tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55050316606511677002024-03-05T10:28:07.793+01:00A Place in the Auvergne (Part 2)THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED. IT WAS A PHOTO BLOG OF ONE YEAR (2008) OF MY LIFE, MIXED WITH NEWS FROM BEYOND THE AUVERGNE THAT CAUGHT MY EYE. YOU CAN FOLLOW THE ODD TWITTER. NO MORE BLOGGING FOR ME.Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-67995739455466596652009-01-02T11:42:00.061+01:002009-01-02T21:13:36.858+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Wednesday, 31st December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong></div><br /><div align="center"><strong>0445</strong></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MeN_HQn7gdMWdJlZQDk_itKyiSdN7jIjBg86fYrUnu0vjWliEF8vz2se5HxCiKcxGZUpIIo4EzLY15CucT9EEvr2yokdXhhhPHN-xOq_HlZmovuBV-l9VwCszmrqd5h97rY_80O2GCQ/s1600-h/DSC05144.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286676294645079170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MeN_HQn7gdMWdJlZQDk_itKyiSdN7jIjBg86fYrUnu0vjWliEF8vz2se5HxCiKcxGZUpIIo4EzLY15CucT9EEvr2yokdXhhhPHN-xOq_HlZmovuBV-l9VwCszmrqd5h97rY_80O2GCQ/s320/DSC05144.jpg" border="0" /></a> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286676289882208050" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnHa0fWsoxcxMMjuXJUyMouPZvmMZyMHPHkQuZD042nx5cBY8ZEfX-hvzEmrlYG1v8S6GWjMYlAJ0cbyeIALr_3zFaXuYc-vKhNFUvBr6x6HgTVyveRqCBbfvkHTqBOtB6wIqNEqhbcuw/s320/DSC05145.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286676285637087474" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRb0kS4U043rHI9dYJTHrEJ4KjgtXQ6DGqx2SlWO2P_VrFEVbXo88jTUT6dQ_9tzWAkcBH7SF9fprvYUKfUPvIb2TJMSZyeDeOBxWsHnor-eJY_dm_Da4xIfUpqkHywmhq_1yNYu-iBaI/s320/DSC05147.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286676280553024498" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN37xqA8FAbvWm5EJr3gIlwM4WVzUbhcSEURd-chVRitIG3d90bIC4P_j9kPhZXMxzMaoAlNhmmL6elvHrcpk5-4Ob4wTbe8UtIqnCRppWOE0a_XgAIdE_xq-MOxDtWPgIKnREpHXDcZM/s320/DSC05148.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286676280296481378" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj18YRNDkk7_xsujjUeBBbq3t_5BnKKQATJ3vseaYs1gq2DX-mUPFq5AsHgS_Ecla4bEBJTD1xLTOXBdTIL73Hu6I_SV7oAN37Ko0JYY9et02FdgvDcCv_Bjv_ZoKmfmhWZ3bQ9eDmZZvY/s320/DSC05149.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286675181979901842" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7ut0yFa85vBvmKkVXc6HNp-LduCWI7Jc0wvo9iR5oQ7-tbG3fJkzCxmI_EkJMLPY-rtzV2glyfS1-8okwSJtDLoquNGvDEibl-Oc2uyjvJQMFAH69wA8N-xb-QoE5oCQyj6NjyqCFOs/s320/DSC05150.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286675172489509522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQpbWbz7a8joVsRis36RWg7aaU-d6xEm0AqR4M8FygjUaZeTXiAE7UutmPhaHADwzZnro56TM1QxfdFTNIky1gcvAsW97tYtZazOiZ1nrGgI60YSPWXkJoMOxHVFo0LPZOlzco0CzTgbA/s320/DSC05152.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286675173408229522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixXKLZ_h65hgpIf5kH_GO9Jycj-T3Ntb_j0aY7QcJiZ3JxeBCv4HoJ2n0Nng_Pfy1Goa4b1qaGCvk0Oy9162BLbjmU43UXiUD-Us-qr75re-TiZWCJ0iDT2Fe3GjbnLQA2brMumWtHHJQ/s320/DSC05155.jpg" border="0" /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286675171550613602" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK0r4QtaTVonSKxECjCBUufzD14CnUNqXy97FHgB8JVizLBPcKRh1E_qnTT4dU3QLQ6rsTrg8Q3_hRj1zuF621WYzvRnTqMFjAuAYVzTtWNDAI1RpEjl9Gt6o4u6IvNescZKakeYvqhfY/s320/DSC05156.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><strong>Former head of Chinese dairy pleads guilty in scandal</strong><br />By David Barboza<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />SHANGHAI: The former chairwoman of one of China's biggest dairy producers pleaded guilty on Wednesday to selling tainted powdered baby formula and acknowledged for the first time that the company knew of the problem months before alerting local officials to what has become one of the country's biggest food-safety crises, according to the state-run news media.<br />The former executive, Tian Wenhua, is one of the highest ranking corporate executives to go on trial in China and could face life imprisonment or even the death sentence, according to legal experts and the local media.<br />Since September, when the scandal became public, investigations have shown how widespread the problem of tainted milk is in China, with watered-down milk being doctored with a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer to falsely raise its protein count. The chemical, melamine, can cause kidney stones and other ailments, and the tainted formula sickened nearly 300,000 children and killed six.<br />The government has accused Sanlu and other big Chinese companies of failing to monitor the quality and safety of their powdered baby formula, and in some cases covering up knowledge that their dairy products contained high and impermissible levels of melamine. The scandal, which follows others in China's food and drug industries, has devastated the country's dairy industry and prompted global recalls of suspect food products, and forced the Chinese authorities to try to demonstrate a new seriousness in enforcement.<br />Tian's plea came on the first day of a trial that involves three other Sanlu executives. The court said that consumer complaints about Sanlu's milk came in as early as December 2007. Tian said she knew the company was selling contaminated formula by May 2008, but did not report the problem to local government officials until August. Between May and September, when Sanlu stopped production, prosecutors said the company made more than 900 tons of melamine contaminated baby milk powder.<br />Until Wednesday, company officials had maintained that they learned of the problem in only in August. That is when executives at the Fonterra Group of New Zealand, which owns a large stake in Sanlu, said they became aware of a problem and pushed Sanlu to issue a recall.<br />The Fonterra executives said they believed their warnings, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, had reached government officials in the capital, but so far investigations have focused mostly on local officials, though the head of the country's product-safety watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision and Quarantine, resigned. The trial involving Tian is in the city of Shijiazhuang, in the northern province of Hebei, where Sanlu is based. This week, an intermediate court rejected requests by some foreign media to attend. On Wednesday, Chinese state-controlled media broadcast images of Tian, who is 66, looking pale and ill, standing handcuffed before a microphone in a yellow jacket acknowledging her guilt.<br />According to state media reports, Tian said she was told in May 2008 that European standards allowed up to 20 milligrams of melamine per kilogram to be present in food products, in an indication that there was a problem with the chemical. In September, some Sanlu products were found to have over 2,000 milligrams per kilogram.<br />Wang Yuliang, another former Sanlu executive on trial, appeared in a wheelchair. State-run media outlets said he tried to commit suicide this year. Sanlu filed for bankruptcy protection last week.<br />Several high ranking Shijiazhuang government officials have been fired for not guarding public safety. The trial of the Sanlu executives and separate trials involving about 15 other dairy middlemen in Hebei Province during the past week has rekindled anger over the scandal. In Shijiazhuang, some families with children who had been sickened by the tainted milk powder gathered outside the courthouse on Wednesday, according to the state-run news media.<br />In 2007, after earlier product-safety scandals, the head of China's State Food and Drug Administration was executed after he was found guilty of corruption and dereliction of duty as a regulator.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Thai political crisis set to drag on in 2009<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Khettiya Jittapong<br />Supporters of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra vowed on Wednesday to resume their street campaign for new elections in 2009, suggesting no respite from a long-running political crisis as a recession looms.<br />In a sign of the strife to come, leaders of the pro-Thaksin camp warned they may target a regional summit in Bangkok in February to pile pressure on the weeks-old government led by former opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva.<br />"We are discussing among DAAD leaders that we will protest against the government again after the New Year holidays," Veera Musikapong, leader of Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship (DAAD), told reporters.<br />"Our demand is the same, a dissolution of the house," Veera said after thousands of red-shirted demonstrators ended a two-day blockade of parliament.<br />The siege forced Abhisit, an Oxford-educated economist and the country's fourth prime minister in 2008, to change the venue of his maiden policy speech.<br />The DAAD, which this week took a page from the playbook of the yellow-shirted People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) that led a months-old street campaign against the previous pro-Thaksin government, has rejected Abhisit's calls for national unity.<br />They accuse the 44-year-old leader of being in an unholy alliance with the army and the PAD, which seized Bangkok's main airports last month, a charge he denies.<br />Thai newspapers said the outlook for political stability remained bleak as long as the rift between Bangkok's royalist and business elite, who accused Thaksin of corruption, and rural voters who loved his populist policies, remains unresolved.<br />"The point of negotiation has passed," Matichon said, comparing the country's politics to a paralysing illness.<br />"There is a chance that this disease will develop and cause death if we don't cure it or find the right cure," it said.<br />THAKSIN RETURN?<br />Thaksin, who fled into exile before his conviction this year on conflict of interest charges, continues to loom large more than two years after he was removed in a bloodless coup.<br />In his latest interview with a magazine in the Middle East, which was widely quoted in the Thai press on Wednesday, Thaksin said he would like to return and lead the government again.<br />Abhisit, who has said Thaksin can return as long as he respected the justice system, said on Tuesday the political chaos could push the country in recession despite his government's planned $8.6 billion (5.9 billion pound) stimulus package.<br />"These conflicts are the country's weakness, especially at a time when the world economy is entering its worst crisis in a century," he told legislators.<br />Slowing exports, falling tourist arrivals, weak commodity prices and delayed private investment would be major problems facing Thailand in 2009 as the global economy weakened, he said.<br />Many Thai and foreign companies have already cut jobs, prompting Abhisit to warn that unemployment could double without urgent government action.<br />But analysts doubt Abhisit's stimulus package can spare the economy from recession, given the country's heavy reliance on exports and the prospects for more political unrest in 2009.<br />(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Sugita Katyal)<br /><br />***************<br /><br /><strong>Ghana presidential hopefuls in last-ditch vote race</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Kwasi Kpodo<br />Ghana's presidential rivals headed to a rural farming constituency on Wednesday, hoping to pick up votes ahead of a crucial ballot there on Friday which will decide one of Africa's closest ever leadership elections.<br />Tain constituency's 53,000 electors could not vote due to problems in last Sunday's run-off ballot, but will now choose who will lead the West African state, the world's No. 2 cocoa grower, for the next four years.<br />With votes counted from Ghana's 229 other constituencies, John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has a wafer-thin lead with 50.13 per cent of votes.<br />Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has 49.87 percent, and just 23,050 votes separate the two foreign-trained lawyers, both aged 64.<br />Akufo-Addo said he was leaving on Wednesday for Tain, where Mills finished narrowly ahead in the first round of voting on December 7. But he protested over irregularities and incidents of violence in last Sunday's ballot and said he may yet pull out.<br />"Whether or not we should go forward in Tain is a matter that we are going to consider," he told reporters in Accra of his planned meetings with party officials in the rural constituency located in Ghana's central Brong Ahafo region.<br />He alleged that NPP polling agents for 10 polling stations in the NDC's Volta Region stronghold were physically prevented from monitoring the vote by opponents on Sunday, while others were assaulted.<br />President John Kufuor, of the NPP, steps down on January 7 after serving the maximum two 4-year terms, and the late voting in Tain has squeezed the timetable for an orderly handover.<br />Observers from the European Union, the U.S.-based Carter Centre and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS said the run-off vote had been generally orderly and transparent.<br />Yet both parties have accused the other's supporters of irregularities and violence during the poll, a hard-fought battle to lead one of Africa's brightest investment hopes as it prepares to start producing crude oil offshore in late 2010.<br />OPPOSITION GAINS<br />Although Akufo-Addo led with a narrow majority in the first round of voting on December 7, Mills' NDC has made the most of the elections so far, overturning an NPP majority in parliament.<br />"In short, the January 2 vote is essentially cosmetic," Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, Africa analyst at risk consultancy Eurasia Group in New York, wrote in a report.<br />"The opposition NDC ... has essentially won the majority of presidential ballots cast during the run-off and Atta Mills will before the end of the week be declared president-elect," he said.<br />Many NDC supporters celebrated on Tuesday when Mills' lead was officially announced. But hundreds of NPP voters gathered at Akufo-Addo's Accra residence on Wednesday expressed anger over alleged election flaws and accosted journalists whom they accused of publishing election results prematurely.<br />Ghana, on Africa's Gulf of Guinea, has enjoyed growth and stability in recent years, becoming an investors' favourite. The country, also a gold producer, will start producing oil in 2010.<br />But with state debts mounting and economic growth slowing amid a global downturn, the new president will likely face high inflation and unemployment, and falling income from foreign aid and remittances from Ghanaians working overseas.<br />(Writing by Alistair Thomson; editing by Pascal Fletcher and Philippa Fletcher)<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ_hLoJSFpw3y99HDOwobKI5U_uqi9M955h0sYCYV3VcAZycL5mo5eFgZ4eJNElSpE5DOltuwCb1tVvYxBHNhlWNpyYP7HwQu_sP6om0uHN3UgopxYJNzvXfogMJydYmD4QC9pqgB9-O8/s1600-h/DSC05158.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286675170694635298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ_hLoJSFpw3y99HDOwobKI5U_uqi9M955h0sYCYV3VcAZycL5mo5eFgZ4eJNElSpE5DOltuwCb1tVvYxBHNhlWNpyYP7HwQu_sP6om0uHN3UgopxYJNzvXfogMJydYmD4QC9pqgB9-O8/s320/DSC05158.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Two of China's quake victims rebuild their lives<br /></strong>By Edward Wong<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />LUOCHEN VILLAGE, China: Li Wanzhi has learned to do certain things with just one arm.<br />Dressing herself, for example. That was easy. Washing clothes was something else entirely. For that, she needed the help of her mother-in-law.<br />Her husband, Wang Zhijun, was in good shape, by comparison. He had all his limbs, even though he and his wife had been trapped together in the rubble of their apartment building for 28 hours after the earthquake in Sichuan Province last May. They had lain with their arms wrapped around each other, their faces only inches apart. His right hand still aches, but he can hold chopsticks now.<br />"Sometimes when we think of that night, we say, 'Let the past be the past,"' Li said with a faint smile. "We feel we've already started a new life."<br />Like the stories of many survivors, the journey of Li and Wang after the earthquake has been one of steps taken by the inch. They are slowly piecing together a future after a disaster that left 88,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless in the rugged hills of southwest China.<br />The two sat on wooden chairs by a field of garlic on a gray afternoon, sipping tea with visitors. The empty left sleeve of Li's brown winter coat was tucked into a pocket. Wang rubbed his aching hand. They listened to their 14-year-old daughter playing with girlfriends in a makeshift tent.<br />This is Wang's home village in Sichuan, where irrigation canals line fields and a cement factory belches fumes.<br />Li and Wang now live in a flimsy wooden hut with a dirt floor.<br />Their disabilities prevent them from working. Besides missing an arm, Li has problems with her right foot. But they say they consider themselves lucky to be alive, and their spirits are much higher than when they were in a hospital room just three days after their harrowing ordeal last May.<br />Before the quake, Wang, 40, had been traveling across China doing odd jobs, and his marriage with Li had been on the wane. Since their rescue, it has proved sturdier than the thousands of buildings that crumbled to dust.<br />The night they were trapped beneath the rubble, they made promises to each other: They would rededicate themselves to each other if they made it out alive; together they would raise their daughter, Xinyi.<br />"He won't travel for now because he has to stay home to take care of me," said Li, 38.<br />Wang grinned. "Yeah, I have to be here to take care of her," he said.<br />Li glanced at Wang's hand. "My father often jokes, 'Look at this couple - one has a third-degree disability, the other has a second-degree disability; they're made for each other,"' she said.<br />They spend their days doing simple exercises to get back into shape. At night, they eat dinner with Wang's younger brother at his home, a large, wooden shelter where villagers gather around four tables to play mah-jongg. Then they return to their cold hut to sleep.<br />The hut has a stack of quilts and a cardboard box that serves as a table. Its one luxury is an old television set and DVD player that Wang's older sister rescued from her home.<br />The sister and her husband sleep next door in an even flimsier shelter, made of plastic tarps.<br />Each day, all across the village, survivors mix cement and stack bricks atop bricks to build new homes. But Li and Wang are in no condition to do such work.<br />"This year, we'll do our best to recover," Li said. "Next year, we'll live on our own and maybe start a small business."<br />Like other earthquake victims, they get a government subsidy of $44 a month. An American couple who read the tale of their survival last May in The New York Times gave them a small donation. And although Li no longer works, her employer, a chemical production company with a factory in the nearby town of Luoshui, continues to pay her a monthly salary of $150.<br />The couple had been living on the fourth floor of a workers' dormitory when it and the factory collapsed on the afternoon of May 12. More than a hundred of Li's co-workers died.<br />"My colleagues often call me to ask if I'm doing well," she said. "In my department, several died. Some others are fine."<br />Wang says he wants to buy a small truck next year to transport goods. Li may try her luck at business.<br />"I want to start a clothes shop," she said. "I often say to my husband, 'I want to feel like a beautiful woman, and to look at beautiful clothes every day.' I want to get my confidence back."<br />Li's arm became gangrenous after being crushed in the rubble. After it was amputated at a local hospital in May, she was flown to Shanghai for more surgery. Doctors gave her a plastic arm for upper-body balance and cosmetic purposes, but she rarely wears it.<br />At a recovery center in Shanghai, she saw other amputees outfitted with metal prosthetic arms. Someone told her the price for one: an astounding $4,400. Her dream now, she said, is to have an arm she can use again.<br />On weekends, Xinyi, their daughter, comes home. Most days, she stays at a friend's home close to her school in Shifang. Poorly built schools collapsed across southwestern China during the earthquake, killing as many as 10,000 children, but Xinyi's remained standing. The school was later torn down, though, and the students now go to class in a prefabricated schoolhouse.<br />"It's not bad," Xinyi said of life after the earthquake. "Baba and Mama are here. I don't think about the earthquake much."<br />But for Li, the hours she and her husband spent buried in the rubble are forever seared into her memory.<br />"I still think often of the earthquake," she said. "Sometimes when I see a high building, I think, 'I was buried after falling from the fourth floor, and I survived. How lucky I am!' The other day, I saw a six-story building and I thought, 'How did I survive?"'<br />Li fell quiet and looked at her husband. The pale winter light was fading. They got up from their chairs and walked into the tent where their daughter had been laughing all afternoon with other children.<br />Huang Yuanxi contributed research.<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Breakingviews.com: Rich countries could be biggest losers in downturn</strong><br />breakingviews.com<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />Absent huge policy mistakes, the current downturn will not rival the Great Depression, when U.S. gross domestic product dropped by 27 percent and the unemployment rate reached 25 percent. Even the worst pessimists do not expect a GDP decline of double-digit percentage points. But there is a chance of a sort of quasi-depression - which could lead to a multi-decade decline in living standards in rich countries.<br />The gap between developing and developed world living standards is still huge. GDP per person in the United States is 4.6 times as high as the world average.<br />But globalization - in trade, communications and knowledge - is narrowing the difference. Both poor and rich have gotten richer, though the poor have got richer faster.<br />That could change. The growth of the poor might start to come at the expense of the rich.<br />Suppose that income gap of 4.6 times halves in the next 15 years while the world's GDP keeps growing at the same rate it did between 1960 and 2000 - 2.6 percent. If that happens, U.S. per capita GDP will mathematically be 27 percent lower in 2022 than in 2007 - the same fall as in the Great Depression, just spread out over many more years.<br />Rich countries can actually get poorer. The average Argentine was 9 percent poorer in 1945 than in 1929. It took heroic doses of wasteful macroeconomic policy to get that result. But the current rich-country policies of huge government deficits and tiny interest rates are not growth-friendly over the long term.<br />Unless reversed quickly, this mix tends to lead to larger governments, troublesome budget deficits and - when the debts cannot be paid off - increasingly dangerous inflation. Populist policies could make a bad situation worse. In the United States and other wealthy countries, the result could be a downward-sloping saw-toothed pattern of output, in which each recovery is feebler than the preceding downturn.<br />As it stands, the poor are closely tied to the rich, so China and its peers are suffering from the troubles in their big export markets. That could change, though, if poorer countries learn to rely less on low-value exports. Instead, they could create a self-sustaining upward spiral of useful investments, improved productivity and rising incomes. Such a decoupling would be highly advisable if rich countries turned to the economic equivalent of self-harming behavior.<br />Even if the rich get one-third poorer, they will be much richer than their ancestors were in 1929, before the Great Depression started. But the psychological effect of losing income for so many years could be just as great. Talk about depressing. - Martin Hutchinson<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSMTKQoU3vnKhv6rNoj1ZZ2Xl8yBtk6aG6pTvJNHMP6DzIVxyDH1YVk_7TiPJP7aJtFsxq3RBVXrsi6hmhQ5bHY2bdbSZqwXQic2Y-A0oqwwgxWOGwrK1q1ajP7GH6MnCKxPnxjgYEfw/s1600-h/DSC05159.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673970152066962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSMTKQoU3vnKhv6rNoj1ZZ2Xl8yBtk6aG6pTvJNHMP6DzIVxyDH1YVk_7TiPJP7aJtFsxq3RBVXrsi6hmhQ5bHY2bdbSZqwXQic2Y-A0oqwwgxWOGwrK1q1ajP7GH6MnCKxPnxjgYEfw/s320/DSC05159.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Gazprom begins halting gas to Ukraine</strong><br />By Andrew E. Kramer<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, began shutting off its gas supplies to Ukraine, Russian state television reported on Thursday, a day after negotiations over gas prices between Russia and Ukraine unraveled.<br />In a live broadcast from the pumping station near Russia's border with Ukraine, the Vesti-24 television station said Gazprom headquarters in Moscow had ordered its pumping station on one of the pipeline routes to Ukraine to halt gas supplies and that the volume of gas to Ukraine was four times below what was normal.<br />Customers in Western Europe will see shortages as the same pipelines in Ukraine are used for export and internal distribution. It is a problem that has bedeviled Europe's energy supplies from Russia for years.<br />How quickly Western Europe would feel a shortage of natural gas was unclear, and would depend on the scale and duration of any Russian embargo of Ukraine. The fuel is used for heating and to generate electricity, and winter is the period of peak demand.<br />As in the past, the dispute blends political and economic grievances.<br />But the economic pressure on Ukraine is likely to be viewed through the lens of the war in Georgia in August, and Russia's subsequent claim to a privileged sphere of influence in the former Soviet republics. Like Georgia, Ukraine has angered Russia by seeking membership in the NATO alliance.<br />In comments broadcast on Russian state television Wednesday evening, the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, said any interference with Russia's gas exports to Europe would carry "serious consequences for the transit country itself," without elaborating.<br />Ukraine paid $1.5 billion to the Swiss-based trader that Gazprom uses to supply Ukraine, RosUkrEnergo, on Tuesday. President Viktor Yushchenko issued a statement saying Ukraine had settled for all deliveries in 2008.<br />Gazprom, however, maintains that Ukraine must also pay $600 million in late fees.<br />By Wednesday evening, the sides had also not settled on the price for 2009 deliveries or the tariff Ukraine would charge for transshipping Russian gas to customers in Western Europe.<br />Gazprom is asking Ukraine to pay $250 for a 1,000 cubic meters next year, up from $179 for the same volume in 2008, Putin said, characterizing this as a subsidized rate.<br />Bohdan Sokolovsky, the Ukrainian president's envoy on energy security, said Ukraine would not accept this price unless Russia offset the increase by paying more to transit gas to Europe.<br />The transit of Russian natural gas across former Soviet states to Western Europe is a pivotal economic and security interest of the Russian government as taxes on exports of oil and natural gas account for about 60 percent of the budget.<br />About 80 percent of Russia's gas exports to Europe, meanwhile, cross Ukrainian territory.<br />Customers include major European utilities like Germany's E.On and the Italy's Eni.<br />After the street protests known as the Orange Revolution installed a pro-Western government in Ukraine in 2004, talks over gas supply and transit became fraught.<br />Russia halted supplies to Ukraine for three days in 2006 in a dispute ostensible over pricing and transit fees.<br />Then, the drop in pressure in the integrated European pipeline system led to shortages as far away as Italy as Ukraine withdrew gas from the export shipments to meet internal demand. This year, however, Ukrainian authorities say they have sufficient reserves to meet internal demand for three months.<br />Russia's hardening position in this gas pricing negotiations come at a bad time for Ukraine, a country already hard hit by recession.<br />Still, Gazprom's chief executive, Aleksei Miller, on Wednesday reiterated the threat to cease deliveries Thursday morning.<br /><br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Ukraine threatens to seize Russian gas, Gazprom says<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Russia's state gas monopoly, Gazprom, said Wednesday that Ukraine has threatened to seize gas intended for European customers if no deal is reached on gas shipments to Ukraine starting Jan. 1.<br />Gazprom's deputy chairman, Alexander Medvedev, said Ukraine's threat amounted to "blackmail" of Russia and the European Union.<br />He condemned the threat contained in a letter from Ukraine's state gas company, Naftogaz, as "utterly irresponsible," saying that it violates Ukraine's obligations under previous agreements.<br />A seizure threat would raise fears of disruptions in supplies to Europe similar to those which occurred amid a similar dispute in January 2006. The announcement comes as Russian and Ukrainian officials remain locked in tough talks on Ukraine's debt over past gas shipments and future deliveries.<br />Gazprom supplies a quarter of the gas used by EU nations, and around 80 percent of it goes through Ukraine.<br />A Naftogaz spokesman, Valentyn Zemlyansky, and other Ukrainian officials had no immediate comment, but Medvedev showed a copy of the letter from the chief of Naftogaz, Oleh Dubina, at a news conference Wednesday.<br />Gazprom again warned it would cut gas supplies to Ukraine on Thursday and sharply raise the price for future deliveries if it fails to pay off $2.1 billion debt for Russian gas supplies by midnight.<br />Naftogaz has said it paid $1.5 billion to settle its debt for Russian gas imports. Medvedev said that the sum has reached the accounts of Rosukrenergo, a Russian-Ukrainian intermediary based in Switzerland, and voiced hope it would soon reach Gazprom's accounts.<br />But a Gazprom spokesman, Sergei Kupriyanov, said that it expects Ukraine to make good on the rest of its $2.1 billion debt.<br /><br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Oilexco says unit faces insolvency as shares skid</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Alasdair Reilly<br />Oil exploration company Oilexco said on Wednesday that its North Sea operating unit intends to file for bankruptcy protection after lenders refused to provide further funding to the company.<br />Oilexco shares lost nearly three-quarters of their value, tumbling 64 Canadian cents to 25 Canadian cents on the Toronto Stock Exchange.<br />The company, which first announced financing problems in October, was the exchange's most heavily traded issue on New Year's Eve, with more than 24 million shares changing hands early in the session. Its London-listed shares sank 60 percent to 20 pence.<br />Calgary, Alberta-based Oilexco said in a statement that subsidiary Oilexco North Sea Ltd is likely to file for administration as early as next week.<br />Oilexco won a $47.5 million (33 million pound) bridge financing on December 17 with its banking syndicate, led by Royal Bank of Scotland . The bridge loan matures on January 31, 2009.<br />The company said in mid-December it was likely that incremental funding would be required in the short term, in addition to the bridge loan.<br />Oilexco is retaining Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch to conduct a strategic review to seek funding alternatives or a possible sale of the company or its assets.<br />Administrators are likely to continue those efforts, but the company said it could give no assurances that a deal would be completed.<br />Oilexco said it remains solvent and committed to the strategic review process.<br />The company tapped the financial market in October 2007 when it secured a $500 million loan from a syndicate of banks.<br />That financing was used to develop the Ptarmigan, Shelly and Huntington fields, for the completion of its acquisition of the Balmoral production vessel and for general corporate purposes.<br />Oilexco's producing properties, exploration and development activities are located in the North Sea, specifically the Outer Moray Firth and Central Graben areas off eastern Scotland.<br />It has been struggling with financing problems since October, when it announced the closing of a planned financing had been delayed by the credit crisis. It also cut its production target amid falling oil prices.<br />(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Jones in Calgary; editing by David Cowell and Rob Wilson)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Oil jumps 14 percent<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Edward McAllister<br />US crude oil ended 2008 up 14 percent a barrel in thin pre-holiday trade on Wednesday, tracking a jump in gasoline as a slowdown in domestic refinery activity sparked fears of tightening fuel supply this winter.<br />U.S. crude oil futures for February settled up $5.57 to $44.60 per barrel, but down 54 percent from the $95.98 on the last day in 2007.<br />London Brent settled up $5.44 at $45.59.<br />This year saw the record high prices in July above $147 a barrel crash to the year low of $32.40 on December 19 as the global recession dissolved world demand.<br />Weekly U.S. inventory data on Wednesday showed a decline in refinery activity and a 500,000 barrel rise in crude stocks, compared with forecasts for a 1.5 million barrel decrease.<br />"There's a sign that the industry might be cutting back on production rates to try to boost margins. As heating oil and gasoline prices are rallying, crude is tagging along," said Gene McGillian, analyst at Tradition Energy Stamford, Connecticut.<br />"The market is trading in pretty thin volume ahead of tomorrow's holiday and I think that's contributing to some of the strength," he added.<br />Inventories of refined products also rose, though less than analysts had expected. Gasoline stockpiles increased by 800,000 barrels, less than forecasts for a 1.5 million barrel build, while distillates rose by 700,000 barrels, below expectations for a 1.1 million barrel increase.<br />Demand for both gasoline and distillates, which include heating oil, was lower than the same time a year ago, extending the trend for reduced consumption.<br />Markets also were watching a dispute over gas supplies between Russia and Ukraine, which may have to buy distillates from Europe if gas supplies from Russia are halted.<br />Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom said on Wednesday that talks with Ukraine over gas prices for 2009 have failed, making a cut-off of gas to Ukraine on January1 unavoidable.<br />"Thrown in with everything else, the Russian threat of a gas cutoff has everyone a bit nervous ahead of the close," said Tom Knight, trader with Truman Arnold in Texarkana, Texas.<br />Analysts forecast an average of $49 a barrel for U.S. crude in the first quarter, and an average of $58.48 for next year, down $14 from their previous forecasts, the latest Reuters poll showed.<br />Faced with slumping demand and prices, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) this month said it was cutting output 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd), its deepest reduction ever.<br />Evidence is mounting that OPEC is complying with its goal to reduce production, led by top exporter Saudi Arabia.<br />Market sources said on Tuesday the kingdom's supplies to long-term buyers in February could imply production of even less than its new OPEC production target.<br />(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Robert Gibbons in New York, Christopher Johnson in London and Chua Baizhen in Singapore; editing by Anthony Barker)<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Iranian president proposes ending energy subsidies<br /></strong>By Nazila Fathi<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />TEHRAN: Faced with falling oil prices and a weakening economy, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented a plan to Parliament on Tuesday that would scrap energy subsidies, a significant change in a major oil-producing country where gasoline is sold for 36 cents a gallon.<br />Economists warn that the move could spur inflation and raise unemployment. But Ahmadinejad urged Parliament to vote for the bill because of the need to curb costly energy consumption, which the subsidies have encouraged.<br />The president previously insisted that the global economic downturn and the decline in oil prices would not harm Iran's economy. But as oil prices have fallen to less than $40 a barrel from $147 in recent months, the pressures on the government have become unavoidable. It currently pays $100 billion a year in direct and indirect subsidies for goods, according to government figures.<br />"Falling oil prices encourage us to promptly implement the bill," Ahmadinejad told Parliament. "It is time we made a decision."<br />The falling international oil prices provided a good opportunity for Iran to act now to end subsidies that have been in place for years, he said. The resulting inflation, he argued, would be temporary.<br />Opposition to the plan is expected to be intense. But Parliament agreed to study the package and is expected to put it up for a vote within a month. Parliament has 290 members, and more than half of them would have to vote for the bill for it to pass.<br />Electricity is now sold at just 6 cents per 10 kilowatt-hours. The plan would abolish all government subsidies for things like heating gas, gasoline, electricity and water within the next three years and allow prices to reach international levels.<br />While the plan seems likely to be unpopular, Ahmadinejad's critics say he is trying to offset its impact and appeal to voters ahead of the June 2009 presidential election by also promising to give much of the money that is now paid in subsidies directly to the poor in the form of a monthly allowance.<br />The amount he proposes for the allowance is not yet clear, but monthly assistance to the poor has steadily dropped to $20 per person every month from nearly $70.<br />Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 with a mandate to distribute windfall oil revenue among the poor. However, the economy has taken a downturn since his election. Unemployment has increased, and inflation already stands at nearly 30 percent.<br />Opponents of his plan say it would push inflation higher. A central bank official, Ramin Pashaifam, said Ahmadinejad's plan would increase inflation by an additional 11 to 15 percent, the daily newspaper Etemad quoted him as saying on Tuesday.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KQ1N5c3eWxjPy4uFNNwRGUHHwgNR64LURvlRnXsoE8KA8ERefcHDSYU-plWKmJ0unt5Fu1_V4YtGHLkMJiN4jBVOV3LK_9cSNkgTX2Eq2FyUDWsee-SzZondN40Tq9VxS2acn4mkhOE/s1600-h/DSC05160.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673962303509922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KQ1N5c3eWxjPy4uFNNwRGUHHwgNR64LURvlRnXsoE8KA8ERefcHDSYU-plWKmJ0unt5Fu1_V4YtGHLkMJiN4jBVOV3LK_9cSNkgTX2Eq2FyUDWsee-SzZondN40Tq9VxS2acn4mkhOE/s320/DSC05160.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>New Year's Eve car burnings rise sharply in France</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />PARIS: The French government says vandals burned 30 percent more cars on New Year's Eve this year than during the holiday last year.<br />Burning cars on the last day of the year has become a tradition in rundown French suburbs.<br />The Interior Ministry said 1,147 cars were burned overnight, compared with 878 last year. It said the police had arrested 288 people during the night, up from 259 last year.<br />President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday that minors caught setting vehicles ablaze should be banned from holding a driver's license until they have paid back victims for the damage done to their cars.<br />Sarkozy also advocates the more widespread use of video surveillance to identify culprits.<br />Worried that the global economic crisis might spark renewed violence in the suburbs this year, the government mobilized 35,000 police officers on New Year's Eve, about 7,000 more than last year.<br />French officials also were on heightened alert after five sticks of dynamite were left in a Paris department store just before Christmas by someone who demanded the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.Fires set in Greece<br />Arsonists attacked 10 banks and 2 car dealerships around Athens early Thursday amid New Year's celebrations in the Greek capital, the police said, according to The Associated Press.<br />No injuries or arrests were reported by the authorities and the attacks caused minor damage. The police had braced for violence over New Year's Eve following riots this month over the fatal shooting of a teenage boy by police officers.<br />At least five arson attacks were also reported by the police in Thessaloniki. Police officers also briefly clashed with protesters in the city, the second-largest in Greece, and fired tear gas at rock-throwing demonstrators.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7KJz_JCAUyWY2WXnhVB6cfa1rr0b4mpbibUVNLsaW9ot4VcdASG9a_orZfKA97asXxOYhjoVpA0bmXgRGlTSYAnfZh5ZcEs6JDie4NaAY8cyEHY1rLiXw_ekZXYLlmftdDIgO4Vm_6Y4/s1600-h/DSC05163.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673960442220242" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7KJz_JCAUyWY2WXnhVB6cfa1rr0b4mpbibUVNLsaW9ot4VcdASG9a_orZfKA97asXxOYhjoVpA0bmXgRGlTSYAnfZh5ZcEs6JDie4NaAY8cyEHY1rLiXw_ekZXYLlmftdDIgO4Vm_6Y4/s320/DSC05163.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673952768537266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleAEok2BKUh1K9sFOqb5A_zVDrz59BXeV3e9xJUpcXjin5DZvnwfELVByAlsgFrwdehEpyDESiALGP4lQQSIUmoIytUm3whfzuGNiJ7BK2I_PKkeB4ZDAFXIuI01L3xS67AeohofAEj4/s320/DSC05164.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673945021845570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 297px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuBVA4T6iCml4mYRYF9JT4Xa5CQ_BkJCn0aqqtj-2AEa-RpUbddVS5kcEOJoXM7vKQfbXOh8vOmrzttN_aOz2vVabE2Pi0zyZEtbyFewaJ2E95icJxA1D6Fk41vvE9UqGcOXOPTNx3E8s/s320/DSC05165.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673148163338306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 191px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpqGTNl_ghyl2suHbmJFOJeDQirrxikQEdUh3leLSeg-UknxCu77f6HRPlKmFu9u5fBnVp0GE_-8ddtZFTnYxdi7MlQH2BPrDJmFfsnSN6fDAk8jPA5ymM6Te63UtEjfu8r03prvU-BCw/s320/DSC05166.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673139212536562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWtiOLzIgsQ41S_tsKYiJGHPYkkGGNlzYaUf16nGWfikijssHwIGRwkZSZesfSraZv_nUC30YJJuOwA5QMTS7uexArPtXec_qToq07AlTJHyKmNzrzFH5zTqoJBcpvWEFS1g7Quo-dbl0/s320/DSC05167.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673129855374946" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT-ljAqoz_iuh0o2PCQd-neBvRU0tUrxsHI38tLt6mallrHThaUv-BAMf11kr5XySx9R0SbW67wG8fQblfp5tGQyXPmVs1lwQwtMSfkDetCRRcR38QYGJ_1iivdpTQjLURDIyRCb-qXvU/s320/DSC05168.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673123432698978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioE7Il3kzET9RS08ehJcjXC5qQ0QC4UHYpnLWcqNAPUct1eg8S1VwjhEOGf0IEb1keEuGRp0gfXBgmlvrkDW7Jfgkyqf4z3AzdDs0iOIXDRsFJs4z6WViHHmdeCCFq9glWgKXTqJos1uY/s320/DSC05169.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286673120281464914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf1uCW14VXQRkblhdO1b3IoIoz3y2t01TfMGi16qMyWs8ZCZ2AvEWezRISSbC_ZnfMbF1IgNKk4VXD3rRR_FjFiWFSCeuUy946UZaxM_js6inneznmCys06Ys_m66i5SzTSup7cyhMc8s/s320/DSC05171.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><strong>Israel rejects cease-fire, but offers Gaza aid<br /></strong>By Ethan Bronner<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Israel sought on Wednesday to fend off growing international pressure over civilian casualties from its military assault on Gaza, saying it would expedite and increase humanitarian aid and work with its allies to build a durable, long-term truce. But Israel would not agree to a proposed 48-hour cease-fire.<br />The government said it would push ahead with its air, sea and ultimately ground operation, which one senior military official described as "making Hamas lose their will or lose their weapons."<br />A strike Thursday morning included the Parliament building among its targets, news agencies reported.<br />During the five days of combat, Israeli warplanes have been destroying buildings once considered off limits, including mosques and government and university compounds, with officials asserting that rocket launchers and ammunition were made, stored and even operated from there. They were also hitting the homes of militants, smuggler tunnels and even money exchange shops to choke off Hamas from its suppliers.<br />The military official said that Gaza was limited in size and cut off from the outside and that Israel could win if it stopped future supplies and destroyed enough of what Hamas had. He added, however, that targets were running short, and that a limited ground operation aimed at destroying remaining sites was likely once the wet weather cleared.<br />Meanwhile, overwhelmed hospital officials in Gaza said that of the more than 390 people killed by Israeli fighter planes since Saturday, 38 were children and 25 women. The United Nations, which has estimated the number of dead to be between 320 and 390, said 25 percent of those killed were civilians. Israel said that it was still checking the numbers.<br />In the Jabalya Refugee Camp north of Gaza City, hundreds lined up for hours in the rain for bread and other staples as F-16 jets menaced overhead. At one point, two rockets were launched from within the camp — among about 60 shot into Israel on Wednesday — and an Israeli missile then hit the launcher.<br />The rockets that have been sent some 20 miles into the Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beersheba in recent days are known as grads. They measure nine feet in length with warheads that weigh 30 to 40 pounds and were not manufactured in Gaza but were bought abroad and smuggled through tunnels from Egypt, Israeli officials said.<br />In Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, emergency personnel engaged in a brutal form of triage, allowing the worst cases to fade as they found themselves unable to cope.<br />A senior Israeli official said the country was seeking ways to increase humanitarian aid so that its military endeavor could continue without further pressure to stop. It permitted a dozen wounded and ill Gazans into Israel on Wednesday for treatment at hospitals here and allowed in some 100 trucks of food and medicine.<br />He also said that one limitation on the aid was that crossing points had come under attack by Hamas. A second, he said, is that donors are not bringing enough goods. Of the donations so far, some come from United Nations agencies, but most are from private donors.<br />Tens of thousands of Gazans have received recorded phone calls from the Israeli Army warning them that their houses have been marked as targets because they harbored either militants or weapons facilities like rocket workshops. Noncombatants were urged to clear out. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets gave the same message.<br />Israeli officials say their goals for a truce include a complete cessation of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza, a ban on armed men approaching the border with Israel, full Israeli control over the border crossings and a mechanism to ensure that Hamas is meeting its commitments.<br />The Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, told Israel that there would be no talk of a truce until it ended its attack and all the crossings into Gaza from Israel as well as from Egypt were opened to full commercial traffic. He did not mention the rockets that Israel considers the central cause of its campaign.<br />On Thursday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was expected to fly to Paris to meet with Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and President Nicolas Sarkozy, who are seeking ways to promote a cease-fire.<br />From his ranch in Crawford, Texas, President George W. Bush called Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said Olmert had "assured President Bush that Israel is taking appropriate steps to avoid civilian casualties" in Gaza. In addition, he said, the Israeli leader told Bush that Israel was "targeting only Hamas operatives and those affiliated with Hamas."<br />They discussed prospects for a cease-fire — "what steps could lead to a cessation of violence," Johndroe said — but did not "get into specific timetables."<br />"It all begins with Hamas agreeing to stop firing rockets" into Israel, Johndroe added. "The onus is on Hamas."<br />The White House praised the diplomatic efforts of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but denounced Iran and Syria, saying they had supplied weapons to terrorist groups.<br />"Hamas is pretty well supplied by Iran and, to a certain extent, Syria," Johndroe said. "Neither Iran nor Syria is playing a helpful role. They're not playing a constructive role in this current crisis, which is pretty typical for their actions with regard to Hamas and Hezbollah."<br />Israel's Supreme Court told the government on Wednesday to allow foreign journalists limited access to Gaza, which had been closed to them since early November. The ruling, which urged the government to allow in a group of up to a dozen foreign journalists, came in response to a petition filed by the Foreign Press Association.<br />Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, appealed to the United Nations Security Council for a cease-fire. Abbas, whose troops were forcibly ejected from Gaza by Hamas 18 months ago, is in a delicate position of not wishing Hamas to triumph but not wishing Palestinians to suffer.<br />In a speech delivered on Wednesday, Abbas reiterated that Hamas was responsible for the Israeli invasion because it ended the cease-fire between it and Israel 12 days ago. But he called what Israel was doing "the bloodiest massacre and systemic destruction of all forms of life; it is an aggression that does not target Gaza only but the entire Palestinian people and their cause and future and their most basic human rights."<br />In the West Bank, the Palestinian police and security forces have had their leaves canceled. Some men associated with Hamas have been detained, and strict rules have been established for demonstrations in support of Gaza to avoid their turning into support for Hamas. Slogans and flags are limited, and close contact with Israeli forces and checkpoints has been barred to prevent trouble.<br />In Cairo, Arab countries appeared deeply divided over how to respond to the latest escalation in fighting between Israel and Hamas, with sharply differing comments from foreign ministers at the opening of an emergency Arab League meeting.<br />Moderate Arab states generally allied with the United States blamed Palestinian disunity for the crisis and more radical states, some of whom did not attend, urged collective action to defend the Palestinians against Israel.<br />In the most striking comments, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, criticized the Palestinians for their inability to remain united behind President Abbas of Fatah — an implicit condemnation of Hamas, which took over Gaza entirely in 2007 in a brief but violent civil war with Fatah. Normally, during periods of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Arab leaders condemn only Israel.<br />"This terrible massacre would not have happened if the Palestinian people were united behind one leadership, speaking in one voice," Prince Saud said at the league meeting's opening. "We are telling our Palestinian brothers that your Arab nation cannot extend a real helping hand if you don't extend your own hands to each other with love."</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Gunman wounds 2 Israelis in Denmark mall shooting<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />COPENHAGEN, Denmark: A gunman shot and wounded two Israelis working at a packed central Denmark shopping mall Wednesday, police said.<br />Police spokesman Lars Thede said it was not immediately clear whether the Israelis were targeted because of their nationality. A video surveillance camera showed a swarthy man with a dark mustache and dark hair in his mid-20s pulling out a gun before opening fire.<br />"We cannot say whether he is Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian or Bosnian, or where he is from," Thede said.<br />"It is too early to say whether this has something to do with what happens elsewhere," he said, referring to an Israeli offensive under way against Gaza's Hamas rulers in retaliation for rocket fire. The strikes have killed some 390 people so far.<br />Poul Bjoernhold Loehde, head of the police in Odense, said the Danish Security and Intelligence Service had been informed of the shooting.<br />"Because of the present world situation, we have contacted them. To us, it is an ordinary criminal case," Bjoernhold Loehde told The Associated Press.<br />No one at the agency was available for comment.<br />The two wounded men are Israelis in their 20s, Thede said. One of the wounded was shot in the arm and the other in the leg, police said. The wounds are not life threatening, police said.<br />The shooting took place at the Rosengaard mall in Odense, 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Copenhagen. It occurred around 3.30 p.m. (1430 GMT), when the mall was filled with people doing last-minute shopping before the New Year's break.<br />Alem Dervisevic, an eyewitness, told TV2 that he thought fireworks were going off when the shooting occurred.<br />"But then we saw gun rounds on the floor, we saw people running and shouting," Dervisevic told TV2. "I saw blood and a man lying down near Kvickly (supermarket) and ambulance people picking him up."<br />The men, who were selling hair care products, had been harassed by a group of youths in recent days, Denmark's Ritzau news agency said. The nature of the harassment was not immediately known. According to the B.T. newspaper's Web site, a man shouted something in a Middle Eastern language and opened fire. Another Israeli inside the hairdressing shop threw a chair at the gunman, the newspaper said.<br />The shooter escaped in a dark vehicle which later was found nearby by police.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Civilians suffer in densely populated Gaza<br /></strong>By Taghreed El-Khodary<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />GAZA: A dentist stood at the bed of a doctor, his good friend Ehab Madhoun, 32, who had just died, his shrapnel-pitted body wrapped in a white shroud.<br />The day before, Madhoun, a general practitioner, was in an ambulance responding to an Israeli airstrike at the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Another missile hit the ambulance. The driver, Muhammad Abu Hasira, died instantly. Madhoun lingered for a day, dying of his wounds on Wednesday in the intensive care unit of Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of people have been brought since Israel began its heaviest assault on Gaza in three decades.<br />The dentist cried.<br />"He was just doing his work," said the dentist, who would not give his name. "He's a doctor, and I can't understand why Israel would hit an ambulance. They can tell from the cameras it's an ambulance."<br />It has always been the case, over years of conflict here, that civilians are killed in the densely populated Gaza Strip when Israel stages military operations it says are essential for its security. But six days of Israeli airstrikes have surpassed previous operations in scale and intensity; the long-distance bombardment of the Hamas-controlled territory has, however well aimed at those suspected of being militants, splintered families and shattered homes in one of the most densely populated places on earth.<br />Medical officials in Gaza said the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli bombardment had topped 400. While many of the dead were Hamas security personnel, the United Nations said a quarter of those killed were civilians. Some Israeli officials have put the number of Palestinian civilians killed at more like 10 percent.<br />Israel broadened the scope of its air offensive against the Hamas infrastructure in Gaza on Thursday, destroying important symbols of government and killing a senior leader of the militant Islamic group.<br />With Israeli troops and tanks amassed along the border with Gaza poised for a possible ground invasion, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, flew to Paris to meet with French leaders who are seeking ways to promote a cease-fire. Before she left, Livni had suggested that Israel was seeking more time for its military operation, whose primary objective is to permanently halt Palestinian rocket fire.<br />The Israeli Air Force on Thursday afternoon bombed the house of Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas leader, killing him, two of his wives and four of their children, Palestinian hospital officials said. Rayyan was the first top Hamas figure killed in the Israeli campaign.<br />Israeli officials are coming under increasing pressure to ease conditions for civilians in Gaza, where severely limited supplies of electricity, water, food and medicine are worsening shortages in an area that was already sealed off from the outside world.<br />On the issue of civilian casualties, Israeli officials maintained that they do not take aim at civilians and do everything possible to avoid hitting them, like using precision-guidance systems, up-to-the minute intelligence, leaflets and phone calls to targeted areas.<br />They say killing and wounding civilians only undermines their primary mission: to stop Hamas from firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel.<br />"I haven't seen too many tears shed in Paris, London or Berlin over the fact that we have hit Hamas targets," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "So we have many reasons, both moral and political, for doing the utmost to make sure that our strikes are as surgical as possible."<br />Further complicating matters is the fact that Gaza's 1.4 million people are packed into an area of only 360 square kilometers, or 140 square miles. The military and government facilities of Hamas are intertwined with buildings where the civilian population lives and works. Israelis say Hamas fires rockets at Israel from civilian neighborhoods.<br />In Gaza, human rights groups said that the new scale of Israel's operation puts the area's civilians, even those accustomed to conflict, under particular stress.<br />Some of the wounded are afraid to seek treatment at the already overwhelmed hospitals, fearful of heading into a rocket attack while driving through streets of smashed buildings and concrete shards.<br />Large, multigenerational families huddle in their houses, hoarding the shrinking supplies of water, food and gasoline. Despite the cold, many have kept their windows open to prevent them from shattering when bombs explode nearby. Shops are closed except for grocery stores, bakeries and pharmacies.<br />"Conditions for parents and children in Gaza are dangerous and frightening," Maxwell Gaylard, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said in a statement.<br />"It is absolutely crucial that there is an end to the fighting," he said. "Without it, more civilians will continue to be killed. Without the violence stopping, it is extremely difficult to get food to people who need it, we cannot assess where the most urgent needs are."<br />In the debate over civilian casualties, there is no clear understanding of what constitutes a military target. Palestinians argue that since Hamas is also the government in Gaza, many of the police officers who have been killed were civil servants, not hard-core militants. Israel disagrees.<br />The ambiguity was evident at the intensive care ward in Shifa Hospital, where Madhoun's body lay. There were 11 patients. One was a pharmacist, Rawya Awad, 32, who had a shrapnel wound to the head. Several were police officers. It was impossible to know the identities of many of the others.<br />But there were several children in another intensive care unit on Tuesday. Among them was Ismael Hamdan, 8, who had severe brain damage as well as two broken legs, said a doctor there. Earlier that day, two of his sisters, Lama, 5, and Hayya, 12, were killed.<br />"I prepared them breakfast that day in the garden," said their mother, Ayda, 36. "They had the tea, bread and thyme. Lama wanted a second pita, but we all teased her, saying keep it for lunch. She told us, 'Don't worry, God will provide us with bread.' ""She made all of us laugh," the mother said. "I cleaned after them and collected the garbage. Ismael volunteered to dump the garbage, but Hayya and Lama joined him. The garbage can is in front of the house, a five-minute walk away. All of a sudden I heard the news from a neighbor, and I ran barefoot to the hospital. A relative collected the bodies of Lama and Hayya on a donkey cart. "The neighbors ran trying to save Ismael, who was the only one breathing," she said. "They say my kids flew 40 meters before hitting the ground."<br />Ismael died Wednesday night.<br />At Kamal Edwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, Mahmoud al-Sheikh, 11, was recovering from wounds he received two days before - he thinks from a rocket fired by an Israeli warplane. Even at his age, he is aware of how fighters and civilians are mixed together in Gaza, saying that the bomb was aimed at the house of his neighbor, Salim Zaqout, who he said was a member of Hamas.<br />"But Zaqout and his family evacuated the house a few days ago," Mahmoud said. "Can't Israel see all these houses that are adjacent to Zaqout's? Now Zaqout's house is completely destroyed, but so are other houses that have nothing to do with Hamas.<br />"I have a big hole in my left hand," he continued. "The doctor told me I'm fine. He filled the hole, but it's hurting. It feels like fire inside it."<br />Marc Santora contributed reporting from the United Nations, New York.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>In Egyptian border town, commerce via tunnel halts<br /></strong>By Steven Erlanger<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />RAFAH, Egypt: The Israeli warplanes flew loud and unhindered in the sunny winter sky, and there was the crashing crump of explosions in the near distance, in Gazan Rafah, only 100 yards away.<br />Hillal Ahmed looked up at the contrails of the jet. "The Israelis are there alone; Hamas has nothing up there," he said. "But on the ground it's different. They're deep underground in cement tunnels just over there, 20 meters deep."<br />Hamas is well armed and waiting for Israeli ground troops, insisted Ahmed, 35, who supports the group's aspirations to rule the Palestinians and drive out the Israelis from all occupied land.<br />Rafah is divided between Egypt and Gaza, which Egypt once held, and which is now run by Hamas, the radical Islamic group Israel is trying to dislodge and destroy. Families like Ahmed's live on both sides of the border, but the border has been closed tight, and families communicate by telephone.<br />The town, which the British used in 1917 as a base for their attack on Gaza, now lives on the smuggling of goods between Egypt and a closed Gaza, through hundreds of tunnels dug deep into the earth. The Israelis are bombing the tunnels day and night, in yet one more attempt to disrupt the passage of arms, explosives and cash into Hamas-run Gaza.<br />But for the people here, the tunnels are their livelihood, and a necessary lifeline into Gaza, which otherwise is dependent on Israel for nearly all its fuel and supplies.<br />"There is a state in the world with no heat, no gas, no oil, no diesel, no drugs, no food," said Muhammad Ahmed, 33, angrily. "The Jews have everything, and they won't understand that on the other side there is nothing!<br />"People dig the tunnels out of hunger," he insisted, and then warned, "When you don't feed animals, they get angry and they bite you!"<br />Both Ahmeds are businessmen; they, too, have tunnels, through which they ship consumer goods like cigarettes and snacks, like the popular Egyptian potato chips called Chipsy and Crunchy, as well as larger products like generators, televisions and washing machines.<br />"It's the No. 1 economy here," Hillal Ahmed said. "Dollars, pounds, shekels, it all comes from the tunnels." He laughed and opened his wallet. "We work for dollars," he said, showing four neatly folded $100 bills.<br />But with the Israeli bombing, and, unspoken, the heavy Egyptian police and military presence that the crisis has meant for the town, the tunnel trade has stopped for now, the residents said. "Nothing is going in now," said Nader Sayed, 28. "It's impossible now."<br />Hamas, the residents said, controls other tunnels, conduits for guns, cement, explosives and fertilizers for explosives.<br />Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. "If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.," he said. "When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it."<br />There is widespread fear for family members on the other side and anger at Israel, with little patience for the Israeli argument that Hamas is an existential threat to the state or much of a threat to its citizens. "Hamas has no planes," Muhammad Ahmed said. "What is a Hamas rocket compared to an Israeli bomb?"<br />Hamas will not be destroyed, Hillal Ahmed said. "Hamas is legitimate and will not surrender," he said. "Even if they raze the place they will not surrender."<br />With the new escalation, there is further pressure on Egypt to open the border and help the Palestinians of Gaza, and not merely, as now, to provide humanitarian supplies and to take some of the most badly wounded to Egyptian hospitals. The area has now been declared a military zone, and the small town is crowded with soldiers, police officers and security officers in plain clothes.<br />They want to prevent demonstrations on this side, or efforts to breach the border from either side, by journalists or by desperate Gazans, as happened a year ago, and they are extremely sensitive to what is seen and written about the town.<br />Interviews with residents were interrupted by plainclothes officers of the Mukhabarat, or security police, who took this reporter and his interpreter in for questioning. The treatment was polite but firm, with warnings to stay away from Rafah for safety reasons, and after questioning and the copying of identification documents, the reporter and interpreter were left to depart.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div> </div><div><strong>With upgraded arsenal, Hamas strikes deep into Israel</strong><br />By Mark Mazzetti<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />WASHINGTON: By firing rockets deep into Israeli territory, the militant Palestinian group Hamas has in recent days displayed an arsenal that has been upgraded with weapons parts smuggled into Gaza since it seized control of the territory 18 months ago, according to American and Israeli officials.<br />For Hamas, a group largely confined to a sliver of land along the Mediterranean Sea, attacking Israeli cities with a rocket barrage has proved an effective strategy to reduce the advantage of Israel's expensive arsenal of fighter jets and warships.<br />That strategy was used successfully by Hezbollah militants against Israel in Lebanon in 2006, although Hezbollah had access to missiles and rockets far more sophisticated than those being used by Hamas. Israeli officials said that Hamas was still relying on unguided rockets, rather than guided weapons like the Iranian-made C-802 cruise missile that Hezbollah used against an Israeli ship during the summer of 2006.<br />Still, the rockets fired by Hamas in the current fighting have flown farther and been more accurate than weapons used by the group in the past, the officials said. Some have flown nearly two dozen miles, destroying buildings in the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beersheba.<br />Hamas and other militant groups have lobbed thousands of rockets into Israel since 2001. The difference now, officials said, is that Hamas is using more of the imported Katyusha rockets, which have a longer range than the crude, homemade Qassam rockets it relied on in the past. Officials say the group has been emboldened to improve its arsenal since it routed its rival, Fatah, in 2007 and assumed control of Gaza.<br />The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss intelligence matters, said that Hamas appeared to have relied on a combination of black-market entrepreneurs and help from its longtime patrons Iran and Syria to procure rocket parts.<br />A senior Israeli military official said Israeli intelligence also believed that Hamas took advantage of a six-month truce with Israel to bolster its stockpiles.<br />The officials said the extent to which Iran and Syria directly supplied Hamas was murky because arms shipments were difficult to track. Yet they generally agree about the smuggling route: by land across the Sinai Peninsula, often aided by Bedouin tribes, and through the warren of tunnels under Egypt's border into Gaza.<br />An American counterterrorism official said it was rare for Hamas to try to smuggle complete weapons systems into Gaza. More frequently, he said, rocket parts were taken through the tunnels and assembled inside Gaza by Hamas munitions experts.<br />Israeli officials have said their objective in carrying out airstrikes on Gaza is to end Hamas's ability to carry out further rocket attacks. But analysts said that goal could require Israeli ground troops to strike into Gaza, in operations that could run the risk of fighting an entrenched guerrilla war in a densely populated area.<br />"The problem you have to consider from an Israeli perspective is that you score most of your victories from the air in the first 48 hours. Afterward, you get into punitive damage," said Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.<br />American officials said Hamas's tactics in recent years had evolved from suicide bombings to more sophisticated attacks like roadside bombings and bombs set off by cellphones, all of which would be a particular risk to Israeli troops and tanks.<br />David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and a former Pentagon official specializing in Middle East issues, said the increasing sophistication of Hamas's tactics was evidence that the group might have received training from Hezbollah.<br />American and Israeli officials said there was evidence that at least some Hamas fighters might also have been schooled in urban assault tactics at Iranian camps run by the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.<br />In April, the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released a report saying Hamas had been engaged in a military buildup since the group took control of Gaza in June 2007. The report cited data by Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, asserting that Hamas had smuggled at least 80 tons of explosives into Gaza since then, and that the group had obtained advanced antitank weapons.<br />A senior Hamas leader called the report an "exaggeration" intended to scare Israelis.<br />The report concluded that if Israel were to carry out ground raids, Hamas would initially put up little resistance. But when Israeli troops reached densely populated areas, Hamas would use booby traps and roadside bombs.</div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Moderate Arab states feel popular anger over Israeli action<br /></strong>By Robert F. Worth<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />BEIRUT, Lebanon: After four days of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, an outpouring of popular anger is putting pressure on American allies in the Arab world and appears to be worsening divisions in the region.<br />The sharpest rhetorical attacks have been aimed at Egypt, which is widely seen as having aided the Israeli campaign by closing its border with Gaza.<br />But as major street demonstrations continued Tuesday from North Africa to Yemen, some marchers and opinion-makers also lashed out at other moderate Arab governments for failing to take a stronger stand. Syria and Iran, meanwhile, have drawn praise for their militancy.<br />The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, gave a televised address to defend his decision not to open the border with Gaza except for humanitarian purposes. He derided "those who are seeking political gains at the expense of the Palestinian people."<br />Although Jordan and Saudi Arabia — solid American allies — have been careful not to blame Hamas publicly, the violence has put them on the defensive, too.<br />"It's becoming clear that if you are silent, the Arab street is going to consider you part of the enemy," said Muhammad al-Masri, a researcher and political analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies in Amman, Jordan. "There is no way to be in the middle."<br />The polarization appears to have ended a thaw that had taken place in the past year, Masri said. Syria had been reaching out to the West and holding indirect peace talks with Israel. Lebanon's political factions had reached a peace deal. Syria and Saudi Arabia had made gestures toward resolving their feud.<br />Now, fault lines visible during the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah have reappeared. Syria has been pressing for an emergency Arab summit meeting, but Egypt and Saudi Arabia have resisted.<br />Although the conflict has sectarian overtones — many Sunni Arabs fear that Iran wants to extend its Shiite influence — it is rooted in politics, not religion.<br />To some extent, the outrage has forged a sense of trans-sectarian unity, allowing militant Shiite figures like Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, to extend his influence in the Sunni Arab world, as he did during the 2006 war.<br />Demonstrations continued Tuesday in Cairo, where marchers have been carrying banners for days with slogans like "Down with Mubarak" and "Where is the Egyptian Army?" Angry disputes have broken out in the Egyptian Parliament, with members of the Muslim Brotherhood — the ideological parent of Hamas — accusing the government of colluding with Israel.<br />Protesters attacked the Egyptian consulate in Aden, Yemen on Tuesday, and 11 were arrested. There have been similar assaults on symbols of Egyptian authority in the region since Sunday.<br />In Tehran, a group of 30 to 40 students broke into the British Embassy's residential compound, where they vandalized buildings and replaced the British flag with a Palestinian flag, according to a witness and an embassy official.<br />Egypt is trapped between Israel, with which it has a peace treaty, and Hamas, which has popular support among Egyptians. The government has struggled with its own Islamist opposition and does not want Hamas operatives to cross into its territory, but it faces popular anger if it appears to endorse violence against Palestinians.<br />The Israeli airstrikes that began Saturday have exacerbated the situation. Hamas is ruling Gaza and is politically isolated from the West Bank, putting the onus more than ever on Egypt, the only state besides Israel that borders Gaza.<br />"Egypt is very much cornered this time," said Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University. "There's a perception that Egypt is leading the moderate Arab camp in this, and that the moderate camp has not been able to achieve anything."<br />Egyptian officials see the hand of Iran, a patron of Hamas, in the current conflict. Iran had been pressing Egypt before the conflict, apparently eager to undermine Egypt's role as a mediator between the Palestinian factions. Demonstrators gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Tehran on Dec. 17 to protest Egypt's position toward Hamas.<br />Recently, government-allied newspapers in Egypt have lashed out at Iran and its ally Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, demanded Sunday that Egypt open its border and allow weapons and supplies to flow to Hamas.<br />Nasrallah "has illusions that people in Egypt will take his orders, and that the government here submits to the kind of bribery he is used to in his country," wrote Usama Saraya in Tuesday's edition of Al Ahram, an Egyptian daily.<br />Television stations and newspapers allied with Iran and Syria continued to portray Egypt as a traitor. Some commentators had harsh words for other Arab states.<br />Saudi Arabia and Egypt "are even more excited about this war than they were during the 2006 war" between Israel and Hezbollah, said Ibrahim al-Amine, the chairman of the board of Al Akhbar, a newspaper aligned with Hezbollah.<br />"Israel would be satisfied with a compromise, but the Arab regimes want to finish Hamas completely," Amine said.<br />They cannot openly say so, he added, because Hamas is a Sunni movement, unlike Hezbollah, which Saudi Arabia and Egypt — both of them Sunni-led countries — publicly criticized at the start of the summer 2006 war with Israel.</div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>US deaths down in Iraq in 2008, up in Afghanistan</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: U.S. military deaths in Iraq plunged by two-thirds in 2008 from the previous year, a reflection of the improving security following the U.S. military's counterinsurgency campaign and al-Qaida's slow retreat from the battlefield.<br />By comparison, the war in Afghanistan saw American military deaths rise by 35 percent in 2008 as Islamic extremists shift their focus to a new front with the West.<br />According to a tally by The Associated Press, at least 314 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in 2008, down from 904 in the previous year. In all, at least 4,221 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in 2003.<br />For Iraqis, the plunge was also marked: During 2008, at least 7,496 Iraqis died in war-related violence according to an AP count, including 6,068 civilians and 1,428 security personnel, down 60 percent from 2007.<br />The Associated Press tally does not reflect a comprehensive total for Iraqi deaths because reports do not come in from all of the country. The estimate, however, has proven accurate for tracking trends.<br />In Afghanistan, 151 U.S. soldiers died in 2008, compared with 111 in the previous year, according to an AP tally. The count recorded 1,160 civilians killed in insurgency-related violence, up from 875.<br />At least 625 U.S. soldiers have died because of the war in Afghanistan since the fighting began in 2001.<br />The AP count is based on figures from Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials.<br />The combined total of at least 465 U.S. deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008 is the lowest combined total for both wars since 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq.<br />Many critics have said the U.S. focus on Iraq led it to neglect the war in Afghanistan, allowing both al-Qaida and Taliban militants to regroup after being routed in 2001. The Taliban, in the last year, moved into wide swaths of Afghan countryside, where Afghan security forces or international troops don't operate. Military commanders in Baghdad say they have enough troops to win all battles but not enough to hold territory, or to keep remote villages safe.<br />Seth Jones, an analyst with the RAND Corp., said he thinks the insurgency is still quite weak because there is no central command structure and because it doesn't have the support of local Afghans. But levels of violence have increased because of the continuing use of sanctuaries by militant groups in Pakistan.<br />"I think the second issue is the ability of groups to move into a vacuum in significant parts in Afghanistan, including in the east and south, where the Afghan government simply has not been able protect villages in rural areas," Jones said.<br />The plunge in violence in Iraq follows the U.S. "surge" of 2007, when thousands of additional troops were sent in to try to rein in a country that appeared to be on the verge of disintegration. That was coupled with a counterinsurgency campaign that included a decision by Sunni tribesmen to switch allegiances and fight al-Qaida. A focused effort to rout Shiite extremists gave U.S. and Iraqi forces the upper hand.<br />U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. David Perkins said recently that attacks in Iraq had declined to an average of 10 a day from 180 a year ago, and the murder rate in November was less than 1 per 100,000 people — far lower than many cities in the world.<br />The drop in violence has bolstered the Iraqi government's confidence as it takes what it calls full sovereignty of the country on Thursday. Under a new security agreement, Iraq will take the lead in security away from U.S. forces, regain control of its airspace, and take back the Green Zone, a wide area of downtown Baghdad that the U.S. occupied after its 2003 invasion.<br />But the deaths of two soldiers on the last day of the year underscored that significant violence persists. One soldier was killed by a mortar round in Baghdad and the other died from wound sustained in combat a day earlier in Tikrit, the military said.<br />Iraq remains gripped by hostility between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and disputes within the creeds.<br />Police announced Wednesday the arrest of a leading figure in a messianic Shiite cult that has battled Iraqi and U.S. forces, possibly thwarting plans by the group to carry out attacks against hundreds of thousands of pilgrims that will gather next week at one of Iraq's holiest shrines.<br />A top adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sadiq al-Rikabi, described Thursday as a "historic day" during which "the symbols of sovereignty, which are highly cherished by Iraqis, will be restored."<br />U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to battle al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgents in the north and in Mosul, the country's third-largest city, where economic and political problems persist. Eight people were killed Wednesday in four bombings in the north.<br />In the southern city of Basra, Police Chief Maj. Gen. Adil Dahham said his forces had arrested a leader of the "Soldiers of Heaven" cult that has carried out bloody attacks during the Shiite Ashura holiday in the past two years.<br />___<br />Associated Press writers Patrick Quinn in Baghdad and Jason Straziuso in Kabul, Afghanistan, and researcher Monika Mathur in New York contributed to this report</div><div></div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Victor Krulak, Marine Corps legend, dies at 95</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />SAN DIEGO: Lieutenant General Victor Krulak, who headed all U.S. Marine forces in the Pacific during part of the Vietnam War, has died. He was 95.<br />Krulak died Monday at the Wesley Palms Retirement Community in San Diego, according to Edith Soderquist, a staff member at the facility. The cause of death was not immediately known.<br />Krulak commanded about 100,000 marines in the Pacific from 1964 to 1968 - a span in which the United States drastically increases forces in Vietnam.<br />Krulak, nicknamed "Brute" for his direct, no-nonsense style, was a decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War.<br />After retirement, he often criticized the government's handling of the Vietnam War. He wrote that the war could have been won only if the South Vietnamese had been protected and befriended and if enemy supplies from North Vietnam had been cut off.<br />"The destruction of the port of Haiphong would have changed the whole character of the war," he said two decades after the fall of Saigon.<br />Krulak once summed up the U.S. dilemma in Vietnam by saying, "It has no front lines. The battlefield is in the minds of 16 or 17 million people."<br />Before assuming command of Fleet Marine Force Pacific, Krulak served as principal adviser on counterinsurgency warfare to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the joint chiefs of staff.<br />"I never got enthusiasm out of war, and I'm convinced that the true pacifists are the professional soldiers who have actually seen it," Krulak said many years after retiring from the post.<br />During World War II on the island of Choiseul in the Solomon Islands, Krulak led his outnumbered battalion during an eight-day raid on Japanese forces, diverting the enemy's attention from the U.S. invasion of Bougainville.<br />Krulak's troops destroyed hundreds of tons of supplies, burning both camps and landing barges. He was wounded on Oct. 13, 1943, and later received the Navy Cross for heroism, along with the Purple Heart.<br />At 43, he became the youngest brigadier general in Marine Corps history up to that time. Krulak received the second of two Distinguished Service Medals when he retired from the military.<br />For the next nine years, he worked for Copley Newspapers.<br />He also wrote the book "First to Fight," an insider's view of the Marine Corps.<br />His son Charles Krulak served as commandant - the Marines' top post - from 1995 to 1999.<br />Werner Wiskari, a former foreign correspondent and editor of international news for The New York Times, died on Dec. 8 in Wakefield, Rhode Island, near his home in Charlestown. He was 90.<br />Wiskari's death was confirmed by his wife, Millie Wiskari.<br />The son of a Finnish-born Lutheran pastor in Michigan, he served with the Navy in the Pacific in World War II and joined The Times as a radio news scriptwriter in 1948, soon after graduating from Columbia University and doing a year of postgraduate study there.<br />From 1958 to 1964, he was based in Stockholm as the northern European correspondent for The Times, its last.<br />He became an assistant to the foreign news editor of The Times in 1968. In 1971, he was part of the small team of editors that prepared the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War, for publication.<br />When war broke out between Iran and Iraq in 1980, he compiled and rewrote fragmentary reports that he gleaned from news agencies and foreign publications and analyzed satellite photos of trench fortifications on either side.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>U.S. vacates Baghdad palace ahead of handover<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Peter Graff<br />U.S. officials withdrew on Wednesday from the Saddam Hussein-era palace they have occupied in Baghdad since 2003, a sign of the change of power when their troops come under Iraqi authority at midnight.<br />The U.S. force in Iraq, now more than 140,000 strong, has operated since 2003 under a U.N. Security Council resolution which expires at midnight on New Year's Eve. From January 1, U.S. troops will operate with authority granted by the Iraqi government under a pact agreed by Washington and Baghdad.<br />The pact -- viewed by both countries as a milestone in restoring Iraqi sovereignty -- requires U.S. troops to leave in three years, revokes their power to hold Iraqis without charge and subjects contractors and off-duty troops to Iraqi law.<br />Iraq also reached a deal with Washington's main ally Britain on Tuesday giving its 4,100 troops until the end of July to depart. Small contingents from Australia, El Salvador, Romania, Estonia and the NATO alliance will also leave in 2009.<br />U.S. and Iraqi officials are planning a ceremony for the morning of New Year's Day to formally hand over control of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified central sector of the capital that houses Western diplomats and Iraqi government offices.<br />In recent weeks U.S. diplomats have gradually moved into a newly-built compound, the world's largest U.S. embassy, leaving behind a sprawling yellow marble palace of ousted dictator Saddam, which looms over the Tigris River.<br />"The palace will be in the possession of the Iraqi government from January 1, 2009," U.S. embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said of the ornate building, where Americans worked beneath garish frescoes depicting Saddam's arsenal of missiles.<br />SYMBOL<br />U.S. officials ruled Iraq directly from the palace for more than a year after toppling Saddam in 2003, and it has remained a symbol of what many Iraqis consider a military occupation even as their nascent elected government has gained confidence.<br />Iraq's security spokesman for Baghdad, Major-General Qassim Moussawi, said Iraqi forces would take responsibility for guarding the Green Zone, with U.S. troops acting in support.<br />After years of extreme sectarian violence, Iraq has become far less bloody over the past year, although militants still launch bomb attacks frequently targeting civilians.<br />In the ethnically divided northern city of Mosul, a base for Sunni militants, gunmen on Wednesday killed a candidate standing in provincial elections due at the end of January. A car bomb killed four people and wounded 45 in the nearby town of Sinjar.<br />U.S. officials expect violence to rise as the poll nears.<br />The U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers, bringing the total killed by hostile action in December to seven, still among the lowest tolls since the war began.<br />Iraq Body Count, a group which monitors media reports of civilian deaths, says 2008 was the least deadly year of a war that has killed at least 90,000 Iraqi civilians. The group still tallied an average of about 25 civilians killed per day over the course of 2008, mostly in the first half of the year.<br />Under the bilateral pact which takes effect from midnight, U.S. combat forces will withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities by mid-2009 and all troops must leave by the end of 2011.<br />They will remain under U.S. command but will require authorisation from a joint U.S.-Iraqi committee to carry out military operations and can arrest people only with warrants from Iraqi judges.<br />Some 15,000 prisoners held at U.S. military detention camps must either be charged with crimes under Iraqi law or set free, although the procedure for doing so may take many months.<br />Contractors working for U.S. troops will be subject to Iraqi criminal law, and U.S. soldiers can be tried in Iraqi courts in narrow circumstances for serious crimes committed off duty.<br />(Editing by Charles Dick)</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>UK turns Iraqi suspects over to Baghdad</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />LONDON: Two men accused of killing British soldiers have been turned over to Iraqi authorities in defiance of Europe's top human rights court, Britain's defense secretary said Wednesday.<br />Faisal al-Saadoon and Khalaf Mufdhi are now in Iraqi custody and face trial for war crimes, British Defense Secretary John Hutton said in a statement. The pair, former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, are alleged to have killed Staff Sgt. Simon Cullingworth and Sapper Luke Allsopp after the pair were captured in an ambush during the opening days of the Iraq War. Photographs of the dying soldiers, surrounded by an Iraqi mob, were broadcast on the Arabic television channel, al-Jazeera.<br />British forces in southern Iraq arrested Mufdhi and al-Saadoon in April and November 2003 respectively, holding them at the city's airport as senior Baathists. British investigators later linked them to the killings, and the case was referred to Iraqi authorities for prosecution in late 2005.<br />Lawyers for al-Saadoon and Mufdhi have fought against any move to have the two tried in their home country, arguing that they might be tortured and face the death penalty.<br />But a British court ruled that the transfer was lawful. Hutton said he had no choice but to defy the European Court of Human Rights because Britain would lose the legal authority to hold the Iraqis in the new year, when its U.N. mandate expires.<br />"The European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg has asked the U.K. to retain custody in Iraq of Mr. al-Saadoon and Mr. Mufdhi when we have no legal power to do so," Hutton said. "Compliance with Strasbourg requests would normally be a matter of course but these are exceptional circumstances."<br />Phil Shiner, an attorney who has fought to keep the men out of Iraqi hands, said the move is vindictive.<br />"The relevant public servants dealing with this case appear to enjoy the prospect of my clients being hung," he said.<br />Britain's military did not say when the men were transferred to Iraqi custody or give any indication as to their current whereabouts.</div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Judge agrees with Bush in ruling on 2 detainees<br /></strong>By William Glaberson<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />A federal judge in Washington ruled Tuesday that the government was properly holding two Guantánamo detainees as enemy combatants, the first clear-cut victories for the Bush administration in what are expected to be more than 200 similar cases.<br />The ruling by a federal district judge, Richard J. Leon, followed his decision last month in a separate case declaring that five Algerians had been held unlawfully at the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly seven years and ordering their release.<br />That case had been the only one to reach a full court hearing after a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in June that said Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in habeas corpus cases.<br />The cases Tuesday, involving a Yemeni and a Tunisian detainee, were the next to be decided, and some lawyers said they expected rulings for the government in other cases. The habeas rulings are being watched carefully, in part because decisions approving the holding of Guantánamo detainees could be used by the Obama administration as a legal justification to continue to hold some of them even if the prison in Cuba is closed.<br />Judge Leon said that the Tunisian, Hisham Sliti, was a Qaeda recruit in Afghanistan who attended a military training camp and had ties to terrorists. He rejected Sliti's explanation of the reasons for his travels, saying his "story about traveling to Afghanistan to kick a longstanding drug habit and find a wife is not credible."<br />In the case of the Yemeni, Moath Hamza Ahmed al Alwi, Judge Leon said it was unnecessary to rule on a government claim that he had been a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. He ruled that there was no evidence that Alwi ever fought American forces, but said his close ties to Taliban and Qaeda forces were sufficient to establish that he was an enemy combatant.<br />Because of classified evidence relied upon by the government, both hearings were conducted mostly behind closed doors.<br />Lawyers for both men said they were considering appeals.<br />A lawyer for Sliti, Cori Crider of the British legal group Reprieve, said that there were many issues for appeal, including the government's reliance on classified evidence her client was not permitted to see.<br />Crider argued that the hearing did not conform to some requirements of the Supreme Court's June ruling that opened the door for habeas corpus cases by most of the remaining 250 detainees being held at Guantánamo. Detainees' lawyers greeted that ruling at the time as a watershed defeat for the Bush administration.<br />"The fact that the word 'habeas' was used doesn't mean that the process was fair," Crider said.<br />James Hosking, a lawyer for Alwi, noted that his client had not been charged with any crime. "It's time to charge the prisoners or release them," he said.<br />A spokesman for the Justice Department, Dean Boyd, said, "We're pleased with the court's ruling that these two individuals are being lawfully detained as enemy combatants."</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Iraq to greet new year in a hush, officials say</strong><br />By Sam Dagher<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: The government ordered hotels and private clubs in Baghdad to cancel their New Year's Eve celebrations, disappointing many Iraqis who had hoped they could celebrate the new year now that the streets are safer than they have been in years past.<br />The parties were canceled because New Year's Eve coincides with Muharram, a mournful religious period for Shiites. The government, which is dominated by religious Shiite parties, issued the order on Sunday.<br />Several hotels and private clubs in the capital, which have been hosting boisterous parties recently, given the improved security situation, said none would be held on Wednesday in compliance with government orders.<br />"The orders of the Ministry of Interior have been enforced at clubs, party venues and family clubs," said Major General Ali al-Yasseri, a police commander in Baghdad. "These places will be closed in accordance with Iraqi law."<br />He added, "We have no objection to those who want to have a dinner party without fanfare, noise, dancing and music."<br />Two Interior Ministry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, said that several police officers sympathetic to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr had also been "politely" informing Baghdad liquor stores that recently reopened that they must close for the holiday.<br />Many Iraqis, including Shiites, said the ban was unfair because this could be a momentous year for Iraq, with American soldiers beginning to pull out from urban areas. Last year there were several big parties and fireworks displays on New Year's Eve.<br />Mahdi al-Khayat, a Baghdad-based singer from a Shiite family in the holy city of Najaf, said that while the observance of Muharram was important, the rules should have been relaxed this year to allow Iraqis to revel in the improved security situation.<br />"The country has been in a miserable state over the past three to four years," he said. "It needs a jump-start with parties and optimism."<br />The Islamic New Year, which follows a lunar calendar and shifts each year, started on Monday. The first month of the year is called Muharram. It is a joyous time for Sunnis but not for Shiites, for whom its start begins the 10-day countdown to Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein, in A.D. 680 at the hands of Sunnis in the battle of Karbala, south of Baghdad.<br />Shiites in Iraq mark this occasion with the erection of symbolic black funeral tents in their neighborhoods. The death of Imam Hussein is lamented with prayers, rituals of chest beating and self-flagellation with chains.<br />The bloodiest attacks against Shiites in Iraq over the past several years have been during Muharram, prompting the government to mobilize considerable resources each year to protect the mourners.<br />"Everyone is free, but I will not have parties and singing," said Dhia Namnam, a popular Baghdad D.J. and party promoter, who is Shiite. "If you want to have a party, do it at home. Most Muslims here are Shiites."<br />Managers at popular party venues like the Sheraton and Babylon hotels on Abu Nuwas Street in central Baghdad and the Hunting Club in the upscale Mansour district said all plans for New Year's Eve festivities had been shelved.<br />Khayat, the singer, said that he had been contracted to sing at a New Year's Eve party in Beirut, Lebanon, but that he would not be going because he could not get a visa in time.<br />Indeed, most well-to-do Iraqis, including many Shiites, have already made plans to celebrate New Year's in Amman, Jordan; Damascus, Syria; or the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Ali Mohammed, a Shiite Kurd living in Baghdad, is headed to Sulaimaniya in Kurdistan for a party.<br />In Kurdistan's capital, Erbil, the upscale Erbil International Hotel plans two New Year's parties with open bars, bands and dancing until dawn, according to the manager, Nabaz Ghafour.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Iraq car bomb kills 4, wounds 45 in northern town<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: A car bomb killed four people and wounded 45 on Wednesday at a crowded market in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, mainly populated by the minority Yazidi sect, police said.<br />Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq over the past year but bombings, roadside explosions, assassinations and other violent incidents are still routine.<br />Police said the death toll in Sinjar -- lying west of the volatile city of Mosul some 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, where al Qaeda and other militant groups still stage frequent attacks -- could well rise.<br />On Sunday, a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed a teenage boy and wounded 17 people at a demonstration in Mosul against Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.<br />Like other religious minorities, the Yazidis, a pre-Islamic religious sect dotted around northern Iraq and Syria, have been frequently targeted by Iraqi militants.<br />Gunmen killed seven Yazidis from a single family in Mosul earlier this month. Last year, suicide truck bombers killed hundreds of people in Yazidi villages north of Mosul in one of the deadliest militant attacks in Iraq's history.<br />(Reporting by Aseel Kami; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Katie Nguyen)</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>On Saddam anniversary, Iraq readies macabre museum<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Waleed Ibrahim and Missy Ryan<br />The man putting together Iraq's newest museum doesn't like to be alone in his office, where he keeps bloodied nooses, a medieval-looking torture device and boxes of documents chronicling atrocities under Saddam Hussein.<br />"It's uncomfortable. You feel as if there's someone there with you," said the soft-spoken court official, who asked to go unnamed. To escape the eeriness, he works alongside colleagues next door.<br />On the two-year anniversary of Saddam's death by hanging, Iraq is preparing to open a new museum that will allow Iraqis to see up close such macabre mementos of mass executions, torture, and other atrocities committed in Saddam's decades-long rule.<br />Iraq's High Tribunal, set up after the U.S.-led invasion to try major crimes from Saddam's Baathist government, will open the museum in the two months in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.<br />It will showcase torture devices such as a man-shaped metal cage where, in the Iraqi Olympic centre, Saddam's son Uday used to lock underperforming athletes for weeks at a time -- and set them naked under the burning sun, the metal searing their flesh.<br />There is a steel bar from an intelligence centre, with a specially welded hook from which countless Iraqis were hung.<br />It will include personal effects found with Saddam when he was discovered hiding on an Iraqi farm in December 2003, including a Quran, a cassette recording of Mozart, a dusty black briefcase.<br />Chairs will be on display that were sat in by Saddam and his top lieutenants during their High Tribunal trials, including the one that ended in Saddam's execution for killing 148 men and boys following an assassination attempt in 1982.<br />The museum will also have a research centre where legal researchers or historians can comb through 26 million documents, including the handwritten orders to crush opposition from minority Kurds, which led to the death of tens of thousands.<br />"We thought that people might forget the works committed by dictators who committed horrible acts against them," said Judge Arif Abdel-Razaq al-Shaheen, who heads the High Tribunal.<br />IRAQ STILL SIFTING THROUGH CRIMES<br />A floor below Shaheen's office, the High Tribunal continued on Tuesday proceedings against Ali Hassan al-Majeed, a Saddam confidante known as 'Chemical Ali' for his role in gassing Kurds, and Tareq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister, on charges they systematically crushed political opponents.<br />Majeed has already been sentenced twice to death, but his execution has been held up by political disputes. Since Saddam was executed, his half brother and several other officials have been sent to the gallows as well.<br />The new case against Majeed, Aziz and over 20 others revolves around the arrest and execution of tens of thousands of members of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa party.<br />Its timing rankled some politicians outside Maliki's sphere, who complained it was a bid to influence provincial elections next month that will be a test of rival parties' influence and will set the tone for parliamentary polls in late 2009.<br />Violence has dropped sharply, but Iraq risks backsliding into civil war if it can't bury deep political grievances.<br />Shaheen rejected that any of the tribunal's dozen or so cases have been politicised, just as he sought to separate the new Saddam museum from the fractious politics of Iraq today, where former enemies have yet to fully reconcile.<br />"This is not related to national reconciliation. This museum is about history. History must not be forgotten," he said.<br />(Editing by Richard Balmforth)</div><div></div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Indian Muslims under pressure in Mumbai aftermath<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />By Bappa Majumdar and Krittivas Mukherjee<br />In a government morgue in Mumbai lie the bodies of nine Islamist militants responsible for killing 179 people in a bloody attack on India's financial hub.<br />The deadly rampage happened in November, but India's Muslims have refused to bury the gunmen, distancing themselves from the killings in a country where Hindu nationalists often whip up anti-Muslim sentiment after such attacks.<br />"We strongly believe terrorists have no religion and they do not deserve a burial," said Maulana Zaheer Abbas Rizvi of the All India Shia Personal Law Board, a body for framing Muslim laws.<br />Leaders of India's 140-million-strong Muslim community have denounced the November 26-29 Mumbai attacks and thousands of Muslims have marched in protests against the bloodshed. It has been the strongest rejection yet of Islamist violence by Indian Muslims.<br />"We have lost our children in the Mumbai attacks too. And we, as Indians, share a common grief and demand justice," said Maulana Mehmood Daryabadi, general-secretary of the All-India Ulema Council, one of the biggest groupings of Muslim sects.<br />In Muslim neighbourhoods in the capital, residents observed low-key celebrations during an Islamic holiday in December.<br />Imran Ahmed, a book-seller, did not buy any new clothes for his children during the festival and did not distribute kebabs to neighbours as he does each year.<br />"So many people were killed by the terrorists. How could I celebrate?" asked the bearded book-seller, sitting outside his shop in the narrow, congested streets of Old Delhi.<br />TENSION<br />For now, the issue of burial of the militants has been averted as Indian officials say the corpses are still needed for their investigation. At the same time, contacts are underway to convince Pakistan to take the bodies, so far to no avail.<br />Tension between India and Pakistan has flared in the wake of the attacks, blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.<br />As the two rivals bicker, India's Muslims have been caught in an uncomfortable position in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, which have intensified their feelings of being under siege even though Muslims make up about 13 percent of India's population.<br />Indian Muslims lag in health care, literacy and income. Official figures show Muslims are underrepresented in government jobs and the judiciary. Yet they are overrepresented in the prison populations in many Indian states.<br />Until recently India boasted that its Muslims, at least outside troubled Kashmir, had not embraced Islamist extremist violence of the type promoted by al Qaeda.<br />That has changed in recent years, with Indian Muslims thought to have carried out a series of bomb attacks on Indian cities this year and last.<br />Centuries of rule of Hindu-majority India by mediaeval Muslim invaders drove a wedge between the two communities, a suspicion that has only grown since the blood-soaked birth of Pakistan, carved out from Muslim-majority areas of India in 1947.<br />Alienation of Muslims has partly been fuelled by communal riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002, when around 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked and burnt to death. Little has been done to catch the culprits despite a national outcry.<br />But the Mumbai attacks have generated a groundswell of public anger across religious and political fault lines against Pakistan for providing refuge for militants on their soil.<br />That anger is mixed with fear of a backlash.<br />"At the moment, Muslims are feeling very insecure. They have always felt as if they were under suspicion for all attacks on India," said Kudlip Nayar, a political commentator.<br />"In every terror attack in the past, Indian Muslims were suspected to have played some role, so now with a clear Pakistan hand emerging in the Mumbai attacks, the Muslims are reiterating that Indian Muslims are united and they had never supported terror acts," Nayar added.<br />Some Muslims are apprehensive about a new terror law that India's parliament passed recently, allowing police to hold suspects without filing charges for up to 180 days.<br />Human rights groups say a similar law was used in the past to round up innocent Muslims, detain them indefinitely or even torture them. Some fear that abuse of the law could stoke up more outrage against the Indian government among Muslims.<br />"Laws against militants must be strict, but there should be enough safeguards to stop people from misusing it," said Maulana Abdus Salaf Salfi, leader of the Jamiat Ahle Hadees group.<br />Meanwhile, the squabble over the burial of nine of the 10 Mumbai attackers -- one was captured -- is far from over.<br />"They have committed a crime against humanity and people who kill innocent people cannot be buried, not in Indian soil at least. Let Pakistan take them back home," said Rizvi.<br />(Editing by Megan Goldin)</div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Muted New Year festivities in India as Mumbai quiet</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Rina Chandran<br />Scanners, blocked roads and tight security will temper New Year revelries across India on Wednesday as fear of militant violence hangs over the country after last month's Mumbai attacks.<br />An unprecedented security blanket covered India's main cities this week, underscoring the collective jitters of a nation after gunmen attacked and killed 179 people in its financial capital.<br />While Mumbai was the worst attack, in all more than 400 people have been killed in about a dozen militant attacks this year across India. An economic slowdown has also dampened usually extravagant celebrations in Mumbai.<br />"It's going to be a quiet evening for me and a bunch of friends at home. We have no plans to party," said 24-year-old Nirbhay Kanoria.<br />Kanoria would be hard-pressed to find places to party, with most luxury hotels and clubs cancelling star-studded bashes and sticking to low-key live music bands and dinner.<br />At the Taj Mahal Hotel, one of two luxury hotels that was attacked by gunmen last month, the poolside has been opened to visitors, and restaurants will offer special menus, a spokesman said, including from the restaurants that were damaged.<br />While the celebrations for the city's well-heeled may go on well into the night, the more popular hangouts such as the Gateway of India and the Marine Drive promenade, where firework displays are common, would wind down revelries after midnight.<br />"This year, the mood is likely to be a bit subdued because the thought (of the attacks) might be weighing on people's minds," said K.L. Prasad, a senior police officer in Mumbai.<br />"Extra forces have been called and there will be an increased police presence throughout Mumbai," he said.<br />Lavish parties on yachts and midnight ferry rides will be missing this year, with a heightened alert in place after the Mumbai attackers made their way into the city by boat.<br />Marine police and the coastguard will patrol the harbour and be in touch with the Navy, which cancelled its Navy Week celebrations and annual ball.<br />Security is tight in other Indian cities as well, including capital New Delhi where police are locking down popular landmarks such as Connaught Place and the lawns of India Gate after sunset and asking bars and pubs to close by midnight.<br />Traffic will be regulated in all the major cities and people will be frisked and stopped to check for drink driving.<br />There would be about 60,000 police on the roads of New Delhi alone, while thousands of them will patrol the streets of Mumbai and Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state which shares a porous border with Bangladesh.<br />Surveillance cameras and a large number of plainclothes police will be deployed at popular spots in Kolkata, said Shivaji Ghosh, a senior police official.<br />(Additional reporting by Sujoy Dhar in Kolkata and Krittivas Mukherjee in New Delhi; Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee and Alex Richardson)</div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Pakistani investigators reportedly find Mumbai link<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD: A leader of a banned Pakistani Islamist militant group has confessed to being a main planner of the attack on Mumbai, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing a Pakistani investigator.<br />The government has not responded to the report but President Asif Ali Zardari told U.S. President George W. Bush that anyone found involved in the attack on India's financial hub in which 179 people were killed would be dealt with.<br />India has blamed the assault on the Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).<br />It was set up by Pakistani security agencies in the late 1980s to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region but officially banned in 2002, after Pakistan signed up to the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.<br />The Wall Street Journal said in an online report at least one top LeT leader, Zarar Shah, captured in an early December raid in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, had confessed to the group's involvement in the attack.<br />"He is singing," an unidentified Pakistani security official told the newspaper.<br />India's angry accusation of a Pakistani link to the assault on Mumbai has revived old hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals and raised fears of conflict.<br />Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and has denied any state role, blaming "non-state actors," and has promised to prosecute anyone found linked to the attack. But it has ruled out sending Pakistanis to India for trial.<br />Zardari reiterated to Bush that Pakistan would not allow its territory to be used for launching attacks on other countries, Zardari's office said. Bush had called Zardari, it said.<br />"Anyone found involved in such attacks from the soil of Pakistan would be dealt with sternly," Zardari told Bush.<br />BY BOAT<br />The Wall Street Journal, citing the Pakistani security official, said Shah's admission was backed up by U.S. intercepts of a telephone call he had with one of the attackers during the assault.<br />Shah told interrogators that he was one of the main planners and he had spoken to the attackers during the rampage to give them advice and keep them focussed, the newspaper cited a second person familiar with the investigation as saying.<br />Shah had implicated other LeT members, and had broadly confirmed the account the sole captured gunman told Indian investigators, the newspaper cited its source as saying.<br />According to Indian reports, the captured gunman told Indian interrogators the 10 attackers trained in Pakistani Kashmir and later went by boat from Karachi to Mumbai.<br />India's home minister, P. Chidambaram, repeated India's line that its neighbour must act on what India says is evidence of Pakistani militants' involvement.<br />Pakistan has repeatedly said India has not provided evidence.<br />"If anyone is in a state of denial anything that we give will be denied," Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi, referring to a statement from the surviving gunman captured in Mumbai.<br />Shah was picked up with another LeT commander, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, in raids on militants launched after the attack, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters on December 10.<br />Pakistani authorities did not have evidence that the LeT was involved in the attacks before the militants were arrested in Kashmir. Their arrest was based on guidance from U.S. and British authorities, the newspaper cited an official as saying.<br />Pakistan and India have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 and came to the brink of a fourth after gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001.<br />India has put a "pause" on a five-year-old peace process that had brought warmer ties.<br />(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider and Krittivas Mukherjee; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Charles Dick)</div><div></div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Pakistani helicopters attack Khyber militants</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Ibrahim Shinwari<br />Pakistani army helicopters attacked militants along the Khyber Pass on Wednesday while tanks rumbled in to secure the vital supply link for Western forces in land-locked Afghanistan.<br />Authorities suspended the shipment of supplies up to the Afghan border on Tuesday to clear the way for the military to launch an offensive aimed at ending surging militant attacks on the route.<br />"Two helicopter gunships pounded militant hideouts while troops moved with tanks to secure the area," said Jehangir Khan Afridi, an administration official in the Khyber region.<br />The Khyber Pass runs between the northwestern city of Peshawar and the border town of Torkham and is a vital supply line for more than 65,000 Western troops battling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.<br />The U.S. military sends 75 percent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of the fuel for its troops, the U.S. Defence Department says.<br />A second overland route is through the town of Chaman to the southwest leading to the Afghan city of Kandahar, and is likely to become more important as the United States begins moving up to 30,000 new troops into Afghanistan next year.<br />Militants in Khyber have been trying to choke off supplies for months and have destroyed hundreds of trucks and killed several drivers.<br />Many truckers have stopped working on the road and supplies had been disrupted but not cut off until authorities sealed the route temporarily on Tuesday.<br />A spokesman for NATO's Afghan force welcomed the effort to make the route safer and played down the impact on military operations saying the force had stocks.<br />Nevertheless, the attacks have exposed the vulnerability of the route and forced the alliance to look for alternatives, including through Central Asia into northern Afghanistan.<br />Authorities have not said how long the offensive would last, only that they were determined to clear militants out.<br />The governor of the North West Frontier Province, Owais Ahmed Ghani, said the offensive would continue until objectives had been achieved and it could be extended to other areas. He did not elaborate.<br />"NO FIRE FROM MILITANTS"<br />Intelligence officials said on Tuesday troops had faced pockets of militant resistance and Afridi said two important militant hideouts had been destroyed.<br />But officials and residents said on Wednesday most insurgents had apparently fled the Khyber region to neighbouring areas.<br />"There has been no fire from the militants. They must have fled to remote areas or to Mohmand," said resident Irfan Afridi, referring to a neighbouring region where security forces have also been fighting Pakistani Taliban insurgents.<br />Militants melted away in June when security forces launched a similar sweep in Khyber.<br />A pro-Taliban ethnic Pashtun tribal elder surrendered to authorities, promising his tribe would support security.<br />"We're loyal to Pakistan and the government. We will not fight security forces, offer resistance nor give shelter to militants or criminals," the tribal leader, Attaullah Khan, told Reuters.<br />The offensive has coincided with growing tension with old rival India after the late November militant attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.<br />The Pakistani military has moved some troops off its western border with Afghanistan in response to the tension.<br />(Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sugita Katyal)</div><div></div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Bribes corrode Afghans' trust in government</strong><br />By Dexter Filkins<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />KABUL: When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.<br />Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.<br />Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.<br />Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.<br />"It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe," Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. "Everything is possible in this country now. Everything."<br />Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic cop to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban regime seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.<br />A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai's own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country's opium trade, now the world's largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, "harchee" — whatever you have in your pocket.<br />The corruption, publicly acknowledged by President Karzai, is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in his government and to the dramatic resurgence of the Taliban, whose fighters have moved to the outskirts of the capital.<br />"All the politicians in this country have acquired everything — money, lots of money," President Karzai said in a speech at a rural development conference here last month. "God knows, it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen."<br />The decay of the Afghan government presents President-elect Barack Obama with perhaps his most under-appreciated challenge as he tries to reverse the course of the war here. Not only may Obama be required to save the Afghan government from the Taliban insurgency — committing thousands of additional American soldiers to do so — but also the Afghan government from itself.<br />"This government has lost the capacity to govern because a shadow government has taken over," said Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister. He quit that job in 2004, he said, because the state had been taken over by drug traffickers. "The narco-mafia state is now completely consolidated."<br />On the streets here, tales of corruption are as easy to find as kebab stands. Everything seems for sale: public offices, access to government services, even a person's freedom. The above mentioned examples — $25,000 to settle a lawsuit, $6,000 to bribe the police, $100,000 to secure a job as a provincial police chief — were told by people who experienced them directly or witnessed the transaction.<br />People pay bribes for large things, and for small things, too: to get electricity for their homes, to get out of jail, even to enter the airport.<br />Governments in developing countries are often riddled by corruption. But Afghans say the corruption they see now has no precedent, in either its brazenness or in its scale. Transparency International, a German firm that gauges honesty in government, ranked Afghanistan 117 out of 180 countries in 2005. This year, it fell to 176.<br />"Every man in the government is his own king," said Abdul Ghafar, a truck driver. Ghafar said he routinely pays bribes to police who threaten to hinder his passage through Kabul, sometimes several in a single day.<br />Nowhere is the scent of corruption so strong as in the Kabul neighborhood of Sherpur. Before 2001, it was a vacant patch of hillside that overlooked the stately neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan. Today it is the wealthiest enclave in the country, a series of gaudy, grandiose mansions that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.<br />Afghans refer to them as "poppy houses." Sherpur itself is often jokingly referred to as "Char-pur," which literally means "City of Loot."<br />Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about Sherpur is the owners of the houses. Many are government officials, whose annual salaries would not otherwise enable them to live here for more than a few days.<br />One of the mansions — three stories, several bedrooms, sweeping balconies — is owned by Abdul Jabbar Sabit, a former attorney general who made a name for himself by declaring a "jihad" against corruption.<br />Since being fired earlier this year by President Karzai, a video began circulating around town showing Sabit dancing giddily around a room and slurring his words, apparently drunk. Sabit now resides in Canada, but his house is available to rent for $5,000 a month.<br />An even grander mansion — ornate faux Greek columns, a towering fountain — is owned by Kabul's police chief, Mohammed Ayob Salangi. It can be had for $11,000 a month. Salangi's salary is unknown; that of Karzai, the president, is about $600 a month.<br />Ghani , the former finance minister, said the plots of land that hold the great mansions of Sherpur were doled out early in the Karzai administration for prices that were a tiny faction of what they were worth. (Ghani said he was offered a plot, too, and refused to accept it.)<br />"The money for these houses was illegal, I think," said Mohammed Yosin Usmani, director general of a newly created anti-corruption unit.<br />Often, the corruption here is blatant. On any morning, you can stand on the steps of the Secondary Courthouse in central Kabul and listen to the Afghans as they step outside.<br />One of them was Farooq Farani, who has been coming to the court for seven years, trying to resolve a property dispute. His predicament is a common one here: Farani fled the country in 1990, as the civil war began, and returned after the fall of the Taliban, only to find a stranger occupying his home.<br />Yet seven years on, the title to Farani's house is still up for grabs. Farani says he has refused to pay the bribes demanded by the judge in the case, who in turn has refused to settle his case.<br />"You are approached indirectly, by intermediaries — this is how it works," said Farani, who spent his exile in Wiesbaden, Germany. "My house is worth about $50,000, and I've been told that I can have the title if I pay $25,000 — half the value of the home."<br />Tales like Farani's abound here, so much so that it makes one wonder if an honest man can ever make a difference.<br />Amin Farhang, the Minister of Commerce, left Karzai's cabinet earlier this month after seven years. In a long talk in the sitting room of his home, Farhang recounted a two-year-long struggle to fire the man in charge of giving out licenses for new businesses.<br />The man, Farhang said, would grant a license only in exchange for a hefty bribe. But Farhang found that he was unable to fire the man, who, he said, simply bribed other members of the government to reinstate him.<br />"In a job like this, a man can make 10 or 12 times his salary," Farhang said. "People do anything to hang onto them."<br />Many Afghans, including Ghani, the former finance minister, place responsibility for the collapse of the state on Karzai, who, they say, has failed repeatedly to confront the powerful figures who are behind much of the corruption. In his stint as finance minister, Ghani said, two moments crystallized his disgust and finally prompted him to quit.<br />The first, Ghani said, was his attempt to impose order on Kabul's chaotic system of private property rights. The Afghan government had accumulated vast amounts of land during the period of communist rule in the 1970s and 1980s. And since 2001, the government has given much of it away — often, Ghani said, to shady developers at extremely low prices.<br />Much of that land has been sold and developed, rendering much of Kabul's property in the hands of unknown owners. Many of the developers who were given free land, Ghani said, were also involved in drug trafficking.<br />When he proposed drawing up a set of regulations to govern private property, Ghani said, he was told by President Karzai to stop.<br />"Just back off," he told me," Ghani said. "He said that politically it wasn't feasible."<br />A similar effort to impose regulations at the Ministry of Aviation, which Ghani described as rife with corruption, was met with a similar response by President Karzai, he said.<br />"Morally the question was, am I becoming the fig leaf to legitimate a system that was deeply corrupt? Or was I there to serve the people?" Ghani said. "I resigned."<br />The corruption may be endemic here, but if there is any hope in the future, it would seem to lie in the revulsion of ordinary Afghans like Farani, who, after seven years, is still refusing to pay.<br />"I won't do it," Farani said outside the courthouse. "It's a matter of principle. Never."<br />"But," he said, "I don't have my house, either, and I don't know that I ever will."</div><div></div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Taliban kill 20 policemen assigned to Afghan aide<br /></strong>By Taimoor Shah<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />KABUL: Taliban militants on Wednesday attacked police officers assigned to protect a senior district official in the southern province of Helmand, killing 20 of them, in one of the bloodiest attacks on the security forces in months, local officials reported Thursday.<br />The Taliban, ousted as Afghanistan's rulers by the American-led invasion in late 2001 but now resurgent in their efforts to expel foreign troops, took responsibility for the attack and claimed the death toll was 32. Two of the attackers also died.<br />Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand authorities, said the attack took place in the Musa Qala district of Helmand when Taliban militants attacked guards at security posts around the home of the senior official, Mullah Salam, the district governor. The governor was not home when the attack took place and was unhurt, local officials said.<br />A Taliban commander, Mullah Qasam, said a police commander with sympathies for the insurgent cause surrendered with 15 of his men before the attack. The Taliban commander claimed 32 policemen were killed, including four commanders, and the militants seized equipment including 24 AK-47 assault rifles, five rocket launchers, two police vehicles and four motorcycles.<br />Several areas in Helmand, one of Afghanistan's most restive provinces, are under Taliban control. The province is also known as a center of opium growing. The opium is harvested to produce heroin in an international narcotics trade that, Western officials say, provides income for the militants.<br />Afghan forces and the American-led coalition lost control of Musa Qala for much of 2007 but reasserted their authority late the same year.<br />News reports said Mullah Salam, the Musa Qala district governor, was a former commander of the Taliban who switched sides shortly before the offensive in 2007 that ended Taliban control of the area.<br />Separately, the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday that two foreign soldiers, one of them a British Marine, were killed Wednesday in southern Afghanistan.<br />The fatalities contributed to the highest annual death toll of foreign troops since the 2001 invasion. Reuters put the 2008 combat death toll at nearly 270 soldiers, including 127 Americans, compared to 169 combat deaths among foreign troops in 2007.<br />Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.<br /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>4 North Koreans defect to South<br /></strong>By Choe Sang-Hun<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />SEOUL: The authorities are questioning four North Koreans who defected to South Korea by sea this week, the Seoul intelligence agency said Wednesday.<br />A spokesman for the spy agency, who spoke on the customary condition of anonymity, gave no further details. But Yonhap, the South Korean national news agency, reported that the defectors were a husband and wife and their son and daughter-in-law.<br />Yonhap, which cited no sources in its report, said the four North Koreans were in a small, wooden boat when a patrol boat from the South Korean Navy picked them up Tuesday night.<br />Escapes from North Korea across the heavily guarded land and sea borders between the two Koreas are uncommon. More than 14,000 people from the hunger-stricken North have defected to South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, but most of them have traveled through China.<br />On Oct. 28, a North Korean believed to be a soldier defected to South Korea, officials in Seoul said. The man apparently entered at a South Korean military guard post. At the time, the North's military was threatening to attack unless Seoul prevented anti-North Korea "provocations," including the sending of airborne leaflets into the Communist North.<br />In recent months, conservative activists in the South - mainly North Korean defectors supported by Christian churches - have been unleashing balloons that carry leaflets to the North. The leaflets harshly criticize the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, and carry news about his alleged illness, a topic that is taboo in the North.<br />Defectors from North Korea said Dec. 22 that they had sent about 1.5 million propaganda leaflets across the border, ignoring an appeal by the South Korean government that they stop. A group of defectors flew 26 large balloons carrying the leaflets toward North Korea from an island off the west coast of South Korea, said Lee Min Bok, head of the North Korea Christian Association in South Korea.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>South Korea to press North for talks<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />SEOUL: South Korea wants to resume frozen talks with North Korea next year and bolster its ability to keep an eye on its communist neighbour by working closely with the new Obama administration, policy papers on Wednesday said.<br />Ties between the Koreas crumbled over the past year, with the North lashing out at the South's president for ending what had once been a free flow of unconditional aid.<br />Seoul has instead linked handouts to progress Pyongyang made in nuclear disarmament.<br />"The government will sincerely urge North Korea to respond to our suggestions for inter-Korean dialogue," the Unification Ministry said in a policy plan for the new year it released with the defence and foreign ministries.<br />North Korea, with estimated annual economic output of about $20 billion (13.8 billion pounds), has lost out on at least $1 billion in aid the South had been supplying each year because of the strain in ties.<br />Impoverished North Korea faces a further cut in aid after the United States this month called for suspending shipments of heavy fuel aid to punish Pyongyang for failing to live up to a six-way nuclear deal by not agreeing to a system to check claims it made about its atomic programme.<br />The Defence Ministry said it wants to work with the United States to bolster its response to any possible North Korean aggression and enhance its surveillance of the reclusive state.<br />U.S. spy satellites and aircraft monitor activity at the North's nuclear arms facilities and also keep track of missile movements and launches.<br />The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea to support its 670,000 soldiers. The North, which is technically still at war with the South, positions most of its 1.2 million troops near the border with its capitalist neighbour.<br />South Korean media has reported in the past few days that Seoul would set up a programme to buy the release of more than 1,000 of its citizens held for decades in the North who include civilian abductees and prisoners not released at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.<br />The Unification Ministry's policy paper did not outline specific plans on the issue, but said: "(The government) will try to fundamentally solve the issue of the abductees and prisoners of war."<br />(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun, Editing by Dean Yates)</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT9RQE2tG_kCLxvqX9aRcCjEnzTmyZwIP-V5Uj7RP9PGhzdF_FaYkDR8HnF-SyQoBrU3F0EtyHdbC3-8AanUiix5U-my8yEmw80CRJs7zYJuZfFnsFoFDoHHGPax7cyJj2QdneG2Ugtf4/s1600-h/DSC05174.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286672499950928770" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkMxllr1NbOLR0r7ExCNSPCVCXA1LlVDRRDmVUxjk9lH3TzW4lTKZZe0Z7FxZTTClkwqGk79AJH1Y3xCA-ItH3PVgw_sDwyT2xTIceTfQ4fb3dwyS839-x6kB_5Xs8SrK2MAZZ-t4sAM/s320/DSC05179.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286671904276619170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht94hZWPlUA9EzaryTvGGczpifqhMs6REWKxTtw_tKFxheBv1UoqqsGDi-qBSwieqRqikWdO7Q_d70r-JokeXOiPwMVuB79ks9AGWOPSzA8Q2QXYvmDE0ncYZfZ4hgeICCS8YLPz-Xsxo/s320/DSC05180.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286671899747979586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj09vhyIvkebO-m1Xde95_KQz77XVqfUiLA4JfpjoaKLGRweG_qRfvolhmwmUuctFyq4GEsleTirate400IccUqrLK8-ufGEYVfc-TkFliaaJmb_WDxXyUWUQA48ickzKi-LIyv3i-n8Yg/s320/DSC05183.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286671902745883394" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6jjJs02fBiIZM73l3O2rZjyT1gyga6cjKlNMunal1n-5HeGXFnOxtsiU7sqRJxfgxZyBfzCyuP_7n7_xdI1faXfy5bLYxf8LnNDLDfifhxO6odu_iKeEYboTTKRtWnRMoYbM6wdw5uAc/s320/DSC05181.jpg" border="0" /><br /><strong>2008 sees 6 years of market gains slip away</strong><br />By Vikas Bajaj<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />There was almost no place to hide from the crash of 2008.<br />By the time the New York Stock Exchange closed Wednesday to end the year, virtually anyone with money in stocks had felt the punishing drop in the market.<br />Shares ended higher on Wednesday, but overall, it was a very bad year to own stocks, any stocks — indeed, one of the worst ever.<br />The Dow Jones industrial average ended the year down more than 33 percent, the worst year for the index since 1931, and the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index more than 38 percent. Blue-chips like Bank of America, Citigroup and Alcoa lost more than 60 percent of their value.<br />All told, about $7 trillion of shareholders' wealth — the gains of the last six years — will be wiped out in a year marked by violent market swings.<br />But what is striking is not just the magnitude of the declines, staggering as they are, but also their breadth. All but 2 of the 30 Dow industrials, Wal-Mart and McDonalds, fell by more than 10 percent. Almost no industry was spared as the crisis that emerged in the subprime mortgage market metastasized and the economy sank into what could be a long, gray recession.<br />As the new year dawns, Wall Street is looking to Washington, where the balance of financial power has tipped in recent months. Analysts and investors are focusing on what the incoming Obama administration and the Federal Reserve will do to revive the economy and the financial system.<br />It is a remarkable turnabout from the mid-1990s, when Wall Street traders helped drive economic policy. Back then, bond investors flexed their financial muscle and prodded the Clinton administration and a Republican Congress to reduce the federal budget deficit.<br />These days, the market in ultra-safe United States Treasury securities seems like a refuge, even as the deficit balloons from the cost of bailing out banks, insurers and the Detroit auto companies. Many investors, having lost stocks and other investments, are buying Treasuries that offer little or no return. They are content simply to get their money back.<br />"The only willing risk taker is the government," said William Gross, the chief investment officer of the Pacific Investment Management Company, or Pimco, the giant bond trading firm. Speaking of the epicenter of the financial world, he added: "It is no longer New York, it's Washington."<br />Like many money managers, Gross is a conservative — he describes himself as a "Reagan fan from way back" — who generally prefers limited government involvement in the markets. But he and others say that the government's sweeping intervention into private industry and in the markets, though sometimes flawed, was necessary to prevent a collapse of the financial system. They are hoping that policy makers do even more to stimulate the economy and revive moribund financial markets.<br />Given the damage in the markets, however, policy makers face daunting challenges.<br />"When we have bear markets, they usually take twice as long to get down this far," said Robert Doll, vice chairman of BlackRock, the investment firm.<br />The markets have become incredibly volatile, especially since Lehman Brothers sank into bankruptcy in September. Since late September, there have been 18 days when the S.& P. moved more than 5 percent in either direction. In the previous 53 years, there were only 17 such days, according to calculations by Howard Silverblatt, an index analyst at S.& P.<br />Diversification — the idea that it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket — did not pay off for investors in 2008, casting doubt over this cornerstone of modern investing. The American market was far from the worst hit in 2008. Stocks have fallen 55 percent to 72 percent in Brazil, Russia, India and China — the so-called BRIC economies that were darlings of the late, great boom. Stocks in developed European and Asian markets also fell sharply, though less than their emerging counterparts. Many commodities like oil and copper crashed.<br />Losses in the credit markets, which are at the heart of this financial crisis, appear small relative to the devastation in other markets. The International Monetary Fund estimated in October that banks and other investors would suffer $1.4 trillion in losses on loans and securities, a loss of just 6 percent. Financial institutions globally have already reported $1 trillion in write-downs, according to Bloomberg.<br />The IMF's estimate, however, does not count losses on derivatives, those complex instruments that derive their value from other assets. Losses on these instruments could outstrip those in the so-called cash markets because they are much bigger than their underlying assets.<br />A spokeswoman for the IMF said the fund's estimates do not include those losses because they are transfers of wealth from one party of a transaction to another. For example, when the insurance giant, American International Group, losses $1 billion on a credit default swap, a type of derivative, it makes payments to customers like investment banks.<br />These complex financial instruments will pose one of the biggest challenges to policy makers in the year ahead. Many investors have lost confidence in banks, insurers and other financial intermediaries, in part, because they do not know whether these companies are valuing opaque instruments properly. Some firms may be carrying enough toxic sludge to sink them, while others may be relatively unscathed.<br />"Until those assets can be removed from the balance sheets of the bank, or until the owners get a better understanding of what these assets are worth, we will have uncertainty," said Douglas Peta, an independent market analyst.<br />A broader focus for policy makers will be reviving the economy. Most financial and political analysts expect the Obama administration to enact a stimulus package that could approach $1 trillion. The effort will aim to create three million jobs by spending money on infrastructure, green energy technology, aid to states and other initiatives.<br />Many analysts say such an effort would help revive the economy, but they warn that it will not have immediate results. Infrastructure spending, for instance, can have a powerful impact by stimulating demand and creating jobs but, like much else in the economy, it often takes time to work.<br />Some are looking to efforts by the Treasury and Fed to jump start lending by lowering mortgage rates and improving the market for bonds backed by small business, auto and credit card loans. A recent drop in mortgage rates has already sparked a refinance boom, but analysts say home prices in many parts of the country are still too high for many would-be home buyers. Furthermore, employment and household savings, which began to rise sharply in the spring of last year, will likely have climb for some time before consumers have enough confidence to buy homes and money for down payments.<br />"Across the board, they can potentially prevent a further slide, and they deserve a lot of credit if they achieve that," Martin Fridson, chief executive of Fridson Investment Advisors, a bond-trading firm, said about policy makers. "I just don't think that they can push a button and have the economy and the stock market turn around."<br />Thomas Lee, the chief equity strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase, said a recovery early in the year could give way to another sell-off before the stock market finally bottoms later in the year. He said his forecast reflects "how unconventional the current recession is." Unlike in the past, policy makers cannot rely on consumers to push the economy ahead by borrowing and spending, he said.<br />"This is a recession where households are net debtors," he said. "They have lost money on houses and equities. That has rarely happened, at least since the 1950s."<br />Doll of BlackRock agreed that consumers will not "run back and power the economy ahead." But he nonetheless contends that several important markets, including stocks, may be close to their bottom. The Fed, he argued, has taken on a more activist role in the markets and the new administration is likely push through a massive stimulus.<br />Such sentiments have probably helped drive the S.& P. 500 index up by 20 percent since Nov. 20 and investment-grade corporate bonds up by nearly 9 percent since October.<br />"Perhaps we have seen a bottom," Doll said. But he added that like the economy, "the stock market recovery will be more muted as well."</div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Wall Street closes out worst year since Depression</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Chuck Mikolajczak and Chris Sanders<br />Wall Street closed out its worst year since the Great Depression on Wednesday after an unstoppable credit crisis and a dreadful economic outlook left investors questioning their faith in stock markets.<br />A string of financial disasters culminating in the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the middle of the night in September precipitated the third biggest percentage loss ever for the Dow industrials and the broad S&P 500.<br />By November 20, the S&P had hit an 11-year low, destroying more than a decade of returns for many Americans and wiping out memories of record highs reached just 13 months earlier.<br />"It was plain ugly out there," said Kurt Brunner, a portfolio manager with Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia.<br />"All in all, it's something that I truly hope is once-in-a lifetime thing."<br />Nonetheless, U.S. stocks managed to close the year on an up note on Wednesday as fresh efforts to stem the recession from Washington lifted equities for the second consecutive session.<br />For the year, the Dow fell 33.8 percent, for its bleakest year since 1931; the S&P skidded 38.5 percent; and the Nasdaq posted its worst year ever, with a 40.5 percent drop.<br />When all was said and done, the S&P 500 found itself $5.02 trillion (3.42 trillion pounds) lighter than it was last year.<br />The bursting of the housing bubble began a long chain of events culminating in the worst credit crisis in a generation.<br />A deep mistrust grew between banks while growing doubts among investors about the American banking model crippled financial stocks and yanked a key pillar supporting U.S. equity markets.<br />As the shortage of credit seeped into the broader economy, unemployment rose and consumer spending dived.<br />Only two stocks in the Dow ended higher for the year: Wal-Mart Stores and McDonald's Inc . Investors bet discounters like Wal-Mart and inexpensive fast-food restaurants would be the few places consumers spend scarce cash as unemployment soared and the economy crumbled.<br />The biggest decliner on the Dow was General Motors , which fell 87.1 percent for the year as the company was compelled, along with other automakers, to plead for funds from Washington in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy.<br />On the S&P, the biggest decliner for the year was insurer American International Group , which fell 97.3 percent after agreeing to an $85 billion bailout from the Federal Reserve in exchange for government control.<br />But the market rose on Wednesday as investors bet that fresh initiatives from Washington will help stave off a deep recession.<br />Late Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve provided clarity on its plan to reduce mortgage costs and set a goal to buy $500 billion in mortgage-backed securities by mid-2009, a move that surprised analysts in its aggressiveness.<br />By buying back the securities more quickly than expected, investors hope mortgage rates will fall at a faster pace and stimulate the beleaguered housing market.<br />The Dow Jones industrial average rose 108 points, or 1.25 percent, to 8,776.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 12.61 points, or 1.42 percent, to 903.25. The Nasdaq Composite Index added 26.33 points, or 1.70 percent, to 1,577.03.<br />For the week, the Dow and Nasdaq rose 3.1 percent while the S&P gained 3.5 percent. For the month, the Dow slid 0.6 percent, the S&P added 0.6 percent and Nasdaq climbed 2.7 percent.<br />Exxon Mobil was among the top boosts to the Dow, rising 1.6 percent to $79.83 as oil rose 14 percent to over $44 a barrel. Chevron rose 0.8 percent to $73.97 while the S&P Energy index added 1.3 percent.<br />The Fed move came a day after lawmakers gave an additional $6 billion to General Motors and its financing arm, GMAC, in another effort to stabilise the auto industry and prevent staggering job losses.<br />While 2008 has been a brutal year for global markets, investors are hoping the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama will lay the ground for a recovery.<br />"There's an optimism that the new team is going to do something," said Michael Cuggino, president and portfolio manager of Permanent Portfolio Funds in San Francisco.<br />"The impact of fiscal policy will play a huge part in determining how deep and how long the recessionary period is and how robust the recovery period will be."<br />The Nasdaq was boosted on Wednesday by large-cap tech companies that are seen as better able to withstand the economic crisis due to large cash reserves. Qualcomm Inc , the wireless chip maker, was up 2.6 percent to $35.83, while BlackBerry maker Research in Motion rose 4.7 percent to $40.58.<br />Industrials helped lift the S&P 500, including Pall Corp , Textron and Dow component Caterpillar Inc . The S&P Industrials index gained 2 percent.<br />Pall, a maker of filtration products, jumped 9.4 percent to $28.43, while Textron surged 7.6 percent to $13.87. Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar rose 2.3 percent to $44.67 as one of the top performers on the Dow.<br />Housing was another bright spot. Interest rates on U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped for a ninth consecutive week and fell to their lowest level since 1971, according to a survey released by home funding company Freddie Mac.<br />The drop in rates boosted demand for home loans, and U.S. mortgage applications held at the highest level in more than five years during the Christmas holiday week, an industry group said on Wednesday.<br />The Dow Jones U.S. Home Builders index was up 2.5 percent after the data, led by luxury home builder Toll Brothers , up 4.1 percent to $21.43.<br />Volume was slim on the New York Stock Exchange, where about 1.2 billion shares changed hands, far below last year's estimated daily average of 1.90 billion. On the Nasdaq, about 1.53 billion shares traded, well below last year's daily average of 2.17 billion.<br />Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by a ratio of about 5 to 1, while on the Nasdaq about three stocks rose for every one that fell.<br />(Additional reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Leslie Adler)</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Dollar and yen rose in 2008</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />NEW YORK: The dollar posted its first yearly gain against a basket of currencies since 2005 last year as the worst financial crisis in 80 years led investors to take refuge in the U.S. currency.<br />Despite a deepening recession in the United States, the dollar emerged from a seven-year downtrend as U.S.-based investors brought cash home and overseas investors parked money in the relative safety of dollar-denominated assets like U.S. Treasury securities.<br />The yen was the other top performer in 2008, soaring as the crisis brought an unwinding of carry trades - borrowing in the low-yielding yen to invest in higher-yielding assets elsewhere.<br />Liquidity was thin as traders closed their books on a year in which banks around the globe failed or sought government bailouts after the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble.<br />Central banks fought aggressively to shore up their economies, with the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan cutting rates virtually to zero.<br />In foreign exchange, "the year could be summed up in two words: risk aversion," said Dustin Reid, director for foreign exchange strategy at RBS Global Banking & Markets in Chicago. "The yen and the dollar were at the receiving end of that global flight to safety."<br />The euro fell about 4.5 percent against the dollar last year, its first annual drop since 2005, while the dollar gained about 6 percent against a basket of currencies.<br />"The volatility in euro/dollar in 2008 was simply spectacular," Reid said. "At the height of risk aversion a couple of months ago, the entire world rushed to buy dollars. But as the Fed reacted by bringing rates to zero, the dollar's luster has been gradually coming off."<br />Indeed, in the past few weeks, the euro has clawed back a significant portion of its decline from the midyear peak, gaining nearly 10 percent against the dollar in December, the largest monthly advance since the currency was born in 1999.<br />Despite its rally against higher-yielding currencies like the pound and the Australian and New Zealand dollars, the dollar tumbled more than 18 percent against the yen last year, the worst annual performance since a 23.2 percent decline in 1987. The euro fell 22 percent against the yen.<br />The pound stood out as the major loser in 2008, slumping nearly 27 percent against the dollar, its biggest drop since the last vestiges of the gold standard were abandoned in 1971.<br />The euro also gained nearly 30 percent against the pound last year. It touched a high of 98.05 pence Tuesday, within striking distance of parity.<br />Investors shunned the pound as the Bank of England lowered interest rates to 2 percent, their lowest level since the 1950s.<br />Analysts said that 2008 would be remembered as a year of intense volatility, as traders used foreign exchanges as a platform to put on risk-averse trades.<br />"It has been an exceptionally active year in the foreign exchange market as currency volatilities hit record highs," Kathy Lien, director of currency research at GFT Forex in New York, wrote in a research note.<br />"In the first half of the year, everyone was worried about how much further the dollar would fall, but in the second half of the year the concern became how much further the dollar would rise."<br />While analysts agree that none of the world's major economies will be spared from recession this year, views are divided about how economic weakness will affect currencies.<br />Jeremy Stretch, a strategist at Rabobank in London, said the euro was likely to continue a slide against the dollar on growing expectations that the U.S. economy might be among the first to recover from the downturn.<br />Other analysts, like David Powell at Bank of America, say that continuing U.S. economic troubles and uncertainty about how the country will finance a huge fiscal stimulus package will hurt the dollar in 2009.<br />"The trend of dollar weakness is unlikely to have yet seen the end," Powell said.</div><div></div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>More economic pain seen in 2009 but some hope too</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Kim Coghill and Claudia Parsons<br />Many investors said good riddance on Wednesday to one of the worst years on record and prayed that government rescue plans will pull the global economy out of its fierce tailspin later in the new year.<br />More pain is expected in the near-term as bleak economic reports roll in, flagging more bankruptcies, bad debts and layoffs through at least early 2009, and more sleepless nights for everyone from central bankers to consumers struggling to pay off mortgages and credit card bills.<br />The biggest financial crisis in 80 years, sparked by a U.S. mortgage meltdown, made this year one of the worst ever for investors as recession stalked the global economy.<br />"It has been a shocking year, hardly anything was spared in the market carnage," said Michael Heffernan, senior client adviser and strategist at Austock Group in Australia.<br />The slump wiped out nearly $14 trillion (9.6 trillion pounds) in market value, according to the benchmark MSCI world index of larger companies.<br />"If there's any optimism, it's on the basis that stock markets recover in recessions," said Justin Urquhart Stewart, director at Seven Investment Management.<br />"Now we have the real recession, rather than the phoney recession. Last year we were so optimistic, that we were fooling ourselves. It's now gone too far the other way. We've discounted a huge amount of bad news."<br />Full-year losses on major world stock indexes ranged from 31 percent in London to 65 percent in Shanghai.<br />CRISIS VICTIMS<br />The crisis of 2008 has radically changed the financial landscape, bringing down U.S. investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, saddling other banks with huge losses and freezing the credit system that keeps world business humming.<br />Victims of the crisis are still piling up, with announcements almost daily of fresh company losses, more layoffs, and slumping prices for assets from cars to homes.<br />LyondellBasell, the world's third-largest petrochemical firm, said it is considering filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it tries to restructure debt.<br />Next Monday, members of the U.S. House Financial Services committee will take their first close look at the alleged $50 billion fraud by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff, whose burnt investors ranged from bearish "Dr. Doom" economist Henry Kaufman to actor Kevin Bacon.<br />Madoff faced a deadline on Wednesday to tell regulators how much he is worth and where his money and other assets are.<br />Oil surged to $44.60 a barrel on Wednesday but was still down 54 percent in 2008, hit by the economic slowdown. Oil has plummeted since a high in July above $147.<br />Gold was one of the few commodities to end higher on the year as economic turmoil burnished its lure as a haven for investors scampering away from risk.<br />Economic reports on Wednesday were mixed.<br />A larger than expected fall in new U.S. jobless claims reported on Wednesday was attributed to seasonal factors. [ID:nN31374038] A yearlong U.S. recession has already destroyed 2.7 million jobs, pushing unemployment up to 6.7 percent, with many economists expecting it to rise above 8 percent in 2009.<br />Separate reports on business activity in New York City and Milwaukee showed no sign of recovery, while 30-year fixed mortgage rates eased for the ninth week as official efforts to bolster the housing market appeared to gain traction.<br />HOPE SEEN IN INTERVENTION<br />With central banks cutting interest rates and governments pumping money into the system, some see better signs for 2009.<br />"I think we'll move ahead a bit in the new year and then stabilise for a while. Global policymakers are doing their utmost to ensure the recession doesn't degenerate into a deflationary malaise," said Mike Lenhoff, chief strategist at Brewin Dolphin.<br />World governments have started pumping more than $1 trillion into their economies, and more is expected in 2009.<br />In the latest bailout, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday it had agreed on a $2.5 billion emergency loan package with Belarus.<br />The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday built on efforts to cut mortgage costs, setting a goal of buying $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities by mid-2009.<br />China's central bank reaffirmed on Wednesday that it would implement a moderately loose monetary policy as it seeks to reinvigorate its once fast-growing economy. [nLV504083]<br />Indonesia's president promised further fiscal stimulus to help Southeast Asia's biggest economy.<br />Global credit markets are showing signs of improvement, but banks remain reluctant to lend.<br />Government stimulus plans, corporate bailouts and rate cuts take time to be felt and their benefits are hotly debated. Nonetheless, mounting job losses are raising fears of social unrest in some countries, and piling pressure on governments to act quickly, even if it means huge deficits and debts.<br />Investors are now looking to January, when Barack Obama will be sworn in as U.S. president on January 20. He is expected to unveil a government spending programme which sources say could range from $675 billion to $775 billion over two years.<br />The new year will also mark attempts by policymakers to overhaul outdated regulatory systems to avert future crises.<br />U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the government had to battle the financial crisis without the tools needed to do the job, the Financial Times reported.<br />"We're dealing with something that is really historic and we haven't had a playbook," he said.<br />(Reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>In 2009, economy will depend on unlocking credit</strong><br />By Eric Dash and Vikas Bajaj<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />"Credit, the disposition of one man to trust another, is singularly varying," Walter Bagehot, the financial journalist, wrote 135 years ago. "In England, after a great calamity, everybody is suspicious of everybody; as soon as that calamity is forgotten, everybody again confides in everybody."<br />He might have been describing modern-day Wall Street, where trust — and credit — are in short supply.<br />The financial crisis began in the credit markets, and eventually it will end there. But as the financial industry rounds out one of the most wrenching years in its history, bankers and policy makers are struggling to see the way out of this mess. Despite triage by Washington and trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money, credit is not flowing nearly as much as many had hoped.<br />The problem, as Bagehot observed, is trust — or rather, the lack of it. Even after receiving millions, in some cases billions, of dollars from the government, banks are reluctant to lend money. Crucial parts of the financial system have stopped functioning. The exuberance of the boom, which led bankers to make loans to people who could not repay them, has given way to a seemingly intractable fear of making any loans at all.<br />How long this situation lasts will determine the immediate course of the nation's economic life. Will the recession, already a year old, drag on through 2009 — or even longer? Will the stock market revive soon or shrivel further? What of the beleaguered housing market?<br />The answers to those questions will depend on the availability of credit in all its forms — home mortgages, personal and business loans and bonds sold by corporations, states and municipalities. For now, many banks are hoarding money rather than lending it. Their holdings of cash have nearly tripled to just over $1 trillion in the last three months, according to Federal Reserve data.<br />In the capital markets, bond investors who embraced risk in good times have abandoned all but the safest of investments. Many have rushed to buy ultra-safe United States Treasury securities, driving the yields on those investments to historic lows. Once the credit markets stabilize, bankers hope, investors will start buying other types of debt, unlocking the flow of credit.<br />A big worry is the future of securitization, a key mechanism of modern banking that enables banks to bundle loans and bonds into securities for sale to investors. This crucial market is moribund now that many of its creations have plunged in value. Some question when, or if, certain areas of securitization will revive.<br />Securitization, which works like a shadow banking system, has radically changed banking and the credit markets in recent years. Three decades ago, banks supplied $3 out of every $4 of credit worldwide. Today, because of securitization, that share has dropped to about $1 in $3.<br />Unless financial companies can securitize debt — which, in turn, depends on investors' willingness to buy the bundled loans — credit will remain tight even if banks resume lending.<br />"What started in 2008, and is going on now, is the undoing of that shadow banking system," said Alex Roever, a short-term credit analyst at J. P. Morgan Securities.<br />The Federal Reserve and Treasury are trying to fill the void, at least in part.<br />Since late November, news that the government planned to acquire billions of dollars in mortgage securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage finance giants, has driven down home loan rates. The national average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has fallen a full percentage point, to just over 5 percent, setting off a huge refinancing boom.<br />The drop in mortgage rates, coupled with a steep decline in government bond yields, is prompting investors to reconsider riskier, albeit higher-yielding investment-grade corporate bonds. Since October, the difference between the yields on such bonds and comparable Treasuries — a measure of the risk investors perceive in corporate debt — has fallen to about 4.3 percent, from 5.7 percent.<br />That's a good sign.<br />"October was the peak, during which everybody shut down and stopped doing a lot of things," said Curtis Ishii, the senior investment officer for fixed income at Calpers, the large California pension fund. "In December, things got a little better."<br />Still, many bond investors and analysts remain cautious. Despite the government interventions, and indeed even because of them, many investors are reluctant to act until they are sure of Washington's next step.<br />"Investors will regain their confidence when they are sure they understand the rules of the road," said Jaret Seiberg, a financial policy analyst at the Stanford Group, a research and consulting firm in Washington. "In the past 18 months, those rules have been rewritten so many times that nobody is sure when the government will intervene and when it won't."<br />Banks are struggling to navigate various crosscurrents from Washington and Wall Street. Regulators are urging banks to make loans, but they are also instructing them to reduce the amount of money they borrow themselves. Credit card lenders are facing new rules that the industry claims will restrict credit just when consumers need it most.<br />In such an environment, many investors refuse to part with their cash.<br />"The government is trying to use its full faith and credit as a substitute for investor confidence," Seiberg said.<br />A crucial test case may come in February, when policy makers try to kick-start consumer and small-business lending with the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.<br />TALF is supposed to help lure investors back to the market for bonds backed by auto and student loans, credit card receivables and small-business debts. Alarmed by rising delinquencies, many investors are shunning these securities. That, in turn, has choked credit, since banks can no longer fashion the loans they make into securities.<br />To allay investors' fears, the Federal Reserve, with the aid of the Treasury Department, will lend money against highly rated asset-backed securities. But the benefits may not trickle down to consumers for several months.<br />After one of the industry's worst years on record, many banks are bracing for still more losses in 2009. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September is still reverberating through the markets: many banks were forced to absorb assets that investors were no longer willing to buy.<br />"The banks are somewhat fearful," said Hyun Song Shin, a Princeton economics professor. "The fundamentals look somewhat less promising, and the incentive to hoard capital will be stronger."<br />The troubles in the economy, of course, only add to the anxiety. Investors and bankers will be reluctant to extend credit until home prices stop falling and until more people are finding jobs than losing them. In a struggling economy, even a seemingly solid loan can turn bad quickly.<br />Analysts say they see few signs that the recession will end quickly, even if the Obama administration enacts a huge fiscal stimulus plan that, according to some reports, could near $1 trillion. All of that spending will not revive the job market and lift housing values overnight.<br />"I don't think it will be a V-shaped bottom," said Donald Galante, senior vice president for fixed income at MF Global, the securities dealer. "It might be a double-dip or it might be a pan-shaped bottom."<br />Or as Bagehot observed, confidence — and credit — will return when bankers start to forget the pain of 2008. </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>U.S. home prices fell at their sharpest pace in October</strong><br />By Jack Healy<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />Home values in 20 large metropolitan areas across the country dropped at a record pace in October as the fallout from the financial collapse reverberated through the housing market, according to data released Tuesday.<br />The price of single-family homes fell 18 percent in October from a year earlier, according to the closely watched Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller Housing Index. All 20 cities reported annual price declines in October; prices in 14 of the 20 metropolitan areas surveyed fell at a record rate as the financial crisis reached a critical point.<br />"October was clearly the free-fall month," said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's. "Everything was going against us in October, without exception."<br />After increasing steadily through the first part of the decade, home prices have fallen every month since January 2007, their slide accelerating as troubles in the housing market infected the broader economy and brought down financial firms.<br />Prices are falling at the fastest pace on record, a sign that the housing market is a long way from recovery.<br />"It is unlikely that we are anywhere near a bottom in nationwide home prices," Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR, wrote in a note.<br />And only 2.5 percent of Americans say they plan to buy a home in the next six months, according to a December survey of consumers by the Conference Board. Despite relief from high gasoline prices, overall consumer confidence dropped to its lowest levels on record this month after rising slightly in November, as Americans braced for a long recession.<br />Only 6.6 percent of Americans said that business conditions were good, and 6.2 percent of people said jobs were plentiful, down from 23.6 percent a year ago.<br />The 10-city index dropped 19.1 percent in October, its largest decline in its 21-year history, and the new numbers show that the cities that played host to the greatest excesses of the housing boom are suffering the deepest drops.<br />Prices in Las Vegas and Phoenix, where developers built subdivisions stretching into the desert, fell by nearly a third in October from 2008. Home prices fell 31 percent in San Francisco and 29 percent in Miami. Prices in New York declined 7.5 percent in October over the same month a year ago.<br />Fourteen of the 20 cities in the Case-Shiller survey posted double-digit declines for the year. The relative winner was Dallas, which had the smallest yearly decline, of 3 percent. The value of a single-family house in Detroit, which has been pummeled by closing plants and the implosion of the auto industry, was less in October than it was in October 1998.<br />The Case-Shiller numbers were the latest round of bleak news for the housing sector, which is at the center of the country's broader economic troubles. Foreclosures, bad loans and collapsing housing prices contributed to the financial crisis earlier this year, and now the widening recession is dragging housing down even more.<br />Last week, the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously owned homes, which dominate the market, fell to the lowest pace in years. Home values tumbled 13 percent in November from a year earlier, the sharpest drop in more than 40 years, the industry group reported.<br />A glut of unsold houses is weighing down the market, and housing is likely to deteriorate further in 2009 as the jobs picture continues to weaken. Unemployment is now at 6.7 percent, its highest point in a decade, and economists predict it will rise to 8 or 10 percent next year.<br />"People who think they're going to lose their job don't buy a home," Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities, said.</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>A renter's market for New York offices<br /></strong>By Terry Pristin<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />With its 15-year Midtown New York office lease expiring in early 2009, the law firm of Anderson Kill & Olick began shopping for space last winter, when rents were still sky-high.<br />The search became even more daunting in March when an investment management firm, Paulson & Company, took two floors in the same office tower, the Mitsui Building at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, for more than twice the rent of $54 a square foot that Anderson Kill was paying a few floors below. "We were competing with hedge funds for which price was no object," said Robert Horkovich, the firm's managing partner.<br />But when the financial markets collapsed, Anderson Kill was able to negotiate an 18-month renewal, instead of the customary 10- to 15-year lease. The firm, which occupies 44,000 square feet, will pay $75 a square foot, far less than Paulson's rent of $125 a square foot. Horkovich said he would start looking again next summer, when he expects rents to reach their nadir.<br />Even to industry veterans who have lived through other downturns, the precipitous decline in the New York office market, especially in Midtown, has been startling.<br />"We have fallen further faster than any time in the last 20 years," said Mitchell Steir, chief executive of Studley, a national brokerage firm that represents tenants. "There has been more damage to real estate values in the last four months than in any other four-month period. The pace with which it has occurred has been astonishing."<br />According to Studley, asking rents in New York over all declined 4.4 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, with the decrease in Midtown even more pronounced, 8.3 percent, the steepest since 2001.<br />But brokers say that actual rents have fallen much further than the data suggests. Studley said that the asking rents for 40 percent of the spaces included in its research are listed as "negotiable."<br />"No one knows what the rents are, because there has been very little activity for the past three months," said Ruth Colp-Haber, a partner at Wharton Property Advisors, which represents small to medium-size tenants. "No one is paying attention to the asking rents."<br />When concessions from the landlords — like months of free rent and help in renovating the space — are factored in, actual rents have slipped as much as 25 percent since the summer, said Mitchell Konsker, a vice chairman of Cushman & Wakefield.<br />Brokers say they are still busy showing space but are having a much tougher time persuading tenants to close deals. Only 5.4 million square feet of space were leased in the last quarter, well below the quarterly average of 7.2 million square feet in the last nine years, Studley reported. Nearly 25 percent of the fourth-quarter activity was represented by Viacom's renewal of its lease for 1.3 million square feet at 1515 Broadway in Times Square. The next largest lease was Deutsche Investment Management's renewal of 150,000 square feet at 345 Park Avenue, near 52nd Street.<br />"The market is frozen," said Richard Warshauer, a senior managing director at Williams Real Estate, a FirstService Company. "They don't have the money, and they can't borrow the money. The velocity has slowed to a virtual standstill."<br />As the market has slowed, the availability rate — empty space and space that will become available within a year — has climbed from 8.9 percent in the third quarter to 10.4 percent. For prime buildings in Midtown Manhattan, the availability rate rose from 9.5 percent to 12.1 percent, its highest level since the 1990s, the Studley report showed.<br />Like Anderson Kill, many tenants say time is in their favor. Kintetsu International, a travel agency with 54 employees in New York, was prepared to leave its longtime quarters at 1325 Avenue of the Americas when its lease expired in 2009 because its landlord, the Paramount Group, planned to more than double the rent to over $90 a square foot, said Bill Sarcona, the assistant general manager. After Lehman Brothers fell, however, Paramount slashed its asking rent, and Kintetsu successfully pushed for a one-year extension with a rent increase of only 5 percent.<br />The travel agency will begin searching for a better deal this summer. "No one seems to expect the market to turn around until the second or third quarter of 2009," Sarcona said. "That's when we're assuming the market will bottom out."<br />Some tenants are grabbing opportunities, however. Pryor Cashman, an entertainment law firm, was spared the expense of designing and furnishing new space when it decided to move into 100,000 square feet at 7 Times Square that had been occupied by Heller Ehrman, a law firm that dissolved in October.<br />In the past, a new tenant would routinely rip out a predecessor's décor, no matter how suitable it was, but tenants today try to avoid wasting money, said Mary Ann Tighe, the regional chief executive of CB Richard Ellis, the firm that represented both parties in the Pryor Cashman deal. "First and foremost, tenants are interested in capital preservation," she said.<br />Brokers predict that sublease space will flood the market in the coming months, further depressing rents. About 13 million square feet of sublease space is available now — more than double the amount of a year ago — but still a relatively modest percentage of the city's office market of more than 400 million square feet.<br />To compete with sublease space that is already in move-in condition, many landlords will find themselves creating offices before they sign up the tenants, Warshauer said. "That's Landlord 101 for bad times," he said. "When the going gets rough, cut up the space and prebuild it."<br />Offering prebuilt space — as well as reducing the rent, giving more months of free rent and providing a larger refurbishing allowance — helped Capstone Equities lease several spaces adding up to about 179,000 square feet at 14 Wall Street since September, said Josh Zamir, the managing principal. "We'll do anything to get a deal done," Zamir said. He said most of his leases are for 10 years, but added, "We would do a short-term lease if the tenant wanted it."<br />Some landlords are so eager to fill space that they offering up to a year's free rent to tenants who are willing to make a longer commitment, Colp-Haber said. "This is a fantastic time to lock in a long-term lease," she said.<br />With many New York building owners facing enormous financial difficulties — Real Capital Analytics, a New York research company, recently estimated that at least $12 billion worth of commercial property in the area is already or potentially in trouble — companies seeking space are asking questions about the creditworthiness of a prospective landlord, several brokers said.<br />"Tenants today are very concerned with who their landlord is going to be," Konsker, of Cushman & Wakefield, said. He added that tenants also have to be concerned about the financial stability of the company that is subletting space. A bankruptcy filing can nullify a lease, leaving the subtenant hanging.<br />At the same time, landlords are looking more closely at the creditworthiness of their tenants, said William Rudin, president of the Rudin Management Company. This week, Verizon leased 50,000 square feet at 560 Lexington Avenue, doubling its presence in the Rudin-owned Midtown building. "We're happy we're signing a lease with an A-rated tenant," Rudin said. "The tenants should be looking at who the owner is, and we as owners should be looking at who the tenants are."</div><div></div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>UBS sells Bank of China stake<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Emma Thomasson<br />Straitened Swiss bank UBS AG said on Wednesday it had sold its stake in Bank of China at a discount to institutional investors and would book a gain of a "few hundred million dollars" in the fourth quarter.<br />UBS is struggling to repair its balance sheet after massive investments into risky U.S. assets forced it to make nearly $49 billion (33.7 billion pounds) of writedowns, more than any other European bank.<br />Bank of China spokesman Wang Zhaowen said the sale would have no impact on the bank's financial status and operations.<br />UBS said it offloaded about 3.4 billion Bank of China H-shares through a discounted placing.<br />The world's biggest wealth manager paid $500 million for a 1.6 percent stake in China's second-largest lender in 2005 before it went public in 2006. Foreign investors who took bigger stakes at the time included Royal Bank of Scotland and Temasek Holdings .<br />Philip Higson, UBS head of investor relations, said the shares were sold at a discount to Bank of China's closing price on Tuesday, but declined to say by how much.<br />Dow Jones news agency said UBS sold the shares to 15 investors at a 12 percent discount, raising $835 million, citing people familiar with the situation.<br />UBS said it had made a gain on the sale of "a few hundred million dollars" which it would book in the fourth quarter although it would only have a marginal positive impact on the bank's Tier I ratio, a key measure of financial strength.<br />UBS posted a small third quarter profit, mainly due to tax credits and a revaluation of its own debt, but warned it could take a multi-billion hit in the final quarter of 2008.<br />UBS's Higson said the weakening dollar and the level of market volatility would have a much bigger impact on the bank's Tier I ratio in the quarter than the Bank of China stake sale.<br />FEAR OF FOREIGNER RETREAT?<br />Bank of China shares closed trading down 3.2 percent at 2.120 Hong Kong dollars compared with a 1.1 percent firmer benchmark Hang Seng Index .<br />UBS said it remained committed to its business relationship with Bank of China and to its businesses in China as a whole. Bank of China's Wang said the stake sale would not harm cooperation with UBS.<br />There has been growing investor concern that RBS, Bank of America , Citigroup and other western banks could unload their holdings in Chinese lenders in order to shore up their books amid the deepening global crisis.<br />But Bank of China said on Wednesday its other major foreign investors -- including its largest foreign shareholder RBS -- had no plans to sell their stakes after the UBS move.<br />Hong Kong's Apple Daily said earlier this month that Bank of America, which owns 19.13 percent of China Construction Bank , aims to trim its stake in the Chinese lender worth up to $3 billion. The report was later denied by the U.S. bank.<br />There has also been talk that Citigroup , damaged by the crisis, may consider selling its shares in Shanghai Pudong Development Bank after a lock-up period expires this month.<br />(Additional reporting by Xie Heng in Beijing; Editing by David Cowell)</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Merrill Vice Chairman may leave in January</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Merrill Lynch's Vice Chairman Jeffrey Edwards will leave the bank in January, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing an internal memo.<br />President Greg Fleming announced in the memo that Edwards, 47, is leaving to pursue other interests, Bloomberg reported.<br />Edwards has worked at the bank for 22 years.<br />A Merrill spokeswoman could not immediately be reached.<br />(Reporting by Elinor Comlay; Editing by Bernard Orr)</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Citigroup's top executives to forgo '08 bonuses<br /></strong>By Eric Dash and Louise Story<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />Wall Street is hitting its bankers where it hurts — in the wallet.<br />Citigroup's chief executive and chairman said on Wednesday that they would forgo their bonuses for 2008 and slash the amounts paid to other senior bankers, joining a growing list of financial executives who are passing up some pay.<br />In a memo to bank employees, Vikram Pandit, Citigroup's chief executive, said that he and Winfried Bischoff, the bank's chairman, would not take year-end rewards.<br />"The harsh realities of 2008, primarily our earnings results, mean that our bonus pool is dramatically lower than last year," Pandit wrote about a year in which the bank has so far announced more than $10 billion in losses. "The most senior leaders should be affected the most."<br />But Pandit's remarks may strike some as several weeks late, if not a few million dollars short. Citigroup, one of the biggest recipients of taxpayer money, has taken in $45 billion in capital from the government's bailout funds.<br />Nearly every chief executive on Wall Street has indicated that he will decline a 2008 bonus, with Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America and John Stumpf of Wells Fargo being the holdouts so far.<br />Other banks have clamped down on pay even more than Citigroup under pressure from Congress, regulators and investors. Wachovia, for example, said it was slashing compensation not just in the executive suite, but all the way down through its ranks as its merger with Wells Fargo neared completion on the last night of the year.<br />"What's different about this year versus last year is that the U.S. taxpayer is part of the equation, so how things appear is important," said Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School.<br />On Wall Street, compensation is always a hot button. But now the tension is heightened: pay too much and risk a political backlash; pay too little and risk losing talented employees. The prospect of losing workers to hedge funds and private equity firms has helped drive up pay in the industry in past years.<br />"The argument is always made about this excessive compensation, that it's necessary to keep these people," said Richard Cellini, a senior vice president at Integrity Interactive, a consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts. "That will now be tested, and I'm not sure if there's anywhere for them to go."<br />The government provided few guidelines about Wall Street compensation when it injected billions of dollars into banks late last year, and only described limits on pay to the highest-ranking executives. That gave the banks great discretion over the size and form of bonuses for traders, midlevel executives and others.<br />Many banks, like Citigroup, are making the biggest reductions to their senior executives' pay. Bonuses at the top of Citigroup will be down at least 40 percent for 10 members of its senior leadership team, according to a corporate filing released on Wednesday. Robert Rubin, an influential Citigroup board member and senior adviser to its leadership team, also turned down his 2008 bonus.<br />But other banks have taken more aggressive actions. Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and UBS have extended so-called clawback agreements to cover all employees, allowing the banks to recover a portion of bonuses if they are later shown to have been based on flawed bets. Citigroup's new clawback policy applies only to its executives.<br />Pandit said that Citigroup would continue to pay the bulk of its employees well as long as they performed.<br />"Meritocracy requires differentiation in pay," Pandit said.<br />That is in stark contrast to the 2008 pay plan at Wachovia, where bonuses were drastically slashed for the rank and file. Many of Wachovia's senior executives, though, could still reap riches from the bank's shotgun merger with Wells Fargo.<br />In a conference call on Dec. 19, Tim Sloan, a Wells Fargo executive who will head the global markets and investment banking unit, told a group of Wachovia bankers that they would not receive big bonuses. Instead, their allocated bonus money will be returned to shareholders.<br />He also said there would be no retention packages, according to a Wachovia employee who listened to the call. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman declined to comment.<br />"I know that's very painful to hear, but that's the reality," Sloan told the employees, as recounted by the participant. "It just would have been irresponsible to the company's shareholders to do anything else."<br />But some employees complained that the rules were being changed late in the game. One employee who identified himself as a third-year vice president said the bank's decision was putting its employees in "financial extremis" and, in some cases, at risk of not making their mortgage payments.<br />Wachovia's senior executives — including Robert Steel, who served as chief executive for just a few months — will not take home a discretionary bonus for 2008. Of course, that is not to say that all of them will wind up empty-handed.<br />According to corporate filings, 10 of Wachovia's senior executives are eligible to receive up to $98.2 million in severance payouts upon the completion of the merger with Wells Fargo.<br />Christy Phillips-Brown, a Wachovia spokeswoman, said that the payouts were "contractual obligations" and could turn out to be less if four Wachovia executives who accepted positions remain at Wells Fargo. Steel, who already announced his departure, will not receive any severance pay.</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Investment bankers face uncertain landscape</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />NEW YORK: For investment bankers who arrange the sale of stocks and bonds, 2008 was a year to forget, and the new year may not bring instant relief.<br />As mounting asset write-downs and loan losses turned into a worldwide credit crisis, total securities underwriting slid 38 percent to $4.71 trillion, a six-year low, from $7.6 trillion in 2007. The number of new issues fell 41 percent. Reported fees dropped 17 percent to $13.4 billion.<br />Problems worsened as the year went on: Volume in the fourth quarter totaled $678.8 billion, down 52 percent from a year earlier and 15 percent from the third quarter.<br />"There was clearly an avoidance of risk," said Bruce Thompson, head of global capital markets at Bank of America. "In the fourth quarter, there was an evolution from what had been concern about markets to concern about the overall economy."<br />Some asset classes fared particularly poorly in the fourth quarter. In the United States, issuance volume slid 95 percent in mortgage-backed securities, 96 percent in junk bonds and 97 percent in asset-backed securities, according to Thomson Reuters data. U.S. commercial mortgage securities issuance fell to zero.<br />Overall issuance would have been even lower, but for tens of billions of dollars in debt issued by financial companies with the backing of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.<br />"There were a whole lot of issuers who could not get money out of the investment-grade corporate bond market at any price - specifically issuers whose businesses were deemed to be very cyclical," said Nigel Cree, head of syndication for North America at Deutsche Bank.<br />JPMorgan Chase was the world's largest underwriter in 2008 as measured by issuance volume, helped by its acquisition of Bear Stearns, according to Thomson Reuters data released Wednesday. That ended an eight-year run at the top for Citigroup, but Citigroup still edged out JPMorgan for the top spot in reported fees.<br />JPMorgan handled $455.1 billion worth of new issue volume for the year. Barclays was next with $401.3 billion, reflecting its purchase of much of Lehman Brothers, followed by Citigroup with $309 billion. In the fourth quarter, JPMorgan also ranked first, followed by Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.<br />In fees, Citigroup reported $1.67 billion in 2008, followed by JPMorgan and Merrill. Bank of America, Goldman and JPMorgan led in the fourth quarter, when overall fees fell 52 percent.<br />Issuance sputtered in the worst financial crisis in decades, with even the most optimistic forecasters saying economies were not likely to recover before mid-2009. Financial carnage like the Lehman bankruptcy, the government takeovers of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the $152 billion bailout of the insurer American International Group and the sales of Merrill and Wachovia led nervous investors to reduce debt and shun securities they perceived as carrying credit risk.<br />Investors flocked to the relative safety of U.S. Treasury securities amid a flood of redemptions from mutual funds and hedge funds. Demand for some riskier securities, like collateralized debt obligations, all but vanished.<br />Major U.S. stock indexes lost two-fifths of their value during the year, and losses even piled up in fixed income. Through Tuesday, total returns in 2008 were minus 27 percent on junk bonds and minus 21 percent on asset-backed debt, and even safer corporate bonds and municipal bonds left investors in the red, according to Merrill data. Treasury securities, in contrast, were up 14.9 percent.<br />More problems could lie ahead as investors stay wary about risk. "Sales could still be tough in the first half of the year," said Mirko Mikelic, senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Grand Rapids, Michigan.<br />Major credit rating agencies have said the U.S. junk bond default rate could reach double digits in 2009. Consumers are spending less, and tight credit markets are making it hard for companies to refinance existing debt or fund day-to-day needs.<br />Meanwhile, low stock prices and high market volatility may leave many companies loath to issue shares or go public.<br />Thompson of Bank of America expects issuance in 2009 to rise. "Companies have pent-up demand for issuance because of their inability to raise capital," he said.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>No more free goodies for U.S. doctors<br /></strong>By Natasha Singer<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />To Lehman Brothers, the retailer Linens 'n Things and the blank VHS tape, add another American institution that expired in 2008: drug company trinkets.<br />Starting Thursday, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies - Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs - that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs.<br />No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned with rhinestones that spell out B-O-T-O-X. So are pens advertising the Sepracor sleep drug Lunesta, in whose barrel floats the brand's mascot, a somnolent moth.<br />Some skeptics deride the voluntary ban as a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the far larger amounts drug companies spend each year on various other efforts to influence physicians.<br />But proponents welcome it as a step toward ending the barrage of drug brands and logos that surround, and may subliminally influence, doctors and patients.<br />"It's not just the pens - it's the paper on the exam table, the tongue depressor, the stethoscope tags, medical calipers that might be used to interpret an EKG, penlights," said Dr. Robert Goodman, a physician in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.<br />In 1999, Goodman started, No Free Lunch, a nonprofit group that encourages doctors to reject drug company giveaways. "Practically anything you can put a name on is branded in a doctor's office, short of branding, like a Nascar driver, on the doctor's white coat," Goodman said.<br />The new voluntary industry guidelines try to counter the impression that gifts to doctors are intended to unduly influence medicine. The code, drawn up by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group in Washington, bars drug companies from giving doctors branded pens, staplers, flash drives, paperweights, calculators and the like.<br />The guidelines also reiterate the group's 2002 code, which prohibited more expensive goods and services like tickets to professional sports games and junkets to resorts. And it asks companies that finance medical courses, conferences or scholarships to leave the selection of study material and scholarship recipients to outside program coordinators.<br />Diane Bieri, the executive vice president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the updated guidelines were not an admission that gifts could influence doctors' prescribing habits. Instead, she said, they were meant to emphasize the educational nature of the relationship between industry and doctors.<br />"We have never said and would never say that a pharmaceutical pen or notebook has influenced any prescription," Bieri said.<br />But some critics said the code did not go far enough to address the influence of drug marketing on the practice of medicine. The guidelines, for example, still permit drug makers to underwrite free lunches for doctors and their staffs or to sponsor dinners for doctors at restaurants, as long as the meals are accompanied by educational presentations.<br />"Pens or no pens, their influence is not going to be diminished," said Dr. Larry M. Greenbaum, a rheumatologist in Greenwood, Indiana. He has made a point of collecting ballpoint pens advertising formerly heavily promoted medications, like the painkiller Vioxx, that were later withdrawn after reports of dangerous side effects.<br />Last year, besides giving away nearly $16 billion in free drug samples to doctors, pharmaceutical companies spent more than $6 billion on "detailing" - an industry term for the sales activities of drug representatives including office visits to doctors, meal-time presentations and branded pens and other handouts, according to IMS Health, a health care information company.<br />The industry code also permits drug makers to pay doctors as consultants "based on fair market value" - which critics say means that companies can continue to pay individual doctors tens of thousands of dollars or more a year.<br />While some doctors applaud the gift ban, others seem offended by the insinuation that a ballpoint pen could turn their heads. "It seems goofy to us; we like getting our pens," Dr. Susan B. Hurson, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Washington, said in a telephone interview.<br />Hurson said she paid no attention to the logos on the pens she carried around in her doctor's coat. Prompted by a reporter's question, she pulled out a handful of pens from her pocket and read off the drugs advertised: Clindesse, a cream for vaginal infection; Halo, a system for detecting breast cancer, and Evamist, an estrogen spray. "It's hard for me to believe it influences what you prescribe."<br />But Dr. Phillip Freeman, a psychiatrist in Boston, said that physicians who contended that the giveaways were benign might be suffering from denial.<br />"The need to deny influence is damaging to the soul," Freeman said. He suggested that doctors would feel less conflicted if they simply wore drug company patches on their white coats.</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Unemployment a social time bomb for Spain<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />By Sonya Dowsett<br />Tensions mounting between native job-seekers and immigrants competing for a declining pool of work in Spain will intensify in 2009 as generous benefits for those laid off reach the end of their fixed terms.<br />Unemployment at 12.8 percent in November, a 12-year high and by far the highest rate in the European Union, could reach 20 percent of the workforce in 2010 as a slump in construction spreads into the wider economy, economists say.<br />That is a level not seen since the 1990s and as Spain heads for its deepest recession in 50 years it may trigger social unrest like that of the 1980s, when high unemployment and low wages led to country-wide demonstrations and violent strikes.<br />Spain makes payouts of up to 70 percent of salaries for up to two years, depending on how long workers have been paying into the social security system.<br />With nearly 3 million unemployed, many of those laid off during 2008 will come to the end of dole payouts next year and will struggle to make ends meet in a depressed labour market with no sign of paid work.<br />"This coming year, a lot of people will stop receiving the dole," said Sandalio Gomez, professor of labour relations at business school IESE. "We could end up with social unrest as people take to the streets to demonstrate."<br />The make-up of Spain's workforce has changed drastically with the arrival of nearly 5 million immigrants boosting the population by 15 percent over the past decade.<br />Desperate Spaniards who have lost jobs in construction are taking up work they formerly shunned, from cleaning bars to fruit-picking, displacing immigrants who struggle to find alternative work.<br />Thousands of Andalusians applied to pick olives for this year's harvest from December to January, according to an Andalusian job agency, leaving the previous workforce of African immigrants without employment.<br />Despite offers from local authorities to pay their coach fares back to Africa, immigrants are sleeping rough or in homeless shelters in a situation described by one charity as a genuine social problem. Another flashpoint in the southern region could be February's strawberry harvest in Huelva, on the border with Portugal, where migrants traditionally find work.<br />Felix Veliz, a Madrid-based former construction sector worker from Ecuador who worked for Corman, which installed safety equipment in building sites, says many of his colleagues were forced to sleep rough when the company filed for administration in September.<br />The 49-year old who came to Spain nearly 10 years ago cannot claim dole or seek other work, as under Spanish law he is still tied to his former company while it files for administration.<br />"All we want is that the judge and the labour authorities reach a decision as soon as possible so we can claim dole or get a job with another company," he told Reuters at a commercial court in Madrid where he and fellow former employees have put in a plea to break their ties with the company.<br />"This is like a charity case now."<br />Married with two adult children, he said he used to earn up to 1,300 euros (1,289 pounds) per month. His mortgage now costs 1,300 euros per month.<br />"They started docking our salaries in May," he said, his hands thrust into the pockets of a blue corduroy jacket in the cold December wind outside the wrought iron doors of the court.<br />"In July the company stopped paying altogether. That's nearly six months, up to now. We are living off loans from friends and family."<br />DISCRIMINATION<br />Ripples from a crumbling construction sector are spreading out into the wider economy, bringing down peripheral businesses like air-conditioning installers and tile manufacturers.<br />The number of Spanish companies entering administration in the third quarter nearly quadrupled from the year-ago period, according to the National Statistics Institute.<br />"It's the domino effect from the construction sector," said Jose Luis Corell Badia, a Valencia-based lawyer and head of corporate restructuring at Ernst & Young Abogados. "I don't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's job destruction."<br />Cristina Ballesteros, a 29-year old former secretary for the vice-president of a multinational cement company, said competition for work is such that potential employers ask her if she plans to have children, even though it is illegal to do so.<br />She lives with her boyfriend but has taken to saying she is single to improve her chances.<br />"I share a rented flat, but if it was not for that I'd be back living with my mother," she said.<br />"I studied to be a secretary: it's not a degree, it's a two-year diploma, but now I find there are many employers who want you to have a degree to do a secretary's job. People accept it, because they have no choice. They are asking for more and more, when it's really not necessary."<br />Outside the Madrid commercial court, others are fighting to receive payments to which they are entitled. Rafael Pliego, 54, was recently fired from his job as a security guard and has already signed up for dole but not yet received his cheque.<br />"I have an illness and they told me I couldn't continue working and they fired me. It happened on October 30. I had only been working with them for five months," he said.<br />"I carry on looking for work, of course. I had the bad luck to get sick, and this happened."<br />BALLOONING DEFICIT<br />Spain's government ran the second highest surplus in the euro zone in 2007, equal to 2.2 percent of GDP, but the public accounts are sinking into the red as tax income falls and the number of people claiming unemployment benefit rises.<br />The central government budget deficit leapt to 14 billion euros in the first 11 months of 2008 -- equivalent to 1.28 percent of GDP. The central government deficit is part of Spain's wider public sector budget, which includes the social security system, regional and municipal accounts.<br />Social security payouts alone in 2009 will double to 3.0 percent of gross domestic product, according to FUNCAS savings bank consultancy.<br />"It's grown this year at an incredible rate," said FUNCAS analyst Angel Laborda.<br />FUNCAS forecasts for the budget deficit in 2009 and 2010 are already obsolete, he said, and will probably come in at around 6 percent of GDP in 2009 and 7.5 percent in 2010.<br />That would shatter a European Union limit of 3 percent of GDP.<br />Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Saturday the country would start to see the first shoots of economic recovery within the coming year.<br />"The first signs of economic recovery, in the government's opinion, will be in the second part, towards the end of 2009. We will be at a point when confidence starts to recover," he said in an interview broadcast on his party's Web site.<br />But Vicente Balmaseda, 36, who lost his job as a conference stand designer six months ago and has been studying to improve his chances as he looks for fresh work, is pessimistic.<br />"I've sent around 200 resumes, every day I send them. At best I've had three or four interviews. I've only had one direct interview with a company, the rest were with agencies.<br />"It's getting me down. The job market in Spain is bad across all sectors. From what they say on the TV, it's only going to get worse next year."<br />(Additional reporting by Ben Harding and Judy MacInnes; Editing by Sara Ledwith)</div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Rising desperation as China's exports drop</strong><br />By Keith Bradsher<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />HONG KONG: At the docks here, the stacks of shipping containers that used to loom above the highway overpass are gone. Logistics managers say they negotiate deeper discounts every week on ships that are leaving half empty.<br />In nearby Guangdong Province, so many factories are closing without paying employees that some workers are resigning pre-emptively and demanding immediate pay before their employers go bankrupt.<br />In Sichuan and other interior provinces, municipal officials are desperately searching for ways to provide jobs for millions of out-of-work migrant laborers whose families no longer need them for farming.<br />Those are the effects of millions of Americans' cutting their spending.<br />American retailers, after suffering a dismal holiday shopping season, are delaying payment for Chinese goods 90 or even 120 days after shipping, in contrast to the usual 30 to 45 days, requiring their suppliers to try to borrow more money to cover the difference. Some Chinese suppliers who cannot raise the money - many already operate on thin margins - are going out of business.<br />At the same time, retailers are demanding that exporters show that they have strong balance sheets and will not go bankrupt before completing orders. Exporters, worried the retailers will fail before paying for their purchases, are reluctant to let goods be loaded onto ships. And banks, for the same reason, have cut back on guaranteeing retailers' payments to exporters.<br />"Trade finance is collapsing," said Victor Fung, the chairman of the Li & Fung Group, the giant supply chain management company that connects factories in China with retailers in the United States and Europe. "We've got orders we can't ship right now."<br />Fung estimates that 10,000 of the 60,000 factories in China owned by Hong Kong interests have closed or will close in the coming months.<br />Other business leaders say that the toll may be even higher and that factory closings are an even bigger problem among mainland Chinese businesses because these tend to be smaller and more poorly capitalized than those owned by Hong Kong businesses.<br />Government statistics show that Chinese exports slipped 2.2 percent in November when calculated in dollars, after seven years of rapid growth. But dollar figures do not come close to capturing the real depth of the downturn.<br />Convert the export figures into China's own currency, a much better measure of the effect on the Chinese economy, and exports plunged 9.6 percent in November. Factor in inflation over the past year and the plunge was 11.4 percent.<br />Indications are that the December data will be even worse.<br />Consumer electronics manufacturers have been hit the hardest, according to customs data. "No one has any money anymore, so demand for our mini hi-fi systems has declined a lot," said Lion Yuan, the sales manager at Shenzhen Yidashi Electronics, where exports have dropped 30 percent in a year.<br />In the past two weeks, Chinese officials have announced a series of measures to help exporters. State banks are being directed to lend more to them, particularly to small and midsize exporters.<br />Government research funds are being set up. The head of the government of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang, plans to seek legislative approval by late January for the government to guarantee banks' issuance of $12.9 billion worth of letters of credit for exports.<br />Particularly noteworthy have been the Chinese government's steps to help labor-intensive sectors like garment production, one of the industries China has been trying to move away from in an effort to climb the ladder of economic development, moving to more skilled work that pays higher wages. But now China has become reluctant to yield the bottom rungs of the ladder to countries with even lower wages, like Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh.<br />China has been restoring export tax rebates for its textile sector, for instance, which it had been phasing out. Municipal governments have also stopped raising the minimum wage, which doubled over the past two years in some cities, peaking at $146 a month in Shenzhen, which abuts Hong Kong.<br />"China will resort to tariff and trade policies to facilitate export of labor-intensive and core technology-supported industries," Li Yizhong, the minister of industry and information technology, said at a conference Dec. 19.<br />Increased export incentives by China have the potential to create a trade issue for the incoming U.S. administration of Barack Obama, particularly regarding textiles.<br />U.S. quotas on the import of a wide range of Chinese garments expired Thursday. Even before the Chinese began announcing their latest programs for exporters, the United States filed a legal challenge Dec. 19 at the World Trade Organization, accusing China of having already provided illegal subsidies to exporters in a long list of industries as part of a program of trying to build recognizable export brands.<br />China denied Dec. 23 that there were any illegal subsidies, saying that many countries tried to help exporters and that its actions were no different.<br />In a letter to the National Council of Textile Organizations on Oct. 24, Obama stopped short of promising any protection from Chinese imports, but he said he favored close monitoring of them. "China must change its policies, including its foreign exchange policies, so that it relies less on exports and more on domestic demand for its growth," he wrote.<br />But shifting toward a greater reliance on domestic demand is not easy. Chinese households have one of the world's highest savings rates. And the Chinese social safety net is in tatters, with families receiving scant government help with education costs, medical care and retirement: The average hospital stay costs the equivalent of two years' wages for the average Chinese worker.<br />Important bureaucratic obstacles also exist. Chinese factories are allowed to import equipment while paying little or no duty, provided that the equipment will be used only to produce goods for export.<br />Obtaining approval to switch the same equipment to making goods for the domestic market can take two years and require the payment of much of the import duties previously avoided, a payment many factories cannot afford.<br />China's measures to help exporters are starting to cause concern in other Asian countries that compete with it, and raise the risk of a protectionist reaction against China. Indonesia, one of the largest Asian markets, imposed a series of administrative measures Thursday that were meant to reduce smuggling but will have the practical effect of making it harder to import Chinese goods.<br />In Indonesia, the third most populous country in Asia after China and India, the government is already acting to limit imports of garments, electronics, shoes, toys and food - five large categories in which Indonesian producers are struggling to compete with China.<br />Starting this year, importers of these products will have to be registered with the government, use only five designated ports for their shipments, arrange for detailed inspections of goods before they are loaded on ships or planes bound for Indonesia and then have every single container exhaustively inspected on arrival by Indonesia's notoriously slow customs bureaucracy. The plan, intended to comply with WTO rules, was adopted after heavy lobbying by Indonesian manufacturers and labor unions.<br />Boediono, the governor of the central bank of Indonesia, who uses only one name, said that Indonesia would be watching China's policies, but he added that he hoped Indonesia could stay competitive. At less than $120 a month, industrial wages in export zones near Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, are slightly below those in coastal regions of China.<br />"I'm not sure they can compete with us again by moving down the ladder," Boediono said, "because I think they have already moved up the ladder."</div><div></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>New Belgian PM seeks quick economic measures</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Philip Blenkinsop<br />New Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy urged parliament on Wednesday to pass bills to revive an economy heading into recession and to resolve a political dispute that threatens to pull the country apart.<br />"The year that ends today has been marked by the most serious global financial crisis since the 1930s," he said in a declaration before a vote of confidence due on Friday.<br />"Domestically it has been a year of uncertainty, partly due to political moments of crisis and the consequences of the financial crisis," he continued in the Belgian equivalent of a state of the union address.<br />Van Rompuy, 61, became Belgium's third premier in a year on Tuesday, succeeding Yves Leterme whose government collapsed on December 19 over the stalled bailout of stricken bank Fortis and asset sale to France's BNP Paribas.<br />Belgium is expected to have entered a recession in the fourth quarter, faces a lingering bank crisis and is beset by a dispute over devolution that has seen it lurch from one political crisis to another since the June 2007 election.<br />Leterme's government proposed earlier this month pumping 2 billion euros (1.94 billion pounds) into the economy next year, part of a 200 billion euro EU-wide stimulus package.<br />"The previous government proposed such a plan. It must be enacted as soon as possible," Van Rompuy told lawmakers.<br />"It is clear that in the coming weeks and months the government will take new initiatives to cope with the challenges that the crisis poses for the economy and employment."<br />Van Rompuy also pressed bickering parties to settle a dispute over whether the regions should have greater autonomy.<br />The majority Dutch-speakers want more powers for Flanders over the labour market and justice, but French-speakers fear further devolution will hit their less vibrant economy and risks breaking the 178-year-old country in two.<br />The prime minister first wants results from a committee looking into the thorny issue of electoral boundaries around Brussels and demanded changes implemented from next summer.<br />Van Rompuy's sole mention of the Fortis debacle was to call for an investigation into alleged meddling in a court's decision to freeze the Fortis bailout to be non-partisan.<br />(Editing by Charles Dick)</div><div></div><div>**********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Sydney plans big New Year fling to see in gloomy 09</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />SYDNEY: Sydney will defy predictions of a gloomy 2009 with its biggest ever New Year party and midnight fireworks display Wednesday, watched by an expected 1.5 million revellers on the glittering harbour and surrounds.<br />The theme for the celebrations will be "Creation" and the centrepiece a pyrotechnic storm over Australia's biggest city, with firework simulations of lightning, thunder and rain, all linked to Aboriginal creation myths.<br />"(It's) looking at what's happened before, where we're going as a nation," creative director Rhoda Roberts said.<br />About 120,000 firework shells and shooting comets will be exploded in the $3.45 million (2.39 million pound) display to be launched from barges, buildings and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.<br />The party, one of the first to kick off New Year celebrations around the world, comes against economist warnings that up to one million Australians will be unemployed by the end of 2009 as joblessness spikes from 4.4 percent to near 8 percent.<br />Melbourne, Australia's second-biggest city, was also seeking to defy the rocky economic outlook and rival Sydney with a $3.2 million sell-out "oak of love" dance party attracting 40,000 revellers dressed in white to an indoor arena.<br />Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would not be joining the main celebrations as the centre-left government looked ahead to dealing with the fallout of the financial crisis and protecting jobs in 2009.<br />(Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by Dean Yates)</div><div></div><div>**********************</div><div></div><div><strong>A better 2009 for global investors?</strong><br />By David Jolly<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />PARIS: After a catastrophic year for global markets, dazed investors are emerging from their shelters to ask if 2009 will be any better. The consensus among professionals? Don't expect the big rebound that usually follows a sharp downturn.<br />Stocks lost 42 percent of their value in 2008, as represented by the MSCI world index, erasing more than $29 trillion in value and all of the gains made since 2003. Just about the only assets to prosper were government bonds of developed countries and gold, where prices rose as investors ran for cover.<br />The year began with a shock, but only a previously lonely group of bears predicted the disaster to come. When Société Générale lost €4.9 billion, or about $6.8 billion, in January on the unauthorized positions taken by a low-level trader, it seemed the year might already have its biggest financial news.<br />But that loss would prove trivial compared with what happened afterward. The bad news never seemed to let up: Bear Stearns in the spring, then after a bit of a summer lull, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in mid-September, the takeover of Merrill Lynch, the bailout of American International Group, the collapse of Bernard Madoff's business, General Motors. The names say it all for one of the most dramatic years in financial history.<br />Many economists held out hope through the first half of the year that because of a "decoupling" caused by the rise of China and India and the growing might of the European Union, the rest of the world would escape the fallout of the Made-in-America subprime mortgage crisis.<br />That hope - ultimately dashed - was never reflected in the markets. Even as the economic data from Brussels and Beijing looked better than that from Washington, stocks in Europe and Asia were falling, and falling faster than their American counterparts, partly because panicked dollar-based investors were repatriating their overseas investments. By the end of the year the global economic picture was almost uniformly bad.<br />The Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 600 index, a measure of the broad European market, finished the year down 46 percent. The MSCI Asia-Pacific index fell 43 percent. U.S. stocks were not much better, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 33.8 percent, its worst year since 1931, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 38.5 percent.<br />The last four months of 2008 stand out as truly awful. Bank lending all but halted, and markets went into a tailspin that ended only when governments agreed to spend trillions of dollars bailing out the global financial system.<br />If the news from the developed world sounded bad, it was even worse for many emerging markets. The Shanghai composite index fell 65.4 percent, the Russian RTS index fell 72 percent and the Sensex 30 in Mumbai fell 52.4 percent.<br />Looking for someplace comparatively safe? You would have needed the foresight to put your money into Bangladesh, where the main Dhaka stock index lost only 7.4 percent last year, or Venezuela, down the same amount.<br />The events of the past year helped to remind stock investors that equities are just one part of the overall picture. Indeed, their importance was dwarfed by a handful of other markets, including credit default swaps, that had barely been on most investors' radar before the storm broke, not to mention the dreaded mortgage-backed securities game. What happens in those other markets will help to determine where stocks go.<br />Investors hoping that 2009 will be better point out that 2008 was marked by two major phenomena unlikely to be repeated: the near-collapse of the world financial system along with the subsequent de facto government takeover of many banks, and the extraordinary bubble in commodities prices that burst in the second half of the year.<br />Oil prices peaked on July 11 at more than $147 a barrel. Today, crude is trading slightly above $44 after falling to less than $40 a barrel.<br />The collapse of commodities prices helped to upend economies from Russia to Australia.<br />With credit markets thawing a bit but still operating far from normally, economies around the world are still deteriorating.<br />Where will the first signs of growth emerge? Some analysts predict that the U.S. economy, which fell into recession in December 2007 and is poised to receive a stimulus package from Washington of as much as $1 trillion over the next two years, might actually start to lead the world out of the downturn sometime in the second half of the year.<br />But the continuing deterioration in the U.S. housing market, the struggles of the auto industry and layoffs almost everywhere serve as a reminder that the outlook for 2009 remains grim.<br />The International Monetary Fund forecasts that developed economies will contract slightly in 2009, while overall world output will grow only 2.2 percent. The fund defines a global recession as growth below 3 percent, because it is far too weak to keep up with the demands of a growing population in emerging markets for jobs.<br />At the same time, deleveraging - the winnowing down of banks' troubled balance sheets - continues to crimp lending. Consumer confidence in the United States and Europe has fallen to record lows.<br />Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists to call the 2008 market disaster correctly, argued in a recent commentary that in 2009, global recession "will morph into a stag-deflation, a deadly combination of economic stagnation/recession and deflation."<br />A shrinking economic pie is bad for stocks because corporate profits tend to fall, making equities appear more expensive. Analysts say corporate profit forecasts are probably still too high to reflect accurately the dimming economic prospects of 2009.<br />Still, Julian Chillingworth, chief investment officer at Rathbone Unit Trust Management in London, said that investors were sitting on unusually large cash reserves, "so if the news is bad, but not devastatingly bad, then you might well see a rally." Unfortunately, he added, any rally will likely turn out to be a "false dawn" until the economic picture begins to clear up.<br />"The real bottom in most bear markets is when you go from capitulation" - when most investors simply give up hope - "to disinterest," he said. "We haven't quite gotten there yet."<br />Philippe Gijsels, senior equity strategist at Fortis Global Markets in Brussels, predicted that 2009 would be "the year of the big shakeout, a year of financial Darwinism, where the weak get weaker and the strong get stronger."<br />Many retailers, banks, commodity producers and pharmaceuticals companies ended 2008 barely hanging on, Gijsels said, making them ripe for acquisition. "The people with the cash and the balance sheet strength will be able to do what they want."<br />In the long run, consolidation will help to create the conditions for the next bull market, he said, because it will mean that capital is being redirected to its most efficient uses.<br />Gijsels said it was possible that the market could begin to stabilize by late 2009 if there was clear evidence that the financial crisis was ending and there were signs that the U.S. housing market crash was nearing an end.<br />If there is any hope for improvement, it is in the nearly unanimous mood of pessimism. Chillingworth said it was possible that "we're all too depressed and the U.S. could kick into gear much faster than anyone now anticipates."<br />But "no one is factoring that possibility into their calculations at the moment."</div><div></div><div>*************************</div><div></div><div><strong>A bad year to own stocks</strong><br />By Vikas Bajaj<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />NEW YORK: There was almost no place to hide from the crash of 2008.<br />When the New York Stock Exchange bell rang out the year Wednesday, it tolled for virtually anyone with money in the stock market.<br />The final, grim tally only confirmed what investors had known for months: It was a very bad year to own stocks, any stocks, anywhere - indeed, one of the worst ever.<br />On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 4,488.43 points, or 33.8 percent, its most punishing loss since 1931.<br />Blue chips like Bank of America, Citigroup and Alcoa lost more than 65 percent of their value. The broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index sank 38.5 percent, almost exactly matching its decline in 1937.<br />All told, about $7 trillion of shareholders' wealth - the gains of the last six years - was wiped out in a year of violent market swings. And that is just in the United States.<br />The U.S. market was far from the worst hit in 2008. Stocks fell 55 percent to 72 percent in the so-called BRIC economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China - that were darlings of the late, great boom. Stocks in developed European and Asian markets also fell sharply, though less than their emerging-market counterparts. Many commodities like oil and copper crashed.<br />What is striking is not just the magnitude of the declines, staggering as they are, but also their breadth. All but two of the 30 Dow industrials, Wal-Mart and McDonald's, fell by more than 10 percent. Almost no industry was spared as the crisis that first emerged in the subprime mortgage market metastasized and the economy sank into what could be a long recession.<br />As the new year dawns, Wall Street is looking to Washington, to which the balance of financial power has tipped in recent months. Analysts and investors are focusing on what the incoming administration of Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve will do to revive the economy and the financial system.<br />It is a remarkable turnabout from the mid-1990s, when Wall Street traders helped drive economic policy. Back then, bond investors flexed their financial muscle and urged the Clinton administration and a Republican Congress to reduce the U.S. budget deficit.<br />These days, the market in ultra-safe U.S. Treasury securities seems like a refuge, even as the deficit balloons from the cost of bailing out banks, insurers and the Detroit auto companies. Many investors, having lost in stocks and other investments, are buying up Treasuries that offer little or no return. They are content simply to get their money back.<br />"The only willing risk taker is the government," said William Gross, the chief investment officer of the Pacific Investment Management, or Pimco, the giant bond trading firm. The epicenter of the financial world, he added, "is no longer New York, it's Washington."<br />Like many money managers, Gross is a conservative - he describes himself as a "Reagan fan from way back" - who generally prefers limited government involvement in the markets. But he and others say that the government's sweeping intervention into private industry and in the markets, though sometimes flawed, is necessary to prevent a collapse of the financial system. They are hoping that policy makers do even more to stimulate the economy and revive moribund financial markets.<br />Given the damage in the markets, however, policy makers face daunting challenges.<br />"When we have bear markets, they usually take twice as long to get down this far," said Robert Doll, vice chairman of the BlackRock investment firm.<br />The markets have become extremely volatile, especially since Lehman Brothers sank into bankruptcy in September. Since then, the S&P has moved more than 5 percent in either direction on 18 days. There were only 17 such days in the previous 53 years, according to calculations by Howard Silverblatt, an index analyst at S&P.<br />Diversification - the idea that it is unwise to put all your eggs in one basket - did not pay off for investors in 2008, casting doubt over this cornerstone of modern investing.<br />Losses in the credit markets, which are at the heart of this financial crisis, appear small relative to the devastation in other markets. The International Monetary Fund estimated in October that banks and other investors would suffer $1.4 trillion in losses on loans and securities, a loss of just 6 percent. Financial institutions globally have already reported $1 trillion in write-downs, according to Bloomberg.<br />The IMF's estimate, however, does not count losses on derivatives, those complex instruments that derive their value from other assets. Losses on these instruments could outstrip those in the cash markets because they are much bigger than their underlying assets.<br />A spokeswoman for the IMF said the fund's estimates did not include those losses because they were transfers of wealth from one party of a transaction to another. For example, when the insurer American International Group loses $1 billion on a credit-default swap, a type of derivative, it makes payments to customers like investment banks.<br />These complex financial instruments will pose one of the biggest challenges to policy makers in the year ahead. Many investors have lost confidence in banks, insurers and other financial intermediaries, in part because they do not know whether these companies are valuing opaque instruments properly. Some firms may be carrying enough toxic sludge to sink them, while others may be relatively unscathed.<br />"Until those assets can be removed from the balance sheets of the bank, or until the owners get a better understanding of what these assets are worth, we will have uncertainty," said Douglas Peta, an independent market analyst.<br />A broader focus for policy makers will be reviving the economy. Most financial and political analysts expect the Obama administration to enact a stimulus package that could approach $1 trillion. Many analysts say such an effort will help revive the economy, but not immediately.<br />Thomas Lee, the chief equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase, said a recovery early in the year could give way to another sell-off before the stock market finally bottoms later in the year.<br />Lee said his forecast reflected "how unconventional the current recession is." Unlike in the past, policy makers cannot rely on consumers to push the economy ahead by borrowing and spending, he said.<br />"This is a recession where households are net debtors," he said. "They have lost money on houses and equities. That has rarely happened, at least since the 1950s."</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>**********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Much glamour at the ball, but fewer debutantes<br /></strong>By Lisa W. Foderaro<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />You had to look hard amid the four-foot floral sculptures and the Vera Wang originals to see signs of the economy's collapse at the International Debutante Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday night.<br />There was the daughter of the Duchesse de Magenta, Pélagie de Mac Mahon, a willowy 18-year-old with chestnut hair who is the great-great-great-granddaughter of the president of the French Republic in the 1870s. And there were the two sisters from Hong Kong, daughters of a heart surgeon and a jewelry designer, who stayed not two nights but two weeks at the Waldorf, passing the days on the lookout for designer dresses.<br />Champagne flowed. Men in tails waltzed and fox-trotted with debutantes in designer gowns to music by the 12-piece Lester Lanin Orchestra, a fixture at the ball almost since its inception in 1954. And before midnight, the young debutantes, each flanked by a civilian and military escort, ascended the stage for a deep curtsy.<br />But the experienced hands, including mothers like the duchesse who made their own debuts in society in this very ballroom, could see the subtle difference in the spaces between tables. There were fewer debutantes, 47, this year than the 58 at the last biennial ball in 2006, and far fewer guests — 662 instead of 976.<br />The director of the ball, Margaret Hedberg, brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table —"Watches cost more," she said — although she acknowledged that perhaps the deepening recession accounted for the smaller crowd.<br />"People are not going overboard," said Hedberg, who came out in 1963 and is the niece of the ball's founder, Beatrice Dinsmore Joyce. "They're not taking three or four tables and inviting everybody's friends' friends. It's a little more conservative that way."<br />Some parents recognized the disconnect between the opulence inside the hotel's gilded doors and the mood beyond them; others took comfort in the fact that the event raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, mainly the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines', Coast Guard and Airmen's Club, a hotel in New York for military members and their families.<br />Roxanna Armstrong Himelrick of Scottsdale, Arizona, who was introduced at the 1976 ball, said that when she remarried in the fall, she chose to elope rather than have a lavish celebration, in part so she could afford the ultimate coming-out party for her 18-year-old daughter, Brittany Blair Mack.<br />"Everybody said you shouldn't do it because of the economy," Armstrong Himelrick said about attending the ball. "It is extravagant. But I felt it was important for my daughter, and things might get worse. This might be her last chance."<br />Steeped in tradition, the ball is one of the most exclusive debutante galas in the country, and this year it included young women from 11 states and from England, France, Germany, Greece and Hong Kong.<br />The biggest contingent was from Texas, 10 women who had perfected their signature curtsy, the "Texas dip," which drew gusts of applause from the crowd. The most recognizable name in the pale pink program, which featured full-page black-and-white portraits of the evening's stars, was a Huffington — Christina Sophia Huffington, daughter of Arianna, the founder of The Huffington Post Web site, and Michael, the oil heir and former California congressman.<br />One of the debutantes, Anne Moody, who grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and is a freshman at New York University, said she would not be heading back to her dorm room after the ball because her parents kept an apartment in the Pierre Hotel.<br />"I love it," Moody, 18, said as she emerged from the hour-and-a-half receiving line, wearing Vera Wang's Audrey gown and Mikimoto pearls. "I'm networking."<br />The ball, which began at 7:30 p.m. and stretched past 2 a.m. on Tuesday, was by no means the only chance for the women to meet and greet one another or the many young men orbiting them.<br />On Sunday, there was a mother-daughter brunch at a catering spot off Fifth Avenue. That was followed by a party for 325 guests in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. And a final reception at the University Club on Tuesday allowed the debutantes to "get all together and exchange e-mails," Hedberg said. "And then there are a lot of things going on that I don't know about."<br />These days, the gala seems less about unveiling marriageable young women than it once did, and more about having a swell party for a rarefied segment of society.<br />"It's not the 19th century, where it was being brought out on the marriage market," said Suzanne Tufts of Forest Hills, Queens, whose daughter, Abigail, a freshman at Dickinson College, was among the guests of honor. "It really is stepping onto an international forum."<br />Tufts, a consultant for nonprofit organizations, said she took pleasure in watching her daughter, a serious athlete, dance in a dress from Bergdorf Goodman with delicate white bows on the skirt. "I'm used to seeing her in sweats and spandex," Tufts said. "So kid gloves and satin is a nice contrast."<br />Tufts noted that the event raised money for charity, adding, "The planning was done a year ago, so you don't renege on your support."<br />Hedberg was keenly aware that the ball might seem out of step with the times, but she too pointed out that most of the women learned that they were chosen as debutantes long before the financial crisis hit. "They made their plans and sent their checks," she said. "And I really can't cancel it in September or October because I signed so many contracts in February with the orchestra and florist and hotel. We all didn't quite see what was happening."<br />And if all those little edible gold leaves adorning the chocolate boxes that contained plump raspberries for dessert seemed a little excessive, Hedberg found a sunny side in the spillover effects. "There are a lot of people who make those dresses and are happy that these gals bought them," she said. "There are a lot of waiters working tonight, so it's doing something for the economy. Plus, it's for charity. So we ought to have some good feelings about that. We can't beat ourselves up about it."<br />Looking back on past recessions, she said, "We got through '87 and '93, and life does have a way of going on.<br />"I don't mean it in a flippant way, but romance and having fun and looking pretty — I hope that doesn't go away."</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEf7KlmDsl0ztQpykSzm84-H__MxzJ9n8VtPzyPcbYu5xdCTHaR6Fk8HkFoGWY-z2ueVrv_FvKQFd1L2Dlfj5l-pK6dtS0eoFaEV6oO7NgXSXpjsFnZ4pmP7FECiTPQoKK6KeghXHFgUM/s1600-h/DSC05187.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286671896379098242" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEf7KlmDsl0ztQpykSzm84-H__MxzJ9n8VtPzyPcbYu5xdCTHaR6Fk8HkFoGWY-z2ueVrv_FvKQFd1L2Dlfj5l-pK6dtS0eoFaEV6oO7NgXSXpjsFnZ4pmP7FECiTPQoKK6KeghXHFgUM/s320/DSC05187.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNIO163XpKGJ4BtA1-WEXXNKQQk3ACUsRG80W9QcFzaYb82T-2Es1FnZJv6hRciWFXAAyY7NOX8m5L8ff2xw4WRGJ2vV7zjxqtOS_CVqNJVKPy7meBVwZBtgNk1bEwxSbTYxV2UdcvdOQ/s1600-h/DSC05191.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286671395561573922" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD0jihxqoIBji26KhkHeHLiGGxOMLCkG6_r5erUAnvplKSCDXJJkMXa450np8-_wJPNRPSgVzNG1aO9ogLNYYdJqY8PVLrDEoHoyyVZgTFf1nKzhT5veLQGYZlzmytUDom46VpnWV0pkU/s320/DSC05197.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286670861061627570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9TRZlOlUvSlQcf9KZhDnNSL0X_stVGyWZi7mB8Dv69Oi4iBLCXGL_sS6nKloG0DjCEsfXVlJenJGta9Z2HX4lZJykm2Mog_aclEnp0MAprgP0HeoOmLCbIr_SaOyf07YJ9a6T9nEs4Zk/s320/DSC05198.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286670863763494194" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZC99VBd8jc6olttIyfD4Rrvjcuj8Yc2fxIolNBNVbHNLkv8AHArEkgg9plOjACTJn8zz5jkOPMB8rkJzh3R0sU7QngWcgIkKDfaYbuMHhCOXrtrhtjXmj_RyjO_yUsmSLw13HgISpgtk/s320/DSC05199.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286670858360182386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ8Ii0CUtlJ8uVRo2eV4c2gRwZA_9P0ERDaU3Imv5G5IlAO58B3xB9ua5tfz34BW0BogC6RYvLN4wcksBsW9nMsKKbteOSNMzCwSs1BczTcvTmdsoZ7yTfjpfW3Y7WyDwHVptezcFMJJg/s320/DSC05200.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286670397222708930" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 243px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-nzi6VA-cW9y2hHhm-1qRdnpKSaSEp9FEJg_Er-Mq8PRtsVN57HewpSWNMi-olbrb2IgqtXdRnUtQi8DmCRSsTKo9jgY0PRod5oKHswXARn479X0vq13VMZiQRjvt2P0YdH0vKMQVCJE/s320/DSC05201.jpg" border="0" /><br /><strong>Cuban-Americans mark revolution's anniversary wearily</strong><br />By Damien Cave<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />HIALEAH, Florida: Four months after they appeared in the waters between Havana and Miami, the four dead men remain nameless. At a morgue in the Florida Keys, they lie on stretchers stacked like bunk beds, their bodies chewed by sharks, their faces too putrified to be recognized.<br />The police suspect they were Cuban rafters. Nilda Garcia thinks one of them might be her son — and the thought makes her weep. Fourteen years after she left Cuba on her own makeshift boat, she finds herself wondering once again: When will it end?<br />"How many mothers are going through this?" she said in an interview at her daughter's apartment here as she awaits DNA results on the bodies. "How many more are crying for their losses? How many young people have drowned in this sea? How many?"<br />Fifty years ago Wednesday, many Cubans cheered when Fidel Castro seized power in Havana, and even now the revolution attracts many fans — as evidenced by the Canadian tour agencies advertising trips "to celebrate five decades of resilience."<br />But the bodies speak to a different legacy. Here in South Florida, where roughly 850,000 Cubans have settled over the years, repeated waves of painful exile and family separation define the Castro era. The revolution never met their hopeful expectations, the island they love has slipped into decay, and for many, this week's golden anniversary provides little more than a flashback to traumas, old and new.<br />"It pounds in everybody's conscience every day," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, 54, the founder of Movimiento Democracia, a Cuban-American group known for using boats to stage protests. "Fifty years is something very hard to accept."<br />Some Cubans remain defiant. Huber Matos, a former revolutionary leader who came to Miami after Castro sent him to jail in 1959 for suggesting that the Cuban government included too many Communists, said that the anniversary inspired him to keep pushing for change. "When you think of what you have to do, you can't be sad," said the 90-year-old former soldier. "To continue working, that's the key."<br />But for many, the revolution's 50th anniversary has inspired a period of reflection. Cubans across Florida say they are mourning privately, or trying to forget, and formal commemorations are being kept to a minimum. If Miami in the 1980s was a place of militants, where "Havana vanities come to dust," as Joan Didion famously wrote, today it is also a home to newer arrivals who ask: Must the pain go on?<br />A poll released this month by Florida International University shows that 55 percent of Cubans in Florida favor lifting the United States embargo against Cuba, up from 42 percent a year ago. It is the first time a clear majority has held that position since the survey began in 1991.<br />Even among those who support the 46-year-old embargo, like Senator Mel Martinez, a Republican, continued damage to families has become a more prominent concern.<br />"This is an ongoing tragedy," said Martinez, who left Cuba at age 15 and spent four years without his parents. "How many people today are still being separated? How many people in Cuba are making plans to leave?"<br />Garcia was a "balsera," one of the 38,000 rafters who fled Cuba in 1994. She said she left her suburb of Havana because her daughter needed medical care she could not get in Cuba for a brain tumor. Her son, Osmani, stayed. He was 20 at the time, a speaker of English and French, who became an independent journalist.<br />His work often put him at odds with the Castro regime. In one dispatch, published on Oct. 26, 2007, he condemned Cuba's foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, for mischaracterizing comments from President George W. Bush.<br />"I will not take the time to point out all the lies told by Felipe Pérez Roque at this press conference, but I will say there was a worried look on his face and those of his cohorts," he wrote, in an article posted online. "It almost seems that they too are realizing there is little time left to the Castro dictatorship and that change is very near."<br />Instead, over the next year, political pressure on Garcia increased. In June, according to a report in a Cuban online forum, he was arrested and interrogated by state officials. Two months later, his mother said he was filmed by a Cuban television reporter at a protest against the government, scaring him enough to flee.<br />His relatives said that on the night of Aug. 15, he climbed aboard a boat with no motor and seven or eight other people, pushing off from an area near Havana with hopes of reaching Florida within a few days.<br />The pace mattered; the sea was churning. By early Monday morning, Tropical Storm Fay had moved through Cuba into the Florida Straits, bringing nearly a foot of rain, swells of several feet and winds that would strengthen to 60 miles per hour.<br />Garcia, 64, a home health aide with a slight limp from a dog bite, said she was not sure if her son had known the storm was coming. Even if he did, she said, "He was desperate and needed to go."<br />She said her son had done all he could to change Cuba from the inside. "How can Cubans confront the government, with rocks and sticks?" Garcia said. "Everyone has nothing, and the people are afraid."<br />She found out about the bodies from the news. The first one, tagged 0107 in morgue records, appeared in the waters off Craig Key just after 5 p.m. on Aug. 21. A fisherman called the Coast Guard, and two Monroe County police officers pulled him from the teal-blue sea. Three others followed, appearing offshore over the next 24 hours in a line heading north.<br />Detective Terry Smith, one of the lead detectives investigating the case with the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, said the locations and currents suggested the bodies had probably spent several days in the water, drifting from somewhere to the south, though the Coast Guard's computer analyses were not definitive.<br />Their identities have been even harder to determine. Hunt Scheuerman, the medical examiner for Monroe County, which covers the Keys, said that all four bodies were naked and gnarled, with only three defining characteristics. Body 0107 wore a ring with a Celtic cross and green stone on the fourth finger of his left hand; 0109 arrived with a white sock and blue Lotto running shoe on his right foot; and 0110 had a tattoo on the inside of his lip that said "Raquel."<br />Garcia said the ring sounds similar to one she gave Osmani, but the ring in the morgue is yellow, suggesting gold, and the ring she gave her son was silver.<br />She said she hoped her son was at the American military base in Guantánamo, where she was processed before coming to the United States. And initially it seemed possible. The Coast Guard stopped a boat near the Bahamas with eight or nine Cuban rafters a few days after Aug. 15. But it must have been another group, Detective Smith said; Garcia's name could not be found on the Coast Guard's list of repatriated refugees.<br />At least two other Cuban families in Miami are in a similar position. In emotional phone calls, they have told Detective Smith about relatives who left Cuba on Aug. 15 in a boat, never to be heard from again. "What if the four we received are not any of their relatives?" he said, discussing what haunts him most. DNA may be the only way to know for sure. In September, Detective Smith swabbed Garcia's mouth and sent the sample to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a comparison with the bodies. For the other two families, the DNA must be collected from closer female relatives, who live in Cuba.<br />Sanchez, of Movimiento Democracia, has been trying to arrange for secure samples from the island. "There are hundreds, probably thousands of Cubans who think they lost relatives in the high seas," he said. But so far, he has received little help from either the Cuban or American governments.<br />And so the cycle continues. According to Coast Guard statistics, 10,489 Cubans have been interdicted at sea since the beginning of 2005, more than double the 4,223 who were caught in the previous four years. A report in May from the University of Miami's Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies found that 131,000 Cubans have settled in the United States permanently over the last four years, and its title predicts more of the same: "Not Going Away," it says. "Cuban Mass Migration to Florida."<br />Garcia said she just wants an end to the 50-year pattern; the uncertainty, tears and tales of woe.<br />Three months after her DNA reached the FBI, she is still waiting for answers. Conversations about her son are drenched with tears and she is never far from a photograph that shows him staring straight ahead, with a stern face, a few wrinkles and thick, dark hair.<br />It looks like a passport picture — of a man who may have only reached a Florida morgue. </div><div> </div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Cuba to mark 50 years of revolution amid worries<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Jeff Franks<br />Against a backdrop of economic gloom and the frail health of former leader Fidel Castro, Cuba will mark on Thursday the 50th anniversary of the revolution that turned the island into a communist state and Cold War hot spot at the doorstep of the United States.<br />President Raul Castro will speak in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba from the same balcony where his older brother, Fidel Castro, proclaimed victory after dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country in the early morning hours of January 1, 1959.<br />The elder Castro, 82, in semi-seclusion since July 2006 after surgery for an undisclosed intestinal ailment, will not attend, officials said.<br />Due to his absence and the economic difficulties plaguing Cuba, what had been expected to be a major celebration of the revolution's longevity will be a no-frills event in a tree-shaded square with room for about only 3,000 people, the officials said.<br />Concerts are planned throughout the country, with the major one in Havana where popular Cuban band Los Van Van will play at the Anti-Imperialist Tribunal in front of the U.S. Interests Section.<br />The Interests Section was the embassy for the United States until it broke off diplomatic relations in January 1961 after U.S.-owned properties were nationalized by Fidel Castro.<br />Officials have said this was not a time for lavish celebration because Cuba is struggling from the effects of three hurricanes this year that caused $10 billion in damages, as well as the global financial crisis.<br />Government leaders gave a gloomy assessment of the economy last week, telling the National Assembly the country's trade and budget deficits had ballooned due to rising import costs and falling prices for exports.<br />Raul Castro called for more belt-tightening and an end to handouts he said discouraged people from working.<br />'A NEW STAGE'<br />"The victory of the 1st of January did not mark the end of the struggle, but the start of a new stage," he said. "There has not been a minute of respite during the past half century."<br />Should he not show up, Fidel Castro's absence will raise new speculation about his condition, to which many believe Cuba's future is closely linked.<br />Although he has not been seen in public for 2-1/2 years, he still has a behind-the-scenes presence in the government and a public voice via opinion columns he writes regularly.<br />He remains a world figure who made his name thumbing his nose at the United States, just 90 miles (145 km) away, and forging close ties with its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union.<br />Many Cubans believe that as long as Fidel Castro is alive, his more pragmatic brother will not be able to reform the Cuban economy or political system in a meaningful way.<br />Others doubt Raul Castro wants to make many changes and that early reforms he implemented, such as opening computer and cell phone sales to Cubans, were meant chiefly to gain favour with Cubans sceptical he could fill his brother's shoes.<br />Cuba's revolution arrives at its 50th anniversary in a time of transition.<br />Fidel Castro is on the sidelines after ruling Cuba for 49 years and his archenemy, the United States, may be on the verge of change in its Cuba policy.<br />President-elect Barack Obama, who replaces President George W. Bush on January 20, has said he wants to ease the 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo towards Cuba, is open to talks with Cuban leaders and will consider steps towards normalizing relations.<br />Both Castros have warily said talks were possible.<br />Changes are not just occurring at the top.<br />In Cuba, people, especially the young, clamour increasingly for an end to five decades of economic hardship and see improved U.S.-Cuba relations as a way out.<br />In the United States, a recent poll showed that for the first time a majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami, centre of the Cuban exile world and anti-Castro sentiment, favour ending the embargo.<br />As Raul Castro told the National Assembly, "We are living in a radically different period of history."<br />(Editing by Peter Cooney)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4Hmpbgi4kFjWA0ReUWWu6f_b21Q-e8u2ZCZs-at2qsBUMkxXOK0QZc33U-leU5_r-ARKNGHUajVVKtkVByA-awhs0Ca6ULTDSJ9n0HXBFVMoNUP32OXN4rijyZKuK8RjN9YQuoncqq8/s1600-h/DSC05202.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286670388197313682" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 234px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhICA6Tq5L_4RQBnRnAG8wPxYDR-Zx1Pv3KbBmYTi2DTKBV3LAoV68P9s8TDM46YcVZHd42a5QfBjhZxFSn4mSa6zT8wTghb9LU_1BtpPEBmNbhQCZ4BLfklxarxHEsUlXQc0t0sgXS8co/s320/DSC05208.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669854536468450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 173px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_SGW7FfNGrLGLMMfBNZBOLrQgO4DFw2LOhHVdDBsY3j1iJIXIGCeKBch-iR1x-utabDoBZPRIYQaRvtqYgOrLuGowzwZm5wHJnnpwxZZhS989e2UuqPRe8f1q5dsLBEBsxJ3R8SNrymQ/s320/DSC05210.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669852477312562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwDneJQAMEAlxq93zZA8akqf07EadIhKBayBIUIS31Bu-FSiOIhxAeP6LT4eIAM1mSBpmPY9joKHXc_cCEUhafT00RPVe7E1KWuGIOFnlFDj12R9MMHdPRLL49EakI7WBV7bQmiptTymM/s320/DSC05211.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><strong>Blagojevich's first pick for Senate seat turned it down<br /></strong>By Monica Davey and Sharon Otterman<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />CHICAGO: A day after Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois appointed Roland Burris to fill President-elect Barack Obama's former Senate seat, new details emerged about how the governor worked behind closed doors to make the appointment, and the United States attorney prosecuting Blagojevich on corruption charges sought a 90-day extension to bring an indictment against him.<br />At a Tuesday news conference here, Blagojevich breezily introduced Burris, a former Illinois attorney general, as the "next United States senator from Illinois." But United States Representative Danny Davis, who like Burris is a longtime fixture of the Illinois Democratic Party and an African-American, said he was offered the seat in a meeting with an emissary of the governor last Wednesday, and turned it down on Friday.<br />"Given all the revelations and all the controversy, I would not be able to take it from the governor," Davis, who has represented a Chicago district in Congress since 1996, said in an interview. "I felt that if I was to take the appointment, I would spend so much of my time deflecting and defending the position that it would take away my real reason for being involved in politics and political life — to find solutions to problems."<br />Blagojevich appointed Burris in defiance of Senate leaders in Washington and a galaxy of political leaders here. The decision set off efforts to block the move by state legislators, the secretary of state, and, most significantly, Democratic leaders in the United States Senate who said they would not seat anyone Blagojevich chose.<br />The choice of Burris also immediately injected the issue of race into the appointment process, which may very well have been part of the governor's calculation. And it put political leaders in Washington and here in an awkward position of having to choose between accepting an appointee of the disgraced governor or denying a respected black candidate a place in the United States Senate.<br />Representative Bobby Rush, Democrat of Illinois, pointed out at the news conference on Tuesday that there were no blacks in the Senate, adding that he did not believe any senator "wants to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate."<br />Rush, a former Black Panther whom Obama once ran against for Congress, appeared Wednesday on the CBS's "Early Show" to underscore what he said was the importance of having an African-American in the Senate.<br />"You know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there can be individuals and there can be situations where schoolchildren — where you have officials standing in the doorway of school children." Rush said." He added that he was sure that senators "don't want to see themselves placed in the same position."<br />The 71-year-old Burris, who appeared beside Blagojevich at Tuesday's conference and said he was "honored" to have been appointed, told an interviewer on MSNBC on Wednesday that he "is prepared to go to work tomorrow." The Democratic caucus in Washington, he said, "will have to face the issue" of seating him, indicating that he planned to show up in Washington for the start of the congressional session on Jan. 6.<br />"Why won't they seat me?" said Burris, who is seen by many here as an elder statesman in Democratic politics. "I was legally and constitutionally appointed. Why won't they seat me because the governor has legal problems? You know, that's apples and oranges."<br />His staff, in e-mail messages, has already begun to refer to him as "the Senator."<br />Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat, was arrested on Dec. 9, and is accused in a web of corruption that prosecutors say included efforts to get a high-paying job or cabinet post or money in exchange for Obama's Senate seat. He also faces an impeachment inquiry in the Illinois house. The governor has denied any wrongdoing.<br />In a motion filed in federal court on Wednesday, the federal prosecutor in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, asked for more time in presenting an indictment against Blagojevich because "multiple witnesses" have come forward in recent weeks and investigators have to review "thousands of intercepted phone calls."<br />Federal prosecutors normally have 30 days to file an indictment against a defendant. Under that deadline, the indictment would have to be returned by Jan. 7; the extension would give prosecutors until April 7.<br />Since the day of the governor's arrest, state and national Democrats have urged him not to even try to appoint a new senator, and Blagojevich's own lawyer has said that he would not. But Blagojevich said Tuesday that he was compelled to do so by state law.<br />"As governor I am required to make this appointment," Blagojevich said.<br />Later, he said, "To not fill the vacancy would be to deprive the people of Illinois of two United States senators, to deprive the people of Illinois of their appropriate voice and votes in the United States Senate."<br />The Senate Democratic caucus, which controls the chamber, issued a statement on Tuesday saying that no one appointed by the governor could be an effective representative, and that Burris would not be seated. It is not clear, however, whether the caucus can bar a qualified appointee, and the issue may be headed to court.<br />President-elect Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, was surprised by the news of the appointment, his aides said, issued a statement condemning the move.<br />"Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat," Obama said. "I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it."<br />Around the state, elected officials, many exasperated after three weeks of topsy-turvy political drama, responded with fury to the appointment.<br />"This provocative action is an insult to the people of Illinois," said Pat Quinn, the lieutenant governor and a fellow Democrat, who added that the governor had defied the desires of an entire state.<br />Jim Durkin, a Republican state representative who sits on a committee that is conducting an impeachment inquiry into the governor, said, "This process is so tainted, it stinks beyond belief."<br />He said he intended to request that Burris be summoned before the committee to discuss how the appointment came about. " Burris left Illinois government with a good reputation, which will be significantly tarnished if he accepts this appointment," Durkin said.<br />Burris, a soft-spoken, never flowery speechmaker, seemed an unlikely person to be in this moment. Having been elected as state comptroller nearly three decades ago and later as attorney general, he left public office after a series of bids for governor (including a primary race against Blagojevich in 2002, in which Obama had endorsed Burris). His political career seemed to be over, and he went to work as a consultant at a firm that was formed in 2002, Burris & Lebed Consulting, and also as a lawyer.<br />Though Burris and Blagojevich are politicians of vastly different styles, they have had a political relationship in recent years. After the 2002 primary for governor, Burris encouraged Obama to endorse Blagojevich, and Burris served at one point as the vice chairman of the governor's transition team.<br />Burris and his consulting firm (which has held, he said, at least one state contract) have made contributions to Blagojevich's campaign fund, too: more than $9,000 in cash and in-kind contributions from his consulting firm and at least $4,500 from Burris personally, state records show. In June of this year, the records show, Burris gave the campaign $1,000.<br />Asked how long Burris and Blagojevich had been in discussions about the seat, Burris said that he talked to the governor about it only a few days ago, on Sunday night, "when he asked if he were to appoint me, would I accept, and my answer was yes."<br />But Burris had made it clear in recent weeks that he was interested in the job. Though his name had not been mentioned as someone being considered by the governor weeks ago, and though he is not someone believed to be mentioned in the conversations prosecutors recorded of Blagojevich's apparent negotiations over the seat, Burris had expressed his interest shortly after Election Day, and had told reporters that he had the support of a half-dozen black ministers here.<br />Not long after Blagojevich's arrest, Burris held a news conference to note his interest in bringing "some sanity and help to the people of this state." That day, he said he would only hold the seat for the two remaining years in Obama's term, a promise he seemed to back away from a bit on Tuesday.<br />Burris, who had said after Blagojevich's arrest that he was "appalled" by the evidence against the governor, offered no such remarks on Tuesday.<br />Asked whether Blagojevich should resign, Burris said quietly: "I have no comment on what the governor's circumstance is. And as a former attorney general of this state, I know and I think most of you all know, that in this legal process, you're innocent until you're proven guilty."<br />The announcement renewed calls among Republican state lawmakers for a special election to fill Obama's seat. State lawmakers had considered that option, but Democrats, who control the House and the Senate, had dropped the idea. An election, which Democrats complained was too expensive, would mean Republicans would have an opportunity to win the seat.<br />Most legislators had assumed, it seemed, that Blagojevich would not try to fill the post now, and Democrats had hoped that he would be impeached and that his most likely replacement, Quinn could fill the post.<br />While senators in Washington weighed their options, it was uncertain how efforts here to block the appointment would proceed. Jesse White, the Illinois secretary of state, said he would refuse to sign paperwork that Blagojevich must present to the Senate offering Burris's appointment. Still, after White's lawyers scanned the legal precedents on the question, there appeared to be no statutory requirement that White's signature be included, his spokesman said, so the move seemed likely to be mostly symbolic. </div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>For Kennedy, self-promotion is unfamiliar<br /></strong>By Nicholas Confessore and Jeremy W. Peters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />In her bid to be appointed the next senator from New York, Caroline Kennedy has zigzagged across the state and talked with dozens of officials and community leaders. She has aired views on topics from the Iraq war to the auto industry bailout and submitted to a round of press interviews.<br />But after a lifetime of being wooed by others — to speak at events, to write books, to lend her aura of celebrity and glamour to this or that cause — it seems clear that Kennedy is still finding her stride in what is, for her, a kind of reverse challenge: selling herself.<br />Interviews with more than a dozen people who have met or spoken with her in recent weeks reveal a fairly uniform portrait of the private Kennedy in her first turn as a very public woman. Most described her as courteous but reticent, unfailingly gracious but not exactly passionate.<br />Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, who has known Kennedy for years and had lunch with her this month, said Kennedy was smart, shy and reserved. Keith Wright, a Democratic state assemblyman from Harlem who spoke with Kennedy on the phone a few days before Christmas, said she had yet to light a fire among potential backers.<br />"I don't know many people who are ready to go 'Rah! Rah! She's our candidate,' " he said.<br />And while Kennedy has declared herself "a Kennedy Democrat," she is still learning, it appears, how to handle the expectations and adulation that come with her name.<br />When Kennedy visited the Democratic headquarters in Rochester recently, local officials ushered her eagerly into a conference area known as the Kennedy Room, decorated with pictures of her father, her mother, her younger brother, and Kennedy herself as a little girl. Kennedy, while polite, did not appear particularly moved.<br />"She never responded to the pictures," recalled Robert Duffy, the mayor of Rochester and the meeting's host. "She looked and perhaps nodded. She never said a word about it."<br />Few of those interviewed described Kennedy's performance over the last two weeks as somehow disqualifying. But it appears to have eroded any sense — real or created — that her selection for the job by Governor David Paterson is inevitable. And many described her approach as striking for someone who is not only seeking a high office, but one held by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in her own first bid for the Senate never left New Yorkers wondering how badly she wanted the job, and how hard she was willing to work to get it.<br />"She has a lot of work to do, and she has a big hill to climb," said Representative Nita Lowey, a Westchester County Democrat who is among those officials advising the governor on the Senate appointment. "She has to convince Governor Paterson that she is the best qualified to advocate for New York in these tough economic times. She has to be an articulate spokesperson, a strong fighter."<br />Representative Joseph Crowley, leader of the Queens Democratic organization — whose holiday party Kennedy attended on Dec. 18 — said he expected to sit down with Kennedy soon. But he said he was troubled by her media interviews last weekend.<br />"She's raised flags," Crowley said. "The recent flubs have been damaging. I don't think they're fatal."<br />Her supporters say that if Kennedy seems less than fervent in her pursuit of the Senate seat, it is out of deference to Paterson, who has discouraged open lobbying for the job. They note that a traditional campaign — the chicken dinner and county fair route — is not an option. For Kennedy to be more aggressive would only fuel criticism that she has acted presumptuously, they say, especially because she is under far more scrutiny than any other candidate for the job, including those who have been lobbying behind the scenes as energetically as Kennedy.<br />"I think she is reticent because she knows this is Governor Paterson's appointment and I don't think she would do anything to make her uncomfortable with him," said Representative Louise Slaughter, a Democrat from upstate New York who has endorsed Kennedy. "I think she is acting with perfect decorum, given the fact that she really only needs to please one person." ( Slaughter, who was at the meeting in Rochester, recalled Kennedy's reaction to the conference room pictures as gracious but brief. "She said 'Oh, that's very nice.' ")<br />Others pointed out that Kennedy was also laboring under a colossal weight of expectations. Some people seem to expect her to be more, well, Kennedyesque — gregarious and extroverted. But Kennedy's own political style seems to have more in common with that of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once held Clinton's seat: cerebral, restrained, wry.<br />In an age when flamboyant displays of warmth and empathy seem almost like an obligatory feature of campaigning, Kennedy simply seems to prefer keeping her feelings to herself.<br />"She's never been aggressive," said Maura Moynihan, a friend and college classmate of Kennedy's and the daughter of the senator. "She's never been an egomaniac. She's never pushed her way before the cameras."<br />"Caroline," she added, "has never had to sell herself, but she has spent her whole life trying to help other people. She is a person of extraordinary integrity."<br />In some of her meetings, Kennedy has displayed a playfulness that is still more familiar to her close friends than to the public. Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, said that when they met recently in his city hall office, he asked if it was O.K. if he called her Caroline. Her response, Brown said, made for a kind of "Sarah Palin-Joe Biden moment."<br />"Is it O.K. if I call you Byron?" Kennedy responded, recalling the vice presidential debate earlier this year.<br />Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a Brooklyn Democrat, who had lunch with Kennedy in Williamsburg recently, described her as having "somewhat of an aura about her."<br />"When you look at her, there's just something about her," he said. "She's not jumping out at you, but when we sat down we talked for 40 minutes. And she was a very talkative, very knowledgeable person."<br />Michael Fishman, the president of Local 32BJ of the influential service employees' union in New York, said that even if Kennedy did not appear to be burning with ambition, he was more concerned with whether she would stand with labor on issues like collective bargaining and health care.<br />"I wouldn't say passion," Fishman said in describing her. "What comes across to me is quiet strength and commitment. She had to have some steel in her spine to do this. That's what you want."<br />To some extent, the mixed reaction to Kennedy may reflect these officials' own ties and interests. Weingarten, for example, is herself a contender for the Senate job, while Lopez endorsed Kennedy shortly after meeting with her. Likewise, if Paterson appointed another top contender for the job — Attorney General Andrew Cuomo — the Legislature would select a new attorney general, who would then be heavily indebted to the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.<br />Silver, who has been openly antagonistic to Kennedy's bid, said, "She clearly hasn't shown herself to have the chutzpa of a Chuck Schumer to go out there and advocate for New York in the way in which he has clearly been effective."<br />"There's no question," he added, "she's not used to the political system."<br />Kennedy's whirlwind introduction has raised some doubts about her temperament and political hunger. One person who discussed the Senate job with Kennedy, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of retribution from her supporters, said that she did not convey a thirst for the job, adding, "It was hard to discern if she wants this or if she's doing this out of a sense of duty."</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Lobbyist sues New York Times, citing report of McCain ties</strong><br />By David Johnston<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: A Washington lobbyist sued The New York Times and several of its reporters and editors Tuesday, charging that the newspaper had falsely created an impression that she had engaged in an improper romantic relationship with Senator John McCain.<br />The suit, filed in the Federal District Court in Richmond, Virginia, said that a front-page article on Feb. 21 "falsely communicated" that the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, and McCain "had an illicit 'romantic' and unethical relationship in breach of the public trust in 1999." At that time, Iseman was representing clients before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, then headed by McCain.<br />"Ms. Iseman did not engage in any behavior toward him that was anything other than professional and appropriate," said the suit, which seeks damages of $27 million.<br />The article, published at a time when McCain had clawed his way back from early setbacks to emerge as the all but certain Republican presidential nominee, examined his stated efforts to maintain high ethical standards even as he sometimes edged close to potential conflicts of interest. With its focus on the details of his Washington life behind the scenes, it provoked immediate debate and angry protest.<br />The article did not directly say that Iseman and McCain had had a romantic relationship. But it did say several aides of his had been "convinced" that he had grown too close to Iseman and that he might be damaged if the relationship became known.<br />The article quoted Iseman and McCain as denying that they had ever had a romantic relationship or engaged in any inappropriate behavior.<br />Abbe Serphos, a spokeswoman for The Times, said in a statement: "We fully stand behind the article. We continue to believe it to be true and accurate, and that we will prevail. As we said at the time, it was an important piece that raised questions about a presidential contender and the perception that he had been engaged in conflicts of interest."<br />The defendants in the suit are The New York Times Company; Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor; Dean Baquet, its Washington bureau chief; Jim Rutenberg, Stephen Labaton and David Kirkpatrick, all Times reporters; and Marilyn Thompson, then a reporter for the paper.<br />W. Coleman Allen Jr. of Richmond and Rodney Smolla of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, who are representing Iseman, declined to comment on the suit.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Madoff complying with assets disclosure deadline<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Grant McCool<br />Accused swindler Bernard Madoff was complying with a court-ordered deadline to tell U.S. regulators how much money he has left, as lawmakers prepared to take their first close look at the alleged scheme that duped investors worldwide.<br />A lawyer for the 70-year-old investment adviser, who is under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment and subject to electronic monitoring, said a list of assets, liabilities and property would be sent by the Wednesday deadline to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under a December 18 court order.<br />"That material will be filed today," said Madoff's attorney, Ira Lee Sorkin. "It will be done pursuant to the court order. It will get there on time."<br />Sorkin declined further comment, and a spokesman for the SEC declined to comment.<br />The regulator is not required to immediately publicly file such disclosures with the courts. The information becomes part of an investigation into how Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was run and how some $50 billion (34.2 billion pounds) in losses can be recovered by investors.<br />Investors include wealthy society in the Americas and in Europe, banks, celebrities and charities all over the world in what could be Wall Street's biggest fraud. Madoff confessed to his sons that he ran a Ponzi scheme for years, in which early investors are paid off with the money of new clients, according to court documents.<br />Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, was also criminally charged on December 11 by U.S. prosecutors in New York, but he has not appeared in court to formally answer the charges.<br />CONGRESSIONAL PANEL HEARING<br />A U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday the internal watchdog at the SEC will testify Monday at a hearing in Washington on how it failed to detect the purported fraud. (ID:nN31376507]<br />Critics claim the SEC missed warning signs and failed to uncover the scandal until Madoff's sons went to authorities three weeks ago. According to court papers, Madoff said it was "all his fault". No one else has been charged.<br />SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has asked the agency's inspector general, David Kotz, to probe its conduct in the case.<br />Kotz will testify at a U.S. House Financial Services committee hearing. It will help lawmakers who are planning "the most substantial rewrite" of laws regulating the U.S. financial markets since the Great Depression, said Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the subcommittee on capital markets.<br />Also appearing will be Harry Markopolos, the former chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management who said he repeatedly tried to get the SEC to investigate Madoff, and Stephen Harbeck, president of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. The nonprofit SIPC was created by Congress in 1970 to maintain reserves to help investors at failed brokerage firms.<br />The SIPC has said it expects it will take several years to find the money in remote locations and sort through investor losses from the alleged fraud. Its money can be used to satisfy claims of each customer up to a maximum of $500,000. The figure includes a maximum of up to $100,000 on claims for cash.<br />The court-appointed trustee of the firm, which is being liquidated, is looking into the sale of the trading operation. Madoff ran the investment advisory business separately and was 'cryptic' about it, according to court papers.<br />The wide scope of Madoff's business continued to reverberate with word that Austria's financial regulator will soon step in to run Vienna-based Bank Medici, in what would be the first known case where a government had to step in to help a bank cope in the wake of the Madoff scandal.<br />A source with direct knowledge of the matter said Wednesday the regulator would appoint a supervisor to the bank's management in the coming days. With a supervisor in place, the bank cannot take important decisions without state consent.<br />A spokeswoman for the bank said it would welcome such a step and cooperate with authorities.<br />(Additional reporting by Karey Wutkowski and Julie Vorman in Washington and Douwe Miedema and Sylvia Westall in London; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)</div><div></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Madoff investigation moves offshore<br /></strong>By Lynnley Browning<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />Investigations into the trader Bernard Madoff are expanding into offshore tax havens.<br />U.S. federal prosecutors are beginning to consider what role offshore fund operations might have played in the $50 billion fraud that Madoff is accused of orchestrating.<br />Of particular interest is whether Madoff and some of his investors used funds based in offshore tax havens to evade U.S. taxes, according to a person briefed on the investigation.<br />Also under scrutiny is whether certain charities that invested with Madoff had improperly allowed their donors to shift money offshore and whether foreign banks had withheld U.S. taxes on Madoff accounts, as required by the IRS, according to this person, who was given anonymity because of the delicate nature of the investigation.<br />Madoff was arrested Dec. 11 at his New York apartment and charged with securities fraud.<br />The authorities have characterized the fraud as a worldwide Ponzi scheme - perhaps the largest ever - which depends on new investments to pay off earlier investors.<br />On Tuesday, the trustee in charge of Madoff's investment firm won court approval to use $28.1 million from the firm's accounts to pay its liquidation costs.<br />Although the inquiries into the role of offshore funds were at an early stage, it was hardly surprising that such funds were coming under scrutiny.<br />Offshore entities played major roles at Bayou Management, a Connecticut hedge fund that collapsed in scandal in 2005, as well as at Enron, which used nearly 900 offshore entities, mostly in the Cayman Islands, to conceal bogus trades and accounting fraud.<br />"You're going to be trying to identify all the vehicles for the fraud, and, drawing on past experience, the use of offshore accounts and entities would certainly be vehicles," said David Kelley, a former federal prosecutor in New York who is now a partner at the law firm Cahill, Gordon & Reindel.<br />Nearly all hedge funds, including funds of funds, operate affiliates and partnerships offshore. Such havens offer low tax rates and light regulation. Offshore havens also help fund managers to defer or avoid U.S. taxes on their personal profits by channeling the earnings through offshore affiliates.<br />Fred Abrams, a lawyer and offshore fraud specialist based in New York, said that large-scale investment swindles often involved the use of offshore nominees, or agents, with legal power over an investor's foreign bank accounts. Another feature, he said, was the use of multiple jurisdictions to carry out trades. "With this, it's possible to transfer enormous sums of money and perhaps do it under the radar," he said.<br />At least a dozen offshore entities were involved with Madoff's firm, according to several regulatory filings. They include funds linked to the Fairfield Greenwich Group, a fund of funds that lost $7.4 billion of its investors' money after entrusting it to Madoff.<br />Other offshore entities involved are affiliated with Tremont Group Holdings, which had $3.3 billion invested, and several Swiss banks, including Union Bancaire Privée and Banc Benedict Hentsch & Cie.</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>U.S. lawmakers to question SEC watchdog about Madoff<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Karey Wutkowski<br />The internal watchdog at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will testify Monday at a hearing by U.S. lawmakers who want to know how the investor protection agency failed to detect the alleged $50 billion (34 billion pound) fraud by Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff.<br />Members of the U.S. House Financial Services committee will take their first close look at the alleged Ponzi scheme that has touched everyone from bearish "Dr. Doom" economist Henry Kaufman to actor Kevin Bacon, both of whom invested with Madoff.<br />Madoff, a former Wall Street fund manager, is accused by federal prosecutors of running a $50 billion scam that ensnared wealthy investors, banks and charities around the world.<br />He faces a Wednesday deadline to tell the SEC how much he is worth and where his money and other assets are. In general, the SEC is not required to immediately publicly file such disclosures with the courts.<br />Critics say the SEC missed warning signs and failed to uncover the scandal until Madoff's sons went to authorities and told them Madoff had confessed to the fraud. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox recently asked inspector general David Kotz to probe the agency's conduct in the case.<br />Kotz will testify at the hearing, which will help lawmakers planning "the most substantial rewrite" of laws regulating the U.S. financial markets since the Great Depression, said Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the subcommittee on capital markets.<br />Also appearing will be Harry Markopolos, the former chief investment officer at Rampart Investment Management who said he repeatedly tried to get the SEC to investigate Madoff, and Stephen Harbeck, president of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. The nonprofit SIPC was created by Congress in 1970 to maintain reserves to help investors at failed brokerage firms.<br />SIPC has said it expects it will take several years to find the money in remote locations and sort through investor losses from the alleged fraud.<br />The witness list also includes Allan Goldstein, a retiree and investor with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities; Tamar Frankel, a law professor at Boston University, and Leon Metzger, a hedge fund expert who has taught at Yale University.<br />(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski and Julie Vorman; Editing by Brian Moss and John Wallace)</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Connecticut bank is drawn into Madoff scandal</strong><br />By Diana B. Henriques<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />Lawyers in Florida say they are investigating the role that a Connecticut bank may have played in steering money to Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street trader accused of operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.<br />According to the lawyers, their clients believed for more than a decade that they had an account at the Westport National Bank, a division of Connecticut Community Bank in Westport, from which they had received statements for many years. Early last week, they learned their money had actually been entrusted to Madoff, the lawyers said.<br />A number of wealthy investors and institutions have already filed lawsuits complaining that money they put into prominent hedge funds or private partnerships had actually been passed along to Madoff without their knowledge.<br />But this time, that complaint is being made against a federally regulated bank, which is subject to much more rigorous oversight than the other investment vehicles through which money has flowed to Madoff.<br />The bank disputes the allegation. It said on Wednesday night that its only role had been to maintain "a custodial account for a number of individuals and entities" who invested with Madoff. It did not say how many customers were affected, or how much money was involved.<br />"As custodian, Westport National Bank served in a ministerial capacity only," said its president, Richard Cummings Jr., in a statement. The bank gave no investment advice to its custodial customers and did not invest any of its own money with Madoff, the statement concluded.<br />Madoff, the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, was arrested on Dec. 11 and charged with a single count of securities fraud.<br />On Wednesday he provided a report on his personal assets and liabilities to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which would not disclose the report.<br />According to court documents, Madoff was arrested after telling two senior executives at his firm — later confirmed to have been his two sons — that the investment advisory business he had run for years was "a lie" and "a giant Ponzi scheme" whose losses could run as high as $50 billion.<br />Since then, a growing roster of prominent charities, schools and celebrities have reported losing money they had knowingly entrusted to Madoff.<br />But other investors caught up in the scandal have said they actually thought they were investing with someone else — in this case, Westport National Bank.<br />The lawyers handling the Florida investigation said their clients are a middle-aged professional couple in South Florida who had dealt with Westport National since at least 1996. They had been solicited to open an account at the bank by a promoter, whom the lawyers also declined to name.<br />The couple told their lawyers that they had always believed their money was being held and invested by the bank. They received regular statements from the bank showing deductions for "custodial fees" and "record-keeping fees" that totaled 4 percent a year, according to Adam Rabin, a partner at McCabe Rabin in West Palm Beach.<br />Craig Stein, his co-counsel and a partner in Stein, Stein & Pinsky in Boca Raton, said that a bank statement from January 2005 showed that the custodial fee had been paid through the sale of "5.3 shares of BLM," while the record-keeping fee, paid to the promoter, had required the sale of "31.26 shares of BLM."<br />Madoff's firm does not have any publicly traded shares, and the couple thought these transactions involved investments the bank had made on their behalf, Stein said.<br />"The couple told us that they had seen the terrible news about the Madoff victims and said 'Oh, those poor people,' " he added. "They had no idea that they were among those victims."<br />Then, a few days after Madoff's arrest, the couple came home to find a Federal Express envelope at their door. It contained a letter from Westport National Bank, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.<br />The letter, dated Dec. 12, opened: "Dear Custodial Services Customer." It stated that the couple had given "full discretionary authority" over their custodial account at the bank to the Madoff firm.<br />"You may have learned of the recent allegations involving Bernard Madoff and his firm," the letter continued.<br />It then asked the couple to notify the bank if they wanted it to request that Madoff's firm "return assets of yours to the bank."<br />The bank is one of five divisions of Connecticut Community Bank, formed in 2004 by the merger of Greenwich Bank & Trust Company and Westport National.<br />It is supervised by the Office of the Controller of the Currency. A spokesman for the agency said it did not disclose details of bank examinations. In 2005, other public records showed that the bank's parent, Connecticut Community Bank, had assets of $252 million. State records show that it had about $370 million in assets earlier this year.</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Was whole economy a Ponzi scheme?</strong><br />By James SaftReuters<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />LONDON: It was perhaps inevitable that we ended 2008, the year we learned we were up the creek, with a great financial scandal: the Madoff Ponzi case.<br />What is even more remarkable is the way in which the alleged fleecing of wealthy people and charities - investors who should have known better or employed people who did - of many billions of dollars serves as a mirror for the broader culture. It shows how we went wrong and where we are left, now that we realize our errors.<br />The main difference really is that the purported victims, or enablers, or co-fantasists of the trader Bernard Madoff say they found out their wealth was illusory all of a sudden, whereas for most people in the English-speaking world, this is happening little by little.<br />Madoff, for those of you just waking after a long winter's nap, is accused of defrauding investors in funds that he promised would deliver a suspiciously steady 12 percent or so a year in good times or bad of as much as $50 billion. The authorities say he has confessed to running a pretty simple Ponzi operation: paying out "earnings" to those who demanded them using new commitments of cash from those who wanted in. And of course, given that the man could "make" heady sums with no risk in all markets, the cash flowed in and the redemption calls were, for a long time, manageable.<br />Madoff has not appeared in court to answer the charges formally. But that there was one man, or a man with confederates perhaps, who was willing to engage in a harebrained fraud that was mathematically doomed to failure would not be that surprising, sadly. That an army of either rich, sophisticated investors or their highly paid advisers played along and believed that they were growing rich is far more interesting.<br />One point, highlighted by Tim Lee of the consultancy pi Economics in Stamford, Connecticut, is that the $50 billion headline figure is about as inflated as California real estate prices were a year ago. That $50 billion is likely to turn out to be not the amount lost but the amount people wrongly thought they had. It is likely that the actual strategy followed by Madoff could return little more than Treasury notes minus fees; in other words he could make for you what you could get for yourself with no help but then pay himself handsomely for the gymnastics.<br />That implies that a lot - for long-time investors, the vast majority - of the "money" invested and now "lost" with Madoff was about as notional as a credit default swap contract with a man you met outside the bus station downtown. Much of the money never existed, other than on the attractive and no-doubt glossy statements sent by Madoff.<br />It was simply what people would have had if he had been a genie.<br />And it is in this way that we are all Ponzi limited partners: We too thought our retirement funds and houses were growing miraculously, though ours was an illusion fueled by debt rather than fraud, and we too made plans based on those asset values that now stand in ruins.<br />"The financial system as a whole has had the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme if we look at it fundamentally," said Lee, who was very early in warning about deflation.<br />"By this I mean that we should think about the true value of assets as being derived from the future flow of goods and services that the assets can lay claim to or produce. If market prices of financial and real estate assets rise a lot but there is no increase in the ability of the economy to provide goods and services in the future, then the apparent increase in wealth is illusory."<br />That means that savings must rise, and expectations about the kind of growth and income that capital can safely command must fall. The process of everyone's figuring that out over the next year or so will be a continued hole in the side of the stock market and, despite the risks inherent in Treasury securities because of quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus, a boon to holders of government debt.<br />There are a lot of individuals, pension funds and nonprofits out there that have penciled in benchmarks for returns on assets that are probably too high for the coming cycle, irrespective of the losses of 2008, and I am talking about people thinking of a modest 8 percent.<br />Those people and institutions will be forced to take steps to right that, and this time not by searching for risk or yield but by saving more and cutting back on expenditure.<br />This will cascade through the economy, and until the savings are replenished and productively deployed, higher government spending will be a balm on a burn, at best.</div><div></div><div>************</div><div></div><div><strong>Billionaire is accused of a second killing in Brazil<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />For the second time in a month, the authorities have asked for a murder indictment against the co-founder of Brazil's No. 2 airline, a police spokeswoman said Wednesday.<br />The suspect, Nenê Constantino, 78, has now been accused by the police of ordering the killings of two men in a 2001 land dispute near Brasília.<br />The gunmen have not been caught. A judge is to decide whether to indict Constantino in the cases.<br />Constantino, one of Brazil's wealthiest and most influential business figures, has a fortune estimated at more than $1 billion.<br />A former long-haul trucker who started a bus company in the 1950s that became one of the country's biggest, he established the budget airline Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes SA with his sons.<br />It began flying in 2001.<br />After the police asked for the first murder indictment, in connection with one of the killings, Constantino vehemently denied wrongdoing.</div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>Indonesia official acquitted in killing<br /></strong>By Peter Gelling<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />An Indonesian court cleared a former deputy intelligence chief of any wrongdoing in connection with the murder of Indonesia's most celebrated human rights campaigner Wednesday, a decision that will likely bring renewed attention to the country's dubious justice system as well as its poor human rights record.<br />Hundreds of Indonesians took to the streets after the court announced its decision to free the intelligence officer, Muchdi Purwoprandjono, who is also a former Indonesian Army major general. The demonstrators called on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to follow through with a promise he made to bring to justice those responsible for the high-profile murder of the campaigner, Munir Said Thalib, in 2004.<br />Mr. Munir was poisoned with arsenic while traveling to the Netherlands on a commercial flight aboard state-carrier Garuda in 2004. Earlier this year, an off-duty Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who jockeyed to sit next to Mr. Munir during the flight, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder.<br />Analysts, however, have long suspected that Indonesia's intelligence agency ordered the killing. Phone records discovered during the initial investigation showed that Mr. Pollycarpus had telephoned General Muchdi dozens of times leading up to the murder.<br />The case has been considered by the international community as a test of how successful Indonesia has been in instituting reforms since the fall of Suharto, the country's former authoritarian ruler, in 1998.<br />Domestically, the case has also served as a challenge for Mr. Yudhoyono, who swept into office during Indonesia's first direct elections on promises to clean up a corrupt government and military. Mr. Yudhoyono, also a former general, is up for re-election next year.<br />General Muchdi would have been the first high-level military or intelligence official to go to jail for serious human rights abuses. But human rights activists said the case is now another example of the culture of impunity enjoyed by military personnel.<br />Analysts said they had concerns about the trial's procedures. Several witnesses contradicted their original statements, tried to withdraw statements altogether, or just simply failed to appear in court, seriously hampering prosecutors.<br />"If Indonesia is to move beyond its authoritarian past, the justice system must show that generals are not above the law," said Matt Easton, an analyst with Human Rights Watch. "Investigators, prosecutors, and the courts must be ready to go where the evidence and the law lead them."<br />News agencies reported that Mr. Munir's widow, Suciwati, was visibly distressed after the verdict Wednesday, saying, "This is a painful thing." She has campaigned vigorously to have the officials responsible for ordering the murder jailed. She accused at least one of the judges responsible of being corrupt and said he lacked credibility, noting that several high-profile corruption suspects have gone free after his rulings, including Tommy Suharto, son of the late president, who was accused of embezzling millions.<br />"I have not only lost a husband," she told reporters after the verdict. "But also an understanding of justice." </div><div></div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong>Zimbabwe court keeps activists in custody</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By MacDonald Dzirutwe<br />A Zimbabwean court ruled on Wednesday that a leading human rights campaigner and 15 other activists should remain in custody pending a remand hearing in a case that has deepened doubts over a power-sharing deal.<br />Jestina Mukoko, head of a local rights group, and the other activists have been charged with recruiting or trying to recruit people to undergo military training to topple President Robert Mugabe's government.<br />"The accused cannot be released at this stage, this is a proper case for (a) remand hearing," said Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe. The activists will appear in court next Monday for a bail hearing.<br />Their arrests have fuelled political tensions in Zimbabwe, where a protracted deadlock on cabinet posts under a September power-sharing deal has dashed hopes that a new leadership would move to tackle an economic crisis.<br />Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai has threatened to pull his party out of negotiations over the issue.<br />Two activists facing lesser charges were ordered to be released in line with a High Court ruling last week but state prosecutors said they would appeal the decision.<br />Thirteen of the activists who will remain in custody are MDC members. Two are colleagues of Mukoko, a former state television broadcaster who has emerged as one of Mugabe's toughest and most influential critics.<br />She was taken away at gunpoint at dawn in Harare on December 3 by a group of plainclothes men who stormed her house and identified themselves as policemen.<br />A High Court judge last week declared the detention of Mukoko and her eight co-accused unlawful and ordered their immediate release, but the government appealed.<br />Tsvangirai won the first round of voting in March elections, but fell short of the majority needed to become president, triggering a run-off which Mugabe won after the MDC leader pulled out, citing violent attacks on his supporters.<br />In their affidavits, the activists say they were severely beaten on the soles of their feet and that they have several scars on their body. They also said they were beaten with fists and blunt objects.<br />Lawyers have accused the state of appealing the High Court order that they be released to a private hospital to make sure their wounds heal while in custody. Prosecutors say they were unaware of alleged torture.<br />A High Court judge will rule on Friday on contempt of court charges filed against the police for refusing to release the activists.<br />A cholera outbreak has heightened the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe and stepped up pressure on Mugabe from Western and some African leaders who have called on him to step down.<br />The rate of cholera infections and deaths in Zimbabwe shows no signs of slowing, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.<br />It said 1,608 people had died of the disease -- which could be treated relatively easily if Zimbabwe's public sanitation and health systems had not broken down so catastrophically -- out of 30,365 reported cases.<br />(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe)</div><div><br /><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPnidRoqiyMNUdKZWvuKIlPIFsssx3zUedTFHTZmMzHKidn_hNiI4QPAH9UStsIiw6wFwJQ3Rmkh_1oLnOax4dpM4s5C7r0dWo9uYyu8Eu1CVsuCl5v86fxqJbE_R8aIPwTyv2yabQjyY/s1600-h/DSC05212.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669348789261682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPnidRoqiyMNUdKZWvuKIlPIFsssx3zUedTFHTZmMzHKidn_hNiI4QPAH9UStsIiw6wFwJQ3Rmkh_1oLnOax4dpM4s5C7r0dWo9uYyu8Eu1CVsuCl5v86fxqJbE_R8aIPwTyv2yabQjyY/s320/DSC05212.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669343734167090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 181px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwJMhz_uejlkOFYzKj7q6Bgo-aI_6Bl7XCi4lOEZnMGEWW5IxSDOV61MENFXhvKQXk210ZmD0aWhIRDIIDE9XuvpRu7IxFGwP8tZbfdOqpGmWYXHVmNoapFJfXoR4-nFl5Y4UpzR_c8qg/s320/DSC05213.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669341473013474" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 179px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj55ewu_UHS6QUbamxERszBKeG8ci4PSz17IH2gmtG3llv59bASHtK8KWn2u_zpMZLRc87YSc2Scb7Gt_gIR6imQ-XscuE7jUgsybekWj3wIxdBRNUnHo0fk9tCDgnwwWD_8H18B_xJRU/s320/DSC05214.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669341791712610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjucyUmOmk-lzFwJQEQXXqm9TOFW7IUY1a1VUoaL-8xkw3fLDVM4gDyh7-vEMKOXYvJpouv0NnMLlSl5__ztcFB87o_V70mKH0JqgPyq-hzNQ1klOovhEz3l1pxHaGCPVskTX6pIp9iUIk/s320/DSC05215.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286669337014028466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjexUWUs1EgZLMa3tWhk_L09Xjvwc4CgcnPqTsIozLmoJ2UyttfxeqWDuHxeYEVWjoeJCSXhpDdIxoDLmGf5arKfo_5ZFSjWMBWF-xwJoMtLOtrlLbyJttcDs3A8B08mC_G1PHzbocdTCg/s320/DSC05216.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><strong>Russia aside, Georgia chief is pressed at home</strong><br />By Ellen Barry<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />GOMARDULI, Georgia: On the eve of his 41st birthday recently, President Mikheil Saakashvili was racing around western Georgia shaking hands. He told a group of miners that his "heart hurt" when he saw their city suffer, and promised to build a ski resort in the village of Gomarduli, posing with a gold-toothed grandmother who giggled in his embrace like a naughty schoolgirl.<br />The day felt curiously like a presidential campaign, and Saakashvili was relaxed and happy. "I never said anything about Russia, and they never asked about it," he said later. He reeled off grandiose plans, like a two-year campaign to teach English to "every Georgian in every remote village." This was the old Misha, as he is known — the dazzler, the wunderkind.<br />It has become harder to spot that man in Tbilisi, the capital city. As winter bears down on Georgia, Saakashvili has found himself on the defensive. In August, he ordered an attack on separatists in South Ossetia, one of two territories — Abkhazia is the other — where Georgia and Russia had been locked in a 15-year standoff. Georgian forces were quickly routed, and Russia seized both territories.<br />Saakashvili has cast the attack as a necessary response to a Russian invasion, but no evidence has emerged to verify the claim, and critics have said he acted rashly.<br />Russian leaders have made it brutally clear that they want him out; at home, political challengers are demanding early elections that they believe could topple Saakashvili. And Georgians, who swelled with loyalty after the war, are facing a steep economic downturn that could upend the political order.<br />"What is the future for Saakashvili?" said Sozar Subari, Georgia's ombudsman for human rights and a longtime critic of the president. "He started the war, he lost the war, he lost the territories. There is a crisis. There is no investment in Georgia. The situation is getting worse and worse. If there is no change, he will leave Georgia as the president who lost everything."<br />Saakashvili has spent months disputing such appraisals, and says he is confident that he enjoys the support of the Georgian people. For all his political adroitness, Saakashvili generally reacts to criticism with visceral anger. He compares skeptics about his account of the war to apologists for Nazi Germany, "the same people who thought Poland started the Second World War," as he put it.<br />"There was preparation of war, they wanted war, they invaded us, then they occupied our territories," he said. "If people just prefer not to see it, not to hear it, it's their choice."<br />Just 36 when he became president in 2004, Saakashvili set out to become a historic figure: A model he has often cited is David the Builder, a 12th-century king who drove the Turks out of Georgia and is worshiped as a saint.<br />Saakashvili won his first election with 97 percent of the vote and, buoyed by passion and adrenaline, pressed to amend Georgia's Constitution, granting himself extraordinary power. His advocates say this was the only way to wrench a corrupt post-Soviet state into the modern age; critics say he created an autocracy, surrounding himself with a clique of loyalists. Either way, no comparable figure has yet emerged from Georgia's fractured opposition. Saakashvili called this "very sad."<br />"If I had been in the opposition, I would have destroyed this government in three months," especially given the economic crisis, he said. Asked how, his answer was almost teasing: "I know how to do it," he said, "but I don't want to teach them how to do it."<br />Saakashvili thinks, talks, and moves at a high rate of speed. When he decides that an event has ended, his aides often break into a full run, lest they be stranded, panting, in his wake. His appetite is legend: On a 45-minute flight, he ordered three cups of tea, a glass of wine, a cognac, and gave a stewardess a genial hard time for not stocking up on cheese.<br />He is easily bored. For reading material on the same flight, he had a glossy magazine, a biography of Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, the disgraced French general; architectural plans for a cargo airport which he had sketched himself when 20 submissions fell short ("I hate to confess it," he said); and a Georgian newspaper, which he glanced through and put aside.<br />"Every Georgian newspaper hates me; what's the difference?" he said. "If you can find me one that likes me, I'll read it all the time."<br />From the beginning, Saakashvili's presidency has been marked by audacious gestures. Months after his swearing-in, he dismissed all 13,000 of Georgia's GAI — the Soviet-era traffic police notorious for low-level corruption — replacing them with 1,600 officers modeled on American state troopers. He also promised to reclaim South Ossetia and Abkhazia, stoking Georgian nationalism and inflaming tensions with Moscow.<br />Western observers were impressed by the reforms and charmed by Tbilisi's new political elite, who had infused a failing state with hope and glamour.<br />"It felt as if 'Ocean's Eleven' had been given custody of the republic," Mark Leonard, a British foreign policy expert, wrote in The New Statesman. "A cabal of beautiful young people dashing around changing the country from top to bottom."<br />The Western allies' faith was shaken in November of 2007, when opposition leaders rallied tens of thousands of protesters against Saakashvili's government. Riot police officers attacked protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets, and the government declared a state of emergency, forcing two opposition television stations off the air. Under criticism from his Western allies, Saakashvili said he had acted to stop a Russian plot.<br />He survived the crisis by calling for early presidential elections to "renew his mandate," as he put it, and won with 53 percent of the vote.<br />The August war has brought Saakashvili back into damage-control mode. The West rallied around him when columns of Russian tanks poured into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But increasingly, observers blame Saakashvili for escalating the low-level conflict that preceded the attack, while acknowledging that in the days before it began, Georgian villages had come under fire from separatist positions.<br />Saakashvili has vigorously disputed these critiques — in particular, a Nov. 7 New York Times report that quoted independent observers in the war zone as questioning Georgia's account of the conflict's origins. In an interview, he said Russia was so well-prepared that its forces immediately took control of Abkhazia, hundreds of miles away from the fighting in South Ossetia.<br />He recalled a conversation he had with Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, after Georgia released intercepted telephone messages that showed Russian armor moving into Georgia early on Aug. 7.<br />"I said, 'This proves we didn't start the war.' " Saakashvili said. "He said, 'You know, I'm military. I know tanks don't fly, especially Russian ones. I don't need proof.' "<br />The change in American administrations injects further uncertainty for Saakashvili, who enjoys warm personal friendships with both President George W. Bush and Senator McCain. Saakashvili said he has no worries about continued support from the United States, which has pledged $1 billion in aid and will sign a strategic cooperation treaty with Georgia this week.<br />But key questions remain, among them: Will the United States re-equip Georgia's battered military, at a cost its defense minister estimated at $8 billion to $9 billion?<br />And as he copes with sporadic violence and internal dissent, Saakashvili is also under close scrutiny from European capitals. Early this month, several NATO members balked at granting Georgia and Ukraine a Membership Action Plan, in part over fears of that Saakashvili could be drawn into renewed conflict with Russia.<br />"Georgia has a lot of problems, and one of them is how people perceive Saakashvili," said Sarah Mendelson, a Russia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "He's the elected president and ultimately this is all up to Georgians. But I hear some people say, 'You need to get rid of him, or get him under wraps.' "<br />Ronald Asmus, executive director of the Transatlantic Center at the German Marshall Fund, said Saakashvili must commit to institution-building, and swallow the presence of Russian troops in Georgia.<br />"The advice of people like me is: To whatever degree possible, forget about the Russians," he said. "Accelerate reform and regain the moral high ground you had, and lost." In the past, he said, Saakashvili's team has committed to that path, "but it's hard for them to stick to it."<br />The advice is not casual. In his response to the state of emergency in November 2007 and the war, Asmus said, Saakashvili has "arguably made two big mistakes," even as the Russians were searching for a way to bring him down.<br />"Most politicians don't get to make two big mistakes and survive," he said. "I don't know how many political lives he has left."<br />And so, at the age of 41, Saakashvili is faced with the strange task of downsizing himself: scaling down his passion, impatience and even his power. Answering questions in the airy white interior of his presidential retreat, he seemed keenly aware of this: If there is a flaw with his government, he said, it is that "it's based on personality, more or less, and it should be based on institutions."<br />He said he had tormented himself over whether he had made a mistake ordering the attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, asking himself the question "a thousand times" in the early days.<br />"Every night when I am not angry with myself is lost," he said.<br />Last week, he announced a constitutional amendment that would lessen the president's power over Parliament. Lately, he said, he's less attracted to the model of David the Builder, and more to George Washington, who, he said, "could have been a king, but instead chose to give up power, and become a democracy."<br />"It's something I'm thinking about more and more," he said. "George Washington." </div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>No one hurt in bombing in Spain's Basque area</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />MADRID, Spain: A car bomb exploded Wednesday outside a regional television station in northern Spain following a warning call from the armed separatist group ETA, police said.<br />The blast caused significant damage and one person suffered an ear injury, television broadcaster EITB, which managed to stay on air despite the explosion at its headquarters in central Bilbao city, said in its early afternoon news report.<br />"They have tried to silence one of this country's media outlets," EITB director Bingen Zupiria told reporters outside the building later.<br />Police said the bomb exploded shortly after 11 a.m. (1000 GMT). The building had been evacuated and the area cordoned off to traffic following a warning call to a fire department about an hour earlier.<br />Spain's state-run television station broadcast footage showing the explosion. After a flash of fire, the blast blew out dozens of windows on the glass facade of the six-story building. Then a large plume of thick smoke rose up and partially obscured the damaged structure.<br />The attack came less than a month after the fatal shooting of a Basque businessman Dec. 3, for which ETA was blamed.<br />ETA has killed more than 825 people since 1968 in its campaign for Basque independence. The group declared a cease-fire in March 2006 that led to peace talks. But it broke the truce with a car bomb Dec. 30, 2006, at Madrid's Barajas airport, killing two people.<br />"ETA can attack but it will lose all the battles," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Wednesday. "The only thing it will achieve will be to put the terrorists in jail quicker."<br />Police in Bilbao said agents followed tips from the caller Wednesday and found the owner of the vehicle used in the attack tied to a tree in some woods just outside the city.<br />"This is an attack against all Basque society because this is public television paid for by people's taxes," Antonio Basagoiti, head of the regional chapter of the conservative opposition Popular Party, told reporters.<br />"ETA wants to pressure us in to accepting what they want: independence, socialism, backwardness and a return to the Stone Age," Basagoiti said.<br />With a population of just under 1 million, Bilbao is the Basque region's main city and home to one of the Guggenheim Museums.<br />The caller gave no reason for the attack but Basque regional government spokeswoman Miren Azkarate said, "EITB has been an ETA target for a long time."<br />Several other media outlets are housed in the building, including a bureau of El Mundo newspaper.<br />Although most of ETA's victims in the past have been security force members, the group has regularly targeted political parties, bank, businesses, public transport, as well as the media.<br />"There's no point in reading anything special into this attack," EITB editor Inigo Herze told Spain's CNN+ television channel. "ETA attacks anyone that doesn't believe in what it believes in."<br />ETA has suffered a wave of arrests of its suspected members in recent months in France and Spain. Suspected leader, Aitzol Iriondo, was arrested in southern France on Dec. 8, three weeks after his alleged predecessor, Mikel de Garikoitz Aspiazu, alias Txeroki, was caught in the neighboring country.<br />_____<br />AP reporter Harold Heckle contributed to this report from Madrid</div><div></div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>China reiterates no room for Taiwan sovereignty<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Lucy Hornby<br />Chinese President Hu Jintao said on Wednesday he understood Taiwan's desire to take part in "international activities" but stressed he would not tolerate any move that suggested sovereign independence from the mainland.<br />In a policy speech, Hu called for a pragmatic approach to the political relationship to ease concerns over military tension across the strait.<br />"As long as the 'one China' principle is recognised by both sides.... we can discuss anything," Hu said.<br />If Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party gives up "splittist activities" and "changes its attitude," it would elicit a "positive response," he said.<br />China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has vowed to bring the island under mainland rule, by force if necessary.<br />Just this week, Taiwan said it would increase foreign aid next year, competing with China on largesse as the global economic crisis leave impoverished allies more desperate for help.<br />With about 170 diplomatic allies to Taiwan's 23, China has continually blocked the island's bid to join the United Nations or affiliated organisations.<br />But relations across the Taiwan Strait, in recent years one of the hottest flashpoints in Asia, have improved since China-friendly Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May, prompting a goodwill gift to the island of two giant pandas just last week.<br />"We understand the Taiwan people's feelings on participating in international activities, and we attach great importance to related issues on this," Hu told a gathering of the Communist Party elite at the Great Hall of the People.<br />"...We can have realistic negotiations to reach a reasonable approach for the issue of Taiwan participating in the activities of international organisations on the premise of not causing one China, one Taiwan."<br />Thursday marks the 30th anniversary of a major announcement by China that it would stop shelling the Taiwan-held island of Kinmen, or Quemoy, and that its policy towards Taiwan would shift from "liberation" through military invasion to "peaceful reunification."<br />It is also the 30th anniversary of the United States switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, recognising "one China," though it remains Taiwan's biggest ally and arms supplier.<br />(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Valerie Lee)</div><div></div><div></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQGqyR3ATEJP9vvihrrJXpK-D0YzEawYVqgpwGUJg2hl63n5GiRottiOebXI8MV4OHYL3ZyUD_9bLtAYUCzt1zoNokNcRZSJSXdYYd0MT9Ar7oSZe7HWMhURiAWr3Npti97R2B1lQXXI/s1600-h/DSC05218.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668885704471010" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQGqyR3ATEJP9vvihrrJXpK-D0YzEawYVqgpwGUJg2hl63n5GiRottiOebXI8MV4OHYL3ZyUD_9bLtAYUCzt1zoNokNcRZSJSXdYYd0MT9Ar7oSZe7HWMhURiAWr3Npti97R2B1lQXXI/s320/DSC05218.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668887840791314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5BfKFIx9WIeOUhZnXGZ7VMl9fae6LDpEqYHbYVAIt89sJiwNkgrulx8B4-8wlxhF0bJtDo_dQaF9NWB9jB1Sl8GyDDJ27iElM_4GmEdB0s2wH7hIwAFucjqaJ1gOTdcZNyNybOcAX0M/s320/DSC05219.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668876770731922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju7sf6vCeobilpx2qGVRib7P5m2B4K4rh81iS1lU0ayGT9aJ9i8M3-SXZHLp-QbPZaehZ_PofPDJCFXps0H2_ouxeNFce0cxLIHcdBt_w6Z_xYOtaXHd_sibmLTTNmIUpUBxATaCRKoNc/s320/DSC05220.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668875537708994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Nj02950tBUQAycOk9gISkU8qohTprgqJGAjGsx0Ky8haOCCCk1igSRnW9KHyr9x53koNmlYVFIVRM18lzXqyJIR_CwRmhVF-txWBuxiu-2eC3msnDcWfoidyD2YaqoaTKbktd_lFt84/s320/DSC05221.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668869607588866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbUuIIBO5rU3hJkHUPlZ_oN2u9TtfDBK0gx5W7C_5674pMSXf-02PpQGev1omgIPbOwrISiwieSqFrrbJY3wqKuhzLCxpEOO7_GJ92YWaAOheTnLxms-lJXqY-gpPWwlCo96Qq16KXzIk/s320/DSC05222.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668402089249602" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8Fk4DWMBQzpGPn7pi-dxiR9dHKHv1iQvtshoekbHMpgD4oqm4yvVMKwDCoHkP0DvqJof8Jpp2KIe7mNEQIgwE_DuQjwIEx-ifM6LIIPLtpc3ym4nP7rYP-MbhFH7eUAXTRbHhLPzsRY/s320/DSC05223.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668399126947154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDIyppSiDdVpu4rORu_R99utYkCEYSRRldVkeUII1XkT0bgGUGTej-VKcmmrpx3faYcQENT_6W36c_2V7RyIV5YnhTOgu0QBFinX8eCOXC3eP4oMNKnIiqxuvMnNaSgscIdESsmIKryg/s320/DSC05224.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668396288300610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYQGrYl1PCGPkS6tNKSBKFrO_3vFcTbgKcoaGEbT9l4rPy9PjhjlDUAXVDNonNmnMaZPu6JyAA5qOTxY46qYBi-ScSySfAoah1sjohNwZPshilwV8qCbG3-CwLpA3qA8bT7V3XEcv0bXE/s320/DSC05225.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286668385825141106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9yBSRbSSl-L51_w5PMhTXMETwrN7rnzoUw0kZuxRIKQNIKAGflkB-huo9P9vpFkQ4g1aP_HfeKR_oONeCvyQNmueQfdhbDS2pugGzqsYBuFy5QpYbu-qan7QUM_3_ljzxfABJORlCvwI/s320/DSC05227.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286667850499087106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ALqCQiOIX3YRsi-dnTnKx9BlDcaZn_k90VghxgK0eIoI6hFcTwaJJziYAGuOGfa78VXb1YEaAMxhirTGx2Dto14GYOS1BDtIYjiiqgc6wv_KxxoosjEQU0etJtu22Pw_mFWuELcDJJA/s320/DSC05228.jpg" border="0" /><br /><strong>Czech Republic faces challenges with EU presidency</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />PRAGUE, Czech Republic: On Thursday, the Czechs take over the European Union's six-month rotating presidency from EU heavyweight France, whose dynamic president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has taken vigorous action on tackling Europe's economic woes.<br />The Czech Republic, only the second post-communist EU newcomer to take the bloc's helm, will face the daunting task of implementing a $258 billion European economic stimulus package approved by EU leaders under the French presidency.<br />The nation of about 10 million people bordering Germany and Poland is also the last EU member to vote on the stalled Lisbon Treaty — a blueprint for reforming the EU that supporters say is essential for it to work effectively.<br />The project has been on hold since Irish voters rejected it in June. The Czech Parliament postponed its vote after the Irish rebuff — and has yet to schedule a new ballot even though Ireland has agreed to hold a new referendum.<br />The most prominent Czech critic of the treaty is the nation's president, Vaclav Klaus, who openly says "a well functioning, bureaucratic EU is not my goal."<br />Klaus has even said he won't allow the EU flag to fly over Prague Castle, his official seat, during the Czech presidency because the country "is not an EU province."<br />His views are shared by some lawmakers from the conservative Civic Democratic Party of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek.<br />Topolanek said he wants Parliament to ratify the treaty. But his party is threatening to block ratification unless lawmakers first approve a deal allowing the United States to base part of a missile defense system on Czech soil.<br />The governing coalition does not have a majority in Parliament's lower house and the opposition fiercely rejects the missile defense plan. Opposition leaders threaten a no-confidence vote if the coalition fails to approve the EU charter by February.<br />Minister for European Affairs Alexandr Vondra said political infighting will not affect the country's ability to effectively lead the bloc. "We are rational people. So don't expect any kind of a mess here."<br />A staunch U.S. ally, the Czech Republic has set ties with the new U.S. administration high on its foreign policy agenda; it hopes to invite Barack Obama to Prague for his first visit to Europe as president.<br />The Czechs are awaiting word from Obama's team on the missile defense deal brokered under President George W. Bush. The shield is backed by NATO, but some European leaders, including Sarkozy, have recently questioned it.<br />The shield, which would also be based in Poland, has angered Russia and could overshadow planned EU-Russia talks during the Czech presidency.<br />Russia is already pressuring the incoming U.S. administration to scrap the plans and has threatened to deploy missiles near the Polish border.</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Writing the Web's future in numerous languages</strong><br />By Daniel Sorid<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.<br />The globalization of the Web has inspired entrepreneurs like Ram Prakash Hanumanthappa, an engineer from outside Bangalore, India. Ram Prakash learned English as a teenager, but he still prefers to express himself to friends and family members in his native Kannada. But using Kannada on the Web involves computer keyboard maps that even Ram Prakash finds challenging to learn.<br />So in 2006 he developed Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages. Users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad's predictive engine converts them into local-language script. Bloggers and authors rave about the service, which has attracted interest from the cellphone maker Nokia and the attention of Google Inc., which has since introduced its own transliteration tool.<br />Ram Prakash said Western technology companies have misunderstood the linguistic landscape of India, where English is spoken proficiently by only about a tenth of the population and even many college-educated Indians prefer the contours of their native tongues for everyday speech. "You've got to give them an opportunity to express themselves correctly, rather than make a fool out of themselves and forcing them to use English," he said.<br />Only there is a shortage of non-English content and applications. So, American technology giants are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to build and develop foreign-language Web sites and services — before local companies like Quillpad beat them to the punch and the profits.<br />"Gone are the days in which you can launch a Web site in English and assume that readers from around the globe are going to look to you simply because of the content you're providing," said Zia Daniell Wigder, a senior analyst at JupiterResearch, an online research company based in New York.<br />Nowhere are the obstacles, or the potential rewards, more apparent than in India, whose online population Jupiter says is poised to become the third-largest in the world after China and the United States by 2012. Indians may speak one language to their boss, another to their spouse and a third to a parent. In casual speech, words can be drawn from a grab bag of tongues.<br />In the last two years, Yahoo and Google have introduced more than a dozen services to encourage India's Web users to search, blog, chat and learn in their mother tongues. Microsoft has built its Windows Live bundle of online consumer services in seven Indian languages. Facebook has enlisted hundreds of volunteers to translate its social networking site into Hindi and other regional languages, and Wikipedia now has more entries in Indian local languages than in Korean.<br />Google's search service has lagged behind the local competition in China, and that has made providing locally flavored services a priority for the company in India. Google's initiatives in India are aimed at opening the country's historically slow-growing personal computer market, and at developing expertise that Google will be able to apply to building services for emerging markets worldwide.<br />"India is a microcosm of the world," said Prasad Bhaarat Ram, Google India's head of research and development. "Having 22 languages creates a new level of complexity in which you can't take the same approach that you would if you had one predominant language and applied it 22 times."<br />Global businesses are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year working their way down a list of languages into which to translate their Web sites, said Donald DePalma, the chief research officer of Common Sense Advisory, a consulting business in Lowell, Massachusetts, that specializes in localizing Web sites.<br />India — with relatively undeveloped e-commerce and online advertising markets — is actually lower on the list than Russia, Brazil and South Korea, DePalma said.<br />Ram of Google acknowledged that the company's local-language initiatives in India did not yet generate significant revenue.<br />But the investments, DePalma said, are smart. "They're potentially creating the Indian advertising market," he said.<br />English simply will not suffice for connecting with India's growing online market, a lesson already learned by Western television producers and consumer products makers, said Rama Bijapurkar, a marketing consultant and the author of "Winning in the Indian Market: Understanding the Transformation of Consumer India."<br />"If you want to reach a billion people, or even half a billion people, and you want to bond with them, then you have no choice but to do multiple languages," she said.<br />Even among the largely English-speaking base of around 50 million Web users in India today, nearly three-quarters prefer to read in a local language, according to a survey by JuxtConsult, an Indian market research company. Many cannot find the content they are seeking. "There is a huge shortage of local language content," said Sanjay Tiwari, the chief executive of JuxtConsult.<br />A Microsoft initiative, Project Bhasha, coordinates the efforts of Indian academics, local businesses and solo software developers to expand computing in regional languages. The project's Web site, which counts thousands of registered members, refers to language as "one of the main contributors to the digital divide" in India.<br />The company is also seeing growing demand from Indian government agencies and companies creating online public services in local languages.<br />"As many of these companies want to push their services into rural India or tier-two towns or smaller towns, then it becomes essential they communicate with their customers in the local language," said Pradeep Parappil, a Microsoft program manager.<br />The project's Web site, BhashaIndia.com, offers user-edited glossaries in local languages for technology terms and words with slang meanings in social networking, like "nudge" and "wink." ("Bhasha" is the Hindi word for "language.")<br />Last December, Yahoo and Jagran Group, a large Hindi newspaper publisher, started Jagran.com, a portal in the Hindi language, the native tongue of 420 million Indians.<br />Yahoo, which also offers e-mail and other content in several Indian languages, says that Jagran.com has surpassed its expectations for user traffic.<br />"Localization is the key to success in countries like India," said Gopal Krishna, who oversees consumer services at Yahoo India.<br />Google recently introduced news aggregation sites in Hindi and three major South Indian languages, and a transliteration tool for writing in five Indian languages. Its search engine operates in nine Indian languages, and can translate search results from the English Web into Hindi and back.<br />Google engineers are also plugging away on voice recognition, translation, transliteration and digital text reading that it plans to apply to other developing countries.<br />Ram Prakash of Quillpad said he was inspired when friends at Google told him they had compared Quillpad with Google's transliteration tool. He said that he believed the use of local languages on the Web would soar even as more Indians strived to learn English.<br />"That's why we say English is not enough," Ram Prakash said, repeating the slogan of Quillpad. "People want to look forward, and they want to learn English. That is all right, but English is not enough for all their needs."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDzZy2445Yo2Eiwl0RdJPMzJKOaxzAeZyTmjb_rSWdrp8ZyiT31xuVTscqSERBuUKdtbTOGSe5SN4giFPRsYUl6PQXP635fbZzYjvwDd4w2UaK6j4m2PSkKLMoLD3CPAT4b3t9IMpu-Jo/s1600-h/DSC05230.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286667848058811346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDzZy2445Yo2Eiwl0RdJPMzJKOaxzAeZyTmjb_rSWdrp8ZyiT31xuVTscqSERBuUKdtbTOGSe5SN4giFPRsYUl6PQXP635fbZzYjvwDd4w2UaK6j4m2PSkKLMoLD3CPAT4b3t9IMpu-Jo/s320/DSC05230.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286667844695056834" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqfBQZqhwMKK_hiJBlEaiCsda9lRkA7ZBTsXKNMPKUerf_5rIPe63obQ8aLwp9aEqnBU8fzo2kYcNns6CmWZwr3pEw559nMFjvwMjQt5whwTNbQFjLIhOfF1Bck49nnB8L0JNRKZU88V0/s320/DSC05231.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286667840174738898" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWsicYWcueH9DCEUw-6ZqByy5uuv2o0pVsUzPb20A_xY4y83sBmG4j-hNztxVjIZrq1nVoTZGDSJEV3SkBO_bF3oltwD1feNvXLWacMxxEoo_MnvBruCjb4EV5JT4LXKX4M-wDxtgJNas/s320/DSC05246.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286659608674478210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5xpBwzatJU6ZLwlRt3uOpg6KKnbhtV3EQA9zm2x0_lEpX6hJQCaUsAUQJTfxV4tb8OsQQtWwh0wntNc5YpsBSKHwX2HI85mzOu9LX2b3UGwmXpNvboRqmM0FEzu99BQHXc3FF4Y6WBB0/s320/DSC05247.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286659603133515506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 222px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwZCGlS1WGdiv2RqQ1BYkLL74juIA0J2DYaWpsiIJsi3xG-VR7wizbktDuDrGG5jNn2GFyefsZfWdPoNYCBxnxIKb9NwukvLzO1I5YWjsJU3TZP2oOp_nkqmtShiZsk6006b8V5apG5hM/s320/DSC05248.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvmTe8g2vBNXf9BQA2tguWBqX9ROjJzYjun-PbVhP8NjNDgvHHPbXskdcQLhoq-Qmwz2AtsS7fMk8jwTsbFIyWLNSEInm7TfQlDfnJ_-VlVIVfmFqS-FLKy81-NkZE-EyINMBU244ZPIk/s1600-h/DSC05249.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286659605333058514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvmTe8g2vBNXf9BQA2tguWBqX9ROjJzYjun-PbVhP8NjNDgvHHPbXskdcQLhoq-Qmwz2AtsS7fMk8jwTsbFIyWLNSEInm7TfQlDfnJ_-VlVIVfmFqS-FLKy81-NkZE-EyINMBU244ZPIk/s320/DSC05249.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286659594583334146" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhBqTnnAHE0n6l5xb912dbK7Cw5_hCFhfZvC8jpX97uN3OeAgBMg7kcRD9BmMpjD8-4Lj5fdszLTtKNjMLP9-zC5E5kJu-Kj0hPxwg8wqC4PRF5GaIxzgAuvDQDaLyQHYEgeaqDMylJL0/s320/DSC05250.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286659004934979234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiec1ARiOpmXoxJYpF-Vz13VQD-bxSHU9rr-dSw1T97JaePecFzIhpjouj-vKf3PpiUg1s9gPjTGL56Ko4tcaOxtm5a8UZCtApVvKU14eNehmqVdULWysb1Wl0s3eU0ja_B1q6BfbBXFeI/s320/DSC05251.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286658998096220546" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggUfA8Mcrzv7fXF__ich9VZvHWiZ-bREcGrXAX5Ss69IAmFfZ8IY_I2G1ttbfZBegTImT6aARvu4BfM8O-F9aW3eA3-pcwb4vExJSa15yi3F0L4CEjjMDTPo6Vl3kpkXuA9nJ2vosTgqc/s320/DSC05252.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286658989637847010" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 189px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibwkpjzqL0Uv8dnPMJL2Tciz9q2i4-nWvnv-7h4IJ3xHwEiK-Qo9cAOTN_N2RjJMj9MZXdRsydPsCSKKQDBzalEoxzjbljSkUQPyb9CakSH8PtuTV7DqbngqKNSsRaKdadtpef4biUFkI/s320/DSC05253.jpg" border="0" /></div><div></div><div><strong>As German neighborhood changes, raunchy shadow lingers<br /></strong>By Nicholas Kulish<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />HAMBURG, Germany: Asking for a copy of the St. Pauli Nachrichten at a newsstand in this North German port city is a bit of a gamble. You may get a flashy new publication with tips on where to find fashionable VIP lounges, but you are more likely to be handed a truly raunchy pornographic magazine with an unusually august pedigree.<br />The rather generic name St. Pauli Nachrichten, which means St. Pauli News, is both hallowed and debased in the history of German media. It is a tale of one historic neighborhood, two magazines with the same title and the long shadow of the original version.<br />Founded in 1968, the first St. Pauli Nachrichten was a provocative mix of satire, sex and left-wing politics. It was representative of the anything-goes attitude in the infamous red-light district that sprang up outside the old city walls here, which still draws tourists and locals alike to its strip clubs and soccer pubs by the tens of thousands each weekend to the Reeperbahn, Germany's version of Bourbon Street.<br />Yet by the same token, the St. Pauli Nachrichten's recent reincarnation as a lifestyle magazine — the first issue was published in November — is just the latest sign of a neighborhood rapidly going upscale, a phenomenon that local activists say is driving out working-class families and aging revolutionaries.<br />The original publication became legendary for biting articles by Stefan Aust, who went on to become the top editor of Germany's leading newsmagazine, Der Spiegel. At its peak, the St. Pauli Nachrichten sold over a million copies per issue. It was that heritage — and success — that Jens de Buhr, publisher of the new version, said he wanted to build upon when he founded his magazine.<br />The only problem was that the old version had not disappeared, it had just devolved into a blue magazine with service advertisements aimed at lonely gentlemen and none of the original political commentary or satire. But instead of looking for another title, De Buhr agreed to pay the old magazine $355 per issue to let him also use the name. The girlie magazine simply added the words "the original" to the cover and kept publishing randy photographs.<br />At a St. Pauli Italian restaurant called Cuneo, where late-night planning meetings for the new magazine had taken place, De Buhr, 45, said this week that people in the industry were placing bets as to how spectacular the magazine's failure would be in a difficult economy that had seen several big German magazines fold.<br />De Buhr, whose company, JDB Media, puts out a magazine about new DVD releases as well as publications for corporations like T-Mobile and Peugeot, pushed ahead anyway, printing 100,000 copies of the first issue as a trial balloon.<br />But the magazine sold out, and De Buhr ordered 30,000 more copies of the maiden issue, so it would stay on newsstands until the second appeared in March, after which the magazine will appear every other month.<br />His lifestyle magazine walks the line between sexy and pornographic, as in studiously tasteful photographs of nude women — black and white, of course — recreating famous paintings in contemporary settings. Compared with the original's harsh political satire, which included jokes about hijacking airplanes, the articles about flirting in the new one seem merely cheeky rather than revolutionary.<br />The first issue even included a column by the Rev. Sieghard Wilm, pastor at the St. Pauli Church. Wilm, who wrote about discussing sins and the Ten Commandments in a local bar, said he thought the magazine was a good idea but would benefit from focusing more on the community. "People want to be anchored in something local as a counterweight to globalization," he said.<br />The neighborhood's appeal was always more about sex than politics, symbolized by the Herbertstrasse, a street where a sign warns that women are not allowed, except of course for the scantily clad prostitutes sitting in the storefront windows of bordellos.<br />Soldiers and sailors spread the names St. Pauli and Reeperbahn far and wide, while music fans remember it as the place where the Beatles worked on their sound at establishments like the Star Club, now defunct, on the famous street Grosse Freiheit, whose name means great freedom.<br />The chaotic old neighborhood looks downright orderly from the bar on the 20th floor of the Empire Riverside Hotel, featured as a spot for celebrity sightings in the premiere issue of the latest iteration of the St. Pauli Nachrichten. Yet the hotel is just down the street from where left-wing squatters in the 1980s waged a long fight to hold on to the abandoned buildings they had occupied.<br />This past April, neighborhood groups organized what they described as a street festival against gentrification here called "It's Raining Caviar."<br />"At some point the neighborhood begins to lose its soul," said Christian Homfeldt, who tends to the small Sankt Pauli Museum, which sells books and postcards and tries to preserve something of the history of the district by maintaining an archive of documents about the area.<br />Homfeldt bemoaned the impending opening of a Versace store nearby. "The brand alone could drive up rents in the area by at least 10 percent," he said. He and other neighborhood activists said they feared that as a result St. Pauli could lose the artists and small, locally run cafes that made it unique, beyond the flashing neon lights of the striptease clubs.<br />On a recent Saturday night, the streets were packed with revelers spilling out of bars and nightclubs. Prostitutes in moon boots and ski jackets worked the street corners, directing their approaches to men walking alone. Prostitution is legal in Germany, but the more belligerent among the drunks spend the night on a short wooden bed in the basement of the Davidwache police station on the Reeperbahn, a fully functioning police station that is also a red-brick historic landmark, nearly a century old.<br />It is out of this mix of the sordid and the swanky that the new magazine has made its identity. "Most lifestyle magazines have no home, they're just synthetic," said De Buhr, the publisher of the new St. Pauli Nachrichten. "We say very strongly that we have a home port, where you find the erotically dressed bartender who you can go out to the bar and meet afterward."</div><div></div><div></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286658986294411986" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWzkxaoW2SZ2OHkwI19uBXVssagoRj-8fAdBcTUFfXag9zEHVfsrAUFRbWmz3N6gElEvpRev5I49KsU_tfiT_3YElMFWnIc4wsepOwpr7uskJbsC182Y-O-vCV6kwZScao-wWlqAeScCQ/s320/DSC05254.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286658982106614402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 260px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxNENRtXoh1hkYFPscYJRfeT85BnQyT5iMdNYO-Vfsf6dZArxKmDMDtToDnSaOqD5ts8H0HMT8GIVfYFLRabjcaln3aVT-ILgXxLv6ztfbB91n_Ip2G4T8NZTJ1aBrC-kE-dOnxvimVo/s320/DSC05255.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc2HH55QFGol09cK5MJfj8E_hPuj6lNtiKQYRFctLG5tmbq6YklqiTH6cnbNw5QbexqDbQSkd5sb441MYGxCs83MIWCq7ahSZTQXojZpwQ4sG8R0HQC35c3WnfIgMEbYeq1dGTmGJhoQw/s1600-h/DSC05257.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286658516691624034" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 210px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn3alB2apVlJww77Do82jBXGiNhkxqf8URCKLsFcHU1R_eOnbkzVkc51eBZiorutoOgg0zijshbMxmAnG9iy92N6LtrcCN-G-Dwb5ca3iVA5uIt-gMxZmpR3qnBZW_Fu5OdZp5eyXnxUA/s320/DSC05291.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286655788130572802" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 210px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHpBaMPTjL-8kTM9epwJhbqfbkO06UC-egyamQt_0lb9eDWmy4mFFcCagNbi5_jUtKJfRNsBBCkk6FBtUB1oLCJqVfhK6HG0mGd7Wz7aWSdWZXyvV58BlE-gzRaDlTdDJVJbFIrExruUA/s320/DSC05292.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286655793853579074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 206px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0jPttp5LY4i6kaNuPZ4rV7NLFKi7puXOPAScif4tyA7T2SEaHleznbPpjkQXg27fK2zX-K3bEwYrPYz24p0NOsLswkKgbichZWdK0CU2gVbMMzhgm_jZumku5AuiLwU6Z5GwFupD2cwM/s320/DSC05290.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><strong>Sale of CDs continue decline in 2008<br /></strong>By Ben Sisario<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />Sales of recorded music fell sharply in the United States in 2008, as consumers continued to migrate away from CDs, large retailers reduced floor space for music and the recession dampened consumer spending during the critical year-end holiday shopping period.<br />Total album sales, including CDs and full-album downloads, were 428 million, a 14 percent drop from 2007, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Since the industry's peak in 2000, album sales have declined 45 percent, although digital music purchases continue to grow at a rapid rate.<br />The year's biggest seller was Lil Wayne's album "Tha Carter III," which sold 2.87 million copies, followed by Coldplay's "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends," with 2.14 million. "Fearless," the second album by the 19-year-old country star Taylor Swift, was third, with 2.11 million.<br />Swift also scored the sixth-highest seller this year, for her self-titled debut, released in 2006, which sold 1.6 million copies in 2008.<br />The music industry has grown accustomed to dismal sales numbers, and this year even the good news comes with disappointment. "Tha Carter III" is the first release in SoundScan's 17-year history to top the year-end list with sales of less than three million.<br />Sales of digital music continued to soar last year. Just over a billion songs were downloaded, a 27 percent increase from 2007, and some record companies say they are finally beginning to wring significant profit from music on Web sites like YouTube and MySpace.<br />But analysts say that despite the growth and promise of digital music - in 2003 just 19 million songs were purchased as downloads - the money made online is still far from enough to make up for losses in physical sales.<br />"As the digital side grows, you get a different business model, with more revenue streams," said Michael McGuire, an analyst with Gartner, a market research firm. "But do we get back to where the revenue that the labels see is going to be fully replacing the CD in the next four to five years? No."<br />Gartner recently issued a report urging record companies to put their primary focus on downloads.<br />Record companies counter that album sales alone do not give a full picture of the complex new economics of the industry. Rio Caraeff, the executive vice president of eLabs, the digital division of Universal Music Group, said other income, like the fees collected when users stream a video online, had become an essential revenue. Twenty percent of Rihanna's income, he said, has come from the sale of ring tones.<br />"We don't focus anymore on total album sales or the sale of any one particular product as the metric of revenue or success," Caraeff said. "We look at the total consolidated revenue from dozens of revenue lines behind a given artist or project, which include digital sales, the physical business, mobile sales and licensing income."<br />Even as most of the industry pushes for greater online sales, two of the biggest albums of the year were by artists who have been vocal opponents of downloading. Kid Rock's "Rock n Roll Jesus" reached No.4 with just over two million sales, and AC/DC's "Black Ice," sold through an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart, was No.5 with 1.92 million.<br />Neither act sells its music through Apple's iTunes, the dominant online seller. AC/DC has said that selling individual tracks breaks up the continuity of a full album. But à la carte downloads are also far less lucrative than full CDs.<br />At least one sector of the music industry has continued to enjoy robust success: the concert business. Ticket sales in North America in 2008 rose at least 7 percent, to $4.2 billion, according to Pollstar, the touring-industry trade magazine. But in keeping with the trend of recent years, slightly fewer tickets were sold for more money: Attendance for the top 100 tours dropped 3 percent, but the average ticket price climbed 8 percent, to $66.90.<br />The record industry has been eager to share in touring's bull market, and many of the major labels' new contracts are for so-called 360 deals, which give the company a much wider share in an artist's income, from touring to merchandising to product endorsements. But those types of contract are still far from the norm.<br />Despite the growth of online music sales, CDs remain by far the most popular format, although that hold is slipping; 361 million CDs were sold in 2008, down almost 20 percent from the previous year. About 84 percent of all album purchases were CDs, down from 90 percent the year before.<br />And since CDs remain the record industry's biggest profit engine, many analysts worry that the industry will be particularly vulnerable to inventory reductions at retail stores. Big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy account for up to 65 percent of all retail purchases, and many of those stores are sharply reducing the floor space allotted to music, said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at Pali Research in New York.<br />"CDs no longer drive somebody into a store on Tuesday," Greenfield said, referring to the day new CDs usually go on sale. "So the big risk for 2009 is that you will see even more rapid contraction of floor space, as CDs really go out of sight, out of mind for the consumer."<br />THE TOP-SELLING ALBUMS OF 2008<br />1. Lil Wayne, "Tha Carter III" (Cash Money/Universal Motown); 2.87 million<br />2. Coldplay, "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends" (Capitol); 2.14 million<br />3. Taylor Swift, "Fearless" (Big Machine); 2.11 million<br />4. Kid Rock, "Rock n Roll Jesus" (Atlantic); 2.02 million<br />5. AC/DC, "Black Ice" (Columbia); 1.92 million<br />6. Taylor Swift, "Taylor Swift" (Big Machine); 1.6 million<br />7. Metallica, "Death Magnetic" (Warner Brothers); 1.57 million<br />8. T.I., "Paper Trail" (Grand Hustle/Atlantic); 1.52 million<br />9. Jack Johnson, "Sleep Through the Static" (Brushfire/Universal); 1.49 million<br />10. Beyoncé, "I Am ... Sasha Fierce" (Music World/Columbia); 1.46 million<br />Source: Nielsen SoundScan</div><div></div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Asian-American paper in U.S. to halt publication<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />SAN FRANCISCO: AsianWeek, the long-running English-language Asian-American newspaper, will stop publication in 2009 in the face of declining readership and advertising revenue and a softening economy, said its editor and publisher, Ted Fang.<br />The paper's last regular issue was scheduled for Friday, but special editions may be considered, Fang said Wednesday.<br />"There is a huge potential in the Asian-American market," Fang said. "But we're facing the difficulties and the reality of the newspaper environment and the economic environment."<br />"It's a big blow," said David Lee, who teaches political science at San Francisco State University and heads the Chinese-American Voters Education Committee. "It was an important resource for bringing people together."<br />The San Francisco-based paper, established in 1979, had a circulation of 60,000 and served as a platform for issues that affected Asian-Americans. It was host to health campaigns to fight hepatitis B, which disproportionately affects Asians, as well as debates on immigration issues and voter registration drives, Lee said.<br />The newspaper took a blow in 2007, when it published an opinion piece by a contributor titled, "Why I Hate Blacks." Fang later issued an apology, and fired the contributor.</div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTU5ulxJLJY08LlMxPCW0xrQAKgxzVFwRlTtyKkxjgjzSxnThqBOh9V2qsNaUKxQQ4YxVwnfRPdGN8Hf-hExUY2SlOaa7qD4NI1vl2WiAdw3mFcJ0orVbcdX4j4EqNIZ0tCuQhE0NZ0sc/s1600-h/DSC05294.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286655409962870626" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTU5ulxJLJY08LlMxPCW0xrQAKgxzVFwRlTtyKkxjgjzSxnThqBOh9V2qsNaUKxQQ4YxVwnfRPdGN8Hf-hExUY2SlOaa7qD4NI1vl2WiAdw3mFcJ0orVbcdX4j4EqNIZ0tCuQhE0NZ0sc/s320/DSC05294.jpg" border="0" /></a> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286655404608747922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 225px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCjtGenfx2U8kYI6IoofIkUU2USIvvdcXQEhCHhr9JQRFlVGA1wSnpLd4mDrmoSMGthHuPxWDU9dn-OybxPCX4uSCPoSskLn-PN3BE8mVmaaG6meFyI6frZ-nsENkPiEq65ffi_schXgc/s320/DSC05295.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286655402815132482" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCgufg6UlG-TR830NnrcIl-R3Nn2p4gGdcqG-pAfI2-l-6RRHvJkgLGmlMyggZRsb1oFlhPCxh8yGrxRaLPJCSby23HaZBWwku2ppxEUMnWjlmW8_MVtYC1w-5mFkKuebT1wBSiSsAIjU/s320/DSC05379.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKMZsvDVsNxglhmhaUpA3LaqbjiUtB_UQa871xyQvtDwAjUZQBS4yoJhNUVUxg7miWyefS1_FNGob2cYBEMnueOz2WyyjEsvzjsMsGEXj7PfCer3pfJ-tbyVG7KO0DJnStHLy0gXcxAps/s1600-h/DSC05383.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646807689209698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKMZsvDVsNxglhmhaUpA3LaqbjiUtB_UQa871xyQvtDwAjUZQBS4yoJhNUVUxg7miWyefS1_FNGob2cYBEMnueOz2WyyjEsvzjsMsGEXj7PfCer3pfJ-tbyVG7KO0DJnStHLy0gXcxAps/s320/DSC05383.jpg" border="0" /></a> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646487128059170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 310px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxfFpBz23ta4jHEzDP4g4_oD1eQbjG0Kdt_AA-aZk1CfsovvucRO8BBt7w-tth4tsmxqP20OpmPaFVHLOpV5Kwj89HU-1p-XZ9XBOL42qdCCVJPR-XvAck7genUHZwpaiqjocplvLiW_8/s320/DSC05395.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646803897874866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzFBTlhk6V258D_zbhN9XEEIt7u27uL2PG_vkWFS-r-grbV2L-TRuIM7_2kL1LFD4EAJbr4m20QySAMk9pXA_wqcVkdmqI7T9S5FKFYPbtqeihpTqDPFttscKKG92eIcbNE3TyanQ8Cc/s320/DSC05385.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646495729790914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_hk5QlR2mpKpPMVHneFgcLTMtnV3Ql3nHJhH4N9lp64c5Ufe_cgWBqOHQpuW7ZCjEMRyhK9zxVvCPVz0VIMb5bPz-N5zJ3wa3Jfhr1FbKVLRPoN5zLkfyV9Zi834aFSaC41NCocAp9EE/s320/DSC05387.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646494553188226" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNOlISdKoef_pDXD7slNih2TrwPWrbgkWm83raQFipSEed5XDp2RrN15O8wjlHynbVLS_1BJ2V42PUFXcoIYCHJqwcIGThdfvTf6dpBaGO_pdrcyGc3DrDgg4jiXDWUqG-3XJO6pYw69k/s320/DSC05401.jpg" border="0" /> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286704039232550514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZGwcFyeE90zu6VU7Z61eEG3kzr712-SEvZzuCpwPLKftsruaXfcPv3-_LkDB18aSkMAJmzuyDMov8GM-DHNpx2LlDtfM8JwgkpWKolvlvhWnFbLPDo30ZuYjLqhZLHx85OvG6t7u8rfE/s320/DSC05402.jpg" border="0" /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Dozens die in nightclub fire in Bangkok<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />BANGKOK, Thailand: At least 59 people, including a number of foreigners, died when a fire swept through a high-class nightclub jammed with as many as 1,000 New Year's revelers in the Thai capital, police at the scene said Thursday.<br />Police officers said about 130 others were injured when the blaze broke out shortly after midnight at the Santika Club in an entertainment area of Bangkok. Local press reports said 200 sustained injuries.<br />The officers, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said the club was packed with about 1,000 celebrants. Rescue workers said they believed other bodies were still inside the blaze-gutted building.<br />Police Gen. Jongrak Jutanont said at least 59 persons perished and that among the injured were nationals of Australia, Nepal, Japan and the Netherlands. Officials could not immediately provide more specific information.<br />Earlier, Police Maj. Gen. Chokchai Deeprasertwit said the fire may have been caused by firecrackers brought into the club by guests or sparks flying from a New Year's pyrotechnics countdown on the nightclub stage.<br />The club was promoting the New Year's party as "Goodbye Santika" night because the pub owner was planning to move to a new location since the lease on the site could not be extended.<br />The Web site of The Nation newspaper quoted one party-goer, Somchai Frendi, as saying the blaze was caused by "special effects" fireworks to usher in the New Year. The fireworks ignited the second floor ceiling, which was made largely of inflammable, sound-proofing material, he said.<br />The report also quoted a club worker as saying that explosions were heard shortly after the New Year countdown ended and someone shouted, "Fire!"<br />Chokchai said death came through burns, smoke inhalation and injuries during the stampede to escape from the club, which had only one main door for entry and exit.<br />A firefighter at the scene, Watcharapong Sri-saard, said another door at the rear of the building was known only to the staff while an Associated Press reporter saw a small, third door at one side of the building.<br />The firefighter said a number of staircases inside the club as well as bars across the second-floor windows also made escape difficult.<br />The rescue workers said most of the bodies were found in the basement of the club, which attracts a well-heeled crowd of Thais and foreigners. The corpses, placed in white body bags, were laid out in rows in the parking lot in front of the club which was strewn with shoes of the victims.<br />A video provided to AP Television News by one of the rescue workers showed bloodied, bruised and burned victims being dragged out of the burning club or managing to run through the door or shattered windows. Flames were racing through the entire building during the rescue operation and the roof of the concrete building later collapsed.<br />An Associated Press reporter who peered inside the still-burning building said everything in sight had been burned to a crisp.<br />Police and rescue workers said the rescue operation was delayed because of heavy New Year's traffic in the Ekamai entertainment district and the large number of cars parked at the club.<br />"Bodies, some of them probably alive, were falling off the stretchers as the rescue workers rushed them away. The flames were glowing through the broken glass windows. A part of the building had already collapsed," said Andrew Jones, who arrived at the scene shortly after the fire erupted.<br />Jones, a teacher in Bangkok from Salt Ash, England, entered the club briefly, seeing corpses charred beyond recognition inside and people fleeing with burns over 90 percent of their bodies.<br />The ceiling over the front entrance to the club collapsed moments after he got out of the building, he said.<br />One local Web site about the entertainment scene in Bangkok described the club as attracting "an affluent Thai student crowd, with Euro models and Westerners also popping in" with a "whisky-sipping crowd all focused on a large stage."<br />Another site says that the high ceiling and a cross in the main room makes one feel "like walking into a church."<br />___<br />Associated Press writer Christopher Blake contributed to this report</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646175743893506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj72iT4SvfUiS2B1MHGWzzhrcmvZ0v2AuX7ft7AQ9S-osjeLl6VOlqMoArbkvWMC9RupZ-Ry-iW93_YHny6usmKE7bDkWSJsHVmxYE_Q0dCFnED7D6Fh5Z5EbJphd2C68Ezy77XCsPSuuM/s320/DSC05397.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286646170908425106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYuBBUIqbXNR2UFqy6u0czxisf8HbWIzeuyy-jmE9MCeVREUDMHL-ULKeAjQEBCHiz9aOZugajgQS_G06Fi3bBC9WSE9JKb7tS5piwPpU6-WVIJp8jkLUY_wSqqwZU1wyeqTorkd1lCOc/s320/DSC05399.jpg" border="0" /> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>A resolution that may stick: Spending less in '09</strong><br />By Ken Belson<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />Jolene Siana, a writer in Brooklyn, New York, plans to spend time with friends at their homes rather than in wine bars, bringing a $12 bottle rather than blowing $12 on a glass. Nelson Murphy, a hospital maintenance worker in New York, is determined that 2009 will be the year he finally gives up smoking — it is bad for his health, and, at $9 a pack, his wallet.<br />And Felicia Jackson, 23, is promising herself a healthier lifestyle — physically and financially. She will take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to work instead of frequenting McDonald's for lunch (and sometimes breakfast), and walk to the subway instead of hopping in a town car.<br />"It's $5 each way, so that's $50 a week," said Jackson, who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan. "I'm going to make a tighter budget this year with the economy the way it is."<br />The resolutions may sound the same, but in this New Year of Recession, the reasons driving them are different. Who can afford to pay $100 a month for a gym membership that goes unused? Walking more sounds a lot like saving on gas. Appreciating the little things is about maybe not having big fancy things around.<br />The annual Marist College end-of-year resolution poll showed that 12 percent of Americans nationwide are vowing to spend less, the third most popular response after losing weight (20 percent) and quitting smoking (16 percent). Economic pressures are so heavy that "spend less money — save more" replaced "be a better person," which dropped to seventh place in the survey of 1,003 people nationwide during the second week of December.<br />"When you ask about New Year's resolutions, it's usually a fun thing, part of the holiday nostalgia," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. "So when you're getting the answers that we're getting, it suggests that there's a lot of serious concerns that are overwhelming the typical tradition. It's a little bit more of a sobering time for people."<br />New Year's resolutions are at least as old as calendars. More than four millennia ago, the Babylonians had an 11-day new year festival and started anew by returning borrowed farm equipment. The Romans honored the god Janus — who looked backward and forward — by designating January as the start of the year. They reflected on the past year while promising to do better in the new one.<br />But interviews around New York this week found that the typical year-end hopefulness about fresh starts and brighter days ahead is largely being overshadowed by fear that the economically calamitous 2008 could become an even rougher 2009. In dozens of conversations with people boarding trains at Grand Central Terminal, eating lunch in Bryant Park, shopping at Atlantic Center in Prospect Heights or walking through Union Square, worries about dollars and cents seeped into otherwise predictable promises to shed pounds and spend more time with friends and family.<br />Take Siana, who is 39, works as a waitress at a private dining club and in 2005 published a memoir of her troubled youth ("Go Ask Ogre: Letters From a Deathrock Cutter"). When asked about her goals for 2009, she first professed a desire to live healthier by using microwave ovens less, eating more organic food and taking more walks. But then she said she would be eating out less often as well. More than two dozen co-workers were recently laid off, she said, which has made her anxious about her job security.<br />So for socializing in 2009, Siana plans to opt for dive bars, not wine bars — or, better yet, gatherings at someone's apartment. Sushi dinners will be less frequent, too.<br />"I'll be cooking more instead of eating out, and cutting down on entertainment," she said while munching on a vegetable sandwich outside a Subway store in Atlantic Terminal.<br />Chris Walling, 26, a financial analyst, wants to break the cycle of losing weight in the winter only to gain it back when the weather warms and his tendency to fall off the wagon of twice-weekly workouts at the gym. "I'm paying the money, so I might as well go," he said of his gym membership. ( Walling also resolved to get a "really cool girlfriend," which could definitely have a negative effect on his finances.)<br />Kevin Cooper, 22, a glassblower from New London, Connecticut, said he intended to commute more by bicycle to his studio in Stonington, a two-hour ride that would not only help him keep his trim frame intact, but also reduce wear and tear on his car.<br />"It's mostly to stay in shape," he said, while hawking his vases at an arts show in Grand Central Terminal. "But there's also the mileage on the car and the gas."<br />Some people are setting goals that take advantage of the bad news. Ali Boddy, 30, a salesman for T-Mobile, is banking on home prices falling further so he will be able to afford a house on Long Island, perhaps in Deer Park, North Babylon or Northport. Homes there, he said, are half the price of what he would pay in Flushing, where he lives now with his in-laws.<br />Katie West, 14, who was visiting New York with her family this week from their home near Syracuse, also seems to have gotten the austerity bug.<br />"I want to save more than $100," Katie said as she watched the holiday light show on the cavernous ceiling of Grand Central. "I get $20 allowance a week. Normally I spend the whole thing."<br />She said she did not know yet what she would do with the money.</div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><strong>At least 59 die in Bangkok fire</strong><br />By Seth Mydans<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />BANGKOK: A fire at a high-end Bangkok nightclub killed at least 59 people and injured more than 200 shortly after midnight Thursday as revelers were celebrating the new year, the police said.<br />Nightclub workers said fireworks had been set off around the midnight countdown, but the cause of the fire has not been determined, according to Lieutenant Sutin Pongkhamphan, the police officer in charge of the case.<br />He said 54 people died at the scene at the popular club, the Santika, and that five more died at hospitals. An additional 212 people were injured, 21 severely.<br />Police Major Akaluk Siriyodsophon, the officer in charge of the local precinct station, said 39 bodies had been identified by Thursday afternoon — 38 Thais and one Singaporean. He said the deaths were about equally divided between men and women.<br />Of the injured, the police said, 35 were foreigners, including people from Australia, Britain, Korea, Singapore and the United States.<br />Forensic work continued Thursday evening, police officials said. Scores of bodies were laid out on the street in white sheets in front of the blackened nightclub. Sirens sounded throughout the night in the crowded streets of central Bangkok.<br />"We were all dancing and suddenly there was a big flame that came out of the front of the stage and everybody was running away," Oh Benjamas, a partygoer, told Reuters. "People started running for the doors and breaking the windows."<br />Most of the deaths and injuries were caused by a stampede in the three-story club, which has one main exit and was packed with about 1,000 people, Sutin said. Other deaths came from burns and smoke inhalation. "The fire spread very quickly because there was a lot of fuel in the club, like alcohol, foam and balloons," he said.<br />One employee said that explosions were heard shortly after the New Year countdown, according to The Nation newspaper Web site. "After the explosions, someone shouted, 'Fire!'" the employee said. He said the fire had started on the top floor and spread quickly, sending smoke through the building and causing panic.<br />The New Year's Eve party was advertised as "Bad Boy Party" on the club's Web site. It also called the party "Goodbye Santika," apparently because the owner was planning to move to a new location.<br />The Santika, in the city's Ekamai district, is popular with the local Thai and foreign jet set. "It attracts an affluent Thai student crowd, with Euro models and Westerners also popping in," according to one Thai entertainment Web site.<br />In the words of another site: "Beautiful music. Beautiful lights. Beautiful babes. Beautiful dudes. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful." The Web site adds: "This is a place to go and display yourself. You wanna be seen? You can't go wrong with this place."</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEyubWzt8YK2TQ30Za3iwqBx9d6CQx1FPgDnLeuP_KYfbk-51CpoJ4tjHS5sCbABD15s_uXzVOeo1ebhlFaiRTJVDsiOtTuPggqMwW95x5WojTlOwXKKyA8ALvPk8Z3WWZE9dIFks4Co/s1600-h/DSC05405.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645843371532546" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEyubWzt8YK2TQ30Za3iwqBx9d6CQx1FPgDnLeuP_KYfbk-51CpoJ4tjHS5sCbABD15s_uXzVOeo1ebhlFaiRTJVDsiOtTuPggqMwW95x5WojTlOwXKKyA8ALvPk8Z3WWZE9dIFks4Co/s320/DSC05405.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645841471817634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEictT1PN6Te95A9XKWYefAxNLLQWIAt5vt5KEmFr0GnxojQkiR-pPsiKEdq9DgxYMue1PQfMXBCtai5WyhD6bdXvt0AoD7eA2twDieZ2nPK2q4Oz1XS6RtXVyCm8rkY8D8q60zkL60Dk94/s320/DSC05407.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645839950275538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8A2ffEeRoaZqX9QDhYXCacb2_2wd_B1zeJI6IlSO-VgPrd3sF5XD6mVWQ3W0lV0iI8oIhTcBQMfAguvDADqfuf8SC4vMxyZhuuRnFv2pmGwKFoL6Zyvtd5XjBtjCf1XI_YwZB14T-6rI/s320/DSC05408.jpg" border="0" /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645834110407586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0bp-XNlMACmG8Vr4C2e-ZgJjl6PEzfpRng_dNRwm6CvBQqePQuYb19akcZ4k-t0M5PKACnrDVIJngmAL2Avwejto9eqtX4ye-xmLFlwJy27RoAnmAKnvXjezM2AX4WuAr5a7cnhdGfg/s320/DSC05409.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645565893675090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 222px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdo7AZ_ljZzTzLd4fGennJS2f8srxJxreMcoXSlzola-hbPjjouBA7V68geIIzzDlh9iU2NL57PYMOt9LD0kSgZZU7WjC6CU7luaddd4ZDkiznSaQOUPfwpQBmeBpPvnW2CX917GGA9RE/s320/DSC05410.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645563236159314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 257px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJHK-KDReezbBWZvdlmnLrejd_DVWqMxiXkDMLTUvuMBR76DjP9NIRNak5qklmsscgJ1B0WZD2kDJS1BQMr5W-MQun4CqsoBJz_2QSMF4VzN_UhzWZeZ8LyeWzf4ydk5jWVo_b2i4uugY/s320/DSC05411.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645560951582786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX4mgpNc7oCkrlpGIWnTgurZJZdj6zKpBdG3IAxM5JrAEyWT3tGse6h32zySkJTY2uItrfJEAOUhhgxNjEmiAVUVZkzQ1k8rijihaiE-XEin1U6AB7TSTXZPaYORmR16vv7xrAVfuPRRc/s320/DSC05413.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645554092167842" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRHX5xpSuCrDHjh7ssHIEpsJk9IbUDIYXe0aEeYIfS9VY-AbjHfKErWOHpP8vsZDxmHwvjSquaAX2wIQ9d9tV1Cgn_SggARqHnd0Qma0EC379WOf8pUeaig4ykO6318afexjfidmV44M/s320/DSC05415.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286645550986003506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS411bFBd1qLiBq89ogWFmXXy4hQmXQIJ0JQPocOuXCYeL4GvY_h8DmtUu5vWT0SXWiLq4FI_jK_b7xHB1PNk6dyaH5eBuGQwbQdtyb6rP_s4qlGBKfMZO7II3kE9KuBdbuhQQ702Imts/s320/DSC05416.jpg" border="0" /> </div><div></div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>FTSE registers worst annual loss</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Dominic Lau<br />The FTSE 100 index closed out 2008 on Wednesday with its biggest annual fall since its launch in 1984, sent reeling by the global credit crisis and looming worldwide recession.<br />The benchmark registered its third straight daily rise, closing up 41.49 points, or 0.9 percent, at 4,434.17 in thin trade in a shortened New Year's Eve session.<br />But in the year it shed 31.3 percent compared with a 3.8 percent gain in 2007.<br />The FTSE 100 fared better than Germany's DAX, down 40.4 percent for the year, and France's CAC, off about 42 percent.<br />Defensive drugmakers were among the top-weighted gainers, with GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Shire putting on between 0.4 and 2.2 percent.<br />The FTSE 350 pharmaceuticals and biotechnology index was the best performer among the FTSE 350 sub-sectors, up 8 percent in 2008. The industrial metals index was at the bottom, down nearly 84 percent this year.<br />"The main concern (for 2009) is that actions taken by governments up to now may not alleviate the credit problem for companies," said Tim Whitehead, head of portfolio services at Redmayne-Bentley.<br />"If the problem has not been adequately addressed, then any initial optimism could wane and we could have a more difficult second half in 2009."<br />Whitehead said there was a chance the markets may have factored in most of the bad news and he saw support for the FTSE 100 at around 3,800.<br />"Hopefully, the actions taken by governments with interest rates and other measures will help in the first half of next year," he said.<br />Banks, at the epicentre of the financial storm, rose with HSBC up 2 percent, Standard Chartered gaining 4.9 percent and Barclays putting on 3 percent.<br />Lloyds TSB, however, dipped 0.4 percent. The Financial Times said Lloyds had signalled its determination to see off demands from the trustees of the HBOS pension scheme for greater security for retirement benefits once its acquisition of the mortgage lender is completed.<br />HBOS advanced 0.9 percent and was the biggest FTSE 100 faller in 2008, losing 90 percent.<br />VODAFONE RISES<br />Shares in market heavyweight Vodafone rose 2.1 percent, bringing their full-year loss to 27.5 percent, after Credit Suisse set a "trading buy" recommendation on the stock, saying sterling weakness has left earnings guidance and consensus beatable for mobile phone operator.<br />Oil producers were mixed, with weaker crude prices. Royal Dutch Shell, BG Group, Cairn Energy and Tullow Oil were down between 0.3 and 2.2 percent. But BP rose 1.2 percent.<br />The FTSE 350 oil and gas producers index lost 16 percent for the year but still outpaced the banks index, down 56.8 percent, and the mining index, down 55.7 percent.<br />Randgold Resources, promoted to the FTSE 100 two weeks ago, was the top gainer among the blue chips in 2008, up 62 percent. The stock was down 1.5 percent on Wednesday.<br />Among mining shares, BHP Billiton, Antofagasta and Rio Tinto advanced 0.9-2.9 percent.<br />But Vedanta Resources, Kazakhmys and Eurasian Natural Resources were in the red.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div></div><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Pound puts in last minute spurt to end ugly year<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />By Veronica Brown<br />The pound rose in holiday-thinned trade on Wednesday, but was set for its worst yearly performance against the euro since the single currency's inception almost a decade ago as a bleak economic outlook hobbled sentiment.<br />Worries about rising unemployment, deteriorating public finances and aggressive rate cuts have pummelled the pound in recent months.<br />The 26-year highs hit just over a year ago above the psychologically-key $2 (1.37 pound) mark are a dim and distant memory.<br />Sterling's near-27 percent slide against the dollar over the year to date would be the sharpest since the gold standard monetary system was abolished in 1971.<br />The euro, having hit a succession of record highs versus the pound this week, retreated roughly 2 percent by 12:51 p.m. to 95.44 pence but stayed in sight of Tuesday's record highs just a few pence shy of parity.<br />Moves on Wednesday were sharpened by thin liquidity, dealers said. Analysts said further pound losses were almost inevitable.<br />"Most of the bad news is already priced in to sterling, and this suggests the euro/sterling move has been a bit overdone. But the overall backdrop is still negative for sterling," said David Powell, G10 currency strategist at Bank of America in London.<br />"The UK has much larger imbalances than the euro zone in terms of its current account deficit. Also its greater dependence on the financial sector and the higher level of consumer indebtedness suggest the economic recovery in the UK will lag that of the euro zone," he added.<br />Against the dollar, the pound rose 1 percent to $1.4577 on last-minute adjustments in some short positions in the UK currency. The pair hit 6-1/2 year lows the previous day at $1.4380.<br />This year's sharp falls against the currencies of the UK's main trading partners brought the pound to successive historic lows on a trade-weighted basis, according to daily records kept by the Bank of England going back to 1990.<br />On Wednesday, trade-weighted sterling was at 74.6, having slipped to 73.3 in the previous session.<br />The euro has soared by over 30 percent against the pound this year, jumping roughly 16 percent so far this month alone.<br />YIELD IN FOCUS<br />Lower interest rates compared with the euro zone have become the latest reason to sell sterling against the euro.<br />The Bank of England has slashed rates by three points since October to 2 percent, leaving them lower than the 2.5 percent in the euro zone, with more cuts expected in 2009.<br />Markets have fully priced in a cut in rates to 1.5 percent when the Bank meets on January 8, while indicating the possibility of a bigger reduction.<br />"Further reductions will be seen during the early part of 2009 as the race to zero continues," said James Hughes, market analyst at CMC Markets in London in a note to clients.<br />Yields on 10-year government bonds have fallen faster than their counterparts in the euro zone, pushing the spread between the two to its narrowest in around six years according to Reuters charts.<br />Economists forecast a sharp contraction for the economy next year and fear high government debt levels will limit room for additional stimulus measures to temper recession.<br />But some strategists see room for the euro to suffer as the impact of the financial crisis becomes clearer in the currency bloc.<br />"There are just so many issues within the euro zone that no-one wants to talk about. It definitely should not be a strong euro story," said UBS strategist Geoffrey Yu in London.<br />(Additional reporting by Eric Burroughs in Hong Kong and Jessica Mortimer in London)<br />(Reporting by Veronica Brown; Editing by Ron Askew)</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div><br /><strong>1,600+ retailers expected to go bust in 2009</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, January 1, 2009<br />LONDON: The downturn in consumer spending will drive over 1,600 retailers out of business in 2009, triggering thousands of job losses and leaving more than one in ten shops empty, a report said Thursday.<br />Market researchers Experian said trading conditions for survivors would be the worst for at least 30 years and there would be knock-on effects at suppliers, manufacturers and service providers.<br />"There is no doubt that the impact on retail will resonate through the entire economy," said Jonathan de Mello, Director of Retail Consultancy at Experian.<br />Retailers are slashing prices as indebted shoppers curb spending amid rising unemployment, sliding house prices and fears of a deep recession.<br />Experian said big discounts had lured some consumers back into stores, with shopper numbers leaping 12.8 percent in the last week of December. But that was not enough to prevent a 3.1 percent drop in footfall for the month as a whole.<br />"The last minute surge in shoppers came as a relief to retailers but for most it was not nearly enough," de Mello said.<br />"The boost in numbers was driven by massive unprecedented discounting all at the expense of retailer margins."<br />Some retailers have not survived, with sweets-to-DVDs chain Woolworths and furniture group MFI falling into administration, a form of creditor protection, in the run-up to Christmas and several smaller companies following suit in recent days.<br />Experian said 1,137 non-food retailers went out of business in the year ended December, up 21.2 percent on the year, and forecast 440 more would become insolvent over the next four months and the total for 2009 as a whole would be about 1,400.<br />Some 194 food retailers failed in 2008, up 10.9 percent, and Experian predicted that number would rise to about 230 in 2009.<br />"The collapses we've seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg," de Mello said.<br />"At the moment there is too much space in the market and not enough demand. Many retailers are either making no margin or losing money. We anticipate that January will be the toughest for 30 years."<br />Experian said the vacancy level on shopping streets was around 7 percent, but with a flurry of businesses recently going into administration that would rise to about 10 percent -- "a figure which is likely to increase as more retailers go into administration in January."<br />"This large scale retail business failure is expected to have a significant impact on high street returns, affecting everything from investors' yields on rents to revenues to local authorities," it said.<br />"This is not to forget the devastating impact on people's jobs and livelihoods," de Mello. "Britain is still a nation of shop keepers and the retail sector is one of the UK's largest employers."<br />(Reporting by Mark Potter; Editing by Mike Nesbit)</div><div></div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Pepsi and Beckham end relationship</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />CHICAGO: PepsiCo Incon Wednesday said it is ending the soft drink and snack maker's endorsement relationship with football star David Beckham after 10 years in a move described as mutual by both sides.<br />"We wish David well with the many projects he is pursuing and look forward to the possibility of partnering together with him again someday," the company said in a statement.<br />Beckham, who plays for the Major League Soccer (MLS) team Los Angeles Galaxy but is on loan to AC Milan in Italy, said he had nothing but good memories of his years pitching Pepsi.<br />"I hope everyone who has seen the work Pepsi and I have done together enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it and, who knows, there may yet be another chapter in this long relationship," he said in a statement provided by Pepsi.<br />The U.S. recession has hurt the sports world, causing the National Football League and National Basketball Association to cut jobs, Major League Baseball to freeze budgets and Arena Football League to cancel its 2009 season.<br />Corporate sponsors and advertisers have not been spared either with many reducing spending.<br />General Motors Corp has slashed promotional spending, including the decision to stop airing ads during the NFL's popular Super Bowl championship game next year. The struggling automaker also said about a month ago it would end its endorsement deal a year early with popular pro golfer Tiger Woods at the end of December.<br />Terms of Beckham's deal were not disclosed, but the Daily Mail newspaper said the contract had been worth 2 million pounds a year. Beckham touted Pepsi in commercials over the years dressed as a cowboy, a surfer and a gladiator.<br />In October, Pepsi, which makes Pepsi-Cola drinks, Frito-Lay snacks and Quaker foods, posted a weaker-than-expected third-quarter profit and cut its full-year outlook as the economic slowdown has hurt beverage sales, especially of bottled water.<br />It also said then that it would cut 3,300 jobs, or about 1.8 percent of its work force, as part of a plan to save more than $1.2 billion (823 million pounds) over three years.<br />In past years, other Pepsi celebrity pitchmen have included pop stars Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.<br />(Reporting by Ben Klayman)</div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><br /><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-92202692875849391972008-12-31T05:13:00.035+01:002009-01-02T19:16:31.261+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Tuesday, 30th December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Swiss nuclear smuggling suspect released from jail </strong></div><strong><div align="justify"><br /></strong>By William J. Broad<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />The Swiss authorities have released from jail a man suspected of smuggling atomic technology to Libya and Iran as part of the nuclear black market of Abdul Qadeer Khan, officials and family members said.<br />The suspect, Urs Tinner, was freed Dec. 22 after more than four years in investigative detention, Swiss officials said Monday. They added that his brother Marco remained in jail because of worries that he still had access to nuclear-weapons secrets.<br />The developments mark a new phase in Switzerland's long efforts to prosecute the family of Swiss engineers, including the Tinner patriarch, Friedrich. All three are suspected of criminal export violations. The father was released from jail in 2006 pending legal action.<br />The Tinners are suspected of having worked for Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer who sold illegal materials to Libya, Iran and North Korea before Western nations disrupted his operations in 2003.<br />International arms inspectors and Western officials have long worried that blueprints for nuclear arms found on the Tinners' computers may have been sold to clients of the smuggling ring or copied and hidden for later sale.<br />In May, the president of Switzerland confirmed that the government had destroyed a trove of computer files and other material documenting the family's business dealings. He said that the action was taken to keep plans for nuclear arms and technologies from ever falling into terrorist hands.<br />But in interviews last summer with The New York Times, U.S. officials said they had urged the destruction less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a secret relationship between the Tinners and the CIA. They said that the family provided a unique lens on the secret activities of Libya, Iran and Khan.<br />Last month, a lawyer for Urs Tinner filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights arguing that the long pretrial detention and the destruction of the files had breached his client's rights. He described the incarceration as "worthy of Guantánamo."<br />In Bern, Andreas Müller, the examining magistrate in the Tinner case who is assessing whether a trial is warranted, decided Dec. 19 that Urs and Marco Tinner should go free, officials said. Müller has said that the destruction of the Tinner files complicated the case's prosecution.<br />In an e-mail message, Müller said that Switzerland had not dropped possible charges of export violations against the two men but that the "time served in pretrial custody became unproportional" to the potential punishment.<br />If the Tinners are formally charged and their case goes to trial in Switzerland, they would face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of breaking laws on the export of sensitive goods. Time in pretrial detention would count toward any possible sentence.<br />On Dec. 21, the Swiss attorney general intervened and asked for Marco Tinner to be kept in jail because of concerns that he still had information on how to make nuclear arms, officials said.<br />A family member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Marco Tinner's fate as a prisoner was still unclear but that the family might learn of developments in a few days. The whole episode, the relative added, "has been very, very painful for a lot of people."</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong>********************</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Ex-U.S. Army engineer pleads guilty to spying for Israel </strong></div><div align="justify"><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NEW YORK: An 85-year-old former U.S. Army mechanical engineer likely will get no prison sentence after admitting Tuesday he passed classified documents to the Israelis in the 1970s and '80s.<br />Ben-ami Kadish told U.S. Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz he believes he was promised the government will not seek a prison term when he is sentenced Feb. 13.<br />Assistant U.S. Attorney Iris Lan said prosecutors promised only that they would not oppose or challenge a sentence that included no prison time.<br />Kadish, a U.S. citizen who lives in New Jersey, pleaded guilty only to one of the four charges of conspiracy he originally faced.<br />He was accused of taking home classified documents from 1979 to 1985, when he worked at the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal. The government said he let an Israeli agent photograph documents, including information about nuclear weapons, a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet and the U.S. Patriot missile air defense system.<br />Prosecutors said it appeared that Kadish, who was born in Connecticut but was raised in Palestine in an area the British government was trying to turn into a Jewish state, was motivated by a desire to help Israel.<br />The judge asked Kadish if he obtained the classified documents from the library of the Picatinny Arsenal and supplied them to Yossi Yagur, an Israeli government agent who had requested them.<br />Kadish, who worked there from 1963 to 1990, said he had.<br />The judge also asked if Kadish requested anything of value or received anything of value for the classified documents.<br />Kadish said he did not. He admitted that he provided the documents for the benefit of Israel.<br />Yagur, now retired and living in Tel Aviv, is the agent who obtained information from convicted Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence for selling military secrets to Israel while working as an intelligence analyst for the Navy. Pollard's case damaged U.S.-Israeli relations and remains a sore point between the countries.<br />U.S. authorities say Kadish confessed to FBI agents that he had given Yagur between 50 and 100 classified documents and accepted no cash in return, only small gifts and occasional dinners for him and his family.<br />Kadish had told the FBI that he knew that one restricted document he provided to the agent included atomic-related information and that he did not have the required clearance to borrow it, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.<br />Outside court on Tuesday, Kadish, asked if he was hopeful the spy case was over, said, "I hope so." His wife told him not to say any more.</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center">********************</div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"></div><div align="center"><strong>South Korea "seeks to pay" North to return abductees</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />SEOUL: South Korea has been drawing up plans to buy the release of more than 1,000 of its citizens held in North Korea and repair strained ties through the massive aid for its impoverished neighbour, local media reported Tuesday.<br />The South wants to entice the North into freeing South Korean civilians it has abducted and prisoners it has held since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War through cash, materials and food, the daily Chosun Ilbo reported government officials as saying.<br />North Korea has cut almost all ties with the South in anger at the policies of President Lee Myung-bak, who took office in February and ended what once had been a free flow of unconditional aid to his prickly neighbour.<br />The Communist North and capitalist South are still technically at war, never having signed a formal peace treaty to end hostilities in 1953.<br />Analysts said the North's already staggering economy was dealt a blow by the loss of aid from the South and will be hit hard by a cut in aid to punish it for not living up to the terms of an international nuclear disarmament deal.<br />South Korea has repeatedly offered cash to the North to return its citizens but Pyongyang has not accepted, Yonhap news agency quoted officials as saying.<br />The South's Unification would not confirm the reports but said the return of its citizens from the North is one of its top policy concerns.<br />Yonhap said last week that the North, which denies holding South Koreans against their will, had approached Seoul about working out a plan to exchange South Koreans for cash and economic incentives.<br />Japan has hit North Korea with sanctions and suspended aid as it has called on Pyongyang to settle problems caused by its agents abducting Japanese nationals decades ago and holding them in the reclusive communist state.<br />North Korea, with an economy estimated at about $20 billion (13.8 billion pounds) a year, has lost out on at least $1 billion in aid the South had been supplying each year due to the strain in ties.<br />About two weeks ago, the United States called for a suspension of heavy fuel oil aid to the energy-starved North because at six-way nuclear talks this month Pyongyang did not agree to a system to check claims it made about its atomic arms program.<br />(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun; Editing by Nick Macfie) </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"><br /> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center">****************</div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong>Pakistan urges India to stand down troops</strong></div><div align="justify"><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Kamran Haider<br />Pakistan urged India on Tuesday to reduce tension by deactivating its forward air bases and standing down troops, but New Delhi angrily rejected suggestions it was aggravating tension with its nuclear-armed rival.<br />A near-daily, frenzied exchange of words has added to bilateral tensions that touched the boiling point after last month's attacks in Mumbai in which 179 people were killed. India says the attackers were trained in Pakistan.<br />"I believe if India deactivates its forward air bases and similarly, relocates its troops to peacetime positions, that will be a positive step," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in a televised address.<br />"I believe by this, the existing tension in the region will be reduced," he said, calling for resumption of a dialogue suspended by India after the Mumbai attacks.<br />Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and has denied any role, blaming "non-state actors."<br />But Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee refuted suggestions India was mobilising its military and aggravating an already tense atmosphere.<br />"We have not escalated any tension, so where is the question of our de-escalation?" he told reporters, referring to Qureshi's suggestions on reducing tensions between the two neighbours.<br />Mukherjee told PTI news agency any military movement now was only part of routine annual winter exercises. India had earlier said its troops were on standby, although it said it had made no new deployments since the Mumbai attacks.<br />"There is no no question of mobilisation or escalation of tension," PTI quoted Mukherjee as saying.<br />As tension rose after the Mumbai attacks Pakistan cancelled army leave and moved a "limited number" of soldiers off the Afghan border "for defensive measures," military officials said.<br />The military has officially denied any build-up of forces on the Indian border, though a security official said some troops had been moved there.<br />"We have not done anything which can escalate the tension between India and Pakistan because from day one I am saying, this is not an India-Pakistan issue," Mukherjee told reporters.<br />"This is an attack perpetrated by elements emanating from the land of Pakistan and Pakistan government would take action.<br />"We are repeatedly saying that, yes, we will give you evidences, as earlier we have given you, but please act on it."<br />India, the United States and Britain have blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), set up by Pakistani security agencies in the late 1980s to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.<br />The group was banned in Pakistan in 2002.<br />India is demanding Pakistan dismantle what it calls the infrastructure of terrorism and has put a "pause" on a four-year peace process that had brought better ties between the old rivals.<br />"It's our point of view that pressure and coercion do not improve relations between friends but make them complicated," Qureshi said.<br />"That will not benefit the two countries but those forces which tried to create tension and unease by this incident and put the peace of this region at stake."<br />(Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee; Writing by Robert Birsel and Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing by Sugita Katyal)</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>0900</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdcPpou3O5LSnVB0QJ3KuaLeV4NiJsTkwMQPgTiMMZgERYEjZMEzwcgKOhafHP8QRoYeH4LvJzDuyd1S9en4jEQleO_PY-oRlyqMbuafRiaAaMpB0DonyFhkNKjSvw6eVD-YO6GUdlY44/s1600-h/DSC04921.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285822002794130594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdcPpou3O5LSnVB0QJ3KuaLeV4NiJsTkwMQPgTiMMZgERYEjZMEzwcgKOhafHP8QRoYeH4LvJzDuyd1S9en4jEQleO_PY-oRlyqMbuafRiaAaMpB0DonyFhkNKjSvw6eVD-YO6GUdlY44/s320/DSC04921.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong></strong> </p><p><strong>RWE gets link for new nuclear plant<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />LONDON: RWE npower has secured grid connection rights for a new nuclear power station at Wylfa in north Wales and acquired options to buy farmland close to the existing nuclear power station, the company said on Tuesday.<br />The UK arm of German utility RWE has been granted permission to feed 3.6 gigawatts of electricity into the national grid at the site on the island of Anglesey but will consult with local people before making any firm plans, the company said.<br />"We are serious and committed to progressing new nuclear options. Anglesey's nuclear heritage means it has great potential as a location for new nuclear build," RWE npower Chief Executive Andrew Duff said.<br />Duff called on the government to clear the way for investment in other types of generation to avoid a looming shortage of power plants before new nuclear plants are built.<br />"Nuclear energy can provide clean, secure and affordable electricity supplies in the mid and long term, but the country also needs early and significant investment in a diverse mix of power generation in order to reconcile climate targets and security of supply," he said.<br />"Without major investment in UK energy infrastructure over the coming years, the UK faces shortages in the approach to 2015."<br />The government wants to replace ageing and state-built atomic energy facilities, like the Magnox power station at Wylfa which is due to close in 2010, with new nuclear reactors built and run by the private sector.<br />France's EDF, the world's biggest nuclear power operator which is already building a new plant in Flamanville, France, has said it plans up to four reactors in Britain.<br />EDF bought land near Wylfa early this year but has since said it would rather build at two sites owned by British Energy, a company it is in the process of buying.<br />(Reporting by Daniel Fineren)</p><p></p><p>******************</p><p><strong>At plant in coal ash spill, toxic deposits by the ton</strong><br />By Shaila Dewan<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />In a single year, a coal-fired electric plant deposited more than 2.2 million pounds of toxic materials in a holding pond that failed last week, flooding 300 acres in East Tennessee, according to a 2007 inventory filed with the Environmental Protection Agency.<br />The inventory, disclosed by the Tennessee Valley Authority on Monday at the request of The New York Times, showed that in just one year, the plant's byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems.<br />And the holding pond, at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a TVA plant 40 miles west of Knoxville, contained many decades' worth of these deposits.<br />For days, authority officials have maintained that the sludge released in the spill is not toxic, though coal ash has long been known to contain dangerous concentrations of heavy metals. On Monday, a week after the spill, the authority issued a joint statement with the EPA and other agencies recommending that direct contact with the ash be avoided and that pets and children should be kept away from affected areas.<br />Residents complained that the authority had been slow to issue information about the contents of the ash and the water, soil and sediment samples taken in and around the spill.<br />"They think that the public is stupid, that they can't put two and two together," said Sandy Gupton, a registered nurse who hired an independent firm to test the spring water on her family's 300-acre farm, now sullied by sludge from the spill. "It took five days for the TVA to respond to us."<br />Richard Moore, the inspector general of the authority, said he would open an investigation into the cause of the spill, the adequacy of the response, and how to prevent spills from similar landfills at other authority plants, according to a report in The Knoxville News Sentinel.<br />Elevated levels of lead and thallium and what the Environmental Protection Agency called "very high" levels of arsenic have been found in water samples taken near the site of the spill.<br />Though the EPA, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the authority have spoken daily about their efforts to monitor air, soil and water quality, complete results have been released for only two samples, both taken from a drinking water intake site that is upstream of the spill. The water there met drinking standards.<br />A test for heavy metals in water, soil or sediment should take two to eight hours, said Peter Schulert, the chief executive of the Environmental Science Corporation, an environmental laboratory near Nashville. "There's no reason why you couldn't have the results within a day," he said.<br />The data on the toxic compounds produced by the plant was filed with the EPA this year, said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the power authority. It was posted on the authority's Web site only in a section labeled "air quality."<br />At full strength, the plant uses 14,000 tons of coal a day and supplies enough electricity for 670,000 households. Its refuse, the ash, rose 55 feet above the banks of the Emory River, which flows into the Clinch River and then the Tennessee. Early last Monday, after a period of heavy rain, the earthen dike that contained the ash breached and 5.4 million cubic yards slid away, covering 300 acres in muck and knocking a nearby home off its foundation, according to the TVA's estimates. Mike Farmer, the Roane County executive, said three houses were left uninhabitable and 36 more residential properties had sustained damage.<br />The authority has been using backhoes and heavy equipment to clean up the ash and is building weirs, or underwater dams, to try to keep it from traveling downstream. Officials do not have an estimate of the cost of the cleanup or how long it will take, said a spokeswoman, Catherine Mackey.<br />The spill has reignited a debate over whether coal ash should be regulated as a hazardous waste. In 2000, the EPA backed away from its recommendation to do so in the face of industry opposition, promising instead to issue national guidelines for proper ash disposal, though it never did.<br />Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a nonprofit policy group based in Knoxville, criticized the TVA for not providing more information to residents, including the sample results.<br />He also criticized the agency for increasing the flow of the Tennessee River to keep the ash from approaching the drinking water intake for Kingston, a town a half-mile up from the confluence of the Clinch and the Tennessee.<br />"They're actually moving the stuff further downstream, in order to protect the drinking supply at Kingston," he said.</p><p></p><p></p><p>******************</p><p><strong>Guinea junta names civilian prime minister<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Saliou Samb<br />Guinea's ruling military junta named banker Kabine Komara as prime minister on Tuesday, a week after it took control of the West African bauxite exporter.<br />The National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), which seized power on the death of President Lansana Conte, had promised to appoint a civilian prime minister.<br />Its leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, has said he will not seek election to the presidency.<br />"Kabine Komara, former administrator at Eximbank, is named prime minister," said a CNDD statement broadcast on state radio, referring to the Egypt-based African Export-Import Bank.<br />Analysts say power remains concentrated in the hands of the military, and a key test of the CNDD's adherence to its rhetoric of reform will be the speed with which elections are organised.<br />The CNDD has pledged to hold elections in 2010, and named as one of its priorities fighting the corruption it said had become endemic under Conte.<br />"Kabine Komara is a competent man who has experience of administration and who knows the country," said Sekou Konate, general secretary of former ruling political party the Progress and Unity Party. "The junta has chosen him to assure the transition."<br />Komara arrived in Guinea late on Tuesday, and travelled to the Alpha Yaya Diallo military camp in Conakry, used as a base by Camara.<br />Neighbouring Senegal has endorsed the new administration, but the international community has demanded a return to constitutional rule.<br />On Monday, the African Union suspended Guinea, and the United States and European Union have condemned the military takeover, though Camara's coup has met with little internal opposition.<br />APPEAL FOR HELP<br />After meeting foreign ambassadors on Tuesday, Camara again appealed for international support for his fledgling government.<br />"You must help us put in place all the democratic principles, in a lasting manner," he said.<br />The Mauritanian ambassador said he supported the new Guinean authorities, and asked for more understanding of both Guinea and Mauritania, whose first democratically elected government was toppled by a military coup in August.<br />The CNDD, a group of young officers, is cementing its grip on power, having already appointed its members as defence and security ministers, and ordered 21 generals into retirement.<br />Listed as a senior director for projects and administrative services by African Export-Import Bank's website, Komara was one of the four men proposed as prime minister by unions after violent anti-government protests in 2007.<br />Local politicians said it was too early to tell what the appointment meant for Guinea.<br />"We are waiting for the composition of the government and for what the new prime minister says," said Sidya Toure, president of opposition party the Union of Republican Forces.<br />International mining firms such as Rio Tinto, Alcoa and United Company Rusal have invested billions in Guinea, the world's biggest exporter of aluminium ore bauxite, a gold producer and potentially a major source of iron ore.<br />The CNDD has said it will review the state's contracts with mining firms, without naming any companies or giving details.<br />(Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Daniel Magnowski; Editing by Alison Williams)</p><p>*********************</p><p><strong>Thai prime minister inaugurates government despite protesters<br /></strong>By Seth Mydans<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BANGKOK: Dodging protesters outside Parliament, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva gathered a quorum at the Foreign Ministry building Tuesday and delivered a policy speech inaugurating his already embattled new administration.<br />"The government has come into office at a time of conflict," he said. "This conflict has become the weakness of the country."<br />He said the conflict, which has paralyzed government and weakened the economy over the past year, must be resolved in order to meet the challenges of the global economic downturn and revive the country's crucial tourist industry.<br />The return of street politics on Monday, when demonstrators had forced a postponement of the parliamentary session, showed the difficulties Abhisit will face as he tries to restore stability.<br />Abhisit and lawmakers from his governing Democrat Party headed for Parliament on Tuesday morning in a convoy escorted by the police, but were blocked from entry by thousands of protesters demanding a new election.<br />They then detoured to the Foreign Ministry where a quorum of legislators had gathered.<br />Both the protesters and hundreds of riot police officers had spent the night outside Parliament after the inaugural session was postponed Monday by the blockade.<br />At one point, according to Reuters, the police tried to push open the gates to Parliament but were forced back inside by the massed protesters.<br />Abhisit, who was elected prime minister in a parliamentary vote two weeks ago, has asserted that no force would be used to disperse the protesters.<br />"We will keep negotiating and mediating," he said. "I beg everyone, including all the lawmakers and officials, to dedicate our holiday for the country in order to move our country forward."<br />The police were widely condemned in October for using force against protesters who opposed the previous government. They have acted with particular care since then.<br />Those earlier protesters, calling themselves the People's Alliance for Democracy, had demanded the resignation of a government allied to the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006.<br />Thaksin, a wealthy businessman, fled Thailand in August to avoid corruption cases against him but continues to exercise political power and to command the support of Thailand's rural majority.<br />The People's Alliance blockaded the prime minister's offices for three months and shut down Bangkok's airports for a week in early December, at one point forcing the cancellation of a parliamentary session with crowds similar to those being deployed on Tuesday.<br />In the end, however, they did not bring down the pro-Thaksin government. Instead, the government was removed from office by a court ruling that found the governing party had committed electoral fraud.</p><p></p><p>*****************</p><p><strong>Dairies to compensate victims in Chinese milk scandal</strong><br />By David Barboza<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />SHANGHAI: A group of Chinese dairy companies accused of selling contaminated milk that killed six children and sickened nearly 300,000 others earlier this year has agreed to pay $160 million in compensation to the victims.<br />A spokeswoman for the China Dairy Industry Association said Tuesday by telephone that a fund had been established for the victims and that the payments would be made.<br />Liu Meiju, the secretary general of the association, declined to give further details. But China's state-controlled media reported earlier this week that a group of 22 dairy companies would make one-time payments to the families of the victims.<br />The settlement would amount to about $550 per victim, which is the equivalent of about three months' salary for the typical factory worker in southern China. The association has also agreed to make payments to care for victims who suffer from long-term effects from the poisonings, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.<br />A series of lawsuits has been filed by families of the victims, but none has been accepted by Chinese courts. The case, however, has drawn the attention of China's top leaders, who have vowed to crack down on food safety problems.<br />Last September, some of China's largest dairy producers were accused by the government of selling milk contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical that is believed to cause kidney stones and other ailments. The food safety crisis led to one of the largest Chinese food recalls in decades and also led to global recalls of Chinese-made dairy products.<br />Later, animal feed and eggs produced in China were also found to contain high levels of melamine, an industrial chemical used to produce fertilizer and plastics.<br />In recent days, more than a dozen dairy middlemen have been put on trial and charged with endangering public security in the northern province of Hebei. They have been accused of intentionally contaminating dairy products with melamine in order to reap bigger profits. Because melamine is high in nitrogen, experts say it can be used to artificially inflate protein readings on milk powder.<br />In fact, some dairy producers and middlemen have admitted to using melamine as a cheap substitute to real milk powder.<br />On Wednesday, the former chairwoman of the Sanlu Group, one of the companies at the center of the scandal, is expected to go on trial for her role in the crisis. Sanlu, which is based in the city of Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province, filed for bankruptcy protection last week.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpF3xPxDM4zc4XAZnZ8DJIy2-pbGmTUdqSu-0rsjPgK7_3nhJsntlzBq9kVgQ7puzaZ9LH1kassuxtIfDIxMSebIEO_eyGlUKMURim0T2AS_U7cjgXPNrR5qNH88HgBylp-tPO1n0pFCg/s1600-h/DSC04922.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285822002714781410" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpF3xPxDM4zc4XAZnZ8DJIy2-pbGmTUdqSu-0rsjPgK7_3nhJsntlzBq9kVgQ7puzaZ9LH1kassuxtIfDIxMSebIEO_eyGlUKMURim0T2AS_U7cjgXPNrR5qNH88HgBylp-tPO1n0pFCg/s320/DSC04922.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Genetic tests offer promise of personalized medicine<br /></strong>By Andrew Pollack<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />For more than two years, Jody Uslan had been taking the drug tamoxifen in hopes of preventing a recurrence of breast cancer. Then a new test suggested that because of her genetic makeup, the drug was not doing her any good.<br />"I was devastated," said Uslan, 52, who stopped taking tamoxifen and is now evaluating alternative treatments. "You find out you've been taking this medication for all of this time, and find out you are not getting benefit."<br />Uslan's situation is all too common — and not just among the hundreds of thousands of women in this country taking tamoxifen.<br />Experts say that most drugs, whatever the disease, work for only about half the people who take them. Not only is much of the nation's approximately $300 billion annual drug spending wasted, but countless patients are being exposed unnecessarily to side effects.<br />No wonder so much hope is riding on the promise of "personalized medicine," in which genetic screening and other tests give doctors more evidence for tailoring treatments to patients, potentially improving care and saving money.<br />Many policy experts are calling for more studies to compare the effectiveness of different treatments. One drawback is that such studies tend to be "one size fits all," with the winning treatment recommended for everybody. Personalized medicine would go beyond that by determining which drug is best for which patient, rather than continuing to treat everyone the same in hopes of benefiting the fortunate few.<br />The colon cancer drugs Erbitux and Vectibix, for instance, do not work for the 40 percent of patients whose tumors have a particular genetic mutation. The Food and Drug Administration held a meeting this month to discuss whether patients should be tested to narrow use of the drugs, which cost $8,000 to $10,000 a month.<br />And a genetic test might help doctors determine the optimal dose of warfarin, a blood thinner used by millions of Americans. Tens of thousands of them are hospitalized each year because of internal bleeding from an overdose or a blood clot from an inadequate dose.<br />"If you save one hospitalization for every 100 new warfarin users, you more than offset the cost of testing all 100," said Dr. Robert Epstein, the chief medical officer of Medco Health Solutions, which manages prescription plans for employers. The test typically costs $100 to $600.<br />For all the potential, experts see some formidable obstacles on the path to the promised land of personalized medicine.<br />"It's going to take 20 to 30 years for all this to fall into place," said Dr. Gregory Downing, who heads efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services to spur personalized health care.<br />The hurdles include drug makers, which can be reluctant to develop or encourage tests that may limit the use of their drugs. Insurers may not pay for tests, which can cost up to a few thousand dollars. For makers of the tests, which hope their business becomes one of health care's next big growth industries, a major obstacle is proving that their products are accurate and useful. While drugs must prove themselves in clinical trials before they can be sold, there is no generally recognized process for evaluating genetic tests, many of which can be marketed by laboratories without FDA approval.<br />Genentech, a developer of cancer drugs, petitioned the FDA this month to regulate such tests. It warned of "safety risks for patients, as more treatment decisions are based in whole or in part on the claims made by such test makers."<br />A cautionary case is Herceptin, a Genentech breast cancer drug that is considered the archetype of personalized medicine because it works only for women whose tumors have a particular genetic characteristic. But now, 10 years after Herceptin reached the market, scientists are finding that the various tests — some approved by the FDA, some not — can be inaccurate.<br />Moreover, doctors do not always conduct the tests or follow the results. The big insurer UnitedHealthcare found in 2005 that 8 percent of the women getting the drug had tested negative for the required genetic characteristic. An additional 4 percent had not been tested at all, or their test results could not be found.<br />Tamoxifen, the drug Uslan took, illustrates the promise and current limitations of genetic testing. In 2003, more than 25 years after tamoxifen was introduced, researchers led by Dr. David Flockhart at Indiana University School of Medicine figured out that the body coverts tamoxifen into another substance called endoxifen. It is endoxifen that actually exerts the cancer-fighting effect. The conversion is done by an enzyme in the body called CYP2D6, or 2D6 for short.<br />But variations in people's 2D6 genes mean the enzymes have different levels of activity. Up to 7 percent of people, depending on their ethnic group, have an inactive enzyme, Flockhart said, while another 20 to 40 percent have an only modestly active enzyme.<br />The implications were "scary," Flockhart said. Many women were apparently not being protected against cancer's return because they could not convert tamoxifen to endoxifen.<br />The economic implications could be just as scary to big pharmaceutical companies.<br />Tamoxifen, now a generic drug, costs as little as $500 for the typical five-year treatment. But most patients in the United States are currently treated with a newer, much more expensive class of drugs, called aromatase inhibitors, that cost about $18,000 over five years. Those drugs — made by AstraZeneca, Novartis and Pfizer — performed better than tamoxifen in clinical trials before the role of 2D6 was generally understood.<br />If only women with active 2D6 had been assessed, tamoxifen might have worked as well or better than the newer drugs, according to researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.<br />But proving these suppositions and having them incorporated into medical practice have not been easy.<br />The FDA, in its meeting this month, said clinical trials were the ideal way to validate a test. But many test developers argue that trials would be too costly and time-consuming, so many tests are validated by reanalyzing patient data from old trials.<br />In the case of tamoxifen, Dr. Matthew Goetz of the Mayo Clinic and colleagues went back to an old trial and used stored tumor samples to test the 2D6 genes of each patient. The researchers reported in 2005 that 32 percent of the women with inactive 2D6 enzyme had relapsed or died within two years, in contrast to only 2 percent of the other women.<br />But while some subsequent studies have backed those conclusions, two had contradictory results. That leaves many experts hesitant to use the test, which costs about $300.<br />There are other complications. Dozens of variants of the 2D6 gene exist, and laboratories can differ in their interpretation of test results. And it is not always clear how to act upon the information the test provides.<br />Uslan, who lives in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, is in a predicament since she stopped taking tamoxifen. The newer alternative, aromatase inhibitors, work only for postmenopausal women and she has not yet completed menopause. To take an aromatase inhibitor, she must have her ovaries removed or take a drug to induce menopause. Because both options are unattractive, many experts say there is no point testing premenopausal women for 2D6.<br />Such complexities are not confined to tamoxifen testing. The labels of about 200 drugs now contain some information relating genes to drug response, said Dr. Lawrence Lesko, the FDA's head of clinical pharmacology. But in many cases, he said, doctors are not told specifically enough what to do with the test results, such as how much to change the dose.<br />Despite all the obstacles, personalized medicine is coming. Even the drug companies, which have been worried that testing would reduce their sales, are starting to realize that their medicines might not be approved or paid for without better evidence that they work.<br />Last year, for instance, European regulators said Amgen's colon cancer drug Vectibix did not provide enough benefit to patients to be approved.<br />So Amgen reanalyzed the data from its clinical trial. After the results showed Vectibix worked better in patients whose tumors did not have a mutation in a gene called KRAS, the drug was approved for those patients only.<br />As for tamoxifen, an FDA advisory panel recommended two years ago that the 2D6 test be mentioned in the drug's label. But the agency itself was not persuaded there was enough evidence until just recently, Lesko said. "There's no 'one size fits all' for evidence that everybody buys into."</p><p>******************</p><p><strong>OPINION</strong></p><p><strong>Cognitive enhancement<br /></strong>By Judith Warner<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />What if you could just take a pill and all of a sudden remember to pay your bills on time? What if, thanks to modern neuroscience, you could, simultaneously, make New Year's Eve plans, pay the mortgage, call the pediatrician, consolidate credit card debt and do your job - well - without forgetting dentist appointments or neglecting to pick up your children at school?<br />Would you do it? Tune out the distractions of our online, on-call, too-fast ADD-ogenic world with focus and memory-enhancing medications like Ritalin or Adderall? Stay sharp as a knife - no matter how overworked and sleep-deprived - with a mental-alertness-boosting drug like the anti-narcolepsy medication Provigil?<br />I've always said no. Fantasy aside, I've always rejected the idea of using drugs meant for people with real neurological disorders to treat the pathologies of everyday life.<br />Most of us, viscerally, do. Cognitive enhancement - a practice typified by the widely reported abuse of psychostimulants by college students cramming for exams, and by the less reported but apparently growing use of mind-boosters like Provigil among in-the-know scientists and professors - goes against the grain of some of our most basic beliefs about fairness and meritocracy. It seems to many people to be unnatural, inhuman, hubristic, pure cheating.<br />That's why when Henry Greely, director of Stanford Law School's Center for Law and the Biosciences, published an article, with a host of co-authors, in the science journal Nature earlier this month suggesting that we ought to rethink our gut reactions and "accept the benefits of enhancement," he was deluged with irate responses from readers.<br />"There were three kinds of e-mail reactions," he told me in a phone interview. "'How much crack are you smoking? How much money did your friends in pharma give you? How much crack did you get from your friends in pharma?"'<br />Americans' default setting on matters of psychotropic drugs - particularly when it comes to medicating those who are not very ill - tend to be, as the psychiatrist Gerald Klerman called it in 1972, something akin to "pharmacological Calvinism." People should suffer and endure, the thinking goes, accept what hard work and their God-given abilities bring them and hope for no more.<br />But Greely and his Nature co-authors suggest that such arguments are outdated and intellectually dishonest. We enhance our brain function all the time, they say - by drinking coffee, by eating nutritious food, by getting an education, even by getting a good night's sleep. Taking brain-enhancing drugs should be viewed as just another step along that continuum, one that's "morally equivalent" to such "other, more familiar, enhancements," they write.<br />Normal life, unlike sports competitions, they argue, isn't a zero-sum game, where one person's doped advantage necessarily brings another's disadvantage. A surgeon whose mind is extra-sharp, a pilot who's extra alert, a medical researcher whose memory is fine-tuned to make extraordinary connections, is able to work not just to his or her own benefit, but for that of countless numbers of people. "Cognitive enhancement," they write, "unlike enhancement for sports competitions, could lead to substantive improvements in the world."<br />I'm not convinced of that. I'm not sure that pushing for your personal best - all the time - is tantamount to truly being the best person you can be. I have long thought that a life so frenetic and fractured that it drives "neuro-normal" people to distraction, leaving them sleep-deprived and exhausted demands - indeed, screams for - systemic change.<br />But now I do wonder: What if the excessive demands of life today are creating ever-larger categories of people who can't reach their potential due to handicaps that in an easier time were just quirks? (Absent-minded professor-types were, for generations, typically men who didn't need to be present - organized and on-time - for their kids.) Is it any fairer to saddle a child with a chronically overwhelmed parent than with one suffering from untreated depression?<br />And, furthermore, how much can most of us, on a truly meaningful scale, change our lives? At a time of widespread layoffs and job anxiety among those still employed, can anyone but the most fortunate afford to cut their hours to give themselves time to breathe? Can working parents really sacrifice on either side of the wage-earning/life-making equation? It's disturbing to think that we just have to make do with the world we now live in. But to do otherwise is for most people an impossible luxury.<br />For some of us, saddled with brains ill-adapted to this era, and taxed with way too many demands and distractions, pharmacological Calvinism may now be a luxury, too.</p><p>Judith Warner writes Domestic Disturbances, a column at nytimes.com. </p><p></p><p>*************</p><p><strong>OPINION</strong></p><p><strong>Waiting for an answer<br /></strong>By Elissa Ely<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />During the sainted years of psychiatry residency, we thought we were learning to be wise. There were many paths to wisdom, depending on your theoretical school. All had in common the act of listening. We practiced avidly. There were as many ways to listen as there were problems to hear: active listening, passive listening, metaphorical listening, listening in displacement. Analysts listen with evenly hovering attention, a term that used to cause me to squint from the dust the helicopter blades were kicking up.<br />The nonlistening part of the day was very busy: writing notes, reading charts, meeting supervisors, preparing seminars, answering phone calls. These were the years before BlackBerries, I-touches, cellphones and voice mail. They were even the years before answering machines. Instead, cubbyholes in the staff room were stuffed with pink memos written in the even hand of the department secretary. Few of us felt as calm as she seemed.<br />Between appointments, we would fan the memos out, and triage them based on degree of emergency: Suicidal? Homicidal? Out of medication? Canceling tomorrow? It helped decide how quickly we needed to return each call. Some of us called back with the birds in the morning. Some called late at night. Some waited a day or two. And some never called back at all.<br />One doctor was a wizard with medications, a genius. He treated cases no one else could, and his two beepers were always going off. But his pink memos could have held their breaths until they turned blue before he answered them. He never returned calls. He just didn't.<br />My home phone rang late one night. A manic patient, not on my caseload, was breathing fire on the other end. Apparently she needed to talk to a psychiatrist and, since hers never called her back, she was going through the phone book alphabetically, chasing down his colleagues. It was a logical approach, bound to succeed; there were 26 opportunities.<br />While I listened, half in sleep but with evenly hovering attention, she proceeded through the story of her life.<br />Truthfully, I was not without sympathy. She and I had something in common. Her doctor never answered my calls, either. I would write him messages on pink memos, requests for medication consultations or some other sort of help, and slip them into his cubbyhole. I would check a week later. They were gone, disappeared into memo neverland. Probably, I would leave him a message about this patient who called me, and he would get it, but he would not answer it. My messages and hers must have crossed in his cubbyhole all the time.<br />I figured there must have been some logic to his negligence that I was not grasping. It was a therapeutic technique. He was forcing us into self-reliance. He was a very, very smart man.<br />But he was not a good psychiatrist. Because how can you be a good psychiatrist if you don't call back? Over the years, that question has grown even broader and more imperative. How can you be a good plumber, banker, teacher, dogwalker, grandmother, librarian? Listening is a profound and intelligent activity, years of training and so on, but it is not the most important thing we do.<br />The most important thing we do - the wisest, the one that matters, and, without doubt, the one we will be remembered for - is to answer.<br />Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.</p><p></p><p>******************</p><p><strong>Ghana election cliffhanger to be decided Friday</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Kwasi Kpodo<br />The outcome of Ghana's presidential run-off is too close to call and will be decided by voting on Friday in a single constituency where balloting has yet to take place, the electoral commission said on Tuesday.<br />In a twist to what was already a tense and closely fought race, the commission said the outstanding vote in the Tain constituency would determine the final result of the election in the West African state, the world's No. 2 producer of cocoa.<br />With votes counted from 229 of the 230 constituencies, John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) held a slender lead with 50.13 per cent of the votes, while Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had 49.87 percent.<br />Only 23,050 votes separated the two.<br />This made the race too close to call in the absence of Tain, which has around 53,000 registered electors and where voting did not take place in Sunday's run-off "due to circumstances beyond our control," election commission chief Kwadwo Afari-Gyan said.<br />"The results are so close that the outcome of the Tain constituency election could affect the eventual winner," Gyan said, adding the constituency, located in Ghana's central Brong Ahafo region, would vote on Friday.<br />Mills' supporters, who had already been celebrating his expected narrow victory, sang and danced around the commission headquarters, which was heavily guarded by police.<br />They remained confident, pointing out that in the inconclusive December 7 first round of voting, Mills' NDC had won Tain with a majority of around 2,000 votes.<br />"I'm not disappointed at all, I'm happy, because Mills is already a president and the whole of Ghana knows it. Tain is our territory and we are going to win there massively to make it a done deal," said NDC supporter, Kwako Assem, a taxi driver.<br />Ghana, on Africa's Gulf of Guinea, has enjoyed growth and stability in recent years, becoming an investors' favourite. The country, also a gold producer, will start producing oil in 2010.<br />POLARISING VOTE<br />Tuesday's announcement followed a tense wait at the commission, where thousands of Mills' supporters had gathered shouting "Change, change."<br />Gyan earlier met party and religious leaders to call for calm. Some banks and shops closed, fearing violence.<br />"These elections have really polarised us," NDC spokeswoman Hannah Tetteh said, adding Mills pledged to unite the nation if he won on Friday.<br />Armed soldiers and police, with water cannon and an armoured personnel carrier, held back the NDC supporters. Police fired shots into the air late on Monday to try to disperse them.<br />Akufo-Addo's NPP, which is also the party of outgoing President John Kufuor, complained of irregularities in results from some regions and said it would challenge them.<br />There were some reports of disorder in Sunday's vote. Many hoped Ghana's election could help salvage the battered image of constitutional democracy in Africa, tarnished by flawed elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe and military coups in Mauritania in August and in Guinea last week.<br />Observers from the European Union, the U.S.-based Carter Centre and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS said the run-off vote had been generally orderly and transparent.<br />The Eurasia Group risk consultancy, in a note by Africa analyst Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, predicted that Mills would be a "narrow electoral winner without a strong governing mandate."<br />Political analysts say the new president -- whoever he is -- will take over at a time when economic growth is expected to slow in the global downturn. He will have to deal with a growing budget and current account deficit, high inflation and unemployment and falling remittance and aid levels, they say.<br />Presidential rivals Mills and Akufo-Addo are both foreign-trained lawyers and both are aged 64.<br />(Writing by Pascal Fletcher)</p><p>******************</p><p><strong>Hu visits China quake area again</strong><br />By Edward Wong<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />China's president, Hu Jintao, visited a region of southwest China over the weekend that was hit hard by the earthquake last May, according to a report on Monday by Xinhua, the state news agency.<br />It was Hu's second visit to the area since May 16, when he flew to Sichuan Province to check on rescue efforts.<br />The earthquake rippled out from its epicenter in Yingxiu, in Sichuan Province on May 12, ultimately leaving 88,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless.<br />Hu has made his trips in the footsteps of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who has traveled to the earthquake region a half-dozen times and whose popularity has grown because of the visits.<br />Many survivors are still living in prefabricated homes with little heating in the depths of winter.</p><p>********************</p><p><strong>Post-tsunami, a rebuilt life</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />PETTIYADICHCHENI, Sri Lanka: Every morning and evening, Velmurugu Kangasuriyam gathers his 2½-year-old daughter and his wife and confronts the wreckage of his former life.<br />His wife, Thaya, lights an oil lamp on the mantel of a dark, bare concrete room. Kangasuriyam presses his hands together and closes his eyes. Little Theresa follows in imitation. For a long minute his new family stands in silent prayer.<br />Thaya places orange flowers in front of pictures of Hindu gods. She lays several more before a picture of Kangasuriyam's parents.<br />The last flowers sit in front of a photo of a woman in a striking red bridal sari: Devi, who was Kangasuriyam's wife for just 10 months before she died, along with his parents, three of his sisters and a brother, just over four years ago.<br />The tsunami that crashed over southern Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, and killed 230,000 people washed away nearly everything Kangasuriyam held dear. Sixteen close relatives were killed. His seaside village was razed, his house demolished, his business destroyed.<br />Four years later, with international aid and prodding from his remaining family, the 30-year-old has rebuilt his life. He has a new family. He has a bigger house in a resettlement village set back from the ocean.<br />He opened a new bicycle repair shop to replace the one where he worked alongside his father from boyhood.<br />A quiet man, Kangasuriyam says he is finally getting his life back in order.<br />"I want to be happy with what I have, and get over it," he said.<br />About 35,000 Sri Lankans died in the tsunami. More than half a million were left homeless.<br />Aid groups have since built more than 100,000 new homes, though several thousand families still remain homeless, according to the United Nations.<br />Many of the survivors have worked to rebuild their lives and carry on, though nearly all bear deep and permanent scars of the disaster.<br />For Kangasuriyam, the reminders are hard to escape.<br />Every Friday, as he returns from prayers at the Hindu temple, Kangasuriyam stops at the remnants of his old village, Passikudah, a few hundred meters from the beach in the Batticaloa district on Sri Lanka's east coast.<br />The house he lived in for 10 months with Devi is little more than two red steps leading to a cracked foundation and a jagged shard of wall.<br />His parents' home next door is a slab of concrete covered in thick black mud, rotting coconut husks and a tangled shrub and vines. He tries to keep the foundation clean, he said, but the jungle keeps reclaiming it.<br />His four sisters and three brothers lived nearby as well.<br />They were a close-knit family, Kangasuriyam said. After school, his nieces and nephews would play together outside. After dinner, everyone would converge on his parents' home to drink tea and gossip.<br />Growing up, he and his brothers all worked in their father's bicycle repair shop, learning how to rebuild a bike that had been dismantled down to its ball bearings. Eventually one brother left to become a postmaster, another a Hindu priest.<br />The third started his own bike shop, leaving Kangasuriyam, the youngest son, to drop out of school and help his father in his shop.<br />As his parents grew frail with age, it fell to Kangasuriyam to care for them. He could not do it alone, he said, so he asked his parents to arrange a marriage. He met Devi, from a village eight kilometers, or five miles, away, on their wedding day.<br />She was a good cook, always smiling and happy. She was kind and took such good care of his parents that when the newlyweds got into an argument, his mother took her side and hit him, he said.<br />Devi was a gifted storyteller, and their nieces and nephews flocked to their house. It did not hurt that she snuck them treats.<br />"He was extremely happy," said his brother, Sarawanamuttu. "In our whole village there was no one as good as her."<br />As Kangasuriyam thinks of his first wife, his eyes sink to the ground. He rubs his chin and scratches his lip in silence. She was four months pregnant, he said.<br />"Every time I remember that, it's very painful," he said.<br />His memories of the tsunami are confused, but Sarawanamuttu says the brothers were working together in his bicycle shop when villagers ran by screaming that the sea was coming.<br />Sarawanamuttu says he grabbed his daughter and ran for safety, while Kangasuriyam ran back toward the village to get his family.<br />His other surviving brother, Ganeshamurthi, the priest, says he was in the temple when the screaming started and saw Kangasuriyam running to the village. He grabbed him, but Kangasuriyam broke free and tried to get home.<br />Kangasuriyam says he ended up unconscious, hanging from the branches of a tree nearly 10 meters, or 30 feet, off the ground, and was taken to the hospital. It took days for the scale of his tragedy to emerge.<br />He hobbled down to the morgue and saw his father's body. Then, two of his sisters' bodies were brought in. The next day, they found his wife. In the days after, the bodies of nieces and nephews began appearing, he said. His mother was never found.<br />He stopped eating, talking and washing his clothes, Sarawanamuttu said. He would see his surviving nieces and nephews and wouldn't recognize them, he said. From their village of 800, 258 people died.<br />"He would cry from time to time. It wasn't only him, it was everybody," said his sister-in-law, Kumudawathi. "There was nobody to pay attention to him because everybody lost people and everybody was crying. There was no one to talk to and calm people down, because everybody lost someone."<br />Kangasuriyam moved with 2,000 other homeless to the yard of a Pentecostal church. His surviving sister and brothers kept him going, he said.<br />They pushed him to apply for housing in a resettlement village being built by an international aid group, and within months he became secretary of the residents' committee.<br />In lieu of payment for his new house, he had to help build it, and he threw himself into the work, he said. When it was done, he continued making bricks for his neighbors.<br />More international aid enabled him and Sarawanamuttu to open a new bike shop together. With aid groups donating hundreds of bicycles to tsunami victims, they suddenly were swamped with bikes to tune up.<br />The long hours of work on the house and in the shop helped Kangasuriyam cope with his loss, Sarawanamuttu said. "Those things got him involved in life again," he said.<br />But, "he is not back to normal, and sometimes he talks nonsense," the brother said.<br />He spent so much time at work that his brothers and sister decided he needed a new wife to care for him. They found Thaya, a woman from their village who had always had a crush on Kangasuriyam, seven years her junior. In May 2005, just five months after the tsunami, they were married. Theresa was born the following April.<br />The toddler struts around the house in the new neighborhood of Pettiyadichcheni, about a kilometer from the beach. As her father sits in one of the brown plastic chairs lining the living room walls, she stands between his legs and burbles playfully.<br />Many have told him Theresa looks just like 2-year-old Dilani, and he thinks, maybe, she is the reincarnation of his lost niece.<br />Ganeshamurthi says the little girl has restored some of his brother's faith and happiness. "He is beginning to forget his old life," he said.<br />But every day, at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., the family enters the shrine room and offers prayers at the photos of his lost family. Kangasuriyam says it is important for Theresa to know what happened, and it is important that his parents and Devi not be forgotten.<br />Kangasuriyam and his brother spend their days working side by side in the bike shop. They never speak of the tsunami, Sarawanamuttu said. "Everybody knows what happened to everybody. There is no point in talking about it," he said.</p><p>****************</p><p><strong>Crews recover 8th Canadian avalanche victim</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />VANCOUVER, British Columbia: Search crews on Tuesday recovered the last of eight snowmobilers killed by avalanches in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, aided by one of just three men who survived the deadly slides.<br />The man was found buried under about 1.5 metres (5 feet) of snow in the same area where the seven other victims were recovered on Monday in a popular backcountry recreational area about 40 km (25 miles) southeast of Fernie, British Columbia.<br />The victims were all from the coal mining town of Sparwood, British Columbia, which has been hit hard by the Christmas holiday deaths of the men, most of whom were long-time residents of the small community.<br />"The community of Sparwood, I know, will be glad to have all of the bodies in and they'll get on with their grieving process," said Cpl. Chris Faulkner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "They'll get on with their preparations for memorial services, and sometime in the next few days, few weeks, they'll get on with life as well."<br />Technicians used explosives to stabilise the snow around the accident site in southeastern British Columbia to protect search crews from further slides as they recovered the bodies on Monday and Tuesday.<br />The area has been hit by heavy snowfalls in recent days and is still considered dangerous.<br />The snowmobilers were struck by two separate snow slides on Sunday. The first buried seven members of the group, and the second struck while their companions were trying to dig them out.<br />Three men were eventually able to free themselves, but the threat of additional avalanches forced them to retreat before they could rescue anyone else.<br />Police said one of the survivors returned to the site on Tuesday to give crews a better idea where to find the final victim.<br />Friends of the men said they were all experienced in backcountry travel and aware of the risk of avalanches.<br />"It's just a sad thing," said Randy Roberts, whose son-in-law Danny Bjarnason was one of the victims "It's an accident that can happen at any time."<br />The men all carried radio beacons designed to aid searchers trying to find them in the snow.<br />Faulkner said that, while the avalanche was tragic, it was also unlikely to discourage residents of the region from enjoying their easy access to the wilderness.<br />"The chances of them being caught in one, while minimal, are always there. For the pleasure of being out there they're willing to take that chance," Faulkner said.<br />(Reporting Allan Dowd and Jeffrey Jones, editing by Rob Wilson) </p><p><br /> </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthL6UVogfDzzujauEqViPT6qzMoF8gh4-tJ6_tPkmpS3pqOR9IeVKXLfpxnC3teAAJwGTepUGjT3adRElW3n1QOQXXz-hP69Ccw4tKqb6Wi7NfFMID4RXs6gkN7_RDi1TZQ3ZR8lzzIA/s1600-h/DSC04923.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285822001542369090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgthL6UVogfDzzujauEqViPT6qzMoF8gh4-tJ6_tPkmpS3pqOR9IeVKXLfpxnC3teAAJwGTepUGjT3adRElW3n1QOQXXz-hP69Ccw4tKqb6Wi7NfFMID4RXs6gkN7_RDi1TZQ3ZR8lzzIA/s320/DSC04923.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Detroit's problems threaten gains of African-Americans</strong><br />By Mary M. Chapman<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />DETROIT: Since millions of African-Americans began leaving Southern farms for Northern factories nearly a century ago in what is still known as the Great Migration, the destinies of many of them have been entwined with the auto industry's.<br />The car companies were hardly multiracial utopias, but they - especially Ford Motor - employed blacks when many industries would not.<br />Through the decades, the automakers and their higher wage scales provided a route to the middle class for many blacks, especially those with limited education, and their children.<br />Now, with Detroit reeling, many blacks find their economic well-being threatened.<br />By last month, nearly 20,000 black auto workers had lost their jobs, a 13.9 percent decline in employment since the recession began last December, according to government jobs data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington research firm. That compares with a 4.4 percent decline for all workers in manufacturing.<br />"African-Americans earn much higher wages in the auto industry than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be devastating," the Economic Policy Institute said in a report this month. "The motor vehicle and parts industry, a sector of the economy that has been particularly welcoming to African-Americans, is becoming a shrinking island of prosperity."<br />Claudia Perkins, 55, who has worked in the automobile industry for 33 years and is at the General Motors assembly plant at Lake Orion, Michigan, put it more bluntly. "If it wasn't for the factory, the average black would not have been able to survive all these years, especially without an education."<br />Blacks occupy most rungs of the car production ladder, from plant workers to white-collar employees to auto suppliers and car dealers.<br />Nelson White 3rd, an industrial materials analyst at Ford's transmission plant in Livonia, Michigan, said he was concerned that in the future other blacks would not receive the opportunities he has.<br />White started as an hourly worker in a Ford factory, attended college under a Ford program and made the leap to management in 1999. In May, he will graduate with a master's degree in organizational leadership.<br />"There's a saying that when America catches a cold, African-Americans catch the flu," White said.<br />As in most recessions, blacks have been hit harder than other workers. The overall unemployment rate for blacks increased to 11.2 percent in November, an increase of 2.8 percentage points over last year. By comparison, the national unemployment last month was 6.7 percent, up two percentage points from a year earlier.<br />In all, blacks made up 14.2 percent of the total automotive work force in 2007, according to the Economic Policy Institute report, compared with 11.2 percent of the overall U.S. work force. Blacks in the manufacturing and parts sector earned $17.08 an hour, compared with $15.44 an hour for blacks in all industries, the report said.<br />"Because African-Americans continue to have less education than other groups, the loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs has long been magnified in the black community," said Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute. "When benefits are considered, the auto industry is one of the best sources of jobs for workers without a college degree."<br />For instance, 21.9 percent of black workers in the country's overall work force have four-year college degrees, compared with 33.7 percent of whites in the entire labor force, Scott said.<br />Almost from the beginning, blacks found opportunities in the car companies when they did not find them in other industries. In the early 1940s, while many industries in the United States were enforcing or even creating segregated workplaces - U.S. Steel's factories and dormitories around Birmingham, Alabama, were an example - Henry Ford employed blacks and whites in the same plants.<br />Ford and other auto company owners pioneered the hiring of black workers, though many of them were often given the dirtiest jobs.<br />Perkins, the GM worker, was raised in Jemison, Alabama, about 45 miles, or 72 kilometers, south of Birmingham. She moved north in the 1950s with her parents, who found work in the booming auto industry.<br />Her mother took a job in Flint, Michigan, at AC Spark Plug, now owned by Delphi, while her father worked for 28 years at the Fisher Body plant of GM.<br />"There was always so much talk down South about the manufacturing jobs up here and how easy you could get a job," said Perkins, whose siblings and other relatives work in the auto industry. "People were excited about the pay, and after they'd get a job they would help their families back in the South. They would all the time drive their new cars down and show them off."<br />Perkins, however, resisted going to work in "some grungy factory." But after an aunt, who was a plant manager, persuaded Perkins to apply at AC Spark Plug, she gave in. "I made one paycheck and told myself I'd quit after one more, but that day never came," she said, chuckling.<br />Her earnings helped her buy a home and pay college expenses for her daughter, an Army major who received a teaching degree.<br />Thus far, Perkins has escaped the job cuts at GM.<br />As automakers and the overall economy contract, car dealerships are facing challenges as well, and black dealers are no exception.<br />About 150 of the country's 2,000 minority dealers have closed this year, and 300 more could shut by the middle of January, said Damon Lester, president of the National Association of Minority Auto Dealers.<br />About 95 percent of all minority dealers are first-generation owners, as opposed to 30 percent of the country's nonminority dealers, who are more established and have more clout at banks, Lester said. In these days of tight credit, that can make a big difference.<br />"Capitalization from a historical standpoint has always been an issue," he said. "Then, when a downturn occurs, black dealerships are less likely to weather economic storms."<br />All of Detroit's three automakers have minority dealer development programs, which historically have provided training, mentoring and startup loans to prospective dealers.<br />But as automakers eliminate some brands and models under the reorganization plans they have submitted to Congress, Lester said, those programs could suffer.<br />"A lot of minorities got their first opportunities through these programs," Lester said. "And that's a good thing. But we want to make sure those programs don't go away."<br />GM said it planned to continue its minority dealer development program, started in 1972, although the program will save money by using teleconferencing in place of some physical dealer meetings, said Susan Garontakos, dealer communications manager. Still, the company has told Congress it would cut its dealer network by 35 percent.<br />In Atlanta, Steve Harrell, who is black, said he hoped he would be one of the dealers left standing. Harrell, the president of Harrell Swatty, has 12 showrooms across the country, selling Ford, GM, Kia, Lexus, Nissan, Hyundai, Porsche and Subaru brands.<br />Harrell, a dealer for 21 years, said he expected his total showroom sales to drop to $200 million by the end of 2008, from $320 million in 2007. He has cut his staff to 375 from 600.<br />"All dealers are suffering," Harrell said, "but we were the last ones to the table, so our staying power, our ability to hang in there, is not as great as nonminorities." If his showrooms are unable to get loans within the next 60 days, "we could be extinct," he said.<br />So could some parts suppliers. There are roughly 60 black-owned parts suppliers in the United States, with a total of about $3.5 billion in sales. One is Leon Richardson, who owns a supply company, ChemicoMays, in Chesterfield, Michigan, that does 65 percent of its business with the automobile industry.<br />About 60 percent of its 200 employees are black, said Richardson, who is also chairman of the National Association of Black Automotive Suppliers.<br />"The credit market has always been extremely tight and difficult for black suppliers even before this meltdown. It was difficult for them to generate cash as it was, and it's going to be more difficult," Richardson said.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Airlines step up search for viable biofuels</strong><br />By Bettina Wassener<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />HONG KONG: Despite plunging oil prices, airlines are intensifying their search for alternative fuels to make flying more affordable and environmentally friendly for the long haul.<br />An early test of the commercial and technical viability of one such biofuel took place Tuesday in the skies above Auckland. Air New Zealand, the main New Zealand carrier, staged a successful test flight using oil derived from jatropha, a weed that can grow in arid conditions and produces inedible oil. That means it need not encroach on land or crops used for feeding the world's swelling population.<br />For two hours, pilots tested the oil, in a 50-50 blend with conventional jet fuel in one of the four Rolls-Royce engines powering a Boeing 747-400 aircraft - the first test flight by a commercial airline using jatropha oil.<br />"Today we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history," said Rob Fyfe, Air New Zealand's chief executive. The project has been 18 months in the works.<br />The results of the test flight - and two others by rival airlines in the United States and Japan in January - will be closely watched by an industry that is determined to wean itself from ultimately finite supplies of conventional crude oil and shift toward sources of renewable, low-emission fuels.<br />A big increase in crude oil prices - to more than $147 a barrel in July - provided a strong incentive for the industry to reduce its exposure to volatile oil prices as soon as possible.<br />But pressure to reduce carbon emissions also drove the search for alternatives. The International Air Transport Association, which represents 230 airlines, aims for its members to use 10 percent alternative fuels by 2017. The group also has the ambitious goal that airlines will be able to fly carbon-free 50 years from now, with the help of technologies like fuel cells and solar energy.<br />Such goals have ensured that research and development into greener flying have continued, despite the recent retreat in oil prices to $40 a barrel and despite shrinking demand as the global economy slows to a crawl.<br />Having conducted a series of tests Tuesday, Air New Zealand and its partners in the venture, the U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing, the British engine maker Rolls-Royce and the technology developer UOP, a part of the U.S. business Honeywell, will review the results "as part of our drive to have jatropha certified as an aviation fuel," said Captain David Morgan, the flight's chief pilot.<br />The hope is that the test results will lay the groundwork for jatropha to be available in commercially viable quantities in three to five years, executives of the companies said.<br />Virgin Atlantic in February became the first airline to test a commercial aircraft on a biofuel blend, using a 20 percent mixture of coconut oil and babassu oils in one of its four engines.<br />Two more airlines are to test their concoctions in quick succession next month. Continental Airlines on Jan. 7 will conduct a test flight powered by a blend involving algae and jatropha, the first biofuel flight by a commercial carrier using algae as a fuel source - and the first biofuel-powered demonstration flight of a U.S. commercial airliner.<br />And Japan Airlines is planning a test flight Jan. 30 from Tokyo using a fuel based on the camelina oilseed.<br />Together, the tests will try out not only different sources of alternative fuel, but also their use in an array of different engine types used by the world's airlines.<br />With the use of ethanol facing increasing criticism - it has been blamed for corn shortages that have led to food riots in parts of the world - hopes increasingly rest on inedible crops, like algae and jatropha, which can be grown without drawing on forested or arable land.<br />Unlike biofuels made from crops like soybeans and corn, jatropha needs little water or fertilizer and can be grown almost anywhere - even in sandy, saline or otherwise infertile soil. Each seed produces 30 percent to 40 percent of its mass in oil, meaning it has higher yield per acre than many other plant oils, experts say.<br />Still, even the potential use of jatropha has not been free of criticism, with some observers fearing that farmers could be tempted to substitute edible crops for jatropha in the hope of getting better prices.<br />Algae may be free of this potential problem, but research into algae is not as far advanced, said an Air New Zealand spokesman, Mark Street, explaining the airline's decision to focus on jatropha.<br />Air New Zealand, which aims to meet 10 percent of its fuel needs through sustainable biofuel by 2013, said the jatropha used on Tuesday's flight had been grown in Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Gazprom pays price for its aggressive takeovers<br /></strong>By Andrew E. Kramer<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />MOSCOW: A year ago, Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, aspired to be the largest corporation in the world. Buoyed by high oil prices and political backing from the Kremlin, it had already achieved third-place ranking, by market value, behind Exxon Mobil and General Electric.<br />Today, Gazprom is deep in debt and negotiating a government bailout. Its market capitalization, the total value of all company shares, has fallen 74 percent since the beginning of the year. Instead of becoming the world's largest company, it has tumbled to 35th place by market value.<br />And while bailouts are increasingly common, none of Gazprom's big private-sector competitors in the West is looking for one.<br />That the largest state-run Russian energy company needs a bailout so soon after oil hit record highs last summer is a telling postscript to a turbulent period. Once the emblem of the pride and the menace of a resurgent Russia, Gazprom has become a symbol of the oil state's rapid economic decline.<br />During the boom times, Gazprom and the other Russian state energy company, Rosneft, became vehicles for carrying out creeping renationalization. As oil prices rose, so did the companies' stock prices. But rather than investing sufficiently in drilling and exploration, the Russian president at the time, Vladimir Putin, used them to pursue his agenda of regaining public control over the oil fields, and much of private industry beyond.<br />As a result, by the time the downturn came, the companies entered the credit crisis deeply in debt and with a backlog of capital investment needs.<br />Under Putin, now the prime minister, Gazprom and Rosneft are so tightly controlled by the Kremlin that the companies are not run by mere government appointees, but directly by government ministers who sit on their boards.<br />"They were as inebriated with their success as much as some of their investors were," James Fenkner, the chief strategist at Red Star, a Russian-dedicated hedge fund, said of Gazprom's ambition to become the world's largest company. "It's not like they're going to produce a better mousetrap," Fenkner said. "Their mousetrap is whatever the price of oil is. You can't improve that."<br />On Tuesday, the company said its profit in the second quarter had nearly tripled before oil prices fell in the third quarter. Gazprom said its net income climbed to 300 billion rubles, or $10.3 billion, in the quarter ended June 30, from 103 billion rubles during the period in 2007, Bloomberg News reported.<br />Investors are fleeing Gazprom stock, once such a favorite that it alone accounted for 2 percent of the Morgan Stanley index of global emerging market companies. Its share price has fallen more quickly than those of private-sector competitors. The company's debt, amassed while consolidating national control over the industry, is one reason.<br />After five years of record prices for natural gas, Gazprom is $49.5 billion in debt. By comparison, the entire combined public and private-sector debt coming due for India, China and Brazil in 2009 totals $56 billion, according to an estimate by Commerzbank.<br />Putin used Gazprom to acquire private property. In 2005 it bought the Sibneft oil company from Roman Abramovich, the billionaire and owner of the Chelsea soccer club in London, for $13 billion. In 2006 it bought half of Shell's Sakhalin-2 oil and natural gas development for $7 billion. And in 2007, it spent more billions to acquire parts of Yukos, the private oil company that collapsed in a politically tinged fraud and tax evasion case.<br />Rosneft is deeply in debt, too. It owes $18.1 billion after spending billions acquiring assets from Yukos. And in addition to negotiating for a government bailout, Rosneft is negotiating a $15 billion loan from the China National Petroleum Corp., secured by future exports to China.<br />Under Putin, more than a third of the Russian oil industry was effectively renationalized in such deals. But the Kremlin used more sophisticated tactics than President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who sent troops to seize a natural gas field in that country.<br />Regulatory pressure was brought to bear on private owners to encourage them to sell to state companies or private companies loyal to the Kremlin. The assets were typically bought at prices below market rates, yet the state companies still paid out billions of dollars, much of it borrowed from Western banks that called in the credit lines in the financial crisis.<br />Rosneft, which was also held up as a model of resurgent Russian pride and defiance of the West, having been cobbled together from Yukos assets once partly owned by foreign investors, was compelled to meet a margin call on Western bank debt in October.<br />Critics predicted the Russian policy of nationalization would foster inefficiency or at the very least disruption as huge companies were bought and sold, divided up and repackaged as state property. At stake were assets worth vast sums: Russia is the world's largest producer of natural gas and became the world's largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia reduced output this summer to support prices.<br />A deputy chief executive of Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, predicted that the company would achieve a market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2014. Instead, its share price has fallen and its market capitalization is about $85 billion.<br />It is true that Gazprom is far from broke. The company made a profit of 360 billion rubles on revenue of 1,774 billion rubles in 2007, the most recent audited results released by the company.<br />Gazprom, meanwhile, says it will proceed with capital spending to develop new fields in the Arctic and continues to pour money into subsidiaries in often-losing sectors like agriculture and the media. It is also assuming, through its banking arm, a new role in the financial crisis of bailing out struggling Russian banks and brokerages.<br />Investors say an unwillingness to cut costs in a downturn is a common problem for nationalized industries, and another reason they have fled the stock. When oil sold for less than $50 a barrel in 2004, Gazprom's capital outlay for the year was $6.6 billion; for 2009, the company has budgeted more than $32 billion.<br />Gazprom executives say they are reviewing spending but will not cut major developments, including two undersea pipelines intended to reduce the company's reliance on Ukraine as a transit country for about 80 percent of its exports to Europe. Gazprom and Ukraine are again locked in a dispute over pricing that Gazprom officials say could prompt them to cut supplies to Ukraine by Thursday.<br />"All our major projects in our core business - upstream, midstream and downstream - will continue with very simple efforts to meet demand both in Russia and in our export markets," Medvedev said. Upstream is exploration and production, midstream is distribution and storage and downstream is refining and marketing.<br />But revenue is projected to fall steeply next year. Gazprom received an average of $420 per 1,000 cubic meters, or 35,000 cubic feet, for natural gas sold in Western Europe this year. That price is projected by Gazprom to fall to a range of $260 to $300 in 2009.<br />"For them, like everybody else, sober realism has intruded," Jonathan Stern, the author of "The Future of Russian Gas and Gazprom" and a natural gas expert at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said by telephone.<br />A significant portion of the Russian corporate bailout fund - about $9 billion out of a total of $50 billion - was set aside for the oil and natural gas companies. Gazprom alone is seeking $5.5 billion.<br />For a time, Gazprom,a company that evolved from the former Soviet ministry of gas, had been embraced by investors as the model for energy investing at a time of resource nationalism, when governments in oil-rich regions were shutting out the Western majors. In theory, minority shareholders in government-run companies would not face the risk their assets would be nationalized.<br />But with 436,000 employees, extensive subsidiaries in everything from farming to hotels, higher-than-average salaries and company-sponsored housing and resorts on the Black Sea, critics say Gazprom perpetuated the Soviet paternalistic economy well into the capitalist era.<br />"I can describe the Russian economy as water in a sieve," Yulia Latynina, a radio commentator on Echo of Moscow, said of the chronic waste in Russian industry.<br />"Everybody was thinking Russia had succeeded, and they were wondering, how do you keep water in a sieve?" Latynina said. "When the input of water is greater than the output, the sieve is full.<br />Everybody was thinking it was a miracle. The sieve is full! But when there is a drop in the water supply, the sieve is again empty very quickly."<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Gazprom keeps pressure on Ukraine</strong><br />By Andrew E. Kramer<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, declined Tuesday to lift a threat to shut off all supplies of the fuel to Ukraine on Thursday, despite the Ukrainian government's offer to repay at least a portion of the country's debt.<br />The disagreement between Gazprom and Ukraine has, once again, made European countries edgy: About 80 percent of Russian natural gas exports to Europe pass through Ukraine and have been disrupted several times already by the turmoil of post-Soviet politics and economics.<br />Gazprom briefly followed through on such a threat in 2006. Then, the loss of pressure in the continent-wide natural gas pipeline system cascaded westward into Europe, resulting in shutoffs not only in Ukraine but as far away as Italy, embarrassing the Kremlin.<br />Gazprom maintains that Ukraine owes the company $2.1 billion for natural gas shipped in November and December, and for fines for late payment throughout the year.<br />Naftogaz, Ukraine's national energy company, said Tuesday that it had paid $1.5 billion into the accounts of RusUkrEnergo, the natural gas trading company based in Switzerland that Gazprom uses to supply Ukraine, settling the debt but not the fines.<br />A spokesman for Gazprom, Sergei Kupriyanov, said that the Russian company's trading agent had not received the money, and that it was unclear whether this payment would be sufficient. The two sides have also not agreed on a price for supplies in 2009.<br />"Let's first see the payment, then we can talk about what will happen next," Kupriyanov said.<br />Gazprom, hard hit by declining energy prices, is trying to squeeze more money from its customers in the former Soviet Union.<br />The dispute is also politically tinged.<br />Inside Ukraine, a strategically important nation of 46 million people that lies between European Union countries and Russia, the pricing negotiations for natural gas are a divisive issue for an already fractious government.<br />Ukrainian politicians say that Russia, which has openly claimed a political role for itself in the former Soviet space, has now seized on Ukraine's economic troubles to sow greater discount among the ruling parties. Ukraine is one of countries hit the hardest by the global recession, and the negotiations over fuel prices have added to the nation's difficulties.<br />The negotiations have coincided with a widening breach between the two most prominent leaders of the 2004 street protests known as the Orange Revolution: the prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, and the president, Viktor Yushchenko.<br />Once allies, the two are likely to compete against each other in presidential elections to be held next year or in 2010.<br />Tymoshenko has sought to broker a solution to the natural gas price dispute to position herself as the candidate better able to negotiate with Russia.<br />By taking a hard line in talks with the administration of Yushchenko, who leans closer to the West, Gazprom may undermine his already waning chances of success in future elections.<br />"They are playing on our internal disputes," said Vladimir Polokhalo, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and an ally of Tymoshenko. "Gazprom is taking into account the situation in Ukraine, and of course, that weakens the government position."<br />Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, say that they are better prepared for a possible shutoff this year than they were in 2006 because Naftogaz has stockpiled a vast reserve of 17 billion cubic meters, or 600 billion cubic feet, of natural gas, sufficient to meet the country's needs until the end of the heating season in April. </p><p>*************</p><p><strong>Ukraine Naftogaz says paid Russia gas debt</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />KIEV: Ukraine's state energy firm Naftogaz said on Tuesday it no longer had debts for Russian gas, having paid $1.52 billion (1.05 billion pounds) to avoid a New Year cutoff of supplies.<br />"We have confirmation from banks that $1.522 billion is in the accounts of (gas supply intermediary) RosUkrEnergo," a spokesman told Reuters. "The payment has been made. Our debt has been paid off," he said.<br />Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom has previously said Naftogaz owed more than $2 billion for gas this year. It threatened to cut off supplies, potentially affecting the smooth transit of gas to Europe.<br />(Editing by Tim Pearce)</p><p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTtP5XKjvupXeagSpO2or052meZJ7UUgt8Kz0SRvEwpAKYV4bNQ-Y2XEbHGw3XhIA-_8mMKn3GPl_qDnLGxUwZ1eIMKzULcA4ce3ZzvWH_89phR33SVQjHifDXefXsrxtKf22e0eVKX4/s1600-h/DSC04924.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821996913409362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTtP5XKjvupXeagSpO2or052meZJ7UUgt8Kz0SRvEwpAKYV4bNQ-Y2XEbHGw3XhIA-_8mMKn3GPl_qDnLGxUwZ1eIMKzULcA4ce3ZzvWH_89phR33SVQjHifDXefXsrxtKf22e0eVKX4/s320/DSC04924.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Ted Lapidus, 79, French fashion designer, dies</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />PARIS: Ted Lapidus, the fashion designer who redefined chic with the 1960s unisex look, has died in France. He was 79.<br />President Nicolas Sarkozy, in an homage to the designer, said Lapidus had "democratized French elegance and classicism" and "made fashion accessible to men and women in the street."<br />Lapidus died of pulmonary problems Monday afternoon at a hospital in Cannes, his sister Rose Torrente-Mett said. He had also suffered from leukemia.<br />Born Edmond Lapidus on June 23, 1929, in Paris, the son of a tailor, Ted Lapidus created his label in 1951, and in 1963 he became a member of the Paris fashion club that runs haute couture, La Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.<br />The sandy-colored safari suit became emblematic of the modernist Lapidus style, with purist lines that swept the international fashion scene in the 1960s and 1970s.<br />At one point, Lapidus was referred to as "the poet of French couture," the statement by Sarkozy's office noted.<br />But Lapidus designed high fashion for only a brief portion of his career, preferring to put the accent on accessories early on. Today, the Ted Lapidus label lives mainly through the sale of accessories like fragrances and watches.<br />Olivier Lapidus, the designer's son, continued diversifying the label through new partnerships starting in 1982.</p><p><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidCHWShPPb6OdX2314PSzfqSyIGTH1YEs8r5C3kFzvdAjoGn1kzTttC__T2D6vft8CHAFyQmh7eShzko14oVUCUJogr7KUBbunRox8GIAlvaR02upGZ1rrcL0ekGD228e1p5wOqlV0oT8/s1600-h/DSC04926.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821657209766498" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidCHWShPPb6OdX2314PSzfqSyIGTH1YEs8r5C3kFzvdAjoGn1kzTttC__T2D6vft8CHAFyQmh7eShzko14oVUCUJogr7KUBbunRox8GIAlvaR02upGZ1rrcL0ekGD228e1p5wOqlV0oT8/s320/DSC04926.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Amid a buildup of its forces, Israel ponders a cease-fire</strong><br />By Ethan Bronner and Taghreed el-Khodary<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: With its punishing air attacks on Gaza about to enter a fifth day, its gunboats gathering near the Gaza port and its ground forces poised for imminent action, Israel said Tuesday that it was considering a 48-hour cease-fire that would also require Hamas to stop its rocket fire.<br />The idea was in an early stage, a result of a conversation between Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel seeking at least a temporary pause in the fighting that would allow humanitarian relief to be delivered to the besieged coastal strip. Aides to Barak said he was interested in exploring it and would do so with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the rest of the cabinet on Wednesday.<br />"The leading option right now is still a ground invasion, but the target of this operation is an improved cease-fire, and if that can come without the invasion, fine," said a close aide to Barak, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not Barak's authorized spokesman. "But, of course, Hamas has to agree, and there has to be a mechanism to make it work."<br />In Paris, where Kouchner was meeting with his European Union colleagues over the Gaza crisis, he called publicly for a permanent cease-fire. A similar call came from the so-called quartet of powers focused on the region — the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia.<br />President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made phone calls to Israeli and Arab leaders to explore prospects for halting the fighting. They emphasized that any cease-fire should be "durable and sustainable," compelling Hamas to end its rocket attacks, a State Department spokesman said.<br />"That is different from the cease-fire that existed in the last six months," said the spokesman, Gordon Duguid, noting that Hamas had routinely violated the previous agreement by firing rockets into southern Israel.<br />The flurry of diplomacy appeared to be mostly byplay in Jerusalem and Gaza, as Israeli officials spoke of a continuing and expanding military operation, and Hamas vowed to step up its resistance. Israeli warplanes attacked tunnels used to smuggle supplies in southern Gaza and destroyed the home of a top militant leader.<br />Olmert told the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, that the airstrikes were the first of several planned phases, according to spokesmen for the officials. It was also clear that the number of targets available from the air was declining, making the likelihood of a ground offensive greater.<br />In Gaza, Hamas militants issued a taped statement vowing revenge for those killed in the Israeli air raids since Saturday and warning that a ground invasion would prove painful for Israel. Palestinian officials say that more than 370 people have been killed, among them, the United Nations says, at least 62 women and children and an unknown number of civilian men. Two sisters, ages 4 and 11, were killed in a strike in the north as concern was growing around the world that the assault was taking a terrible toll on civilians.<br />"It would be easier to dry the sea of Gaza than to defeat the resistance and uproot Hamas, which is in every house of Gaza," said the statement from the military wing of Hamas. It was played on Hamas's television station, which had been shut down by an Israeli missile but went back on the air by broadcasting from a mobile van. The statement added that if there was a ground invasion, "the children of Gaza will be collecting the body parts of your soldiers and the ruins of tanks."<br />Hamas continued to fire longer-range rockets at Israel, shooting deep into the city of Ashdod for a second day as well as into Beersheba, a major city in Israel's south, where one landed in an empty kindergarten classroom. There was a report of light injuries as well as a number of people in shock.<br />Israeli warplanes, returning repeatedly to the same section of Gaza City overnight, pummeled the main government complex with about 20 missiles, residents said Tuesday. The building had been evacuated since the start of the operation on Saturday, which also hit nearly all of Hamas's security complexes, its university and other symbols of its sovereignty and power.<br />The Nakhala family, which lives next to the compound, was inspecting the damage on Tuesday morning and recounting the utter fear and panic they all felt as the missiles hit.<br />"We have no shelters in Gaza," said the father, Osama Nakhala. "Where shall we go? I also have to worry about my mother, who is 80 years old and paralyzed."<br />His 13-year-old son, Yousef, was with him. When asked his view of the situation, Yousef took an unusual stand for someone in Gaza, where Israel is being cursed by most everyone. "I blame Hamas. It doesn't want to recognize Israel. If they did so there could be peace," he said. "Egypt made a peace treaty with Israel, and nothing is happening to them."<br />His brother Amjad, 16, disagreed and blamed the Palestinian president in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, saying that he had sided with Israel.<br />Gaza City was entirely without electricity for the first time, the result of an air attack that hit the system's infrastructure. Repair workers said they were afraid to work because of the possibility of more raids.<br />The few open bakeries and grocery stores had lines stretching outside as people tried to stock up. But essentials, like diapers, baby food, bread, potatoes and fresh vegetables, were in short supply and costlier than normal.<br />Israel sent in about 100 trucks with emergency supplies of food and medicine, the military reported.<br />At the Hassouna Bakery near Shifa Hospital, about 100 men and 50 women waited in separate lines to buy bread. Amal Altayan was telling others in the line that she kept her cellphone in her pocket so that if an Israeli missile destroyed her house she would be able to phone for help. The other women mocked her, saying that if a missile hit her house, she would be gone. Showing familiarity with the kind of knowledge circulating in Gaza these days, Altayan replied, "It depends. If it is an F-16 I will turn into biscuits, but if it is an Apache I may have a chance."<br />Osama Alaf, 41, said he spent four hours waiting in line to buy bread. "I bought flour until now," he said. "I don't have cooking gas, but I make a fire out of cartons and paper and make bread that way." Asked whom he blamed, he said, "Israel, which is slaughtering us, and whoever is cooperating with Israel, like Egypt."<br />Anger at Egypt has grown across the Arab and Muslim worlds because it has declined to open its border with Gaza and is seen as cooperating with Israel.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>NEWS ANALYSIS</strong><br /><strong>For Hamas, logic led to cease-fire's end<br /></strong>By Stephen Farrell<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />RAMALLAH, West Bank: On the wall of the Israeli government press office in Jerusalem on Monday was a stack of yellow Post-it notes pasted one on top of the next, with the number 10,048 scrawled on the top one. That was the number of Palestinian rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza since 2001.<br />It was quickly out of date, and other Post-its will soon be stacked on top.<br />For Israel, the tally has prompted internal debate about how to counter the threat from Hamas's homemade rockets and those of other armed Palestinian factions.<br />For Hamas, the very existence of that number in an Israeli office is an achievement. As plumes of smoke rise from Gaza, it is Hamas that dominates the television news and newspaper headlines.<br />It is not only the publicity, but also the status conveyed on Hamas as the Palestinians' principal resistance. Its secular rival, Fatah, sits on the sidelines, marginal to the violence unfolding in Gaza, from which Hamas effectively expelled it at gunpoint in the summer of 2007.<br />The questions remain: Why did Hamas end its six-month cease-fire on Dec. 19? Will it — can it — unleash suicide bombers into Israel in retaliation? And will the devastation in Gaza make Palestinians fall into line behind Hamas, as they reliably have in the past, or will Hamas lose their support as Gazans count the escalating cost in blood and destruction?<br />Even knowing that retaliation was certain, Hamas seemed to end the cease-fire in part because of its longstanding discipline and consistency. For years it has preached to Palestinians the rejectionist credo that Fatah negotiated with Israel and got nowhere; Hamas's way of armed force, it argued year in and year out, was the only way.<br />And so it appears that Hamas turned its logic against its own cease-fire: Hamas's supreme leader, Khaled Meshal, said on Saturday that the truce had yielded few results. If there were no specific benefits — like freed prisoners or an end to Israeli blockages on Gaza — then the option, again, was a return to violence. It may also have calculated that the rockets into Israel — 60 in one day — would restore its status among Palestinians as the champion of "resistance" against the Zionist enemy, whose soldiers and settlers are no longer in Gaza within reach of Hamas's military wing.<br />A major question remains whether Hamas expected the shock-and-awe Israeli offensive that has left Gaza reeling.<br />The outcome, for the moment, is far from clear because neither side has yet deployed the full arsenal available to it.<br />Some in Gaza believe Hamas wants Israeli soldiers to enter the Gaza Strip, because it has had 18 months to smuggle weapons in through tunnels from the Sinai since it seized control of the territory from Fatah. For the last several years, after Israel's pullout from Gaza in 2005 and its erection of a barrier around the West Bank, it has been harder to strike at Israelis.<br />Israel, though, is aware of the risks and will not reflexively mount a large-scale military return to Gaza.<br />As Israeli tanks rumbled on the outskirts of Gaza and explosions and machine-gun fire echoed through the night late on Monday, it is too early to gauge the effect the renewed violence is having on Palestinian opinion. The key issue is whether Palestinians will blame Israel for raining fire down upon them, as Hamas hopes. Or blame Hamas for provoking it, as Fatah, Israel and its Western allies hope.<br />Right now Palestinians are blaming Israel, loudly.<br />This weekend, the Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jadida printed a black front page with a headline blaring: "1,000 Martyrs and Wounded in Saturday Slaughter."<br />More important is whether once away from television cameras and foreign journalists, Palestinians will vote for Hamas in presidential and parliamentary elections, both scheduled roughly within a year.<br />At the Shuafat refugee camp on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem on Sunday, masked Palestinian youths burned tires and used slingshots to hurl stones at Israeli soldiers.<br />Mohammed, 13, predicted bloody Hamas reprisals. "Hamas will be the one that will bomb green Egged buses, and we will go back to the way it was," he said, referring to the Israeli bus carrier that is often a target of suicide bombers.<br />Others were more doubtful. Ahmad, 14, said he supported "neither one nor the other," complaining that Hamas and Fatah spent too much time fighting each other instead of working for Palestinian unity.<br />A few miles north in Ramallah anti-Israeli and American sentiment was high among a small crowd of protesters gathered, incongruously, beneath a Stars and Bucks Cafe. Even here, in Fatah's heartland, people said they admired Hamas for its willingness to take on a regional superpower.<br />Challenged on the point that firing highly inaccurate rockets from Gaza into Israel carried a huge cost in retaliation, one 30-year-old Palestinian who refused to give his name compared the attacks to the impotent yet defiant gesture of the Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, who has become a folk hero across the Arab world for throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush.<br />Mustafa Saleh, 37, said: "I am originally Fatah and my voice will always be Fatah. But Hamas is resisting and we are a nation under occupation. I support the resistance, even here in the West Bank."<br />Hamas hopes such sentiments will bring it new supporters.<br />But as he watched the protesters go by, Mohanad Salah, 42, said that emotions would calm down. Palestinians were quite capable of wanting Hamas-style "resistance" with their hearts but peace talks with their heads, he said.<br />"The more military operations by Israel either here or in Gaza, the more it will make people go away from wanting agreements," he said.<br />"But you should know that even after Israel carried out this operation yesterday, if today it says 'We want a political solution, let's reach an agreement,' it would be completely accepted by the majority of the Palestinian people," Salah added.<br />Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, on Monday accused Hamas of inflicting suffering upon its fellow Palestinians. In a conference call with journalists he said the group was "holding hostage" ordinary Palestinians in Gaza just as it was a quarter of a million citizens in southern Israel.<br />But Hamas has in the past proved adept at deflecting such barbs. "Israel and America say no to Hamas. What do you say?" read one Hamas 2006 election banner. The Palestinians gave one answer then. Whether they give the same answer in 2009 or 2010 may depend on how the next few weeks play out.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. presses Israel on cease-fire</strong><br />By Mark Landler<br />Wednesday, December 31, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The United States is pressing Israel to call a cease-fire in its assault on Hamas militants in Gaza, officials said Tuesday, while enlisting Arab countries to press Hamas to do the same.<br />The intensive diplomacy is being led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who made a flurry of phone calls over the last 24 hours to Israeli and Arab leaders. The goal, said a State Department spokesman, Gordon Duguid, is a "reliable cease-fire, one that is durable and sustainable."<br />"That is different from the ceasefire that existed in the last six months," Duguid said, noting that Hamas routinely violated the previous agreement by firing rockets into southern Israel.<br />In the past few days, the Bush administration has said Israel was justified in retaliating against Hamas's attacks. The United States still holds Hamas responsible for the eruption of violence in Gaza, Duguid said. But the Bush administration has begun to increase pressure on Israel, as the death toll from the attacks surpassed 350, including 60 civilians, according to a United Nations estimate.<br />"We're working where we can have the best effect," said an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Other parties are working in areas where they have more influence than we do."<br />On Tuesday, President George W. Bush spoke by telephone with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The two leaders agreed that if a cease-fire in Gaza was to be effective, "it must be respected by Hamas," said a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe. Bush also spoke with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the White House said.<br />Also on Tuesday, Rice spoke to King Abdullah of Jordan and the foreign ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to the State Department. The United States asked these Arab officials to use their influence with Hamas to halt its rocket attacks.<br />Rice placed new calls to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, with whom she has been in almost constant contact over the past three days.<br />With diplomatic efforts still under way, the State Department did not confirm reports in Israel that Washington was seeking a 48-hour cease-fire that would allow relief supplies to be delivered to stricken areas in Gaza. The pause would also give Hamas a last chance to stop its attacks.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Fear and resolve as rockets head north into Israel<br /></strong>By Isabel Kershner<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />ASHDOD, Israel: A piercing shriek went up and a young woman fainted as the body, wrapped in a white shroud, was brought into the packed funeral hall.<br />On Tuesday, this fast-developing modern port city about half way between Gaza and Tel Aviv buried its first victim of a rocket attack: Irit Sheetrit, a 39-year-old mother of four.<br />The Katyusha-type rocket that killed her was fired on Monday night by Palestinian militants from Gaza; it was the first to have hit this city of more than 200,000, so far north of the Palestinian territory.<br />Over the weekend, Israel began its devastating air bombardment of Hamas targets in Gaza with the stated goal of stopping the incessant rocket fire that has plagued Israeli towns and villages close to the border for years.<br />More than 370 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault so far, including at least 70 civilians. The militants have responded with increasingly advanced rockets that reach farther into the country with each passing day.<br />As the sun set on Tuesday, rockets started flying out of Gaza again, landing in new places like Kiryat Malachi to the northeast and Beersheba, the capital of Israel's south.<br />Yet even here, amid the sobbing of the mourners, many of them in a state of shock and disbelief, support for a sustained Israeli military campaign remained strong.<br />"Of course we support it," said Rosette Alalouf, a former colleague of Sheetrit at the funeral. "Do we have a choice?"<br />In his eulogy, Yehiel Lasri, the mayor of Ashdod, conveyed the prevailing spirit of resolve here. "Has not the time come to use full force and all the means at our disposal?"<br />Lasri added that he had watched as Sderot first came under rocket fire, then Ashkelon farther up the coast. "We hoped they would not get to Ashdod, but we did not delude ourselves," he said, noting that the authorities have been preparing for such a scenario for two years.<br />The ability of the civilian population to withstand heavy rocket fire, which Israel fully expected in the wake of its campaign, is a crucial part of the military equation. As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, "the patience, determination and stamina of the residents of the home front will, in the end, determine the ability" of Israel to attain its military and diplomatic goals.<br />Israeli officials say the preparations in that home front — which now includes hundreds of thousands of citizens in southern Israel — has saved many lives. Though four Israelis have been killed in rocket attacks since the start of the military operation, three of them on Monday, officials say the hundreds of rockets that have been fired could have exacted a much heavier toll.<br />All communities within a 25-mile radius of Gaza have sirens that serve as incoming rocket alerts, and while the Chanukah vacation officially ended on Tuesday, schools within rocket range remained closed. Pupils spent the day in shelters or at home.<br />Television and radio channels repeatedly broadcast instructions on how to behave in an alert. Those caught driving, for example, are told to get out of their cars and lie on the ground.<br />Sheetrit had been on her way home from the gym with her sister when the siren wailed. She managed to get out of the car and tried to take shelter in a bus station, but the rocket slammed down from the sky too quickly, too close.<br />The site of the landing has turned into something of a local destination. Curious residents came by on Tuesday, some taking photos on their cell phones. A group of children from a nearby apartment building searched a grassy verge for tiny metal balls and other bits of shrapnel that had scattered all around.<br />Two more rockets hit Ashdod in the evening, this time falling in open areas and causing no harm.<br />The center of town was unusually quiet on Tuesday, though stores remained open in a bid to maintain a sense of normalcy. Many of the adults seemed reconciled to the new situation, but said that the children were very afraid.<br />Zion Ben Abu, 45, the owner of a falafel shop, said he used to run a factory in an industrial zone on the Gaza border where dozens of Palestinians worked. He said he felt some sympathy for the ordinary Gazans, who "mostly want to send their kids to school and live quietly, like us."<br />The problem, he argued, were those on top, who left Israel no choice but to fight.<br />"I'm prepared to live like this for months as long as the army continues this aggressive line," said Oren Idelman, 33, an investment adviser at a nearby bank. The Gazans "have to understand that if we get hit, they get hit," he said.<br />In Netivot, an Israeli town east of Gaza, knots of people waited at bus stops with small suitcases when the Sabbath ended on Saturday evening, hours after a local man was killed in a rocket attack.<br />But nobody seemed to be speaking of leaving Ashdod, perhaps because of the shrinking number of places where it is safe to go.<br />"I've been here since 1976," said Avraham Ohana, an older resident. "We are used to wars. But they always used to happen somewhere else, far away."<br />As Ohana spoke, his brother called on his cell phone and urged him to come and stay with him in Haifa, about 80 miles to the north.<br />"I said 'what for? To be within range of Nasrallah's rockets?'" he joked bleakly, referring to Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militant Hezbollah organization in Lebanon that fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel during its war with Israel in 2006.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Egyptians struggle over how to help Gaza</strong><br />By Steven Erlanger<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />EL ARISH, Egypt: Egyptian ambulances have brought at least 43 wounded Palestinians from Gaza to the general hospital in this southern city, with 15 of them needing mechanical respirators to keep them alive, said Muhammad al-Gabr, a doctor who has been trying to keep them alive and get them to more sophisticated surgical hospitals in Cairo.<br />Nine remained here Tuesday, including a young boy. They all were in critical condition with blast and fracture wounds, and Gabr hoped to medivac them out Tuesday night. "The doctors in Gaza are very talented," he said with some admiration. "They've had a lot of experience."<br />He said that as far as he knew all the patients sent here were civilians.<br />He said he felt he was trying to do his part for Gaza, though he recognized that Egypt and its longtime president, Hosni Mubarak, faced a difficult political dilemma - needing to show solidarity with the Palestinians under attack while refusing to open the border between Egypt and Gaza to anything but carefully monitored humanitarian missions, like the 30 ambulances this reporter saw Tuesday heading toward Gaza.<br />"Gaza was part of Egypt if you go back in history, so there is a special feeling," Gabr said. "But we don't look at borders this way. We are helping the people."<br />But some here, where an important part of the economy is based on smuggling food, supplies, weapons and explosives to Gaza, feel that Egypt must do more while Gaza is under such heavy attack from Israeli warplanes.<br />"Egypt is helping the wounded and sending supplies for the people," said Hishmat Abu Bakr, 63, who fought in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. "But we'd prefer bigger help. We'd like to break the border and go die there with our brothers."<br />Open criticism of Mubarak was rare Tuesday in southern Egypt, where the landscape and the architecture are nearly identical to that in Gaza. There is a heavy presence of police, military and secret police, the Mukhabarat, and numerous checkpoints along the roads on the way to Rafah, which has been declared a military zone.<br />President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his ally, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, have called on Egypt to open the barriers to Gaza and the Egyptian people to break them down. But Mubarak's forces have already clashed with Palestinians trying to leave Gaza, and he has said that the border would remain closed.<br />Egypt would only reopen the Rafah crossing when the Palestinian faction Hamas reconciles with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, and allows him to reassert his authority over all of Palestine, including Gaza, Mubarak said Tuesday in a nationally televised speech.<br />"We in Egypt are not going to contribute to perpetuating the rift by opening the Rafah crossing in the absence of the Palestinian Authority and European Union observers," as called for in a 2005 agreement opening Rafah that was negotiated with Abbas, Israel and the United States.<br />Mubarak condemned Israel's "savage aggression," said Israel's "blood-stained hands are stirring up feelings of enormous anger" and called for an immediate cease-fire.<br />But in a riposte to Arab critics who live at a distance, Mubarak said: "We say to those who are trying to make political capital out of the plight of the Palestinian people that Palestinian blood has a price." He told the Palestinians "to restore your unity" and said he had warned Hamas leaders that ending the six-month truce with Israel would bring new Israeli attacks.<br />Bakr, the war veteran, refused to believe it when told of Mubarak's speech. "Mubarak could not say something so wrong," Bakr said. "The Palestinians are his brothers."<br />There have been attacks, meanwhile, on Egyptian diplomatic missions in Beirut and in Aden, Yemen. Egypt will act as host of a meeting Wednesday of Arab League foreign ministers before a summit meeting on Friday in Doha.<br />Muhammad Ahmad, 25, who owns the Farha(Happiness) dress shop, said he felt that Egypt was doing what it could. "If they open the border just like that, it will be chaos like last year," he said. "That's why we need an agreement. Here in El Arish we're so close to Gaza and yet there's nothing we can do. It's sad, but we're powerless."<br />Hassan Salem, 22, said he and Khaled Kamal, 25, had traveled the 35 kilometers, or 20 miles, from Rafah to this seaside city "to look at young women and to rest my head." Kamal said that when the Israelis were bombing near Rafah to try to destroy the smuggling tunnels that run between the Egyptian and Gazan side of the once-unified city, "we were almost knocked out by the noise."<br />Everyone in Rafah has family on both sides of the border, Salem said. "So there's a lot of worry - everyone on both sides of Rafah is worried."<br />They sat in a tea shop, eyes glued to Al Jazeera and its nonstop coverage of the wounded and dead in Gaza, with a special focus on two dead sisters, shown lying in shrouds side by side.<br />"When you see small children dying like that, why did they die?" Kamal said passionately. "What did they do?"<br />Both were careful in discussing the tunnels, but Salem said, with a bit of exaggeration: "Israel destroyed maybe 40 tunnels the other day, but there are a thousand."<br />His words were echoed by Ahmad Abdo, 43. "The tunnels are our lifeline," he said. "The Israelis bombed some, but they can't bomb them all. Their economy is our economy."<br />Salem said that all Arabs should help the Palestinians, but he was less clear about how.<br />As for Egypt, he said that Mubarak was "doing all he can to help them." Kamal remembered how Hamas blew up the border between Gaza and Egypt last year, and how the first days of celebration were followed by resentments and the denuding of southern Egypt of goods meant for Egyptians. "After three days, there was nothing left for us to buy," he said.<br />The military men in Rafah, Salem said, "are there to help." But then he said, neatly describing the Egyptian dilemma, "Of course, if the Palestinians push through, the military is also there to push them back."<br />Nadim Audi contributed reporting.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Tensions worsen in Arab region<br /></strong>By Robert F. Worth<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BEIRUT: After four days of Israeli strikes on Gaza, an outpouring of popular anger is putting pressure on American allies in the Arab world and appears to be worsening the region's internal divisions.<br />The sharpest rhetorical attacks have been aimed at Egypt, widely seen as having aided the Israeli assault through its closure of its Gaza border, preventing refugees from fleeing the fighting.<br />But as massive street demonstrations continued Tuesday from north Africa to Yemen, some marchers and opinion-makers also lashed out angrily at other moderate Arab governments - including Jordan and Saudi Arabia - for failing to take a stronger stand. Syria and Iran, meanwhile, have drawn praise for their militancy.<br />As the death toll in Gaza passed 370, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt gave a televised address to defend his decision not to open the border with Gaza except for humanitarian purposes, and derided "those who are seeking political gains at the expense of the Palestinian people."<br />President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, in an apparent reference to Egypt, said "those who link their interests to the interests of the Zionists will go to hell."<br />Although Jordan and Saudi Arabia have been careful not to blame Hamas, the violence has put them on the defensive.<br />"It's becoming clear that if you are silent, the Arab street is going to consider you part of the enemy," said Muhammad al-Masri of the Center for Strategic Studies in Amman. "There is no way to be in the middle."<br />That shift appears to be unraveling the tentative thaw over the past year, Masri said. Syria was reaching out to the West and holding indirect peace talks with Israel. Lebanon's political factions reached a peace deal. Syria and Saudi Arabia made gestures toward resolving their long-running feud.<br />Now the fault lines that were so painfully visible during the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah have reappeared. Syria has been pressing for an emergency Arab summit meeting, but Egypt and Saudi Arabia have resisted the call, apparently fearing they could be portrayed as appeasers.<br />Demonstrations continued Tuesday in Cairo, where marchers have been carrying banners for days with slogans like "Down with Mubarak" and "Where is the Egyptian Army?" Angry disputes have broken out in Parliament, with members of the Muslim Brotherhood - the ideological father of Hamas - accusing the leadership of colluding with Israel.<br />A crowd of protesters attacked the Egyptian Consulate in Aden, Yemen, on Tuesday, and 11 were arrested by the police. Egyptian embassies have been the scenes of attacks and protests throughout the region since Sunday.<br />Egypt is in effect trapped between Israel, with which it has a peace treaty, and Hamas, which enjoys popular support among Egyptians. The Egyptian government has struggled with its own Islamist opposition, and would clearly like to be rid of Hamas. But it faces tremendous popular anger if it appears to endorse violence against Palestinians.<br />The Gaza violence has exacerbated that dilemma. It has happened before, but now Hamas is ruling Gaza and is politically isolated from the West Bank - which puts more onus on Egypt.<br />"Egypt is very much cornered this time," said Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University. "There's a perception that Egypt is leading the moderate Arab camp in this, and that the moderate camp has not been able to achieve anything."<br />Egyptian officials see the hand of Iran - a patron of Hamas - in the conflict. Iran was already pressing Egypt before the Israeli attack began, apparently eager to undermine Egypt's role as a mediator between the Palestinian factions. Demonstrators gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Tehran on Dec. 17 to protest Egypt's position toward Hamas.<br />In recent days, government-allied newspapers in Egypt have lashed out at Iran and its ally Hezbollah, whose leader demanded that Egypt open its border.<br />For their part, TV stations and newspapers allied with Iran and Syria continued to portray Egypt as a traitor. There were also harsh words for other Arab states.<br />Egypt and Saudi Arabia "are even more excited about this war than they were during the 2006 war" between Israel and Hezbollah, said Ibrahim al-Amine, chairman of the board of Al Akhbar newspaper, which is aligned with Hezbollah. "Israel would be satisfied with a compromise, but the Arab regimes want to finish Hamas completely," he said.<br />Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>A captured Israeli soldier figures in military assessments and political calculus</strong><br />By Isabel Kershner<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: A rare point of consensus in Israel, a normally fractious country, has been the desire to see Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal who has been held captive in Gaza for more than two years, return alive.<br />Yet when Israelis woke up on Monday to a report on Egyptian television that the soldier, now 22, had been hurt in the Israeli bombardment of Hamas facilities in Gaza over the last few days, the news was met with an almost stoic sangfroid. Despite very real fears for the soldier's safety and an instinctive understanding that the attack on Gaza involved a calculated risk for Shalit, many were also prepared for what could be emotional manipulations by the other side.<br />Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza and is holding Shalit, has demanded the release of some 1,400 Palestinian security prisoners from Israeli jails, including many convicted of deadly terrorist attacks, for his return. The group's officials refused to confirm or deny the report that he was injured, which first cropped up on Islamist militant Web sites.<br />So far, if only out of respect for the soldier's family, Israeli leaders have tried to keep Shalit out of the political fray. But in a country where 18-year-olds are conscripted into the army and the military prides itself on never abandoning its own, his fate has gripped the nation.<br />The Israeli military said in a statement that the soldier, who was seized in a cross-border raid by Hamas and other militant groups in June 2006, was a "valuable asset" to Hamas; in the military's view, the group would do all it could to keep him alive.<br />During a special session about the Gaza crisis in the Israeli Parliament on Monday, the defense minister and leader of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, addressed the soldier's parents, Aviva and Noam Shalit, saying, "I think it proper to emphasize here the strength of our commitment to Gilad's return home."<br />But only two weeks ago, Barak made it clear that a broad military assault on Gaza would be dangerous for the captive, saying "Gilad Shalit is one of the reasons" for favoring a truce. The army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, told Army Radio last week that Shalit was a factor in Israel's calculations about Gaza.<br />To many Israelis, the government's decision to attack Gaza seemed a clear subjugation of Shalit's safety to broader military goals.<br />"I am not sure he'll be back," said Daphna Kaplansky, a volunteer gathering signatures on Monday for a petition urging the government to go ahead with the prisoner exchange in a tent set up outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's house since September. "He is in terrible danger now."<br />Shalit was last seen publicly being dragged into Gaza alive in 2006. A year later, Hamas released an audiotape of the soldier believed to be authentic; the family has since received letters written in what family members said was his hand.<br />When Israel agreed to a six-month truce with Hamas in June, Shalit's parents decried the fact that Israel had agreed to ease its sanctions on Gaza without securing his freedom.<br />Israel insisted it had made the truce contingent on movement in the case. But when Hamas declared the truce officially over 10 days ago, a senior Israeli official conceded that there had been no serious talks about the soldier and that Hamas had not even agreed to a Red Cross visit.<br />Even before the recent intensification of rocket fire out of Gaza, precipitating the Israeli military response, the soldier was being pulled into the campaign for elections set for Feb. 10.<br />Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is running for prime minister, said this month that while all Israelis wanted to see Shalit returned safely, "it is not always possible to bring everyone back home."<br />With Livni cast by some opponents as heartless, Barak, a rival for the prime ministerial post, was accused of exploiting the issue by saying two days later that he was willing to take responsibility for the soldier.<br />Barak added: "We have a moral and authoritative obligation to bring him home alive and well, not at any price, but at any worthy and possible cost."<br />Columnists noted both were essentially saying the same thing.<br /><br />***************<br /><br /><strong>Israel and Hamas under pressure for Gaza aid truce<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Nidal al-Mughrabi<br />Foreign powers stepped up calls on Israel and Hamas on Tuesday to halt hostilities after four days of Israeli air attacks on the Gaza Strip and rocket salvoes by the Islamist militants deep inside the Jewish state.<br />The Quartet of Middle East peace brokers -- the United Nations, United States, Russia and European Union -- urged an immediate cease-fire, a U.N. spokeswoman said after telephone consultations by the group's foreign ministers.<br />Israeli warplanes destroyed Hamas targets for a fourth day, including five ministerial buildings and a structure belonging to the Islamic University in Gaza City.<br />Medical officials put Palestinian casualties since the aerial onslaught began on Saturday at 384 dead and more than 800 wounded. A U.N. agency said at least 62 of the dead were civilians. Four Israelis have been killed.<br />Israeli media quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as saying the Gaza offensive, launched by his centrist government six weeks before an election that opinion polls predict the opposition right-wing Likud party will win, was in "the first of several stages."<br />Israel says its air bombardments are aimed at ending rocket attacks launched from Gaza, which have caused panic for months in areas where one-eighth of its population lives.<br />Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit the city of Beersheba on Tuesday, 42 km (26 miles) inside Israel, police said -- the deepest such attack yet by militants, who have launched more than 400 rockets across the border since Saturday, according to an Israeli military assessment.<br />Three Israelis were killed by rockets on Monday but there were no reports of serious casualties inside Israel on Tuesday.<br />FOOD AND POWER LOW<br />In Gaza, basic food supplies were running low and power cuts were affecting much of the territory. Hospitals lacked at least 80 essential medicines as well as scores of instruments, Health Ministry official Muawiyah Hassanein said.<br />French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner proposed Israel accept a 48-hour truce to allow aid into Gaza. France said it would host Livni on Thursday and an Israeli official said French President Nicolas Sarkozy might visit Jerusalem next Monday.<br />EU foreign ministers called late on Tuesday for an immediate and lasting truce and for humanitarian aid to be let into Gaza.<br />The EU said it would work with other members of the Quartet, and send a delegation of ministers to the region shortly.<br />Turkey, Egypt and several other Arab governments are also pursuing their own initiative calling for a cease-fire and reopening of Gaza's crossings with Israel, diplomats said.<br />Olmert met Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni late on Tuesday to discuss the initiatives, Israel Radio said.<br />Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said Israel supported the idea of letting aid into Gaza.<br />"We want to see convoy after convoy of humanitarian support and we are willing to work closely with all relevant international parties to facilitate that goal," he said.<br />"At the same time, it is important to keep the pressure up on Hamas, not give them a respite, time to regroup and reorganise."<br />About 1.5 million Palestinians live in Gaza, which has one of the highest population densities and growth rates in the world. Most Gazans live on less than $2 a day and up to 80 percent are dependent on food aid, according to aid groups.<br />Hamas seized Gaza from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction in fighting in June 2007. The Islamists have rejected international demands to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.<br />"VICTIM AND JAILER"<br />Hamas was cool to the idea of a truce. It said the onus was on Israel to stop firing and lift the blockade of Gaza.<br />"You can't equate the victim and the jailer," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told reporters. "What is required at this time is an Arab and international effort to stop the (Israeli) aggression and open the (border) crossings."<br />The White House said President George W. Bush had spoken to Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Tuesday to discuss how to end the violence.<br />According to internal Israeli assessments, the air offensive has destroyed a third of the Hamas rocket arsenal but the faction's guerrilla army remains largely intact, Israel's Channel 10 television reported.<br />"None of us can say how long it will take," Israeli President Shimon Peres said after being briefed at the Defence Ministry about Israel's deadliest Gaza campaign since the 1967 Middle East war, when the territory was captured from Egypt.<br />Barak said he would seek Israeli cabinet approval for the mobilisation of 2,500 army reservists, compounding an earlier call-up of 6,500 reservists for the garrison on the Gaza border.<br />Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was due in Syria and Jordan on Tuesday. Al Arabiya television said he would meet Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader living in Damascus, although Erdogan's office said no such meeting was scheduled.<br />Palestinian officials said Abbas would meet Erdogan in Jordan in the evening.<br />In northern Gaza, two Palestinian sisters were killed in an air raid near their home, medical workers said. The area has been a launching ground for cross-border rocket attacks.<br />"We are living in horror, we and our children. The situation is not just bad, it is tragic," said Gazan Abu Fares, standing outside his home near the rubble of a building bombed overnight.<br />(Additional reporting by Adam Entous and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Andrew Dobbie and Kevin Liffey)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>Why Israel feels threatened</strong><br />By Benny Morris<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />LI-ON, Israel: Many Israelis feel that the walls - and history - are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War and destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies in Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.<br />More than 40 years ago, the Egyptians had driven a UN peacekeeping force from the Sinai-Israel border, had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and air traffic and had deployed the equivalent of seven armored and infantry divisions on Israel's doorstep. Egypt had signed a series of military pacts with Syria and Jordan and placed troops in the West Bank. Arab radio stations blared messages about the coming destruction of Israel.<br />Israelis, or rather, Israeli Jews, are beginning to feel much the way their parents did in those apocalyptic days. Israel is a much more powerful and prosperous state today. In 1967 there were only some 2 million Jews in the country - today there are about 5.5 million - and the military did not have nuclear weapons. But the bulk of the population looks to the future with deep foreboding.<br />The foreboding has two general sources and four specific causes.<br />The general problems are simple. First, the Arab and wider Islamic worlds, despite Israeli hopes since 1948 and notwithstanding the peace treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan in 1979 and 1994, have never truly accepted the legitimacy of Israel's creation and continue to oppose its existence.<br />Second, public opinion in the West (and in democracies, governments can't be far behind) is gradually reducing its support for Israel as the West looks askance at the Jewish state's treatment of its Palestinian neighbors and wards. The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory and the Arab states are increasingly powerful and assertive.<br />More specifically, Israel faces a combination of dire threats. To the east, Iran is frantically advancing its nuclear project, which most Israelis and most of the world's intelligence agencies believe is designed to produce nuclear weapons. This, coupled with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's public threats to destroy Israel - and his denials of the Holocaust and of any homosexuality in Iran, which underscore his irrationality - has Israel's political and military leaders on tenterhooks.<br />To the north, the Lebanese fundamentalist organization Hezbollah, which also vows to destroy Israel and functions as an Iranian proxy, has thoroughly rearmed since its war with Israel in 2006. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah now has an arsenal of 30,000 to 40,000 Russian-made rockets, supplied by Syria and Iran - twice the number it possessed in 2006. Some of the rockets can reach Tel Aviv and Dimona, where Israel's nuclear production facility is located. If there is war between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah can be expected to join in. (It may well join in the renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, too.)<br />To the south, Israel faces the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip and whose charter promises to destroy Israel and bring every inch of Palestine under Islamic rule and law. Hamas today has an army of thousands. It also has a large arsenal of rockets - home-made Qassams and Russian-made, Iranian-financed Katyushas and Grads smuggled, with the Egyptians largely turning a blind eye, through tunnels from Sinai.<br />Last June, Israel and Hamas agreed to a six-month truce. This unsteady calm was periodically violated by armed factions in Gaza that lobbed rockets into Israel's border settlements. Israel responded by periodically suspending shipments of supplies into Gaza.<br />In November and early December, Hamas stepped up the rocket attacks and then, unilaterally, formally announced the end of the truce. The Israeli public and government then gave Defense Minister Ehud Barak a free hand. Israel's highly efficient air assault on Hamas, which began on Saturday, was his first move. Most of Hamas' security and governmental compounds were turned into rubble and several hundred Hamas fighters were killed.<br />But the attack will not solve the basic problem posed by a Gaza Strip populated by 1.5 million impoverished, desperate Palestinians who are ruled by a fanatic regime and are tightly hemmed in by fences and by border crossings controlled by Israel and Egypt.<br />An enormous Israeli ground operation aimed at conquering the Gaza Strip and destroying Hamas would probably bog down in the alleyways of refugee camps before achieving its goal. (And even if these goals were somehow achieved, renewed and indefinite Israeli rule over Gaza would prove unpalatable to all concerned.)<br />More likely are small, limited armored incursions, intended to curtail missile launches and kill Hamas fighters. But these are also unlikely to bring the organization to heel - though they may exercise sufficient pressure eventually to achieve, with the mediation of Turkey or Egypt, a renewed temporary truce. That seems to be the most that can be hoped for, though a renewal of rocket attacks on southern Israel, once Hamas recovers, is as certain as day follows night.<br />The fourth immediate threat to Israel's existence is internal. It is posed by the country's Arab minority. Over the past two decades, Israel's 1.3 million Arab citizens have been radicalized, with many openly avowing a Palestinian identity and embracing Palestinian national aims. Their spokesmen say that their loyalty lies with their people rather than with their state, Israel. Many of the community's leaders, who benefit from Israeli democracy, more or less publicly supported Hezbollah in 2006 and continue to call for "autonomy" (of one sort or another) and for the dissolution of the Jewish state.<br />Demography, if not Arab victory in battle, offers the recipe for such a dissolution. The birth rates for Israeli Arabs are among the highest in the world, with 4 or 5 children per family (as opposed to the 2 or 3 children per family among Israeli Jews).<br />If present trends persist, Arabs could constitute the majority of Israel's citizens by 2040 or 2050. Already, within five to 10 years, Palestinians (Israeli Arabs coupled with those who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) will form the majority population of Palestine (the land lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean).<br />Friction between Israeli Arabs and Jews is already a cogent political factor. In 2000, at the start of the second intifada, thousands of Arab youngsters rioted along Israel's major highways and in Israel's ethnically mixed cities.<br />The past fortnight has seen a recurrence, albeit on a smaller scale, of such rioting. Down the road, Israel's Jews fear more violence and terrorism by Israeli Arabs. Most Jews see the Arab minority as a potential fifth column.<br />What is common to these specific threats is their unconventionality. Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran's nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs' growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel's leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.<br />Israel's sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow.<br />Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University, is the author, most recently, of "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>Undermining peace</strong><br />By Marwan Bishara<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Israel might be targeting Hamas, but its bombardment of Gaza is undermining the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Moreover, if this explosive microcosm of the greater Middle East blows up, it will destroy the incoming Obama administration's chances for a fresh start for peace in the region.<br />Behind the Israeli government's military escalation lie cynical electoral calculations and a flawed strategic rationale. It is common knowledge in Israel that the ambitious foreign and defense ministers - Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak - who head the coalition parties Kadima and Labor respectively - are all too aware that the assault on Gaza will help them to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the February elections.<br />Defense Minister Barak, the architect of the Gaza campaign, has seen his poll approval ratings double in recent days. But with each Israeli vote he earns, support among the Palestinians for Abbas erodes.<br />Israel has based its assault on Gaza on three principles: Israel has the right to defend its citizens against rocket attacks; it aims to empower Palestinian and Arab moderates; and it hopes to protect the peace process against the forces of extremism.<br />Let's dissect these justifications.<br />Israel certainly has a right and responsibility to defend its citizens, but so do the Palestinians. If the killing three Israelis and terrorizing thousands of others justifies the heavy shelling of Gaza, surely the killing of some 350 Palestinians in three days - in addition to 500 others over the last year - justifies Palestinian retaliation.<br />Why should the holding of an Israeli soldier unleash the dogs of war, the Palestinians ask, when holding thousands of Palestinians, many detained indefinitely without trial, goes unchecked?<br />Israel asserts that it is ready to end the occupation only through negotiated settlement, but it criticizes Abbas for being indecisive and soft on terror. Thus comes Olmert's attempt to strengthen Abbas by breaking and removing Hamas from power and handing him a pacified Gaza Strip.<br />Here, the parallels with Israel's 2006 war are sobering. The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah instead weakened the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora. If Israel fails in Gaza as it did in Lebanon, Hamas, like Hezbollah, will come out stronger and more popular as the defender of the homeland, rendering Abbas and his Fatah party a political sitting duck.<br />If Israel succeeds in defeating Hamas amid heavy Palestinian casualties, Abbas will be seen as an Israeli accomplice. Any attempt by his forces to enter Gaza on the footsteps of the Israeli military would unleash a bloodbath, fueling further radicalization among the Palestinians and the demise of Abbas's authority.<br />Considering that great human toll in either scenario, Olmert's assertion that Israel has no quarrel with the people of Gaza rings hallow. In fact, the escalation of fighting is an extension of their collective punishment for daring to vote overwhelmingly for Hamas against the more secular Fatah party in the Palestinian elections of 2006.<br />Although my network, Al Jazeera English, has been the only TV outlet broadcasting internationally from the strip since the blockade began, the Arab world has been awash with images of the suffering people are enduring there. Israel's disproportionate use of force against the 1.5 million Gazans, half of whom are children, is widely portrayed as a war crime that undermines America and its friends in the region.<br />It should therefore come as no surprise to the Israeli prime minister that the people of Gaza, 85 percent of them refugees, do have a quarrel with Israel, which has occupied their land for 40 years.<br />Israel's leaders have been trying hard to justify the heavy toll among the Palestinians and the humiliation of the Palestinian Authority as a necessary price to pay for defeating terrorism and strengthening the U.S.- sponsored peace process. But no one has shown as much commitment to the peace process as the Palestinian president.<br />Since he brokered the Oslo accords and played a key role in reaching six interim agreements with Israel, Abbas has hedged all his bets on America and Israel, but to no avail. Although President Bush and Olmert embraced Abbas in public as he sacrificed Palestinian national unity and resistance to occupation, the expansion of Jewish settlements and Israeli incursions have left him empty-handed.<br />When Israel finally disengaged from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it re-deployed unilaterally - with no coordination whatsoever with its Palestinian partner. The pullout was not done as a good-will gesture to Abbas. It was made because the densely populated strip, which comprises 2 percent of historic Palestine and 20 percent of all Palestinians, had become a security and demographic nightmare.<br />The failure of the American-sponsored Annapolis framework to bring about a peace agreement has helped bolster Hamas, leaving the Palestinian president ever-more vulnerable. Unless the international community puts a prompt end to Israel's onslaught, brokers an expanded cease-fire and lifts the Gaza blockade, the world will be left with a great humanitarian and strategic mess.<br />Alas, those who shouted "Obama inshallah" a few weeks ago are today burning U.S. and Israeli flags on the streets of Gaza and in capitals around the globe.<br />Marwan Bishara is a senior political analyst for the Al Jazeera English network. The opinions expressed here are his own.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>EDITORIAL</strong><br /><strong>There's plenty of blame to go around for Gaza's war</strong><br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />Israel must defend itself. And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory.<br />Still we fear that Israel's response - devastating airstrikes that represent the largest military operation in Gaza since 1967 - is unlikely to weaken the militant Palestinian group substantially or move things any closer to what all Israelis and all Palestinians need: a durable peace agreement and a two-state solution.<br />Israel must make every effort to limit civilian casualties. The leaders of Hamas, especially those safely ensconced in Damascus, are unconcerned about their people's suffering - and masters at capitalizing on it.<br />Before the conflict spins out of control, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries will have to find ways to cajole or more likely threaten Hamas (or its patrons in Syria and Iran) to accept a new cease-fire.<br />President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should be pressing Cairo and Riyadh to use all of their influence with Hamas, and they should be pressing Israel to exercise restraint.<br />By Monday, some 350 Palestinians - mostly Hamas security forces - were reported killed. A Hamas security compound was among dozens of structures pummeled in the attacks, and the group's leaders were supposedly driven into hiding. The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, promised a "war to the bitter end."<br />We hope he does not mean a ground war. That, or any prolonged military action, would be disastrous for Israel and lead to wider regional instability. Barak and Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, both candidates to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in elections set for February, must not be drawn any further into a competition with the front-runner, Benjamin Netanyahu, over who is the biggest hawk.<br />There can be no justification for Hamas' attacks or its virulent rejectionism. But others must also take responsibility for the current mess. Hamas never fully observed the cease-fire that went into effect on June 19 and Israel never really lived up to its commitment to ease its punishing embargo on Gaza. When the cease-fire ran out, no one, including the Bush administration, made a serious effort to get it extended.<br />Meanwhile, the peace process Bush launched with such fanfare in Annapolis last year is moribund. There is plenty of blame to go around for that, too. Olmert's government failed to halt settlements and give the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas - Hamas' sworn enemy - the support he needed. Bush refused to press Olmert to do what was needed but politically unpalatable. Arab leaders never did enough to boost Abbas, or to persuade or pressure Hamas to cut its ties with Iran and join peace efforts.<br />Rice once hoped to make a Middle East peace her legacy. It is too late for that. But she should do her job. That means getting on a plane for Cairo and Riyadh - now - to enlist their help in brokering a new cease-fire. Then it will be up to President-elect Barack Obama to quickly pick up the pieces and fashion a Middle East peace strategy that may actually bring peace.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>LETTERS</strong><br /><strong>Blaming Israel and Hamas</strong><br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />Blaming Israel and Hamas<br />Israel's horrific bombardments on Gaza are war crimes pure and simple. Collective punishments leveled on a civilian population violate international law and deserve universal condemnation. The U.S. government should not only distance itself from Israel's reprehensible actions, but also use its diplomatic clout to prevent such attacks in the future.<br />L. Michael Hager Washington<br />'Warning: Please stop."<br />That's what Israel has been saying for the last several years, hoping to discourage Hamas from firing rockets on a daily basis, terrifying Israeli civilians in the southern towns of Sderot and Ashkelon.<br />If Hamas had stopped the rockets, Israel would have had no reason to attack Gaza. But all of Israel's warnings, requests, threats and restraint have failed.<br />Now after being bombarded with thousands of rockets, Israel is finally rightfully defending its own citizens. No country in the world would do otherwise.<br />Hamas has relentlessly and brutally set up rocket launchers in the midst of Gazan homes - thus deliberately putting the Palestinian civilian population in maximum danger.<br />Hamas is to blame for causing Palestinian dead and wounded.<br />June Brott, Oakland, California<br />President Bush seems to have approved Israel's use of tons of bombs to solve its conflict with Hamas. In addition, Bush laid blame on Hamas. He cautioned the Israelis to avoid destroying the lives of civilians. Are laying blame and bombing effective methods to resolve conflict? Bush's comments and policy reveal a shocking lack of imagination.<br />Carol Adamson, Stockholm<br />The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, justified air strikes on Gaza by saying his country wants to "totally change the rules of the game." Which "game" and what "rules" was he talking about?<br />Moreover, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, said that the military strikes would continue until the southern Israelis no longer feel threatened by rockets from the Gaza Strip. In fact, that day will never arrive if military tactics are not given up. Bombs and shells never bring peace; they fuel further hatred and instability.<br />Ashwani SharmaGhaziabad, India<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><br /><strong>Warrants expected to slow arrests in Iraq<br /></strong>By Campbell Robertson<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: In late November, around the time the security agreement between the American and Iraqi governments was ratified, an order came down to Charlie Company at their Sadr City outpost.<br />In accordance with the agreement's new rules on searches and detentions, troops from Charlie Company - or Company C of 1st Battalion, 35th Armor Regiment - were to begin operating under a policy called "warrant-based targeting."<br />Up to that time, Lieutenant Jamen Miller's platoon had been the most prolific in the company when it came to arrests, nabbing more than half of those captured in the past seven months. But he soon found himself explaining to an Iraqi officer that, yes, a certain man that his platoon had declined to arrest was a bad guy, but that nothing could be done yet without a warrant.<br />"The gears of the system," Miller said of those first few days, "looked like they were coming to a halt."<br />In many ways, Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite quarter in northeastern Baghdad, is on the front line of the recent security agreement.<br />Security has improved enormously in the eight months since Sadr City was a battle zone, but insurgents are still taking cover in the vast slum, and the holdouts are being tracked down, one by one.<br />Joint Iraqi-American patrols, as mandated by the agreement, which goes into effect on Thursday, are already becoming the norm. And units based here are adjusting to the new rules for finding and holding detainees, including the necessity of warrants.<br />"It's all being defined as we go," said Major Rich Ramsey, who works on a task force that is addressing some of the changes with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Baghdad.<br />American commanders said they welcome the rules as signs of Iraq's growing stability. But as details are being worked out, some soldiers are worried about obstacles they could present.<br />After years of quick-response raids, American troops are having to adjust to gumshoe work, which involves lots of conversations with civilians about who has done what in the neighborhood. Though a judge makes the decision on what is needed for a warrant, it typically requires at least two sworn statements by witnesses to a crime, American officers said.<br />Many of these witnesses will have to testify before Iraqi investigators, judges or members of the security forces, depending on a trust that has been violated countless times in the past, often violently. An Iraqi who had been kidnapped earlier this year told Miller recently that he would sign a statement against his captors, as long as his identity was kept from any Iraqi. That will probably cease to be an option now that Americans must conduct all operations with Iraqi forces.<br />Obtaining warrants can be a frustratingly long process. Lieutenant Guy Allsop of Charlie Company said that he had submitted 18 warrant requests since the agreement had been passed. Weeks later, one had been approved.<br />After an arrest, the detainee has to be turned over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours, and the Iraqis have to bring the case to a judge, who rules on whether the detainee should be held or released.<br />Some Iraqi Army officers said they worried about the new rules.<br />"There will be more steps," said Major Hasoon Hussein al-Zoubadi, an officer whose unit shares an outpost with Charlie Company. "It will make it harder for us and easier for the Mahdi army."<br />Actually, the agreement changes almost nothing for the Iraqi security forces; they are supposed to have been operating under the warrant-based system since 2007. The agreement just applies their rules to the Americans, though the frequently close relationship between the two armies can muddle the different operating procedures.<br />Guidelines have come down from division headquarters throughout December, indicating that there may be more breathing room than originally appeared, calming the concerns of officers like Miller.<br />A warrant is still needed for an arrest, the company was told, but something called a detention order could be obtained, sort of a warrant after the fact.<br />This option, which still requires that evidence be presented to a judge within 24 hours, was spoken of with relief by American officers, who worried that targets could escape capture while detective work was being done.<br />The security agreement also states that a warrant is not needed to search a house in "cases of actual combat operations," or when troops are in immediate danger, exceptions that could be interpreted broadly.<br />But there is no question that Charlie Company's freedom to operate is going to be curtailed, at least somewhat. With that in mind, 1st Battalion has been trying to complete missions, like general house-to-house searches, that will soon become far more complicated, if not impossible.<br />In mid-December, scouts from the battalion were trying to gather statements for a warrant on a man considered a valuable target, when they happened upon him by chance. So they did what they have been doing freely for nearly six years but would be much trickier on Thursday: They detained him on the spot.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Trial delayed for shoe-tossing journalist</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: The trial of a journalist who has been hailed as a hero in the Arab world after throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush was postponed Tuesday pending a review of the case by a higher court, a spokesman for Iraq's Higher Judicial Council said.<br />The trial of Muntader al-Zaidi was to begin Wednesday on charges of assaulting a foreign leader, which his defense team said carried a maximum sentence of 15 years. But the court spokesman, Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, said that the trial has been postponed until an appellate court rules on what charges the journalist should face.<br />Bayrkdar said the defense team was seeking a lesser charge. Two of his lawyers said they want a reduced charge of insulting a foreign leader - which carries a maximum sentence of three years.<br />"There is a difference between assault and insult, al-Zaidi wanted to express his objection to the occupation. So the case is within context of an insult and not an intention to kill," his lawyer, Diaa al-Saadi, told Associated Press Television News.<br />If the appellate court decides to reduce the charges, then Saadi said Zaidi could be released on bail. It was unclear when the appellate court would issue its ruling.<br />Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush during a Dec. 14 joint news conference with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The gesture of contempt for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq made Zaidi a folk hero in Iraq, and thousands of people have demonstrated for his release.<br />"According to the appeals raised by Muntader al-Zaidi's lawyers to the Federal Appeals Court, the Central Criminal Court has decided to postpone the trial sessions until the Federal Appeals Court issues a decision about these appeals, then another date for the trial will be set," Bayrkdar said.<br />Before the postponement was announced, one of Zaidi's lawyers had said that he expected a lengthy trial and a sentence of no less than three years if he is convicted.<br />Zaidi's brother, Dhargam al-Zaidi, said that the family would turn to an international court if they found the Iraqi jurisdiction system "biased and unfair."<br />"If the Iraqi jurisdiction system will be fair and transparent then it's fine, but if it will be politicized," he said, then "we will rely on an international court."<br />The case transformed Zaidi from a little-known television journalist into an international celebrity for defying the U.S. leader, but it also embarrassed Maliki, who was standing next to Bush when the shoes were thrown.<br />Last week the Iraqi leader sought to undermine the journalist's popularity by saying the he had confessed that the mastermind of the attack was a militant known for slitting his victims' throats.<br />Maliki said that in a letter of apology to him, Zaidi wrote that a known militant had induced him to throw the shoes. The alleged instigator has never been identified, and neither Maliki nor any of his officials have provided further explanation. The letter was never made public.<br />The journalist's family denied the claim and alleged that Zaidi was tortured into writing the letter.<br />His brother Uday al-Zaidi said he met the journalist in prison about a week after the incident and that there had been no regret for throwing the shoes.<br />He claimed his brother had a missing tooth and cigarette burns on his ears. He also said his brother told him that jailers also doused him with cold water while he was naked.<br />The investigating judge, Dhia al-Kinani, has said that the journalist was beaten around the face and eyes when he was wrestled to the ground after throwing the shoes.<br />There has been no independent corroboration that Zaidi was abused in custody, and Iraqi officials have denied this.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Fewer journalists killed in 2008<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Anna Willard<br />Fewer journalists were killed this year doing their jobs than in 2007 due to a big fall in the number of deaths in Iraq, a media watchdog said on Tuesday.<br />Sixty journalists around the world died in 2008 down from 86 in 2007, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in an annual report, adding that the decline in fatalities did not signal an improvement in global press freedom.<br />"The figures may be lower than last year's, but this should not mask the fact that intimidation and censorship have become more widespread, including in the West," the RSF report said.<br />"The quantitative improvement in certain indicators is often due to journalists becoming disheartened and turning to a less dangerous trade or going into exile," it added.<br />Iraq remained the deadliest country for reporters with 15 deaths over the past 12 months, but that was down significantly from 47 in 2007 and 46 in 2006.<br />Although violence has dropped sharply in Iraq five years after a U.S.-led invasion, car bombs, suicide attacks and assassinations are still routine.<br />After Iraq, Pakistan, the Philippines and Mexico were the most dangerous countries for reporters, while the death toll in Africa dropped from 12 in 2007 to 3 in 2008.<br />RSF said this was because many journalists there had simply stopped working, with news media gradually halting coverage of war zones such as Somalia."<br />The report also found that fewer journalists were detained, censored, kidnapped, physically attacked or threatened in 2008.<br />Some 673 journalists were arrested this year compared to 887 in 2007 and 29 were kidnapped against a previous 67.<br />But the watchdog said censorship and intimidation were still widespread. "As the print and broadcast media evolve and the blogosphere becomes a worldwide phenomenon, predatory activity is increasingly focussing on the Internet," it added.<br />RSF said for the first time in 2008, a man acting as a "citizen journalist" was killed.<br />Chinese business man Wei Wenhua was beaten to death in rural China after he filmed police clashing with villagers over a disputed garbage dumping site. Four security officers were later jailed for up to six years for their role in the killing.<br />RSF said China was at the forefront of Internet repression, with 10 cyber-dissidents arrested, 31 physically attacked or threatened, and at least three tried and convicted. In all, 38 reporters were arrested in China, many linked to the Olympics.<br />Online censorship was recorded in 37 countries, with China, Syria and Iran leading the way. In Myanmar, outspoken journalists and bloggers were jailed in a crackdown by the military government.<br />"Every year, repressive governments acquire new tools that allow them to monitor the Internet and track online data," RSF said.<br />(Editing by Crispian Balmer)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Marines prepare to leave Falluja</strong><br />By Timothy Williams<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />FALLUJA, Iraq: In Falluja, a town that rises abruptly out of the vast Syrian Desert an hour west of Baghdad, nearly every building left standing has some sort of hole in it.<br />Mosques are without their minarets. Apartment walls have been peeled away by artillery shells. A family's kitchen is full of tiny holes made by a fragmentary grenade .<br />Of all the places fighting has raged since the American invasion nearly six years ago, Falluja — the site of two major battles and the town where American security contractors were killed and their bodies hung from a local bridge — stands out as one of the bloodiest and most intractable.<br />This month, as the last American marines prepare to leave Camp Falluja, the sprawling base a few miles outside of town where many of the American troops who fought the two battles were stationed, Falluja has come to represent something unexpected: the hope that an Iraqi town once at the heart of the insurgency can become a model for peace without the United States military.<br />As part of the reduction of United States troops from Iraq, by Thursday there will be few marines left in or around this mostly Sunni city of about 300,000 people. The closing of Camp Falluja is one of the most prominent symbols yet that America's presence in the country, which at times had seemed all encompassing, is diminishing.<br />As recently as a year ago, the base closing was cause for alarm. The calm that seemed to have taken hold here was fragile enough that both Iraqi and American officials feared the potential consequences of the marines' departure.<br />Today they look forward to it.<br />"That will make our job easier," said Colonel Dowad Muhammad Suliyman, commander of the Falluja Police Department. "The existence of the American forces is an excuse for the insurgents to attack. They consider us spies for the Americans."<br />To be sure, the threat of violence has not vanished. But the police said they were proud that a place that suffered a major attack a week just a few years ago has had only two in the last six months.<br />The view that the town is better off taking care of itself was echoed by residents, even in the neighborhood hit by the most recent big attack, in early December, when suicide truck bombers linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia killed 19 people, wounded dozens of others, and leveled nine houses and two police stations.<br />"Our sons will take care of the security issue," said Khalil Abrahim, 50, a resident of the neighborhood, as he walked over the rubble of his house, wondering aloud how he could afford to rebuild. "They can do a better job."<br />Camp Falluja will be handed over to the Iraqi Army, with most of its marines relocated to Al Asad Air Base, about 90 miles to the west. A smaller contingent will remain at nearby Camp Baharia.<br />The move reflects the confidence of the American command that major violence will not return here.<br />"It won't happen again because the Iraqis don't want it to happen again," said Colonel George Bristol, the bald, heavily muscled commanding officer of the First Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group at Camp Falluja.<br />"We've certainly turned a page," he said. "The conditions are now there where we can close it and turn it over to the people who fought beside us. It's a great thing. If you look at the city, it has really come to life."<br />The city, which had been emptied of much of its population before the second Battle of Falluja in November 2004, now bustles with people, its streets filled with honking cars inching their way to the Old Bridge that spans the placid, green Euphrates River.<br />In a small building at the foot of the bridge, freshly painted green, not far from where the bodies of two Blackwater security guards were hung, Falluja has established an Office of Citizen Complaints.<br />At the elementary school where in 2003 members of the 82nd Airborne Division fired on protesters — some of whom may have been armed — killing 17 people, dozens of girls were at play during recess. A sign out front said the school was a voter registration center for the coming provincial elections.<br />Not far away, a restaurant named KFC — not affiliated with the American fast-food chain but adorned with unlicensed pictures of Sanders — sells a fried chicken lunch for about $3.50.<br />All around the city, people are rebuilding houses and clearing away rubble.<br />If a rocket-propelled grenade launcher symbolized Falluja during the height of the insurgency, its new symbol may well be the broom. They are sold in bunches at roadside markets, and are in almost constant use by workers in bright orange jumpsuits trying to keep the town's narrow roads free of desert sand.<br />At Camp Falluja, Major James Gladden and Master Gunnery Sergeant Ray SiFuentes are overseeing the dismantling of a base that had once been home to 14,000 marines and contractors.<br />The 2,000-acre post had its own fire department, water treatment plant, scrap yard, voter registration booth, ice-making factory, weather station, prison (for insurgents), beauty shop, power plant, Internet café, Turkish bazaar and dog catcher.<br />Its chapel could fit 800 marines for religious services, a Toby Keith concert or a performance by the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders, all of which were held there.<br />"We had basically everything a small town had," said Gladden, 34, who is known by other marines as the mayor of Camp Falluja. "Everything except fast-food outlets," he said, which were deemed too unhealthy.<br />There are only 200 marines left now, and about 170 truckloads a day leave the base, most headed for other United States military installations.<br />Even the gaggle of geese from the camp's artificial pond, which some marines had adopted as pets, has been taken away. One by one, they were trapped and set loose at a larger pond at Camp Baharia.<br />A good deal of packing up involves making sure nothing is left behind that later could be used against American forces. Obsolete armor for trucks, ballistic glass plates for Humvees and concertina wire are cut to pieces. Thousands of mammoth concrete barriers are being trucked to other military bases.<br />Back in town, where residents have been required to be fingerprinted and to submit to iris scans, Hashim Harmoud, 69, a caretaker at a mosque that had been said to be a center for insurgent activity, said he was thankful for the city's newfound peace.<br />But as testament to the town's dual nature, he was hesitant to discuss an insurgency that could rise up again at a moment's notice. "Al Qaeda?" he asked, a bit cagily. "I don't know anything about them. I go from the mosque to my house, and that's all."<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>EDITORIAL</strong><br /><strong>Shifting troop targets<br /></strong>Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />The new security agreement with Iraq heralds an overdue end to President Bush's ill-advised war. But while it calls for U.S. combat forces to be out of the cities by June and all forces to withdraw from the country by the end of 2011, there is disquieting talk in Washington of having tens of thousands of troops stay longer and slyly redefining their missions.<br />The year ahead presents tough challenges in Iraq. The improved security environment masks pitfalls - more political than military - that could again increase tensions.<br />Bush's goal of a model democracy in Iraq - never realistic - remains elusive. A new report by the U.S. Institute of Peace found that "as the threat of state collapse has receded, the risk of an increasingly repressive and authoritarian Iraqi regime has come to the fore." Iraq's governing parties still resist sharing power.<br />Bush and President-elect Barack Obama must do whatever they can to strengthen institutions that can stabilize Iraq, starting with ensuring that provincial elections, set for Jan. 31, and national elections, expected by the end of 2009, are as free and fair as possible. But Iraqi leaders do not seem sufficiently committed to the task. U.S. officials already are jockeying with the security agreement deadlines to compensate for Baghdad's failings.<br />Even Obama, who campaigned on withdrawing all combat troops within 16 months (roughly May 2010) has signaled flexibility by saying he will listen to his generals.<br />What are the generals saying? The commanders' new military plan reportedly would leave troops in place beyond Obama's timetable. And there is talk about redefining solders as "trainers" or "advisers" so that they do not have to leave the cities in June.<br />If conditions deteriorate, Washington may have to slow the withdrawal pace. But, for now, we urge Obama to stick to his campaign pledge to pull combat troops out in 16 months. Some residual forces may be needed after 2011 for training and counterterrorism missions, but the number should be as small as possible. That would keep the pressure on Iraqis to assume greater responsibility for their country.<br />The sooner Iraqis do that, the sooner all American troops can come home, an overtaxed U.S. military can be repaired and additional forces can be reassigned to Afghanistan, where the threat from extremists is greatest.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Rare suicide bombing in Iran kills 4<br /></strong>By Nazila Fathi<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />TEHRAN: Employing a tactic not seen in Iran before, a suicide bomber affiliated with a Sunni militant group killed four people and wounded 12 in an attack early Monday in Saravan, a southeastern city, the official IRNA news agency reported.<br />The group, Jundallah, has attacked Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guards in the past. But this was the first time it had used a suicide bombing similar to those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.<br />"This group has killed many innocent and defenseless civilians in the past, and the security forces have killed their members," IRNA reported without providing further information.<br />The news agency did not disclose details about the attack, but according to unofficial news Web sites in Iran, a suicide bomber drove into a security forces headquarters in Saravan around 7:30 a.m. local time. Jundallah claimed responsibility for the attack, IRNA reported. It was not clear whether the casualties were civilians or members of the security forces.<br />Jundallah said in a statement posted by one of the Web sites that the attack was in retaliation for the authorities' destruction of a Sunni religious school in Zabol, a southeastern city. It also said the suicide bomber was Abdol-ghafoor Rigi, the brother of the group's leader.<br />Iran says the group, led by Abdolmalek Rigi, is a terrorist organization with links to Al Qaeda. The group has claimed responsibility for previous attacks, including one on a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards in 2007.<br />Early this month, the authorities said that the group killed all 16 of the border guards it kidnapped in June. Jundallah had demanded the release of 200 of its prisoners in return for the border guards.<br />The authorities have accused Britain and the United States of supporting Jundallah to destabilize the Islamic Republic.<br />The first deputy chief of judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, said this month that Iran had documents showing that "Britain and America supported Rigi's terrorist group with arms and information," IRNA reported.<br />The group is active mostly in a southeastern province, Sistan va Baluchestan, near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the majority of people are Sunni Muslims. Iran is predominantly Shiite. Jundallah says it is fighting discrimination against Sunnis by the Iranian authorities.<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Pakistan closes NATO supply line to Afghanistan<br /></strong>By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Pir Zubair Shah<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Backed by helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery, Pakistani security forces on Tuesday shut down a crucial supply line for NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan as they launched an offensive against Taliban militants who dominate the Khyber Pass region.<br />NATO uses the Khyber Pass, an ancient trade and military gateway that cuts through the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to transport the majority of provisions for troops fighting the resilient Afghan insurgency. Supplies are ferried from Karachi in Pakistan 700 miles north to Peshawar, and then trucked 40 miles westward through the pass and into Afghanistan.<br />But Taliban militants, including forces led by an upstart lieutenant to the warlord Baitullah Mehsud, have taken over the area between the pass and Peshawar, and now routinely attack convoys with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles.<br />Many drivers in the convoys have already quit making the trip because the route is so deadly. Militants also ransacked a half-dozen supply depots in Peshawar this month, burning 300 cargo trucks and Humvees destined for NATO troops.<br />The attacks — and the Pakistani government's inability to quell them — have sent American military officials scrambling to secure other supply routes into Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia. NATO officials said that they believed that shutting down the route through the Khyber Pass during the military offensive that began Tuesday would not deprive them of necessary supplies.<br />"Over all, it's a temporary irritation," said a NATO spokesman in Kabul, Captain Mark Windsor of the British Royal Navy. "There will obviously be a minor effect in the short term, but it's for the long-term good of our operation."<br />However, Tariq Hayat, the top civilian official in the Khyber Agency, the formal name for the Pakistani district between the Khyber Pass and Peshawar, said there was no timetable for the operation, which he said would continue until "I am satisfied that the area is clear of all lawless and miscreant elements." Hayat declined to say how many troops were involved in the offensive, but he said they were drawn almost entirely from the country's paramilitary Frontier Corps. Pakistani Army soldiers are standing by in reserve should they be needed, he said.<br />He said that there had been no casualties during the offensive among Pakistani forces but that he had received a report that several children and a woman had been killed by an artillery shell.<br />Ibrahim Khan, who lives near the supply route in the village of Jamrud, said troops came through his village at 3:30 a.m., using loudspeakers to warn residents to stay inside. Helicopter gunships patrolled all day until the afternoon, he said.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>*********************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>U.S. plans to expand its Afghan lifelines</strong><br />By Thom Shanker<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The United States and NATO are planning to open and expand supply lines through Central Asia to deliver fuel, food and other goods to a military mission in Afghanistan that is expected to grow by tens of thousands of troops in the months ahead, American and alliance diplomats and military officials say.<br />The plan to open new paths through Central Asia reflects an American-led effort to seek out a more reliable alternative to the route from Pakistan through the strategic Khyber Pass, which was closed Tuesday by Pakistani security forces when they opened an offensive against militants in the region.<br />The militants have shown they can threaten shipments through the pass into Afghanistan, burning U.S. cargo trucks and Humvees over recent weeks. More than 80 percent of the supplies for U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan now flow through Pakistan. But the new arrangements could leave Washington more reliant on cooperation with such authoritarian countries as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which have poor human rights records.<br />The officials said delicate negotiations were under way not only with the Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan, but with Russia as well, to work out the details of new routes. The talks show the continued importance of U.S. and NATO cooperation with the Kremlin, despite tension over Russia's August war with Georgia and other issues.<br />U.S. officials said they were trying to allay Central Asian concerns by promising that the supplies would be hauled only by commercial companies and would not include weapons or munitions. Officials also said that no additional U.S. bases would be required.<br />Some of Afghanistan's neighbors, in particular Kyrgyzstan, already serve as staging areas for U.S. supplies bound for Afghanistan, and officials involved in the talks said those countries appeared eager to increase their role, both to help bring stability in the region and to benefit commercially from the arrangement.<br />Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan share Afghanistan's northern border and have road transport routes into Afghanistan.<br />Kyrgyzstan, farther to the north, allows U.S. military cargo planes access to its airfields, in a deal that has become more important since 2005, when the government of Uzbekistan ordered the United States to leave a base there in a dispute over human rights issues.<br />U.S. and NATO officials said concerns about Uzbekistan's rights record were less important to the negotiations because no new bases were under discussion and any increased supply shipments would be handled by contracts with commercial trucking companies.<br />Among other states, Kazakhstan is viewed as an important supply hub, while the Caspian Sea port of Baku, Azerbaijan, could be a transit point for shipments of fuel and other goods arriving from Europe by sea or by rail.<br />General Duncan McNabb, chief of the U.S. military's Transportation Command, quietly visited nations along Afghanistan's northern border last month, said U.S. military officials who declined to identify the countries by name because of diplomatic sensitivities.<br />"These countries of Central Asia recognize that this is their struggle, too, in Afghanistan," said one State Department official, who added that those border nations had responded positively to talks on "how to improve, regularize, expand and find additional routes in."<br />NATO officials said the attacks in Pakistan had not yet presented a strategic threat to U.S. supply lines, but they said planning for alternative routes was warranted.<br />"We always want flexibility," said General John Craddock, NATO's military commander. "There is work ongoing in NATO to see what can be done about alternative lines of communication."<br />President-elect Barack Obama has said that he intends to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in the months ahead, and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this month that 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops could be added to the mission, with a large portion being sent in the first six months of next year.<br />About 31,000 U.S. troops are now in Afghanistan, including 14,000 who are part of a NATO-led mission that has more than 51,000 troops. The other 17,000 U.S. troops operate independently of NATO to carry out combat, counterterrorism and training missions.<br />The increase outlined by Mullen could nearly double the size of the U.S. presence, which would require not just more war-fighting equipment, food and fuel, but large increases in lumber, concrete and other construction materials to build barracks and support structures.<br />Officials said that because of Afghanistan's land-locked status and its relatively primitive infrastructure of roads, it costs several times more to sustain an individual soldier there than in Iraq.<br />Major General Michael Tucker, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said, "There's a very huge building campaign that has already begun" to prepare for the arrival of those additional troops.<br />Under plans described by the American military, a goal would be to purchase significant amounts of supplies locally from those Central Asian economies.<br />Other supplies could be shipped to Central Asia by air, but heavy construction equipment and fuel would be sent by rail to Central Asia, where it would then be loaded on trucks for the final journey.<br />Some supplies could be sent directly from Europe or through Baltic ports, then sent overland along Russia's well-developed rail system to Central Asia. Russia today is the principal source of fuel for the alliance's needs in Afghanistan, and the Kremlin already allows shipment of other nonlethal supplies bound for Afghanistan to travel across Russian territory by ground.<br />In a new development, NATO and Russian representatives are discussing whether the alliance might be allowed to move military equipment through Russian airspace, alliance officials said.<br />"Talks are now under way for a NATO-wide air transit for military goods, not specified as nonlethal," said James Appathurai, NATO's chief spokesman. He added: "Those talks are going well. The Russian Federation has publicly and repeatedly made it clear that this is an issue of strategic interest to them, and that despite disagreements we have over other issues, this area of cooperation has been walled off and preserved. We expect it to be deepened."<br />Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Islamabad.<br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Somali's resignation may have come too late</strong><br />By Jeffrey Gettleman<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NAIROBI: Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the cantankerous president of beleaguered Somalia, resigned Monday. The question is, will it make a difference?<br />Could it be the death knell of Somalia's transitional government, whose zone of control is down to a few city blocks in a country nearly as big as Texas? Or will it be the government's saving grace?<br />For weeks, Western diplomats, Somali elders and United Nations officials have been crossing their fingers that Yusuf, widely blamed for trying to block a peace deal with Somalia's increasingly powerful Islamist insurgents, would step aside.<br />One of Somalia's top warlords, Yusuf never seemed able to shake his warlord ways. Western diplomats have accused him of favoring his clan at the expense of all others, enabling corruption and too often trying to solve knotty political problems, which called for a little finesse, with the business end of a machine gun.<br />Kenyan officials even threatened sanctions against him this month, calling him "an obstacle to peace" and warning that unless he changed tack, he would no longer be welcome in Kenya. That was a serious threat because Yusuf, who claims to be 74 but is widely believed to be several years older, has gone to Kenya several times for lifesaving medical treatment for an ailing liver.<br />In stepping down, Yusuf said he could not unite Somalia's feuding leaders, news agencies reported, and as soon as he resigned, the United Nations' top official for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said that "a new page of Somalia history is now open."<br />But what will be written on it?<br />The scramble to succeed Yusuf could set off an ugly clan-based political melee. By contrast, the prime minister and other top officials could give the post to a moderate Islamist leader, who might be the unifying figurehead that Somalia so desperately needs.<br />Or it may simply be too late because so much of the country has already fallen into the hands of powerful, hard-line Islamists - some of whom behead opponents and have stoned to death a teenage girl who said she had been raped.<br />Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group, which tracks conflicts worldwide, said Yusuf's resignation was "good news" because "it may create the opportunity to put a more conciliatory figure in charge of the government."<br />That figure could be someone like Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a respected, moderate Islamic cleric who has struggled to walk the tightrope between negotiating with the transitional government and being dismissed as a sellout.<br />Sharif's faction signed a power-sharing agreement with the transitional government this year, despite the president's objections, and many Somalis are hoping the deal will stick.<br />"If that power-sharing deal is applied, it will help a lot," said Muhammad Dheere, a pharmacist in Mogadishu, Somalia's battle-scarred capital. "Then the other problems could finish soon."<br />Somalia certainly has a lot of them. Famine is steadily creeping toward millions of people. Pirates off the coast have netted countless headlines and as much as $100 million in ransoms. Violence is rising again and finding new forms, with Islamist factions now fighting one another to take over the areas the government no longer controls.<br />Over the weekend, in two towns, a moderate Islamist group routed the Shabab, one of the nation's most fearsome and radical Islamist militias. But the Shabab were fighting back fiercely on Monday, and they also took over a UN food distribution office, imperiling a critical lifeline.<br />The thousands of Ethiopian troops who have been in Somalia for two years are threatening to leave any day now. If they do, the transitional government may have no one to protect it from Islamist insurgents, except a relatively small contingent of African Union peacekeepers and a few ragtag Somali militiamen.<br />It will not be easy finding someone qualified - and willing - to serve as president, considering all this. The transitional government, created four years ago (with Yusuf at the helm) as a temporary solution until Somalia could hold elections, is carefully balanced on a formula that divides power among four major clans.<br />One considerable strike against Sharif is that he is not only from the same clan, but from the same subclan as the prime minister, who is well regarded and not believed to be going anywhere.<br />Many people expect that the next president could come from the same clan as Yusuf, to minimize clan friction. The speaker of Parliament will take over the presidency for one month until the legislature elects a new president.<br />But after nearly 18 years of unbridled anarchy, many Somalis have lost hope.<br />"Somalis are a God-forsaken nation," said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, a Canadian-Somali who used to work with Yusuf and is now looking for a job. "They are so oblivious to what is happening. One tribe, one religion, one language, one culture - but they don't see what unites them, they only see what divides them. Maybe on the outside, to the international community, the resignation will matter. But not on the inside."<br />Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.<br /><br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>U.S. defense contractors vying for cyberscurity deals<br /></strong>Bloomberg News<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the world's biggest military companies, are deploying forces and resources to a new battlefield: cyberspace.<br />The U.S. military contractors, eager to capture a share of a market that may reach $11 billion in four years, have formed new business units to tap increased spending designed to protect U.S. government computers from attack.<br />Boeing, based in Chicago, set up its Cyber Solutions division in August "because of a realization by the company that it's a very serious threat," Barbara Fast, vice president of the unit, said. "It's not a question of if we'll be attacked but when, and so how will we be prepared." Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Maryland, started its cyberdefense operation in October.<br />President George W. Bush revealed his national cybersecurity plan in January to be supervised by the Department of Homeland Security, after an increasing number of attacks on U.S. government and private sector networks by groups linked to foreign governments, organized crime gangs and hackers. In a Dec. 8 report, a panel of experts urged President-elect Barack Obama to create a White House office to oversee the effort.<br />The number of security breaches of computer networks reported to the Computer Emergency Readiness Team of the Homeland Security Department almost doubled to 72,000 in the fiscal year ended in October from about 37,000 the previous year, a spokeswoman for the agency, Amy Kudwa, said.<br />U.S. government spending to secure military, intelligence and other agency computer networks is forecast to rise 44 percent to $10.7 billion in 2013 from $7.4 billion this year, according to a report by the market forecaster Input.<br />Security-system spending will grow 7 percent to 8 percent annually, "significantly faster" than information technology, which has increased about 4 percent a year in the past five years, said John Slye, an analyst for Input.<br />In addition to traditional defense contractors, established providers like McAfee and Symantec are also expected to compete for the work.<br />In the past 18 months, Raytheon, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, acquired the network security providers Oakley Networks, SI Government Solutions and Telemus Solutions, said Steve Hawkins, Raytheon vice president for data security. To meet the likely increase in demand, Raytheon plans to add 300 security engineers in 2009 to its pool of 600 technicians, he said.<br /><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>New focus on behavior as U.S. airport security evolves</strong><br />By Joe Sharkey<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />A man wearing a private security uniform with a great big badge pinned to his maroon coat provided a timely lesson in security recently at the airport in Newark.<br />"It don't fit, and you can't take it on," this fellow rudely told a young woman who was kneeling on the floor at the entrance for the security line trying to repack her carry-on bag. She looked about 17 years old, maybe 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, but he stood over her and her disheveled bag like a prison guard.<br />She was crying. Belongings spilled out of her bag as she struggled to find a way to make it fit into the metal frame that airlines sometimes use to demonstrate what size bag can be carried on. A child's frilly white party dress fell onto the dirty floor.<br />"All she needs is a plastic bag to put her extra stuff in," someone said.<br />I spotted a trash can with a clean liner and handed it to her for her extra things. So now the carry-on slipped into the frame and the private security guard, aware of the hostile glares coming from those of us in line he would not have had the courage to hassle arbitrarily, backed off and waved the girl on.<br />I'm making two points. One, the girl's carry-on bag was, by general agreement among those in line, of reasonable size. None of the rest of us, mostly male adults, had been required to have our carry-ons measured, with all the commotion that requires. And two, once we arrived at the official counter farther ahead, we were greeted by a courteous Transportation Security Administration officer, who carefully checked credentials and looked us in the eye. The contrast between the private guard and the U.S. government employee doing a professional job was obvious.<br />Now, anyone who has read this column for the last 10 years knows that I have not been shy about criticizing airport security or the security agency. In 2004, this is where you read about appalling instances of female travelers being arbitrarily groped during security pat-downs. We've regularly looked at theft, rudeness, ridiculous policies and the rapid growth of a shockingly expensive bureaucracy (the current budget is about $6.8 billion).<br />Still, every frequent traveler I know says that the security checkpoint experience has greatly improved in recent years. For this week and next, I've conducted basically an exit interview with Kip Hawley, administrator of the agency since July 2005, who is leaving the job in a few weeks.<br />Hawley, who like his predecessors is regularly pummeled by bloggers who ridicule agency procedures as mere "security theater," has been deliberately redefining and retraining the agency to approach security in a more holistic way.<br />Congress and the news media regularly set up howls on those occasions when some reporter sneaks a box cutter through security. But no security expert today believes — given reinforced cockpit doors and vigilant passengers ready to pounce — that an airliner might ever again be hijacked by some deluded soul armed with a box cutter.<br />Box cutters and lots of other things are still prohibited contraband, of course. But, in general, the thinking in airport security is more geared toward understanding how would-be terrorists behave and situational awareness, and officers are being trained that way.<br />"In the hurly-burly and the infinite variety of travel, you can end up with nonsensical results in which the TSA person says, 'Well, I'm just following the rules,' " Hawley said. "But if you have an enemy who is going to study your technology and your process, and if you have something they can figure out a way to get around, and they're always figuring, then you have designed in a vulnerability."<br />Depending on more technology, better intelligence and more intensive training of screeners to "think and engage with customers," the agency is working on what it calls a "checkpoint evolution." Part of that evolution is to maintain a calm, orderly environment at checkpoints — because disruptions themselves provide opportunities for a would-be terrorist, he said.<br />(The private guard making that young woman empty her belongings on the floor at the Newark checkpoint is a good example of a needless disruption.)<br />Hawley said his main concern was the use of multiple improvised explosive devices simultaneously in multiple aircraft, as well as the constant probing of the system for vulnerabilities.<br />"These are not dark, shadowy forces," he said. "They are named individuals, with cells and know-how and training camps and active plot lines. We're in an everyday multiple-stream world. And our own rigidity can itself be a vulnerability."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPjZ9clDoIDvanJ6r2Jd6vbSGMA2ZT72V2BLB7Pul4SNfewEdRoPFR8H5JyXvTNs2Dg5tDI0RjTQDwrp0TnwLQr5WZQX988zpSDwWc1vcy21-__YLOuTeG6Am9dvpG9V1hS7Y9fTI6Xk/s1600-h/DSC04928.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821653402122066" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPjZ9clDoIDvanJ6r2Jd6vbSGMA2ZT72V2BLB7Pul4SNfewEdRoPFR8H5JyXvTNs2Dg5tDI0RjTQDwrp0TnwLQr5WZQX988zpSDwWc1vcy21-__YLOuTeG6Am9dvpG9V1hS7Y9fTI6Xk/s320/DSC04928.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8sqfJ6v3Q33rVFHiapb6qH_n3x_8bc28I6Gf1RdUnGmdWB_asb3Li5XZsIT-eJ9YW4__y3c6CaGZf9PFoosjAqVEFBdlLaukff5nbQ-3pxA8yl9x4kKuWgLApc3hSUu0Uvj-rgfX42h0/s1600-h/DSC04929.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821651716823442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8sqfJ6v3Q33rVFHiapb6qH_n3x_8bc28I6Gf1RdUnGmdWB_asb3Li5XZsIT-eJ9YW4__y3c6CaGZf9PFoosjAqVEFBdlLaukff5nbQ-3pxA8yl9x4kKuWgLApc3hSUu0Uvj-rgfX42h0/s320/DSC04929.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglvHQSX9CDuRv5LryAnRp2Q161hRPFMxIIrWolHxLMaYBcY3AJ93UEOXXGKk93EYfgfqcIVKq7gSESBFqBbBdh9gOVe8vj3PEZ0JDNeem_1-veLCLFg7QzuLAcPlnQvO6m6u0uiPfF4TQ/s1600-h/DSC04930.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821647621523442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglvHQSX9CDuRv5LryAnRp2Q161hRPFMxIIrWolHxLMaYBcY3AJ93UEOXXGKk93EYfgfqcIVKq7gSESBFqBbBdh9gOVe8vj3PEZ0JDNeem_1-veLCLFg7QzuLAcPlnQvO6m6u0uiPfF4TQ/s320/DSC04930.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Medvedev signs law extending presidential terms in Russia<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />MOSCOW: President Dmitri Medvedev signed a law Tuesday extending presidential terms from four years to six, in a move seen as paving the way for Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency.<br />Medvedev's final endorsement of the legislation followed its quick approval by the Kremlin-controlled Parliament and all of Russia's 83 provincial legislatures. The change will not apply to Medvedev's current term, which is due to end in 2012.<br />Putin, barred constitutionally from seeking a third straight term as president, tapped Medvedev, his protégé, as his successor, ensuring a landslide victory. Putin then became prime minister and leader of the United Russia party, which dominates Parliament.<br />Putin remains popular and is still seen as the man calling the shots in Russia. But the rush to amend the Constitution just months after Medvedev's election has led to speculation that Putin wants to return to office now - before the financial crisis erodes his popularity.<br />Most analysts expect Medvedev would step aside if Putin asked him to do so. But some think the president could try to strengthen his position at Putin's expense as Russians become increasingly angry over economic difficulties.<br />Medvedev appeared to issue a veiled criticism of his mentor's course Monday, when he said that the cabinet's anti-crisis program was "well-balanced but not ideal."<br />"Medvedev may wait until Putin loses his popularity as the economy worsens by the day and dismiss him," an independent political analyst, Dmitri Oreshkin, was quoted by online Gazeta.ru as saying.<br />But Igor Bunin, head of the Center for Political Technologies, said Putin and Medvedev would try to preserve their alliance because its collapse could incapacitate the government.<br />Medvedev also turned his attention Tuesday to foreign affairs, once again expressing hope that Russia and the United States could mend ties frayed by disputes over U.S. missile defense plans and Russia's war in Georgia in August.<br />In a New Year's wish to President-elect Barack Obama, Medvedev suggested that the two nations could expand their cooperation on the basis of "pragmatism and a balance of interests."</div><div></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Former executive at Yukos freed on bail</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />MOSCOW: An ailing former executive of the dismantled oil company Yukos who was jailed in 2006 was freed Tuesday after posting a $1.8 million bail, his lawyer said.<br />Vasily Aleksanian, currently in a Moscow clinic being treated for AIDS and cancer, faces money laundering and embezzlement charges in a host of criminal cases against Yukos and its jailed founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.<br />The trial of Aleksanian, a 36-year-old U.S.-trained lawyer, was suspended in 2008 and he was moved to a clinic in February while lawyers demanded his release on health grounds. He is now partially blind.<br />"The guards around his bed have been dismissed," Drew Holiner, Aleksanian's lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights, said by telephone. "But he is still in serious condition."<br />The Strasbourg-based court last week condemned Aleksanian's detention and ordered him released on humanitarian grounds.<br />Aleksanian and his lawyers will now be able to make sure he is tended to by the best doctors, something they were previously not permitted to do, Holiner said.<br />Aleksanian had been a vice president at Yukos and was a lawyer for Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian prison on fraud and tax evasion charges.<br />Once Russia's largest oil producer, Yukos was broken up and sold off in auctions in what was seen as the Kremlin's punishment for Khodorkovsky's political ambitions. Most of the company's assets were purchased at bargain prices by state-owned corporations.<br />The Moscow City Court set bail for Aleksanian in December, but rights groups condemned the amount as unreasonably high. His lawyers posted pleas and bank account details on Web sites to try to raise the sum.<br />Rights activists were initially doubtful that Aleksanian would be able to raise bail because the legal onslaught against Yukos left it bankrupt.<br />Holiner said he did not know who the private donors were or how many contributed.<br />"That's a private matter," he said.<br />Holiner said he viewed his client's release, despite the huge bail, as Russian compliance, which "has to be welcomed."<br />The treatment of another Yukos lawyer, Svetlana Bakhmina, also has attracted wide attention. Bakhmina became pregnant while in custody and her supporters had called on President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia to grant her amnesty.<br />She was recently transferred to a clinic near Moscow and gave birth to a girl last month. </div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Iranian authorities raid offices of rights advocate<br /></strong>By Nazila Fathi<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />TEHRAN: The authorities have stormed the private office of the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Shirin Ebadi, seizing her computers and her clients' documents.<br />Ebadi, who is the country's most prominent human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the government, has recently come under increasing pressure from the government. The move Monday appeared to be part of an effort to limit her activities leading up to the presidential election in June.<br />This month, the authorities shut down her Center for Defenders of Human Rights, a coalition of human rights groups and other political activists whose members were planning to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.<br />In an interview by telephone, Ebadi said that five men from the judicial authorities arrived at her office Monday afternoon, claiming they had a warrant to take her computers and documents to investigate whether she had evaded her taxes. Last week, the tax authorities went to her office to examine all her financial documents, she said.<br />Ebadi said she had resisted giving up her clients' files, which she said contained confidential information. But, after a five-hour ordeal, she was forced to surrender them, she said.<br />"I am not in a position to say what was the reason they came to my office today, but I know that those men who came knew they were not here for any tax-related issues," she said.<br />Pressure on rights activists has increased since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.<br />Ebadi received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts for democracy and human rights in 2003.<br />Ebadi's prize was a source of pride for activists, who later came together to form the Center for Defenders of Human Rights. Among other causes, the center has criticized the increasing number of executions by the government, including those of juveniles.<br />Other activists said they believed the government intended to intimidate all rights groups, not only that of Ebadi.<br />"I think they wanted to send a message to all of us," said one women's rights activist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. "The government does not like it when different groups with different ideologies and affiliations come together around a movement or a project. They wanted to stop this."Plan would cut subsidies<br />Ahmadinejad has presented an economic package to Parliament that will cut subsidies in the coming months, The Associated Press reported from Tehran.<br />The bill - if approved - is certain to raise prices and fuel inflation. It is also likely to further anger Iranians in a year when Ahmadinejad is up for re-election.<br />Ahmadinejad maintains that plummeting oil prices have made his plan inevitable. It includes scrapping costly subsidies for fuel, water and electricity.<br />Iran is already suffering under a 28 percent inflation. That, along with Ahmadinejad's failed election promises to bring oil revenues to every Iranian family, will hamper his 2009 re-election bid.<br />To compensate for the cut in subsidies, Ahmadinejad wants the government to pay the needy in cash.</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>British couple sentenced for sedition in Gambia<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BANJUL, Gambia: Two British missionaries were sentenced Tuesday in Gambia to one-year jail terms with hard labor for criticizing the tiny West African country's government.<br />David and Fiona Fulton pleaded guilty last week to charges of sedition, and asked the court for a lenient sentence.<br />The pair, who have worked in Gambia for years, were arrested late last month in the predominantly Muslim nation after allegedly sending a letter to individuals and groups criticizing the government.<br />Gambia, a sliver of land within Senegal, has been ruled by the regime of Yayha Jammeh since he grabbed power in a 1994 coup.<br />Judge Edrissa Mbai said Tuesday the couple had shown no respect for Gambian authority or for Jammeh.<br />"In this country there is a law that one has to obey, whether Gambian or non-Gambian," Mbai said in the packed courtroom in the capital, Banjul.<br />The Fultons had originally maintained their innocence, but changed their plea at a hearing last week in which David Fulton apologized to the Gambian public and to Jammeh.<br />Defense lawyer Antoumane Gaye told the court his clients had been working to help Gambia for years, and asked that they be spared jail time.<br />It was not immediately clear where in Gambia the Britons would serve their sentences.<br />The two had been held separately — David Fulton in solitary confinement at Gambia's high-security Mile Two prison, and Fiona at a police station, according to the Web site of the Westhoughton Pentecostal Church in the northern English town of Bolton. The church has supported the couple in the past and is lobbying for their release.<br />Gambia is a former British colony, and critics say its people have limited freedom of expression under a repressive government.</div><div></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Zimbabwe activists appear in court<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />A prominent Zimbabwean activist and 31 others, some with bloodied and swollen faces, appeared in court on Monday in connection with a supposed plot to oust President Robert Mugabe by force.<br />The activist, Jestina Mukoko, and the other defendants arrived at the Harare magistrates court in leg irons and handcuffs.<br />Judge Mishrob Guvamombe said that they should remain in custody until Wednesday but that they could receive medical treatment from private doctors in prison.<br />Their lawyers had asked for them to be transferred to a hospital for treatment. The group has been charged with recruiting fighters to overthrow Mugabe.<br />The reported plot has been widely dismissed by opponents of the government as fabricated amid an increasing clampdown on dissent.</div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Judge in Madoff case asked to widen its scope</strong><br />By Diana B. Henriques<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NEW YORK: A U.S. District Court in New York will be the forum this week for three important issues affecting investors caught in the widening scandal surrounding Bernard Madoff, accused of operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.<br />Most important, Judge Louis Stanton of the court, who is handling the civil case against Madoff, is being urged to consider broadening the protections normally available to investors in failed Wall Street firms to allow for the "devastating" circumstances.<br />Stanton had established Wednesday as the deadline for Madoff to provide U.S. government securities regulators with a full accounting of his and his New York firm's assets - from real estate to art works to bank accounts. Regulators were to notify the judge if the report was not filed on time.<br />And finally, the court has been notified by the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's brokerage firm that the first mass notification to customers of the firm should be mailed out by the end of next week.<br />These developments in the civil case are paralleling a U.S. government criminal case accusing Madoff of securities fraud, based on accounts that he confessed to his sons on Dec. 10 that his entire business was "a lie" and a giant Ponzi scheme. According to court filings, Madoff himself put the losses as high as $50 billion.<br />Because Madoff operated a brokerage firm, some of his direct investors may be covered by the Securities Investor Protection Corp., or SIPC, a U.S. government fund created to cover fraud losses in brokerage accounts.<br />But many victims were not direct customers of the brokerage firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Instead, they had invested in "feeder funds," some of them operated by well-known Wall Street figures, which in turn invested with Madoff.<br />In a letter posted in the court docket on Monday, one of those indirect investors - Daniel Goldenson of Bremen, Maine - urged Stanton to consider looking past those feeder funds to the individuals ultimately affected by Madoff's collapse. They, not just the feeder funds, should be considered direct customers of Madoff's firm, Goldenson argued.<br />He acknowledged in his letter that a strict reading of the SIPC guidelines would not treat him as a customer. "But in this devastating case we feel it is appropriate to broaden investors eligibility beyond direct investments," Goldenson wrote.<br />"Please consider broadening access to SIPC for all individuals who lost so much or all of their life savings," he concluded. "This was an intertwined system of deceit and theft within our financial markets that has left retirees like ourselves having to sell our homes and raise money any way we can."<br />Stanton acknowledged the letter, but simply cited the early stages of the case and the complex legal issues that surround eligibility for brokerage-account protection without indicating if he would consider Goldenson's request.<br />Stephen Harbeck, the president of the SIPC, said during an interview that he could not predict whether the judge would follow Goldenson's suggestion. The crucial step now, he said, was for affected investors to submit their claims, so that they were on the record as the legal issues were being worked out.<br />That process is ready to move forward, as the trustee working for the SIPC has notified the court that he is ready to send out the first published and mailed notices to Madoff customers by Jan. 9.<br />Given early accounts that the records for Madoff's money management clients were found in considerable disarray, the announcement came earlier than many lawyers in the case had expected and would speed up the day when the legal issue of SIPC coverage could be considered in court.<br />That speed has come with a price tag. Stanton on Tuesday approved the payment of $28 million in expenses relating to the Madoff liquidation. The money is to cover salaries and benefits of employees continuing to work at Madoff's revenue-producing trading business.<br />The funds were sought under an agreement with Bank of New York Mellon, which holds three of the five bank accounts identified in court papers as belonging to Madoff or his firm.</div><div></div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Madoff expected to disclose worth to U.S. regulators<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Grant McCool<br />Confessed swindler Bernard Madoff faces a Wednesday deadline to tell regulators how much he is worth and where his money and other assets are, but it will likely be a longer wait before his investors, seeking to recover billions of dollars, learn the tallies.<br />Investigators from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission -- which is under fire for missing a purported decades-long $50 billion (34.6 billion pound) Ponzi scheme to fleece wealthy individuals and charities alike -- will take weeks to pore over the assets, liabilities and property declared by Madoff, 70.<br />A spokesman for the SEC declined comment. In general, the regulator is not required to immediately publicly file such disclosures with the courts.<br />Legal experts said Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market who was arrested and charged with securities fraud on December 11, would be better off declaring everything in this early stage of the parallel criminal and civil investigations.<br />"I find it hard to believe that he doesn't have anything that is hidden someplace," said Ellen Zimiles, chief executive of Daylight Forensic & Advisory LLC in New York, which works with corporations on compliance.<br />"If he is trying to do the right thing here he should put everything down. If it is found later that he has assets that are not included in that and someone finds them in some other manner, then that is going to be perjury, adding to his troubles," said Zimiles, a former federal prosecutor.<br />On December 18, U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton, who is handling the civil case, ordered Madoff and his Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC to provide the SEC "on or before December 31 a verified written accounting of all assets, liabilities and property currently held, directly or indirectly."<br />The order said this included bank accounts, brokerage accounts, investments, business interests, loans, lines of credit and "real and personal property, describing each asset and liability, its current location and amount."<br />Madoff's lawyer -- Ira Lee Sorkin, himself a former head of the New York office of the SEC from 1984 to 1986 -- could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.<br />Authorities said in court documents that Madoff confessed to running a Ponzi scheme with $50 billion in losses. Ponzi schemes are investment frauds in which early investors are paid with money from new clients.<br />Madoff is under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment on $10 million bail and he has not appeared in court to formally answer the charges.<br />Scores of wealthy people, banks, universities and charities all over the world say they are victims, but the exact amount of money lost is not yet known in what could be the largest fraud in Wall Street history.<br />Finding the money is a priority for investigators who want to recover as much as possible for those apparently duped by Madoff. On Tuesday, a bankruptcy court judge approved the transfer of $28.1 million to the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's firm from a bank account held by Madoff or his firm.<br />"This is one of many steps that Trustee Irving H. Picard has taken and will continue to take to collect all available assets of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC for the future use of satisfying customer claims and other purposes," the trustee and the Securities Investor Protection Corp said in a statement.<br />The non-profit SIPC was created by Congress in 1970 to maintain reserves to help investors at failed brokerage firms.<br />The SIPC expects it will take several years to find the money in remote locations and sort through investor losses.<br />"We're looking everywhere for all assets," said Richard Bernard, a lawyer representing the court-appointed trustee.<br />A French hedge fund manager distraught over losing his own and clients' money apparently committed suicide in his New York office on December 23.<br />"There are a number of rich, angry investors who want to recover their losses," said Douglas Hirsch, a lawyer investigating civil lawsuits on behalf of investors who put their money in funds that in turn entrusted it with Madoff.<br />Since the Madoff scandal broke, these "feeder funds" have been sued in federal court by people seeking class action, or group status, for those ensnared in the purported fraud.<br />Investors have written to the judge in the civil case asking him to consider broadening access to the SIPC to any investor whose money ended up with Madoff, even indirectly.<br />"This was an intertwined system of deceit and theft within our financial markets that has left retirees like ourselves having to sell our homes and raise money any way we can," Daniel and Suzanne Goldenson of Bremen, Maine, wrote in a letter to Judge Stanton that was entered in the record.<br />The judge acknowledged the letter without indicating whether he would consider the request, according to court documents.<br />The cases:<br />USA v. Madoff 08-02735, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)<br />Securities and Exchange Commission v. Madoff et al 08-10791, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan)<br />Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, 08-01789, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).<br />(Reporting by Grant McCool and Emily Chasan; Editing by Gary Hill)</div><div></div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>SEC's top accountant to leave</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The top accountant in the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement branch is leaving for a private sector job next month, in what could herald a wave of departures from the embattled agency.<br />The SEC said Tuesday that Susan Markel, chief accountant in the agency's division of enforcement, is taking a job in the corporate investigations practice of AlixPartners, a turnaround consulting firm.<br />Her departure comes as President-elect Barack Obama's SEC chairman-designate, Mary Schapiro, is likely to face pressure to bring sweeping changes to the agency, said James Cox, a Duke University law professor and securities law expert.<br />The SEC has come under fire for failing to detect signs that major Wall Street companies were in trouble. The commission also has been criticized for ignoring allegations brought to SEC staff about the Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff's businesses. Madoff has been accused of engaging in a massive fraud that may end up costing investors $50 billion.<br />With the SEC under intense scrutiny from the incoming administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, more high-level staff changes could be in the works, Cox said.<br />For current staffers, it is often better "to leave on your own accord than to face the awkwardness of being asked to leave," he said.<br />Markel has been at the SEC since 1994, working on the agency's inquiries into Xerox, Cendant, WorldCom and Cardinal Health.<br />Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, praised Markel saying in a statement that "her instincts are superb and her investigative abilities are unparalleled."<br />Obama has promised a tougher regulatory and enforcement approach after he takes office on Jan. 20.<br />"Instead of appointing people with disdain for regulation, I will ensure that our regulatory agencies are led by individuals who are ready and willing to enforce the law," Obama said in December.<br />Meanwhile, the SEC also said Tuesday that it obtained a court order to halt an alleged pyramid scam that collected more than $23 million from Haitian-American investors.<br />The SEC said investors in the scheme were promised a 100 percent return on their investments within 90 days. In reality, the Florida-based operator of the alleged fraud had lost at least $18 million over the past year and siphoned off at least $3.8 million for personal use, the SEC said in court documents. </div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Old problem, new theme: China's warning on bribes</strong><br />By Mark McDonald<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />HONG KONG: It has become one of the New Year traditions in the New China: a stern, old-school warning from the Communist Party about corruption.<br />The party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection issued its annual broadside to government and party officials this week, a mind-your-manners reminder about bribes and malfeasance. The warning this year focuses on illegal business deals, and it is hardly a coincidence that the state-run news media are now full of stories about public officials brought low by shady schemes.<br />Fancy cigarettes were Zhou Jiugeng's undoing.<br />Zhou, a government real estate manager in the city of Nanjing, was spotted smoking Nanjing Imperial 95 cigarettes, which go for 150 yuan a pack, or about $22 - certainly an extravagance for a midlevel official like him.<br />The state-run China Daily newspaper said Internet sleuths - using what is known in China as a "human flesh search engine" - posted photographs online of Zhou smoking the luxury cigarettes. He also appeared to be wearing a $14,600 Vacheron Constantin watch, and the paper reported that "Zhou was also found to be driving a Cadillac to work."<br />Zhou, 48, was fired from his post on suspicion of "embezzling public funds to pursue a luxurious personal lifestyle," according to China Daily.<br />The upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, inaugurating the Year of the Ox, falls on Jan. 26, 2009. The holiday season is a time for traveling, visiting friends and relatives, holding elaborate dinners, and giving gifts, particularly red-and-gold envelopes containing cash.<br />The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, quoted the party commission's new circular that reminds officials to "live a frugal life and rule out extravagance and waste."<br />"Feasts, sightseeing and gift-giving with government money are absolutely forbidden."<br />That advisory was followed by a report Monday in China Daily that 40 government officials in Nanjing are under investigation over accusations that they accepted gifts worth $21,000 from a local toy company during the last New Year holiday.<br />The scandal came to light, a Nanjing newspaper said, when unpaid suppliers stormed and ransacked the offices of the toy company, which had gone bankrupt. A list of the government officials and their gifts was found by chance in a drawer. The gifts reportedly included cash, shopping cards and designer clothing.<br />Each New Year's corruption circular seems to strike a different theme. In 2005, officials were cautioned about gambling overseas. In 2006, it was bribes through wedding or funeral gifts. Last year, sightseeing tours at public expense.<br />The party also announced last week that nearly 151,000 government officials had been penalized in the year ending in November on various corruption and bribery charges.<br />Gan Yisheng, deputy secretary of the discipline inspection commission, said at a news conference last Friday that 4,960 of these were senior officials, Xinhua reported.<br />Among those whose ox was gored: a deputy mayor of Beijing, the former general manager of the oil and chemical giant Sinopec, the vice chairman of the Communist Party in Henan Province, and the vice chairman of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.<br />Cai Wenlong, 55, a senior government official and the board chairman of several state-owned companies in Anhui Province, received a suspended death sentence last week for embezzlement. State media reported that Cai had stolen or mishandled about $5 million, and that he had lost more than $43.8 million investing state funds in the stock and futures markets.<br />Two senior Communist Party members also have been expelled from the party for overstaying their visas in France, according to Xinhua. One of the officials has returned to China; the other has not.<br />In addition, Huang Songyou, a former vice president of the Supreme People's Court, also remained under investigation, said Gan, of the discipline inspection commission. Huang was removed in October for taking bribes, Xinhua reported, making him the highest-ranking judicial official to be fired for corruption since 1949.</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Obama says Senate cannot accept Blagojevich appointment</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />KAILUA, Hawaii: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he agreed that Senate Democrats "cannot accept" any move by Illinois' scandal-tarred governor to name a replacement for Obama's Senate seat.<br />Obama said he was disappointed that Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- who has been accused of trying to sell the vacant Senate seat -- had appointed former state attorney general Roland Burris to fill the vacancy.<br />"Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat," Obama said in a statement, adding that he agreed with this position.<br />"I believe the best resolution would be for the Governor to resign his office and allow a lawful and appropriate process of succession to take place."<br />(Editing by Jackie Frank)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQEMWomuE0xjCTCRY5CHVYuZOttPlL379qKRJ4UHedHgxrlpW8RL9H48pMPQyFON2b70VUAp_asim2W5pVO-BPHraEekya9KXEvvRaXTmSU9g08a8MSqBDsDydjIlnKT9BIiV8LwdVwA/s1600-h/DSC04931.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821643968691458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 220px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQEMWomuE0xjCTCRY5CHVYuZOttPlL379qKRJ4UHedHgxrlpW8RL9H48pMPQyFON2b70VUAp_asim2W5pVO-BPHraEekya9KXEvvRaXTmSU9g08a8MSqBDsDydjIlnKT9BIiV8LwdVwA/s320/DSC04931.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijViHrn9AJhASJVl5FTxtxR9SqwDCjIogRdTHoG0JIYq6FG-6KeK6GbwXOy7kCXVtusgDZ5DydBX8MDBtcWTeAa4GNE5ybbee59SWZEGOrR2t3QCRPKcfENPDgQPqP8SpjsLGJCx-wm6k/s1600-h/DSC04934.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821253478004930" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 251px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijViHrn9AJhASJVl5FTxtxR9SqwDCjIogRdTHoG0JIYq6FG-6KeK6GbwXOy7kCXVtusgDZ5DydBX8MDBtcWTeAa4GNE5ybbee59SWZEGOrR2t3QCRPKcfENPDgQPqP8SpjsLGJCx-wm6k/s320/DSC04934.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_5m0U4FPk2aZvgLjBfIjPwG3ymUBi0GgFIaVJZN2IpL6xHvkDZmrbCW79NKn8ghcaX1iZakyguWEskfLUfA0FQS1PnsITTvdaco6kLDc75Ec9iytdxjFxzlhsd67FTEJywcg1Z6roB7E/s1600-h/DSC04935.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821250850490898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 242px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_5m0U4FPk2aZvgLjBfIjPwG3ymUBi0GgFIaVJZN2IpL6xHvkDZmrbCW79NKn8ghcaX1iZakyguWEskfLUfA0FQS1PnsITTvdaco6kLDc75Ec9iytdxjFxzlhsd67FTEJywcg1Z6roB7E/s320/DSC04935.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQ02IoK9NON2d3MTa9wEPrHo3toUoYaxyUeBSKeRjWJZX4awqpkzHpGxf3UoNrkecn_JUC-IJ8v4E-XpUo8BKPtT2d2chu4RejIwSbdtF6fBsN6o3ObKHO8c630gu1q_bUEiqDOrfc_g/s1600-h/DSC04936.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821247625760450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 290px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQ02IoK9NON2d3MTa9wEPrHo3toUoYaxyUeBSKeRjWJZX4awqpkzHpGxf3UoNrkecn_JUC-IJ8v4E-XpUo8BKPtT2d2chu4RejIwSbdtF6fBsN6o3ObKHO8c630gu1q_bUEiqDOrfc_g/s320/DSC04936.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>NASA reports details of Columbia deaths</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: When the first of many loud alarms sounded on the space shuttle Columbia, the seven astronauts had about a minute to live, though they didn't know it.<br />The pilot, William McCool, pushed several buttons trying to right the ship as it tumbled out of control. He didn't know it was futile. Most of the crew were following NASA procedures, spending more time preparing the shuttle than themselves for the return to Earth.<br />Some weren't wearing their bulky protective gloves and still had their helmet visors open. Some weren't fully strapped in. One was barely seated.<br />In seconds, the darkened module holding the crew lost pressure. The astronauts blacked out. If the loss of pressure didn't kill them immediately, they would be dead from violent gyrations that knocked them about the ship.<br />In short, Columbia's astronauts were quickly doomed.<br />A new NASA report released Tuesday details the chaotic final minutes of Columbia, which disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003. The point of the 400-page analysis is to figure out how to make NASA's next spaceship more survivable. The report targeted problems with the spacesuits, restraints and helmets of the Columbia crew.<br />Many of the details about the astronauts' deaths have been known — they died either from lack of oxygen during pressure loss or from hitting something as the spacecraft tumbled and broke up. However, the new report paints a more detailed picture of the final moments of the Columbia crew than the broader investigation into the accident five years ago.<br />Astronaut Pam Melroy, deputy study chief, said the analysis showed the astronauts were at their problem-solving best trying to recover Columbia, which was starting to crack up as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere with a hole in its left wing, damage that had occurred at liftoff. "There was no way for them to know that it was going to be impossible."<br />The crew had lost control of the motion and direction of the spacecraft. It was pitching end-over-end, the cabin lights were out, and parts of the shuttle behind the crew compartment — including its wings — were falling off.<br />"It was a very disorienting motion going on," NASA deputy associate administrator Wayne Hale said in a telephone conference call. "There were a number of alarms going off simultaneously. The crew was trying very hard to regain control. We're talking about a brief time in a crisis situation."<br />The NASA study team is recommending 30 changes based on Columbia, many of them aimed at the spacesuits, helmets and seatbelts for both the shuttle and the next space capsule NASA is building. Since the accident, NASA has quietly made astronauts put more priority on getting their protective suits on, Melroy said.<br />NASA's suits don't automatically pressurize, "a basic problem of suit design and it is one we intend to fix with future spacecraft," Hale said.<br />Had the astronauts had time to get their gear on and get their suits pressurized, they might have lived longer and been able to take more actions. But they still wouldn't have survived, the report notes.<br />The report lists events that were each potentially lethal to the crew: Loss of cabin pressure just before or as the cabin broke up; crew members, unconscious or already dead, crashing into objects in the module; exposure to a near vacuum at 100,000 feet (30,500 meters); and crashing to the ground.<br />Killed in the Columbia disaster along with pilot McCool, were commander Rick Husband, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon.<br />Columbia was the second space shuttle NASA has lost. The hole in its wing was caused by a piece of foam insulation that broke off the fuel tank and slammed into it at launch. The shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after liftoff on 1986, also claiming seven lives. Investigators in both accidents pointed to a NASA culture of ignoring problems that later turned fatal.<br />Dr. Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon and husband of Laurel Clark, praised NASA's leadership for the report "even though it says, in some ways, you guys didn't do a great job."<br />"I guess the thing I'm surprised about, if anything, is that (the report) actually got out," said Clark, who was a member of the team that wrote it. "There were so many forces" that didn't want to produce the report because it would again put the astronauts' families in the media spotlight.<br />Some of the recommendations already are being applied to the next-generation spaceship being designed to take astronauts to the moon and Mars, said Clark, who now works for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.<br />Kirstie McCool Chadwick, sister of William McCool, said a copy of the report arrived at her Florida home Tuesday morning but she had not read it.<br />"We've moved on," Chadwick said. "I'll read it. But it's private. It's our business ... Our family has moved on from the accident and we don't want to reopen wounds."<br />NASA held the report till after Christmas at the request of the families.<br />John Logsdon, who was a member of the original Columbia accident investigation board, questioned the need for the report, saying, "Those people are dead. Knowing in specifics how they died should be a private matter."<br />But for friends of the astronauts working on the investigation, confirming that the crew didn't suffer much "is a very small blessing," Melroy said.<br />__<br />Correspondent Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.<br />___<br />On the Net:<br />The NASA report: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/index.html">http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/index.html</a></div><div></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>The fight over NASA's future<br /></strong>By John Schwartz<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NASA has named the rocket Ares I, as in the god of war — and its life has been a battle from the start.<br />Ares I is part of a new system of spacecraft being designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to replace the nation's aging space shuttles. The Ares I and its Orion capsule, along with a companion heavy-lift rocket known as the Ares V, are meant for travel to the Moon and beyond.<br />Technical troubles have dogged the design process for the Ares I, the first of the rockets scheduled to be built, with attendant delays and growing costs. And in an age of always-on communication, instant messages and blogs, internal debate that once might have been part of a cloistered process has spilled into public view.<br />Some critics say there are profound problems with the design that render the Ares I dead on arrival, while other observers argue that technical complications crop up in any spacecraft development program of this scope.<br />The issues have become a focus of the members of the presidential transition team dealing with NASA, and the space program could undergo a transformation after Barack Obama takes office.<br />During his campaign, Obama expressed support for NASA and criticized the five-year gap between the scheduled end of the space shuttle program in 2010 and the planned debut of the first components of the new system, which NASA has given the overall name Constellation, in 2015. (During the pause in American flights — a Bush administration plan to conserve money during the development process — the United States will depend on Russia and its Soyuz spacecraft for trips to the International Space Station.)<br />But NASA, which has a $17 billion annual budget and most likely would face higher expenses if the gap is to be narrowed and the new program kept on track, will be competing for money as the new administration faces urgent and expensive crises.<br />The Obama transition team, in meetings and requests for information from NASA, contractors and others with a stake in the process, has asked whether increased financing can narrow the five-year flight gap by speeding development of the new spacecraft. The advisers have also asked what the costs and consequences might be of continuing to fly the shuttles for at least one or two additional flights, or even to keep flying them until the next system is ready.<br />The team has also asked whether the development program is truly in trouble and, if so, whether the Ares I should be modified or replaced by rockets used by the Air Force to launch satellites, or the Ariane 5 rocket from Europe.<br />While some involved in developing the rockets have read volumes into the questions, a spokesman for the transition team, Nick Shapiro, said that "the role of the agency review teams is not to make recommendations on any of the issues they are reviewing. They are fact-finding and preparing the full range of options for consideration by the incoming appointees."<br />Nonetheless, tensions have increased between the incoming administration and the management of NASA, whose administrator, Michael Griffin, is fighting to keep the program on course. If he is not reappointed by Obama, his term will end Jan. 20.<br />John Logsdon, a space historian at the Smithsonian Institution, said Griffin was fighting for a program "which he's put his whole reputation on." On the other hand, Logsdon said, a new president needs to press and probe. "Any administration making a choice that's going to last for a generation needs to make that choice for itself," he said.<br />A New Direction<br />In an enormous barnlike building at the Kennedy Space Center earlier this year, officials proudly showed off a prototype of the heat shield of the new Orion capsule, a rounded disc some 15 feet across. Startlingly large but oddly prosaic — it looked like nothing so much as a gigantic muffin top — it served as a powerful symbol for those at the space center. It meant the first pieces of test hardware were moving from computer screens to reality.<br />Metal, as they say, is being bent.<br />President George W. Bush announced the new direction for the space program in January 2004, nearly a year after the loss of the shuttle Columbia underscored the risks inherent in the spacecraft — especially the potential for debris to strike it during launching. In 2005, NASA lifted the curtain on the Constellation program, with the Orion capsule that would ride on top of its rocket, Ares I, out of the way of launch debris. It would be capable of carrying six astronauts; Apollo held three.<br />The Ares rockets are very different — both from the shuttle and each other.<br />Ares I, uses as its first stage a lengthened solid rocket booster like the ones used by the shuttle. The second stage is a rocket that will burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, as the shuttle's main engines do. Atop the stack will sit the Orion capsule.<br />The first test of an unmanned Ares I could take place next summer. The test, however, will use a spacecraft that is very different from the Ares I to come. It will involve a solid rocket booster of the same length that the shuttle uses, and the second stage and capsule will be dummies. Four more test flights are scheduled before the rocket is used beginning in 2015.<br />The Ares V is a much brawnier rocket designed to send equipment to the Moon and beyond. Its first stage includes two solid rocket boosters and a liquid-fueled set of six rocket engines.<br />The design process has run into technical problems. Orion is far heavier than the Apollo capsule and weight issues have required redesigns of both the capsule and the rocket, further complicating technical issues. Engineers have also had to come up with ways to dampen potentially dangerous vibrations along the shaft of the rocket as the solid rocket engine empties.<br />Some inside the development program have complained that it is run with a my-way-or-the-highway attitude that stifles dissent and innovation. Jeffrey Finckenor, an engineer who left NASA this year, sent a goodbye letter to colleagues that expressed his frustrations with the program. "At the highest levels of the agency, there seems to be a belief that you can mandate reality," he wrote, "followed by a refusal to accept any information that runs counter to that mandate." The letter was posted to the independent NASA Watch Web site.<br />Finckenor has refused to comment further.<br />Leroy Chiao, a retired astronaut who flew three shuttle missions and served aboard the space station, said that the 2004 announcement by Bush of NASA's new direction "was a time of great optimism." Chiao is not involved with the Constellation project today, but he said it was clear from some of the leaked discussions that "the program has not panned out as I, and the vast majority of people, had hoped."<br />Sunny Assessments<br />NASA officials say the Constellation program is actually coming along well. In an interview in November, Griffin said, "I can't imagine somebody thinks you're going to develop a new space transportation system and encounter no challenges." The ones NASA is encountering, he said, are "routine in the extreme."<br />Douglas Cooke, a leading space agency official on the Constellation program, told reporters this month that the weight and vibration issues were well on their way to being fixed. And Neil Otte, the launching chief engineer for the Constellation rockets, said that solving tough problems was what engineers did for a living. When they encounter a particularly difficult challenge, he said, their attitude is, "Hey, it's starting to get fun now, and we're earning our money."<br />Nonetheless, the chorus of naysayers that has arisen online, and even within NASA, often has a favorite alternative in mind. There is momentum behind using Atlas and Delta rockets developed for satellite delivery, which proponents say could quickly be fitted with the Orion capsule.<br />Griffin has proposed using satellite launchers for human flights in the past, a process known as "human rating" that involves upgrades to the safety and reliability of the craft. This year, he told French lawmakers that it would be a "small step" from today's French Ariane 5 rocket, which has launched a cargo craft to the International Space Station, to "an independent European human spaceflight capability." But he opposes the plan to use the military rockets and has said that the switch would lead to delay and cost increases while risking safety.<br />Otte said using military rockets would be far more complex than simply putting a capsule on top of off-the-shelf equipment. Rockets built for satellites would have to be extensively modified before putting humans aboard.<br />A second group of engineers favors plans for a follow-up system, called Direct 2.0, that is drawn largely from old NASA plans that had been abandoned. Ross Tierney, a spokesman for the group pushing Direct 2.0, said, "Let's have an independent review and check them all out."<br />"We're confident of what the numbers are going to be, and that we'll come out on top," he said.<br />But that concept has gained few followers, and in April, Richard Gilbrech, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems at the time, testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics that "we can't justify, based on laws of physics, the performance" claimed by the plan's proponents.<br />Edward F. Crawley, a senior professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that the Ares I was not perfect, but that when seen in the context of its use of components from the shuttle program, military systems and the coming Ares V, it was the product of sensible choices. "I don't have any reason to believe there are major technical issues to block its success," he said.<br />Building a new rocket "is a hard thing," Crawley said, and initial test flights often end in embarrassment or even disaster because everything in a very complex system has to go right. "It's one strike and you're out," he said. "If you put every day of its development under a microscope, you'll find plenty of things to write about."<br />To Keep Flying or Not<br />When Obama decides what to do about space, he might also decide to narrow NASA's five-year flight gap simply by flying the space shuttles past the Bush administration's 2010 deadline.<br />Pressure has grown to keep the shuttles flying. In July, former Senator John Glenn of Ohio said in testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee that he favored flying the shuttles until the Constellation craft were ready to fly. "I never thought I would see the day when the world's richest, most powerful, most accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up to our station," said Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.<br />Continuing shuttle flights has also been proposed by the New Democracy Project, a group with strong ties to John Podesta, a co-chairman of the Obama transition team.<br />To Griffin, though, such proposals threaten to scuttle the new space program by hijacking billions of dollars that could go to Constellation development. He also argues that the shuttle's considerable risks make it unsafe to continue flying it. In an interview in November, Griffin defended the program he has put in place.<br />"U.S. civil space policy, in terms of its goals, was headed in the wrong direction after the Nixon administration," he said. Today, with the nation talking about going back to the Moon, exploring near-Earth asteroids and even going to Mars, "that's the right path for us to be investing in," he said.<br />Crawley of MIT said he would like to see a panel of "unbiased and wise people" under the new administration weigh NASA's plans against the alternatives while keeping in mind the broad range of budgetary, workforce and technical issues. "I don't frankly know what the answer is," he said, "but I know it's a lot closer and a lot more complicated answer than the one playing out in the media and the blogs."<br />And then, Crawley said, get on with it. The space program's $17 billion annual budget is small in comparison with other elements of the nation's spending. But its payoff, he noted, can be big. If the new president seeks to stimulate the economy with "domestic high-technology jobs that provide stable and rewarding employment," he said, "space would be a well-placed investment."<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEherWu-8MLTlxJE4B3q2t1xpZzpihatSWL5GqKIt5c-tuPZgaC0BHnrYLZi0JaiX9ugpZza3i6vKgcyo12CnZ3eHgXzf1bOYvFPHVewWsID64E8IgdIW-aRpetpDZFYsFV6_eg5HKwZNQo/s1600-h/DSC04939.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821243925287330" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEherWu-8MLTlxJE4B3q2t1xpZzpihatSWL5GqKIt5c-tuPZgaC0BHnrYLZi0JaiX9ugpZza3i6vKgcyo12CnZ3eHgXzf1bOYvFPHVewWsID64E8IgdIW-aRpetpDZFYsFV6_eg5HKwZNQo/s320/DSC04939.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDc0rStAunAsm97qpxHzmS0IAswU7zs0ei1_nc4GwhNSzTK4K1SwSVc9gINnmC_T8RrEY99v9KxKNbm1N5RKgOhQHpJFWY2xJzNkASoTMcNp2Mcizhqy-1-u0xLgQDuHRGAZ1dFseLUcs/s1600-h/DSC04942.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285821245172425538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDc0rStAunAsm97qpxHzmS0IAswU7zs0ei1_nc4GwhNSzTK4K1SwSVc9gINnmC_T8RrEY99v9KxKNbm1N5RKgOhQHpJFWY2xJzNkASoTMcNp2Mcizhqy-1-u0xLgQDuHRGAZ1dFseLUcs/s320/DSC04942.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEtqAfWQVV0_V_hmTLncj0yiIiWkCgcs3-SVBmIYXJcJcBCu4NVzA05DXjNUqw9myJ0c4vsWET3zi_YpFYvNiGeSKZ2t1nk8622cIVDIt_0YYfsy2yztIM0CXHSeUYHKoh6d5LC_oJchI/s1600-h/DSC04943.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820878519535394" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEtqAfWQVV0_V_hmTLncj0yiIiWkCgcs3-SVBmIYXJcJcBCu4NVzA05DXjNUqw9myJ0c4vsWET3zi_YpFYvNiGeSKZ2t1nk8622cIVDIt_0YYfsy2yztIM0CXHSeUYHKoh6d5LC_oJchI/s320/DSC04943.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0lCiupo8WhbICO9EcNnQ3q1QGORPzTo3C1laBiCTSbLUlBPlP1p0KQQonj4Z2ZmxnFLYEGDhzxpC3JSzjI7hBSbb-X8tvIX_z5YA519cSiF8mF5ZM535Z0AFUYu8F22QrDvx7UzPvEM/s1600-h/DSC04944.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820875272184514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0lCiupo8WhbICO9EcNnQ3q1QGORPzTo3C1laBiCTSbLUlBPlP1p0KQQonj4Z2ZmxnFLYEGDhzxpC3JSzjI7hBSbb-X8tvIX_z5YA519cSiF8mF5ZM535Z0AFUYu8F22QrDvx7UzPvEM/s320/DSC04944.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>A gentle helping hand for laid-off hedge fund managers</strong><br />By Susan Dominus<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NEW YORK: When a certain kind of client calls Michael Madigan these days, the two of them speak in a local dialect that could be described as business euphemism. The client doesn't say he's been laid off; he says, "It looks like we'll be wrapping things up here." Madigan doesn't talk about how he can help that client start over; he talks to him about "business alternatives."<br />Madigan, 27, is the guy who manages the tech guy - he's the client services director at Chelsea Technologies, a small operation that specializes in providing information technology services to hedge funds and small investment funds around the city.<br />To the average white-collar worker, the tech guy occupies a slot somewhere between the plumber and the in-house counsel - he is there to serve but holds a worker's professional well-being in his highly skilled hands. He sometimes has access to highly confidential documents and must be discreet. He must inspire confidence. He must speak the local dialect. He must respond with speed.<br />Madigan, who once worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, understands all that. He started paying attention in November when two former clients called him to say they'd be wrapping things up at their offices and needed help setting up home offices so they could do some trading on their own. In December, he got a flurry of calls saying the same thing, enough that last week, his firm started aggressively marketing "robust, versatile solutions for the home office known as Chelsea Home Office Solutions."<br />Included in the various packages, Madigan said, is help with one of the first needs a newly out-of-work hedge funder usually asks for: e-mail.<br />E-mail? The same men (and like the tech guys, they're mostly men) who were managing millions upon millions of other people's dollars can't be relied upon to set up their own e-mail accounts?<br />"A lot of these guys are used to working in investment houses where they have chefs coming and making them omelets in the morning and baking them cookies in the afternoon, and all that," Madigan said. Maybe they could, or maybe they couldn't, figure out how to set up a secure, backed-up account that syncs with their BlackBerry and has a professional-sounding name. Either way, he said, they're used to a certain level of service.<br />Madigan also found that many of his new home-office clients don't want any old Gmail account. They want an e-mail account that looks and works and feels just like the one they had in their office, a level of familiarity that's not just efficient but comforting. And that's true for their other computer systems as well, right down to which corner of the screen they'll see their instant messenger icon pop up. "We're selling them that 'big bank' feel," said Madigan, who also helps set up his clients with computers with the power to handle market data feeds and high-volume printers. "Oftentimes they're trying to look like a bigger operation, with a more professional approach," Madigan said.<br />For the most part, said Madigan and Adam Cabezas, a client services engineer with Chelsea Technologies, the newly unemployed hedge funders they've met haven't seemed demoralized by the turn of events. "The typical person I'm seeing is somebody who's been a go-getter his whole life," said Cabezas, who has been spending time with the clients at their homes, helping them arrange their new lives. "They're definitely in reaction mode - they want a fast turnaround. That's the way they've been trained, and that's the way they've lived their whole lives. They're very optimistic."<br />If anything, said Madigan, he urges his employees to bring an even higher level of professionalism into the homes of their clients, all in the name of maintaining that investment bank feel in an alternative setting. He requires his workers to take their shoes off before entering clients' homes (God knows how much their carpets cost), and to avoid using their bathrooms, waiting instead for a lunch break outside the home.<br />The systems Madigan sets up may ultimately boil down to a series of brilliantly arranged zeros and ones, but he understands that part of his business - part of so many businesses - is creating an illusion, in this case, a new one that replicates, as closely as possible, the old one. Many of his new clients will probably spend some of their solitary lunch breaks pondering just how much illusion is good for business, and at what point it teeters into dangerous folly.<br />When setting up home offices, Madigan's colleagues enter into people's private domains and sit with them for hours, talking through the various systems, explaining how they work and how to respond when something fails. His code of professionalism requires that the tech specialists try to avoid personal conversations, but every once in a while, after all those hours of working in tandem, they can't avoid it. Cabezas was getting ready to leave one former banker's apartment after setting up the last system for a home office when the client confessed that he was really going to miss having co-workers, that collegiality, that sense of community. Cabezas assured him that with instant messaging and e-mail and video conferencing, he'd surely feel in touch - in technology, the promise of comfort.</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Indianans give Obama's representative an earful on health insurance<br /></strong>By Bob Driehaus<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />DUBLIN, Indiana: Former Senator Tom Daschle, whom President-elect Barack Obama has called the "lead architect" of the new administration's efforts to expand health insurance and rein in medical costs, attended a community meeting here where he received an earful about expenses that were too high and coverage that was too little.<br />Dolly Sweet, 79, said she beat breast cancer 20 years ago but was now battling lung cancer without the drug her doctor had prescribed. Sweet told Daschle that after covering her radiation treatment, Medicare would not pay for follow-up treatment with the drug Tarceva, which would have cost $32,000 a year.<br />"Then what happened?" Daschle asked.<br />"I'm still here," she replied. "You always look over your shoulder and see someone else who's worse off."<br />The gathering in this small eastern Indiana town was one of thousands on health care being held around the country at the behest of the Obama transition team, and the first attended by Daschle, whom Obama has chosen to be secretary of health and human services and director of the new White House Office of Health Reform.<br />Daschle was joined at the meeting, which was held at the town's firehouse, by several dozen other people. Among them were doctors and administrators from Reid Hospital in nearby Richmond, who told of patients who were flooding the emergency room there because they did not have primary care doctors or insurance coverage.<br />"Our population hasn't grown, yet our emergency department census has more than doubled," Michael Baldwin, the department's director, said of changes over the past 24 years. "Everyone used to have his own doctor. Now little more than half do."<br />Joseph Fouts, one of the area's few general practitioners, said he dealt nearly every day with patients who had found jobs carrying health benefits but who were denied coverage because of what insurers determined to be pre-existing conditions. In a recent case, Fouts said, a child of one such person was denied coverage for a cold prescription because he had a cold last year.<br />After listening for nearly 90 minutes, Daschle said the system could be changed by citizens' participation. "When we combine all the stories we heard in this small town of Dublin and multiply that by 300 million people, we can begin to imagine the scope of the problem," he said. "But I'm hopeful that the country has come together to say: 'Enough already. We have to fix this."'</div><div></div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Republicans demand details of any stimulus plan<br /></strong>By Carl Hulse<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Republican congressional leaders are trying to pressure Democrats to be more open about the drafting of a huge economic recovery bill that Democrats hope to pass in the first days of the Obama administration.<br />Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leaders of the two chambers, called Monday on Democrats to hold hearings on the emerging legislation and not schedule any votes on the bill until it had had at least a week of public review.<br />"A trillion-dollar spending bill would be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history," McConnell said in a statement. "As a result, it will require tough scrutiny and oversight. Taxpayers, already stretched to the limit, deserve nothing less."<br />He and Boehner were careful not to say they would oppose a measure that some economists have said is necessary to prevent an even deeper recession. But they warned Democrats against loading the legislation with provisions they called wasteful.<br />"We must act in a responsible way that helps get our economy moving again, not with more pork-barrel spending that does nothing but give taxpayer money to special interests and campaign contributors," Boehner said in a statement.<br />The Democrats, who have been trying to assemble the framework of an economic recovery plan in concert with representatives of President-elect Barack Obama, said they were willing to work with Republicans and would try to reach agreement on a process for weighing and acting on the measure.<br />"As families across America continue to struggle, it is essential that we pass legislation to help create jobs and get our economy back on track," said Jim Manley, senior communications adviser to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. "Senator Reid understands that the only way that we can do so is with the cooperation of Senate Republicans, and he intends to work on a bipartisan basis to pass an economic recovery package."<br />The Republican demand for transparency was an opening salvo in what could be the first major fight over the economic plan that lawmakers are preparing to take up when the 111th Congress convenes Jan. 6. The maneuvering may be one of the best options open to the minority party, given reduced Republican ranks in both the House and Senate.<br />Estimates of the price tag for the economic plan vary widely, but David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, said Sunday that a cost of $675 billion to $775 billion had been discussed.<br />Democrats have spoken only broadly about how the money would be spent on public works and energy projects.<br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>*************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Merkel says crisis chance for tough financial rules</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday she would press for stronger international financial regulations, saying the global economic crisis created an opportunity for more controls and greater transparency.<br />In a speech for broadcast on New Year's Eve released in advance, Merkel said her government would raise spending on infrastructure and education to stimulate growth, but warned she would not be pushed into heavy stimulus spending.<br />"The world is learning its lessons from the financial crisis," said Merkel, adding that the "financial excesses" and irresponsible behaviour of some bankers and managers were to blame for the crisis.<br />"The world has lived beyond its means," she said.<br />Merkel, who has indirectly criticised the United States and Britain for thwarting earlier efforts to tighten controls and introduce more transparency, said she would press for international organizations to clamp down.<br />"The opportunity created by this crisis is for the introduction of international rules that are based on the principles of the 'social market economy'," she said, referring to the German economic model with its heavy state intervention.<br />"I'm not going to let up until we've achieved our goal of getting these rules in place," Merkel said.<br />"The state is the guardian of the economic and social order. Competition must have a sense of proportion and social responsibility. These are the principles of the social market economy. They're in force in Germany but that's not enough.<br />"These guiding principles must be followed worldwide."<br />Merkel, whose annual address will be broadcast on German television on New Year's Eve, said the government would expand roads and railways and improve communications and be looking to protect and create jobs.<br />Schools, training centres and universities would be the focus of new spending, Merkel said.<br />But she added that Germany, where the crisis has not hit as hard as elsewhere, would not be pushed into stimulus measures of the same scope as in some other countries.<br />"The government is acting with determination and completeness," said Merkel, in an apparent response to criticism at home and abroad that she has dithered. "But I'm not going to make any decisions based on who screams the loudest."<br />(Writing by Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Jon Boyle) </div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>*************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Philip Bowring: A close-up on Japan's 'lost decade'<br /></strong>Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />HONG KONG: Not a day goes by without Japan's so-called "lost decade" being wheeled out in support of pleas for bigger and faster injections of government money into wobbly financial systems and weakening economies. Japan's allegedly inadequate response to the bursting of its asset bubble 18 years ago is said to have led to years of deflation, government deficits and minimal economic growth. Today Japan's stock prices are still one quarter of their 1990 peak. According to this wisdom, Japan is the example to be avoided unless the U.S. and others are to have their own decades of deflation and decline.<br />But is it? Could the assumption be an inflationary trap? Could the Japanese have been wiser than you think?<br />There are many criticisms that can be made of official Japan's failure to recognize the extent of post-bubble, asset-price declines and their impact on banks, consumer confidence and corporate balance sheets. Much government spending that was supposed to spur demand went on economically wasteful pork-barrel projects and bridges to nowhere. Politics and bureaucracy thwarted structural reforms.<br />But before foreigners jump to too many conclusions about Japan's failures, they would do well to look at the data of Japan's actual performance during the "lost" years.<br />Japan never had a major post-bubble crisis, just years of gradual adjustment. Deflation of consumer prices did occur for a number of years but it was never above 0.9 percent in any one year and cumulatively was no more than 6 percent. This relatively modest if lengthy level of deflation, common in the 19th century, should only be viewed as dangerous by nations whose financial and debt structures are geared to price inflation. In Japan, consumer prices are now at the same levels as in 1992. Nominal returns on savings have been low but positive in real terms - in other words, better than in the United States since 2000.<br />A significant part of the deflationary pressure can also be attributed not to post-bubble financial policies but to the near doubling of the yen's value forced on Japan by the Plaza Accord in 1985. Appreciation culminated in a peak of 85 to the dollar in 1995 compared with 240 a decade earlier.<br />Japan's GDP performance looks worse than its peers partly because Japan's population has barely grown over this time and has begun to shrink while most other developed countries still have population growth. For sure, Japan has a serious demographic problem - which Germany and Italy will soon emulate - but that is a different issue and one that financial policies cannot address.<br />When measured against other developed countries in per capita terms Japan's overall performance has been moderate rather than bad. It was very weak in the late 1990s, with two years of contraction, when the East Asian crisis led to sharp export contraction. But for this decade so far, Japan's per capita growth has exceeded that of the United States, Germany and France. Of the major developed nations it was only exceeded by Britain, which was boosted, until recently, by financial services and household borrowing booms. Japan's cumulative per capita growth this decade has been 13.7 percent compared with 12.5 percent for the United States.<br />Roughly the same results are shown if one measures Japan's per capita income on a purchasing-power parity basis. European Union data for 1998-2007 indicate that Japan's fell slightly, compared with the United States and Britain but gained on Germany<br />Indeed, perhaps the only overall conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that the United States and Britain became ever more reliant on foreign capital to finance their growth and consumption while Japan, like Germany, continued to show the savings excess needed by countries with rapidly aging populations. Contrary to the United States, growth today was being sacrificed for security tomorrow. The government borrowed heavily, but from Japanese, not foreigners. Meanwhile, Japan continued to accumulate foreign assets. In other words the Japanese may have been behaving in a much more rational manner than they are given credit for.<br />By learning the wrong lessons from Japan, the United States and others are stoking renewed inflation and putting off the years of savings needed by their aging populations.</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Tokyo Tower goes from futuristic hope to symbol of the good old days<br /></strong>By Martin Fackler<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />TOKYO: It was erected in a city still scarred by war, on the grounds of an ancient Buddhist temple, using steel from scrapped American battle tanks. But when finished in 1958, Tokyo Tower gripped Japan's imagination by pointing the way to a brighter future.<br />The 333-meter, or 1,093-foot, structure, which resembles the Eiffel Tower but with orange and white stripes, was the world's tallest self-supported steel structure, a title it still holds. That, and the fact it was used to broadcast color television, then in its infancy, made the tower an instant symbol of the nation's peacetime ambitions to excel in technology.<br />While it never gained the global recognition of its Parisian twin or the Statue of Liberty, the tower remains a landmark in this now affluent, sprawling city. But after a half century, the aging spire is no longer as prominent, or inspiring, as it once was.<br />Tokyo Tower turned 50 last week amid a wave of nostalgic national media coverage. Television news showed grainy black-and-white film of the tower, describing it as part of a bygone era of heady achievements that also included Japan's bullet train and the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.<br />Indeed, the tower seems to have won a new place in the national imagination, this time as a monument to a sepia-toned past. The change comes at a time when Japan as a whole seems to have lost confidence in its future, or has even resigned itself to slow decline.<br />The change also underscores a broader point: How the passage of time can shift the meaning of national symbols - even ones as large as Tokyo Tower.<br />"Tokyo Tower stood for a dream of the future, but that dream is gone," said Masanori Nakamura, a professor emeritus of history at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University. "Tokyo Tower offers no more dreams, just as Japan has no more dreams."<br />In recent years, Tokyo Tower has become harder to spot among the city's growing number of ever more boldly designed glass skyscrapers.<br />In 2011, it will lose its long-held distinction as the city's tallest structure to a new television tower, the awkwardly named Tokyo Sky Tree, which will be 610 meters, nearly twice as high as Tokyo Tower.<br />Still, the tower, which has drawn some 157 million tourists since it opened, maintains a grip on the city's imagination. Last Tuesday, some 20,000 visitors turned up for the 50th birthday, lining up for hours to take elevators to one of the tower's two observation decks.<br />Its owner, Nippon Television City, gave Tokyo Tower a $6.5 million makeover for the occasion with a new nighttime illumination scheme, the Diamond Veil, featuring 276 lights in seven colors.<br />Visitors to the tower and nearby residents explained its appeal in affectionate terms, describing it as an old friend who had stood with them through decades of breathtaking social and economic transformation.<br />"For my father's generation, Tokyo Tower was the symbol of the new Tokyo that they wanted to build," said Midori Tajima, 60, who owns a camera shop near the tower. "But for my generation, it has watched over us during 50 years when everything else seemed to be changing."<br />Tajima, who as a fourth grader watched the tower being built, celebrated the anniversary by displaying old photographs in her shop, including one from 1958 that showed the structure rising over a jumble of wooden homes and now-vanished cable cars.<br />When completed, the tower stood almost 274 meters above the Japanese capital's next highest structure at the time, the Parliament building.<br />As it was being erected, rumors abounded that Hawaii would be visible from the top, older residents say.<br />Before his death in 1986, the tower's creator, Hisakichi Maeda, a former owner of the right-leaning newspaper Sankei Shimbun, called the soaring structure "a triumph of Japanese technology."<br />The tower cost $8.4 million at the time and used scrapped Korean War tanks, one of the few sources of quality steel at the time.<br />The recent nostalgia boom has led to a revival in the tower's popularity. After more than a decade of slowly dwindling visitors, the number has risen by roughly 50 percent in the past three years to some 3.2 million last year, Nippon City said.<br />This nostalgia boom has partly been fueled by a flurry of recent novels and movies that featured the tower. (One of its first cinematic appearances was in "Mothra," a 1961 black-and-white monster film in which the tower was toppled by a giant caterpillar.)<br />In the recent books and films, the tower often appears as a metaphor for what this graying nation feels it has lost in recent decades: the shared sense of purpose and youthful optimism that drove its economic miracle, or even the simpler lifestyles before Japan became an economic superpower.<br />So keen is interest in the tower's history that the owner has begun asking the workers who built it to come out of retirement and talk to schools, tour groups and the press. One is Goro Kiryu, 76, who says tightening bolts on the tower's steel girders felt like just another job at the time, though one that involved unusual heights and fearful winds.<br />"At the time, everyone was just working hard to improve our lives," Kiryu said. "Now I realize that Tokyo Tower was my life's main work."<br />The company is hoping the nostalgia boom will also help keep the tower profitable, after television networks started announcing that they would switch their broadcasting to the Sky Tree. Fearful of also losing tourists to the taller new rival, Nippon City says it will renovate the tower's outdated attractions to play up the history angle.<br />"Tokyo Tower is a part of Tokyo's history," said Tatsuo Matsuzawa, a managing director. "We want it to survive another 50 years."<br /></div><div></div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>U.S. home prices continue steep decline<br /></strong>By Jack Healy<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Home values in the 20 largest U.S. metropolitan areas dropped at a record pace in October as the fallout from the financial collapse reverberated through the housing market, according to data released Tuesday.<br />The price of single-family homes fell 18 percent in October from a year earlier, according to the closely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. All 20 cities reported annual price declines in October. Prices in 14 of the 20 metropolitan areas surveyed fell at a record rate. "October was clearly the free-fall month," said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's.<br />Adding to a gloomy economic picture, the Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index, after rising moderately in November, declined to an all-time low in December. The index now stands at 38.0, down from 44.7 in November.<br />Home prices, after increasing steadily through the first part of the decade, have fallen every month since January 2007, their slide accelerating as troubles in the housing market infected the broader economy and brought down financial firms.<br />Prices are falling at their fastest pace on record, a sign that the housing market is a long way from recovery.<br />"It is unlikely that we are anywhere near a bottom in nationwide home prices," Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR, a New York-based economic consulting firm, wrote in a note.<br />The 10-city index dropped 19.1 percent in October, its largest decline in its 21-year history, and the new numbers show that the cities that played host to the greatest excesses of the housing boom are suffering the deepest drops.<br />Prices in Las Vegas and Phoenix fell by nearly a third in October from 2008. Home prices fell 31 percent in San Francisco and 29 percent in Miami. Prices in New York declined 7.5 percent in October from the same month a year ago.<br />Fourteen of the 20 cities in the Case-Shiller survey posted double-digit declines for the year. The relative winner was Dallas, which had the smallest yearly decline, of 3 percent.<br />Drops in England and Wales<br />House prices in England and Wales fell by 12.2 percent in November compared to the same month a year ago, according to a government report released Tuesday, The Associated Press reported from London. It was the biggest drop since the price survey began in 2000.<br />The average home in England and Wales now costs £161,883, or $234,696, down more than £20,000 from November 2007, the Land Registry said in its house price survey.<br />The Land Registry said sales volumes have also fallen dramatically over the past year, with an average of 48,599 house sales going through each month in the June-to-September period - less than half the average monthly sales volume of 115,697 a year earlier.</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>LETTERS</strong></div><div><strong>Seeds of the housing crisis</strong></div><div>Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />The article blaming President Bush for the housing-bubble crash, "Bubble fed on Bush's vision - and his ambition" (Dec. 22), managed to plow through dozens of paragraphs without mentioning the main reason we are in this mess: The Community Reinvestment Act originally passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress under Jimmy Carter in 1977 and vigorously reinforced under the Clinton administrations. This omission defies belief.<br />It was the CRA, a Democrat-conceived and imposed, market-skewing piece of legislative folly, that spawned the whole orgy of subprime lending that has gotten us into the global financial mess we're in today.<br />To publish a long article on the subprime housing disaster that blames Bush and never mentions the CRA is akin to writing an article on the causes of the Civil War that blames Lincoln while never mentioning such small details as the Kansas-Nebraska Act or the Dred Scott decision.<br />Jack Jolis, Brasschaat, Belgium<br />The article blaming President Bush for the housing meltdown is disturbing. Many articles from your own archives dispute the contention that Bush is responsible for today's troubles.<br />For example, the article "Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending" (Sept. 30,1999), which is available on the New York Times Web site, highlights the fact that the Clinton administration was the first to push lending to subprime mortgage applicants.<br />The 1999 article clearly explains that Fannie Mae's then-new practice could lead to financial trouble for the U.S. government. Here is a passage from that piece: "'From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 'If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry."'<br />Jared Reeder Greensboro, North Carolina</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Divorce takes a hit amid downturn</strong><br />By John Leland<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />When Marci Needle and her husband began to contemplate divorce in June, they thought they had enough money to go their separate ways. They owned a million-dollar home in Atlanta and another in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as investment properties.<br />Now the market for both houses has crashed, and the couple are left arguing about whether the homes are worth what they owe on them, and whether there are any assets left to divide, Ms. Needle said.<br />"We're really trying very hard to be amicable, but it puts a strain on us," said Ms. Needle, the friction audible in her voice. "I want him to buy me out. It's in everybody's interest to settle quickly. That would be my only income. It's been incredibly stressful."<br />Chalk up another victim for the crashing real estate market: divorce.<br />With nearly one in six homes worth less than the mortgage owed on it, according to Moody's Economy.com, divorce lawyers and financial advisors throughout the country say the logistics of divorce have been turned around.<br />"We used to fight about who gets to keep the house," said Gary Nickelson, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. "Now we fight about who gets stuck with the dead cow."<br />As a result, divorce has become more complicated and often more expensive, with lower prospects for money on the other side. Some divorce lawyers say that business has slowed down, or that clients are deciding to stay together because there are no assets left to help them start over.<br />"There's an old joke," said Randall Kessler, Ms. Needle's lawyer: "Why is a divorce so expensive? Because it's worth it. Now it better really be worth it."<br />In a normal economy, couples typically build equity in their homes, then divide that equity in a divorce, either after selling the house or with one partner buying out the other's share. But after the recent boom and bust cycle, more couples own houses that neither spouse can afford to maintain, and that they cannot sell for what they owe on it. For couples already under stress, the family home has become a toxic asset.<br />"It's much harder to move on with their lives," said Alton Abramowitz, a partner in the New York firm Mayerson Stutman Abramowitz Royer. "I'm in the middle of several cases where it's virtually impossible right now to get a good read on what the real estate is worth," he added. "All of a sudden, prices are all over place, people aren't closing, and it becomes virtually impossible to judge how far the market has fallen, because nothing is selling."<br />For John and Laurel Goerke, in Santa Barbara, Calif., the housing market crashed in the middle of what Mr. Goerke said was an orderly legal proceeding. At the height of the market, Mr. Goerke said, they had their house appraised at $2.3 million, which would have given them about $1 million to divide after paying off the mortgage. But by the time they sold last year, the value had fallen by $600,000, cutting their equity by more than half.<br />"That changed everything," said Mr. Goerke, who is now nearly two years into the divorce process, with legal and other fees of several hundred thousand dollars. "The prospect of us both being able to buy modest homes was eliminated. The money's not there."<br />Now, with both spouses living in rental properties, their lawyers still cannot agree on what their remaining assets are worth. Their wealth is ticking away at $350 an hour, times two.<br />"It's got to end," Mr. Goerke said, "because at some point there's nothing left to argue about."<br />For other couples it does not have to end. Lisa Decker, a certified divorce financial analyst in Atlanta, said she was seeing couples who were determined to stay together even after divorce because they could not sell their home, a phenomenon rarely seen before outside Manhattan.<br />"We're finding the husband on one floor, the wife on the other," Decker said. "Now one is coming home with a new boyfriend or girlfriend, and it's creating a layer to relationships that we haven't seen before."<br />In California, James Hennenhoefer, a divorce lawyer, said couples were taking advantage of the housing crisis to save money by stopping their mortgage payments but continuing to live together for as long as they can. "Most of the lenders around here are in complete disarray," Hennenhoefer said.<br />"They're not as aggressive about evictions" he said. "Everyone's hanging around in properties hoping the government will buy all that bad paper and then they'll negotiate a new deal with the government. They just live in different parts of the house and say, We'll stay here for as long as we can, and save our money, so we have the ability to move when and if the sheriff comes to toss us out."<br />Hennenhoefer said this tactic worked only with first mortgages; on second and third mortgages, the lenders pursue repayment even after the homeowners have lost the home.<br />Dee Dee Tomasko, a nursing student and mother in suburban Cleveland, expected to leave her marriage with about $200,000 in starter money, primarily from the marital home, which was appraised at about $1 million in 2006. By the time of her divorce last year, however, the house was appraised at $800,000; her share of the equity came to about $105,000.<br />Though she is relieved to be out of the marriage, Tomasko said, if she had known how little money she would get, "I might have stuck with it a little more, I don't know. Maybe it would've made me think a little harder."<br />For divorcing spouses with resources, though, there can be opportunities in the falling housing market. Josh Kaufman and his wife bought a new, 6,500-square-foot, or 600-square-meter, house outside Cleveland on 5.5 acres, or 2.2 hectares, with four bedrooms and two three-car garages that was worth $1.5 million at the height of the market. When they divorced in June, Kaufman knew his wife could not afford to carry the home. The longer the divorce process continued, the more the house depreciated; by the time he assumed the house, its appraised value was half what the couple had put into it; he did not pay her anything for her share.<br />"From a negotiating standpoint we knew that she couldn't afford to stay in it," Kaufman said. "It appeared as an opportunity to turn the negative situation around. There was no emotion involved. It was a business decision on what made most financial sense. It wasn't an attempt to take advantage of someone."<br />Still, his lawyer, Andrew Zashin, said, "He bought this house at a bargain basement price."<br />For Nancy R., who spoke on condition of anonymity because her colleagues do not know her marital status, the impediments to divorce are visible every time she opens her door.<br />"There's three other houses for sale on our same road," she said. "There's no way our house would sell."<br />For now the couple are separated, waiting for real estate prices to recover. But for Ms. R., that means remaining financially dependent on her husband. He moved out; she remains in the house.<br />"I still feel kept in certain ways, and I don't want to rock the boat," she said. "And it's draining. So suddenly, when there's an economic crunch, we're paying for two places."<br />The same dynamics that marked their marriage now hang over their separation, she added.<br />"He has the ultimate control," she said. "We can't sell the house, and whatever settlement I get depends on a good relationship with him, based on his good will. The lines get blurry and confused quickly, which makes emotions fly easily. Any icing on the cake is going to come from his good will, and that means being the peacemaker. I'm the underdog in this situation. We're basically forced to remain in a relationship after we've decided to end it."</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><strong>U.S. consumer confidence and home prices hit grim records<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Burton Frierson<br />The U.S. economy extended its run of record-breaking dismal data on Tuesday, with consumer confidence and home prices registering a pair of grim milestones.<br />U.S. consumer confidence fell to a record low in December as the worst job market in 16 years hammered sentiment, the Conference Board business research firm said.<br />The dour sentiment has had a harsh impact on spending. The U.S. holiday shopping season has been the worst since at least 1970 due to the recession, the International Council of Shopping Centres said.<br />Prices of U.S. single-family homes in October posted a record fall of 18.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the closely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.<br />Business activity in the U.S. Midwest continued to shrink in December but at a less severe rate than expected, and input prices fell sharply.<br />The data was the latest reminder that the U.S. economy is in for a tough slog after a year-long recession, which many expect to continue during the first half of 2009.<br />"Really at this point we are not going to be seeing anything fundamentally positive from the U.S. for the time being," said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon in New York.<br />On Wall Street, stocks closed higher despite the weak data. U.S. government bonds, which are highly sought after by investors during troubled economic times such as these, also rallied.<br />The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago business barometer rose to 34.1 for December from 33.8 in November. The reading was better than the 33.0 economists had forecast, but was still well below the 50 level that separates expansion from contraction.<br />"RAPID AND STEEP DETERIORATION"<br />The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 38.0 in December from a slightly downwardly revised 44.7 in November.<br />The median forecast of economists polled by Reuters was for a reading of 45.0. Their 62 forecasts ranged from 40.0 to 51.1.<br />"The further erosion of the Consumer Confidence Index reflects the rapid and steep deterioration of economic conditions that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008," said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Centre.<br />"The overall economic outlook remains quite dismal for the first half of 2009, and only a modest recovery is expected in the second half."<br />Chief among consumers' woes has been spiralling job losses in recent months.<br />U.S. employers axed 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November alone, the most in 34 years, according to Labour Department data released earlier this month.<br />The Conference Board data reflected this, with its "jobs hard to get" index rising to 42.0 in December -- the highest since December 1992. That was up from 37.1 in November.<br />Not surprisingly, consumers also rated their present situation poorly, with the index of this measure tumbling to 29.4 -- its lowest since April 1992 -- from November's 42.3.<br />Sales at U.S. chain stores fell 1.8 percent in the week ended December 27 compared with the previous year, while sales fell 1.5 percent compared with the prior week, according to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales index.<br />The ICSC expects holiday sales in November and December to fall 1.5 percent to 2 percent versus the year-ago period. That would represent the first decline since the ICSC began tracking holiday sales in 1969.<br />"BEAR MARKET CONTINUES"<br />The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller composite home price index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.2 percent in October from September. The price drops, both on a year-over-year and month-over-month basis, came in worse than expected, based on a Reuters survey of economists.<br />S&P said its composite index of 10 metropolitan areas dropped 2.1 percent in October from September for a 19.1 percent year-over-year drop, also a record.<br />Many economists say arresting the slide in home prices is key to halting the economy's slump, which was caused by the bursting of this decade's housing bubble.<br />"The bear market continues; home prices are back to their March, 2004 levels," David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's, said in a statement.<br />(Additional Reporting by Ros Krasny in Chicago, Julie Haviv and Nick Olivari in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)<br /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Retailers succumbing to economic malaise<br /></strong>By Stephanie Rosenbloom<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NEW YORK: A rash of retailing bankruptcies is expected in the new year, but as the clock winds down on one of the weakest U.S. holiday shopping seasons in decades, the fallout has already begun.<br />On Monday, Parent Co., an Internet retailer of children's products, had the dubious distinction of becoming the first well-known retailer to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after Christmas. The company made the filing along with nine of its subsidiaries, including eToys and BabyUniverse. Many analysts did not expect bankruptcy filings to begin until January or early February.<br />Michael Wagner, chief executive of Parent, called the bankruptcy filing "an unfortunate but necessary and responsible step to preserve the company's value for our stakeholders in light of the ongoing challenging retail environment."<br />Challenging is hardly the word. This year, retailers including Circuit City, Boscov's, Sharper Image, Mervyns, Linens 'n Things, Whitehall Jewelers and Steve & Barry's filed for bankruptcy protection.<br />That is very likely the tip of an iceberg that extends to Europe as well.<br />On Tuesday, the photography studio Olan Mills joined the list of British retailers falling victim to the downturn in consumer spending.<br />The company, which filed for administration, a form of creditor protection, has 34 studio locations across England and Wales, many of them within baby goods retailer Mothercare stores.<br />In the past month the list of British companies that have filed for administration include the retailer Woolworths, the furniture group MFI, the designer fashion group USC, the tea and coffee merchant Whittard of Chelsea and the music chain Zavvi.<br />Back in the United States, AlixPartners, a restructuring firm, estimated that during the next 24 months there would be a fourfold increase in the number of U.S. retailers in deep distress - companies that do not have enough working capital or are unable to finance their debt.<br />"Unfortunately, this is the new normal," said Matthew Katz, a managing director in the retailing practice of AlixPartners, which studied more than 180 companies.<br />Retailers had one of the worst holiday shopping seasons in decades, with sales falling by double digits in nearly all categories, including apparel, luxury goods, furniture, and electronics and appliances, according to SpendingPulse, a report by MasterCard Advisors that estimates retail sales from all forms of payment.<br />Like many retailers, Parent was hit hard by the freeze-up in consumer spending. To attract consumers during the critical Christmas shopping season, eToys offered up to 60 percent off more than 1,300 toys and games, including brands like Hannah Montana, My Little Pony and TMX Elmo.<br />Parent, based in Denver, is majority owned by D.E. Shaw. The company, which listed assets of $20.6 million and debt of $35.7 million, is seeking permission for a $10.9 million loan from a Shaw affiliate to keep operations running while it seeks a buyer.<br />Like luxury retailing, the toy sector was once considered insulated from the economic downturn. But no more. James Lewellis, a retailing research associate at Needham, said recently that toy retailers have too much inventory and have had to significantly cut prices.<br />"It's all about liquidity," Katz said. "What retailers are trying to do is turn their inventory into working capital and use that to fund the operation and to fund the debt load. And without that your lifeline is soft or gone."</div><div></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>World's most valuable commercial addresses<br /></strong>By Matt WoolseyForbes.com<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />There's a gravitas to a retail address on New York City's Fifth Avenue, the city's most famous shopping strip - especially at 57th Street, where you'll find Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany & Co. But along with that gravitas comes a hefty price: Those two luxury retailers are sitting on the world's most expensive addresses.<br /><a title="" href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/22/most-valuable-addresses-forbeslife-cx_mw_1222realestate_slide_2.html?partner=iht" target="_blank">In Pictures: World's most valuable commercial addresses</a><br />Even at a time when the commercial and residential real estate markets nearly everywhere else have fallen apart, the price per square foot in these and other luxury retail locations remains sky high thanks to a lack of available locations and plenty of demand.<br />The average going rate on Fifth Avenue, between Central Park and 42nd Street, reached $1,850 per square foot this year, making it the most expensive stretch of addresses in the world, according to Cushman Wakefield, an international real estate investment group. And while tough economic times might encourage retailers to try and renegotiate their leases in other prime shopping locations, such as Ginza in Tokyo, it's unlikely there's going to be much wiggle room on Fifth.<br />"There's only going to be one opening on Fifth this year, at 666 Fifth Ave.," says Gene Spiegelman, executive director of retail services at Cushman & Wakefield. "There's no one that needs to make a deal or get out of its space for 2009."<br />Price Drops Beyond Fifth<br />While Spiegelman remains upbeat about top-flight addresses holding their value, he says to expect price drops and negotiations to be a major theme for 2009 essentially everywhere other than Fifth Avenue, from New York's Madison Avenue, only a few blocks away, to Via Condotti in Rome.<br />"The market is clearly going through a correction, and it's two-fold," says Jeffrey Roseman, executive vice president of Newmark Knight Frank Retail, the New York arm of the London-based firm. "Prices were artificially inflated to begin with, and with everything that's going on, spending is down."<br />One place where the drop in spending has caused a drop in retail real estate values is New Bond Street in London, where prices are already down from last year. Between 2006 and 2007 retailers paid $813 per square foot on average per year - now they pay $810. In massive, multifloor stores like Asprey or Ralph Lauren, that $3 difference adds up.<br />The drop wasn't caused purely by a slowdown in spending, but also because the pound has lost juice to other major currencies this year - down to as low as $1.49 against the dollar from as high as $2 in late 2007. Add in the British recession, and it's easy to see why property values are softening.<br />Even though London has seen a slide, many other high streets have - thus far - resisted markdowns. Having a shop on Via Montenapoleone in Milan or Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris, with the Guccis and Louis Vuittons as neighbors, costs $983 and $1,134 per square foot, per year, respectively.<br />Waiting To Pounce<br />Only time will tell if those particular addresses will remain so expensive. What isn't hard to determine, however, is that one man's price drop is another's opportunity.<br />Some companies, like clothing retailer Forever 21, have seized on the opportunity of a slipping market. The chain scooped up a 90,000-square-foot property in New York's Times Square in November that had previously been occupied by Tower Records. The location will be Forever 21's largest and the company is paying only $809 per square foot for it.<br />"For retailers able to get into New York for 20 percent less than it was a year ago, I think you'll see it pick up," says Roseman. "Once the base is set, which I'm not sure it is yet, then it will be time to jump back."<br />But it's not just about Forever 21 selling clothes at its new location; it's about advertising.<br />Most forecasts project a fall for ad spending in 2009, a core method for retailers to reach customers. According to ZenithOptimedia, a London ad industry research firm, overall spending will trend down 0.2 percent worldwide with 5.7 percent drops in North America and Western Europe. A highly visible shopping location can make up for the exposure lost by a cut in ad budgets.<br /><a title="" href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/22/most-valuable-addresses-forbeslife-cx_mw_1222realestate_slide_2.html?partner=iht" target="_blank">In Pictures: World's most valuable commercial addresses</a><br />"If you look at Regent Street, Bond Street, Champs-Elysees, Causeway Bay - all have the benefit that they're international branding opportunities," says Spiegelman. "Particularly in a market where people are cutting back on advertising, if you have prime real estate, that's a great branding opportunity."<br />In other words, these locales aren't simply about the relatively small number of people who shop at them; they're about nearly everyone walking by them. Which is why the most expensive addresses stay so expensive.<br /><br /><br /></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>When the U.S. sneezes, Mexico catches cold</strong><br />By Elisabeth Malkin<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />MEXICO CITY: Twice in the last three decades, Mexico has demonstrated that one country's profligacy and mismanagement can spell economic catastrophe beyond its borders.<br />In 1982, the country defaulted on its foreign debt and set off a Latin American debt crisis that led to a decade of anemic growth across the region. In 1994, the peso collapsed and halted capital flows to emerging markets around the world, until the Clinton administration arranged a $50 billion Mexican bailout.<br />But this recession, it is the profligate United States pulling down fiscally disciplined Mexico.<br />Like a host of middle-class countries, from South Africa to Brazil, Mexico is credited by economists with prudent economic policies that reduced debt and tamed inflation, but that has not saved any of them from the pain of a global recession. Billions of dollars have been pulled from emerging markets as investors seek the safest haven, which is still considered to be U.S. Treasury bills.<br />When the American economy began to spiral downward, officials here argued that Mexico's hard-won macroeconomic stability would protect it.<br />Now, as each week brings more bad news from the United States, those forecasts seem quaintly optimistic. The North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, which so tightly bound Mexico and the United States and turns 15 on Thursday, is helping drag Mexico down with the United States just as it helped bolster it when times where good north of the border.<br />When the American economy was growing, successive governments here counted on foreign investment and exports to generate growth. Exports account for almost a third of Mexico's gross domestic product. But more than 80 percent of them go to the United States, and when American consumers stop buying, there is no market for Mexican-made big-screen televisions, auto parts or expensive winter fruit.<br />"In the face of the most serious contraction in decades, it is hard to imagine that Mexico will avoid recession too," said Gray Newman, Latin American economist for Morgan Stanley in New York.<br />The effect on Mexico is becoming clear. Unemployment is at the highest level in eight years. The peso has fallen 25 percent, leading to a spike in the price of imports, hurting consumers and businesses that reply on imported goods. Exports, industrial production and retail sales have all fallen in the last few months.<br />Although the government has yet to change its growth forecast of 1.8 percent for next year, private analysts say Mexico's economy will not grow at all in 2009. In the worst case, the economy could contract as much as 1.7 percent, according to BBVA Bancomer, Mexico's largest bank.<br />Bad economic news dominates the media. Every morning for the last few weeks, the influential radio journalist Carlos Puig has invited business owners to call in and describe their troubles. "The last thing we Mexicans lose is hope," said one caller, Faustina García, manager of a small building supplies company, Bester Mexicana, before beginning a passionate plea for government aid.<br />After a decade of sound economic management, Mexico's government does have some room to maneuver. Next year the government will run its first budget deficit in five years as it increases spending to give the economy a push. It is also taking on new loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to support social and environmental projects. The central bank has almost $85 billion in reserves to defend the peso and room to bring down interest rates.<br />On top of that, the finance ministry has dealt with the economy's most glaring vulnerability — the dependence on oil export revenue to finance almost 40 percent of the country's budget.<br />When Mexican crude was selling at $130 a barrel last summer, officials began selling Mexico's future 2009 exports at $70 a barrel, a price that seemed wildly conservative in those heady days. In the fall, the congress estimated a $70 price for its 2009 budget projections. The government usually locks in the price of its future production by buying options to sell oil at a certain price. When the market price rises above the option price, the government loses money. When the price falls, as it has, the government makes a profit.<br />Buying the options cost the government $1.5 billion last summer, but at the current price, now below $30, Mexico would stand to earn more than $10 billion. That money would go to job creation plans in infrastructure, tourism and small business.<br />Mexico's caution is a contrast to the policies of Latin America's other main oil exporter, Venezuela. Under President Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan economy has become more dependent on oil revenue to finance his social programs.<br />Analysts say that the Mexican government has taken the right steps but warn that more may be needed in the next couple of months.<br />"At the moment they have done what they can do to face the crisis," said Jorge Máttar, the representative in Mexico for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, or Eclac. But the effect of the recession in the United States is so large that the measures so far will only be a palliative, he said. In essence, there is only so much the government can do if exports plunge and factories close.<br />There are other worries. Even though the oil price Mexico will get is locked in at $70, the amount of crude Mexico can pump is not. On Dec. 22, the state oil monopoly Pemex announced that production had fallen 9.3 percent for the year though November. Exports dropped 17.3 percent.<br />If the economy contracts, tax revenue will most likely fall. And even though Mexico's finances are sound enough that it could borrow more to finance further spending increases, Newman of Morgan Stanley argues there will not be many buyers for emerging market debt.<br />The government will face particular pressure to continue to increase its social programs as the recession hits the poor hardest — and midterm elections approach in July.<br />Over the last few years, Mexico and Latin America have finally managed to achieve some success in reducing poverty. Eclac estimates that the percentage of poor in the region has dropped to 33 percent, from 44 percent, since 2002. Extreme poverty has also fallen, to 13 percent, from about 19 percent.<br />In Mexico, a government program that provides payments to five million families to keep their children in school and take them to clinics regularly has been responsible for much of the improvement in extreme poverty.<br />Remittances from relatives working in the United States have also helped reduce poverty in many regions, but those have dropped nearly 2 percent this year.<br />"There have been substantial gains by the main Latin American countries from the mid-1990s to 2006," said Santiago Levy, a vice president at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, who started the Mexican program 11 years ago. "It would be very, very sad if this was lost."<br />He recommends that governments shift their spending over to infrastructure projects that create jobs, like building much-needed rural roads. Governments should subsidize employers not to lay off workers and offer temporary scholarships to poor families so that they do not pull their children out of school, he said.<br />But Levy warns against any temptation to loosen the disciplined fiscal policies that Mexico and other developing countries have kept over the last years. "Those gains were very hard to get," he said. "We know how to preserve them. And we know how to avoid falling back."</div><div></div><div></div><div>****************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>Handicapping currencies in 2009<br /></strong>breakingviews.com<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />Which currency will be a safe harbor of value in 2009? It is not an easy contest to call. Dollar, yen, euro, pound: each has structural deficiencies and plenty of room to leak value. But in this contest of inadequate defenses, some harbor is bound to prove better.<br />Recent history teaches caution. In 2008, there was extreme currency volatility and an apparent disconnect between fundamentals and prices. The dollar plunged until August - and then rallied hard, even as the U.S. economy sank, before stalling in December. The yen powered up late in the year from multiyear depths, in spite of Japan heading towards recession.<br />The currency fight is not straightforward, especially in this time of global financial crisis. Deleveraging, forced liquidation, flows to havens: these are undercurrents that are powerful yet not so easily seen.<br />The dollar, still the world's reserve currency, has on the surface four huge forces against it: the cutting of benchmark interest rates to zero; huge boosts to the money supply through so-called quantitative easing; spiraling government deficit and debt; and an external deficit that remains close to 5 percent of gross domestic product.<br />These risk sending the dollar to multi-year lows yet again. Were other countries without serious problems, that would be likely - and it may indeed occur. But other factors may weigh against it.<br />The desperate times for the countries that consumed their way into trouble - the United States and Britain - are also desperate times for their suppliers. Germany, the world's biggest exporter, will suffer a big contraction in GDP in 2009 - a fall of 2.7 percent, according to the Kiel Institute. China, the second biggest, has cut interest rates five times since mid-September and announced a fiscal stimulus of $580 billion. Japan's exports were down by 26.7 percent in November on a year earlier.<br />Yet the yen is close to a 13-year high against the dollar, partly because traditionally low Japanese rates are now matched by novel but just as exiguous interest rate policy in the United States. The yen's recent rally is also partly technical. For years, speculators borrowed in yen in order to finance the purchase of higher-yielding currencies and assets. They have recently beat a rapid retreat. When all those so-called carry trades are reversed, the yen could therefore suffer, especially if other economies show signs of recovery.<br />For the euro, too, the slowdown in global trade brings risks. The European Central Bank has been slow to cut rates. But as unemployment takes its toll, it is likely to follow its peers in Japan, the United States and Britain in moving the overnight policy rate down to very low levels. Moreover, euro-zone economies face their first test by recessionary fire. That may inspire countries which once devalued in hard times - like Spain and Italy - to think about leaving the common currency. Even vague talk of departures would unsettle the markets and undermine the euro's appeal.<br />The ECB's sluggishness, too, could hurt the euro if recession looks to be deepening and persisting. Nor will a strong euro help exports or recovery, especially as the currencies of so many of its important customers are weak.<br />Britain is in that group. Recovery there is not near at hand. The pound has plummeted against the euro and yen, and also the dollar. Britain has all the fiscal and monetary deficiencies of the United States, but the pound has none of the dollar's reserve status. Its path remains down. Parity with the euro looks inevitable. The more exciting question is how close the pound, worth $2 as recently August, might come to parity with the dollar.<br />That suggestion may seem outlandish. But suppose the huge fiscal and monetary stimulus creates a revival of some sort in the U.S. economy. Then the euro could fall to, say, $1.20. If the euro has climbed to a value of £1.05, the pound would buy just $1.14 - not far from parity.<br />So is the dollar the best bet in 2009? A currency supported by a zero interest rate, a deficit-ridden government and a recession-stricken economy ought not to be. And might not be. The currency risks that investors will run in 2009 will again be frightening. Finding a safe currency is almost as hard as finding a safe bank. - Ian Campbell</div><div></div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>Analysts will be watching loan covenants in 2009</strong><br />By Natalie Harrison and Jane BairdReuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />LONDON: Sifting through often nondisclosed loan covenants is the arduous task facing anyone wanting to predict which company will be the next to collapse under its debt burden.<br />As the credit crisis enters its next year, most publicly available information - like bond redemption calendars or default risks in credit default swap markets - signals bankruptcies will be on the rise. But the data are inconclusive when it comes to singling out individual names, so bankruptcy watchers will shift their focus to loan covenants, which offer early warning signs that companies face potential problems in repaying bonds or loans.<br />"Clearly, covenant breaches and defaults in 2009 will be more of a concern," high yield credit strategists at Barclays Capital said in their outlook for 2009.<br />Viable companies breaching covenants will move into debt restructurings, resetting covenants at a higher cost, while banks will allow other companies to fail.<br />Seat Pagine Gialle, an Italian multimedia company, agreed last week with its top creditor, Royal Bank of Scotland, to pay a one-time fee of €9 million, or $12.9 million, and between 0.75 and 1 percentage point more in interest in exchange for more flexible covenants. Analysts believe that more companies are likely to ask for waivers in the next few weeks.<br />Covenants included in loan documentation may refer to minimum levels of cash flow or interest coverage or maximum levels of leverage and capital expenditure.<br />Other covenants may include negative pledges, in which borrowers are not allowed to pledge security over assets, and limits are put on the amount of new debt raising, assets sales or the use of the proceeds of asset sales.<br />The ratings agency Moody's is forecasting that 12.5 percent of European companies with speculative-grade credit ratings will default by the end of November 2009, up from 1.3 percent in the previous 12 months.<br />And Standard & Poor's estimates that at least 60 European companies will default within the next 12 months, affecting as much as €25 billion worth of debt, and a similar number in 2010, making it the worst period on record.<br />The Barclays pan-European high yield index shows there are €9.1 billion worth of bonds maturing in 2009, the vast bulk of which are for companies whose ratings have sunk rapidly to speculative grade from investment grade.<br />More than 20 European companies, including Ineos Group, HeidelbergCement and Virgin Media, have already asked for waivers on loan covenants since the start of the credit crisis.<br />Companies under pressure from covenants will try to avoid technical or actual default by asking lenders for waivers. While most requests have been granted to date, companies may not be equally successful in 2009.<br />"We expect negotiations to become increasingly difficult as more issuers potentially run into problems over the course of 2009 in a weak economic environment," Société Générale credit analysts said in a recent note.<br />The world of leveraged loans - which back private equity buyouts - does not look any prettier. Relatively few leveraged loans are set to mature in 2009 and 2010 at $4.2 billion and $7.3 billion, respectively.<br />But the number jumps to $21 billion in 2011 and more than doubles to $57 billion in 2012, Reuters data show.</div><div></div><div></div><div>*********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>ECB's Hurley sees "very weak" global growth in 2009</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />DUBLIN: Global economic growth is expected to be very weak in 2009, European Central Bank Governing Council member John Hurley said on Tuesday.<br />"Problems in financial markets are affecting the real economy across the world and global growth is expected to be very weak in 2009," Hurley said in an article in the Irish Times newspaper to mark 10 years of the euro as a common currency.<br />Speaking of the euro zone in a separate interview last week, Hurley said the area's economy was contracting and would also shrink in 2009 while inflation was expected to weaken further.<br />Earlier this month, ECB staff sharply revised down the outlook for economic activity in the euro zone next year. They forecast gross domestic product would fall as much as 1 percent in 2009, having previously predicted growth of between 0.6 and 1.8 percent.<br />Listing the advantages of euro zone membership, Hurley, who is also Ireland's central bank governor, said the greater stability of medium and long-term inflation expectations had been impressive as commodity prices fluctuated widely.<br />"Over the next decade I have no doubt that the euro will establish itself further as an alternative reserve currency," Hurley said in the Irish Times article.<br />(Reporting by Andras Gergely; Editing by Kazunori Takada)</div><div></div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>World faces slowdown in 2009 as hopes pinned on bailouts<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Claudia Parsons<br />Another day, another batch of warning signs indicating the world will enter 2009 in the throes of a sharp economic slowdown, with governments scrambling to find ways to boost lending and spur growth.<br />Oil and gold prices dipped on Tuesday, pressured by the gloomy global economic outlook which outweighed tensions in the Middle East due to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip.<br />Tuesday brought more dismal economic news in the United States, with single-family home prices down 18 percent in October from a year earlier and consumer confidence plunging to a record low due to severe job cuts.<br />U.S. retailers are also suffering. The International Council of Shopping Centers said the U.S. holiday shopping season was the worst since at least 1970 due to the recession, heavy discounting and harsh winter weather.<br />"Really at this point we are not going to be seeing anything fundamentally positive from the U.S. for the time being," said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon.<br />But U.S. stock indexes ended more than 2 percent higher, cheered by news that the government expanded its bailout of the auto industry, pumping $5 billion (3.4 billion pounds) into General Motors' auto and mortgage financing arm GMAC.<br />GMAC and its parent GM, the biggest U.S. automaker, announced programs to make it easier for car and truck buyers to get financing, a day after the U.S. government funding was announced.<br />The U.S. government agreed on December 19 to rescue GM and Chrysler LLC with up to $17.4 billion in loans to help stave off a collapse that would have cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in an economy already deep in recession.<br />The pressure on companies was highlighted by data from Reuters Loan Pricing Corp showing U.S. loan issuance in 2008 tumbled 55 percent to the lowest since 1994.<br />2009 GROWTH SEEN WEAK<br />New data on Tuesday also showed lending to euro zone companies and households stagnated in November to the weakest result on record, bolstering expectations the European Central Bank will keep cutting rates to ward off a deeper recession.<br />"Problems in financial markets are affecting the real economy across the world and global growth is expected to be very weak in 2009," ECB Governing Council member John Hurley said in the Irish Times.<br />He did not give a global figure but the ECB has already cut its forecast for the euro zone, predicting a 1.0 percent fall in gross domestic product next year.<br />Retail spending in the euro zone fell for the seventh straight month in December, French unemployment jumped sharply and the head of the German exporters' association, BGA, forecast exports will fall next year for the first time since 1993.<br />European stocks were on track for a 46 percent loss in the full year when trading ends on Wednesday, while on Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 is down about 40 percent, making 2008 one of its worst years ever.<br />The euro continued its recent surge against the pound and the dollar. The contrast of aggressive monetary easing in the United States with a more cautious ECB is lending support to the euro while hurting the greenback, analysts said.<br />REAL ECONOMY HIT<br />Analysts forecast more pain for consumers and investors in 2009, but said hopes of more government rescue packages were helping to shore up financial markets for now.<br />Daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun said Japan's government and central bank hope to launch a $110 billion scheme by the end of March to buy bad loans and other financial assets from banks.<br />Japan's gross domestic product has likely shrunk in the fourth quarter by an annualized 12.1 percent, which would be its sharpest contraction in 34 years, Barclays Capital said.<br />"Everyone's pinning their hopes on economic stimulus policies by the United States and possibly China," said Tomomi Yamashita, a fund manager at Shinkin Asset Management.<br />Tokyo stocks ended higher on their last trading day of 2008, capping a grim year which saw the Nikkei index plunge 42 percent, the biggest loss in its 58-year history.<br />"2008 was the year of the serpent, everyone got bitten," said Paul Biddle, a fund manager with Souls Funds Management in Australia.<br />China announced a 4 trillion yuan (406 billion pound) stimulus package last month to tackle a sharp slowdown that many economists forecast could cut growth next year to less than 7.5 percent, the country's lowest since 1990.<br />In a sign of shrinking economic activity across borders, international airlines saw a huge 13.5 percent fall in cargo traffic in November and a drop of 4.6 percent in passengers, industry group IATA said.<br /></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrhy09Bouj3MoSxpBqeYYPEIuA8q4kEyoz6p-rcpjaBVSXhxAJO6Hhefrb0V1_LsEAz8KXcGNPscQtl-WkohYdlhCHw2AvEBdAwIbArHntgAZL3pemKqP2csBDiuB11u_yTxz4Lb3G-oQ/s1600-h/DSC04945.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820875156904370" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga6QMIfFey37MzoHSI4l0SyxrSukMpAE1EcgUO4qwUNuSWz47fv-2kvLEyDprPPn9LrVKegmT5ClioUqKOcevVx7G1fEvgh_irpo0V3790F3bsgYnsnK79s5r1A12y_BGTH6E6nPxxvSU/s320/DSC04955.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKB2r6CbJ2N3FsugTd-4xbj2KHY0sI-e-wIhudN8XqoUf3CAR9no0WZs07AYWd4KC4WoLiHLCnCdYvPKBbtmxETA7QGt6nvIDzPsN-otRE_2r4Evf-h5DZ2kdvf8QKyaExe9TxnsozSgg/s1600-h/DSC04956.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820210532139458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKB2r6CbJ2N3FsugTd-4xbj2KHY0sI-e-wIhudN8XqoUf3CAR9no0WZs07AYWd4KC4WoLiHLCnCdYvPKBbtmxETA7QGt6nvIDzPsN-otRE_2r4Evf-h5DZ2kdvf8QKyaExe9TxnsozSgg/s320/DSC04956.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqDJyz2L_K7wB-1K1QzQ7dME9SxsvwaZ7pYx57wbpbFTCy03HrmRi4OHRhKo2jTKjBv1dnAoFXvfG-byQE5E7FUK2z9-fyg1TN4QitDohVttp4i2QAKCKC6JfhSrwOtANNXBBY0SLcwL0/s1600-h/DSC04957.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820198756954210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqDJyz2L_K7wB-1K1QzQ7dME9SxsvwaZ7pYx57wbpbFTCy03HrmRi4OHRhKo2jTKjBv1dnAoFXvfG-byQE5E7FUK2z9-fyg1TN4QitDohVttp4i2QAKCKC6JfhSrwOtANNXBBY0SLcwL0/s320/DSC04957.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitKyhtJ3WZ_huwV63eDvBbU5nbsiiaSmhPIh0WmeC5kALqXq31JGk8qsEpqvf43itSl0AEKpgrrHlFMK3bL7v6MrHIpQE4XdLdGLb_RKMXUYd27moh0UEHTsKF0QvvKdGxzkTPIJp19zE/s1600-h/DSC04958.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820194581874850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitKyhtJ3WZ_huwV63eDvBbU5nbsiiaSmhPIh0WmeC5kALqXq31JGk8qsEpqvf43itSl0AEKpgrrHlFMK3bL7v6MrHIpQE4XdLdGLb_RKMXUYd27moh0UEHTsKF0QvvKdGxzkTPIJp19zE/s320/DSC04958.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Serbian president replaces army chief</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BELGRADE, Serbia: The president of Serbia dismissed the country's army chief Tuesday, days after the army chief charged the country had no strategy for defense.<br />President Boris Tadic said in a statement that he was replacing Gen. Zdravko Ponos. The statement gave no reason for the dismissal. It said a deputy commander will take over until a new army chief is named.<br />Last week, Ponos lashed out at the Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac, an ally of Tadic. Ponos was quoted by Serbian news organizations as criticizing the military budget and saying Serbia had no defense strategy. He also alleged that reform of the army had been halted.<br />The clash fueled opposition criticism of the government and added weight to allegations that the country's security system was under threat.<br />In an interview on Serbian state television late Monday, Tadic said both Ponos and Sutanovac bore responsibility for the disagreement. But he said Ponos should not have criticized the defense minister publicly.<br />Ponos became the Serbian army commander in 2006. He launched pro-Western reform of the Balkan country's military and restored relations with NATO, which had been strained since the 1999 U.S.-led bombing of Serbia over the country's actions in its breakaway province of Kosovo.</div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong>Builders unearth 18th century galleon in Argentina<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BUENOS AIRES: Argentine builders stumbled across the wreck of an 18th century Spanish galleon while digging the foundations for a riverside high-rise building in Buenos Aires, archaeologists said on Tuesday.<br />Experts combing the remains of the ship said they did not expect it to contain treasure, but so far they have discovered several canons and well-preserved earthenware jars that were probably used to store olive oil.<br />The remains of the galleon were found on a building site close to the shores of the River Plate and archaeologists from Buenos Aires city government think the boat was probably shipwrecked some 300 years ago.<br />"You can see it's very old and we think it dates from the 1700s, although it's also possible that it's from the 1600s," said archaeologist Marcelo Waissel.<br />"I don't think there's any treasure, but what there will be is a nice collection of artefacts," he told local television, adding it was the first time such a discovery had been made in the city.<br />Workmen were helping the investigators retrieve artefacts from the site and Waissel said the city government would ensure that the discovery was preserved even though the construction of the building will continue.<br />"The building's going to go ahead and the area will be protected so the archaeologists can carry on recovering bits of what's been found," Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri told reporters at the site in the Puerto Madero district, an area of former docks and reclaimed land that has been redeveloped with offices, apartments and upmarket restaurants in recent years.<br />(Reporting by Karina Grazina; Writing by Helen Popper; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)</div><div></div><div>***************</div><div></div><div><strong>Italian priest's attacker sentenced in Turkey</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />A Turkish court sentenced a man to four years in prison on Monday for stabbing an Italian Catholic priest in 2007.<br />The man, Ramazan Bay, told a court in western Turkey that he had stabbed the priest, Adriano Franchini, after seeing news reports of other attacks against Christians, including the shooting death of Andrea Santoro, an Italian Catholic priest, in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon in 2006.<br />Father Franchini survived the attack.<br />The small Christian community in Turkey, a Muslim nation, has been the target of several attacks over the past few years.<br /></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong>Challenges await new Belgian leader</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />BRUSSELS: A Flemish Christian Democrat, Herman Van Rompuy, was named Belgian prime minister Tuesday to head a revived five-party coalition in a country facing recession and a bank crisis.<br />Van Rompuy replaces a fellow party member, Yves Leterme, who resigned on Dec. 19 over allegations of political meddling in the bailout of Fortis, the stricken bank.<br />King Albert "received Mr. Herman Van Rompuy this afternoon at the Chateau de Laeken and named him prime minister," the palace said in a statement. The swearing-in ceremony followed and the parliamentary vote of confidence will take place Friday.<br />The five parties that had made up Leterme's government renewed their coalition after a three-hour meeting Tuesday.<br />It is likely that the new government, which is nearly identical to its predecessor, will continue that government's policies. Van Rompuy was expected to take over his predecessor's plan for battling a looming recession caused by the global financial crisis.<br />He will also have to show sensitivity in handling the strained relations between Flanders, Belgium's richer, more populous Dutch-speaking region, and its Francophone area.<br />"Nothing is simple in our country, but what is important is that we have a government to lead with seriousness, stability and serenity," said Elio di Rupo, leader of the Francophone Socialist Party.<br />Van Rompuy will be the third prime minister since general elections in June 2007 in the linguistically divided country that is host to the main European Union institutions and to NATO.<br />"I think we have a good formula to have a government this year," said Didier Reynders, leader of the Francophone Liberal Party, who will stay on as finance minister.<br />Van Rompuy, 61, has the reputation of being both an intellectual and a budgetary hard-liner. He was budget minister from 1993 to 1999 and sharply reduced public debt in his first year in office.<br />Along with helping the economy, his other task will be to sort out the Fortis debacle. The bank's shareholders won an appeal court ruling this month, freezing the group's breakup by the Dutch, Luxembourg and Belgian governments and the latter's sale of Fortis assets to BNP Paribas.<br />Leterme's government had planned a €2 billion, or $2.9 billion, package of measures to increase growth, including tax cuts, lower energy costs and accelerated infrastructure projects.<br />That government collapsed after the Supreme Court said there were clear indications of political meddling in a court ruling over the bailout of Fortis.<br />Belgium's coalition comprises the Flemish Christian Democrat Party, Flemish Liberal Party, Francophone Liberal Party, Francophone Christian Democrats and Francophone Socialist Party.<br />After consulting political leaders, Van Rompuy said Christian Democrats, Liberals and Socialists must continue in power for the sake of continuity.<br />Holding new elections followed by government formation talks can take months.<br />After the June 2007 elections it took Leterme six months to form a government owing to bickering among Dutch and French-speaking parties over how to resolve regional autonomy issues.</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCKZPNOEQCgRhX7zflraCsg66WsNLBxRUaZZKSe59h5pkyZwTnzGZpzNb0WeqVzZok33ODxOAuhov4m0X34nFCAp3l8V_VA-0ThMB2ceAJHciLMkjudeXQdVcb-PqAhOo-L3TrTLs20pc/s1600-h/DSC04960.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285820191453418626" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjUax-xhr7DlL6Kz191Ngv0GiYQyAzvBjTwpA68k_RNGZSNhZOMkrm4_lhwnVnurydILcv1H0f_sLW-kjcjVXM9CEsjNisFK8Mi8uEpGDcxm-AKt-J0p2peQICKMFWHeQf7_4jZTZnkUI/s320/DSC05099.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5keKTiwlPeyyt6yFhQThPiV8wnn8VesM7wCr72tq8PzFW869ouKrfIwG-k1um1EEB9UAbuuLUPwNjx_gaTkr3s2oG_saH8bUC1O5gpnwmoATA6KpVA4agLIHoOQrrCJ3iPFK1M40OfxY/s1600-h/DSC05100.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808597065132578" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5keKTiwlPeyyt6yFhQThPiV8wnn8VesM7wCr72tq8PzFW869ouKrfIwG-k1um1EEB9UAbuuLUPwNjx_gaTkr3s2oG_saH8bUC1O5gpnwmoATA6KpVA4agLIHoOQrrCJ3iPFK1M40OfxY/s320/DSC05100.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibSPprGOGfJsy-QGsGX70kYroG5F594azvabuDLZBV66IRCf64WiTMfEofdlkAvNqx2g4yBy2kK_bEv_wsMHxcWIvQljL4JO8AbfuwnY9JQz8CvSU8fy9r7tg6QamXfumqUEz3QAx5dCo/s1600-h/DSC05102.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808589277549602" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibSPprGOGfJsy-QGsGX70kYroG5F594azvabuDLZBV66IRCf64WiTMfEofdlkAvNqx2g4yBy2kK_bEv_wsMHxcWIvQljL4JO8AbfuwnY9JQz8CvSU8fy9r7tg6QamXfumqUEz3QAx5dCo/s320/DSC05102.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhotXmWKlk4Rie-nGYY3ou2Ao3f-0J_WTHuch0lqlE-qVvZqKH4V73zE5dNXYMKWHsGMSAPGKT8wffItG2cwaNRdb8yWZfsaN2nxYA6yAJ5D8k0MZdBo641-tlsh5zdaUBgKlRZF8VDw1g/s1600-h/DSC05105.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808281168109442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhotXmWKlk4Rie-nGYY3ou2Ao3f-0J_WTHuch0lqlE-qVvZqKH4V73zE5dNXYMKWHsGMSAPGKT8wffItG2cwaNRdb8yWZfsaN2nxYA6yAJ5D8k0MZdBo641-tlsh5zdaUBgKlRZF8VDw1g/s320/DSC05105.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglWVHxDA83aizycr7RO3Nu1mYxONiun5XH-dgq5Z_TgAw1YP5vCX_VIL9MRqDjLdzasG7qSRRLj1nnRW4BsHq9Wei3hQX9FuKXflvUtO8JpwNw_c-J-RdHmCsPHlVMTpt-Pt_gIWuvvg8/s1600-h/DSC05106.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808280114561234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglWVHxDA83aizycr7RO3Nu1mYxONiun5XH-dgq5Z_TgAw1YP5vCX_VIL9MRqDjLdzasG7qSRRLj1nnRW4BsHq9Wei3hQX9FuKXflvUtO8JpwNw_c-J-RdHmCsPHlVMTpt-Pt_gIWuvvg8/s320/DSC05106.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>EDITORIAL OBSERVER</strong></div><div><strong>Klaatu had better rent the video<br /></strong>By Brent Staples<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />The remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a sentimentalized take on the 1951 classic. The new version has its uses, so see it. Then rent the original and watch it late at night - the way bleary-eyed adolescents did when it could be seen only on grainy broadcasts in the wee hours of the morning.<br />I compared the two earlier this month, watching the vintage version for the first time in at least 25 years. I was reminded of how deeply it had insinuated itself into the DNA of popular culture. I also thought of Norma Desmond, the fallen movie idol in "Sunset Boulevard," who said of her spent career: "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."<br />Digital effects have revolutionized the monster, science-fiction and superhero genres, making the films larger than ever visually. But the same effects have whittled away at the acting space, making the movies smaller in the dramatic sense.<br />The minimalist - and altogether cool - effects in the 1951 film leave lots of room for the performers. Michael Rennie is aces as Klaatu, the brainy, handsome and thoroughly polite alien who threatens to eliminate every creature on the planet - kittens, puppies and cute little babies included - if earthlings become a danger to the galaxy.<br />Watching the movie as a middle-aged man, I saw what I lacked eyes to see as a 12-year-old. There is no shred of sentimentality in Rennie's performance. He is a congenial exterminating angel, dropping round for tea to tell of horrors to come.<br />Rennie's Klaatu is God-fearing, emotionally sophisticated, superior to but indistinguishable from the earthlings among whom he walks.<br />That's an open-minded characterization at the start of a decade dominated by redbaiting and fear of outlanders in general.<br />Keanu Reeves' Klaatu is numbingly monotonic. He is emotionally underdeveloped, and suffers from a robotic flatness of affect.<br />Instead, the scriptwriters gave him powers that are predictably demonstrated through pricey special effects that do not sustain dramatic momentum. With all this digital sleight of hand, the performers are reduced to the equivalent of bystanders at a fireworks show.<br />By making the new Klaatu emotionally naïve, the writers make him subject to earthling tears and cuddly puppy influences that would have cut no mustard with the Klaatu of old. This emotional vulnerability allows for a great deal of unjustified optimism about the human race's ability to change its destructive behavior.<br />It is nearly impossible to recast a movie that is so deeply embedded in pop cultural understanding. The virtue of the new Klaatu is that he points us back to the original.<br />Brent Staples is a member of the New York Times editorial board.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBRfENQGFSWJCULAsmeDhZnGXdgXGTw2ABB8cuLn6Og_SNXuwCrAk9yjjyLQOLPm3CJtM_xZnOlvNhyphenhyphenuWKdtomqfeHiMw82FZamu_wcIbbmsAJsaLZszMY9yOXHQf_u_VejxrgT93uoA/s1600-h/DSC05116.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808283491977458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXBRfENQGFSWJCULAsmeDhZnGXdgXGTw2ABB8cuLn6Og_SNXuwCrAk9yjjyLQOLPm3CJtM_xZnOlvNhyphenhyphenuWKdtomqfeHiMw82FZamu_wcIbbmsAJsaLZszMY9yOXHQf_u_VejxrgT93uoA/s320/DSC05116.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9PO207fo9pA33joej3pmcVbmXOPctcoGN3izU8iXimiZhna6P-MJosNa2sue6WrvasZ4We72rTZGaRFy2qNMusphfURu6UkYaFm47AIMiKFlu38KUBopGbs7xMd6TFtzqOKNkz4Gci3k/s1600-h/DSC05117.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808277371694706" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9PO207fo9pA33joej3pmcVbmXOPctcoGN3izU8iXimiZhna6P-MJosNa2sue6WrvasZ4We72rTZGaRFy2qNMusphfURu6UkYaFm47AIMiKFlu38KUBopGbs7xMd6TFtzqOKNkz4Gci3k/s320/DSC05117.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfbB0jr_uZhbFtH1Eb9yTgXJc-4k3UsOIIwY6wP3-ygflZywyqn7oLF3U2qP3naGdXqaTscowgXfnLwL1egXPUy7mjsmJwy5H2LwnKtglSXuaFvPhJrbNyHZPyDGl45dV82pYFaSmRrI/s1600-h/DSC05118.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808279428552386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfbB0jr_uZhbFtH1Eb9yTgXJc-4k3UsOIIwY6wP3-ygflZywyqn7oLF3U2qP3naGdXqaTscowgXfnLwL1egXPUy7mjsmJwy5H2LwnKtglSXuaFvPhJrbNyHZPyDGl45dV82pYFaSmRrI/s320/DSC05118.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>At least four reported dead in Vietnam celebrations</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />HANOI: At least four people were killed during a raucous night of partying in the streets of Vietnam after the national football team won its first international title, a newspaper reported Tuesday.<br />Three men died in traffic accidents Ho Chi Minh City and another was hit and killed by drag racers in the neighbouring province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau after Vietnam beat Thailand on aggregate to win the Southeast Asian championship Sunday, Thanh Nien Daily reported.<br />In Hanoi, hundreds of thousands of people jammed the city to celebrate the win, waving flags, singing songs, banging pots and pans, and zipping up and down streets on motorbikes.<br />Other cities up and down the football-loving country saw similar scenes of jubilation.<br />Hospitals in Vietnam's commercial hub, Ho Chi Minh City, had received 183 emergency cases of people injured in the partying up to Monday morning.<br />Hospitals in Hanoi treated 63 cases of people injured in traffic accidents, including three skull fractures, the newspaper said.<br />(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Greg Stutchbury)</div><div></div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong>Sports, politics and big money<br /></strong>By Peter Berlin<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />For anyone still clinging to the illusion that sport can ever hope to disentangle itself from politics or economics, 2008 was a sobering year.<br />It was a year in which politics and money loomed over sport. It was also a year in which those off the field of play - the administrators, the drug testers, the scientists, the engineers and, of course, the lawyers - were often as much in the headlines as those who ran or swam or hit balls.<br />For the first half of the year, the Olympic torch relay wound around the world to a steady beat of political protest. Many Western leaders flirted with boycotting the opening ceremony under pressure over a host of politically awkward issues involving China.<br />The Chinese government responded by twisting arms. In the end, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, were the only notable absentees at the opening ceremony.<br />Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt may have made the headlines on the track and in the pool, but the abiding visual images of the Games may well have been the backdrops against which they performed. The Water Cube and the Bird's Nest, and particularly the opening ceremony there, offered eye-catching demonstrations of what can be achieved with imagination, hard work and an almost unlimited budget by a government that never has to worry about what opponents or voters might say.<br />The Chinese offered a late sop to those who hoped the Games might bring liberalization. Chinese citizens would be allowed to apply for permits to vent grievances at protest parks. It seemed a well-calculated public relations gesture; a chance to show off an old woman protesting about an unfair eviction to the hungry cameras of the world media. No one, however, seems to have told the security services of the public relations potential. They refused every application to protest, and even carted some of the applicants off to jail.<br />The International Olympic Committee cherishes the idea that the 1988 Games helped usher South Korea toward democracy. In Beijing the transaction seems to have worked the other way. When the Western media started asking embarrassing questions about the protest parks, the IOC, taking its cue from the host, agreed to call off one of its daily briefings, muttering that sports and politics should not mix.<br />Of course, the Games might have started the hidden erosion of the monolithic Chinese state. Certainly the debate on the IOC's political responsibilities continues to rumble on.<br />That is not the only area in which the Beijing Games just will not go away.<br />The IOC has announced it will retest 400 samples from the games for CERA, an advanced blood-doping product.<br />In this it is following the lead of French authorities. A test for CERA was not available during the Tour de France. When it was developed, French testers took samples out of storage and promptly busted four riders, including three rising stars - Riccardo Ricco, Bernard Kohl and Stefan Schumacher - who tested positive.<br />It was a victory for the men in white coats. But the steady drip, drip of tainted blood is taking its toll. The Gerolsteiner team, for which Schumacher, a German, and Kohl, an Austrian, rode, folded, as did another German team, T-Mobile. German television announced it would not cover next year's tour.<br />The most successful performance-enhancing Olympic product is still legal, for the time being. The year brought 108 world records in swimming. The scientists at Adidas deserve as much of the credit as the swimmers in the water. The vast majority of the records were set in the Adidas LZR suit.<br />The governing body of world swimming, FINA, has commissioned a study. It would not be surprising if the lawyers got involved, yet again. But 2008 has been another good year for lawyers in sport.<br />Michael Vick, a former Pro Bowl quarterback, was back in court last week with the latest installment of the dog-fighting case that put him in a federal prison. Plaxico Burress, who caught the winning pass in January's Super Bowl, engaged a lawyer after shooting himself in the leg in a New York nightclub.<br />The future of the America's Cup remains mired in New York courts. The willingness of Ernesto Bertarelli, owner of Allinghi, and Larry Ellison, a perennial challenger with BMW Oracle, to spend up to $70 million each on one yacht-racing series may suggest that they both have too much money. Their willingness to hurl even more of it at high-priced lawyers seems to be definitive proof.<br />But it is the drug users who are keeping the lawyers busiest.<br />Marion Jones was sentenced to six months in jail. Her former coach, Trevor Graham, was jailed as well. Roger Clemens, the former pitcher, has initiated a defamation suit against a former trainer, Brian McNamee, who accused the pitcher of taking drugs.<br />The year ended with a court in Minnesota refusing to allow the National Football League to punish five players who had tested positive for a banned masking agent. The most striking element of the case was not that the NFL, like a host of other sports bodies around the world, had messed up the handling of drug tests. It was that, unlike other sports bodies, the NFL believes a positive test merits only a four-week ban.<br />Sports was not immune either to the bloodier end of politics. The Dakar rally was called off in January after apparent threats from groups linked to Al Qaeda.<br />Cricket also suffered, though less directly. Pakistan did not play a home test match all year because other teams are too scared to visit. The series between England and India was delayed and then shifted to other venues after the attacks in Mumbai in November.<br />Security remains a costly, and necessary, obsession for the organizers of big sports events, even as they struggle to cope with straitened times.<br />Vladimir Putin's pet project, the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, suffered doubly in 2008: suddenly on the edge of a war zone and caught in the Russian financial meltdown.<br />It is not the only planned sporting set piece beset by problems. The organizers of the London Games in 2012 had spent their time in Beijing busily dialing down expectations even before the downturn increased the need for retrenchment.<br />The Euro 2012 soccer tournament is caught in both a political and economic vise. One host, Ukraine, is struggling to pay for its stadiums. The other, Poland, is caught in a corruption scandal.<br />The Polish government, unhappy with its soccer federation's inaction over a match-rigging scandal, threatened to depose the soccer leadership. FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, insists its sport is above national governments and defended its own by threatening to suspend Polish soccer.<br />Allegations of game-rigging were not confined to Polish soccer. Steaua Bucharest was docked seven points by the Romanian league for trying to fix a match. Giorgio Galimberti, an Italian tennis player, was suspended for 100 days for gambling on his matches. Tim Donaghy, a former NBA referee, was sentenced to 15 months in jail for gambling on games.<br />The sums involved for corrupting the spirit of sport were often tiny. But as the year ends with a recession looming, macroeconomics has become a driving worry across a range of sports.<br />The women's golf tour, the LPGA, will have three fewer tournaments in 2009, Nascar is cutting jobs, the world rallying championship is down to two team sponsors. General Motors is cutting its sports sponsorship, but other bailout beneficiaries remain prominent spenders on sport. The New York Mets are moving to a stadium named for Citibank. Manchester United still carries the name AIG on its shirts as part of a $99 million, four-year deal with American International Group.<br />Even before soccer's January transfer window opens, Real Madrid has announced the signing of Lassana Diarra and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. Meanwhile, its baseball counterpart, the New York Yankees, committed $400 million to sign four players in barely a week earlier this month. The Yankees will also move into a new, and more profitable, stadium made possible by public funding next season. The club also has happy memories of the Great Depression. They won five world series in the 1930s.<br />The more sanguine of sports managers insist that clubs, their sponsors and the broadcasters who show their games, will thrive in a recession as people save money by staying at home and watching television. If they are right, maybe it is best that sports strive to preserve the illusion that they can somehow escape these politically and economically testing times.</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLX7NEIQb6JENjURbU2194tT7rsv8SLXQhYGa0COLSy89tPYK0xALyKNDw0jTlvf0oFpksUx5CT831UMMhzNKkRPFIzVp_WaHnyLz7LXgpyPWtlwcNPWQegddBFAt8ltYRCR1Q1_GJ_LQ/s1600-h/DSC05124.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808016073685618" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLX7NEIQb6JENjURbU2194tT7rsv8SLXQhYGa0COLSy89tPYK0xALyKNDw0jTlvf0oFpksUx5CT831UMMhzNKkRPFIzVp_WaHnyLz7LXgpyPWtlwcNPWQegddBFAt8ltYRCR1Q1_GJ_LQ/s320/DSC05124.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBulVybVRzqrNih7Ulh4DgcD6_WZb_v5WbflCzWNraX2OKTX1MocKEhfJv3bjrG0V8EDoJNbWJ8o01TnDtyvxRn10H4HutaJgMLKnc4M4jja8y5yyehKd_803Sa364w6GWfvB8qXqGt2c/s1600-h/DSC05125.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808012312951906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBulVybVRzqrNih7Ulh4DgcD6_WZb_v5WbflCzWNraX2OKTX1MocKEhfJv3bjrG0V8EDoJNbWJ8o01TnDtyvxRn10H4HutaJgMLKnc4M4jja8y5yyehKd_803Sa364w6GWfvB8qXqGt2c/s320/DSC05125.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilbz5gZI3WxmbOcPfRY782J6fxnwelTlxSeaqnbc7rTyYmbGtU5Z8lELT3IMaTLZxOnglLBmi7-RfJD5RBpMHUWEQCzD4O3hACIZaWRDRLsB3_f8RsoVUuFe270ZOwzxDzDNDPJk8VKzQ/s1600-h/DSC05127.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285808000788439826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilbz5gZI3WxmbOcPfRY782J6fxnwelTlxSeaqnbc7rTyYmbGtU5Z8lELT3IMaTLZxOnglLBmi7-RfJD5RBpMHUWEQCzD4O3hACIZaWRDRLsB3_f8RsoVUuFe270ZOwzxDzDNDPJk8VKzQ/s320/DSC05127.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcReBQ0wdoWLqUM6ZQ_g7GwJY6gN4s822qt3ujZyjHeu-kKKdp1r7n_IvU5kXyVwN0LMalTm44SXI2BMDSm3O8h0GmsogSvoomGUr85hheih4wed7aN10M1vMgrRs7mtzMmCvNmDzTmPg/s1600-h/DSC05133.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285807996742677282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcReBQ0wdoWLqUM6ZQ_g7GwJY6gN4s822qt3ujZyjHeu-kKKdp1r7n_IvU5kXyVwN0LMalTm44SXI2BMDSm3O8h0GmsogSvoomGUr85hheih4wed7aN10M1vMgrRs7mtzMmCvNmDzTmPg/s320/DSC05133.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dR4VJFCXqEpesowpti8sPSjS9s2Us2Fjd7cqp5a_e1rzv6DeglGXuIGJEZf3M_sxfIavJo3tjH3VrVZQ58ZdSR9n2Cwt3T0J4oCsF8SrCn6B6RB51sI6W2A6ilvoJBy49-bBLFVdDAM/s1600-h/DSC05139.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285807996308098130" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dR4VJFCXqEpesowpti8sPSjS9s2Us2Fjd7cqp5a_e1rzv6DeglGXuIGJEZf3M_sxfIavJo3tjH3VrVZQ58ZdSR9n2Cwt3T0J4oCsF8SrCn6B6RB51sI6W2A6ilvoJBy49-bBLFVdDAM/s320/DSC05139.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Gerrard may have become the distraction he feared<br /></strong>By Rob Hughes<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />LONDON: Sports, and the people who play them, sometimes assume such importance to society, to life, that nations lose a sense of proportion over them.<br />Through Sunday night into Monday morning, thousands of Vietnamese filled the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City to celebrate their team's winning the Southeast Asian soccer championship, the nation's first international title ever.<br />"We have a huge, huge party going on here," said Henrique Calisto, the Portuguese responsible for choosing and coaching one team out of 86 million in Vietnam.<br />And then, by all accountants, Calisto disappeared in the celebrating mass in Hanoi.<br />At roughly the same hour, Steven Gerrard, an English player so famous that they would recognize him from Liverpool to Laos, was under arrest in a local police cell. Gerrard, too, had something to celebrate Sunday.<br />He is the driving force of Liverpool, the team he joined as a schoolboy, and after dedicating his youth and now the first decade of his manhood to one paramount quest - winning England's Premier League for his club - Gerrard believes that for the first time in his era he is captain of a team capable of achieving that.<br />Gerrard is now a rarity in English pro soccer, a thoroughly local man leading a team of global talents. He has won Europe's major trophy, the Champions League in spectacular fashion, but he craves to his competitive soul winning the domestic league.<br />Sunday belonged to "Stevie G."<br />His performance, and the two goals he struck as he raised Liverpool to a 5-1 away victory at Newcastle, were so impressive that even the opposing team's manager, Joe Kinnear, lauded Gerrard.<br />"He was magnificent," said Kinnear. "It isn't nice being on the end of it, but that was one of the best individual performances I have seen in a long time."<br />Gerrard said very little. The folks trying to seek him out to give him the Man of the Match champagne, and the journalists waiting to interview him, were told he was in the ice bath, presumably for some niggling sore.<br />Before his team took the plane home to Liverpool, however, Gerrard had emerged and spoken soberly, quietly, almost boringly of sensing within the dressing room that he is now part of a group of players who are giving themselves "a great chance" of going all the way in a title race dominated for the past 19 years by Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea.<br />"We have big players here," Gerrard said. "If we keep playing like this then we will be there. This is the best team I have played with, but consistency is the key. If we want to stay top, we have got to deal with the pressure."<br />The natural caution in Gerrard, the longing to win this thing, is a process of growing up in a tough suburb of a city that weans its children on soccer.<br />Gerrard makes £120,000 per week in a contract that has until 2011 to run, but riches have not quenched his almost frightening amalgam of physical and mental determination - as anyone who witnessed him leading by example to turn his team around after it trailed 3-0 to AC Milan at half time in the European Cup Final in Istanbul three years ago can testify. Liverpool leveled the scored at 3-3 and won in a penalty shootout.<br />He is a soldier in a soccer uniform; a warrior player driven first and foremost to win for his club.<br />If anything scares him, as he suggested after the game in Newcastle, it is something beyond his control going wrong to jeopardize Liverpool's chances of achieving his dream.<br />Later that night, in fact at 2.30 am Monday, Gerrard himself became the figure that jeopardizes the team. He was taken into police custody after a bar brawl that ended with a disc jockey's being treated in hospital for facial wounds.<br />The media staked out the police station. The Paparazzi snapped shots of Gerrard's Bentley parked outside the night club, and his wife, the model and fashion columnist Alex Curran visiting the police station in her own Bentley.<br />It was not until the early hours of Tuesday that Gerrard, and two other men who are not famous players, were formerly charged with assault and affray. They were released on bail and will appear before magistrates on Jan 23.<br />Anything else to do with that night is speculation. None of us know, and until the hearing we have no special right to know, what took place in that bar.<br />Gerrard knows the pitfalls and the traps of international stardom. His choice for winding down after two emphatic victories in three days after Christmas, was a night out with the boys while his wife and two young children slept in the home that, because of threats that come with fame, is a guarded mansion.<br />Critics ask what a professional athlete was doing in a night club at 2.30 a.m. Gerrard's likely answer is that he, like others in England whose league plays right through the festive period, and had done his work.<br />He was not expected to play this coming Saturday in the FA Cup at Preston, a team not in Liverpool's league. The Cup is third in Liverpool's priorities after the Premiership and Europe.<br />Gerrard, a role model in his city, will do well to avoid the front pages of British newspapers, which on Tuesday displaced wars and growing unemployment to tell at great length the story of an arrest about which nothing is known.<br />The newspapers also carried, but only briefly, the story of another soccer player, a 20-year-old who lost control of his Mercedes sports car and killed a father of five children on Christmas Day, appeared down the front page<br />That player, Jordan Robertson, was charged on suspicion of dangerous driving and bailed until the New Year. His career is in the shadows of Gerrard, and has been loaned out by his club, Sheffield United, to another lower-division team, Southampton.<br />Whatever their level, players are under scrutiny even off duty. Lee Woon-Jae, South Korea's national goalie and its hero of the 2002 World Cup, last month finished a 12-month ban imposed by his national association after he was seen drinking in an Indonesian night club during the 2007 Asian Cup.<br />He publicly confessed his "error" and was allowed to play for his club Suwon Samsung Bluewings, eventually winning back his national jersey in November when the ban expired.<br />Last week, Lee was named Korea's player of 2008.<br />"I can't believe that I am deserving of this prize," he said. "I will try to show the fans what I can do in the future."<br />In Liverpool, or Jakarta, there is no hiding place for the modern superstars.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>***************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>Shopper numbers jump as retailers slash prices</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />LONDON: The number of Britons visiting shopping streets leapt 12.8 percent in the week beginning December 22 compared with a similar period last year, market researchers Experian said on Tuesday.<br />The data add to signs that deep discounting finally lured cash-strapped consumers back into the shops in the days immediately before and after Christmas.<br />"Retailers attracted a frenzy of shopping activity last week showing that the lure of sales and deep discounting still works to draw consumers to the shops," Experian analyst Anita Manan said in a statement.<br />But she said the rise was distorted by the timing of Christmas, with this year's period including three pre-Christmas shopping days compared with just one last year.<br />The increase, which follows declines of 11.6 percent and 7.1 percent in the previous two weeks, was also unlikely to continue, she added.<br />"This recent surge in shoppers to the high street may be short lived as reality kicks in for consumers who will face the first credit card bill of the year, together with job insecurities and recession worries impacting confidence, which may force consumers to tighten their purse strings," Manan said.<br />"High street retailing is changing, as a new breed of savvy shoppers grow to be more comfortable with shopping last minute and using multiple channels to fulfil their needs."<br />(Reporting by Mark Potter; Editing by David Cowell)</div><div></div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div></div><div><strong>Pound hits 6-1/2 year low vs dollar</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />LONDON: Sterling hit a record low on a trade-weighted basis and a 6-1/2 year low against the dollar on Tuesday, nagged by a grim outlook for the economy in thin trade as the year draws to a close.<br />The pound hovered close to record troughs against the euro, keeping parity with the common currency in sight on the view that the economy will deteriorate further, keeping intact the prospect of more aggressive interest rate cuts in Britain than in the euro zone.<br />Further bearish news on the economy emerged on Tuesday, with the Land Registry reporting a 12.2 percent annual fall in house prices in England and Wales during November.<br />The pound dropped to 73.6 against a basket of currencies, its lowest on daily records held by the Bank of England which date back to 1990 as market participants took advantage of thin liquidity to push the currency lower.<br />"It is the holiday-thinned liquidity environment which is driving sterling down and taking currency pairs to extremes," Tullett Prebon G7 market economist Lena Komileva said.<br />At 12:42 p.m. British time, the pound was steady against the dollar at $1.4500 after earlier hitting a 6-1/2 year low of $1.4385 according to Reuters data.<br />The euro rose 1.2 percent against the pound to 97.63 pence, a whisker below Monday's high of 98.0 pence hit on Reuters dealing data.<br />The euro has soared by over 30 percent against the pound this year -- jumping more than 18 percent so far this month alone -- and most in the market see it as only a matter of time before the two currencies hit parity.<br />"People see the opportunity to test parity in these thin trading conditions," State Street foreign exchange strategist Lee Ferridge said.<br />"The deteriorating fiscal situation is becoming a major worry for the UK and this leaves the pound vulnerable," he added.<br />The International Monetary Fund warned on Monday that countries would need aggressive fiscal stimulus to bolster their economies, but analysts fear high government debt levels will limit room for additional measures.<br />Meanwhile, lower interest rates compared with in the euro zone provided further reason to sell sterling against the euro, analysts said.<br />The Bank of England has slashed interest rates by 300 basis points since October to 2 percent in an attempt to shore up the economy, leaving them lower than 2.5 percent in the euro zone, with more cuts expected in the new year.<br />The Bank's aggressing easing has caused yields on10-year government bonds to fall faster than their counterparts in the euro zone, pushing the spread between the two to its narrowest in six years according to Reuters charts.<br />(Reporting by Jessica Mortimer; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)<br /></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /><br /></div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-15224637644335556122008-12-30T09:48:00.037+01:002008-12-30T12:03:10.807+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Monday, 29th December 2008<div align="center"><strong>Israel blasts Hamas sites for 3rd day</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />By Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />GAZA: In a third straight day of deadly airstrikes against the emblems and institutions of Hamas on Monday, Israeli warplanes pounded targets in Gaza, including the Interior Ministry, while in Jerusalem, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed "an all-out war on Hamas and its kind."<br />The three-day death toll surpassed 350, some 60 of them civilians, according to United Nations officials. Palestinian hospital officials reported that some 1,500 people were wounded.<br />Israel says that its onslaught its most ferocious against Palestinians in decades is designed to prevent Palestinians from attacking towns in southern Israel with missiles. But Hamas fired more than 60 rockets into southern Israel on Monday, killing an Israeli Arab construction worker in Ashkelon and wounding several others.<br />A long-range rocket also struck the Israeli city of Ashdod some 18 miles from Gaza, where it hit a bus stop, killing a woman and injuring two other people. Thousands of Israelis huddled in shelters.<br />The airstrikes followed bombing late Sunday that hit the Islamic University in Gaza, a Hamas stronghold, and the Interior Ministry, according to Hamas. Footage recorded from Israeli warplanes showed bombs striking the entrances to tunnels allegedly used to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt.<br />The Hamas-owned television station Al Aqsa was also hit, as was a mosque that the Israeli military said was being used as a terrorist base. Speaking in Parliament, Barak said that the attack in Gaza would be "widened and deepened as is necessary" and referred to its operations as part of Israel's long-term struggle against Israel's Islamist enemies.<br />"Hamas is responsible for everything that happens in Gaza and which emanates from it," Barak said.<br />The Bush administration placed the responsibility for ending the violence on Hamas.<br />"In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable cease-fire," a White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, told reporters in Texas. "Hamas has once again shown its true colors as a terrorist organization."<br />But international calls for Israel to pull back intensified. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon again condemned Israel's excessive use of force and called for an immediate cease-fire.<br />"The frightening nature of what is happening on the ground, in particular its effects on children, who are more than half the population, troubles me greatly," he said. "I have continuously stressed the need for strict observance of international humanitarian law."<br />In a statement on Monday, the Israeli Army said some areas around Gaza had been declared a closed military zone, a move which some analysts depicted as a potential precursor to a ground offensive. The military said the declaration meant that civilians, including journalists, could be denied access to an area up to two miles from Gaza.<br />The government on Sunday approved the emergency call-up of thousands of army reservists in preparation for a possible ground operation, as Israeli troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers massed at the border.<br />A military spokeswoman, Major Avital Leibovich, said the closed zone around Gaza had mostly to do with concerns of safety. She said the military had information that Hamas may employ either suicide bombers or more powerful missiles from the border area and it wanted to clear the area. She said she was sure journalists would be permitted to return.<br />"No one is trying to hide anything," she said.<br />The continued airstrikes, which Israel said were in retaliation for sustained rocket fire from Gaza into its territory, unleashed a furious reaction across the Arab world, raising fears of greater instability in the region.<br />Much of the anger was also directed at Egypt, seen by Hamas and some nearby governments as having acceded to Israel's military action by sealing its border with Gaza and forcing back many Palestinians at gunpoint who were trying to escape the destruction.<br />Witnesses at the Rafah border crossing described a chaotic scene as young men tried to force their way across into Egypt, amid sporadic exchanges of gunfire between Hamas and Egyptian forces. Egyptian state television reported that one Egyptian border guard was killed by a Hamas gunman. A Palestinian man was killed by an Egyptian guard near Rafah, Reuters reported.<br />In Gaza, officials said medical services, stretched to the breaking point after 18 months of Israeli sanctions, were on the verge of collapse as they struggled to care for the wounded. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, women wailed as they searched for relatives among bodies that lay strewn on the hospital floor. One doctor said that given the dearth of facilities, not much could be done for the seriously wounded, and that it was "better to be brought in dead."<br />Dr. Hussein Ashour, director of Shifa Hospital, said there were some 1,500 wounded distributed among Gaza's nine hospitals with far too few intensive care units, equipped ambulances or dozens of other kinds of equipment.<br />The International Committee of the Red Cross appealed on Sunday for urgent humanitarian assistance, including medical supplies, to be allowed to enter Gaza. Some of the wounded were permitted to pass through the closed Rafah crossing to be treated at Egyptian hospitals on Monday, and the Egyptian government said it had sent 17 trucks to Gaza filled with medical supplies. Israeli officials said some aid had been allowed through one of the crossings from Israel.<br />Israel made a strong push to justify the attacks, saying it was forced into military action to defend its citizens. At the same time, the supreme religious leader of Iran and the leader of Hezbollah expressed strong support for Hamas.<br />Across Gaza, families huddled indoors as Israeli jets streaked overhead. Residents said that there were long blackouts and that they had no cooking gas. Some ventured out to receive bread rations at bakeries or to brave the streets to claim their dead at the hospitals. There were few mass funerals; rather, families buried the victims in small ceremonies.<br />At dusk on Sunday, Israeli fighter jets bombed over 40 tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt. The Israeli military said that the tunnels, on the Gaza side of the border, were used for smuggling weapons, explosives and fugitives. Gazans also use many of them to import consumer goods and fuel in order to get around the Israeli-imposed economic blockade.<br />While Israeli officials vowed to deal a critical blow to Hamas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel's goal was not to reoccupy Gaza, which it left unilaterally in 2005, but to "restore normal life and quiet to residents of the south" of Israel.<br />Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, appeared on American talk shows to press Israel's case. She said on "Fox News Sunday" that the operation "is needed in order to change the realities on the ground, and to give peace and quiet to the citizens in southern Israel."<br />But in Damascus, Syria, a senior exiled Hamas official said that there can be no talk of a truce with Israel until the assault ends and Israel reopens the Gaza crossings.<br />"We need our liberty, we need our freedom and we need to be independent. If we don't accomplish this objective, then we have to resist," the official Abu Marzouk, told The Associated Press.<br />In Lebanon, the leader of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, put his fighters on alert, expressing strong support for Hamas and saying that he believed Israel might try to wage a two-front war, as it did in 2006. He called for a mass demonstration in Beirut on Monday. And he, too, denounced Egypt's leaders. "If you don't open the borders, you are accomplices in the killing," he said in a televised speech.<br />Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the silence of some Arab countries, which he said had prepared the grounds for the "catastrophe," an Iranian news agency, ISNA, reported.<br />"The horrible crime of the Zionist regime in Gaza has once again revealed the bloodthirsty face of this regime from disguise," he said in a statement. "But worse than this catastrophe is the encouraging silence of some Arab countries who claim to be Muslim," he said, apparently in a reference to Egypt and Jordan.<br />Egypt has mediated talks between Israel and the Palestinians and between Hamas and Hamas's rival, Fatah, leaving it open to criticism that it is too willing to work with Israel. In turn, Egypt and other Western-allied Sunni Arab nations are deeply opposed to Hezbollah and Hamas, which they see as extensions of Iran, their Shiite nemesis.<br />Across the region, the Israeli strikes were being broadcast in grisly detail almost continually on Arab satellite networks.<br />In the Syrian capital, Damascus, a large group of protesters marched to Yusuf al Azmeh Square, where they chanted slogans and burned Israeli and American flags.<br />In Beirut, protesters were bused to a rally outside the United Nations building, holding up Palestinian flags and Hamas banners. Muhammad Mazen Ibrahim, a 25-year-old Palestinian who lives in one of the refugee camps here, choked up when asked about the assault on Gaza.<br />"There's an agreement between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel against Hamas," he said. "They want to end them; all the countries are in league against Hamas, but God willing, we will win."<br />That sentiment is widespread here. Many see Livni's visit to Cairo last week as evidence that Egypt, eager to be rid of Hamas, had consented to the airstrikes.<br />The anger echoes what happened in July 2006, when the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt publicly blamed Hezbollah for starting the conflict with Israel. Popular rage against Israel soon forced the leaders to change their positions.<br />Hamas, sworn to the destruction of Israel, took control of Gaza when it ousted Fatah last year. An Egyptian-brokered six-month truce between Israel and Hamas, always shaky, began to unravel in early November. It expired 10 days ago.</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="center"><strong>Swiss release man held in smuggling case</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />GENEVA: A Swiss man suspected of involvement in the world's biggest nuclear smuggling ring has been released from prison after more than four years of investigative detention, his family said Sunday.<br />Urs Tinner, 43, was freed several days ago, his mother, Hedwig Tinner, told The Associated Press by telephone from eastern Switzerland.<br />His brother, Marco Tinner, 40, remains in detention while prosecutors appeal for his release to the federal criminal court in Bellinzona, she said.<br />The family's information was confirmed by an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality rules.<br />The Swiss Supreme Court had rejected previous requests for the release of the Tinner brothers, but told investigators in August to consider "within months" whether to set them free pending a possible trial.<br />The brothers, along with their father, Friedrich, are suspected of supplying the clandestine network of Abdul Qadeer Khan creator of Pakistan's atomic bomb with technical know-how and equipment that was used to make gas centrifuges. Khan sold the centrifuges to countries with secret nuclear weapons programs, including Libya and Iran, before his operation was disrupted in 2003.<br />Swiss investigators have struggled to piece together a complete picture of the alleged activities of the Tinners within the Khan network since their arrest.<br />If the Tinners are formally charged and their case goes to trial in Switzerland, they face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of breaking laws on the export of sensitive goods. Time in pretrial detention would count toward any prison sentence.<br /><br /> </div><br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>0330</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"><strong>IW: This blog is making me ill, dragging me down deep. I count the deaths, the endless violence and the days to go until the end of this year of loss.</strong></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix6J8shmPbxAW5MZ9tafAQZk4gPzdSZlMCK2CSTjsbBNjg4-dxLI_uz7naZ6I6OxJzamppMwA-UFpz3eFGgqKW5jVI1885UCFj-CCrNP_9Eddqf6HIY-HS29NZ62zdAfWOcnc97vPm3kU/s1600-h/DSC04807.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285508110337157538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix6J8shmPbxAW5MZ9tafAQZk4gPzdSZlMCK2CSTjsbBNjg4-dxLI_uz7naZ6I6OxJzamppMwA-UFpz3eFGgqKW5jVI1885UCFj-CCrNP_9Eddqf6HIY-HS29NZ62zdAfWOcnc97vPm3kU/s320/DSC04807.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Renewed focus on women who farm</strong><br />By Megan RowlingReuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />LONDON: Like many other African women, Mazoe Gondwe is her family's main food provider. Lately, she has struggled to farm her plot in Malawi as the unpredictability of rain makes her hard life even tougher.<br />"Now we can't just depend on rain-fed agriculture, so we plant two crops - one watered with rain and one that needs irrigating," she explained. "But irrigation is back-breaking and can take four hours a day."<br />Gondwe, who was flown by the development agency ActionAid to Poland for UN talks on climate change this month, said she wanted access to technology that would cut the time it took to water her crops and till her garden. She would also be glad of help in improving storage facilities and seed varieties.<br />"As a local farmer, I know what I need and I know what works. I grew up in the area and I know how the system is changing," Gondwe said.<br />This year, agricultural experts have renewed calls for policy makers to pay more attention to small-scale female farmers like Gondwe, who grow as much as 80 percent of the crops raised for food consumption in Africa.<br />After decades in the political wilderness, farming became a hot topic in 2008 when international food prices hit record high levels in June, sharply increasing hunger around the world. The proportion of development aid spent on agriculture has dropped to just 4 percent from a peak of 17 percent in 1982.<br />The former UN secretary general Kofi Annan has called for women to be at the heart of a "policy revolution" to improve small-scale farming in Africa.<br />Women have traditionally shouldered the burden of household food production both there and in Asia, while men tend to focus on growing cash crops or migrate to cities to find paid work.<br />Yet women own a tiny percentage of the world's land - some experts say as little as 2 percent - and receive only about 5 percent of farming information services and training.<br />"Today the African farmer is the only farmer who takes all the risks herself," Annan said at an October conference on fighting hunger. "No capital, no insurance, no price supports, and little help - if any - from governments. These women are tough and daring and resilient, but they need help."<br />A new publication by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization explaining how to tackle gender issues in farming development projects, highlights the potential returns of improving women's access to technology, land and finance.<br />In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and security of tenure, women's use of fertilizer and profits per hectare would nearly double.<br />In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving female entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would increase business revenue by as much as 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women's income by $10 brings improvements in children's health and nutrition that would require a $110 increase in men's income.<br />"The knowledge is there, the know-how is there, but the world - and here I'm talking rich and poor - doesn't apply it as much as it could," said Marcela Villarreal, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization's gender, equity and rural employment division.<br />Many African governments have introduced formal laws making women and men equal, but have trouble enforcing them where they clash with customary laws giving property ownership rights to men, she said.<br />Often if a woman's husband dies, she has little choice but to marry one of his relatives so she can keep farming her plot and feeding her children, Villarreal said. But if a widow is HIV positive, she might be chased off her land.<br />In Malawi, the Food and Agriculture Organization is working with legislators and village chiefs to let rural women know they are legally able to hold land titles. They are given wind-up radios so they can listen to farming shows in local languages and are taught how to write wills.<br />"People continue to think that doing things for women is part of a welfare program, and doing things for men - big investments or credit - that is agriculture, that is GDP-related," Villarreal said. "Women continue not to be seen as part of the productive potential of a country."<br />One powerful woman trying to change that is Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda's minister of state for agriculture. She said government land reform and credit programs specifically focus on struggling female farmers, many of whom are bringing up children alone, their husbands having been killed in the 1994 genocide.<br />This has helped raise their incomes, leading to better nutrition, health and education for their children, Kalibata said. Women are also getting micro-credit loans, which they use to access markets and cooperatives or set up small businesses, such as producing specialty coffee for export.<br />"They are not like rocket scientists, they are women from the general population who finally feel empowered that they can come out and do some of these things," explained Kalibata.<br />In the private sector, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has decided to put women at the center of its agricultural development program by attaching conditions to grants. It no longer finances projects that ignore gender issues, and it requires women to be involved in their design and implementation.<br />Catherine Bertini, a senior fellow at the foundation and professor of public administration at Syracuse University, said aid donors had not spent enough on support for women who farm.<br />"You can find the rhetoric but it's a limited number of people who actually walk the walk," she said.<br />Bertini, who headed the UN World Food Program in the 1990s, said policy makers could best be persuaded to focus on women farmers by playing up the economic benefits rather than talking about gender equality. "You convince people to do it because it's the most practical way to increase productivity and income to women," she said.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>In San Francisco, a cocktail is not just a drink</strong><br />By Gregory Dicum<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />The bartender at the Alembic took my order for a mint julep. He unfolded a small canvas sack, which he filled with ice and laid on the bar. He took up a black bat and began whaling on the pouch, reaching above his head to pummel the bag over and over again.<br />He mounded the resulting gravel-sized ice in a silver cup into which followed 12-year Old Fitzgerald bourbon and simple syrup. He snapped a generous bunch of dark mint sprigs and planted it in the ice. He concealed a small straw inside the bouquet, such that my first experience of the now-frosted cup was a clean, soaring nose of pure mint. A bracing, richly sweet wash of bourbon followed close behind.<br />It was the best mint julep I have ever had. By far.<br />In the San Francisco Bay Area, a growing scene of local distillers and bartenders capable of wielding their elixirs to maximum effect has emerged. With wry flair, they combine technical perfection with subtle, deniable showmanship and an eagerness to experiment with Northern California's agricultural bounty. "The West Coast does liquids well," said Alembic's bar manager, Daniel Hyatt, reflecting on his contribution to the region's fluid scenes.<br />Anchor Distillery in San Francisco makes gin and rye whiskies in tiny lots. Distillery No. 209, on Pier 50, makes only gin. But St. George Spirits, across the bay in Alameda, is the only one open to the public.<br />When I visited this fall, the air was redolent with Montmorency pie cherries finishing their mash in a chilled steel tank. Shining copper stills, industrial macerators and barrels filled a huge, light-filled hangar on a former Naval base (the vodka is named for it: Hangar One). Within an hour the cherries had become eau de vie, dripping from a stainless steel pipe while Jörg Rupf, the founder, offered tastes to an impressively informed group of about 30 visitors.<br />Absinthe Verte, perfected by Lance Winters, Rupf's distilling partner, is one of the handful of American absinthes on the market again after a centurylong drought. The spirit epitomizes the fervid scene in the Bay Area: it is at once classic, with a 19th-century aesthetic, and innovative something that had not been available at all, much less in this highly cultured form.<br />The bar that best reflects this dichotomy is Bourbon & Branch. Styled a modern-day speakeasy, it is in a space in the seedy Tenderloin neighborhood that was once an actual speakeasy. A password (get it online with your reservation) is required to enter the den of wood, leather, distantly twinkling tinplate and oceans of brown liquors. Twenties jazz plays quietly, and guests are greeted with small glasses of champagne punch on linen coasters.<br />If it all seems a bit pompous a reservation at a bar? it works. Even on a Friday evening, Bourbon & Branch is an intimate setting for the contemplation of fine cocktails. It draws a diverse crowd of aficionados who are rewarded with exquisite drinks: the Sazerac is not too sweet, its rye bite balanced with a lemony nose. The 1794 (really a Boulevardier) is delicious. My Democrat, a concoction of peach and bourbon, was tasty but lacked heft. I sent it back and the bartender happily fixed the problem with a splash of bourbon.<br />The bar features a seasonal menu of what Brian Sheehy, one of the owners, calls "market fresh cocktails," as well as two that change every day. Bourbon & Branch has become the nexus of a tight-knit community, with alumni opening bars and developing menus throughout the city. Last month, Sheehy and co-owners opened Cask, a store selling craft spirits and bartending paraphernalia.<br />Todd Smith, who helped start Bourbon & Branch, developed the bar at Beretta, in the Mission District. I visited on a Thursday, the day Smith still works the bar. It was hot, so I led a small group of obliging friends through an extended flight of gorgeous drinks. A lucid pink Nuestra Paloma, of tequila, elderflower and grapefruit, glowed in the sun. The Agricole Mule was a tangy song of Martinique rum, sweet but not cloying housemade ginger syrup, lime and mint. The almond viscosity of fresh orgeat made by Small Hand Foods, a Berkeley company that specializes in craft cocktail ingredients, offset the phenolic astringency of St. George absinthe in the Gaby de Lys.<br />We continued with a Pisco Punch that married satisfying pineapple gomme richness with pisco's depth. The Airmail was beautiful the cocktail version of latte art and mixed the tickle of prosecco with honey's roundness. It gave way to the best thing we drank that day: a refreshing Rangoon Gin Cobbler that tasted like a liquid Dreamsicle.<br />The Clock Bar, which opened this summer in the Westin St. Francis on Union Square, is one of Michael Mina's endeavors a counterpart to his eponymous restaurant across the lobby. His hand is visible in the bar food: treats like lobster corn dogs or black truffle popcorn are $12.<br />But I was there to drink, and the St. Francis Cocktail was an unfortunate start. Why call a martini anything but? And why sully Anchor's Junipero gin with Noilly Pratt? (Here I might as well reveal my own martini recipe: two thirds Junipero, one third Vya dry vermouth, stirred with ice and served up with a single Armstrong martini olive. After that, a martini in which every ingredient is produced little more than an hour's drive from Martinez, California, one of the drink's putative birthplaces, there's hardly any point in doing it any other way.)<br />The Clock Bar is cool, with black wood setting off a gleaming floor and a magnificently lit bank of bottles. The place filled quickly with a crowd of stunned-looking hotel guests perched on black leather cubes and boisterous locals on their way to dinner.<br />The bar redeemed itself with its gin rickey: with a pellucid lime-ness that shone on the palate, it was the standout of the evening. I ordered a Boulevardier made with Bulleit bourbon and Carpano Antica Formula vermouth. Though swamped, Merran, the bartender, took the time to re-twist a lemon peel after the first broke. The flame of an orange peel outlined her face in brief, diabolical light.<br />The Alembic sits on a tawdry block of Haight Street, near Golden Gate Park. Yet it is a pleasant neighborhood bar (and restaurant) of high, mustard-yellow walls and generous skylights, with a casual air arising from civilized and knowledgeable regulars.<br />Hyatt, who often works the bar, divides his menu into canonical and new school: Sazerac, pisco sour, and Ramos gin fizz face inventions like the Gilded Lily, a surprising drink of Plymouth gin, Yellow Chartreuse and orange flower water under a glittering slick of gold dust.<br />But it is with the Old-Fashioned, a drink with roots easily 200 years old, that the Alembic achieves cult status. When I visited, a cheerful, bald man at the bar was having one made with Anchor's single malt Hotaling rye.<br />"Old-Fashioneds are too fruity," observed the woman sitting next to me. She was drinking and let me try a Southern Exposure of Junipero gin, mint and lime with a surprisingly savory undertone of celery juice.<br />"Not here," said the man at the bar. He waited until her date had returned to order an Old-Fashioned for her.<br />I ordered one as well, made with Buffalo Trace bourbon from the single barrel the Alembic owns. It was warmly syrupy, coating a few sharply cubic lumps of ice. It lay on my tongue like a soothing balm.<br />I went outside to take a call, and a woman stopped to look at the menu.<br />"Have you tried the Old-Fashioned?" she asked me.<br />"There's one waiting for me on the bar," I said, tasting again my sweetened lips and a fragrant allspice aftertaste.<br />"It's so ... " She smiled slightly and paused, unused to saying the word she had in mind unironically. "It's so sophisticated."<br />WATERING HOLES<br />St. George Spirits, on the former Alameda Naval Air Station (2601 Monarch Street, Alameda, California; 510-769-1601; www.stgeorgespirits.com) offers free distillery tours weekends at 1 p.m. The tasting room, where flights begin at $10 (which buys the glass that you can take home), is open Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 7 p.m., Sunday noon to 6 p.m.<br />The Alembic (1725 Haight Street; 415-666-0822; www.alembicbar.com) is a bar and restaurant. Specialty cocktails are $9; hours noon to 2 a.m.<br />Reservations are required at Bourbon & Branch (501 Jones Street; 415-346-1735; open daily starting at 6 p.m.). Get them at www.bourbonandbranch.com. You can also sign up for classes at the Beverage Academy, where the mysterious rites of the cocktail are passed on from the masters. Seasonal, "market fresh" cocktails are $12.<br />Cocktails at Beretta (1199 Valencia Street; 415-695-1199; www.berettasf.com) are $9. It fills up fast so get there early (opens 5:30 weekdays and noon on weekends) if you hope to talk cocktails with the bartenders.<br />The Clock Bar is off the lobby of the Westin St. Francis (335 Powell Street; 415-397-9222; www.michaelmina.net/clockbar). Open 4 p.m. Classic cocktails start at $11.<br />Cask is a recently opened store that specializes in artisanal spirits and obsessive barware (17 Third Street; 415-424-4844; <a href="http://www.caskstore.com/">www.caskstore.com</a>).<br /><br />*************<br /><br /><strong>A sinking feeling for West Coast fishermen<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />HALF MOON BAY, California: An unusually weak Dungeness crab harvest on the West Coast of the United States is compounding the financial woes of fishermen who already were struggling with depressed consumer demand and the unprecedented collapse of the Pacific chinook salmon fishery.<br />Commercial fishermen in California, Oregon and Washington are struggling to stay afloat financially. They say the downturn could force fishermen who depend heavily on crab and salmon to leave the shrinking ranks of the region's fishing fleet.<br />"With this crab season being slim at best, it's going to be pretty hard to make it through to the next one," said Duncan MacLean, 58, a commercial fisherman since 1972. "I would suspect there are going to be lots of people falling by the wayside."<br />The Dungeness season that began in mid-November is shaping up to be one of the least productive in years. In Half Moon Bay, about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, south of San Francisco, MacLean and other crabbers are not doing much fishing because the catch is so poor and prices offered by seafood processors are so low.<br />"It's disappointing to everybody because you want to support your family," said Steve Mills, 45. "Even though we're not catching crab, the bills still pile up."<br />Last spring, federal regulators for the first time canceled the commercial salmon season on the West Coast after a near-record low number of chinook returned to spawn in the rivers of the Central Valley of California. The season also could be called off next year to allow salmon populations to rebound.<br />Congress approved $100 million in federal disaster relief to help trollers and businesses that depend on West Coast salmon fishing. Many fishermen say they would be hurting even more without the aid, but they still had been counting on a robust Dungeness season.<br />Scientists attribute the weak crab harvest to increased fishing earlier this year, ocean conditions that disrupted the marine food chain and the natural cycle of crab populations, which tend to peak every seven to 10 years.<br />The catch in California this season is expected to fall below the 8 million pounds caught last year, which was down from 25 million pounds four years ago, according to the state Department of Fish and Game.<br />"I'd characterize it as near the bottom of the natural cycle," said Peter Kalvass, a state biologist in Fort Bragg. He expects the harvest to rebound in a couple of years, based on the large number of young crabs found in traps.<br />In most years, low supply means higher prices, but this year crab fishermen are getting paid less than they got in more abundant years.<br />"The economy is in the toilet, and people that normally buy crabs are not buying the crabs," said Dale Beasley, a fisherman in Ilwaco, Washington, who heads the Columbia River Crab Fishermen's Association.<br />The lack of locally caught chinook, or "king," salmon and the disappointing crab harvest is a loss not just for fishermen but for businesses that draw tourists based on their communities' ties to the ocean.<br />"Our preference would be to sell as much local seafood as possible, and that's becoming increasingly difficult now," said Paul Shenkman, who owns Sam's Chowder House. "A lot of our guests want local fish, and we can't give it to them."<br />Fishermen wonder whether they can afford to keep fishing for a living.<br />John Mellor, a fisherman from San Francisco, said he did not receive any federal aid and had been banking on a decent crab harvest to pay for his taxes, boat insurance and daughter's braces. "I have to come up with money to pay these big bills," Mellor said.<br />To get by, fishermen plan to catch herring, squid, sardine, rockfish and albacore, but they say fishing for those species is not as lucrative.<br />The salmon fishing ban and poor crab harvest could force more commercial fishermen to leave the business at a time when the Pacific Coast fleet is aging and shrinking amid increasing regulation, declining fisheries and the expansion of farmed fish.<br />Over the past three decades, membership in the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations has dropped from about 4,500 to 1,000 members, said executive director Zeke Grader. The average age of group members has risen from the mid-30s to the late-50s as few young people choose to fish for a living. "People don't think there's a future in it," Grader said.<br /><br />***************<br /><br /><strong>Brazilian rancher to be charged in 2005 killing of nun<br /></strong>By Myrna Domit<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />A Brazilian rancher suspected of orchestrating the 2005 death of Sister Dorothy Stang, an American nun who spoke out against logging in the Amazon rain forest, will be charged in the killing and brought to trial following his arrest in a land fraud case, prosecutors said.<br />The federal police arrested the rancher, Regivaldo Galvão, on Friday at his home in the northern Amazon state of Pará. He was accused of trying to use forged titles to claim possession of the same public land that Stang was protecting when she was shot and killed in February 2005.<br />Felício Pontes, a federal prosecutor, said Sunday that documents believed to have been forged that were seized from Galvão contradict his earlier statement that he had no connection to the Roman Catholic nun or her killing.<br />The case attracted international attention from human rights groups and cast scrutiny on the Brazilian justice system, which has been plagued by corruption.<br />Galvão was arrested and charged in connection with the killing in 2005, but he was freed the next year after a series of appeals claiming he had no commercial interest in the land where Stang, 73, was killed. The land is in a region near the Trans-Amazon Highway.<br />Pontes said Sunday that the arrest of Galvão "shows that he had direct connection and interest in the lands that Sister Dorothy died to protect."<br />Edson Cardoso, a state prosecutor, said he would seek to have Galvão tried in the nun's killing next month.<br />Stang, who was from Dayton, Ohio, spent 30 years trying to prevent ranchers from taking the land of poor Amazon settlers.<br />Her struggle and killing were detailed in the 2008 documentary "They Killed Sister Dorothy," narrated by the American actor Martin Sheen.<br />Pontes said the film had prompted his office to reinvestigate Galvão's existing land titles, which were mentioned by the suspect's lawyer during an interview in the documentary.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>***************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Thousands of protesters surround Thai Parliament<br /></strong>By Seth Mydans and Mark McDonald<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />BANGKOK: Politics returned to the streets in Thailand on Monday as thousands of anti-government demonstrators surrounded the Parliament building, forcing a delay in the legislature's opening session under a new government.<br />With power changing hands in Thailand, the protests shifted as well, this time to the "red shirts" who support Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister who was ousted in a coup in 2006. A pro-Thaksin government was dissolved Dec. 2 when a court determined that the governing party had committed electoral fraud.<br />The demonstration called to mind recent protests by anti-Thaksin "yellow shirts" who had barricaded the prime minister's office for three months and shut down Bangkok's airports for a week this month.<br />Chai Chidchob, the Parliament speaker, said the new session was being postponed until Tuesday morning because of threats to the safety of lawmakers.<br />The new government, which is headed by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva of the Democrat Party, must by law present its core policies to Parliament by Jan. 7. The prime minister was originally scheduled to outline those plans in an address to Parliament on Monday morning.<br />Abhisit, 44, who was born in Britain and schooled at Eton and Oxford, became prime minister Dec. 17 following the court ruling that disbanded the governing party and banned its leaders from Thai politics for five years.<br />The new protest group, which calls itself the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship, is demanding that the Abhisit government dissolve the legislature and call a new election.<br />Although Thaksin, a wealthy telecommunications tycoon, has fled Thailand to avoid corruption cases against him, he remains a powerful force in politics.<br />His backers say they could win a new election with the support of his broad rural base. They claim the new government has seized power through what they call a "silent coup" that involved political pressure from the military.<br />Thousands of police officers were deployed around the Parliament building, but Abhisit said force would not be used against the demonstrators.<br />The protests Monday marked a continuation of months of political street theater that has tested both the patience of residents of the capital and the resilience of the national economy.<br />An estimated 300,000 tourists were stranded during the blockades of the Bangkok airports by the yellow-shirted demonstrators from the People's Alliance for Democracy. Revenues this year from tourism are expected to show very little growth, and one tourism official said he expected business to be worse than after the tsunami of 2004.<br />The blockades also shut down mail, parcel and cargo services, crippling exports of items as diverse as orchids, mangos, asparagus and electronics. Imports stopped, too, especially of dairy products, fresh fish and specialty foods.<br />Earlier this month, Standard & Poor's, the rating agency, lowered its economic outlook for Thailand because of the turmoil.<br />Mark McDonald reported from Hong Kong.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance</strong><br />By John Vinocur<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />AMSTERDAM: Two years ago, the Dutch could quietly congratulate themselves on having brought what seemed to be a fair measure of consensus and reason to the meanest intersection in their national political life: the one where integration of Muslim immigrants crossed Dutch identity.<br />In the run-up to choosing a new government in 2006, just 24 percent of the voters considered the issue important, and only 4 percent regarded it as the election's central theme.<br />What a turnabout, it seemed - and whatever the reason (spent passions, optimism, resignation?), it was a soothing respite for a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population.<br />Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Netherlands had lived through something akin to a populist revolt against accommodating Islamic immigrants led by Pim Fortuyn, who was later murdered; the assassination of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, accused of blasphemy by a homegrown Muslim killer; and the bitter departure from the Netherlands of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who became a member of Parliament before being marked for death for her criticism of radical Islam.<br />Now something fairly remarkable is happening again.<br />Two weeks ago, the country's biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch "tolerance."<br />It came at the same time Nicolas Sarkozy was making a case in France for greater opportunities for minorities that also contained an admission that the French notion of equality "doesn't work anymore."<br />But there was a difference. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims' obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor's chairperson, was exceptional.<br />The paper said: "The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance."<br />Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.<br />Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid "self-designated victimization."<br />She asserted, "the grip of the homeland has to disappear" for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.<br />Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be "bringing our values into confrontation with people who think otherwise."<br />There was more: punishment for trouble-making young people has to become so effective such that when they emerge from jail they are not automatically big shots, Ploumen said.<br />For Ploumen, talking to the local media, "The street is mine, too. I don't want to walk away if they're standing in my path.<br />"Without a strategy to deal with these issues, all discussion about creating opportunities and acceptance of diversity will be blocked by suspicion and negative experience."<br />And that comes from the heart of the traditional, democratic European left, where placing the onus of compatibility on immigrants never found such comfort before.<br />It's a point of view that makes reference to work and education as essential, but without the emphasis that they are the single path to integration.<br />Rather, Labor's line seems to stand on its head the old equation of jobs-plus-education equals integration. Conforming to Dutch society's social standards now comes first. Strikingly, it turns its back on cultural relativism and uses the word emancipation in discussing the process of outsiders' becoming Dutch.<br />For the Netherlands' Arab and Turkish population (about 6 percent of a total of 16 million) it refers to jobs and educational opportunities as "machines of emancipation." Yet it also suggests that employment and advancement will not come in full measure until there is a consciousness engagement in Dutch life by immigrants that goes far beyond the present level.<br />Indeed, Ploumen says, "Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally." Immigrants must "take responsibility for this country" and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.<br />Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, "The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women on citizenship.<br />"We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society."<br />And the obligations of the native Dutch? Ploumen's answer is, "People who have their roots here have to offer space to traditions, religions and cultures which are new to Dutch society" - but without fear of expressing criticism. "Hurting feelings is allowed, and criticism of religion, too."<br />The why of this happening now when a recession could accelerate new social tensions, particularly among nonskilled workers, has a couple of explanations.<br />A petty, political one: It involves a Labor Party on an uptick, with its the party chief, Wouter Bos, who serves as finance minister, showing optimism that the Dutch can avoid a deep recession. The cynical take has him casting the party's new integration policy as a fresh bid to consolidate momentum ahead of elections for the European Parliament in June.<br />A kinder, gentler explanation (that comes, remarkably, from Frits Bolkestein, the former Liberal Party leader, European commissioner, and no friend of the socialists, who began writing in 1991 about the enormous challenge posed to Europe by Muslim immigration):<br />"The multi-cultis just aren't making the running anymore. It's a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country. "<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MMUKeLEOYql6lpGLRORWS1dVrqCvj0Zh0h3NtFHGQ7rOEksoztL8U-71kEafb5mp9zMvzbHq0ieZ_SvgnJ8ij1EKNByOdJCmKu6A3JU7kLP1rKLCj9cXJl4_r2CB6s_iwHJ5eQ3HQtE/s1600-h/DSC04808.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285508112868607426" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MMUKeLEOYql6lpGLRORWS1dVrqCvj0Zh0h3NtFHGQ7rOEksoztL8U-71kEafb5mp9zMvzbHq0ieZ_SvgnJ8ij1EKNByOdJCmKu6A3JU7kLP1rKLCj9cXJl4_r2CB6s_iwHJ5eQ3HQtE/s320/DSC04808.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong> </strong><br /><strong>Earthquake hits Afghanistan</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />KABUL: An earthquake of 5.9 magnitude jolted parts of Afghanistan Monday but caused no casualties or damage, officials said.<br />The epicentre of the earthquake was in the Badakhshan provincial capital Faizabad, 260 km (160 miles) northeast of Kabul. It was also felt in neighbouring Pakistan and Tajikistan.<br />Authorities contacted remote regions and had received no reports of losses of damage, officials said.<br />Mountainous Afghanistan has suffered a series of earthquakes that have killed thousands of people in the last decade.<br />(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Dean Yates)<br /><br /><br /><strong>***************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Slow recovery in a quake-devastated county in China</strong><br />By Edward Wong<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />BEICHUAN, China: He lost his wife of 35 years when their home collapsed during the earthquake in May. She lost her husband of 20 years the same day in a cascade of debris at a construction site. They are distant relatives from the same town whose eyes still tear up when they talk about their dead spouses.<br />But within months of the earthquake, the deadliest natural disaster to befall China in more than three decades, Jiang Zhongfu, 60, began courting Zhu Xiaoqiong, 42. Last month, he moved into Zhu's prefabricated housing cube in a refugee camp in these scarred hills.<br />"We're considering getting married," Jiang said as Zhu sat beside him, knitting a gray sweater.<br />More than seven months after the earthquake ravaged southwestern China, new couples like Jiang and Zhu are one sign that, psychologically at least, there have been the beginnings of a recovery. About 370 couples here in the devastated county of Beichuan have registered to remarry, and the local government plans to hold a matchmaking fair soon, said Wang Hongfa, a county official.<br />But progress across the stricken region has been much slower in some critical ways, tempered by the economic downturn and the harsh conditions of winter. The earthquake left 88,000 people dead or missing and more than five million homeless.<br />Now, many survivors are huddled in temporary shelters without jobs, trying to stay warm with little more than blankets and hot-water bottles handed out by the government. In one area of Sichuan Province, where the destruction has been greatest, people are sleeping in subway cars donated by Beijing.<br />Gray rows of prefabricated housing arranged into camps, some with as many as 10,000 residents, lie scattered across farm fields. Everywhere hang red banners extolling aid provided by the Communist Party. "The care of the party is our power," says one.<br />Local governments have promised that everyone will get supplies for the winter. But late last month, the vice governor of Sichuan Province said at a news conference in Beijing that survivors still needed 330,000 quilts and some heating equipment.<br />The vice governor, Wei Hong, also said government financing would account for only a fifth of the estimated $438 billion needed for reconstruction. The rest would have to come from loans and investments by private companies and state-owned enterprises, he said.<br />The authorities are encouraging survivors to build their own permanent homes using a government subsidy that averages $2,900 per household. Officials in the city of Mianyang, which oversees administration in a large swath of the quake region, say construction has begun on 410,000 permanent homes in that area. Half-finished brick homes dot the countryside.<br />But here in Beichuan, reconstruction has been particularly slow. Nestled deep in the mountainous folds of Sichuan Province, the county has become a symbol of the savagery of the quake. Nearly 20,000 of a population of 180,000 were killed, and landslides along the steep valley walls surrounding the county seat buried half the town.<br />A green chain-link fence topped with barbed wire prevents survivors from moving back into the town. Instead, they live in purgatory, spread across 11 large camps.<br />Construction on a new town of Beichuan has not yet begun.<br />"The pace of reconstruction is too slow," said Han Dongmei, 26, as she cradled her 6-month-old daughter in a camp where hot water has been sporadic. "Of course I want to move into a permanent home. The problem is they don't even have a plan yet."<br />Beichuan's mayor said it was difficult "to balance the demands of the refugees with the process of reconstruction." In an interview at a reconstruction meeting in Mianyang, the mayor, Jing Dazhong, said, "Of course, we want it to be faster, but we need to meet scientific standards."<br />Survivors have found different ways to cope. On a hill above the town of Beichuan, enterprising residents sell earthquake souvenirs to tourists who come each day to gawk at the ruins. Hundreds of tourists arrive on the weekends. Laminated photos and DVDs with grisly scenes of destruction go for $1.50 each, as do sets of incense sticks to burn in memory of the dead.<br />"I'm not afraid of ghosts here," said one survivor, a 17-year-old girl named Zhou Qiaoyun, as she stared down at the ruined town from her souvenir stand. "I've seen a lot of dead people. The day I escaped from Beichuan, you had to step on dead bodies to get out."<br />She had a stoic facade, but it broke down when a tourist with a large camera asked her about the destruction of the town. She began weeping.<br />Two aunts who lived with Qiaoyun died in the quake, she said, as did 90 of 1,000 students in her vocational school. Her parents left over the summer to find migrant work on the east coast. Qiaoyun now lives alone in a nearby camp and earns little more than $3 a day selling souvenirs. Most camp residents make do with just a small stipend from the government $1.50 a day and some rice.<br />Some survivors are even poorer, those who live not in the camps but among the rubble in remote mountain villages. A few hike down each day to sell medicinal herbs and fruit to the tourists. Their makeshift shelters in the mountains are little more than plastic tarps draped across sticks.<br />One farmer, He Yifu, said the government had given him $300 to help with repairs and promised that his village would be rebuilt in three years.<br />"The government pays attention to those living on the side of the road, not those far away," said He, 56, as he handed a bagful of herbs to a tourist. "But I understand the government has its own difficulties."<br />He lives with his wife, who has had problems since the quake. "Her memory fades," he said. "She has a hard time remembering things."<br />The camps have taken on the air of permanent settlements.<br />One near the entrance to Beichuan has a police station and an elementary school and a woman who walks around selling hot cornbread. The grocery store is hiring. There is a mental health clinic next to the party secretary's office.<br />The party secretary, Jia Dechun, was able to recite from memory the exact number of residents here: 5,008 people in 1,175 households. Many are of the Qiang ethnic minority.<br />A sign at the camp entrance has a tally of the supplies: 1,050 pieces of winter clothing, 800 quilts and 45 tons of rice.<br />The residents are already preparing for the Lunar New Year in January by hanging dry sausages, a local specialty, from their ceilings and walls.<br />"This is far better than tents," said Liu Xihua, 62, who lives with her eldest son in a prefabricated cube, a plastic tarp separating two beds. "I think the government is good. They've provided many daily supplies."<br />A few houses down live Jiang and Zhu, the widower and widow who became lovers after their spouses died in the quake. They sat together one afternoon watching television. They were living in separate camps after the quake, until a common relative introduced them. "We just started to get together," Zhu said.<br />Jiang's youngest daughter disapproves of the relationship, he said. On the day of the earthquake, she escaped from their home in Beichuan. Jiang was far away, doing menial labor in the coastal city of Xiamen. His wife, eldest daughter and the daughter's husband were all crushed together in the house.<br />The bodies were never found. They are still beneath the rubble.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>UN ties massacre to Ugandan rebel group</strong><br />By Jeffrey Gettleman<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NAIROBI: The Lord's Resistance Army, the fearsome Ugandan rebel group known for its lurid violence and penchant for kidnapping children, massacred nearly 200 people last week, UN officials said Monday.<br />The rebels were being chased by a multinational military offensive against them, and as they fled, they hacked to death dozens of villagers in their path, according to Ugandan military officials.<br />The killings may not be over. Most of the rebels escaped the military offensive and have scattered across a vast swath of rugged territory in the northeastern corner of Congo.<br />"The civilian population is really in danger," said Ivo Brandau, a UN spokesman in Congo. "They are under attack."<br />The Lord's Resistance Army used to be the bane of Uganda's existence. Starting in the late 1980s, the rebels terrorized villages in northern Uganda, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing nearly two million. They were notorious for kidnapping girls and boys as young as 10 and turning them into sex slaves and killers. They were driven by a strange mix of political grievances, bloodlust and self-proclaimed fundamentalist Christian beliefs.<br />The Ugandan military drove the rebels out of Uganda about five years ago, and the rebels have been mostly hiding out in a thickly forested area of northeastern Congo ever since. There have been several high-profile efforts, backed by the United Nations and the United States, to persuade Joseph Kony, the commander of the rebels, to surrender.<br />The latest peace effort failed in late November, when once again, Kony did not show up to sign a peace agreement. The armies of Congo, Uganda and semi-autonomous South Sudan then teamed up to wipe out the rebel bases. But the rebels are known as excellent jungle fighters. They often carry solar panels on their backs to power their satellite phones and they can live off of very little food and water. In the past several weeks, they seemed to have eluded the government troops and airstrikes.<br />In the process, they have raided several villages, possibly to signal that they are still a lethal force to be reckoned with. According to UN officials, the rebels struck a village called Faradje on Dec. 25, killing 40 people. Over the next two days, the rebels attacked two more villages, Doruma and Gurba, killing 149 more people.<br />Ugandan military officials have said most of the victims were women and children, who were cut into pieces. David Matsanga, a rebel spokesman, denied responsibility for the killings, telling The Associated Press that rebels were not in the area.<br /><br />**************<br /><br /><strong>Rio wants to meet Guinea govt on iron ore project</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />LONDON: Mining group Rio Tinto is seeking a meeting with the new military junta in Guinea to discuss its $6 billion (4 billion pound) Simandou iron ore project, the firm said on Monday.<br />Rio -- the world's fourth biggest diversified mining group by market value -- had been locked in a dispute about Simandou with the previous government of President Lansana Conte, who died last week, sparking a military coup.<br />"One of main priorities is that we want to fix up a meeting with the new government as soon as possible to discuss the situation," spokesman Nick Cobban said.<br />On Saturday, the military junta led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara in the West African state said "defective" mining contracts would be revised, without naming firms or projects.<br />On December 11, Rio said it had received a letter from the Mines Ministry indicating the government planned to withdraw Rio's rights to the northern portion of the huge Simandou concession.<br />Later, a company belonging to Israeli diamond trader Beny Steinmetz said it had obtained the rights to north Simandou.<br />Rio Tinto, the world's No. 2 iron ore miner, has repeatedly vowed to fight to retain rights to the entire Simandou project, which it has described as the world's biggest known undeveloped iron ore deposit.<br />The firm had said it was deferring all non-essential spending on the project for 2009 until it could verify its licence, but still planned to spend $58 million between January and April.<br />"Our position really is the same, that we still we have a valid claim there," Cobban said, who added that prospecting work on the site had been continuing.<br />"Of course this is the Christmas break, but we have been drilling. Work is continuing there."<br />The company had forecast that Simandou's production would begin in 2013 at 8 million tonnes, rising to 70 million tonnes by 2018. Rio Tinto says it has already spent $400 million on Simandou.<br />(Reporting by Eric Onstad; Editing by David Cowell)<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Those lost in wilderness may find bill for a rescue<br /></strong>By Katie Zezima<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />LINCOLN, New Hampshire: When two hikers from the Boston area became hopelessly lost in the New Hampshire woods in October, they dialed 911 for help and were promptly rescued by state fish and game wardens.<br />Wayward trekkers finding themselves in need of a similar helping hand in the future may well find a bill for their rescue in the mail.<br />In response to the multitude of hikers, cross-country skiers and others who venture unprepared into the wilderness, become lost and have to call for help, the State of New Hampshire is billing people for rescues stemming from their own negligence, like not taking a map on a hike, wandering away from a group or going out in dangerous conditions.<br />The state Fish and Game Department coordinates all rescues, and a vast majority of them are here in the rugged White Mountains, where weather and trail conditions are often unpredictable. Money for rescues comes out of a budget that was financed mainly by a surcharge on registrations for snowmobiles, boats and other recreational vehicles.<br />But in July, a law which had been on the books since 1999 was changed to lower the threshold for when to bill hikers and others for being rescued. Under the original law, hikers had to engage in "reckless" behavior; now they need only be "negligent."<br />"The Fish and Game Department was rescuing many people who were negligent by having not taken normal precautions for hiking or whatever," said State Representative Dennis Abbott, chairman of the House Fish and Game Committee, which drafted the revised law. "We felt it was unfair to pass that burden onto the sportsmen of New Hampshire."<br />But the law also applies to nursing homes and hospitals, holding supervisors responsible if a patient wanders off and has to be rescued.<br />Officials are reviewing the cases of four groups of hikers to determine whether they should be billed, said Lieutenant Todd Bogardus of the Fish and Game Department.<br />In most situations, rescue charges are minimal. For example, the two lost hikers from the Boston area who were rescued would have to pay $75 each.<br />Bogardus said his department conducted, on average, 150 rescues a year, about 60 percent involving hikers.<br />On a morning drive around Franconia Notch, Lincoln and Crawford Notch, three of the state's most popular outdoor destinations, he pointed out spots where he frequently dispatched teams for rescues, like Falling Waters Trail in Franconia, a deceptively steep and rocky hike tried by many beginners.<br />"We call it the falling people trail," Bogardus said. He drove a short stretch down Interstate 93 and pointed out where the two Boston women became lost. "They said they could hear the highway, which means you're not far," Bogardus said. The women simply could not find their way out and sat on a log and waited for rescue crews, he said.<br />The law leaves the decision to investigate a case up to the Fish and Game Department. If a case is found to meet the threshold of negligence, it is passed on to the attorney general, who makes the final decision on whether to bill the hikers.<br />Since 1999, 20 groups or people have been rescued and charged, and the state which collects only what it costs in equipment and personnel for a rescue has recouped $47,000. Officials said only two people who were rescued have not paid. Those billed who do not pay could face civil charges.<br />Last year, the Fish and Game Department spent $280,000 on search and rescue missions, slightly more than its rescue budget, Bogardus said. Volunteer crews from around the White Mountains and other parts of the state help with rescues.<br />Most of the billed rescues are relatively simple, but some are dangerous and complicated.<br />In February, a Boston man became separated from his hiking party as winds started gusting over 100 miles per hour and temperatures plummeted.<br />Bogardus was able to track the man's position from text messages he was sending, and he was rescued by helicopter two days later. Because the man separated from his group, ignored weather forecasts and did not have adequate equipment, he was billed $16,000 for his rescue, Bogardus said.<br />In 2003 Bogardus started Hike Safe, a program intended to educate people on the risks of hiking and the need for proper equipment.<br />Signs imploring hikers to bring 10 essential items, including a compass, first aid kid and pocket knife, as well as the "Hiker Responsibility Code," which tells hikers they are responsible for themselves, are posted at the beginning of New Hampshire trails.<br />Sam and Greg Wood, brothers from Thornton, New Hampshire, were at a trailhead in Lincoln clearly marked with Hike Safe signs. Neither had heard of the program, nor did they agree with billing hikers for a rescue.<br />"We're going out for an hour and not bringing food because it's an hour," Greg Wood, 28, said. "Is that negligent?" Wood and his brother planned to cross-country ski.<br />Mary Young, 54, of Compton, New Hampshire, and her friend Jodi Nelson, 58, of Lincoln, planned to spend the afternoon cross-country skiing. Both agreed with the rescue law.<br />"If it were me and I were ill-prepared and not fit to be there, I'd want to pay," Nelson said. "I'd feel responsible. I'd be thanking them for the rest of my life and sending cookies."<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Six dead and two missing in Canada avalanches</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />VANCOUVER, British Columbia: Searchers recovered the bodies on Monday of six of the eight snowmobilers missing since they were hit by a pair of avalanches in Canada's Rocky Mountains.<br />The two men still unaccounted for since Sunday's accident about 40 km (25 miles) south of Fernie, British Columbia, are believed buried in the snow, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.<br />"There are six bodies recovered, and we're still looking for two more," said RCMP Cpl. Chris Faulkner, who acknowledged it was very unlikely the missing men were still alive.<br />Eleven snowmobilers were caught in two slides in Harvey Pass, a backcountry recreation area popular with local residents in southeast British Columbia. Three people dug themselves out and suffered minor injuries.<br />The snowmobilers were residents of the nearby coal mining community of Sparwood, British Columbia. They were experienced in winter travel in the rugged area, but ignored warnings of a high danger of avalanches in the region, which has received more than 70 cm (28 inches) of snow in recent days.<br />The threat of new slides slowed rescue efforts and technicians used explosives to stabilise the mountain snow before ground crews could safely begin searching the site on Monday morning.<br />It took two of the men who survived about 20 minutes to dig themselves free. They then rescued a third man, but the danger of additional avalanches forced them to leave the area on foot before they could dig for anyone else.<br />Radio beacons carried by the victims help search crews locate their bodies in the snow, police said.<br />(Reporting Allan Dowd, editing by Rob Wilson)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFUkij8bJLni34Yg6iG4swYNwv52F81Wey4kWnJRziGui9HCRMgQxb95-pnpyIS88SngQLPqI9Mal_8Ln-gORZeMQtFSzJQgPnKZBkeCWYMNhPGnG5zd_i4OjltL_InzsgSk33xdNU5ug/s1600-h/DSC04809.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507838028890834" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFUkij8bJLni34Yg6iG4swYNwv52F81Wey4kWnJRziGui9HCRMgQxb95-pnpyIS88SngQLPqI9Mal_8Ln-gORZeMQtFSzJQgPnKZBkeCWYMNhPGnG5zd_i4OjltL_InzsgSk33xdNU5ug/s320/DSC04809.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Oil prices rally on Middle East tensions</strong><br />By Matthew Saltmarsh<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />PARIS: Oil prices rose Monday, lifting energy stocks and other commodities on concern that the Israeli attacks on Hamas would stoke tensions across the Middle East.<br />In a third straight day of air strikes against Hamas on Monday, Israeli warplanes pounded targets in Gaza, raising the death toll to more than 300, Palestinian medical officials said.<br />Those events underscored the market's sensitivity to conflict in a volatile region that produces about a third of global crude oil. Some analysts also said the commodity was benefiting from heightened tensions between India and Pakistan.<br />On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude for February delivery was up 41 cents, or 1.1 percent at $38.12 a barrel in afternoon trading. It earlier touched a session high of $42.20. The February gold futures contract in New York added 1.1 percent, to $880.50 an ounce, while copper prices also rose.<br />Helen Henton, head of commodity research at Standard Chartered Bank in London, said that while the price spike was driven by events in the Middle East, it also suggested that "over the longer term, the oil price has found a floor."<br />Before the latest trouble in the Middle East, the price of a barrel had plunged - from a record $147.27 in July to a recent low of $32.40 on Dec. 19 - as demand collapsed.<br />Demand is not expected to rebound any time soon. In December, the U.S. Department of Energy, the International Energy Agency and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries all significantly cut their estimates for 2009.<br />In a research report released after the OPEC announcement this month, a Deutsche Bank analyst, Adam Sieminski, forecast that additional output cuts would be adopted throughout next year as demand stays soft.<br />The top exporters have already responded by reducing supply. This month, OPEC announced a 2.2 million barrel-a-day cut in productive, effective Jan. 1. That was the third cut since September.<br />"As the OPEC cuts start to feed through, the market will appear tighter" and prices should start to rise, Henton said.<br />She added that $40 a barrel appeared to be too low given the production cuts, as emerging market economies are widely expected to recover by the start of 2010 and as it becomes apparent that investment in extraction has slowed.<br />"There's a danger that the price could move quite sharply - there could be a crunch" in 2009, she said, as supply dwindles.<br />Still, for coming months, she added, the outlook was for soft but "very volatile" prices.<br />European stocks were mostly higher Monday, following a similar pattern in Asia, lifted by energy and mining shares. The FTSE 100 index in London gained 2.4 percent and the DAX in Frankfurt closed 1.6 percent higher.<br />Energy and resource stocks led the gains in Europe. BP, the British oil company, added 3.7 percent and Repsol of Spain was up less than 1 percent. BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company, rose 4.1 percent in London.<br />Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING in Amsterdam, cautioned against assuming a meaningful year-end rally in European stocks given thin market conditions and continued weakness in financial stocks.<br />"Let's get into 2009 and see if there is some light at the end of the tunnel - then we can start thinking about a recovery in 2010," he said.<br /><br /><br /><strong>*****************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Gazprom, once mighty, is reeling</strong><br />By Andrew E. Kramer<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />MOSCOW: A year ago, Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, aspired to be the largest corporation in the world. Buoyed by high oil prices and political backing from the Kremlin, it had already achieved third place judging by market capitalization, behind Exxon Mobil and General Electric.<br />Today, Gazprom is deep in debt and negotiating a government bailout. Its market cap, the total value of all the company's shares, has fallen 76 percent since the beginning of the year. Instead of becoming the world's largest company, it has tumbled to 35th place. And while bailouts are increasingly common, none of Gazprom's big private sector competitors in the West is looking for one.<br />That Russia's largest state-run energy company needs a bailout so soon after oil hit record highs last summer is a telling postscript to a turbulent period. Once the emblem of the pride and the menace of a resurgent Russia, Gazprom has become a symbol of this oil state's rapid economic decline.<br />During the boom times, Gazprom and the other Russian state energy company, Rosneft, became vehicles for carrying out creeping renationalization.<br />As oil prices rose, so did their stocks. But rather than investing sufficiently in drilling and exploration, Russia's president at the time, Vladimir Putin, used them to pursue his agenda of regaining public control over the oil fields, and much of private industry beyond.<br />As a result, by the time the downturn came, they entered the credit crisis deeply in debt and with a backlog of capital investment needs. (Under Putin, now the prime minister, Gazprom and Rosneft are so tightly controlled by the Kremlin that the companies are not run by mere government appointees, but directly by government ministers who sit on their boards.)<br />"They were as inebriated with their success as much as some of their investors were," James Fenkner, the chief strategist at Red Star, a Russian-dedicated hedge fund, said of Gazprom's ambition to become the world's largest company. "It's not like they're going to produce a better mousetrap," he said. "Their mousetrap is whatever the price of oil is. You can't improve that."<br />Investors are now fleeing Gazprom stock, once such a favorite that it alone accounted for 2 percent of the Morgan Stanley index of global emerging market companies. Gazprom is far from becoming the world's largest company; its share prices have fallen more quickly than those of private sector competitors. The company's debt, amassed while consolidating national control over the industry, is one reason.<br />After five years of record prices for natural gas, Gazprom is $49.5 billion in debt. By comparison, the entire combined public and private sector debt coming due for India, China and Brazil in 2009 totals $56 billion, according to an estimate by Commerzbank.<br />Putin used Gazprom to acquire private property. Among its big-ticket acquisitions, in 2005 it bought the Sibneft oil company from Roman Abramovich, the tycoon and owner of the Chelsea soccer club in London, for $13 billion. In 2006 it bought half of Shell's Sakhalin II oil and gas development for $7 billion. And in 2007, it spent more billions to acquire parts of Yukos, the private oil company bankrupted in a politically tinged fraud and tax evasion case.<br />Rosneft is deeply in debt, too. It owes $18.1 billion after spending billions acquiring assets from Yukos. And in addition to negotiating for a government bailout, Rosneft is negotiating a $15 billion loan from the China National Petroleum Corporation, secured by future exports to China.<br />Under Putin, more than a third of the Russian oil industry was effectively renationalized in such deals. But unlike Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or Evo Morales of Bolivia, who sent troops to seize a natural gas field in that country, the Kremlin used more sophisticated tactics.<br />Regulatory pressure was brought to bear on private owners to encourage them to sell to state companies or private companies loyal to the Kremlin. The assets were typically bought at prices below market rates, yet the state companies still paid out billions of dollars, much of it borrowed from Western banks that called in the credit lines in the financial crisis.<br />Rosneft, which was also held up as a model of resurgent Russian pride and defiance of the West as it was cobbled together from Yukos assets once partly owned by foreign investors, was compelled to meet a margin call on Western bank debt in October.<br />Critics predicted Russia's policy of nationalization would foster inefficiency, or at the very least disruption as huge companies were bought and sold, divided up and repackaged as state property. At stake were assets worth vast sums: Russia is the world's largest natural gas producer and became the world's largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia reduced output this summer to support prices.<br />A deputy chief executive of Gazprom, Aleksandr Medvedev, predicted the company would achieve a market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2014. Instead, its share price has fallen 76 percent since the beginning of the year and its market cap is now about $85 billion.<br />By comparison, Exxon's share price Monday of $78.02 is down 18 percent since January. The company's market capitalization is $393 billion. And the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index stocks is down more than 40 percent for the year<br />Medvedev, the Gazprom executive, defended Gazprom's performance and attributed the steep drop in its share price relative to other energy companies to the company's listing on the Russian stock exchange, which is volatile and lacks investors who put their money into companies for the long term.<br />Medvedev said share price "does not reflect the company's value" and blamed the financial crisis that began on Wall Street for the company's woes.<br />It is true that Gazprom is far from broke. The company made a profit of 360 billon rubles, or $14 billion, from revenue of 1,774 billion rubles, or $70 billion, in 2007, the most recent audited results released by the company.<br />Valery A. Nesterov, an oil and gas analyst at Troika Dialog bank in Moscow, said Gazprom's ratio of debt to revenue before interest payments, taxes and amortization was 1 to 5 in 2007, high by oil industry standards but not so excessive as to jeopardize the company's investment grade debt rating.<br />The company, meanwhile, says it will go ahead with capital spending to develop new fields in the Arctic, and continues to pour money into subsidiaries in often losing sectors like agriculture and media. It is also assuming, through its banking arm, a new role in the financial crisis of bailing out struggling Russian banks and brokerages.<br />Investors say an unwillingness to cut costs in a downturn is a common problem for nationalized industries, and another reason they have fled the stock. When oil sold for less than $50 a barrel in 2004, Gazprom's capital outlay that year was $6.6 billion; for 2009, the company has budgeted more than $32 billion.<br />Gazprom executives say they are reviewing spending but will not cut major developments, including two undersea pipelines intended to reduce the company's reliance on Ukraine as a transit country for about 80 percent of exports to Europe. Gazprom and Ukraine are again locked in a dispute over pricing that Gazprom officials say could prompt them to cut supplies to Ukraine by Thursday.<br />"All our major projects in our core business upstream, midstream and downstream will continue with very simple efforts to meet demand both in Russia and in our export markets," Medvedev said.<br />But revenue is projected to fall steeply next year. Gazprom received an average of $420 per 1,000 cubic meters for gas sold in Western Europe this year; that is projected to fall to $260 to $300 in 2009.<br />"For them, like everybody else, sober realism has intruded," Jonathan Stern, the author of "The Future of Russian Gas and Gazprom" and a natural gas expert at Oxford Energy, said in a telephone interview.<br />A significant portion of the country's corporate bailout fund about $9 billion out of a total of $50 billion was set aside for the oil and gas companies. Gazprom alone is seeking $5.5 billion.<br />For a time, Gazprom, a company that evolved from the former Soviet ministry of gas, had been embraced by investors as the model for energy investing at a time of resource nationalism, when governments in oil-rich regions were shutting out the Western majors. In theory, minority shareholders in government-run companies would not face the risk their assets would be nationalized.<br />But with 436,000 employees, extensive subsidiaries in everything from farming to hotels, higher-than-average salaries and company-sponsored housing and resorts on the Black Sea, critics say Gazprom perpetuated the Soviet paternalistic economy well into the capitalist era.<br />"I can describe the Russian economy as water in a sieve," Yulia Latynina, a commentator on Echo of Moscow radio, said of the chronic waste in Russian industry.<br />"Everybody was thinking Russia had succeeded, and they were wondering, how do you keep water in a sieve?" Latynina said. "When the input of water is greater than the output, the sieve is full. Everybody was thinking it was a miracle. The sieve is full! But when there is a drop in the water supply, the sieve is again empty very quickly."<br />More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on December 30, 2008, on page B1 of the New York edition.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>EDITORIAL</strong><br /><strong>Russia's pipeline politics with Ukraine and the West<br /></strong>The Boston Globe<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />Ukraine and Russia are at odds again over the price of natural gas and how it is delivered. This latest dispute underlines the need for President-elect Barack Obama to eliminate avoidable causes of friction in the West's relationship with Russia.<br />The state-owned Russian company Gazprom is threatening to halt deliveries to Ukraine unless a new contract is signed at more than double the current price. This month's confrontation presents less of a risk than one in January 2006, when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine, and deliveries to Europe were interrupted.<br />Unlike the situation then, Ukraine and Germany both have ample reserves to get through the winter heating season. So even if Gazprom carries out its threat, consumers in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe should not go cold.<br />Europe receives about a fourth of its natural gas from Russia, nearly all of which is transported by pipeline across Ukraine. Accordingly, Russian officials have been saying that if supplies to Europe are reduced, the Europeans should blame Ukraine, not Russia. The Russian insinuation is that Ukraine will siphon off gas meant for Western Europe.<br />With energy prices plummeting, Russia has no market motive to double the price of its gas. Rather, the Kremlin wants to show that steps toward NATO membership for Kiev will incur Russia's displeasure and then could affect energy supplies for Europe.<br />However Russia and Ukraine resolve this latest quarrel, the Obama administration should set out to completely recast relations with Russia. Once the Kremlin no longer fears the Bush administration's attempt to absorb Ukraine into NATO, Russian leaders will have no excuse for using energy supplies to apply geopolitical pressure.<br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Kerkorian sells off Ford shares at deep loss</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />DETROIT: Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian has sold off all of his remaining shares of Ford Motor Co , completing a retreat from a high-profile stake in the No. 2 U.S. automaker that cost him hundreds of millions of dollars.<br />A spokeswoman for Kerkorian's investment firm, Tracinda Corp, said that the firm's remaining Ford shares had been sold. A spokesman for Ford had no comment on the development.<br />Tracinda, which briefly ranked as Ford's largest outside investor, said in a regulatory filing in October that it had begun working with bankers to sell the 133.5 million shares of the No. 2 U.S. automaker it still held at that time.<br />It was not immediately clear when Tracinda had completed those remaining sales of Ford stock over the past two months.<br />The pullout from Ford by Kerkorian caps a two-year period during which the activist investor took a run at all three Detroit-based car companies as they struggled to restructure.<br />Kerkorian, 91, previously held a nearly 10 percent stake in General Motors Corp and made a failed bid for Chrysler LLC last year.<br />Since October, he has been cutting his losses on a $1 billion (692 million pound) investment in Ford that had lost most of its value.<br />It was not immediately clear how deep Kerkorian's losses on the Ford investment were. But even if Tracinda sold all its remaining shares at the recent high for Ford stock, the firm would have been facing a loss of some $475 million based on its average acquisition cost for the shares.<br />If the firm had sold out at the bottom of the market for Ford stock in November, it would have lost more than $800 million.<br />Kerkorian surprised analysts and investors in April when he began buying Ford shares and spent more than $1 billion to take a stake in the automaker at an average price per share of $7.10.<br />At the peak of his investment, Kerkorian held a 6.5 percent stake in Ford. In June, he had also offered to support the automaker's turnaround efforts with an infusion of additional capital.<br />Ford has been widely considered to be the best-positioned of the three Detroit automakers at a time when all three have been hit hard by declining sales and tight credit.<br />When GM and Chrysler negotiated $17.4 billion of emergency loans from the U.S. government earlier this month, Ford held back, saying it expected to be able to weather the downturn on its own.<br />But conditions across the auto industry have taken a dramatic turn for the worse since September when credit suddenly tightened for both car shoppers and dealers.<br />In late October, Tracinda began selling Ford shares at $2.43, representing a loss of almost 66 percent from what the fund paid on average.<br />Since then, Ford's shares have traded between a low of $1.02 in November and a high of $3.54 earlier this month.<br />Ford shares closed down 3 percent on Monday to end the New York trading day at $2.22.<br />The Ford family holds slightly less than 3 percent of the automaker's shares but controls 40 percent of the voting power through a separate class of shares.<br />Kerkorian's offer of additional capital for Ford had been seen as an endorsement of the company's strategy and management under Chief Executive Alan Mulally.<br />But Kerkorian's record as an activist investor had also raised questions earlier this year about whether his investment could be a threat to the Ford family's continued control of the automaker.<br />(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Matthew Lewis)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Breakingviews.com: </strong><br /><strong>Monday, December 29, 2008</strong><br /><strong>IS DOW'S LOSS KUWAIT'S GAIN?</strong><br />Kuwait's botched handling of its $17 billion joint-venture agreement with Dow Chemical will do little to enhance its reputation as an international business partner.<br />To recap, a Kuwait Petroleum subsidiary, Petrochemical Industries, agreed to buy half of Dow's struggling basic chemicals business for $9.5 billion in cash one year ago. The Gulf state lowered the price by $2 billion four weeks ago amid a weakening oil price and falling demand for chemicals. That downward revision was fair enough. But now Kuwait has decided to scrap the deal altogether, after a further 20 percent drop in oil prices. Kuwait's caution might be financially sensible, but the eleventh-hour change of heart so soon after recommitting to the proposed transaction is embarrassing.<br />Arguably, Kuwait could have driven a harder bargain when it renegotiated the terms earlier this month. The average U.S. chemical company has seen its market capitalization fall 40 percent over the past 12 months. Kuwait ought to have factored in further short-term oil price volatility into its calculations - or been surer of its view that this transaction was for the long haul.<br />The late U-turn leaves Dow in the lurch. The chemicals giant, based in Midland, Michigan, won't get much-needed access to inexpensive raw materials. And without the Kuwaiti funds, it is unclear how Dow will finance its subsequent $15 billion agreement to buy a rival in Philadelphia, Rohm & Haas. To terminate the R&H deal, Dow could face a minimum $750 million fee, lifting its debt to just over two times next year's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. But Dow may not have the ability to terminate the deal if it gets the expected regulatory clearance, according to people close the situation.<br />Yet Dow's loss isn't fully Kuwait's gain. The two-step demise of the joint venture has drawn attention to the country's political infighting, which seems to have been a factor in the deal's failure. Kuwait is under pressure to increase domestic spending as part of its response to the financial crisis. Parliamentary ministers, allegedly encouraged by rival factions in the ruling Al-Sabah family, have accused the government of squandering public funds abroad. They can point to highly visible losses by the country's sovereign wealth fund on stakes in Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.<br />Kuwait's relative oil wealth means bankers will always be knocking on its door offering international investment opportunities in a world where capital is scarce. But after Dow's experience, Kuwait's wealthy neighbors may get that call first. - Una Galani<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Passive houses guard against waste of heat energy</strong><br />By Elisabeth Rosenthal<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />DARMSTADT, Germany: From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray-and-orange row houses in the Kranichstein district here, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle.<br />But these houses are part of a revolution: Though the ground around them is frozen, they are toasty-warm inside, even though they are not using any heating. No drafts. No cold tile floors. No snuggling under blankets while the furnace kicks in.<br />In Berthold Kaufmann's house, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room, but it is not in use. Indeed, even on the very coldest nights, Kaufmann's new "passive house" - and others of this design - can get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy used to run a hair dryer.<br />"You don't think about temperature - the house just adjusts," said Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose soaring glass doors give way to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents' home, which is the same size, he said.<br />In attempts to meet new energy-efficiency standards, architects all over the world are designing more sustainable homes using better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into new sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines - the icons of the green building.<br />The passive house concept, pioneered in this small town outside of Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle: Using ultra-thick insulation and complex doors and windows, passive-house architects engineer homes that are effectively encased in an airtight shell so that heat never escapes and the cold outside never seeps in.<br />As such, passive houses can be warmed by their occupants' bodies, the heat from appliances and the sun.<br />Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed because of stagnant air and mold, for example. But at the heart of each new passive house is an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side-by-side with clean cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.<br />"The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand," said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut here in Darmstadt. "This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It's about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating."<br />There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses worldwide, the vast majority built in the past few years and almost all of them in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia. The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local architect, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, the parts still only mass-produced in this part of the world.<br />There is now a thriving passive-house building industry in Germany - new schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique - and it is spreading. The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, is promoting passive house building, and the European Parliament proposed that new buildings should meet passive-house standards by 2011. The U.S. Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.<br />"Awareness is skyrocketing; its hard for us to keep up with requests," Hasper said.<br />Nabih Tahan, an architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive house for his family in Berkeley, California, and heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers to encourage adoption of the standard.<br />"This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people - why not reuse this heat you get for free?" he said.<br />But ironically, when California inspectors came to assess whether the house met green building codes (it did) he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device unknown in the United States.<br />"When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way," he said.<br />A house that is certified hermetically sealed may understandably sound a bit suffocating. (To meet the standard, buildings undergo a "blow test" to show that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, there are plenty of windows - though far more facing south than north - and all can be opened.<br />Inside, passive homes are slightly different from conventional houses, just as electric cars drive differently than their gas cousins. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature, with all the air from the outside going through high-efficiency filters before entering the rooms. The concrete floor of the basement is not cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.<br />Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, their layers of glass and gas are visible, as are the elaborate seals around the edges. A small grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.<br />Though passive houses need no human tinkering, most architects put in a switch with three settings that can be turned down for vacations or up for circulating air for a party - though window could also just be opened.<br />"We've found it's very important to people that they feel they can influence the system," Hasper said.<br />It may be too radical for those nostalgic about drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others.<br />"I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different," said Georg Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs nothing else.<br />Passive houses cost about 5 to 7 percent more than conventional houses to build, but with growing popularity and an ever-larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, the buildings have become cheaper.<br />Feist's original passive house, a boxy white building with four flats, looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. (Feist still calls the house home, though he spends much of his time in Austria, where he now teaches.) The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues research, teaches architects and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain in the United States.<br />Still, there are challenges.<br />Because a successful passive house requires interplay between the house, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a small shady valley in Switzerland, for example, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are now looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates, as well, where a heat exchanger could be used to keep cool air in and warm air out.<br />Most important, those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal; sprawling homes are too hard to insulate and heat. Most passive houses allow 50 square meters, or 540 square feet, per person, a comfortable though not luxurious living space.<br />"It doesn't make sense to heat 1,000 square meters for just one person," Hasper said, reflecting: "Anyone who feels they need that much space to live - well, that's a different discussion."<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUpiMLbI5VJbAXZQ_iKopX1Csu_2X0sjnuKbyI9wlWqGSiB_U95gDArhwpN4LkCAIUbqys6oJwSRx5wJbIPWLUH6HMAvgUvgZtALuevhROz-Z22adO3HQA2Kvjz2nxppPV6qoL_FXM6wg/s1600-h/DSC04810.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507833065300930" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUpiMLbI5VJbAXZQ_iKopX1Csu_2X0sjnuKbyI9wlWqGSiB_U95gDArhwpN4LkCAIUbqys6oJwSRx5wJbIPWLUH6HMAvgUvgZtALuevhROz-Z22adO3HQA2Kvjz2nxppPV6qoL_FXM6wg/s320/DSC04810.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0S8KrmcxDhE-wKNZagKcM2sxv9w7wAkrLdH5CeqdTyv6ziqabvZz88tK7JZ-M8y6Xoo5elKnXo1UC51U3AcbqocbzwHpbzHH5eZbXDeAGjypfQGAm3JShPo7NnYo8PvKMUGdbDIISKzg/s1600-h/DSC04811.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507830918520850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0S8KrmcxDhE-wKNZagKcM2sxv9w7wAkrLdH5CeqdTyv6ziqabvZz88tK7JZ-M8y6Xoo5elKnXo1UC51U3AcbqocbzwHpbzHH5eZbXDeAGjypfQGAm3JShPo7NnYo8PvKMUGdbDIISKzg/s320/DSC04811.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmroYr3VBCdnu9y5BLcLYUVMeKDj0w4HKJJKwxZb7lbhCzDXoRJgl7gCRZmJeIdakjTyp5B4VnwGk0yaponuep_A30jbAdxyLcpofwezMPyW_AAfyFvs-xImXVT8sJYP6FRW2FrvZUrH8/s1600-h/DSC04812.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507821373390818" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmroYr3VBCdnu9y5BLcLYUVMeKDj0w4HKJJKwxZb7lbhCzDXoRJgl7gCRZmJeIdakjTyp5B4VnwGk0yaponuep_A30jbAdxyLcpofwezMPyW_AAfyFvs-xImXVT8sJYP6FRW2FrvZUrH8/s320/DSC04812.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL OBSERVER</strong></div><div><strong>Just following orders</strong><br />By Adam Cohen<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />In 1963, Stanley Milgram, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale, published his infamous experiment on obedience to authority. Its conclusion was that most ordinary people were willing to administer what they believed to be painful, even dangerous, electric shocks to innocent people if a man in a white lab coat told them to.<br />For the first time in four decades, a researcher has repeated the Milgram experiment to find out whether, after all we have learned in the last 45 years, Americans are still as willing to inflict pain out of blind obedience.<br />The Milgram experiment was carried out in the shadow of the Holocaust. The trial of Adolf Eichmann had the world wondering how the Nazis were able to persuade so many ordinary Germans to participate in the murder of innocents. Milgram devised a clever way of testing, in a laboratory setting, man's (and woman's) willingness to do evil.<br />The participants - ordinary residents of New Haven - were told they were participating in a study of the effect of punishment on learning.<br />A "learner" was strapped in a chair in an adjacent room, and electrodes were attached to the learner's arm. The participant was told to read test questions, and to administer a shock when the learner gave the wrong answer.<br />The shocks were not real. But the participants were told they were - and instructed to increase the voltage with every wrong answer. At 150 volts, the participant could hear the learner cry in protest, complain of heart pain, and ask to be released from the study. After 330 volts, the learner made no noise at all, suggesting he was no longer capable of responding. Through it all, the scientist in the room kept telling the participant to ignore the protests - or the unsettling silence - and administer an increasingly large shock for each wrong answer or non-answer.<br />The Milgram experiment's startling result - as anyone who has taken a college psychology course knows - was that ordinary people were willing to administer a lot of pain to innocent strangers if an authority figure instructed them to do so. More than 80 percent of participants continued after administering the 150-volt shock, and 65 percent went all the way up to 450 volts.<br />Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University replicated the experiment and has published his findings in American Psychologist. He made one slight change in the protocol, in deference to ethical standards developed since 1963. He stopped when a participant believed he had administered a 150-volt shock. (He also screened out people familiar with the original experiment.)<br />Burger's results were nearly identical to Milgram's. Seventy percent of his participants administered the 150-volt shock and had to be stopped. That is less than in the original experiment, but not enough to be significant.<br />Much has changed since 1963. The civil rights and antiwar movements taught Americans to question authority. Institutions that were once accorded great deference - including the government and the military - are now eyed warily. Yet it appears that ordinary Americans are about as willing to blindly follow orders to inflict pain on an innocent stranger as they were four decades ago.<br />Burger was not surprised. He believes that the mindset of the individual participant - including cultural influences - is less important than the "situational features" that Milgram shrewdly built into his experiment. These include having the authority figure take responsibility for the decision to administer the shock, and having the participant increase the voltage gradually. It is hard to say no to administering a 195-volt shock when you have just given a 180-volt shock.<br />The results of both experiments pose a challenge. If this is how most people behave, how do we prevent more Holocausts, Abu Ghraibs and other examples of wanton cruelty? Part of the answer, Burger argues, is teaching people about the experiment so they will know to be on guard against these tendencies, in themselves and others.<br />An instructor at West Point contacted Burger to say that she was teaching her students about his findings. She had the right idea - and the right audience. The findings of these two experiments should be part of the basic training for soldiers, police officers, jailers and anyone else whose position gives them the power to inflict abuse on others.<br />Adam Cohen is the assistant editor of the New York Times editorial board.<br /> </div><div> </div><div><strong>******************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>U.S. TV networks leaving Iraq</strong><br />By Brian Stelter<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Quietly, as the U.S. presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, three American broadcast networks - CBS, NBC and ABC - have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.<br />At the same time, the major U.S. television networks have been trying to add newspeople in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with expectations that the administration of Barack Obama will focus on the conflict there.<br />In short, the story, certainly on television, is shifting to Afghanistan. CNN now has a reporter assigned to the country at all times.<br />Michael Yon, an independent reporter who relies on contributions from Internet users to report from both areas of conflict, has already perceived a shift in both media and reader attention from Iraq to Afghanistan.<br />"Afghanistan was the forgotten war; that's what they were calling it, actually," he said. "Now it's swapping places with Iraq."<br />The staff cuts appear to be the latest evidence of budget pressures at the networks. And those pressures are not unique to television: Many newspapers and magazines have also curtailed their presence in Baghdad. As a consequence, the war is gradually fading from television screens, newspapers and, some worry, the consciousness of the American public.<br />For Yon and others who continue to cover Iraq, the cutbacks are a disheartening reminder of the war's diminishing profile at a time when about 130,000 U.S. service members remain on duty there - as opposed to 30,000 in Afghanistan. More than 4,200 Americans and many more thousands of Iraqis have died in fighting there since 2003.<br />ABC, CBS and NBC declined to speak on the record about their news coverage decisions. But representatives for the networks emphasized that they would continue to cover the war and said the staff adjustments reflected the evolution of the conflict in Iraq from a story primarily about violence to one about reconstruction and politics.<br />In Baghdad, ABC, CBS and NBC still maintain skeleton bureaus in heavily fortified compounds. Correspondents rotate in and out when stories warrant.<br />But employees who are familiar with the staffing pressures of the networks say the bureaus are a shadow of what they used to be. Some of the offices have only one Western staff member.<br />The TV networks have talked about sharing some resources in Iraq, although similar discussions have stalled in the past because of concerns about editorial independence. Parisa Khosravi, CNN's senior vice president for international news gathering, said such talks among the networks were not currently under way.<br />But journalists in Iraq expect further cooperative agreements and other pooling of resources in the months ahead.<br />ABC and the British Broadcasting Corp, longtime partners on polling in Iraq, may consolidate some back office operations early in 2009, two people with knowledge of the talks said. They spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk about the plans.<br />As the war claims fewer American lives, Iraq is fading from TV screens. The three network evening newscasts devoted 423 minutes to Iraq this year as of Dec. 19, compared with 1,888 minutes in 2007, said Andrew Tyndall, a television news consultant.<br />"But clearly, viewers' appetite for stories from Iraq waned when it turned from all-out battle into something equally important but more difficult to describe and cover," said Jane Arraf, a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor. She recalled hearing one of her TV editors say, "I don't want to see the same old pictures of soldiers kicking down doors."<br />"You can imagine how much more tedious it would be to watch soldiers running meetings on irrigation," she said.<br />It is an expensive and dangerous operation to run at a time of diminishing resources and audience interest.<br />"Some news organizations just cannot afford to be there," said Yon, the independent reporter. "And the ones who can are starting to shift resources over to Afghanistan."<br />CNN and the Fox News Channel, both cable news channels with 24 hours to fill, each keep one correspondent in Iraq. Among newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post continue to assign multiple reporters to the country. The Associated Press and Reuters also have significant operations in Iraq.<br />Stories from Iraq that are strongly visual - as when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at President George W. Bush this month - are still covered by the networks, though often with footage from freelance crews and video agencies.<br />"But these other stories - ones that require knowledge of Iraq, like the political struggles that are going on - are going uncovered," said Joseph Angotti, a former vice president of NBC News.<br />Mike Boettcher, a Baghdad correspondent for NBC News from 2005 to 2007, said nightly news segments and assignments with military units occurred less frequently as the war continued.<br />"Americans like their wars movie-length and with a happy ending," Boettcher said. "If the war drags on and there is no happy ending, Americans start to squirm in their seats. In the case of television news, they began changing the channel when a story from Iraq appeared."<br />A year ago, Boettcher left NBC after the network rejected his proposal for a "permanent embed" in Iraq and he started the project on his own. In August, he and his son Carlos, 22, started a 15-month embed assignment with U.S. forces in Iraq. His reporting appears online at NoIgnoring.com.<br />Iraq has been, according to some executives, the most expensive war ever for TV news organizations.<br />Most of the costs go for the security teams that protect each bureau and travel with reporters. Iraq remains the deadliest country in the world for journalists, according to a report compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Nov. 30, a National Public Radio correspondent and three local staff members survived an apparent assassination attempt in Baghdad when a bomb detonated under their armored vehicle.<br />Keeping fewer people stationed in Iraq and traveling on assignment often cuts costs for the news organizations. In an unrelated interview this month, Alexandra Wallace, an NBC News vice president, said the network had correspondents in Iraq "most of the time."<br />"If a bomb blew up in the Green Zone and Richard Engel wasn't there, we do have an option," she said. Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent, rotates in and out of Baghdad.<br />Boettcher was not convinced. "Like it or not, the country is at war and there is not a correspondent to cover it," he said. "Sad."</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Ex-Saddam officials and others go on trial over execution of thousands<br /></strong>By Sam Dagher<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: Two dozen people, including some of the most senior figures of Saddam Hussein's government, went on trial on Sunday for what prosecutors said was their role in the execution of thousands of members of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's political party during Saddam's rule.<br />Many welcomed the action, especially relatives of victims hoping for a measure of long-awaited justice.<br />But critics saw the trial's timing as a highly politicized and even cynical move by Maliki and his partisans to bolster their stature among their core Shiite constituency before crucial provincial elections that are scheduled for the end of January. The fact that some of the defendants had already been convicted in other cases added to the argument that the trial was at least partly for show.<br />The defendants include Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as Chemical Ali, who received the death sentence during two previous trials. Several others, like Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim, Saddam's half brothers; and Tariq Aziz, Saddam's deputy prime minister, face charges in other trials being heard by the same court.<br />They were charged on Sunday with the organized killing of as many as 250,000 members of the Islamic Dawa Party, which opposed Saddam's Baath Party, from 1968 to 2003.<br />"We want to present a vivid portrait of what the ruling Saddamist bunch perpetrated against the Iraqi people in Balad so that it becomes evident to Arabs everywhere, particularly those who still describe Saddam's ill-fated regime as pan-Arabist, populist and democratic," the prosecutor, Mahdi al-Haddo, said in his opening remarks.<br />He cited a massacre in July 1981, when 1,135 Dawa partisans and their families were rounded up in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad. They were taken to a desert camp in southern Iraq near the Saudi border, where the men, ages 15 and older, were separated and later executed. The women and children were released in 1984, but their homes and land in Balad were confiscated.<br />Haddo spoke of other Dawa members who were fatally poisoned or strapped with dynamite. Many wives and daughters of Dawa members were raped, he said. He added that no "honorable" Iraqi man would accept this, and, his voice rising with emotion, he called the perpetrators "bastards."<br />Walid al-Hilli, a senior Dawa member who was jailed for a year in 1979, testified that several fellow members had been killed and their bodies tossed in acid vats.<br />Hilli, one of those pleased to see the trial finally begin, dismissed suspicions that it was politically motivated. The court is an independent body, preparations have been under way since 2004, and at least a million documents have been gathered in evidence, he said.<br />"We are upset it took this long for the trial to start," he said.<br />Others were more skeptical. There had been virtually no previous public discussion of the trial, and even some officials were taken by surprise that it had begun.<br />"I think the timing of this trial is propaganda for the elections," said Wael Abdul-Latif, a Shiite member of Parliament from Basra. "They are going all out."<br />Saad al-Hadithi, a professor of politics at Bagdad University, said the government may have been trying to deflect the electorate's disgruntlement with religious parties. A high-profile recapitulation of past horrors could sway public opinion in the victims' favor.<br />"Iraqis are driven by emotion, not reason," Professor Hadithi said.<br />Abdul-Latif, who is also a judge with intimate knowledge of the workings of the Iraqi High Tribunal, which is hearing the trial, said he was concerned about the court's neutrality because Maliki's government was responsible for its financing and staffing with little oversight from Parliament.<br />The tribunal is a special court set up by the American-led occupation authority after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to try members of the Saddam government for crimes against humanity. It is the same court that sent Saddam to the gallows in 2006 amid accusations of intense pressure on the court by Maliki.<br />An official at the American Embassy here, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while American officials continued to advise and provide extensive support to the tribunal and Iraq's judicial system as a whole, this trial was an entirely "Iraqi process."<br />Dawa, a leading party in the current government coalition, was founded by Shiite clerics and politicians in 1957 with the aim of combating secularism and Communism and creating an Islamic state. It immediately clashed with Saddam's Baath Party, which was initially secular and intolerant of opposition.<br />Dawa was outlawed in 1980, with membership punishable by death. That same year, its spiritual leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, and his sister were executed.<br />Two of the defendants on trial Sunday, Abdelghani Abdul-Ghafor al-Ani, a former government minister, and Majid, were given death sentences this month in a trial involving the crushing of a Shiite uprising in 1991. Majid was also given the death sentence last year in a separate trial for his leadership of a military campaign in the 1980s that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds.<br />Several of the defendants were also facing charges in three other current trials, a court spokeswoman said. These involve the execution of merchants during the Baathist era, the suppression of Shiites in 1999 and another trial dealing exclusively with the use of poison gas in the town of Halabja in 1988 that killed about 5,000 Kurds.<br />Ani, who had upset Judge Mohammed Oraibi al-Khalifa with an outburst at his previous trial, refused to speak on Sunday. He responded to the judge's questions by waving a notebook in which he had written the answers.<br />The once-defiant Majid, 64, dressed in traditional tribal robes and walking with a cane, looked frail and resigned. Aziz, 72, who also used a cane, wore ill-fitting pants and old sneakers, a far cry from his debonair image before the government fell.<br />Also on Sunday, one person was killed by a suicide bomber on a bicycle at a demonstration in Mosul to protest the Israeli assault in Gaza.<br />In Baghdad, an American soldier died of wounds sustained by the explosion of a homemade bomb, the military said in a statement.<br />Turkish warplanes bombed several sites near Iraq's northern border that had been used by the Kurdish rebel group the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, according to a rebel spokesman. He said there were no casualties.<br />Elsewhere, two prisoners who remained free after a deadly prison break that left 13 dead in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, were caught by the Iraqi police early on Sunday.<br />Major General Tareq al-Yousef, the police commander of Anbar Province, said the police acted on a tip from a resident. "The two escaped prisoners asked him to serve them food, and he recognized them instantly," Yousef said.<br />A third prisoner who had escaped, described as a Sunni insurgent leader, was killed in a gun battle with the police on Saturday.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Deadly bombings shake Afghanistan for a 2nd day</strong><br />By Adam B. Ellick<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />KABUL: A day after a suicide bomber killed at least 16 people, including 13 schoolchildren, in a region bordering Pakistan, a new rash of bombings shook different areas of Afghanistan on Monday, killing two civilians north of Kabul and two more in Kandahar Province.<br />The explosion on Sunday detonated outside a local government compound in Khost Province and wounded 53, local government officials and coalition forces said. The bombing, near the border with Pakistan, occurred next to a school, and many children were among the wounded.<br />The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.<br />Coalition forces provided a video showing about 15 children walking on the street as they were engulfed by a ball of fire. Mark Larter, a spokesman for the coalition forces, said the death toll also was based on reports of troops at the scene. Two police officers were among the dead.<br />The number of suicide bombings in Afghanistan has fallen sharply since 2006, mainly because of better intelligence and a proliferation of security checkpoints. But in Khost Province, which borders the tribal area of the Pakistani region known as North Waziristan, a wave of violence continues to overwhelm security officials.<br />On Monday morning, a suicide car bomber in a black Toyota Corolla killed 2 civilians and wounded 15, including 2 American servicemen in Chire-kar, the capital city of Parwan Province, just north of Kabul, U.S. forces and local government officials said.<br />The attack occurred outside of the local governor's office, and most of the wounded were government employees, said Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the governor. Taqwa said he entered the compound only two minutes before the blast and was unharmed. He said he noticed a U.S. convoy on the road near his office.<br />Several hours later, in Kandahar Province, a remote-controlled bomb exploded at a marketplace in Spin Boldak district, killing 2 civilians and wounding 19. Five of the wounded are in critical condition, said Zalmay Ayobi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar. The bomb was apparently aimed at a passing police vehicle but missed.<br />Despite the overall drop in the number of bombings, suicide attacks around the country have become more technically sophisticated and have grown in scale, including the attack Sunday, in which a huge fireball towered over the compound's security blockade.<br />The blast on Sunday occurred as local leaders and tribal elders gathered inside the government building to discuss security and elections, said Tahir Kahn Sabari, the deputy governor of Khost Province. At the nearby school, the bomb rattled students, ages 6 to 12, who were receiving certificates on the last day of the school year.<br />President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, saying those responsible "are not aware of the Islamic teachings which outlaw the killing of innocent people."<br />Sangar Rahimi and Taimoor Shah Noori contributed reporting.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>No easy Indian response to Pakistan's troop shift</strong><br />By Somini Sengupta<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NEW DELHI: Though tensions have risen in the past few days, neither India's governing coalition led by the Congress Party nor its habitually hawkish political opposition is advocating a military confrontation with Pakistan, the country's neighbor and archrival.<br />Pakistan's redeployment of troops late last week to its border with India, from its tribal areas in the northwest, raised fears. The troop movement came a month after the attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital, which India says were orchestrated by Pakistan-based militants.<br />Fear of a conflict in South Asia is unlikely to pass quickly, as Pakistan has resisted a broad crackdown on the militants India says were behind the Mumbai assault.<br />But for India, many here say, the cost is too high, not just because both sides have nuclear arms. As an Indian official put it, "Almost anything against Pakistan would be messy."<br />The Mumbai attacks prompted bellicose outbursts from the Indian news media and led Indian officials to state that their "restraint" should not be mistaken for "weakness." Yet even a surgical strike on terrorists' training camps in Pakistan, one of the options floated in the immediate aftermath of the attack, would bring unwanted risks, according to policy makers and analysts.<br />They say it could damage India's economic prospects at a time when the country is vulnerable to the global downturn.<br />Moreover, past military engagements with Pakistan strengthened the political influence of Pakistan's army and weakened its civilian government. Many in India say they are reluctant to do anything to undermine civilian rule there.<br />"The Pakistan military is itching for a fight," said Lalit Mansingh, a retired Indian ambassador to the United States. "That will give them the excuse not to carry on the fight on Afghanistan."<br />This time, he said, the Indian government is left with no choice but to mount a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, in part by appealing to some of its most stalwart allies, like Saudi Arabia, China and the United States. "People realize war would be more costly in its impact," Mansingh said.<br />In that sense, the stakes for the next American president, Barack Obama, are potentially as high as they are for India. A new spike in tension would give the Pakistani Army the rationale it needs to refocus its energy on the eastern flank. The United States has strongly urged Pakistan to concentrate instead on fighting Islamic militants along its western border with Afghanistan.<br />The calculus is complicated by India's need to project itself as a world power that cannot be seen as doing nothing in the face of the terrorist attack that killed 163 people, including nearly two dozen foreigners, in Mumbai a month ago.<br />The Indian government insists that the gunmen, including the sole survivor, were Pakistani. It has sent Pakistan a letter that India says he wrote requesting assistance from his home country. The government in Islamabad says it cannot confirm that the man is a Pakistani.<br />Nor has Islamabad agreed to India's chief demand to date: to turn over suspects implicated in this and prior attacks.<br />Pakistan's prime minister, Asif Ali Zardari, said Saturday that his government would rein in extremist groups, but "not on your démarche," a clear reference to India. Pakistani officials have also gone on record as saying they do not want war.<br />The troops Pakistan moved toward India, believed to number several thousand, represent only a small fraction of its military presence in the northwest. But a Taliban suicide bombing at a polling place in Pakistan on Sunday served as a reminder of the risks of taking too many troops away from battling insurgents inside the country.<br />One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, Dawn, editorialized Sunday that the army "just cannot afford to redeploy any large number of its troops" and thus leave "the 'wild' west in a free fall."<br />Indians point out that their most recent effort to mobilize troops on the border with Pakistan did not end terror attacks. That occurred after a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. It ended in early 2004 with a peace deal, which has been effectively suspended since the Mumbai strike.<br />"You can't fire the same bullet twice," said Arun Shourie, a member of Parliament from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which was in power at the time. In a speech in Parliament last week, Shourie said neither a punitive airstrike nor a conventional troop mobilization was viable now.<br />The only safeguard against a future attack, he offered, would be to "do a Kashmir on Pakistan" to provide aid to insurgents against the Pakistani state inside its restive provinces, including Baluchistan in the west.<br />The Indian official who warned that almost any action would be messy, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss strategic matters with the news media, said the 2001 standoff had accomplished little and resulted in "hundreds" of casualties among Indian troops.<br />"It didn't achieve anything last time," he said. "It didn't scare off the Pakistanis."<br />But whether the United States can or will lean hard enough on the Pakistani Army is hotly debated. Kanwal Sibal, a former foreign secretary of India, said he doubted that the Obama administration would impose conditions on future aid to Pakistan, which Islamabad needs to supplement its strained budget and finance military operations.<br />Sudheendra Kulkarni, a BJP leader writing in The Indian Express on Sunday, said that it was pointless to expect the United States to "fight our battle."<br />Yet the real crisis, argued Stephen Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is Pakistan's inability to control what happens inside its territory. For India, a military strike seems unlikely to change that situation, he said. "It's hard to find a military way of responding," Cohen said.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Pakistan urges "de-escalation" with India<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />By Kamran Haider<br />Pakistan and India should reduce tension inflamed by last month's militant attacks in Mumbai and resume a peace dialogue, Pakistani military chiefs told a visiting Chinese official on Monday.<br />India has blamed Pakistan-based militants for the assault on Mumbai in which 179 people were killed, reviving old hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals and raising fears of conflict.<br />Indian and Pakistani military officials held an unscheduled hotline call on the weekend as China's Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei arrived in Pakistan to ease tension between the neighbours.<br />The Chinese minister met military chiefs and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday.<br />The chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff committee, General Tariq Majid, reiterated Pakistan's commitment to regional peace and cooperation, the military said.<br />"(He) emphasised the need for avoidance of provocative belligerent posturing, initiation of reciprocal measures for immediate de-escalation and earliest resumption of the peace dialogue," the military quoted Majid as telling He.<br />India has put a "pause" on a five-year peace process.<br />Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani "highlighted the need to de-escalate and avoid conflict in the interest of peace and security," it said.<br />The South Asian neighbours both tested nuclear weapons in 1998. They have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 and came to the brink of a fourth after gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001.<br />Although most analysts say war is very unlikely, international unease is growing and the United States has urged both sides not to further raise tension.<br />Senior military officials from India and Pakistan held an unscheduled conversation on a hotline at the weekend, said a Pakistani security officer, who declined to be identified.<br />The two countries' directors general of military operations talk every Tuesday, but spoke at the weekend because of "the current situation," said the officer. He did not give details.<br />Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and has denied any state role, blaming "non-state actors."<br />India, the United States and Britain have blamed the attacks on Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), set up by Pakistani security agencies in the late 1980s to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.<br />The group was banned in Pakistan in 2002.<br />"ABSOLUTE RUBBISH"<br />Since the attacks, Pakistan has detained scores of militants, including several top leaders, and shut offices and frozen the assets of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity group, which the United Nations says is a front for the LeT.<br />India is demanding Pakistan dismantle what it calls the infrastructure of terrorism.<br />The Chinese minister expressed concern over the escalation of tension and emphasised the need for resolving issues through dialogue and cooperation, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said.<br />"Mr He Yafei said that conflict was not the solution of the problem as it will only strengthen the hands of terrorists and extremists," it said.<br />He was due to travel to India later on Monday, a government official said.<br />As tension has increased, Pakistan has cancelled army leave and shifted some troops from its western border with Afghanistan.<br />Pakistani military spokesmen have denied any build-up of troops on the eastern border with India, but a security official said some troops had been moved to that border.<br />Pakistani military officials have declined to say how many troops had been moved off the Afghan border, where 100,000 soldiers had been fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants, saying only "limited numbers" were involved.<br />One military official, who declined to be identified, described as "absolute rubbish" a report that 20,000 soldiers had been withdrawn from the western border and moved east.<br />The movement of Pakistani troops off the Afghan border is likely to cause alarm in the United States, which does not want to see Pakistan distracted from the battle against militants.<br />(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Alex Richardson)<br /><br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Sanctions don't stop Hewlett-Packard from selling in Iran</strong><br />By Farah StockmanThe Boston Globe<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />TEHRAN: Behind an unmarked door on a crowded side street in Tehran, a stack of Hewlett-Packard printers rises to the ceiling. A fleet of motorbikes swarms outside as deliverymen wait to take printers to buyers across the sprawling capital.<br />HP printers have become a top seller here, despite a comprehensive embargo that prohibits the company from sending its products to Iran.<br />The prevalence of such American-made goods in Iran has led U.S. officials to crack down on the cottage industry of smugglers in nearby Dubai who purchase everything from iPhones to Bratz dolls to sell in Iran. But the biggest share of HP printers, among the most visible of U.S. goods here, come not through smugglers, but through a series of international transactions that enable HP to sidestep U.S. sanctions.<br />In 1997, two years after President Bill Clinton banned trade with Iran, HP struck a partnership with a newly formed company in Dubai to sell its products in the Middle East. At the time, the company, called Redington Gulf, had only three employees and its sole purpose was to "sell HP supplies to the Iran market," according to a history on Redington Gulf's Web site and Rajesh Chandragiri, the administrative manager in Redington Gulf's Dubai office.<br />If U.S. executives at HP cut the deal knowing the printers were destined for Iran, it would be in violation of the law, sanctions specialists said. But despite the crackdown on U.S. companies that sell their products in Iran, some American businesses whose products are sold through third-party distributors like Redington Gulf have thus far avoided scrutiny.<br />"Using a distributor makes it much more difficult to prove that the manufacturer has knowledge of the sales to Iran," said Robert Clifton Burns, a lawyer based in Washington who specializes in export law.<br />A spokeswoman for HP, which is based in Palo Alto, California, declined to say how much the company knew about the popularity of its printers in Iran, offering only a statement that said HP has "a policy of complete compliance with all U.S. export laws."<br />But in 1999, before sanctions enforcement became as rigorous as it is today, Albrecht Ferling, the general manager of HP Middle East, was quoted in the media as estimating HP's growth rate in Iran to be about 50 percent a year.<br />"Iran is a big market for Hewlett-Packard printers," he was quoted as saying in Gulf News, an English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates. Attempts to reach Ferling, who has since left HP, were unsuccessful.<br />In any case, HP's ability to avoid sanctions undermines the impact of the U.S. economic boycott of Iran, which Clinton announced in 1995 to pressure the country to stop financing the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and to curb its nuclear program.<br />In recent years, the administration of President George W. Bush has cracked down even harder on companies that find ways to do business with Iran.<br />"The easier it is for the targeted country or entity to avoid or circumvent the sanctions measures, the lesser their impact and utility," said Victor Comras, who supervised sanctions policy for the U.S. State Department.<br />"Computers and related products are keystone items in today's economy," Comras added. "Inhibiting trade in such products imposes a greater cost than more mundane and easily substituted products. That makes inhibiting the availability of such products an important part of U.S. trade sanctions program. HP is an important player in this sector."</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Book Review: 'The King's Messenger'</strong><br />Reviewed by Barry Gewen<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />BOOKS The King's Messenger<br />Prince Bandar bin Sultan and America's Tangled Relationship With Saudi Arabia<br />By David B. Ottaway<br />321 pages. Walker & Co. $27.<br />Those who take pleasure in reading about foreign policy because it is like a chess game played in three dimensions will find much to savor in "The King's Messenger," David B. Ottaway's account of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States. Saudi Arabia's relationship with the United States isn't chess so much as string theory, with 10 or 11 dimensions. Here are two allies that have struggled to maintain close ties although they have almost nothing in common. Every agreement between them has been fraught with contradiction. Every push has produced a pull.<br />Managing this awkward and potentially combustible quid pro quo required energy, intelligence, sensitivity and a large dollop of deviousness. Bandar, who arrived in Washington as a lobbyist in the late 1970s and served as ambassador from 1983 to 2005, was the right man in the right place. President George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, James Baker, spoke of Bandar's extraordinary influence, along with his "aura of charming roguishness." The Middle East expert Dennis Ross called him indispensable at times, but also "probably part con man."<br />The modern U.S.-Saudi relationship began during World War II, when President Franklin Roosevelt declared, "The defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States," and at first it must have seemed like simplicity itself: The Saudis would supply the United States with oil, and the Americans would guarantee the security of the kingdom.<br />Oil was oil, but security meant something different to each country. For Washington, it meant protection against the Communists. For the Saudis, it meant support against their rivals, the Hashemite royal families in Jordan and Iraq. Even after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 produced a common enemy, perspectives diverged. Ronald Reagan called the embattled Afghans "freedom fighters," while to the Saudis they were "holy warriors."<br />Then there was the contradiction that repeatedly tore Washington apart: The more secure the Saudis felt, the less secure the Israelis believed themselves to be. Proposals to sell arms to the kingdom produced titanic battles in Congress and, Ottaway reports, at least one occasion when the Saudis and the Israelis edged near to open warfare. Bandar made his name helping the Carter administration gain approval for a sale of F-15s to the Saudis in 1978, and he remained at the center of all subsequent arms disputes, winning more than one victory against the powerful Israel lobby.<br />Culture also divided the two allies. Bandar termed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait a "defining moment" of his life, bonding him not only to the first President Bush but also to the rest of the White House team.<br />Yet Ottaway highlights the bizarre conflicts that can develop between wartime allies when one is a postindustrial society and the other is still mired in the Middle Ages. More than a half-million American troops were sent to the kingdom during the first Gulf war, but Bibles had to be smuggled in to circumvent Saudi customs officials, and Jewish soldiers who wanted to hold religious services had to be smuggled out to ships.<br />Bandar never again achieved the level of influence he enjoyed during the first Gulf war. The Clinton administration viewed him with suspicion because of his ties to the Bush family. And while the 2000 election of the second Bush was, as Bandar put it, "too good to be true," the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks turned relations sour, ruining almost everything to which he had devoted his life. Americans were never comfortable with the conservative and aggressive variety of Islam practiced by the Saudis, and once it became clear that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, Bandar had a "public relations disaster" on his hands.<br />After November 2003, when Bush announced a policy of promoting democracy in the Middle East, the Saudis reacted with a crackdown on democrats within the kingdom.<br />"Bush's 'freedom speech,"' Ottaway writes, "represented a fundamental shift in what had been a U.S. policy of ignoring the state of Saudi internal politics, an attitude that dated back to the start of the special relationship in 1945." In 2005, Bandar resigned his ambassadorial post.<br />There is probably no one better qualified to tell this story than Ottaway. He spent 35 years with The Washington Post, including four as the paper's Cairo bureau chief, which gave him the opportunity to make several visits to Saudi Arabia. He has reported on Bandar's Washington maneuvers, profiled him for The Post, interviewed him frequently and even spent eight hours in conversation with him after 9/11. Yet Ottaway has produced a choppy, disjointed book in which Bandar never really emerges from the shadows. The image of Bandar a reader takes away from "The King's Messenger" is that he is one of those people who become more unknowable the closer you get to them.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>How Moscow courts the Muslim world</strong><br />By Jacques Lévesque<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />Vladimir Putin was the first head of a non-Muslim majority state to speak at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a gathering of 57 Muslim states, in October 2003. That was a political and diplomatic feat, especially since Russia was waging a long-running war in Chechnya at the time. Putin stressed that 15 percent of the population of the Russian Federation is Muslim and that all the inhabitants of eight of its 21 autonomous republics are Muslim, and he won observer member status with the organization, thanks to support from Saudi Arabia and Iran.<br />Since then, Putin and other Russian leaders, including the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claim that Russia "is, to some extent, a part of the Muslim world." In an interview with Al Jazeera on Oct. 16, 2003, Putin stressed that, unlike Muslims living in Western Europe, those in Russia were indigenous, and that Islam had been present on Russian territory long before Christianity. So Russia now claims to have a privileged political relationship with the Arab and Muslim world and believes that, as a mostly European state, it has a historic vocation as a mediator between the Western and Muslim worlds.<br />There are reasons for these claims. The first is to counter the pernicious effect of the war in Chechnya, in Russia as much as in the rest of the world. The aim is to avoid, or at least limit, polarization between Russia's ethnic majority and its Muslims by reinforcing Muslims' feelings of belonging to the state. "We must prevent Islamophobia," said Putin in the Al Jazeera interview. That will be difficult, given the way anyone suspected of being a Muslim fundamentalist is pursued, and not just in Chechnya. "Terrorism should not be identified with any one religion, culture or tradition," Putin insisted. Before 9/11 he called Chechen rebels "Muslim fundamentalist terrorists." Now he speaks of "terrorists connected to international criminal networks and drug and arms traffickers," avoiding any reference to Islam.<br />The other purpose in seeking special ties with the Arab and Muslim world is related to Russia's foreign policy aim to "reinforce multipolarity in the world" - to sustain and develop poles of resistance to U.S. hegemony and unilateralism. This means taking advantage of the hostility to U.S. foreign policy in the Arab and Muslim world. The Soviet Union used to present itself as the natural ally of anti-imperialist Arab states "with a socialist orientation." Now Russia is seeking strong political relations not only with Iran and Syria, but also with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, which have long been close American allies.<br />Economic considerations are important, especially in the energy sector - the power behind Russia's return to the international stage. The Kremlin believes there is a major future in nuclear energy and the export of nuclear power stations, which may give Russia a competitive edge in technology and make it more than just an exporter of raw energy. The same is true of high-tech weapons, which were the most successful economic sector of the former Soviet Union before serious difficulties in the 1990s.<br />The Kremlin is no longer seeking formal alliances. It wants strong but non-restrictive political ties in frameworks such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), which do not put it in direct opposition to the United States. Significantly, Iran only has observer status in this organization, although it would like to be a full member.<br />One more explanation for this new policy toward the Muslim world is the quest for a post-Soviet Russian identity at home and abroad. This is not just political opportunism. In 2005, the academic Sergei Rogov wrote in the official Foreign Ministry review: "The Islamic factor in Russian policy is first and foremost a question of identity. ... That is one of the reasons why Russia cannot yet be a nation state in the European sense of the term. ... Our relations with the Islamic world directly affect our security."<br />It is important to grasp what that means. In September 2003, Igor Ivanov, then foreign minister, said the war in Iraq had increased the number of terrorist attacks on Russian territory as elsewhere in the world. That was before Beslan, but Russia was already fearful of terrorism as a consequence of the Iraq war. Russia had hoped that a new multipolar configuration would emerge from the concerted opposition at the UN Security Council by France, Germany and Russia, which had deprived the U.S. of international legitimacy for the war.<br />Russian leaders were seriously concerned that a "clash of civilizations" would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and unconditional U.S. support for Israel's most intransigent policies, Russian leaders thought potential U.S. attacks on Iran would be a catastrophe, with destabilizing consequences in Iran, so close to Russia, as well as in several former Soviet republics and in Russia.<br />This is a key to understanding the complex and difficult relationship that Moscow has with Tehran. Iran is an important geopolitical partner, as well as being the third-biggest buyer of Russian arms after China and India, and a showcase for the controlled export of nuclear power plants. Iran's leaders have refrained from expressing support for Chechen rebels. Iran and Russia cooperated in supporting armed opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan, long before the United States. (Afghanistan under the Taliban was the only state in the world to recognize the independence of Chechnya and offer assistance to Chechen fighters.) But Moscow did denounce President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks about Israel as "shameful" and put pressure on Tehran by voting with the United States for economic sanctions at the UN Security Council, although it excluded military action.<br />By risking a deterioration of its relations with Iran, Russia wants to show the United States and other Western powers that it is responsible when it comes to nuclear nonproliferation. It also wants to persuade Iran to find a modus vivendi with the International Atomic Energy Agency. By agreeing to limited sanctions, Russia hopes to reduce the threat of an armed attack against Iran for as long as possible. Russia does not want an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons on its frontiers, but it would prefer to live with a nuclear Iran than face the consequences of a U.S. attack on Iran.<br />The ambivalence of these positions has contributed to a rapprochement with traditional U.S. allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia - both concerned that Iran may have access to nuclear weapons. However, like Russia and for the same reasons, they are opposed to U.S. military action. They fear the consequences at home as well as among their immediate neighbors.<br />As a result of the war in Iraq, Turkey has a de facto independent Kurdistan on its borders, a problem that would be seriously aggravated by a destabilized Iran. Russia intends to take advantage of this at a time when its economic exchanges with Turkey - and political convergence - are at their best for two centuries.<br />Russia also intends to keep improving its relations with Saudi Arabia, which opposed the war in Iraq despite its hostility to Saddam Hussein. In February 2007, Putin made a first visit by a Russian or Soviet head of state to Saudi Arabia and offered contracts for the construction of nuclear power plants and arms. He also pleaded for an increase in the number of Russian Muslims authorized to make the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Saudi support for the Chechen rebels, openly expressed until 2002 (without recognition of the independence they claimed), suddenly stopped.Jacques Lévesque teaches at the faculty of political science and law at the University of Quebec, Montreal. This article first appeared in Le Monde diplomatique. Distributed by Agence Global</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Provoking Russia<br /></strong>By Muammar el-Qaddafi<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />TRIPOLI: Once again, the West's policy toward Russia and its addiction to interfering in the affairs of other countries is having dangerous effects on the rest of the world.<br />The seeds for the current danger were sown by NATO's expansion to Russia's borders after the fall of the Soviet Union. That deliberate, provocative, and continuing process echoes in Russia's long memory the painful experience of the Napoleonic and German armies storming across Europe into their motherland, hell-bent on conquest.<br />NATO's expansion was not merely an attempt to secure Russia's vast resources - the sole objective of those earlier adventures. Its other aim was to fill the political vacuum left by the dismantlement of the Soviet Union. It was "independence mania" being driven down the throats of the former Soviet republics. However, Russia perceives its encirclement - from Central Asia to the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea - to be a threat, the effects of which are now playing out on the regional stage, including the recent hostilities in Georgia.<br />The real danger lies in the fact that Russia possesses 16,000 nuclear weapons, among the largest stock in the world. Intimidating Russia and attempting to besiege it fuels nationalism and threatens the world, again, with nuclear war. A new arms race is already afoot in the wake of the West's decision to install a missile system in Eastern Europe, just miles from the Russian border.<br />Interestingly, the West's misread of Russia's reaction to NATO expansion was a precursor of recent strategic blunders - such as the invasion of Iraq - based on misleading information and short-sighted and naïve analysis. Did the West really expect that "independence mania" would stop at pro-West Kosovo and not reach Abkhazia and South Ossetia? Now NATO is considering Georgia and Ukraine for their military alliance, more geopolitical bombs at Russia's borders.<br />The continuation and expansion of NATO has no justification anymore, after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. And, unlike during the Cold War, Russia is not defending a political, economic, or philosophical ideology; it has none. What it will defend is Russian nationalism and the integrity of the Russian nation itself. In fact, it will be defending its very existence. This makes the current situation all the more dangerous.<br />America, like any other country, has the right to defend itself as well as to seek to live in permanent peace. Its remote geographical location - insulated by two oceans and with nonthreatening neighbors to the north and south - has made it a safe haven for immigrants and refugees, away from the conflicts and ambitions of the old world. Such a stature makes America the worthy host of the United Nations. Such a status would also qualify it to be a neutral country.<br />As America reassesses its role in the world under a new president, it should consider a return to the Monroe Doctrine, which called for non-interference in problems or relations with Europe, and non-expansion by European countries of their colonial hegemony toward America. This principle of non-interference should be extended by and for all countries of the world.<br />Greed, stupidity, recklessness and miscalculation must not continue to implicate humanity in war. Russia is not the Soviet Union. The world has moved on. Cooperation, not intimidation, is the key to peace and progress. Will the West wake up to this fact in time?<br />Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, recently returned from a state visit to Russia.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>'Firm and patient' on North Korea<br /></strong>Monday, December 29, 2008<br />President Bush has offered good advice about the off-again-on-again North Korea nuclear deal. The United States, he said recently, must remain "firm and patient" as President-elect Barack Obama assumes the challenge of separating North Korea from its nuclear program.<br />We won't dwell on the fact that if Bush had followed that course from the start of his administration, North Korea might not be sitting on enough plutonium for six or more nuclear weapons. His prescription was good; the administration still isn't following it.<br />Before Bush spoke, the State Department announced that the United States and its partners would halt deliveries of heavy fuel oil because Pyongyang refused to agree, in writing, on a plan for verifying its nuclear stockpile and facilities.<br />China and Russia insisted that they had not agreed to any such decision. South Korea said it would delay shipping steel plates for North Korean power stations. Japan was already reneging on its commitment to supply fuel aid, and Australia, which had stepped into the breach, announced that it would withhold its contribution.<br />If the shipments stop, North Korea would be within its rights to stop disabling its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and resume producing plutonium for weapons. That would present Obama with an immediate crisis.<br />North Korea has a long history of cheating, and robust verification is essential. That includes getting it to commit in writing to allow inspections of key facilities, interviews with scientists and environmental sampling. But under the deal, a verification plan was supposed to come later. The timing was pushed forward as a condition for taking North Korea off the terrorism list by hard-liners seemingly bent on sabotaging the agreement.<br />The deal is premised on action-for-action, including that Washington and its allies provide one million tons of heavy fuel oil in return for North Korea's disabling the reactor and fuel production facilities at Yongbyon. By one estimate, Pyongyang has completed 85 percent of the disablement while the United States and its partners have delivered no more than 60 percent of the fuel oil.<br />The North Koreans are frustrating, erratic and likely trying to hide nefarious activities. That has always been the challenge. There is much less chance of prying away their nuclear program if this deal falls apart.<br />North Korea missed an opportunity to set a positive tone with the new Obama administration by not signing a formal verification plan now. Its leaders may want to deprive Bush of a last-minute foreign policy success or may be hoping to force his successor to offer more fuel or other benefits. They shouldn't count on it.<br />As Bush suggested, Obama must be firm and patient as he takes on the challenge of persuading Pyongyang to give up its weapons and stop selling nuclear technology and know-how.<br />He should signal early on that he is sincerely committed to full relations with a nuclear-free Pyongyang and include a North Korean official in a Washington event soon after his inauguration. Obama also must leave no doubt that he will push the Security Council to impose dormant sanctions - approved after Pyongyang's 2006 nuclear weapons test - if North Korea walks away from the deal.<br /><br /><strong></strong></div><div><strong>******************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Fighting breaks out among Islamist groups in Somalia<br /></strong>By Jeffrey Gettleman<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NAIROBI: Islamist militants in Somalia, long a bane of the country's weakening government, are now officially fighting one another.<br />A powerful, newly militarized Islamist group on Sunday declared a "holy war" against other Islamist factions, and it seems to have the muscle to back up its intentions. Over the weekend, the group, the Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama, killed more than 10 fighters from the Shabab, a rival Islamist faction that was known as one of Somalia's toughest.<br />The group issued a statement calling on its followers to "prepare themselves for jihad against these heretic groups," referring to some of the other, more hard-line Islamist factions, and "to restore stability and harmony in Somalia and achieve a genuine government of national unity."<br />Many analysts had been predicting that this would happen: that as the transitional government headed toward collapse - it now controls just a few city blocks - the Islamist insurgents of varying agendas would begin to slug it out among themselves. This weekend's violence is a strong sign that the infighting is under way.<br />An episode of grave desecration may have been what started it. In early December, fighters from the Shabab, one of Somalia's most militant Islamic groups, ransacked the graves of moderate Islamist clerics who had been buried in Kismaayo, a town the Shabab controls.<br />On Sunday, moderate Islamist leaders brought this up and condemned the Shabab for such un-Islamic behavior.<br />"It is a politically motivated act, which can ignite a sectarian war," warned Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, one of the moderate Islamists, at a news conference in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.<br />On Saturday and Sunday, gunmen from Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama took back two towns that the Shabab had controlled, Guriel and Dusa Marreb, and they vowed to roll back recent Shabab gains in other parts of the country. Until recently, Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jama was known as a religious brotherhood of moderate Islamists, and it did not have a formidable military wing.<br />The tension among Islamic groups comes at a time when politics here are as precarious as ever. Somalia's transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, resigned Monday.<br />Yusuf blamed the international community for not doing enough to shore up the transitional government. "Most of the country was not in our hands and we had nothing to give our soldiers," Yusuf told legislators in Baidoa, the seat of Parliament. "The international community has also failed to help us."<br />Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.</div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>******************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Opportunities and risks after Somali president quits<br /></strong>By Jeffrey Gettleman<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />NAIROBI, Kenya: Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the cantankerous president of beleaguered Somalia, resigned Monday. The question now is, will it make a difference?<br />Could it be the death knell of Somalia's transitional government, whose zone of control is down to a few city blocks in a country nearly as big as Texas? Or will it be the government's saving grace?<br />For weeks, Western diplomats, Somali elders and United Nations officials have been crossing their fingers that Yusuf, widely blamed for trying to block a peace deal with Somalia's increasingly powerful Islamist insurgents, would step aside.<br />Yusuf, one of Somalia's first warlords, never seemed able to shake his warlord ways. Western diplomats have accused him of favoring his clan at the expense of all others, enabling corruption and too often trying to solve knotty political problems, which called for a little finesse, with the business end of a machine gun.<br />Kenyan officials even threatened sanctions against him this month, calling him "an obstacle to peace" and warning that unless he changed tack, he would no longer be welcome in Kenya. That was a serious threat because Yusuf, who claims to be 74 but is widely believed to be several years older, has gone to Kenya several times for lifesaving medical treatment for an ailing liver.<br />In stepping down, Yusuf said he could not unite Somalia's feuding leaders, news agencies reported, and as soon as he resigned, the United Nations' top official for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said that "a new page of Somalia history is now open."<br />But what will be written on it?<br />The scramble to succeed Yusuf could set off an ugly clan-based political melee. By contrast, the prime minister and other top Somali officials could give the post to a moderate Islamist leader, who might be the unifying figurehead that Somalia so desperately needs.<br />Or it may simply be too late because so much of the country has already fallen into the hands of powerful, hard-line Islamists who behead opponents and have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who said she had been raped.<br />Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group, which tracks conflicts worldwide, said Yusuf's resignation was "good news" because "it may create the opportunity to put a more conciliatory figure in charge of the government."<br />That figure could be someone like Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a well-respected, moderate Islamic cleric who has struggled to walk the tightrope between negotiating with the transitional government and being dismissed as a sellout.<br />Earlier this year, Sheik Sharif's faction signed a power-sharing agreement with the transitional government, despite the president's objections, and many Somalis are hoping the deal will stick.<br />"If that power-sharing deal is applied, it will help a lot," said Muhammad Dheere, a pharmacist in Mogadishu, Somalia's battle-scarred capital. "Then the other problems could finish soon."<br />Somalia certainly has a lot of them. Famine is steadily creeping toward millions of people. Pirates off Somalia's coast have netted countless headlines and as much as $100 million in ransoms. Violence is rising again and finding new forms, with Islamist factions now fighting one another to take over the areas the government no longer controls.<br />Over the weekend, in two towns, a moderate Islamist group routed the Shabab, one of the nation's most fearsome and radical Islamist militias. But the Shabab were fighting back fiercely on Monday, and they also took over a United Nations food distribution office, imperiling a critical lifeline.<br />The thousands of Ethiopian troops who have been in Somalia for two years are threatening to leave any day now. If they do, the transitional government may have no one to protect it from Islamist insurgents, except a relatively small contingent of African Union peacekeepers and a few ragtag Somali militiamen.<br />It will not be easy finding someone qualified and willing to serve as president, considering all this. Somalia's transitional government, created four years ago (with Yusuf at the helm) as a temporary solution until Somalia could hold elections, is carefully balanced on a formula that divides power among Somalia's four major clans.<br />One considerable strike against Sheik Sharif is that he is not only from the same clan, but from the same subclan as the prime minister, who is well regarded and not believed to be going anywhere.<br />Many people expect that the next president could come from the same clan as Yusuf, to minimize clan friction. The speaker of Parliament will take over the presidency for one month until Parliament elects a new president.<br />Yet, after nearly 18 years of unbridled anarchy, many Somalis have lost hope.<br />"Somalis are a God-forsaken nation," said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, a Canadian-Somali who used to work with Yusuf and is now looking for a job. "They are so oblivious to what is happening. One tribe, one religion, one language, one culture but they don't see what unites them, they only see what divides them.<br />"Maybe on the outside, to the international community, the resignation will matter," he said. "But not on the inside."</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Gaza fighting adds to expectations for Obama</strong><br />By Steven Lee Myers and Helene Cooper<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: When President-elect Barack Obama visited Israel in July - to the very town, in fact, whose repeated shelling culminated in new fighting in Gaza this weekend - he all but endorsed the punishing Israeli attacks now unfolding.<br />"If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that," he told reporters in Sderot, a small city on the edge of Gaza that has been attacked repeatedly by rocket fire. "And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."<br />Now, Obama's presidency will begin facing the consequences of just such a counterattack, one of Israel's deadliest against Palestinians in decades, presenting him with yet another foreign crisis to deal with the moment he steps into the White House on Jan. 20, even as he and his advisers have struggled mightily to focus on the country's economic problems.<br />Since his election, Obama has said little specific about his foreign policy - in contrast to more expansive remarks about the economy. He and his advisers have deferred questions - critics could say, ducked them - by saying that until Jan. 20, only President George W. Bush would speak for the nation as president and commander in chief. "The fact is that there is only one president at a time," David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, said Sunday on CBS, reiterating a phrase that has become a mantra of the transition. "And that president now is George Bush."<br />Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, talked to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday. "But the Bush administration has to speak for America now," Axelrod said. "And it wouldn't be appropriate for me to opine on these matters." As the fighting in Gaza shows, however, events in the world do not necessarily wait for Inauguration Day in the United States.<br />Even before the conflict flared again, India and Pakistan announced troop movements that have raised fears of a military confrontation following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. North Korea scuttled a final agreement on verifying its nuclear dismantlement earlier this month, while Iran continues to stall the international effort to stop its nuclear programs. And there are still two American wars churning in Iraq and Afghanistan. All demand his immediate attention.<br />Obama's election has raised expectations, among allies and enemies alike, that new American policies are forthcoming, putting more pressure on him to signal more quickly what he intends to do. In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, Obama has not suggested he has any better ideas than Bush had to resolve the existential conflict between the Israelis and Hamas, the Palestinian movement that controls Gaza.<br />"What this does is present the incoming administration with the urgency of a crisis without the capacity to do much about it," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and author of "The Much Too Promised Land," a history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. "That's the worst outcome of what's happening right now."<br />The renewed fighting - and the international condemnation of the scope of Israel's response - has dashed already-limited hopes for quick progress on the peace process that Bush began in Annapolis, Maryland, in November 2007. The omission of Hamas from any talks between the Israelis and President Mahmoud Abbas, who controls only the West Bank, had always been a land mine that risked blowing up a difficult and sensitive peace process, but so have Israel's own internal political divisions.<br />Obama might have little to gain from setting out an ambitious agenda for an issue as intractable as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But the conflict in Gaza, like the building tensions between India and Pakistan, suggests that he may have no choice. "You can ignore it, you can put it on the back burner, but it will always come up to bite you," said Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian peace negotiator.<br />For Obama, the conundrum is particularly intense since he won election in part on promises of restoring America's image around the world. He will assume office with high expectations, particularly among Muslims around the world, that he will make an effort at dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict.<br />Early on as a candidate, Obama suggested that he did not necessarily oppose negotiations with groups like Hamas, though he spent much of the campaign retreating from that position under fire from critics.<br />By the time he arrived in Israel in July, he suggested he would not even consider talks without a fundamental shift in Hamas and its behavior, effectively moving his policy much closer to Bush's. "In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation-state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries," he said then.<br />Obama received an intelligence briefing on Sunday and talked as well with his nominee for secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and his choice for national security adviser, James Jones.<br />One option would be for an Obama administration to respond much more harshly to Israel's policies, from settlements to strikes like those this weekend, as many in the Arab world and beyond have long urged. On Sunday, though, Axelrod said the president-elect stood by the remarks he made in the summer and, when asked, noted the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel.<br />Otherwise, Obama could try to pressure surrogates to lean on Hamas, including Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza. He can try to build international pressure on Hamas to stop the rocket attacks into Israel. He can try to nurture a peace between Israel and Abbas on the West Bank, hoping that somehow it spreads to Hamas. All have been tried, and all have failed to avoid new fighting.<br />"The reality is, what options do we have?" Miller said.<br />Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Hawaii.</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Israel reminds its foes it has teeth<br /></strong>By Ethan Bronner<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Israel's military operation in Gaza is aimed primarily at forcing Hamas to end its rocket barrages and military buildup. But it has another goal as well: to expunge the ghost of its flawed 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and re-establish Israeli deterrence.<br />On the second day of the offensive, which has already killed hundreds and is devastating Hamas's resources, Israeli commanders were lining up tanks and troops at the border. But they were also insisting that they do not intend to reoccupy the coastal strip of 1.5 million Palestinians or to overthrow the Hamas government there.<br />This is because whatever might replace Hamas anarchy, for example could in fact be worse for Israel's security. So the goal, as stated by a senior military official, is "to stop the firing against our civilians in the south and shape a different and new security situation there."<br />This means another peace treaty with Hamas that has more specific terms than the one that ended 10 days ago. Such a concrete goal, however, should not obscure the fact that Israel has a larger concern it worries that its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were or should be. Israeli leaders are calculating that a display of power in Gaza could fix that.<br />"In the cabinet room today there was an energy, a feeling that after so long of showing restraint we had finally acted," said Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking of the weekly government meeting that he attended.<br />Mark Heller, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that energy reflected the deep feeling among average Israelis that the country had to regain its deterrent capacity.<br />"There has been a nagging sense of uncertainty in the last couple years of whether anyone is really afraid of Israel anymore," he said. "The concern is that in the past perhaps a mythical past people didn't mess with Israel because they were afraid of the consequences. Now the region is filled with provocative rhetoric about Israel the paper tiger. This operation is an attempt to re-establish the perception that if you provoke or attack you are going to pay a disproportionate price."<br />Numerous commentators on Sunday, both in Israel and in the Arab world, noted that the shadow of the 2006 Lebanon war was hanging over the attack on Gaza. Then, an Iranian-backed Islamist group was lobbing deadly rockets into Israel with apparent impunity and had captured an Israeli soldier in a crossborder raid.<br />Israel invaded southern Lebanon and for 34 days carried out air, sea and land assaults before a truce was negotiated. But Hezbollah, by successfully shooting thousands of rockets into Israel while under attack and sounding defiant to the end, won a great deal of credit among Arabs across the region and used its prestige to grab a decisive role in the Lebanese government.<br />The risk to Israel in Gaza seems of a parallel nature that if the operation fails or leaves Hamas in the position of scrappy survivor or even somehow perceived victor, that it could then dominate Palestinian politics over the more conciliatory and pro-Western Fatah movement for years to come. Since Hamas, like Hezbollah, is committed to Israel's destruction, that could pose a formidable strategic challenge.<br />And despite unwavering expressions of support for Israel from President-elect Barack Obama during his campaign, Israel is also gambling that its aggressive military posture will not alienate the new administration.<br />There are internal complications as well. At Sunday's government meeting, Olmert portrayed the Lebanon war, which he led, not as a failure but as something of a model for the current operation, since the northern border has been completely quiet ever since. But most Israelis disagree.<br />Israel began that war vowing to decimate Hezbollah without fully realizing the extent of its military infrastructure, underground bunkers and rocket arsenals. And while many in Lebanon and overseas considered Israel's military activities to be excessive, in Israel the opposite conclusion was reached that it had been too restrained, too careful about distinguishing between Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon.<br />"We were not decisive enough, and that will not happen again," a senior military officer said in reference to that war, speaking on condition of anonymity, some weeks ago. He added, "I have flown over Gaza thousands of times and we know how to hit something within two meters."<br />The current operation started only after preparation and intelligence work, military commanders said, leading to a true surprise attack on Saturday and the instant deaths of scores of Hamas men. The Israeli military had mapped out Hamas bases, training camps and missile storehouses and systematically hit them simultaneously in an Israeli version of "shock and awe," the sudden delivery of overwhelming force.<br />It was Ehud Barak, the defense minister, who directed the preparations, and politically it is Barak who stands to gain or lose most. As chairman of the Labor Party, he is running for prime minister in the February elections and polls show him to be a distant third to the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Kadima leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.<br />But if Hamas is driven to a kind of cease-fire and towns in Israel's south no longer live in fear of constant rocket fire, he will certainly be seen as the kind of leader this country needs. If, on the other hand, the operation takes a disastrous turn or leads to a regional conflagration, his political future seems bleak and he will have given Hamas the kind of prestige it has long sought.<br />Ron Ben-Yishai, a veteran military correspondent who writes for Yediot Aharonot, said that Barak had phoned him shortly after the 2006 Lebanon war and said it had been an enormous error. Israel should have waited and prepared before reacting to Hezbollah, choosing its moment and circumstances, he said.<br />And that, Ben-Yishai said, is what Barak did, not only behind the scenes but through a subtle public disinformation campaign. On Friday night, after having decided to launch the operation, he appeared on a satirical television program. An attack seemed at least several days away and Hamas, which had been holding its breath, relaxed. The next day, the Jewish Sabbath and the first day of the Arab workweek, Israel struck.<br />There is palpable satisfaction at the moment in the government and the military because the operation so far is seen as a success. Few have focused on the fact that at this stage in the 2006 Lebanon war, there was the same satisfaction before things turned disastrous.</div><div> </div><div>**************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>In the midst of war's horror, a terrible vengeance<br /></strong>By Taghreed el-Khodary and Ethan Bronner<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />GAZA: At Shifa Hospital on Monday, armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roved the halls. Asked their function, they said they were providing security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.<br />In the fourth floor orthopedic section, a woman in her late twenties asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Hajoj was carried out of his room by young men pretending to transfer him to another hospital section. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head. A bit of brain emerged on the other side of his skull.<br />Hajoj, like five others who were killed at the hospital in this way in the previous 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges, and when Israel destroyed the prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their trials were short-circuited.<br />A crowd at the hospital showed no pity after the shooting, which was widely observed. A man in his thirties mocked a woman who expressed horror at the scene.<br />"This horrified you?" he shouted. "A collaborator that caused the death of many innocent and resistance fighters?"<br />Another man told her, "It was his brother who killed him to wipe away the shame from his family."<br />Sobhia Jomaa, a lawyer with the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, said 115 collaborators were in the central prison. None had been executed by Hamas since it took office and their cases were monitored closely, she said.<br />"The prison provided the sole protection to all of them," she said. "But once it was bombed, many wanted to take revenge."<br />Dr. Hussein Ashour, director of Shifa Hospital, said keeping his patients alive from their wounds was hard enough for him. He said there were some 1,500 wounded distributed among Gaza's nine hospitals with far too few intensive care units, equipped ambulances or dozens of other kinds of equipment.<br />Around the city, families huddled around battery-powered radios. Electricity arrives only a few hours a day, offering the diversion of television, but nothing local. The Hamas station has been shut because of an Israeli missile hit and most local radio stations have closed their doors out of fear of suffering the same fate.<br />Israeli drones buzz overhead taking photographs.<br />International calls on Israel to pull back intensified, but Ehud Barak, the defense minister, said that no country should sit still while rockets were fired upon it and added that "Hamas is responsible for everything that happens in Gaza and which emanates from it." He added, "This operation will be widened and deepened as we see fit."<br />Despite fairly precision bombing, civilians are constantly caught up in the fire. On Saturday, when dozens of Israeli sorties were made simultaneously, a group of young people, 18 to 20, were hit when a missile was fired at a group of Hamas policemen in the street. According to a statement by the United Nations special coordinator, Robert Serry, eight of the young people, emerging from a UN training center, were killed instantly and 19 wounded. Eight were in critical condition Monday, and one was awaiting emergency transfer to an Israeli hospital.<br />Serry sent Barak a letter of protest.<br />Meanwhile, in Israel, warning sirens wailed over mostly empty streets in the seaside city of Ashkelon, where a man was killed by a missile fired from Gaza. Storefronts were battened shut.<br />Families clustered together inside the city's stretches of towering white apartment blocks and single-family houses. Wary of venturing too far outside, they scurried into protected rooms when sirens sounded, listening for another rocket crashing somewhere in their city.<br />It is a city that is reluctantly getting used to its new status as the front line.<br />"It's frightening, but what can we do?" said Chen Hassan, 18, a high school senior.<br />She woke up Monday morning, jolted by the sound of a missile hitting a public library under construction across the street. The rocket killed a construction worker and injured several of his co-workers, Bedouins from the Negev Desert of Israel.<br />Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem. Dina Kraft contributed reporting from Ashkelon.<br /><br /><br /> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNKW2TO3NJuHTM0hnzHm7hc5aqEr0xZ7CHSAj_2ERPyggW01guiQMPYB_fh3VvfwOqwIEwW7eS1l_6GefqAbAmyJcwtPJhuXJA2FOMpKpkE9YxCg2EsIiRX5szVYtWh-hRFQhIZWvEqic/s1600-h/DSC04814.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507824451791090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNKW2TO3NJuHTM0hnzHm7hc5aqEr0xZ7CHSAj_2ERPyggW01guiQMPYB_fh3VvfwOqwIEwW7eS1l_6GefqAbAmyJcwtPJhuXJA2FOMpKpkE9YxCg2EsIiRX5szVYtWh-hRFQhIZWvEqic/s320/DSC04814.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM9-6e0JXLSYYcRdph8Mxu28ldg_wjhSgoR9JkFoAQGdN_BavRsMnjS4C9bM8fgUvW1mXbI8BW_fCBpyfKS0Z8a_PSKsi2JijVJA69PVuX2XV-KfT2AjJtxjLrzpBWvEe5qGqOvz2xWfQ/s1600-h/DSC04815.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507514272184082" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM9-6e0JXLSYYcRdph8Mxu28ldg_wjhSgoR9JkFoAQGdN_BavRsMnjS4C9bM8fgUvW1mXbI8BW_fCBpyfKS0Z8a_PSKsi2JijVJA69PVuX2XV-KfT2AjJtxjLrzpBWvEe5qGqOvz2xWfQ/s320/DSC04815.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaGktFVJsitN5k5HDqXisXqhlW-bBa-uQAcV-mikK0BX64BOtBAFbZ_AoQf4iMoIMONvv5Eva0nNY8qKBSkG0EMAPgcdFz8sdDSuR_7lcFy6vuaMHAweFXQ1iuP6YTeamyqRS3fUQhPNI/s1600-h/DSC04819.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507508126210226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaGktFVJsitN5k5HDqXisXqhlW-bBa-uQAcV-mikK0BX64BOtBAFbZ_AoQf4iMoIMONvv5Eva0nNY8qKBSkG0EMAPgcdFz8sdDSuR_7lcFy6vuaMHAweFXQ1iuP6YTeamyqRS3fUQhPNI/s320/DSC04819.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>U.S. downturn hitting German exporters hard</strong><br />By Carter Dougherty<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />MUNICH: When American consumers stop buying, companies around the world - even those with little direct business in the United States - start running for cover.<br />Take the case of Hawe Hydraulics, which makes all manner of valves and conduits here in southern Germany. Its sales boomed in recent years, driven largely by growing demand from China and the rest of Asia for industrial components. But in the past few months, new orders have virtually dried up.<br />What happened? Only 5 percent of Hawe's products are sold in the United States. But Chinese purchases from around the world dropped off as their factories stopped churning out as much stuff for Americans, and the effects almost immediately ricocheted around the globe, back to Germany.<br />"It used to be that it took years," said Karl Haeusgen, Hawe's genial chief executive, who drove the company's global expansion this decade. "But now the global link works very quickly."<br />The United States, with its credit-happy consumers, has long ensured that others, notably China, Germany and Japan, have been able to pile up bulging trade surpluses. That dynamic has now lurched into reverse, with strapped Americans paring purchases from abroad at a ferocious rate.<br />"As the American consumer now capitulates, the export bubble is the next to go," said Stephen Roach, the chairman of Morgan Stanley in Asia. "Export-led economies around the world are in for a very tough rebalancing."<br />In Germany, which since 2003 has been the world's largest merchandise exporter, sales to other countries drove growth for the past five years. But in the third quarter the slump in exports dragged down the economy, pushing Germany firmly into recession.<br />Virtually all economists expect 2009 to be a lost year for Germany, which will pay a heavy price for the slump in the global economy. Estimates range from a decline in economic activity for the year of about 1.5 percent to as much as 4 percent.<br />The retrenchment bears out what Haeusgen feels in his bones, that there is a link between the Chinese prosperity that rested in part on U.S. profligacy, and German sales to China and elsewhere. German exports of capital goods feed a Chinese industrial economy that itself is fed by U.S. demand for inexpensive consumer goods.<br />Jacques Cailloux, chief Europe economist at Royal Bank of Scotland in London, has established a strong correlation between Chinese exports to the United States and German exports to China. The U.S. trade deficit in 2007 was $708.5 billion: Trade surpluses of $288.5 billion in Germany and $262.2 billion in China represent much of the other side of that equation.<br />Already, overall manufacturing orders in Germany have plunged. In September, they fell by the largest one-month amount since 1990, when the economy of communist East Germany was disintegrating. October was nearly as bad. Business confidence has fallen to levels not seen in 16 years.<br />Hawe, founded by Haeusgen's grandfather after World War II, belongs to the group of German companies known as the Mittelstand - midsize business, almost always family owned. Their products are as ubiquitous as they are invisible to consumers, but whether valve, pump or turbine, they are vital to the functioning of modern economic life.<br />With metal shavings littering parts of its shop floor and employees grinding blocks of steel by hand, Hawe looks like the sort of company that modern economics textbooks suggest would better exist in places with low labor costs.<br />In fact, skilled Hawe employees are able to mill important parts of its hydraulic systems to tolerances of one micron with a deft human touch. Hawe has not been able to find any machine - to say nothing of a low-paid worker - that can repeat the feat. It manufactures solely at sites in and around Munich, the wealthy capital of Bavaria.<br />But for all its success, Hawe is by no means immune to the global economic sickness.<br />Hawe generated revenue of 238 million, or $340 million, in 2007, capping five years of blazing growth. But sales for 2008 were flat; they are expected to decline slightly in 2009, with January shaping up in terms that Haeusgen described with an expletive.<br />The rapid slowdown in global growth during the past three months led to Hawe extending its traditional Christmas break, to varying degrees, depending on the product line. Several hundred temporary workers have been let go. Other idled employees are drawing full paychecks by tapping accounts in which they stored up overtime hours during the fat years.<br />"A year ago this would have been full of employees," Michael Knobloch, Hawe's director of marketing, said as he stood between two dormant sorters. "Every machine would have been running."<br />With machines at Hawe and so many other plants silent, much other activity in Germany, a country set up for export, has fallen off.<br />Deutsche Bahn, the railway operator, has rented space at ports to store train cars this winter for lack of freight. It expects shipments to drop by about 40 percent in December from the same period a year earlier. Specialized manufacturers like Hawe are part of that, but so are automakers like BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen, which all extended their holiday shutdown periods.<br />Deutsche Post, the German logistics giant that owns DHL, has been hit by a 15 percent to 20 percent decline in its freight-forwarding business compared with levels a year earlier. It is trying to corral new business by cutting rates, as are many of its competitors.<br />"We are trying to gain market share," said Hermann Ude, who runs the freight business. "That doesn't necessarily mean you gain volume."<br />If a company can't sell as much to the world, it has to sell more to its homeland or suffer the consequences. Recognizing this economic truth, export nations in the rest of the world have embraced vast domestic stimulus programs aimed at halting the slide.<br />Earlier this month, Japan announced a $250 stimulus program, while China was planning a $586 billion investment over two years in infrastructure and other projects. In Washington, the incoming Obama administration is talking about spending at least $675 billion and perhaps as much as $1 trillion in the next two years in a bid to revitalize the rapidly contracting U.S. economy.<br />Not so Germany.<br />The bitterest political dustup in recent memory has erupted in Europe over Germany's unwillingness to pump larger amounts of cash into its shrinking economy. Content, at least so far, with one modest package and another on the way, German officials are wary of spending programs that would bust a nearly-balanced budget.<br />The economy minister, Michael Glos, fought for more stimulus spending to spur Germany's traditionally weak domestic demand but lost to the pugnacious finance minister, Peer Steinbrück. That prompted Glos to note laconically that perhaps packages put in place by other countries would "help our export economy."<br />This perspective resonates at companies like Hawe.<br />"My fear is that the Chinese are reacting more strongly, in a psychological sense, than other countries," Haeusgen said. "Our hope is that someone decides to turn on the lights again in the next few months."<br />Indeed, German companies, not expecting growth at home, are using the current crisis to reassess how to tap the most lucrative export business. Hawe's product designers, executives said, are using the lull to ramp up their efforts; their floor of the Munich headquarters throbs with energy.<br />A new pattern of trade may ultimately emerge. German companies say that in place of voracious U.S. consumers, they look forward to Chinese customers saving less and spending more as Beijing encourages domestic-led growth.<br />"I could imagine that a future boom comes from the countries that have big savings, particularly in Asia," Ude of Deutsche Post said. "We shouldn't lose sight of that."<br />But even under the best of circumstances it will take a long time to fill the void left by American consumers. Global trade may well shrink and even the most successful German exporters, new products notwithstanding, will have to settle for less.<br />"This strategy can work for one or the other company," said Andreas Rees, chief Germany economist at UniCredit in Munich. "It cannot work for Germany as a whole."</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Euro zone governments trying to persuade consumers to spend</strong><br />By Mark John</div><div>Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />BRUSSELS: Governments are trying everything from sales tax cuts to mortgage rate caps and favorable loans to lure European consumers off their sofas and back into shops, restaurants and car showrooms.<br />But with recession casting a pall over the winter sales season in Europe, efforts to persuade people to spend are unlikely to be as successful as governments would like in 2009, and the benefit to the economy will be limited.<br />Take reductions in value added taxes, like the cut to 15 percent from 17.5 percent offered by Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain.<br />Across-the-board VAT cuts are blunt instruments. There is no guarantee they will help the sectors that need it most, and some of the desired help for the home-grown economy will be lost to imports.<br />In addition, there is a possibility that retailers will not pass on all of the tax rebate to customers, particularly if they are already feeling the pinch, and demand could take a new hit whenever taxes increase again.<br />In the 15 euro zone countries, governments are banking on a mixed bag of policies to put cash in the pockets of consumers to allay a recession that officially started in the third quarter of 2008.<br />Italy has promised tax breaks for poorer families and is capping variable mortgage rates at 4 percent. Belgium is offering energy bill rebates and tax-efficient food vouchers.<br />Commercial banks, meanwhile, were told by European Union leaders this month that they should pass on deep cuts in central bank interest rates to borrowers.<br />Such efforts will free up some cash, but it is not certain that households will immediately spend these modest windfalls.<br />With many people fearing for their jobs and facing monthly credit card bills, Charles Dickens's character Scrooge is likely to be a role model this year for many.<br />Consumer sentiment across the euro zone showed a reading for November heading toward the record trough of July 1993.<br />A survey of 2,700 people by Boston Consulting released this month indicated that more than half of all consumers planned to cut discretionary spending, like dining out or new music systems, by an average of 12 percent next year.<br />The poll suggested about 47 percent of European consumers expected the economy to get worse in 2009 and about a third felt financially insecure - more than last year. Nearly half said they expected to be saving more.<br />Officials in Germany have pointed to traditionally high savings rates as a reason not to try to tune up their economy, the largest in Europe, for a consumer-led rush for growth.<br />In Britain, Brown says the VAT cut is already working. But there are questions about how reliable evidence of this is - stores are resorting to ever bigger discounts to attract shoppers.<br />British shoppers now face a dilemma over whether to succumb to the temptation of big one-time savings in the sales when the average household is burdened with debt estimated at 186 percent of disposable income.<br />Faced with a recession whose roots are in overreaching by households and banks, they may feel the more sensible option is to tighten belts and sit out a lean spell likely to last though 2009 and much of 2010.<br />Governments now face the task of ensuring that the European welfare safety net does what it was designed to do - function swiftly and efficiently for those hit hardest.<br />Households may be advised to use short-term savings to reduce credit card debt, and homeowners could take advantage of low interest rates to accelerate mortgage payments.<br />Governments may find there is no quick fix and aim more investment at making the economy fitter - as is planned under a number of national stimulus plans.<br />Now could be the time for home-owners to investigate the myriad state grants for energy efficiency. This year, splurging on ceiling insulation foam rather than a new television may make better sense for both consumers and the economy.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama advisor puts stimulus plan at $675 to $775 billion</strong><br />By Sharon Otterman<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />The last Sunday of the year was a quiet one on the network's morning talk shows, with David Axelrod, President-elect Barack Obama's political advisor, looking ahead to the new administration while Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reflected on the past eight years.<br />In addition, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni defended Israel's ongoing air assault on Gaza on "Fox News Sunday" and NBC's "Meet the Press." Axelrod said that Obama was monitoring the situation in Gaza, and that he has spoken with Rice about the attack.<br />Axelrod, speaking on "Face the Nation" and "Meet the Press," underscored the special relationship between the United States and Israel but did not elaborate on the specifics of the situation in Gaza, stating that "in America, there's only one president at a time."<br />Regarding the new administration's stimulus plan, Axelrod also said that the exact dollar amount Obama will seek has not yet been determined. "We've talked about a package from $675 billion to $775 billion," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."<br />"One thing I think everyone agrees on, economists from left to right, is that we have to do something very large," he said.<br />The president-elect also intends to follow through quickly on his promise for tax relief for most Americans, Axelrod said, this time on "Meet the Press." As for repealing the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, he said that whether it was repealed early or allowed to expire as scheduled at the end of 2010, the tax cut would eventually disappear.<br />"It's going to go, it has to go," he said.<br />The "Meet the Press" host, David Gregory, pressed Axelrod on whether Rahm Emanuel, the Obama's chief of staff, or any of his other advisers had been asked for any favors by Illinois Governor Rod. Blagojevich, who faces federal corruption charges that include trying to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.<br />Axelrod said no. "There was no reason to believe that there was anything unusual or untoward going on that would require contact with the U.S. attorney's office," he said.<br />And speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation," Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn said that he believed Blagojevich would be impeached by the Illinois legislature by Lincoln's 200th birthday on Feb. 12 and that he stood ready to step into his place.<br />He said that if he became governor, he would hold a special election for the vacant Senate seat, but that it probably would not be able to take place until June. In the interim, a temporary senator would be appointed.<br />"If I am the governor, I would certainly push that kind of a law, and we'll see what happens," he said. It's important, he said, to "make sure Illinois has two senators at all times."<br />Axelrod also defended Obama's decision to invite Rick Warren, the influential evangelical pastor, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Warren, who brought both John McCain and Obama to his California church this past August, in at least one interview likened committed gay relationships to incest and polygamy.<br />While Obama and Warren disagree about "civil rights for gays and lesbians and a woman's right to choose," Axelrod said, the two men agree on issues like fighting poverty and disease in Africa.<br />Warren's inclusion, he said, was a symbol of Obama's campaign promise to "build bridges of understanding and move this country forward."<br />"The important point here is that you have a conservative evangelical pastor who's coming to participate in the inauguration of a progressive president, and this is a healthy thing and a good thing for our country," Axelrod said.<br />Also on Sunday, Rice and Laura Bush took a moment to share some things about themselves that might be little known.<br />On CBS's "Sunday Morning," Rice shared her surprise about the reaction she got in 2005, when she wore the nearly knee-high leather boots with heels paired with a short skirt one chilly afternoon in Weisbaden, Germany. The picture made fashion headlines around the world.<br />"Well, but I wore the boots because it was cold. I've tried so hard to explain to people that that outfit was it was really a surprise to me that there was any commentary about it, because I grew up well, spent a lot of my life in Colorado. When it's cold, you wear boots," she said.<br />On her own look-back interview on "Fox News Sunday," First Lady Laura Bush said that President George W. Bush "was in trouble" for telling an interviewer recently that one thing he was not looking forward to after the White House was her cooking.<br />But then she conceded on "Fox News Sunday" that she "can't even remember cooking."<br />"It's been 14 years since we moved into the Texas governor's mansion," she said. But, she added, "I love to read cookbooks. I'm very interested in food, and I'm a reader, as you know."<br />Interviewer Chris Wallace responded, "I hate to say this, but all due respect, Mrs. Bush, reading doesn't actually get the meal on the table."<br />The First Lady smiled, and said that she intended to cook for her husband "when it's just us.".<br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Bank failure in Russia revives fears of financial turmoil and domestic unrest<br /></strong>By Clifford J. Levy<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Roman Malinovsky had been salting away his salary at his local bank to pay for graduate school in Germany. Yelena Samoilova, a supervisor at a publishing house, was saving at the same branch to buy a Ford Focus. Olga Sudakova, who was a little embarrassed to be living with her parents at age 33, had almost enough money in her account there for a down payment on an apartment.<br />They were part of the new middle class in Moscow, confident that with the Russian economic revival and with the government's guarantees, they could rely on the banking system, no matter what its troubled history suggested.<br />But when they went to the small bank on Kalanchyovskaya Street to retrieve their money over the past two months, they got a shock that made them question whether life here had truly changed.<br />"They said, 'There's no money,"' said Malinovsky, 26, who had about 100,000 rubles, or $3,450, at the bank, Capital Credit. "'There is no cash.' That is how they explained it."<br />What happened next offered a glimpse into the kind of public discontent that could grow in Russia as the financial crisis deepens here. Capital Credit's depositors, who for the most part had never before agitated against the government, began doing just that.<br />"The government made promises to us," said Samoilova, 25. "The president every day went on television and told us that our deposits are insured, that people should put money in banks. In truth, the situation is not like the one they have portrayed."<br />A depositor, Denis Davydov, 30, who works for the railroad system, took the lead.<br />He used the Internet to find others with similar grievances against the bank.<br />They called politicians and circulated petitions demanding that the Russian central bank revoke Capital Credit's license, thereby making the depositors eligible for government insurance so they could recover at least some of their money.<br />Post-Soviet Russia has a history of bank runs and other financial tribulations that have often badly shaken the public's faith. In the current financial crisis, the Russian government has allocated billions of dollars in an effort to shore up the banking system.<br />Still, the depositors at Capital Credit felt forgotten.<br />For weeks, the central bank ignored their pleas, as did Capital Credit. (Neither would answer a reporter's questions.) Many depositors, to no avail, went every few days to the Capital Credit branch to seek information.<br />"They always said that the executives of the bank had left for the day, or were in a meeting, or just could not talk," Davydov said.<br />The depositors were instructed to go to a small basement room in the branch to fill out paperwork about their accounts. Many depositors said they later received calls indicating that their money was available. Some did receive it. But others showed up at the branch and were told that there had been a mistake.<br />"We very much fear that the management of the bank is gone, that they have gone abroad with our money," said Sudakova, who manages a translation service and had about $35,500 in the bank.<br />Frustrated, the depositors took to the streets.<br />They held a protest earlier this month in front of the bank, waving banners - "Central Bank, Wake Up!" - demanding that regulators do something. Another slogan, "1998=2008?," referred to the Russian financial crisis of 1998, when the government defaulted on its debt, banks failed, the ruble was sharply devalued and many Russians lost everything.<br />The analogy is provocative because the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin has positioned itself as having rescued the country from the disorder of that era. Just last week, President Dmitri Medvedev assured the public that "there is no cause for alarm or hysteria."<br />Even so, a senior Interior Ministry official also warned last week that Russia could face many protests over unemployment and other financial hardships caused by the crisis. The Russian economy is based largely on the export of oil, natural gas and other natural resources, and thus has been badly hurt by the sharp decline in commodity prices.<br />Demonstrations have already occurred this month against an increase in tariffs on imported cars, which the government imposed to protect the domestic automobile industry. A protest in Vladivostok, in the country's far east, was broken up by riot police officers.<br />At the protest in front of Capital Credit this month, the authorities limited the number of people to a few dozen but did not try to disrupt it. They were apparently reluctant to do so because the grievances were genuine and not political.<br />Last Friday, the depositors planned to hold another protest, this time in front of the central bank. But they awoke to the news that the regulators had finally responded to them and seized the bank's license. That move allowed them to apply for government insurance for as much as about $24,800.<br />Still, some depositors said they feared that it would take many weeks of slogging through the bureaucracy to get the money. Whatever happens, they said, their trust in the government and the banks has been shaken.<br />"This really reminds us of the 1990s," Sudakova said. "The situation really scares us. I have always believed in our government and our authorities. I very much loved our president. I believed in him. Now I don't. I just fear for the future."</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Breakingviews.com: An accelerating decline in the ruble<br /></strong>breakingviews.com<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />As it devalues the ruble, the Bank of Russia is trying to prevent a soft landing from becoming a sudden fall. It has sought to have the currency slide gracefully in recent months by gradually broadening the ruble's reference trading band against the dollar and the euro. But the pace of devaluation is accelerating. The decline Monday means the ruble has now experienced 12 mini-devaluations since mid-November.<br />The Russian currency has fallen nearly 20 percent against the dollar since August. Foreign currency reserves are down by about 25 percent in the same period, to $450 billion, partly because they were used to defend the ruble. The Bank of Russia could have saved the money by allowing a sharp, one-time devaluation when oil prices went into a tailspin. Oil and oil-related products account for more than 70 percent of Russian exports.<br />More rapidly than planned, the country seems to be heading towards its stated goal of having a free-floating currency - leaving the central bank focused solely on fighting inflation. But getting there could still be painful, and a hard landing for the ruble is looking increasingly likely.<br />It seems that the main argument within the Russian government against a one-time devaluation is that it could open the way to a run on banks, of the type last seen in 1998 when Moscow set off panic by defaulting on its foreign debt. But today, markets are already braced for further falls in the ruble, which according to most analysts probably needs another devaluation of 20 percent or thereabouts before it can stabilize. Russians care more about the dollar than the euro-dollar basket.<br />So why is the Bank of Russia holding back from a decisive devaluation? The answer may be that Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, is opposed to such a move, which his own finance officials seem to favor. Russia's boom years are fast turning into a major slump. Officially making Russia poorer with a full devaluation would suggest to Russians that "Putin's prosperity" was based on booming oil prices, and little else. - Pierre Briançon</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/29/business/29citi.php">Citigroup to inject $800 million into South Korean unit</a> </div><div> </div><div>********************<br /> </div><div><strong>How one family's mortgage is linked to meltdown<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />By Daniel Trotta<br />Cynthia Goldrick's daughter is in and out of the hospital for brain surgery, her mother has Stage 4 lung cancer and her father has moved into a home for the elderly.<br />So when the Goldrick family's adjustable rate mortgage reset while husband Patrick was off work for a job-related injury, it eliminated the thin margin between their income and the mortgage payment and put them on the road to foreclosure.<br />While these circumstances may seem extreme -- a perfect storm of bad luck -- the basic economics of a hike in mortgage rates and a bank's inability or unwillingness to modify terms have been shared by many Americans over the past year.<br />The Goldricks took out a $375,000 (255,681 pound) mortgage in 2005, when they refinanced a previous mortgage on their 1,800-square-foot (167-square-metre) house in semirural Hampton Bays, some 90 miles (150 km) east of New York city.<br />At first, the interest rate was 6.5 percent and the monthly payment was $2,370. After two years, it rose to 9.5 percent and suddenly the payment of $3,850 was beyond the means of a family living off Patrick Goldrick's salary as a cable guy.<br />Appraised at $605,000 in 2005, the house today is surrounded by others with "For Sale" signs out front and is probably worth less than the outstanding loan.<br />It is also the only home the Goldrick children have known. "It's just walls. But this is where my daughter comes home after surgery, so they're comfortable walls," Cynthia Goldrick said.<br />The loan was granted by Rose Mortgage Inc. of New Jersey and is being serviced by Saxon Mortgage Services, a unit of Morgan Stanley.<br />But the mortgage is in the hands of neither because it was securitized, pooled with $700 million worth of mortgages into an investment vehicle created by Morgan Stanley known as IXIS 2005-HE4, and sold to investors.<br />Such pools constitute much of the so-called toxic assets at the heart of the worst financial crisis in the United States since the 1930s.<br />Today's investors in IXIS 2005-HE4 include Prudential Insurance, Pimco Advisors, Western Asset Management and Legg Mason -- institutions that manage money for the wealthy and the population at large.<br />NOT JUST A HOUSE BUT A HOME<br />"We didn't jump on the refinancing bandwagon to take a cruise or buy a Mercedes," Cynthia Goldrick said. "We refinanced to give my child a life, not a lifestyle, but a life."<br />The Goldricks' 10-year-old daughter, Erin, has had 10 operations for hydrocephalus, a Chiari malformation and spina bifida. Most of the medical bills are paid by insurance and a fund established from the settlement of a malpractice suit over Erin's treatment as a baby.<br />Erin is an honour student who would have made high honours but for a score of 83 in dance. She bears little outward sign of her medical history, unless she pulls up her hair to show scars on her neck and an open wound on her scalp. She looks after her little sister, Emily, 6, and their room is decorated by dozens of stuffed animals.<br />But her constant medical needs prevent Cynthia from going back to work. "How can you go to work when your daughter's on the operating table?" Cynthia said.<br />At one point, the Goldricks considered selling their home and moving to a larger and cheaper one in North Carolina, but that would separate Erin from the doctors who have been treating her since she was 2.<br />So they enlisted the services of Sal Pane, president of AmeriMod, a company specializing in modifying mortgages, a process in which banks agree to lower mortgage payments and interest rates to avoid the cost of foreclosures.<br />"Modifications can save this economy," Pane said. "My company could do 60,000 loan modifications a month with our current staffing. Give us government assistance and I can modify the entire country in a year."<br />But modification efforts have encountered difficulties. Increasingly, people are falling behind on loans that have already been modified and regulators warn the trend may worsen. Of all the modifications made in the first quarter, 55 percent were at least 30 days delinquent after six months, according to a government report.<br />Then there are the rights of bondholders -- the financial institutions that invest in mortgage-backed securities like the pool that contains the Goldrick mortgage.<br />While modification advocates say it is better for investors to accept a lower rate of return rather than nothing, bondholders don't see much benefit if modifications just delay an inevitable foreclosure.<br />Moreover, some securitizations prohibit modifications, as is the case with the pool containing the Goldrick mortgage. Such clauses are meant to protect bondholders -- sometimes a hedge fund, sometimes a pension fund -- who have been guaranteed a certain return.<br />So even though the Goldricks could afford to stay in their home if the interest rate was 6.5 percent, and the bondholders would benefit by continuing to receive income on the loan rather than have it stuck in foreclosure, the servicer of the loan -- Saxon -- cannot budge.<br />"Your loan modification request has been denied because the investor does not allow modifications for this loan. We apologise for any inconvenience," a Saxon customer service representative wrote to AmeriMod on December 19.<br />Saxon referred inquiries on the Goldrick mortgage to its parent, Morgan Stanley, which declined to comment.<br />Despite the notice, Pane vowed to continue fighting to modify the loan, citing the extraordinary circumstances of the Goldrick family and a clerical error that put the Goldricks further into arrears when a payment to cover property taxes was credited to the wrong account.<br />POOL RULES<br />Back in 2005, the securitisation pool containing the Goldrick mortgage looked like a safe bet for fixed-income investors. Fitch Ratings gave the senior debt in that pool a grade of AAA -- a rating it maintains to this day -- and Fitch said 80 percent of the AAA bonds have been repaid in full.<br />The lower-rated debt in the pool has not fared as well, resulting in multiple downgrades.<br />Three years after the deal closed, 24.3 percent of what is left in the fund is in foreclosure and another 13.1 percent delinquent by at least 30 days, according to November data on Morgan Stanley's website.<br />And 2005 was still a pretty good year. Mortgage bonds from 2006 and 2007 are even more "distressed."<br />Until the credit crisis blew up in 2007, Wall Street institutions were piling into mortgage-backed securities. It was dominated by Lehman Brothers, which has since collapsed, and Bear Stearns, which was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co in an emergency deal.<br />Investment banks were making 1.25 to 1.35 percent on securitizations, which would mean a profit of $875,000 to $945,000 on a $700 million pool.<br />"That doesn't sound like a lot, but mortgage markets are so big there's a lot of profitability," said Brad Hintz a securities industry analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.<br />Firms were in frenzied competition for market share at a time when mortgage companies were handing out easy credit.<br />Now, that bubble has burst and new issues of securitized mortgages have come to a halt. Investors are buying mortgage bonds at a steep discount on the secondary market.<br />"Distressed yields are on the order of 15 to 20 percent, so people are kind of responding to that," said JPMorgan analyst Chris Flanagan.<br />For example, Whitney Tilson, founder of the hedge fund T2 Partners LLC, said he was betting that losses on underlying loans won't be as bad as the market expects. In other words, enough people will continue to make their mortgage payments.<br />"For the first time in our 10-year history we are buying distressed debt, and we are selling equities to do it," Tilson told the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit earlier this month.<br />But that won't help the Goldricks, who like many other families are in danger of losing their house and not likely to benefit from the $700 billion that Congress has allocated to Wall Street for bailing out financial institutions.<br />"I am absolutely bitter," said Patrick Goldrick, who sees the scandal surrounding investment advisor Bernard Madoff as further evidence of Wall Street wrongdoing. "I am bitter towards Congress and bitter towards the big banks and the creepy billionaires who get away with stealing pensions."<br />"I just don't even listen anymore. I turn it off. It's all bad news."<br />(Reporting by Dan Trotta; Editing by Eddie Evans)</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Skaters jump in as foreclosures in U.S. drain the pool</strong><br />By Jesse Mckinley and Malia Wollan<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />On a recent morning, a 27-year-old skateboarder who goes by the name Josh Peacock peered into a swimming pool in Fresno, California, emptied by his own hands and the foreclosure crisis and flashed a smile as wide as a half-pipe.<br />"We have more pools than we know what to do with," said Peacock, who lives in Fresno, the Central Valley city where thousands of homes, many with pools behind them, are in foreclosure. "I can't even keep track of them all anymore."<br />Across the nation, the ultimate symbol of suburban success has become one more reminder of the economic meltdown, with builders going under, pools going to seed and skaters finding a surplus of deserted pools in which to perfect their acrobatic aerials.<br />In these boom times for skaters, Peacock travels with a gas-powered pump, five-gallon buckets, shovels and a push broom, risking trespassing charges in the pursuit of emptying forlorn pools and turning them into de facto skate parks.<br />"We can just hit them back to back," said Peacock, who preferred to give his skateboarding name because of the illegality of his activities.<br />Skaters are coming to places like Fresno from as far as Germany and Australia. Peacock said his floor and couch were covered by sleeping bags of visiting skateboarders each weekend.<br />Some skateboarders use realty tracking sites like realquest.com and realtor.com to find foreclosed houses with pools, while others trawl through satellite images from Google Earth. On the Web site skateandannoy.com, where skaters trade tips about how to find and drain abandoned pools, one poster wrote about the current economic malaise. "God bless Greenspan," the post read, "patron saint of pool skatin'."<br />Pool builders feel differently, of course. In Phoenix, for example, where scorching summers can make pools seem like a survival tool, the city has issued fewer than half the number of residential pool permits this year as in 2007, as builders are being pummeled by declining home construction and evaporating credit for potential buyers. Several large companies have gone bust this year, including Riviera Pools, which once sponsored the swimming pool at Chase Field, where the Arizona Diamondbacks play baseball. Smaller contractors, retailers and pool cleaning companies have also failed, leaving unpaid bills and unfinished projects.<br />"You've got people that still want to build pools, but now you're getting maybe 20 percent or 10 percent that can actually qualify now," said Dave Brandenburg, a pool builder in north Phoenix who estimated business was off 40 percent to 70 percent. "Before it was, 'Sure, no problem.' Now it's like, 'Sorry.' "<br />Business is just as bad in Florida, where builders like Ben Evans, the chief executive at American Pools and Spas in Orlando, said he had let much of his staff go as orders for pools dropped to 150 this year, from about 1,000 in 2007.<br />"I'm just looking for my bailout money," Evans said, ruefully. "Do you know where that is?"<br />In many warmer states, the authorities are trying literally to bail out pools, using pumps, dredges and strong stomachs to attack a surge in abandoned ones that have attracted all manner of nastiness rats or belligerent raccoons, or algae, dead leaves and worse. These so-called green pools can become a breeding ground for mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus.<br />California officials estimate that there are tens of thousands of abandoned pools in the state, with as many as 5,000 in places like Sacramento County, where a building boom in the capital's suburbs has gone bust. California law calls for fines of up to $1,000 per day for egregious cases of pools left with standing water, but officials say the sheer numbers of cases are daunting.<br />John Rusmisel, the district manager for Alameda County's mosquito abatement district, said he used a promotional company that flies banners over football games and other events to help find the fetid swimming pools.<br />"They were up there seeing all these funky pools," said Rusmisel, who added that his workload had doubled in the last year. "So they just started to take pictures."<br />Once he finds a problem pool, his workers treat it with a combination of insecticide and mosquitofish, pinky-size carp that find mosquito larvae delectable. But they do not empty any pools, he said, because in a good rain, an empty pool can be partially lifted out of the hole by groundwater, he said. "I've seen them float up a foot or two," Rusmisel said.<br />Dirk Voss, a code enforcement agent in Oxnard, California, northwest of Los Angeles, said even those residents who manage to stay in their homes often could not maintain the pool. "They don't want to pay for the power to run the motor or pay for the chemicals to treat them," Voss said.<br />But skaters do not mind doing the work, whether it is that of scouting for pools or scouring them. Adam Morgan, 28, a skater from Los Angeles, said it used to take months to find a good skating pool. Now the task is a breeze.<br />"There are more pools right now than I could possibly skate," Morgan said. "It's pretty exciting." Peacock travels around town in his pickup searching for the addresses of homes he has learned have been foreclosed on, either via the Internet or from a friend who works in real estate. He has also learned to spot a foreclosed house, he said, by looking for "dead grass on the lawn and lockboxes on the front door."<br />Once he has found a pool he likes he prefers older, kidney-shaped ones he drains the water into the gutter with his pool pump, sometimes setting up orange cones on the sidewalk to appear more official. Later, he returns to shovel out the muck, and then lets the pool dry. In order to maintain a sense of public service, the skateboarders adhere to basic rules: no graffiti, pack out trash and never mess with or enter the houses.<br />A day or two later, the skating begins, often in short bursts during the workday to avoid disturbing neighbors or attracting police attention. Twice in recent weeks, Peacock said, the police caught the skateboarders in an empty pool and demanded they leave but did not issue citations.<br />Peacock said he was helping the environment. "I'm doing the city a favor," he said, by emptying fetid pools. "They're always talking about West Nile on the news. Those little fish can only eat so much."<br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Veterans of 1990s bailout of U.S. thrifts stand to profit from bank crisis<br /></strong>By Eric Lipton and David D. Kirkpatrick<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: A tightly knit group of former senior U.S. government officials who were central players in the savings and loan bailout of the 1990s is seeking to capitalize on the latest economic meltdown, enjoying a surge in new business in their current work as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists.<br />With $700 billion in bailout money up for grabs and billions of dollars in bad debt or failed bank assets probably headed for sale or auction, these former officials are helping clients get a piece of the bailout money or the chance to buy, at fire-sale prices, some of the bank assets taken over by the U.S. government.<br />"It is a good time to be me," said John Douglas, a partner in Atlanta at the law firm Paul Hastings, a lawyer for bank regulators who helped create Resolution Trust Corp., the agency that administered the last federal bailout.<br />Some of these former U.S. officials, like L. William Seidman, the first chairman of the RTC, are serving as advisers - sharing ideas with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. and the transition team for the president-elect, Barack Obama - even while they are separately directing investors or banks on how best to profit from this advice.<br />"It is an enormous market," said Seidman, who has already joined two such potential moneymaking efforts and was evaluating proposals to participate in a third. "I am enjoying this."<br />David Iannarone, a former RTC lawyer who is managing partner at a firm that handles defaulted commercial real estate loans, added: "The people who worked on this back in the early 1990s are back in vogue."<br />The RTC was set up by the government in 1989 to sell off what ultimately grew to $450 billion worth of real estate and other assets assembled from 747 collapsed savings banks.<br />What is obvious to former RTC officials is that, as in the last go-round, a great deal of money will be made by a select group of investors and business operators, particularly those with government contacts. The former government officials said during interviews that much of what was motivating them was a desire to help the nation recover from this latest stumble. But they acknowledged that they intended to be among the winners who emerge.<br />"Fortunes will be made here - no doubt about it," said Gary Silversmith, one of more than a dozen former Resolution Trust officials interviewed who are involved in enterprises seeking to profit from bank bailouts.<br />The busiest moneymaking arena so far for these RTC alumni is in helping distressed banks line up cash infusions from the Treasury as they seek pieces of the bailout.<br />Robert Clarke - controller of the currency under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and a former Resolution Trust board member - has been advising banks throughout the South on how to get their shares of bailout money.<br />"I have been absolutely inundated," said Clarke, who works at Bracewell & Giuliani, the Houston-based law firm affiliated with the former New York mayor and presidential candidate, Rudolph Giuliani.<br />Clarke's labor on behalf of his clients has included calling up U.S. regulators to urge them to reconsider plans to reject applications for bailout money. He would not identify the banks, saying doing so might undermine public confidence in them.<br />But Clarke said that his intervention, in at least some cases, had been successful.<br />Eugene Ludwig, the comptroller of the currency under President Bill Clinton during the final stages of the savings and loan cleanup, runs Promontory Financial Group, a banking consultant group whose clients include struggling banks.<br />"I must get an e-mail a day from people who I worked with back then about what to do about the current mess," he said. "It is not so much capitalizing on it as really just, how do we contain the flames?"<br />Many of the former governemtn officials like Ludwig have stayed in the field, working as lawyers or contractors who buy up and resell seized bank properties. What is remarkable now is just how busy they are.<br />"It is a great time to be a banking lawyer," said Thomas Vartanian, a partner in the Washington office of Fried Frank, who is a former general counsel to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., which led a bank bailout effort in the 1980s.<br />The planned sale by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the U.S. agency that insures bank deposits, of the assets of the failed IndyMac Bancorp has turned into an alumni event of sorts for veterans of the RTC era. One of those is John Oros, who advised bank regulators during the savings and loan crisis. Now he is a partner in J.C. Flowers, one of the private equity firms negotiating to buy a portion of IndyMac.<br />In the space of one weekend in September he explored buying out the troubled insurer AIG and worked with Bank of America on an aborted acquisition of Lehman Brothers. Then he advised Bank of America on its last-minute switch to buy Merrill Lynch before Lehman's collapse hammered Wall Street.<br />Although the financial meltdown is a disaster for the country, Oros said, "the opportunity going forward is unprecedented. It is fantastic. It is as if I had been training for this for the last 40 years of my career."<br />The biggest profits will most likely be made, the former U.S. bank officials agreed, by those who figure out a way to benefit from what could turn into one of the greatest fire sales of bad debt and bank assets in American history.<br />Through September of this year, 25 banks had failed, compared with only three in 2007. An additional 171 banks are on the FDIC's list of troubled banks, more than twice as many as at the end of last year.<br />As a result of these failures, and other related industry troubles, billions of dollars worth of real estate or at least mortgage-backed securities and other "illiquid" financial instruments will likely need to sold off at discounted prices to investors who stand to profit if they can sell the assets at a higher price once the economy recovers. The open question is just how this unloading of bad debt will take place.<br />So far, the U.S. government is relying upon financial institutions to find ways on their own to sell off bad debts or assets they end up with as a result of foreclosures. But some financial industry players are arguing that a modern Resolution Trust Corp. should be established to help set prices for this bad debt and speed the move toward a recovery.<br />The RTC alumni are prepared to profit either way.<br />Seidman, for example, has been hired as an adviser to SecondMarket, a company based in New York that early next year will start a virtual marketplace that intends to resell some of the trillions of dollars worth of distressed mortgage-backed securities, the financial instruments that helped fuel the surge in housing prices.<br />Seidman has already set up meetings between company executives and U.S. government regulators, including at the FDIC, said Barry Silbert, the company's founder.<br />Silversmith, meanwhile, who during the savings and loan crisis helped arrange the sale of thrift assets, has teamed with Barry Fromm, the chief executive of Value Recovery Holding, one of the big government contractors who handled these sales. The two in recent weeks have held meetings with some of Silverstein's former colleagues, including James Wigand, the deputy director in charge of the FDIC division that sells seized assets, to work on a plan to get ahold of some of the new wave of properties the U.S. government intends to put on the market as a result of recent bank failures.<br />Many of the investors who built legendary fortunes during the savings and loan crisis - like Sam Zell, the chief executive of the Tribune Company, and Joseph Robert Jr., the chief executive of J. E. Robert Companies - are also looking for ways to get back into or expand their distressed assets trade.<br />Zell, who has fared less well in his Tribune investment, recalled the instinct for capitalizing on the misfortune of others that earned him the sobriquet "the grave dancer" when he started buying up properties from failed savings and loans.<br />"When I started the first opportunity fund in 1988, I was the only one bidding - if they didn't sell to me, they didn't sell to anyone," Zell recalled.<br />Now, he said, "The best opportunity right now is in the debt area, mortgages. We have been buying all along."<br />RTC experience is certainly no guarantee of success, the agency veterans acknowledge.<br />Peter Monroe, who was president of the RTC oversight board from 1990 to 1993, has already bought about 300 distressed properties in Detroit, through a venture capital company he formed called Wilherst Oxford. Figuring out a way to profit from the investment - even though some of the houses cost him only a few hundred dollars has proven to be a challenge.<br />"It is like a high-hurdle race: you can get going fast, but you have to jump over one hurdle after the other," Monroe said. "It has turned out to be more complicated than even I expected."</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Paul Krugman: Fifty Herbert Hoovers</strong><br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />No modern American president would repeat the fiscal mistake of 1932, in which the federal government tried to balance its budget in the face of a severe recession. The Obama administration will put deficit concerns on hold while it fights the economic crisis.<br />But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers - state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation's economic future.<br />These state-level cutbacks range from small acts of cruelty to giant acts of panic - from cuts in South Carolina's juvenile justice program, which will force young offenders out of group homes and into prison, to the decision by a committee that manages California state spending to halt all construction outlays for six months.<br />Now, state governors aren't stupid (not all of them, anyway). They're cutting back because they have to - because they're caught in a fiscal trap. But let's step back for a moment and contemplate just how crazy it is, from a national point of view, to be cutting public services and public investment right now.<br />Think about it: Is America - not state governments, but the nation as a whole - less able to afford help to troubled teens, medical care for families, or repairs to decaying roads and bridges than it was one or two years ago? Of course not. Our capacity hasn't been diminished; our workers haven't lost their skills; our technological know-how is intact. Why can't we keep doing good things?<br />It's true that the economy is currently shrinking. But that's the result of a slump in private spending. It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too.<br />In fact, the true cost of government programs, especially public investment, is much lower now than in more prosperous times. When the economy is booming, public investment competes with the private sector for scarce resources - for skilled construction workers, for capital. But right now many of the workers employed on infrastructure projects would otherwise be unemployed, and the money borrowed to pay for these projects would otherwise sit idle.<br />And shredding the social safety net at a moment when many more Americans need help isn't just cruel. It adds to the sense of insecurity that is one important factor driving the economy down.<br />So why are we Americans doing this to ourselves?<br />The answer, of course, is that state and local government revenues are plunging along with the economy - and unlike the federal government, lower-level governments can't borrow their way through the crisis. Partly that's because these governments, unlike the feds, are subject to balanced-budget rules. But even if they weren't, running temporary deficits would be difficult. Investors, driven by fear, are refusing to buy anything except federal debt, and those states that can borrow at all are being forced to pay punitive interest rates.<br />Are governors responsible for their own predicament? To some extent. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in particular, deserves some jeers. He became governor in the first place because voters were outraged over his predecessor's budget problems, but he did nothing to secure the state's fiscal future - and he now faces a projected budget deficit bigger than the one that did in Gray Davis.<br />But even the best-run states are in deep trouble. Anyway, we shouldn't punish our fellow citizens and our economy to spite a few local politicians.<br />What can be done? Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio, is pushing for federal aid to the states on three fronts: help for the neediest, in the form of funding for food stamps and Medicaid; federal funding of state- and local-level infrastructure projects; and federal aid to education. That sounds right - and if the numbers Strickland proposes are huge, so is the crisis.<br />And once the crisis is behind us, we should rethink the way we pay for key public services.<br />As a nation, we don't believe that our fellow citizens should go without essential health care. Why, then, does a large share of funding for Medicaid come from state governments, which are forced to cut the program precisely when it's needed most?<br />An educated population is a national resource. Why, then, is basic education mainly paid for by local governments, which are forced to neglect the next generation every time the economy hits a rough patch? And why should investments in infrastructure, which will serve the nation for decades, be at the mercy of short-run fluctuations in local budgets?<br />That's for later. The priority right now is to fight off the attack of the 50 Herbert Hoovers, and make sure that the fiscal problems of the states don't make the economic crisis even worse.</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>For better or worse, ads we'll remember from 2008</strong><br />By Stuart Elliott<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Queen Elizabeth II described 1992 as "an annus horribilis" for her and the royal family. This annus may have not been that horribilis for Madison Avenue, but it came pretty close.<br />The biggest problem was that most advertising was overtaken by events as the year wore on. The best-laid marketing plans proved no match for a historic presidential race and an enormous financial crisis.<br />That cut both ways for agencies and marketers: overshadowing the best ads, but also drawing attention away from the worst.<br />So half the industry is ending the year cursing its poor timing while the other half is breathing a loud sigh of relief.<br />Here is a recap of some high and low points of 2008.<br />After years of enduring a mocking campaign from Apple that turned the phrase "I'm a PC" into a punch line, Microsoft struck back with ads that appropriated and effectively repurposed the phrase as a rallying cry.<br />Teaser spots that preceded the Microsoft counterattack, featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld as a talkative odd couple, were less successful.<br />But they generated almost as much publicity as if the pair had plighted their troth as an actual couple. Agency: Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners.<br />Print and online ads for Motrin, the pain reliever sold by a division of Johnson & Johnson, foolishly tried to be funny by comparing babies carried by mothers to fashion accessories. "Wearing your baby" is the term used for carrying infants in slings, but J&J wound up wearing tons of Pablum tossed at it by parents offended that their efforts to bond with their babies were being trivialized.<br />The complaints, many delivered in the form of angry "tweets" via the Twitter site, eventually seemed like overkill, but they killed the campaign. Agency: Taxi.<br />A tongue-in-cheek campaign for the Routan minivan sold by Volkswagen of America, part of the German automaker Volkswagen, sought to spoof the image of minivans as mom-mobiles. A celebrity mother, Brooke Shields, was featured as a scold who accused expectant parents of wanting children just so they could experience the "German engineering" of the Routan.<br />Like the campaign for Motrin, the Routan campaign seemed tone deaf. Maybe Americans consider motherhood no laughing matter. Or maybe a company based in a country that once deified motherhood ought to stick to safer subjects for ads. Agency: Crispin Porter & Bogusky.<br />At Coca-Cola, a Super Bowl commercial for the Classic brand was a warm and fuzzy winner in the spirit of Coke classics. Over the skies of New York, two breakaway balloons from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade battle for a balloon bottle of Coke, only to lose out to that lovable loser, Charlie Brown. Agency: Wieden & Kennedy.<br />After the success of the audacious "Whopper Freakout" campaign, which began in 2007, Burger King kept the heat on its rivals in the fast-food category, with mixed results. Stunts like selling Flame, a meat-scented body spray for men, were viral-marketing hits. But a campaign called "Whopper Virgins" - asking residents of places like Greenland and Romania to take part in taste tests, which pitted the Whopper against the Big Mac - was off-putting; the premise came off like cultural imperialism. Agency for both: Crispin Porter & Bogusky.<br />One reason that so few people paid attention to advertising this year was a race for the White House filled with milestones, which ended with a precedent-setting president-to-be. One reason for that outcome was the deft use of media, new and traditional, by the Barack Obama campaign and by his supporters.<br />An example of an official ad that broke through was a 30-minute infomercial that the campaign ran on seven broadcast and cable networks on Oct. 29.<br />The commercial, filmed like a documentary, managed to be slick and earnest at the same time, and finished with a live flourish with Obama at a rally in Florida. Agencies: GMMB, part of the Omnicom Group, and Murphy Putnam Media.<br />An example of an unofficial Obama ad that succeeded was a video clip, produced by the musician Will.i.am, called "Yes We Can," which was viewed on YouTube and other video-sharing Web sites more than 20 million times.<br />Almost 50 years after Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon demonstrated that in Chicago, some like it hot, Kraft Foods turned on the heat there to promote its Stove Top brand of stuffing.Heated roofs were installed in 10 downtown bus shelters to bring to life the Stove Top promise of a warm feeling when eating a meal with stuffing as a side dish. The clever campaign was emblematic of what is known as experiential marketing, which has brought sounds and smells to bus shelters in addition to hot air. Agencies: Draft FCB, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies; JCDecaux North America, part of JCDecaux; and MediaVest, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe.<br />A commercial to promote zero percent loans offered by Toyota Motor Sales USA, part of Toyota Motor, featured a version of a 1983 song, "Saved by Zero," by the Fixx. The spot seemed innocuous enough, but incessant repetition got on America's nerves to the point where consumers were threatening to fix Toyota's wagon, station or otherwise.There were even groups formed on Facebook to urge Toyota to pull the commercial. Still, all the publicity may have been beneficial at a time when people were thinking more about bailing out carmakers than buying cars; a headline in The Daily News, over an article about the Federal Reserve Board's decision to slash interest rates, asked, "Are We Saved by Zero?" Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, part of Publicis.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>The new route to musical stardom: Shilling for products<br /></strong>By Jon Pareles<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />In "Creator," the rawest track on Santogold's debut and self-titled album, the singer Santi White boasts, "Me I'm a creator/Thrill is to make it up/The rules I break got me a place up on the radar." It's a bohemian manifesto in a sound bite, brash and endearing, or at least it was for me until it showed up in a beer commercial. And a hair-gel commercial too.<br />It turns out that the insurgent, quirky rule-breaker is just another shill. Billboard reported that three-quarters of Santogold's excellent album has already been licensed for commercials, video games and soundtracks, and White herself appears in advertisements, singing for sneakers. She has clearly decided that linking her music to other, mostly mercenary agendas is her most direct avenue to that "place up on the radar."<br />The question is: What happens to the music itself when the way to build a career shifts from recording songs that ordinary listeners want to buy to making music that marketers can use? That creates pressure, subtle but genuine, for music to recede: to embrace the element of vacancy that makes a good soundtrack so unobtrusive, to edit a lyric to be less specific or private, to leave blanks for the image or message the music now serves. Perhaps the song will still make that essential, head-turning first impression, but it won't be as memorable or independent.<br />Music always had accessory roles: a soundtrack, a jingle, a branding statement, a mating call. But for performers with a public profile, as opposed to composers for hire, the point was to draw attention to the music itself. Once they were noticed, stars could provide their own story arcs of career and music, and songs got a chance to create their own spheres, as sanctuary or spook house or utopia. If enough people cared about the song, payoffs would come from record sales (to performer and songwriter) and radio play (to the songwriter).<br />When Moby licensed every song on his 1999 album, "Play," for ads and soundtracks, the move was both startling and cheesy, but it did lead to CD sales; an album that set staticky samples of blues and gospel to dance-floor beats managed to become a million-seller. Nearly a decade later, platinum albums are much scarcer.<br />And as music becomes a means to an end - pushing a separate product, whether it's a concert ticket or a clothing line, a movie scene or a Web ad - a tectonic shift is under way. Record sales channeled the taste of the broad, volatile public into a performer's paycheck. As music sales dwindle, licensers become a far more influential target audience. Unlike nonprofessional music fans who might immerse themselves in a song or album they love, music licensers want a track that's attractive but not too distracting - just a tease, not a revelation.<br />It's almost enough to make someone miss those former villains of philistinism, the recording companies. Labels had an interest in music that would hold listeners on its own terms; selling it was their meal ticket. Labels, and to some extent radio stations and music television, also had a stake in nurturing stars who would keep fans returning to find out what happened next, allowing their catalogues to be perennially rediscovered. By contrast, licensers have no interest beyond the immediate effect of a certain song, and can save money by dealing with unknowns.<br />As the influence of major labels erodes, licensers are seizing their chance to be talent scouts. They can be good at it, song by song, turning up little gems like Chairlift's "Bruises," heard in an iPod ad. For a band, getting such a break, and being played repeatedly for television viewers, is a windfall, and perhaps an alternate route to radio play or the beginning of a new audience. But how soon will it be before musicians, perhaps unconsciously, start conceiving songs as potential television spots, or energy jolts during video games, or ringtones? Which came first, Madonna's "Hung Up" or the cellphone ad?<br />Not wanting to appear too crass, musicians insist that exposure from licensing does build the kind of interest that used to pay off in sales and/or loyalty. Hearing a song on the radio or in a commercial has a psychological component; someone else has already endorsed it.<br />Musicians who don't expect immediate mass-market radio play have gotten their music on the air by selling it to advertisers. That can rev up careers, as Apple ads have done for Feist and for this year's big beneficiary, Yael Naim, whose "New Soul" introduced the MacBook Air. (Sites like findthatsong.net help listeners identify commercial soundtracks.)<br />The Sri Lankan art-pop-rapper M.I.A. already had all the hipster adoration she could ever want for her song "Paper Planes," which compares international drug dealing to selling records, and it turns gunshots and a ringing cash register into hooks. But having the song used in the trailer for "Pineapple Express" was probably what propelled the song to a Grammy nomination for record of the year. And if the song now conjures images of the movie trailer for many listeners, that's the tradeoff for recognition.<br />The old, often legitimate accusation against labels was that they sold entire albums with only one good song or two. Now there's an incentive for a song to have only 30 seconds of good stuff. It's already happening: Chris Brown's hit "Forever" is wrapped around a jingle for chewing gum.<br />Apparently there's no going back, structurally, to paying musicians to record music for its own sake. Labels that used to make profits primarily from selling albums have been struggling since the Internet caused them to lose their chokehold on distribution and exposure. Now, in return for investing in recording and promotion, and for supplying their career-building expertise (such as it was), they want a piece of musicians' whole careers.<br />Old-fashioned audio recording contracts are increasingly being replaced by so-called 360 deals that also tithe live shows, merchandising, licensing and every other conceivable revenue stream - conceding, in a way, that the labels' old central role of selling discs for mere listening is obsolescent. Some musicians, like the former record company president Jay-Z, have concurred, but by signing 360 deals not with labels but with the concert-promotion monolith Live Nation.<br />Maybe such dire thoughts are extreme, since some people are still buying music. The iTunes Music Store has sold more than 5 billion songs since 2003. But it's harder and harder to find a song without a tie-in. It took Guns N' Roses 15 years between albums to complete "Chinese Democracy," certainly long enough to receive worldwide notice when the album was released this year. But instead of letting the album arrive as an event in itself, the band licensed one of the album's best songs, "Shackler's Revenge," to a video game that came out first. Metallica fans have complained that the band's new album, "Death Magnetic," sounds better in the version made for the "Guitar Hero" video game than on the consumer CD, which is compressed to the point of distortion so it will sound louder on the radio. But they take for granted that the music will end up in the game in the first place. Consumers reinforce the licensers almost perversely: They pay for music as a ringtone, or tap along with it on the iPhone game "Tap Tap Revenge," but not as a high-fidelity song.<br />Perhaps it's too 20th century to hope that music could stay exempt from multitasking, or that the constant insinuation of marketing into every moment of consciousness would stop when a song begins. But for the moment I'd suggest individual resistance. Put on a song with no commercial attachments. Turn it up. Close your eyes. And listen.<br /><br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi35k96fs3qii3p33Bg_t0wBX7nE6J9JnKEHQ1VGJjsEqfE8mFHsNvGFgVcIjHlyhYYbsq4TWOzQTFv2xDjsutaIMyxGJB2kRCM4dCAE0j1tcyiuE-iTXt9olTHNU0poOhiRtF0iE1j8fU/s1600-h/DSC04820.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507508299691250" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi35k96fs3qii3p33Bg_t0wBX7nE6J9JnKEHQ1VGJjsEqfE8mFHsNvGFgVcIjHlyhYYbsq4TWOzQTFv2xDjsutaIMyxGJB2kRCM4dCAE0j1tcyiuE-iTXt9olTHNU0poOhiRtF0iE1j8fU/s320/DSC04820.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYsxe6awkb2wZAbZieeBEaw8tvup3In3u9L5bbQHDWTvtbd3b8XpBaf2Gj2dxotq_zQsaKVGPMMHiC74-AIwx4j5BAfNMzdULKaOiFEJ5A0LD_PWCXLavMsMWk5dedXGb1_isFEKeCHxM/s1600-h/DSC04821.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507502356552914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYsxe6awkb2wZAbZieeBEaw8tvup3In3u9L5bbQHDWTvtbd3b8XpBaf2Gj2dxotq_zQsaKVGPMMHiC74-AIwx4j5BAfNMzdULKaOiFEJ5A0LD_PWCXLavMsMWk5dedXGb1_isFEKeCHxM/s320/DSC04821.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7wDYyqCej7g8Z4SET31ZVBRgj11ruZTD0eGoCr-sGeuhvgka6xduL5KarSLQnJ4_XEuywLRo6bAw_hpqDFnzspTCbctvOO90TV9ZT-X0nzbxYFbG0BAMiz9UFEY8KLZhU7pM5Vcnz4g/s1600-h/DSC04822.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507501348714274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7wDYyqCej7g8Z4SET31ZVBRgj11ruZTD0eGoCr-sGeuhvgka6xduL5KarSLQnJ4_XEuywLRo6bAw_hpqDFnzspTCbctvOO90TV9ZT-X0nzbxYFbG0BAMiz9UFEY8KLZhU7pM5Vcnz4g/s320/DSC04822.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDTBCtJchnyBXGfmwJV4A9Im60MyYIIqMl-5bgbEpMnPFyd2Jw35IJq4UvIXScNQLRJ_6eP3pIQLau3Fy1IH0BgYxYLfnieYuWbJUJ1IpbjRZx7NCTCsZc7VT4W3jgtFKxjGKwA_ChlWI/s1600-h/DSC04823.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507205149804802" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDTBCtJchnyBXGfmwJV4A9Im60MyYIIqMl-5bgbEpMnPFyd2Jw35IJq4UvIXScNQLRJ_6eP3pIQLau3Fy1IH0BgYxYLfnieYuWbJUJ1IpbjRZx7NCTCsZc7VT4W3jgtFKxjGKwA_ChlWI/s320/DSC04823.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>Labor gets its hopes up<br /></strong>By Steven Greenhouse<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Unions in the United States are looking to Barack Obama and rising economic anxiety to reverse organized labor's long slide.<br />Through three decades of decline, union leaders have been predicting a renaissance that never came. But labor invested more than $300 million to help elect Obama and enlarge the Democratic majority in Congress, and it is counting on Democrats to work together to enact legislation that will make it easier for millions of American workers to unionize.<br />"The people we helped elect, the people America elected," said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, stand in sharp contrast to those who brought about "25 years of a market-worshiping, trickle-down economy.<br />"The discussion in America is no longer so much about national security or guns and gays," Stern added. "It's about something that unions are incredibly important to - in the future, am I going to get a raise and will I get health coverage and a pension?"<br />Skeptics say the outlook for labor is as bleak as ever. Business leaders and congressional Republicans have vowed to block the new legislation labor wants, and Obama might want to avoid a bitter, divisive fight.<br />Moreover, corporate leaders say, a shrinking economic pie could work against union organizing as much as it could work in its favor.<br />"What's happened with the United Auto Workers has undercut the whole argument that unions are a ticket to the middle class, that unions will lead you to a better life," said Randel Johnson, vice president for labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.<br />As the Detroit automakers have retreated in the face of foreign competition and their own failures, the UAW has shrunk to fewer than 500,000 members from 1.5 million in the late 1970s, as the proportion of U.S. workers who belong to unions plunged to 12 percent from 24 percent.<br />"A lot of people see that the unions drove the auto companies off the cliff," Johnson said. "That clearly has undermined the argument that unions are a way to a secure and better future."<br />Charles Craver, a labor relations expert at George Washington University, said workers and unions could learn a lesson from the auto workers and what he sees as their stubborn resistance to accept concessions to keep the carmakers competitive.<br />"What's happened with the UAW is their very success brought them to the brink of disaster," Craver said, referring to union members' traditionally high wages and benefits. "It's Samuel Gompers who said a century ago that the enemy of the worker is an unprofitable employer. Unions have to work to make the company successful, and employers have to recognize the contribution of the worker."<br />While union leaders' optimism has proved excessive in the past, they say it is justified this time. In the view of the AFL-CIO's president, John Sweeney, rising frustration over stagnating wages, declining health and retirement benefits, and soaring chief executive salaries has shifted the political landscape in labor's favor.<br />"People are economically pressed and are looking for solutions and protections for themselves," Sweeney said. "Working people know they need more power to counter corporate power, and they understand that unions can provide that counterbalance."<br />The possibility of enacting the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier to unionize private-sector workers, is crucial to organized labor's hopes for the future. Many labor leaders say the bill would help add millions of workers to union rolls.<br />Under the bill, employees could gain union recognition as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted a union. In a move that business and Republicans say would betray a basic American right, unions could bypass secret ballot elections.<br />If enacted into law, unions say they would be able to organize many workplaces - perhaps even banks, McDonald's and Wal-Marts - that have largely been impervious to union drives.<br />"In a recession, workers are looking for stability and security, and that will cause a lot of them to turn to unions," said Stewart Acuff, the AFL-CIO's organizing director.<br />As proof, he pointed to several recent developments.<br />At JetBlue, 1,800 pilots worried about their health and retirement benefits are scheduled to vote whether to unionize in January.<br />After a 15-year effort to keep out a union, Smithfield Packing said this month that it would grant union recognition to 4,600 workers at its North Carolina pork-processing plant who just voted to unionize. Last month, the Pequot tribe granted union recognition to 2,600 dealers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.<br />Union leaders also note a Peter D. Hart poll, commissioned by the AFL-CIO and conducted in December 2006, that found that 53 percent of the 808 nonunion, nonsupervisory workers surveyed said they would vote to unionize immediately if they could.<br />No one doubts that unions will survive in the public sector, where millions of teachers, firefighters and other public employees have unionized in recent decades. But labor's survival in the private sector is more problematic - just one in 14 private-sector workers is in a union, down from two in five a half-century ago.<br />Over all, union membership has fallen to 15.7 million from 21 million three decades ago, although last year union membership rose by 311,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some academics have called that a statistical fluke, but labor leaders say the increase was the result of their hard work in unionizing construction, health care and government workers in a year when employment climbed to record levels.<br />But whether the gains are more than temporary depends on the tug of war between political and economic forces.<br />"Unions are going to survive this downturn," said Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley, who was on Obama's short list for labor secretary. "But whether they survive as a significant social force depends," he added, on the ability of the Obama administration "to strengthen working families in a cold winter economically."<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtONYPM8jW6MnhqbE-A5DJlef8eRAnDtY3QFEw7G0PMqGE6F5ilQr9RTXXGlUnyw-mpADkhmJ-zGsw0SxyEIoCbJeekUUc8JC2bOwuW66BQHhllK0nSOKqFRYK7r-aC3FBMXhcKGcgvLs/s1600-h/DSC04824.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507204213477442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtONYPM8jW6MnhqbE-A5DJlef8eRAnDtY3QFEw7G0PMqGE6F5ilQr9RTXXGlUnyw-mpADkhmJ-zGsw0SxyEIoCbJeekUUc8JC2bOwuW66BQHhllK0nSOKqFRYK7r-aC3FBMXhcKGcgvLs/s320/DSC04824.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSipSpeXHVCFAbXWAhkcBqi1D2DfvR28rAI-AYhZD6Lrw9YxDnezGOpzj_aXZJgiHPVdcH379AEoI9XIf-jBWKMThROvbnUC4LMzjBf7-vbGPwHbRluFBpheWUUlT8aeN0EjjbQukKAM8/s1600-h/DSC04825.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285507205839607890" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 306px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjShoz_i5Rp-V6dqR8HSM62nYN6wPpQW8e9G87d0vGbPK3L2dQaWl6aCwLIBcUw1hKmeKP5CA-iwgelz-8MMgn3JXBV0A3xmOvb6Sav0SxAFGkgvVbJFQ0hvuDX8W97kitkfVtgFkijSVk/s320/DSC04836.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRkqXQgq_R1z9Q0SmjeydKL_dyyC8K2Ajssmj_0zZ6-RGZa1zA0ls0YmjdETMjvhVNJQC-yh6ZNeb2KzuL4JQqhOgnoe1q2XgXnjWLPARoqFvVwubM8ZEl3Kt8kMtL9IEG46DjxBOZmsQ/s1600-h/DSC04837.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506655322889250" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRkqXQgq_R1z9Q0SmjeydKL_dyyC8K2Ajssmj_0zZ6-RGZa1zA0ls0YmjdETMjvhVNJQC-yh6ZNeb2KzuL4JQqhOgnoe1q2XgXnjWLPARoqFvVwubM8ZEl3Kt8kMtL9IEG46DjxBOZmsQ/s320/DSC04837.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBd5eZ_7U2S4CHjRpj9ULRdtMCXA_xEZUeD_UGB00Ui6vQ7LCs5NEbWkRUGo9MfIXy-1Sxtt_QKrLQtD8opGwU2c422siR1f8xF8qLjF240Z0WB3M7Wvc_tUMc7ASEFrcxibBcXY9PUgc/s1600-h/DSC04839.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506644704789410" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBd5eZ_7U2S4CHjRpj9ULRdtMCXA_xEZUeD_UGB00Ui6vQ7LCs5NEbWkRUGo9MfIXy-1Sxtt_QKrLQtD8opGwU2c422siR1f8xF8qLjF240Z0WB3M7Wvc_tUMc7ASEFrcxibBcXY9PUgc/s320/DSC04839.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>A place to curl up with the company<br /></strong>By Steven Kurutz<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />OXFORD, Mississippi: It probably wouldn't be accurate to say that the most interesting people within a 75-mile radius were gathered at the home of Richard and Lisa Howorth here on a recent Thursday evening, but, then again, the claim might not be too far off.<br />In the Howorths' living room, the humorist John Hodgman was chatting with the actress Joey Lauren Adams. John T. Edge, a food writer, was hanging out in the kitchen, near a big pot of gumbo Lisa Howorth had cooked the night before, as was a mellifluously named Mississippian, Semmes Luckett, who was telling Hunter S. Thompson stories (they were buddies in Aspen, Colorado). Roy Blount Jr., meanwhile, held forth in the dining room, drinking whiskey and proving that a good party can sustain more than one professional humorist.<br />Other guests included the novelist Jack Pendarvis; a co-founder of Fat Possum Records, Matthew Johnson; and the author Dean Faulkner Wells, whose uncle, William Faulkner, is Oxford's most famous son. At some point, the New York-based singer and songwriter known as Milton and members of his backup band, who were passing through Oxford on tour, began twisting to '60s dance records, like the Bar-Kays' "Soul Finger." It was, as they say, that kind of night.<br />The link among all of these people is the Howorths, who own Square Books, a local institution and one of the country's better-known independent bookstores. (They also operate an annex, Off Square Books, and a store specializing in children's books.)<br />Located in a 19th-century brick building on Oxford's elegantly preserved town square, the store is a popular stop on book tours, and the couple has become friendly with a lot of writers in the 29 years they've been in business. They often invite visiting authors to stay at their five-bedroom house instead of in a hotel.<br />Hodgman, who is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, and Blount - both in town to appear on "Thacker Mountain Radio," a variety program co-created by Richard Howorth and broadcast live each Thursday from Off Square Books - were the writers-in-residence on this particular night. But on any given week, especially in the fall, the publishing industry's busy season, a best-selling novelist or first-time author is likely to be sleeping in the downstairs guest room.<br />"We run a pretty relaxed household," said Lisa Howorth. To stay there, "you have to be able to put up with dog hair and a certain amount of slack housekeeping."<br />The novelists Nick McDonell and the journalist Nicholas Dawidoff were recent guests; the full guestbook is slightly longer than Joyce's "Ulysses" and includes such literary names as Richard Ford, Ann Patchett, Alexander McCall Smith, Donna Tartt and Madison Smartt Bell.<br />As the Howorths' 27-year-old daughter, Claire, explained it, her parents "basically run a B&B for writers," although there's no cost and the entertainment tends to be livelier than a traditional innkeeper might provide. Take, for instance, the time Lisa Howorth took the British novelist Graham Swift on a road trip through the Delta. Or the many nights when the couple piled into their car and drove a writer out to a juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, owned by the bluesman Junior Kimbrough, who died in 1998. "It's 30 miles away," she said, "but what's 30 miles when you have a car and a bottle of bourbon?"<br />For authors engaged in the often dispiriting ritual known as the book tour, rolling into Oxford is a blessed respite.<br />"When you go to a bookstore, you think of it as a lonely outpost, but this is the opposite of a lonely outpost," said Blount, whose affection for the Howorths and their store is such that in the author photo for his most recent book, "Alphabet Juice," he's wearing a Square Books ball cap.<br />Gary Fisketjon, an editor at Knopf, has sent many writers to Oxford and himself stayed with the Howorths. "I love their house - it's amazing how many people you can wad in that place," he said. Asked to describe a typical evening, Fisketjon said: "It's food, it's music, it's plenty of whiskey. They are people who know how to have a good time."<br />If there were a publication called Southern Home and Book, the Howorth place would be the editorial template. There's a big wrap-around porch typical of antebellum manors, and the downstairs hall is given over to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The décor is a mix of eccentricity and faded gentility; in the parlor stands a wobbly-sounding piano, topped by a toy talking monkey.<br />Across the hall is the room where visiting writers stay. It's furnished simply, with a table, an armoire, a desk, file cabinets and antique twin beds that a friend picked up at a flea market in Atlanta.<br />Lisa Howorth's approach to houseguests is laissez-faire. "If they want to be left alone to work, that's fine," she said. "If they'd like to get out and go into town to socialize at a restaurant or bar, we can do that, too."</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>In Canada, National Gallery seeks to leave controversy behind</strong><br />By Ian Austen<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />OTTAWA: Like most prominent and publicly financed institutions here, the National Gallery of Canada does not escape controversy.<br />Usually the fuss is over art. In 1990, several politicians derided the museum in Parliament for acquiring "Voice of Fire" (1967), a huge minimalist painting with three vertical stripes by Barnett Newman, for $1.45 million. (The disturbance eventually died down, and the painting's value has risen considerably.)<br />Now as Pierre Théberge prepares to end his 11-year tenure as the director of the National Gallery, Canada's wealthiest art institution, the museum is immersed in a controversy that has more in common with television comedies like "The Office" than debates about expenditures on paintings.<br />The chain of events has included the dismissal of David Franklin, the museum's deputy director and curator; the filing of a lawsuit by Franklin and his subsequent rehiring; the release of a series of unusually vitriolic internal e-mail messages; court filings that discuss the gallery's "toxic" working atmosphere; and, finally, the appointment of a new director who is to take over next month.<br />Throughout the conflict, Théberge, 66, who was once mainly seen by the public as an eccentric who brought his terriers to work, has faced allegations from Franklin, 47, that he is "medically unfit" for his job.<br />"This has been a disgrace," said René Blouin, a leading art dealer in Montreal, adding, "It's very damaging for museums of that caliber when there is not pride at the top."<br />Unions that represent some of the workers at the gallery have complained for years about the lack of respect toward employees under the leadership of Théberge and Franklin. Three years ago, the auditor general, a parliamentary body that analyzes government operations, found that the gallery lacked a system for evaluating its workers properly.<br />Yet it was a seemingly minor act, the deletion of e-mail messages, that has put the gallery's internal workings on public display.<br />In April, Franklin dismissed Erika Dolphin, the assistant curator of European and American art, along with several other people in what he described in a court filing as a cost-cutting move.<br />Soon afterward, Dolphin's union filed a request under the federal government's access-to-information laws for the release of all material related to her dismissal, including e-mail messages, which the law requires government departments and agencies to archive.<br />There was a problem: Franklin was unusually methodical about deleting e-mail messages.<br />In a court filing, he describes how he would regularly engage in sessions of "double-deleting," a practice that might be more accurately termed triple-deleting. First, he deleted e-mail messages from his sent box and in box. Then he removed them from a deleted messages folder, and finally he removed them from a folder for recovering deleted e-mail messages. It was, he said in a sworn statement, all for his mental well-being.<br />"I find this process of purging around 2,000 e-mails each week to be very therapeutic," Franklin testified in an affidavit. "This routine of clearing e-mail assists me to clear my mind in order to concentrate on research and scholarly work."<br />One of his e-mail purges immediately followed Dolphin's removal. It was intended, Franklin testified, to remove any material that might embarrass her.<br />Franklin, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, disputes that the process completely destroyed his messages. The National Gallery and its lawyers contend otherwise. After several exchanges over the deletions, he was dismissed for what the museum called "just cause" - which means that it did not offer him severance pay - on June 11. The gallery's director of personnel, who was involved in the deleting, was suspended.<br />But in suing to recover his job, Franklin argued that the accusations about his e-mail deletions, which are the subject of a federal investigation with the potential for criminal charges, were merely a pretext to remove him as a challenger to Théberge, whose term as director expires on Sunday.<br />"I believe that Mr. Théberge is desperate to do anything in his power to prolong his term as director," Franklin testified. "Removing me as a strong potential candidate for his position is part of his strategy."<br />Despite Franklin's e-mail deletions, the National Gallery did recover messages sent to and from others, including some from Graham Larkin, the curator of European and American art and an ally of Franklin.<br />In one e-mail message addressed to Franklin and released by the Federal Court of Canada, Larkin used a vulgar expression to describe most of the gallery's senior managers and curators and offered a similarly coarse suggestion for what should be done to Franklin's opponents, including Théberge. Adding to the embarrassment was an affidavit in which Franklin testified that Théberge had become unfit for his job because of Parkinson's disease. He cited what he said was Théberge's tendency to doze off at meetings and "increasing nostalgia."<br />In an interview, Théberge declined to discuss any of Franklin's assertions. He said that running the museum, which receives more than $40 million of its $47 million budget from the national government, posed unique challenges.<br />"In Ottawa, you have to learn how it works," he said, referring to the government's oversight of the museum. What is more, he said, it took him a while to adjust to the National Gallery's ways.<br />"The gallery has a structure on paper that's very clear," he said. "But in fact it's full of quirky characteristics."<br />Although Franklin returned to his job - without the administrative duties - in July under an out-of-court settlement, he failed in his bid to succeed Théberge.<br />Because the National Gallery's director is appointed by the federal Cabinet, the succession process became a source of anxiety in the arts community this fall. During a federal election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut financing for some arts projects while characterizing artists as a "bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough."<br />Yet after the vote kept a Conservative government in office, Harper pleasantly surprised many in the arts community by appointing Marc Mayer, 52, who currently heads the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, to replace Théberge. Mayer has curatorial experience in museums in the United States and Canada.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgsDXhyphenhyphenjZQNzsUlC0Q9xJAZhA2RR_yr1WazZ-EUn3aQKUGQEGWYEITj2aF8aX0whDKc9UkhRcmDPmCog5VOy0-q_j5QbEnl2edbVSaRfjKlkch41_ILPRZ2lB2AcS4ZVmJE8xG0Eqhsn4/s1600-h/DSC04840.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506644678383730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgsDXhyphenhyphenjZQNzsUlC0Q9xJAZhA2RR_yr1WazZ-EUn3aQKUGQEGWYEITj2aF8aX0whDKc9UkhRcmDPmCog5VOy0-q_j5QbEnl2edbVSaRfjKlkch41_ILPRZ2lB2AcS4ZVmJE8xG0Eqhsn4/s320/DSC04840.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Book review: 'On Architecture'<br /></strong>Reviewed by Justin Davidson<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />On Architecture Collected Reflections on a Century of Change. By Ada Louise Huxtable. 478 pages. Walker & Company. $35<br />"The first observation that one must make about the new CBS headquarters," Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in 1966, "is that it is a building."<br />It takes a lot of moxie to open a piece of serious criticism with such a lofty declaration of the obvious, offered in praise, without sarcasm or irony. But then Huxtable, who was the architecture critic for The New York Times from 1963 to 1982 and still, at 87, tosses out the occasional bravura essay for The Wall Street Journal, has never lacked nerve. With an authority that verges on the oracular, she flicks away giants: "The style of the Kennedy Center is Washington superscale, but just a little bit bigger. Albert Speer would have approved." She calls out eminences ("Inside Edward Durell Stone, there is an architect signaling to get out") and ordains geniuses ("Frank Gehry is the most staggeringly talented architect that this country has produced since Frank Lloyd Wright"). So if Huxtable declares "Black Rock," the glowering corporate palazzo that Eero Saarinen bestowed on CBS, to be a building, then it's worth reading on to discover what she means.<br />Her point, which remains as germane today as it was four decades ago, is that the mute brawn of the tower's exterior can't be separated from its structure and function. Rather than trying to disguise its bulk in a shiny, frilly sheath, Black Rock displays the muscle that is every tower's birthright, and the masses who find it charmless are just plain wrong. "The dark dignity that appeals to architectural sophisticates puts off the public, which tends to reject it as funereal," she acknowledges. "The first fault, therefore, is in the public eye."<br />Huxtable has been training that eye for nearly half a century. Given how often it still gets blackened by architectural sucker punches, she hasn't yet completed her task. But "On Architecture," a career-spanning collection of articles and essays, demonstrates that she has always pursued her mission with reason, elegance and wisdom. Huxtable's work remains the gold standard of criticism, and not just the architectural variety, because she brings to the job a rare combination of aesthetic certitude and roving curiosity.<br />Her aesthetic forged by the austerities of highest modernism, she adapted cheerfully to successive waves of flamboyance. From the start of her career, she admired Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier because they were her generation's deities, and later had no trouble recognizing the more baroque talents of Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Santiago Calatrava. Review by review, essay by persuasive essay, she erects an impressive structure supported by the force of sheer reasonableness. She applauds economy but detests cheapness, appreciates expressivity but abhors showiness, and above all demands that a building make sense.<br />For a colleague less than half her age, it is awesome to observe her pronouncing judgment on elements of New York City that have come to seem immemorial.<br />In 1963, she reported with dismay on the Pan Am Building's new immensity: "A $100 million building cannot really be called cheap. But Pan Am is a colossal collection of minimums. ... Pan Am's one effective aesthetic feature is its brutality. In afternoon sun, from lower Park Avenue, its patterned mass rises with striking power behind the dwarfed familiarity of Grand Central's proper academic facade."<br />Today, the building (rebaptized the MetLife in 1991) has become so familiar, so comfortingly alpine in its overweening bulk, that it's difficult to imagine a time before its construction.<br />The reader who switches back and forth between these sparsely illustrated pages and a good collection of historical photographs (or nyc-architecture.com) can watch the millennial metropolis take shape and metamorphose. Under Huxtable's gaze, Midtown acquires its parade of pinstriped boxes. Lincoln Center opens ("expensively suave, extravagantly commonplace"). Le Corbusier passes into legend, bequeathing the 20th-century city his great art and disastrous philosophies. The World Trade Center goes up, the twin towers "could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world," she wrote in 1966. Huxtable responds to the destruction of 9/11 with a far-seeing suite of essays in which she (1) outlines the debacle that will follow disaster if the usual development narrative unfolds; (2) pronounces Libeskind's initial master plan an unexpected miracle amid "a dyslexic process (everything backward) that made all the mistakes in the plan book and invented a few"; and (3) falls back in a quintessentially Huxtabulatory mixture of optimism and exasperation. "I do not believe for a moment that we are no longer capable of building great cities of symbolic beauty and enduring public amenity," she writes. "What ground zero tells us is that we have lost the faith and the nerve, the knowledge and the leadership, to make it happen now."<br />Anyone who cares about architecture will want to argue with Huxtable. Her opinions are too finely honed not to draw blood, her targets too varied not to include some admirers, too. An ardent preservationist, she reserves her most tempered blades of scorn for the champions of false restoration. If the closest you get to buying this book is skimming it in a bookstore aisle, at least turn to Page 424 and read "The Way It Never Was," in which she fulminates coolly against Colonial Williamsburg, where "studious fudging of facts received its scholarly imprimatur," and where "history and place as themed artifact hit the big time."<br />Though Huxtable has survived innumerable conversions of conventional wisdom, she declares in the introduction that, like Edith Piaf, she regrets rien, not even her praise for Boston's much-detested City Hall. To disagree with her is to confront a nimble and thorough foe. Her arguments are impeccably engineered, her style frugal and efficient, her tolerance for humbug nil. The biggest buildings rise in a swirl of jargon and flackery, which she always pointedly ignores.<br />The stance of queenly sagacity overlaps only occasionally with the messy reality of cities that evolve simultaneously at every scale. Architecture is not just the product of architects, but of the people who use it, the tides of humanity that flow through a large building year after year, simultaneously wreaking havoc on the design and defining its degree of success. Cities also require a great many small and undistinguished buildings, without which the standouts would not stand out. Huxtable, however, is only rarely moved by the contradictions of urbanism or the architecture of the ordinary. Her beat is monuments.<br />Which brings us back to the CBS building, a brooding stele that defies employees to enter it without a heavy sigh. Like the devout modernist she is, Huxtable savors the lucidity of Saarinen's design because "it all fits together in an economical scheme that unifies structure, planning and aesthetics."<br />The same might be said for her prose. She shuns metaphor and doesn't bother to riffle the thesaurus for active verbs. The word "is" tolls through her sentences, and in her hands that weak, neutral syllable acquires a kind of prophetic majesty. (And it doesn't depend on what the meaning of "is" is.) She has always understood, and sometimes wished, that a quarter-mile-high agglomeration of concrete and steel could be discarded. Nevertheless, she writes with the hope that the greatest buildings will prove perennial, and so she hammers at the fact of their existence. A bad building might disappoint or overreach; a good one simply is.<br />Justin Davidson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2002, is the classical music and architecture critic for New York magazine.<br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGcrpXdExIELIzZEtBumSpSihNebwCabTpzcLdVfhdPBmem0N9uwCFHZok2faV1ksS9vpf8zcrzOEHpERF4TNOUeIfmQQoVdbz47Dcu5lZQKi9NYqwyjejbZtm8boyK6a4DYF-JJqWls/s1600-h/DSC04842.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506640864518994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGcrpXdExIELIzZEtBumSpSihNebwCabTpzcLdVfhdPBmem0N9uwCFHZok2faV1ksS9vpf8zcrzOEHpERF4TNOUeIfmQQoVdbz47Dcu5lZQKi9NYqwyjejbZtm8boyK6a4DYF-JJqWls/s320/DSC04842.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2CKFjvoTEYa7fIdEhKiBGFIhfsKIoMfQmJp-H1Z83TWt0plp7pnDW5fEUcH6xYZ8okOja2Eo0flGkP4kE7OiE6t-qtmuc2BGU27x0TpJIxnFpc_xWmKULv4FCJW6UGDCPoW3-5j9ebaU/s1600-h/DSC04844.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506350405178034" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 243px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8vzp5v-BVZ4fSzKnac_3SEG2hLM9gHZ4fEUv1lot0haLvoiS2SUv3wsza8wCXRPyGM4judnumDe12W-zF5Lynq2vKV1ZfHSm1cLBPsuKSF1DLBl80f5ote6R4E8Wxvtoyle3vzcTyjHM/s320/DSC04854.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3bTGAcpqr5UolF913cEQNser5e73JobqfHBEcJli5oH3BCXhszyCP0z1i3bIL_vXyACRnx86CsykMDQNR3qAUvd9D2HCnZHPZU-ShKr44d1VOhdn3dW6Rxj9lqVeswtmNx2Ye2sMNNkg/s1600-h/DSC04855.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506051285314866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3bTGAcpqr5UolF913cEQNser5e73JobqfHBEcJli5oH3BCXhszyCP0z1i3bIL_vXyACRnx86CsykMDQNR3qAUvd9D2HCnZHPZU-ShKr44d1VOhdn3dW6Rxj9lqVeswtmNx2Ye2sMNNkg/s320/DSC04855.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijw8L7YfDqP-gFak5_PGsYhdAZesyUQ9eX_3y_Q_2rAotlZvg3imfeOGih1kXjAR-biJlGYL-yh5nZkM5ytT9dQTfdSLrS73lM0X1cWycpnYovK5N-yzMTFnTi69A7Io8x_2lKGgDxbgQ/s1600-h/DSC04857.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506044906831234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijw8L7YfDqP-gFak5_PGsYhdAZesyUQ9eX_3y_Q_2rAotlZvg3imfeOGih1kXjAR-biJlGYL-yh5nZkM5ytT9dQTfdSLrS73lM0X1cWycpnYovK5N-yzMTFnTi69A7Io8x_2lKGgDxbgQ/s320/DSC04857.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzri0mnds4ozNbQ3dAgp7p5DqwNtmqSIgeIEMy9ZsmSi_dgm25FBfLK5IOabJ15TYFRSTZ64qlrWOxIV9f6TmTy8bAzwfToS8Qg4nFEuwdDDfRhPn5aKBGaUhLGJJz-r7J6denB-PJSKg/s1600-h/DSC04858.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285506038721804562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzri0mnds4ozNbQ3dAgp7p5DqwNtmqSIgeIEMy9ZsmSi_dgm25FBfLK5IOabJ15TYFRSTZ64qlrWOxIV9f6TmTy8bAzwfToS8Qg4nFEuwdDDfRhPn5aKBGaUhLGJJz-r7J6denB-PJSKg/s320/DSC04858.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>Mexican officer accused of working with cartels</strong><br />By Sam Dillon and Antonio Betancourt<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />MEXICO CITY: Mexicans got new word Saturday of the narcotics mafias' relentless efforts to infiltrate the government here when authorities accused a midranking army officer in the elite presidential guard of selling information about the whereabouts of President Felipe Calderón to the drug lords.<br />The officer, Major Arturo González Rodríguez, was taken into custody, and a judge authorized his provisional detention for 40 days, giving prosecutors time to collect evidence that he accepted thousands of dollars from traffickers in exchange for reports on President Calderón's movements, the federal attorney general's office said Saturday.<br />The communiqué announcing González's arrest did not clarify the motives the cartels might have had in buying the classified information, and a government official interviewed about the arrest late Saturday was not more specific. But Mexican newspapers quoted officials as saying that González was paid $100,000 for information about the president's movements so that the traffickers, who move in heavily armed convoys of SUVs, could avoid crossing paths with his security detail.<br />Calderón, a technocrat from Mexico's center-right party who began a six-year term in 2006, has used thousands of army troops and federal police officers in an offensive aimed at curbing the traffickers' increasing violence. There have been some 5,000 grisly killings this year, and a wave of kidnappings for ransom. Many of the murders have resulted from turf wars between rival cartels, but the drug lords have also carried out terrorist attacks of a type little known here previously, seemingly intended to defy the power of the Mexican state head-on.<br />These attacks have included a grenade explosion on a crowd of Independence Day revelers in the capital of Calderón's home state, Michoacán, in September that killed eight people and wounded more than 100.<br />And on Dec. 21, traffickers kidnapped at least seven army recruits as they left a garrison in the state of Guerrero for a Christmas leave. After torturing and decapitating the unarmed soldiers, the killers left their heads on public display with a message warning the military to discontinue antidrug operations.<br />The terrifying proliferation of the drug war is spurring a strategic debate. This month, Rubén Aguilar, the former spokesman for President Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox, said publicly that the drug war was unwinnable, offering to legalize some forms of drug commerce if the cartels would end their attacks.<br />"Narcotics trafficking is not going to end," Aguilar said. "What we can do is diminish the violence."<br />President Calderón said days later that he would never negotiate. "Using the entire force of the state, we will confront and defeat the enemies of Mexico," he said.<br />González's detention was not the first of its kind here. In 2005, authorities detained a former travel coordinator for then-President Fox, accusing the staff member of selling information to traffickers. But a judge threw out the charges.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>U.S. Congress to examine Madoff case on Monday<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Rachelle Younglai<br />U.S. lawmakers will take their first close look next Monday at financier Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion (34.6 billion pound) fraud and why the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to discover the scandal.<br />Information gleaned from the hearing will help guide Congress as it attempts to reform laws regulating the U.S. financial system, said Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the House capital markets subcommittee.<br />"Madoff's actions have further weakened the already battered investor confidence in our securities markets," Kanjorski said in a statement on Monday.<br />Madoff, a former Wall Street fund manager, is accused of running a $50 billion fraud that ensnared investors and charities around the world, according to authorities.<br />Critics say the SEC missed warning signs and failed to uncover the scandal until Madoff's sons went to the authorities and told them he confessed to the fraud. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has asked an internal watchdog to probe the investor protection agency's conduct in the case.<br />Kanjorski said the Congressional hearing will examine if the SEC had enough staff and budget to police the markets.<br />"These proceedings will help us to discern whether or not the SEC had the resources needed to get the job done, how such a sizable scheme could have evaded detection for so long, and what new safeguards we need to put in place to protect investors," the lawmaker said.<br />Kanjorski did not identify who will testify at the hearing, scheduled for the day before the new Congress convenes. President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn into office on January 20.<br />The Madoff scandal, Kanjorski added, "provides a glaring example" of why Congress must launch the biggest reform of financial markets regulation since the Great Depression. Other lawmakers, including Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, have said they want to streamline and improve the tangled U.S. regulatory structure that oversees banks and financial services.<br />Madoff is accused of running a giant Ponzi scheme, where he paid off early investors with money from later investors. He faces a criminal fraud charge filed by the U.S. Justice Department and a civil lawsuit filed by the SEC.<br />A federal judge in New York City recently set a December 31 deadline for Madoff to give the SEC a verified written accounting of his firm's records, bank accounts and other investments.<br />In addition to the federal lawsuits, a New York City investor who said she gave Madoff $2 million to manage sued the SEC and is seeking $1.7 million in damages from the federal agency.<br />(Editing by Phil Berlowitz)</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Impeachment panel offered tapes on Blagojevich</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />CHICAGO: Prosecutors agreed on Monday to provide an impeachment panel with tape-recordings in which investigators say Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is heard scheming to sell the powers of his office.<br />Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, said he will ask a judge next week for permission to turn over redacted versions of four intercepted conversations in which investigators say Blagojevich is heard talking about exchanging state funding and contracts for campaign contributions.<br />Up to now, Fitzgerald has asked the impeachment committee not to subpoena witnesses that might bear on the criminal conspiracy case against Blagojevich that includes charges the second-term Democratic governor tried to peddle his power to fill President-elect Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat.<br />The impeachment panel acceded to Fitzgerald's request not to call Obama's future chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and two other Obama aides to testify. Fitzgerald has said Obama is not implicated in the case.<br />Blagojevich's attorney, Edward Genson, submitted to the panel an internal report ordered by Obama that concluded there were no inappropriate dealings between Obama's staff and the governor or his office.<br />The fate of Obama's vacant Senate seat is in limbo, with Blagojevich not expected to fill it because of the taint of the investigation and Democrats who control the state legislature putting off consideration of a special election.<br />Also on Monday, Emanuel announced he would resign his seat representing a Illinois district in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 2. The seat will be filled by a special election.<br />Blagojevich, 52, has vehemently denied doing anything wrong, defying calls from within his own party to resign and saying the impeachment effort is led by "a political lynch mob."<br />Genson said the governor would not appear before the impeachment panel, which he criticized as failing to follow standards for evidence.<br />(Reporting by Andrew Stern, editing by Vicki Allen)<br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCHKNidUEwo2BU09pCKc_yhDdTmuGtkZFMh8dLWNNpl2hxeaDaTpxbwcj72QzzHwaxDO42cF-cBDHwK0wbCjfQfQtV90qvGEVXWGW6RGvQRv3WEAVZLOSpCbuABxewYQY9yk_hKZnO5uc/s1600-h/DSC04859.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285505750231106994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCHKNidUEwo2BU09pCKc_yhDdTmuGtkZFMh8dLWNNpl2hxeaDaTpxbwcj72QzzHwaxDO42cF-cBDHwK0wbCjfQfQtV90qvGEVXWGW6RGvQRv3WEAVZLOSpCbuABxewYQY9yk_hKZnO5uc/s320/DSC04859.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEionT79dbiSisTXKYBz1N-FFalwl-IBiasH9YC1bRVvBObLP8jXnJ1apgsOnCGNsIYg0gixLuJuNMLV_a68L7Cp34luAYlk6BJFtxFv09qIyFS9VXZljrdcV06ZqetMgOj3xt1ILiRBpSY/s1600-h/DSC04862.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285505747433176706" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhawjAIeTp2OYhC5Ez067nqYBrgAZLeSrnWm6S4aKWTkh39OltOrvIYI-mnqUJDamDzxe1jOwVehFuRKSmBuzOI217PRzb9EDCHe-t2VVMmSxGWr4G927Ibfp3c3l-YcM60Jju38lMDA40/s320/DSC04870.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVDO4i7Dhc-OUyh89X0soA2Yp9B2nadEHfIZeGWXJat8UuqQTFE05RNFpTNv4wnuMeJaJhFWDAqNdJHO2WFaetf66V0xaIx35RBE_6WTr76Ob_ctNfvDtZyc2EdMo8bWEqUyvpr-wXBgw/s1600-h/DSC04872.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285505246106644674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVDO4i7Dhc-OUyh89X0soA2Yp9B2nadEHfIZeGWXJat8UuqQTFE05RNFpTNv4wnuMeJaJhFWDAqNdJHO2WFaetf66V0xaIx35RBE_6WTr76Ob_ctNfvDtZyc2EdMo8bWEqUyvpr-wXBgw/s320/DSC04872.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqJNSe6LTy3AGwK-2LxxL1qv8MB7Iwf29gbGbIKrn1BRcokSgi2Px4bTQaJ04NvEU1jaOZXuuFVXvhlvSACoy5ogU9GPziuaAAWToAi-UhMv6X9_PGkYW2HOEOkIP_Vc2iLjUolle_BEk/s1600-h/DSC04873.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285505245487861762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqJNSe6LTy3AGwK-2LxxL1qv8MB7Iwf29gbGbIKrn1BRcokSgi2Px4bTQaJ04NvEU1jaOZXuuFVXvhlvSACoy5ogU9GPziuaAAWToAi-UhMv6X9_PGkYW2HOEOkIP_Vc2iLjUolle_BEk/s320/DSC04873.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-Ptiyins82Fubh6_VK1lva24n7CAdlh0ooZwpq0XAM-0l7ZULUOweS5dKtBP8IIDVDXA63m4PCdmBoSRgEdSt6K9SoRDG5m3lH7RJJRBWjjIYes35yjkIZmKwmKg3vSGDntG6Z9NlAU/s1600-h/DSC04874.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285504884413713698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-Ptiyins82Fubh6_VK1lva24n7CAdlh0ooZwpq0XAM-0l7ZULUOweS5dKtBP8IIDVDXA63m4PCdmBoSRgEdSt6K9SoRDG5m3lH7RJJRBWjjIYes35yjkIZmKwmKg3vSGDntG6Z9NlAU/s320/DSC04874.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqh1W06h-IPGKKKL0kCNwuOLAnYoKvOylDbxtyUGQWtxxOBdNOGkMjBC0KoZIWJLwLnK_efGersfOwLN0nfPmGU2XfJYRYCAva8EIk8RNjPuljzVajUPBoLVtZlkxx9BeqI9zrk5M5yqw/s1600-h/DSC04875.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285504881985977266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 242px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqh1W06h-IPGKKKL0kCNwuOLAnYoKvOylDbxtyUGQWtxxOBdNOGkMjBC0KoZIWJLwLnK_efGersfOwLN0nfPmGU2XfJYRYCAva8EIk8RNjPuljzVajUPBoLVtZlkxx9BeqI9zrk5M5yqw/s320/DSC04875.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT-7xmatD1epnysHHc2kdOOGaEuy1qu43avfBfqOxS_yWZOBM0yWg88J97N9BOxfloQkAbs34OHdYoFE4PaA9FIQ8pvy3OUF6M6TgpZSaZax5telrHEHnxQxqxoj83KHOchPzum2h0_6s/s1600-h/DSC04876.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285504879700358402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT-7xmatD1epnysHHc2kdOOGaEuy1qu43avfBfqOxS_yWZOBM0yWg88J97N9BOxfloQkAbs34OHdYoFE4PaA9FIQ8pvy3OUF6M6TgpZSaZax5telrHEHnxQxqxoj83KHOchPzum2h0_6s/s320/DSC04876.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>Spain offers citizenship to exiles' descendants<br /></strong>By Rachel Donadio<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />ROME: Descendants of those exiled from Spain during the Spanish Civil War and the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco may claim Spanish citizenship under new legislation that went into effect over the weekend.<br />The Spanish government expects half a million people, many of them in Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, to file for citizenship under the new measure, the Spanish newspaper El País reported.<br />A government spokesman was not immediately able to confirm the figure.<br />The citizenship law covers the period from July 18, 1936, to Dec. 31, 1955, which includes the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and the first decades of the fascist dictatorship, which ended with Franco's death in 1975.<br />The act is part of the "law of historical memory," a landmark and controversial piece of legislation passed last year by the Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero aimed at encouraging Spain to resolve issues from its bloody 20th-century history.<br />The law also provides public financing to unearth the mass graves in which thousands of Spaniards were buried during the war. It also requires the removal of many symbols from the Franco dictatorship from state buildings and public spaces.<br />Those applying for citizenship must present proof of their parents' or grandparents' place and date of birth, according to the Web site of the Spanish Justice Ministry. The government plans to accept applications until December 2010. Those deemed eligible would not have to renounce their other citizenship.</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance</strong><br />By John Vinocur<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />AMSTERDAM: Two years ago, the Dutch could quietly congratulate themselves on having brought what seemed to be a fair measure of consensus and reason to the meanest intersection in their national political life: the one where integration of Muslim immigrants crossed Dutch identity.<br />In the run-up to choosing a new government in 2006, just 24 percent of the voters considered the issue important, and only 4 percent regarded it as the election's central theme.<br />What a turnabout, it seemed - and whatever the reason (spent passions, optimism, resignation?), it was a soothing respite for a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population.<br />Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Netherlands had lived through something akin to a populist revolt against accommodating Islamic immigrants led by Pim Fortuyn, who was later murdered; the assassination of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, accused of blasphemy by a homegrown Muslim killer; and the bitter departure from the Netherlands of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who became a member of Parliament before being marked for death for her criticism of radical Islam.<br />Now something fairly remarkable is happening again.<br />Two weeks ago, the country's biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch "tolerance."<br />It came at the same time Nicolas Sarkozy was making a case in France for greater opportunities for minorities that also contained an admission that the French notion of equality "doesn't work anymore."<br />But there was a difference. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims' obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor's chairperson, was exceptional.<br />The paper said: "The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance."<br />Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.<br />Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid "self-designated victimization."<br />She asserted, "the grip of the homeland has to disappear" for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.<br />Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be "bringing our values into confrontation with people who think otherwise."<br />There was more: punishment for trouble-making young people has to become so effective such that when they emerge from jail they are not automatically big shots, Ploumen said.<br />For Ploumen, talking to the local media, "The street is mine, too. I don't want to walk away if they're standing in my path.<br />"Without a strategy to deal with these issues, all discussion about creating opportunities and acceptance of diversity will be blocked by suspicion and negative experience."<br />And that comes from the heart of the traditional, democratic European left, where placing the onus of compatibility on immigrants never found such comfort before.<br />It's a point of view that makes reference to work and education as essential, but without the emphasis that they are the single path to integration.<br />Rather, Labor's line seems to stand on its head the old equation of jobs-plus-education equals integration. Conforming to Dutch society's social standards now comes first. Strikingly, it turns its back on cultural relativism and uses the word emancipation in discussing the process of outsiders' becoming Dutch.<br />For the Netherlands' Arab and Turkish population (about 6 percent of a total of 16 million) it refers to jobs and educational opportunities as "machines of emancipation." Yet it also suggests that employment and advancement will not come in full measure until there is a consciousness engagement in Dutch life by immigrants that goes far beyond the present level.<br />Indeed, Ploumen says, "Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally." Immigrants must "take responsibility for this country" and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.<br />Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, "The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women on citizenship.<br />"We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society."<br />And the obligations of the native Dutch? Ploumen's answer is, "People who have their roots here have to offer space to traditions, religions and cultures which are new to Dutch society" - but without fear of expressing criticism. "Hurting feelings is allowed, and criticism of religion, too."<br />The why of this happening now when a recession could accelerate new social tensions, particularly among nonskilled workers, has a couple of explanations.<br />A petty, political one: It involves a Labor Party on an uptick, with its the party chief, Wouter Bos, who serves as finance minister, showing optimism that the Dutch can avoid a deep recession. The cynical take has him casting the party's new integration policy as a fresh bid to consolidate momentum ahead of elections for the European Parliament in June.<br />A kinder, gentler explanation (that comes, remarkably, from Frits Bolkestein, the former Liberal Party leader, European commissioner, and no friend of the socialists, who began writing in 1991 about the enormous challenge posed to Europe by Muslim immigration):<br />"The multi-cultis just aren't making the running anymore. It's a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country. "</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div>Hundreds of migrants feared dead in Indian Ocean<br />By Mark McDonald<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />HONG KONG: Hundreds of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar are missing and feared dead in the Bay of Bengal, Indian Coast Guard officials and news agencies said Monday.<br />A coast guard official in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, said by telephone Monday that 99 migrants had been rescued, although more than 300 were still missing and presumably drowned.<br />The official, who said rescue efforts were ongoing, said it was still not clear where the migrants were headed, although an earlier coast guard statement said the men had left Bangladesh about 45 days ago, bound for Malaysia, where they were expecting to find work.<br />A survivor identified as Mohammad Ismail Arafat said he and others had paid a Bangladeshi agent for promised jobs, according to the statement.<br />"We were left to the mercy of God," he said, adding that their boat had drifted for about two weeks, apparently after losing power. "When finally we saw a lighthouse, many jumped into the water."<br />A coast guard commander, S.P. Sharma, said 88 men had been rescued in a small boat near Little Andaman Island, Reuters reported. Eleven others had been found on a small island nearby.<br />Little Andaman Island lies 1,300 kilometers, or about 800 miles, south of Bangladesh. If the men had been headed to Malaysia, they had another 1,100 kilometers to go.<br />The survivor told the police there had been there had been 412 men in their original vessel, according to Reuters. He said the migrants, between the ages of 18 and 60, had very little food and water, with only a plastic sheet for a sail.<br />Sharma said the survivor told the police that seven men had died at sea and their bodies were put over the side.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Bangladesh holds first vote in 2 years</strong><br />By Somini Sengupta and Julfikar Ali Manik<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />NEW DELHI: After two years of army-backed emergency rule, democracy returned to Muslim-majority Bangladesh on Monday, as voters thronged the polls to choose their next government in a largely peaceful and in many places festive atmosphere.<br />If the apparently high turnout - election officials said that it could exceed 70 percent - was an endorsement of elected civilian rule, it was also a challenge to the nation's political leaders to conduct themselves better than they had in recent years.<br />"I know politics in this country is dirty," said Monira Khanam, 22, a medical student who voted in the capital, Dhaka. "Now that the country is returning to democracy after two years, I expect politicians will behave better. It is out of this expectation that I've come out to vote."<br />These national elections had to be postponed for nearly two years because of repeated, violent clashes between rival political parties. The army-backed government, in taking over in January 2007, banned political activity altogether, took 11 million fake names off the old voter rolls, and arrested scores of politicians and businessmen on charges of corruption. According to human rights groups it also arrested scores of people arbitrarily and on some occasions, subjected them to torture.<br />Most of all, in its bid to clean up politics, the caretaker government sought to drive the two women who head the country's two principal parties out of politics forever: Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League and Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. It failed. The leaders refused to go into exile. Then, even after they were jailed on corruption charges, they fought to be let out and campaign for office.<br />The government relented, releasing both women - "the ladies," as they are known - earlier this year on bail as their cases wound through the courts.<br />They have alternately ruled this Muslim-majority nation of 153 million, and one of them is certain to head the next government. Hasina has formed an alliance with something called the Jatiya Party, while Zia has one with an Islamist faction known as Jamaat-e-Islamia.<br />Whether either will embrace reform remains to be seen. The final results for the 300-seat assembly are expected to be announced on Tuesday. It is unclear whether the loser in the race will accept the election verdict or resort to street violence as in the past. Equally unknown is whether the army will fully give up the reins of government and go back into the barracks.<br />Politics has long been a road to riches in Bangladesh, and connections to local politicians have been used to gain access to basic public goods, from university admissions to government jobs. Bangladesh has ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, even as it faces some of the toughest challenges, from a rise of Islamist extremism to climate change to abiding poverty.<br />For some voters, especially the poor, price rise of essential items was the most important issue. For others, it was public safety. "If the elected government upholds the law, people will be afraid to break it," Ariful Islam, 24, said in Dhaka.<br />Like Islam, at least a fifth of the country's 81 million registered voters are estimated to be first-time voters.<br />Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh.</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>China's great migration wrenched back by crisis<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 30, 2008<br />By Simon Rabinovitch<br />The biggest migration in human history has gone into reverse.<br />China's ocean of blue-collar workers is streaming back to the country's farming hinterland, bringing thwarted aspirations and rising discontent in tow as their city jobs, their paths out of poverty, fall victim to the global economic crisis.<br />Train K192 is a daily conduit of the reversing flow.<br />Every afternoon it pulls into Chengdu, capital of populous Sichuan province, after a 31-hour trip from Guangzhou, centre of China's once-thriving export heartland.<br />Hundreds of weary passengers, some of whom stand through the entire journey because seats are sold out, straggle into the grey light of the Chengdu winter and an uncertain future.<br />"Lots of factories have closed. Mine shut about three months ago. There was nothing to do, so I came home," said Wu Hao, 21, sporting a stylish striped sweater and a sleek metal suitcase.<br />After a year spent making circuit boards in Guangzhou, he was heading back to his family's patch of farmland, a full month before the Chinese new year when he would usually visit home.<br />Officials estimate that more than 10 million migrant labourers have already returned to the countryside as thousands of companies have been dragged under by weak global demand for everything from clothes to cars.<br />The government, always concerned about social instability, is now on high alert, fearful of the consequences of a huge mass of jobless, disappointed, rootless young men.<br />Beijing has urged firms to avoid cutting jobs despite falling profits, and many bosses have obliged by retaining workers but giving them unpaid leave.<br />"Sales were really bad and the boss just kept giving us holidays. We had 15 days off last month," said Tan Jun, who also clambered off train K192 in Chengdu. "Next year I won't go back."<br />With an impish smile, Tan looked more like a student than the factory hand he had been for a drug company in Dongguan, an industrial city next to Guangzhou.<br />"MENACE TO STABILITY"<br />Over the past three decades, about 130 million people have left China's countryside for the smokestacks, assembly lines and construction sites of cities.<br />That migration, described as the world's biggest ever by the United Nations, has underpinned the country's heady growth and also given its poorest citizens a share of the spoils, as urban residents' incomes are much higher than farmers'.<br />Known as China's "floating population," labourers rarely settle permanently where they work -- effectively prohibited from doing so by residency rules -- and return in droves to their hometowns for the Chinese lunar new year.<br />State media have put the best possible gloss on the in-bound tide of migrants under way: they are simply returning home early, one month ahead of the Year of the Ox which begins on January 26.<br />But China is heading into uncharted territory and the picture could deteriorate quickly. Many economists forecast growth next year of less than 7.5 percent, the country's lowest since 1990 and a level that would swell the ranks of the jobless.<br />"The redistribution of wealth through theft and robbery could dramatically increase and menaces to social stability will grow," Zhou Tianyong, a leading Communist Party scholar, wrote this month in a newspaper issued by a state think-tank.<br />Workers and officials alike hope the migration reversal is only temporary, but the numbers are too vast to ignore. The social security ministry says 10 percent of all migrants have already gone back to the countryside.<br />NEW ECONOMY?<br />China, in the short term at least, is pinning its hopes on a smooth absorption of the returnees.<br />"We expect that there will be a big change early next year, probably in March or April," said Wang Min, a director at the Yuhui LabourMarket in Chengdu. "A lot of people will stay here in Sichuan to look for work and not go to other provinces."<br />If so, they could be redrawing China's economic map.<br />Coastal provinces have long been the wealthiest in China and the main destination for migrants. But they have borne the brunt of falling exports, while the country's poorer hinterland is more closely tied to domestic fortunes that could rise on the back of a hefty government stimulus spending.<br />"We are seeing quite a few good, talented people come our way from Guangdong, people with business experience and skills," said Wei Chengyi, manager at Chengdu Doulton Trading Co., which sells ceramic filters. "It's a big help for us."<br />Unveiling its rural policy priorities for next year, the government said on Sunday that it will encourage unemployed people who return home to start their own businesses. Officials in Chongqing and Henan, two big sources of migrants, have already pledged to lend seed money.<br />Reconstruction after the devastating earthquake centred on Sichuan this year has also created a huge need for labour that will sop up some of the floating population.<br />"I'm not worried. There are still places you can find a job. And when you've got a lot of friends, it's quite easy," said Long Zhaojun, who had spent nearly four years in coastal factories.<br />Just off the train in Chengdu, Long said he would stay in the bustling city of 10 million for a while to hunt for jobs and have some fun. He was in no rush to return to his farming village.<br />(Additional reporting by Royston Chan; editing by Megan Goldin)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-VNh4_OGetcmRECPP5xXHhbPEOX7YRibajRR4iTWc44mYIrNQ1thzQD9Ltfq2_aXEcuR7Hgl_QS7DxxGlHBoRA6Q6L1LB1HYb_n7LR8zvk1TuHPlk1XhyIPfx9K6zcaieBG7RqA2Kvb4/s1600-h/DSC04877.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285504880689731730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-VNh4_OGetcmRECPP5xXHhbPEOX7YRibajRR4iTWc44mYIrNQ1thzQD9Ltfq2_aXEcuR7Hgl_QS7DxxGlHBoRA6Q6L1LB1HYb_n7LR8zvk1TuHPlk1XhyIPfx9K6zcaieBG7RqA2Kvb4/s320/DSC04877.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDKVQ4dNwZ54o3QV96wnO-2yZtxeNPSx3U3y0OQOtAJ-JvVD85tlmDT9eWz6Lgp_5vIflpTDqVFp7dtcXukO4UFnSo275EVwptHI79UCNjmbYEJgGmp73HLiExedNFzWcczdHgDcsAndU/s1600-h/DSC04878.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285504875738386274" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcfOWuz6QJ6jCR-Wnko9DABGXsFKLYFWVkFwgFbOwHscCr39cePTEaNiehFfCt0ijc_LcPUlDI4lQRjG8qxAfr8FOoSjp67bcMJhHGItsF6TQyD94tpposY2tw284oGXfrBZIZMHOTEw/s320/DSC04892.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4cWKlDWXpjjh45Els0sCiKbw5k8lE7GuHmwDy9IhAgcgoBRTS80gbTuMpYJyXGUluLW2i0UR-SvnZMCfheeTl3M_VphILivCLGSGiB3ECZtbJLO5O_9wzpqN-6lUEycnkE0SwGvhiq9w/s1600-h/DSC04894.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503805541694226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4cWKlDWXpjjh45Els0sCiKbw5k8lE7GuHmwDy9IhAgcgoBRTS80gbTuMpYJyXGUluLW2i0UR-SvnZMCfheeTl3M_VphILivCLGSGiB3ECZtbJLO5O_9wzpqN-6lUEycnkE0SwGvhiq9w/s320/DSC04894.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Fritzl incest victims leave clinic</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />VIENNA, Austria: A lawyer says Josef Fritzl's daughter and her children have left the psychiatric clinic where they were recovering from their incest ordeal.<br />Christoph Herbst says the woman and six of the seven children he fathered with her while holding her captive for 24 years have moved into their own home at an undisclosed location.<br />Herbst announced the family's move in an interview Monday with the Austria Press Agency. He could not immediately be reached for more details.<br />Prosecutors in November charged 73-year-old Fritzl with murder for refusing to arrange medical treatment for the seventh child, who died in infancy. He also faces charges of rape, incest, false imprisonment and enslavement and is expected to go on trial in March.<br />The crime came to light in April.<br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkFc22N8_u8PTkr5dIgrPKeKkQdDa602vtmuMXCOW1lJW75vV9takJRsgQTB4xvM0LqmHI6AIzsUhPrvw77aX6HcjzDQJcVrX2hPoIO3x_9XdtS6KiJs8EJEd4Sy3NG6mbYUUvBVOALpg/s1600-h/DSC04896.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503801135596210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 251px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkFc22N8_u8PTkr5dIgrPKeKkQdDa602vtmuMXCOW1lJW75vV9takJRsgQTB4xvM0LqmHI6AIzsUhPrvw77aX6HcjzDQJcVrX2hPoIO3x_9XdtS6KiJs8EJEd4Sy3NG6mbYUUvBVOALpg/s320/DSC04896.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqE_f24W0PnB-sacp8_48DLgh-u2lGGNvgwkajzDkapAYIk2DHKgWP2j-OaTzpwhRXFts-eltOD7tQ3Wy-X8bJGDV-2Zp3zexneUV5JFc0ZRS5x9VuqRZqULP8WniC3JymQp9mvSeI8g/s1600-h/DSC04900.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503804436950530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBqE_f24W0PnB-sacp8_48DLgh-u2lGGNvgwkajzDkapAYIk2DHKgWP2j-OaTzpwhRXFts-eltOD7tQ3Wy-X8bJGDV-2Zp3zexneUV5JFc0ZRS5x9VuqRZqULP8WniC3JymQp9mvSeI8g/s320/DSC04900.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDpWU2qQ0wJpUr6B5Usjdcyjft6OoDP1q5ckstNPSqwddtQJrNKaPuw7x_LWJCoAydmF5z3iifra3CmHbiH7B2lKveS5iDazVDfOhWQg3m1LET3LrK9Tf2TL0WwsfGpl_URYQeG-eYWI0/s1600-h/DSC04904.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503463613791042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDpWU2qQ0wJpUr6B5Usjdcyjft6OoDP1q5ckstNPSqwddtQJrNKaPuw7x_LWJCoAydmF5z3iifra3CmHbiH7B2lKveS5iDazVDfOhWQg3m1LET3LrK9Tf2TL0WwsfGpl_URYQeG-eYWI0/s320/DSC04904.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwqHAS4v2Q_XE-_r6EHwQUmiaBvVUcmLi-k78zX-1n6a9a-yh4Ysce_AMM64oClJ841lRXIJhASnzO05gsN2IjfAoarGWeprAMRI2SsmVkxzUKAxq-lIWPZh5ZytnhT-HbD293Yq5PeVo/s1600-h/DSC04905.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503459437376786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwqHAS4v2Q_XE-_r6EHwQUmiaBvVUcmLi-k78zX-1n6a9a-yh4Ysce_AMM64oClJ841lRXIJhASnzO05gsN2IjfAoarGWeprAMRI2SsmVkxzUKAxq-lIWPZh5ZytnhT-HbD293Yq5PeVo/s320/DSC04905.jpg" border="0" /></a> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503463121744642" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 282px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQLdHQuDhmFFx46WCvu5tR9B6IFeCYnSk6kr2Y3Z8qmflRWlao4nHGdHHcjHyPBbrDNb6eiwuW2IZ4TT38O3CjPQzIt5wwT_o_CHun4dIUelrj5SYF37Ohl9P3qaJ3BBu2X1sBekLDX4o/s320/DSC04902.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwhsySrCexbcxApYvtsBqylcqEg7VTWIRLsiPabAbHOYl_pz5qM-_pbeZ4BKoxB8seoRpPjwIYWXKHXHpVJIN-VMVe4a5aYY4OIipwd05ht7B-AukGiKBgAiOHgrNrKGDpu60i3Y1hK6k/s1600-h/DSC04908.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503459982194354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwhsySrCexbcxApYvtsBqylcqEg7VTWIRLsiPabAbHOYl_pz5qM-_pbeZ4BKoxB8seoRpPjwIYWXKHXHpVJIN-VMVe4a5aYY4OIipwd05ht7B-AukGiKBgAiOHgrNrKGDpu60i3Y1hK6k/s320/DSC04908.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKeJmbhlkkyfl8WOErRlKSlqoaSvfXTJ4U8E0GygmBsWsrJDv_IBM-vPZWqLwsYkxseM2vg_WesvcPoAeAcl1FbHAfQPlDo7HZQ6YedkBAYU44Iv-m-ka7h4UKgm9Fux1aEtjky1IE0a4/s1600-h/DSC04909.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503453238460130" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKeJmbhlkkyfl8WOErRlKSlqoaSvfXTJ4U8E0GygmBsWsrJDv_IBM-vPZWqLwsYkxseM2vg_WesvcPoAeAcl1FbHAfQPlDo7HZQ6YedkBAYU44Iv-m-ka7h4UKgm9Fux1aEtjky1IE0a4/s320/DSC04909.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>Lessons for other smokers in Obama's efforts to quit<br /></strong>By Denise Grady and Lawrence K. Altman<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />Will one of President-elect Barack Obama's New Year's resolutions be to quit smoking once and for all?<br />His good-humored waffling in various interviews about smoking made it plain that Obama, like many who have vowed to quit at this time of year, had not truly done so.<br />He told Tom Brokaw of NBC several weeks ago, for example, that he "had stopped" but that "there are times where I've fallen off the wagon." He promised to obey the no-smoking rules in the White House, but whether that meant he would be ducking out the back door for a smoke is not known. His transition team declined to answer any questions about his smoking, past or present, or his efforts to quit.<br />Anti-smoking activists would love to see Obama use his bully pulpit to inspire others to join him in trying to kick the habit, but he has not yet taken up their cause.<br />The last president to smoke more than occasionally was Gerald Ford, who was quite fond of his pipes. Jimmy Carter and both Presidents George Bush were reportedly abstainers, but Bill Clinton liked cigars from time to time - though he may have chewed more than he smoked.<br />Obama's heaviest smoking was seven or eight cigarettes a day, but three was more typical, according to an interview published in the November issue of Men's Health magazine. In a letter given to reporters before the election, Obama's doctor described his smoking history as "intermittent," and said he had quit several times and was using Nicorette gum, a form of nicotine replacement, "with success." Obama was often seen chewing gum during the campaign.<br />His pattern matches that of millions of other people who have resolved but stumbled in their efforts to give up cigarettes. Today, 21 percent of Americans smoke, down from 28 percent in 1988.<br />Off-again-on-again smoking and serial quitting are common, as is the long-term use of nicotine gum and patches.<br />"It takes the average smoker 8 to 10 times before he is able to quit successfully," said Dr. Steven Schroeder, director of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco.<br />Schroeder said that counseling was helpful and that if Obama were his patient, he would urge him to try it, even if only by telephone. With nicotine replacements and counseling, quit rates at one year are 15 percent to 30 percent, Schroeder said, about twice the rates of people who try to stop without help.<br />But Obama has apparently been chewing nicotine gum for quite a while. Is it safe? Dr. Neal Benowitz, another specialist on nicotine addiction from the University of California, San Francisco, said that long-term use of the gum or patches, "if it keeps you off cigarettes, is O.K."<br />He said people had the best chances of quitting if they used more than one type of nicotine replacement at the same time - like wearing a patch every day, but also using the gum when cravings took hold.<br />Studies have found that 5 percent to 10 percent of people who tried nicotine replacements were still using them a year later, and nicotine itself appears not to be harmful, except possibly during pregnancy and for people at risk for diabetes, Benowitz said. The risks of cancer, lung disease and heart problems come from other chemicals in cigarette smoke.<br />"If nicotine is harmful, it is a minuscule risk compared to cigarette smoking," Benowitz said. "If people want to continue using gum or patches, and not cigarettes, their health will be enhanced."<br />Nicotine can speed up the heart rate somewhat, he said, and it may raise blood pressure very slightly. More important, it can reduce the body's sensitivity to insulin and may aggravate diabetes or pre-diabetic conditions. It also constricts blood vessels in the skin and may interfere with wound healing.<br />But still, Benowitz emphasized, "If the choice is between taking nicotine or smoking, nicotine is far, far better."<br />Falling off the wagon is typical. Three months, six months and a year are major milestones, and most people who can quit for a year will be able to stay off cigarettes for good, Benowitz said. But about 10 percent relapse even after a year or more.<br />"It's generally prompted by a stressful situation, when they're fatigued and they need to concentrate and focus," Benowitz said. "Obama talked about that. People are used to having a cigarette in that situation."<br />Nicotine is strongly addictive for many people, and withdrawal can leave them irritable, restless, sleepless, depressed and struggling to concentrate. Some experts say it is harder to give up than cocaine or heroin.<br />"Then there is something called hedonic dysregulation," Benowitz said. "It involves pleasure. Nicotine involves dopamine release, which is key in signaling pleasure. When people quit smoking, they don't experience things they used to like as pleasure. Things are not as much fun as they used to be. It's something you get over in time."<br />People become hooked on nicotine in part because, like alcohol and other addicting drugs, it alters the brain. Some of the changes are long-lasting, and the younger people are when they take up smoking, the stronger their addiction.<br />"There is increasing evidence that you lay down new neural circuits related to smoking, sort of memory tracks," Benowitz said. "Nicotine does it, and other aspects of smoke do, too. Your brain is forever changed."<br />Those memory tracks could be hindering Obama's efforts to quit.<br />Schroeder also noted that for someone who smoked fewer than 10 cigarettes a day, as Obama reportedly did, nicotine replacements may be less helpful because the addiction may be more to the habit than to nicotine.<br />One of the best things that Obama has going for him is that he is a jogger.<br />"There is increasing evidence that if you can exercise, it's often helpful" in quitting, Benowitz said. "I hope Obama can still find time to play basketball on a regular basis."<br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaAk1g5B3ztDqiGPgCXx-Y_wUgI_Bp1nPPeNXqvL9YNgD03xb5h9XWJhJruUuftt8Vmd2lupFYDIyymEEVyIW_48ocIc_RY0qULAhXA5yUzFBwSB7B6gdvKFAuooQPZWIocAh2O6DdHN0/s1600-h/DSC04910.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503157821394402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaAk1g5B3ztDqiGPgCXx-Y_wUgI_Bp1nPPeNXqvL9YNgD03xb5h9XWJhJruUuftt8Vmd2lupFYDIyymEEVyIW_48ocIc_RY0qULAhXA5yUzFBwSB7B6gdvKFAuooQPZWIocAh2O6DdHN0/s320/DSC04910.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo9S8jAvlU_633agbfNIHQUiPU7RZKHzd491tj_WnNl6XbxtVwBl8wyeaSk6TkLGhZMvjmCEAOU0-Up3CppiPpGNNLBJhPjHL_CsPyOJa2kWQXpSeoTt3FT7uBTTe8RBcyMxaMlmdKnHI/s1600-h/DSC04911.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503160938068146" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo9S8jAvlU_633agbfNIHQUiPU7RZKHzd491tj_WnNl6XbxtVwBl8wyeaSk6TkLGhZMvjmCEAOU0-Up3CppiPpGNNLBJhPjHL_CsPyOJa2kWQXpSeoTt3FT7uBTTe8RBcyMxaMlmdKnHI/s320/DSC04911.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTyqr3WBwx4jFmLncb4jWkR4uCMvJlvrWwj7PAB3gRSC4jjzLYO4J7v_2ujjNzGPDd_1f7EqvpFFwY6elY95qgSpXyreaEvFeOi38P-4BZG4mmdnu8p1AtYFu7J3q1C9o0B6cswjtudQc/s1600-h/DSC04912.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503155491694898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTyqr3WBwx4jFmLncb4jWkR4uCMvJlvrWwj7PAB3gRSC4jjzLYO4J7v_2ujjNzGPDd_1f7EqvpFFwY6elY95qgSpXyreaEvFeOi38P-4BZG4mmdnu8p1AtYFu7J3q1C9o0B6cswjtudQc/s320/DSC04912.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioh9uPQMl5O2NLcfaIv69_JVzhfzSVudYo-QxQvD4z5if_rSo9BWzmXcVLmbB-VbXEATCAOP-SDIgq4KcUDwVwjYEv7SNTXBXRTxoweaTGjw0ruNVA3uuSw2IFMtXfQj1iFa755Qo-2-g/s1600-h/DSC04913.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503156486816418" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioh9uPQMl5O2NLcfaIv69_JVzhfzSVudYo-QxQvD4z5if_rSo9BWzmXcVLmbB-VbXEATCAOP-SDIgq4KcUDwVwjYEv7SNTXBXRTxoweaTGjw0ruNVA3uuSw2IFMtXfQj1iFa755Qo-2-g/s320/DSC04913.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRNcnI9FgFWrOMRXMB4HYb_6zba_KTQzAosFhv5ZDqrDZR1iwseVT-0y74E4IkoQ3TFFawpDqHK5SCv7qf0Nyx_86h1J3f22Lm31OqYNZmlR4ywNWPCMouhxMgBn5Rne9jVSG0zXqYqo/s1600-h/DSC04915.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285503156156022546" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRNcnI9FgFWrOMRXMB4HYb_6zba_KTQzAosFhv5ZDqrDZR1iwseVT-0y74E4IkoQ3TFFawpDqHK5SCv7qf0Nyx_86h1J3f22Lm31OqYNZmlR4ywNWPCMouhxMgBn5Rne9jVSG0zXqYqo/s320/DSC04915.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0jlhDVyTnCgYLIp-YkYvJdlO_jyc0JKYOXEUmll9KxDTbWeIYtRahxDxQRCLDxijMk6alc0f3DOyz4RBOQTDFant3Kwregt7rasi1ybfSgS1ZWd8s98A6A4cY2GdRkuTKpXH3RvP6bE0/s1600-h/DSC04916.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285502892632298018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0jlhDVyTnCgYLIp-YkYvJdlO_jyc0JKYOXEUmll9KxDTbWeIYtRahxDxQRCLDxijMk6alc0f3DOyz4RBOQTDFant3Kwregt7rasi1ybfSgS1ZWd8s98A6A4cY2GdRkuTKpXH3RvP6bE0/s320/DSC04916.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc53OahyeMKHmGULteCty-1xD0KS740kAHqEAUIdLJo8ZTco-HPWgHgZT60huoKI6_Mu_fEeJ_zubKWoKrz-w6_CGoWN39LLLZ0scFUoirE44knhT1iADF0ny3jV6jeLeoxm3QpNCAz14/s1600-h/DSC04917.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285502889693735986" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc53OahyeMKHmGULteCty-1xD0KS740kAHqEAUIdLJo8ZTco-HPWgHgZT60huoKI6_Mu_fEeJ_zubKWoKrz-w6_CGoWN39LLLZ0scFUoirE44knhT1iADF0ny3jV6jeLeoxm3QpNCAz14/s320/DSC04917.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVK66bJ5xrw8Mo-OmM9Ez1Cpjbs_gqAPAiTHiDkDhyphenhyphenLaMtmfvdLC8wcOS5TXSYIg4UGcRUjSdZ-26Om7_P4JjylKy4xcO4xr3vUoWys5CHMpMu09ytO6T1RBke73FcJQDCacHj33ixQD4/s1600-h/DSC04918.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285502886096191058" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVK66bJ5xrw8Mo-OmM9Ez1Cpjbs_gqAPAiTHiDkDhyphenhyphenLaMtmfvdLC8wcOS5TXSYIg4UGcRUjSdZ-26Om7_P4JjylKy4xcO4xr3vUoWys5CHMpMu09ytO6T1RBke73FcJQDCacHj33ixQD4/s320/DSC04918.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>A tipping point for Gladwell?</strong><br />By Alex Beam<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />MEANWHILE<br />I've just had a flash of intuition, a moment of "rapid cognition ... the kind of thinking that happens in the blink of an eye," as Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book "Blink." My thought: Has Gladwell reached his tipping point?<br />His latest book, "Outliers: The Story of Success" is of course a monster hit, flying off bookshelves everywhere. But do I detect a certain impatience with Gladwell's glib repackagings of social scientists' ideas this time around?<br />Recently the New York Times columnist David Brooks opined that Gladwell's "social determinism ... slights the centrality of individual character and individual creativity. And it doesn't fully explain the genuine greatness of humanity's outliers."<br />Brooks may represent the fulcrum in what looks like an epidemic of anti-Gladwell screeds, the epidemic metaphor being the lynchpin of Gladwell's earlier, gajillion-selling work, "The Tipping Point." The germ started festering two years ago, when Brooks's New York Times colleague Joe Nocera suggested that a Gladwell article about Enron was full of bushwa.<br />Gladwell had wandered into a field that a strong-minded writer with a big megaphone knew something about - Nocera edited the book "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron" - and the results weren't pretty.<br />Nocera made short shrift of Gladwell's contention that Enron's deviousness lay in the complexity of its Star-Trekkie financial tools dreamed up by B-school geniuses. Enron's deviousness, Nocera wrote, actually lay in its propensity for fraud. Gladwell calls Nocera's column "just grumpiness," to which I add: Yes, but grumpy in a good way.<br />In Britain, they don't seem to hold Gladwell in very high esteem. Appearing on a BBC show while promoting "Blink," Gladwell recalled, the interviewer turned to him halfway through and said, "You know, I just don't buy it." London's Sunday Times said of his latest book, "the problem with 'Outliers' is not that it is contentious but that it is largely platitudinous." The Guardian headlined its review of "Outliers": "Stating the obvious, but oh, so cleverly."<br />Writing for The Register, Andrew Orlowski served up a diverting, scorched-earth tour of Gladwell's books headlined, "The Dumb, Dumb World of Malcolm Gladwell." "As we can see, each time Gladwell has the opportunity to engage with challenging ideas he cops out," Orlowski wrote. "Addressing rationality, social trends or genius properly - and failing - would still leave us richer than Gladwell's approach, which is empty, cynical and trite. But Gladwell can't do science. He can't do people .. [and] he can't really do journalism, either."<br />Ouch!<br />I want to make clear that none of this is personal. Apart from a healthy envy of Gladwell's supercalifragilistic book sales, I am unencumbered by prejudice toward, or any special knowledge of, his work. I've read most of his New Yorker articles, and the ideas undergirding the books seem to leach out effortlessly into book reviews, public radio jawfests and airline flight magazines.<br />I have noticed a certain tendency to repeat himself. Gladwell has merchandised a hilarious, somewhat off-color anecdote about a woman friend baring her breasts more than once. And if you know anything about a subject he alights upon, you might be disappointed. One of the key moments in "Outliers" - his explanation of the famous 1997 Korean Air 801 air crash on Guam - is super-antiquated news to anyone who follows airline disaster literature. And Korean Air is now one of the world's safest airlines.<br />Patrick Smith, a professional pilot who writes the "Ask the Pilot" column for Salon.com, teed off on Gladwell's contention that "the single most important variable in determining whether a plane crashes is not the plane, it's not the maintenance, it's not the weather, it's the culture the pilot comes from." "That is a reckless and untrue statement," Smith wrote. "That is totally absurd, and I am extremely disappointed that somebody as influential as Malcolm Gladwell said it."<br />Is it time to short Gladwell stock? "Interesting question," Gladwell wrote in an e-mail. "I actually think there was more negativity around 'Blink' than 'Outliers' ... I've always thought that a writer's job is very different from a politician's job. Politicians succeed when they convince people to agree with them. Writers succeed when they spark discussion, and I couldn't be more delighted with the discussion 'Outliers' has sparked."</div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Publisher cancels false memoir of Holocaust</strong><br />By Motoko Rich and Joseph Berger<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />A man whose memoir about his experience during the Holocaust was to have been published in February has admitted that his story was embellished, and his publisher has canceled the release of the book.<br />And, once again, a New York publisher and Oprah Winfrey were among those fooled by a too-good-to-be-true story.<br />This time, it was the tale of Herman Rosenblat, who said he first met his wife while he was a child imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and she, disguised as a Christian farm girl, tossed apples over the camp's fence to him. He said they met again on a blind date 12 years after the end of war in Coney Island and married, celebrating their 50th anniversary earlier this year.<br />Winfrey, who hosted Rosenblat and his wife, Roma Radzicki, on her show twice, called their romance "the single greatest love story" she had encountered in her 22 years on the show. On Saturday night, after learning from Rosenblat's agent that the author had confessed that the story was fabricated, Berkley Books, a unit of Penguin Group that was planning to publish "Angel at the Fence," Rosenblat's memoir of surviving in Schlieben, a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, with the help of Radzicki, canceled the book and demanded that Rosenblat return his advance.<br />Harris Salomon, who is producing a movie based on the story, said he would go ahead with the film, but as a work of fiction, adding that Rosenblat had agreed to donate all earnings from the film to Holocaust survivor charities.<br />Another unit of Penguin, Riverhead Books, was duped this year by Margaret Seltzer, the author of "Love and Consequences," her fabricated gang memoir about her life as a white girl taken into a black foster home in South Central Los Angeles. She had in fact been raised by her biological family in a well-to-do section of the San Fernando Valley.<br />This latest literary hoax is likely to raise yet more questions as to why the publishing industry has such a poor track record of fact-checking.<br />In the latest instance, no one at Berkley questioned the central truth of Rosenblat's story until last week, according to Andrea Hurst, his agent. Neither Leslie Gelbman, president and publisher of Berkley, nor Natalee Rosenstein, Rosenblat's editor at Berkley, returned calls or e-mail messages seeking comment. Craig Burke, director of publicity for Berkley, declined to elaborate beyond the company's brief statement announcing the cancellation of the book. In an e-mail message, a spokesman for Winfrey also declined to comment.<br />After several scholars and family members attacked Rosenblat's story in articles last week in The New Republic, Rosenblat confessed Saturday to Hurst and to Salomon that he had concocted the core of his tale. Hurst said that in an emotional telephone call with herself and Salomon, Rosenblat said Radzicki had never tossed him apples over the fence.<br />In a statement released through his agent, Rosenblat wrote that he had once been shot during a robbery and that while he was recovering in the hospital, "my mother came to me in a dream and said that I must tell my story so that my grandchildren would know of our survival from the Holocaust."<br />He said that after the incident he began to write. "I wanted to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people," he wrote in the statement. "I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world. In my dreams, Roma will always throw me an apple, but I now know it is only a dream."<br />According to Hurst, who represents other inspirational writers including Bernie Siegel, author of "Love, Medicine and Miracles," Rosenblat first concocted his story in the mid-1990s as an entry to a newspaper contest soliciting the "best love stories." In 1996, he appeared on Winfrey's show with his wife and repeated the fabricated story. From there, it snowballed, with versions appearing in magazines, a volume of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, and a children's book, "Angel Girl," by Laurie Friedman, released in September by an imprint of Lerner Publishing. Rosenblat and Radzicki, who live in Miami, appeared on CBS's "Early Show" in October.<br />As media coverage of Rosenblat's story spread, scholars and others began to question the veracity of the romance throughout the blogosphere, pointing out that, among other things, the layout of the camp would have prevented Rosenblat and Radzicki from meeting at a fence.<br />In a telephone interview in November, Rosenblat defended his story against such doubts. He said that his section of Schlieben was not well guarded and that he could stand between a barracks and the 6-to-8-foot, or 1.8-to-2.4-meter, fence out of sight of guards. Radzicki was able to approach him because there were woods that would have concealed her.<br />In recounting the stunning "reunion" with Radzicki 12 years later as survivors living in New York, Rosenblat said Radzicki told him she had saved a boy by hurling apples over a fence to him.<br />"Did he have rags on his feet instead of shoes?" Rosenblat said he asked her.<br />She said yes and he told her, "That boy was me." In a telephone interview on Sunday, Hurst, who sold the book to Berkley for less than $50,000, said she always believed the essential truth of Rosenblat's tale until last week. "I believed the teller," Hurst said. "He was in so many magazines and books and on 'Oprah.' It did not seem like it would not be true." On Sunday, Hurst said that she was reviewing her legal options because "I've yet to see what kind of repercussions could come from this, and I was lied to."<br />That so many would get taken in by Rosenblat's inauthentic love story seems incredible given the number of fake memoirs that have come to light in the past few years. The Holocaust in particular has been fertile territory for fabricated personal histories: this year, Misha Defonseca confessed that her memoir, "Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years," about her childhood spent running from the Nazis and living with wolves, was not true.<br />A decade ago, a Swiss historian debunked Binjamin Wilkomirski's 1996 memoir, "Fragments," which described how he survived as a Latvian Jewish orphan in a Nazi concentration camp. It turns out the book was written by Bruno Doessekker, a Swiss man who spent the war in relative comfort in Switzerland. Rosenblat, at least, appears to have told the truth about being a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps.<br />The primary sleuth in unmasking his fabrication of the apple story was Kenneth Waltzer, director of Jewish studies at Michigan State University. He has been working on a book on how 904 boys - including the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel - were saved from death by an underground rescue operation inside Buchenwald, and he has interviewed hundreds of survivors - including boys from the ghetto at Piotrkow, Poland, who were taken with the young Herman Rosenblat to Buchenwald.<br />When Waltzer asked other survivors who were with Rosenblat about the apple story, they said the story could not possibly be true.<br />In his research of maps drawn by ex-prisoners, Waltzer learned that the section of Schlieben where Rosenblat was housed had fences facing other sections of the camp and only one fence - on the south - facing the outside world. That fence was adjacent to the barracks of the SS, who would have been able to spot a boy regularly speaking to a girl on the other side of the fence, Waltzer said. Moreover, the fence was electrified, and civilians outside the camp were forbidden to walk along the road that bordered the fence.<br />Waltzer also learned from online documentation that Radzicki, her parents and two sisters were hidden as Christians at a farm not outside Schlieben but 335 kilometers, or 210 miles, away near Breslau.<br />Holocaust survivors and scholars are fiercely on guard against any fabrication of memories because they taint the truth of the Holocaust and raise doubts about the millions who were killed or brutalized.<br />"There's no need to embellish, no need to aggrandize," said Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University. "The facts are horrible, and when you're teaching about horrible stuff, you just have to lay out the facts."<br /> </div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div> </div><div><strong>HP elbowing its way into 'truth' computing</strong><br />By Ashlee Vance<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />AUSTIN, Texas: Shortly after taking the helm of Hewlett-Packard in early 2005, Mark Hurd realized that, despite being one of the world's leading technology suppliers, HP had an embarrassing and crippling technology problem.<br />There was no easy way for executives to get a picture of what was happening in the entire company.<br />Each unit of the Palo Alto, California, computer giant had its own systems for tracking information about crucial areas like inventory, component costs and marketing expenditures. No central system pulled all the data together into what Hurd liked to call "a single version of the truth."<br />Hurd developed his passion for that quest during a previous job running the Teradata division of NCR. Teradata pioneered a technology called data warehousing, which allows managers to get a coherent picture of a company's inventory, production, marketing and sales.<br />With all of that information at their fingertips, employees can sift through and see once-hidden trends. Such technology helps companies like Wal-Mart Stores determine which shirt colors are preferred by people in Cincinnati, tells Best Buy what offers it should dangle in front of online shoppers in mid-March and suggests to Wynn Resorts which frequent gamblers should be coddled.<br />To Hurd, who rode his success at Teradata into the chief executive's spot at NCR, data warehousing is a vital tool for making a business much more efficient.<br />He had a few options for fixing HP's information problem: buy Teradata's products, acquire Teradata outright or have HP build its own data warehousing technology.<br />Taking a large risk, he chose the third option, encouraging HP engineers to meld decades-old technology inherited from the Compaq Computer acquisition with HP data analysis software to create a product called NeoView.<br />Hurd declined to be interviewed about HP's data management strategy. But Randy Mott, HP's chief information officer, said, "Mark made the assessment that he did not have the information he needed to run the company the way he needed to run it. So the assessment was that, as a company, we were going to have the technology needed to fix that."<br />After testing NeoView internally at HP, Hurd decided to sell it to HP's customers - in effect, declaring war on his former employer.<br />HP has a tiny presence in the data warehousing business, which is dominated by Teradata, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, with a number of smaller companies also getting in. In the last 18 months, HP has managed to sell only around 30 of its systems, according to Donald Feinberg, an analyst with the technology research firm Gartner.<br />Some experts in the field say HP's systems, built on expensive, older technology rather than cheap industry-standard components, are dated and too costly. NeoView set-ups can cost more than $10 million, placing HP at the wrong end of a technology that has been declining in price.<br />But HP is hoping that its recent $13.9 billion purchase of Electronic Data Systems, the data services giant, will change the equation. The reach of EDS could lift HP's data warehouse consulting business. HP is telling corporate customers that its data warehouse technology, combined with an EDS overhaul of their overall data processes, could save them a lot of money.<br />HP is also hinting that it intends to bring NeoView onto cheaper hardware and may rent space in its own data centers to customers instead of asking them to buy hardware. The rental model would complement something EDS has specialized in for years: managing data centers for a large number of businesses.<br />In the current difficult economy, HP argues, companies need "truth" more than ever. "This is not a nice-to-have toy for some data analyst," said Mott, who works in Austin, where two of HP's data centers are located. "It matters more than anything else."<br />Indeed, the idea of using technology to achieve the legendary efficiencies of companies like Wal-Mart or Dell is alluring to many corporations. Bon-Ton Stores, a retailer that purchased HP's technology, has about 1,000 of its 32,000 employees digging into a NeoView database. Bon-Ton gathers information from 13,000 cash registers and feeds it into the data warehouse.<br />"We are using the tools to understand the most optimal use of every dollar we spend in the corporation," said Jim Lance, chief information officer at Bon-Ton.<br />HP's push into the market comes as other technology companies are also recognizing the growing importance of data warehousing. Oracle and IBM are revamping their relevant products, while a host of start-ups have cropped up offering cheaper, faster hardware aimed at specialized tasks. Analysts think SAP wants to increase its reach in the market, possibly through an acquisition. Microsoft also signaled its intent to take this technology to the masses by purchasing the start-up Datallegro in July.<br />Stephen Brobst, chief technology officer at Teradata, commends HP for presenting a relevant message at the relevant time, but he contends that HP's technology is too expensive and unproven.<br />HP's approach to data warehousing is based on database technology originally developed by Tandem Computers, which HP had acquired in the 2002 Compaq merger. The Tandem technology, called NonStop, occupies a lofty position in computing lore, running some of the most reliable computer systems ever made, including many at the world's financial exchanges.<br />But NonStop was untried for data warehousing applications when HP first decided to enter the business. To prove it would work, the company's own data centers became the guinea pigs. After working on the project for months, HP assembled a unified database that 30,000 employees could turn to for instant information about every aspect of the company's business.<br />Now HP is using the experience of converting its own business as a selling point to other customers.<br />But HP's data warehouse strategy revolves as much around personalities as it does technology. Hurd poached Mott from Dell just a few months after he arrived at HP. Mott has been heralded as the master of data warehouse technology, setting up Teradata-based systems at Wal-Mart and Dell as chief information officer at those companies.<br />And in November, HP chose a former Teradata executive, Kristina Robinson, to be the head of a new unit, Business Intelligence Solutions. Robinson joined HP in mid-2006 and had been a vice president within HP's printing group. It will be Robinson's task to sell this expensive technology in one of the most difficult economic periods in recent history, and develop the fledgling business.<br />To come from behind in this market, HP has turned to a hard-sell pitch that says customers can either model themselves after the revamped HP by adopting data warehousing or continue to be a mess.<br />"It's the difference in my mind between winners and losers," Mott said.</div><div><br /><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjip1UqdH_sFESile02UXiPlcQYSDcBrdDabke2o78LKDktoj1w0Uhat2pJXKvZx6PDfIIw-lspB9EAVDEf4-68Go382uopoyDxomiTOdjvwFbPuDOq49d2y6ZwmlJtfEUVpHmkHEo2c7M/s1600-h/DSC04919.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285502882170310434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjip1UqdH_sFESile02UXiPlcQYSDcBrdDabke2o78LKDktoj1w0Uhat2pJXKvZx6PDfIIw-lspB9EAVDEf4-68Go382uopoyDxomiTOdjvwFbPuDOq49d2y6ZwmlJtfEUVpHmkHEo2c7M/s320/DSC04919.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>The office pool, 2009<br /></strong>By William Safire<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />When Dolph Camilli, Brooklyn Dodger star slugger of the 1940s, stepped up to the plate after whiffing ignominiously in his two previous times at bat, we fans in the Ebbets Field bleachers would nod sagely and murmur, "He's due."<br />Last year, in the 34th annual Office Pool in this space, I predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average would break 15,000 in 2008. (Readers whose pick was "recession has brokers selling apples for 5 on Wall Street" won that round.) But this year - I'm due. For each item, choose one, all or none. Only those daring to play now can claim hooting rights later.<br />1. In Demo-dominated Washington, post-postpartisan tension will pit:<br />(a) lame-duck Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke against Fed Chairman-in-Waiting Larry Summers and Fed Chairman-of-Christmas-Past Paul Volcker (aka "The GDP Deflator") over an "imperial Fed"<br />(b) Hillary Clinton at State and Trade Rep Ron Kirk against Labor's Hilda Solis over protectionism<br />(c) Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel against UN Ambassador Susan Rice, a Zbigniew Brzezinski acolyte, over Mideast policy<br />2. Springtime for GM will lead to:<br />(a) a slippery-slope series of industrial bailouts exceeding $100 billion<br />(b) a "pre-pack bankruptcy" auto rescue sweetened by federal pension protection and guarantee of new-car warranties<br />(c) a multinational merger with troubled Toyota<br />3. Toughest foreign affairs challenge will come if:<br />(a) Afghanistan becomes "Obama's War" or "Obama's Retreat"<br />(b) Iraq backslides into chaos after too-early U.S. withdrawal<br />(c) Depressed Russia moves on Ukraine<br />(d) India-Pakistan fighting breaks out<br />4. Oil selling below $50 a barrel will:<br />(a) threaten President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's June election in Iran<br />(b) reduce Arab support of Hamas and, in Israel's February election, help Bibi Netanyahu's Likud Party reach the Tzipping point<br />(c) be the equivalent of a huge U.S. tax-cut stimulus<br />5. Best-picture Oscar goes to:<br />(a) "Doubt"<br />(b) "Slumdog Millionaire"<br />(c) "Revolutionary Road"<br />(d) "Gran Torino"<br />(e) "Frost/Nixon"<br />6. The nonfiction sleeper will be:<br />(a) "Power Rules," a Machiavellian view of foreign policy by the former diplomat and New York Times editor Les Gelb<br />(b) "Deep Brain Stimulation," by the neuroscience writer Jamie Talan<br />(c) "Bold Endeavors," by the financier and infrastructuralist Felix Rohatyn<br />(d) "Losing the News," by Alex Jones<br />(e) "Ponzi Shmonzi: The Bernie Madoff Story," crash-published by a dozen houses<br />7. America's don't-ask deficit at year's end will be:<br />(a) under $1 trillion, thanks to the new administration's cutting of waste, fraud and abuse, as well as tax-soaking of the remaining rich<br />(b) $2 trillion, adding to the inherited Bush bailouts a raising-Keynes handout to shovel-ready contractors<br />(c) $1,393,665,042,198 and no cents. (Why so specific? A billion is a thousand million, and a trillion is a thousand billion. That's 10 to the 12th power, or 1 followed by 12 zeroes)<br />8. In Congress:<br />(a) House Republicans Eric Cantor and Mike Pence will energize the Republican Party<br />(b) Senate Republicans Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander will be the fulcrum of a bipartisan "Gang of 20"<br />(c) among Senate Democrats, Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy's influence will rise because Supreme Court nominations will take center stage, while Harry Reid's clout dissipates because of home-state weakness<br />9. Post-honeymoon journalists and bloody-minded bloggers will dig into:<br />(a) the jailhouse singing by Chicago's felonious fixer, Tony ("Who You Callin' 'Boneheaded'?") Rezko, to Dewey-eyed prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to reduce his six-year sentence<br />(b) suspicion by conspiracy theorists about the unremarked lobbying that led to the expensive renaming, after 72 years, of New York's Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge just in time for Caroline Kennedy's campaign for anointment to an open Senate seat<br />(c) the retaliatory scheme to rename the Brooklyn Bridge the Clintons Bridge<br />10. The Supreme Court will decide:<br />(a) in nipple exposure or "fleeting expletives" on live TV, that the FCC exceeded its authority in fining Fox for indecency<br />(b) that the Federal Election Commission was wrong to censure a moviemaker whose "biopic" was hostile to Hillary Clinton during her campaign<br />(c) that the appearance of impropriety in financial dealings of a West Virginia judge disqualified him from sitting in a coal-company dispute<br />(d) that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller had a "qualified immunity" from being sued for racial profiling in imprisoning suspected terrorists<br />(e) that in al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, a legal U.S. resident cannot be held indefinitely at Guantánamo<br />11. Obama philosophy will be regarded as:<br />(a) proudly liberal on environment and regulation<br />(b) determinedly centrist on health care, immigration and protectionism<br />(c) unexpectedly right of center on national security<br />(d) all over the lot<br />12. Year-end presidential approval rating will be:<br />(a) eroding as recovery stalls<br />(b) soaring after economic turnaround propels Dow above 12,000<br />(c) sinking but 30 points higher than that of Congress and the news media<br />My picks: 1 (all); 2 (b); 3 (a); 4 (all); 5 (b) (an uplifting film has an edge in hard times); 6 (d); 7 (b); 8 (c); 9 (b) (diehards will still say, "Take the Triborough to Idlewild"); 10 (all) (I aced the Supremes' decisions in last year's pool); 11 (d); 12 (b).<br />William Safire is a former op-ed columnist for the New York Times.</div><div><br /><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyBqrVhL3FSLLZPaQZWQtJkQ8KPoeDcoyuHAPblaAotIzFGAXIRdFA7qRX96WjvYaT11AVMaPzpILJKHv_9jCx7NmmE134-wwV9H7KHCu2p5qTHF01K82tDlCvtuGFi5F2Z5ZXWefr3Rk/s1600-h/DSC04920.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285502878163057154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyBqrVhL3FSLLZPaQZWQtJkQ8KPoeDcoyuHAPblaAotIzFGAXIRdFA7qRX96WjvYaT11AVMaPzpILJKHv_9jCx7NmmE134-wwV9H7KHCu2p5qTHF01K82tDlCvtuGFi5F2Z5ZXWefr3Rk/s320/DSC04920.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Unemployment expected to soar in Britain in 2009<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />LONDON: As many as 600,000 people could lose their jobs in Britain next year, making 2009 the worst year for unemployment since 1991, personnel experts warned on Monday.<br />The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, or CIPD, said that a widely-expected recession would hurt Britain next year and could push unemployment close to the three million mark before the economy begins to recover.<br />"By the end of 2009 the number of people unemployed and actively seeking work will have increased to 2.8 million, one million above the autumn 2008 figure," John Philpott, the CIPD's chief economist, wrote in its annual Barometer Report.<br />The first few months of the year, he said, were likely to be the worst for almost two decades.<br />"Our current expectation, based on available survey evidence and employer soundings, is that the number of redundancies will jump sharply in the early months of 2009, once employers take stock of the economic outlook. The period between New Year and Easter is likely to be the worst for redundancies since 1991."<br />The CIPD's warning came as another British retailer - the children's clothing shop Adams - collapsed.<br />The demise of Adams, which employs about 2,000 staff, follows that of other nationwide retailers including the chain store Woolworths, the music chain Zavvi, the tea and coffee outlet Whittard, and the menswear group The Officer's Club.<br />Woolworths collapsed into administration in November and its administrators said all its stores would close by Jan. 5, with the loss of 27,000 jobs, unless a last-minute buyer were found.<br />The CIPD also conducted a survey of 2,600 workers and found that those employees who keep their jobs expect to have their pay frozen or even cut in 2009. Some 28 percent do not expect a pay rise in 2009, while 26 percent think their pay rise will be lower than in 2008. Only 11 percent are expecting a higher wage increase than last year and two percent expect a pay cut.<br />"With job cuts seemingly lurking around every corner and trading conditions tight, employees are realistic about their pay prospects for the year ahead," said CIPD reward adviser Charles Cotton.<br />"Against this backdrop, employers will need to work hard to find new ways to motivate their employees to perform. Targeting pay increases to reward superior performance, making intelligent use of non-financial rewards, and targeted investment in training and development are all ways of making limited budgets go further."</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Sterling hits all-time low versus euro</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />By Naomi Tajitsu<br />Sterling hit a record low against the euro and a basket of currencies on Monday, stung by an ongoing view that the weak economy will require more interest rate cuts.<br />The euro climbed to 97.98 pence in extremely thin trade, edging closer to parity after figures showed that home prices fell in December, taking them nearly 10 percent lower since the start of the credit crunch in August 2007.<br />As evidence shows the economy is falling deeper into recession, the Bank of England is expected to cut rates more, which would keep borrowing costs below those in the euro zone and make euro zone investments more appealing than UK ones.<br />"Sterling is continuing to be hit by the belief that rates in the UK still have to fall much more, and underlying fears of a very deep recession in the UK," said Antje Praefcke, currency strategist at CBCM in Frankfurt.<br />"There's still a gravitational pull towards parity (with the euro) in the thin market," she added.<br />The euro has soared more than 32 percent against sterling this year -- jumping a record 18 percent so far this month alone -- and its rise on Monday pushed the UK currency down to 74.2 on a trade-weighted basis, its lowest according to daily records kept by the Bank which date back to 1990.<br />Sterling suffered across the board, slipping 0.1 percent against the dollar to $1.4630. It tumbled 0.8 percent to 131.72 yen, its weakest level against the Japanese currency since 1995.<br />Market participants said trading volumes were far lower than usual, which was aggravating year-end trade. In such conditions, many said that it was just a matter of time before the euro reaches parity with sterling.<br />Many analysts said that the pair may reach parity before the new year due to poor liquidity. Still, they said that the euro may be unable to sustain such lofty gains, given it is already overbought against sterling.<br />UK ECONOMY SUFFERS<br />Figures on Monday from property consultant Hometrack showed that housing prices in England and Wales fell 8.7 percent in 2008. They fell 0.9 percent in December, showing that prices have now fallen consistently over the last 15 months and 9.3 percent since the credit crisis began.<br />Adding to gloom about the economy were figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development at the weekend showing that 600,000 UK jobs could be lost in 2009 due to the recession.<br />In addition, children's wear retailer Adams will become the latest firm to fall into administration, fuelling speculation that more businesses are poised to fail.<br />A shrinking economy, ongoing deterioration in the housing market and rising unemployment are contributing to an grim outlook in 2009, which has battered sterling across the board.<br />This has fed the belief that the Bank of England will cut rates further -- and perhaps even explore other options to shore up the economy during in the recession -- even after an aggressive round of cuts has left rates at a five-decade low of 2.0 percent, lower than 2.5 percent in the euro zone.<br />"There's a sense that UK rates will fall closer to zero, and that the BoE may be forced into some sort of quantitative easing, while there's no sense of that in the euro zone," said Daragh Maher, senior currency strategist at Calyon in London.<br />He added that the negative view of the economy will continue to weigh on the pound, although additional weakness in the euro zone economy may start to chip away at the euro's appeal in the new year.<br />Higher interest rates in the euro zone have increased the euro's appeal against the pound as it has narrowed the yield spread between euro zone and UK government bonds.<br />The yield on 10-year UK bonds hovered around 3.121 percent on Monday, near a record low of 3.008 percent hit last week, while the yield on its euro zone counterpart fell to an all-time trough of 2.909 percent.<br />Both yields have tumbled due to economic deterioration and falling interest rates but the bigger fall in UK yields due to the Bank's particularly aggressive easing has shrunk the yield spread between the two to around 0.109 percent on Monday, the narrowest yield advantage for sterling in a decade.<br />(Editing by Andy Bruce)</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>In 2008, actors shone, but the ensemble was the star<br /></strong>By Matt Wolf<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />LONDON: It's tempting, of course, to think of the London stage awash in singular men and women of the theater: Derek Jacobi, Ralph Fiennes, and Michael Gambon, to name but a few from the year just gone, with the promise of Jude Law, Judi Dench, and Helen Mirren to come during 2009.<br />But to reflect on the traffic both on and off the West End over the last 12 months was to be reawakened to the strength of the ensemble work one regularly finds in London. Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, its company of players in town to scalding, savagely funny effect with "August: Osage County," served as merely one example out of many of the bracing results when the collective is the star.<br />That was the case time and again, in theaters both big and small. The novice dramatist Alexi Kaye Campbell's extraordinarily accomplished "The Pride" had too short a run this month at the Royal Court's tiny Theatre Upstairs, which meant that only a select few were able to savor a fully able quartet of actors in Bertie Carvel, JJ Feild, Lyndsey Marshal and Tim Steed. The cast was considerably larger but scarcely less sharp across town in north London at Tricycle Theatre in the spring, when the director Maria Aberg put a youthful, mostly unknown assemblage through the bruising paces of "Days of Significance," Roy Williams's merciless dissection of Britain's binge drinking culture as it bled into - and away from - the war in Iraq.<br />That play arrived as a commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company, which fielded the Bardic collective of many a season in the director Michael Boyd's exhilarating sequence - eight in all - of Shakespeare history plays. A genuine event, the Roundhouse cycle of plays found veterans like David Warner passing the classical baton to such comers as Jonathan Slinger, a previously unheralded actor possessed of a raw power and theatrical intuition that should take him far. Slinger's Richard II, by turns petulant and woundingly human, was the Shakespeare performance of the year, though stiff competition emerged in recent weeks when an understudy Hamlet, Edward Bennett, stepped into the breach and had an opening night audience breathlessly following his every existential musing.<br />Those still griping about the absence of an infirm David Tennant, the theater talent turned TV name, could nonetheless take solace in a troupe of players surrounding Hamlet that reduced all cavils to silence, from Patrick Stewart's seductively low-key Claudius to Oliver Ford Davies's matchless Polonius, at once authoritative and addled.<br />At some plays, the name attraction proved merely the icing on an unexpectedly rich cake. Kenneth Branagh returned to the West End after too long an absence to play the title role in "Ivanov," an early Chekhov play that gets seen in London far more frequently, it seems, than some of the Russian master's later ones. Exciting though it was to find Branagh in middle age mining a soulfulness he didn't necessarily possess on stage when he was younger, the director Michael Grandage ensured that equal time went to such top-rank supporting players as Gina McKee, Malcolm Sinclair and Tom Hiddleston.<br />Shakespeare's Globe doesn't put stars above the titles, a decision that seems appropriate to a unique venue in which the audience itself on occasion likes to play the star. (That's what can happen when you have 700 "groundlings" per show, vulnerable to London's ever-unpredictable elements.) But an especially fine summer slate of Shakespeare found David Calder's mournful Lear moving aside in my memory to make room for an unusually frolicsome "Merry Wives of Windsor" alongside that rare "Midsummer Night's Dream" that did justice to the numerous realms - regal, amorous, amateur theatrical - of this perennially popular play. Most exciting of all was the director Lucy Bailey's fierce "Timon of Athens," complete with aerial performers swooping vulture-like on proceedings below. One only wishes this production were around now so that its impact could be felt even more forcefully in our imperiled economic climes. As it is, I have a feeling we haven't heard the last of Timon's tale of largesse turned grievously to woe; as is often the case, Shakespeare yet again seemed the canniest, most contemporary writer in town.<br />The modern-day big guns of British playwriting were largely absent throughout the year, though Tom Stoppard did contribute the spiky new version of "Ivanov" that kicked off the cozy, not-for-profit Donmar's season-long residency in larger premises in the commercial West End.<br />David Hare was represented by the London debut of his erstwhile Broadway premiere, "The Vertical Hour," that managed to get right what the New York version had gotten wrong (the female lead, for starters) and botch what the Broadway incarnation did so well (the play's two male roles). Hare returned in November with a National Theatre world premiere in "Gethsemane" that didn't earn its closing epiphany, however skillful the acting and design. Elsewhere at the National, Hare's onetime playwriting colleague, Howard Brenton, in "Never So Good" made his leisurely, historically themed way through to an awkward ending that delivered no epiphany at all; on the other hand, Jeremy Irons's star turn as the former prime minister Harold Macmillan was one of several casting gambles during 2008 that thoroughly paid off. There were deserved cheers, too, for the Argentinian actress-singer Elena Roger's immersion in the role of the doomed French songbird Edith Piaf in Pam Gems's play "Piaf," here in a streamlined production from the director Jamie Lloyd to intrigue even those sated by this doomy biographical tale courtesy the Oscar-winning film "La Vie En Rose."<br />American acting got a look in, and how, from Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum, brilliant both separately and together in the Old Vic revival of "Speed-the-Plow," David Mamet's play about loyalty in the land of the Hollywood hustle here bitingly served up by the British director Matthew Warchus, whose sellout production eclipsed the later, entirely separate Broadway reappraisal of the same play. Warchus returned in the fall to the Old Vic with "The Norman Conquests" from Alan Ayckbourn, seven hours of theater across three tragicomic plays that still felt too short. For that, credit the triptych's incomparable cast of six. And one will long be crediting the late Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, who died last week, with changing the theatrical landscape for keeps. London audiences could judge for themselves at various Pinter revivals across the year, the first of which - a double bill of "The Lover" and "The Collection," two one-acts from the 1960s - registered most strongly. Watching its flawless cast of four encompass seduction and fear, intimidating power plays and erotic potency, one felt the theater at its most alive, which is surely the best legacy that a playwright of Pinter's lasting influence could leave behind.<br /> </div><div><br /> </div><div><br /><br /> </div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France<br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-58238017459448780652008-12-29T03:55:00.023+01:002008-12-29T07:06:13.255+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Sunday, 28th December 2008<div align="center"><strong>Casualties rise as Israel strikes on Gaza persist </strong></div><strong><div align="justify"><br /></strong>By Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />GAZA: Israeli aircraft pounded Gaza for a second day on Sunday, increasing the death toll to nearly 300, as Israeli troops and tanks massed along the border and the government said it had called up reserves for a possible ground operation.<br />The continued strikes, which Israel said were in retaliation for sustained rocket fire from Gaza into its territory, unleashed a furious reaction across the Arab world, raising fears of greater instability in the region.<br />Much of the anger was also directed at Egypt, seen by Hamas and some nearby governments as having acceded to Israel's military action by sealing its border with Gaza and forcing back many Palestinians at gunpoint who were trying to escape the destruction.<br />Witnesses at the Rafah border crossing described a chaotic scene as young men tried to force their way across into Egypt, amid sporadic exchanges of gunfire between Hamas and Egyptian forces. Egyptian state television reported that one Egyptian border guard was fatally shot by a Hamas gunman. A Palestinian man was killed by an Egyptian guard near Rafah, Reuters reported.<br />In Gaza on Sunday, officials said medical services, stretched to the breaking point after 18 months of Israeli sanctions, were on the verge of collapse as they struggled to care for the more than 600 wounded in the past two days.<br />At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, women wailed as they searched for relatives among bodies that lay strewn on the hospital floor. One doctor said that given the dearth of facilities, not much could be done for the seriously wounded, and that it was "better to be brought in dead."<br />The International Committee of the Red Cross appealed on Sunday for urgent humanitarian assistance, including medical supplies, to be allowed to enter Gaza. Israeli officials said that some aid had been allowed in through one of the crossings. Egypt temporarily opened the Rafah crossing on Saturday to allow some of the wounded to be taken to Egyptian hospitals.<br />Israel made a strong push to justify the attacks, saying it was forced into military action to defend its citizens. At the same time, heated statements from the supreme religious leader of Iran and the leader of Hezbollah expressed strong support for Hamas.<br />Across Gaza, families huddled indoors as Israeli jets streaked overhead. Residents said that there were long blackouts and that they had no cooking gas. Some ventured out to receive bread rations at bakeries or to brave the streets to claim their dead at the hospitals. There were few mass funerals; rather, families buried the victims in small ceremonies.<br />At dusk on Sunday, Israeli fighter jets bombed over 40 tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt. The Israeli military said that the tunnels that were attacked, on the Gaza side of the border, were used for smuggling weapons, explosives and fugitives. Gazans also use many of them to import consumer goods and fuel in order to get around the Israeli-imposed economic blockade.<br />Over the past two days, Israeli jets destroyed at least 30 targets in Gaza, including the main security compound and prison in Gaza City known as the Saraya, metal workshops throughout Gaza that were suspected of manufacturing rockets, and Hamas military posts.<br />Hamas said Israel bombed a government ministry compound and the Islamic University in Gaza, a stronghold of Hamas, late Sunday night. The Hamas-owned television station Al Aqsa was also struck, as was a mosque that the Israeli military said was being used as a terrorist base.<br />Israel appeared to be settling in for a longer haul. The government on Sunday approved the emergency call-up of thousands of army reservists in preparation for a possible ground operation as Israeli troops, tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers massed along the border.<br />Speaking before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, said the army "will deepen and broaden its actions as needed" and "will continue to act." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel's goal was not to reoccupy Gaza, which it left unilaterally in 2005, but to "restore normal life and quiet to residents of the south" of Israel.<br />Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, appeared on American talk shows to press Israel's case. She said on "Fox News Sunday" that the operation "is needed in order to change the realities on the ground, and to give peace and quiet to the citizens in southern Israel."<br />Militants in Gaza again fired barrages of rockets and mortar shells further into Israel on Sunday. One rocket fell in Gan Yavneh, a village near the major port city of Ashdod, almost 20 miles north of Gaza. Two others landed in the coastal city of Ashkelon. Several Israelis were wounded.<br />Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, told reporters that Israel had started a "war" but that it would not be able to choose how it would end. He called for revenge in the form of strikes reaching "deep into the Zionist entity using all means," including suicide attacks.<br />The hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens now within rocket range have been instructed by the authorities to stay close to protected spaces.<br />In Lebanon, the leader of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, put his fighters on alert, expressing strong support for Hamas and saying that he believed Israel might try to wage a two-front war, as it did in 2006. He called for a mass demonstration in Beirut on Monday. And he, too, denounced Egypt's leaders. "If you don't open the borders, you are accomplices in the killing," he said in a televised speech.<br />Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the silence of some Arab countries, which he said had prepared the grounds for the catastrophe, an Iranian news agency, ISNA, reported.<br />"The horrible crime of the Zionist regime in Gaza has once again revealed the bloodthirsty face of this regime from disguise," he said in a statement. "But worse than this catastrophe is the encouraging silence of some Arab countries who claim to be Muslim," he said, in an apparent reference to Egypt and Jordan.<br />Egypt has mediated talks between Israel and the Palestinians and between Hamas and Fatah, leaving it open to criticism that it is too willing to work with Israel. In turn, Egypt and other Western-allied Sunni Arab nations are deeply opposed to Hezbollah and Hamas, which they see as extensions of Iran, their Shiite nemesis.<br />Across the region, the Israeli strikes were being broadcast in grisly detail almost continually on Arab satellite networks.<br />In the Syrian capital, Damascus, a large group of protesters marched to Yusuf al Azmeh Square, where they chanted slogans and burned Israeli and American flags.<br />In Beirut, protesters were bused to a rally outside the United Nations building, holding up Palestinian flags and Hamas banners. Muhammad Mazen Ibrahim, a 25 year-old Palestinian who lives in one of the refugee camps here, choked up when asked about the assault on Gaza.<br />"There's an agreement between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel against Hamas," he said. "They want to end them, all the countries are in league against Hamas, but God willing, we will win."<br />That sentiment is widespread here. Many see Livni's visit to Cairo last week as evidence that Egypt, eager to be rid of Hamas, had consented to the airstrikes.<br />The anger echoes what happened in July 2006, when the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt publicly blamed Hezbollah for starting the conflict with Israel. Popular rage against Israel soon forced the leaders to change their positions.<br />Hamas, sworn to the destruction of Israel, took control of Gaza last year. An Egyptian-brokered six-month truce between Israel and Hamas, always shaky, began to unravel in early November. It expired ten days ago.</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="center"><strong>Oil jumps after Israel-Hamas violence</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />SINGAPORE: Oil prices extended gains and rose more than $2 a barrel on Monday after weekend violence flared between Israel and Hamas, reminding traders of the geopolitical risk to crude supplies from the Middle East.<br />U.S. light, sweet crude advanced $2.04 to $39.75 a barrel by 0037 GMT, while London Brent crude rose $2.13 to $40.50 a barrel.<br />(Reporting by Chua Baizhen, Editing by Anshuman Daga)</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>0810</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0k3SAks5uiy5y1u_X9H1U6NW7q1V0AbrZI35Os9oiw5f1f2Q8n4IQJ10BkkHnhjgcBWvdCiZrbPbpQVrDY3sIjavODEjghMDNXw8izisWtdr5I2nOYwRbuDjq7SnwKpC5XcF3v6ObPas/s1600-h/DSC04704.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285052234590198178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0k3SAks5uiy5y1u_X9H1U6NW7q1V0AbrZI35Os9oiw5f1f2Q8n4IQJ10BkkHnhjgcBWvdCiZrbPbpQVrDY3sIjavODEjghMDNXw8izisWtdr5I2nOYwRbuDjq7SnwKpC5XcF3v6ObPas/s320/DSC04704.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPr01lvs42fO7o9_693N-PbkvwOfWnik1LNLk2-XCyJmVOWKgLwZmRVkooV6JuIrPHy5I2bMtFtTBpcmxwovNfnMJzjgK_dCLvFsYA92jc2HS0NLlPh25lvSzPDPMGAegx4uU3ZZ0_UY/s1600-h/DSC04706.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285052234072939058" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPr01lvs42fO7o9_693N-PbkvwOfWnik1LNLk2-XCyJmVOWKgLwZmRVkooV6JuIrPHy5I2bMtFtTBpcmxwovNfnMJzjgK_dCLvFsYA92jc2HS0NLlPh25lvSzPDPMGAegx4uU3ZZ0_UY/s320/DSC04706.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-QDZryPv0VQarg_lqBX7bcjGwPvGWzHthaI5XYnyDt1Ey-CG9YA32iUOTMv0x_ipluB1511UYusWx1cszYkDT42eQqhCS-Koo3gbiCMHLOxj5J4ZzLwmpPVopSKKujCdD69BsdDpm8Fw/s1600-h/DSC04707.jpg"></a><br /><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgL0pisoUUZb29zmVaTFyAUrGGMRdgWSZAL395OFExe390j4qW0YulIzXrEmHPDmjjBU9rGA8k7bN7fIqYU36jHWkABYX1jQooDGk6w3sif9ETI2yKXKmfvFIcjNmE3tYClSPJsimQtd0/s1600-h/DSC04707.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285052219662009266" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 211px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL3eOzYDkEWA0HqnF0-pvtkH6lyHpevmUVnUDXJz_KhSq6jz9Le7EENij_UoAVEKqf7PnqLIIoYX3FCNL3mn2mTboxmtA9seuUBcsZBaq5xI3078SoiBMVNgoWuH8bAhT9L8Ki7CqbebQ/s320/DSC04715.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7YW7vAg4exYXw1VGCWlwY26zwQQR7VMEAKAgiQvxOABJYG9UL2IHjJYyLUn_5zff3AiEK8tBQF2gVRtPXajgWsZ0hutAItDEmwMU6r-TwS9YUNDigF2OQHI97gNWNHM5vDFMJuWWOsQ/s1600-h/DSC04716.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051501907556306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 227px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7YW7vAg4exYXw1VGCWlwY26zwQQR7VMEAKAgiQvxOABJYG9UL2IHjJYyLUn_5zff3AiEK8tBQF2gVRtPXajgWsZ0hutAItDEmwMU6r-TwS9YUNDigF2OQHI97gNWNHM5vDFMJuWWOsQ/s320/DSC04716.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg01lP-c5U8FsrDgWbDFSdJSUtBg5HNPrCb3Wok6t7rDWaNqJwoxprVdWllOg8XUpQX-0JxK0N_bU8Xt0l4dKxxh3RrvR-3nbF5DbRp4XYAT66Sbnv2U6xAUDfQPMMLqbYuwybgXt7Cokc/s1600-h/DSC04717.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051494021401890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg01lP-c5U8FsrDgWbDFSdJSUtBg5HNPrCb3Wok6t7rDWaNqJwoxprVdWllOg8XUpQX-0JxK0N_bU8Xt0l4dKxxh3RrvR-3nbF5DbRp4XYAT66Sbnv2U6xAUDfQPMMLqbYuwybgXt7Cokc/s320/DSC04717.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGvEJD8W7fT9LcGiA2BJQSqoj4iM_y2B2HVLpj8rJU5eNA0CYl8odvw_0B7sN1O204uwCmrtFfpEQ4PJQtPt9D2niQWu0G9i9EPP8k0U8IN2Thk8IU2vfH7WLc9SckbjDfC6_67mTN81E/s1600-h/DSC04718.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051496936423234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGvEJD8W7fT9LcGiA2BJQSqoj4iM_y2B2HVLpj8rJU5eNA0CYl8odvw_0B7sN1O204uwCmrtFfpEQ4PJQtPt9D2niQWu0G9i9EPP8k0U8IN2Thk8IU2vfH7WLc9SckbjDfC6_67mTN81E/s320/DSC04718.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVY-AnSSk6XWoewGpxkgMn2PL1HPaQlj_zAQtSnw3blYNC_kr1uxkzrDp43kM4oHo-j60AgqzolKNOJROx-X3BtKtTnoTFKJIiQeVBQueAXsdlI0T_lkgEB54t-pWa2JzHQUj-aTwmI7w/s1600-h/DSC04719.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051489731199346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVY-AnSSk6XWoewGpxkgMn2PL1HPaQlj_zAQtSnw3blYNC_kr1uxkzrDp43kM4oHo-j60AgqzolKNOJROx-X3BtKtTnoTFKJIiQeVBQueAXsdlI0T_lkgEB54t-pWa2JzHQUj-aTwmI7w/s320/DSC04719.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDBz79t8RmkYlDV6CqAm0-sZyCmyGHH7_9AlhWHikKEvAHhheQCYzoBIX7W0FOC_miyJkYLqd8u4sM2LcgPjfjwtC2qSnqUH0HYl0KlrhCWodYsSxrZZEwyqwBaSopbiwz-c4riW0Ss28/s1600-h/DSC04720.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051182600442770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDBz79t8RmkYlDV6CqAm0-sZyCmyGHH7_9AlhWHikKEvAHhheQCYzoBIX7W0FOC_miyJkYLqd8u4sM2LcgPjfjwtC2qSnqUH0HYl0KlrhCWodYsSxrZZEwyqwBaSopbiwz-c4riW0Ss28/s320/DSC04720.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Bargain books have an unexpected cost<br /></strong>By David Streitfeld<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />U.S. book publishers and booksellers are full of foreboding - even more than usual for an industry that has been anticipating its demise since the advent of television. The holiday season that just ended is likely to have been one of the worst in decades. Publishers have been cutting back and laying off. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it would not acquire any new manuscripts, a move akin to a butcher shop proclaiming it had stopped ordering fresh meat.<br />American bookstores, both new and secondhand, are faltering as well.<br />Olsson's, the leading independent chain in Washington, went bankrupt and shut down in September. Robin's, which says it is the oldest bookstore in Philadelphia, will close next month. The once-mighty Borders chain is on the rocks. Powell's, the huge store in Portland, Oregon, said sales were so weak that it was encouraging its staff to take unpaid sabbaticals.<br />Do not blame this carnage on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader's time or diminished attention spans. What is undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers.<br />In other words, it is all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, to sell them. This is not about Amazon peddling new books at discounted prices, which has been a factor in the book business for a decade, but about the rise of a worldwide network of amateurs who sell books from their homes or, if they are lazy like me, in partnership with an Internet dealer who does all the work for a chunk of the proceeds.<br />They get their books from friends, yard sales, recycling centers, their own shelves, castoffs. Some list them for as little as a penny, although most aim for at least a dollar. This growing market is achieving an aggregate mass that is starting to prove problematic for publishers, new bookstores and secondhand bookstores.<br />For readers and collectors, these resellers, as they are called, offer a great service. Lost in the hand-wringing over the state of the book industry is the fact that this is a golden age for those in love with old-fashioned printed volumes: More books are available for less effort and less money than ever before. A book search engine like ViaLibri.net can knit together 20,000 booksellers around the world offering tens of millions of nearly new, used or rare books.<br />One consequence has been to change the calculations traditionally involved in buying a book: Given the price, do I really want to read this? Now it has become an economic and a moral issue. How much do I want to pay, and where do I want that money to go? To my community via a bookstore? To the publisher? To the author?<br />In theory, I want to support all of these fine folks. In practice, I decide to save a buck.<br />Here is one example of how I casually wreak destruction. I was reading "Sylvia," an account by the late short-story master Leonard Michaels of his unstable first wife. Looking for material about Michaels, I saw his friend Wendy Lesser had written a long essay about him in a book published last year by Pantheon. I could buy a new paperback edition of that book, "Room for Doubt," for $13.95 plus tax in a bookstore. But there were dozens of copies available online from resellers for as little as one cent, plus shipping.<br />A penny felt a little chintzy, even for me, so I bought a hardcover copy for 25 cents from someone who called herself Heather Blue, plus a few bucks for shipping. Neither my local bookstore nor Pantheon - whose parent, Random House, announced this month it would cut costs by reducing five divisions to three - nor the author got a share. The book looked good as new.<br />Lesser is the publisher of The Threepenny Review, a literary journal. She lives in Berkeley, California, where, as it happens, there is no longer a large, general-interest bookstore. Cody's, which was once one of the country's great stores, closed its last outlet in June. The Barnes & Noble store there also recently closed.<br />Andy Ross, the former owner of Cody's, told me that buying books online "was not morally dubious, but it is tragic. It has a lot of unintended consequences for communities."<br />Ross said he realized that Cody's was doomed when he noticed that in the last year he had not sold a single copy of Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." Students presumably were buying it online. Sales of classics and other backlist titles used to be the financial engine of publishers and bookstores, allowing them to take chances on new authors. Clearly, that model is breaking. Simon & Schuster, which laid off staffers this month, cited backlist sales as a particularly troubled area.<br />Michael Barnard, who owns Rakestraw Books in Danville, California, not far from Berkeley, was more critical of me. He said that I was taking Lesser's work while depriving her of an income and that I would regret my selfish actions when all the physical stores were gone.<br />Lesser's editor, Dan Frank, said that the rise of resellers like Heather Blue meant that there was no longer a set price for a book at any one time. If you want it during those first few weeks when it is new, you will pay a premium. If you can wait, it might be only a pittance. "These cracks and fractures will only grow bigger," he said.<br />Lesser herself was philosophical. "I am a pragmatist, not a thin-skinned, delicate little writer who thinks everything needs to be what it is in heaven," she said. Still, she sounded a little taken aback at the going rate for her books. "Twenty-five cents? That's all it was?"<br />At least this way, the writer said, she gained a reader if not an income. Maybe I would never have found the book in a store.<br />"With the Internet, nothing is ever lost," Lesser said. "That's the good news, and that's the bad news."<br />And what of the woman who sold me the book? She told me in an e-mail message that her real name was Heather Mash and that she worked as a domestic violence case manager in a women's shelter not far from Berkeley.<br />She did not set out to subvert the publishing and bookselling world, she said. Like most of us who sell online, Mash began because she had too many books and wanted to raise money to buy more. "I would rather sell a book for a penny and let someone enjoy it than keep it collecting dust," she said.</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Beware of grammarians who rule by whim<br /></strong>By Jan Freeman<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Nothing could be easier than finding an outlandish assertion, a baldfaced lie, a counterfactual claim on the Web, where anyone can say anything - at least temporarily.<br />Still, a linguistics student named Gabe Doyle was surprised by what he found on the list of "English words with disputed usage" at Wikipedia. Most of the entries were familiar - comprise, nauseous, unique - but one, says Doyle in a post at Motivated Grammar, was novel: "Some prescriptivists argue not should not conclude a sentence," it said.<br />Seriously? he asked. Where were these prescriptivists who thought it was wrong to say "I think not," or "She thought she was free, but she's not"? He checked usage books, and found that "none of them make even the scarcest mention of this supposed controversy."<br />And there it is: A new usage rule, fresh out of the oven and ready to feed to the unsuspecting masses. It reminded me of a recent e-mail from Kevin, whose high school English teacher had a similarly inventive usage theory.<br />She rejected the sentence "The pitcher threw no strikes," he recalled: "She asked me to show her how to throw 'no strike.' She said the correct way to say it would be, 'The pitcher didn't throw any strikes."'<br />This doctrine, of course, was just plain nutty. No in this construction means "not any," as it has since Old English. No grammarian has banned it. Yet Kevin was successfully browbeaten: "For years I avoided writing things such as "The store had no bananas," "I have no opinion," "I ate no onions," he wrote.<br />But a surprising number of the old, familiar usage rules are just as arbitrary as this one. When the idea of tidying up English caught on, usage guidance became a kind of sport, with grammarians trashing one another and pitching their own, ever subtler refinements.<br />Thus John Dryden, in a 1672 essay, suggested that a preposition at the end of a sentence - a natural occurrence in English - was a less than elegant phrasing; his opinion launched a fetish that persists today.<br />In Dryden's time, though, at least you could still call foods "healthy": "There is no flesh more healthy ... than lamb" wrote one diet guru in 1683. Two centuries later, an American usage writer decided healthy and healthful had to be pried apart. In "The Verbalist" (1881), Alfred Ayres declared that we ought to reserve wholesome for food, healthful for living conditions, and healthy for living beings, setting the table for a feast of pointless nitpicking. (Healthy still outdoes healthful, and it's still correct.)<br />The journalistic notion that you can't use "over" for "more than" - still enshrined in the AP stylebook - is another 19th-century invention. It first appeared on a list of banned expressions issued by William Cullen Bryant when he was editor of the New York Evening Post. Over had been used this way for 500 years when Bryant took a dislike to it. But that was 150 years ago. Surely these days, a journalist can't issue a usage edict based on nothing but whim. Or can he?<br />He can, apparently, if he's James J. Kilpatrick. This fall, Kilpatrick has issued at least two new rules in his syndicated usage column.<br />The first one came in a column criticizing The New York Times for calling the Lincoln Center renovation an "enormous reconstruction project." Enormous is the wrong word, he said, because it is tainted by enormity; as all peevologists know, we're supposed to use enormity to mean "great wickedness," not simply "immensity."<br />But Kilpatrick has it backward. Enormous lost its last trace of wickedness a couple of centuries ago; it really does mean just "huge." And the now-innocent enormous is sweetening enormity, not being tainted by it.<br />Not long after, Kilpatrick decided something was wrong with expressions like "he seems like a good candidate." "The 'like' in these erring constructions is excess baggage," he admonished. If the meaning of seems is "appears to be," you should skip the word like, and just say "He seems a good candidate."<br />Kilpatrick's version is fine, though it sounds more British than American.<br />But seems like has never been bad usage. Samuel Pepys, in a 1664 diary entry, said that a British naval encounter "seems like a victory." And Richard Grant White, in his popular 19th-century guide "Words and Their Uses," also employs the phrase: "Citizen is used by some ... with what seems like an affectation of the French usage."<br />So if a usage rule sounds far-fetched, check it out. Sure, it might have roots in Anglo-Saxon declensions, but it's just as likely it was invented by a scholar or editor in a fit of usage crankiness.</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUKc71OlCuON4TU6s-tjUicQpD7aeqLKBVuZDerUJtOtzoV3gfSAyfafyOQMa7BQyaM8wdSTZ4kRQwFBf2MGwNBw0h8MOWP6DZUlA0jckGXL7_vTqwCa7tOOdb9X9IfKUzgrnLxox2pbo/s1600-h/DSC04721.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051177609292226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUKc71OlCuON4TU6s-tjUicQpD7aeqLKBVuZDerUJtOtzoV3gfSAyfafyOQMa7BQyaM8wdSTZ4kRQwFBf2MGwNBw0h8MOWP6DZUlA0jckGXL7_vTqwCa7tOOdb9X9IfKUzgrnLxox2pbo/s320/DSC04721.jpg" border="0" /></a> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050830687156034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguFBherNJiN3dnklz9PKqBC0iM7iR9OmIW4HheCA7J5e7DLVISNDo7Z6M8Sd8mvAFg5ennoJM7HfRAaR8Q8RXaP2Wq_VycnB6P7oxLUO8wQgQLTxoZoWf_1yVFMfRq-ewFfb7u9lw_HDA/s320/DSC04726.jpg" border="0" /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Bird flu found in poultry in northern Vietnam<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />HANOI: Bird flu has resurfaced in poultry in northern Vietnam after many months without any cases, killing ducks and chickens at two farms, a state-run newspaper reported on Sunday.<br />Animal health officials confirmed on Saturday the H5N1 virus had killed several birds among a flock of more than 100 ducks in Thai Nguyen city, 80 km (50 miles) north of Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth league-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said.<br />Officials had also detected the virus in dead chickens at a farm in the same city and nearly 4,200 chickens had been slaughtered to prevent the virus from spreading, the report said without giving a timeframe.<br />Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan said this week that there was a very high risk of bird flu returning during the winter and spring in northern Vietnam. The H5N1 strain seems to thrive best in low temperature.<br />Five Vietnamese have died of bird flu so far this year out of six reported H5N1 infections and all were found in northern Vietnam during the first quarter of the year.<br />The H5N1 strain has killed 247 people globally among the 391 confirmed cases of infection since 2003, according to the World Health Organisation.<br />Vietnam has 106 infections, the second highest number of cases among 15 countries with known human cases after Indonesia.<br />(Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050826876850322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqmW1TR_6YWo68cfkdriO0g40LNzL0bG4-ZnzknW2lUcFmkQsSrnh0qXIydMokmfBEH2TR92huGxyQ5RytzAwMtkTsEA3gMs2GRMljIIH57i-GtoQOXSBHx2X1OWP2l-AMhEyzzxdhdV0/s320/DSC04727.jpg" border="0" /></div><div> </div><div><strong>Massive quake rebuild holds key for China economy</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />By Simon Rabinovitch<br />ANXIAN, China (Reuters) -- In 80 seconds of shaking, China's devastating earthquake earlier this year cut a swathe of death and destruction through remote hilly towns.<br />In a recovery that will take years, the whole country's prosperity is at stake.<br />Quake reconstruction is a central plank of the government's stimulus plan for the ailing Chinese economy, set to take one-quarter of Beijing's promised 4 trillion yuan (398 billion pounds) spending boost and to create millions of sorely needed jobs.<br />Already, the disaster zone has been transformed into a vast, manic construction site, a trail of bricks, steel and cement coursing through its heart, those made homeless hammering away to reverse their fate and entrepreneurs from far-flung corners of the country attracted by the whiff of profit in calamity.<br />"I've been doing this job for about 20 years and I've never seen things so busy," said Zhao Renjun, bending steel girders into shape on a construction site in Anxian county, part of the huge area rocked by the May 12 earthquake that killed more than 80,000 people in China's southwest.<br />"I haven't had time to fix my own house. I've been so busy working for others," he said.<br />A partial list of needs includes 4.5 million homes, 51,000 kms (31,690 miles) of roads and 5,500 kms (3,418 miles) of railways -- enough to occupy at least some of the 20 million people who could lose jobs in China's once-humming export factories hit by the global slowdown.<br />The feverish activity inspires confidence about the financial muscle of the state and the vigour of the economy that it is trying to nurse back to health, but it also carries warning signs of the corruption, waste and unforeseen complications that are already dogging China's economic plans.<br />COMPLICATIONS<br />"Because everyone is building, prices for materials have shot up," said Liu Siyin, 34, taking a break from hauling buckets of cement on a shoulder pole at his quake-damaged home.<br />"We can't buy everything we need now and we might have to stop building for a while," he said. "We really wish the government could control prices."<br />Liu had just started laying bricks for the second-floor wall of his house up a treacherous mountain road.<br />Only half joking, he said fast-inflating material costs would neutralise his 50,000 yuan interest-free loan from the government for rebuilding. Bricks and cement from local vendors have trebled in price in just a few months.<br />Some local authorities, such as the city government in Mianyang, have vowed to crack down on price gouging.<br />However, a degree of price increases is exactly what the government wants. As with the stimulus package for the wider economy, Beijing is providing a huge pot of cash to kick off quake reconstruction but expects to lure private businesses into the fold, to have the investment momentum spread more widely.<br />A profit-chasing zeal has already been unleashed.<br />Piles of bricks, bundles of steel girders, wood boards and small concrete mixers -- all for sale -- line the narrow highways in the disaster zone, many in front of makeshift shops set up by entrepreneurs from Chongqing, a huge city 350 kms (217 miles) to the east.<br />Some have come from much further afield.<br />Tang Qinghua, a young energetic man with close-cropped hair, said his last job had been selling apartments in Shenzhen, the one-time boomtown across from Hong Kong where property prices have dropped by nearly 20 percent over the past year.<br />He and two friends now ply rutted back roads in a small van to drum up customers for their selection of tiles -- green, white and clay, glazed and unglazed, interior and exterior.<br />"People have no choice here. They have to rebuild. And we're making a contribution, helping them out," Tang said.<br />CORRUPTION WORRIES<br />Glimpses of a darker side to the reconstruction effort have come through in official reports.<br />Any country in the world that throws so much cash at disaster recovery, when urgency overwhelms usual budgetary checks and balances, must contend with mismanagement and outright theft.<br />China, which has long struggled to rein in corruption, is no exception. Small, isolated cases have been publicised so far.<br />A national audit found that a half-dozen villages had improperly spent subsidies meant for quake victims, or demanded illegal reconstruction fees. An investigation in Chongqing concluded that a hospital had sold donated medicine for profit.<br />A little more than one month after the quake, the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention said it had already received more than 1,000 complaints from the public and punished 43 officials.<br />Aid agencies lavished praise on China for mobilising rescue workers just minutes after the 7.9 magnitude quake reduced homes, schools and offices to rubble. It was China's worst earthquake in three decades.<br />The planning and oversight required in the next three years, during which the government has pledged to spend 1 trillion yuan on rebuilding, may prove more vexing.<br />"There has to be a process. We want it to be fast but not too fast, not too rushed," said Tan Li, Communist Party secretary of Mianyang. "Things have to be well built, to proper standards."<br />Getting it right in the quake zone is a critical part of China's bigger plan for reviving its economy.<br />The torrent of investment flowing towards reconstruction and the country's interior more broadly should transform inland provinces into China's growth engine in 2009, as the coastal factories that have long propelled the country struggle, Standard Chartered Bank economists say.<br />But among the cranes and steamrollers, brick layers and steel workers now busily rebuilding, there is one place that is completely silent. The jagged buildings and boulder-strewn roads at the epicentre of the earthquake in Beichuan are untouched, preserved as an open-air memorial to the tens of thousands who died that May afternoon when the earth shook so violently.<br />(Editing by Megan Goldin)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>***************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Indonesian mining project dwarfs businessman's other ventures<br /></strong>By Fitri WulandariReuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />JAKARTA: Yusuf Merukh, an Indonesian politician turned businessman, has 500 mining concessions in his portfolio. But his latest venture could dwarf the rest.<br />Despite the bursting of the global commodities bubble, his unlisted Merukh Enterprises plans to push ahead with what has the potential to be one of the world's largest copper and gold mines, on the island of Lembata, off the island of Flores, in eastern Indonesia.<br />But the project is controversial. Merukh says the site has preliminary reserves of 61.7 billion kilograms, or 136.1 billion pounds, of copper and 2.27 million kilograms, or 80.3 million ounces, of gold, but some media reports have questioned the size of the deposits.<br />At $17 billion, the cost of development is also being criticized, while environmental and community groups have raised concerns about the effect of the project locally.<br />"I reject the project," said Sonny Keraf, a former environment minister and current member of the Indonesian Parliament's mining committee. "Its mining potential is unclear."<br />Merukh, 72, was born on the Indonesian island of Rote, in East Nusa Tenggara Province, and was a politician for many years. During his political career he sat on a mining committee in Parliament and worked as a top government agrarian official.<br />In a rare interview this month, Merukh said his group would start to invest in infrastructure for the Lembata project next year, but he declined to say where he would obtain financing.<br />Mining projects in Indonesia have often been a source of conflict because of effects on the environment and local people, especially when it comes to the distribution of the proceeds.<br />"We are last to benefit from a project," Merukh said. "No. 1 is the local people."<br />The Lembata project would involve the relocation of about 100,000 people. Many of them lack the skills to work on the mining project, so Merukh plans to bring in outside workers, who are to be housed on a nearby island to reduce the risk of conflicts with local residents.<br />The Indonesian business magazine Globe says Merukh is worth $174 million. His early business ventures included chrome exploration, but he moved into gold concessions when the price was far below the current level of about $845 an ounce.<br />"He is the first Indonesian who has held so many mining concessions," said Hartojo Wignjowijoto, an economist who has known Merukh for many years. "At first, I thought he was just trading mining licenses, but he proved to be a good mining partner" for foreign investors. "He's shrewd. But he's shrewd for the national interest, and patriotic."<br />Merukh said he was optimistic that demand for copper from the auto and electronics industries would hold up despite the slump in commodities. "As long as the industry is still there and still alive, they still need copper," he said.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>****************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Creative solutions in tough times</strong><br />By Alice Rawsthorn<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />LONDON: They cost more than the people who need them can afford. They belch out noxious fumes. They often cause fires, and it isn't safe to leave kids alone with them in case they accidentally burn themselves, or drink poisonous fluid.<br />Why do people use them? Because they don't have a choice. If you lived in a home without electricity like most people in sub-Saharan Africa do, how else would you light it after dark other than with potentially lethal kerosene lamps? Candles? They're dangerous too. That's why the Freeplay Foundation, a charity that provides sustainable technologies to help poor people in developing countries, is planning this spring to distribute Lifelights, a lantern powered by renewable energy, to 100,000 orphaned households in Rwanda.<br />The Lifelight checks most of the necessary boxes for "good design" in 2009. One, it uses design innovation to help the poorest 90 percent of the world's population whom designers have traditionally ignored. Two, it's environmentally responsible, since it is charged by solar power and a wind-up technology developed by Freeplay Energy, the sustainable energy company that funds the foundation. Three, it has adapted a new technology - the tiny, energy-efficient light sources known as light emitting diodes, or LEDs - to produce something that's genuinely useful for people who urgently need it. And four, it was developed in collaboration with them, rather than by a designer who'd already decided what they "needed."<br />All of those themes - empowerment, sustainability, innovation and inclusion - will surface again and again in design next year. Many of the most eagerly awaited new projects of 2009 embrace some of them. Take the new Prius, the roomier, more fuel-efficient version of Toyota's hugely successful gas-electric hybrid car, which is to be unveiled next month at the Detroit motor show. Or the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that NASA has scheduled for lift-off in February as its first unmanned spaceship for more than a decade. Then there's NASA's new Mars Rover and the collection of sustainable products being developed by Hella Jongerius, Yves Béhar and other designers for The Nature Conservancy. Even design's leap into reality television - a BBC series soon to be broadcast in Britain in which would-be designers vie to impress the rumbustious French design star Philippe Starck - promises to be inclusive. Up to a point.<br />It makes perfect sense that design, which strove to build a better world for much of the 20th century, should be dominated by such concerns at a time of environmental crisis, geopolitical turmoil and technological change. Similarly it seems sensible that design should be seen as a possible solution to the world's problems in an era when politicians and economists are seeking alternatives to the systems that regulated our lives in the last century, but are no longer fit for that purpose.<br />One question is whether the deepening recession will change this. Will consumers in the developed world be quite so keen on splashing out (and often paying a premium) for environmentally and ethically sound products when they're strapped for cash? Will designers be willing to devote quite so much time to poorly paid or pro bono humanitarian projects? Will their clients feel confident enough to invest in innovation at such a turbulent time?<br />Much as I'd love to answer those questions with a resounding "yes," I can't. The surge of investment that has fostered experimentation in once-buoyant, now recession-struck, sectors like furniture design is already dwindling, as it is in other areas of consumer products. Without it, established designers will find it harder to develop new ideas, and younger ones to make their mark.<br />But the recession will also create opportunities for designers to help us to adjust to economic austerity. Consumers will still want to score sustainability points, but to save money while doing so. The new cadre of "service designers," who apply design thinking to help organizations structure themselves more efficiently and behave differently, will be called upon to develop new business models to address this. One example is the recent flood of "rentalist" services, whereby you acquire the right to use, say, a car or bicycle, for period of time rather than buying it outright.<br />The economic crisis has also squashed any lingering doubts about the urgency of finding new ways to address acute social problems more efficiently - from caring for the expanding elderly population, to improving the management of over-stretched health care services. This newfound realism is already benefiting the emerging breed of "social designers."<br />Another question is whether designers are ready to respond to these challenges, as "service" and "social" design involve very different skills to conventional design practice. The 20th-century notion of the lone "designer-hero" (there were depressingly few "heroines") shaping his projects from start to finish was always illusory, but the new approaches to design require far greater collaboration, not just with fellow designers but with experts from other disciplines like economists, social scientists, anthropologists and programmers too. Designers also have to make the leap from a material culture where their work generally had a definitive outcome, such as an object or image, to one in which they are applying design thinking to analyze problems and develop solutions that are neither visible nor tangible.<br />This is a significant shift, which some designers, especially older ones steeped in 20th-century design culture, may be unwilling or unable to contemplate. The next generation of designers are likely to think - and work - very differently, which makes it timely that the leadership of many of the world's top design schools is poised to change in 2009. The Rhode Island School of Design in the United States led the way by appointing the maverick software designer John Maeda as its president. Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands and the Royal College of Art in London have since made new appointments, and Art Center in Pasadena, California, is soon to do so. Those schools must now nurture the designers who'll redefine design in 2009 - and beyond.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Grocer Waitrose posts surge in pre-Xmas sales<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />LONDON: Upmarket grocer Waitrose benefited from a late surge in spending in the week before Christmas, enjoying its busiest ever shopping day and a 3.5 percent rise in like-for-like sales, it said on Sunday.<br />The chain, part of employee-owned retailer John Lewis, said total sales in the seven days before Christmas Day rose 6 percent and sales on December 27 were up 36.9 percent on the same day last year.<br />Like-for-like sales for December 22, 23 and 24 were up 12 percent, and the chain had its busiest ever trading day on December 23, with sales of 34.4 million pounds and over 879,000 transactions.<br />Waitrose said it sold 231,000 fresh and frozen turkeys for Christmas, over 12 million mince pies and 34 million sprouts during December, up 13 percent on the same month last year</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Whaling foes claim a victory<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />SYDNEY: The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society says it has achieved its aim of forcing the Japanese whaling fleet out of Antarctic waters claimed by Australia.<br />In a statement on its Web site, dated Saturday, the U.S. group said its ship, the Steve Irwin, had forced the fleet into waters off the Ross Dependency, which is a New Zealand possession.<br />Australia has declared an "economic exclusion zone" in waters off the coast of its Antarctic territories, and an Australian court order bans whaling there. Sea Shepherd has said it is enforcing that order by pursuing the Japanese whaling fleet, which is in the area for an annual hunt to kill around 900 whales.<br />Japan does not recognize the exclusion zone and says its whaling fleet is in international waters.<br />In the statement, the Sea Shepherd founder, Paul Watson, promised that his organization would continue its pursuit of the Japanese fleet.<br />"The good news is that they are no longer whaling in Australian waters, and they only managed to hunt in the waters of the Australian Antarctic Territory for about a week," the Sea Shepherd statement said.<br />"They are now in the waters of the Ross dependency, and the Steve Irwin is in pursuit," he said, referring to a region of the Antarctic. Watson said this was "bad news" for whales in waters south of New Zealand.<br />Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, which runs the hunt, has accused Sea Shepherd of "ecoterrorism" and of ramming its vessel, the Kaiko Maru, during a protest action last Friday. Sea Shepherd blamed the Japanese for the collision.<br />In a video of the incident released on its Web site, the anti-whaling group showed the crew of the Kaiko Maru warning Sea Shepherd in English that its protesters would be treated as "illegal intruders under Japanese law" if they tried to board.<br />During the last whaling season, two Sea Shepherd activists were briefly held on a Japanese vessel after they had boarded it during a protest.<br />Despite an international moratorium on whaling since 1986, Japan justifies the hunt on the grounds that its whaling is for scientific purposes. Much of the meat ends up on supermarket shelves.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>U.S. Navy and environmental groups settle suit over sonar use<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />HONOLULU: The U.S. Navy has settled a lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenging its use of sonar in hundreds of submarine-hunting exercises around the world.<br />The navy said Saturday the deal reached with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups required it to continue to research how sonar affects whales and other marine mammals.<br />It does not require sailors to adopt additional measures to protect the animals when they use sonar.<br />The agreement comes one month after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the navy in another sonar lawsuit the defense council filed.<br />The navy said the settlement, which was reached Friday, called on it to spend $14.75 million over three years on marine mammal research topics of interest to both the navy and the plaintiffs.<br />"The navy is pleased that after more than three years of extensive litigation, this matter has been brought to an end on favorable terms," Frank Jimenez, the navy's general counsel, said in a statement.<br />Officials from the Natural Resources Defense Council could not immediately be reached for comment. The plaintiffs asked the judge to dismiss the case on Friday.<br />The council and five other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in U.S. court in the Central District of California on Oct. 19, 2005.<br />The complaint sought a court order to curb mid-frequency sonar, the navy's preferred method for detecting enemy submarines, on the ground that the sonar disturbs and sometimes kills whales and dolphins.<br />The navy said the suit was amended twice so that it challenged its use of sonar in 370 specific training and testing activities around the world.<br />In the years since, U.S. courts in California and Hawaii ruled in favor of the council and other environmental groups and ordered the navy to restrict its use of sonar to protect the animals.<br />But last month, in a ruling on a council lawsuit challenging the navy's sonar training exercises off Southern California, the Supreme Court ruled that military training trumps protecting whales.<br />Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that forcing the navy to deploy an inadequately trained anti-submarine fleet would jeopardize the safety of the fleet. He also wrote it was unclear how many marine mammals the navy's sonar exercises might harm.<br />The navy uses mid-frequency active sonar to send sound pulses through the water. Sailors listen for what objects the sound bounces off to identify if enemy submarines are lurking nearby.<br />This technology is different from passive sonar, which sailors use to listen for the sounds enemy submarines emit themselves.<br />Environmentalists argue that mid-frequency active sonar can disrupt whale feeding patterns, and in the most extreme cases can kill whales by causing them to beach themselves.<br />But scientists aren't sure why sonar affects some species more than others. They also do not fully know how it hurts whales.<br />The navy acknowledges that sonar may harm marine mammals but says it takes steps to protect whales. It says more research needs to be done to better understand how sonar affects whales before it adopts additional protective measures.<br />The Pacific Fleet has made anti-submarine warfare a top priority as more countries, including North Korea, Iran and China, have been acquiring quiet, diesel-electric submarines that are increasingly difficult to track.<br />The navy said the long-range research program it adopted under the settlement is basically the same as the one it set out to follow in August 2005, two months before the lawsuit was filed.<br />Other plaintiffs were: International Fund for Animal Welfare, Cetacean Society International, League for Coastal Protection, Ocean Futures Society and Jean-Michel Cousteau.<br /> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Ghana vote peaceful in presidential runoff</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />ACCRA, Ghana: Ghanaians voted peacefully Sunday to choose a president for Africa's newest emerging oil producer in a runoff election that many hope can salvage the continent's battered democratic credentials.<br />In the capital, Accra, and across the West African state, the world's No. 2 cocoa grower, lines formed outside schools and other public buildings where polling stations were operating, guarded by soldiers and the police.<br />Election officials said voting went ahead generally smoothly, despite some minor hitches and disputes. Turnout by midday appeared to be lower than in the inconclusive first round on Dec. 7. Final results were not expected to be released until at least 48 hours after polls closed at 5 p.m.<br />The presidential contest pits Nana Akufo-Addo, of the governing New Patriotic Party, against John Atta Mills of the opposition National Democratic Congress, after neither managed an outright victory in the first round.<br />Both are foreign-trained lawyers, both are 64 and both have pledged to maintain the stability and economic growth of recent years, which made the former British colony a favorite of investors on a turbulent continent.<br />The first-round vote in Ghana was praised as fair and orderly by observers, a contrast to other countries in Africa, where setbacks to constitutional democracy this year were posed by flawed elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe and military coups in Mauritania and Guinea.<br />Long lines snaked out of several polling stations in the capital even before they opened at 7 a.m.<br />About 12.4 million Ghanaians, out of a population of 23 million, are registered to vote to choose a successor to President John Kufuor, who is stepping down after two terms, the constitutional limit for remaining in office.<br />The campaign for the runoff had been spiced with heated rhetoric, and the National Democratic Congress had protested to electoral officials about "irregularities." The authorities deployed extra troops and police officers to guarantee security in the second round.<br />"We still have confidence in the good will of Ghanaians that they will not do anything to dent the credibility and the image of Ghana as a beacon in West Africa," said Kwesi Ofori, the deputy police superintendent.<br />In the close-fought first round, Akufo-Addo finished first with just over 49 percent, more than one percentage point ahead of Mills, but he failed to gain the more than 50 percent of votes required for victory.<br />Analysts said the election could go either way.<br />Voter turnout, at nearly 70 percent in the first round, could be key to deciding a winner.<br />A higher turnout would favor Akufo-Addo, while a lower turnout - traditional in second rounds - could enhance Mills's chances.<br />The election came as Ghana, which is also the continent's second largest gold producer, is preparing to start producing oil in commercial quantities from late 2010.<br />Analysts see some risks in the outcome of the vote, which follows the New Patriotic Party losing its majority in Parliament in legislative elections Dec. 7.<br />"Either way, the next president of Ghana - whether from the NPP or the NDC - is likely to face a hostile and acrimonious Parliament that his party won't be able to easily control," wrote Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an Africa analyst at the Eurasia Group.<br />Two of the legislature's 230 seats still need to be declared by the electoral commission, which is handling outstanding constituency disputes, and the Parliament now appears split, with the NDC holding 114 seats and the NPP 108.<br />Ghana suffered back-to-back coups in the 1970s and 1980s. But after ruling for 11 years, the strongman Jerry Rawlings organized elections. He won two terms, then surprised the world by ceding power when his party's candidate lost to Kufuor in the 2000 vote.<br />Ghana - called the best place in West Africa to do business by the World Bank - has seen growth of over 6 percent in the past eight years. Investment has grown 20-fold and the discovery of oil offshore last year is expected to start pumping $2 billion to $3 billion annually into the state purse. Yet many say there is little to show for all the statistics indicating success. Ghana remains one of the world's poorest countries.<br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050824245494226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9obOnk9jxebBo8hRXqj9xPucSUSLCtcR8kEmPTSDukrgI8kocNqV9ZdVK8KIn6XB3ujqD0XqFT1nOH8SVwhEp4KgA8VkcdnHe9yaNaoivc-OKx1j9-FXotGF2MQcbCUdNC48V-nvLjYo/s320/DSC04728.jpg" border="0" /></div><div> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Thomas L. Friedman: Win, win, win, win, win ...</strong><br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />How many times do we have to see this play before we admit that it always ends the same way?<br />Which play? The one where gasoline prices go up, pressure rises for more fuel-efficient cars, then gasoline prices fall and the pressure for low-mileage vehicles vanishes, consumers stop buying those cars, the oil producers celebrate, we remain addicted to oil and prices gradually go up again, petro-dictators get rich, we lose. I've already seen this play three times in my life. Trust me: It always ends the same way - badly.<br />So I could only cringe when reading this article from CNNMoney.com on Dec. 22: "After nearly a year of flagging sales, low gas prices and fat incentives are re-igniting America's taste for big vehicles. Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December ... something that hasn't happened since February. Meanwhile, the forecast finds that sales of hybrid vehicles are expected to be way down."<br />Have a nice day. It's morning again - in Saudi Arabia.<br />Of course, it's a blessing that people who have been hammered by the economy are getting a break at the pump. But for America's long-term health, getting re-addicted to oil and gas guzzlers is one of the dumbest things we could do.<br />That is why I believe the second biggest decision Barack Obama has to make - the first is deciding the size of the stimulus - is whether to increase the federal gasoline tax or impose an economy-wide carbon tax. Best I can tell, the Obama team has no intention of doing either at this time. I understand why. Raising taxes in a recession is a no-no. But I've racked my brain trying to think of ways to retool America around clean-power technologies without a price signal - i.e., a tax - and there are no effective ones. Without a higher gas tax or carbon tax, Obama will lack the leverage to drive critical pieces of his foreign and domestic agendas.<br />How so? According to AAA, U.S. gasoline prices now average about $1.67 a gallon. Funny, that's almost exactly what gas cost on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. In the wake of 9/11, President Bush had the political space to impose a gasoline tax, a "Patriot Tax," to weaken the very people who had funded 9/11 and to stimulate a U.S. renewable-energy industry. But Bush wimped out and would not impose a tax when prices were low or a floor price when they got high.<br />Today's financial crisis is Obama's 9/11. The public is ready to be mobilized. Obama is coming in with enormous popularity. This is his best window of opportunity to impose a gas tax. And he could make it painless: Offset the gas tax by lowering payroll taxes, or phase it in over two years at 10 cents a month. But if Obama, like Bush, wills the ends and not the means - wills a green economy without the price signals needed to change consumer behavior and drive innovation - he will fail.<br />The two most important rules about energy innovation are: 1.) Price matters - when prices go up people change their habits. 2.) You need a systemic approach. It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit - and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars - and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars. .<br />There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes, which would attract more investment in battery technology to make electric cars, which would hugely help the expansion of the wind and solar industries - where the biggest drawback is the lack of batteries to store electrons when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. A higher gas tax would drive all these systemic benefits.<br />The same is true in geopolitics. A gas tax reduces gasoline demand and keeps dollars in America, dries up funding for terrorists and reduces the clout of Iran and Russia at a time when Obama will be looking for greater leverage against petro-dictatorships. It reduces our current account deficit, which strengthens the dollar. It reduces U.S. carbon emissions driving climate change. And it increases the incentives for U.S. innovation on clean cars and clean-tech.<br />Which one of these things wouldn't we want? A gasoline tax "is not just win-win; it's win, win, win, win, win," says the foreign policy specialist Michael Mandelbaum. "A gasoline tax would do more for American prosperity and strength than any other measure Obama could propose."<br />I know it's hard, but we have got to stop "taking off the table" the tool that would add leverage to everything we want to do at home and abroad. We've done that for three decades, and we know with absolute certainty how the play ends - with an America that is less innovative, less wealthy, less respected and less powerful.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>*********************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>South Korea announces major energy investment</strong><br />Bloomberg News<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />SEOUL: South Korea plans to invest 37 trillion won, or $28.5 billion, from 2009 to 2022 on new power plants, including 12 new nuclear plants, to improve fuel efficiency and cut emissions, the Energy Ministry said Sunday.<br />South Korea, one of the largest importers of crude oil, will also build seven new coal plants, 11 liquefied natural gas plants and 1 heavy fuel plant by 2022, but it will get rid of 3 existing coal plants, 6 liquefied natural gas plants and 13 heavy fuel units to improve efficiency, the ministry said.<br />"The plan is to generate more low-carbon power while decreasing the use of high-priced reserves such as LNG and coal," the ministry said, referring to liquefied natural gas. "Under the plan, the fuel cost will be about 56 percent lower than this year."<br />The total number of nuclear power units will rise to 32, or 32.92 million kilowatts, by 2022 and account for 48 percent of the country's total power generation, from 34 percent this year, the ministry said.<br />Liquefied natural gas, which is the most expensive fuel, will account for just 6 percent of total power generation in 2022 under the plan, down from the current 22 percent. The overall electricity power capacity will increase to 100.89 million kilowatts by 2022, up from 71.36 million by the end of 2008.<br />The cost of nuclear power generation is 3 won per kilowatt compared with 22 won at coal-fired plants and 89 won for gas, according to the ministry.<br />Separately, the ministry said it would lend a combined 289.8 billion won to petroleum developers in 2009 to help the country secure stable energy supplies. Of the finished budget, 60 percent is to go to existing projects, both at home and abroad, and the remainder to new exploration.<br />The ministry said the government would increase the ratio of lending support to non government companies in 2009, while it would curtail lending to the state-run Korea National Oil Corporation.<br />South Korea also plans to expand its use of alternative energy. Under the government's long-term plan, renewable energy sources, including solar, wind and water, should account for 11 percent of power consumption by 2030 from the current 2.2 percent.<br />To achieve its goals, South Korea intends to invest 100 trillion won in alternative energy by 2030. The country seeks a 44-fold increase in the supply of solar power to 3,504 megawatts, a 37- fold gain in wind power to 7,301 megawatts and a 19-fold increase in biofuels supply.</div><div><br /> </div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050818121820178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhso0yNzeu3evLVsg7_8PuHnvnZZp1vvyJMw5PlAwZXegKKIU2ib1_faSSoHkr10ROM7KkwDrSRzrnXZuKjFvZdB7W4k-S-V36gDFn1Gmy7wgVvPzVmPyTLBeO_1pnYVY35iNanI-okrgw/s320/DSC04729.jpg" border="0" /> <div> </div><div><strong>Sarkozy pardons ex-official convicted of bribery</strong><br />By Verena von DerschauThe Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />PARIS: Among 27 French prisoners granted presidential pardons this holiday season is one with an unusual résumé.<br />Jean-Charles Marchiani, 65, helped free French hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s and Bosnia in the 1990s, and served in the European parliament and as a governor in the south of France. He has also been convicted twice of taking bribes for business contracts and is now on trial in a weapons trafficking case.<br />But President Nicolas Sarkozy decided that Marchiani had paid his dues and granted him a partial pardon this week that could see him soon free.<br />Sarkozy's enemies are crying foul.<br />"How can we talk about justice when the same rules are not applied to everyone?" said the leader of the opposition Socialists, Martine Aubry. She noted that Sarkozy had rejected appeals for the early release of prisoners convicted of certain minor crimes.<br />Sarkozy was in Brazil all week, away from the fray. His office made no direct comment about Marchiani's pardon, but issued a statement Tuesday announcing 27 partial or total pardons "motivated by acts of courage or bravery exhibited during or before their incarceration."<br />Four former French hostages in Lebanon appealed to Sarkozy to pardon Marchiani. So did his former boss - Charles Pasqua, a fixture of France's conservative establishment who is himself facing a tangle of corruption charge.<br />A former interior minister, Pasqua said there was "nothing extraordinary" about Sarkozy's decision. "Let's look at the services rendered, look at the risks undertaken, the courage that he exhibited, the results he obtained in freeing the hostages," Pasqua said on RTL radio.<br />Marchiani rose to prominence after helping negotiate the release of three French hostages held by the Islamic Jihad movement in Lebanon in 1988. They were among several foreigners, including Americans, who were being held in Lebanon at the time.<br />In exchange, France agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Iran, which had been strained over the Iran-Iraq war, and paid off the last segment of a billion-dollar dispute over a nuclear energy project with Iran.<br />Marchiani was later accused of laundering money meant for use as a ransom for the hostages, though the French government has denied paying a ransom.<br />Marchiani was convicted in 2005 in two corruption cases - one for taking kickbacks in the sale of gearboxes from a German company to the Defense Ministry for use in Leclerc tanks, and one for profiting from a contract between a Dutch company and the Paris airports authority in the 1980s. He was a government official for at least part of the period when he allegedly took the bribes.<br />Marchiani was notified Tuesday that his sentence was reduced by six months. Since he has already served 13 months of a three-year sentence, the partial pardon means he is now eligible to request conditional release.<br />Even if Marchiani leaves prison soon, he will not be free of legal woes. He and Pasqua are among 42 people on trial in a tangled case of alleged arms trafficking to Angola. The trial began in October and is expected to last until March.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>**************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>For champagne industry, a bubbly niche emerges</strong><br />By Joseph Schmid<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />PARIS: When the slump in the financial markets began to worsen in September, Francis Egly, who makes Champagne from his own grapes in Ambonnay, France, started getting calls from his customers. They wanted to know if the bad news might mean he had a few extra bottles to sell.<br />He didn't. About 80 percent of the roughly 100,000 bottles he will sell this year was reserved and paid for a year in advance, and he has no doubt that he will sell next year's vintage just as easily. "This crisis doesn't affect me at all," Egly said by telephone recently. "I don't have enough wine."<br />A few kilometers down the road, in Bouzy, Delphine Vesselle, who owns the Jean Vesselle Champagne house, sent letters to her customers in September telling them that not only would she not be accepting new buyers for this year's output, but that orders would only be partially filled, to a degree based on purchases from prior years.<br />For small producers, like Egly and Vesselle, times are good.<br />But for the Champagne industry as a whole, the traditional year-end surge in sales is looking anything but festive. Overall shipments by producers started falling in September, and that downward trend accelerated in October.<br />The major producers like Moët & Chandon or Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, who sell the bulk of their bottles through retailers, saw shipments drop 21 percent in October from a year earlier, the most recent figures that have been compiled by the Interprofessional Committee of the Wines of Champagne, or CIVC in French, a trade group. And the weak economy has darkened the prospects for the last two months of the year, which represent at least a third of a major producer's annual sales.<br />For the nearly 5,000 houses that make Champagne exclusively from their own grapes - called vignerons - as opposed to buying from vineyards throughout the region, shipments in October were up 3.3 percent. These producers, like Egly and Vesselle, sell mainly to individuals, and for many years their customers often lived within a tight radius of their vineyards, meaning that people could drive over to pick up orders.<br />"The vignerons are the ones that mainly sell direct to their clients, and they're the ones that have been increasing their shipments recently," said Daniel Lorson, the spokesman for the committee.<br />It is a corner of the 4.5 billion, or $6.3 billion, Champagne industry that is proving resilient to the retrenchment of holiday spending in France and elsewhere. Of the 36.2 million bottles shipped in October alone, the major producers shipped 25 million bottles, down about 6.6 million from a year earlier. Vigneron houses shipped nearly 7.5 million bottles.<br />Egly said a major reason that vignerons were thriving amid the slump was price. "The big houses have raised their prices a lot," Egly said. He increased his prices 5 percent this year, mainly to cope with higher fuel prices.<br />At Lavinia, the large Paris wine emporium, sales of vigneron Champagne have been brisk in December, even though overall sales of Champagne were "dead" for the first three weeks of the month, said a clerk, who didn't want to be identified because he did not have permission to speak on the record.<br />"It's much easier to sell a Champagne that costs 20 to 30, and the quality is absolutely comparable" to the major brands, most of which start at 40, the clerk said.<br />He said the major houses had imposed two price increases this year, an average of 5 percent in April, and another 8 percent during the summer. The least expensive Veuve Clicquot at Lavinia now costs 36.<br />Prices of vigneron Champagnes at Lavinia start at 23, and only a handful exceed 35. A 1999 vintage made by Pierre Gimonnet, for example, costs 34, but the least expensive vintage Champagne from a top brand is a 2002 Deutz, at 45. For a 1999 vintage from that brand, the Amour de Deutz, the price jumps to 130. "There are not a lot of people who are going to spend that much for a vintage Champagne," the clerk said.<br />At Legrand Filles & Fils, an institution for fine wine in Paris, bottles of Elgy's Champagne, Elgy-Ouriet, start at 31, and the 2000 vintage costs 69. The store's perennial top seller is a vigneron Champagne made by Jean-Mary Tarlant, at 27. They sell 10,000 bottles of it a year.<br />But while price may explain the choice of a vigneron Champagne for the holidays this year, that does not appear to be helping the least expensive mass producers. The CIVC groups these companies in the same sector as the well-known houses, and together, their shipments dropped 21 percent in October.<br />The vast majority of these "entry-level" Champagnes are sold in supermarkets, and mainly at the end of the year. At a Cora hypermarket outside Paris, the least expensive bottle on Christmas Eve was from G.H. Martin, at 15, and no bottle cost more than 30.<br />Lorson, of the CIVC, said supermarkets were using low-priced Champagne to draw in customers, who were then likely to buy other holiday items as well. "The question is whether this sector is going to increase," but he said it was too early to judge this year's holiday sales. The shipments for November and December will not be known for several weeks.<br />But beyond the question of price, growing numbers of customers are looking for Champagnes off the tracks that have been beaten by the most famous houses. Export shipments of vigneron bottles to the European Union climbed 17 percent in October, when EU exports of the biggest houses slumped 20 percent.<br />Despite the fact that very few of these houses advertise extensively, restaurants around the world are giving top billing to vigneron Champagnes on their wine lists, and wine merchants are encouraging clients to search out the particularities of different Champagnes in the same way they look for particular bottles of Bordeaux or Bourgogne.<br />For Egly, this trend means that many growers like him will have to continue to turn away clients. "People like to know that there's a fellow behind the wine," he said.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj4xYw5F0U1fbMAx2bSjVYC-qpBGCvnooDLQW9R5zVuj-3WMgSOFsChyC9QuinRBgusihnToNIPsE6ybdj4hixClgtNZdRl87eJJtJfDpiqrm6ayRLobJv4ESqNQp3IBIRS-uCS-P0-eo/s1600-h/DSC04722.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051178033489314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj4xYw5F0U1fbMAx2bSjVYC-qpBGCvnooDLQW9R5zVuj-3WMgSOFsChyC9QuinRBgusihnToNIPsE6ybdj4hixClgtNZdRl87eJJtJfDpiqrm6ayRLobJv4ESqNQp3IBIRS-uCS-P0-eo/s320/DSC04722.jpg" border="0" /></a><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050511341080178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFYNWPrcDCSWgA8YQLWZaTe43rsTJoR9MITj62puCYfTT6mebledhdArQtCGLgx5ANxRIFjD89o2__F-k_Aud9oNzeJ4vhtKLDIBACdolK3nw5jUxjvM5kEScRkzIc_2hNl8a1S3OM_X0/s320/DSC04730.jpg" border="0" /> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Bailout of Long-Term Capital: A bad precedent?<br /></strong>By Tyler Cowen<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />THE financial crisis is a result of many bad decisions, but one of them hasn't received enough attention: the 1998 bailout of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. If regulators had been less concerned with protecting the fund's creditors, our current problems might not be quite so bad.<br />Long-Term Capital was advised by finance quants, or quantitative analysts, who made a number of unsound, esoteric bets, including investments in interest rate derivatives. When Russia's inability to pay its debts roiled global markets, the fund, saddled with high-leverage and off-balance-sheet obligations, was near collapse.<br />Because Long-Term Capital owed large sums to banks and other financial institutions, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York organized a consortium of companies to buy it out and cover the debts. Alan Greenspan, then the Fed chairman, eased monetary policy to restart capital markets, which were starting to freeze up. Long-Term Capital's shareholders were wiped out, but none of the creditors took losses.<br />At the time, it may have seemed that regulators did the right thing. The bailout did not require upfront money from the government, and the world avoided an even bigger financial crisis. Today, however, that ad hoc intervention by the government no longer looks so wise. With the Long-Term Capital bailout as a precedent, creditors came to believe that their loans to unsound financial institutions would be made good by the Fed as long as the collapse of those institutions would threaten the global credit system. Bolstered by this sense of security, bad loans mushroomed.<br />Of course, there were many reasons for the reckless lending and failures of risk management that led to the most recent systemic credit shocks. And we have now entered the realm of trillion-dollar bailouts, vast contagion across financial institutions, rapid deleveraging of banks and an economic crisis that some people are starting to compare to the Great Depression.<br />The Long-Term Capital episode looks small when viewed against all of that. But it was important precisely because the fund was not a major firm. At the time of its near demise, it was not even a major money center bank, but a hedge fund with about 200 employees. Such funds hadn't previously been brought under regulatory protection this way. After the episode, financial markets knew that even relatively obscure institutions through government intervention might be able to pay back bad loans.<br />The major creditors of the fund included Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, all of which went on to lend and invest recklessly and, to one degree or another, pay the consequences. But 1998 should have been the time to send a credible warning that bad loans to overleveraged institutions would mean losses, and that neither the Fed nor the Treasury would make these losses good.<br />What would have happened without a Fed-organized bailout of Long-Term Capital? It remains an open question. An entirely private consortium led by Warren Buffett might have bought the fund, but capital markets might still have frozen because of the realization that bailouts were not guaranteed.<br />And Fed inaction might have had graver economic consequences, especially if a Buffett deal had fallen through. In that case, a rapid financial deleveraging would have followed, and the economy would have probably plunged into recession. That sounds bad, but it might have been better to have experienced a milder version of a downturn in 1998 than the more severe version of 10 years later.<br />In 1998, there was no collapsed housing bubble, the government's budget was in surplus rather than deficit, bank leverage was much lower, and derivatives markets were smaller and less far-reaching. A financial crisis related to Long-Term Capital, however painful, probably would have been easier to handle than the perfect storm of recent months.<br />The ad hoc aspect of the bailout created a precedent for what has come to be called "regulation by deal" now the government's modus operandi. Rather than publicizing definite standards and expectations for bailouts in advance, the Fed and the Treasury confront each particular crisis anew. Decisions are made as to whether a merger is possible, whether a consortium can be organized, what kind of loan guarantees can be offered and what kind of concessions will be extracted in return. So far, every deal or lack thereof, in the case of Lehman Brothers has been different.<br />While there are some advantages to leaving discretion in regulators' hands, this hasn't worked out very well. It has become increasingly apparent that the market doesn't know what to expect and that many financial institutions are sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see what regulators will do next. Regulatory uncertainty is stifling the ability of financial markets to engineer at least a partial recovery.<br />John Maynard Keynes famously proclaimed that "in the long run we are all dead." From the vantage point of 1998, today is indeed the "long run."<br />We're not quite dead, but we are seriously ailing. As we look ahead, we may be tempted again to put off the hard choices. But perhaps the next "long run," too, is no more than 10 years away. If we take the Keynesian maxim too seriously, and focus only on the short run, our prospects will be grim indeed.</div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>*****************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>At Washington Mutual, a relentless urge to approve any loan</strong><br />By Peter S. Goodman and Gretchen Morgenson<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />SAN DIEGO: "We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe's-Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we've done our job, five years from now you're not going to call us a bank."<br />- Kerry Killinger, chief executive of Washington Mutual, 2003<br />As a supervisor at a Washington Mutual mortgage processing center, John Parsons was accustomed to seeing baby sitters claiming salaries worthy of college presidents, and schoolteachers with incomes rivaling those of stockbrokers. He rarely questioned them. A real estate frenzy was under way and WaMu, as his bank was known, was all about saying yes.<br />Yet even by WaMu's relaxed standards, the mortgage on one home four years ago raised eyebrows. The borrower was claiming a six-figure income and an unusual profession: mariachi singer.<br />Parsons could not verify the singer's income, so he had the applicant photographed in front of the home, dressed in his mariachi outfit. The photo went into a WaMu file. Approved.<br />"I'd lie if I said every piece of documentation was properly signed and dated," said Parsons, speaking through wire-reinforced glass at a California prison near here, where he is serving 16 months for theft after his fourth arrest - all involving drugs.<br />While Parsons, whose incarceration is not related to his work for WaMu, oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily, he said.<br />"In our world, it was tolerated," said Sherri Zaback, who worked for Parsons and recalls seeing drug paraphernalia on his desk. "Everybody said, 'He gets the job done."'<br />At WaMu, getting the job done meant lending money to nearly anyone who asked for it - the force behind the bank's meteoric rise and its precipitous collapse this year in the biggest bank failure in American history.<br />In a financial landscape littered with wreckage, WaMu, a Seattle-based bank that opened branches at a clip worthy of a fast-food chain, stands out as a singularly brazen case of lax lending. By the first half of this year, the value of its bad loans had reached $11.5 billion, having nearly tripled from $4.2 billion a year earlier.<br />Interviews with two dozen former employees, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and appraisers show the relentless pressure to churn out loans that produced such results. While that sample may not fully represent a bank with tens of thousands of people, it does reflect the views of employees in WaMu mortgage operations in California, Florida, Illinois and Texas.<br />Their accounts are consistent with those of 89 other former employees who are confidential witnesses in a class action filed against WaMu in U.S. court in Seattle by former shareholders.<br />According to these accounts, pressure to keep lending emanated from the top, where executives profited from the swift expansion - not least, Kerry Killinger, who was WaMu's chief executive from 1990 until he was forced out in September.<br />Between 2001 and 2007, Killinger received compensation of $88 million, according to the Corporate Library, a research firm. He declined to respond to a list of questions, and his spokesman said he was unavailable for an interview.<br />During Killinger's tenure, WaMu pressed sales agents to pump out loans while disregarding borrowers' incomes and assets, according to former employees. The bank set up what insiders described as a system of dubious legality that enabled real estate agents to collect fees of more than $10,000 for bringing in borrowers, sometimes making the agents more beholden to WaMu than they were to their clients.<br />WaMu gave mortgage brokers handsome commissions for selling the riskiest loans, which carried higher fees, bolstering profits and ultimately the compensation of the bank's executives. WaMu pressed appraisers to provide inflated property values that made loans appear less risky, enabling Wall Street to bundle them more easily for sale to investors.<br />"It was the Wild West," said Steven Knobel, a founder of an appraisal company - Mitchell, Maxwell & Jackson - that did business with WaMu until 2007. "If you were alive, they would give you a loan. Actually, I think if you were dead, they would still give you a loan."<br />JPMorgan Chase, which bought WaMu for $1.9 billion in September and received $25 billion a few weeks later as part of the taxpayer bailout of the financial services industry, declined to make former WaMu executives available for interviews.<br />JPMorgan also declined to comment on WaMu's operations before it bought the company. "It is a different era for our customers and for the company," a spokesman said.<br />For those who placed their faith and money in WaMu, the bank's implosion came as a shock.<br />"I never had a clue about the amount of off-the-cliff activity that was going on at Washington Mutual, and I was in constant contact with the company," said Vincent Au, president of Avalon Partners, an investment firm. "There were people at WaMu that orchestrated nothing more than a sham or charade. These people broke every fundamental rule of running a company."'Like a sweatshop'<br />Some WaMu employees who worked for the bank during the boom now have regrets.<br />"It was a disgrace," said Dana Zweibel, a former financial representative at a WaMu branch in Tampa, Florida. "We were giving loans to people that never should have had loans."<br />If Zweibel doubted whether customers could pay, supervisors directed her to keep selling, she said. "We were told from up above that that's not our concern," she said. "Our concern is just to write the loan."<br />The ultimate supervisor at WaMu was Killinger, who joined the company in 1983 and became chief executive in 1990. He inherited a bank that had been founded in 1889 and had survived the Depression and the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s.<br />An investment analyst by training, he was attuned to Wall Street's hunger for growth. Between late 1996 and early 2002, he transformed WaMu into the sixth-largest U.S. bank through a series of acquisitions.<br />A crucial deal came in 1999, with the purchase of Long Beach Financial, a California lender specializing in subprime mortgages - loans extended to borrowers with troubled credit.<br />WaMu underscored its eagerness to lend with an advertising campaign introduced during the 2003 Academy Awards: "The Power of Yes." No mere advertising pitch, this was also the mantra inside the bank, underwriters said.<br />"WaMu came out with that slogan, and that was what we had to live by," Zaback said. "We joked about it a lot." A file would get marked problematic and then somehow get approved. "We'd say: 'O.K.! The power of yes."'<br />Revenue at WaMu's mortgage unit swelled from $707 million in 2002 to almost $2 billion the following year, when the "The Power of Yes" campaign started.<br />Between 2000 and 2003, the number of WaMu's retail branches grew 70 percent, reaching 2,200 across 38 states, as the bank used an image of cheeky irreverence to attract new customers. In offbeat television ads, casually dressed WaMu employees ridiculed staid bankers in suits.<br />Branches were pushed to increase lending. "It was just disgusting," said Zweibel, the Tampa representative. "They wanted you to spend time, while you're running teller transactions and opening checking accounts, selling people loans."<br />Employees in Tampa who fell short were ordered to drive to a WaMu office in Sarasota, an hour away. There, they sat in a phone bank with 20 other people, calling customers to push home equity loans.<br />"The regional manager would be over your shoulder, listening to every word," Zweibel recalled. "They treated us like we were in a sweatshop."<br />At the other end of the country, at WaMu's processing office in San Diego, Zaback's job was to take loan applications from branches in Southern California and make sure they passed muster. Most of the loans she said she handled required the borrower to provide only an address and a Social Security number and to state income and assets.<br />She ran applications through WaMu's computer system for approval. If she needed more information, she had to consult a loan officer, which she described as an unpleasant experience. "They would be furious," Zaback said. "They would put it on you, that they weren't going to get paid if you stood in the way."<br />On one loan application in 2005, a borrower identified himself as a gardener and listed his monthly income as $12,000, Zaback recalled. She could not verify his business license, so she took the file to her boss, Parsons.<br />He used the mariachi singer as inspiration: a photo of the borrower's truck emblazoned with the name of his landscaping business went into the file. Approved.<br />Parsons, who worked for WaMu in San Diego from about 2002 through 2005, said his supervisors constantly praised his performance. "My numbers were through the roof," he said.<br />On another occasion, Zaback asked a loan officer for verification of an applicant's assets. The officer sent a letter from a bank showing a balance of about $150,000 in the borrower's account, she recalled. But when Zaback called the bank to confirm, she was told the balance was only $5,000.<br />The loan officer yelled at her, Zaback recalled. "She said, 'We don't call the bank to verify."' Zaback said she had told Parsons that she no longer wanted to work with that loan officer, but he had replied: "Too bad."<br />Shortly thereafter, Parsons disappeared from the office. Zaback later learned of his arrest for burglary and drug possession.<br />The sheer workload at WaMu ensured that loan reviews were limited. Zaback's office had 108 people, and several hundred new files a day. She was required to process at least 10 files daily.<br />"I'd typically spend a maximum of 35 minutes per file," she said. "It was just disheartening. Just spit it out and get it done. That's what they wanted us to do. Garbage in, and garbage out."Referral fees for loans<br />WaMu's boiler room culture flourished in Southern California, where housing prices rose so rapidly during the bubble that creative financing was needed to attract buyers.<br />To that end, WaMu embraced so-called option ARMs - adjustable-rate mortgages that enticed borrowers with a selection of low initial rates and allowed them to decide how much to pay each month. But people who chose minimum payments were underpaying the interest due and adding to their principal, eventually causing loan payments to balloon.<br />Customers were often left with the impression that low payments would continue long term, according to former WaMu sales agents.<br />For WaMu, variable-rate loans - option adjustable-rate mortgages, in particular - were especially attractive because they carried higher fees than other loans and allowed WaMu to book profits on interest payments that borrowers deferred. Because WaMu was selling many of its loans to investors, it did not worry about defaults: by the time loans went bad, they were often in other hands.<br />WaMu's adjustable-rate mortgages expanded from about one-fourth of new home loans in 2003 to 70 percent by 2006. In 2005 and 2006 - when WaMu pushed option adjustable-rate mortgages most aggressively - Killinger received pay of $19 million and $24 million respectively.The ARM loan niche<br />WaMu's retail mortgage office in Downey, California, specialized in selling option ARMs to Latino customers who spoke little English and depended on advice from real estate brokers, according to a former sales agent who requested anonymity because he was still in the mortgage business.<br />According to that agent, WaMu turned real estate agents into a pipeline for loan applications by giving them "referral fees" for clients who became WaMu borrowers.<br />Buyers were typically oblivious to agents' fees, the agent said, and agents rarely explained the loan terms.<br />"Their realtor was their trusted friend," the agent said. "The realtors would sell them on a minimum payment, and that was an outright lie."<br />According to the agent, the strategy was the brainchild of Thomas Ramirez, who oversaw a sales team of about 20 agents at the Downey branch during the first half of this decade, and now works for Wells Fargo.<br />Ramirez confirmed that he and his team had allowed real estate agents to collect commissions, but he maintained that the fees had been fully disclosed.<br />"I don't think the bank would have let us do the program if it was bad," Ramirez said.<br />Ramirez's team sold nearly $1 billion worth of loans in 2004, he said. His performance made him a perennial member of WaMu's President's Club, which brought big bonuses and recognition at an awards ceremony for which Killinger typically was host at warm-weather locations like Hawaii.<br />Ramirez's success prompted WaMu to populate a neighboring building in Downey with loan processors, underwriters and appraisers who worked for him. The fees proved so enticing that real estate agents arrived in Downey from all over Southern California, bearing six and seven loan applications at a time, the former agent said.<br />WaMu banned referral fees in 2006, fearing they could be construed as illegal payments from the bank to agents. But the bank allowed Ramirez's team to continue using the referral fees, the agent said.Forced out with millions<br />By 2005, the word was out that WaMu would accept applications with a mere statement of the borrower's income and assets - often with no documentation required - as long as credit scores were adequate, according to Zaback and other underwriters.<br />"We had a flier that said, 'A thin file is a good file,"' recalled Michele Culbertson, a wholesale sales agent with WaMu.<br />Martine Lado, an agent in the Irvine, California, office, said she had coached brokers to leave parts of applications blank to avoid prompting verification if the borrower's job or income was sketchy.<br />"We were looking for people who understood how to do loans at WaMu," Lado said.<br />Top producers became heroes. Craig Clark, called the "king of the option ARM" by colleagues, closed loans totaling about $1 billion in 2005, according to four of his former coworkers, a tally he amassed in part by challenging anyone who doubted him.<br />"He was a bulldozer when it came to getting his stuff done," said Lisa Alvarez, who worked in the Irvine office from 2003 to 2006.<br />Christine Crocker, who managed WaMu's wholesale underwriting division in Irvine, recalled one mortgage to an elderly couple from a broker on Clark's team.<br />With a fixed income of about $3,200 a month, the couple needed a fixed-rate loan. But their broker earned a commission of three percentage points by arranging an option ARM for them, and did so by listing their income as $7,000 a month. Soon, their payment jumped from about $1,000 a month to about $3,000, and they fell behind.<br />Clark, who now works for JPMorgan, referred calls to a company spokesman, who provided no further details.<br />In 2006, WaMu slowed the use of option adjustable-rate mortgages. But earlier, ill-considered loans had already begun hurting its results. In 2007, it recorded a $67 million loss and shut down its subprime lending unit.<br />By the time shareholders joined WaMu for its annual meeting in Seattle last April, WaMu had posted a first-quarter loss of $1.14 billion and increased its loan loss reserve to $3.5 billion. Its stock had lost more than half its value in the previous two months. Anger was in the air.<br />Some shareholders were irate that Killinger and other executives were excluding mortgage losses from the computation of their bonuses. Others were enraged that WaMu had turned down an $8-a-share takeover bid from JPMorgan.<br />"Calm down and have a little faith," Killinger told the crowd. "We will get through this."<br />WaMu asked shareholders to approve a $7 billion investment by Texas Pacific Group, a private equity firm, and other unnamed investors. David Bonderman, a founder of Texas Pacific and a former WaMu director, declined to comment.<br />Hostile shareholders argued that the deal would dilute their holdings, but Killinger forced it through, saying WaMu desperately needed new capital.<br />Weeks later, with WaMu in tatters, directors stripped Killinger of his board chairmanship. And the bank began including mortgage losses when calculating executive bonuses.<br />In September, Killinger was forced to retire. Later that month, with WaMu buckling under about $180 billion in mortgage-related loans, regulators seized the bank and sold it to JPMorgan for $1.9 billion, a fraction of the $40 billion valuation the stock market had given WaMu at its peak.<br />Billions that investors had plowed into WaMu were wiped out, as were prospects for many of the bank's 50,000 employees. But Killinger still had his millions, rankling laid-off workers and shareholders alike.<br />"Kerry has made over $100 million over his tenure based on the aggressiveness that sunk the company," said Au, the money manager. "How does he justify taking that money?"<br />In June, Au sent an e-mail message to the company, asking executives to return some of their pay. He says he has not heard back</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Blockbuster openings, lackluster U.S. box office<br /></strong>By Michael Cieply<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />LOS ANGELES: What a year for movie openings.<br />I mean, who could forget "Twilight"? Teenagers screaming for free tickets outside the dual-theater Westwood premiere here. Mayhem in the malls. Girls thirsting for Robert Pattinson. Box-office projections growing bigger and bigger as online vendors sold out theater after theater.<br />It was amazing. When all is said and done, maybe 24 million tickets will be sold to that movie, based on current sales. That makes it almost as big as, what?<br />"Patch Adams," the No. 10 movie of 1998. Or roughly the size of "George of the Jungle," which placed No. 13 the year before. Or any number of films that are fondly remembered as midsize hits.<br />Looking back, in fact, 2008 may be remembered as the year when Hollywood succeeded in redefining the Big Event.<br />A "movie of the century" something that made you want to dress up, get in line, and act silly just to see it used to come along every year or two. The "Star Wars" films had that quality. So did "Titanic," in a quieter, dreamier sort of way.<br />But heart-stopping film events like that have been popping up every few weeks this year.<br />Or at least it felt that way if you were willing to close your eyes and take a ride with Hollywood's marketing mavens and those who help them along in the media, old and new.<br />(Yes, yours truly has sometimes played the game. Many film writers have.)<br />It's all great fun and, in the heat of the moment, can seem tantalizingly real. Remember the high-heeled stampede toward "Sex and the City"? What a romp! Cosmopolitans. Bus tours. Girls' nights out.<br />Eventually, about 22 million tickets were sold. That puts it on a par with "Steel Magnolias" in 1989 or "The First Wives Club" in 1996 movies that played to about the same number of viewers, but did so with considerably less noise.<br />Even this year's really big one, "The Dark Knight," was never quite as big as it felt. Clear away the urgent reports about 6 a.m. screenings and Imax-size demand, and you are left, according to an always-sobering tally kept by the Box Office Mojo Web site, at <a title="" href="http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm" target="_self">boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm</a>, with the 26th-most-popular movie of all time, in terms of tickets sold.<br />Apparently, movie events that were once routine are now routinely treated as thrilling.<br />Part of the reason is obvious: Those vast, exciting openings we all love have acquired a kind of false amplitude from ticket price inflation. A movie ticket in 2007 cost $6.88, on average (and at least 20 cents more in 2008), up nearly 47 percent from $4.69 in 1998. In general, the cost of consumer goods rose only about 27 percent in the same 10 years, according to a popular inflation calculator available on the Web at <a title="" href="http://westegg.com/inflation/" target="_self">westegg.com/inflation/</a>.<br />Inevitably, the weekend box-office numbers loomed larger and larger, even as fewer people were going to see the pictures.<br />According to Media By Numbers, a consulting company that tracks such things, admissions to theaters adrift for years are now about 3 percent behind last year's count, even as box-office revenue is poised to top the $9.7 billion record set in 2007.<br />If inflation-soaked numbers consistently look exceptional with a $42 million opening weekend, even "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" began to feel like a blockbuster they have appeared to grow still more in the magnifying lens of the Internet.<br />Who can resist the drama when box-office aficionados at Fandango.com, Movietickets.com, Boxofficeguru.com and Deadlinehollywooddaily.com start pumping up the volume, and building their own traffic, in the weeks before a movie like "Twilight" opens?<br />Before you know it, fans trample one another at a mall and make TMZ.com. Pretty soon, even The New York Times is staking out "Twilight"-mania at a shopping center in suburban Philadelphia.<br />All not to be scooped on a movie that so far has had about as many viewers as the dimly recalled angel romance "Michael," from 1996.<br />(At the same time, the population has been growing, so a movie with the same number of viewers is actually drawing a smaller chunk of the market. If you were to count the percentage of Americans who actually watched in a theater, "Twilight" was probably closer to the performance of "Congo," a jungle thriller from the year before.)<br />Maybe everything looks a little bigger than it really is in these somewhat hysterical times.<br />"It's certainly easier to create a media event, if you have the right stars and get the right traction," said Howard Bragman, a Hollywood publicist who, with Michael Levin, has made a study of contemporary publicity in a book, "Where's My Fifteen Minutes?," which was recently published by Portfolio Hardcover.<br />The problem, Bragman said, "is that there's shockingly little relationship between the publicity, i.e., the hype, and butts in seats."<br />In truth, a little exaggeration is probably good for the movie industry (though it does not do much for journalism). Studios need the excitement of seemingly enormous openings to juice waning DVD sales while they wait for the next truly big thing a new distribution format that would let companies once again resell all those movies that have been peddled previously on broadcast television, cable, videocassettes and discs.<br />Until that happens, though, it may be a good idea to keep an inflation calculator handy. Just so we don't start kidding ourselves about what is really going on here.<br />As colossal as it seemed back in May, "Iron Man" was no "Twister." The 1996 tornado film, that year's No. 2, easily outsold the superhero, this year's second-biggest event, 55 million tickets to 45 million.<br />And "Turner & Hooch," from 1989, would have looked like a very big deal more than a third bigger in ticket sales than Disney's dog-movie-of-the-century "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," actually if that sloppy old hound had slobbered on Tom Hanks in 2008.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Printing money - and its price<br /></strong>By Peter S. Goodman<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Borrowing and spending beyond ordinary limits largely explains how the United States got into such economic trouble. For decades, businesses and consumers feasted relentlessly, as if gravity, arithmetic and the tyranny of debt had been defanged by financial engineering.<br />Armed with credit cards and belief in a bountiful future, Americans brought home ceaseless volumes of iPods and cashmere sweaters, and never mind their declining incomes and winnowing savings. Banks lent staggering sums of money to homeowners with dubious credit, convinced that real estate prices could only go up. Government spent as it saw fit, secure that foreigners could always be counted on to finance U.S. debt.<br />So it may seem perverse that in this new era of reckoning — with consumers finally tapped out, government coffers lean and banks paralyzed by fear — many economists have concluded that the appropriate medicine is a fresh dose of the very course that delivered the disarray: Spend without limit. Print money today, fret about the consequences tomorrow. Otherwise, lost jobs and business failures could cripple the nation for years.<br />Such thinking carries the moment as President-elect Barack Obama puts together plans to spend more than $700 billion on projects like building roads and classrooms to put people back to work. It is the philosophy behind the Federal Reserve's decision to drop interest rates near zero — meaning that banks can essentially borrow money for free — while lending directly to financial institutions. This is the mentality that has propelled the U.S. Treasury to promise up to $950 billion to aid Wall Street, Detroit and perhaps other recipients.<br />But where does all this money come from? And how can a country that got itself in peril by borrowing and spending without limit now borrow and spend its way back to safety?<br />In the case of the Fed, the money comes from its authority to print dollars from thin air. Since late August, the Fed has expanded its balance sheet from about $900 billion to more than $2.2 trillion, creating $1.3 trillion that did not exist to replace some of the trillions wiped out by falling house prices and vengeful stock markets. The Fed has taken troublesome assets off the hands of banks and simply credited them with having reserves they previously lacked.<br />In the case of the Treasury, the money comes from the same wellspring that has been financing U.S. debt for decades: Investors in the United States and around the world — not least, the central banks of China, Japan and Saudi Arabia, which have parked national savings in the safety of U.S. government bonds.<br />Americans have gotten accustomed to treating this well as bottomless, even as anxiety grows that it could one day run dry with potentially devastating consequences.<br />The value of outstanding U.S. Treasury bills now reaches $10.6 trillion, a number sure to increase as dollars are spent building bridges, saving auto jobs and preventing the collapse of government-backed mortgage giants. Worry centers on the possibility that foreigners could come to doubt the U.S. wherewithal to pay back such an extraordinary sum, prompting them to stop — or at least slow — their deposits of savings into the United States.<br />That could send the dollar plummeting, making imported goods more expensive for U.S. consumers and businesses. It would force the Treasury to pay higher returns to find takers for its debt, increasing interest rates for home- and auto-buyers, for businesses and credit-card holders.<br />"We got into this mess to a considerable extent by overborrowing," said Martin Baily, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Now, we're saying, 'Well, O.K., let's just borrow a bunch more, and that will help us get out of this mess.' It's like a drunk who says, 'Give me a bottle of Scotch, and then I'll be O.K. and I won't have to drink anymore.' Eventually, we have to get off this binge of borrowing."<br />Some argue that the moment for sobriety is long overdue, and postponing it further only increases the ultimate costs. "Our government doesn't have enough spare cash to bail out a lemonade stand," declared Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, a Connecticut-based trading house. "Our standard of living must decline to reflect years of reckless consumption and the disintegration of our industrial base. Only by swallowing this tough medicine now will our sick economy ever recover."<br />But most economists cast such thinking as recklessly extreme, akin to putting an obese person on a painful diet in the name of long-term health just as they are fighting off a potentially lethal infection. In the dominant view, now is no time for austerity — not with paychecks disappearing from the economy and gyrating markets wiping out retirement savings. Not with the financial system in virtual lockdown, and much of the world in a similar state of retrenchment, shrinking demand for U.S. goods and services.<br />Since the Great Depression, the conventional prescription for such times is to have the government step in and create demand by cycling its dollars through the economy, generating jobs and business opportunities. That such dollars must be borrowed is hardly ideal, adding to the long-term strains on the nation. But the immediate risks of not spending them could be grave.<br />"This is a dangerous situation," Baily says, essentially arguing that the drunk must be kept in Scotch a while longer, lest he burn down the neighborhood in the midst of a crisis. "The risks of things actually getting worse and us going into a really severe recession are high. We need to get more money out there now."<br />Had the government worried more about limiting spending than about the potential collapse of the mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it might have triggered precisely the dark scenario that consumes those who worry most about growing American debt, argues Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations.<br />China purchased a lot of Fannie and Freddie bonds with the understanding that they were backed by the American government. No bailout "would have been portrayed in China as defaulting on the Chinese people," Setser said. That would have increased the likelihood that China would start parking its savings somewhere other than the United States.<br />The most frequently voiced worry about the bailouts is that the Fed, by sending so much money sloshing through the system, risks generating a bad case of rising prices later on. That puts the onus on the Fed to reverse course and crimp economic activity by lifting interest rates and selling assets back to banks once growth resumes.<br />But finding the appropriate point to act tends to be more art than science. The Fed might move too early and send the economy back into a tailspin. It might wait too long and let too much money generate inflation.<br />"It's a tricky business," says Allan Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, and a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan. "There's no math model that tells us when to do it or how."<br />But that, as most economists see it, is a worry for another day. Some policy makers are focused on staving off the opposite problem — deflation, or falling prices, as demand weakens to the point that goods pile up without buyers, sending prices down and reducing the incentive for businesses to invest. That could shrink demand further and perhaps even deliver the sort of downward spiral that pinned Japan in the weeds of stagnant growth during the 1990s.<br />"Those who claim that sharp increases in federal borrowing and the national debt would be ill advised at the present time, when the economy is weakening while deflation threatens, have failed to study Japan's history," declared the economist John Makin in a report published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute — ordinarily, a staunch advocate for lean government.<br />So back to the well Americans go, putting aside worries about debt, unleashing another wave of synthesized money in an effort to prevent deeper misery.<br />"Right now," Setser says, "the risk is not doing enough."</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Dubious accounting undermines aid for U.S. homeowners<br /></strong>By Gretchen Morgenson<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />With U.S. home prices in free fall and mortgage delinquencies mounting, pressure to modify troubled loans is ratcheting up.<br />But lawyers who represent candidates for modifications say the programs are hobbled by the complexity of securitization pools that hold the loans, as well as by uncertainty about who actually owns the notes underlying the mortgages.<br />Problems often emerge because these notes - which are written promises to repay the full amount of a mortgage - were not recorded properly when they were bundled by Wall Street into pools or were subsequently transferred to other holders.<br />How can a loan be modified, these lawyers ask, if the lender cannot prove that it actually owns the note? More and more judges are asking the same thing about lenders who are trying to foreclose on borrowers.<br />And here is another hurdle: Most loan servicers - the people responsible for handling all the paperwork surrounding monthly mortgage payments - are not set up to handle all of the details involved in a modification.<br />Loan servicing operations are intended to receive borrowers' payments. Producing loan histories and verifying that payments have been received or junk fees have not been applied is considerably more labor-intensive. This cuts into profits.<br />"These servicers are not staffed up and they don't have a chance in the world to do the stuff they are supposed to do," said April Charney, a consumer lawyer at Jacksonville Legal Aid in Florida. Many servicers stonewall troubled borrowers who ask for histories of their loan payments and fees, she said.<br />"This is your biggest, hugest expense - your home - and when you ask for a life-of-loan history, your servicer tells you to get lost," she said. "And when you ask for a list of charges in the loan history that's not going to happen."<br />So even if loan modifications were to rise rapidly, it is unclear that borrowers could trust what lenders told them about what they owed.<br />Consider a U.S. bankruptcy court case in Colorado. It involves two borrowers who got into trouble on their loan but agreed, under a bankruptcy plan, to make revised mortgage payments to get back on track.<br />The lender in the case is Wells Fargo, and on Dec. 22 the judge overseeing the matter took a tough stance on the bank's record-keeping and billing practices.<br />In June 2004, Brandon Burrier and Denon Burrier received a $183,126 loan for a property in Arvada, Colorado. The note was later transferred to Wells Fargo, court filings show.<br />The Burriers fell behind on their loan and in February 2007, they filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, agreeing to pay $12,000 that Wells Fargo said they owed. Chapter 13 bankruptcies allow debtors to retain their properties and work out repayment plans based on their incomes and levels of indebtedness.<br />The Burriers' payment plan was confirmed by the bankruptcy court in August 2007. Last December, a second plan requiring higher payments was approved by the court.<br />Two months later, Wells Fargo told the court that the Burriers had failed to make four of their payments and that it should be allowed to begin foreclosure proceedings.<br />The Burriers denied that they had missed payments, but in April, to keep their home, they agreed to make double payments to cover the ones Wells Fargo claimed they had missed.<br />If the borrowers could prove that the mortgage checks had been submitted, Wells Fargo said, their account would be credited and they would no longer have to make up the payments. The proof required by Wells Fargo and approved by the court was "valid, accurate and true copies" of the fronts and backs of the checks the borrowers had sent in.<br />Last August, the parties were back in court, with Wells Fargo stating that the borrowers had failed to comply with the condition. Denon Burrier testified that she had asked her local bank repeatedly for proof of the payments made to Wells Fargo, but had had no luck. The payments to Wells Fargo had been processed electronically, she learned, and that meant Wells Fargo had not returned the checks to her bank.<br />The borrowers did produce bank statements showing that the checks Wells Fargo said were missing had been cashed by "WFHM," an entity that they assumed was Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.<br />But Tara Gaschler, the lawyer representing the borrowers, said Wells Fargo continued to maintain that it had not received the money.<br />The bank flew in an expert to testify that all checks received by Wells Fargo from borrowers in Chapter 13 cases were processed by hand, Gaschler said. "Even when presented with bank statements, they told the court there must be some mistake," she added.<br />Finally, Wells Fargo demanded that the Burriers provide the routing number of the account at Wells Fargo that their money went into. If they could not, the bank said, they would have to keep making extra payments.<br />But Sidney Brooks, the judge overseeing the case, was clearly dismayed by the bank's performance.<br />In his opinion, he fumed that Wells Fargo had asked the borrowers for canceled checks as proof of payment, even though such checks were often not available. Wells Fargo's request for canceled checks was especially troubling, the judge said, given that the bank was a proponent of the 2003 law that had allowed banks to stop returning canceled checks to customers.<br />The only institution that could have the original checks was Wells Fargo, he concluded.<br />"The payments have, evidently, been lost in a black hole of the creditor's organization or through accounting mismanagement," the judge wrote. "This is a major lender/mortgage loan servicer where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing - the collection department does not know what the check processing and accounting departments are doing."<br />Because this is not the first time the judge has encountered problems in Wells Fargo's operations, he is considering sanctions on the bank.<br />"This dispute might portend a widespread abuse of collection practices or creditor overreaching," he wrote, "demanding of debtors what it, the creditor itself, is unable to provide: accurate and reliable record keeping and billing practices."<br />A spokesman for Wells Fargo said: "We are currently reviewing the court's opinion to determine whether or not an appeal is appropriate. The Burrier case is quite factually specific, and we disagree with the court's conclusions. We are confident that our payment processing practices are accurate and sound."<br />Gaschler says that this kind of dispute is becoming more common in her practice and that borrowers wind up losing too often.<br />"A lot of times clients don't keep canceled checks or maybe their bank account was closed and they can't go and get the proof," she said. "The bank gets that extra money for as long as the debtor can keep it up and when they can't, they are pushed out of their homes."<br />While judges are starting to see how flawed loan servicers' systems can be, those rushing to modify loans may not be as aware of the problems.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Downturn ends building boom in New York<br /></strong>By Christine Haughney<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.<br />The setbacks for development perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years.<br />"There's no way to finance a project," said the researcher, Stephen Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group.<br />Charles Blaichman is not about to argue with that assessment. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. But when he turned north to the blocks along the High Line, once among the most sought-after areas for development, he surveyed a landscape of frustration: the planned sites of three luxury hotels, all stalled by recession.<br />Several indicators show that developers nationwide have also been affected by the tighter lending markets. The growth rate for construction and land development loans shrunk drastically this year to 0.08 percent through September, compared with 11.3 percent for all of 2007 and 25.7 percent in 2006, according to data tracked by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.<br />And developers who have loans are missing payments. The percentage of loans in default nationwide jumped to 7.3 percent through September 2008, compared with 1 percent in 2007, according to data tracked by Reis Inc., a New York-based real estate research company.<br />New York's development world is rife with such stories as developers who have been busy for years are killing projects or scrambling to avoid default because of the credit crunch.<br />Blaichman, who has built two dozen projects in the past 20 years, is struggling to borrow money: $370 million for the three hotels, which include a venture with Jay-Z, the hip-hop mogul. A year ago, it would have seemed a reasonable amount for Blaichman. Not now.<br />"Even the banks who want to give us money can't," he said.<br />The long-term impact is potentially immense, experts said. Construction generated more than $30 billion in economic activity in New York last year, said Louis Coletti, the chief executive of the Building Trades Employers' Association. The $5 billion in canceled or delayed projects tracked by Coletti's association include all types of construction: luxury high-rise buildings, office renovations for major banks and new hospital wings. Coletti's association, which represents 27 contractor groups, is talking to the trade unions about accepting wage cuts or freezes. So far there is no deal.<br />Not surprisingly, unemployment in the construction industry is soaring: in October, it was up by more than 50 percent from the same period last year, labor statistics show.<br />Experience does not seem to matter. Over the past 15 years, Josh Guberman, 48, developed 28 condo buildings in New York and Manhattan, many of them purchased by well-paid bankers. He is cutting back to one project in 2009.<br />Donald Capoccia, 53, who has built roughly 4,500 condos and moderate-income housing units in all five boroughs, took the day after Thanksgiving off, for the first time in 20 years, because business was so slow. He is shifting his attention to projects like housing for the elderly on Staten Island, which the government seems willing to finance.<br />Some of their better known and even wealthier counterparts are facing the same problems. In August, Deutsche Bank started foreclosure proceedings against William Macklowe over his planned project at the former Drake Hotel on Park Avenue. Kent Swig, Macklowe's son-in-law, recently shut down the sales office for a condo tower planned for 25 Broad Street after his lender, Lehman Brothers, declared bankruptcy in September. Several commercial and residential brokers said they were spending nearly half their days advising developers who are trying to find new uses for sites they fear will not be profitable.<br />"That rug has been pulled out from under their feet," said David Johnson, a real estate broker with Eastern Consolidated who was involved with selling the site for the proposed hotel to Blaichman, Jay-Z and their business partners for $66 million, which included the property and adjoining air rights. Johnson said that because many banks are not lending, the only option for many developers is to take on debt from less traditional lenders like foreign investors or private equity firms that charge interest rates as high as 20 percent.<br />That doesn't mean that all construction in New York will grind to a halt immediately. Guberman is moving forward with one condo tower at 87th Street and Broadway that awaits approval for a loan; he expects it will attract buyers even in a slowing economy. Capoccia is trying to finish selling units at a downtown Brooklyn condominium project, and is slowly moving ahead on applying for permits for an East Village project.<br />Blaichman, 54, is keeping busy with four buildings financed before the slowdown. He has found fashion and advertising firms to rent space in his tower at 450 West 14th St. and buyers for two downtown condo buildings. He recently rented a Lower East Side building to the School of Visual Arts as a dorm.<br />Blaichman had success in Greenwich Village and the meatpacking district, where he developed the private club SoHo House, the restaurant Spice Market and the Theory store. He had similar hopes for the area along the High Line, where he bought properties last year when they were fetching record prices.<br />An art collector, he considered the area destined for growth because of its many galleries and its proximity to the park being built on elevated railroad tracks that have given the area its name. The park, which extends 1.45 miles from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, is expected to be completed in the spring.<br />Other developers have shown that buyers will pay high prices to be in the area. Condo projects designed by well-known architects like Jean Nouvel and Annabelle Selldorf have been eagerly anticipated. In recent months, buyers have paid $2 million for a two-bedroom unit and $3 million for a three-bedroom at Selldorf's project, according to Streeteasy.com, a real estate Web site.<br />"It's one of the greatest stretches of undeveloped areas," Blaichman said. "I still think it's going to take off."<br />In August 2007, Blaichman bought the site and air rights of a former Time Warner Cable warehouse. He thought the neighborhood needed its first full-service five-star hotel, in contrast to the many boutique hotels sprouting up downtown. So with his partners, Jay-Z and Abram and Scott Shnay, he envisioned a hotel with a pool, gym, spa and multiple restaurants under a brand called J Hotels. But since his mortgage brokers started shopping in late summer for roughly $200 million in financing, they have only one serious prospect for a lender.<br />For now, he is seeking an extension on the mortgage monthly payments are to begin in the coming months and trying to rent the warehouse. (He currently has no income from the property.)<br />It is perhaps small comfort that his fellow developers are having as many problems getting loans. Shaya Boymelgreen had banks "pull back" recently on financing for a 107-unit rental tower the developer is building at 500 West 23rd St., according to Sara Mirski, managing director of development for Boymelgreen Developers. The half-finished project looked abandoned on two recent visits, but Mirski said that construction will continue. Banks have "invited" the developer to reapply for a loan next year and have offered interim bridge loans for up to $30 million.<br />Blaichman cuts a more mellow figure than many other developers do. He avoids the real estate social scene, tries to turn his cellphone off after 6 p.m. and plays folk guitar in his spare time.<br />For now, Blaichman seems stoic about his plight. At a diner, he polished off a Swiss-cheese omelet and calmly noted that he had no near-term way to pay off his debts. He exercises several times a week and tells his three children to curb their shopping even as he regularly presses his mortgage bankers for answers.<br />"I sleep pretty well," Blaichman said. "There's nothing you can do in the middle of the night that will help your projects."<br />But even when the lending market improves in months, or years restarting large-scale projects will not be a quick process. A freeze in development, in fact, could continue well after the recession ends.<br />Blank of the Urban Land Institute said he has taken to giving the following advice to real estate executives: "We told them to take up golf."</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>A wish list for U.S. commercial real estate<br /></strong>By Amy Cortese<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />BEFORE Christmas this year, as the U.S. government scrambled to fix a recalcitrant economy, some businesses received early holiday gifts. There was $100 billion for the American International Group, the insurance giant; $250 billion for banks; and at least $13 billion for automakers.<br />President-elect Barack Obama has also signaled that he would spend more than $700 billion on infrastructure projects to help create jobs, while the Treasury Department has an additional $350 billion available from the rescue funds authorized by Congress in September.<br />Across corporate America, executives are drawing up their wish lists, and the commercial real estate industry is no exception.<br />Commercial real estate groups have been meeting with members of Congress, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as well as Obama's transition team, to press their case. And they say they have a compelling one. Commercial real estate is a significant industry, accounting for $549 billion in construction-related spending and nearly five million full-time jobs in 2007, according to the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. It also contributes to state and local coffers.<br />Although commercial real estate remains in better shaper than some other industries there is a good balance between supply and demand, vacancy rates are modest and loan default rates have so far hovered at a rock-bottom 1 percent, according to trade groups industry leaders warn that the sector faces significant problems. In particular, tighter credit policies are making it harder for real estate companies to refinance. An estimated $400 billion in loans are expected to come due in 2009 alone, and more than $1 trillion over the next three years, according to industry estimates based on Federal Reserve data.<br />"We have profound risk on our hands at the moment," said Bruce Mosler, the president and chief executive of Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial brokerage firm.<br />Jeffrey DeBoer, the president and chief executive of the Real Estate Roundtable, an industry group based in Washington, agreed. "Commercial real estate debt will be the next major problem that policy makers need to address," he said.<br />The commercial real estate industry relies on a steady stream of relatively short-term financing; loans are refinanced every several years or so. With the two main sources of commercial funding bank lending and commercial mortgage-backed securities effectively shut down, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loans are in jeopardy of defaulting.<br />The bulk of the loans coming due, industry executives say, were originated two or more years ago to help finance a rash of deals in office towers, hotels and industrial buildings, many of which are generating healthy cash flow today. "We're talking about performing loans that's the rub," said Thomas Bisacquino, the president of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.<br />Of course, there were also speculative, highly leveraged deals at the height of the economic bubble, when rents and property values looked as if they would rise indefinitely. As vacancy rates climb and values drop, many of these loans will need to be restructured.<br />Existing properties are only half the problem. New development has also ground almost to a halt because of a lack of financing.<br />Getting investment flowing again is the most immediate concern, industry executives say, and they have a number of suggestions. The Real Estate Roundtable, for example, has circulated a five-point plan to both the current and incoming administrations that proposes a mix of lending programs and tax and accounting changes to stimulate commercial real estate investment.<br />Both the Roundtable and the National Association of Industrial Office Properties want the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility program, which was initially intended to intended to lubricate the market for securities backed by consumer and small-business loans, to be extended to cover commercial real estate mortgages. When it was announced in late November, Treasury officials said they would spend up to $200 billion on the program.<br />Alternatively, the groups have suggested that a program be created for commercial real estate debt, perhaps modeled after enterprises like Freddie Mac. They also favor changing tax rules to make it easier to restructure loans (under current regulations, the parties would incur tax penalties), and eliminating what they say are onerous taxes on foreign real estate investment.<br />Although it would not be a panacea, extending the $200 billion loan program would be a step in the right direction, industry officials said. "The most important thing is that lenders start lending again," DeBoer said.<br />John B. Hynes III, the president and chief executive of Gale International, a developer based in Boston, knows firsthand about the credit crisis. Gale and its partner, Vornado Realty Trust, recently suspended construction on their planned $700 million redevelopment of their One Franklin project in downtown Boston because of difficulties obtaining credit.<br />About three-quarters of the 250,000 square feet of retail space has been preleased, half of it to Filene's, the building's original tenant, Hynes said. Also, he said, a buyer was found for a 275-room hotel, and one-quarter of the building's 500,00 square feet of office space has been leased.<br />The deal was funded with a healthy 40 percent equity stake, and Gale and Vornado were looking for $400 million in financing. But the developers were able to stitch together only $300 million from five banks. The project would create an estimated 3,000 construction jobs for a period of three years, according to Hynes.<br />What irks him, he said, is that while he was trying to drum up funding the government was injecting billions of dollars into banks. "So I'm sitting here in Boston waiting for coins to fall out of the sky, and nothing's happening," Hynes said. "I thought they were getting the money so that they could lend it out and we could create jobs. It's like giving the automakers $25 billion, and then they don't make any cars."<br />Real estate executives say Treasury officials the transition team to a new Obama administration have been listening. "There's an openness to serious consideration of all of these things," said Steven Wechsler, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.<br />The Obama team will have a lot on its plate, but executives were hopeful that measures will be taken early next year.<br />In the meantime, Hynes and his team have redesigned their One Franklin building, shaving off almost $200 million in costs. They expect to go to the capital markets to try again in January.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Former bankers turn to a creative plan B</strong><br />By Hannah Seligson<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />MICHAEL TERRY led a double life for many years.<br />"During the day I worked at Morgan Stanley as an executive director, overseeing a group that raised money for hedge funds," he said, "and at night I performed in comedy shows."<br />Then, last February, his company announced a round of layoffs. Terry, motivated to pursue his goal of becoming a "Daily Show" correspondent, raised his hand.<br />"At the time, I figured the severance package would give me a couple of years to try comedy, something that was getting increasingly hard to balance with my day job."<br />Since leaving Morgan Stanley, Terry, 37, has shot two pieces as an on-the-scene reporter for the Onion News Network, and his sketch comedy group, Party Central USA, has been given a prime spot at the coming Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival.<br />With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs, bonuses disappearing and the financial sector going through a seismic shift, some bankers and lawyers are switching lanes to more creative career paths. They are putting down their Wall Street Journals and picking up Variety as they try their hands at comedy, filmmaking and writing.<br />Harry Weiner, a partner at On-Ramps, a recruiting and consulting firm that works with financial professionals, says the economic downturn is creating a new psychology of career transition.<br />"People feel there's nothing to lose in terms of taking a risk and pursuing a new direction, especially when you have a résumé that says 'banking' and no banks are hiring," Weiner said.<br />That was certainly the calculus for Benjamin Cox, 33. After leaving his job as a vice president at Goldman Sachs in August, he immediately began incubating his plans to work on his screenplay he calls it a cross between "Swingers" and "Annie Hall" and start a production company.<br />Cox said that with the upheaval on Wall Street, he feels relieved to have a backup plan. "I'm seeing a lot of people who never thought of an alternative to banking."<br />Shaun Gatter, 38, left his position as a vice president and counsel at a large investment bank last year to work on his novel about a Jewish South African family, a story set against the backdrop of apartheid.<br />Gatter says that the decision has meant a huge financial adjustment, but that the payback having more mental energy for his book has been worth it.<br />"It's been euphoric to be able to think mainly about the book and less about equity derivatives and client risk."<br />Greg Collett, 37, left his job as a director in the commodity exchange-traded fund business at Deutsche Bank in June to explore a career in stand-up comedy.<br />"I had this gnawing feeling that things were only going to get worse and that Wall Street was not the place to be," Collett said, adding that it was easier to leave knowing that compensation packages were going to be a fraction of what they were a few years ago.<br />Richard Florida, author of "Who's Your City?" and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, sees the gravitational pull away from Wall Street and toward more creative industries as part of a necessary economic recalibration.<br />"The economy couldn't survive on speculation and what really amounted to advanced financial alchemy," he said. "We are now realizing it is our human creativity that is our real capital.<br />"The economic downturn is going to free up top talent to do other things that are going to change the metabolism of cities like New York in a very good way."<br />According to a 2005 report by the Center for an Urban Future, the creative work force of New York City comprised 8.1 percent of all those employed in the five boroughs, and has been on one of the strongest areas of economic growth for the city. Between 1998 and 2002, employment in New York's creative core grew by 13.1 percent, adding 32,000 jobs, while the city's overall job totals increased by 6.5 percent.<br />Carmen Scheidel, director of education, events and multimedia at MediaBistro.com, a Web site for artists and media professionals, says that while most industries are contracting, MediaBistro added 93 online courses in the last year to meet the demands of people who want to take courses in writing, multimedia and design.<br />Still, Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, says that while there is no question that creative fields are not faring as badly as Wall Street right now, they are hardly immune to the economic downturn. The advertising, publishing and newspaper industries are all cutting jobs, he noted.<br />The bright spot that Bowles sees is for the free agent. "There's a good chance," he said, "that there will be more work for independent contractors and freelancers."<br />WHILE most bankers and lawyers who pursue careers in comedy, writing and filmmaking say they are somewhat anomalous, the situation could change quickly.<br />"Things look so bad in finance that if you think the difference in salary multiple isn't as big as it used to be between doing what you are viscerally interested in versus a job that's just about money, it puts a whole different spin on it," Terry said.<br />Gatter said that many of his colleagues at the bank commended his choice to leave, telling him that they also nursed ambitions to be chefs, photographers, writers and artists.<br />"Everyone seems to have something else they would rather be doing than their 9-to-5," he said. "I think that people who are losing their jobs are being forced to pursue their dreams and, in a way, are being liberated from the golden handcuffs of Wall Street and venturing into something that might fulfill them."</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>I'm penniless, but the laugh's on them<br /></strong>By Liz Alderman<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />DID you hear the one about the stockbroker who's been sleeping like a baby? Every hour, he wakes up and cries.<br />That was before he read that Somali pirates were issuing a new ransom-backed security to buy Citigroup. Moody's rated it AAA, Henry Paulson Jr. deemed the pirates "fundamentally sound," and Bernard Madoff will safeguard the returns.<br />It's not every day that hijackers, the Treasury secretary and disgraced Wall Street moguls are lumped into the same wisecrack. Then again, these aren't ordinary times. Financial jokes that were once mainly the province of pointy-headed economists are flourishing as a popular genre, thanks to the recession and an intense longing for a national catharsis to deal with everyone's miserable personal finances.<br />Late-night comedians are only the tip of the squawk box. Internet pranksters have mapped out a road trip from Detroit to Washington for the chief executives of the Big Three automakers (instructions include "Go to full-serve gas station, refill, drive away without paying bill" and "Ask government to pay for toll"). YouTubers are writing ballads about Fannie Mae, the mortgage company, and AIG, the much-bailed-out insurance group (the most common refrain: "Where's my bailout?"). Even the nation of Iceland, which went bankrupt this fall, is being kicked around: someone recently put it up for auction on eBay for 50 cents.<br />Few outlets have lampooned the crisis more mercilessly than The Onion, the satirical paper, whose coverage can serve as a leading indicator of our collective mood. "Financial Planner Advises Shorter Lifespan," was the headline of one recent story, a dark turn from sunnier days when headlines like "Screaming Japanese Schoolgirls Overturn Greenspan's Bus" were the norm.<br />Across the board, some of the most scathing satire has been reserved for former Masters of the Universe, whose power, money and lawyers can no longer insulate them from the public's schadenfreude. Names that used to appear on lists of the wealthiest and most influential Americans are now being dragged through the mud on Web sites like LolFed.com, where pidgin-English captions are scrawled on the faces of famous bankers and others, the same treatment given to silly cat pictures on Lolcat.com.<br />Recent victims have included John Thain of Merrill Lynch, whose request for a large bonus prompted the posting of a photo of him with the words, "10 milluyn n unmarkd billz plz." The site's most popular villain is "Vikram Bandit," a k a Vikram Pandit, the head of Citigroup, shown in a robber's mask (with labels like, "Mah bizniss model is no longr relavint"). When Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was pleading with Congress to pass the $700 billion bailout, LolFed ran a photo of him praying: "oh pls oh pls oh pls let dis work."<br />The site, introduced last January, is the brainchild of Alyx Kaczuwka, 29, a Web analyst in Orlando, Florida. Traffic began to spike as the meltdown worsened in September. Users from every major bank and brokerage company including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and even the Federal Reserve now show up in the analytics Kaczuwka uses to track readership.<br />"The thing people say is we'd rather laugh instead of cry," Kaczuwka said. "But I've picked up on a lot of resentment that people would basically engage in casino bets by leveraging themselves 40-to-1."<br />Ridicule on a broad scale can be healthy for a society, said Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, especially when its pillars have been shaken by the unwise actions of a powerful few. "Humor exposes the fact that it's not the dumb people who cause problems, it's the smart people who come up with dumb ideas," he said.<br />The New Yorker recently published its first collection of financial cartoons. One of the selections features a one-way sign on Wall Street pointing down.<br />"Human nature is not only a crisis it's a continuing crisis," Mankoff said. "That's why we'll continue to have jokes about it."<br />Laughing at well-known people and bad situations can be a good way to channel anxiety and release tension, said Shawn Achor, a business consultant who teaches psychology courses at Harvard. "A lot of Americans feel powerless to change the economy at a macro level, and they hear on CNN the names of people like CEO's and the Treasury secretary," Achor said.<br />"These are people with power to affect the economy in a way that the individual doesn't have," he said. By poking fun, "you invert that power structure and gain power over those people."<br />Certainly the present turmoil has served as a blessing to Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien, who might otherwise be flailing for material during a post-election lull. "This year, the Treasury Department is holding its annual holiday party inside something called the Cash Room," Leno recently told his audience. "Of course, these days it's empty, so plenty more room to party."<br />Vanished cash has also become synonymous with Madoff, who was put under house arrest after confessing to running one of the world's biggest Ponzi schemes. "While Bernie's incarcerated in his penthouse, he's not just goofing around," Letterman said. "Today, he swindled 20 bucks from the Domino's guy."<br />On "Saturday Night Live," where the outcome of the election knocked the legs out from under the Sarah Palin-mocking franchise, the economy has proved a welcome distraction. In one skit, set at a congressional hearing, an actor playing Representative Barney Frank faced down the heads of the Big Three automakers. "As many of you know, we decided to drive here from Detroit," said the actor playing Rick Wagoner of General Motors. "But we had car trouble."<br />While television gives a common expression to people's anxieties, the Internet has created a powerful platform for individuals to cut loose. The fake bond offer from Somali pirates has bounced to thousands of in-boxes, as has a parody featuring Paulson as the author of a Nigerian e-mail scam. "I am ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America," his message begins. "My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US ..."<br />On YouTube, there are hundreds of songs that mock the handling of the economy and the people and companies responsible (try coming up with good rhymes for "bailout," "Lehman" and "Federal Reserve"). Some of the authors not only wrote lyrics and music, but also devised complex visual montages featuring fallen titans like Richard Fuld Jr., who led Lehman Brothers to its grave.<br />The YouTube duet RhettandLink has attracted more than 60,000 hits with their video "Economy Bailout Song," which includes the rap lines: "I used to think that Freddie Mac was a pimp/But now my mutual fund is the one walkin' with a limp." A song by j-liddy denounces the government for "robbin' us blind," as gunfire rattles in the background.<br />In earlier financial meltdowns, there was also plenty of dark humor, said Robert Wright, a financial historian who is a guest curator at the Museum of American Finance in Lower Manhattan (on Wall Street, actually). In 1720, when the South Sea financial bubble burst, a play called "Exchange Alley" came out quickly, mocking market volatility.<br />"They didn't have YouTube, so you would either buy the play or go to the theater and see it acted out," Wright said.<br />HE anticipates that 50 years from now, the museum will have plenty to display from the current crisis.<br />"We've been saving e-mails of the Somali pirate thing, and video from YouTube, which can always be played back," he said, "though 50 years out, who knows what technology will be there."<br />But today, when 500-point swings in the Dow are the new norm, most people can only hope to wind up like a boy in a New Yorker cartoon from the 1987 Black Monday crash. "I came out O.K.," he declared. "Everything I had was in baseball cards."</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Castro calls for more work and less handouts</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />By Jeff Franks<br />Cuban President Raul Castro called on Saturday for austerity measures including fewer subsidies for workers and stricter management to pull the country out of an economic morass aggravated this year by three hurricanes and the global financial crisis.<br />He told a year-end meeting of the National Assembly the government would cut official trips abroad by 50 percent and eliminate programs that reward good workers with free vacation trips but cost the government $60 million (£19.3 billion) a year.<br />"The accounts don't square up," he said. "You have to act with realism and adjust the dreams to the true possibilities," said Castro, who officially replaced his ailing older brother Fidel Castro as president in February.<br />"Two plus two always equals four, never five," he said.<br />Castro implemented reforms when he took office, including opening the sale of computers and cell phones to Cubans and allowing them to go to hotels and stores previously reserved for foreigners.<br />But he said the country's economic problems would postpone some changes, including a planned government restructuring.<br />Castro lamented the economic effects of hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma, which caused $10 billion in damages, and warned that no one can tell how bad world economic problems will get.<br />Cuba's import costs have soared while prices for key exports such as nickel have plunged, requiring the communist-run country to impose greater fiscal discipline, said the 77-year-old Castro.<br />Other government officials told the assembly Cuba's budget deficit had climbed to 6.7 percent of the gross domestic product as the economy grew at a slower-than-expected rate of 4.3 percent in 2008. They forecast 6 percent growth for 2009.<br />Before his speech, the assembly voted to raise the age at which workers can retire with a government pension by five years, to 65 for men and 60 for women. Officials said the change was needed because Cuba's population was ageing rapidly due to a declining birth rate and immigration.<br />Castro said Cuban managers need to demand more from their workers, who receive free education and health care and subsidized food rations but on average earn only $20 a month.<br />"I have arrived at the conclusion that one of our big problems is a lack of systemic demand," said Castro.<br />He expressed dissatisfaction with the system of subsidies for those who can work, but do not, saying government handouts discourage Cubans from being more productive.<br />As Cuba prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the revolution that put Fidel Castro in power on Thursday, Raul Castro paid tribute to him as the person "who has led us yesterday, today and always to victory and victory."<br />Fidel Castro, 82, has not been seen in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006.<br />(Editing by Todd Eastham)<br /> </div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>So far so good, with just three trading days left in 2008, but what's ahead?</strong><br />By Emily KaiserReuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Central bankers around the globe seem to have dumped enough money on financial markets to avoid a repeat of the year-end funding scramble that caused chaos a year ago.<br />Next comes what may be an agonizingly long wait until companies and consumers feel like spending enough to end the recession and banks feel confident enough to resume normal lending.<br />It may not be evident yet in the ailing global economy, but there are signs that the U.S. Federal Reserve and its partners abroad have made progress in bringing down borrowing costs, particularly on loans between banks.<br />Last December, the interest rate on short-term interbank loans spiked as companies frantically searched for cash to meet year-end requirements. The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank tried to ease the strain by providing an extra $64 billion worth of term lending.<br />This year, the United States alone has offered more than 10 times that amount in year-end funding and set up unlimited foreign exchange swap lines with European central banks to make sure there would be enough dollars available.<br />"The banking system has plenty of liquidity," economists at Global Insight wrote in a note to clients. "If this strategy has worked, we should see minimal pressure on short-term rates at the end of the year."<br />So far so good, with just three trading days left in 2008.<br />The overnight London interbank offered rate, known as Libor, has barely budged since Dec. 10, hovering around 0.14 percent and in line with the Federal Reserve's current short-term lending rate target of zero to 0.25 percent.<br />Last December, the overnight Libor rate shot up about 10 percent in the final week of 2007, closing out the year just above 4.8 percent when the U.S. federal funds rate was at 4.25 percent.<br />The president of the European central bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, recently pointed to the drop in interbank lending rates as evidence of progress in easing market strains. He chided investors for underestimating the importance of steps taken by central banks and governments.<br />But he also acknowledged that a lack of consumer confidence was blunting recession-fighting efforts, and that increased government spending would do little to restore growth until confidence was restored.<br />That may take a while.<br />Data to be released this week are expected to show that global manufacturers remain firmly in recession mode, cutting production and jobs so they will not be stuck with too much inventory in a sinking economy.<br />Economists are looking for reports Friday from the euro zone, Britain, China and the United States to confirm that factory activity slowed further in December after the global manufacturing index hit a record low in November.<br />Early reports on U.S. holiday spending do not look reassuring. Data compiled by MasterCard Advisors showed that retail sales fell as much as 4 percent during the holiday season, which did not bode well for quarterly growth.<br />Without healthy consumer spending, there is little hope for a strong economic recovery. A weakening economy means more job losses and even greater consumer unease.<br />So how do you break the cycle?<br />Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors and former director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said psychology was partly responsible for low consumer confidence and spending.<br />"I have been doing a lot of work the last few days trying to compare various" U.S. economic data series "with previous recession periods. This one is right in the middle of the pack. It is not - so far - the next coming of the Great Depression," he said.<br />"All the rhetoric has scared people," he added. "If people just shut up a bit, it would go a long way to help bring consumer confidence back."<br />Do not expect peace and quiet any time soon.<br />The manufacturing reports will contain two vital clues to how the economic data is likely to look in the coming weeks. Big declines in the measures of employment and new orders would signal more bad news ahead.</div><div> </div><div>*********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/28/business/airlines.php">Asian Airlines brace for turbulent times</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/29/business/OUKBS-UK-BRITAIN-PROPERTY-HOMETRACK.php">House prices fall 8.7 percent in 2008</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/28/business/OUKBS-UK-KUWAIT-DOW.php">Kuwait cancels $17 billion deal with Dow Chemical</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/28/business/OUKBS-UK-STEELMAKERS-EARNINGS.php">Japan steelmakers likely to cut profit forecasts</a> </div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Comfort in numbers<br /></strong>By Sonja Lyubomirsky<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />RIVERSIDE, California: These days, bad news about the economy is everywhere. So why aren't we panicking? Why aren't we spending our days dejected about the markets? How is it that we manage to remain mostly preoccupied with the quotidian tasks and concerns of life? Traffic, dinner, homework, deadlines, sharp words, flirtatious glances. Because the news these days affects everyone.<br />Research in psychology and economics suggests that when only your salary is cut, or when only you make a foolish investment, or when only you lose your job, you become considerably less satisfied with your life. But when everyone from autoworkers to Wall Street financiers becomes worse off, your life satisfaction remains pretty much the same.<br />Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.<br />Similarly, Daniel Zizzo and Andrew Oswald, economists in Britain, conducted a study that showed that people would give up money if doing so would cause someone else to give up a slightly larger sum. That is, we will make ourselves poorer in order to make someone else poorer, too.<br />Findings like these reveal an all-too-human truth. We care more about social comparison, status and rank than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations.<br />For example, Andrew Clark, an economist in France, has recently shown that being laid off hurts less if you live in a community with a high unemployment rate. What's more, if you are unemployed, you will, on average, be happier if your spouse is unemployed, too.<br />So in a world in which just about all of us have seen our retirement savings and home values plummet, it's no wonder that we all feel surprisingly O.K.<br />Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of "The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want."<br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibjR-9j7ZpkPVZ4NHTL_YKbrgVqt3x-MZSaQTixnaAUCd_XX-sVLJxikYOwOC_dZ1ou7jdTASxBb4DWxWijw_HL3K_uniMbXoVZBvDrKJgMrz_Hb-AS64h8oLiSYutl2wUpiDUXPG8QqQ/s1600-h/DSC04723.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051172859567378" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibjR-9j7ZpkPVZ4NHTL_YKbrgVqt3x-MZSaQTixnaAUCd_XX-sVLJxikYOwOC_dZ1ou7jdTASxBb4DWxWijw_HL3K_uniMbXoVZBvDrKJgMrz_Hb-AS64h8oLiSYutl2wUpiDUXPG8QqQ/s320/DSC04723.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJMf238nGYQy-N2wYV4dZx_V8zrSudoV1pWkkxafY61sMsWVQxh3oHNYE5QFCzZtVHKx56ANj-zTkxEtSzFcJ4e1J-GLEyY0s_gcB6n-SR6XXbpGXPzaLuyVbx2oacKrmNl_XZFskNO9s/s1600-h/DSC04724.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285051168409590386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJMf238nGYQy-N2wYV4dZx_V8zrSudoV1pWkkxafY61sMsWVQxh3oHNYE5QFCzZtVHKx56ANj-zTkxEtSzFcJ4e1J-GLEyY0s_gcB6n-SR6XXbpGXPzaLuyVbx2oacKrmNl_XZFskNO9s/s320/DSC04724.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD87tny3ZTggboRwgjewfctL5GyIhN-x8DqILW6ZpWIvK2BAmrioM19lp4TTLmZyJ1g6ewssRrnAGfPw8FaIuChzgFHUR_oKMkI5fYJ2_AI-9UBL4LWyftDBI1r5sehVtsz8swzV7Q1YY/s1600-h/DSC04725.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050842581860514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD87tny3ZTggboRwgjewfctL5GyIhN-x8DqILW6ZpWIvK2BAmrioM19lp4TTLmZyJ1g6ewssRrnAGfPw8FaIuChzgFHUR_oKMkI5fYJ2_AI-9UBL4LWyftDBI1r5sehVtsz8swzV7Q1YY/s320/DSC04725.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Obama adviser defends inaugural invitation to anti-gay preacher<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: A top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama on Sunday defended plans for a conservative, anti-gay rights preacher to deliver the inaugural invocation while promising that Obama's campaign pledges for middle-income taxes cuts will be kept.<br />David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, also said that President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy would be revoked or allowed to expire.<br />With 23 days remaining until Obama takes office in the midst of the deepest economic downturn in decades as the country is still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Axelrod said the incoming president's invitation to the Reverend Rick Warren was important because it underlined the inclusiveness Obama wants to institute in his administration.<br />"The important point here is you have a conservative evangelical pastor coming to take part in the inauguration of a progressive president," Axelrod said of Warren, a prominent preacher who opposes homosexuality and who backed a ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in his home state of California.<br />Warren has likened gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse and polygamy. His stance has sparked outrage among gays and many of Obama's supporters.<br />More important for most Americans, Axelrod said, is the economic situation in the United States and globally.<br />Obama won the election, in part, because voters believed he was better equipped than John McCain, the Republican candidate, to deal with the economic meltdown. Part of Obama's campaign pledge was to cut taxes for middle- and low-income earners while increasing them for wealthier Americans.<br />Axelrod said the tax cut was at the top of Obama's agenda, and declared that higher taxes for more wealthy Americans also were in the cards, though less immediately. Axelrod said the quick move to cut taxes was "vital."<br />"People need money in their pockets," he said on NBC. "That'll get our economy going again."<br />He reiterated that higher taxes for the wealthy would come about through the revocation of a measure on tax cuts passed during the Bush administration or by allowing it to expire in 2010.<br />"Whether it expires or we repeal it a little bit early we'll determine later," Axelrod said, "but it's going to go. It has to go."<br />Obama says a revocation would not represent a tax increase but would return the assessment on the wealthy to the level it was during President Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s.<br />"We feel it's important that middle class people get some relief now," Axelrod said.<br />Those cuts will be part of the new administration's stimulus plan, Axelrod said. "This package will include a portion of that tax cut that will become part of the permanent tax cut that he'll have in his upcoming budget."<br />The incoming administration is considering tax cuts of $1,000 for couples and $500 for individuals that will be delivered by reducing the tax withheld from paychecks. That plan, which would cost about $140 billion over 2009-2010, would put more money in paychecks.<br /><strong>Laura Bush stands by her man</strong><br />First Lady Laura Bush disagrees with critics who call the presidency of George W. Bush a failure, The Associated Press reported from Washington.<br />"I know it's not, and so I don't really feel like I need to respond to people that view it that way," she said in a television interview that was broadcast on "Fox News Sunday." "I think history will judge and we'll see later."<br />Laura Bush called the shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad an "assault." She rebuffed administration critics who contend the United States turned its military might and resources to the war in Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan.<br />She noted that under her husband's watch, the United States toppled Saddam Hussein and liberated millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from oppressive governments. She also highlighted the president's work to provide treatment for diseases like AIDS and malaria to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. She said her husband responded to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in a way that has kept the nation safe. "I think that's very, very important," she said.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama parody hits the wrong note</strong><br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Adding to the issues that divide the Republican Party, here comes one more. Some Republicans find humor in the song "Barack the Magic Negro." Some most definitely do not.<br />The debate began last week after a candidate for the Republican Party chairman, Chip Saltsman, distributed the parody, which was initially broadcast on the Rush Limbaugh radio show last year and questions President-elect Barack Obama's racial authenticity.<br />Speaking to The Hill newspaper on Friday, Saltsman, a longtime Republican operative from Tennessee, described it as a "light-hearted" gift that would be received in "good humor" by members of the Republican National Committee.<br />In a party that had big losses this year among minority voters, not everyone took it that way.<br />"I am shocked and appalled," Mike Duncan, the current party chairman, said in a statement released Saturday. Duncan is competing for a second term against Saltsman and four others.<br />"This is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it," Newt Gingrich, a Republican former House speaker, said in an e-mail message. Referring to Obama, Gingrich said, "There are no grounds for demeaning him or for using racist descriptions."<br />Saul Anuzis, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and another candidate for party chairman, said, "This isn't funny, and it's in bad taste."<br />There are two black candidates for the post, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, and Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. On Saturday, Blackwell dismissed the fuss as "hypersensitivity."<br />"All competitors for this leadership position are fine people," he said in an e-mail message.<br />The dispute illustrates a larger Republican challenge in the months ahead: how to oppose the first black president without seeming antiblack. There are no black Republicans in Congress, and a party spokesman could name only two blacks among the 168 members of the national committee.<br />Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, resigned from an all-white country club in preparing for his campaign to be party chairman.<br />The parody is sung to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" by a character meant to be the Reverend Al Sharpton, the civil rights advocate and sometime political candidate. The character laments that white liberals vote for Obama while shunning his brand of more confrontational racial politics.<br />"Barack the Magic Negro," the character sings, "made guilty whites feel good/They'll vote for him and not for me/Cause he's not from the 'hood."<br />The song was written by a parodist, Paul Shanklin, whose work frequently airs on Limbaugh's show, and Limbaugh has defended it against critics who called it racist. Limbaugh said that it was inspired by "Obama the Magic Negro," an opinion column in The Los Angeles Times by a black writer, David Ehrenstein, who likened Obama to "warm and unthreatening" black figures like the actors Sidney Poitier and Morgan Freeman.<br />Saltsman distributed the song in a compilation of works by Shanklin, whom he described to The Hill as "a longtime friend." Saltsman did not return phone calls on Saturday.<br />A spokesman for Obama declined to comment on the matter.<br />"Barack the Magic Negro" calls into question Obama's racial identity. Born to a black father and white mother, he was raised primarily by his white grandparents.<br />"The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party," Duncan said in a statement. "I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."<br />In a statement that followed Duncan's, Saltsman said: "Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media didn't utter a word about David Ehrenstein's irresponsible column in the Los Angeles Times last March. But now, of course, they're shocked and appalled by its parody on the 'Rush Limbaugh Show.'<br />"I firmly believe that we must welcome all Americans into our party and that the road to Republican resurgence begins with unity, not division. But I know that our party leaders should stand up against the media's double standards and refuse to pander to their desire for scandal," he said.<br />The Hill, the Washington newspaper that published a story about the CD on Friday, reported that Saltsman said that members of the Republican committee had "the good humor and good sense" to see Shanklin's tunes as "lighthearted political parodies."</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>With Pope Benedict's encouragement, Spanish rally promotes family values<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />MADRID: Hundreds of thousands of people attended a Mass in central Madrid on Sunday designed to promote traditional family values in a predominantly Roman Catholic country that has legalized gay marriage and made it easier for people to divorce.<br />The service started with a message from Pope Benedict XVI, who urged Spanish Catholics to keep their families strong.<br />"Dear families, do not let love, openness to life and the incomparable links that join your homes weaken," the pope said in a message read out in Madrid. "The pope is by your side," he added.<br />The archbishop of Madrid, Antonio María Rouco Varela, added: "The future of humanity depends on the family, the Christian family."<br />"It is possible to conceive, organize and live marriage and family in a very different way from what is in fashion in so many areas of our society," he said in a homily.<br />Neither the police nor city officials would give an estimate of how many people attended, but the crowd appeared to number in the hundreds of thousands. In chilly, overcast weather, the faithful packed central Plaza de Colón and spilled out into streets running off from it in four directions.<br />María Rosa de la Cierva, leader of a church association representing Catholics in Madrid province, predicted before the Mass began that up to a million people would attend.<br />Spain's Socialist government has angered the church by legalizing gay marriage, making it easy for people to divorce and instituting a public school course in which children learn about homosexuality and same-sex marriages. It is also considering easing Spain's restrictive abortion law.<br />Rouco Varela called abortion one of the worst "scourges" of modern times.<br />He concelebrated the Mass along with 5 other archbishops, 22 bishops and more than 300 priests.<br />A similar Mass and rally were held at this time last year in the same square, and organizers put attendance at well over a million. Then, bishops criticized the Spanish government over its social policies but this time there were no such remarks.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Importing priests for U.S. Catholics<br /></strong>By Laurie Goodstein<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />OWENSBORO, Kentucky: Sixteen of the Reverend Darrell Venters's fellow priests are running themselves ragged here, each serving three parishes simultaneously. One priest admits he stood at an altar once and forgot exactly which church he was in.<br />So Venters, lean and leathery as the Marlboro man, a cigarette in one hand and a cellphone with a ringtone like a churchbell in the other, spends most of his days recruiting priests from overseas to serve in the small towns, rolling hills and farmland that make up the Roman Catholic diocese of Owensboro.<br />He sorts through e-mail and letters from foreign priests soliciting jobs in America, many written in formal, stilted English. He is looking, he said, for something that shouts: "This priest is just meant for Kentucky!"<br />"If we didn't get international priests," he said, "some of our guys would have had five parishes. If one of our guys were to leave, or, God forbid, have a heart attack and die, we didn't have anyone to fill in."<br />In the last six years, he has brought 12 priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America who are serving in this diocese covering the western third of Kentucky, where a vast majority of residents are white. His experiences offer a close look at the church's drive to import foreign priests to compensate for a dearth of Americans, and the ways in which this trend is reshaping the Roman Catholic experience in America.<br />One of six diocesan priests now serving in the United States came from abroad, according to "International Priests in America," a large study published in 2006. About 300 international priests arrive to work here each year. Even in American seminaries, about one in three of those studying for the priesthood are foreign-born.<br />Venters has seen lows. Some foreign priests had to be sent home. One became romantically entangled with a female co-worker. One isolated himself in the rectory. Still another would not learn to drive. A priest from the Philippines left after two weeks because he could not stand the cold. A Peruvian priest was hostile toward Hispanics who were not from Peru.<br />"From a strictly personnel perspective," Venters said, "the international priests are easier to work with than the local priests. If they mess up, you just say, 'See you.' You withdraw your permission for them to stay."<br />But there have been victories as well, when Kentucky Catholics who once did not know Nigeria from Uganda opened their eyes to the conditions in the countries their foreign priests came from - even raising $6,000 to install wells in the home village of a Nigerian priest serving in Owensboro.<br />In earlier eras, the Catholic church in the United States depended on foreign priests from places like Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland and Belgium. But they had usually accompanied their immigrant flocks, and ministered to their own people in their native language.<br />Nowadays, however, the missionary priests have little in common with the Americans who often come to them for advice and solace in times of crisis. In Owensboro, it falls to Venters, who grew up on a farm in Illinois and has barely traveled outside the country, to find ways to bridge the often large cultural divides. One foreign priest had never seen a microwave. Another thought the frost on his car one morning was the work of vandals.<br />"There's this assumption that a priest is a priest," said Venters, who, as the vicar for clergy, is essentially the bishop's assistant on personnel issues. "On the church side of it, that's correct. We are a universal church and the rituals are the same, so he knows how to be a priest. The challenge is, he does not know how to be a priest in the United States."<br />To succeed, Venters has also had to learn to navigate the immigration system, which has become so restrictive since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that even priests with invitations to work have trouble getting into the country.<br />At one point, he sent so many FedEx letters to Nigeria that the Department of Homeland Security suspended his account until he proved he worked for a legitimate church.<br />In 2002, when Venters began his recruitment drive, he was looking at a diocese that, like many in the United States, had growing needs and fewer priests to serve them.<br />Hispanic Catholic immigrants were pouring into Kentucky, drawn by jobs in poultry plants and construction. The diocese estimates that its Catholic population of 60,000 includes 10,000 Spanish-speaking parishioners who arrived in the last 10 years.<br />But the pool of priests was shrinking, from retirements, deaths and a handful who were removed from the ministry after accusations of sexual abuse of young people. They were also growing elderly: Eight were older than 70.<br />Many dioceses faced with shortages were shutting or consolidating parishes, but that was not an option for Owensboro. "Because we're so rural," Venters said, "closing parishes doesn't make sense. Some of our counties just have one Catholic church."<br />At first, Venters felt discouraged by the stilted English and obsequious tone of the letters that foreign priests sent. Then an e-mail message caught his attention. The English was clear, the tone humble. "I welcome your assistance and advice," said the message from a Kenyan priest, Chrispin Oneko, who was serving five impoverished parishes in Jamaica.<br />Venters asked him for an "audition tape" of his preaching, and found the homily thoughtful - the accent pronounced, but clear enough. He invited the priest to fly to Owensboro to meet Bishop John McRaith.<br />The foreign priests in Owensboro earn the same amount as their American counterparts: a base salary of $1,350 a month, plus $60 for each year since ordination. (The pay scale varies among dioceses, and many pay foreign priests significantly less than Americans.) They can also earn as much as $130 a month in Mass intentions, or special requests, plus $50 for weddings and $25 for baptisms. For the African priests, it is a windfall.<br />Venters knows that many of the foreign priests send part of their income home, to help with school fees, food and medicine for their families. And yet, he said, he did not believe money, though a benefit, was the reason the priests were willing to come to America.<br />"A lot of them, they know we need priests," he said. "And after getting to know them, I believe they truly have a missionary spirit."<br />The notion of having to go out and recruit priests was foreign to Venters. He had converted to Catholicism as a young adult, had a college degree in agribusiness and was trying to figure out his next step when he heard a priest give a homily about being of service to others.<br />He phoned the Diocese of Owensboro and signed up for seminary. His class at St. Meinrad School of Theology had 48 students, and in 1989, he was one of seven new priests ordained by McRaith.<br />But within 10 years, the vocations dried up. It has been five years since a new priest was ordained in Owensboro. The next ordination, of two priests, is expected next year.<br />Most of the priests serving in Owensboro support Venters's recruiting drive, but some voice doubts. The Reverend Dennis Holly, with the Glenmary Home Missioners, an American order dedicated to serving regions that are not predominantly Catholic, like Western Kentucky, believes America is spending money to attract priests from countries that have even greater shortages.<br />"We experience the priest shortage, and rather than ask the question, 'Why do we have a priest shortage?' we just import some and act like we don't have a priest shortage," Holly said. "Until we face the issue of mandatory celibacy and the ordination of women, we can't deal with the lack of response to the invitation to priesthood."<br />But Venters is a pragmatist. Those were good questions, he said, "But, in the meantime, you have to respond to the needs of people."<br /> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050507928836770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyhQiTJnNiuWZobx95ySw3Syr1ti8GrpdnZ0MPlARFNdOy3cc0kshcmWa9ghUW1QRg5ylacJ2gnz4f-cO5OGqLg6PdH3g8KjNTCOAIuNsgfG4SGGsq00FAJXisPunXXlO1KpJU4sjGTEA/s320/DSC04732.jpg" border="0" /></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Samuel Huntington, 81, political scientist, dies</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />BOSTON: Samuel Huntington, a political scientist best known for his theory of a clash of civilizations, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure and complications from diabetes, on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, Harvard University announced over the weekend. He was 81.<br />Huntington had retired from active teaching in 2007 after 58 years at Harvard. His research and teaching focused on American government, democratization, military politics, strategy and civil-military relations.<br />He argued that in a post-Cold War world, violent conflict would come not from ideological friction between nations, but from cultural and religious differences among major civilizations.<br />He identified those civilizations as Western (including the United States and Europe), Latin American, Islamic, African, Orthodox (with Russia as a core state), and Hindu, Japanese and "Sinic" (including China, Korea and Vietnam).<br />He made the argument in a 1993 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, and then expanded the thesis into a book, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," which was published in 1996. The book has been translated into 39 languages.<br />His focus on religion rather than ideology as a source of conflict in the post-Cold War world triggered broad debate about relations between the Western and Islamic worlds, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.<br />Despite criticism that his thesis was simplistic - or in the words of the Middle East scholar Edward Said, that promoted the idea of "West versus the rest" - Huntington told Islamica magazine in 2007, "My argument remains that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states."<br />Huntington's book in 2004, "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity," also provoked heated debate by arguing that the massive influx of Mexican immigrants to the United States threatened traditional American identity and national unity.<br />In all, Huntington wrote 17 books, including "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations" in 1957, which was inspired by President Harry S. Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur, and "Political Power: USA-USSR," a study of Cold War dynamics written in 1964 with Zbigniew Brzezinski.<br />His 1969 book, "Political Order in Changing Societies," analyzed political and economic development in the Third World.<br />"Sam was the kind of scholar that made Harvard a great university," Huntington's friend of nearly six decades, the economist Henry Rosovsky, said in a statement released by the university.<br />Huntington was born in New York on April 18, 1927. He was graduated from Yale in 1946, served in the U.S. Army, earned a master's degree from the University of Chicago in 1948, and a doctorate from Harvard in 1951.</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Israeli Foreign Minister says Hamas is to blame</strong><br />By Sharon Otterman<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni defended the Israeli assault in Gaza, saying on America's Sunday morning talk shows that Hamas, not Israel, "is the one who needs to be condemned by the international community."<br />Reacting to anger from the Arab world, as well a call by the United Nations to cease hosilities, Livni said on "Fox News Sunday" that the assault "is needed in order to change the realities on the ground, and to give peace and quiet to the citizens in southern Israel."<br />Speaking from Jerusalem in taped interviews, Livni said that until Hamas recognized Israel's right to exist and ceased rocket attacks against Israel, they remained terrorists who needed to be acted against. The Israeli air assault has killed at least 280 Palestinians since it began Saturday.<br />She said army was seeking to avoid unnecessary deaths in the assault against Hamas headquarters in Gaza. Palestinian hospitals have reported numerous civilians among the dead and wounded.<br />"We are targeting Hamas, we are not looking for civilians to kill more than that," she said in a second interview, on NBC's "Meet the Press."<br />She added that the Israelis had warned Palestinian civilians to leave places where Hamas officials and fighters were known to be located.<br />"The one who needs to be condemned by the international community is Hamas," she continued on "Meet the Press." "Israel is a state that implements its right to defend itself and its citizens."<br />Livni said that she had been in "close connection" Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that she had spoken with her Saturday night. The Bush administration has been supportive of the assault, condemning Hamas for its repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel in recent weeks. Rice, in a statement issued Saturday, said that she "holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza."<br />The army has not ruled out a ground assault, Livni added, and has called up thousands of reservists. "We will make these decisions according to the situation on the ground," she said. "All the options are open."</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>After Israeli airstrikes, Bush administration calls Hamas "thugs"<br /></strong>By Robert Pear<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />CRAWFORD, Texas: The Bush administration has issued blistering criticism of Hamas, saying the group provoked Israel's airstrikes on Gaza by firing rockets into southern Israel.<br />Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said Saturday that Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, was responsible for the outbreak of violence and called its rocket attacks "completely unacceptable."<br />"These people are nothing but thugs," he said. "Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas."<br />In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a statement that said: "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza. The cease-fire should be restored immediately. The United States calls on all concerned to address the urgent humanitarian needs of the innocent people of Gaza."<br />An aide to President-elect Barack Obama said he had discussed events in Gaza with Rice in an eight-minute telephone call initiated by Obama.<br />Brooke Anderson, a spokeswoman for Obama, said that while Obama was monitoring global events, "There is one president at a time."<br />In the campaign, Obama made statements that sounded similar to those issued by the Bush administration on Saturday. "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that," Obama said in July. "And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."<br />Johndroe said that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Saturday, and they discussed the situation.<br />Asked whether the United States had given any green light for the airstrikes by Israel, Johndroe said: "The Israeli cabinet authorized this a few days ago, as you're all aware. So we were aware of that authorization by the Israeli cabinet." He added: "Hamas has done nothing for the people of Gaza. They need to stop. They have a choice to make. You can't have one foot in politics and one foot in terror."</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>U.N. Security Council calls for end to Gaza violence<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. Security Council called early on Sunday for an immediate halt to all violence in Gaza after a day of Israeli air strikes in response to rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants against Israel.<br />"The members of the Security Council expressed serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza and called for an immediate halt to all violence," said a statement read to reporters by Croatian Ambassador Neven Jurica, president of the council.<br />"The members called on the parties to stop immediately all military activities."<br />Palestinian medical officials said on Sunday that 271 Palestinians had been killed in 24 hours of Israeli attacks in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Since the operation began, one Israeli had been killed by Palestinian rocket fire.<br />Diplomats said the Security Council meeting had been convened at the request of Libya, the only Arab country on the council.<br />The statement, agreed upon after four hours of closed-door council discussions, called on all parties to address "the serious humanitarian and economic needs in Gaza."<br />It urged them to take necessary measures, including the opening of border crossings, to ensure Gaza's people were supplied with food, fuel and medical treatment.<br />Council members "stressed the need for the restoration of calm in full" to open the way for a Palestinian-Israeli political solution.<br />(Reporting by Patrick Worsnip; editing by Todd Eastham)<br /> </div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Gaza attacks bring protests in Mideast streets<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />BEIRUT: Crowds of thousands swept into the streets of cities around the Middle East on Sunday to voice their outrage over Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.<br />From Lebanon to Iran, Israel's adversaries used the attacks to marshal crowds out onto the streets for noisy demonstrations. Among regional allies there was also discontent: Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called the attacks a "crime against humanity."<br />Several of the protests Sunday turned violent. In Lebanon, the police fired tear gas to stop dozens of demonstrators from reaching the Egyptian Embassy. Some in the crowd hurled stones at the embassy compound. It was unclear if anyone was hurt.<br />Egypt has been criticized for not doing enough to allow aid to pass through its border with Gaza.<br />Earlier in the Lebanese capital, a Hamas official roused a crowd of about 1,000 people topped by fluttering Lebanese and Palestinian flags, promising victory and resistance, and ruling out surrender. His speech was met with cries of "death to Israel" from the crowd.<br />The demonstrators gathered outside the United Nations office in downtown Beirut. After an all-night emergency session in New York, the UN Security Council expressed serious concern about the escalating situation in Gaza and called on Israel and the Palestinians to immediately halt all violence.<br />A Hamas representative, Osama Hamdan, told the crowd that the militant group had no choice but to fight. Gaza militants have been lobbing dozens of rockets and mortars into southern Israel since a six-month truce expired over a week ago, prompting Israel's fierce retaliation.<br />"We in the Hamas group and other resistance factions in Gaza know that we don't have many alternatives," Hamdan said. "We have one alternative, which is to be steadfast and resist and then we will be victorious."<br />In the capital of neighboring Syria, more than 5,000 people marched toward the central Youssef al-Azmeh Square, where they burned an Israeli and an American flag. One demonstrator carried a banner reading, "The aggression against Gaza is an aggression against the whole Arab nation."<br />"Down with America, the mother of terrorism," read another.<br />In Amman, about 5,000 lawyers marched toward Parliament to demand the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and the closure of the embassy. "No for peace, yes to the rifle," they chanted.<br />In the Baqaa camp for Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Jordan, one protester, Yassin Abu Taha, 32, blamed America and Israel for the Middle East's problems.<br />"The Israelis kill our people in Gaza and the West Bank. The Americans kill our people in Iraq. We're refugees, kicked out of our home in Tulkarem in 1967 and we're still displaced," he said, bemoaning his family's flight in the 1967 Mideast war.<br />The U.S. Embassy in Jordan warned Americans to avoid areas of demonstrations.<br />Thousands of Egyptians - many of them students - demonstrated at campuses in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere and accused President Hosni Mubarak and other Arab leaders of not doing enough to support the Palestinians.<br />President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who has said Israel should be "wiped off the map," denounced the Israeli strikes.<br />In the normally politically placid streets of Dubai, hundreds of demonstrators, some draped in Palestinian flags, gathered at the Palestinian consulate.<br />"This is a time for the Palestinians and Arabs to unite to fight against a common enemy," said Majdei Mansour, a 30-year-old Palestinian resident of Dubai. Mansour has family still in Gaza but said he had been unable to contact them since the latest fighting.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>*********************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Photographers capture images of terror in Mumbai<br /></strong>By Thomas Fuller<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />MUMBAI: When the gunfire started at Mumbai's main train station last month, Sebastian D'souza was well placed to respond. From his office directly across the street, D'souza, the photo editor of The Mumbai Mirror newspaper, grabbed his Nikon and two lenses and headed out into the blood-soaked night of Nov. 26. Peering from behind pillars and running in and out of empty train cars, he emerged with the singular iconic image of the attacks: a clear shot of one of the gunmen.<br />"I was shaking, but I kept shooting," D'souza said as he scrolled through his pictures of the attacks in a recent interview at his office.<br />D'souza's photo of Muhammad Ajmal Kasab confidently striding through Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus carrying an assault rife with one hand, finger extended toward the trigger, has been printed and reprinted in newspapers here and flashed daily on television screens.<br />Four weeks after the terrorist rampage that left more than 160 people dead, the memories of victims are blurring. Some witness accounts remain contradictory. But D'souza and another newspaper photographer, Vasant Prabhu, have millions of pixels of evidence that will remain part of the indelible record.<br />Their photos, some of them yet unpublished, provide detail and precision that is lacking from other witness accounts. They show brave attempts by police officers to stop the attackers. But they also highlight the woeful inadequacy of the police officers' weapons, and thus help to explain how just 10 terrorists managed to hold a city hostage for three days.<br />Surprising in an era of camera phones and point-and-shoot pocket-sized cameras, there are very few other images from the attacks aside from those taken by D'souza and Prabhu, except for some grainy security camera footage at the luxury hotels and one blurry photo of an attacker walking outside - taken from a newspaper office window by a Times of India photographer who was shot at but unharmed.<br />Prabhu, who is a photographer at The Indian Express, followed two police officers into the Taj Mahal hotel and documented the room-by-room discovery of the destruction and killing there. He captured images of restaurant tables abandoned; there are half-eaten meals on plates and shattered glass is everywhere. By the swimming pool, a Western couple clad in white are sprawled out lifelessly near an ice bucket and some wine glasses.<br />Both D'souza and Prabhu, who are in their 50s, took their pictures at great risk to themselves. Several police officers whom they photographed were subsequently killed. Prabhu said he invoked the name of Ganesh, the Hindu deity, for protection when he had to use a flash and risked being spotted by the gunmen.<br />Both photographers were tormented by the passivity of their jobs - recording the bloodshed without any power to stop it. "I wanted to get rid of my camera, get hold of a gun and go after the terrorists," Prabhu said. If they had been looking through rifle scopes instead of camera viewfinders some of the attackers might have been killed early on. D'souza, who tracked the gunmen for about 40 minutes until they left the train station, had managed to find a better vantage point on the attackers than any of the police stationed there.<br />Witnesses have offered various accounts on the timing and duration of the attacks. D'souza's pictures help resolve the issue. Some images show the train station clock, down to the second. A police officer is seen shooting his rifle at the attackers at 22:07:05. Another photo shows the same clock 20 minutes later. His camera also recorded the times that the photos were taken.<br />A photo of Kasab that has not yet been published gives a slightly more detailed look at the attacker. Kasab's assault rifle appears to have two ammunition cartridges bound together with tape, allowing for longer intervals between reloads. He has the appearance of a college student, with a slightly floppy haircut, cargo pants and what appears to be a sweatshirt.<br />D'souza described the two attackers as cool and unflappable. "They never ran, just walked," he said. "They were very accurate and didn't waste any bullets."<br />Kasab is in police custody as the lone surviving gunman. The other nine were killed by the police.<br />Both photographers' images of the police show a stark mismatch with the attackers' arsenal. D'souza photographed a police officer awkwardly firing his outdated rifle; he and all the other officers missed, D'souza said. Neither attacker appears to have been wounded at the train station during what was at least a half-hour rampage there.<br />Prabhu's photos show two police officers in pressed khaki uniforms wearing formal, wing-tip style shoes. Their pistols are drawn and Prabhu says he saw one officer fire three rounds in the direction of the attackers. But they were up against terrorists with assault weapons, grenades and other explosives.<br />In the train station, D'souza captured some of the surreal aspects of the attacks. He recounted how despite the near constant sound of approaching gunfire, a shopkeeper at a small bookshop spent minutes trying to close his metal shutter instead of just running away. The attackers shot the merchant; one of D'souza's pictures show the man slumped, dying in front of his shop.<br />D'souza also tells of a woman in a sari who walked nonchalantly in front of the attackers but was spared. "They didn't even look at her," D'souza said.<br />A man, possibly homeless, D'souza guesses, watched the attacks with his arms folded as if he were admiring a street performance. It is still not clear why the attackers let some people live while others were killed on the spot.<br />"They were like angels of death," D'souza said. "When they hit someone they didn't even look back. They were so sure."</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Marriott in Pakistan reopens after deadly bombing</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Marriott Hotel in Pakistan's capital partially reopened Sunday with a giant bombproof wall and revamped security, three months after a massive suicide truck bombing devastated the building and killed more than 50 people.<br />The September attack on the luxury Islamabad hotel, a site popular with expatriates and the Pakistani elite, demonstrated the reach of militants in Pakistan extends well beyond the lawless regions bordering Afghanistan where al-Qaida and the Taliban have flourished.<br />The hotel's owner said Sunday the reopening was a message that Pakistan would not be cowed by the threat of terrorism.<br />"We have expressed our resolve that we will not bow before the enemies of Pakistan," said Saddaruddin Hashwani.<br />Several foreigners, including at least three Americans and the Czech ambassador, were killed in the attack, prompting embassies, non-governmental organizations and other groups to tighten security and even send some people home.<br />To guard against a future assault, the hotel has constructed a 14-foot, or four meter, bombproof wall and installed additional security cameras, reinforced glass and a new alarm system, said Hashwani.<br />He hopes the added security will help the hotel regain its former clientele.<br />"We have built this like a fortress," he said at a recent event heralding the reopening. "I think time is a healer. Slowly, gradually, I think things are going to improve."<br />The hotel's three restaurants were up and running Sunday, and 70 rooms will be available Jan. 1, said Sufia Shahid, a senior communications official at the group that owns the hotel. The hotel hopes to have all of its nearly 300 rooms ready by March, she added.<br />Zafran Hafeez, whose father worked as a security guard at the hotel and was killed in the attack, said the reopening could not heal the loss felt by victims' families.<br />"Marriott can rebuild, but the people like my father can never come back," Hafeez said.<br />Pakistan has arrested three people allegedly connected to the truck bombing, but no one has been formally charged.<br />The Pakistani government recently claimed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group believed to be based in the Pakistani province of Punjab, was involved in the bombing. But it has not ruled out connections to al-Qaida and other militants based in the northwest.<br />Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a Sunni Muslim extremist group blamed for killing scores of minority Shiite Muslims across Pakistan. Its members have also been accused of attacks against Westerners in Karachi and the slaying of Daniel Pearl, a U.S journalist, in 2002.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Taliban attacks Pakistani village that resisted</strong><br />By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Pir Zubair Shah<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD: Four months ago, the people of the Pakistani mountain village of Shalbandi gained national repute after a village posse hunted down and killed six Taliban fighters who had tied up and killed eight local policemen.<br />On Sunday morning the Taliban struck back.<br />A suicide bomber exploded a car at a school in Shalbandi that was serving as a polling place, as voters lined up to elect a representative to the national assembly. More than 30 people were killed and more than two dozen wounded, according to local political and security officials.<br />The blast was the latest demonstration of the Taliban's bloody encroachment from lawless tribal areas on the western border eastward and deeper into Pakistan. Shalbandi is less than 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, northwest of Islamabad, the capital, and lies just south of the lush Swat Valley, which has been largely taken over by the Taliban despite large-scale army operations.<br />In the frenzied aftermath of the car bombing, survivors and witnesses described two versions of the attack, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, Information Minister for the North-West Frontier Province.<br />In one account, he said, the bomber sped his car toward the school but plowed into adjacent shops. The explosion was so large that it destroyed part of the school and killed many people waiting to vote. In the other version, he said, the killer parked near the school and told people he was having car trouble. As people gathered, he detonated the bomb inside.<br />A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack as retribution for the deaths of its fighters, according to a Pakistani news channel. The Pakistani military claimed over the weekend it had killed 34 militants in Swat.<br />But to people in the region there was no doubt why militants picked Shalbandi for such a gruesome attack.<br />"They singled out this village because it had clearly resisted and had expelled the Taliban by force," said Afrasiab Khattak, leader of the Awami National Party, which won control of the provincial government in February by defeating incumbent religious parties with ties to militants. "They want to topple the system and turn this country into a failed state."<br />Shalbandi had received constant threats after the posse hunted down the Taliban. "Disrupting elections is a general strategy for these elements," Khattak said, "but there was a reason for choosing this specific village."<br />The bombing on Sunday was not the first act of retaliation. The son of a village elder who had been a leader of the August posse was recently kidnapped by militants in Swat, Hussain said. The village elder responded by kidnapping the son of a well-known Taliban spokesman in Swat.<br />"These people cannot frighten us," said Hussain, who added that voting for the legislative seat continued Sunday at other polling places. "We are ready for a dialogue, but if they continue with the violence we will take strong action against them even at the cost of our lives."<br />Yet the efforts of villagers in northwest Pakistan have proved little deterrent to the Taliban, who continue to take over more territory despite major Pakistani military campaigns. In the latest sign of Taliban domination of Swat, militants announced that by Jan. 15 no girls would allowed to attend school in the valley.<br />The blast Sunday also underscored one risk of moving Pakistani troops out of Taliban-controlled western tribal areas toward the eastern border with India. At least several thousand troops are believed to have been redeployed in recent days, following elevated tensions with India after the Mumbai terror attacks last month, which India blames on Pakistani militants.<br />One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, Dawn, editorialized on Sunday that the army "just cannot afford to redeploy any large number of its troops" and thus leave "the 'wild' west in a free fall." "Isn't that the area where the world's best intelligence says the extremist militants are holed up in significant numbers and planning to strike targets everywhere?" the editorial asked.On the other hand, there is some angst within the Pakistani defense and intelligence communities that the military's scorched-earth approach in the west, including leveling villages as refugees huddle in camps miles away, may not gain the government much security in the long run. "What do they gain if they destroy everything?" said one Pakistani official familiar with the military campaigns.</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Suicide blast kills 6 and wounds 36 Afghans</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />KHOST, Afghanistan: A suicide bomber killed six people, including four children, and wounded 36 others in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost on Sunday, a provincial official said.<br />The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, part of the worst spate of violence in Afghanistan this year, itself the bloodiest period since the militants were overthrown in 2001.<br />Two of the six killed in the attack on Ismail Kheil's district headquarters were members of the security forces, district chief Dawlat Qayoumi told reporters.<br />U.S. forces were also in the building during the attack, but suffered no losses, Qayoumi said. "The attack has also caused damage to the building," he added.<br />A doctor in the main hospital in Khost said 36 people, many of them civilians, were wounded in the attack. Some were in critical condition.<br />The escalation of violence in Afghanistan has raised concerns the country may slide back into anarchy despite increased deployments of foreign troops.<br />U.S.-led troops with the backing of some Afghan armed factions overthrew the Taliban government after it refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders accused by Washington of masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States.<br />The Taliban, who are largely active in southern and eastern regions near the border with Pakistan, have regrouped since 2005 and mostly rely on suicide attacks and roadside bomb raids against Afghan and foreign troops.<br />(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Giles Elgood)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Kurds herald launch of Turkey's first official Kurdish language station</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />ISTANBUL: The launch of Turkey's first Kurdish language channel by the state broadcaster Jan. 1 is being heralded as a long overdue step toward improving the rights of the country's minority Kurds.<br />But skepticism among many about its state-sponsored message will mean it faces a battle to earn acceptance among Kurds in impoverished southeast Turkey, which has been scarred by a quarter of a century of separatist conflict.<br />The latest move, among cultural reforms inspired by Ankara's campaign for European Union membership, follows decades of repression of Kurdish identity and analysts said solving the Kurdish problem required more fundamental political reforms.<br />"It is significant that a language whose use was previously forbidden and its speakers punished will have 24-hour broadcasts on state television, but I think this is not enough," said Sezgin Tanrikulu, chairman of the Diyarbakir Bar Association.<br />A test broadcast for the channel, TRT 6, on Dec. 25 began with the Turkish national anthem. The channel will be launched Thursday with a ceremony that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is expected to attend.<br />Turkey lifted bans on broadcasts in Kurdish in 2002, but bureaucratic resistance has delayed implementation of the reform and the creation of private channels is still blocked, said Tanrikulu. The authorities hope TRT 6 will draw viewers away from popular Danish-based ROJ TV, which they say is a mouthpiece of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.<br />In the mainly Kurdish southeast, there is still widespread scepticism about the commitment of the state to address the needs of a region associated in people's minds with a separatist conflict which has killed about 40,000 people.<br />The government has pledged to invest $12 billion in the region in the next five years as it looks to drain PKK support.<br />There was scepticism among analysts about the channel's impact on attitudes in the southeast.<br />"In terms of having a political impact, it will be very minimal," said Cengiz Candar, a leading Turkish political commentator.<br />Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurds, a sixth of the population, already have access to Kurdish-language channels broadcast from mainly Kurdish northern Iraq and popular Roj TV.<br />In a report by the TESEV think tank released on Tuesday, leading figures in southeast Turkey called for the government to take measures ranging from constitutional reform to economic and educational initiatives to solve the Kurdish problem.<br />The PKK launched its armed bid for a Kurdish homeland in 1984 and still commands widespread sympathy in the southeast. The EU and the United States, like Turkey, describe the PKK as a terrorist group.<br />The ruling AK Party said TRT 6 would not be a "propaganda channel" and would sincerely try to meet the needs of Turkey's Kurds, who complain of decades of discrimination.<br />"The opening of this channel is one of the steps in the democratization of Turkey," said Nihat Ergun, deputy head of the AK Party's parliamentary group.<br />The channel is being billed as a Kurdish version of the main Turkish language channel TRT 1, with films, soap operas and talk shows. It will not initially carry advertising.<br />In the largest city of southeast Turkey, Diyarbakir, locals welcomed the benefits it would bring in terms of raising levels of Kurdish, which is not taught in schools. The channel will feature programs in three Kurdish dialects.<br />"Kurdish television is something for which I've been longing for years," said the shopkeeper Ibrahim Ceylan, 35. "This will be good for our children. At least they will be able to learn Kurdish better."</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Kurdish guerrillas bombed<br /></strong>Turkish Army sources said Sunday that Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq on Saturday and Sunday, The Associated Press reported from Ankara.<br />Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, targets in the Hakurke region of northern Iraq were hit on Saturday night and several other targets near the Iraqi-Turkish border were bombed Sunday afternoon, the sources said.<br />The strikes in a mountainous border area claimed no civilian casualties, said Lieutenant Colonel Ihsan Kamal, commander of the border guards' operation room in Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region.<br />"This is becoming routine, Turkish warplanes targeting the border area," he said. "We are not worried about civilian casualties because these areas are deserted."<br />But he added that he had no idea of PKK casualties.<br />Turkish Army sources said the army was also carrying out operations against mobile PKK groups spotted inside Turkey near the Iraqi border.</div><div> </div><div>Turkish jets hit PKK targets in northern Iraq<br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Ankara: Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq in operations carried out on Saturday and Sunday, Turkish Army sources told Reuters. They said that Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, targets in the Hakurke region in northern Iraq were hit Saturday night and several other targets near the Iraqi-Turkish border were bombed Sunday afternoon. They said the Turkish Army was also carrying out operations against mobile PKK groups spotted inside Turkey near the Iraqi border. There was no mention of casualties caused by the strikes. Ankara has stepped up military action against the PKK in recent months, as casualties on both sides have risen. Turkey, the European Union and United States label the PKK a terrorist organisation. Around 40,000 people have been killed in fighting between the PKK and the military since 1984, when the PKK took up arms with the aim of establishing an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey. </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Iraq bomber targets Gaza airstrike protest<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier in the Shiite slum of Sadr City here Sunday, and an Iraqi died when a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up at a mass rally against Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.<br />The two attacks were demonstrations of the violence that still flares up in Iraq as the government prepares to take responsibility for security from the U.S. military in a few days.<br />A spokesman for the U.S. Army, Captain Charles Calio, said the soldier was killed by a roadside bomb that targeted an U.S. convoy. He said there were no other casualties and the name of the soldier was being withheld pending notification of family.<br />In the northern city of Mosul, 16 people in the crowd of about 1,300 protesters were wounded in the attack, a police officer said on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak with news media.<br />U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to battle Al Qaeda and other insurgents in Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq after Baghdad and Basra, where economic and political problems persist. The issues are complicated by Kurdish-Arab tensions in the city.<br />There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack on the Mosul demonstration, the local police officer said. The rally was one of several throughout Iraq on Sunday to protest the Israeli attacks and demand a strong response from Arab governments in the region.<br />The demonstration was organized by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party. The party spokesman in Mosul, Yahiya Abid Mahjoub, complained that the police and the Iraqi Army had not taken security precautions for the demonstration.<br />Also Sunday, the police in Falluja said a bomb had exploded on the outskirts of the city, killing two civilians and wounding four.<br />A police officer, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bomb exploded in a parking lot where farmers and other merchants gather to buy and sell goods. Calio, the U.S. military spokesman, confirmed the casualty toll but added that the bomb had been aimed at a police patrol.<br />Delivery trucks and other vehicles that do not have access permits for Falluja are not allowed to drive into the city, which is west of Baghdad.<br />The Iraqi government condemned the airstrikes on Gaza, which began Saturday.<br />The top Shiite cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said condemnation did not go far enough.<br />"Expressing condemnation and denunciation for what is going on against our brothers in Gaza and expressing solidarity with them by words only doesn't mean anything in the face of the big tragedy they are facing," he said in a statement released by his office in Najaf.<br />"Now more than at any other time, both Arab and Islamic nations are required to take a practical stance for the sake of stopping this repeated aggression and to break the unfair besieging of these brave people," the statement said, without giving details of the proposed stance.<br />About 100 people took to the streets in the largest Palestinian neighborhood in Baghdad, a complex of 16 apartment blocks surrounded by Shiite areas, carrying signs denouncing Israel.<br />On Saturday, a car bomb killed at least 24 people, many of them Shiite pilgrims, and wounded 46 others when it exploded on a busy road in Baghdad that leads to the revered shrine of Kadhimiya, the Interior Ministry reported.<br />That bombing, along with several others in recent weeks, was a stark reminder that even as violence has sharply fallen, insurgents still have the power to carry out deadly strikes in the heart of the capital.<br />The attack's timing and location appeared to be intended to reignite sectarian passions. Millions of Shiites are preparing to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The observance falls during Muharram, the holiest month of the Shiite calendar, which begins Monday. Families from across Iraq traditionally visit the shrine on Saturdays.<br />The explosion occurred at midday about 100 meters, or 330 feet, from Bab al-Dirwaza, one of the main gates to the shrine and the Kadhimiya district's bustling market.<br />According to several witnesses, the car that exploded was parked outside the fence of one of the nearby parking lots.<br />A report released Saturday by the nongovernmental group Iraq Body Count said 8,955 civilians have died in Iraqi violence so far in 2008. The figures, while far below those of 2006 and 2007, when well over 20,000 civilians were killed annually, were only slightly below those for 2003 and 2004, according to the report.<br /> </div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Suicide bomber kills 8 in Sri Lanka</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />By Ranga Sirilal<br />A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber killed eight people including six paramilitary guards in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo on Sunday while air force jets bombed rebel positions in the far north.<br />Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said the Tamil Tiger rebel targeted a security checkpoint near a crowded market in the northern suburb of Wattala.<br />"The death toll has gone up to eight people including six civil defence force personnel, one army officer and a civilian," Nanayakkara said. He said 17 others were injured and being treated at two hospitals.<br />A Reuters witness said the site of the blast had been cordoned off.<br />While Sri Lanka's military blamed the rebels for the blast, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) did not immediately comment on the attack and has in the past denied responsibility for such attacks.<br />Military officials said air force fighter jets had bombed rebel positions in the far north of the country, hours after the suicide attack.<br />Earlier, the Sri Lankan navy said it had killed four rebels and destroyed a rebel boat in the north.<br />The military said heavy fighting continued around the rebels' self-proclaimed capital Kilinochchi in the northern war zone.<br />Sri Lanka's military has been closing in on Kilinochchi since September and in the past two weeks has been assaulting heavy defences encircling the town's outskirts.<br />The LTTE had no immediate comment on the fighting but pro-rebel website www.tamilnet.com quoted unnamed Tamil Tiger rebel officials saying at least 50 Sri Lankan army soldiers were killed and 90 wounded in the northern district of Mullaitivu in fighting on Saturday.<br />It said LTTE officials recovered 16 dead bodies of army soldiers in the clearing mission that followed.<br />The military admitted the fighting took place but said the rebels had overblown the figures.<br />It is nearly impossible to verify battlefield claims since both the government and the LTTE block independent media access to the war zone, and have repeatedly distorted figures to their advantage.<br />The LTTE started fighting the government in 1983. It says it is battling for the rights of minority Tamils in the face of mistreatment by successive governments led by the Sinhalese majority since Sri Lanka won independence from Britain in 1948.<br />(Additional reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Valerie Lee)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Nicholas D. Kristof: A new chance for Darfur</strong><br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />If Barack Obama wants to help end the genocide in Darfur, he doesn't have to look far for ideas of how to accomplish that.<br />President Bush and his top aides have been given, and ignored, a menu of options for tough steps to squeeze Sudan - even destroy its air force - and those will soon be on the new president's desk.<br />The State Department's policy planning staff prepared the first set of possible responses back in 2004 (never pursued), and this year Ambassador Richard Williamson has privately pushed the White House to squeeze Sudan until it stops the killing.<br />Williamson, who is President Bush's special envoy to Sudan, wrote a tough memo to Bush this fall outlining three particular steps the United States could take to press Sudan's leader, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir:<br />- The United States could jam all communications in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. This would include all telephone calls, all cellular service, all Internet access. After two days, having demonstrated Sudan's vulnerability, the United States could halt the jamming.<br />- The United States could apply progressive pressure to Port Sudan, from which Sudan exports oil and thus earns revenue. The first step would be to send naval vessels near the port. The next step would be to search or turn back some ships, and the final step would be to impose a quarantine and halt Sudan's oil exports.<br />- The United States could target Sudanese military aircraft that defy a United Nations ban on offensive military flights in Darfur. The first step would be to destroy a helicopter gunship on the ground at night.<br />A tougher approach would be to warn Sudan that unless it complies with international demands (by handing over suspects indicted by the International Criminal Court, for example), it will lose its air force - and then if it does not comply, to destroy all its military aircraft on the ground.<br />Officials frustrated by the administration's passivity shared these possible steps with me, partly to make clear that Obama can do more if he has the political will.<br />Williamson has been one of the unsung heroes of the Bush administration, fighting tenaciously and secretly - even twice threatening to resign - to redeem American honor by confronting genocide. Bush himself seemed open to tougher action, officials say, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, always resisted, backed by the Pentagon.<br />Rice and Hadley tarnished their own honor and the honor of the United States by advocating, in effect, acquiescence in genocide.<br />The naysayers' objection was simple: Those are incredibly serious steps, with grave repercussions.<br />They're right. But then again, genocide is pretty serious, too.<br />That's something that Obama and his aides understand. Partly for that reason, Sudan fears the Obama administration, and now for the first time in years, there's a real chance of ousting Bashir and ending the rule of his murderous regime.<br />Several factors are coming together. The leaders in Khartoum feel their government wobbling, particularly after rebels clashed with government soldiers on the outskirts of Khartoum earlier this year.<br />They know that the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir, probably in February, but that no other top leader will be indicted after Bashir.<br />China, which for years has been Bashir's most important international supporter, now seems to be backing away - just as it eventually abandoned genocidal friends like Slobodan Milosevic and the Khmer Rouge. And an Arab state, Qatar, is now leading a serious diplomatic initiative to try to end the slaughter.<br />Thus there are growing whispers that key figures in the Sudanese regime may throw Bashir overboard in the coming months.<br />The other leaders are ruthless and have blood on their hands as well, but some of them have in the past proved more willing to negotiate deals than Bashir has.<br />Hovering in the background is the risk that the north-south war in Sudan will resume, leading to a slaughter even worse than Darfur. One ominous sign is that Sudan is now stockpiling cash and weapons, apparently so that it can wage war on the south even if Port Sudan is blocked.<br />Williamson has suggested providing surface-to-air missiles to the separate government of South Sudan. Such weaponry would reduce the chance that Sudan would attack the south.<br />If Obama and his aides can work with Europe, China and Qatar to keep the heat on - and to make clear that Sudan has no choice but to hand over Bashir once the court issues the arrest warrant - then we just might avert a new war and end the first genocide of the 21st century in the new year.</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Moderate Islamists seize two central Somali towns<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />By Abdi Sheikh<br />A moderate Islamist group captured two towns in central Somalia on Sunday from al Shabaab, a hardline militia on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, residents and Islamists said.<br />The Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, a government-allied Sunni Islamist group, vowed on Saturday to seize towns controlled by al Shabaab after retaking Gurael, a trading town north of the capital Mogadishu.<br />Most of the south and centre of Somalia except Mogadishu and Baidoa is controlled by various Islamist factions opposed to the Western-backed transitional government and to its Ethiopian military allies.<br />Somalia has been without an effective central government for 17 years, and the Ethiopian troops that have been propping up a feeble transitional government since 2006 are due to withdraw within days.<br />But fears that this will create fresh anarchy are countered by some diplomats who say the withdrawal and the current turmoil within the administration could be a chance to bring Islamists into peace talks and create a broader-based government.<br />President Abdullahi Yusuf, who has been accused by Western nations and regional leaders of being an obstacle to a peace, is widely expected to announce his resignation on Monday.<br />"WAR ON AL SHABAAB"<br />A two-year Islamist insurgency has killed more than 10,000 civilians, uprooted 1 million people and caused one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.<br />The Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca have declared war on al Shabaab, accusing them of killing religious leaders and desecrating graves, acts that they say are against Islamic teachings.<br />"We have swept al Shabaab from Gelinsoor and most of Dusamareeb is under our control," Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf, spokesman for Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, told Reuters.<br />"We are determined to oust them from the entire country."<br />Residents said nine people were killed in Gelinsoor, in central Somalia, and 12 died in Dusamareeb, in the same region.<br />"Fierce fighting between the Sunni group and al Shabaab killed nine people including an old man hit by a stray bullet in Gelinsoor on Sunday," resident Ahmed Hassan told Reuters.<br />"The two groups exchanged machinegun fire and rocket-propelled grenades for eight hours. Most of the residents have fled into the woods, except for a few like me who couldn't get out of the house," Dusamareeb resident Halima Osman said.<br />Residents in Baidoa say Yusuf's relatives, the families of some of his presidential guards and legislators allied to the president have fled to Puntland, a semi-autonomous enclave north of Somalia, fearing they may be targeted after he resigns.<br />"Two flights came and 18 legislators closely related to President Yusuf flew to Puntland today," Hassan Abukar, a worker at Baidoa airport, told Reuters.<br />A worker at Mogadishu's airport said about 130 women and children from the presidential palace had flown to Puntland.<br />Yusuf's spokesman and the speaker of parliament declined to comment.<br />(Additional reporting by Abdi Guled and Ibrahim Mohamed in Mogadishu, Mohamed Ahmed in Baidoa; Writing by Wangui Kanina; Editing by David Clarke and Kevin Liffey)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>China's gunboat diplomacy<br /></strong>By Rory Medcalf<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />SYDNEY: On Friday, two destroyers and a supply vessel departed on China's first long-range naval expedition since 1433. The decision to join the global armada in the pirate-plagued waters off Somalia is a momentous step in China's rise as a world power.<br />It is also a precious chance for others - especially the United States and India - to build maritime security cooperation with China before Beijing forms any risky habit of solo military forays.<br />China has long been a free rider on the ocean highways. It has enjoyed the benefits of maritime trade and energy routes, so vital to its economic boom, while other countries' navies have kept them open.<br />Yet with growing wealth, pride and ambition come expectations that Beijing will contribute to the safety of an interdependent world. It was only a matter of time before China, along with the other awakening giant India, joined the club of maritime security providers, using their fleets simultaneously for self-interest and the common good, whether fighting piracy, interdicting smuggling or delivering disaster relief.<br />That day was hastened when the sea-brigands of Somalia caught Chinese vessels, cargoes and sailors in the net of their brazen raids. Press photos of Chinese mariners squatting at gunpoint on their hijacked trawler provided an incentive that was hard to resist. New Delhi's idea that the Indian Ocean was India's Ocean, plus its assertive policing, was another.<br />The Somali piracy crisis makes the ideal platform for China's debut on the high seas. It gives Beijing every justification for easing its doctrine of non-intervention: Chinese lives and interests are in danger, the United Nations has blessed action in Somali waters, most everyone else is in the game, and what passes for the Somali government has invited China in. And in times of economic pain, a show of military strength can be a politically smart distraction.<br />There is also a deeper logic to China's experiment in gunboat diplomacy. China's strategists worry at the vulnerability of their economy to maritime corridors, such as the Strait of Malacca, which they think America's superior navy could choke at will.<br />The primary mission of the People's Liberation Army Navy remains stopping Taiwan from declaring independence, as well as keeping U.S. forces at bay in any ensuing war. But some new or projected capabilities are meant to give Beijing wider options, whether thwarting energy blockades, deterring other powers, or protecting Chinese nationals and interests far away. Large amphibious assault ships, nuclear submarines, refueling vessels, a huge hospital ship and proposed aircraft carriers all fit ocean-going or "blue-water" roles.<br />After decades in which China had just a rusty coastal force, the expansion of Beijing's seafaring clout since the 1990s is vexing the United States, Japan, India, Australia and others. After all, even if there is no reason to doubt China's claims that it wants to be a harmonious society in a harmonious world, nobody knows how a formidable China might one day behave.<br />Yet prudence about the China of 2030 is no reason to neglect trying to engage today's Chinese military in providing for the global good.<br />China has as much right as any trading nation to guard itself in the lawless waters off the Horn of Africa. Warships from European Union nations, the United States, India, Russia and even Malaysia are already on patrol; there is talk of South Korea and Japan joining in. It was inconceivable that China would forever outsource its maritime security to the United States or India.<br />The challenge now is to forge operational cohesion in a motley multinational flotilla. The Chinese presence is a critical opportunity for China, the U.S., India and others to shape the rules and habits of cooperation and communication at sea that could be crucial to future peace. As things stand, these navies lack even a basic agreement to stop accidental clashes, like the treaty that helped keep the Cold War cold.<br />The Chinese role off Somalia could help Washington persuade Beijing that confidence-building military dialogue is too important to be suspended at every diplomatic spat over Tibet or Taiwan. India could prove that it is not paranoid about China, by offering rest and fuel stops for the Chinese ships as they steam west. By saying yes, Beijing would weaken theories that it wants to ring India with bases and client states.<br />It took the pirates of Wall Street to compel international cooperation in finance. If China's naval excursion can raise trust among the sea powers of the Asian century, the world may yet thank the pirates of Somalia.<br />Rory Medcalf directs the international security program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>Obama and Putin: How to improve relations</strong><br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Given all he faces, Barack Obama may be tempted to put Russia on a back burner. We hope he does not.<br />Russian-American relations have disintegrated to a dangerous low, with the Kremlin increasingly acting to antagonize the United States.<br />And America's European allies have been in no mood to take their cue on Russia from Washington. A majority have resisted U.S. efforts to quickly bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The alliance, which cut formal ties with Russia after the Georgian-Russia war last August, has begun a "conditional and graduated re-engagement" with Moscow.<br />Given NATO's declaration that there would not be "business as usual" until Russia withdrew all its troops from Georgia and canceled its annexation of two Georgian provinces, the re-engagement looks a lot like pandering to an energy supplier. But it also reflects the erosion of European trust in President Bush's leadership.<br />America's leverage over Russia's behavior has been limited further by the widespread conviction among Russians that so long as they appeared to be weak, the United States took advantage of them. The war with Georgia was one result; the recent announcement of $140 billion in military procurement is another.<br />Obama does have a few advantages in dealing with Russia: He is new, and the Russians are no less intrigued by him than the rest of the world. Neither he nor his foreign-policy team can have any illusions about Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. And Russia is deep in economic crisis.<br />Putin's popularity and power have been based largely on Russia's windfall profits from soaring energy prices. Now the Russian stock market is in free fall and factories are closing, while Putin's ratings slip.<br />Obama should signal to the Russians that he wants better relations. That would mean cutting back on belligerent talk and inviting the Russians to high-level consultations on areas in which the two countries can achieve cooperation quickly - say, on combating piracy.<br />Obama should consider renewing the Start 1 treaty on reducing strategic nuclear forces, which expires in December 2009. He also could tone down demands for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, especially since neither country is ready, and review plans to station defensive missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic.<br />For every gesture, the United States would make clear that it expects a tangible response, starting with help in ending Iran's nuclear program and continuing with cooperation against international terrorism and a withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia.</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Dictator Stalin voted third most popular Russian</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />By Dmitry Solovyov<br />Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was voted Russia's third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll that ended on Sunday, despite the famine and purges that marked his rule.<br />The "Name of Russia" contest run by Rossiya state television channel over more than six months closed on Sunday night with a final vote via the Internet and mobile phones. It drew more than 50 million votes in a nation of 143 million.<br />Millions of Soviet citizens perished from famine during forced collectivisation, were executed as "enemies of the people" or died in Gulag hard labour camps during Stalin's rule which lasted for almost 30 years until his death in 1953.<br />"We now have to think very seriously, why the nation chooses to put Josef Vissarionovich Stalin in third place," prominent actor and film director Nikita Mikhalkov, one of the contest's judges, said after the results of the vote flashed on a screen.<br />"We may find ourselves in a situation where absolute power and voluntarism that ignores people's opinions may prevail in our country, if a fairly large part of the nation wants it."<br />At the top of the list was 13th century prince Alexander Nevsky, who defeated German invaders, followed by Pyotr Stolypin, a prime minister in the early 20th century known for agrarian reforms and a clampdown on leftist revolutionaries.<br />The project was launched in mid-June with a list of 50 historical figures selected from some 500 original ones.<br />YEARNING FOR AN IRON FIST?<br />Support for the Georgian-born Stalin came alongside widespread grief at the death of Soviet-era dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in August as the project was gaining pace.<br />Solzhenitsyn, himself a former political prisoner, told the world the gruesome truth about Stalin's camps in his book "The Gulag Archipelago."<br />"The younger generation is fed with myths about Stalin. It knows nothing about the millions who died in Gulag camps but well knows he was a strong leader who defeated (Nazi) Germany," human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov told Reuters.<br />He said a whiff of Stalinism was felt in Russia's harsh tone with the West which has accused Moscow of backtracking on democratic reforms and keeping a tight lid on dissent.<br />"Again, foreign enemies are to blame for all internal problems, so you need to rule with an iron fist -- it's a purely Stalinist method."<br />Stalin's nostalgic supporters like to repeat that he defeated Nazi Germany, industrialised the Soviet Union and achieved total literacy across a backward peasant nation.<br />"Of course, there were also dark pages...and coming along with his genius there were also destructive moments, but in general he is remembered mostly as a great leader," Viktor Ilyukhin, a leading member of the Communist party, told Reuters.<br />"We have been living under capitalism for 20 years now and so what? We are now a rank-and-file country, no longer a superpower. Our voice is weak both in economics and politics, and key decisions are sometimes taken without us."<br />(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; editing by Philippa Fletcher)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>The wrong role for Bill Clinton</strong><br />The Boston Globe<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Despite formidable political skills and an enduring popularity overseas, former President Bill Clinton would be an awkward choice for a foreign policy assignment in an Obama administration. There has been speculation that the ex-president could be made a special envoy for the Mideast, the Indian-Pakistani dispute over Kashmir, or some other area of conflict.<br />This would be a mistake for several reasons - most notably that he should not serve in a position that reports to his wife, Hillary Clinton, the likely secretary of state.<br />The difficulty of such an arrangement should be self-evident. It would violate the Beltway bromide that you should never hire someone you can't fire. But there are other reasons not to appoint Clinton as a special envoy for a diplomatic mission.<br />During the presidential primary campaign, Bill Clinton pursued lines of attack on President-elect Barack Obama that harmed, or complicated, Hillary Clinton's pursuit of the presidency. It was unclear then whether he was following her agenda or acting on his own. There should be no doubt that a U.S. envoy on a peacemaking mission is acting only for the American president and secretary of state.<br />Yet another complication would come from the foreign donors to Clinton's charitable foundation. Earlier this month, Clinton disclosed that his foundation raised millions of dollars from foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Australia, Kuwait, and Qatar. He had to disclose this list as a condition for Obama to pick Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, even though donors were originally led to believe their donations would not be public. But this disclosure does not eliminate the potential for conflicts of interest.<br />Furthermore, the former president would come to any negotiating table burdened with specific policy failures during his two terms in the White House. India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons on Clinton's watch. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, with backing from Pakistan's intelligence agency. And when Clinton broke his own promise not to blame either side for failure at Camp David by casting all blame on Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat, he ruined whatever reputation he had among Palestinians as an honest broker. The new administration can't get tangled up in what should or shouldn't have happened in the 1990s. U.S. diplomacy needs a fresh start.<br />Bill Clinton could serve many domestic causes well. Or he could directly take on the fight against poverty and disease in Africa that his Global Initiative has pursued. But former presidents do not make the best diplomats. And the downside is even greater for one who would report to his own spouse.</div><div> </div><div></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050511808175218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Fezp-m0lU3cpxy-tVFeuF8gIj8VYy58YL9fJN5Su1N4F8zkBoMynjNMVdQ_mktyfIh-82boV9s9uwQgKf6ZHgV5v_eOsVdQIC7eN4aSh37s2VBOSh2JPLf8ZGtSvy5nyxmCierCm7wo/s320/DSC04731.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div><div><div><div><div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsWZDiCoH4Idz5YesDjxdLWu-ug36Alpqb6VDX7GAVtyB3pmtCxQLzaYkpkYrNr_T2vySlU5xZG7cdgDhD_mNe5OMpfopCl-ioByOOg4Ao3QKqt5bpjVmSluAyZ3jlVMH5FnZzKhiZHFE/s1600-h/DSC04733.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050506666886994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsWZDiCoH4Idz5YesDjxdLWu-ug36Alpqb6VDX7GAVtyB3pmtCxQLzaYkpkYrNr_T2vySlU5xZG7cdgDhD_mNe5OMpfopCl-ioByOOg4Ao3QKqt5bpjVmSluAyZ3jlVMH5FnZzKhiZHFE/s320/DSC04733.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkVf13x39hp1UK8SMEL2IgkpJHuuRKMX9f_VwdvkyxEwsHRM0OF_hOmOLT1hGwPi1KyImJ9ToRaQwstPElwmf0GdGU6GDRczVNKoQsY6MQhyHvbubO5aAj502VXHkD9AvYCpMYDoUt_U/s1600-h/DSC04734.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050507289147250" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkVf13x39hp1UK8SMEL2IgkpJHuuRKMX9f_VwdvkyxEwsHRM0OF_hOmOLT1hGwPi1KyImJ9ToRaQwstPElwmf0GdGU6GDRczVNKoQsY6MQhyHvbubO5aAj502VXHkD9AvYCpMYDoUt_U/s320/DSC04734.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-AwxNmoQOPjYfT5MbwvbHwsLtsM_msMs1iCrB1GPza91TWm-9_HEmt9M8jmfC_USUtek05OTPFaISUlExdjwbkUmUtIJvhFsdtBjVwM4YASwfq0KOiQrhpBJlHH_7ca9MZMGJKdmJbA/s1600-h/DSC04735.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050208749532354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4-AwxNmoQOPjYfT5MbwvbHwsLtsM_msMs1iCrB1GPza91TWm-9_HEmt9M8jmfC_USUtek05OTPFaISUlExdjwbkUmUtIJvhFsdtBjVwM4YASwfq0KOiQrhpBJlHH_7ca9MZMGJKdmJbA/s320/DSC04735.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Keepers of Bush data face system overload as electronic records snowball</strong><br />By Robert Pear and Scott Shane<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The National Archives has put into effect an emergency plan to handle electronic records from the Bush White House amid growing doubts about whether its new $144 million computer system can cope with the vast quantities of digital data it will receive when President George W. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20.<br />The technical challenge was an inevitable result of the explosion in cybercommunications, which archives officials estimated will make the electronic record of the Bush years about 50 times as large as that left by the Clinton White House in 2001.<br />The collection will include top-secret e-mail tracing plans for the Iraq war as well as scenes from Barney Cam 2008, a White House video featuring the first pet.<br />Under federal law, the government has "complete ownership, possession and control" of presidential and vice-presidential records. The moment Bush leaves office, the National Archives becomes legally responsible for "the custody, control and preservation" of the records.<br />Archives officials who disclosed the emergency plan said it would mean that the agency would initially take over parts of the White House storage system, freezing the contents on Jan. 20. Only later, after further study, will archivists try to move the records into the computer system they have devised as a repository for digital data.<br />Questions about the archives' capacity have added a new element to the uneasiness felt by open-government advocates and historians, who already fear that departing White House officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, may not turn over everything. Cheney asserted this month in a court case that he had absolute discretion to decide which of his records were official and which were personal, and so do not have to be transferred to the archives,<br />The National Archives has already begun trucking boxes of paper records from the White House to a warehouse it is leasing in Lewisville, Texas, not a great distance from where Bush's presidential library is to be built, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.<br />The archives invoked its emergency plan to deal with problems in transferring two types of electronic files: a huge collection of digital photographs and the "records management system," which provides an index to most of the textual records generated by Bush and his staff members over eight years.<br />Archivists said it could be weeks or months before those files could be indexed and searched.<br />In their plan, archives officials wrote, the transition poses "unique challenges" because of the huge volume of electronic records, some of them in unfamiliar formats.<br />Although archivists have been working with the White House to survey the documents, "there is always a possibility that some electronic records may be overlooked," the officials wrote.<br />If the electronic records of the Bush White House total 100 terabytes of information, as archives officials estimate, that would be about 50 times the volume of electronic records left behind by the Clinton White House in 2001 and about five times the contents of all 20 million catalogued books in the Library of Congress.<br />"It's a monstrous volume of material, and some people wonder if the system can absorb it," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History, a collection of 60 archival and historical groups.<br />Sam Watkins, a transition liaison officer at the archives, said his agency was expecting to receive 20 to 24 terabytes of e-mail alone from the Bush White House. By contrast, Watkins said, the volume of e-mail from the Clinton White House was less than one terabyte.<br />While some routine messages may be of little interest to historians, the law does not generally permit White House officials to pick which messages to preserve. And for an administration not documented by the tapes that captured the inside story of the Johnson and Nixon White Houses, e-mail may provide a substitute, historians said.<br />The archives said it had "a high level of confidence" that it could bring the e-mail into its electronic record-keeping system and retrieve messages in response to requests from Congress and the courts.<br />But Thomas Blanton, director of the nonprofit National Security Archive, a plaintiff in several lawsuits seeking Bush administration records, said the National Archives' track record did not justify such a claim. "Their confidence is inexplicable," he said.<br />Archives officials said they might have been better prepared for the transition if the White House had cooperated earlier.<br />Millions of White House e-mails created from 2003 to 2005 appear to be missing and may not be recoverable. And in September 2007, the top lawyer at the National Archives wrote in a memorandum that he had "made almost zero progress" planning the transition because the White House had ignored repeated requests for infor-mation about the volume and formats of electronic records.<br />In May of this year, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that "the administration had not yet provided specific information on the volume and types of data to be transferred" to the archives. Linda Koontz of the accountability office warned in May and again in September that the National Archives might not be ready for the torrent of electronic records on Jan. 20.<br />Even if the technology were perfect, some historians, librarians and watchdog groups said they did not trust this administration to preserve its records.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>A deadly wave, a lucky star<br /></strong>By John Bemelmans Marciano<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />One hundred years ago this past Sunday, the life of my grandfather Lorenzo took a tragic and extraordinary turn.<br />Dec. 28 marks the Feast of the Slaughter of the Innocents on the Roman Catholic calendar. Once the final day of the Christmas season, it instead signaled, by 1908, a return to normal life, as children were headed back to school and parents to work for the first time in weeks.<br />Alarm clocks were set the night before, at the end of a Sunday that had been uncommonly cold and gloomy across southern Italy, so much so that people forsook the traditional visits to friends and family and stayed home.<br />My grandfather's family would not have ventured out in any event, because that night they welcomed a new addition, another sister for 10-year-old Lorenzo - his sixth - to go along with his little brother, Giuseppe.<br />My grandfather lived in Pellaro, a small town just south of Reggio di Calabria on the Strait of Messina. His family lived alongside that of his uncle, aunt and five cousins in the Via Madonella, a road that dead-ended into a sandy beach. His childhood was idyllic: the sea right outside his door to play in, Mount Etna rising fantastically across the blue-black waters.<br />That late-December morning, Pellaro smelled strongly of perfume; it was harvest time for the bergamot, the small citrus fruit that is the principal ingredient in all manner of cologne and grown only on this narrow strip of the Calabrian coast.<br />Lorenzo was awakened shortly before the dawn, not by his alarm but by the loud low rumble of the earth and the awful crashing that followed. Living in an area recently wracked by earthquakes, most people immediately knew what was happening. During seismic events the majority of deaths are caused by people's homes collapsing in on them - a fate suffered by few in Pellaro, which was a sparsely built farming community.<br />People gathered near the water, thinking it the safest place to be, but 10 minutes after the main shock the sea began to recede from shore. Boats at anchor tottered and hit bottom. There were two words in Italian to describe what was happening, one native (maremoto) the other borrowed from Japanese (tsunami).<br />There was no time to outrun the water, but someone pushed my grandfather up into an olive tree along with his little brother, whom Lorenzo held onto with all his strength. The roar of the sea was deafening - the tidal wave crested at more than 40 feet - and fight though Lorenzo did, the impact broke his clutch on Giuseppe.<br />No one will ever know how long my grandfather wandered the ruined coast, calling out the names of his brother, of his family. Everything Lorenzo had ever known was destroyed. The land beneath his neighborhood collapsed and fell, Atlantis-like, into the sea. The Church of the Madonella was open to the sky, a boat docked in its altar. Farther up the beach, a crack in the earth revealed ancient Greco-Roman tombs, still intact.<br />Across the straits, Messina - one of the most ancient cities in Europe - had been annihilated. More than 50,000 were dead. It took only a few hours for civilization to break down among the survivors.<br />Looting ran rampant; thieves cut fingers from the dead rather than waste time prying their rings off. Marconi's new radio transmitter at the mouth of the strait had gone silent, and many believed themselves to be the only people left alive, anywhere.<br />The 1908 earthquake stands as the most lethal natural disaster in recorded European history. (And only the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 has dwarfed it recently.) Nearly 100,000 people perished, including all 16 of my grandfather's relatives in Via Madonella.<br />The response of the royal Italian government makes FEMA's effort in New Orleans look like a model of efficiency. Most disgracefully, the shacks built as temporary shelter for the homeless would remain occupied for 30 years while the reconstruction dragged on. My grandfather himself was shuffled among relatives in Calabria before boarding the steamer Europa in 1921 to seek a better life in America.<br />Grampa, who died in 1990, always said he had been born under a lucky star. I assumed this belief was the sign of an earlier, more stoic generation. In fact, it was not. People went insane with grief over the events of Dec. 28, 1908. But a few survivors came away from the experience with the knowledge that they had stared apocalypse in the face and found the strength to come through it. And, having done so, they could endure anything - including arriving in America with little money and even less English, and raising eight children through a Depression and a war against their home country.<br />Grampa's lucky star was in fact mine, and my brothers', and all our cousins'.John Bemelmans Marciano is the author and illustrator of "Madeline and the Cats of Rome." </div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdb6VRKB2D9Be3IFdWDTuN62YTB6p_3RF5W5c-shup7XYUp74BY2OnQG2yXpSfIGNvrdvtYZLil1UC6_iEEYPsuDQF0XIIwYjTw6XpG0gvBhuq7fIhwYAd6YrCZNTxozeA4RyhtLfhhs/s1600-h/DSC04736.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050209167332546" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdb6VRKB2D9Be3IFdWDTuN62YTB6p_3RF5W5c-shup7XYUp74BY2OnQG2yXpSfIGNvrdvtYZLil1UC6_iEEYPsuDQF0XIIwYjTw6XpG0gvBhuq7fIhwYAd6YrCZNTxozeA4RyhtLfhhs/s320/DSC04736.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipLwQ5_4UyhUK3xXWWWy5wzkEmMy-t6oH74dFR5BH_wF-hYctSqxvGIjBABajA65Ts7_y8bvCqwWWkSp-IUf7VvlkW2Iv5d_CBsZkekXYlocAggWgqarkKRNzKFmkRo1lsmHnQ7K0y-0Q/s1600-h/DSC04737.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050205078165586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipLwQ5_4UyhUK3xXWWWy5wzkEmMy-t6oH74dFR5BH_wF-hYctSqxvGIjBABajA65Ts7_y8bvCqwWWkSp-IUf7VvlkW2Iv5d_CBsZkekXYlocAggWgqarkKRNzKFmkRo1lsmHnQ7K0y-0Q/s320/DSC04737.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeSGBkp4ZG6OOIZLva1jkYesW3jLRYDB_aC5R4QnXopgF1Lwuxc_ZeLVMfc_tZ9Au_q3kougMXsyy_EsmlwTLvdfRDC4nyMv9Da0YgXIqElQLY8CgWygHJaV5HZrIJ2KY-JusHR16vXj0/s1600-h/DSC04738.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050200920417186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeSGBkp4ZG6OOIZLva1jkYesW3jLRYDB_aC5R4QnXopgF1Lwuxc_ZeLVMfc_tZ9Au_q3kougMXsyy_EsmlwTLvdfRDC4nyMv9Da0YgXIqElQLY8CgWygHJaV5HZrIJ2KY-JusHR16vXj0/s320/DSC04738.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9KEXXqY30LsdGCxhEkwyjQWY8UA088-oCHNl5Rl_llYIATYelIKGGSXOBcbmf4EYoCi7VFagO-028KuErLjAEEfzM2zSA-2HTF5YFljYUg5bLXGjL62sovwfazTocZFw5iHQkoWoiLbU/s1600-h/DSC04739.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285050203599851938" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9KEXXqY30LsdGCxhEkwyjQWY8UA088-oCHNl5Rl_llYIATYelIKGGSXOBcbmf4EYoCi7VFagO-028KuErLjAEEfzM2zSA-2HTF5YFljYUg5bLXGjL62sovwfazTocZFw5iHQkoWoiLbU/s320/DSC04739.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Questioning the cost of text messaging<br /></strong>By Randall Stross<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Text messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers' costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain.<br />Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four.<br />So in September, Kohl sent a letter to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, inviting them to answer some basic questions about their text messaging costs and pricing.<br />All four of the major carriers decided during the past three years to increase the pay-per-use price for messages to 20 cents from 10 cents. The decision could not have come from a dearth of business: the total of 2.5 trillion sent messages this year, as estimated by the Gartner Group, is up 32 percent from 2007. Gartner expects 3.3 trillion messages to be sent in 2009.<br />The written responses to Kohl from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile speak at length about pricing plans without getting around to the costs of conveying text messages.<br />Attempts to speak with representatives of all three about their costs and pricing were unsuccessful.<br />The carriers will have other opportunities to tell us more about their pricing decisions: Twenty class-action lawsuits have been filed around the United States against AT&T and the other carriers, alleging price-fixing for text messaging services.<br />T-Mobile and AT&T contended in their responses to Kohl that the pay-per-use price of a message was relatively unimportant because most messaging was done as part of a package. With a $10 or $15 monthly plan for text messaging, customers of T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint can effectively reduce the per-message price to a penny, if they fully use their monthly allotment.<br />T-Mobile called Kohl's attention to the fact that its "average revenue per text message, which takes into account the revenue for all text messages, has declined by more than 50 percent since 2005."<br />This statement seems like good news for customers. But consider what is left out: In the past three years, the volume of text messaging in the United States has grown tenfold, according to CTIA - the Wireless Association, a trade group based in Washington. If T-Mobile enjoyed growth that was typical, its text messaging revenue grew fivefold, even with the steep drop in per-message revenue.<br />The lucrative nature of that revenue increase cannot be appreciated without doing something that T-Mobile chose not to do, which is to talk about whether its costs rose as the industry's messaging volume grew tenfold. Kohl's letter of inquiry noted that "text messaging files are very small, as the size of text messages are generally limited to 160 characters per message, and therefore cost carriers very little to transmit."<br />A better description might be "cost carriers very, very, very little to transmit." A text message initially travels wirelessly from a handset to the closest base-station tower and is then transferred through wired links to the digital pipes of the telephone network. Then, near its destination, it is converted back into a wireless signal to traverse the final leg, from tower to handset. In the wired portion of its journey, a file of such infinitesimal size is inconsequential.<br />Srinivasan Keshav, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, said: "Messages are small. Even though a trillion seems like a lot to carry, it isn't."<br />Perhaps the costs for the wireless portion at either end are high - spectrum is finite, after all, and carriers pay dearly for the rights to use it. But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what's called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network. That's why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.<br />Until Kohl began his inquiries, the public had no reason to think of the text-messaging business as anything but an ordinary one, whose operational costs rose in tandem with message volume. The carriers had no reason to correct such an impression.<br />Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>CS clients reported may have lost 627 million pounds on Madoff<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />ZURICH: Credit Suisse clients may have lost up to 1 billion Swiss francs (627.3 million pounds) on investments connected to accused swindler Bernard Madoff, newspaper Sonntag reported on Sunday.<br />Without giving details of its sources, Sonntag reported that internal forecasts at Credit Suisse showed that customers of Switzerland's second-largest bank could have lost 0.9-1.0 billion francs in the Madoff case.<br />Credit Suisse spokesman Jan Vonder Muehll said: "Credit Suisse did not actively recommend or sell products invested with Bernard Madoff.<br />"Furthermore, none of the funds of hedge funds offered by Credit Suisse contained holdings in Madoff funds."<br />Authorities say Wall Street fund manager Madoff has confessed to running a $50 billion fraud that ensnared investors and charities around the world.<br />Funds managed by Swiss banks have been prominent victims of Madoff, who is accused of running a global Ponzi scheme in which earlier investors are paid off with investments from newer clients.<br />($1=1.080 Swiss Franc)</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Ponzi schemes never change</strong><br />By Eduardo Porter<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />One hears anguished commentary about how Bernard Madoff's gargantuan fraud epitomizes the self-defeating excess of high-tech finance - his fall the embodiment of the fall of modern capitalism.<br />But while $50 billion is a lot of money to defraud, there's nothing particularly modern about Madoff's ethics or technique.<br />Ponzi schemes are among the oldest in the books, long preceding the stamp arbitrage scam engineered in the 1920s by Charles Ponzi, who gave the fraud its name. They have been practiced by hundreds of scammers across the world. And they usually end badly.<br />The oldest documented case dates back to 1719, when John Law, a Scot, offered investors stock in a French company trading up the Mississippi River, promising returns of more than 40 percent a year.<br />More recently, from Romania to Russia, Ponzi schemes became de rigeur as former Communist countries embraced capitalism. In Albania, half the population invested an amount equivalent to the nation's entire gross domestic product in an enormous Ponzi scheme before it collapsed.<br />In April last year, authorities in Wazirabad, Pakistan, arrested a former high school teacher who reportedly took nearly $1 billion from starry-eyed investors. And a few weeks ago, the Colombian government declared a state of emergency because of rioting over some closed Ponzi funds.<br />Some say that Madoff's fraud is a harbinger of the downfall of the 21st-century's frenetic variant of capitalism. I would suggest that it underscores how stable the strategies and the institutions of finance truly are. What changes are the scale and the technology. The ethical shortcomings remain.<br />Madoff's strategy doesn't just recall that of snake-oil peddlers of yore. It is strikingly similar to that of the brokers and the financiers who built lucrative legal businesses convincing investors that something - Internet stocks, American homes, Dutch tulips - would appreciate forever for some superspecial reason.<br />What's a Ponzi scheme but an illegal ruse to entice the gullible with the promise of too-good-to-be-true returns in arcane investments using an intimidating cloud of abstruse financial lingo? Ponzi frauds have the defining characteristic that returns to the first batch of innocents are paid from the money invested by the second batch. That sounds a lot like today's American real estate market.<br />And Ponzi frauds often have similar ends to our increasingly frequent bubbles. Not only do they both usually collapse, but so many rich and influential French investors were taken by John Law's fraud in the 18th century that the government felt compelled to bail them out. According to Utpal Bhattacharya, a professor of finance at Indiana University, it exchanged the investors' worthless stock for bonds secured by Paris's municipal revenues.<br />There are, of course, important differences between fraud and standard financial practice. Crucially, bubbles are powered by fools of increasing gullibility, who will be willing to pay an even greater price to buy an asset from the fool that bought it in the preceding round. Ponzi schemes only require that their investors be foolish.<br />Yet these details do not negate the larger paradigm of finance, old or new: getting investors' money requires a story. It doesn't have to be true.<br />Eduardo Porter is a member of the New York Times editorial board.</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>John Lewis posts record sales on 1st clearance day</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 29, 2008<br />LONDON: John Lewis, the employee-owned group viewed as a bellwether of British retailing, said on Sunday the first day of its post-Christmas clearance sale produced record takings at its department stores.<br />Department store sales on Saturday were up 7 percent on the same day last year at 21.3 million pounds, led by demand for home technology products and womenswear, it said.<br />"This is a remarkable result at any time and particularly so in this challenging economic climate," department stores Managing Director Andy Street said in a statement.<br />(Reporting by Mark Potter)<br /> </div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Contemplating our cluelessness<br /></strong>By Peter Applebome<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Yes, it has been a miserable year.<br />Had Time waited a few days it might have decided to go with Bernard Madoff, the ultimate face of this annus horribilis, as its Person of the Year instead of Barack Obama.<br />But, when it comes to money, hope springs eternal. Just ask the financial magazines which are already full of advice about the better year to come. "Your Comeback Year 2009," announces Kiplinger's Personal Finance. In Money it's: "Get Your Money Back A Six-Step Plan to Rebuild Your Savings." BusinessWeek's Investment Outlook promises: "Yes, Things Are Grim. But Here's Your New Plan to Emerge Stronger."<br />Maybe next year will be better. It can't be much worse. But before we toss the latest unopened 401(k) statement into the trash, a year-end toast to us all the boobs and easy marks who from time immemorial have mastered the art of buying high and selling low, investing in bubbles as transparent as an open window, making crashes and swindles as much a part of the human experience as love, vanity and bad breath.<br />"Insofar as there is a lesson in history," said James Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, "it's that human beings are not very good with large sums of money, anything over $136."<br />As we await a better 2009 we ask: Are we doomed forever to be the fleeced or is there anything we can learn form this latest round of financial catastrophe? In fact, there are plenty of lessons to be learned. So here's a revolutionary idea: Maybe it's time we even start thinking about ways to teach them.<br />All financial collapses have their own brand of pain. But this one cuts particularly deep because over the past few decades, without even quite knowing it, we went from a nation with a few financial choices to one with thousands, and we're making decisions previous generations never faced in Individual Retirement Accounts, 401(k)'s, 529 plans and elsewhere. What's the right asset allocation? Regular IRA or Roth? When is it best to retire and when to begin withdrawing funds from retirement plans? Tell me again how that annuity is supposed to work? What's the catch in that cheap adjustable-rate mortgage?<br />Back in 1972, Money magazine was a revolutionary idea, a money magazine for people who didn't have much of it. Now the marketplace is full of people and publications offering advice, much of it self serving, some smart, some dumb. Were you lucky enough you might have happened upon David Lereah's invaluable primer, "Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust And How You Can Profit From It" or Robert Zuccaro's prescient book, "Dow, 30,000 by 2008 Why It's Different This Time." There was plenty more where those came from.<br />Not all that long ago financial wisdom for the masses was Louis Rukeyser on "Wall Street Week" trading puns and market insight with buttoned-down Wall Street savants in that sedate living room on PBS. Now it's Jim Cramer shouting, sweating and making loud animal noises in his financial carnival on CNBC. We're all part of a 24/7 financial noise machine even if most of us don't know the first thing about it.<br />Surely, there are different levels of financial ignorance and folly. People who took out loans they had no ability to pay based on the quaint notion that housing prices only went up didn't make the same mistakes as Madoff's investors, who had at least some reason to think they were doing something prudent and wise.<br />But can anyone doubt that the demands on people to make reasonably intelligent choices with their money has so far exceeded their wisdom to do it, that maybe we should at least try to figure out some way to close the gap? If many presumably sophisticated Madoff investors were ruined, what chance do the rest of us have?<br />Frederick Rowe Jr., a Dallas money manager, has a framed quote attributed to financier and investor Bernard Baruch near his desk.<br />It reads: "If you are ready and able to give up everything else, to study the whole history and background of the market and all the principal companies whose stocks are on the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy, to glue your nose at the tape at the opening of every day of the year and never take it off till night. If you can do all that and in addition you have the cool nerves of a great gambler, the sixth sense of a kind of clairvoyant, and the courage of a lion," then you've got a chance.<br />That level of commitment may be a bit beyond most of us. But shouldn't we be teaching more of this in high school and college? Shouldn't every high school graduate at least know what compound interest can do for you as a saver and what it does to you as a borrower? Any college kid at some point gets lectures and required readings on the importance of diversity, academia's favorite subject. Shouldn't they graduate with a modicum of financial literacy as well?<br />"We're taught that money is the root of all evil and that money can't buy you love, but the nature of compound interest, that you have to have more money coming in than going out, is almost never taught," Rowe said. "Students have to take math and foreign language and history, but you can graduate from every good school in the country without any exposure at all to how money works."<br />One lesson of this year is that these days, no one, even the most financially secure, can afford to be stupid. Another might be that investing for the long term, can mean for a very, very long term.<br />It's ugly out there. Better luck next year.</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>As a candidate, Kennedy is forceful but remains elusive</strong><br />By Nicholas Confessore and David M. Halbfinger<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />Caroline Kennedy, the woman who would be New York's next senator, is sure of one thing. Among all the hopefuls seeking to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, she said on Saturday, there is no better choice.<br />"I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I would be the best," Kennedy said, sitting in the back room of an Upper East Side diner around the corner from her home.<br />After weeks of criticism that she had not opened up to the public or the press, Kennedy has embarked on a series of interviews. But in an extensive sit-down discussion Saturday morning with The New York Times, she still seemed less like a candidate than an idea of one: forceful but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way.<br />Facing a somewhat delicate task, where she is not running for office but seeking an appointment to an impending vacancy, Kennedy avoided questions about the other possible contenders, saying she did not want to criticize them. She praised Clinton, but said it was too soon to say how she could improve on Clinton's performance as a senator. She said she had been personally affected by the economic crisis but sidestepped questions about her wealth, declining to say how much money she lived on each year.<br />She provided only the broadest of rationales for her candidacy for the Senate, saying her experience as a mother, author and school fund-raiser, her commitment to public service and her deep political connections had prepared her for the job.<br />Kennedy, 51, has had only a few weeks to think through a platform and a message, and she has already taken positions on issues like same-sex marriage, which she supports, and school vouchers, which she opposes. She spoke knowledgeably about education issues and said that, if appointed, she hoped to be particularly involved in the debate over the reauthorization of the federal legislation known as No Child Left Behind, of which her uncle Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts was a lead author.<br />But in the interview on Saturday, she said she hoped to be a consensus-builder, and declined to describe her positions on other pressing public issues even in education, where she has some expertise. Kennedy would not say, for example, whether she supported proposals to abolish tenure for teachers and offer them merit pay instead.<br />"To pick out the most controversial one as a stand-alone thing, I don't think that's really the way to go about this," Kennedy said. "People can vote; it'll be really interesting to see what happens. There's a lot of experimentation going on in the country that we should pay attention to."<br />The interview underscored the aura of mystery that still surrounds Kennedy nearly a month after she told Governor David Paterson that she was interested in filling Clinton's seat.<br />New Yorkers appear to have a favorable view of Kennedy and fond memories of her family. But they know little about her positions or what has driven her to seek office after years spent mostly avoiding the spotlight.<br />With several weeks to go before Paterson makes his decision, she is doling out glimpses of her political beliefs and private life. But when asked Saturday morning to describe the moment she decided to seek the Senate seat, Kennedy seemed irritated by the question and said she couldn't recall.<br />"Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman's magazine or something?" she asked the reporters. "I thought you were the crack political team."<br />On an appearance Friday night on NY1, Kennedy was more lighthearted, and also more personal. She talked about her family's political legacy, about how much she missed her brother, and about how much her mother had loved campaigning.<br />But on Saturday morning, Kennedy was all business and seemed in a more lawyerly frame of mind. At one point, she said that it might have been preferable to seek the seat in an election, noting that "it would give me a chance to explain exactly what I'm doing, why I would want to do this, and, you know, to get people to know me better and to understand exactly what my plans would be, how hard I would work."<br />But she would not say whether she thought Paterson should appoint a caretaker candidate to fill out Clinton's term, which would allow Kennedy and others interested in the seat an equal and unfettered chance to campaign for it in 2010.<br />"This is the opportunity that's presenting itself right now, and I'm interested if the governor thinks that I could do a good job and help New York and help him," Kennedy said.<br />Kennedy said she had spoken "throughout this process" with Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general, who is a contender for the job himself and is divorced from Kennedy's cousin Kerry Kennedy. There are at least a half dozen other serious contenders for the job, including Thomas Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, and Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Kirsten Gillibrand.<br />"I'm not a conventional choice," Kennedy said. "I haven't followed the traditional path, but I do think I'd bring a kind of a lifetime of experience that is relevant to this job."<br />One of the main assets she could bring to the Senate, Kennedy suggested, was her celebrity itself. It would be useful, she said, in bringing attention to New York's needs and fighting for a bigger share of federal stimulus money.<br />"We are losing a very visible, very strong, very powerful advocate in Hillary Clinton," Kennedy said. "This is not about me, this is about what I can do to help New York get its fair share, help working families, travel the state, bring attention to what is going on up there. So that's why I think I would be good."<br />Kennedy said she was very close to Senator Kennedy, and was inspired by his example, but felt no family duty to follow in her uncle's footsteps.<br />Asked how much of a role her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, might take in her political career on the hustings in Watertown, New York, say, or other political way stations in the north country she hinted that he might be busy elsewhere, given his own career as the head of a prominent design firm. But she said no one could have a more supportive husband.<br />"The more time I spend with him, the happier I am," she said.<br />Kennedy said she had spent some time in the Catskills and the Adirondacks; when asked her favorite place in the state outside of the city and Long Island, she said, "I like visiting historical sites. I loved visiting the battlefields of Saratoga."<br />Kennedy said her finances had been affected by the economic crisis, though "not as badly as a lot of people's. I'm lucky that I'm not afraid of losing my home, and my husband still has a job."<br />But she declined to discuss details. "If I'm chosen for this I'm going to comply with every kind of disclosure; if the governor has questions about my finances, I'll talk to him."<br />She said she employed one household worker as well as a personal assistant though she said she had far more experience managing people at the Department of Education. "Building a staff is something that I would have no trouble doing," she said.<br />And she said she would have no trouble relating to New Yorkers of more modest means. "I have lived a very advantaged life, and I am very fortunate," she said. "But our family tradition has been always to work for, as I said, for working people."<br />Though Kennedy's own children have attended private schools, she said her experience working with city schools had given her ample understanding of what students and their parents are facing.<br />"Many of those families are headed by women who are poor, and the kids are poor," she said. "So I think that I've seen firsthand, and extensively across the city, the need that there is, the disadvantage that those kids are at when they enter school without the kind of support that kids from more fortunate backgrounds have, and the long-term impact of that on our city."<br />Asked to name an issue on which she would depart from Democratic Party orthodoxy, Kennedy seemed to have trouble identifying one.<br />"If we're not comparing it to anybody specifically, it's hard to say where I disagree," she said.<br />But when asked how she might differ with Mayor Michael Bloomberg or with Governor Paterson, who has sole authority to make the Senate appointment, she demurred.<br />"I'm not going to talk about my disagreements with him," she said. "You'll find out over time."<br />Indeed, Kennedy, like Barack Obama, the presidential candidate she endorsed, returned repeatedly to the idea of bipartisanship and unity.<br />"What I think people are really looking for is for people to work together," she said finally. "It's something that I take really seriously. We need Republicans and Democrats, all Democrats people need to look at what we have in common.<br />"Health care is a perfect example," she added. "All the stakeholders are at the table. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had different plans, but I think the goal now is to get quality affordable health care. The point now is to find something that's going to work, to reduce costs and get more people covered. Now is the time for people to come together and focus on compromise. I think that's one of the things I have going for me."<br />Kennedy came to the interview with two aides, who had reserved the back room of the Lenox Hill Diner, on Lexington Avenue near 78th Street, for several interviews scheduled on Saturday.<br />As things wrapped up, a reporter tried to pose another question, but she interrupted him.<br />"I think we're done," she said.<br /> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurGP2gdwsRBlslVKM12_M7dL0eHQlTVHO49UTxZUR5Bz5PhMGu3NDk6nEKSKXUNC88ie7BMiz8tT0BRT7PHcgLzuHFIh2MbgMGxrogHvdWZsGxm26IduAavvhL9SoN-ZQXr1XCuTbFO4/s1600-h/DSC04740.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285049867402415922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiurGP2gdwsRBlslVKM12_M7dL0eHQlTVHO49UTxZUR5Bz5PhMGu3NDk6nEKSKXUNC88ie7BMiz8tT0BRT7PHcgLzuHFIh2MbgMGxrogHvdWZsGxm26IduAavvhL9SoN-ZQXr1XCuTbFO4/s320/DSC04740.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiG1OsGIUlzgKPGsDjkz7qDIeKIR5PwCb7ZVHjkp69vcTCbEwDObmQGKpqI3Rq1qM9CCNiFvUqudYonlTdbVCBPwJBRXX7qa0T4ctIUJFXyP40oVuKimNtghBQCerG7wRmahEs-zo5Pkk/s1600-h/DSC04741.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285049869528045938" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jrt2mXIg3RqjUFW-XoIUs3BW9ACqhHuHN3mCKNyZkXYmoWtATKqsysrID-Ue0UoC_rHE-zOe06HHyOAhCOx5HDEg5vPbqEK4QAaany3mcM_FtGKRePdrYCPWw3kYSv9TM2zF7awT74A/s320/DSC04761.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuY-_DaQjnpbEzTKr-PLAqTgpN8JGjr7KueeNb17UW5QrIPtmfunBDByg_llR9PST51VG0sqHp2GCedp9WV34iSB8hJ6ynd49kMGB5JEfjr_BnQyeffLIZdN9zD_usM2srByO7qb6JFC0/s1600-h/DSC04762.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285048620846198850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuY-_DaQjnpbEzTKr-PLAqTgpN8JGjr7KueeNb17UW5QrIPtmfunBDByg_llR9PST51VG0sqHp2GCedp9WV34iSB8hJ6ynd49kMGB5JEfjr_BnQyeffLIZdN9zD_usM2srByO7qb6JFC0/s320/DSC04762.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Wild Oats XI wins Sydney to Hobart race<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />HOBART, Australia: The discovery of a shark tangled in its aft rudder helped the Australian yacht Wild Oats XI surge to an unprecedented fourth successive first-place finish in the Sydney to Hobart race on Sunday.<br />The 30-meter, or about 100-foot, carbon-fiber yacht, which had been trailing rival Skandia, was forced to stop after it collided with a two-meter shark Saturday evening.<br />Mark Richards, the captain, said the collision had a positive outcome. Having to stop and reverse the yacht to clear the shark from the rudder also removed some debris from its keel that had slowed the boat since the start.<br />"It might have been something off a spectator boat," he said of the debris. "I mean it was just a washing machine, a nightmare, you never know what could have happened."<br />Richards said he thought about sending a crew member over the side to inspect the keel, but the tight race with Skandia never gave him the opportunity.<br />"We just never stopped, he said, adding that when a yacht is sailing at 20-25 knots per hour, or 37-46 kilometers per hour, "it's a hard thing to work out what to actually do. So we were sort of waiting for the opportunity but in the end we didn't have one. We had to do it anyway."<br />Freeing the shark, Richards said at Constitution Dock in Hobart, "was a godsend in the end because the second we got him off, the boat was back to its old self."<br />Wild Oats XI surged ahead of Skandia, the winner in 2003, and crossed the finish line in the island state of Tasmania at 9:34 a.m. local time on Sunday, 1 day 20 hours 34 minutes 14 seconds after leaving Sydney. Skandia finished an hour later.<br />The time was about two hours slower than the record Wild Oats set in 2005 for the 628-nautical mile, or about 1,160-kilometer, race.<br />Wild Oats XI last year equaled the record for three successive victories achieved by Claude Plowman's Morna from 1946-48.<br />Richards said this year's victory was the toughest "by a country mile."<br />Fickle conditions overnight ended hopes of breaking the record after the leading yachts appeared on course to eclipse it when favorable northerly winds propelled them down the east coast of Australia.<br />Ichi Ban was third for the second year in a row, about 45 minutes behind Skandia, followed by ASM Shockwave 5, Limit and Black Jack.<br />Grant Wharington, the Skandia skipper, said his team enjoyed the challenge of staying close to a superior yacht.<br />"We did all we could to spring an upset but that thing is just so fast," Wharington said of Wild Oats.<br />"We always knew that once we turned the corner and started reaching and going up wind they were going to be pretty quick. We knew we would have needed probably 10 miles on them at Tasman Island to even have a chance."<br />Still to be decided was the handicap winner, which was won last year by American entry Rosebud after finishing fourth overall.<br />Ragtime, the only American entry this year, was the lone yacht of 11 international boats likely to finish in the top 20.<br />Three of the 100 yachts that started in Sydney on Friday had retired by late Sunday, including Georgia, a New Zealand-built Farr 52.<br />It broke a rudder, took on water and sank. Its 14 crew were rescued by two passing race boats and taken safely to land by police launch late Friday.<br />Sanyo Maris and Inner Circle retired after gear failure.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrd4T6O0rdPB38xDTp7XTyqDUyr-7a1Udl5ro-8LuWZoZpRBAsjDhVyZWoG_SnHAS4aXpfadLv4Ag5U6C1pAzDCQ2FYW_cDk5YZKOqZkfcNE8lPM1sLxl1bCSua3QRosQ5up5nZpLPwM0/s1600-h/DSC04763.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285048624384528274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrd4T6O0rdPB38xDTp7XTyqDUyr-7a1Udl5ro-8LuWZoZpRBAsjDhVyZWoG_SnHAS4aXpfadLv4Ag5U6C1pAzDCQ2FYW_cDk5YZKOqZkfcNE8lPM1sLxl1bCSua3QRosQ5up5nZpLPwM0/s320/DSC04763.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcy1kYd3pResVHxLwF0wM56yNprs3fL4NTpT0RpMvqxnawd9mlBDCLkJ4cebs3L82Xu3yucO9LN_sXW-gnp-JNKt5F3Il1TTzgWUyN6Um_HUXxs_VWvzLZQCexhFWkoMmMNnvr44Pn4n4/s1600-h/DSC04765.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285047837351275090" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyjuEqZTfl8YtMvPWF3dccOD1csj8SspstLuqBFXkP8u3wtjnYCJ9kOGIEH5afde7BpmI-jBMQPsRLcS1p3O3OH9F-sFpCmBuC0geU75sKkrQnAicePi37zUE-b7V7nlsd6Whca74AlVI/s320/DSC04801.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEx8qHjSvwK99-UO1X86PaEMw1fW8O5KKPkWEsk5pyhWUvyZuQTm9xB4l9Bz0myfGa_dN8TEJqGyz3RQJRbGja8o1OTgsHDeroWhXVM37ed3EInH4bAblZiIYXYN4B4CBejOQtvF_8tlU/s1600-h/DSC04802.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285045272580328594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 235px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEx8qHjSvwK99-UO1X86PaEMw1fW8O5KKPkWEsk5pyhWUvyZuQTm9xB4l9Bz0myfGa_dN8TEJqGyz3RQJRbGja8o1OTgsHDeroWhXVM37ed3EInH4bAblZiIYXYN4B4CBejOQtvF_8tlU/s320/DSC04802.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>The comics are feeling the pain of print</strong><br />By Leslie Berlin<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />IN many ways, Stephan Pastis is living his dream. In 2002, after years of frustration, he quit his job as a lawyer to pursue cartooning. Today his daily strip, "Pearls Before Swine," appears in more than 500 newspapers. He says he answers his fan mail "in groups of 100."<br />Nevertheless, he can't help worrying.<br />"Newspapers are declining," he says. "For a syndicated cartoonist, that's like finally making it to the major leagues and being told the stadiums are all closing, so there's no place to play."<br />Lisa Wilson, senior vice president of syndication for United Media, which distributes "Pearls Before Swine" through its United Feature Syndicate, says simply: "The newspapers' economic challenges become ours."<br />What do you do when the distribution method you have relied on for more than a century begins to falter? In the last two months, two syndicates have revealed their hands.<br />In November, United Feature Syndicate, which distributes 50 comics, including "Peanuts," "Dilbert" and "Get Fuzzy," made its full archives and portfolio available free on its Comics.com Web site. The company also added social networking features for tagging and rating comics. Visitors can have comics sent to them via e-mail or RSS feed.<br />The point is to attract more and, ideally, younger readers to the syndicate's comics.<br />In the past, Comics.com displayed the current day's strips and a 30-day archive free. Anyone wishing to see older comics or receive comics via e-mail had to pay a subscription fee of less than $20 a year, according to Wilson.<br />The syndicate decided that the subscription model "was limiting the audience for comics," she says. It appears to have been right. After the change, traffic to the site increased 48 percent, to 571,000 unique visitors in the United States in November, according to comScore Media Metrix.<br />Today, Comics.com serves more as a marketing tool than a significant source of revenue. Wilson says the site does bring in money from advertisers, which include cellphone companies and Netflix. But its primary function is to build a fan base and to provide links to sites where fans can buy books, calendars and other items featuring characters from the comics. No one expects Comics.com to fully compensate for what Wilson calls "declines on the print side." The site, she says, is "a platform for what comes next."<br />Douglas Edwards thinks he knows what comes next: comics on mobile devices. Edwards is chief executive of Uclick, the digital arm of the media company Andrews McMeel Universal. Another division of the company is Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes "Garfield," "Calvin and Hobbes" and "Doonesbury," among others.<br />In the last two months, Uclick has placed several bets on the iPhone, which Edwards says is a good platform for comics because it has a relatively large screen that makes text easier to read. Uclick sells comics-themed wallpaper and animations for cellphones. In November, the company began selling graphic novels on iTunes.<br />Last week, Andrews McMeel Universal introduced a new version of its free GoComics Web site, optimized for the iPhone. GoComics has many of the same features as Comics.com, as well as a pay-to-post area for emerging cartoonists called Comics Sherpa. Edwards says GoComics is profitable but declines to give specific figures.<br />Cartoonists are not waiting for the syndicates to develop new business models. They are posting to free sites like Comic Genesis and Webcomics Nation. Some Web comics, like "The Argyle Sweater" by Scott Hilburn, have been picked up for syndication, but that is unusual. Even more rarely, a Web comic might attract a large following at a stand-alone site; such is the case with "Penny Arcade," a video gaming strip.<br />Cartoonists are also experimenting with color, animation, sound and novel distribution methods.<br />Garfield.com allows fans of Jim Davis's strip to send cards via e-mail, play online games and download screen savers. Visitors to Dilbert.com can download widgets for their Web pages or replace the punch lines of the strip's creator, Scott Adams, with their own. The site also features 30-second animated strips produced by RingTales, based in Santa Monica, California, which animates and distributes New Yorker cartoons. "Peanuts" motion comics essentially, short cartoons based on comic strips are available on iTunes.<br />The creators of the comic strip "Zits," which is syndicated by King Features, are working with Jantze Studios in San Anselmo, California , to develop "audio comics," in which a camera pans over a strip while actors read the text.<br />Pastis, who recently created a Facebook page for "Pearls Before Swine" and is in talks about animating the strip, says it is challenging to appear simultaneously in newspaper comics pages, which have what he calls a "1950s sensibility," and in a media universe where the younger readers he wants to attract can download episodes of "South Park" to their iPods.<br />Pastis says he must embrace the balancing act. "Being known now means being known in a number of different formats," he says, adding that one has to go where the readers are.<br />But Brian Walker, a member of the creative team behind the comics "Beetle Bailey" and "Hi and Lois" both syndicated by King Features and created by Walker's father, Mort Walker warns that too much exposure "can take away from the strip itself." If a comic's characters are everywhere, he asks, why bother reading the newspaper strip?<br />And Brian Walker, who is also a comics historian, believes that comics are best appreciated on paper. He likens reading a comic on a screen to watching a movie on an iPod: the general idea comes through, but some of the essential artistry is lost.<br />In print, the comics are as much a part of many people's morning routines as a cup of coffee. The question now is whether daily comics can make a jump to mass electronic distribution and a younger readership or whether they will be tossed aside like yesterday's news.<br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicvwy3bpkFqC9zy0HvAFD4okOuYHwGiw_xY_zfJ57xUoGeXH1rRXOmHnHPZe50YDSsnQg1vLzrIuaKfVcvbMu-ZVbYlsTtzZMpWiGUsTN3NI-W3wJux-FKV-DLpY4gIX_k7Ns-njMwU-Y/s1600-h/DSC04804.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285045268664822658" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicvwy3bpkFqC9zy0HvAFD4okOuYHwGiw_xY_zfJ57xUoGeXH1rRXOmHnHPZe50YDSsnQg1vLzrIuaKfVcvbMu-ZVbYlsTtzZMpWiGUsTN3NI-W3wJux-FKV-DLpY4gIX_k7Ns-njMwU-Y/s320/DSC04804.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_wDguIhkFvod80E2Y9SE865yd2WHctgXAYg_gFmu0fRbvkM7d_MDbK3f_S1UDgCdX5GvitG7IFkpdCLkIyEmJ9GBEo8uhAYN4vW3I_l-QklB7MbprUgZ1Q0C_VqWssDBxc8PtkY9viE/s1600-h/DSC04805.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285045268761756610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_wDguIhkFvod80E2Y9SE865yd2WHctgXAYg_gFmu0fRbvkM7d_MDbK3f_S1UDgCdX5GvitG7IFkpdCLkIyEmJ9GBEo8uhAYN4vW3I_l-QklB7MbprUgZ1Q0C_VqWssDBxc8PtkY9viE/s320/DSC04805.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMahyphenhyphennb0i0s90rvdTC-1mERovG1RkVg8QVVDCV67VDmoQ-eBDA2wTVHWXJKNnq7Xu_tdk72gHqF9K9edAP-j2kknE_OBlSaMkiurTJM-GvlOFDLLG1eSRFaQBhisXQ_qkpix526XosTYI/s1600-h/DSC04806.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285045263518721154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMahyphenhyphennb0i0s90rvdTC-1mERovG1RkVg8QVVDCV67VDmoQ-eBDA2wTVHWXJKNnq7Xu_tdk72gHqF9K9edAP-j2kknE_OBlSaMkiurTJM-GvlOFDLLG1eSRFaQBhisXQ_qkpix526XosTYI/s320/DSC04806.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Gordon Brown pledges alliance for change with Obama</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 28, 2008<br />LONDON: Prime Minister Gordon Brown will use his New Year address to call for a "coalition for change" with President-elect Barack Obama in a speech intended as a rallying call to Britons.<br />Brown, who frequently uses the comparison of World War II to describe the current global financial crisis, will tell Britons they have the strength of resolve to tackle a recession.<br />"Today the issues may be different, more complex, more global," Brown says in excerpts of the speech released Sunday by his office. "And yet the qualities we need to meet them the British people have demonstrated in abundance before.<br />"So that we will eventually look back on the winter of 2008 as another great challenge that was thrown Britain's way, and that Britain met. Because we had the right values, the right policies, the right character to meet it."<br />Brown identifies the economy, climate change and security as the main challenges facing the world in 2009 and pledges to work with the United States to tackle them, positioning the alliance beyond a traditional focus on military cooperation.<br />"I look forward to working with President-elect Obama in creating a trans-Atlantic, and then a global coalition for change," Brown will say. "We can demonstrate this in 2009 not just in how we address global economic challenges but in how we tackle climate change at the Copenhagen summit."<br />World leaders are working to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations pact on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, with talks due to end at a conference in Copenhagen next year.<br />Brown identifies the economy as the single biggest challenge for 2009 and defends plans for a massive spending program to prevent a recession spiraling into a slump.<br />"The failure of British governments in previous downturns was to succumb to political expediency and to cut back investment across the board, thereby stunting our ability to grow and strangling hope during the upturn," he will say.<br />"This will not happen on my watch. The threat that will come of doing too little is greater than the threat of attempting too much. We will direct the next stage of our strategy at creating jobs and making the investments our economy needs."<br />The remarks are a swipe at the opposition Conservative Party, which has said that if they won the next election, due by mid-2010, they would not match Labour's spending plans.<br />Labour trails the Conservatives in opinion polls ahead of elections due in the next 18 months, but the opposition's lead has shrunk since the summer as they struggle to convince voters about their ability to handle the economy.<br />The Sunday Times reported that the Conservative Party was preparing to unveil three tax-cut proposals in an effort to show how they would help those hit by the economic downturn.<br />But George Osborne, the Conservative Party's spokesman on economic issues, told the paper in an interview that the Conservatives wanted to target those most affected by the tax rises Labour will need to fund the billions of pounds the government is borrowing to revive Britain's economy.<br />"I am not writing my 2010 budget now, but my priority is to try to reverse the increase in National Insurance because it is a tax that affects the vast majority of people in Britain," Osborne said.<br />Alistair Darling, chancellor of the Exchequer, announced in his November pre-budget report a planned rise in National Insurance contributions from 2011, which would raise £5.4 billion, or $7.9 billion, for the Treasury and hit all but the lowest-paid.<br />"It is a tax on jobs at a time of high unemployment," Osborne said. "It is a tax on incomes at a time when people will be under severe strain."<br />Osborne, who made headlines earlier this year over reports he used a visit to the yacht of a Russian billionaire to solicit donations for the Conservative Party, also wants to introduce measures to help savers and pensioners, who have been hurt by recent interest rate cuts.<br />The Sunday Times said Osborne did not go into the details of his plans, but the paper understood that proposals being considered include the abolition of the basic rate of tax on savings, which would cost £2.4 billion or more, and an increase in tax allowances for those over 65 years old.<br />Each increase of £100 in the threshold would cost the Treasury £75 million.<br />Labour argues that future tax rises are necessary to help fund the cost of a fiscal stimulus package to bolster the country's ailing economy, which is expected to shrink faster next year than at any time since the 1940s.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008</strong></div><div align="center"><strong><br /></strong>Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-19143845725909688342008-12-28T14:27:00.015+01:002008-12-28T14:54:28.325+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Saturday, 27th December 2008<div align="center"><strong>0800</strong></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uG9jxaV6h1cYHhCO57UtLlbjtwlab0D5qozIEx0f3Fhp-tNIHA8E3Fo49xVfGYU8dwuo0zoIByT2sprb2XdbtvCCFpVDd6K6YizDje1t_0qzht1eoZZV2XW0aolFf3kdS_FRj5tdRag/s1600-h/DSC04630.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835286177517682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uG9jxaV6h1cYHhCO57UtLlbjtwlab0D5qozIEx0f3Fhp-tNIHA8E3Fo49xVfGYU8dwuo0zoIByT2sprb2XdbtvCCFpVDd6K6YizDje1t_0qzht1eoZZV2XW0aolFf3kdS_FRj5tdRag/s320/DSC04630.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>White farmers confront Mugabe in a legal battle</strong><br />By Celia W. Dugger<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />CHEGUTU, Zimbabwe: Edna Madzongwe, president of the Senate and a powerful member of Zimbabwe's governing party, began showing up uninvited at the Etheredges' farm here last year, at times still dressed up after a day in Parliament.<br />And she made her intentions clear, the Etheredges say: she wanted their farm and intended to get it through the government's land redistribution program.<br />The farm is a beautiful spread, with three roomy farm houses and a lush, 55,000-tree orange orchard that generates $4 million a year in exports. The Etheredges, outraged by what they saw as her attempt to steal the farm, secretly taped their exchanges with her.<br />"Are you really serious to tell me that I cannot take up residence because of what it does to you?" she asked Richard Etheredge, 72, whose father bought the farm in 1947. "Government takes what it wants."<br />He dryly replied, "That we don't deny," according to a transcript of the tapes.<br />Etheredge this year became one of dozens of white farmers to challenge the government's right to confiscate their land, and they sought relief in an unusual place: a tribunal of African judges established by the 15 nations of the Southern African Development Community regional trade bloc.<br />The case is rooted in one of the most fraught issues facing not just Zimbabwe, but other nations in the region, especially South Africa: the unjust division of land between whites and blacks that is a legacy of colonialism and white minority rule.<br />But the tribunal's recent ruling, in favor of the white farmers, is also a milestone of particular relevance to Zimbabwe. It suggests that a growing number of influential Africans among them religious leaders and now jurists are confronting Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's 84-year-old liberation hero and president, for his government's violations of human rights and the rule of law, even as most regional heads of state continue to resist taking harsher steps to isolate his government.<br />Zimbabwe's handling of the land issue has had disastrous consequences. Since 2000, when Mugabe began encouraging the violent invasion of the country's large, white-owned commercial farms once the country's largest employers food production has collapsed, hunger has afflicted millions and the economy has never recovered.<br />Mugabe presents this redistribution as a triumph over greedy whites. But it set off a scramble for the best farms among the country's ruling elite, who often had little knowledge or interest in farming, and became a potent source of patronage for Mugabe. His own relatives, as well as generals, judges, ministers and members of Parliament, were beneficiaries, farmer and human rights groups say.<br />By this year, the number of white-owned commercial farms dwindled to about 300 from 4,500. Even many of the remaining ones came under assault in this year's bloodstained election season.<br />Among those singled out were farms here in Chegutu, where some owners had dared to take their cases to the SADC tribunal, challenging Mugabe before judges he could not entice with gifts of land.<br />In March, the tribunal ordered the Zimbabwean authorities not to evict any farmers seeking legal protection, pending resolution of the case. But as with other international efforts to influence Mugabe and his allies, Zimbabwean authorities apparently decided to ignore the tribunal's order.<br />On June 17 just 10 days before the discredited presidential runoff between Mugabe and his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai dozens of youths led by a man named Gilbert Moyo surrounded Etheredge's son, Peter, 38, at the main gate of the farm, family members said.<br />"Moyo told me he'd been sent by Edna," Peter recalled, referring to Madzongwe, the Senate president. Peter said Moyo threatened to kill him if the Etheredge clan did not clear off the farm immediately.<br />Peter, his twin, James, and their families fled.<br />Madzongwe denied hiring Moyo and his gang. "If a farm is acquired, there are rules," she said in a recent telephone interview. "I go by the book."<br />But Jason Lawrence Cox, a local farmer, swore in an affidavit that he saw her on June 21 drive past piles of the Etheredges' belongings, dumped at the side of the road, and onto their farm.<br />The gang had looted the three family homes on the farm of all but the large mounted heads of an eland and a kudu, according to photos taken before and after the invasion. They used a jackhammer to break through the foot-thick wall of the walk-in safe. The haul from the homes and the farm included 1,760 pounds of ivory, 14 handmade guns, 14 refrigerators and freezers, 5 stoves, 3 tractors, a pickup truck and 400 tons of oranges, the family said.<br />Eleven days later, a far more violent farm invasion occurred at the home of Mike and Angela Campbell, also here in Chegutu. Campbell, 76, was the first farmer to take on Mugabe before the tribunal.<br />A gang came that Sunday afternoon, pouring out of a pickup truck and a bus, Campbell said. Her son-in-law, Ben Freeth, 38, said that he was bludgeoned with rifle butts and that his skull and ribs were fractured. Mike Campbell was also severely beaten.<br />Campbell, 66, said she was dragged by her hair, after her arm was broken in multiple places, and dumped next to her husband. The doctor who treated them in the capital, Harare, signed affidavits confirming the severity of their injuries.<br />"Mike was so battered, I hardly recognized him," Campbell said. "I didn't know he was alive until he groaned." The three of them were loaded into the Campbells' truck and driven to a nighttime vigil of youth loyal to the governing party at Moyo's base camp, she said.<br />It was cold, and men poured freezing water over them. Campbell drifted in and out of consciousness. By the flickering light of bonfires, the youths denounced the Campbells as white pigs, Campbell said, and ordered her to sing revolutionary songs. She remembers singing a children's song instead, which enraged one of her intoxicated tormentors. He charged at her, she said, trying to thrust a burning stick into her mouth.<br />Later that night, the Campbells and Freeth were again stuffed into the back of the Campbells' truck. Before they were dumped, Campbell said, the kidnappers insisted that she sign a paper promising not to press the tribunal case.<br />Within days just as the international outcry mounted over the state-sponsored beatings of thousands of opposition supporters photographs of the grotesquely battered faces of the Campbells and Freeth circulated on the Internet.<br />By July 4, the police informed the farmers here who were part of the tribunal case that they could go back to their land. Peter Etheredge speculated that the authorities might have relented because the photographs were spreading online just as Mugabe was meeting with Africa's leaders about his country's political crisis.<br />On Nov. 28, the farmers gathered in Windhoek, Namibia, to hear the final ruling of five judges of the SADC tribunal. As Justice Luis Antonio Mondlane of Mozambique read the full 60-page decision aloud, it dawned on the farmers that they had won.<br />The tribunal found that the government had breached its obligations under the trade bloc's treaty, which committed it to respecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law, by denying the farmers compensation for their farms and court review of the government's confiscation of them.<br />More broadly, it rejected the government's claim that the land redistribution program was meant to right the wrongs of a colonial era when a white minority ruled what was then Rhodesia. Instead, the court found that the government had itself racially discriminated against the white farmers.<br />In a stinging rebuke, the tribunal, citing an earlier legal case, said it would have reached a different conclusion had the government not awarded "the spoils of expropriation primarily to governing party adherents."<br />The usually stoic farmers wept. "We burst into tears, the whole lot of us," Freeth said.<br />The reaction of the government was defiant. Didymus Mutasa, the minister who oversees the distribution of seized land, told the state media that the judges were "daydreaming" if they thought Zimbabwe would heed the ruling.<br />The government would take over the rest of the white-owned farms, he vowed. And the state has since moved to prosecute four Chegutu farmers, though not yet the Etheredges or the Campbells, for illegally occupying land they owned before the government claimed it, the farmers' lawyer, Dave Drury, said.<br />Perhaps it was a banner at the recent funeral of a governing party boss that best captured the government's rejection of those who question its righteousness, even a panel of distinguished African jurists.<br />The banner said: "The Rhodesian Tribunal Can Go to Hell."<br />More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on December 28, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Tainted-milk victims in China to be paid</strong><br />By Andrew Jacobs<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />BEIJING: A group of Chinese dairy companies accused of selling tainted milk that sickened tens of thousands of babies has agreed to compensate the victims, the state media announced on Saturday.<br />China's Dairy Industry Association, a group of 22 milk producers, said it would provide one-time payments to the families of the children who were sickened or who died after consuming milk tainted with melamine, a chemical compound that is often used in the production of plastics and fertilizers.<br />"The enterprises offered to shoulder the compensation liability," the association said, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency. "By doing so, they hope to earn understanding and forgiveness of the families of the sickened children."<br />As part of its promised compensation package, the dairy association said, it would also pay for the long-term health care needs of affected children. "If the babies suffer from relative aftereffects, all medical fees will be covered by the fund," the association said, according to Xinhua. Six children died, and nearly 300,000 were sickened.<br />The report by Xinhua did not indicate the amount of compensation or when the payments would be made.<br />It is unclear how the promise of compensation may affect a series of lawsuits brought by the families of the victims. None of the lawsuits have been accepted by the courts.<br />On Friday, six melamine producers and dealers in Henan Province went on trial on charges that they manufactured or sold the compound to milk producers.<br />Until the scandal broke in September, melamine was frequently added to dairy products as a means of increasing the protein content of watered-down milk.<br />Earlier this month, the government said that more than 800 children remained hospitalized with kidney stones and other ailments.<br />This week the chairwoman of one of China's biggest dairies, Sanlu Group, will face trial in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, on charges that the company knowingly sold adulterated milk. Last week Sanlu was declared bankrupt. Sanlu, which is partly owned by a New Zealand dairy cooperative, stopped all milk production in September.<br />On Saturday the government took on another delicate issue, shoddy construction, by creating stricter codes to make schools and other public buildings more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake in May in Sichuan Province killed at least 88,000 people, many of them children who died in the rubble of poorly built schools.<br />The regulations, passed by the National People's Congress, imposes new requirements on both new and existing schools. They also cover hospitals and shopping centers. The rules, reported by Xinhua, were short on details and, like many national laws, would be carried out largely by local governments. More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on December 28, 2008, on page A9 of the New York edition.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Italian makers of prosecco seek recognition<br /></strong>By Amy Cortese<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />IN 1984, Fabio Zardetto, chief winemaker at his family-run vineyard in northern Italy, leapt at the chance to become one of the first bottlers to export prosecco, the sparkling wine, to the United States.<br />At first, his efforts on behalf of his bubbly fizzled. "I had to push people to taste the prosecco," recalled Zardetto, now 50. "I would run behind them with a glass saying, 'Please, taste this.' "<br />When they did try it, he said, they were pleasantly surprised. Sales of Zardetto prosecco grew to 100,000 cases in the United States in 2007, from 50 cases in 1984.<br />With its fresh flavor, pleasing bubbles and gentle price tag it typically sells for $10 to $20 a bottle prosecco has gained many fans worldwide. Global sales have been growing by double-digit percentages for 10 years, to more than 150 million bottles last year. And with consumers in an economizing mood this holiday season, prosecco is an increasingly popular alternative to Champagne, which has been soaring in price.<br />But prosecco is also encountering some growing pains. From its traditional home in northern Italy, it is now waging a war against outsiders, just as Champagne, its more elite cousin in France, has done for so many years.<br />A host of producers elsewhere in Italy and as far away as Brazil are trying to cash in on the drink's newfound popularity. Because prosecco is the name of a grape, like chardonnay or cabernet, anyone can use the name.<br />Today, about 60 percent of all prosecco some eight million cases comes from producers outside the traditional prosecco-growing region of Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, a cluster of villages about a half-hour's drive north of Venice. The newcomers are not held to the same strict production standards as the traditional producers, which are tightly governed under Italian wine laws.<br />One product, Rich Prosecco, is made by an Austrian company whose ads feature Paris Hilton. In some, she is naked and spray-painted gold. What's worse to some producers, the product is sold in a 6.8-ounce can, in gas stations as well as stores, for around $3.<br />"It's absolutely vulgar," says Vittorio Zoppi, marketing manager for the prosecco consortium.<br />Claus Jahnke, a sales and marketing executive at Rich, says he is puzzled by the reaction to the product, which uses Italian grapes. "We have invested a lot of money in advertising and PR to launch Rich and promote prosecco," he says. "We gave this famous grape a helping hand in conquering the world."<br />The Italian winemakers worry that upstarts will weaken prosecco's image just as it is taking off.<br />"If everyone around the world plants prosecco, we will lose the value of the name," says Ludovico Giustiniani, vice president of a consortium that represents about 150 wineries in the traditional prosecco-producing region.<br />Over months of discussions, the consortium, along with a broader group of growers and producers, has hammered out a plan that would create an official prosecco production zone tied exclusively to northern Italy. Only wine produced in that region could be labeled as prosecco. If the plan is approved by the Italian government a decision is expected by early 2009 prosecco would then be eligible for "protected designation of origin" status under European laws intended to protect regional products from Champagne and port to Serrano ham.<br />"It will let prosecco be an Italian product and nothing else," says Giancarlo Moretti Polegato, the owner of Villa Sandi, one of the area's prominent wineries.<br />That is the theory, at least. Protection from the European Union would extend only across its 27 member countries, and, as Champagne producers have discovered, a lot of policing is still required.<br />The Champagne region of France has been officially designated since 1927 as the authentic home of the wine that bears its name, but its trade organization still spends millions of dollars battling producers of items as varied as sparkling wine, bubble bath and bottled water that also use the word.<br />"We have to spend a lot of money and energy protecting our product," says Sam Heitner, director of the Office of Champagne USA, a trade group that represents the interests of Champagne producers.<br />That spending is on display in Times Square, where a giant screen flashes an ad by Heitner's group for holiday revelers. A bottle, labeled "American Champagne," is covered by a red, Venetian-style carnival mask. It's part of the group's "Unmask the truth" campaign, which notes its opposition to the name's use by United States producers.<br />Producers of prosecco may also be in for a long fight.<br />PROSECCO'S success can be seen in the steep-hilled villages surrounding Conegliano and Valdobbiadene.<br />The area has grown from a sleepy agricultural area to one of Italy's wealthiest enclaves, dotted with shiny new wineries and farmhouses that have been transformed into rustic inns to support a growing wine tourism trade.<br />Prosecco sales from this area alone were 370 million, or about $518 million, last year. And a hectare (2.47 acres) of vineyard in the most coveted spots, like Cartizze, sells for more than $1 million. Prosecco from Cartizze, a panettone-shaped hill in Valdobbiadene where 140 growers farm about 250 acres, fetches about $40 a bottle.<br />The vines are tended and harvested by hand. Machines cannot navigate the vertical angles, although helicopters are occasionally used when a vineyard needs to be sprayed. The soil and the mix of warm days and cool nights make for an especially flavorful prosecco an affinity given official weight in 1969, when the region was awarded the status of denominazione di origine controllata, or DOC, Italy's version of a wine appellation.<br />The region's turn of fortunes, though, is relatively recent. Although prosecco grapes have been cultivated here for three centuries, in the early days they were made mostly into still wine for local consumption. The vines shared the steep hillsides with more valuable cows and sheep.<br />It was only after a new method for producing sparkling wine became widespread in the mid-1900s that things began to change.<br />Champagne and other sparkling wines typically get their bubbles when they are fermented a second time, with added sugar and yeast. The yeast feeds on the sugar and converts into alcohol and carbon dioxide. When the bottle is opened, the escaping gas gives the wine its bubbles and characteristic "pop."<br />Champagne re-ferments in bottles, an expensive and labor-intensive process. But the new production methods allowed prosecco makers to re-ferment their wine in large tanks, a process that kept prices down. That, and prosecco's light, delicate flavor and low alcohol content, made it an especially versatile wine.<br />IN Italy, prosecco is enjoyed year-round and practically around the clock. "The only moment we don't drink it is for breakfast," Giustiniani says.<br />That approachability has helped propel the popularity of prosecco in the 1960s throughout Italy, in the '80s in Germany and neighboring countries and in the '90s in the United States, which today is prosecco's No. 1 market outside of Italy.<br />Perhaps no one pushed harder to establish prosecco in the United States than Mionetto, a winery founded in Valdobbiadene in 1886 and now one of the area's largest, with sales of 40 million a year.<br />Seeing the tremendous growth potential in the 1990s, this winery began expanding aggressively. It established Mionetto USA to control distribution in North America and has spent millions of dollars promoting prosecco and the Mionetto brand. Today, the company has the leading market share, roughly 33 percent, in the United States, with 168,000 cases a year of its DOC and non-DOC prosecco.<br />Still, says Sergio Mionetto, who took over as chief winemaker from his grandfather in 1956, "we believe we're just at the tip of the iceberg."<br />At the bustling Union Square Cafe in New York, where the house prosecco is Mionetto's top-of-the-line Sergio (named after himself), prosecco by the glass outsells Champagne two to one, says Stephen Paul Mancini, director of wine and spirits at the restaurant. "Prosecco is an extremely popular product for us," he adds. And some retailers report that prosecco is flying off shelves this holiday season.<br />Prosecco is also catching on in new markets, like China, India and Vietnam, causing producers to think even bigger.<br />"Prosecco can be the best-selling sparkling wine of the world," says Gianluca Bisol, a 21st-generation winemaker and general manager of the Bisol winery, in Valdobbiadene. He figures that prosecco can overtake Champagne in sales volume in the next 25 years or so.<br />The problem is that others saw the potential, too. It started with the relative newcomers in the plains of northern Italy. Growers there are less regulated than their DOC kin; they were granted the Italian wine system's least-stringent designation, known as IGT, in 1995. They can produce almost double the volume of wine per hectare, and quality can vary.<br />In the flatlands, winemakers can use machines to harvest and tend to their vines, at about a tenth of the cost, Bisol and others say. "For these reasons," Bisol says, "this area that didn't exist 25 years ago now accounts for 60 percent of prosecco production."<br />A more recent worry for the consortium and newer growers is that countries like Brazil, Romania, Argentina and Australia have begun to plant prosecco. Brazil, in particular, has embraced the grape, perhaps not surprisingly, given that its main wine region is populated by northern Italian immigrants.<br />Close to 2,000 acres of prosecco are planted in Brazil, Bisol says.<br />"The Brazilians like parties," Bisol says. "They drink a lot of prosecco." The homegrown prosecco could cut into Italian sales there: Brazil is already the fifth-largest export market for Italian prosecco.<br />Closer to home, German and Austrian producers have taken to buying tanks of Italian prosecco produced in the plains and shipping it to their countries to be bottled. Or canned, in the case of Rich Prosecco.<br />When Hilton traveled to northern Italy to promote Rich Prosecco two years ago, "it was a big scandal for the area," Bisol says. "The winegrowers were very angry." She has not returned, he says.<br />Günther Aloys, a hotelier and entrepreneur in the Austrian resort town of Ischgl who introduced Rich Prosecco in 2006, plans to take it to the United States next year. And Jahnke, the sales and marketing executive at Rich, said the company was following the developments with the Italian producers' proposal to the Italian government.<br />THE threat of foreign-brand prosecco has prompted northern Italian producers, of both DOC and IGT prosecco, to work together to protect their turf. They say they believe that their proposal will raise quality and prevent others from calling their products prosecco.<br />The plan would create a broad new DOC designation to govern the hundreds of IGT prosecco producers that have sprung up across eight northern Italian provinces in the plains from Treviso to Trieste. The producers would have to comply with strict quality controls, including lower yields per hectare and stronger oversight.<br />The region of Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, meanwhile, would be elevated to Italy's highest designation for wine regions, known as DOCG.<br />The key is to link prosecco to its traditional home.<br />"We don't want to end up with something like pinot grigio," says Primo Franco, owner of the Nino Franco winery in Valdobbiadene, referring to another white wine grape from the Veneto region that is grown around the world.<br />Because prosecco is also the name of a northern Italian village where the grape is believed to have originated, the consortium can make an argument, too, that prosecco is a place name that can be protected just like Chianti, Champagne and others.<br />By bringing all of northern Italy's prosecco makers into the fold, the winemakers hope to do more than give prosecco a territorial identity. They also want the muscle power to meet growing demand and achieve their goal of matching or even besting Champagne, which produces some 300 million bottles a year. About 150 million bottles of Italian prosecco are produced a year.<br />Prosecco producers say they believe that with the new plan, they can double their output to 300 million or even 400 million bottles a year, while providing consumers with a guarantee of quality.<br />"Champagne is the king of the bubble," Bisol says. "But prosecco maybe can be considered the small prince."<br />In recent weeks, the winemakers have been scrambling to nail down a final proposal to the Italian government before a year-end deadline. The producers hope to be eligible for a streamlined European Union system that goes into effect in August. If all goes well, the new prosecco protections will be in place for the 2009 harvest.<br />But that is just a start. European Union regulations are valid only for members, and deals have to be struck with countries outside of the union, like the United States or Brazil, on an, ahem, case-by-case basis. For now, says Moretti Polegato of Villa Sandi, "everybody involved in prosecco production is happy."<br />You can almost hear the corks popping.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdBJjPqnJ0WAFfeagPvu8GjDUV1G3zZ9o1Mjt7sQP7qmcU6Zpwxt0MkRtlBtU_FkqTFFrjKXA5g1mDUGeoY9oJq2jsgHlgKj2MWd29tnYrpqMK8c0BCThGlwjOd3esyS1Oo3U6PxKk8Sc/s1600-h/DSC04631.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835282279364978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdBJjPqnJ0WAFfeagPvu8GjDUV1G3zZ9o1Mjt7sQP7qmcU6Zpwxt0MkRtlBtU_FkqTFFrjKXA5g1mDUGeoY9oJq2jsgHlgKj2MWd29tnYrpqMK8c0BCThGlwjOd3esyS1Oo3U6PxKk8Sc/s320/DSC04631.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbljCmWU7Lp9t9m-KWHZVg4rlIefbznbyKpmJ9FxfK5eEhyrRn8ds1LQW9Ip6Trk01wi_Q3NOjf9fOYxuUPGOjJgIl0N9G1a0eJuNAwYkXMmO7IiQz6UAJfy4v_F7NomVFJ-sdbw_yp58/s1600-h/DSC04632.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835100959490882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbljCmWU7Lp9t9m-KWHZVg4rlIefbznbyKpmJ9FxfK5eEhyrRn8ds1LQW9Ip6Trk01wi_Q3NOjf9fOYxuUPGOjJgIl0N9G1a0eJuNAwYkXMmO7IiQz6UAJfy4v_F7NomVFJ-sdbw_yp58/s320/DSC04632.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO8KuAPhjx7X_jey-6MBoL9hHpC1eRJYHBH0RR6Fn5plWQR1b6fgHeYzagGDj2Rq190KjF1J__Y8mdl0XWcQPl6dYVBDleD5Us7E-1oowbqoWrxPWyCAF9ILuMnEX0fNH0I_X1PjIS1XY/s1600-h/DSC04633.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835100366710338" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO8KuAPhjx7X_jey-6MBoL9hHpC1eRJYHBH0RR6Fn5plWQR1b6fgHeYzagGDj2Rq190KjF1J__Y8mdl0XWcQPl6dYVBDleD5Us7E-1oowbqoWrxPWyCAF9ILuMnEX0fNH0I_X1PjIS1XY/s320/DSC04633.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPkWQ-mG9lqM7TmThDteXbsuhUPxjvmxEceit4flWgsFywXJkLlcP-YlQmK53lVAhtBTe0hAoco3OCbOMArSlFi90y2NeDK1Vkvukvt8eshpp8LZFS02v0hJk_BMRX1XfmBGhlMBSJnI/s1600-h/DSC04634.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835098105616082" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 239px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPkWQ-mG9lqM7TmThDteXbsuhUPxjvmxEceit4flWgsFywXJkLlcP-YlQmK53lVAhtBTe0hAoco3OCbOMArSlFi90y2NeDK1Vkvukvt8eshpp8LZFS02v0hJk_BMRX1XfmBGhlMBSJnI/s320/DSC04634.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwpOKQi4e-NjuTeXoI7ryOKribo5-08vs_wzmOakZqYlu8rbmBbg3YjFUGMszVaBed4lWz3KNphovaFfttIztvaZakU-sT0bxbfFo0Cd5_J37GkGpvUPcG5shn8ipwe89H6FMN5Tj3LvY/s1600-h/DSC04635.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835088295170210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwpOKQi4e-NjuTeXoI7ryOKribo5-08vs_wzmOakZqYlu8rbmBbg3YjFUGMszVaBed4lWz3KNphovaFfttIztvaZakU-sT0bxbfFo0Cd5_J37GkGpvUPcG5shn8ipwe89H6FMN5Tj3LvY/s320/DSC04635.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>For migrants in Russia, fear swells after a killing</strong><br />By Sabrina Tavernise<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />KHODZHA-DURBOD, Tajikistan: The men from this village who went to Russia to work all knew the rule: always stay together on the walk home. As Tajiks in an aggressive Russian city, getting caught could mean getting hurt.<br />But on the eve of the Muslim holiday of sacrifice this month, Salohiddin Azizov broke the rule. It was a fatal mistake.<br />He was caught, killed and beheaded on Dec. 5, not far from where he worked at the Pokrovskaya vegetable warehouse south of Moscow, his brothers said. A Russian nationalist group claimed responsibility, calling Azizov, 20, part of a "non-Russian occupation." One of his brothers identified his body by the shape of his toes.<br />"If we are Tajik, does it mean we are cows to be butchered and thrown away?" said the victim's father, Muhabat Azizov, in his small house here a day after his funeral in mid-December.<br />Though gruesome, the killing was not unprecedented. It was a grim reminder of the vicious daily attacks against ethnic minorities that have become a part of daily life for the millions of migrants from the former Soviet Union who work in Russia.<br />The collapse of the Soviet Union plunged Russians into poverty and humiliated them, and some young Russians have turned their bitterness on the migrants from the poorer fringes of the empire who poured into Russian cities during an oil boom.<br />Now, with a sharp economic downturn looming, and Russian officials talking about instituting quotas for migrant workers, Tajiks fear the attacks will only get worse.<br />The Tajik news agency, Asiaplus, reported that Tajik authorities had counted 324 deaths among migrants as of Dec. 16, and that at least 80 of them had been killed in ethnically motivated attacks.<br />"They hate us," said Nurali Bashirov, a friend of the Azizov family, who has worked in Russia. "If a week went by without an attack, we would celebrate."<br />The Azizov family is typical for this village, which has been abandoned by most of its men for manual labor jobs in Russia. Of six brothers, five have worked in Russia, sending small amounts of money home every month for the family to survive the grinding poverty in Tajikistan, where 50 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day.<br />Everybody has a story. Bashirov recalled how a group of young Russian men, out of meanness, tore down a wash basin that he had built for migrants at a construction site.<br />"They were saying to us, 'We're better than you,'" he said. "You could see it on their faces."<br />Another young villager was walking with Azizov when he was killed that evening, but he managed to escape. One of Azizov's brothers pointed him out last week, as he rode by on a bicycle, a bandage taped to his face.<br />The last time Azizov heard from his son was when Salohiddin called to tell his father that he had sent him money for the Muslim holiday Id al-Adha on the day he was killed.<br />For his family, his death has disrupted the flow of Tajik tradition, in which the youngest son takes care of his parents in their old age and settles his family in their house.<br />"We, who raised him, remember every one of his movements, his conversations," Azizov said. "I want to sleep where he died. I want to find who did this."<br />The Azizov family was still in shock last week, and had only recently received Salohiddin's body, after days wrangling with the Russian police in Moscow. The brother Salohiddin lived with said he made eight trips to the Tajik Embassy begging for help with the body.<br />"So many mothers and fathers suffering like me," Azizov said, sitting on the floor of his small house with mats and one wood stove.<br />After years of ignoring the violence against migrants, the Russian authorities have given the problem some attention recently. The prosecutor's office in the city of Yekaterinburg ordered a local construction company to pay back wages to Tajik workers, Radio Free Liberty reported this month. And on Dec. 15, a court in Moscow convicted a group of teenagers for the murder of 20 migrants, Reuters reported.<br />For the one Azizov brother who has never been to Russia, that is no consolation.<br />"No, never I go," he said in English, walking through the mud in the village to a relative's house to repay a debt his dead brother owed. "After what happened, no." More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on December 28, 2008, on page A8 of the New York edition.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiztKL1KK5cNSByKgfvZveoXrT_4Ru-RqKRI9dOWFknGT0QpOiqr-RkFOmHdhuv3V6t8SyOkBKmWqVxciWNV4w5294AiQXxMGWvgdofuZdQVsuyQuXdxHhj095ezHYFlPRJgkTnEvYUtlg/s1600-h/DSC04636.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284835084256866210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiztKL1KK5cNSByKgfvZveoXrT_4Ru-RqKRI9dOWFknGT0QpOiqr-RkFOmHdhuv3V6t8SyOkBKmWqVxciWNV4w5294AiQXxMGWvgdofuZdQVsuyQuXdxHhj095ezHYFlPRJgkTnEvYUtlg/s320/DSC04636.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0VUCNA-8c5VGKo87aKC_PZ1l9jTlc82ZC1lnpAaoAjmbiyhZohhKm-Tt9wkigx5SksG_8G33phQ_4ImNz7X3QrJiDPkTS6U9K1-82o1AQS5VlpUxxTni_DSRV7qKu3A8XetNAUvqd4A/s1600-h/DSC04637.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284834854601040178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0VUCNA-8c5VGKo87aKC_PZ1l9jTlc82ZC1lnpAaoAjmbiyhZohhKm-Tt9wkigx5SksG_8G33phQ_4ImNz7X3QrJiDPkTS6U9K1-82o1AQS5VlpUxxTni_DSRV7qKu3A8XetNAUvqd4A/s320/DSC04637.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlLOs9vhHuKGa7_5uifM7bWJXvPlqBB11FVfabFJUwC5x7upqCG5sqjn0UHRVZ_-oSeWk-khiNIX4aGpn0WzSro26VqIsU7lk1FgcRDyDnG1g8-OvuiW-j1gjUitIk2e1wF0wbI_vljrk/s1600-h/DSC04638.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284834844488971906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlLOs9vhHuKGa7_5uifM7bWJXvPlqBB11FVfabFJUwC5x7upqCG5sqjn0UHRVZ_-oSeWk-khiNIX4aGpn0WzSro26VqIsU7lk1FgcRDyDnG1g8-OvuiW-j1gjUitIk2e1wF0wbI_vljrk/s320/DSC04638.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIcHgpODM9KiANH9cm4qF4UYUtBrWaY1SeGxibB88crkK6WxwEw_dfvlWTSoGO52uR6GszTrEOYEhcBtYKlDxRgJkxrDKIuGqWo44yAJJdEwWzNlkB_NAb1iwQPiQlnOlAlqlOuVroTr0/s1600-h/DSC04639.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284834842140800962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIcHgpODM9KiANH9cm4qF4UYUtBrWaY1SeGxibB88crkK6WxwEw_dfvlWTSoGO52uR6GszTrEOYEhcBtYKlDxRgJkxrDKIuGqWo44yAJJdEwWzNlkB_NAb1iwQPiQlnOlAlqlOuVroTr0/s320/DSC04639.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipgSu0joJvn9RCNm1iIOKwa206iSmiL4-ghK9CjIxcjTWdp_wP3Fu38f8JbSLQRxPLO7U2H8V05hLbCz2xNOPajDz39_hzRf4y7am8m03Qo_0uQ7JMNRE8c3hckoaa79Tu_aAzKvWOEy4/s1600-h/DSC04640.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284834839245816018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipgSu0joJvn9RCNm1iIOKwa206iSmiL4-ghK9CjIxcjTWdp_wP3Fu38f8JbSLQRxPLO7U2H8V05hLbCz2xNOPajDz39_hzRf4y7am8m03Qo_0uQ7JMNRE8c3hckoaa79Tu_aAzKvWOEy4/s320/DSC04640.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div> </div><div><strong>In land scarred by violence, dogfighting makes a comeback</strong><br />By Kirk Semple<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />KABUL, Afghanistan: In a dingy butcher's shop reeking of slaughter, a half-dozen sheep's carcasses dangled from hooks, and two men spoke of dogs.<br />"My dog is younger than his dog, I have the advantage," said one of the men, known as Abdul Sabour, 49. "And my dog is more energetic than his dog."<br />"He's lying," grumbled the other man, Kefayatullah, 50. "His dog is old. He's just here wasting his time. How many dogs has my dog beaten? Sixty! My dog has been a champion for three years!"<br />The men were arranging a dogfight, largely in the international language of trash-talking. They represented two groups of bettors. The purse, they said, was $50,000, a fortune in this impoverished country and one of the biggest prizes here in recent memory.<br />Afghans like to fight. They will boast about this. They will say that fighting is in their blood. And for all the horrors of three decades of war, they still find room to fight for fun, most often through proxies: cocks, rams, goats, camels, kites.<br />And dogs. Dogfighting was banned under the Taliban, who considered it un-Islamic. But since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, the sport has regained its earlier popularity, with dogfighters entering their charges in informal weekly tournaments on dusty lots in the country's major cities.<br />The sport has even experienced a resurgence in the south, where the influence of the Taliban is strongest, though the crowds have thinned somewhat since February, when a suicide bomber detonated himself at a dogfighting match. About 80 people were killed and more were wounded.<br />Here in the capital, there are two tournaments every week, both on Friday, the day of prayer. The bigger one unfolds in the morning in a natural dirt amphitheater at the bottom of a craggy slope on the city's outskirts. It draws thousands of men and boys as spectators like most sports and sporting events in Afghanistan, it is almost exclusively a male pursuit.<br />"It's something from our ancestors," said Ghulam Yahya Amirzadah, 21, whose family owns 17 dogs in Kabul and in their hometown in the northwest province of Badghis.<br />Amirzadah, who is known in dogfighting circles as Lala Herati, said he inherited the pastime from his father, who ran fighting dogs in his youth.<br />"It's not about money," Amirzadah said. "If my dog beats another dog, it makes me feel like I've won $100,000. I can survive just from the happiness."<br />On a recent Friday, Amirzadah was at the dogfighting amphitheater, though without his dogs. He was watching the fights and arranging future matches for his stable.<br />More than 2,000 people were there poor men who had arrived on foot as well as former warlords in sport utility vehicles accompanied by Kalashnikov-toting guards. And there were dozens of dogs hulking, big-headed mastiff breeds that, in the right light and the wrong setting, might be mistaken for small bears. Some were so big that they had to be restrained by two men. A few owners, their arms tired, had lashed their dogs to the wheels of cars.<br />An informal committee of arbiters, including Kefayatullah and Abdul Sabour, was selecting the fights and matching up the dogs. Some fights had been organized days in advance, with hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands, riding on each.<br />The event was presided over by a ringmaster, a toothless old man with a turban and a limp. He carried a wooden staff that he used to beat spectators who crowded the pitch and members of the dogfighters' entourages who blocked the spectators' view.<br />Though dogfighting is again popular here, it is far from universally embraced. The country's elite disparage it as the domain of the uncultured and the criminal.<br />"In my personal view, it's not a good thing," said Ghulam Nabi Farahi, deputy minister of information and culture. "In today's world, these animals should be treated well. But unfortunately, there's a lot of fighting."<br />But dogfighters generally shrug at these sorts of remarks. In modern Afghan society, there are not many sources of entertainment, they argue. In addition, they say, the dogs are well fed and well treated.<br />"The interest of the people is increasing day by day," said Sher Mohammad Sheywaki, 50, who was standing on the edge of the fighting pitch. "Even if people are starving, they'll still keep dogfighting."<br />A fight was about to begin. Two dogs were brought close by their owners, then released. They lunged at each other, thrusting upward on hind legs and clamping their jaws onto each other's face. They tugged and twisted each other, looking for leverage, each trying to knock the other off balance.<br />Their handlers pressed in, shouting encouragement and slapping the dogs on their haunches, as a jockey would a racehorse. A cameraman crouched nearby, recording the fight for collectors' DVDs. A large cloud of dust enveloped the scrum.<br />This fight, like most others, was over in a few minutes when one dog had pinned the other to the ground and held him there. They were pulled apart and hauled out of the ring.<br />In some countries, dogfighters will fight their dogs to the death. But Afghan dogfighting is more akin to Greco-Roman wrestling. A dog is declared the victor when he clearly establishes his dominance over the other, or when the weaker dog displays one of the telltale signs of submission, including backing off from the fight or putting its tail between its legs. They are usually pulled apart before they can inflict serious damage on each other.<br />The stakes for dogfighters are too high to risk their charges any further. Dogs may be a costly investment for the average Afghan, but they can also make their owners money.<br />On the eve of the fight between Kefayatullah's dog, Palang (meaning tiger), and Abdul Sabour's dog, Zambur (bee), the planned $50,000 purse dropped to $10,000, according to Kefayatullah.<br />The fight took place on a sunny and chilly Friday morning this month. It was heavily anticipated, and the crowd was large. For more than 10 minutes, Palang and Zambur tore against each other, drawing blood. Kefayatullah, Abdul Sabour and others with money riding on the fight stayed close and yelled encouragement, according to Amirzadah, who attended.<br />Eventually, Zambur, Abdul Sabour's dog, ran out of steam and Palang overwhelmed him, prompting the men to call a halt to the fight. In celebration, friends of Kefayatullah swarmed Palang, whose fur was wet with blood, and showered him with Afghani bills.<br />Except for deep wounds on a leg and an ear, Palang was O.K. But his owner was not. Minutes after the fight, Kefayatullah collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. He had suffered a heart attack.<br />"It was a stroke of joy and happiness!" he joked a week later, as he lay in a ward in the Wazir Akhbar Khan Hospital in Kabul. His wife and daughter sat at his bedside. "I'll be up in no time," he said, "and everything will be back to normal, like before."<br />His wife's face visibly tensed. "No you won't!" she said, glaring. She was serious. He was smiling. The daughter looked embarrassed.<br />"It's over," Kefayatullah's wife continued. "I will kill the dogs! I will give them some pills."<br />Kefayatullah shrugged and smiled again, trying to defuse the situation. "She says a lot, but I don't listen," he said, and he vowed to be back at the Friday dogfights with his champion dogs soon enough.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Israeli Gaza strike kills more than 200</strong><br />By Taghreed El-Khodary and Ethan Bronner<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />GAZA: Waves of Israeli airstrikes hit Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group's rocket fire, killing more than 200 the highest one-day toll in an Israeli military operation against Palestinians in decades.<br />Israeli military officials said the airstrikes, which went on into the night, were the start of what could be days or even months of an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. The operation could ultimately include ground forces, a senior Israeli security official said.<br />After the initial airstrikes, which Palestinian officials said also wounded at least 600, dozens of rockets struck southern Israel, where an emergency was declared. Thousands of Israelis hurried into bomb shelters amid the hail of rockets, including some longer-range models that reached farther north than ever before. One man was killed in the town of Netivot and four were wounded, one seriously.<br />A military operation against Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, had been forecast and demanded by Israeli officials for weeks, ever since a rocky cease-fire between Israel and Hamas fully collapsed a week ago, leading again to rocket attacks in large numbers against Israel and isolated Israeli operations here.<br />Still, there was a shocking quality to Saturday's attacks that began in broad daylight, as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at the outdoor market and children were emerging from school.<br />The center of Gaza City was a scene of chaotic horror, with rubble everywhere, sirens wailing, and women shrieking as dozens of mutilated bodies were laid out on the pavement and in the lobby of Shifa Hospital so that family members could identify them. Most of those killed were Hamas police officers and security men, including two senior commanders, according to Palestinian officials. But the dead included at least a dozen civilians, including several construction workers and at least two children in school uniforms.<br />The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, said in a statement that "Palestine has never witnessed an uglier massacre." Later, in a televised speech, he vowed to fight Israel. "We say in all confidence that even if we are hung on the gallows or they make our blood flow in the streets or they tear our bodies apart, we will bow only before God and we will not abandon Palestine," he said.<br />By afternoon, shops were shuttered, funerals began and mourning tents were visible on nearly every major street of this densely populated city.<br />"We wanted to attack military targets while the terrorists were inside the facilities and before Hamas was able to get its rockets out that were stored in some of the targets," said the top Israeli security official, briefing a group of reporters by telephone on condition of anonymity.<br />"Right now, we have to hit Hamas hard to stop the launching," he added. "I don't see any other way for Hamas to change its behavior. Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. It actually rules Gaza and is well supported by Iran with some of its leadership in Syria."<br />A number of governments and international officials, including leaders of Russia, Egypt, the European Union and the United Nations, condemned Israel's use of force and also called on Hamas to end the rocket fire.<br />The Bush administration blamed Hamas for the end to the cease-fire and demanded that it stop firing rockets, but called on Israel only to avoid hitting civilians as it attacked Hamas.<br />Ehud Barak, the Israeli military minister and chairman of the Labor Party, said the military operation would expand and deepen as necessary, adding, "There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and this is the time for fighting." He said he was withdrawing from campaigning for Israel's February elections to focus on the operation.<br />Hamas had in recent weeks let it be known that because of the coming elections it doubted Israel would engage in a major military undertaking. But in some ways the elections have made it impossible for officials like Barak not to react, because the public has grown anxious and angry over the rocket fire, which while causing no recent deaths and few injuries is deeply disturbing for those living near the Gaza border.<br />Israeli officials said that anyone linked to the Hamas security structure or government was fair game since Hamas was a terrorist group that sought Israel's destruction. But with work here increasingly scarce because of an international embargo on Hamas, young men are tempted by the steady work of the police force without necessarily fully accepting the Hamas ideology. One of the biggest tolls on Saturday was at a police cadet graduation ceremony in which 15 were killed.<br />Spokesmen for Hamas officials, who have mostly gone underground, called on militants to seek revenge and fight to the last drop of blood. Several compared what was happening to the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, when Israel reacted to the capture and killing of several soldiers along its northern border with air raids, followed by a ground attack. Hezbollah is widely viewed as having withstood those assaults and emerged much stronger politically.<br />The Arab League called an emergency meeting for Sunday in Cairo with all the foreign ministers from the member states.<br />Governments that dislike Hamas, like Egypt's, Jordan's and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, are in a delicate position. They blame Hamas for having taken over Gaza by force 18 months ago and oppose its rocket fire on Israeli towns and communities. But the sight of scores of Palestinians killed by Israeli warplanes outraged their citizens, and anti-Israel demonstrations broke out across the region. Egypt, worried about possible efforts by Palestinians to enter the country, has set up machine guns along the Gaza border.<br />In the West Bank and in some Arab parts of Jerusalem and Israel, Palestinians threw stones, causing some injuries. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority angrily condemned the Israeli airstrikes.<br />Hamas is officially committed to Israel's destruction, and when it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and then forcibly took over Gaza in 2007, it said it would not recognize Israel, honor previous Palestinian Authority commitments to it or end its violence against Israelis.<br />Israel, backed by the United States, Europe, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, has sought to isolate Hamas by squeezing Gaza economically, a policy that human rights groups condemn as collective punishment. Israel and Egypt, which control routes into and out of Gaza, have blocked nearly all but humanitarian aid from going in.<br />The result has been the near death of the Gazan economy. While enough food has gone in to avoid starvation, the level of suffering is very high and getting worse each week, especially in recent weeks as Israel closed the routes entirely for about 10 days in reaction to daily rocket fire.<br />Opening the routes to commerce was Hamas's main goal in its cease-fire with Israel, just as ending the rocket fire was Israel's central aim. But while rocket fire did go down drastically in the fall to 15 to 20 a month from hundreds a month, Israel said it would not permit trade to begin again because the rocket fire had not completely stopped and because Hamas continued to smuggle weapons from Egypt through desert tunnels. Hamas said this was a violation of the agreement, a sign of Israel's real intentions and cause for further rocket fire.<br />On Wednesday, some 70 rockets hit Israel over 24 hours, in a distinct upsurge of intensity.<br />The rockets that flew into southern Israel on Saturday left the streets of cities like Netivot, a hardscrabble town of immigrants, nearly deserted. Inside a public shelter, parents worked to keep restless children occupied. The man killed by a rocket was hit by shrapnel as he stood in the entrance to his building, next door to where the rocket hit.</div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Car bomb in Baghdad kills at least 24<br /></strong>By Sam Dagher<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: A car bomb killed at least 24 people, many of them Shiite pilgrims, and wounded 46 others when it exploded Saturday on a busy road in Baghdad that leads to the revered shrine of Kadhimiya, according to the Ministry of Interior.<br />That bombing, along with several others in recent weeks, was a stark reminder that even as violence has sharply fallen, insurgents still have the power to carry out deadly strikes in the heart of the capital. The attack's timing and location appeared to be intended to reignite sectarian passions.<br />Millions of Shiites are preparing to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. The observance falls during Muharram, the holiest month of the Shiite religious calendar, which begins Monday. Shiite families from across Iraq traditionally visit the shrine, with its shimmering twin golden domes, on Saturdays.<br />The explosion occurred at midday about 100 yards from Bab al-Dirwaza, one of the main gates to the shrine and the Kadhimiya district's bustling market, which has been a pedestrian-only area for several years because of a spate of deadly attacks in the area. According to several witnesses, the car that exploded was parked outside the fence of one of the nearby parking lots.<br />Jalal Hussein, 56, had just parked his car, after dropping off his wife and daughter at the gate, when the bomb exploded a few yards away, creating a huge ball of fire that consumed several vehicles and many pedestrians. He said the bodies and limbs of victims, including many children and women, were scattered everywhere.<br />"It was an unexpected massacre of simple people going to visit the shrine," said Hussein, who was wounded in the shoulder.<br />On the street in front of the lot, which was cordoned off by American and Iraqi forces, the chassis of a car lay amid the wreckage of a minibus and five other vehicles in one lane. A woman's shoe and shreds of the black head-to-toe cloak commonly worn by Iraqi women mixed with blood, broken glass and metal. A smashed bus was in the other lane.<br />"My son," screamed a distraught mother who had rushed there with her husband.<br />Rescuers tried to force open the doors of vehicles to remove the dead and wounded, witnesses said. Many badly burned bodies were simply piled up on wooden market pushcarts.<br />Muhammad Hamdan, 58, who narrowly escaped the blast, had come to the shrine with his wife and six children to pray to be cured of a heart ailment. "Those who perished are martyrs, God willing," he said.<br />Residents and visitors expressed shock and anger that the bombing occurred in what is considered one of the city's most secure enclaves. The neighborhood is ringed with Iraqi Army and police checkpoints, where each entering vehicle is scanned with a hand-held bomb detection device.<br />The area receives special attention because it is home to the shrine and the base of Ayatollah Hussein Ismail al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric close to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.<br />The tight security led several residents to lash out at what they assumed to be incompetence or corruption that had allowed the bombing to happen. "This area is highly protected," Hussein said. "Not even a rat could come in. The terror is from within."<br />A Kadhimiya resident, Fawzia Qazzaz, standing on her porch overlooking the scene, screamed at security personnel as tears rolled down her cheeks. "Either their bomb detection equipment is faulty or they are implicated in the terror," she said.<br />In another bombing on Saturday, in Jurf al-Sakher, south of Baghdad in Babil Province, an Iraqi Army officer and two members of a local Awakening Council were killed when a bomb attached to their vehicle exploded, according to a police official in Hilla, the provincial capital.<br />While the sectarian bloodshed that had ripped Iraq apart as recently as last year has eased, devastating attacks continue to crop up. The last major attack in the capital, a suicide bombing at a police training academy on Dec. 1 , killed at least 15 people.<br />A new report released Saturday by the nongovernmental group Iraq Body Count placed at 8,955 the number of civilians killed by acts of violence in Iraq so far in 2008. The figures, while far below those of 2006 and 2007, when a total of 51,894 civilians were killed, were only slightly below those for 2003 and 2004, according to the report.<br />Meanwhile, the police in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killed an escaped prisoner who was believed to be an insurgent leader. The prisoner, Emad Ahmed Ferhan, was among three who escaped Friday from a police station after a shootout that killed six policemen and seven prisoners.<br />The police received a tip on Saturday that he was hiding at a house in central Ramadi and sent a force to arrest him, said the police chief, Major General Tareq al-Youssef. He said the force had surrounded the house and a gun battle had ensued with Ferhan, who was described as a leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners.<br />He was killed as he fled. A machine gun, passport and fake beard were in his possession, Youssef said.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ_32buxbkJhqmqb6Mn5lQYu5VrVj7tpgbVpnzibEUQUc4skjdFNR1Nd5sFh1nPfF_7GioWYgw6CMd3J6AXwy8X4KLLgEUv3oPgo_-kU5OSWiCpU1YYF_5DJ40GMptK_x3VME4MnQ33Wc/s1600-h/DSC04641.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284834836616421058" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ_32buxbkJhqmqb6Mn5lQYu5VrVj7tpgbVpnzibEUQUc4skjdFNR1Nd5sFh1nPfF_7GioWYgw6CMd3J6AXwy8X4KLLgEUv3oPgo_-kU5OSWiCpU1YYF_5DJ40GMptK_x3VME4MnQ33Wc/s320/DSC04641.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7TxuWiLw03gnXzN51cREvr6xosHdRhyphenhyphen-gK98dqHr0HrPElFHiB418BeCc9hFK5k78lM_8nhKvjWgxsSFHyHdMzI1E6ecuLsv_GE6iMTeIpfyWLnihmfvkbNkBUgZ7JXe9tQCVomLdhU/s1600-h/DSC04642.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284834576837085394" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUOlQhdlllpmOk5_Z1vypCp3FfHycR-zNAZlGmQXoFY3u0RQjPGKZ23L27UwEZ9U4gRfPPYW0OxDyj3yQK4DQr2ZOTy2hC7ncrgnixXRJhDyVdYSUPkZcse-BhM5Otnwp7x5GOI-32px8/s320/DSC04697.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsrrizYDaKQ-XbighPuMsnwiOah8C2Ihp75tvHSSvEoEvTb_8uYU5Jwo__efNqe13UkbL-iB7Kuz_6czpIkVayrgr8caTtcWKTQS6gh_soSNSRPgmK2SI3kMRIa_Mt0mDC0svJyQUUIq4/s1600-h/DSC04698.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284832467855374738" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsrrizYDaKQ-XbighPuMsnwiOah8C2Ihp75tvHSSvEoEvTb_8uYU5Jwo__efNqe13UkbL-iB7Kuz_6czpIkVayrgr8caTtcWKTQS6gh_soSNSRPgmK2SI3kMRIa_Mt0mDC0svJyQUUIq4/s320/DSC04698.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br /><strong>Blogs about France</strong></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-64970536147057409662008-12-27T09:59:00.015+01:002008-12-27T11:40:17.850+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Friday, 26th December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Pakistan moves some troops from western border</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Salman Masood<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has begun moving some troops away from its western border with Afghanistan, where the United States has pressed it to combat Taliban militants, and has stopped many soldiers from going on leave amid rising tensions with India, senior Pakistani officials said Friday. But by late in the day, there was little evidence to indicate whether the redeployment involved large numbers of troops.<br />The decision to restrict leave for soldiers was taken "in view of the prevailing environment," namely the deteriorating relations with India since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month, a senior Pakistani military official said. He added that the Pakistani Air Force was "vigilant" and "alert" for the same reason. A second Pakistani military official would also not say where the forces were being sent but confirmed the troop movements and the restrictions on leave, saying, "There's an obvious reason for that."<br />Yet little else was clear by late Friday, and it was not immediately evident whether the troop movements reflected any serious worry on the part of the Pakistani military, or whether it was intended more to send a message to the Indian government.<br />The two Pakistani military officials offered little detail about the specific reasons for the troop movement or about its size, and they were careful and measured, as if reading from a script. They said nothing harsh or critical about India, even though they were speaking with the guarantee that their names would not be used.<br />One of the officials confirmed that troops were being drawn from northwestern Pakistan, where the military is fighting Taliban militants on several fronts. He also said that "essential troops in limited numbers are being pulled out of areas where no operations are being conducted," or where winter weather had already limited their ability to maneuver.<br />But two Pakistani intelligence officials - one from military intelligence and one from Inter-Services Intelligence - suggested the situation was more serious and said some troops were indeed moving toward the Indian border.<br />One of the intelligence officials described the situation as "tense" and said intelligence intercepts had led Pakistani officials to worry that India might launch a strike inside Pakistan as soon as within the next three or four days. Troops on the border have been told to be on alert, the official said. The second intelligence official estimated the chance of armed conflict as about one in three.<br />A third Pakistani official said that for the past week the air force had been in a "point defense" posture, standing ready to defend specific key defense installations and cities - including Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore as well as the Kahuta nuclear weapons laboratory. The forces include two squadrons of F-7 and F-16 fighters, the official said, adding that pilots were sleeping in uniform with their boots on.<br />The Associated Press quoted two Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that the Pakistani Army's 14th division was being sent to Kasur and Sialkot, near the Indian border and that around 20,000 troops were being redeployed. However, neither the scale nor ultimate destination of the troop movement could be confirmed.<br />The redeployment came as the Indian authorities warned their citizens not to travel to Pakistan, citing reports that Indian citizens had allegedly been arrested in Pakistan in connection with a bombing in Lahore. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summoned the leaders of his country's armed forces on Friday.<br />The developments added to the simmering tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors one month after the three-day terror assault in Mumbai left 171 people dead. Indian and American intelligence officials have attributed the Mumbai attacks to a Pakistani militant group that has long had ties to the Pakistan intelligence service. But Pakistani leaders reject that argument, saying that they have been shown no evidence proving who carried out the attacks.<br />The troop movements away from northwestern Pakistan, if they later prove to be significant in size, may also deepen concerns among American officials about Pakistan's commitment to battling Taliban militants in the country's lawless western frontier regions.<br />If troops are being sent toward the Indian border, the action is in contrast to efforts this month to cool hostilities between the two countries, which have fought three wars since 1947.<br />Two weeks ago, for example, Pakistani officials went out of their way to play down as "inadvertent" two incursions of Indian warplanes into Pakistani airspace. Their response to the airspace violations - which the Indian military denied - won praise from United States leaders even as Pakistani officials privately said the incursions were likely a test or provocation.<br />For its part, India on Friday accused Pakistan of "diverting attention" from terror to war, but Indian officials refused to comment on the reports of troop movements inside Pakistan.<br />In advising against travel to Pakistan, Indian officials said there had been reports in the Pakistani news media of arrests of Indian citizens in Lahore and Multan. But they took pains not to blame the elected civilian government in Pakistan. "It seems that this is the work of other agencies in Pakistan that operate outside the law and civilian control," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.<br />The Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, met with his counterpart from Saudi Arabia, among Pakistan's staunchest allies, as part of India's worldwide diplomatic campaign to put pressure on Pakistan to quash terrorist groups operating on its soil. Mukherjee has all along blamed "elements in Pakistan" for the Mumbai attacks last month and told reporters in New Delhi on Friday that his country had evidence, ranging from ship's logs to satellite phone records.<br />"Instead of diverting attention from the real issue, they should concentrate on how to fight against terrorism and bring to book the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack," Mukherjee said.<br />Indian officials including Singh have repeatedly said that they are not keen to go to war.<br />Nor has the political opposition pressed for military action in response to the siege of Mumbai.<br />Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from India.</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="center"><strong>0440</strong></div><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDUnlrWojx39y-wNeV7YGry8nCBMZ42CKt02pnNKuNOd55YcnmYlFdluU8vJAHWNz_E7qN6XfX3lNA83j0uI3vBqNqQWRMuRtzh7jI7K9GT2_OBW-Xn60dEi3AL-FIByzt99UBuRwTUX8/s1600-h/DSC04572.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394908886075826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDUnlrWojx39y-wNeV7YGry8nCBMZ42CKt02pnNKuNOd55YcnmYlFdluU8vJAHWNz_E7qN6XfX3lNA83j0uI3vBqNqQWRMuRtzh7jI7K9GT2_OBW-Xn60dEi3AL-FIByzt99UBuRwTUX8/s320/DSC04572.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><p><strong>China puts 6 on trial over tainted milk scandal<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BEIJING: Trials opened Friday in China for six people accused of making and selling the industrial chemical at the center of a tainted milk scandal that has been blamed for killing six children and sickening nearly 300,000 others.<br />Among those in court Friday was the owner of a workshop that was allegedly the country's largest source of melamine, the substance responsible for the health crisis that also saw Chinese food products pulled from stores worldwide, state media said.<br />The police say that Zhang Yujun, 40, ran a workshop on the outskirts of Jinan in eastern Shandong Province that manufactured and sold a "protein powder" composed mainly of melamine and malt dextrin, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The powder was added to watered-down milk to make it appear to have a higher protein content.<br />Prosecutors at Shijiazhuang Intermediate People's Court accused Zhang of producing 776 tons of the additive powder from October 2007 through August 2008, making it the largest source of melamine in the country. He allegedly sold more than 600 tons with a total value of 6.83 million yuan, or $1 million, the court was told.<br />In the same case, a second man, Zhang Yanzhang, 24, was accused of buying and reselling 230 tons.<br />Chinese state television showed both men in court in handcuffs with their heads bowed while being questioned by three judges.<br />An official at the publicity office of Hebei Supreme Court confirmed that the trial started Friday but refused to give his name or other details.<br />Four other men were being tried in three separate courts across Hebei Province for adding the chemical to raw milk and then selling it to Sanlu Group, the main company involved in the scandal, according to Xinhua.<br />Melamine can artificially inflate protein levels and was apparently added to watered-down milk to fool quality inspectors into thinking the protein content was normal, while also increasing profit.<br />Zhang Heshe and Zhang Taizhen were accused of adding 35 kilograms, or 77 pounds, of the "protein powder" to 70 tons of raw milk and then selling it to Sanlu. Yang Jingmin and Gu Guoping were also charged with adding 24 kilograms and 16.7 kilograms of melamine, respectively.<br />The verdicts will be announced at an unspecified date, Xinhua reported.<br />The dairy company Sanlu, which is based in Shijiazhuang, confirmed this week that it was bankrupt.<br />Xinhua reported Thursday that Sanlu had 1.1 billion yuan of net debt and that a branch of the Shijiazhuang City Commercial Bank was the creditor that applied to a court to have Sanlu declared bankrupt.<br />It said the intermediate court in Shijiazhuang had accepted the filing. Xinhua said Sanlu owes a creditor 902 million yuan that it borrowed this month to pay for the medical treatment of children sickened after drinking the company's infant formula and for compensation of the babies' families.<br />Wang Jianguo, a spokesman for the Shijiazhuang city government, said the money was given to the China Dairy Industry Association for medical care and compensation fees for victims, according to a transcript of a news conference he gave Thursday. A woman who answered the phone Friday at the association refused to answer any questions.<br />The issue of compensation for the families of the children sickened or killed has become a sensitive one, with courts so far not accepting any lawsuits filed by the families.<br />The Legal Daily newspaper reported that Tian Wenhua, Sanlu's chairwoman and general manager, would go on trial Wednesday in Shijiazhuang for "selling fake and shoddy products."<br />Sanlu, like a number of major Chinese dairies, had been exempt from government inspections because it was deemed to have superior quality controls - until high levels of the industrial chemical melamine were found in its baby formula and other products in September. Several other dairies were also found to have sold tainted goods.<br />Melamine poses little danger in small amounts, but larger doses can cause kidney stones and renal failure.</p><p>**********************</p><p><strong>In technology, an effort to help the Japanese fishing industry</strong><br />By Martin Fackler<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />OTOSHIBE, Japan: The Shinei Maru No. 66 looks like the dozens of other fishing boats moored in this Japanese harbor. But its builders say it is the world's first hybrid fishing trawler. Switching between oil and electrical power for propulsion, it uses as much as one-third less fuel than conventional boats.<br />"It's like a Prius for the sea," said Tadatoshi Ikeuchi, 62, the boat's owner and captain.<br />Until very recently, commercial fishermen around the world have been laboring under the weight of high fuel prices. In Europe earlier this year, fishermen expressed their frustration by blockading ports to protest prices and taxes. In the United States, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, the former Republican vice presidential nominee, has called for low-interest loans to help Alaskan fishermen buy fuel-efficient engines.<br />Japan, meanwhile, is searching for high-technology solutions. The hybrid boat engine, which is still a prototype, is part of a multimillion-dollar government-led effort to rescue the Japanese fishing industry from energy costs, which are likely to resume their increase once the global recession ends and demand revives.<br />As part of the two-year-old program, the Japanese are also testing biofueled marine engines, computer-engineered propeller designs and low-energy LED lights on squid boats, which use bright lights to lure their catch.<br />There is a vast international market for such solutions. Many Japanese boat engines that use computers to improve fuel efficiency are already popular with American fishermen. And Yamanaka, the Tokyo-based maker of the hybrid engine for the trawler, which is called the Fish Eco, says the United States and Europe are large potential markets.<br />The Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry in Japan, which has led development of the new technologies, will subsidize their introduction as part of a $700 million aid package announced in July to help the fishing industry.<br />Modernization of this ancient profession seems the natural answer here to the commercial fishing crisis, which predates the steep rise (and recent fall) of fuel prices. Japan gave the world both sushi and the hybrid car. But fishermen say they doubt the effort will be enough to break the deep sense of malaise that has started to afflict fishing communities like this one in northern Japan.<br />After decades of sending its fleets to the far corners of the globe, and paying high prices for tuna and other premium fish for sashimi in global markets, Japan appears to many to be letting its fishing industry sink. The number of commercial fishermen has shrunk by 27 percent in the past decade, to 204,330 last year, hurt by declining birthrates and migration of young people to the cities, according to the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, an industry group representing fishermen.<br />The federation warns that rising fuel costs could prompt an additional 25,000 to 45,000 fishermen to hang up their nets. Before the recent decline in prices, boat fuel, known as heavy fuel oil, accounted for 20 percent to 30 percent of a fisherman's total costs in Japan, almost double the proportion three years ago.<br />The fishermen cannot pass on the increase to consumers in the form of higher seafood prices for fear of losing sales to less expensive imports from competitors like China and Vietnam.<br />They also worry that higher seafood prices would only intensify the shift in Japanese consumer tastes away from a traditional seafood-centered diet - a trend known as "sakana banare," or flight from fish.<br />"Higher fish prices will just encourage Japanese to eat more hamburgers and fried chicken," said Nobuhiro Nagaya, a managing director at the fisheries federation.<br />The average Japanese eats about 94 grams, or 3.3 ounces, of fish a day.<br />Gloomy sentiments about the future of Japan's industry are shared by officials at the Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry.<br />While their multimillion-dollar projects recall the government-orchestrated technology drives of previous decades, when Japan rose to global dominance in industries like semiconductors and supercomputers, officials express far more modest expectations today in an era of tight budgets.<br />"Technology cannot be the only answer," said Kazuo Hiraishi, an assistant chief in the ministry's maritime technology research division. "But Japan's excellence in electronics and energy-saving should be of some help to our fishermen."<br />While fishermen in countries like France, Spain and Ireland have staged disruptive demonstrations, protests in Japan have been more sedate, though still large.<br />Last summer about 200,000 fishing boats stayed in port on a one-day strike, and thousands of fishermen gathered for a rally in Tokyo.<br />The government responded two weeks later with the $700 million aid package, under which it promised to pay 90 percent of fuel price increases since December, but only to fishermen who found ways to reduce their consumption. The package also contained subsidies to help fishermen buy efficient new engines, like the hybrid.<br />A $250,000 subsidy from the Agriculture Ministry, for example, meant that Ikeuchi, the hybrid boat's captain, paid only $650,000 for the trawler, the same price as for a conventional boat.<br />Ikeuchi said his fuel use had dropped to about 285 liters a day, or 75 gallons, cutting his daily bill by about $100.<br />The propulsion system switches between a 650-horsepower heavy oil motor, which powers the main engine, and a 150-horsepower heavy oil motor, which turns a generator that runs a smaller electric engine for use when the boat moves slowly.<br />When Ikeuchi showed off the boat, which he uses to hunt for scallops, Pacific cod and kelp, the only visible difference from other boats in this small, man-made harbor was its dashboard, with small touch-controlled screens - high-tech devices for a craft made mostly of traditional-looking wood and steel.<br />Still, many fishermen who walked over to take a peek at the boat doubted it would be enough to save their industry.</p><p>*********************</p><p><strong>Nissin Foods to buy stake in Russian noodle maker</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />TOKYO: Nissin Foods Holdings Co, the top instant noodle maker in Japan, said on Friday that it would buy a one-third stake in the largest instant noodle group in Russia for about $296 million.<br />Japanese food companies have been stepping up overseas acquisitions in the face of weak growth prospects at home as the population ages.<br />Earlier this week, the largest Japanese beer maker, Asahi Breweries, said it had agreed to buy Cadbury's Schweppes soft drinks business in Australia for about $810 million in what would be the company's biggest acquisition.<br />Nissin, the maker of Cup Noodles, said it would buy the 33.5 percent stake in Angleside, the holding company for the instant noodle maker LLC Mareven Food Central, in steps starting in January through the purchase of new shares.<br />The Russian group controls 41 percent of the country's instant noodle market, Nissin said.<br />Russia is the world's ninth-largest instant noodle market with annual consumption of about 2 billion servings, and the Japanese company said it saw an opportunity in the fast rise in sales of higher-end items there.<br />Japan is the No. 3 market with 5.4 billion servings, after China and Indonesia, according to Nissin.<br />Shares of Nissin had fallen 0.9 percent to ¥3,160 by the midday break, underperforming a 1 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average.</p><p> </p><p>****************</p><p><strong>Save the environment - eat kangaroo, groups say</strong><br />By Meraiah Foley<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />SYDNEY: How many kangaroo steaks will Australians eat this holiday season? Not enough, according to a growing body of academics who say that giving up beef and lamb for kangaroo would reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions and ease pressure on a drought-stricken land.<br />The bounding marsupial is one of Australia's most emblematic symbols. It stands opposite an emu on the country's coat of arms, and its silhouette adorns the tail wing of the national airline.<br />It is a common misconception that an animal this iconic, so uniquely associated with a single country, must be endangered. Indeed, many Australian marsupials have fared badly in the centuries since European settlement, but several species of grass-eating kangaroo have actually benefited from the mass clearing of bushland for the grazing of sheep and cattle.<br />The number of kangaroos in Australia ranges from 15 million to 50 million each year, depending on climatic conditions, compared with about 80 million sheep and 25 million meat cattle, according to government estimates. Beef and lamb are still preferred among meat-loving Australians, but some scientists say there is a strong case for making wild kangaroo the new red meat of choice.<br />Cattle and sheep are major emitters of methane, one of several greenhouse gases associated with global warming. Flatulent livestock produce nearly 70 percent of Australia's agricultural emissions, which make up 11 percent of the country's total, according to the department of climate change.<br />Kangaroos, in contrast, emit negligible amounts of methane, thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs that aid in the digestion of grass.<br />One team of scientists in the northeastern state of Queensland is currently trying to find a way to harvest these bacteria and transfer them to the stomachs of beef and sheep. But others say the answer is more straightforward: Eat less beef and lamb, more kangaroo.<br />It is not a new concept. Environmentalists have long touted kangaroo as an ecologically sound alternative to hard-hoofed livestock, which erode Australia's drought-parched soils and damage its delicate waterways. But the push to address climate change has given new impetus to an old idea.<br />"For most of Australia's human history - around 60,000 years - kangaroo was the main source of meat. It could again become important," said a widely read government report on the possible approaches to tackling climate change that was released in September.<br />Under a global emissions trading scheme, where there is a price placed on the production of carbon, methane and other greenhouse gases, the abundance of available kangaroo meat "could be a source of international comparative advantage for Australia in livestock production," the report said.<br />But replacing cows and sheep with kangaroo is not an easy proposition.<br />First, there is the question of how many kangaroos would have to be killed to get the same amount of meat produced by larger livestock, such as cattle. According to Meat and Livestock Australia, an industry body representing producers, it would take 80 million kangaroos - or more than three times the current wild population - to make as much meat as is now produced with the slaughter of around 8 million cows a year.<br />But if ranchers reduced their cattle holdings, the population of wild kangaroos would probably explode because the two animals tend to feed on the same pastures, according to a paper published by two Australian researchers, George Wilson and Melanie Edwards, in the August edition of Conservation Letters, the journal of the U.S.-based Society for Conservation Biology.<br />Using mathematical modeling, the researchers looked at the regions of Australia where meat kangaroos are currently harvested and found that the marsupials' numbers could reach as high as 200 million by 2020 if ranchers dramatically reduced sheep and cattle numbers.<br />Kangaroos are a protected species in Australia, and they cannot be commercially farmed. Instead, the government sets an annual quota of wild animals that can be killed by professional hunters. Wilson and Edwards, who run a wildlife consultancy, said farmers would have to form cooperatives to share the profits from harvesting free-ranging kangaroo that could not be tagged and fenced.<br />Such a major shift would "require cultural and social changes," Wilson and Edwards conceded, as well as significant incentives to encourage ranchers to embrace new forms of animal husbandry.<br />There is also the matter of taste.<br />One might expect a furry, hopping marsupial to taste something like rabbit. In both flavor and texture, however, kangaroo is closer to beef, though it has a richer, gamier taste. With less than 3 percent fat, kangaroo is extremely lean and must be cooked with a delicate touch or it becomes tough and rubbery.<br />A recent study by the University of New South Wales found that 80 percent of Australians were open to the idea of eating kangaroo, though only 16 percent said they ate it at least four times a year.<br />"There certainly is a resistance to people purchasing it raw and knowing what to do with it," said Peter Ampt, an agricultural scientist who heads the Future of Australia's Threatened Ecosystem program at the University of New South Wales. "There is an element of 'What do I do with it?"'<br />The kangaroo meat industry is currently worth about $110 million a year, compared to the $11 billion market in Australia for beef and lamb. But even if Australian consumers were willing to adjust their palates to favor kangaroo, skeptics like the National Farmers Federation argue that foreign consumers would simply turn elsewhere for their beef and lamb. Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of red meat, so critics say a shift away from Australian meat would simply push livestock-related methane emissions elsewhere.<br />"The reality is that kangaroo meat currently has a very limited market," the federation said in a statement. "Farmers will respond to marketplace demand, but the market is not indicating that it will accept kangaroo meat in large quantities - let alone as a substitute for beef or lamb."<br />For Ted Younger, who runs a small ranch in southeastern New South Wales, the idea has merits but is mostly academic in the absence of significant government incentives.<br />"I think it's a marvelous idea if it could ever get off the ground," Younger said. But pointing to a lack of government incentives to encourage ranchers away from traditional farming, he said, "I think that being able to husband kangaroos in any viable way is a long way off."</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br /><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVnyIf7cxAkZVYkxXCVoZ7JdTuTJrCoehHj5xDeDv97-CeIwh3JWg5kucUa7bE0gLtQ44iyX39wnaXCy90hGWb1vs-2cJiQID2JrZpJi6cXZGQpM3hYNt1nRUQmlmbwJPl5a_fqgAFpU/s1600-h/DSC04573.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394903928497538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVnyIf7cxAkZVYkxXCVoZ7JdTuTJrCoehHj5xDeDv97-CeIwh3JWg5kucUa7bE0gLtQ44iyX39wnaXCy90hGWb1vs-2cJiQID2JrZpJi6cXZGQpM3hYNt1nRUQmlmbwJPl5a_fqgAFpU/s320/DSC04573.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Many schools still unsafe in quake aftermath, China says</strong><br />By Andrew Jacobs<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BEIJING: Government officials have acknowledged in the most definitive report since the devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province in May that many school buildings across the country are poorly constructed and that 20 percent of primary schools in one southwestern province may be unsafe, according to a description of the report published by the state media Friday.<br />The Ministry of Education report is a rare government admission about substandard school construction. The issue has been a sensitive one since May, when an earthquake in Sichuan Province killed 88,000 people, many of them children crushed in the rubble of shoddily built schools.<br />The report called on the central government to quickly fund the reconstruction of vulnerable schools, especially those in rural areas and western parts of the country that are seismically unstable. Lu Yongxiang, vice chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said in an interview with the China News Service that Beijing would increase construction subsidies by 25 percent to 150 percent, depending on the region.<br />Lu was quoted as saying that nearly 2.5 percent of all primary and middle schools in China have structural problems, on a built area equal to 33.5 million square meters, or 360 million square feet.<br />He added that 90 percent of these schools are in rural areas and the earthquake-prone west of the country. The China News Service report singled out Yunnan Province, just south of Sichuan, as having some of the most structurally unsound schools, including 20 percent of the province's primary schools and 11 percent of its middle schools.<br />His point was underscored just hours after the report was made public. On Friday morning, a 4.9-magnitude earthquake shook Yunnan Province, injuring nine people, according to Xinhua, the official news service.<br />In Sichuan, many parents of students killed in May continue to press their demands for an investigation into the widespread school collapses. Earlier this month, a group of parents whose children died at a primary school in Fuxin filed a lawsuit against government officials and a construction contractor. The suit, filed Dec. 1, asked for $1.1 million in damages and a public apology.<br />But last week a judge at the Intermediate People's Court in the city of Deyang rejected the lawsuit, saying the court was hamstrung by a government directive from on high.<br />In the weeks after the earthquake, the government promised to punish those responsible for poorly built schools, but the government has not made public any progress in this direction.<br />The number of students who died on May 12 is unknown, although estimates suggest the figure may be as high as 10,000. In his comments to the state media, Lu, the standing committee vice chairman, opened a small window into that mystery: He said that 14,000 schools in Sichuan had been damaged by the earthquake last May.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Thousands evacuated after quakes hit SW China</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BEIJING: Three earthquakes jolted China's southwestern provinces on Friday, injuring 19 people and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands more, state media said, citing local authorities.<br />An earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale struck at 4:20 a.m. (8:20 p.m. British time Thursday) about 10 km (6.2 miles) from Ruili, a town on the China-Myanmar border, Xinhua said, citing the province's earthquake monitor.<br />The quake destroyed the city government's old office building and prompted the evacuation of about 30,000 people, Xinhua said, citing the local Communist Party chief.<br />Authorities were distributing supplies, Xinhua said.<br />Another tremor measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale jolted Yiliang county near provincial capital Kunming at 2:19 a.m., damaging more than 100 houses, affecting some 1,200 people in eight villages. No casualties were reported, Xinhua said.<br />A third quake measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale struck neighbouring Guizhou province at about 8 p.m., Xinhua said. No casualties were reported.<br />"We have phone called all the 26 townships and received no report of casualties or house collapses. Traffic and telecommunications are running as normal," Sha Xiangui, the local Communist Party chief of Luodian country, where the earthquake occurred, was quoted as saying.<br />China is still struggling to build housing and infrastructure for millions of people made homeless by the May 12 Sichuan earthquake which killed 80,000 people.<br />(Reporting by Ian Ransom and Jacqueline Wong; Editing by Jon Boyle)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Victims of 2004 tsunami remembered </strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: The victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 were honored by thousands of mourners who prayed, burned candles and shared meals on beaches from Indonesia to India on Friday, the fourth anniversary of the disaster.<br />For many, the modest ceremonies were a time to reflect on their lives and weigh progress in rebuilding homes and communities wiped out by the enormous waves that proved deadly and destructive in a dozen nations.<br />Ibrahim Musa, a 42-year-old civil servant in the hard-hit Aceh Province of Indonesia, said it felt like yesterday that his family was taken by the sea.<br />"Even after four years, I cannot forget how I lost hold of my wife and baby," he said. "I have tried in vain to look for them for three years. Now I have no choice but to accept their departure as destiny."<br />Musa gathered with thousands of others along the Aceh coast, where a massive earthquake triggered the tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people, of which more than 120,000 were in Indonesia.<br />Siti Hasnaini, 40, who still lives with her two sons and husband in a temporary shelter, prayed "for my daughter who was washed away with my house."<br />Homes for Hasnaini and nearly 900 other families are scheduled to be completed by February, a month before the Indonesian government winds up its reconstruction mandate, said a government spokesman, Juanda Djamal.<br />Total spending has reached $5.48 billion, 70 percent of which was paid through foreign donations, and more than 124,000 houses have been built, he said.<br />On Thai beaches, where thousands of people died, family members and friends of gathered for services, including one in the sand under palm trees held before hundreds of spectators.<br />Paulette and Bauke Van den Wyngaard, a Dutch couple who return to Patong beach every year to visit the spot where they survived the deadly waves, were among them.<br />"We were lucky to survive. Others were not as lucky," said Paulette, who was pulled from the raging water by a hotel worker.<br />In Sri Lanka, the government declared two minutes of silence for the thousands of people killed there as well as other victims of natural disasters.<br />The "Queen of the Sea," a coastal train toppled by the tsunami, was repaired and made its first trip in four years Friday, riding the same route where more than 1,000 of its passengers were killed in 2004.<br />In India, where thousands also perished, interfaith prayers and a moment of silence were held.<br />Hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals and businesses have been rebuilt across the region in the largest relief operation ever seen.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Working to reclaim the starry night in Death Valley</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, California: High atop Dante's View, overlooking sheets of salt flats and ribbons of sand dunes, Dan Duriscoe shined a laser beam at the North Star and steadied his digital camera at the starry heavens.<br />Click. The sky looks dark.<br />Duriscoe panned the camera toward the light factory of Las Vegas, 85 miles, or 135 kilometers, away but peeking out like a white halo above the mountains in the eastern horizon.<br />Click. The sky is on fire.<br />"You can see the Luxor vertical beam," said Duriscoe, pointing to a time-exposure shot on his camera-connected laptop showing the famous searchlight of the pyramid-shaped Vegas Strip hotel. "That's the brightest thing out there."<br />Acclaimed for its ink-black skies, Death Valley, a desert basin that is the hottest place in North America, also ranks among the nation's unspoiled stargazing spots. But the vista has grown blurry in recent years.<br />The glitzy neon glow from Las Vegas and its burgeoning bedroom communities is stealing stars from the park's eastern fringe. New research reveals that light pollution from Las Vegas increased 61 percent between 2001 and 2007, making it appear brighter than the planet Venus on clear nights as seen from Dante's View, a popular vantage point in Death Valley National Park, which encompasses the Death Valley basin.<br />Duriscoe, a soft-spoken scientist with the National Park Service, is part of a roving U.S. government team of night owls whose job is to gaze up at the sky and monitor light pollution in national parks.<br />"What is alarming to me is: What's going to happen three or four generations from now if this growth of outdoor lights continues?" he asked.<br />Amid such concerns, Death Valley, the largest national park in the contiguous United States, has set an ambitious goal: It wants to be the first official dark-sky national park.<br />Since the dawn of civilization, humans have been enthralled by the night sky's romantic mystique. Early seafarers relied on stars to steer their ships. Farmers looked toward the night sky for clues on when to plant and harvest crops. Ancient cultures spun mythologies while staring at the cosmos.<br />Civilization is also the chief reason why the night sky is vanishing in many corners. As the world's population grows, so do the number of lamp posts. In many North American cities and suburbs, lighted shopping strips, twinkling auto malls and flashy billboards are common sights.<br />It is estimated that about one-fifth of the world's population and more than two-thirds of U.S. residents cannot see the Milky Way from their backyards.<br />Furthermore, studies have shown exposure to artificial lights can interrupt animals' biological clocks and disrupt ecosystems. Migratory birds have been known fly directly into skyscrapers after being confused by their blinding lights. Last year, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization listed the graveyard shift, where workers toil under artificial lights, as a probable carcinogen.<br />The International Dark-Sky Association, a nonprofit based in Arizona whose slogan is "Carpe Noctem," has noticed an increased awareness about the perils of light pollution but acknowledged that there is a limit to promoting dark skies.<br />"I don't think you can get Paris to turn off the Eiffel Tower or persuade Times Square to turn off all of its lights," said Pete Strasser, the association's managing director.<br />The same could probably be said for Las Vegas, the sparkly desert playground where neon signs blend into the natural landscape.<br />"It's part of the whole ambiance. It's the selling point of Las Vegas," said Barbara Ginoulias, director of comprehensive planning for Clark County, Nevada, where Vegas is located. Still, she added, "We're certainly cognizant of light pollution, and we try to address it in the best way."<br />Ginoulias's department oversees unincorporated parts of Clark County, which are required to shield outdoor lights or cast the light downward. Next month, the county commission will consider an ordinance that would set lighting standards on digital billboards on Interstate 15, which runs along the Vegas Strip.<br />As for the main drag, Las Vegas Boulevard, Ginoulias said that signs were reviewed case by case. Newer signs tend to be less flashy or not have the glaring white background, she said.<br />With no control over the Vegas glow, park rangers at Death Valley are looking inward to fix the light problem as they pursue their goal of becoming the first dark-sky national park in the United States.<br />To gain that distinction, the park must shield or change out two-thirds of its existing outdoor light fixtures. Death Valley has about 700 lights in its 3.3 million acres, or 1.3 million hectares, including parking lot lightpoles, floodlights, fluorescent tubes and egress lights next to doors. Only about 200 lights meet the sky-friendly standard.<br />At the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, located 190 feet, or 57 meters, below sea level, the pedestrian walkway leading to the front entrance is lined with overhead rows of fluorescent tubes under a canopy.<br />From Dante's View at night, the visitor center appears as dancing white and blue dots.<br />"This is a really bright spot in the park," said Terry Baldino, chief of interpretation at Death Valley. "All the campgrounds have to share their night sky with the lights here. If we can reduce that, then we're going to improve their night stay."<br />The park has replaced some fixtures with tin can-shaped designs that focus light onto the ground instead of sideways or upward.<br />Rangers are also debating whether to turn off outdoor lights in some cases. "We're doing little by little," Baldino said.<br />So far, Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah and Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania are the only two parks in the United States certified by the International Dark-Sky Association as dark-sky enclaves.<br />This autumn, the group gave a tentative nod to the Geauga Park District's Observatory Park, 40 miles east of Cleveland, for its work to preserve darkness over the observatory and nearby park land.<br />Despite Death Valley's lighting challenges, city dwellers from all over still flock to the park to take in the view.<br />On a recent December evening, a couple from northern Los Angeles admired the star-studded sky from Zabriskie Point, a popular lookout just south of the visitor center.<br />"You don't see this in L.A.," said Karen Zimmerman, 49. "You forget how many stars there are."<br />As Zimmerman spoke, a hazy glare could be seen from a distance.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Thousands mourn Guinea dictator<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />CONAKRY, Guinea: Allies of the dictator who ruled Guinea for nearly a quarter-century mourned him Friday, but the leader of the coup that followed his death did not attend the ceremonies.<br />The coup leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, had promised a "grandiose funeral" for Lansana Conté a day earlier and in a broadcast called on Guineans to show up en masse.<br />Tens of thousands of mourners packed a stadium where Conté's body was brought after a eulogy in Parliament. The junta's No.2 leader was there - the only coup representative seen Friday. Camara's absence surprised many mourners and caused widespread speculation about the reason.<br />Colonel Toto Camara, who is not related to the coup leader, did not explain why Captain Camara was not in attendance but said the junta "reassures the people of Guinea that we will guarantee your well-being."<br />Conté's body was being taken next to Conakry's Grand Mosque before interment in his village about 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, away.<br />Conté died Monday after ruling this West African nation since seizing power in a 1984 coup after the death of his predecessor. He was widely seen as corrupt and authoritarian. Hours after the announcement of Conté's death, Camara's group declared a coup. He declared himself Guinea's interim leader, promising not run in an election he says will be held in December 2010.<br />The service at Parliament was heavily attended by members of Conté's former government, including the deposed prime minister, Ahmed Tidiane Souaré, who surrendered to coup leaders and stepped down on Thursday along with dozens of other government leaders.<br />Sitting in the front row was Facinet Touré, Conté's comrade-in-arms during the 1984 coup that brought him to power. "I ask the people of Guinea to forgive the general for all that he did that was not good," Touré said.<br />Conté's coffin sat on a stage with two of his three wives, who wore dark sunglasses and clutched tissues. Also attending were the presidents of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea-Bissau, along with and Jean Ping, chairman of the African Union Commission.<br />Presidential guards used belts to beat back mourners who wanted to push their way in.<br />Aboubacar Somparé, the leader of Parliament, who had been next in line to be president under the Constitution, remained at large following the expiration of a deadline that coup leaders set for government members to present themselves.<br />The European Union has urged Guinea to hold "democratic and transparent" elections within the first three months of 2009.<br />The United States said the military must restore civilian government as swiftly as possible.<br />"We reject the announcement by elements of the Guinean military that elections will not be held for two years, and we call for an immediate return to civilian rule," the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.<br />President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa, chairman of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community, described the coup as "an affront to peace, stability and democracy."<br />A French Foreign Ministry spokesman, Frédéric Desagneaux, said foreign diplomats would meet Saturday in Conakry, the Guinean capital.<br />Guinea has been in rocky waters for years. It had immense promise at independence, with gold, diamonds, verdant banana fields, seemingly limitless aluminum ore and rivers ideal for hydropower. It was considered one of the gems in the French colonial crown. But its economy has rapidly deteriorated, and its 10 million people are among the world's poorest.<br />Guinea slipped into obscurity under its first ruler, Ahmed Sékou Touré, a revolutionary who espoused Marxist policies and shut out the West. After Touré died in 1984, Conté's military coup was very similar to the one that took place this week.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVb4CaVEBiU5tZO8yCWr3-l6jPhx8C310zrx7mq0ui05MCN24K0xgixyjCl2MWP5-GRbJHmuyIalCzsKWbNNKqVnFO6VwYMzjSKRTrWUvdxBSTBJeiQgQE7KHaYchaERvYAu-XHx234g/s1600-h/DSC04574.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394670633584050" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVb4CaVEBiU5tZO8yCWr3-l6jPhx8C310zrx7mq0ui05MCN24K0xgixyjCl2MWP5-GRbJHmuyIalCzsKWbNNKqVnFO6VwYMzjSKRTrWUvdxBSTBJeiQgQE7KHaYchaERvYAu-XHx234g/s320/DSC04574.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Winter cold puts a chill on green energy</strong><br />By Kate Galbraith<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of renewable energy.<br />This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine.<br />So in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning off the solar panels. "At least I can get to them with a long pole and a squeegee," said Alan Stankevitz, a homeowner in southeast Minnesota.<br />As concern has grown about global warming, many utilities and homeowners have been trying to shrink their emissions of carbon dioxide their carbon footprints by installing solar panels, wind turbines and even generators powered by tides or rivers. But for the moment, at least, the planet is still cold enough to deal nasty winter blows to some of this green machinery.<br />In January 2007, a bus stalled in the middle of the night on Interstate 70 in the Colorado mountains. The culprit was a 20 percent biodiesel blend that congealed in the freezing weather, according to John Jones, the transit director for the bus line, Summit Stage. (Biodiesel is a diesel substitute, typically made from vegetable oil, that is used to displace some fossil fuels.)<br />The passengers got out of that situation intact, but Summit Stage, which serves ski resorts, now avoids biodiesel from November to March, and uses only a 5 percent blend in the summertime, when it can still get cold in the mountains. "We can't have people sitting on buses freezing to death while we get out there trying to get them restarted," Jones said.<br />Winter may pose even bigger safety hazards in the vicinity of wind turbines. Some observers say the machines can hurl chunks of ice as they rotate.<br />"It's like you throw a plate out there and that plate breaks," said Ralph Brokaw, a cattle rancher in southeast Wyoming who has 69 wind turbines on his property. When his turbines ice up, he stays out of the way.<br />The wind industry admits that turbines can drop ice, like a lamppost or any tall structure. To ameliorate the hazard, some turbines are painted black to absorb sunlight and melt the ice faster. But Ron Stimmel, an expert on small wind turbines at the American Wind Energy Association, denies that the whirling blades tend to hurl icy javelins.<br />Large turbines turn off automatically as ice builds up, and small turbines will slow and stop because the ice prevents them from spinning "just like a plane's wing needs to be de-iced to fly," Stimmel said.<br />Brokaw says that his turbines do turn off when they are too icy, but the danger sometimes comes right before the turbines shut down, after a wet, warm snow causes ice buildup.<br />From the standpoint of generating power, winter is actually good for wind turbines, because it is generally windier than summer. In Vermont, for example, Green Mountain Power, which operates a small wind farm in the southeastern part of the state, gets more than twice the monthly production in winter as in August.<br />The opposite is true, however, for solar power. Days are shorter and the sun is lower in the sky during the winter, ensuring less power production.<br />Even in northern California, with mild winters and little snow, solar panels can generate about half as much as in the summer, depending on how much they are tilted, according to Rob Erlichman, chief executive of Sunlight Electric, a San Francisco solar company.<br />Operators of the electrical grid do not worry much about the seasonal swings, because the percentage of production from renewable energy is still so low around 1 percent of the country's power comes from wind, and less from solar panels. In addition, Americans use slightly less electricity in the winter than in the summer because air conditioners are not running. This is especially true in sunny areas, so solar panels' peak production matches the spikes in demand.<br />But as renewable energy becomes a bigger part of the nation's power mix, the seasonable variability could become more of a problem. Already, power developers are learning that they must make careful plans to avoid the worst impacts of ice and snow.<br />Trey Taylor, the president of Verdant Power, which has put small turbines in the tidal East River in New York City and plans more for the St. Lawrence River in Canada, said that ice chunks could slide over one another "like a deck of cards," pushing ice below and harming turbines. That may rule out parts of otherwise promising sites like the Yukon River in Alaska, he said.<br />Kevin Devlin, the vice president for operations of Iberdrola Renewables, a wind developer, said that winter was probably the hardest time of year to maintain turbines, because workers must go out in snow and ice. Occasionally, he said, the turbines will shut down or set off alarms if it is too cold, and workers must brave the elements to fix them.<br />For homeowners, the upkeep of their power sources can also be a bother.<br />Stankevitz keeps his panels tilted 40 degrees or higher, but they still become covered with snow and experts say that if even one cell in a panel is covered, the panel will not produce power.<br />On the other hand, the panels can get extra power from sunlight reflected off nearby snow. And like other electronic gear, solar panels work better when cold.<br />Stankevitz said that on some rare winter days, when the Minnesota sky is clear, the weather is freezing and the sun is shining brightly, his panels can briefly churn out more electricity than they were designed to produce, more than on the balmiest days of summer.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxYCiMtwDZOBp5MrcTDveOyEb3XnFrOYu7mCaE5BxR7AuiRZpEmFYuyJ3aUYb7nzwNRCEMlrp0rQ9axl_tJK8FKAUQcijSQ9apy1tX8lX9es-02zS4la3xYpCGwT7s-EvcfR1UMoyaf14/s1600-h/DSC04575.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394665309866850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxYCiMtwDZOBp5MrcTDveOyEb3XnFrOYu7mCaE5BxR7AuiRZpEmFYuyJ3aUYb7nzwNRCEMlrp0rQ9axl_tJK8FKAUQcijSQ9apy1tX8lX9es-02zS4la3xYpCGwT7s-EvcfR1UMoyaf14/s320/DSC04575.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Bringing a mixed French city together at the movies</strong><br />By Steven Erlanger<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />MARSEILLE: Marseille prides itself on being a port city, a rough melting pot of differences rather like its signature dish, bouillabaisse, which combines various fish, some very expensive and some considered just a cut above trash.<br />Some of the toughest districts in Marseille, the second-largest French city, are in the hills above L'Estaque, which inspired Braque and Cézanne. But poverty is high, drug use is common and resentments are deep.<br />Samia Ghali, 40, is the new mayor of two of these districts, or arrondissements, with nearly 100,000 constituents. Of Algerian descent herself - like roughly a quarter of Marseille's 826,700 people - she is consumed by the economic crisis washing over France and its poor, and she is convinced that these neighborhoods are going to burn.<br />"People identify themselves with Marseille, which has always been a cosmopolitan capital, full of immigrants," she said, trying to explain the "Marseille exception" to most of the urban rioting that took place in Paris and other big cities in 2005.<br />But with unemployment rising quickly, a shortage of housing, the state reducing job-creation subsidies in poor neighborhoods and nearly 40 percent of the population under the poverty line, "the social cohesion of Marseille won't mean anything," said Ghali, a Socialist. "With the economic crisis, it will finish by exploding here."<br />She sees danger in the youth riots in Greece, even with their anarchist character. "It's a cry of alarm, a kind of warning," she said. "We shouldn't believe that what's happening in Greece can't happen here."<br />Not everyone agrees with her dark assessment, of course.<br />Jean-Claude Gaudin is the longtime mayor of Marseille, a member of the governing center-right party and vice president of the French Senate. A large man of 69, with a voice that echoes around his palatial office, Gaudin dismisses those fears.<br />"Samia Ghali belongs to the opposition," he said. "There it is. She may be surprised by the calm and serenity of the city, and maybe she would hope that it won't work well. But we've been announcing so many disasters for the last 14 years, and none of them have taken place."<br />Because of the sea and the beaches, and because the population is so mixed - with poor and Muslim communities inside the city, not funneled into suburban areas - Marseille, he argued, is a model of racial calm. "There are fewer disturbances in Marseille than in any of the other big cities of France," he said. "This is a city used to foreigners."<br />But diversity is not the same thing as integration, notes one of Gaudin's contemporaries, Jean-Pierre Daniel, who lives and works in these "northern neighborhoods" above L'Estaque. One small safe harbor here is L'Alhambra, a movie palace of the 1930s, lovingly restored by the city of Marseille and Daniel, 69, a determined man in love with cinema.<br />Son of a merchant mariner, Daniel has run the Alhambra since it reopened in June 1990 - seven years after the city bought it as a wreck. Nearly six of those years were spent in that special form of French debate called "cultural politics."<br />The left, which dominated the area, finally agreed with the right that a "cultural center" should be built to help "rehabilitate the neighborhood," Daniel said. But the city did not have enough money, "so they bought an old cinema instead, as a political gesture, and they asked me to run it." It is the only public hall in an area of nearly 100,000 people.<br />The only request, he said, "was not to provoke the voters with politics." With that charge, he created a place for education, relaxation and culture. The theater is of the old style, with 250 seats in steeped rows and a huge screen from floor to ceiling. He shows a mix of classic and modern films, both popular and art-house, featuring Chaplin, Tati and Pagnol as well as current releases from Woody Allen and Claire Simon.<br />Daniel and his deputy, William Benedetto, 38, soon to succeed him, present 150 different films a year, with 18 showings a week. There are special shows for schoolchildren, many bused from other parts of Marseille. Prices are kept low - 4, or about $5.50, for an adult, 2.50 for those under 13. Some 45,000 people a year come to see films, half of them children.<br />The theater is owned by the city, which provides half the annual budget of 600,000. About 20 percent of the budget comes from tickets, with the rest from state and regional grants.<br />Daniel and Benedetto say they believe that attending a cinema is a kind of socialization that cannot be had watching television at home.<br />"There is an etiquette to entering the cinema, buying a ticket and ascending the staircase to find a seat," Daniel said.<br />To give younger children the same experience, Benedetto has lowered a special area of the welcome desk so shorter customers can buy or receive their tickets at eye level.<br />Daniel wrote in the Alhambra's newsletter, "The hall of a cinema, like the theater, the circus, the stadium or the arena, is a space of a precise form designed to welcome the public, assembled to have an experience, to look and listen together to a spectacle that provokes thoughts and emotions."<br />Or as Benedetto said more pithily, "It's a sort of messianic conviction that the kids will open their eyes and experience these emotions."<br />Daniel said, "We want to enrich the lives of the children and the people of the neighborhood."<br />In the lobby, the theater displays an early projector, a praxinoscope, to show people how moving pictures worked, and there are also workrooms and labs for film students, and a small studio. Nearby is the editing table that Pagnol used for his film "Marius."<br />Ghali praises the theater, as does Gaudin, who said, "It's a very interesting initiative of the city, but it won't overturn the landscape."<br />Benedetto has a slightly smaller ambition. "It won't change the world" he said. "But we have the conviction that these movies can change the lives of these kids - they will ask themselves questions that resonate."<br />Maïa de la Baume contributed reporting.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Building a bridge to a better life<br /></strong>By Charly Wilder<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />PARIS: Aziz Senni started his career as an entrepreneur early, and for a compelling reason: to have a social life. Raised in a rough neighborhood of Mantes-la-Jolie, a working-class city west of Paris, Senni, who was born in Morocco, didn't have much pocket money as a teenager. So when he wanted to go out with friends or ask a girl on a date, he would ride the train into Paris to the old garment district of Sentier, buy armloads of inexpensive girls' clothing and sell it in the schoolyard during breaks from class.<br />Today, Senni's entrepreneurship has equally compelling, though more altruistic, motives. Having founded and run a successful taxi company, ATA France, and made millions, Senni, 32, is rallying other businesspeople to reach into rough neighborhoods like his and help other young people.<br />Soon after the riots that tore up some Parisian suburbs in 2005, Senni began contacting wealthy executives and entrepreneurs, asking them to contribute at least 50,000 each to an investment fund that would provide guidance and start-up capital to businesses from poor areas. Now up and running for more than a year, the fund Senni founded, Business Angels of the Housing Estates - known by the French acronym BAC - has raised over 5 million, or $7 million, from 80 investors like Claude Bébéar, former head of the insurance company AXA, and Gonzague de Blignières, co-president of Barclays Private Equity Europe.<br />The fund, Senni said, builds "a bridge between two worlds," allowing established entrepreneurs to share their experience with those who have the drive and talent but lack other qualifications.<br />BAC has invested close to 2 million in 10 projects, all still in business, including a cosmetic line for dark skin tones, a fast-food chain called Kool Halal, a sportswear designer and an online store selling Moroccan crafts. The businesses offer a return to investors, so the fund does not function as a charity.<br />"The people who come are often very efficient in their field, but they live in a bubble," said Abdel-Basset Zitouni, the director of the French Association of Young Entrepreneurs, who often works with Senni to mentor BAC recipients. "Very often they don't have a grasp on all the things related to the product, like marketing, financing and all the other things on the business end, but their products could potentially be very promising."<br />After graduating from high school, Senni attended two years of advanced vocational business training but had to drop out for financial reasons. Two years later, at the age of 23, he used money he saved by working, along with 70,000 of state funding, to start his taxi company, which he based on a North African model of collective busing he saw during a family trip to Morocco. This year, Senni said, ATA France earned 3 million. It operates 50 vehicles in 14 locations and employs more than 100 people.<br />He credits his success in business to his parents' strict emphasis on education and hard work. But Senni also said the anger he felt at being dismissed because of his ethnic and socioeconomic background had instilled in him a more aggressive sense of purpose.<br />"I wanted to take social revenge - make lots of money, earn social recognition, go from being the child of workers to being the head of a company," Senni said during a recent interview at ATA headquarters, a few blocks from the decaying housing project where he grew up. "The idea I held in my mind was to go as far as possible."<br />France has the euro zone's second-largest economy, after Germany, but the French unemployment rate has lingered around 10 percent for the past two decades. A 2005 government study found that unemployment in many of the suburbs of major French cities was around 21 percent and rising. Other reports have put the figure as high as 60 percent.<br />Senni's personal history is speckled with stories of discrimination, from a boss who asked him to introduce himself to customers as Anthony instead of Aziz, to teachers who accused him of cheating because he had scored well on exams. He recounts many of these tales in a memoir, "The Social Elevator Was Broken So I Took the Stairs" - a play on the French expression "l'ascenseur social," meaning upward social and economic mobility.<br />Because of his visibility as a foreign-born, suburban success story, Senni has been celebrated in the French press and courted by politicians. Jacques Chirac visited the ATA offices in 2004 when he was president, and François Bayrou, head of the Union for French Democracy, a centrist party, appointed Senni as his diversity spokesman.<br />As the French economy buckles under the weight of the global financial crisis, Senni said the difficulties young minorities face had become even more daunting. Fewer lenders are willing to take risks, and public statements indicate that the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy is backing away from a campaign pledge to help improve the economic situation in the suburbs.<br />Though unsurprised by the backpedaling, given the downturn, Senni worries that to neglect the suburbs now is to invite devastating results. "The financial crisis is going to have a much bigger impact in the suburbs than it does anywhere else," he said. "When there is a crisis, it's always the weakest areas, the lowest socioeconomic groups that are affected first."<br />He hopes that BAC will help cushion the blow, taking over where banks and government have left off.<br />"Crisis or no crisis, I do what I have to do," Senni said. "Simply because I wish someone had done the same for me."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Dexia may link up with French postal bank</strong><br />By Joseph Schmid<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />PARIS: The French business of Dexia, the banking group whose other activities are centered in Belgium and Luxembourg, could be split off and merged with the banking arm of the French postal operator La Poste.<br />Les Echos, a French business daily, said Friday that the Caisse des Dépôts et des Consignations, the French state-controlled bank that holds a 17.6 percent stake in Dexia, was pushing for the deal as a way to secure funds for Dexia's municipal financing division.<br />Because Dexia has a relatively small amount of consumer bank deposits, it relies on the financial markets to raise the funds it loans to local governments for their infrastructure investments. But the strains in the markets have pushed up the cost for those funds, squeezing Dexia's ability to offer new loans.<br />The number of new deals made by Dexia's public and wholesale banking arm fell 23 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, and the quarterly loss from all operations reached 121 million, or $170 million. The bank warned in November that financing costs had increased even more in the fourth quarter as markets continued to deteriorate.<br />That prompted analysts at Standard & Poor's this month to lower their credit ratings on Dexia's core banking divisions, to A from A+, saying the difficulties in securing money for its public financing operations "call into question the business's long-term viability."<br />The Belgian daily La Libre Belgique reported Wednesday that it was mainly the French municipal financing operation that needed to reinforce its capital reserves. This was the main business of Crédit Local de France, which was merged with Crédit Communal de Belgique in 1996 to form Dexia.<br />A merger with Banque Postale, the consumer banking division of La Poste, would provide Dexia's municipal financing operation with the funds it needs to continue its municipal lending.<br />Banque Postale had more than 29 million individual accounts at the end of 2007, with 250 billion of client deposits under management. This firepower would allow the Caisse de Dépôts and other shareholders, which include the governments of France and Belgium, to avoid having to provide additional cash to shore up Dexia's balance sheet.<br />Dexia received 6.4 billion of government aid in September, but investors have not been convinced that it would be enough to revive the bank's fortunes. Its shares have tumbled 63 percent since the capital injection, closing at 2.80 in Paris on Wednesday, the last day of trading before a four-day Christmas break for the Paris stock exchange.<br />Executives at Dexia and Banque Postale were unavailable for comment Friday.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg15HbxcSZug6xAVTV3nVk8CSMTOLTn5sgz4weX6PFb68tNB7B91dxc5xezmkYaezXAfUDerc0sw1t-49ZwhR2l_pFmvnfztzw8xEnh29-YtgZKNZY4EHHpBIr_ug7rZerO2_FgxvRhULw/s1600-h/DSC04576.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394664111825298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg15HbxcSZug6xAVTV3nVk8CSMTOLTn5sgz4weX6PFb68tNB7B91dxc5xezmkYaezXAfUDerc0sw1t-49ZwhR2l_pFmvnfztzw8xEnh29-YtgZKNZY4EHHpBIr_ug7rZerO2_FgxvRhULw/s320/DSC04576.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Japanese data reinforces recession worries<br /></strong>By Bettina Wassener<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />HONG KONG:<br />Industrial output in Japan plunged 8.1 percent in November in the biggest decline on record, intensifying worries that the world's second-largest economy was headed for a deeper and more protracted recession than previously thought.<br />Inflation figures Friday also indicated that Japan faced a possible new bout of deflation next year, while rising unemployment and evaporating consumer spending added to the bleak picture.<br />Taken together, the figures highlighted how difficult it will be for Japan to extricate itself from the recession it has been in for much of this year as consumer and corporate demand around the world dries up.<br />"It's a big mess," said Ryutaro Kono, chief economist for Japan at BNP Paribas in Tokyo. "We've never seen anything like it."<br />The sharp drop in industrial output from October surprised even the most pessimistic of forecasters, despite a flurry of announcements in recent weeks as manufacturers like Honda and Sony raced to scale back production as demand plummeted.<br />In the latest in a string of such news from corporate Japan, Fuji Heavy Industries, the maker of Subaru-brand cars, said Friday that it would reduce output by a further 10,000 vehicles in the business year ending in March, bringing the total to 70,000. It will also shed 300 additional temporary jobs.<br />"The output results were very disappointing," said Satoru Ogasawara, an economist at Credit Suisse in Tokyo. "They are much worse than expected."<br />Japan's export-dependent economy has been hit especially hard by recessions in the United States and Europe as those economies are crucial markets for corporate giants like Panasonic, Nissan and Toyota. Companies are also taking a hit from a strong yen, which makes Japanese goods more expensive.<br />"It was U.S. excess consumption that was behind Japan's growth in the past few years," said Kono of BNP Paribas.<br />The data on Friday showed that manufacturers planned to scale output back a further 8 percent this month, putting the manufacturing sector in line for a quarterly drop of 11.1 percent. This trend, combined with figures out Monday indicating that exports in November had dropped a steep 26.7 percent from the level of a year earlier, shows the overall Japanese economy is heading for a sharp contraction this quarter, said Kono of BNP.<br />Many economists believe the first two quarters of next year also look set for contraction before the economy bottoms out in the second half of 2009.<br />For next year over all, Ogasawara of Credit Suisse forecasts Japan's economy will shrink 2.1 percent.<br />Other data Friday showed Japanese manufacturers' inventories continued to swell despite production cutbacks. Data also showed the jobless rate had climbed to 3.9 percent in November from 3.7 percent the previous month. Household spending slid a modest 0.5 percent but was widely expected to deteriorate further.<br />Meanwhile, annual core consumer inflation slowed to 1 percent in November from 1.9 percent the previous month, thanks largely to a plunge in oil prices. And inflation appears set to slow further: Early December data for the important Tokyo region foreshadowed a December reading of only 0.2 percent for all of Japan.<br />This indicator puts the country in line for a slight fall in prices - or deflation - by the second quarter of 2009, Kono estimated.<br />With interest rates in Japan already near zero, the Bank of Japan has very little room to cut the cost of borrowing further and will now have to try to shore up ailing Japanese credit markets by buying commercial paper, which is a way to lend money directly to companies.<br />The government's already announced stimulus packages have yet to be implemented, but Kaoru Yosano, the economic minister, said Friday the government would act flexibly on possible additional measures if conditions deteriorated.<br />Other countries in the region, too, have raced to shore up their ailing economies.<br />In China, where the authorities announced a huge stimulus plan last month, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the central bank, said Friday that the country needed more policies to increase consumption to offset the effects of falling exports.<br />His comments came as figures showed Chinese industrial companies made a combined 2.4 trillion yuan, or $352 billion, in profits during the first 11 months of this year, up 4.9 percent from a year earlier - the slowest pace in years.<br />And in South Korea, the economic ministry said the Korean economy was in an "unprecedented crisis," but the government would strive to avert an annual decline in exports in 2009.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>South Korea warns of unprecedented economic crisis</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />SEOUL: South Korea's economy is in an unprecedented crisis with domestic and overseas demand falling at the same time, but the government will strive to avert an annual decline in exports in 2009, the economy ministry said Friday.<br />The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in its new year policy report to President Lee Myung Bak that it would aim to boost 2009 exports to $450 billion from around $430 billion projected for this year and post a trade surplus of more than $10 billion.<br />"The Korean economy is faced with an unprecedented crisis with exports and domestic demand, the two pillars of economic growth, falling at the same time," the ministry said.<br />But an influential local trade research institute, the Institute for International Trade, said earlier in the day that export prospects for the first quarter of next year appeared to be the worst in at least six years in the face of a deepening global recession.<br />In November, South Korean exports fell a revised 19 percent from a year earlier, as shipments to the country's largest market, China, fell by a third compared to a year earlier, customs agency figures showed last week.<br />The South Korean central bank has already warned in its official forecasts that the economy would grow only 2 percent in 2009, which would be the slowest growth since the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.<br />The Bank of Korea has slashed the policy interest rate by a total of 2.25 percentage points since early October to a record-low 3.0 percent and has pledged to supply sufficient funds into the financial system to shore up the economy.<br />The economy ministry also said the government would try to boost foreign direct investment into the country by 6 percent to $12.5 billion in 2009 from $11.8 billion expected for this year.<br />The ministry, which is also in charge of energy policy, said the state-run Korea National Oil Corp. will seek to acquire a medium-sized overseas oil company or companies in 2009 to secure more sources of energy supply. South Korea does not produce any oil in its territory.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Vietnam devalues currency</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />HANOI: Vietnam devalued its currency by 3 percent Thursday, spurred by falling inflation and the weakest annual economic growth in nine years.<br />The central bank set the dong midpoint at 16,989 per dollar Thursday, from 16,494 on Wednesday after a two-day cabinet meeting in which Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said gross domestic product had grown 6.23 percent this year. That is the slowest pace since 1999, when growth was at 4.77 percent.<br />Last year Vietnam was a darling of the investment community, with 8.5 percent expansion. After a domestic overheating crisis earlier this year, and faced with the global slowdown, the government has cut its growth forecast to 6.5 percent.<br />Next year will be worse, Dung predicted. "The year 2009 will be tougher than 2008, as we will be faced with a strong impact from the global economic downturn," a government statement quoted Dung as telling the cabinet in Ho Chi Minh City.<br />The government forecasts growth of 6 percent to 6.5 percent in 2009, but the International Monetary Fund expects growth to slump to 5 percent.<br />"The central bank's decision to let the dong fall 3 percent against the dollar is wise, as it eases pressure on the country's foreign currency reserves and stimulates exports in 2009," said Tong Minh Tuan, an economist at Bao Viet Securities. "Moreover, this shows that the central bank is moving in a way that investors expected. That will help boost confidence."<br />Vietnam's stocks fell 0.61 percent Thursday. The index has tumbled 67 percent so far this year and ranks among the worst performers in Asia.<br />Vietnamese consumer prices have risen 19.89 percent in December, well below the government's forecast of 22 percent, while average inflation for the year has been 22.97 percent, the government statistics office said Thursday.<br />December was the 14th consecutive month of double-digit inflation, but the figure has eased for three consecutive months.<br />Earlier in the year, in response to soaring inflation and a widening trade deficit, the government imposed three interest rate increases and strict measures to curb credit growth. But Hanoi has reversed policy since the global credit crunch started turning into a worldwide economic slowdown.<br />The State Bank of Vietnam, the central bank, has cut rates five times since late October, unwinding most of the earlier tightening, and has reduced banks' compulsory reserve ratio, which has effectively flooded the financial system with money. Dung has said that promoting exports is a priority, and the government has announced plans for a $6 billion economic stimulus package.<br />But foreign portfolio investment has fallen, while export revenues have also slowed in Vietnam's major markets, and the dong has come under pressure to slip.<br /><br />***************<br /><br /><strong>Rouble devalued again after Russian oil nears $30<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />By Yelena Fabrichnaya and Andrei Ostroukh<br />Russia's central bank allowed this month's eighth mini devaluation of the rouble on Friday, a day after the country's main export earner, oil, neared $30 per barrel, the lowest level since 2004.<br />The collapse of oil and other commodity prices coupled with the global economic slowdown and capital flight from emerging markets has turned the rouble around to a depreciation bet from an appreciation play in less than six months.<br />The central bank has spent more than $100 billion (£68 billion) defending the currency in the last 4-1/2 months to prevent a run on banks and panic among the population, which still has sour memories of savings losses in the 1990s and Soviet times.<br />Dealers estimate the bank has spent around $10 billion supporting the currency in this week alone.<br />Faced with an economy potentially heading for its first recession in a decade, Russia started on a gradual depreciation path six weeks ago to preserve reserves -- still the world's third largest at $451 billion -- which will be needed to support the economy.<br />Russian authorities, which initially denied they would allow the rouble to fall sharply, have softened the tone in the past weeks, saying the rouble cannot remain strong during a sharp downturn on global commodities markets.<br />Russia had plans to balance its budget at an oil price of $70 per barrel next year but plans to revise it now to $50.<br />By 1500 GMT the rouble was trading at 34.31 versus a euro-dollar basket, having broken through the 33.86 mark seen as the previous central bank's support level.<br />A source at the central bank confirmed that the rouble's trading corridor had been widened again, but gave no details.<br />First Deputy Chairman of the central bank Alexei Ulyukayev, seen as Russia's key forex policy maker, said he will not alter his policy of allowing the rouble to weaken gradually, ruling out a one-off devaluation of the currency.<br />"This policy, from our point of view, is the least painful for market participants and firms. We think there is no reason to change it in favour of sharp jumps and fluctuations," Ulyukayev told Vesti 24 news channel.<br />The rouble has weakened versus the euro-dollar basket by almost 13 percent since the bank started its mild rouble devaluation in September.<br />The rouble eased beyond 29 per dollar on Friday, the weakest level in four years, and was traded at around 41 per euro, the weakest level ever.<br />The Economy Ministry sees the rouble rate at around 31-32 per dollar next year, but central bank executives say they dislike the forecast and the rate will depend on the euro/dollar rate as well as the oil price.<br />Traders said they expected another weakening before the end of the year as the central bank was seeking to take advantage of the fact that key foreign players betting against it were on holiday.<br />"Everyone, including the population, expects the rouble to weaken further. So I don't think there much reason here for the central bank to delay (another move)," said Nikolai Podguzov, an analyst at Renaissance Capital brokerage.<br />"The faster they do it... the better it is from the point of view of reserves' spending," Podguzov said, adding that Monday would be a good day to do it.<br />Standard & Poor's ratings agency downgraded Russia this month, the first time since the 1998 financial crisis, citing concerns over shrinking reserves.<br />On Thursday, Russia's mainstay Urals' crude oil export blend fell close to $30 per barrel but bounced back to $33.5-$33.7 on Friday together with global prices.<br />(Reporting by Yelena Fabrichnaya and Andrei Ostroukh; Writing by Tanya Mosolova and Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>India inflation falls</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />By Rajkumar Ray<br />Indian inflation fell to a nine-month low in mid-December, helped by cheaper fuel and lower factory taxes, and analysts saw it diving to around 2 percent by March, freeing the central bank to cut rates deeply.<br />India's wholesale price index, the most widely watched inflation measure, rose 6.61 percent in the 12 months to December 13, slower than 6.84 percent in the previous week but a shade above a Reuters poll of 6.57 percent.<br />"It certainly means the second-round effects of the fuel price cuts and duty cuts are kicking in and inflation is also tapering off very fast due to the disinflationary effects of manufactured goods," said Rupa Rege Nitsure, an economist at Bank of Baroda.<br />"I expect inflation at 3 percent by end-March 2009 and expect the central bank to cut interest rates by 100 basis points and reduce banks' cash reserve requirements by 50 basis points."<br />In early December, the government lowered state-set prices of diesel and petrol and announced a 4-percentage point cut to value-added tax on a range of manufactured products.<br />The government said this week the central bank had considerable scope for monetary easing next year and aggressive monetary action may be needed if the global downturn continued to hurt manufacturing and slow growth.<br />This was India's lowest reading since March 1, and inflation has now nearly halved from early August's peak of 12.91 percent.<br />It is well within the central bank's forecast of around 7 percent for 2008/09 and some economists saw it falling below two percent by March-end.<br />Most analysts now expect the central bank to cut interest rates by another 100 basis points, a sentiment echoed by a top economic adviser to the government this week.<br />After slashing rates since mid-October, the central bank's key lending or repo rate now stands at 6.5 percent and the reverse repo rate, at which it absorbs cash from the market, stands at 5.0 percent.<br />Financial markets were relatively unruffled with the 10-year benchmark bond yield briefly easing one basis point to 6.56 percent and the rupee hovering closed to 48.00 per dollar.<br />India's $1 trillion (677.2 billion pounds) economy, Asia's third-biggest, has shown palpable signs of slowing after growing at 9 percent or above for the past three years.<br />Factory output growth has fallen sharply, companies have shelved expansion plans and laid off staff, and export growth has dropped as global demand weakened.<br />Economists and government advisers and officials expect growth to slow to around 7 percent this fiscal year and the central bank's chief said earlier this month that 2009/10 looked like being an even more challenging year.<br />(Writing by Saikat Chatterjee; Editing by Mark Williams)<br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>China foreign debt rises to 300 billion<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BEIJING: China's foreign debt grew at a slower pace in the third quarter, the country's foreign exchange regulator said on Friday, reflecting a slowdown in investment from abroad amid the weaker global economy.<br />China's foreign debt reached $442.0 billion (300 billion pounds) at the end of September, up 3.4 percent from $427.4 billion at the end of June, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said on Friday.<br />China's foreign debt rose 8.9 percent in the second quarter and 5.1 percent in the first quarter.<br />The end-September level was up 18.3 percent from the end of 2007, the foreign exchange regulator said on its website (www.safe.gov.cn).<br />Short-term foreign debt, an indicator of inflows of capital, rose to $280.0 billion at the end of September, up from $265.4 billion at the end of June. That amounted to 63.4 percent of the total.<br />But medium- and long-term foreign debt, which accounted for 36.6 percent of the total, fell $0.2 billion in the third quarter.<br />China's short-term foreign debt was about 14.6 percent of its $1.906 trillion in foreign exchange reserves as of the end of September.<br />China's yuan has stablised against the U.S. dollar since the second half of 2008. The country's foreign exchange reserves fell in October for the first month since December 2003, despite a record high trade surplus of the month, suggesting that speculative capital has begun to flow out of the country.<br />SAFE issued rules this week allowing exporters to accept 25 percent of the total due as prepayment and allowing importers to delay paying 25 percent of the total they owe, both up from 10 percent previously.<br />(Reporting by Langi Chiang and Zhou Xin, Editing by Jacqueline Wong)<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>China and U.S. bound themselves with linked addictions</strong><br />By Mark Landler<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: "Usually it's the rich country lending to the poor. This time, it's the poor country lending to the rich."<br /> Niall Ferguson<br />In March 2005, a low-key Princeton economist who had become a Federal Reserve governor coined a novel theory to explain the growing tendency of Americans to borrow from foreigners, particularly the Chinese, to finance their heavy spending.<br />The problem, he said, was not that Americans spend too much, but that foreigners save too much. The Chinese have piled up so much excess savings that they lend money to the United States at low rates, underwriting American consumption.<br />This colossal credit cycle could not last forever, he said. But in a global economy, the transfer of Chinese money to America was a market phenomenon that would take years, even a decade, to work itself out. For now, he said, "we probably have little choice except to be patient."<br />Today, the dependence of the United States on Chinese money looks less benign. And the economist who proposed the theory, Ben Bernanke, is dealing with the consequences, having been promoted to chairman of the Fed in 2006, as these cross-border money flows were reaching stratospheric levels.<br />In the past decade, China has invested upward of $1 trillion, mostly earnings from manufacturing exports, into American government bonds and government-backed mortgage debt. That has lowered interest rates and helped fuel a historic consumption binge and housing bubble in the United States.<br />China, some economists say, lulled American consumers, and their leaders, into complacency about their spendthrift ways.<br />"This was a blinking red light," said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. "We should have reacted to it."<br />In hindsight, many economists say, the United States should have recognized that borrowing from abroad for consumption and deficit spending at home was not a formula for economic success. Even as that weakness is becoming more widely recognized, however, the United States is likely to be more addicted than ever to foreign creditors to finance record government spending to revive the broken economy.<br />To be sure, there were few ready remedies. Some critics argue that the United States could have pushed Beijing harder to abandon its policy of keeping the value of its currency weak a policy that made its exports less expensive and helped turn it into the world's leading manufacturing power. If China had allowed its currency to float according to market demand in the past decade, its export growth probably would have moderated. And it would not have acquired the same vast hoard of dollars to invest abroad.<br />Others say the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department should have seen the Chinese lending for what it was: a giant stimulus to the American economy, not unlike interest rate cuts by the Fed. These critics say the Fed under Alan Greenspan contributed to the creation of the housing bubble by leaving interest rates too low for too long, even as Chinese investment further stoked an easy-money economy. The Fed should have cut interest rates less in the middle of this decade, they say, and started raising them sooner, to help reduce speculation in real estate.<br />Today, with the wreckage around him, Bernanke said he regretted that more was not done to regulate financial institutions and mortgage providers, which might have prevented the flood of investment, including that from China, from being so badly used. But the Fed's role in regulation is limited to banks. And stricter regulation by itself would not have been enough, he insisted.<br />"Achieving a better balance of international capital flows early on could have significantly reduced the risks to the financial system," Bernanke said in an interview in his office overlooking the Washington Mall.<br />"However," he continued, "this could only have been done through international cooperation, not by the United States alone. The problem was recognized, but sufficient international cooperation was not forthcoming."<br />The inaction was due to a range of factors, political and economic. By the yardsticks that appeared to matter most prosperity and growth the relationship between China and the United States also seemed to be paying off for both countries. Neither had a strong incentive to break an addiction: China to strong export growth and financial stability; the United States to cheap imports and low-cost foreign loans.<br />In Washington, China was treated as a threat by some people, but mostly because it lured away manufacturing jobs. Others argued that China's heavy lending to this country was risky because Chinese leaders could decide to withdraw money at a moment's notice, creating a panicky run on the dollar.<br />Bernanke viewed such international investment flows through a different lens. He argued that Chinese invested savings abroad because consumers there did not have enough confidence to spend. Changing that situation would take years, and did not amount to a pressing problem for the Americans.<br />"The global savings glut story did us a collective disservice," said Edwin Truman, a former Fed and Treasury official. "It created the idea that the world was doing it to us and we couldn't do anything about it."<br />But Bernanke's theory fit the prevailing hands-off, pro-market ideology of recent years. Greenspan and the Bush administration treated the record American trade deficit and heavy foreign borrowing as an abstract threat, not an urgent problem.<br />Bernanke, after he took charge of the Fed, warned that the imbalances between the countries were growing more serious. By then, however, it was too late to do much about them. And the White House still regarded imbalances as an arcane subject best left to economists.<br />By itself, money from China is not a bad thing. As American officials like to note, it speaks to the attractiveness of the United States as a destination for foreign investment. In the 19th century, the United States built its railroads with capital borrowed from the British.<br />In the past decade, China arguably enabled an American boom. Low-cost Chinese goods helped keep a lid on inflation, while the flood of Chinese investment helped the government finance mortgages and a public debt of close to $11 trillion.<br />But Americans did not use the lower-cost money afforded by Chinese investment to build a 21st-century equivalent of the railroads. Instead, the government engaged in a costly war in Iraq, and consumers used loose credit to buy sport utility vehicles and larger homes. Banks and investors, eagerly seeking higher interest rates in this easy-money environment, created risky new securities like collateralized debt obligations.<br />"Nobody wanted to get off this drug," said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who pushed legislation to punish China by imposing stiff tariffs. "Their drug was an endless line of customers for made-in-China products. Our drug was the Chinese products and cash."<br />A new economic dance<br />The United States has been here before. In the 1980s, it ran heavy trade deficits with Japan, which recycled some of its trading profits into American government bonds.<br />At that time, the deficits were viewed as a grave threat to America's economic might. Action took the form of a 1985 agreement known as the Plaza Accord. The world's major economies intervened in currency markets to drive down the value of the dollar and drive up the Japanese yen.<br />The arrangement did slow the growth of the trade deficit for a time. But economists blamed the sharp revaluation of the Japanese yen for halting Japan's rapid growth. The lesson of the Plaza Accord was not lost on China, which at that time was just emerging as an export power.<br />China tied itself even more tightly to the United States than did Japan. In 1995, it devalued its currency and set a firm exchange rate of roughly 8.3 to the dollar, a level that remained fixed for a decade.<br />During the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, China clung firmly to its currency policy, earning praise from the Clinton administration for helping check the spiral of devaluation sweeping Asia. Its low wages attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment.<br />By the early part of this decade, the United States was importing huge amounts of Chinese-made goods toys, shoes, flat-screen televisions and auto parts while selling much less to China in return.<br />"For consumers, this was a net benefit because of the availability of cheaper goods," said Lawrence Meyer, a former Fed governor. "There's no question that China put downward pressure on inflation rates."<br />But in classical economics, that trade gap could not have persisted for long without bankrupting the American economy. Except that China recycled its trade profits right back into the United States.<br />It did so to protect its own interests. China kept its banks under tight state control and its currency on a short leash to ensure financial stability. It required companies and individuals to save in the state-run banking system most foreign currency primarily dollars that they earned from foreign trade and investment.<br />As foreign trade surged, this hoard of dollars became enormous. In 2000, the reserves were less than $200 billion; today they are about $2 trillion.<br />Chinese leaders chose to park the bulk of that in safe securities backed by the American government, including Treasury bonds and the debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had implicit government backing.<br />This not only allowed the United States to continue to finance its trade deficit, but, by creating greater demand for United States securities, it also helped push interest rates below where they would otherwise be. For years, China's government was eager to buy American debt at yields many in the private sector felt were too low.<br />This financial and trade embrace between the United States and China grew so tight that Ferguson, the financial historian, has dubbed the two countries Chimerica.<br />'Tiptoeing' around a partner<br />Being attached at the hip was not entirely comfortable for either side, though for widely differing reasons.<br />In the United States, more people worried about cheap Chinese goods than cheap Chinese loans. By 2003, China's trade surplus with the United States was ballooning, and lawmakers in Congress were restive. Senator Graham and Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced a bill threatening to impose a 27 percent duty on Chinese goods.<br />"We had a moment where we caught everyone's attention: the White House and China," Graham recalled.<br />At the People's Bank of China, the central bank, a consensus was also emerging in late 2004: China should break its tight link to the dollar, which would make Chinese exports more expensive.<br />Yu Yongding, a leading economic adviser, pressed the case. The American trade and budget deficits were not sustainable, he warned. China was wrong to keep its currency artificially depressed and depend too much on selling cheap goods.<br />Proponents of revaluation in China argued that the country's currency policies denied the fruits of prosperity to Chinese consumers. Beijing was investing their savings in low-yielding American government securities. And with a weak currency, they said, Chinese could not afford many imported goods.<br />The central bank's English-speaking governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, was among those who favored a sizable revaluation.<br />But when Beijing finally acted to amend its currency policy in 2005, under heavy pressure from Congress and the White House, it moved cautiously. The renminbi was allowed to climb only 2 percent. The Communist Party opted for only incremental adjustments to its economic model after a decade of fast growth.<br />Little changed: China's exports kept soaring and investment poured into steel mills and garment factories.<br />But American officials eased the pressure. They decided to put more emphasis on encouraging Chinese consumers to spend more of their savings, which they hoped would eventually bring the two economies into better balance. On a tour of China, John Snow, the Treasury secretary at the time, even urged the Chinese to start using credit cards.<br />China kicked off its own campaign to encourage domestic consumption, which it hoped would provide a new source. But Chinese save with the same zeal that, until recently, Americans spent.<br />Shorn of the social safety net of the old Communist state, they squirrel away money to pay for hospital visits, housing or retirement. This accounts for the savings glut identified by Bernanke.<br />Privately, Chinese officials confided to visiting Americans that the effort was not achieving much.<br />"It is sometimes hard to change successful models," said Robert Zoellick, who negotiated with the Chinese as a deputy secretary of state. "It is prototypically American to say, 'This worked well but now you've got to change it.' "<br />In Washington, some critics say too little was done. A former Treasury official, Timothy Adams, tried to get the IMF to act as a watchdog for currency manipulation by China, which would have subjected Beijing to more global pressure.<br />Yet when Snow was succeeded as Treasury secretary by Henry M. Paulson Jr. in 2006, the IMF was sidelined, according to several officials, and Paulson took command of China policy.<br />He was not shy about his credentials. As an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, Paulson made 70 trips to China. In his office hangs a watercolor depicting the hometown of Zhu Rongji, a forceful former prime minister.<br />"I pushed very hard on currency because I believed it was important for China to get to a market-determined currency," Paulson said in an interview. But he conceded he did not get what he wanted.<br />In late 2006, Paulson invited Bernanke to accompany him to Beijing. Bernanke used the occasion to deliver a blunt speech to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in which he advised the Chinese to reorient their economy and revalue their currency.<br />At the last minute, however, Bernanke deleted a reference to the exchange rate being an "effective subsidy" for Chinese exports, out of fear that it could be used as a pretext for a trade lawsuit against China.<br />Critics detected a pattern. They noted that in its twice-yearly reports to Congress about trading partners, the Treasury Department had never branded China a currency manipulator.<br />"We're tiptoeing around, desperately trying not to irritate or offend the Chinese," said Thea Lee, public policy director of the AFL-CIO "But to get concrete results, you have to be confrontational."<br />An embrace that won't let go<br />For China, too, this crisis has been a time of reckoning. Americans are buying fewer Chinese DVD players and microwave ovens. Trade is collapsing, and thousands of workers are losing their jobs. Chinese leaders are terrified of social unrest.<br />Having allowed the renminbi to rise a little after 2005, the Chinese government is now under intense pressure domestically to reverse course and depreciate it. China's fortunes remain tethered to those of the United States. And the reverse is equally true.<br />In a glassed-in room in a nondescript office building in Washington, the Treasury conducts nearly daily auctions of billions of dollars' worth of government bonds. An old army helmet sits on a shelf: as a lark, Treasury officials have been known to strap it on while they monitor incoming bids.<br />For the past five years, China has been one of the most prolific bidders. It holds $652 billion in Treasury debt, up from $459 billion a year ago. Add in its Fannie Mae bonds and other holdings, and analysts figure China owns $1 of every $10 of America's public debt.<br />The Treasury is conducting more auctions than ever to finance its $700 billion bailout of the banks. Still more will be needed to pay for the incoming Obama administration's stimulus package. The United States, economists say, will depend on the Chinese to keep buying that debt, perpetuating the American habit.<br />Even so, Paulson said he viewed the debate over global imbalances as hopelessly academic. He expressed doubt that Bernanke or anyone else could have solved the problem as it was germinating.<br />"One lesson that I have clearly learned," said Paulson, sitting beneath his Chinese watercolor. "You don't get dramatic change, or reform, or action unless there is a crisis."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Worst slump in decades for Thai tourism</strong><br />By Ed CropleyReuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BANGKOK: From empty sun loungers at luxury hotels to vacant bar stools in dingy saloons, tourism in Thailand is going through its worst slump in decades, a result of the global economic slowdown and its own political turmoil.<br />"Right now, business is so slow. Some nights, only one customer," said Jodie, a 24-year-old transvestite go-go dancer teetering around the capital's Nana red-light district in spike-heeled, thigh-high boots.<br />Jodie's gloom is echoed by everybody in an industry that accounts for 6 percent of the economy in the self-styled Land of Smiles and directly employs 1.8 million people.<br />The head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, Phornsiri Manoharn, estimates the eight-day closure of Bangkok's $4 billion Suvarnabhumi airport by antigovernment protesters a month ago will have caused one million foreign visitors to cancel trips or go elsewhere.<br />"This is the hardest hit we've ever encountered in the 48 years we've been promoting tourism to Thailand," she said. And that's after the country suffered through the December 2004 tsunami, bird flu and SARS.<br />With arrival numbers for December likely to be 500,000 a third of forecasts the Tourism Authority's goal of attracting 15.5 million tourists in 2008 and 16 million in 2009 is in tatters.<br />Far from the 70 percent occupancy they normally see in December, Bangkok's top hotels are 25 percent full, forcing management to close floors, lay off contractors and ask employees to take unpaid leave.<br />"It would be fair to say that this will be the lowest monthly occupancy we've experienced in the history of the hotel," said Wayne Buckingham, managing director of the 740-room Royal Orchid Sheraton.<br />The corporate and conference business has been hit particularly hard. That segment of the tourism industry was more sensitive than others to the travel warnings issued during the airport occupation, the climax of months of sometimes violent political confrontation.<br />But Buckingham said that people in Asia had been through downturns before and would get through this one, too. "It's just that this one will take a bit longer," he said, estimating that it will be 12 to 18 months before things return to normal.<br />With the export-driven economy already feeling the pinch from the global slowdown, many analysts say they believe the airport protests by the People's Alliance for Democracy could tip Thailand into recession.<br />Even if tourism avoids the large-scale layoffs already hitting manufacturing, getting the industry back on its feet will be yet another problem for the new prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, who heads a shaky coalition.<br />If he starts diverting provincial cash to Bangkok or the south, where the best beaches and strongest support for his Democrat party are to be found, he risks further alienating voters in the north and northeast, where loyalty to the former leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, runs deep.<br />However, there was expected to be great pressure to intervene, because the dearth of visitors was hurting a wide range of people, including taxi drivers, antique dealers, gem traders and thousands of service workers.<br />The only people still smiling are the foreign visitors who decided not to be put off by the likelihood of more political unrest.<br />"To be honest, it's worked out fairly well all the sights are pretty much empty and we've been getting a guide all to ourselves," said Michael Gude, a businessman from London.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br /><strong>Paul Krugman: Barack be good</strong><br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />PRINCETON, New Jersey: Times have changed. In 1996, President Bill Clinton, under siege from the right, declared that "the era of big government is over."<br />But President-elect Barack Obama, riding a wave of revulsion over what conservatism has wrought, has said that he wants to "make government cool again."<br />Before Obama can make government cool, however, he has to make it good. Indeed, he has to be a goo-goo.<br />Goo-goo, in case you're wondering, is a century-old term for "good government" types, reformers opposed to corruption and patronage. Franklin Roosevelt was a goo-goo extraordinaire. He simultaneously made government much bigger and much cleaner. Obama needs to do the same thing.<br />Needless to say, the Bush administration offers a spectacular example of non-goo-gooism. But the Bushies didn't have to worry about governing well and honestly. Even when they failed on the job (as they so often did), they could claim that very failure as vindication of their anti-government ideology, a demonstration that the public sector can't do anything right.<br />The Obama administration, on the other hand, will find itself in a position very much like that facing the New Deal in the 1930s.<br />Like the New Deal, the incoming administration must greatly expand the role of government to rescue an ailing economy. But also like the New Deal, the Obama team faces political opponents who will seize on any signs of corruption or abuse - or invent them, if necessary - in an attempt to discredit the administration's program.<br />FDR managed to navigate these treacherous political waters safely, greatly improving government's reputation even as he vastly expanded it. As a study recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts it, "Before 1932, the administration of public relief was widely regarded as politically corrupt," and the New Deal's huge relief programs "offered an opportunity for corruption unique in the nation's history." Yet "by 1940, charges of corruption and political manipulation had diminished considerably."<br />How did FDR manage to make big government so clean?<br />A large part of the answer is that oversight was built into New Deal programs from the beginning. The Works Progress Administration, in particular, had a powerful, independent "division of progress investigation" devoted to investigating complaints of fraud. This division was so diligent that in 1940, when a congressional subcommittee investigated the WPA, it couldn't find a single serious irregularity that the division had missed.<br />FDR also made sure that Congress didn't stuff stimulus legislation with pork: There were no earmarks in the legislation that provided funding for the WPA and other emergency measures.<br />Last but not least, FDR built an emotional bond with working Americans, which helped carry his administration through the inevitable setbacks and failures that beset its attempts to fix the economy.<br />So what are the lessons for the Obama team?<br />First, the administration of the economic recovery plan has to be squeaky clean. Purely economic considerations might suggest cutting a few corners in the interest of getting stimulus moving quickly, but the politics of the situation dictates great care in how money is spent. And enforcement is crucial: Inspectors general have to be strong and independent, and whistle-blowers have to be rewarded, not punished as they were in the Bush years.<br />Second, the plan has to be really, truly pork-free. Vice President-elect Joseph Biden recently promised that the plan "will not become a Christmas tree"; the new administration needs to deliver on that promise.<br />Finally, the Obama administration and Democrats in general need to do everything they can to build an FDR-like bond with the public. Never mind Obama's current high standing in the polls based on public hopes that he'll succeed. He needs a solid base of support that will remain even when things aren't going well.<br />And I have to say that Democrats are off to a bad start on that front. The attempted coronation of Caroline Kennedy as senator plays right into 40 years of conservative propaganda denouncing "liberal elites." And surely I wasn't the only person who winced at reports about the luxurious beach house the Obamas have rented, not because there's anything wrong with the first family-elect having a nice vacation, but because symbolism matters, and these weren't the images we should be seeing when millions of Americans are terrified about their finances.<br />O.K., these are early days. But that's precisely the point. Fixing the economy is going to take time, and the Obama team needs to be thinking now, when hopes are high, about how to accumulate and preserve enough political capital to see the job through.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Russia govt unveils list of strategic enterprises<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Russia has unveiled a list of strategic enterprises entitled to preference government support in the economic crisis but said the list was not complete and did not guarantee the receipt of the financial help.<br />The cabinet published the list made of 295 companies from various industries and compiled by a government commission for increasing sustainability of the economic development on its Web site late on Thursday.<br />Moscow has pledged over $200 billion (135.7 billion pounds) to stave off the crisis, which has already seen companies cut jobs, salaries and investment plans, forced consolidation in Russia's 1,000-plus banking sector and prompted a rise in corporate debt defaults.<br />"The inclusion of a company in the list does not guarantee the receipt of the financial support," the government said in a statement on its web site http://www.government.ru.<br />"The main objective...is supporting their stability using not only credit instruments but other measures," it said adding the measures included restructuring tax arrears, altering tariff policy and granting government orders.<br />"Besides, if it is needed, the government will (act to) minimise negative social and economic consequences of the closure of these enterprises," the government said.<br />Among others, the list includes oil pipeline monopoly Transneft , Russian Railways, flag carrier Aerfoflot , gas export monopoly Gazprom , the largest oil producer Rosneft , No.2 mobile operator Vimpelcom , Norilsk Nickel , the world's biggest producer of nickel and palladium, and others.<br />However, the list lacks some major companies key for their industries, such as Russia's largest silver miner Polymetal or oilfield services firm Integra , while some companies are mentioned twice.<br />"The list...is not complete and may be modified by resolution of the commission," the government said.<br />To see the Russian-language version of the list, please click on: http://www.government.ru/content/governmentactivity/mainnews/archive/2008/12/25/943415.htm.<br />(Writing by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Victoria Main)<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Germany resists calls to spend its way out of trouble</strong><br />By Judy Dempsey<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BERLIN: With battle lines sharpening, the German government appears determined to resist calls to spend an additional 40 billion to fight its way out of the recession, according to officials attending a meeting in the Chancellery in the past week.<br />Chancellor Angela Merkel is being pulled in all directions as she plans a Jan. 5 follow-up to a meeting of German government officials, business executives and union leaders she called two weeks ago to discuss ways to counter the recession.<br />The business community, leaders of German states and other European Union nations are calling for the additional spending, which would amount to $56 billion. Industry chiefs, meanwhile, are calling for tax cuts.<br />Merkel, facing federal elections in September, has said the focus of any spending measures must be preserving jobs. At the meeting two weeks ago, industry lobbyists promised to go along on that point, but now they have backed away even as they exert more pressure on her.<br />Jürgen Thumann, president of the Federation of German Industry, said smaller companies could not make any pledges to save jobs because the economic environment was so volatile. These include the Mittelstand, small and medium-sized businesses in Germany, which are mostly family owned.<br />"A drastic fall in the number of orders means several companies will be forced to cut their work force," Thumann said in an interview with the German news agency DPA.<br />Already the automobile, chemical and wood processing sectors have introduced shorter working weeks and even some layoffs. In addition to seeking more federal spending, the Federation of German Industry has repeatedly called on Merkel to cut taxes, especially employers' contributions to the social welfare system, to encourage more consumer spending.<br />The dispute over taxes has even led to a wedge between the two conservative parties that support Merkel, her Christian Democratic Union and its allied party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union. Taxes must be lowered immediately, the Bavarian party said. Merkel said she preferred to wait until after the federal elections.<br />Under new leadership, the Bavarian party is aiming to win back disaffected voters in time for the European Parliament elections in June and the federal elections in September largely by adopting a more independent line from the Christian Democratic Union.<br />The European Union, while weakening its criticism of Merkel's cautious approach to dealing with the economic crisis, still wants the German government to do more because of its size: It has the largest economy in Europe.<br />Merkel, so far, has kept the lobbyists, the state leaders and the EU guessing about her final package.<br />After a meeting Tuesday in the Chancellery between representatives from the 16 federal states and Merkel's chief of staff, Thomas de Maizière, it appeared that the government wanted to limit spending in order to keep it well within the limits of the EU's Stability and Growth Pact, according to politicians present. The pact limits deficit spending to 3 percent of gross domestic product, so the limit in Germany's case amounts to about 80 billion.<br />Ingolf Deubel, finance minister of Rheinland-Palatinate, who attended the Chancellery meeting, told the Rhein-Zeitung newspaper that the Merkel government wanted to keep any extra spending to about 25 billion.<br />Regional politicians want more public money for big infrastructure projects, to which the government has already allocated 12 billion. It has also made 500 billion in bank guarantees.<br />Merkel and Peer Steinbrück, the finance minister, seem to have concluded that they will face criticism no matter what action they take.<br />If they increase spending, they risk violating the Stability and Growth Pact. Less than four years ago, Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, disregarded those rules and was accused of undermining Europe's attempts to keep budget deficits under control.<br />But if they do not increase spending, they face further complaints from other EU countries, notably Britain and France, and from industry here for not doing enough to bring Europe out of the economic crisis.<br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>How to get the money moving</strong><br />By Bruce Bartlett<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />GREAT FALLS, Virginia:<br />There is an old joke about economists: They are people who see something working in practice and try to figure out if it would work in theory. Just recently we have seen an example of this when interest rates on U.S. Treasury bills turned negative, meaning the government got paid for borrowing money rather than paying to do so.<br />In theory, this isn't supposed to happen. If market interest rates are negative then people normally just hold on to their cash. But these aren't normal times. The fear of risk is so pervasive that individuals and businesses don't trust even cash and are willing to pay a premium to park their money in Treasury bills.<br />This explains a great deal about what is at the root of the U.S. economy's problem today. People are so risk-averse that they are hoarding money, refusing to spend; banks are refusing to lend even to their best customers; and businesses are so desperate for safety that they would rather get a negative return on a safe asset than invest in something remotely risky, no matter how high the potential return.<br />When everyone in the economy suddenly stops spending, the number of times that money turns over falls. Since the gross domestic product equals the money supply times its rate of turnover - something economists call velocity - this means that if the money supply is unchanged then the GDP must fall.<br />Theoretically, the Federal Reserve can compensate for a decline in velocity by increasing the money supply. But in times like these it is very hard for it to do so because of something economists call a liquidity trap. When this occurs, the Fed cannot inject liquidity into the economy because its normal means of doing so no longer works. In a liquidity trap, trying to expand the money supply is like trying to push on a string.<br />Normally the Fed expands the money supply by buying Treasury bills and paying for them by creating money out of thin air. When it wants to contract the money supply it does the reverse, putting Treasury bills from its portfolio on the market and drawing money out of the economy when financial institutions pay for them.<br />But when interest rates on Treasury bills fall to zero this process doesn't work because money is essentially nothing but a perpetual government bond that pays no interest. If the Fed creates money to buy a Treasury bill that pays zero interest, it accomplishes nothing, economically. All it does is trade one government security for another that is virtually identical. There is no net increase in liquidity.<br />Under these circumstances, when the normal rules don't apply, the government must find more creative ways to ease credit conditions and get the economy moving again.<br />First, it needs to increase the budget deficit. This expands the amount of Treasury bills in circulation and is the same as expanding the money supply, which is necessary to keep the GDP from shrinking due to a fall in velocity.<br />Second, the Fed needs to revise its operating procedures. Instead of buying only T-bills it needs to buy securities with positive interest rates. These include longer-term Treasury bonds and securities issued by government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae. If necessary, the Fed could also buy corporate bonds, state and local government bonds, or even bonds issued by foreign governments.<br />Third, the government must try to raise velocity by stimulating aggregate spending in the economy. This is harder than it sounds. Buying bonds and securities may expand liquidity, but it doesn't increase spending. And we know from experience that tax rebates don't work because people save them.<br />The trick is to find a way to get people and businesses to spend money over and above what they would have spent anyway. A stimulus is not a stimulus unless it causes an incremental increase in aggregate spending. Simply replacing private spending with public spending doesn't do any good unless total spending increases in the process.<br />Since it is just as stimulating to invest money as to buy things with it, it may be possible to bring forward the plans for future investments that businesses and governments already have. But, again, it is essential that these investments be marginal - over and above what would otherwise be spent - or else there will be no increase in aggregate spending, and we will be no better off.<br />Above all, policymakers need to understand that the economy's fundamental problem is the decline in aggregate spending, which is pulling down both prices and output and rendering the Fed's usual tools for increasing liquidity useless. To restore the economy to health will require new policies that increase aggregate spending.<br />Bruce Bartlett was an economist in the Treasury Department during the George H.W. Bush administration.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Fiscal chaos aside, start-ups bloom in Argentina</strong><br />By Vinod Sreeharsha<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />MENDOZA, Argentina: Even in the best of times, Felix Racca faced a formidable task trying to build a new class of entrepreneurs in a country known for cozy cronyism and political melodrama. And now, the Argentine angel investor is trying to do it in the middle of a global storm that has sucked billions of investor dollars out of emerging markets.<br />So while the Buenos Aires stock exchange was tumbling to a five-year low in October after the government announced it would nationalize private pension savings, Racca was 600 miles away, coolly discussing the prospects of a start-up with Daniel Caselles.<br />Racca had provided the seed capital for Caselles's brainchild, AuthenWare, a company that makes biometrics software with security applications for banks and insurance companies.<br />To outsiders this may seem like an unusual time and place for entrepreneurship. The pension grab was widely seen as an admission that Argentina might not meet 2009's debt payments, approximately $20 billion.<br />After the government's 2001 default, lack of access to credit became a way of life here. The country remained largely cut off from global capital markets and foreign investment.<br />As a result, Argentine entrepreneurs started looking inward, and over time created a nascent start-up ecosystem with local venture capital funds and angel investors.<br />According to the 2008 Venture Capital Observatory Report, $25 million is available this year from those funds and investors. Gabriel Jacobsohn, the report's author and a business professor at the University of Buenos Aires, expects that figure to hold steady next year despite current economic uncertainty.<br />The volume is small, much less than 1 percent of Argentina's gross domestic product, but it represents a sharp cultural shift. In the past, family inheritance and government contacts often determined who started a business. Now, slowly, Argentines are beginning to trust and invest in each other.<br />The IAE Angels Club is an example. Its October meeting took place on the day when the Brazilian and Russian stock exchanges had to suspend operations in response to collapsing stocks. But the club's middle-aged members attentively listened to two business pitches by complete strangers in their 20s and 30s. Several new angels attended, one announcing he was starting a sister group in Córdoba province, in the center of Argentina, about 400 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.<br />The Angels Club has grown to 100 members, from six, in three years and has invested $3 million in 17 projects. Silvia de Torres Carbonell, the group's founder, said that without the club, "their money would go elsewhere, and most likely out of Argentina." Investments are usually not recovered for eight to 10 years.<br />Argentina's new financiers are also providing expertise. Several began their own start-ups during past crises and not only survived but thrived, with little support.<br />Racca is one such veteran. He and his partner, Emilio Lopez-Gabeiras, founded Intersoft, Argentina's most successful software company, in the early 1990s, surviving hyperinflation, stagnation and multiple currencies.<br />When they developed a spinoff with the hope of competing globally, they could not find investment partners here. So Racca moved to the United States. He visited 120 potential suitors over three years before finding Sevin Rosen, a venture capital fund based in Dallas.<br />The general managing partner, Jon Bayless, said that his first impression of Racca was that "he was a technical visionary, but terribly naïve in terms of how to run a business."<br />Nonetheless, the fund gave him a management team, led by Ron Brittian, a former Texas Instruments executive, and $9 million, its first investment in a company originating in South America. Three days later, Racca suffered a heart attack.<br />Still, he pressed forward with the company, Fuego Inc., a pioneer in developing business process management systems to help companies streamline operations. BEA Systems acquired Fuego in 2006 for $87 million. This year Oracle acquired BEA.<br />Racca says he wants to ensure that his compatriots "do not have to go through what I did."<br />In Daniel Caselles, he saw a technical genius. Racca invested in him before they had defined a product and after knowing him for barely three years, virtually unheard of in Argentina.<br />The company, still in its infancy, expects to generate $5 million in revenue by the end of 2009. It has drawn additional investors Racca said he received a new commitment of $300,000 last month. Another is Brittian, who now lives in Argentina.<br />He and Racca have begun a venture capital fund that plans to raise $100 million by the end of 2009.<br />In addition to financing Caselles, Racca is grooming him to be a future investor and business leader, practicing English with him and pushing him to take the lead on calls.<br />This is another break from the past, when Argentines viewed potential financiers with suspicion. Caselles says he does not worry about his ownership stake being diluted because "our investors take better care of us than we do."<br />Other pioneers include Emiliano Kargieman and Jony Altszul, who started Core Security Technologies, a software company, in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s. They succeeded in the United States, landing customers from NASA to the U.S. Army.<br />Today they run a venture capital fund back home, Aconcagua Ventures. Their first investment, Popego, was founded by a 24-year-old college dropout, Santiago Siri, who has since become the only Latin American selected to participate in both Le Web, one of Europe's most elite technology conferences, and Silicon Valley's TechCrunch50. A catalyst for the evolving start-up culture here was Endeavor, the United States nonprofit that fosters entrepreneurial networking in the developing world. Endeavor's first success was in Argentina 10 years ago, just before the country's last financial collapse.<br />Today it remains a strong presence here. But the entrepreneurial ecosystem here is now entirely locally run, mostly by people with middle-class backgrounds.<br />For instance, Santiago Bilinkis and his partner, Andy Freire, founded Officenet, an office supply catalogue service in Argentina, before the last crisis. Staples acquired it in 2004. Mr. Bilinkis has since invested in three start-ups. He said that what he called serial entrepreneurship was "the only way to change the country."<br />The founders of Globant, an information technology services company based in Buenos Aires, concur. They estimate they will take in $40 million in revenue this year, and last week completed their second acquisition.<br />Indicative of the changing values in Argentina, Alejandro Mashad, Endeavor Argentina's director, said, "Globant's four founders could sell their company today and each have a private jet, but they want to build a company in Argentina."<br />Google, a Globant client, cited Argentina's emerging entrepreneurial spirit as a main justification for its decision last year to base its Latin American operations in Buenos Aires.<br />Alberto Arebalos, Google's Latin American spokesman, says this developing culture "will not change despite the ups and downs of the economy."<br />An Argentine, Mr. Arebalos listed some of the tumult that Argentine business has endured in the last decades: "We have had at least five or six different economic plans, with completely different politics, a closed economy, an open economy, privatization, nonprivatization, a fixed dollar, a floating dollar, a controlled dollar, an uncontrolled dollar, brutal devaluations, increases in tariffs and frozen tariffs."<br />The lesson, he said, is "one goes nuts or one becomes a survivor."<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Gold mostly steady<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />By Miho Yoshikawa<br />Gold was mostly steady on Friday, holding near $845 amid views that the dollar would remain under pressure given the grim outlook of the U.S. economy, but activity was slow due to the holiday season.<br />New York futures markets were closed on Thursday for Christmas, and will reopen on Friday. All UK financial markets will remain closed on Friday for Boxing Day holiday.<br />Spot gold inched up to $845.90 an ounce at 3:48 a.m. from $844 late in New York, after moving between $840.00 and $847.75.<br />Gold has lost about 18 percent of its value from the record high of $1030.80 marked in mid-March.<br />Koji Suzuki, a senior analyst at SBI Futures, said a weak dollar was benefiting gold, which often trades with an inverse correlation to the dollar due to its role as a hedge against the U.S. currency.<br />"The lack of liquidity is mostly behind recent market moves as position adjustment takes place, but that is about all that's happening," he said.<br />Trading activity has been light this week due to the Christmas holiday.<br />The yen dipped against the dollar and the euro on Friday after the release of poor Japanese economic data, but the Japanese currency's losses were limited in thin holiday trade.<br />The dollar rose to 90.65 yen from around 90.40 yen seen in late Asian trade the previous day.<br />The euro was barely changed at $1.4020. Against the yen, the European single currency strengthened to 127.10 yen from around 126.65 yen.<br />Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves rose by a record $15.4 billion (10.4 billion pounds) in the latest week thanks to a stronger euro and a rise in commercial banks' foreign currency deposits.<br />The series of weak Japanese data released on Friday underscored fears that the world's second largest economy after the United States could sink back into deflation next year.<br />Government data showed that annual nationwide core consumer inflation slowed to 1.0 percent in November from 1.9 percent in October.<br />In a sign of further trouble for an economy already in recession, the ratio of jobs available to those looking for work fell to a nearly five-year low, while industrial production fell a more-than-expected 8.1 percent in November from a month earlier.<br />February gold futures was mostly unchanged at $848.2 an ounce on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange in early Asian trade after settling at $848 in New York on Wednesday.<br />U.S. crude futures rose above $36 a barrel on Friday after the UAE joined Saudi Arabia in deepening oil supply curbs to comply with OPEC's biggest-ever output cut last week.<br />The benchmark December contract on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange rose 12 yen to 2,465 yen per gram.<br />Platinum rose to $871 from $850 in late New York, while palladium was flat at $174.<br />Silver inched up to $10.34 from $10.33.<br />(Editing by Kazunori Takada)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3vu7a4wyvAIusjjGQiNdnJXa2YOTbx_BqsQwU-IwbXm1Yne4JSAZhKBseyDRg6Hb9fq8NmVqIx1rdBkB-Mqbuc4WRZ-y14J-8l8zwCtkH5xSz0iW5JjqZGBKP91sKCS9hQNxzSgzMMg/s1600-h/DSC04577.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394658909926482" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3vu7a4wyvAIusjjGQiNdnJXa2YOTbx_BqsQwU-IwbXm1Yne4JSAZhKBseyDRg6Hb9fq8NmVqIx1rdBkB-Mqbuc4WRZ-y14J-8l8zwCtkH5xSz0iW5JjqZGBKP91sKCS9hQNxzSgzMMg/s320/DSC04577.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>U.K. shoppers to flock to post-Christmas sales</strong><br />By Matthew ScuffhamReuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Shoppers were expected to make the most of record discounts in stores on Friday, with retailers looking to make up for dismal trading in the run-up to Christmas as the country headed towards a recession.<br />High street chains including Debenhams, House of Fraser, Top Shop, Comet, and Currys began their sales today. Heavyweights John Lewis and Marks & Spencer begin their in-store sales tomorrow, along with Next.<br />Retailers are relying on a strong performance in the post-Christmas sales to shift surplus stock and several are offering discounts of up to 90 percent.<br />The sector received a boost, however, when John Lewis, which is seen by some observers as a barometer of retail spending, said it had seen improved sales in the final four days before Christmas, reversing a trend of sales declines since September.<br />The employee-owned group said its department store sales rose by 2.5 percent between December 21 and December 24.<br />The performance will raise hopes that the traditional last minute rush for gifts and heavy discounting in the run up to Christmas would have boosted consumer spending.<br />"We had anticipated Christmas would come late to the high street this year but it certainly did arrive," said John Lewis' Managing Director, Andy Street.<br />Street said John Lewis had benefited from strong sales of speaker docks, iPods, Brain Trainers, fragrance and lingerie.<br />John Lewis began its online sale immediately following the closure of its stores on Christmas Eve and said it had seen its busiest ever online activity with one order being received every second in the second hour of trading.<br />Demand had been particularly strong for bedroom and dining furniture and plasma televisions, it said.<br />Several high profile retailers, including Zavvi, Whittard, and The Officer's Club have been forced into administration in the lead-up to Christmas, underlining the pressure the sector is facing from the consumer downturn.<br />On Thursday, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said retail sales figures would reflect a poor Christmas season.<br />The BRC, which publishes one of the most closely watched retail sales surveys, said conditions were tough and Britons were struggling.<br />That was backed up by a survey from market researcher Experian, which showed shopper numbers fell 4.3 percent on Christmas Eve compared with the same day last year<br />Experian said retailers had discounted heavily prior to Christmas in an effort to maintain market share and sales volumes.<br />"For consumers, this has created an unprecedented 'buyers market' which still for many has not been sufficient to offset concerns about their personal situation," it said.<br /><br /><br />*************************<br /><br /><strong>A last, late discount blitz, in a dismal season<br /></strong>By Stephanie Rosenbloom<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Retailers began their after-Christmas sales in earnest Friday, but even if business is brisk, it will not make up for the dismal holiday shopping season.<br />Analysts who visit malls each year said stores were relatively quiet Friday morning compared with previous years. In general, customer traffic has been slower throughout the holiday season, and with retailers offering unprecedented bargains in the weeks before Christmas, postholiday sales lost some allure.<br />"These are the same discounts we've seen before the holiday," the chief industry analyst for NPD Group, Marshal Cohen, said. "Nothing new, nothing exciting."<br />Mr. Cohen visited several Long Island malls Friday morning and said that there was a bit of a rush in the wee hours but that it subsided by 6 a.m. or so. He expected a lunchtime surge but said sales would not measure up to Black Friday, the blockbuster shopping day after Thanksgiving.<br />Customer traffic was light Friday morning at malls owned or managed by Taubman Centers in Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia; Clinton Township, Michigan; and Wellington, Florida.<br />Cohen said that in the future, retailers should use popular brands and compelling products to lure customers, not just low prices.<br />One retailer, at least, plans to do just that.<br />Wal-Mart, which had a 3.4 percent sales increase in November and has been bucking grim retailing trends, said it would sell discounted iPhone 3Gs at nearly 2,500 stores beginning Sunday. A black 8-gigabyte iPhone is $197; the 16-gigabyte black or white model will go for $297, with a service agreement with AT&T. (Not to be outdone by other retailers, Wal-Mart said it would match the price of any local competitor's advertised store price within the same promotional period.)<br />"Our electronics associates have been preparing for many weeks for the arrival of iPhone 3G," said Gary Severson, a senior vice president of entertainment at Wal-Mart.<br />As expected, retailers had one of the worst holiday shopping seasons in decades, with sales falling by double digits in nearly all categories, including apparel, luxury goods, furniture and electronics and appliances, according SpendingPulse, a macroeconomic report by MasterCard Advisors that estimates retail sales (including by check and cash).<br />The report said that in November retail sales sank 5.5 percent compared with a year ago. They were down 8 percent in December, through Christmas Eve. Excluding gasoline, the decrease in holiday sales ranged from 2 to 4 percent.<br />Snowstorms and chilly temperatures did nothing to inspire already hesitant consumers to go out and shop the last weekend before Christmas, usually one of the busiest periods of the year. The weather, though, may have contributed to some good news in online retailing, as consumers opted to surf the Web rather than brave the cold.<br />Amazon on Friday reported its "best ever" holiday sales season, but the company did not provide sales figures so there was no telling whether its profits were eroded because of deep discounting. Amazon said that on its peak day, it shipped more than 5.6 million units. Investors sent shares up 0.45 percent, to $51.67, by Friday afternoon.<br />In an interview Thursday, Michael McNamara, vice president of research and analysis for SpendingPulse, said online commerce sales were a bright spot for retailing, as was news that some sectors appeared to be stabilizing. Over all, online sales declined 2.3 percent compared with the 2007 holiday season, SpendingPulse reported.<br />"The dramatic declines that we were seeing that kept getting worse started to level off," he said, citing women's apparel as one example. The sector has been down 19 to 22 percent for most of the season. While that may not sound like good news, McNamara said that things must stabilize before they can get better.<br />"It seems once you take that 20 percent haircut off some of these sectors," he said, "that seems to be the firewall."<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>Boxing Day is for giving<br /></strong>By Judith Flanders<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />LONDON:<br />Ask most British people what Boxing Day is for, and they will answer, "It's the day the sales start." Or, possibly, the day for "visiting the rellies" - Brit-speak for relatives. Ask an Irish person and you will get a history lesson on Christian saints and martyrs, reminding you that it is St. Stephen's Day in Ireland. Ask an American, of course, and the answer is: "Boxing what?"<br />Boxing Day, usually thought of as Dec. 26, but technically the first weekday after Christmas, has a distinguished pedigree in Britain, and during this time of economic crisis, it is good to be reminded of it. It is on Boxing Day, after all, on the "feast of Stephen," that "Good King Wenceslas" looked out and saw the snow, "deep and crisp and even." The cold was notable not for its beauty, but for the hunger that it brought with it. The king calls for food, wine and "pine logs" not for his own feast, but that he and his page may "bear them thither" to give to the poor.<br />In Britain, post-Reformation amnesia over saints' days saw St. Stephen's Day renamed, but even "Boxing Day" is a reminder that the day is one for charitable giving. Maundy Thursday, at Easter, is for charity from the great (the queen still hands out what are today Maundy coins of a small but symbolic value, but were once very real money - alms for the poor people); Boxing Day, in contrast, is for giving from everyone.<br />In the 19th century, the "boxes" of Boxing Day were either literally boxes of gifts or money, given by employers to staff and servants. On Boxing Day 1872, Hannah Cullwick, a maid-of-all-work, the lowest kind of household drudge, wrote in her diary, "I go round every year to the master's or missis' tradesmen and ask for Christmas boxes, and they mostly give me a shilling or half a crown." (Half a crown was two shillings and sixpence, or perhaps two days' pay for a lowly live-in servant.) She and her fellow servants were given this money by the shopkeepers as a thank-you for bringing the household's business - and as an inducement to keep shopping there in the new year.<br />Servants also expected a tip from the guests who visited their employers at Christmas - and from today's perspective no tip could be too much for the drudgery involved. Cullwick recorded working from 6 a.m. to 4 a.m. to create the "family" Christmas her employers expected: She cooked for nearly 50 people on Christmas Eve and 20 the following day - with one person part-time to help her. As a treat, she was allowed to "run up" from the basement to stand in the hallway and watch some of the amateur play that the guests put on. She added wistfully, "I often think what a most delightful pleasure that must be, going home for Christmas, but I've never once had it."<br />By definition, before the last third of the 19th century, seasonal presents were Boxing Day gifts, and a "box" was a present from a superior to an inferior, whether in social status (employer to servant) or age (parent to child). Presents were a favor conferred, an act of benevolence - even to a child; they were not something exchanged between equals. When in 1841 it was noted that Queen Victoria's new husband liked "the agreeable accompaniment of Christmas presents," his childlike (servant-like?) taste was odd enough to comment on. At mid-century, the great Lewis' of Liverpool department store sold ready-made Boxing Day parcels for employers to give to servants like Hannah Cullwick: "Seven yards of double-width black merino, two yards of lining, one striped skirt and half a dozen linen handkerchiefs" - in other words, the materials for the servants to sew their own uniforms.<br />Presents were equated with charity. New Year's treats had long been organized for the poor; in the 19th century many workhouse or laborers' New Year's dinners were held on Boxing Day, after the family had had its own celebrations. The main thrust of these events was that the day was not one to satisfy your own needs, but those of others.<br />For most of the population, through most of the century, of course, while Boxing Day was a day for boxes, it was otherwise just another working day. It wasn't until 1871 that it became an official bank holiday (the British term for a "legal" holiday - you'd never know Americans and Brits spoke the same language, would you?). Charity was not the same as cessation from labor. "What have you done for the happiness of those below you?" asked Punch, nominally a satirical magazine, in 1843.<br />"Nothing? Do you dare, with those sirloin cheeks and that port-wine nose, to answer - Nothing?"<br />Today most householders in Britain continue to give Boxing Day gifts, even if they are end-of-year bonuses handed over before the holiday, and we have forgotten that they were once called boxes. They still go to our "servants," although in the 21st century these servants have been outsourced: Now they are the cleaners, dry cleaners, recycling collectors, delivery people and dustmen (sanitation workers - our word is a survival from the days when they removed coal dust). Unless there is a ghastly event like the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, unless something literally earthshaking happens, we have stopped seeing Boxing Day as a day for charitable giving. Instead we have a grinding 10-day holiday shutdown, filled with grotesque overeating and drinking, and then a return to the consumerist fray in the Boxing Day sales. This is the modern British Christmas.<br />In Britain, because there is no Thanksgiving holiday on which to spread some of the family-centered traveling, Boxing Day is most often used as a day for duty visits, for taking children to see their grandparents. It would be good if Boxing Day were added to America's list of legal holidays. (From over here, America looks awfully light on time off anyway.) But not if it just became another day in the round of shop-eat-family-family-family.<br />Instead Boxing Day could return as a day of giving. Not necessarily cash - and not material to make uniforms - but rather one day a year to donate skills or effort, a day for sharing something of value in the larger community. Help someone whose first language isn't English fill out driver's license forms. Load an old lady's iPod with Rogers and Hammerstein. Teach the boy next door to throw overhand, so the other kids stop teasing him.<br />What we really need to do is put down the punch bowl and pick up on what Punch magazine wrote more than 150 years ago: Don't just keep "the Christmas of the belly: Keep you the Christmas of the heart. Give - give."<br />Judith Flanders is the author of "Inside the Victorian Home" and "A Circle of Sisters."<br /><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>A fixture in New York's art scene struggles for its survival<br /></strong>By Robin Pogrebin<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />NEW YORK<br />Dwarfed by the Guggenheim Museum's commanding Frank Lloyd Wright building and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's stately Carnegie mansion, the National Academy Museum's graceful but relatively diminutive town house on Fifth Avenue could be a metaphor for its squeezed condition.<br />The 183-year-old academy, a museum and school that played a pathbreaking role in fostering a New York art scene in the 19th century, is in serious trouble. Having sold two important Hudson River School paintings from its collection this month to pay bills, the institution was recently branded a pariah by the Association of Art Museum Directors. That group views such stopgap measures as a breach of basic principles, stipulating that museums can sell art only to finance new acquisitions.<br />The association urged its members to cut off all loans to the academy and forgo any collaborations.<br />To the academy's leadership, such censure was not only an indignity but also a shove for an institution on a financial precipice. The academy has been running a deficit for five years, and this year's shortfall is estimated at around $1 million. It has a $4 million annual operating budget.<br />The academy has been borrowing heavily from its $10 million endowment - $3 million of which is restricted - to pay the bills and has had difficulty paying the museum guards and the heating bill. Its very mission is in disarray, and several board members have resigned over the last six months to protest the institution's direction - or what some say is a lack thereof.<br />A recent proposal to sell the academy's Beaux-Arts museum building on Fifth Avenue and two additional buildings on East 89th Street, and to relocate, was supported by the academy's 20-member board, known as the council. But the move was rejected by the institution's professional artist members, known as academicians. The academy also has an advisory board.<br />Among the 337 academicians, elected by their peers, are many of the country's leading artists and architects, including Chuck Close, Helen Frankenthaler and Frank Gehry. In a practice going back to the institution's founding in 1825, each new academician contributes a piece of art as a membership requirement.<br />The academy's previous director, Annette Blaugrund, who had championed the sale of the building, resigned last December. The board had difficulty finding a replacement and only this month appointed Carmine Branagan, who has worked at several nonprofit organizations but has no art museum experience.<br />In an interview in her office Branagan said the academy's main problems were the lack of a strong fund-raising mechanism and of clear direction.<br />Robert Levinson, vice chairman of the advisory board, said the trustees met last week to discuss changing the academy's constitution so the academicians would no longer have financial control.<br />Levinson argued that artists are ill equipped to make financial decisions about the institution's future. "They just live in another world and don't understand fiduciary responsibility," he said.<br />Even though it has been operating essentially hand to mouth, the institution has had no formal fund-raising operation in place, aside from its annual spring gala. An effort last year to start a capital campaign produced very little. Some trustees fault the artist members, who have not leapt into the breach by making big donations or helping to raise funds.<br />The artist Richard Haas, a member of the academy, called some of the criticisms unfair. "This organization existed for 183 years, in large part because artists are very creative in their thinking," he said. Still, when asked how the academy had landed in its current situation, Haas allowed that some "somewhat intransigent age-75-and-over artists probably had something to do with it."<br />Founded as the National Academy of Design, with the Royal Academy of Arts in London as a model, the academy serves as an honorary association of American artists, with a museum that focuses on American works and a school. It has one of the largest public American art collections in the country, more than 7,000 works from the 19th century to the present.<br />The academy raised $13.5 million from its recent sale of Frederic Edwin Church's "Scene on the Magdalene" from 1854 and Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Mount Mansfield, Vermont" from 1859. Branagan said that the deal had been arranged privately and that she did not know the buyer's identity, only that it was a private foundation that had agreed to hang the paintings publicly.<br />John Driscoll, the director of Babcock Galleries in New York, said that the academy members had refused "over several years to explore graceful and culturally responsible ways to alleviate their financial woes" and that "its artist membership deserves our contempt and any sanctions that can be applied."<br />"I fear for the collection as a whole, which is now at considerable risk," he continued, "as it is clear there is no one there to keep the barbarians from the gate."<br />The recent sale was not the academy's first; it sold Thomas Eakins's "Wrestlers" in the 1970s and Richard Caton Woodville's "War News From Mexico" in the 1990s, according to David Dearinger, a former curator. When the academy later applied to the museum association for accreditation, Dearinger recalled, it was asked about the Woodville sale and promised not to repeat such a move.<br />"I don't blame them for being upset," Dearinger said of the association. "They were made fools out of."<br />Consultants hired by the academy last year to explore a $5 million capital campaign had concluded that the goal actually needed to be $21 million, but that the institution was capable of raising only $800,000. "I think that woke up the artists," Levinson, the advisory board member, said of their decision. "They started to come out of the dream world."<br />Haas said the artists agonized over the proposal to sell the works before voting 183 to 1 in favor (with one abstention) in November.<br />Long-planned shows at the academy are now in jeopardy because the museum directors' association warned other artists against collaborating with the academy.<br />Currently on view there are a retrospective of George Tooker's works and a show on Ralph Albert Blakelock, both of which run through Jan. 4.<br />"The collection is wonderful, the shows they do are great," said Brian Allen, director of the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, and a critic of the recent sale. "They just have to find a way to develop a mission that will allow them to succeed."<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Protestant and Catholic leaders in Germany warn against materialism<br /></strong>Judy Dempsey<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BERLIN: Leaders of Germany's Protestant and Catholic churches warned Friday that "money has become God" and called for a return to nonmaterialistic values and urged bank managers to be more prudent during their Christmas messages.<br />Bishop Wolfgang Huber, who represents 25 million Protestants in Germany, criticized the strong profit-driven focus and "culture of greed" of individual bank managers and executives, and even named Josef Ackermann, chief of Deutsche Bank, as anexample.<br />Banks needed to give more priority to "sustainable value-building" rather than to short-term financial gain and hefty bonuses for its managers, Huber said.<br />"Money has become akin to God in the current situation," Huber told daily Berliner Zeitung.<br />Referring to Ackermann, one of Germany's most highly-paid bankers who this month said Deutsche Bank's investment banking businesses would generate a return on equity of 20 to 25 percent after the end of the current financial turmoil, Huber was very critical.<br />"Never again will a Deutsche Bank CEO set a target of 25 percent on equity returns," warning that it would create expectations that would grow larger and could never be fulfilled. He asked managers to be more prudent and forgo large bonuses."<br />Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the Catholic Archbishop of Cologne, said a banker was "the custodian for money that doesn't belong to him and with which he has to work said Wednesday .<br />"It's devastating that this ethos can simply disappear and that people can trade with things that don't exist."<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>****************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Religious Turks tested by wealth<br /></strong>By Sabrina Tavernise<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />ISTANBUL: Turkey's religious businesspeople spent years building empires on curtains, candy bars and couches. But as observant Muslims in one of the world's most self-consciously secular states, they were never accepted by elite society.<br />Now that group has become its own elite, and Turkey, a more openly religious country. It has lifted an Islamic-inspired political party to power and helped make Turkey the seventh-largest economy in Europe.<br />And while other Muslim societies are wrestling with radicals, Turkey's religious merchant class is struggling instead with riches.<br />"Muslims here used to be tested by poverty," said Sehminur Aydin, an observant businesswoman and the daughter of a manufacturing magnate. "Now they're being tested by wealth."<br />Some say religious Turks are failing that test. They see the recent economic crisis as a lesson for those who indulged in the worst excesses of consumption, summed up in the work of one Turkish interior designer: a bathroom with faucets encrusted with Swarovski crystal, a swimming pool in the bedroom, a couch rigged to rise up to the ceiling by remote control during prayer. "I know people who broke their credit cards," Aydin said.<br />But beyond the downturn, no matter how severe, is the reality: the religious wealthy class is powerful now in Turkey, a new phenomenon that poses fresh challenges not only to the old secular elite but to what good Muslims think about themselves.<br />Money is at the heart of the changes that have transformed modern Turkey. In 1950, Turkey was a largely agrarian society, with 80 percent of its population living in rural areas. Its economy was closed and foreign currency was illegal. But a forward-looking prime minister, Turgut Ozal, opened the economy. Now the country exports billions of dollars in goods to Europe, and about 70 percent of its population lives in cities.<br />Religious Turks helped power that rise, yet for years they were shunned by elite society. That helps explain why many are engaged in such a frantic effort to prove themselves, said Safak Cak, a Turkish interior designer with many wealthy religious clients. "It's because of how we labeled them," he said. "We looked at them as black people."<br />Cak was referring to Turkey's deep class divide. An urban upper class, often referred to as White Turks, wielded the political and economic power in the country for decades. They saw themselves as the transmitters of the secular ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder. They have felt threatened by the rise of the rural religious merchant class, particularly of its political representative, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<br />"The old class was not ready to share economic and political power," said Can Paker, chairman of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, a liberal research organization in Istanbul. "The new class is sharing their habits, like driving Mercedeses, but they are also wearing head scarves. The old class can't bear this."<br />Paker described the White Turks' thinking this way: "They were the peasants; why are they among us?"<br />Aydin, who wears a scarf, encountered that attitude not long ago in one of Istanbul's fanciest districts. A woman called her a "dirty fundamentalist," when Aydin tried to put trash the woman had thrown out her car window back inside.<br />"If you're driving a good car, they stare at you and point," said Aydin, 40. "You want to say, 'I graduated from French school just like you,' but after a while, you don't feel like proving yourself."<br />She does not have to.<br />Her father started by selling curtains. Now he owns one of the largest home appliance makers in Europe. Aydin grew up wealthy, with tastes no different from the older class. She lives in a sleek, modern house with a pool in a gated community. Her son attends a prestigious private school. A business school graduate, she manages about 100 people at a private hospital founded by her father. Her head scarf bars her from employment in a state one.<br />Her husband, Yasar Aydin, shrugged. "Rich people everywhere dislike newcomers," he said. In another decade, those prejudices will be gone, he said.<br />The business owners describe themselves as Muslims with a Protestant work ethic and say hard work deepens faith.<br />"We can't lie down on our oil like Arab countries," said Osman Kadiroglu, whose family owns a large candy company in Turkey, with factories in Azerbaijan and Algeria. "There's no way out except producing."<br />Ismail Kavurmaci, an observant Muslim who owns a Cerruti store, said Islam teaches that "nobody likes an idle man."<br />Fortunes were made, forming new patterns of consumption. Istanbul, Turkey's economic capital, is No.4 on the latest Forbes list of world cities with the highest number of billionaires. Luxury cars stud its streets. Shopping malls, 80 at last count, are mushrooming.<br />"Now, unfortunately, there is a taste for luxury, excessive consumption and comfort, vanity, exhibitionism and greed," said Mehmet Sevket Eygi, a 75-year-old newspaper columnist who has written extensively about Muslims and wealth.<br />Recep Senturk, a sociologist at the Center for Islamic Studies in Istanbul, said: "You have money, but do you buy whatever you want? Or should you keep a humble life? This is a debate in Turkey right now."<br />Islam forbids consuming more than one needs, but the line is blurry, leaving rich Muslims struggling with questions like whether luxury cars can be offset by large donations to charity, a central tenet of Islam.<br />Donations to Deniz Feneri, one of the largest charities in Turkey, jumped almost a hundredfold in the six years ending in 2006, when they topped $62 million. A large part of the donations came from credit cards on the Internet.<br />Aydin, for her part, supports 25 families, although she moved out of their district two years ago. The real problem is not finding a place to pray on a busy day out (mall fitting rooms work), but being truly charitable and putting others first in an age when the frenzied pace of life pushes in the opposite direction.<br />Even house designs take charity into account. Cak described a multimillion-dollar house whose design included an industrial-size kitchen where food was cooked daily and distributed in trucks throughout the Umraniye neighborhood.<br />"It's the way to find peace in your heart after spending so much money," Cak said. "I'm putting gold in my floor, but I'm feeding all these people."<br />Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Ad featuring singer proves bonanza for animal protection charity</strong><br />By Stephanie Strom<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Marie Bedford first saw what has become known as "The Ad" in nonprofit circles about a year and a half ago. "I saw it a couple of times and found I just had to respond," Bedford, an actress living in New York, said. "It's so moving."<br />The television advertisement, for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, features heartbreaking photographs of dogs and cats scrolling across the screen while Sarah McLachlan, the Canadian singer-songwriter, croons the haunting song "Angel" in the background.<br />That simple pitch has raised roughly $30 million for the organization since the advertisements started running in early 2007, making it the ASPCA's most successful fund-raising effort and a landmark in nonprofit fund-raising, where such amounts are virtually unimaginable for a single commercial. (The organization's annual budget is $50 million.)<br />McLachlan appears only momentarily to ask viewers to share her support for the ASPCA<br />"Sarah made it possible to do in two minutes what took 30 minutes before," said Jo Sullivan, the organization's senior vice president for development and communications, referring to the long-form use of celebrities in the past. "She literally has changed the way we fund-raise."<br />Like Bedford, many of the roughly 200,000 new donors attracted to the organization through the advertisement are "annuity" donors who have pledged an average of $21 a month to the ASPCA, which charges their credit card or receives the money via an automatic electronic transfer from their bank.<br />The advertisement came about by accident.<br />The ASPCA had been working with a Canadian firm, Eagle-Com Inc., which helps charities raise money using television and that had helped the ASPCA create spots featuring celebrities like Jason Alexander of "Seinfeld," Kevin Nealon from "Saturday Night Live" and Jennifer Coolidge, who played the manicurist in "Legally Blonde." Those advertisements typically ran in the early hours of the morning, which was all the organization could afford.<br />Eagle-Com was working on a project for a small animal shelter in Vancouver, British Columbia, that McLachlan supported and asked if she might be interested in doing similar work for the ASPCA<br />"She asked for information about our mission and programs and just got really excited," Sullivan said. "People keep asking us how we cultivated her did we send flowers, chocolates but it really was just a happy accident."<br />Donations from the McLachlan commercial enabled the A.S.P.C.A to buy prime-time slots on national networks like CNN, which in turn has generated more income. This holiday season, the ASPCA rolled out another advertisement featuring McLachlan singing "Silent Night," and it will release another McLachlan advertisement in January.<br />"I don't want people to hear $30 million and not understand that we've grown tremendously with that increase in income," Sullivan said.<br />For instance, over the last decade, the ASPCA has increased its grants to support other animal welfare organizations by 900 percent.<br />"A big chunk of that has come in the last three years because of this ad," Sullivan said.<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>*********************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Death toll at 9 in California shooting</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />COVINA, California: The killing began when an 8-year-old girl attending a Christmas Eve party answered a knock at the door.<br />A man dressed as Santa and carrying what appeared to be a present pulled out a handgun and shot her in the face Wednesday night, then began shooting indiscriminately as partygoers tried to flee.<br />By the time it was over, at least nine people at the party were dead and the house was torched. The gunman, identified as Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, killed himself hours after exacting revenge against his former wife by going on a massacre at his former in-laws' home.<br />Pardo's former wife and her parents were believed to be among the dead. On Friday, investigators resumed searching what was left of their two-story home on a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood of Covina, about 22 miles, or 45 kilometers, east of Los Angeles.<br />The house was owned by James and Alicia Ortega, an elderly couple who were retired from their spray-painting business and who often invited their large extended family over for parties, particularly around Christmas.<br />Pardo, 45, had no criminal record and no history of violence, according to the police, but he was angry after last week's settlement of his divorce.<br />Court documents show that Bruce and Sylvia Pardo completed their divorce on Dec. 18 after about two years of marriage. She got $10,000, their dog and her wedding ring in the settlement. He kept the house.<br />Bruce Pardo's lawyer, Stanley Silver, said Friday that his client had still been trying to pay the $10,000 as recently as Tuesday. He said his client had also fallen behind on spousal support payments after he lost his job in July.<br />The police said Pardo showed up at his former in-laws' home about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday for their annual Christmas party. The gift-wrapped box that Pardo was carrying contained a pressurized homemade device that he used to spray a liquid that quickly sent the house up in flames.<br />David Salgado, a neighbor, said he saw the 8-year-old victim being escorted to an ambulance as flames consumed the house.<br />Another neighbor, Jan Gregory, said she saw a teenage boy flee the home, screaming, "They shot my family!"<br />A 16-year-old girl was shot in the back, and a 20-year-old woman broke her ankle when she escaped by jumping from a second-story window. Those two, and the 8-year-old, have been hospitalized and are expected to recover.<br />When the fire was extinguished early Thursday, officers found three charred bodies in the living room area. Investigators found five more bodies amid the ashes later in the day, and one more on Friday. None of the dead or missing has been identified. The authorities were unable to immediately determine whether the victims were killed by the flames or the gunfire.<br />After the shootings, Pardo took off the Santa suit and drove away, witnesses told the police. He went to his brother's home, about 25 miles away in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles. No one was home, so Pardo let himself in, the police said.<br />They were called to the home early Thursday, and officers found Pardo dead of a single bullet to the head. Two handguns were found at the scene, and two more were discovered in the wreckage of his former in-laws' house. A car that Pardo apparently parked near his brother's home exploded Thursday evening, and more ammunition was found in it, the police said.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Creator of Usain Bolt's Olympic dance shot dead<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />KINGSTON: The dancer and choreographer who created the popular dance used by Jamaica sprinter Usain Bolt to celebrate his victories at the Beijing Olympics was shot to death at a Kingston nightclub on Friday, police said.<br />David Alexander Smith, who was known in entertainment circles as "Ice," was shot in the head and chest during an argument with two men who took his keys and fled in his car, police said.<br />Police said they did not know the motive for the shooting.<br />Smith created the "Gully Creeper" that Bolt danced each time he won a race at the Olympics last August.<br />Bolt set world records in the 100 meters and 200 meters and was a member of the Jamaican quartet that won gold in the 4-by-100 metre relay.<br />Jamaica has one of the world's highest per capita murder rates. More than 1,500 people have been murdered in the Caribbean island this year.<br />(Reporting by Horace Helps, editing by Jim Loney)<br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>MEANWHILE</strong><br /><strong>The Ten Days of Newton<br /></strong>By Olivia Judson<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Some years ago, the evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins pointed out to me that Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics and mathematics, was born on Christmas Day, and that therefore Newton's Birthday could be an alternative, if somewhat nerdy, excuse for a holiday.<br />Think of the merchandise! Newton is said to have discovered the phenomenon of gravity by watching apples fall in an orchard. Newton's Birthday cards could feature the great man discovering gravity by watching a Christmas decoration fall from a tree. (This is a little anachronistic - Christmas trees didn't come to England until later - but I don't think we should let that get in the way.)<br />All very jolly - but then, 'tis the season. Yet things are not so simple. It turns out that the date of Newton's birthday is a little contentious. He was born in England on Christmas Day 1642 according to the Julian calendar - the calendar in use in England at the time. But by the 1640s, much of the rest of Europe was using the Gregorian calendar (the one in general use today); according to this one, Newton was born on Jan. 4, 1643.<br />Rather than bickering about whether Dec. 25 or Jan. 4 is the better date to observe Newton's Birthday, I think we should embrace the discrepancy and have an extended festival. After all, the festival of Christmas properly continues for a further 12 days, until the feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6. So the festival of Newton could begin on Christmas Day and then continue for an extra 10 days, representing the interval between the calendars.<br />The reason the interval became necessary is that the Earth does not orbit the sun in an exact number of days. Instead, the Earth's orbit is 365 days and a bit. The "bit" is just under a quarter of a day.<br />It wasn't always thus. Some 530 million years ago days had less time. Back then, a day was only 21 hours, and a year was about 420 days. In another 500 million years, perhaps a day will be 27 hours, and a year fewer than 300 days. Because of the friction exerted by the moon, the Earth is slowing down. Indeed, already the days are a tiny bit longer than they were 100 years ago.<br />Because the orbit isn't an exact number of days, our calendars get out of sync with the seasons unless we correct for the fractional day. The Julian calendar, which was put in place by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C., was the Romans' best effort at making a systematic correction. Before that, the Roman calendar gave 355 days to the basic year, and every other year was supposed to include an extra month of 22 or 23 days.<br />But over a period of 24 years, that gave too many days; so in some years, the extra month was supposed to be skipped. This didn't always happen. By the time the Julian calendar was introduced, the Roman calendar was so far out of sync with the seasons that the year before the first Julian year had to include a massive correction; that year, referred to as "the last year of confusion," was 445 days. Talk about a long year.<br />The Julian calendar, which is broadly similar to the one we have now, divided the year into 365 days and a quarter. To implement this practically, three out of four years were given 365 days, and the fourth, 366. But this still wasn't precise enough: by the 16th century, the calendar had fallen 10 days out of sync with the solar year. By introducing a couple of extra fiddles to do with leap years at the ends of centuries, the Gregorian calendar fixed that. Again, however, changing calendars meant introducing a one-off correction to bring the dates back in line with the seasons. Rather than having a year with an extra 90 days like the Romans, Europeans "lost" 10 days as the calendar skipped forward. Hence the interval between the contending dates of Newton's Birthday.<br />It's strangely suitable that the length of the festival should be due to human efforts to describe the orbit of our planet. For planetary orbits were the subject of one of Newton's key works, "De Motu Corporum in Gyrum," ("On the Motion of Bodies in an Orbit"), which he sent to the astronomer Edmond Halley (of Halley's comet fame) in November of 1684. The proofs and insights contained here allowed the calculation of the orbit of any object, from planet to comet or asteroid, moving through a gravitational field.<br />Shortly after sending "Motion" to Halley, Newton began work on the treatise for which he is most famous, "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"). This is where he articulated his three laws of motion. He explained that gravity causes tides, and that the gravitational force of Jupiter perturbs the orbit of Saturn. The basis of many of his insights rested in a kind of mathematics he had invented as a private tool for himself years before: calculus.<br />Newton was not merely a thinker of abstract thoughts, however. He was also an experimenter. For example, his experiments with prisms showed that white light is composed of light of other colors. Although it had been known before Newton that shining a beam of sunlight through a prism would produce a rainbow, no one knew why. Newton discovered the reason: Light is composed of different wavelengths that are refracted differently by the glass of the prism. The prism doesn't create colors, it reveals them.<br />Physics was only one of his interests. He was deeply religious and he wrote more about religion than he did about physics or his other great interest, alchemy. Though he never managed to turn base metal into gold, later in life he became Warden of the Mint - the man in charge of making the country's money. He also went after counterfeiters, several of whom were hanged.<br />Newton does not seem to have been a pleasant man. He feuded with several of his professional colleagues. But he was also a genius, and his work laid the foundations of our modern understanding of the world.<br />In honor of Newton's Birthday festival, I therefore propose the following song, to be sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." For brevity, I include only the final verse.<br />On the tenth day of Newton,<br />My true love gave to me,<br />Ten drops of genius,<br />Nine silver co-oins,<br />Eight circling planets,<br />Seven shades of li-ight,<br />Six counterfeiters,<br />Cal-Cu-Lus!<br />Four telescopes,<br />Three Laws of Motion,<br />Two awful feuds,<br />And the discovery of gravity!<br />Happy Newton, everybody!<br />Olivia Judson writes "The Wild Side" column at nytimes.com/opinion.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>MEANWHILE</strong><br /><strong>Dumb, childlike wonder<br />By Garrison Keillor</strong><br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />It is the blessed Christmas season. But of course you know that. Unless you live ten miles up a box canyon deep in the Wasatch Range with only your dog Boomer and are demented from drinking bad water, you are inhaling Christmas night and day and "Adeste Fideles" is stuck in your head like a five-inch nail.<br />This Christmas I am in New York for the general dazzlement and variety. On Sunday St. Patrick's Cathedral was packed to the rafters for 4 p.m. Mass in Spanish, the name "Jesucristo" drifting around the battlements, and a few blocks south the Jane Austen Society was meeting to discuss Christmas in Olde England, and in between, I stopped in a men's store and bought six pairs of red socks. For myself.<br />Down deep I am selfish and don't like to feel obliged to do what other people are doing - dancing, leaping, piping, drumming, welcoming the Christ Child with joyful hearts, etc. - at the times when other people are doing them. This city enables one to leap or pipe pretty much whenever you feel like it, even after 10 p.m. on weekdays.<br />Yesterday I took my sandy-haired bright-faced daughter to dinner at 9 p.m., which is late for a 10-year-old, and introduced her to the idea of Ordering Whatever You Want, No Matter What Others May Think, and she got the chicken Kiev and for dessert an apple tart as big as a Gideon Bible. She is a good eater. She approached her meal with the quiet devotion that a chicken deserves. She loved the candles, the linen, the silver, the formality. I enjoyed a tiny quail egg poached in a toasted brioche with a dollop of caviar, though, thanks to my upbringing, I eat my meals surrounded by gaunt Chinese children holding out empty rice bowls. And when the check arrives, I have visions of debtors' prison, dank stone walls, a wooden bunk, a straw mat, water dripping, and so forth.<br />Here in New York, Mr. Madoff allegedly made off with billions of dollars of other people's money in a Ponzi scheme, which is selfishness raised to a high level indeed, but the selfishness I am indulging is a simpler kind - for example, if I feel like having a mocha, I just step into a Starbucks and get one. A small one, no pastry, but it feels luxurious, coming from a utilitarian background as I do. Why mocha? How does it further God's work on earth? I don't know. I just like it.<br />A few weeks ago a pundit wrote about what a wonderful thing it would be to appoint Bill Clinton to the Senate to fill his wife's seat, him being a former president and all, and then that idea vanished. Bloop. I imagine Bill called up a few people and said, "Whom are you kidding?" When a man can jet around the world and be received as a potentate and knock down a hundred grand every time he feels like giving a speech, he is not going to want to sit in the Senate chamber and hear old men drone on about Arbor Day and the crucial role of the forest products industry.<br />I feel the same way about Christmas parties. It isn't fun to stand around making small talk with other people's friends as they anesthetize themselves. But slipping into St. Patrick's for Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold I go.<br />It brought back memories of Christmas Eve in Copenhagen twenty years ago and how beautiful the sermons were before I started learning Danish.<br />A man gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not his own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand. Which makes me glad I am no smarter than I am. Let's go have lunch.<br />Garrison Keillor's latest Lake Wobegon novel is "Liberty." Distributed by Tribune Media Services.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Peruvian Jesus born to Virgin Mary on Christmas</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />LIMA: Virgin Mary, a 20-year-old Peruvian woman, gave birth to a baby boy on Christmas day and named him Jesus, Peru's state news agency said on Friday.<br />The baby's father, Adolfo Jorge Huamani, 24, is a carpenter. Religious Peruvians compared him to Joseph the Carpenter in the Bible.<br />"Two thousand years later the story of Bethlehem is relived," read the headline about the birth in El Comercio, the main newspaper in Peru, a predominantly Catholic country.<br />The mother, Virgen Maria Huarcaya, delivered the 7.7 pound (3.5 kg) boy, Jesus Emanuel, in the early hours of Christmas at the central maternity hospital in Lima, the capital.<br />"A few days ago we had decided to name my son after a professional soccer player," the father said. "But thanks to a happy coincidence this is how things ended up."<br />(Reporting by Terry Wade; Editing by Vicki Allen)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMiukgRV0IMKrfDspuyGLbCTjIkG0yoo0LeH6Xeo1-4P5l0FPf1BMhjULLmpF_gr7f0Kl6Qo3tMc0WOZr3-ywnvqCG7Mu8ZuJogucBVcdFIsp9JvMzcE18EOTpT2mQgWGfaySLRw1sdK8/s1600-h/DSC04578.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394655077395762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMiukgRV0IMKrfDspuyGLbCTjIkG0yoo0LeH6Xeo1-4P5l0FPf1BMhjULLmpF_gr7f0Kl6Qo3tMc0WOZr3-ywnvqCG7Mu8ZuJogucBVcdFIsp9JvMzcE18EOTpT2mQgWGfaySLRw1sdK8/s320/DSC04578.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong> </strong><br /><strong>Maliki faces accusations and rumors</strong><br />By Alissa J. Rubin<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />With provincial elections scheduled for the end of January, Iraq appears to be plagued by political troubles that seem closer to Shakespearean drama than to nascent democracy.<br />There is talk of a coup to oust the prime minister. The speaker of the Parliament has abruptly resigned, making angry accusations on his way out the door. And there have been sweeping arrests of people believed to be conspiring against the government, both in Baghdad and Diyala Province, northeast of the capital.<br />Beneath the swirl of accusations and rumors is a power play in which different factions within the government - and some outside it - are struggling to gain ground as American influence in the country wanes and elections approach that could begin to reshape the political landscape here.<br />The real struggle is for the country's identity: how much the government will be controlled from Baghdad and how much from the provinces, who will hold power and who will have to give it up.<br />The American mantra has been that Iraq remains "fragile" - to use the words of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus. On the political front that seems especially true. The one source of political unity recently has been frustration with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has been making arrests and using tribes in the provinces to set up personal power bases. His rivals, conscious of Iraq's long history of dictatorship, are crying foul.<br />"Maliki is monopolizing all the political, security and economic decisions," said Omar Abdul Sattar, a prominent Sunni member of Parliament. He listed political parties that he said were turning against the prime minister, including a powerful Shiite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is fighting Maliki's drive to centralize power in Baghdad and pushing to give more to the provinces, where the party has important power bases, particularly in the south.<br />"It's simply the story of the transformation from a democratic prime minister into a dictator," Sattar said.<br />Fresh in people's minds is the recent detention of 24 employees of the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, and possibly more from other ministries, who, according to some reports, were plotting a coup.<br />Maliki's office vehemently denied that this was the reason for the detention. In any case, the detentions of at least some of the 24 were politically motivated, according to several senior Iraqi government officials.<br />In Diyala Province, about 50 people were detained three weeks ago during a rally protesting the detention of a local Sunni political leader. Ten were members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni party that Shiite parties in Diyala suspect of having some links to Sunni insurgents and would like to hobble.<br />Equally controversial is Maliki's project to form tribal councils that have a direct relationship with his office and are paid from his budget. The groups, known as support councils, are being created both in predominantly Shiite and predominantly Sunni areas.<br />Their mandate is vague, but conversations with members suggest that they are a way to bring powerful tribes into Maliki's political orbit so that he has a local power base. Maliki's Dawa Party is not particularly influential in the provinces, unlike the parties of some of his rivals.<br />Deep resentment at these attempts to bolster his power and especially his exclusion of all but a small inner circle from decision making is prompting serious discussion of forcing Maliki out by holding a no-confidence vote in Parliament. A no-confidence vote removes the prime minister and requires the appointment of a new one.<br />In 2007, a previous effort to depose Maliki failed, but this time the talk seems more serious.<br />About two weeks ago the leaders of the major political factions in the government met in northern Iraq to discuss Maliki and whether they could muster the votes to get rid of him, according to high-ranking Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats.<br />"We have been counting the votes, and we have enough votes to withdraw confidence and nominate a new prime minister," said a senior member of the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite parties and independents that forms the largest bloc in Parliament.<br />What they do not have, however, is agreement on who would get the top jobs, which the parties want to nail down before making any moves.<br />The parties' concerns with Maliki vary.<br />The Sunni parties mostly feel distrusted, slighted and left out of decision making. Many Sunnis remain in detention despite an amnesty law that was supposed to result in the release of thousands from Iraqi jails.<br />The Kurds are furious that despite promises from Maliki and his government, there has still not been a vote on whether the disputed areas in the north, including Kirkuk, should become part of the Kurdistan region. They are also upset that Maliki has been rallying Arabs in the north against them, trying to shift the political balance of power. However, if Maliki agrees to some of their demands - especially for a referendum on Kirkuk - they might fare better with him than against him.<br />Among his fellow Shiites there is a more complicated dynamic. Some parties, like the powerful Supreme Council, agree with the Kurds' desire to have strong provincial powers, in part to curtail the power of the central government. But other Shiite groups, like those aligned with the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, are wary of granting more power to the provinces because they have a vision of a national Iraqi identity bolstered by a strong central government.<br />The former speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who resigned this week, accused Maliki's rivals of pushing him out to make a no-confidence vote easier.<br />"They are hoping that after my resignation, it will be easier for them to dismiss Maliki," he said Tuesday.<br />A vote of no confidence, however, would not be a coup; it would in fact be a democratic, orderly way to change the government. But unless there is consensus about a successor, the government could drift as it did after the elections in 2005, when there were several months of discussions about who would become prime minister, and in 2006, when the previous prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was removed.<br />There is another problem: The very qualities that lawmakers resent in Maliki - strong-arm tactics combined with efforts to reach out to select local constituencies - have enhanced his profile on the Iraqi street. The question is, will they do better by sticking with him or forcing him out?<br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>13 killed as Iraqi prisoners try to escape</strong><br />By Timothy Williams and Mohammed Hussein<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: Six police officers and seven prisoners suspected of being members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia were killed early Friday in a fierce gunfight during a brazen jailbreak by militants at a police station in western Iraq, officials said.<br />Three of the militants, including a man Iraqi police described as being a local leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, escaped and remained at large, the authorities said. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, and the leader who escaped is suspected of having killed several police officers and civilians in the past.<br />The city of Ramadi, where the jailbreak occurred, was cordoned off Friday morning and a curfew was imposed on its 450,000 residents, said Latif Obaid Ayada, the mayor. Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, is located about 60 miles west of Baghdad.<br />Seven Iraqi police officers and one inmate were wounded in the gun battle, which started inside a police station near the city center and spilled out onto local streets. No bystanders have been reported injured.<br />Ramadi had been at the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency against American forces until tribal chiefs began to turn against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia two years ago and started cooperating with the American military and the Iraqi government.<br />The escape attempt began about 1 a.m. as an officer at Al Forsan police station was escorting an inmate back to his cell from an interrogation room, said Major General Tareq al-Youssef, police chief of Anbar Province.<br />As the policeman entered the cell with the prisoner, another inmate, Emad Ahmed Ferhan, the suspected Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia leader, complained that he felt nauseated and needed to use the toilet. As Ferhan was leaving the cell, which held about 30 inmates at the time, he attacked the police officer.<br />The officer, Majid Latif, was overpowered, stripped of his AK-47 rifle, bound and fatally shot, al-Youssef said.<br />"They exploited the humanity of the guard to commit the crime," the police chief said. "He paid with his life for his mistake."<br />Of the 30 men in the cell, the police said 11 fled as part of what officials described as a previously planned escape plot.<br />The authorities said that 10 of the 11 men were being held for terrorism-related offenses. The other man had been detained because he was suspected of having committed an honor crime.<br />After the original shooting, a second police officer rushed to the scene, but he was also fatally shot, the authorities said.<br />Armed with a second automatic weapon at that point, the prisoners made their way to the police station's armory, officials said.<br />Tha'eer Dulaimi, a policeman wounded in the ensuing shootout, said most of the station's officers had been in bed when the jailbreak began.<br />"We were sleeping when we heard shouting and realized the prisoners were escaping," said Dulaimi, who was hospitalized with a gunshot wound that was not considered life-threatening. "Instantly, we ran toward the armory. The criminals started shooting at us to prevent us from reaching the armory, but we beat them back and they did not get inside."<br />Three inmates were shot and killed inside the police station, the authorities said.<br />After failing to take the armory, the prisoners began to shoot their way out of the station, led by Ferhan, who is suspected of being the mastermind of the plot.<br />"When they came out of the police station, they were shooting at us," said Mohammed Dulaimi, a police officer who was also wounded. "I shot back and I killed one of them, but some of them escaped."<br />Among those killed were a lieutenant colonel and a captain, said al-Dulaimi.<br />On the darkened city streets, four inmates were chased down and fatally shot, the authorities said. One prisoner, the man accused of an honor crime, surrendered and was not seriously injured, the police said.<br />A door-to-door search with photos of the three men who managed to escape, including Ferhan, continued throughout the day.<br />There was no immediate information about Ferhan's suspected previous crimes.<br />Officials in Ramadi said Friday that despite widespread support in the city for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in recent years, there was no evidence that residents had aided the prisoners.<br />Ramadi's mayor said adult males in the city had retrieved their own firearms and had helped the authorities search for the militants.<br />"The locals have played a prominent role in helping with security in town," Ayada said.<br />Later, residents said the bold jailbreak does not necessarily mean that the militant group would reassert itself.<br />"I don't think this attack will take us back to the days of Al Qaeda," said Barzan al-Aliyawi, a 21-year-old student.<br />Omar al-Reshawi, 25, agreed, saying the local authorities needed to take better precautions with jailed militants.<br />"It was negligent on the part of the police," he said. "They need to put those criminals in a special place, and the police should take more restrictive measures."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Iraqi Christians brave violence to celebrate Christmas</strong><br />By Sam Dagher<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />MOSUL, Iraq: Iraqi Christians in the northern city of Mosul say this year has been the worst in living memory. After a wave of killings and attacks in October, more than 2,000 families fled to nearby villages.<br />Mosul remains one of the most dangerous places in Iraq and a stubborn holdout of the insurgency, but security has improved enough that at least half of those families have returned. On Thursday, they braved embattled streets and biting cold and rain to attend Christmas Masses and pray for their safety.<br />At the nearly thousand-year-old Chaldean church of Miskinta, where a bomb had exploded in October and where graffiti praising the insurgency remains on a nearby wall, about 50 parishioners followed a deacon outside to the courtyard, where a fire was lighted to symbolize the birth of Christ.<br />Many tried to hold back tears as they prayed for "the rebirth of tormented Iraq to a new life of forgiveness and compassion."<br />Among those attending the Mass was Fadi Ammar, 5, who lost his father and another relative in a bombing in the Jadid neighborhood of Mosul on Dec. 1, which killed 21 people. The family had just returned to Mosul after fleeing in October to their ancestral village in the adjacent Nineveh Plain, which, although part of the province that includes Mosul, is now under the effective protection of Kurds from the adjacent semiautonomous Kurdistan region and is considered significantly safer than Mosul.<br />Another Mass, at St. Paul's on the east side of the city, was held on Wednesday afternoon instead of on Christmas Eve because of security precautions.<br />To the extent that security has improved, it is thanks largely to the nearly 3,000 national police officers sent here from Baghdad in October to bolster the local force.<br />But many of the Christians who have returned said they did so because they were inspired by the determination and faith of one priest and a handful of nuns who stayed in the city against the odds.<br />At St. Paul's, Mikhail Ibrahim said the only reason he returned to Mosul after fleeing for a few weeks with his family was because of his faith in the Reverend Basman George Fatouhi, the Chaldean Church's de facto leader in Mosul.<br />"He was the only one who stayed and took care of the community," Ibrahim said. "He told us to come back, and we did."<br />Father Fatouhi, a charismatic 27-year-old priest, was foisted into the effective leadership of the Chaldean Church in Mosul after the kidnapping and death this year of its leader, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. Rahho's closest aide, another senior figure in the church, was killed in 2007.<br />Fatouhi had negotiated with the archbishop's kidnappers, who abducted him after a church service and killed three of his companions.<br />Their demands went from $300,000 to $20,000, but, after the lesser sum was paid, the negotiators were told that the archbishop had died in captivity because he did not have his diabetes medication. Fatouhi and another church member dug out his body out of a shallow grave and took it to the morgue.<br />Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Christians have been hit hard, particularly in parts of Baghdad and Mosul. Numerous churches and the Chaldean archdiocese building in Mosul were bombed, and many priests and parishioners were either killed or kidnapped for ransom.<br />The largest Christian denomination is the Chaldean Church, an Eastern Rite church that is part of the Roman Catholic Church but maintains its own customs and liturgy.<br />Amid the violence, the few remaining church leaders like Fatouhi and Sister Autour Yousif, who also belongs to the Chaldean Church, are working against the tide to keep their faith alive.<br />During the depths of the crisis in October, they were not only providing moral and spiritual support, but often venturing out at great risk to buy food and provisions for families who were too scared to even go to the market. They have also been determined to maintain church services in some of the most dangerous parts of the city.<br />On numerous occasions, the pair have found themselves carrying out the grim task of collecting the bodies of Christians from the morgue because familiy members were too afraid to do it.<br />Sister Yousif is among three nuns at a convent next to the Miskinta church who have refused to leave Mosul. They care for 27 orphan girls and reach out to Muslims and Christians alike.<br />"We are like the rest of the people," she says. "We will remain until they all leave. The poor need us."<br />In his homily on Thursday, Fatouhi compared Jesus to a flame that continues to "warm the hearts" of the faithful during difficult and trying times.<br /><br /><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Israel opens Gaza border for humanitarian aid</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Israel reopened its border with Gaza on Friday to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid, despite continued rocket and mortar fire from the coastal strip and growing expectations of a large-scale Israeli military campaign against Palestinian militants.<br />One rocket fired by militants late Friday landed short of its target and struck a house in northern Gaza, killing two Palestinian girls, ages 5 and 12, said a Health Ministry official, Dr. Moiaya Hassanain. The two girls were cousins, he said, adding that three other children were wounded.<br />There was no immediate claim of responsibility.<br />The military said that approximately 90 trucks were delivering medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment included a large donation of goods from the wife of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt as well as more than 400,000 liters, or 150,000 gallons, of fuel and 200 tons of natural gas, the military said.<br />The Israeli Defense Ministry said it agreed to open its cargo crossings into Gaza to avoid a humanitarian crisis there. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the decision came after consultations with defense officials as well as calls from the international community. Israel controls Gaza's cargo crossings, which are used to deliver food, fuel and other goods into the territory.<br />Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a cabinet minister, said the humanitarian shipment was meant to be a message to the people of Gaza that they were not enemies of Israel.<br />"We are sending them a message that the Hamas leadership has turned them into a punching bag for everyone," he told Israel Radio. "It is a leadership that has turned school yards in rocket launching pads. This a leadership that does not care that the blood of its people will run in the streets."<br />The deliveries did not persuade Gaza militants to halt their rocket and mortar fire on Israeli border communities. The military said more than 10 rockets and mortars were fired toward Israel early Friday. One home was struck but no injuries were reported.<br />Israel had originally agreed to open the cargo crossings with Gaza on Wednesday, but shut the passages after militants began pounding southern Israel with dozens of rockets and mortars. The attacks were the heaviest since an Egyptian-mediated truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers expired last week. The truce, which had taken effect in June, began unraveling in early November.<br />Pressure has been mounting in Israel for the military to strike forcefully against Gaza militants and Israeli leaders have been voicing strong threats in recent days. But on Friday, military officials said the army was planning a routine rotation of its troops along the Gaza border in the coming week. That, coupled with winter weather, made an imminent operation seem unlikely, they said.<br />The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to discuss military strategy publicly.<br />Israel has maintained a strict blockade of Gaza since the June 19 cease-fire began unraveling six weeks ago, allowing in only small quantities of essential goods. Egypt has also sealed its border crossing with the territory, the main exit point for Gazans traveling abroad.<br />Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was in Cairo on Thursday for meetings with Mubarak, who urged Israel to exercise restraint in response to the rocket fire. Livni brushed aside the calls, however, and said Israel would defend itself.<br />Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also issued a direct, emotional plea to the people of Gaza to stop firing and turn against their Hamas leaders, whom he called "the main reason for your suffering - for all of ours." He delivered the message in an interview with the Arabic-language Al-Arabiya TV channel.<br />Israel left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation. Islamic Hamas militants seized control of Gaza in June 2007, after routing security forces loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.<br />Israel has thus far been reluctant to press ahead with a campaign likely to exact heavy casualties on both sides. Past incursions have not halted the barrages, and officials fear anything short of a reoccupation of Gaza would fail to achieve the desired results.<br />Israel is expected to continue its military consultations over the weekend.<br />Also Friday, a poll published in the Maariv daily showed Livni's moderate Kadima Party in a statistical tie with its hawkish Likud rival ahead of Feb. 10 elections. Likud objects to the peace talks that Israeli negotiators, led by Livni, are conducting with Abbas' government.<br />A Teleseker survey showed Kadima winning 30 of the 120 seats in Parliament, compared with 29 seats for Likud. The poll surveyed more than 800 people and had a margin of error of 2 seats. Previous polls in recent weeks had given Likud a strong lead.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Lebanese Army dismantles eight rockets aimed at Israel<br /></strong>By Robert F. Worth<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />BEIRUT: Lebanese Army soldiers found and dismantled eight Katyusha rockets on Thursday afternoon that were pointed south toward Israel, Lebanese military officials said.<br />The rockets were found near the southern town of Naqura, in the border region where an expanded United Nations peacekeeping force has been monitoring an uneasy truce since the war in the summer of 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group.<br />The United Nations force is based in Naqura, and United Nations teams were sent on Thursday to help the army dismantle the rockets and investigate the episode, said Yasmina Bouziane, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.<br />The Lebanese Army released a statement saying that the eight rockets were of different weights and calibers, but it did not say how they were found.<br />Hezbollah is the dominant force in southern Lebanon, but there are also Palestinian camps, where other militant groups bent on fighting Israel have a presence.<br />In June 2007, three rockets were fired into Israel from southern Lebanon, but they did no damage and the attack did not provoke any wider hostilities. The peacekeepers periodically find and destroy weapons caches.<br />However, Israeli officials have repeatedly complained that the presence of the peacekeepers and the deployment of the Lebanese Army to southern Lebanon in August 2006 have failed to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has said that the group has rearmed and is better prepared than ever to fight Israel.<br />For its part, the Lebanese government has accused Israel of violating United Nations Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, by trespassing into Lebanese territory during brief raids and by violating Lebanon's airspace with jet flyovers.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>China sends naval task force on anti-piracy mission<br /></strong>By Mark McDonald<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />HONG KONG: In China's first modern deployment of battle-ready warships beyond the Pacific, a naval task force set out Friday to begin escorts and patrols in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, state media reported.<br />A supply ship and two destroyers - the Wuhan and the Haikou - departed from the port at Sanya, on Hainan Island, carrying a total crew of about 800, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.<br />"In addition to missiles, artillery and satellite communications, special troops who are trained for the tasks will also be on board the warships," Xia Xinnian, deputy chief of Chinese naval forces, said in a news broadcast on the state network CCTV.<br />The task force commander, Rear Admiral Du Jingcheng, said the primary mission of the destroyers, which are also carrying helicopters, would be the protection of Chinese merchant ships passing through the gulf, especially tankers carrying crude oil.<br />About 60 percent of China's imported oil comes from the Middle East, and most of that passes through the gulf, along with huge shipments of raw materials out of Africa.<br />Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence agency based in the United States, said in a report that a Chinese anti-piracy patrol would afford its navy "some very real opportunities for on-the-job training, covering everything from logistics far from home and combat against seaborne opponents to communications and joint operations with other, more experienced navies."<br />The Statfor analysis also said the Chinese "will very likely monitor the way NATO (and especially U.S.) warships communicate with each other and with their shipborne helicopters."<br />The navy would acquire new skills, the report said, "under the banner of internationalism."<br />Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, said the coalition would welcome the Chinese ships and emphasized they should join the international effort on a day-to-day operational level.<br />"China is ready to exchange information and cooperate with warships of the other countries in performing humanitarian rescue tasks," Huang Xieping, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said Thursday on CCTV.<br />The Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur said Friday that 110 ships had been attacked in the gulf this year, and 42 had been hijacked. Fourteen ships are still being held for ransom.<br />A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said 1,265 Chinese commercial vessels had passed through the gulf so far this year, and seven had been attacked. A Chinese fishing trawler and 18 crew members were still being held by pirates, he said.<br />A European Union flotilla has begun patrolling the gulf in recent days, joining naval ships from India, the United States, Iran and Russia. On Thursday, a helicopter dispatched from a German frigate drove off a pirate ship that was attacking an Egyptian cargo ship.<br />The Chinese commander, Du, said the navy had made "special preparations to deal with pirates, even though these waters are not familiar to us."<br />If pirates are encountered, he said, according to Xinhua, "our primary target is not striking them but dispelling them. If the pirates make direct threats to the warships or the vessels we escort, the fleet will take countermeasures."<br />Commander Xie Zengling, chief of the special forces unit, told Xinhua that he expected to encounter firefights with pirates.<br />He said one Chinese special forces soldier could handle several enemies with his bare hands.<br />Aside from good-will visits, China has not sent warships out of its region since the 15th century, under a Chinese Muslim admiral, Zheng He.<br />The modern Chinese Navy, officially known as the People's Liberation Army Navy, has concentrated on coastal defense, regional maneuvers and visits to foreign ports. A Chinese guided-missile destroyer, the Qingdao, made a port call in San Diego, California, in 2006.<br />Both destroyers in the anti-piracy task force, state media said, were designed and manufactured by China.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Sudan's north-south war still smolders</strong><br />By Neil MacFarquhar<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />ABYEI, Sudan: This market town serves as kind of a fulcrum balancing perhaps the most important peace treaty in Africa.<br />Much rides on the stability of the nearly four-year-old agreement between the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum and the former rebel movement in the mostly Christian and animist southern Sudan: considerable oil wealth; the calm, such as it is, in Sudan and several neighboring states; the future of Darfur.<br />But Abyei, once a thriving town of 30,000, is now an empty, blackened wreck.<br />It is still smoldering from the first significant outburst of sectarian violence since the peace pact was signed, an eruption last May that destroyed the town and emphasized the delicate health of the treaty.<br />"It is fragile but it is fundamental; it is absolutely vital to get it right because if the north-south agreement fails, everything else will also fall apart," said John Holmes, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, during a recent whirlwind tour of the area. "If that goes, you can forget about Darfur; it is just a side show."<br />While much of the world's attention has been focused on the crisis in Darfur, the stakes are much higher in southern Sudan. At more than 40 years, the war in the south lasted longer and was far more brutal than what Darfur has endured. An estimated two million people were killed and four million displaced in the 15 years before the 2005 treaty.<br />In Darfur, the death count is not known, but Holmes estimated that up to 300,000 fatalities could be attributed to the outbreak of war.<br />The fear in the south is that some small spark - like the confrontation of a few soldiers at a checkpoint in Abyei last May - could re-ignite the conflagration not just in one town, but across the south. That might draw in combatants from the governments or rebel movements in the countries around southern Sudan, few of them models of stability. They include Congo, the Central African Republic and Uganda.<br />But since the two sides reached the peace agreement in 2005, the world has to some extent stopped paying attention.<br />"We work in the shadow of Darfur," said David Gressly, the regional coordinator in the southern capital, Juba, for the UN mission in Sudan. "In general, there was a lack of engagement in what was going on here."<br />The thousands who fled the town or its immediate environs remain displaced, their insecurity confirmed by a skirmish early this month that left two police officers dead.<br />"If there is peace, these things should not happen," said Amol Bol, a 57-year-old sorghum farmer who, like thousands of others, remains stuck in a shantytown of reed and plastic huts around the town of Akog, south of Abyei. "Now we live in fear that this peace will fall apart, because we were attacked in our houses."<br />Kuol Deng Kuol, the paramount tribal chief, said government soldiers burned all 50 of his tukuls, the mud brick huts with conical thatched roofs that dot the countryside here.<br />"They want to chase us away from the area, to create a reality that there are no Dinka living in Abyei," he said, referring to his tribe. "The peace may have been signed, but the implementation is not going in the right direction."<br />Both sides are dragging their feet in carrying out the peace plan, initially envisioned as a six-year transition culminating in a 2011 referendum on whether the south would achieve independence or Sudan would remain united. Complicated national elections are scheduled before that, with the date depending on an uncompleted census.<br />In theory, there is a government of national unity from both sides overseeing it all, but Sudanese officials and diplomats point out that there is little real integration.<br />That problem was particularly acute around Abyei. The shock of the violence finally prompted both sides to agree to a set of reinforced peace guidelines last June. Among other things, they call for the integration of police and army units from the north and south, a process that still lags, and the sharing of oil revenues from the area, a continuing problem. Both sides also agreed to submit their border demarcation dispute around Abyei to international arbitration, with a decision due around next June.<br />But progress is slow, and it is not hard to see why both sides would be stalling.<br />A sign welcoming passengers approaching the squat terminal of the airport at Juba neatly captures the wrinkle in the fight for autonomy: "Our Peace. Our Land. Our Oil. Our Liberty."<br />The most significant oil resources in southern Sudan lie right along the still-unmarked border between north and south, with notable deposits underneath Abyei. The inability to agree on how to share that oil is holding up the peace process. As it stands now, though, if the south votes for independence in 2011, it will take some 80 percent of the reserves with it.<br />It has no way of getting the oil out of the landlocked south without relying on the north, unless it wants to invest billions of dollars in precious resources in building a pipeline to the sea, most likely through Kenya. Thus, diplomats say they believe that the crucial piece of the plan stalling peace is the lack of a long-term deal for sharing oil revenues.<br />"The fight over land on the border is a proxy discussion for the fight over oil," said Richard Williamson, President George W. Bush's special envoy for Sudan.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Ugandan LRA rebels said to kill at least 15 in Congo<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Saturday, December 27, 2008<br />By Joe Bavier<br />Ugandan rebels fleeing a multinational offensive have raided a Congolese village and killed at least 15 people, U.N. peacekeepers said on Friday.<br />Uganda, Congo and South Sudan launched a joint assault on December 14 against bases of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan rebel group, in Democratic Republic of Congo. But they have so far failed to corner its reclusive leader, Joseph Kony.<br />The United Nations mission in Congo (MONUC) said fleeing LRA fighters attacked the village of Faradje, near Congo's porous border with Sudan, on December 24 and 25.<br />"According to our sources, at least 15 people were killed in the town of Faradje, which suffered looting and destruction of homes," MONUC said in a statement.<br />A Ugandan military spokesman earlier told Reuters the rebels had killed 35 civilians in five different raids over the two-day period, but this report could not be independently confirmed.<br />Congo's Foreign Minister Alexis Thambe Mwamba told reporters in Paris earlier this week that he expected to be "totally rid" of the rebels within days.<br />The joint offensive was launched after Kony, a self-styled mystic, failed again to sign a peace deal to end his rebellion against the Ugandan government. Despite early claims of success, it has so far failed to locate Kony and crush the rebels, infamous for kidnapping women and using children as fighters.<br />"They are avoiding any possible contact. They are not willing to confront us. They are still elusive," said Captain Chris Magezi, the Ugandan spokesman for the joint operation.<br />Ugandan authorities have released no death toll from the offensive to indicate the scale of its impact.<br />LRA BASES BOMBED<br />MONUC said it transported around 100 Congolese soldiers to Faradje on Friday in an effort to boost security and protect civilians. Uganda was also sending more forces to the area.<br />On Monday, an LRA spokesman said Kony and his top commanders had survived bombing raids on their bases. He said Kony was calling for peace talks to be relaunched with a new mediator.<br />The rebels said on Friday they shot down a Ugandan army helicopter, a charge both Ugandan and U.N. officials denied.<br />Magezi said Ugandan forces believed Kony's fighters were now moving towards the Central African Republic, which borders Congo and Sudan and where the LRA has conducted raids in the past.<br />"This operation is a success. We are occupying his (Kony's) bases and sitting on his food supplies," Magezi said. "We'll hunt him down even if he goes to CAR. We have been in contact with the government there and they are ready to cooperate."<br />A spokesman for Central African Republic's President Francois Bozize would not confirm the poor and sparsely populated country had agreed to help the anti-LRA drive.<br />Kony and two of his deputies have been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes allegedly committed during a two-decade bush war that has killed thousands of people and displaced about two million more.<br />(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)<br />(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Mark Trevelyan)<br /><br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>NATO awaits new leadership</strong><br />By Stephen Castle<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />The former secretary general of NATO, George Robertson, once recounted welcoming the first contingent of Russian officials to the alliance's headquarters in Brussels. To Robertson's surprise, his visitors already had an excellent grasp of the layout of a sprawling building none of them had ever visited.<br />Russia has always taken NATO seriously - invariably seeing it as an aggressive alliance determined, especially since the fall of Communism, to expand right up to Russia's frontiers. By contrast, NATO's Western members often seem to treat it with indifference.<br />With the Cold War won, the alliance's main raison d'être disappeared. The trans-Atlantic rift over the invasion of Iraq then sapped NATO's ability to act as a crisis intervention force.<br />Now, as the alliance's main challenge, in Afghanistan, gets bogged down, allies bicker over who should take more of the military strain. In a policy journal called Europe's World, Nick Witney, a former senior British official and ex-head of the European Defense Agency, recently wrote an article under the title "The Death of NATO."<br />But rumors of its demise may be exaggerated. In 2009, NATO will celebrate its 60th anniversary at a summit meeting in Strasbourg and Kehl, a small German city just across the border.<br />That meeting should anoint a secretary general to succeed Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Dutch diplomat whose low-key period in office ends in July. Already there is discreet jockeying for the job.<br />History suggests that the successful candidate will be a current minister and a European, to balance the American who occupies the post of supreme allied commander Europe.<br />Though he has not declared any interest publicly, the front-runner is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, an experienced and current leader, albeit of a smallish NATO nation.<br />His closest challenger is Radek Sikorski, foreign minister of Poland. Again, Sikorski has expressed no desire for the post, though observers noted a speech he made at a recent NATO ministerial meeting with Ukraine. Sikorski spoke in French, thereby, the theory goes, answering criticism that his main weakness as a candidate for NATO's top job is a less than perfect grasp of the language of Molière.<br />The consensus is that, given its historic ambivalence toward the alliance, it is too soon for France itself to put up a candidate, even though Michèle Alliot-Marie, a former defense minister, would be a strong contender. The names of Alexandr Vondra, deputy prime minister of the Czech Republic, and Norway's defense minister, Anne-Grete Strom-Erichsen, are also mentioned.<br />After years of safe-hands diplomacy under de Hoop Scheffer, most experts believe it's time for a bigger, noisier, character. Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London, thinks personal authority will be crucial. "Influence is informal and depends on the strength of the personality, not on formal powers, which are negligible," he said.<br />If Tony Blair was interested, argued one diplomat, he would walk into the job.<br />The logic is that whoever wins the post needs to have the confidence of key players as they confront complex challenges. One task is to help re-establish a trans-Atlantic consensus over security. Here there is reason for optimism for NATO's supporters.<br />The arrival of President-elect Barack Obama heralds an era in which America is more likely to listen to its allies, and coincides with France's offer to rejoin NATO's command structures.<br />In Washington the new national security adviser, General James Jones, is a respected former supreme allied commander of NATO (who also speaks good French).<br />Paris, which a few years ago delighted in obstructing Washington at NATO, is now working well with the core powers, the United States, Britain and Germany.<br />There are difficulties too. Berlin is proving less cooperative, and tensions are likely to increase when Obama asks Europeans for more help in Afghanistan, just as Germany prepares for federal elections.<br />Even if Europeans do produce more troops, Afghanistan will test the cohesion of the alliance. The greater the European military contribution in Afghanistan, the more it will brush up against the Pentagon's traditional reluctance to share decision-making with allies it sees as military pygmies.<br />Meanwhile the new secretary general will be trying to repair the dysfunctional relationship between NATO and the European Union, which has military ambitions and overlapping membership. These are currently obstructed by tensions between Turkey (which is in NATO but not the EU) and Cyprus (in the EU but not NATO).<br />But perhaps the most complex challenge will be steering ties with Russia, frozen after the war in Georgia.<br />As Obama was elected, Moscow threatened to site missiles in its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad if Czech and Polish governments participated in U.S. missile defense.<br />Russia's president, Dmitri Medvedev, has also suggested a new European security architecture - a vague initiative seen by some diplomats as a transparent device to weaken NATO.<br />Last month the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, called for a moratorium on missile deployments in Europe until a summit meeting next summer to discuss Russia's security ideas under the auspices of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.<br />That idea won very little support at an OSCE meeting this month. But there is now talk of NATO resuming ties established back in May 2002, when, at a summit meeting in Italy, the alliance and Russia pledged to work together on issues from counterterrorism to missile defense.<br />At a ceremony in a mock-up of a Roman amphitheater, accompanied by an Italian Air Force fly-by, George W. Bush even suggested that the two former foes were "joined as partners, overcoming 40 years of division and a decade of uncertainty."<br />The idea of NATO as a fulcrum for debate between Russia and the West never took off. Instead, when Moscow's relations with Washington deteriorated, its ties with NATO became a casualty. The NATO-Russia Council, set up in 2002, produced little before it was suspended over Georgia.<br />But, over an Italian meal on Dec. 19, de Hoop Scheffer and Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's hard-line ambassador to NATO, discussed the gradual resumption of contacts. That the discussion took place at all shows that Russian officials still see NATO as important - just as they did when Robertson first invited them.<br /><br />***********************<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>LETTER</strong><br /><strong>Stop bullying Russia<br /></strong>Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Stop bullying Russia<br />Regarding your editorial "Forging new relations with Russia" (Dec. 26): In a day and age of so much financial and political instability, Russia can be a tremendous force of stability if the West treats it as an equal partner, and not as an adversary to be exploited and conquered.<br />Instead, our leaders have been seeking to exploit Russia. The West gave Russia poor financial advice that brought poverty to millions of Russians, made a select few elites fabulously wealthy and expedited the transfer - or theft - of billions of dollars of capital from the fledgling democracy.<br />America's leaders also sought to continue NATO's now irrelevant existence by having NATO illegally invading the territories of the former Yugoslavia. NATO has also aggressively sought to expand its reach by absorbing territories from the former Soviet Union but does not offer Russia membership in the organization.<br />The Russians, who have endured centuries of invasions, see the writing on the wall and are reacting accordingly.<br />Russia still has a sizeable nuclear arsenal - and they do good physics. It's time for Americans to wake up to the reality that U.S. leaders have been leading us toward World War III.<br />Instead of seeking perpetual war for America's massive military industrial complex, we need to focus our precious and limited resources toward rebuilding America instead of destroying other countries.<br />Let's begin a new course based on trust and respect for all nations by leading by example, not by force, and ceasing our incessant and desperate bullying of Russia.<br />Michael Pravica Henderson, Nevada<br /><br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>A Faustian failure</strong><br />By Adrian Hong<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />LOS ANGELES:<br />After five years of effort, the much-vaunted "Six Party Talks" have essentially been acknowledged as an abject failure. Despite America's best efforts, North Korea has proven itself most capable at stalling and swindling.<br />The U.S. State Department calculated that accusations and actions condemning North Korea's human rights conditions (and China's abhorrent treatment of North Korean refugees) would only make negotiations more difficult with the famously temperamental North. As a result, we have witnessed an astonishing charade - the world's standard-bearer of freedom and justice in essence excusing, downplaying or outright ignoring the actions and the victims of the world's greatest oppressor.<br />There is a difference between name-calling and accurate description. North Korea is home to the largest modern-day gulag. Hundreds of thousands of innocent political prisoners toil and die in a network of concentration camps. Refugees, their advocates and experts have testified during the past decade about the public executions, rapes, forced abortions, mass starvation and other atrocities that meet the legal definition of "crimes against humanity."<br />To play off Benjamin Franklin's adage, we essentially gambled their liberty for our security, and won neither. Having gained no verifiable denuclearization by North Korea, we are in the same place today as we were in 2003, except for semi-annual press conferences and photo ops in Seoul, Beijing and Pyongyang, at the cost of thousands more North Koreans tortured, starved and executed.<br />Negotiation must always be given a legitimate chance, and force must always be the last resort. But for years we have watched the negotiations with apprehension and anxiety. Activists who chained themselves to embassies or found themselves serving time in Chinese jails for trying to aid fleeing North Koreans were condemned as hot-headed and reckless. Underlying such admonishments was the assertion that such urgency is unfounded, that wise government leaders would resolve the situation, if we would only wait.<br />In 2004, I co-founded a nongovernmental organization to raise awareness of the crisis North Koreans are facing. The organization operates underground shelters throughout Asia; its members risk their own safety to protect refugees and move them covertly to freedom. The group also works on behalf of the North Korean people to lobby agencies, institutions and governments worldwide to help refugees find freedom and resettle to new lives.<br />For the past four years, I have resisted calling for outright regime change, believing genuine attempts at negotiation to be a moral imperative. I thought the talks were worthwhile if they provided the slightest chance that the North Korean regime would come to realize the critical reasons for reform and change.<br />I was wrong. Now I cannot deny what I wish were untrue - the North Korean elites will never bargain away the only powers that prevent them from losing authority. They realize that any opening for freedom or reform would only allow breathing space for any potential resistance group. They know that the loosened flow of outside information would condemn the leadership's complicity in the suffering of North Korea's citizens. Most of all, they know the fate of men like Ceausescu, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.<br />A small number of North Korean defectors are resorting to desperate measures to change the status quo. One attempted self-immolation in Seoul earlier this year, after an unsuccessful international campaign to halt the public execution in the North of his brother, sentenced to death for practicing Christianity. Others have begun perhaps foolhardy attempts to forcibly win the freedom of imprisoned countrymen. It is becoming increasingly difficult to impress upon them the importance of civil disobedience and reasoned discourse when the grand pledges of presidents and prime ministers have proven to be empty rhetoric.<br />Now, as we pretend concentration camps are a relic of the 20th century, as a tattered network of activists and defectors attempts to save as many people as it can, as children starve on the streets of cities like Yanji, Shenyang, Wonsan and Hamhung, our leaders and diplomats comfort themselves with the illusion that nothing can be done.<br />There was a time when we pledged to bear any burden and support any friend to ensure the survival and the success of liberty. We must now rid ourselves of the delusion that we can bring about real change without real sacrifice. We must shelter the broken and malnourished people who have managed to escape and allow them a chance at a new life. Most of all, we must wholeheartedly support those fighting a government that exhibits all signs of an unrelenting totalitarian evil, with more than just empty promises. If this government and its actions cannot be called evil, then the word has lost all meaning.<br />Adrian Hong is co-founder and former executive director of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), and was imprisoned in China in 2006 for helping North Korean refugees escape.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Fighting flares in southern Philippines</strong><br />By Carlos H. Conde<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />MANILA: A series of rebel attacks this past week in the southern Philippines that left least nine civilians dead underscores the need for the government and Muslim separatists to resume peace negotiations, analysts said Friday.<br />While civilian casualties are not uncommon in the troubled region of Mindanao, some analysts view recent actions as the insurgents' way of pressuring the government to restart the peace process that has been stalled since August, when the government nullified a landmark agreement that would have expanded a Muslim autonomous region.<br />On Tuesday, members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main group that has been fighting for Muslim self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic region since the 1970s, attacked villages in Sultan Kudarat township, killing nine civilians and wounding more, the military said.<br />The next day, Christmas Eve, the rebels reportedly staged another attack, this time in the town of Alamada.<br />"The attacks came while the people were setting off firecrackers. The attackers timed their attacks during the revelry," said Ernesto Concepcion, mayor of Alamada, according to ABS-CBN television.<br />The military said the rebels attacked other areas on Christmas Day, firing rocket-propelled grenades at power lines in Sultan Kudarat and looting.<br />"They ransacked the houses of civilians and extorted money from them. They even stole the guns of retired soldiers living in the area," Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Torres Jr., an army spokesman, said Friday.<br />Officials of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front denied that its forces had tried to attack civilians. Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the front, instead blamed the military for stepping up its offensives in the past several days.<br />Julkipli Wadi, an analyst and professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of Philippines, said, "The recent attacks may be viewed as a strategic offensive" by the insurgents to pressure the government to restart the peace process.<br />However, Kristian Herbolzheimer, an adviser on peace processes with the Initiatives for International Dialogue, a Mindanao-based group that monitors the negotiations, said more information was needed.<br />"The fragility of any peace process is that it can easily be affected by episodes of violence that can either be a product of rogue elements who want to put pressure on the government or by spoilers who want it to derail completely," he said. He urged a restoration of cease-fire monitors, with new authority to carry out "binding fact-finding missions" to determine the truth behind the attacks.<br />In recent months, fighting between separatists and the government has killed dozens from both sides and displaced more than half a million Filipinos from their homes, with tens of thousands in refugee camps in several provinces.<br />Negotiations broke down in August after the government rescinded the agreement that would have enlarged a Muslim autonomous region.<br />Many Filipinos, particularly Christian politicians and local officials, opposed the agreement, calling it a sellout of the Philippine patrimony. The issue went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the pact was unconstitutional.<br />Since then, the government has been trying to repair the situation. Last week, the government announced a new negotiating panel, in the hope that talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front could restart early next year.<br />But rebel leaders say any future negotiations will have to resume from where both sides left off - with the territorial agreement that was knocked down by the Supreme Court.<br />"Despite the Supreme Court's declaration of the agreement as unconstitutional, the new government peace panel has no choice but to make the MOA-AD as a frame of reference for the new round of negotiations," said Wadi, the University of the Philippines professor, using the acronym for the territorial agreement. If not, Wadi added, "there is no substantial peace agreement that can be expected."<br />Herbolzheimer said both sides must work to overcome the profound mistrust that underlies the deadlock. He said opposition to the territorial agreement has "severely affected the trust of many Moros" - a term for Filipino Muslims - "in the existing institutions of the Philippines."<br />"At the same time," he added, "the majority of the non-Moro public opinion remains with strong prejudices against Muslims."Communists mark 40 years<br />The Communist Party of the Philippines, which leads one of the longest Communist insurgencies in the world, marked its 40th anniversary Friday by making public a five-year plan that it said should advance its aim of establishing a Marxist state, Carlos H. Conde reported from Manila.<br />It said that under the plan, government and military officials who committed "treason, plunder and human rights violations" would be subjected to what it called "revolutionary justice." It also said that it intended to establish rebel forces in each of the country's 168 congressional districts.<br />But some say the Communist movement, whose armed wing, the New People's Army, is down to only 5,000 regular combatants compared with more than 10,000 two decades ago, is too weak to carry out such a plan.<br />"I don't see where they would get the wherewithal to do something like this," said Scott Harrison, managing director of Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a risk consultancy group.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Suicide bomber hits foreign forces in Afghanistan<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />HERAT, Afghanistan: A suicide car bomber targeted a convoy of foreign troops on Friday in Afghanistan's western Herat province, wounding one U.S. soldier and two Afghan civilians, a provincial official said.<br />Violence has surged sharply this year in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, sparking fear the country may slide back into anarchy despite the increasing numbers of foreign troops.<br />The attack hit the convoy as it was coming out of Herat's airport, said security officer Qadir Agha, adding two vehicles in the convoy were damaged.<br />Both NATO and the U.S.-led troops operate in Herat which has faced a number of attacks by the Taliban this year.<br />Separately, U.S.-led coalition forces killed 11 Taliban insurgents and detained two more in an operation aimed in the southern province of Kandahar on Thursday, the U.S. military said in a statement.<br />One Afghan woman was also wounded in the leg during the operation, it added. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.<br />(Reporting by Sharafuddin Sharafyar; Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by David Fox)<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Violence in Kashmir lowest in 20 years, police claims</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />SRINAGAR, India: Separatist violence in Indian-administered Kashmir has fallen to its lowest level since an insurgency began nearly two decades ago, the police said Friday, but almost 1,000 Muslim guerrillas are thought to be operating in the region.<br />Indian officials say that violence between Indian troops and separatist militants started a steady decline in 2004 after India and Pakistan, who both claim the region in full but rule in part, started a slow-moving peace process.<br />In an offensive against Muslim militants in Jammu and Kashmir state this year, Indian security forces killed 350 guerrillas, including 67 top-ranking commanders of different groups, Kuldeep Khuda, director general of the Kashmir police, said.<br />The number of militant incidents fell by about 40 percent to 700 compared with last year, the lowest in the insurgency's history, Khuda said in a statement.<br />There are nearly 250 foreign militants among close to 1,000 guerrillas operating in Indian Kashmir, Khuda added. These include members of the banned Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which New Delhi blames for last month's attacks in Mumbai that killed 179 people.<br />India has imposed a "pause" in the dialogue with Pakistan since the strike by 10 Islamist gunmen on the financial hub.<br />Separatists called for a boycott of state elections in Kashmir, which ended this week, the third ballot since the insurgency began in 1989. The election was relatively trouble-free.<br />Officials say that more than 47,000 people have been killed in nearly two decades of violence in Kashmir, which was hit by massive anti-India protests earlier this year. Separatists put the toll at 100,000.<br /><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Pakistan cancels army leave as India tensions rise</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />By Bappa Majumdar and Kamran Haider<br />Pakistan cancelled army leave and redeployed some troops Friday in a sign of rising tension with India.<br />The United States urged both sides to refrain from further raising tensions, already high after India blamed Islamist militants based in Pakistan for attacks on Mumbai last month that killed 179 people.<br />The latest strains followed media reports in Pakistan and India that "several" Indian nationals had been held in the last two days after bombings in the Pakistani cities of Lahore and Multan.<br />The foreign ministry in New Delhi warned Indian citizens on Friday that "it would be unsafe for them to travel (to) or be in Pakistan."<br />Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier discussed tension with Pakistan during a scheduled meeting about military pay with the chiefs of the army, navy and air force, his office said.<br />"The prime minister met the tri-services chiefs to discuss the pay commission issues but obviously the situation in the region was also discussed," said an official from Singh's office, who requested anonymity.<br />The South Asian neighbours both tested nuclear weapons in 1998. They have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, and came to the brink of a fourth after gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001.<br />Although many analysts say war is very unlikely, international unease is growing.<br />"We hope that both sides will avoid taking steps that will unnecessarily raise tensions during these already tense times," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.<br />"We continue to be in close contact with both countries to urge closer cooperation in investigating the Mumbai attacks and in fighting terrorism generally."<br />Brooke Anderson, chief national security spokesperson for President-elect Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated on January 20, declined to comment on the current tensions.<br />"There is one president at a time, and we intend to respect that," Anderson said.<br />While there had been no significant troop movements in either India or Pakistan, military officials in Islamabad said army personnel had been ordered to report to barracks and some troops had been moved off the Afghan border.<br />"A limited number of troops from snow-bound areas and areas where operations are not being conducted have been pulled out," said a senior security official who declined to be identified.<br />WORRYING DISTRACTION<br />That is likely to worry Washington, which does not want Pakistan distracted from the battle against al Qaeda and Taliban militants on its western border.<br />The official declined to say where the troops had been moved to, citing the sensitivity of the issue. Pakistani media have reported some troops had been redeployed to the Indian border.<br />India, the United States and Britain have blamed the Mumbai attack on Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, set up to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.<br />Pakistan has condemned the attacks and has denied any state role, blaming "non-state actors." It has offered to cooperate with India but denies Indian claims that it has been handed firm evidence of links to militants in Pakistan.<br />Islamabad has said that it will defend itself if attacked.<br />A senior police official in Pakistan's Punjab province denied that any Indians had been arrested over the Lahore and Multan blasts but an intelligence agency official, who declined to be identified, said an Indian had been detained Wednesday.<br />Several more Indians had been detained based on information obtained from that suspect, the intelligence official said.<br />Increasingly frenzied media reporting on both sides of the border has fuelled war speculation, affecting India's government bond market Friday, although leaders from both countries have said war would serve no one's interests.<br />Washington has joined Britain in urging restraint from India, but at the same time has demanded Pakistan act decisively to wipe out banned groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba.<br />Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also called his counterparts in New Delhi and Islamabad in the past two days.<br />China has long been a close ally of Pakistan, while India and Washington have been building close ties. A Chinese foreign ministry statement said Yang urged both sides to continue dialogue. China was willing to work with the international community to protect peace and security in South Asia.<br />A senior government official in New Delhi said Yang had suggested a meeting between Indian and Pakistani officials.<br />Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Yang Pakistan must crack down on militants before a meeting would be possible, the official said. A crackdown on Pakistan-based militants after the 2001 parliament attack was seen by India as a sham.<br />(Additional reporting by Washington and Beijing bureaux; Writing by Paul Tait and Robert Birsel; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Community health clinics increased during Bush years<br /></strong>By Kevin Sack<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />NASHVILLE, Tennessee: Although the number of uninsured and the cost of coverage in the United States have ballooned under his watch, President George W. Bush leaves office with a health care legacy in bricks and mortar: He has doubled U.S. financing for community health centers, enabling the creation or expansion of 1,297 clinics in medically underserved areas.<br />For those in poor urban neighborhoods and isolated rural areas, including Indian reservations, the clinics are often the only dependable providers of basic services like prenatal care, childhood immunizations, asthma treatments, cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted diseases. As a crucial component of the health safety net, they are lauded as a cost-effective alternative to hospital emergency rooms, where the uninsured and underinsured often seek care.<br />Despite the clinics' unprecedented growth, wide swaths of the country remain without access to affordable primary care. The recession has only magnified the need as hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance along with their jobs. In response, Democrats on Capitol Hill are proposing even more significant increases, making the centers a likely feature of any health care deal struck by Congress and the Obama administration.<br />In Nashville, United Neighborhood Health Services, a 32-year-old community health center, has seen its federal financing rise to $4.2 million, from $1.8 million in 2001. That has allowed the organization to add eight clinics to its base of six, and to increase its pool of patients to nearly 25,000 from 10,000. Still, says Mary Bufwack, the center's chief executive, the clinics satisfy only a third of the demand in Nashville's pockets of urban poverty and immigrant need.<br />One of the group's recent grants helped open the Southside Family Clinic, which moved last year from a pair of public housing apartments to a gleaming new building on a once derelict corner.<br />As she completed a breathing treatment one recent afternoon, Willie Mai Ridley, a 68-year-old beautician, said she would have sought care for her bronchitis in a hospital emergency room were it not for the new clinic. Instead, she took a short drive, waited 15 minutes without an appointment and left without paying a dime; the clinic would bill her later for her Medicare co-payment of $18.88.<br />Ridley said she appreciated both the dignity and the affordability of her care. "This place is really very, very important to me," she said, "because you can go and feel like you're being treated like a person and get the same medical care you would get somewhere else and have to pay $200 to $300."<br />As governor of Texas, Bush came to admire the missionary zeal and cost-efficiency of the not-for-profit community health centers, which qualify for federal operating grants by being located in designated underserved areas and treating patients regardless of their ability to pay. He pledged support for the program while campaigning for president in 2000 on a platform of "compassionate conservatism."<br />In Bush's first year in office, he proposed to open or expand 1,200 clinics over five years (mission accomplished) and to double the number of patients served (the increase has ended up closer to 60 percent). With the health centers now serving more than 16 million patients at 7,354 sites, the expansion has been the largest since the program's origins in President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, federal officials said.<br />"They're an integral part of a health care system because they provide care for the low-income, for the newly arrived, and they take the pressure off of our hospital emergency rooms," Bush said last year while touring a clinic in Omaha, Nebraska.<br />With federal encouragement, the centers have made a major push this decade to expand dental and mental health services, open on-site pharmacies, extend hours to nights and weekends and accommodate recent immigrants - legal and otherwise - by employing bilingual staff. More than a third of patients are now Hispanic, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers.<br />The centers now serve one of every three people who live in poverty and one of every eight without insurance. But a study released in August by the Government Accountability Office found that 43 percent of the country's medically underserved areas lack a health center site. The National Association of Community Health Centers and the American Academy of Family Physicians estimated last year that 56 million people were "medically disenfranchised" because they lived in areas with inadequate primary care.<br />President-elect Barack Obama has said little about how the centers may fit into his plans to remake American health care. But he was a sponsor of a Senate bill in August that would quadruple federal spending on the program - to $8 billion from $2.1 billion - and increase incentives for medical students to choose primary care. His wife, Michelle, worked closely with health centers in Chicago as vice president for community and external relations at the University of Chicago Medical Center.<br />And Obama's choice to become secretary of health and human services, former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, argues in his recent book on health care that financing should be increased, describing the health centers as "a godsend."<br />The federal program, which was first championed in Congress by Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, has earned considerable bipartisan support. Leading advocates, like Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Representative James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, the House majority whip, argue that any success Obama has in reducing the number of uninsured will be meaningless if the newly insured cannot find medical homes. In Massachusetts, health centers have seen increased demand since the state began mandating health coverage two years ago.<br />At $8 billion, the Senate measure may be considered a relative bargain compared with the more than $100 billion needed for Obama's proposal to subsidize coverage for the uninsured. If his plan runs into fiscal obstacles, a vast expansion of community health centers may again serve as a stopgap while universal coverage waits for flusher times.<br />Recent job losses, meanwhile, are stoking demand for the clinics' services, often from first-time users. The United Neighborhood Health Services clinics in Nashville have seen a 35 percent increase in patients this year, with much of the growth from the newly jobless.<br />"I'm seeing a lot of professionals that no longer have their insurance or they're laid off from their jobs," said Dr. Marshelya Wilson, a physician at the center's Cayce clinic. "So they come here and get their health care."<br />Studies have generally shown that the health centers - which must be governed by patient-dominated boards - are effective at reducing racial and ethnic disparities in medical treatment and save substantial sums by keeping patients out of hospitals. Their trade association estimates that they save the health care system $17.6 billion a year, and that an equivalent amount could be saved if avoidable emergency room visits were diverted to clinics. Some centers, including here in Nashville, have brokered agreements with hospitals to do exactly that. Many centers are finding that federal support is not keeping pace with the growing cost of treating the uninsured. Government grants now account for 19 percent of community health center revenues, compared with 22 percent in 2001, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the program. The largest revenue sources are public insurance plans like Medicaid, Medicare and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, making the centers vulnerable to government belt-tightening. The centers are known for their efficiency. Though United Neighborhood Health Services has more than doubled in size this decade, Bufwack, its chief executive, manages to run five neighborhood clinics, five school clinics, a homeless clinic, two mobile clinics and a rural clinic, with 24,391 patients, on a budget of $8.1 million.Starting pay for her doctors is $120,000. Patients are charged on an income-based sliding scale, and the uninsured are expected to pay at least $20 for an office visit. One clinic is housed in a double-wide trailer. Because of a nationwide shortage of primary care physicians, the clinics rely on federal programs like the National Health Service Corps that entice medical students with grants and loan write-offs in exchange for agreements to practice as generalists in underserved areas. Of the 16 doctors working for United Neighborhood, seven are current or former participants. Dr. LaTonya Knott, 37, who treated Ridley for her bronchitis, is among them. Born to a 15-year-old mother in south Nashville, she had been a regular childhood patient at one of the center's clinics. After graduating as her high school's valedictorian, she went to college on scholarships and then to medical school on government grants, with an obligation to serve for two years. She said she now felt a responsibility to be a role model. "I do a whole lot of social work," she said, noting that it was not uncommon for children to drop by the clinic for help with homework, or for a peanut butter sandwich. "It's not just that we provide the medical care. I'm trying to provide you with a future." Despite such commitment, national staffing shortages have reinforced concerns about the quality of care at health centers, notably the management of chronic diseases. This year, the government started collecting data at the centers on performance measures like cervical cancer screening and diabetes control. "The question is not just, 'Are you going to have more community health centers?"' said Dr. H. Jack Geiger, founder of the health centers movement and a professor emeritus at the City University of New York. "It's, 'Are you going to have adequate services?"' A deeper frustration for health centers concerns their difficulty in securing follow-up appointments with specialists for patients who are uninsured or have Medicaid. All too often, said Bufwack, medical care ends at the clinic door, reinforcing the need to expand both primary care and health insurance coverage. "That's when our doctors feel they're practicing Third World medicine," she said. "You will die if you have cancer or a heart condition or bad asthma or horrible diabetes. If you need a specialist and specialty tests and specialty meds and specialty surgery, those things are totally out of your reach."<br /><br />**************<br /><br /><strong>A father, a son, and a short-lived presidential pardon<br /></strong>By Ken Belson and Eric Lichtblau<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />The ties that bind fathers and sons come in all shapes and sizes, including 10-foot-high chain-link fences.<br />That is one of the many connections between Robert Toussie and his son Isaac, who was pardoned and unpardoned by Bush this week, decisions that set abuzz the normally sedate New York community of Manhattan Beach.<br />Neighbors say the elder Toussie built the fence a decade ago to keep rabble-rousers away from the shoreline promenade on the Rockaway Inlet that abuts his family's waterfront homes, including one where Isaac lives.<br />While Toussie's fence, which has No Trespassing signs in English and Russian, has largely kept the derelicts at bay, it has also alienated neighbors who might otherwise have little bad to say about him.<br />It also shines light on the complex relationship between Toussie and his son, who pleaded guilty in 2001 to using false documents to have mortgages insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and in 2002 to mail fraud, admitting that he had persuaded officials in Suffolk County to overpay for land.<br />The White House said Thursday that when Bush granted Isaac Toussie, 37, a pardon earlier this week, the president and his advisers were unaware that the elder Toussie had recently donated $30,800 to Republicans. Bush took the extraordinary step of rescinding the pardon on Wednesday after reports about the political contributions.<br />The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said in an e-mail message Thursday that the administration never sought information on political donations in considering pardon applications.<br />"This would be inappropriate on many levels," Perino said. "Given that no one advising the president knew of the donation by Toussie's father, and because of the possibility of an appearance of impropriety, the counsel to the president withdrew his recommendation."<br />While the younger Toussie has said nothing publicly since the revelation of the donations on Tuesday, his supporters say he deserved a pardon because he was contrite about his misdeeds and had made significant charitable contributions before and after his convictions. Both of these factors are believed to have been factors in Bush's original decision to grant the pardon.<br />"There was a long list of charitable donations and work he had done since his sentence," Perino said.<br />Officials said Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, was unaware in reviewing the petition that Toussie's father had recently donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee and $2,300 to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona.<br />People involved in the pardon process say it has become more common in recent months for those seeking clemency to go directly to the White House, as Toussie's lawyer, Bradford Berenson, did, rather than go through the Justice Department.<br />Bush's revoking of the pardon was so unusual that some legal experts questioned whether he had the authority to reverse the pardon, one of 19 the White House announced Tuesday. But the Justice Department said it believed that the original pardon announcement was not binding and could be revoked because Toussie had not received formal notification of the president's action. Toussie's lawyers hope he might still be granted a pardon once the Justice Department completes a formal review.<br />The father and son have worked in real estate for years, but in 2001 the elder Toussie sued Suffolk County, saying, in effect, that they had been tied too closely together. The suit, still pending, said the county had refused to sell Robert Toussie 31 parcels of land he won at a county auction because of his son's legal troubles.<br />Both Toussies are among the defendants in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2001 by about 400 home buyers, most of them black or Hispanic, who say they were sold poorly constructed new homes at inflated prices and were fooled into believing that property taxes would be deferred or reduced. The case is continuing.<br />Some of his neighbors say Toussie has been protective of his son. He helped him buy a home on Dover Street several years ago, according to a resident who did not want to be named for fear of antagonizing neighbors. He extended the chain-link fence from his homes on Exeter, one street to the east, to his son's home.<br />But the fence cut through a 104-by-20-foot grass strip abutting the home of Igor Zolotov, who lives between the houses of Toussie and his son. Zolotov and Toussie both claimed that the land was theirs, but in 2003 a state appellate court sided with Zolotov, who removed the fence and replaced it with a smaller one.<br />The decision did not erase the bad will Toussie had created. Neighbors, some of whom had moved to Manhattan Beach to be by the sea, still do not have easy access to the shore because of another section of Toussie's fence that still stands. And they see Isaac Toussie's legal troubles through the prism of what they call his father's heavy-handedness.<br />"It's not surprising that the son is following in the footsteps of the father," said Irena Zolotova, 31, Zolotov's daughter. "It caused my father a lot of indignation. It's chutzpah. How do you try to take away somebody's property?"<br />Some neighbors, including Sabina Gurshumova, 29, a homemaker who lives across the street from the elder Toussie, say the Toussies are "good people."<br />"Sometimes they have us over for dinner for the holidays," Gurshumova said.<br />Neither Toussie nor his son answered the doors of their homes on Thursday. But one Toussie family member said the picture of the father and the son was unfair.<br />"They are philanthropists; they build hospitals and save people," said a woman reached by telephone who identified herself as a cousin, Marie Torgueman. She cited in particular Robert Toussie's donations to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital but said both father and son were involved in charitable activities.<br />While a president has unfettered authority to grant a pardon for any reason he wishes, the suggestion of a linkage to political donations has proved controversial in the past. The most notorious case in recent years was President Bill Clinton's 2001 pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife had donated $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library.<br />Experts on pardons said the White House faced a difficult decision on whether to find out if someone seeking a pardon had made political contributions.<br />On the one hand, the president's advisers would probably want to have that information to avoid the type of appearance problem that arose in the Toussie case. But if the White House did seek information on donations, it could be accused of tilting pardons toward those who had given money.<br />"I would want to make sure that anything that's potentially embarrassing to the president, he ought to know about it in making the decision," said Margaret Love, a pardon lawyer at the Justice Department in the Clinton administration.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1qFcGChVonxUBlCLeK-NwAjkACMoGeVXScO0U2PQucFGs3F93FPEnsRWo9ipHOAmtORSLbm5d7tDtDiJNvdwVLCKMsmHKHPb99F2Sh4ZSy6Ki9Ey6_eD0RC6tv3NmV7C0qLLwt_uxxQ/s1600-h/DSC04580.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394411104959634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-1qFcGChVonxUBlCLeK-NwAjkACMoGeVXScO0U2PQucFGs3F93FPEnsRWo9ipHOAmtORSLbm5d7tDtDiJNvdwVLCKMsmHKHPb99F2Sh4ZSy6Ki9Ey6_eD0RC6tv3NmV7C0qLLwt_uxxQ/s320/DSC04580.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN3a-YxFRu8t2gdECgaQxhAkEViPollryKUgac6GKDpkPHf06eQKUaj7tVkdBkKZeM2hx4atKan5M2SyGlvRqOYgEm6PaoLCAk8cQQ095QbeBzv1eDMH8OgLDFFXHc1UWylw3kxdgIJB8/s1600-h/DSC04582.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394409776060642" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitXmdz05k9WpHwel42x2PdCEInsfN2rkGJdq-chMjCC6BSGPkljz0QKtLSJY94DPFpK_9PVTkbXOWgpskdm21T8AucoyyigoXRpTZaaP58QCsm7WjdiWCLsE7LWYXOR1N0Zx6DfL5Ispo/s320/DSC04584.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLuAObDSH51KtXh7lUVW5K3f22ic6MOGdicqRPc4m_-oB1_Wy5nW41y5nAVZf1rjfIzHJ3H4iaYPr2mmPsvpE7vFvjQU7KsGDOF9HroFlI4zyQh7zaTrIYmR7J1fIv3GU4ngEkTBd1djM/s1600-h/DSC04585.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394387020969458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLuAObDSH51KtXh7lUVW5K3f22ic6MOGdicqRPc4m_-oB1_Wy5nW41y5nAVZf1rjfIzHJ3H4iaYPr2mmPsvpE7vFvjQU7KsGDOF9HroFlI4zyQh7zaTrIYmR7J1fIv3GU4ngEkTBd1djM/s320/DSC04585.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHQFqiQY5ijzXFAws-GBq8gKoL-UvvMlBNUoVLbhf7q7GDnvwWmDU-ZisxH4EhGmhPam_IwVGtVcurGB_882dHKMhb2ldUFbmSGZ6ymcPAWxn2jpLjw_sWCIN1Rn02sWKORwylzo15pSk/s1600-h/DSC04586.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394125108380530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHQFqiQY5ijzXFAws-GBq8gKoL-UvvMlBNUoVLbhf7q7GDnvwWmDU-ZisxH4EhGmhPam_IwVGtVcurGB_882dHKMhb2ldUFbmSGZ6ymcPAWxn2jpLjw_sWCIN1Rn02sWKORwylzo15pSk/s320/DSC04586.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL6TWmBRFikYySTp9HsB8pzTAb3ucdUTKa-5GOyTghpI1HNEewsvM6vvZfSBX4GLH8Sf6jVBs7XqRwRTGe0KIN0XSMHZUJ-1IWBcj-zi73G7xonTGlbn0C4Tub_X9mutfY1a4s78G5g0Y/s1600-h/DSC04587.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394116333392402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL6TWmBRFikYySTp9HsB8pzTAb3ucdUTKa-5GOyTghpI1HNEewsvM6vvZfSBX4GLH8Sf6jVBs7XqRwRTGe0KIN0XSMHZUJ-1IWBcj-zi73G7xonTGlbn0C4Tub_X9mutfY1a4s78G5g0Y/s320/DSC04587.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3YZtEUjdSfvlusKOX32pLITPzURxvyE9YKblCDs9rO5TQEXKoFEqZuBUZ3uvlit3ylwoR0Dobz3QH0SH3LR9lDcPCuwkTBcEEhCVxmRt3lcXtXVcB6G1GNTUwPEMiWJ9APPX58TvCec/s1600-h/DSC04590.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394113451280050" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3YZtEUjdSfvlusKOX32pLITPzURxvyE9YKblCDs9rO5TQEXKoFEqZuBUZ3uvlit3ylwoR0Dobz3QH0SH3LR9lDcPCuwkTBcEEhCVxmRt3lcXtXVcB6G1GNTUwPEMiWJ9APPX58TvCec/s320/DSC04590.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>EU entry helps Romanians and Bulgarians understand each other<br /></strong>By Matthew Brunwasser<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />RUSE, Bulgaria: Bulgarians had grandiose expectations about joining the European Union. The arrival of many Romanians was not among them.<br />Before both joined the EU on Jan. 1, 2007, Bulgarians and Romanians considered each other with almost total indifference, despite being formal allies in the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War and sharing a Danube River border 470 kilometers, or 290 miles, long.<br />Even for residents of Ruse, at the Bulgarian end of the only bridge connecting the two nations, the people on the opposite river bank might as well have been on another continent. When they thought of Romanians at all, it was usually to dismiss them as "mamaligari," roughly "polenta-makers," after the Romanians' national dish mamaliga.<br />Romanians, for their part, would put down Bulgarians as "castravetari" or "cucumber-growers," for their perennial vegetable-gardening.<br />But shortly after the border between them formally dissolved because of EU membership, a tidal wave of bargain-seeking Romanians crashed over northern Bulgaria.<br />That initial wave has receded, leaving a multitude of unexpected and enduring relationships in its wake.<br />Many residents of Ruse are now embarrassed that they were close-minded for so long.<br />"The new relations with Romania have opened a new world," said Ivelina Belcheva, 40, a television journalist born and raised in Ruse, whose motorcycle club, "Spirit of Freedom," has since started riding with new friends from Romania. "It has always been close by, but always very closed."<br />Before 2007, Ruse was known for its faded glory, depopulation and rusting behemoths of Soviet-era heavy industry. The birthplace of the Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, it grew wealthy in the 19th century from trade along the Danube. Neo-Baroque and neo-Rococo architecture grace its center, an echo of Central European Habsburg glory far upstream in Vienna and Budapest. Until the early 20th century, when it was eclipsed by Sofia, this was the economic and cultural capital of Bulgaria.<br />In the past two years, this city of 175,000 has undergone a marked revitalization, fueled by a Romanian spending spree. Romania, which with 22 million people versus 7.5 million in Bulgaria has a far larger economy, boasts average salaries of 450 a month, compared with about 265 for Bulgaria - the lowest in the EU.<br />Seven separate new shopping malls are planned - five of them already under construction. The biggest, the 100 million Grand Plaza slated for completion in 2010, is to boast a 90,000-square-meter, or 970,000-square-foot, mall; a 5,000-seat arena for sports and cultural events; a 115-room luxury hotel; and 11,000 square meters of offices.<br />And while the global economic slowdown is starting to be felt here, it did not diminish extra-large holiday crowds from Romania, and so far has not affected construction of the malls.<br />Romanians come in large numbers on weekend shopping trips. They buy property and start businesses. Restaurants in the city center offer Romanian menus. And Romanian language courses have sprouted, with the tiny supply of translators unable to meet new and growing demand.<br />Sofia is more than 300 kilometers away, while Bucharest, the Romanian capital, is not 70 kilometers distant, and Ruse is sucked into its economic orbit. Since EU membership has eliminated long waits at the border, people from Ruse now regularly use Bucharest Airport. Traffic congestion in Bucharest means the drive from southern Bucharest to Ruse is often shorter than driving to the northern part of the Romanian capital.<br />"They say it's good to know Romanian because someday Ruse will be a neighborhood of Bucharest," said Anka Staneva, a long-time Romanian teacher and translator. The six students in her classroom work in the medical profession; many of their clinics participate in exchanges of staff members and patients with Giurgiu, the Romanian town across the bridge.<br />"Speaking Romanian will be helpful in the future, and I'm looking ahead,"<br />said Nona Ignatieva, 24, a kinesiotherapist at a private spa.<br />Several students recalled their shock in the first days of EU membership, when Ruse was so flooded with visitors that cars with Romanian license plates outnumbered Bulgarian ones. The municipalities of Ruse and Giurgiu organized three days of free city bus rides between the towns. Many lifelong residents of both communities crossed the bridge for the first time; up to 1,500 people waited for the buses.<br />"It made a big impression on me," said Daniela Nikolaeva, a travel agent. It was her first visit to Giurgiu, and she was surprised at how well groomed the town was after years of hearing horror stories. Streets were litter-free, and each tree in the center was fenced and neatly tended. "There isn't any of that kind of thing in Ruse," she said.<br />In general, traffic between the two countries is helping to dispel negative stereotypes on each side - a tendency shared by many neighbors in the Balkans, long separated by Communist borders and centuries of prejudice.<br />"I was expecting the worst: poverty, crime and filth," said Sorin Ropotan, 30, a Romanian who works in sales at a communications company.<br />"But then last year we saw that Ruse is actually very nice," he continued, finding the streets cleaner than Bucharest. "The old architecture is very beautiful. And the waiters are very professional and even speak Romanian."</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlpm6Ids26mGp1bN5U2mhrl7jtrbtjXDuO-P9suBFmNu3vMxzmsMrcNkpv3_uUPVTlwUOx4p7ty7xxisLeD3Yd_wjvrJCTuVjpQJVEqg8D2992rjsTJl5JRUl2EkNyaWP5mGrKcQBSQnI/s1600-h/DSC04591.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394106302372610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlpm6Ids26mGp1bN5U2mhrl7jtrbtjXDuO-P9suBFmNu3vMxzmsMrcNkpv3_uUPVTlwUOx4p7ty7xxisLeD3Yd_wjvrJCTuVjpQJVEqg8D2992rjsTJl5JRUl2EkNyaWP5mGrKcQBSQnI/s320/DSC04591.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYkJ1c5rzUDv92YU6mHCpm5pNlZ5M6CAndWB9V6dMOBxrAroADCY67TmGpSeq1JOwT3Bg6Trrm-fY62B9tRzfshXNTMoLZY2UROsRgM8w4D2SzwTeuNkO3IerJbOqZHmfL6_r8aiWRC3o/s1600-h/DSC04592.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284394107379996562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYkJ1c5rzUDv92YU6mHCpm5pNlZ5M6CAndWB9V6dMOBxrAroADCY67TmGpSeq1JOwT3Bg6Trrm-fY62B9tRzfshXNTMoLZY2UROsRgM8w4D2SzwTeuNkO3IerJbOqZHmfL6_r8aiWRC3o/s320/DSC04592.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNjXYWONox_9cwpTGszl8C0keDa94fisHW6NKhZBSJF_IBRbs4oM-GO_RsrGeYoITYQN3JlRE4kYtJLQd5o3NfSEXq0O5ObePvwvbWO6hzOfpbDP0jUuab9Gbp8hLANeY-HFZriw08Q3g/s1600-h/DSC04593.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393881300370066" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNjXYWONox_9cwpTGszl8C0keDa94fisHW6NKhZBSJF_IBRbs4oM-GO_RsrGeYoITYQN3JlRE4kYtJLQd5o3NfSEXq0O5ObePvwvbWO6hzOfpbDP0jUuab9Gbp8hLANeY-HFZriw08Q3g/s320/DSC04593.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Elizabeth Alexander: Inaugural poet with an outsize audience</strong><br />By Dwight Garner<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Summoning artists to participate<br />In the august occasions of the state<br />Seems something artists ought to celebrate.<br />Those are pleasant thoughts, but awful poetry - probably the worst three lines Robert Frost ever put to paper. Tellingly, it was work for hire: the opening lines of "Dedication," the poem Frost composed for John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration.<br />Famously, and perhaps blessedly, Frost never had the chance to declaim them. The high wind and strong sun that day conspired to make his typescript unreadable. Unruffled, he pulled a mighty poem from memory, his own "Gift Outright," with its ringing first line: "The land was ours before we were the land's."<br />Frost was the first poet to read at a presidential inauguration, and there have been only two others in the almost five decades since: Maya Angelou, at Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993, and Miller Williams, at Clinton's second, in 1997. (Some would include James Dickey, who composed a poem that he read at Jimmy Carter's inaugural gala but not at the inauguration.) Now America is about to meet its fourth inaugural poet, a 46-year-old Yale professor named Elizabeth Alexander.<br />Thus far America's inaugural poems have been a mixed, motley bunch. Frost's "Dedication" was stiff and dutiful. Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" was touchy-feely, multi-culti and crammed with shout-outs:<br />So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew<br />The African, the Native American, the Sioux,<br />The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,<br />The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,<br />The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,<br />The Privileged, the Homeless, the Teacher.<br />Miller Williams seemed to get it about right. His inaugural poem, "Of History and Hope," was dignified, with a weather-beaten resonance. It began:<br />We have memorized America,<br />how it was born and who we have been and where.<br />In ceremonies and silence we say the words,<br />telling the stories, singing the old songs.<br />(Music fans could not have heard that last line without recalling that Williams is the father of Lucinda Williams, the venerated singer and songwriter.)<br />But there is little doubt, given the intense global interest in President-elect Barack Obama, that Alexander's verse will be broadcast to more people at one time than any poem ever composed. It is, for Alexander, an outsize platform.<br />What the world will hear at Obama's inauguration is the work of a woman whose verse makes a sharply different kind of music from that of any of the inaugural poets who have preceded her. The principal obsessions in her four books of verse - race and history, love and family - are played out in poems that can buzz with an electric and angular ellipticity, as in "Emancipation," printed here in its entirety:<br />Corncob constellation,<br />oyster shell, drawstring pouch, dry bones.<br />Gris gris in the rafters.<br />Hoodoo in the sleeping nook.<br />Mojo in Linda Brent's crawlspace.<br />Nineteenth century corncob cosmogram<br />set on the dirt floor, beneath the slant roof,<br />left intact the afternoon<br />that someone came and told those slaves<br />"We're free."<br />At other times her voice is calm and plain-spoken, as in this snippet from the poem "Smile":<br />When I see a black man smiling<br />like that, nodding and smiling<br />with both hands visible, mouthing<br />"Yes, Officer," across the street,<br />I think of my father, who taught us<br />the words "cooperate," "officer,"<br />to memorize badge numbers,<br />who has seen black men shot at<br />from behind in the warm months north.<br />Alexander, who was born in Harlem in New York City and raised in Washington, has been on fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Over a recent lunch in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she talked about how surprised and flattered she was to be asked to compose a poem, particularly by this president-elect. "His own use of language, and his respect for it, is so evident," she said. "He is aware of the kind of power language has, and aware of the kind of care with which we ought to try to speak to each other" as "we move forward."<br />She is going about making a poem for Obama, she said, by casting an eye back. "I have read the previous inaugural poems, as well as many others," she said. "The ones that appeal to me have a sense of focus and a kind of gravitas, an ability to appeal to larger issues without getting corny." One thing Alexander wants to do, she said, is speak clearly but artfully. "I don't want the poem to talk down to some imagined audience," she said. Among the poets she has been reading for guidance are Virgil, W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Gwendolyn Brooks.<br />Is she prepared, I asked, for a Robert Frost moment? What if her manuscript catches fire or blows away? "I am going to have many copies of the poem tucked away," she replied, laughing. "I really am. In a boot. I'm serious. I will have backups. I'm a mom."<br />Alexander is not a stranger to politics. Her father, Clifford, was a presidential civil rights adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson and secretary of the army during the Carter administration. Her mother, Adele, teaches African-American women's history at George Washington University. Alexander became friendly with Barack and Michelle Obama when both she and Barack Obama were teaching at the University of Chicago in the 1990s. Her younger brother, Mark, was a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and is working on the Obama transition team.<br />Alexander's first book of poems, "The Venus Hottentot," was published in 1990. Her other books of poetry are "Body of Life" (1996), "Antebellum Dream Book" (2001) and "American Sublime" (2005), one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as two books of essays. If there is anything critics and readers get wrong about her poetry, and that of her African-American contemporaries, it is that they "focus on content but forget about form and craft," Alexander said. "But they are not just documentaries. It's been a problem through the ages. African-American poetry has been read sociologically."<br />Alexander is not overly nervous, she said, about performing her inaugural poem. She enjoys reading her work. "By the time you are reading a poem, the real work has been done," she said. "If I ever get nervous before getting up to read, I look at the poem and say: 'You're done. All I have to do is let you out."'</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>A dashing war hero, but way too Cruise</strong><br />Reviewed by Manohla Dargis<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Valkyrie<br />Directed by Bryan Singer<br />There are no discernibly nasty Nazis in "Valkyrie," though Hitler and Goebbels skulk about in a few scenes, shooting dark, ominous looks at the heroic German army officer played by Tom Cruise. Perhaps they're wondering what this Hollywood megastar is doing in their midst, a sentiment that you may come to share while watching Cruise - who gives a fine, typically energetic performance in a film that requires nothing more of him than a profile and vigor - strut about as one of history's more enigmatic players.<br />That enigma was Claus von Stauffenberg, a count and a colonel who, though he lost one eye, an entire hand and several fingers while fighting on behalf of the Reich, made several attempts to assassinate Hitler and seize control of the government. At the core of his spectacularly ambitious plot was Valkyrie, Hitler's plan for the mobilization of the home army that Stauffenberg hoped to hijack in order to quash the SS and its leaders. It didn't work, of course, for complicated reasons, though also because by 1944, as William L. Shirer bluntly puts it in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," the conspirators were "terribly late."<br />You don't learn how belated the coup d'état was in "Valkyrie," which opens worldwide through the winter. This might matter if this big-ticket production with Cruise in an eye patch and shiny, shiny boots had something to do with reality. But the director, Bryan Singer (of the "X-Men" franchise), and the writers, Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, aren't interested in delivering a history lesson: That's why Ken Burns was born. Slick, facile entertainment is the name of the game here, as it is in all Singer's films, including "Apt Pupil" (about a Nazi war criminal and the American boy next door who outs him) and "The Usual Suspects," an intricately plotted story with men and guns, secrets and shadows that McQuarrie wrote. The secrets have already begun swirling by the time "Valkyrie" opens with Stauffenberg, stationed in North Africa, bitterly recording his opposition to Hitler in a diary right before losing various body parts to the war. After his convalescence he meets Major General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh), who, sometime earlier, tries to blow up Hitler with a bomb hidden in bottles of French liqueur. (Russian vodka might have been more effective.)<br />Stauffenberg soon joins the conspiratorial party that includes other British class acts brandishing high military rank and speaking in lightly accented or unaccented English: Bill Nighy as General Friedrich Olbricht, Tom Wilkinson as General Friedrich Fromm, Terence Stamp as General Ludwig Beck and Eddie Izzard as General Erich Fellgiebel.<br />Most of the crucial rebellious officers are played by British actors, while some of the Nazi diehards are played by Germans, which wouldn't be worth mentioning if this cacophony of accents weren't so distracting. But, as with the casting of Cruise, whose German voice-over quickly eases into English, this international acting community invokes an earlier studio age, when Peter Lorre and Claude Rains delivered their lines in exotically flavored English and everyone pretended that Rick's Café really was located in Casablanca and not on a back lot. If Cruise doesn't work in "Valkyrie," it's partly because he's too modern, too American and way too Tom Cruise to make sense in the role, but also because what passes for movie realism keeps changing, sometimes faster than even a star can change his brand.<br />Though Singer's old-fashioned movie habits, his attention to the gloss, gleam and glamour of the image, can be agreeably pleasurable, he tends to gild every lily. Hitler (David Bamber) doesn't need spooky music or low camera angles to be villainous: He just has to show up.<br />Singer's fondness for exaggeration can even undercut his strongest scenes, as when Stauffenberg visits Hitler to secure approval for the rewritten Valkyrie plan. If implemented, the plan will bring down the Führer, who, for his part, seems intent on bringing down the house with leers and popping eyeballs. Singer appears to have taken cues here from "Black Book," Paul Verhoeven's World War II romp, but he's too serious to make such vaudeville work.<br />Stauffenberg, who hated Hitler but worshipped the Reich, sacrificed himself on the dual altar of nationalism and militarism, which makes him a more ambiguous figure than the one drawn in "Valkyrie." He's a complex character, too complex for this film, which like many stories of this type, transforms World War II into a boy's adventure with dashing heroes, miles of black leather and crane shots of German troops in lockstep formation that would make Leni Riefenstahl flutter.<br />It's a war that offers moral absolutes (Nazis are evil) and narratives (Nazis are evil and should die) that seem easier to grasp than any current conflict. Truly, World War II has become the moviemaker's gift that keeps on giving, whether you want it to or not.<br /></div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGsojHdu6ZNKSHDKhbqKTiq7S19oo3SCYk4EKJDWmmkOAD9z7X1kTDRucvEvaf9zBqh5scaCv8jeUS4O4o6vEvsyl7PdThU5H_85uME30h17DuxXAlcDaGf_WrqYuL4mFvC6YuzOMC9O0/s1600-h/DSC04594.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393882310163170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGsojHdu6ZNKSHDKhbqKTiq7S19oo3SCYk4EKJDWmmkOAD9z7X1kTDRucvEvaf9zBqh5scaCv8jeUS4O4o6vEvsyl7PdThU5H_85uME30h17DuxXAlcDaGf_WrqYuL4mFvC6YuzOMC9O0/s320/DSC04594.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3RZFQfDQ_NZv2BGS9rIPa6jfk4nzR16YMA8ThygJYsGro1uPWoJjuTAJxvy5WgWRYRas6v2o9ZXzYhMNuSYVWj1xmqpzqUv9ZCPr-mswhfqTtlp2p_JP_KHFzNxXRJw6kyeY9Gctp2lk/s1600-h/DSC04595.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393874576801346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3RZFQfDQ_NZv2BGS9rIPa6jfk4nzR16YMA8ThygJYsGro1uPWoJjuTAJxvy5WgWRYRas6v2o9ZXzYhMNuSYVWj1xmqpzqUv9ZCPr-mswhfqTtlp2p_JP_KHFzNxXRJw6kyeY9Gctp2lk/s320/DSC04595.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>A challenge for Obama: Getting immigration right<br /></strong>Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Getting immigration right<br />It's way too early to tell whether the United States under Barack Obama will restore realism, sanity and lawfulness to its immigration system. But it's never too early to hope, and the stars seem to be lining up, at least among his cabinet nominees.<br />If Obama's team is confirmed, the United States will have a homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and a commerce secretary, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who understand the border region and share a well-informed disdain for foolish, inadequate enforcement schemes like the Bush administration's border fence. And it will have a labor secretary, Hilda Solis of California, who, as a state senator and congresswoman, has built a reputation as a staunch defender of immigrants.<br />The confluence of immigrants and labor is exactly what America - particularly, and disastrously, the Bush administration - has not been able to figure out.<br />In simplest terms, what Solis and Obama seem to know in their gut is this: If you uphold workers' rights, even for those here illegally, you uphold them for all working Americans. If you ignore and undercut the rights of illegal immigrants, you encourage the exploitation that erodes working conditions and job security everywhere. In a time of economic darkness, the stability and dignity of the work force are especially vital.<br />This is why it is so important to reverse the Bush administration's immigration tactics, which for years have attacked the problem upside down and backward. To appease Republican nativists, it lavished scarce resources solely on hunting down and punishing illegal immigrants. Its campaign of raids, detentions and border fencing was a moral failure.<br />Among other things, it terrorized and broke apart families and led to some gruesome deaths in shoddy prisons. It mocked the American tradition of welcoming and assimilating immigrant workers.<br />But it also was a strategic failure because it did little or nothing to stem the illegal tide while creating the very conditions under which the off-the-books economy can thrive. Illegal immigrant workers are deterred from forming unions. And without a path to legalization and under the threat of a relentless enforcement-only regime, they cannot assert their rights.<br />It's a system that the grubbiest and shabbiest industries and business owners could not have designed better. Through it all, the Bush administration's response to criticism has been ever more enforcement.<br />Solis, whose father immigrated from Mexico and was a Teamsters shop steward and whose mother, from Nicaragua, worked on an assembly line, promises a clean break from that past. She lives in El Monte, a Los Angeles suburb where two compelling stories of immigrants and labor have emerged in recent years.<br />The first was tragic: a notorious 1995 raid at a sweatshop where Thai workers were kept in slave conditions behind barbed wire. The second is less well-known but far more encouraging: a present-day hiring site for day laborers at the edge of a Home Depot parking lot.<br />The Latino men who gather in that safe, well-run space uphold an informal minimum wage and protect one another from abusive contractors. It's good for the store, its customers and the workers.<br />Solis is a defender of such sites and has opposed efforts in other cities to enact ordinances to disperse day laborers and force them underground. She understands that if day laborers end up in our suburbs, it is better to give them safe places to gather rather than allow an uncontrolled job bazaar to drive wages and working conditions down.<br />That's a bit of local wisdom that deserves to take root in the federal government.</div><div><br /><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNwEDlwjTL9AKfYqWJV5zmjcmKPSZzG6MIcl6xM-tr9p_gXltKkp_yi5JUDhm1cAJt84CUGV7JqUXgP1cTVV_hDwOZRAXfwq_vJKsFCJoHcdAXHuSS3IuWvp49WOhIj6ZCSj-CxHsHejQ/s1600-h/DSC04596.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393877721660770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNwEDlwjTL9AKfYqWJV5zmjcmKPSZzG6MIcl6xM-tr9p_gXltKkp_yi5JUDhm1cAJt84CUGV7JqUXgP1cTVV_hDwOZRAXfwq_vJKsFCJoHcdAXHuSS3IuWvp49WOhIj6ZCSj-CxHsHejQ/s320/DSC04596.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTke4I5CUuTBoMKYK4oe-nabsHvK5rXCNweYhp2BZsIHHpnULBEGcI8BeZOTbQn9tVFaluu9Ns02rJcGM5aVc2a0g3kBdoq8VJhbZnzN-Hmf3kYLk2od1nLF2n4qKkX3S3ULebYgbSgsU/s1600-h/DSC04597.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393872297262946" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTke4I5CUuTBoMKYK4oe-nabsHvK5rXCNweYhp2BZsIHHpnULBEGcI8BeZOTbQn9tVFaluu9Ns02rJcGM5aVc2a0g3kBdoq8VJhbZnzN-Hmf3kYLk2od1nLF2n4qKkX3S3ULebYgbSgsU/s320/DSC04597.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>Sri Lanka's ignored war<br /></strong>The Boston Globe<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Asia's longest civil war is building to a violent crescendo. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese-majority government should be pressed to accept a cease-fire, to permit a political settlement.<br />Government forces are besieging the rebel Tamil Tigers in the north. Since abandoning a cease-fire in 2006 and a Norwegian-sponsored peace process earlier this year, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defense Minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, have been vaunting their intention to crush the Tigers once and for all.<br />There is little chance the brothers' military campaign will produce anything other than a new phase of protracted guerrilla warfare. Meanwhile, over 200,000 civilians have been uprooted from their homes. On ground flooded by monsoon rains, they struggle to survive in frail lean-tos, dependent on aid agencies that operate under the Sri Lankan Army's severe restrictions.<br />Both sides have abused civilians. The Sri Lankan military has bombed and shelled villages, schools, hospitals. An official of the World Food Program told the BBC recently that conditions for displaced people in the northern conflict zone are "as basic as in Somalia." And Human Rights Watch has accused the Tigers of preventing 230,000 displaced civilians from fleeing the war zone so they can be used as human shields, and to provide a pool of potential recruits.<br />Tamil civilians of northern Sri Lanka are suffering a man-made disaster. Ethnic or nationalistic pride should not be allowed to inflict such suffering on civilians who committed no crime but to be trapped in a war zone.<br />Only when the shooting stops can Sri Lanka's government pursue a lasting peace - by granting the Tamils meaningful autonomy in their homelands.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4doFVHLG_jN9i3fYID-rWdFKpm-sKqR21mwgglHzIUHXc7NAnAtgs9U8BxJjeWUxLvltpsGO1ZpMwKmS0Zqk6cGk6zBX28PntTy7k1hyphenhyphen7_SeNeH2OwPBg5cNV2uxjzAWUy9ErAVYzsKM/s1600-h/DSC04598.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393642820851490" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4doFVHLG_jN9i3fYID-rWdFKpm-sKqR21mwgglHzIUHXc7NAnAtgs9U8BxJjeWUxLvltpsGO1ZpMwKmS0Zqk6cGk6zBX28PntTy7k1hyphenhyphen7_SeNeH2OwPBg5cNV2uxjzAWUy9ErAVYzsKM/s320/DSC04598.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJPn7cabiZLcO8pr_HICt1YQOFhDUqdMD8C8yojPGRNu_vdTGpcUQ17m_grlahiWIm2gPWbofTjGYjBNvC0Jk0tueVM-A16XBcEps7-HcSD0CPp28sBPqfscyYOj_JQwUhyphenhyphen4NUMd_c0Y/s1600-h/DSC04599.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393639442636034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmJPn7cabiZLcO8pr_HICt1YQOFhDUqdMD8C8yojPGRNu_vdTGpcUQ17m_grlahiWIm2gPWbofTjGYjBNvC0Jk0tueVM-A16XBcEps7-HcSD0CPp28sBPqfscyYOj_JQwUhyphenhyphen4NUMd_c0Y/s320/DSC04599.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX0OIxrNzZgAq3VGb8IotM-JAigwq3-07yuJHHgNFHtNIlqH5jj1pXuYfTr5DbF2QRlDPqn-HtwpVfcpGQOIhanvF1xcayXX3S-hJqVIWsm1lhThjXFuZxpEAw3wS2Wk1r8eB5GNtKLPg/s1600-h/DSC04600.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393636671897346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX0OIxrNzZgAq3VGb8IotM-JAigwq3-07yuJHHgNFHtNIlqH5jj1pXuYfTr5DbF2QRlDPqn-HtwpVfcpGQOIhanvF1xcayXX3S-hJqVIWsm1lhThjXFuZxpEAw3wS2Wk1r8eB5GNtKLPg/s320/DSC04600.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotBBaaUOjGcw-ZYov6NU2FaP3vElRBnPtsGryTI8xe6PKWmNG4yUiXwd7hdCq-mgCFULIEhUi68UY9EtN-YRXLG7rXz3EH6K6NUk6Te7SxONp2B27OuNe6XpEaT3MiWDAVrzaqlNDr0s/s1600-h/DSC04601.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393633073589730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotBBaaUOjGcw-ZYov6NU2FaP3vElRBnPtsGryTI8xe6PKWmNG4yUiXwd7hdCq-mgCFULIEhUi68UY9EtN-YRXLG7rXz3EH6K6NUk6Te7SxONp2B27OuNe6XpEaT3MiWDAVrzaqlNDr0s/s320/DSC04601.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>New Zealand was top of the rugby union world in 2008<br /></strong>By Peter Berlin<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Year-end reviews in rugby union invariably start with one team and tend to follow four-year cycles.<br />That team is New Zealand and for 20 years the pattern has been the same: three years of calling the All Blacks the best team on earth, followed by a fourth asking how it is that they again failed to win the World Cup.<br />In that seemingly unchanging rhythm, 2008, a post-World Cup year is the start of a new cycle. On the surface it was almost as good a year as New Zealand could have wanted.<br />New Zealand was eliminated by France at the quarterfinal stage in the 2007 World Cup. It then lost a string of veteran players to European clubs.<br />Yet New Zealand's officials seem to be learning lessons from the past. Whether they are the right lessons, we will see in three years.<br />In a break with tradition, New Zealand did not fire its coach, Graham Henry nor cast its captain, Richie McCaw into the outer darkness reserved for All-Black scapegoats.<br />That did not mean Henry escaped a ritual public humiliation. He was made to re-apply for his own job. He beat some extremely strong candidates, notably Robbie Deans, to retain it.<br />McCaw might have strengthened his status through an injury that meant he missed the two tests that the All Blacks lost in 2008: consecutive Tri-Nations matches against South Africa, at home in Dunedin and in Sydney.<br />After he returned, the All Blacks did not lose again. They won the Tri-Nations for a fourth straight year and then swept all four opponents in an autumn tour of Britain and Ireland. Including one match against an Irish provincial team, Munster, the All Blacks played 16 games in 2008 and won 14.<br />New Zealand ended the year back at No. 1 in the world rankings. Canterbury Crusaders, captained by McCaw and coached by Deans, won the Super 14 - the southern hemisphere inter-provincial competition. New Zealand also won the under-20 World Cup and the sevens world series.<br />Henry turned the loss of players to European clubs and injury into a plus, blooding a string of young - and not so young - players. Nevertheless the team continues to orbit around McCaw and Dan Carter, the fly half.<br />The final match of the "grand slam" tour, against England at Twickenham in the fall, demonstrated Carter's qualities. For once he appeared fallible, yet he still dominated the game. His goal-kicking was unusually wayward, but he still booted 17 points. His inspired passing sparked the second-half burst of tries that turned a tight game into another All-Black rout.<br />Yet the end of Carter's year raised questions about the All Blacks and suggested that others in the rugby world harbored doubts.<br />Carter did not return home with the All Blacks. He stayed in Europe to play for Perpignan: another New Zealand star seemingly seduced by the wealth of a European club. Yet, perhaps, the All Blacks have found a way to staunch the bleeding. Carter is, apparently, on a six-month "sabbatical" and should return to New Zealand for the next Tri-Nations.<br />Carter also failed to recapture the world player of the year award. That went to Shane Williams, of Wales.<br />The tiny winger broke the Wales try-scoring record as his team continued its yo-yo form in the European Six Nations. Wales won a Grand Slam in 2005, then imploded before recapturing the winning touch this year. Under a new coach, Warren Gatland, another Kiwi, it again swept all its games.<br />Wales ended the year by becoming the only European team to beat one of the Tri-Nations teams in an autumn international, edging Australia.<br />The Southern Hemisphere clearly remains dominant and the biggest question mark against the All Blacks remains the looming menace of its two Tri-Nations rivals.<br />Deans, spurned by his own country, took over as Australia coach. While his first year contained two losses to New Zealand, one to Wales and a record defeat in South Africa, it also produced clear progress.<br />The Achilles' heel of the Australian team in recent years has been a lack of front-row players to match the brilliance of its backs. Somehow, Deans, from the land of props and hookers, seems to have solved the problem in a few months.<br />South Africa made symbolical strides off the field while seeming to slip back on it. It appointed its first black head coach, Pieter de Villiers. He, in turn increased the proportion of non-white players in the squad. The authorities decided to downgrade the freighted Springbok logo. The protea flower, a symbol of the post-apartheid nation, will become the principle emblem on the shirt.<br />Critics were not surprised when South Africa finished last in the Tri-Nations. Yet it remains the world champion and showed that it still has the ability to grind out victories. It won in New Zealand for the first time in a decade and, with the return of its own talismanic captain, John Smit, completed its own, far uglier, sweep on its autumn tour.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeTN8ulPOO4Ov0xj4tPoPBGz-XGboAnpma8RFxRXaExbr0RVT2qICFg9M7yfRdeMRWbugdDwmWDV20cFWw_bjA0DBMujIGCnAkvi6mAIVGl9-xQ3Y2CKhKzrld0yx19dvRXv7TBwNG9QI/s1600-h/DSC04602.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393627786509586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeTN8ulPOO4Ov0xj4tPoPBGz-XGboAnpma8RFxRXaExbr0RVT2qICFg9M7yfRdeMRWbugdDwmWDV20cFWw_bjA0DBMujIGCnAkvi6mAIVGl9-xQ3Y2CKhKzrld0yx19dvRXv7TBwNG9QI/s320/DSC04602.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoweepMjdd65BJhO7dw5VGYsvMsP0hYkVlyyh1h_2NuXZtpyDiEBJ4A8MkXda62_-X3h9YDswov6I_jyeFw5rx_sj8-mQLHS-7UUJQNZaCsZbwCzXdc33JFA7mFeIfGzWE_rVw7VIQ-JM/s1600-h/DSC04603.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393372270506610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 230px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoweepMjdd65BJhO7dw5VGYsvMsP0hYkVlyyh1h_2NuXZtpyDiEBJ4A8MkXda62_-X3h9YDswov6I_jyeFw5rx_sj8-mQLHS-7UUJQNZaCsZbwCzXdc33JFA7mFeIfGzWE_rVw7VIQ-JM/s320/DSC04603.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkHlqXOpIkRmhZQqrKFyt71YVgyW37yEf0EDct7gnS16OW_P35rmCR12ovRKTO9OGqSSiy39U8khGBUGELBo9153scDdpVD_83q4qwqhopdTMJ8AoA-V65Home7-wMA0VRQOqIc160Pk/s1600-h/DSC04604.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393374959269090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWkHlqXOpIkRmhZQqrKFyt71YVgyW37yEf0EDct7gnS16OW_P35rmCR12ovRKTO9OGqSSiy39U8khGBUGELBo9153scDdpVD_83q4qwqhopdTMJ8AoA-V65Home7-wMA0VRQOqIc160Pk/s320/DSC04604.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZEmqTD62hAS_WlZtIiq5n7OnkcCUK_kXV_8a58gc2_xAgbX8avjf0fjydOJ7JinNGKHwv1mhyWvHgH6JkhJuSFVTPHg74uL06aZDiMdNq3ZyOGUnAE-WhPdVjUJFT0IH9u0HjX3AAG4/s1600-h/DSC04605.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393367502614514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZEmqTD62hAS_WlZtIiq5n7OnkcCUK_kXV_8a58gc2_xAgbX8avjf0fjydOJ7JinNGKHwv1mhyWvHgH6JkhJuSFVTPHg74uL06aZDiMdNq3ZyOGUnAE-WhPdVjUJFT0IH9u0HjX3AAG4/s320/DSC04605.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFNsn60OLDNVq5Ew6TdTyEvZZCST73Ckg1AxCYmU8ami14XrPdm9iFhDFT_CYnFRiavuNzd2HzAzR6fkMl8s3LYD1wqZSArQFmU9vH2SUcBZg25sDNQpjCHVtqkRTiHqs3tULRBISmB4/s1600-h/DSC04606.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393368720465138" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFNsn60OLDNVq5Ew6TdTyEvZZCST73Ckg1AxCYmU8ami14XrPdm9iFhDFT_CYnFRiavuNzd2HzAzR6fkMl8s3LYD1wqZSArQFmU9vH2SUcBZg25sDNQpjCHVtqkRTiHqs3tULRBISmB4/s320/DSC04606.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3vj57XOe3gn05bQPgWhNsPsCTERugKp_CXpYhsWK_5BlVNMcqGRtKIc3ZY6gD16dvWg-ZiSENg4NQqKNpxUVkEnOsHqOeGyLPuhcWJOrUx1B4OLIPUt5wrByX-gQzAqAs8ZNUJhWSkg/s1600-h/DSC04607.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393363217304626" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj3vj57XOe3gn05bQPgWhNsPsCTERugKp_CXpYhsWK_5BlVNMcqGRtKIc3ZY6gD16dvWg-ZiSENg4NQqKNpxUVkEnOsHqOeGyLPuhcWJOrUx1B4OLIPUt5wrByX-gQzAqAs8ZNUJhWSkg/s320/DSC04607.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0LsFk4pfqvZ6LvmCfpJcHgi6ZW5sX7X1CWz4-DnncYp9gkEyde4owb8SjODViklJT2qW4j9X4Jz7S2BXCQneYnikly07py1JbITIUWNatz6gV2-hyh5AZ6q5S1xQksfBHFoRTifJpxY/s1600-h/DSC04608.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393139201146530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0LsFk4pfqvZ6LvmCfpJcHgi6ZW5sX7X1CWz4-DnncYp9gkEyde4owb8SjODViklJT2qW4j9X4Jz7S2BXCQneYnikly07py1JbITIUWNatz6gV2-hyh5AZ6q5S1xQksfBHFoRTifJpxY/s320/DSC04608.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Death toll in Ukraine apartment blast rises to 26</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />KIEV: The death toll from an explosion that leveled an apartment building in southern Ukraine reached 26 on Friday, as the country observed a day of national mourning, officials said.<br />The search for survivors continued after rescuers pulled 21 people from under the mounds of concrete and glass following the huge blast Wednesday at the five-story building in the Crimean peninsula resort of Yevpatoriya.<br />But officials do not know how many people could remain beneath the rubble and hold out little hope of finding more survivors given that temperatures over the two nights since the blast reaching minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit).<br />The entire central section of the building came down, exposing apartments on either side. Sixty-two people were registered inhabitants of the destroyed section of the apartment and rescuers paused their work every hour to listen for cries for help. Two children were among those killed, officials said.<br />Friday was designated a day of national mourning in Ukraine, with entertainment events canceled and flags lowered to half-mast.<br />Officials believe oxygen canisters in the building's basement exploded, said Volodymyr Ivanov, a spokesman for Crimea's branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry.<br />Ivanov said one canister was found intact and sent to forensic investigators. Ivanov said that other possible causes had not been ruled out, without elaborating.<br />President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of Ukraine both flew to Yevpatoriya to inspect rescue efforts and talk to survivors on Thursday. Tymoshenko said in televised remarks that survivors would be given free housing before the end of the year.<br />Yushchenko thanked Russia for offering to send naval personnel from Russia's Black Sea fleet, stationed at the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol, to help with the rescue, but said they were not needed.<br />Neglect of safety precautions has led to frequent explosions in apartment buildings and public facilities in the ex-Soviet nations.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkjLq7iPZrQC2qlCdEggZtpZlGHv5TFyp2YnNJ7Tjx-Qbke9KGv0cWQV1Hs8g4TqB61bfcQ8hWiNdllD7Y-oSfwmLnXjhBBuw8trY_4UoyXtyg7larvxj6dKLJAA3vgMkis3D7BnKiZd8/s1600-h/DSC04609.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393139196000434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkjLq7iPZrQC2qlCdEggZtpZlGHv5TFyp2YnNJ7Tjx-Qbke9KGv0cWQV1Hs8g4TqB61bfcQ8hWiNdllD7Y-oSfwmLnXjhBBuw8trY_4UoyXtyg7larvxj6dKLJAA3vgMkis3D7BnKiZd8/s320/DSC04609.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXbARcixtiK9PsrlrPpyyzO4w6eW_gyeP7aLWDhbfkO9tLtchrFXUhMyoxfc6iMXRHkolPATx_ZoHmkhhv0gtm-PS-djLaTSJAEkR0X7rUK-Gx2m3zqkGXWGrSdiIXaOptBP71pJf6ZL4/s1600-h/DSC04610.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284393132540455186" style="DISPLAY: block; 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Turner did not see Italy until 1802, the same year he was elected to the Royal Academy at 27, then the youngest member ever.<br />But the idea of Italy had already become an essential element in the precociously accomplished young painter and draftsman's productions while he was still in his teens. And his later visits to the peninsula had a radical effect on the development of his mature work.<br />The lifelong impact of the Italian experience on the English artist is the subject of "Turner and Italy," a splendid exhibition of nearly 90 paintings and drawings, expertly curated by James Hamilton. The show continues at Palazzo dei Diamanti here until Feb. 22, then travels on to the National Gallery in Edinburgh and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.<br />Turner began to imbibe Italy in his youth through English buildings influenced by Italian architecture (he grew up near Inigo Jones's Palladian Covent Garden Piazza, and his first apprenticeships were with an architect and an architectural draftsman), Old Master Italian paintings, the landscapes of Claude Lorraine and Italian views by British painters, notably Richard Wilson and John Robert Cozens. All three of these artists are represented by fine pieces in the exhibition.<br />Although of lowly stock - his father was a barber - the artist found patrons who would have been willing to commission him to travel to Italy to execute works for them and extend his artistic education, but the Continent was closed to him by the Napoleonic Wars.<br />A brief pause in this long conflict, after the Peace of Amiens in 1802, precipitated a rush of English visitors to France. Artists in particular seized the chance to visit Paris and the Louvre, then stuffed with looted masterpieces from all over Europe, advertised over the museum's cornice as "Les fruits de nos victoires" (The Fruits of Our Victories).<br />With his patrons' assistance Turner, too, traveled to Paris and surveyed the Louvre but was anxious to press on to Italy while he could. On the way, he discovered the Alps, the most enduring added bonus of his determination to see Italy itself. The profound impression that these mountains had on him is illustrated here by drawings and watercolors, including the spectacular "St Gotthard Pass from the Middle of the Devil's Bridge." The painting depicts a narrow mule path vertiginously snaking its way beneath overhanging rocks on the sheer cliff-face, streaked with frozen cascades above and the dizzying chasm below, half-concealed by the icy mists billowing through it.<br />On this trip, the artist made it only as far as Aosta on the southern side of the Alps, where he saw his first Roman remains on Italian soil.<br />Brief though this taste of Italy was, it stimulated Turner to produce further colorful scenes of cities there he was yet to visit himself, among them Rome and Naples. Meanwhile, the renewed outbreak of hostilities impeded his return to the Continent for many years.<br />That long-term Italian resident and Turner hero, Claude Lorraine, was a primary influence on the English artist's undertaking of his "Liber Studiorum." Claude had compiled a catalogue of drawings of his own paintings, the "Liber Veritatis." From 1806 onward, Turner began a similar project of etchings of his own paintings, intended for publication. Italian landscapes, often with architectural features, figured prominently in this collection.<br />But Turner went further, transforming, for example, rural Thames-side views to the west of London into Claudian Italianate pastoral scenes. A fascinating case on show here is "Isleworth," a print from the "Liber Studiorum" of the (still picturesque) riverside village where Turner lived after his return to England. The medieval church tower, cottages and a mill appear mistily in the background, but in sharp focus in the foreground Turner has conjured up on the tree-lined riverbank a circular Roman temple and imbued the whole scene with a distinctly Claudian atmosphere.<br />"Isleworth" is dated "January 1, 1819." In the summer of that year, Turner set out for Italy again to see the real thing.<br />He had prepared for years for this opportunity: immersed himself in classical literature, the Roman poets and historians, and Alexander Pope's translations of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey"; studied the available travel literature, both poetic and prosaic; and made a personal notebook (on show here) of thumbnail sketches, a dozen to a page, of the places he intended to seek out and record for himself.<br />The artist traversed the Alps again and took a zigzag route down the peninsula, making his first visit to Venice, passing through Bologna, Rimini and Ancona, crossing the Apennines, and going through Umbria on the way to Rome and Naples.<br />Vesuvius perversely erupted shortly after he returned to Rome. But he made an absolutely exquisite unfinished watercolor sketch (lent by the Tate) of the volcano seen from across the bay, emitting (as he acutely observed) twin plumes of decorative smoke, drifting lazily inland against a tranquil but subtly darkening sky.<br />Exposure to the full force of Mediterranean light and the strong, contrasting colors of Italy's land- and seascapes had dramatic consequences for Turner's palette, as he adopted a whole new range of vibrant yellows, blues and reds. Nor were these only applied to his Italian paintings - which he worked up from his hundreds of often minutely detailed drawings and sketches into oils and watercolors in his studio when he returned home - but also to new works depicting his native land.<br />Over the next decade, as vividly demonstrated in the exhibition, sooty Edinburgh became a Caledonian Roman forum basking in the southern sun; Minehead in Somerset, a northern Bay of Naples; Hythe in Kent was transposed to the Gulf of Salerno; and Virginia Water, a small lake in Surrey to the west of London, took on the glassy, miasmic air of the Venetian lagoon in midsummer.<br />This proved too much for some British critics, who complained that Turner's painting was suffering from some kind of "yellow fever." In 1828, the artist returned to Rome for an extended sojourn to try out the life of the resident artist as opposed to that of the itinerant visitor. He held an exhibition of his work at a palazzo on the Quirinal Hill. Instead of wood he used ship's ropes painted with yellow ochre to frame the pictures. The antiquary David Laing laconically recorded that "the people here cannot understand his style at all."<br />Nonetheless, at least two of his large oils that resulted from this last Roman stay - "Rome Seen from the Aventine Hill" and "Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino" (both here from Edinburgh) - must now surely be considered among the greatest of his Italian pictures.<br />Turner spent only about a month in all in Venice over three stays, in 1819, 1833 and 1840. James Hamilton rightly points out in the catalogue that in terms of production the artist's special passion for the place was "an idiosyncrasy of his old age," rather than something that occupied him, as did Italy in general, throughout his career. At the same time, Venice was a significant factor in the adventurous experimentation of the artist's last years, as is witnessed by the striking selection of Venetian and other late works with Italian settings, which gave rise to such English masterpieces as "Rain, Steam and Speed," now at the Tate Gallery.</div><div><br /> </div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><strong><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France</strong> </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-70531912235279033742008-12-26T07:07:00.020+01:002008-12-26T11:49:35.585+01:00A Place in the Auvernge, Thursday, 25th December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong>0720</strong></div><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuVwaVmX47H20eWb3rFczmvfkIRQa31bMGjybEOHEa_5VRaOxzj7SM62Lrz91PNNCcQ_4hcNCV6QzpRlzzzWSGDiUEb1KZcNKz65SiFt__GpUliONpHjDmTKC9z5s57EG5jYG5IZnyi_w/s1600-h/DSC04434.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982656301322210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuVwaVmX47H20eWb3rFczmvfkIRQa31bMGjybEOHEa_5VRaOxzj7SM62Lrz91PNNCcQ_4hcNCV6QzpRlzzzWSGDiUEb1KZcNKz65SiFt__GpUliONpHjDmTKC9z5s57EG5jYG5IZnyi_w/s320/DSC04434.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><p><strong></strong> </p><p><strong></strong> </p><p><strong>Despite rule changes, fighting in NHL is on the rise<br /></strong>By Dave Caldwell<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />Mitch Fritz is a 28-year-old left wing from Osoyoos, British Columbia, who stands 6 feet 8 inches and weighs 258 pounds. He has a goatee, and the knuckles on his left hand are often covered with dark scabs. He is not with the Islanders because he can score.<br />In his second NHL game, on Nov. 1, Fritz picked a fight with Montreal's Georges Laraque, one of the league's most fearsome enforcers. By all accounts, Fritz held his own. He has been in three fights since, keeping a spot on the roster.<br />He does not play much, but Fritz considers his presence a sign of an NHL trend. The number of fights is up by about 15 percent over last season and by 75 percent over three years ago, meaning that players who can fight have become more valuable.<br />"I don't follow it, I don't dissect it, but I don't mind when it's up," said Fritz, an otherwise mild-mannered man who won the Man of the Year award from the American Hockey League three years ago. "It might mean more work for me down the road."<br />Fighting has been an accepted part of hockey for generations. With few exceptions, every team has at least one player who can fight. Two enforcers battle, often briefly, to defuse the emotion generated by a tight, physical game, or to create some emotion.<br />The NHL does not include a fight card in its daily packet of statistics, but Web sites like hockey-fights.com keep track, and the site has logged 351 fights this season, up from 308 through the same time last season.<br />Fights, labeled as such when at least one of the players involved receives a five-minute major penalty, have increased each year since the 2004-5 lockout. Through Dec. 23, 2005, there were 201 fights; through Dec. 23, 2006, there were 220.<br />"It seems like it's coming full circle again," said Jason Travers, a St. Louis Blues fan who in 1995 created hockey-fights.com, which unapologetically lists fights (often adding blow-by-blow descriptions) and includes videos of the better battles.<br />Through Dec. 23, 2003, in the season before the lockout, the site listed 341 fights. That was before the NHL instituted a series of rules changes intended to crack down on late-game brawls, and on clutching and grabbing so the league's premier players would have more room to score.<br />Colin Campbell, the NHL's director of hockey operations, said that stick fouls like cross-checking and slashing were down substantially. But he acknowledged that fighting had increased, and, like many others in hockey, he has a few theories.<br />First, Campbell said, fighting — and rough stuff in general — is less prevalent than when he played in the NHL from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s. (He remembers coating his hair with Vaseline before games so that opponents would not be able to pull it during a scrum.)<br />Those were the days when two-man fights often became donnybrooks, and hardly anyone said no when challenged to a fight. Many enforcers could barely skate, let alone score. Players are more versatile now, and they became a tighter fraternity during the lockout.<br />"Coming out of the lockout," Campbell said, "I don't know if there was a lot of animosity."<br />Meaning that there is more animosity now than there was three years ago.<br />When told what Campbell had said, Boston Bruins forward Shawn Thornton, who was in his 10th fight of the season on Tuesday against the Devils, smiled and replied: "It's a theory. But I'd fight my sister if it came down to it. I'm friends with some of the guys I throw the gloves down with. If I start thinking who's on the other side, then I'm not playing the way I can."<br />Mike Rupp, the Devils forward who fought with Thornton, said: "After the lockout, they opened up the game more. Maybe the game's faster, so there are bigger hits. With speed picking up, guys are laying hits on the skill players from the other teams."<br />That means there has sometimes been a need to even the score, which is when fights tend to break out. Thornton picked a fight in the second period with Rupp after Rupp delivered crushing (but legal) checks on Boston's Dennis Wideman and Vladimir Sobotka.<br />Campbell said he understood why that happened — "It's considered a safety valve," he said of fighting in general — but he said he did not think it was necessary for an enforcer to even the score when clean checks later in the game could deliver the same message.<br />"Take a good hit, get the license plate number and wait to get the other player back," Campbell said.<br />Establishing a physical presence works for some teams, even in today's NHL With the blessing of Brian Burke, then the general manager, the 2006-7 Anaheim Ducks amassed 71 fighting majors, far and away the most in the league. They went on to win the Stanley Cup. Burke has moved to Toronto, but Anaheim, which has an 18-14-3 record, has already been in 40 fights this season, sharing the league lead with the Vancouver Canucks.<br />Some teams do not feel the need to drop the gloves, most notably the Detroit Red Wings, who won the Stanley Cup last season for the 11th time despite being in only 21 fights. (They have been in only seven this season, a league low.)<br />"I just don't think that's part of our game plan," goaltender Ty Conklin, in his first year with the Red Wings, said recently in a conference call with reporters. "You know, there are some teams that you know they feel that they get an advantage if they can intimidate the other team, and we just don't have guys like that. The guys are not intimidated out there."<br />Generally, one fight does not lead to another, although Andre Deveaux of Toronto and Krys Barch of Dallas were in two fights in their game Tuesday and were thrown out of the game.<br />"Lots of times, the fights don't mean anything," said Washington Capitals forward Donald Brashear, 36, who is considered one of the most ferocious tough guys in hockey history. "Guys just fight for fun, for pride. That's about it."<br />Quite often, only a few punches are thrown before the fighters grapple and fall to the ice in a heap. Even with those few punches, though, they will probably be slamming their fists into the other player's helmet.<br />"I'd rather have scars on my knuckles than my face," Thornton said.<br />The knuckles on Thornton's right hand — his "throwing" hand, as the fight fans like to call it — are covered with scabs. He considers it an occupational hazard. He knows what the Bruins expect him to do, and he is doing it.</p><p><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCg5wHlmb9shy1kvvu9rbqRNvOxFSDUhSXzfWsxMe0rNWZ2w5wEzn3otQAtpJobpRiCctSokWch0NVIqeExD2jEk6sutWf3WEfdeP_58MV5pTCyhFzAtTfkDbrWL8ew4xbxr9eajrqtM/s1600-h/DSC04435.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982651923476850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCg5wHlmb9shy1kvvu9rbqRNvOxFSDUhSXzfWsxMe0rNWZ2w5wEzn3otQAtpJobpRiCctSokWch0NVIqeExD2jEk6sutWf3WEfdeP_58MV5pTCyhFzAtTfkDbrWL8ew4xbxr9eajrqtM/s320/DSC04435.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCH_8YmUlUMQKZwAe4xnEu9dUD4mbMBrw1ENJyX_1ILm1VQrLLXbK73hqGgLZY1koXJbCnBCW6hHsnjLpN_2WjvqWaL0WPoh9e2KCeyjYC6L3NeK1jSbn5OMeFLcQUrcGWHkxd7rRDlM8/s1600-h/DSC04436.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982644293928898" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCH_8YmUlUMQKZwAe4xnEu9dUD4mbMBrw1ENJyX_1ILm1VQrLLXbK73hqGgLZY1koXJbCnBCW6hHsnjLpN_2WjvqWaL0WPoh9e2KCeyjYC6L3NeK1jSbn5OMeFLcQUrcGWHkxd7rRDlM8/s320/DSC04436.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsDBsjsyv-NRUA81B3cI7tcLH-ZmP68n9UkjT_Sc5LPw3VK_J5xjOZ_2oLjuU_ZKLO7jt0FOn6uMzYnPwifrdmaUtye8g5bRTT4FFoR8c7A6ZjIhwNMs9wYlPsPn5hteHtHsFa4SKA_IQ/s1600-h/DSC04440.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982647499322706" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsDBsjsyv-NRUA81B3cI7tcLH-ZmP68n9UkjT_Sc5LPw3VK_J5xjOZ_2oLjuU_ZKLO7jt0FOn6uMzYnPwifrdmaUtye8g5bRTT4FFoR8c7A6ZjIhwNMs9wYlPsPn5hteHtHsFa4SKA_IQ/s320/DSC04440.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtTV6VPhCSr5OHuQPrex5CqhO8HYXy8L6sHESYOoaOq_kzBTrrgJgug0T9b3rT9GTokpvCpLmYukrnwUei0ouJU5eZ8475wxh0pPZ81Q9p4m6ortwVtP-Ta4hoVEzSIVmhBMVwmRVHgaE/s1600-h/DSC04445.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982642117679554" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtTV6VPhCSr5OHuQPrex5CqhO8HYXy8L6sHESYOoaOq_kzBTrrgJgug0T9b3rT9GTokpvCpLmYukrnwUei0ouJU5eZ8475wxh0pPZ81Q9p4m6ortwVtP-Ta4hoVEzSIVmhBMVwmRVHgaE/s320/DSC04445.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMwt8JkChAUV1UU2ZsjWKKbnoudaE_ZsGeMPJp2-HO9Wh1HCb2FV28wUmNCeThJFj9tt1l_kTEcTtCqcS9yMwqleq2uUasZNyKNuXuEWqLvII_E6efVcwNU1JFlwIRC0EkndnAA5CefX0/s1600-h/DSC04446.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982314684950466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMwt8JkChAUV1UU2ZsjWKKbnoudaE_ZsGeMPJp2-HO9Wh1HCb2FV28wUmNCeThJFj9tt1l_kTEcTtCqcS9yMwqleq2uUasZNyKNuXuEWqLvII_E6efVcwNU1JFlwIRC0EkndnAA5CefX0/s320/DSC04446.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2qJbXnm9kYdNxPy2Ymsxzw21r1luGn9CRz42Cm0rA2TwHMONda1w9Lt4tEXmu1WyiEh_mmsxIpFzYetJKXfrsFAuRBj3q5bbxN9FswjYsOGYNV86UIVpIaNRF3Olm2mb14zK_gQWy6Ts/s1600-h/DSC04447.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982313487570882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2qJbXnm9kYdNxPy2Ymsxzw21r1luGn9CRz42Cm0rA2TwHMONda1w9Lt4tEXmu1WyiEh_mmsxIpFzYetJKXfrsFAuRBj3q5bbxN9FswjYsOGYNV86UIVpIaNRF3Olm2mb14zK_gQWy6Ts/s320/DSC04447.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMYelT0NtmJUuwFB1H5YwK1duITFotqpYoZJEmHq8JCDYT9xxr3wSzgnXyGoiJSFCV1FJ4qvKYe0Fiy80lsAt1DeRqYVHc4Pok_1297aMEZwPWuBDeDDqYYRygZiPGERjyzz2F33lHHkM/s1600-h/DSC04448.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982308309536994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMYelT0NtmJUuwFB1H5YwK1duITFotqpYoZJEmHq8JCDYT9xxr3wSzgnXyGoiJSFCV1FJ4qvKYe0Fiy80lsAt1DeRqYVHc4Pok_1297aMEZwPWuBDeDDqYYRygZiPGERjyzz2F33lHHkM/s320/DSC04448.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>B</strong><strong>read of life, baked in Rhode Island<br /></strong>By Katie Zezima<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />GREENVILLE, Rhode Island: To the Cavanagh family, the product they make at a nondescript plant here is just bread and water. But to millions at churches around the world, it is a sacred offering.<br />From a purely economic point of view, it is something that is almost just as rare: a seemingly recession-proof business.<br />With the exception of a decline during recent Catholic Church priest scandals, the Cavanagh Company's business of making communion bread has been growing steadily for the last 65 years.<br />The bread is used as a sacramental offering that, for Catholics and some other Christians, represents the breaking of the bread at the Last Supper and the body of Christ.<br />The family-owned company makes about 80 percent of the communion bread used by the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Southern Baptist churches in the United States. It has a similar market share in Australia, Canada and Britain, and is now looking to expand to West Africa.<br />"We feel as though we're a bakery, and all we're making is bread," said Andy Cavanagh, the company's general manager, and part of the fourth generation of Cavanaghs to work here. "It's not that we don't have respect for what happens to it, but that transformation is out of our hands and takes place in a church. The best thing we can do is make sure the bread is perfect in every way possible."<br />Some customers say the Cavanaghs have such a big market share because their product is about as close to perfect as earthly possible.<br />"It doesn't crumb, and I don't like fragments of our Lord scattering all over the floor," said the Rev. Bob Dietel, an Episcopal priest.<br />Dietel uses Cavanagh altar bread at his parish, St. Aidan's, in Camano Island, Washington State He likes that the large wafer, which he holds up and breaks during Mass, cracks cleanly.<br />A few years ago, the congregation switched to the wheat wafer the Cavanaghs make from the white.<br />"There's a nice clean bread flavor, as opposed to the paste flavor you have with some other breads," Dietel said.<br />His congregation buys about 6,000 wafers a year from a Seattle religious goods store. Traditionally, nuns, priests or members of a congregation baked altar bread. (In the Catholic tradition it is unleavened and contains only flour and water; other denominations, including Southern Baptists, allow the use of additional ingredients.)<br />In 1943, Andy's great-grandfather, John Cavanagh Sr., an inventor, and grandfather, John Jr., were asked to help local Catholic nuns renovate their antiquated baking equipment. The men created new ovens and mixers for the nuns; then three years later, John Jr. and his brother Paul started making bread themselves.<br />They distributed all of it to Catholic churches and monasteries.<br />The Cavanaghs are Catholic and John Sr. let his sons run the business so he could concentrate on his first love, liturgical art. Crosses and paintings are showcased in a room in the Rhode Island offices.<br />For about 20 years, the Cavanagh bread was small, white and nearly transparent, intended to melt on the tongue. After the changes initiated in the church at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Catholic churches wanted the wafers to be thicker and chewable, like real bread.<br />The Cavanaghs started producing the wafers of today — usually whole wheat and sealed on the outside to prevent crumbs.<br />In 1970, Paul's sons Brian and Peter joined the business and started expanding the company's reach beyond New England and the Catholic Church, where fewer and fewer nuns were making bread.<br />The company will not disclose sales numbers, but says it makes about 850 million wafers each year, and that each wafer sells for less than a penny. Most of the company's bread is sold wholesale to religious supply stores and Southern Baptist bookstores. In the Catholic Church the company sells to monasteries; the nuns then sell the bread to churches.<br />"It's a source of income for us, but at the same time it's a service to the parishes in the diocese," said Sister Marilyn McGillan of the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Watertown, New York Her monastery sells to about 100 churches in the Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York "We're like a clearinghouse for altar breads for our dioceses."<br />There are plenty of varieties. The company sells both white and wheat flour wafers, in sizes ranging from one and one-eighth inches wide to nine inches wide. Some are double-thick, and all except the large ones can be embossed with designs including a cross or a lamb.<br />'They're the classic symbols of Christianity," Andy Cavanagh said.<br />Brian and Peter Cavanagh still run the company, and expect Andy, 30, Peter's son; and his two brothers, Dan, 31 and Luke, 28, to buy them out one day.<br />The family members pride themselves on having never had an argument over business. They eat lunch together daily, and business talk almost always turns into discussions about New England sports teams.<br />"When you emphasize family, the business falls into place," Brian said.<br />Each brother has his own niche. Andy deals with the finances, Luke the Web site and Dan the machines.<br />Dan Cavanagh feels most at home in the large baking area.<br />In huge tubs, about 90 pounds of cake flour is mixed with about 13 gallons of water. The batter is then sent through a tube, where it is piped onto a large metal plate. Another plate clamps on top, and it goes through the oven. Each plate is like a "very large, 500-pound waffle iron," Dan Cavanagh said.<br />After coming out of the oven, the wafers spend about 15 minutes in what amounts to a humidifier, so they do not become brittle. When sufficiently moist they roll down a tube and into a spinning cylinder that resembles the ones in bingo halls.<br />The wafers are then shot to a machine that either puts them in sleeves of 100 or counts them for bags of 250. Then they are boxed.<br />The bread for Southern Baptist churches is baked on the other side of the room. The mixing process is similar, except the dough contains oil. Since the bread rises, it is baked in a large rotating oven and comes out as small squares.<br />The wafers and bread are made in both white and whole wheat, but most congregations prefer the whole wheat variety because it has more flavor, the Cavanaghs said.<br />Business dropped about 10 percent after the clergy sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in 2002, according to the Cavanaghs. But it has picked up recently — perhaps because of the growing worldly concerns that come with a bad economy.<br />The company now sells church supplies including altars and pews in England and Australia, and is keeping an eye on the growing Catholic communities in Africa and South America.<br />But no matter where they do business, they say, the company will remain in Rhode Island, and in the family.<br />"It's so gratifying to have it be a successful family business," Brian Cavanagh said.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Is a new food policy on Obama's list?</strong><br />By Kim Severson<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />FROM the moment it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be president, people who have dedicated their lives to changing how America eats thought they had found their St. Nicholas.<br />It wasn't long before the letters to Santa began piling up.<br />Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine, wants a new high-profile White House chef who cooks delicious local food. Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, wants policies requiring better treatment for farm animals.<br />Parents want better public-school lunches. Consumer groups are dreaming of a new, stronger food safety system. Nutrition reformers want prisoners to be fed less soy. And a farmer in Maine is asking the president-elect to plow under an acre of White House lawn for an organic vegetable garden.<br />Although Obama has proposed changes in the nation's farm and rural policies and emphasizes the connection between diet and health, there is nothing to indicate he has a special interest in a radical makeover of the way food is grown and sold.<br />Still, the dream endures. To advocates who have watched scattered calls for changes in food policy gather political and popular momentum, Obama looks like their kind of president.<br />Not only does he seem to possess a more-sophisticated palate than some of his recent predecessors, but he will also take office in an age when organic food is mainstream, cooking competitions are among the top-rated TV shows and books calling for an overhaul in the American food system are best sellers.<br />"People are so interested in a massive change in food and agriculture that they are dining out on hope now. That is like the main ingredient," said Eddie Gehman Kohan, a blogger from Los Angeles who started Obamafoodorama.com to document just about any conceivable link between Obama and food, whether it is a debate on agriculture policy or an image of Obama rendered in tiny cupcakes.<br />"He is the first president who might actually have eaten organic food, or at least eats out at great restaurants," Gehman Kohan said.<br />Still, no one is sure just how serious Obama really is about the politics of food. So like mystery buffs studying the book jacket of "The Da Vinci Code," interested eaters dissect every aspect of his life as it relates to the plate.<br />They look for clues in the lunch menus at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, where his two daughters will be eating items like herbes de Provence pita, local pears and organic chopped salad, served with unbleached napkins in a cafeteria with a serious recycling program. They point out that when Obama was a child, his family used food stamps and that in interviews he has referred to his appreciation of the philosophy put forth by Michael Pollan, the reform-minded food writer.<br />They note with approval that Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, belongs to a synagogue that runs a community supported agriculture program and that his social secretary, Desirée Rogers, is from the food-obsessed city of New Orleans. They also see promising signs in Obama's fondness for some of Chicago's better restaurants, like Spiaggia and Topolobampo.<br />As for Michelle Obama, she has said in interviews that she tries to buy organic food and watches the amount of high-fructose corn syrup in her family's diet. And, as she confided on "The View" on ABC, "We're bacon people."<br />Add it all up and Obama looks like the first foodie president since Thomas Jefferson. For more recent comparisons, one could look at President George W. Bush, who is a fitness buff but who aligned himself with large agricultural companies like Cargill and Monsanto that some advocates for sustainable agriculture and organic food fight against.<br />President Bill Clinton certainly seemed to love food, but in his White House years his tastes ran more toward Big Macs than grass-fed beef. Only after his presidency, and serious health problems, did he turn his attention to issues of obesity and diet.<br />The Obamas are a different kind of first family, said David Kamp, who traced the history of the modern gourmet-food movement in his book, "The United States of Arugula" (Broadway, 2006). "This time we have a Democrat in office that seems to live the dream and speak the language of both food progressivism and personal fitness," Kamp said.<br />For many food activists, a shiny new secretary of agriculture was high on the Christmas wish list.<br />One of the first names to come up was Pollan, who in October wrote an open letter to the future president in The New York Times Magazine, explaining the ways in which he believes the food system needs fixing.<br />Even after Pollan repeatedly pointed out that he was unqualified and uninterested in the job of overseeing a $97-billion budget and more than 100,000 employees, his supporters kept pushing with more fanaticism than Clay Aiken's Claymates.<br />A couple of longtime Iowans, the celebrity pig farmer Paul Willis and his neighbor Dave Murphy, started a more serious drive. They compiled a list of six candidates who they thought would have the best interests of farm-based rural America and sustainable agriculture at heart. More than 50,000 people signed their petition, the restaurateur Alice Waters and the writer Wendell Berry among them.<br />But Santa had other plans. Last week, Obama appointed Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, which grows much of the nation's corn and soybeans. Vilsack has talked about reducing subsidies to some megafarms, supports better treatment of farm animals and wants healthier food in schools. But his selection drew criticism because he is a big fan of alternative fuels like corn-based ethanol and is a supporter of biotechnology, both anathema to people who want to shift government support from large-scale agricultural interests to smaller farms growing food that takes a more direct path to the table.<br />"Americans were promised 'change,' not just another shill for Monsanto and corporate agribusiness," wrote Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association, which has promised to fight the confirmation of Vilsack. Willis and Murphy immediately shook off the blow and sent out a new petition to have someone more like-minded placed as undersecretary.<br />Food advocates aren't the only ones whose hopes for the new administration received a quick kick to the curb. A coalition of more than 140 environmental groups and scientists sent letters supporting one candidate to lead the Department of the Interior. Obama chose someone else.<br />Multiply that by every special interest and it becomes clear that just because changing the food system is the first priority for some, it isn't so for everyone. The pragmatists among the food reformers understand.<br />"This president is taking over when the economy is the worst it has been in our lifetime and we are in the middle of wars," said Ann Cooper, the chef who transformed the school food program for the Berkeley Unified School District in California and is about to do the same in Boulder, Colorado. "I think it's somewhere between naïve and fairy tale to think his No. 1 focus is going to be on food."<br />Still, she has her own little wish, which is that the new president will move responsibility for school food programs to the Department of Education or the Department of Health and Human Services from the Department of Agriculture. That way, the focus might shift away from the commodity foods that are the backbone of most school lunches and toward menus tailored to the health and development of children.<br />Some food-system reformers may have a better chance of getting what they want than others do. A coalition of community-based groups called the U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis wrote to Obama asking him to make hunger and the global food crisis a top priority. Their optimism is based on Obama's promise to abolish childhood hunger by 2015.<br />They are also banking on his desire to tackle climate change and overhaul energy and health care policies.<br />"If he's serious about doing this, then he'll have to address the current problems of our food system, which are inextricably linked to these other problems," said Christina Schiavoni of World Hunger Year, which is part of the coalition. "There's no getting around it."<br />In her view and others', diets filled with healthier food produced by less intrusive farming practices can reduce medical problems like obesity and diabetes and be easier on the environment.<br />And even if Obama can't or won't deliver the changes some are hoping for, maybe he'll just leave a little something in their stockings.<br />A new White House chef, maybe? Cristeta Comerford, the first woman to hold the executive chef job, has been in the position since 2005, not long by White House standards. Still, some people think it's time for a change. "What the president eats could have a major impact on everyone in the country," said Reichl, who along with Waters and Danny Meyer, the restaurateur, sent a letter to Obama offering to help him select someone to head the White House kitchen.<br />A chef who cooks local and organic food and picks some of it from a presidential garden could change things faster than any cabinet appointment, Reichl said.<br />"It's like the hat manufacturers being furious because JFK didn't wear a hat, and suddenly everyone in America stopped wearing hats," she said. "It's that simple."</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Women farmers toil to expand Africa's food supply</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />By Megan Rowling<br />Like many African women, Mazoe Gondwe is her family's main food provider. Lately, she has struggled to farm her plot in Malawi due to unpredictable rains that are making her hard life even tougher.<br />"Now we can't just depend on rain-fed agriculture, so we plant two crops - one watered with rain and one that needs irrigating," she explained. "But irrigation is back-breaking and can take four hours a day."<br />Gondwe, flown by development agency ActionAid to U.N. climate change talks in Poland this month, said she wanted access to technology that would cut the time it takes to water her crops and till her farm garden. She would also be glad of help to improve storage facilities and seed varieties.<br />"As a local farmer, I know what I need and I know what works. I grew up in the area and I know how the system is changing," Gondwe said.<br />This year, agricultural experts have renewed calls for policy makers to pay more attention to small-scale women farmers such as Gondwe, who grow up to 80 percent of crops for food consumption in Africa.<br />After decades in the political wilderness, farming became a hot topic this year when international food prices hit record highs in June, sharply boosting hunger around the world. The proportion of development aid spent on agriculture has dropped to just 4 percent from a peak of 17 percent in 1982.<br />Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for women to be at the heart of a "policy revolution" to boost small-scale farming in Africa.<br />Women have traditionally shouldered the burden of household food production both there and in Asia, while men tend to focus on growing cash crops or migrate to cities to find paid work.<br />Yet women own a tiny percentage of the world's land -- some experts say as little as 2 percent -- and receive only around 5 percent of farming information services and training.<br />"Today the African farmer is the only farmer who takes all the risks herself: no capital, no insurance, no price supports, and little help - if any - from governments. These women are tough and daring and resilient, but they need help," Annan told an October conference on fighting hunger.<br />A new toolkit explaining how to tackle gender issues in farming development projects, published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), highlights the potential returns of improving women's access to technology, land and finance.<br />In Ghana, for example, if women and men had equal land rights and security of tenure, women's use of fertilizer and profits per hectare would nearly double.<br />In Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania, giving women entrepreneurs the same inputs and education as men would boost business revenue by up to 20 percent. And in Ivory Coast, raising women's income by $10 (6.7 pounds) brings improvements in children's health and nutrition that would require a $110 (75 pound) increase in men's income.<br />"The knowledge is there, the know-how is there, but the world -- and here I'm talking rich and poor -- doesn't apply it as much as it could," said Marcela Villarreal, director of FAO's gender, equity and rural employment division.<br />EQUALITY<br />Many African governments have introduced formal laws making women and men equal, but have troubling enforcing them where they clash with customary laws giving property ownership rights to men, she said.<br />Often if a woman's husband dies, she has little choice but to marry one of his relatives so she can keep farming her plot and feeding her children, Villarreal said. But if a widow is HIV positive, she might be chased off her land.<br />In Malawi, FAO is working with parliamentarians and village chiefs to let rural women know they are legally able to hold land titles. They are given wind-up radios so they can listen to farming shows in local languages and taught how to write a will.<br />"People continue to think that doing things for women is part of a welfare programme and doing things for men - big investments or credit - that is agriculture, that is GDP-related," Villarreal said.<br />"Women continue not to be seen as part of the productive potential of a country."<br />One powerful woman trying to change that is Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda's minister of state for agriculture. She said government land reform and credit programmes specifically target struggling women farmers - many of whom are bringing up children alone after their husbands were killed in the 1994 genocide.<br />This has helped raise their incomes, leading to better nutrition, health and education for their children, Kalibata said. Women are also getting micro-credit loans, which they use to access markets and cooperatives or set up small businesses, such as producing specialty coffee for export.<br />"They are not like rocket scientists, they are women from the general population who finally feel empowered that they can come out and do some of these things," explained Kalibata.<br />In the private sector, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has decided to put women at the centre of its agricultural development programme by attaching conditions to grants. It no longer finances projects that ignore gender issues, and it requires women to be involved in their design and implementation.<br />Catherine Bertini, a senior fellow at the foundation and professor of public administration at Syracuse University, said aid donors had not spent enough on support for women farmers.<br />"You can find the rhetoric but it's a limited number of people who actually walk the walk," she said.<br />Bertini, who headed the U.N. World Food Programme in the 1990s, said policy makers could best be persuaded to focus on women farmers by playing up the economic benefits rather than talking about gender equality.<br />"You convince people to do it because it's the most practical way to increase productivity and income to women," she said. (Editing by Megan Goldin)</div><div> </div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU9DQys8Ta5jpBNjcawME8T8grmlFBxtqG3ZW5ojgGfkmjtrTvzFZr8i70Y0rmCp88j3TDeBjqKotDk-fzD9FnOR5U_k-5yLu7-1q3Fd0ZlGHHWICebQ5xQsKOPNtYXBuNzRV0JMFdTt8/s1600-h/DSC04449.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982300192192658" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU9DQys8Ta5jpBNjcawME8T8grmlFBxtqG3ZW5ojgGfkmjtrTvzFZr8i70Y0rmCp88j3TDeBjqKotDk-fzD9FnOR5U_k-5yLu7-1q3Fd0ZlGHHWICebQ5xQsKOPNtYXBuNzRV0JMFdTt8/s320/DSC04449.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Coup in Guinea largely welcomed</strong><br />By Jeffrey Gettleman<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />NAIROBI, Kenya: By Thursday afternoon, the coup attempt in Guinea seemed to have simply become a coup.<br />In one fell swoop, most of the top politicians of this impoverished West African country surrendered themselves to the cadre of junior officers who began seizing power Tuesday after the death of the country's longstanding ruler. The army's rank-and-file seemed to be lining up behind the junior officers. And the coup leaders swiftly replaced governors with military commanders.<br />"We are at your disposal," the country's prime minister said in a live radio address.<br />Though the young officers essentially shoved aside Guinea's civilian leadership at gunpoint, there was not a lot of complaining among the populace.<br />People in Conakry, Guinea's steamy, seaside capital, flooded back into the streets Thursday, resuming their lives, playing soccer, going shopping, with many saying they hoped the coup would usher in better government.<br />"We're all happy," said Mamadou Bah, a tailor in Conakry. He said that if the junior officers did what they promised - namely, wiping out corruption and holding elections within two years - the people would support them.<br />Ahmedou Oury Bah, the minister of national reconciliation (who happens to have the same popular surname as the tailor), said that he decided to succumb to the coup leaders because it was better than being hunted down, as the junior officers had threatened.<br />When asked if this meant that he supported the coup leaders, Bah answered in an indirect, but telling, way.<br />"We're acknowledging that they're in power," he said.<br />Guinea plunged into a political abyss after Lansana Conté, a chain-smoking, diabetic general who ruled the country for 24 iron-fisted years, died Monday, apparently from an illness and with no publicly announced succession plans.<br />Junior and midranking officers rushed to fill the power gap. They started by storming the radio and television headquarters. They then tightened their grip by taking control of key administrative buildings and army bases in Conakry.<br />By Wednesday afternoon, the junior officers had announced that their spokesman, Moussa Dadis Camara, an army captain who is thought to be in his mid-40s and used to be in charge of fuel supplies, was the country's new president.<br />Initially, there had been grumbling by some senior military commanders, who denounced the coup, and by top civilian leaders. But by Thursday, most of them seemed to have either capitulated or gone underground. No one inside Guinea appears to have mounted a challenge to the junior officers, despite widespread condemnation of the coup abroad.<br />Guinea has been in rocky waters for years. It was a country of immense promise at independence in 1958, with gold, diamonds, verdant banana fields, seemingly limitless aluminum ore and gushing rivers ideal for hydropower. It was considered one of the gems in the French colonial crown.<br />But Guinea slipped into obscurity under its first ruler, Ahmed Sékou Touré, a revolutionary who espoused Marxist policies and shut out the West. After Touré died, Conté seized power in a military coup very similar to the one that took place this week.<br />He kept Guinea relatively stable, compared to its neighbors like Liberia and Sierra Leone. But thanks to corruption and mismanagement, the economy was still a shadow of its potential. Conté's health steadily declined, so did the country. Paralyzing strikes erupted last year and dozens of people were killed. In May, junior army officers mutinied, kidnapping a senior officer and demanding better pay.<br />Given that their country has been ruled by just two presidents, both notorious dictators, for almost all of the past 50 years, many Guineans seemed to welcome the coup, or at least were not outspokenly against it. One word on many lips Thursday seemed reminiscent of a certain political phenomenon an ocean away: change.<br />"We want change," said Mamadou Aliou Barry, a construction worker in the capital. "What happened yesterday took too long."<br />Some people on Conakry's streets have even starting calling Camara, the new president, "Obama junior."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Nicholas D. Kristof: Good deeds for profit</strong><br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />Here's a question for the holiday season: If a businessman rakes in a hefty profit while doing good works, is that charity or greed? Do we applaud or hiss?<br />A new book, "Uncharitable," seethes with indignation at public expectations that charities be prudent, nonprofit and saintly. The author, Dan Pallotta, argues that those expectations make them less effective, and he has a point.<br />Pallotta's frustration is intertwined with his own history as the inventor of fundraisers like AIDSRides and Breast Cancer 3-Days - events that, he says, netted $305 million over nine years for unrestricted use by charities. In the aid world, that's a breathtaking sum.<br />But Pallotta's company wasn't a charity, but rather a for-profit company that created charitable events. Critics railed at his $394,500 salary - low for a corporate chief executive, but stratospheric in the aid world - and at the millions of dollars spent on advertising and marketing and other expenses.<br />"Shame on Pallotta," declared one critic at the time, accusing him of "greed and unabashed profiteering." In the aftermath of a wave of criticism, his company collapsed.<br />One breast cancer charity that parted ways with Pallotta began producing its own fundraising walks, but the net sum raised by those walks for breast cancer research plummeted from $71 million to $11 million, he says. Pallotta argues powerfully that the aid world is stunted because groups are discouraged from using such standard business tools as advertising, risk-taking, competitive salaries and profits to lure capital.<br />"We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them," Pallotta says. "Want to make a million selling violent video games to kids? Go for it. Want to make a million helping cure kids of cancer? You're labeled a parasite."<br />I confess to ambivalence. I deeply admire the other kind of aid workers, those whose passion for their work is evident by the fact that they've gone broke doing it. I'm filled with awe when I go to a place like Darfur and see unpaid or underpaid aid workers in groups like Doctors Without Borders, risking their lives to patch up the victims of genocide.<br />I also worry that if aid groups paid executives as lavishly as Citigroup does, they would be managed as badly as Citigroup.<br />Yet there's a broad recognition in much of the aid community that a major rethink is necessary, that groups would be more effective if they borrowed more tools from the business world, and that there is too much "gotcha" scrutiny on overhead rather than on what they actually accomplish. It's notable that leaders of Oxfam and Save the Children have publicly endorsed the book, and it's certainly becoming more socially acceptable to note that businesses can also play a powerful role in fighting poverty.<br />"Howard Schultz has done more for coffee-growing regions of Africa than anybody I can think of," Michael Fairbanks, a development expert, said of the chief executive of Starbucks. By helping countries improve their coffee-growing practices and brand their coffees, Starbucks has probably helped impoverished African coffee farmers more than any aid group has.<br />Fairbanks himself demonstrates that a businessman can do good even as he does well. Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, hired Fairbanks' consulting company and paid it millions of dollars between 2000 and 2007.<br />In turn, Fairbanks helped Rwanda market its coffee, tea and gorillas. Rwandan coffee now retails for up to $55 a pound in Manhattan, wages in the Rwandan coffee sector have soared up to eight-fold, and zillionaires stumble through the Rwandan jungle to admire the wildlife. Kagame thanked Fairbanks by granting him Rwandan citizenship.<br />There are lots of saintly aid workers in Rwanda, including the heroic Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health, and they do extraordinary work. But sometimes, so do the suits. Isaac Durojaiye, a Nigerian businessman, is an example of the way the line is beginning to blur between businesses and charities. He runs a for-profit franchise business that provides fee-for-use public toilets in Nigeria. When he started, there was one public toilet in Nigeria for every 200,000 people, but by charging, he has been able to provide basic sanitation to far more people than any aid group.<br />In the war on poverty, there is room for all kinds of organizations. Pallotta may be right that by frowning on aid groups that pay high salaries, advertise extensively and even turn a profit, we end up hurting the world's neediest.<br />"People continue to die as a result," he says bluntly. "This we call morality."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Goldman helps business women in emerging nations<br /></strong>By Elizabeth Olson<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />Finding time away from building a new business is never easy, but Ngozi Okoli-Owube gladly set aside her daily schedule this year to go back to school to learn marketing, accounting and managerial skills that she never had the time to master.<br />For five months, Okoli-Owube, 31, alternated her work establishing a preschool for learning-disabled children in Lagos with weeklong stints at the Lagos Business School, joining a class of two dozen women to earn a certificate in entrepreneurial management.<br />"I have a university degree, but I did not have the training in how to run a business," said Okoli-Owube, who had been struggling to get enough students to enroll at her "Start Right" school. "I have to learn to keep the books, how to market and to get advice from women who've come out the other side."<br />So when she saw a local newspaper advertisement last spring for 10,000 Women, a global entrepreneurship program run by Goldman Sachs, she and about 100 other women jumped at the chance to apply.<br />The welfare of girls and women has long been on the agenda of international agencies. The World Bank, for example, this year announced steps to increase support for women entrepreneurs by channeling some $100 million in commercial credit lines to them by 2012.<br />But corporations have also begun to take their economic power more seriously, especially in emerging markets.<br />Many corporate programs employ microloans, grants or gifts to promote business education.<br />Goldman decided to take a different approach after its research showed that per capita income in Brazil, China, India, Russia and other emerging markets could rise by as much as 14 percent if women gained deeper management and entrepreneurial skills.<br />"It's not only philanthropy they're after," said Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women. Goldman "had the idea that investment in women means a return on the gross national product of the country, and on household income."<br />The company set aside $100 million over five years to bring business education to 10,000 qualified women business owners in developing countries, a commitment that remains unchanged despite the turmoil in the banking industry.<br />Rao Gupta said the long-term view that Goldman and others were taking in growing markets might help form a new economic stratum in societies where women's participation in business traditionally has been circumscribed. Laws and customs in some countries, for example, bar women from being able to open bank accounts or can require a husband's permission to set up a company.<br />"This is the next step for women because it's investing long term in business skills," said Rao Gupta, whose institute researches and provides technical assistance for women in developing countries.<br />The hurdles can be high. Few women in African nations ever pursued a business education, often the preserve of well-to-do students heading for a corporate job. Of 50 major business schools in Africa - a continent of 900 million people - only 2,600 women were enrolled in local MBA programs, Goldman's research found.<br />To foster entrepreneurship and management education, business schools in developing countries are being paired with 50 universities and organizations in Europe and the United States.<br />This month, for example, 10,000 Women announced that the Yale School of Public Health would work with Tsinghua University to provide management and leadership education to Chinese women working in public health.<br />Women remain in situ, allowing them to be with their families and - like Okoli-Owube - apply their newly learned skills on the spot.<br />"Women often don't have two years to get an MBA," said Dina Powell, who oversees the Goldman initiative.<br />Family considerations as well as cultural differences make it difficult for many women to leave their home country for study abroad.<br />In Cairo, about 100 female participants annually can earn a business certificate after learning accounting, market research and e-commerce, as well as fund-raising and structuring a business plan.<br />But in countries where attending school can be dangerous for women, a different tack is taken. Using Goldman funds, the Thunderbird School of Management, which is based in Arizona but has programs in five other countries, brings Afghani women entrepreneurs to its Phoenix campus for five weeks of training.<br />The investment bank is also financing the training of local Afghani professors to teach business courses to women in Kabul.<br />AT&T, which is also investing in women's education, donated $125,000 through a foundation this year to bring women entrepreneurs from developing countries, like Afghanistan, to the United States for a three-week college-level business course, and a week of mentorship with female U.S. business owners.<br />"This is still a small part of what we do," said Laura Sanford, the president of AT&T Foundation. "But it's an area that's going to grow as it becomes more recognized that women are part of the economic landscape, and as business owners, they contribute to the economic welfare of their country."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Not-so-lonely planet<br /></strong>By Oliver Morton<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />They came for the Moon, and for the first three orbits it was to the Moon that the astronauts of Apollo 8 devoted their attention. Only on their fourth time round did they lift their eyes to see their home world, rising silently above the Moon's desert plains, blue and white and beautiful. When, later on that Christmas Eve in 1968, they read the opening lines of Genesis on live television, they did it with a sense of the heavens and the Earth, of the form and the void, enriched by the wonder they had seen rising into the Moon's black sky.<br />The photograph of that earthrise by the astronaut Bill Anders forms part of the Apollo program's enduring legacy - eclipsing, in many memories, any discoveries about the Moon or renewed sense of national pride. It and other pictures looking back at the Earth provided a new perspective on the thing that all humanity shares. As Robert Poole documents in his history, "Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth," that perspective had deep cultural effects, notably in the emotional resonance it offered the growing environmental movement. Seen from the Moon, the Earth seemed so small, so isolated, so terribly fragile.<br />It takes nothing from the beauty and power of the image, though, to point out that it was the photographer, far more than its subject, who was isolated, and that the fragility is an illusion. The planet Earth is a remarkably robust thing, and this strength flows from its ancient and intimate connection to the cosmos beyond. To see the photo this way does not undermine its environmental relevance - but it does recast it.<br />That the Earth is small is undeniable. If the inner solar system were the size of the United States, the Earth would be the size of a football field; if the distance to the center of the galaxy were a mile, the Earth would be less than an atom. But if the "Earthrise" photo could have captured our planet in the dimension of time instead of space, things would look different. In its duration, as opposed to its diameter, the Earth demands to be measured on a cosmic scale. At more than 4 billion years old, it stretches a third of the way across the history of the universe, a third of the way back to the Big Bang itself. Many of the stars you can see on a clear winter's night are younger than the planet beneath your feet.<br />Mere persistence is not, in itself, that great a feat. The barren rocks of the Moon have persisted almost as long. But the Earth has not merely endured; it has lived. For almost 90 percent of its history the planet has been inhabited, and shaped by life. The biological mechanisms that first operated in the dawn of life animate the creatures of the Earth to this day, forming an unbroken chain at least 3.8 billion years long.<br />This unfailing, uninterrupted life demonstrates that the planet is far from fragile. The living Earth is tough on scales it is hard to credit. Life has watched continents crash together and tear themselves apart; skies glowing like bright coals; tropical seas frozen into stillness: It has endured. Slaked in radiation from nearby supernovae, pummeled by asteroids, it has barely faltered and never stopped. Our civilization may be - is - out of balance with its environment; current human ways of life are frighteningly precarious. But to read the fragility of our way of life onto life itself is foolish.<br />Humans can kill species and diminish ecosystems. Such vandalism poses real dangers to its perpetrators, since human civilization relies on the services some of these ecosystems provide. But at the scale of the planet's life taken as a whole it is penny-ante stuff. Humanity poses no existential risk to life on Earth, and nor will anything else for hundreds of millions of years. Rich, varied, ever changing - the Earth is all of these. Fragile it is not.<br />Why so robust? The reason rests in the second great misconception: that the Earth is isolated. This is true only if your sense of connection depends on physical matter moving from place to place. The dust and rocks that rain down from space are indeed the merest spattering, even if some of the larger rocks occasionally cause a little dinosaur-killing discomfort; the traces of gas blown off the top of the atmosphere are truly negligible. Matter trickles in, whispers out. But matter is not everything.<br />An unending spate of pure luminous energy pours from the Sun in all directions. Eight minutes downstream at the speed of light, part of this extraordinary flux crashes down on the Earth in a 170,000-trillion-watt torrent. Some of it splashes back into space; Major Anders' "Earthrise" captures that reflected light in the brilliant white of clouds and polar ice. Most, though, is absorbed; this is the energy that drives the winds, makes the waves and currents flow, heats the rocks and warms the sky. The Sun's energy flows through the earth system and out the other side, ebbing back into the coldness of space as a tide of infrared radiation.<br />A very small fraction of this energy is caught, not by rock and wind and water, but by life. That fraction of a percent captured by plants and other photosynthetic organisms flows into and through the food webs of the world. It is this sunlight, endlessly refreshed, that allows the grass to grow, the birds to sing - and you to live. The Sun's energy flows through your breakfast cereal, your morning coffee, your veins and your mind. It animates you as it has animated almost all the Earth's life for billions of years.<br />The science of thermodynamics tells us that closed systems tend toward equilibrium, toward dullness, toward entropy. If the Earth were truly as isolated as it looks, that unavoidable tendency would be the lot of life. But the Earth is as open as the sky. Energy from elsewhere floods through it, creating endless chances for complexity and improbability, washing the world's entropy back into space. The flow of energy that unites almost every living creature on the planet is the same flow that connects our environment to the universe beyond.<br />For this flow to work, the energy must get out as well as get in. If Major Anders had had a camera working in the infrared, that departing energy would have shown up as a warm glow on the night side of the planet. Forty years on, that glow has dimmed a little; less energy is getting out. By thickening the skies with carbon dioxide, we are blocking the energy's flow, and allowing a buildup of heat here at the surface of the Earth. This greenhouse warming is small beer in any cosmic sense. It poses no threat to the continuation of life on Earth, but it does pose a threat to tens of millions of people, and will do so for generations to come.<br />Happily, to see the problem of global warming in terms of this flow of energy is to see its solution. By putting a little of the cosmic energy to use - by developing wind power, appropriate energy crops, hydropower and, most promising of all, solar power - we could do away with the need for that sky-thickening carbon dioxide. Other flows of energy could help too - flows of heat from the depths of the Earth and of radiation bequeathed to us in the uranium of dead stars. But it is solar energy, indirectly or directly, that will dominate the picture, simply because of its abundance. The Sun delivers more energy to the Earth in an hour than humanity uses in a year.<br />To substitute these flows for the fossil fuels poised to despoil our planet and also run out on us - worst of both worlds - is an epic task. But the message that frames all the other messages of "Earthrise" is that we can rise to epic tasks. Look where the photo was taken. "If we can put a man on the Moon ..." quickly became shorthand for society's failure to achieve goals that seemed far simpler. But still: We put a man on the Moon, and that does say something. Efforts on a similar scale aimed at harvesting the energy flowing about us are entirely appropriate, and could make things a great deal better. We cannot solve all problems; some climate change is inevitable. But catastrophe is not.<br />"Earthrise" showed us where we are, what we can do and what we share. It showed us who we are, together; the people of a tough, long-lasting world, shot through with the light of a continuous creation.Oliver Morton, the author of "Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World," and, most recently, "Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet," is the chief news and features editor of the journal Nature. </div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwL-wLfNNM4aUnTqoC9T8IroO4-w6QhG51thZq-SfuUsTl7M3vdbLC3OOLzbCoat6ikyHWE7mBhGGRRtcaRdaXu6XRr6qodeb6RJcgSzAFcFmmZypMivCDeEO0G9yohaLOV8HzggBRNIM/s1600-h/DSC04450.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982299678880402" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwL-wLfNNM4aUnTqoC9T8IroO4-w6QhG51thZq-SfuUsTl7M3vdbLC3OOLzbCoat6ikyHWE7mBhGGRRtcaRdaXu6XRr6qodeb6RJcgSzAFcFmmZypMivCDeEO0G9yohaLOV8HzggBRNIM/s320/DSC04450.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Pipeline dreams entangle Russians and Europeans</strong><br />By Judy Dempsey<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />BERLIN: 2009 was supposed to be the year when Europe and Russia would diversify their energy sources and routes.<br />The Russian-German Nord Stream pipeline that would run under the Baltic Sea was due to be completed in the coming months, ready to deliver gas by 2010. Once in operation, it would be the realization of Russia's dreams to reduce its dependency on troublesome transit countries, such as Ukraine. It would also be the crowning of the special relationship between Russia and Germany. Nord Stream would run from Vyborg, near St. Petersburg, touching land at Greifswald, on Germany's north-eastern coast. But as of this day, construction has not even begun.<br />Then there is Russia's South Stream pipeline, meant to be built under the Black Sea with the Italian energy company ENI. It would link Russia to Bulgaria, denying Turkey lucrative transit fees.<br />The European Union, too, has its pipeline plan: Nabucco. Feted six years ago as the pipeline that would reduce Europe's dependency on Russian gas, construction was supposed to be completed by 2009. No pipes have yet been laid. In the meantime, the dependency on Russian gas imports, already accounting for 42 percent of Europe's needs, is set to increase.<br />The Russians and the EU have made such ambitious plans because the Europeans need gas and Russia needs Europe's rich markets. The North Sea gas fields that provided Europe with much of its gas are dwindling rapidly. And despite calls by the EU for more diversification to ensure energy security, the Europeans still look mostly to Russia for its energy.<br />Yet with gas consumption among the 27-member bloc expected to rise a further 200 billion cubic meters a year by 2030 from present levels of about 300 billion cubic meters, or 10.6 trillion cubic feet, a year, there are no guarantees that Russia will be able to meet that demand. Russia's fields in Western Siberia are almost depleted; Nord Stream and South Stream (and Nabucco) are facing delays - and it is not certain they will add new capacity.<br />The global economic crisis is a contributing factor for the delays. Oil prices, to which gas prices are closely linked, have plummeted from a high of $140 a barrel last summer to about $40 a barrel this month. That has made energy companies far more cautious about investing in long-term, capital-intensive projects.<br />The three pipelines also have their own special problems. Nord Stream has still not obtained planning permission from all the countries that border the Baltic Sea. The credit crunch also means that banks will not be in a hurry to finance Nord Stream, which will cost €7.4 billion, or $10.3 billion, for the offshore work. Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy company that holds the majority stake in Nord Stream, will not fund it alone, said Vaclav Bartuska, the Czech government's special energy envoy. "The Russians need European money. We have yet to see if the German banks will deliver," he added.<br />At least the steel pipes for Nord Stream have been ordered. Germany's former chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who is chairman of Nord Stream's shareholders' committee and who has developed a particularly close relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister and former president, is determined to see the project through.<br />And even though Putin last month warned that Nord Stream might be abandoned if the Europeans did not support it politically, energy experts said he was bluffing. "Putin wants Nord Stream because it would tie Russian energy exports to Europe," said Borut Grgic, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. BASF/Wintershall and E.ON Ruhrgas, the German energy companies that have teamed up with Gazprom to build Nord Stream, are not prepared to jump ship, either.<br />South Stream has problems too. This week Serbia signed an accord to join the project with Gazprom - after a year of haggling over the terms. But other countries supposed to be involved in South Stream, including Bulgaria, have also raised objections. When asked whether the $10 billion project would ever be completed, Mihaly Bayer, the special envoy for the Hungarian government, which is involved in both South Stream and Nabucco, replied cryptically: "There are still several intergovernmental agreements to be finalized." Even Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom's management committee, said recently that South Stream would not be ready until 2015.<br />The EU's €7.9 billion Nabucco pipeline that plans to take gas from Azerbaijan and eventually Iran is lagging behind operation by up to three years. "Europe unveiled Nabucco before it had producers to fill the pipeline," said Grgic. "With no guaranteed sources of energy, there is no markets. And without markets, the consortium will not obtain financing," he added.<br />The Nabucco management denied this week that the project was in trouble. "Financial institutes are shying away from financing volatile risk business and are shifting to long-term infrastructure projects such as Nabucco," it said in a statement.<br />But whatever happens to these three projects, neither individually nor collectively will they meet Europe's growing demand for gas. Nord Stream will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year, but it will not be new gas. "It will be gas which otherwise would have been sent across Ukraine," said a Nord Stream company official. The same is true for the South Stream's annual 30 billion cubic meters, which might include some supplies from some Central Asian countries. As for Nabucco, it plans an annual capacity of merely 31 billion cubic meters.<br />The reason why so little new Russian gas will be sent to Europe is not just rising domestic demand. Russia has failed to invest in the sector. Even when energy prices were very high, Putin did not use the windfalls to modernize the energy infrastructure or introduce energy-saving measures. Instead, Gazprom spent them acquiring energy assets in Central Asia and the Balkans, buying newspapers and building swanky offices.<br />As if blind to this, Europe has neglected to find new alternative gas sources. It could have supported the reconstruction of Iraq's energy sector, reached out to energy-rich Azerbaijan and done much more to save energy and support and renewables. Now the economic crisis will make the EU even more unwilling to look elsewhere for its energy. But the writing is already on the wall.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Tennessee coal ash spill revives issue of its hazards</strong><br />By Shaila Dewan<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />KINGSTON, Tennessee: What may be the nation's largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.<br />Federal studies have long shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee, displaced residents spent Christmas Eve worried about their health and their property, and wondering what to do.<br />The spill took place at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a Tennessee Valley Authority generating plant about 40 miles west of Knoxville on the banks of the Emory River, which feeds into the Clinch River, and then the Tennessee River just downstream.<br />Holly Schean, a waitress whose home, which she shared with her parents, was swept off its foundation when millions of cubic yards of ash breached a retaining wall early Monday morning, said, "They're giving their apologies, which don't mean very much."<br />The TVA, Schean said, has not yet declared the house uninhabitable. But, she said: "I don't need your apologies. I need information."<br />Even as the authority played down the risks, the spill reignited a debate over whether the federal government should regulate coal ash as a hazardous material. Similar ponds and mounds of ash exist at hundreds of coal plants around the nation.<br />The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued no warnings about the potential chemical dangers of the spill, saying there was as yet no evidence of toxic substances. "Most of that material is inert," said Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the authority. "It does have some heavy metals within it, but it's not toxic or anything."<br />Francis said contaminants in water samples taken near the spill site and at the intake for the town of Kingston, six miles downstream, were within acceptable levels.<br />But a draft report last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that fly ash, a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity, does contain significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations. The report found that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.<br />Similarly, a 2006 study by the federally chartered National Research Council found that these coal-burning byproducts "often contain a mixture of metals and other constituents in sufficient quantities that they may pose public health and environmental concerns if improperly managed." The study said "risks to human health and ecosystems" might occur when these contaminants entered drinking water supplies or surface water bodies.<br />In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter federal controls of coal ash, but backed away in the face of fierce opposition from utilities, the coal industry, and Clinton administration officials. At the time, the Edison Electric Institute, an association of power utilities, estimated that the industry would have to spend up to $5 billion in additional cleanup costs if the substance were declared hazardous. Since then, environmentalists have urged tighter federal standards, and the EPA is reconsidering its decision not to classify the waste as hazardous.<br />A morning flight over the disaster area showed some cleanup activity along a road and the railroad tracks that take coal to the facility, both heaped in sludge, but no evidence of promised skimmers or barricades on the water to prevent the ash from sliding downstream. The breach occurred when an earthen dike, the only thing separating millions of cubic yards of ash from the river, gave way, releasing a glossy sea of muck, four to six feet thick, dotted with icebergs of ash across the landscape. Where the Clinch River joined the Tennessee, a clear demarcation was visible between the soiled waters of the former and the clear brown broth of the latter.<br />By afternoon, dump trucks were depositing rock into the river in a race to blockade it before an impending rainstorm washed more ash downstream.<br />The spill, which released about 300 million gallons of sludge and water, is far larger than the other two similar disasters, said Jeffrey Stant, the director of the Coal Combustion Waste Initiative for the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental legal group, who has written on the subject for the EPA. One spill in 1967 on the Clinch River in Virginia released about 130 million gallons, and the other in 2005 in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, released about 100 million gallons into the Delaware River.<br />The contents of coal ash can vary widely depending on the source, but one study found that the mean concentrations of lead, chromium, nickel and arsenic are three to five times higher in the Appalachian coal that is mined near Kingston than in Rocky Mountain or Northern Plains coal.<br />Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said it was "mind-boggling" that officials had not warned nearby residents of the dangers.<br />"The fact that they have not warned people, I think, is disastrous and potentially harmful to the residents," Smith said. "There are people walking around, checking it out."<br />He and other environmentalists warned that another danger would arise when the muck dried out and became airborne and breathable.<br />Despite numerous reports from recreational anglers and television news video of a large fish kill downstream of the spill, Francis said the TVA's environmental team had not encountered any dead fish. On Swan Pond Road, home to the residences nearest the plant, a group of environmental advocates went door to door telling residents that boiling their water, as officials had suggested, would not remove heavy metals.<br />Environmentalists pointed to the accident as proof of their long-held assertion that there is no such thing as "clean coal," noting two factors that may have contributed to the scale of the disaster. First, as coal plants have gotten better at controlling air pollution, the toxic substances that would have been spewed into the air have been shifted to solid byproducts like fly ash, and the production of such postcombustion waste, as it is called, has increased sharply.<br />Second, the Kingston plant, surrounded by residential tracts, had little room to grow and simply piled its ash higher and higher, though officials said the pond whose wall gave way was not over capacity.<br />Environmental groups have long pressed for coal ash to be buried in lined landfills to prevent the leaching of metals into the soil and groundwater, a recommendation borne out by the 2006 EPA report. An above-ground embankment like the one at Kingston was not an appropriate storage site for fly ash, said Thomas FitzGerald, the director of nonprofit Kentucky Resources Council and an expert in coal waste.<br />"I find it difficult to comprehend that the State of Tennessee would have approved that as a permanent disposal site," FitzGerald said.<br />The TVA will find an alternative place to dispose of the fly ash in the future, Francis said. He said that at least 30 pieces of heavy machinery had been put in use to begin the cleanup of the estimated 1.7 million cubic yards of ash that spilled from the 80-acre pond, and that work would continue day and night, even on Christmas. The plant, which generates enough electricity to support 670,000 homes, is still functioning, but might run out of coal before the railroad tracks are cleared.<br />About 15 houses were affected by the flood, Francis said, and three would likely be declared uninhabitable. "We're going to make it right," he said. "We're going to restore these folks to where they were prior to this incident."<br />A spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency, Laura Niles, said the agency was overseeing the cleanup and would decide whether to declare Kingston a Superfund site when the extent of the contamination was known.<br />United States coal plants produce 129 million tons of postcombustion byproducts a year, the second-largest waste stream in the country, after municipal solid waste. That is enough to fill more than a million railroad coal cars, according to the National Research Council.<br />Another 2007 EPA report said that over about a decade, 67 towns in 26 states had their groundwater contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps.<br />For instance, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, between Baltimore and Annapolis, residential wells were polluted by heavy metals, including thallium, cadmium and arsenic, leaching from a sand-and-gravel pit where ash from a local power plant had been dumped since the mid-1990s by the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. Maryland fined the company $1 million in 2007.<br />As it grew dark in Kingston, a hard rain enveloped Roane County, rendering the twin smokestacks of the steam plant, as locals refer to it, barely visible amid the dingy clouds.<br />Angela Spurgeon, a teacher and mother of two whose dock was smothered in the ash-slide, said she was worried about the health effects, saying that on the night of the accident everyone was covered in sludge.<br />"The breathing is what concerns me, the lung issues," Spurgeon said. "Who knows what's in that water?"</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2dpohMa6q_8RGKfiktuWuzYcyUayP83LTWh-IhI0v-N4g9mD2lgoVLjxdtIhmrh7EjUXkCN67gDPXbCPg4WiOCg0thJba8s1SFM41i-mMsedJX2DB91JsQbWe5muIMVtXA8sottf41VY/s1600-h/DSC04451.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982003813504722" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2dpohMa6q_8RGKfiktuWuzYcyUayP83LTWh-IhI0v-N4g9mD2lgoVLjxdtIhmrh7EjUXkCN67gDPXbCPg4WiOCg0thJba8s1SFM41i-mMsedJX2DB91JsQbWe5muIMVtXA8sottf41VY/s320/DSC04451.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>British downturn pummels real-estate values in Alps<br /></strong>By Warren Giles and Dylan Griffiths</div><div>Bloomberg News<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />GENEVA: Dan Morgans cut the asking price for his ski chalet near Chamonix, France, after the credit crunch and plunging pound ended a boom fueled by Britons.<br />The price of the house, with an outdoor Jacuzzi facing Mont Blanc, has been dropped by 13 percent to €1.5 million, or $2.1 million. Morgans, a 35-year-old chef, paid €750,000 for the chalet in 2001.<br />"It's a bit stomach-churning," said Morgans, who has spent seven years catering for guests at the chalet. "Nothing is moving in this market."<br />British demand for ski properties has helped drive Alpine prices higher for at least six years. Values are now plunging as the worst financial crisis since the 1930s and this year's 22 percent decline in the pound against the euro deter buyers.<br />At Chamonix, which gets half its foreign visitors from Britain, prices have dropped by as much as 20 percent, said Craig Widdicombe, who sells houses in the area for Agence des Alpes.<br />Gabriel Mingeon, sales director at MGM Immobilier, which is based in Annecy, France, and is one of the biggest real estate developers in the French Alps, said: "The whole mountain economy is suffering. The British are big consumers."<br />British clients accounted for about 12 percent of MGM's 360 sales this year, compared with 18 percent of 420 sales in 2007.<br />"The British are the drivers in the market because as soon as they buy, the French see it and start to get interested," Mingeon said. "They gave the system its dynamism."<br />The British economy shrank 0.6 percent in the third quarter, the worst decline since 1990, while the European Central Bank predicts that the euro region, which comprises 15 countries, will contract 0.5 percent next year.<br />In Chamonix, 88 kilometers, or 55 miles, from Geneva, the pound's "crippling" decline is making it more difficult to attract Britons, said Simon Warren of Agence Montagne, a real estate company in the town.<br />"Our biggest problem is that nobody needs a chalet in the Alps," Warren said as he surveyed the plat du jour of Thai chicken at Chambre Neuf, a bar opposite Chamonix train station. "It's the ultimate discretionary spend."<br />Chamonix, which hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924, lies in a valley encircled by snow-clad peaks.<br />The town's population of 9,000 increases 10-fold during the winter as skiers seek such attractions as the Vallée Blanche, a 20-kilometer descent on a snow-covered glacier from the Aiguille du Midi, which has an elevation of 3,842 meters, or 12,600 feet.<br />Heavy snowfalls, with more than a meter lying on the upper slopes of Chamonix and a neighboring Swiss resort, Verbier, are fueling early-season bookings, said Marion Telsnig, spokeswoman for Britain's biggest ski-tour operator, Crystal Holidays.<br />"Bookings screeched to a halt in September and October with the financial crisis," Telsnig said.<br />Telsnig said that more skiers were opting for self-catering vacations and that reservations "have recovered with the snow."<br />Reservations later this season are down, she said. Chamonix properties that used to sell within two months are still unsold after six months, said Widdicombe, the Agence des Alpes broker, who has lived in the town for five years.<br />Among the properties that Widdicombe is trying to sell is a four-bedroom, wood-clad chalet near the center of Chamonix for €1.35 million. That works out at €6,200 per square meter, below the €7,000 to €8,000 that was previously the base for sellers in Chamonix.<br />The budgets of buyers have dropped to an average of about €500,000 from €700,000 a year ago, he said. The market may worsen further.<br />"Some U.K. buyers may be forced to liquidate their property assets," Widdicombe said as he drove through a snow-lined hamlet within sight of the Bossons glacier.<br />This that may push other sellers to reduce their prices, he said.<br />Back at his chalet, Morgans said he hoped that the credit markets would ease enough to tempt a buyer soon.<br />"I told myself I'd give it 6 to 10 years in Chamonix," he said. "It's a great place to live, but any longer than that and the risk is you become a perpetual ski bum."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>French shareholders want list of Madoff losses<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />PARIS: A group of French shareholders is pressing the government to release a list of French funds exposed to losses from alleged fraud by Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff.<br />SOS Petits Porteurs, or SOS Small Shareholders, said in a statement Wednesday that it has asked the French Finance Ministry to provide a list of French funds "contaminated by the Madoff virus."<br />"The public at large has the right to know," the statement said.<br />The group says many depositors are complaining that fund managers are refusing to discuss their potential losses or exposure to Madoff-related investments.<br />Madoff was arrested Dec. 11 in what prosecutors say was a $50 billion scheme to defraud investors. Leading French banks, including BNP Paribas and Natixis, have estimated their exposure to his activities at more than $1 billion.<br />The French market regulator, the AMF, has estimated the total exposure of French mutual funds at €500 million, or $700 million. The AMF said in a statement Dec. 18 that the majority of those funds were available only to institutional investors or very wealthy clients - not the general public.<br />The AMF urged French fund managers to alert their clients about any Madoff-related investments, but said it was not compiling a list of affected French mutual funds.<br />Members of France's elite have already been touched by the affair. Police say distinguished French investor Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet committed suicide in New York on Monday after losing more than $1 billion of his clients' money in Madoff's alleged fraud.</div><div><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPplI5eQbsii5Ky3-bXgBOQ900DPJMADCeUK_DQ0OFHHRo1H70G17uc2O6fHKA5wWTiRSb1I3h4yNc1fCwBnRoL-4T2CR0lcJP5GrPOyaPLEp4_JgdFtt67dr7m1G27GH58YSkOh-6uYE/s1600-h/DSC04452.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982003635590770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPplI5eQbsii5Ky3-bXgBOQ900DPJMADCeUK_DQ0OFHHRo1H70G17uc2O6fHKA5wWTiRSb1I3h4yNc1fCwBnRoL-4T2CR0lcJP5GrPOyaPLEp4_JgdFtt67dr7m1G27GH58YSkOh-6uYE/s320/DSC04452.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW77tPytyvsPnCe2MvUHmY6kHc6dUKZWC2vjFGWf7tiASI1o9tN8edy16JkI733lqsWTLYtpNVKHWZZlHDzLxGAgfpHsNcP_XFkHEV9w0EOXZw7kR8QxZEgdhN-2PlKKK14OckuteyBvk/s1600-h/DSC04453.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283982002010599522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW77tPytyvsPnCe2MvUHmY6kHc6dUKZWC2vjFGWf7tiASI1o9tN8edy16JkI733lqsWTLYtpNVKHWZZlHDzLxGAgfpHsNcP_XFkHEV9w0EOXZw7kR8QxZEgdhN-2PlKKK14OckuteyBvk/s320/DSC04453.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEpB8qabOx65LlLnc9s6_t4mOyXKNIebZXwUyE2rlEBIM5QeD3mI9tgF6FZG-vrg2CuwNPitVe1BgRr-KYfR7JcfTOwwMxcemembxR_wRolwRwT1JLuzZTO0-y8YI_hbrut9JZ3Z0_r8/s1600-h/DSC04454.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981996494267026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSEpB8qabOx65LlLnc9s6_t4mOyXKNIebZXwUyE2rlEBIM5QeD3mI9tgF6FZG-vrg2CuwNPitVe1BgRr-KYfR7JcfTOwwMxcemembxR_wRolwRwT1JLuzZTO0-y8YI_hbrut9JZ3Z0_r8/s320/DSC04454.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Harold Pinter, playwright of the pause, dies at 78</strong><br />By Mel Gussow and Ben Brantley<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday. He was 78 and lived in London.<br />The cause was cancer, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said Thursday.<br />Pinter learned he had cancer of the esophagus in late 2001. In 2005, when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was unable to attend the awards ceremony at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm but delivered an acceptance speech from a wheelchair in a recorded video.<br />In more than 30 plays — written between 1957 and 2000 and including masterworks like "The Birthday Party," "The Caretaker," "The Homecoming" and "Betrayal" — Pinter captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence.<br />Along with another Nobel winner, Samuel Beckett, his friend and mentor, Pinter became one of the few modern playwrights whose names instantly evoke a sensibility. The adjective Pinteresque has become part of the cultural vocabulary as a byword for strong and unspecified menace.<br />An actor, essayist, screenwriter, poet and director as well as a dramatist, Pinter was also publicly outspoken in his views on repression and censorship, at home and abroad. He used his Nobel acceptance speech to denounce American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq, but that it had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years.<br />His political views were implicit in much of his work. Though his plays deal with the slipperiness of memory and human character, they are also almost always about the struggle for power.<br />The dynamic in his work is rooted in battles for control, turf wars waged in locations that range from working-class boarding houses (in his first produced play, "The Room," from 1957) to upscale restaurants (the setting for "Celebration," staged in 2000). His plays often take place in a single, increasingly claustrophobic room, where conversation is a minefield and even innocuous-seeming words can wound.<br />In Pinter's work "words are weapons that the characters use to discomfort or destroy each other," said Peter Hall, who has staged more of Pinter's plays than any other director.<br />But while Pinter's linguistic agility turned simple, sometimes obscene, words into dark, glittering and often mordantly funny poetry, it is what comes between the words that he is most famous for. And the stage direction "pause" would haunt him throughout his career.<br />Intended as an instructive note to actors, the Pinter pause was a space for emphasis and breathing room. But it could also be as threatening as a raised fist. Pinter said that writing the word "pause" into his first play was "a fatal error." It is certainly the aspect of his writing that has been most parodied. But no other playwright has consistently used pauses with such rhythmic assurance and to such fine-tuned manipulative effect.<br />Early in his career Pinter said his work was about "the weasel under the cocktail cabinet." Though he later regretted the image, it holds up as a metaphor for the undertow of danger that pervades his work. As Martin Esslin wrote in his book "Pinter: The Playwright," "Man's existential fear, not as an abstraction, but as something real, ordinary and acceptable as an everyday occurrence — here we have the core of Pinter's work as a dramatist."<br />Though often grouped with Beckett and others as a practitioner of Theater of the Absurd, Pinter considered himself a realist. In 1962 he said the context of his plays was always "concrete and particular." He never found a need to alter that assessment.<br />Beginning in the late 1950s, John Osborne and Pinter helped to turn British theater away from the gentility of the drawing room. With "Look Back in Anger," Osborne opened the door for several succeeding generations of angry young men, who railed against the class system and an ineffectual government. Pinter was to have the more lasting effect as an innovator and a stylist. And his influence on other playwrights, including David Mamet in the United States and Patrick Marber and Jez Butterworth in England, is undeniable.<br />The playwright Tom Stoppard said that before Pinter: "One thing plays had in common: you were supposed to believe what people said up there. If somebody comes in and says, 'Tea or coffee?' and the answer is 'Tea,' you are entitled to assume that somebody is offered a choice of two drinks, and the second person has stated a preference." With Pinter there are alternatives, "such as the man preferred coffee but the other person wished him to have tea," Stoppard said, "or that he preferred the stuff you make from coffee beans under the impression that it was called tea."<br />As another British playwright, David Hare, said of Pinter, "The essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play or film he writes in certain expectation of the unexpected."<br />Though initially regarded as an intuitive rather than an intellectual playwright, Pinter was in fact both. His plays are dense with references to writers like James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. The annual Pinter Review, in which scholars probe and parse his works for meaning and metaphor, is one of many indications of his secure berth in academia.<br />Politics Inside the Plays<br />While it was not immediately apparent, Pinter was always a writer with a political sensibility, which became overt in later plays like "One for the Road" (1984) and "Mountain Language" (1988). These works, having to do "not with ambiguities of power, but actual power," he said, were written out of "very cold anger."<br />He and his wife hosted gatherings in their Holland Park town house for liberal political seminars. Known as the June 20th Society, the participants included Hare, Ian McEwan, Michael Holroyd, John Mortimer, Salman Rushdie and Germaine Greer. In their discussions Pinter expressed the great struggle of the mid-20th century as one between "primitive rage" and "liberal generosity," Hare said.<br />Through the years Pinter became known, especially to the British news media, for having a prickly personality. "There is a violence in me," Pinter once said, "but I don't walk around looking for trouble." The director Richard Eyre said in a testimonial book published for Pinter's 70th birthday that he was "sometimes pugnacious and occasionally splenetic" but "just as often droll and generous — particularly to actors, directors and (a rare quality this) other writers."<br />Harold Pinter was born in Hackney in the East End of London on Oct. 10, 1930. His father, Jack, was a tailor; his mother, Frances, a homemaker. Pinter's grandparents had emigrated to England from Eastern Europe. His parents, he said, were "very solid, very respectable, Jewish, lower-middle-class people."<br />With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Harold, an only child, was evacuated from London to a provincial town in Cornwall. His feelings of loneliness and isolation from that time were to surface later in his plays. When he was 13, he returned to London and was there during the Blitz when his house was struck by a bomb. He rushed inside to rescue a few valuable possessions: his cricket bat and a poem — "a paean of love" — he was writing to a girlfriend.<br />Sports, poetry and his relationships with women were to remain important to him. Vigorously athletic, he was a fierce competitor in cricket and tennis. Ian Smith, an Oxford don and cricket teammate, equated Pinter's art with his bold style of playing cricket. "Everything is focused," he said. "It's about performance and economy of gesture."<br />Poetry and Pacifism<br />Pinter grew up on a diet of American gangster movies and British war films. From the first he was a great reader and a hopeful poet, with strong political judgments. When he was called up for military service at 18, as a pacifist he refused to serve.<br />In diverse ways he remained a conscientious objector in the years to come, echoing a line in "The Birthday Party," in which Stanley, a lodger in a seaside boarding house, is suddenly taken away by two strangers to some ominous future as a friend cries out, "Stan, don't let them tell you what to do!" Years later, Pinter said he had lived that line all his life.<br />Pinter's first poem was published in a magazine called Poetry London when he was 20. Soon afterward he completed a novel, "The Dwarfs." After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama, he signed on with a repertory company and, performing under the name David Baron, toured Ireland in plays by Shakespeare and others, often in villainous roles like Iago.<br />In 1955, at a party in London, Pinter was struck by what he referred to as "an odd image." A little man, who later turned out to be the writer and professional eccentric Quentin Crisp, was making bacon and eggs for a large man who was sitting at a table reading the comics. Pinter told his friend Henry Woolf about the incident and said he thought he might write a play about it. The next year Woolf, then a graduate student at the University of Bristol, asked him if he could write that play for a group of drama students.<br />The resulting work, "The Room," was Pinter's first play. And with its story of mysterious intruders and its elliptical speech, it showed that Pinter had already found his voice as a dramatist. It opened in Bristol on May 15, 1957, and was restaged three years later at the Hampstead Theater Club in London.<br />In 1956 Pinter married Vivien Merchant, an actress in the company. After their son, Daniel, was born in 1958, they moved to the Chiswick section of London. He wrote "The Birthday Party," his first full-length play, drawing on his memories of touring as an actor in Eastbourne, on Britain's south coast.<br />The Pinters, who were temporarily unemployed and desperately poor, had an offer to act in Birmingham, and Merchant wanted to accept it. But Pinter said: "I have this play opening in London. I think I must stay. Something's going to happen." She replied, "What makes you think so?"<br />They turned down the acting offer. "The Birthday Party" opened in the West End in 1958 and received disastrous reviews. Then, prodded by the theatrical agent Peggy Ramsay, Harold Hobson, the eminent critic of The Sunday Times of London, came to see it at a matinee. What he wrote turned out to be a life-changing review.<br />"It breathes in the air," Hobson wrote. "It cannot be seen, but it enters the room every time the door is opened." He continued: "Though you go to the uttermost parts of the earth, and hide yourself in the most obscure lodgings in the least popular of towns, one day there is a possibility that two men will appear. They will be looking for you, and you cannot get away. And someone will be looking for them too. There is terror everywhere." He concluded, "Mr. Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London."<br />Despite that review the play closed that weekend. By contrast Pinter's next full-length play to be produced, "The Caretaker," which opened in London in 1960, was a dazzling critical success. "Suddenly everything went topsy-turvy," Pinter said.<br />In that play two brothers live in a seedy house in London and, for inexplicable reasons, invite a homeless man named Davies to share their quarters and to act as a kind of custodian. Michael Billington, a critic for The Guardian and Pinter's biographer, has called the play "an austere masterpiece: a universally recognizable play about political maneuvering, fraternal love, spiritual isolation, language as a negotiating weapon or a form of cover-up."<br />Pinter's next play, "The Homecoming," opened in London in June 1965, in a Royal Shakespeare Company production directed by Hall. The story of an all-male family headed by a Lear-like father and the woman ( Merchant, who starred in many of his plays) who enters and disrupts their domain scored a major success in London. Though it received a mixed reception in New York, "The Homecoming" won a Tony Award as best play and had a long run on Broadway.<br />A Shift of Focus<br />After these first three full-length plays — all stories of raffish characters in shabby environments — Pinter shifted his focus. His next three dramas were set in the worlds of art and publishing: "Old Times" (1971), "No Man's Land" (1975) and "Betrayal" (1978), all studies of the unreliability of memory and the uncertainty of love. In "Old Times" a husband and wife encounter a woman they may or may not have known in the past.<br />In "No Man's Land" a faded poet visits a wealthy patron for an evening of recollection and gamesmanship, roles played in the original production by John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, who repeated their performances in New York the next year. The elegant "Betrayal" is a play about marriage and duplicity and, despite its use of reverse chronology, is among Pinter's most accessible works. It was made into a 1982 film starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge.<br />During the run of "No Man's Land" Pinter began an affair with Lady Antonia Fraser, the biographer and historian, who was then married to Hugh Fraser, a conservative politician. In 1980 Pinter and Lady Antonia were married, with Pinter becoming the substitute paterfamilias of an extended family.<br />In addition to his wife, his survivors include his son, Daniel, and his stepchildren, Benjamin, Damian, Orlando, Rebecca, Flora and Natasha. Years ago his son changed his last name to Brand, his maternal grandmother's maiden name. He had been estranged from his father, living as a recluse in Cambridgeshire.<br />After "Betrayal" Pinter's plays became shorter (like "A Kind of Alaska") and then, for about three years, they stopped. "Something gnaws away," he explained, "the desire to write something and the inability to do so." He added, "I think I was getting more and more imbedded in international issues."<br />At the same time he continued his involvement in films, highlighted by his close collaboration as screenwriter with the director Joseph Losey, which began in 1963 with "The Servant," a depiction of class relations in Britain. That was followed in 1967 by "Accident," about a professor infatuated with a student ( Pinter and Merchant each had minor parts), and "The Go-Between" (1971), about a boy's complicity in an adult affair in turn of the century Britain, with Julie Christie and Alan Bates.<br />His many screenplays for other directors include "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964), about a woman (Anne Bancroft) drifting through multiple marriages, directed by Jack Clayton; "The Last Tycoon," Elia Kazan's 1976 adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel; and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), a Karel Reisz film with Meryl Streep and Irons.<br />With his plays "Moonlight" (a portrait of family relationships undermined by years of divisiveness) and "Ashes to Ashes" (a story of "torturers and victims" reflected in a typically uncommunicative marriage), Pinter returned to the longer, somberly meditative form.<br />His final work, "Celebration" (2000), is a wry look at power-conscious couples dining in a chic restaurant that bears a striking resemblance to the Ivy, a famous theater gathering place in London. "Celebration" was inspired by the playwright's early days as an unemployed actor, when he took a job as a busboy at the National Liberal Club. Because he dared to intrude on a conversation among several diners, he was fired.<br />The Writer as Director<br />He often directed plays by others, especially those by Simon Gray ("Butley," "Otherwise Engaged"), and occasionally his own work. Increasingly and with greater zeal he appeared as an actor — onstage with Paul Eddington in "No Man's Land" and in films like "Mojo," "Mansfield Park" and "The Tailor of Panama." Throughout his life he specialized in playing menacing characters, including several in his own plays ("The Hothouse," "One for the Road").<br />In July 2001 the highlight of the Lincoln Center Festival in New York was the presentation of nine Pinter plays, including a revival of "The Homecoming," and a pairing of his first and last plays, "The Room" and "Celebration." Pinter participated as a director and also acted in "One for the Road" in the role of a dapper and sadistic government interrogator.<br />The Pinter festival was the capstone of a season that, in London, featured the premiere at the National Theater of a stage version of his film script for "Remembrance of Things Past." Late in 2001 he directed an acclaimed revival of "No Man's Land," starring John Wood and Corin Redgrave at the National Theater.<br />In December 2001, during a routine medical examination, he was found to have cancer of the esophagus. In January 2002, while undergoing treatment, he acted in his brief comic sketch "Press Conference" at the National Theater in a malicious role as a minister of culture who was formerly the head of the secret police. In 2006 he appeared in a weeklong, sold-out production of Beckett's one-man play, "Krapp's Last Tape," at the Royal Court Theater.<br />"Pinter looks anxiously over his left shoulder into the darkness as if he felt death's presence in the room," Billington of The Guardian wrote. "It is impossible to dissociate Pinter's own recent encounters with mortality from that of the character."<br />Revivals of Pinter's work have become increasingly frequent in recent years. Last December an acclaimed production of his "Homecoming" opened on Broadway.<br />Pinter said he thought of theater as essentially exploratory. "Even old Sophocles didn't know what was going to happen next," he said. "He had to find his way through unknown territory. At the same time, theater has always been a critical act, looking in a broad sense at the society in which we live and attempting to reflect and dramatize these findings. We're not talking about the moon."<br />Speaking about his intuitive sense of writing, he said, "I find at the end of the journey, which of course is never ending, that I have found things out."<br />"I don't go away and say: 'I have illuminated myself. You see before you a changed person,' " he added. "It's a more surreptitious sense of discovery that happens to the writer himself."<br />Few writers have been so consistent over so many years in the tone and execution of their work. Just before rehearsals began for the West End production of "The Birthday Party" half a century ago, Pinter sent a letter to his director, Peter Wood. In it he said, "The play dictated itself, but I confess that I wrote it — with intent, maliciously, purposefully, in command of its growth."<br />He added: "The play is a comedy because the whole state of affairs is absurd and inglorious. It is, however, as you know, a very serious piece of work."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Eartha Kitt, a seductive talent, dies at 81</strong><br />By Rob Hoerberger<br />Friday, December 26, 2008<br />Eartha Kitt, who purred and pounced her way across Broadway stages, recording studios and movie and television screens in a show-business career that lasted more than six decades, died on Thursday. She was 81 and lived in Connecticut.<br />The cause was colon cancer, said her longtime publicist, Andrew Freedman.<br />Kitt, who began performing as a dancer in New York in the late '40s, went on to achieve success and acclaim in a variety of mediums long before other entertainment multitaskers like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also, along with Lena Horne, among the first widely known African-American sex symbols. Orson Welles famously proclaimed her "the most exciting woman alive" in the early '50s, apparently just after that excitement prompted him to bite her onstage during a performance of "Time Runs," an adaptation of "Faust" in which Kitt played Helen of Troy.<br />Kitt's career-long persona, that of the seen-it-all sybarite, was set when she performed in Paris cabarets in her early 20s, singing songs that became her signatures like "C'est Si Bon" and "Love for Sale." Returning to New York, she was cast on Broadway in "New Faces of 1952" and added another jewel to her vocal crown, "Monotonous" ("Traffic has been known to stop for me/Prices even rise and drop for me/Harry Truman plays bop for me/Monotonous, monotone-ous"). Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in May 1952, "Eartha Kitt not only looks incendiary, but she can make a song burst into flame."<br />Shortly after that run, Kitt had her first best-selling albums and recorded her biggest hit, "Santa Baby," whose precise, come-hither diction and vaguely foreign inflections ( Kitt, a native of South Carolina, spoke four languages and sang in seven) proved that a vocal sizzle could be just as powerful as a bonfire. Though her record sales fell after the rise of rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll in the mid- and late '50s, her singing style would later be the template for other singers with small-but-sensual voices like Diana Ross (who has said she patterned her Supremes sound and look largely after Kitt), Janet Jackson and Madonna, who recorded a cover version of "Santa Baby" in 1987. Kitt would later call herself "the original material girl," a reference not only to her stage creation but also to her string of romances with rich or famous men, including Welles, the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and the banking heir John Barry Ryan 3rd. She was married to her one husband, Bill McDonald, a real-estate developer, from 1960 to 1965; their daughter, Kitt Shapiro, survives her, as do two grandchildren.<br />From practically the beginning of her career, as critics gushed over Kitt, they also began to describe her in every feline term imaginable: her voice "purred" or "was like catnip"; she was a "sex kitten" who "slinked" or was "on the prowl" across the stage, sometimes "flashing her claws." Her career has often been said to have had "nine lives." Appropriately enough, she was tapped to play Catwoman in the 1960s TV series "Batman," taking over the role from the leggier, lynxlike Julie Newmar and bringing to it a more feral, compact energy.<br />Yet for all the camp appeal and sexually charged hauteur of Kitt's cabaret act, she also played serious roles, appearing in the films "The Mark of the Hawk" with Sidney Poitier (1957) and "Anna Lucasta" (1959) with Sammy Davis Jr. She made numerous television appearances, including a guest spot on "I Spy" in 1965, which brought her her first Emmy nomination.<br />For these performances Kitt very likely drew on the hardship of her early life. She was born Eartha Mae Keith in North, South Carolina, on Jan. 17, 1927, a date she did not know until about 10 years ago, when she challenged students at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, to find her birth certificate, and they did. She was the illegitimate child of a black Cherokee sharecropper mother and a white man about whom Kitt knew little. She worked in cotton fields and lived with a black family who, she said, abused her because she looked too white. "They called me yella gal," Kitt said.<br />At 8 she was sent to live in Harlem with an aunt, Marnie Kitt, who Kitt came to believe was really her biological mother. Though she was given piano and dance lessons, a pattern of abuse developed there as well: Kitt would be beaten, run away and return. By her early teenage years she was working in a factory and sleeping in subways and on the roofs of unlocked buildings. (She would later become an advocate, through Unicef, on behalf of homeless children.)<br />Her show-business break came on a lark, when a friend dared her to audition for the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. She passed the audition and permanently escaped the cycle of poverty and abuse that defined her life till then.<br />But she took the steeliness with her, in a willful, outspoken manner that mostly served her career, except once. In 1968 she was invited to a White House luncheon and was asked by Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War. She replied: "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot." The remark reportedly caused Johnson to burst into tears and led to the only derailment in Kitt's career. ( Kitt claimed that the CIA drafted a negative memo that referred to her as a nymphomaniac.)<br />As bookings dried up she was exiled to Europe for almost a decade. But President Jimmy Carter invited her back to the White House, and she earned her first Tony nomination for her work in "Timbuktu!," an all-black remake of "Kismet," in 1978.<br />By now a diva and legend, Kitt did what many other divas and legends — Shirley Bassey and Ethel Merman among them — did: she dabbled in dance music, scoring her biggest hit in 30 years with "Where Is My Man" in 1984, the same year she was roundly criticized for touring South Africa. Kitt was typically unapologetic; the tour, she said, played to integrated audiences and helped build schools for black children.<br />The third of her three autobiographies, "I'm Still Here: Confessions of Sex Kitten," was published in 1989, and she earned a Grammy nomination for "Back in Business," a collection of cabaret songs released in 1994.<br />As Kitt began the sixth decade of her career, she was as active as ever. In 2000 she received her second Tony nomination, for best featured actress in a musical in "The Wild Party." Branching out into children's programming, she won two daytime Emmy Awards, in 2007 and 2008, for outstanding performer in an animated program for her role as the scheming empress-wannabe Yzma in "The Emperor's New School." And all the while she remained a fixture on the cabaret circuit, having maintained her voice and shapely figure through a vigorous fitness regimen that included daily running and weight lifting. Even after discovering in 2006 that she had colon cancer, she triumphantly opened the newly renovated Café Carlyle in New York in September 2007. Stephen Holden, writing in The Times, said that Kitt's voice was "in full growl."<br />But though Kitt still seemed to have men of all ages wrapped around her fingers (she would often toy with younger worshipers at her shows by suggesting they introduce her to their fathers), the years had given her perspective. "I'm a dirt person," she told Ebony magazine in 1993. "I trust the dirt. I don't trust diamonds and gold."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>19 killed in explosion at apartment building in Ukraine</strong><br />By Michael Schwirtz<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />MOSCOW: At least 19 people were killed when an explosion tore through an apartment building in the Ukrainian Black Sea resort town of Yevpatoria, investigators said Thursday.<br />Rescuers were able to pull 21 people alive from the rubble of the building, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry said. It was unclear if more people were buried in the debris or what caused the blast, which occurred Wednesday night.<br />The ministry spokesman said rescuers had not yet made their way to the basement, where investigators think the explosion may have originated.<br />The Ukrainian minister for emergency situations, Volodymyr Shandra, told Ukrainian news media that investigators had ruled out a household gas explosion and were looking into whether faulty oxygen tanks stored in the building's basement had caused the blast, the Interfax news agency reported.<br />Interfax also cited residents from neighboring buildings, who said tenants from the building where the explosion occurred had repeatedly asked officials to remove oxygen and acetylene tanks from the building.<br />Explosions are not uncommon in aging apartment blocs throughout the former Soviet Union, and are typically caused by natural gas.<br />A natural gas explosion in October 2007 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk killed more than 12 people.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>David Rampe, 60, dies; veteran New York Times editor</strong><br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />David Rampe, an editor on the foreign desk of The New York Times who helped shape the newspaper's coverage of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died Wednesday in New York. He was 60.<br />He went into cardiac arrest in Paris in January, resulting in severe brain damage, his partner, Ed Rogers, said.<br />As the foreign desk's weekend editor, Rampe also had an integral role in organizing the paper's coverage of the 2005 London terrorist bombings and the transition in the Vatican from Pope John Paul II to Benedict XVI. In 2004, he was assigned to Paris to coordinate The Times's coverage with the International Herald Tribune, its global edition, and help integrate the two newspapers' news operations.<br />Rampe worked for The Times for nearly three decades. He was previously an editor at The Wall Street Journal and, on one assignment, lived in Hong Kong while helping to introduce The Asian Wall Street Journal.<br />At The Times, he worked as an editor in the business section and in the Washington bureau. In the early 1990s, he was the founding editor of TimesFax (since renamed Times Digest), a digest of Times articles sent to resorts and hotels overseas and to cruise ships.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>MEANWHILE</strong></div><div><strong>A fish called Puntja<br /></strong>By Benjamin Svetkey<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />My wife, Lenka, and I don't have anything against kids, but the responsibility of caring for another being, of holding the fate of a tiny defenseless soul in our shaky hands, always worried us. So a while back we got a fish.<br />We named him Puntja, which is the equivalent of Spot in Czech, my wife's native language. The word for Flipper was too hard for me to pronounce. We brought him home in a plastic baggie, and soon enough we were cooing into his bowl and fretting over the temperature of his water. That first night, I went online and was horrified to learn that his bowl was too small. So we drove back to the pet store and purchased a 10-gallon version. We also got a high-tech filtration system guaranteed to clean and recirculate Puntja's water every few hours, along with antibiotic tablets and various other goldfish medicines (just in case) and lots more plastic plants to decorate his big new bowl.<br />Lenka and I lavished an insane amount of affection on Puntja. I read that goldfish are as intelligent as dolphins, so I planted a large donut-shaped rock in his bowl and tried to teach him to swim through its hole. Lenka took pictures of him constantly, keeping a record of his growth. I pinned the shots up on my office wall, next to pictures of my family; she posted them on her MySpace page. We would sometimes catch each other hovering over Puntja's bowl, making cute fish faces and fish noises.<br />The little guy really had become part of the family. When we left him behind for a long Thanksgiving weekend at Big Sur, we spent the whole vacation worrying that his time-release food pellet would malfunction and he'd starve before we got home.<br />Then, one day right before Christmas, Lenka called me at the office, sounding stricken. "Something's wrong with Puntja," she said. "He's swimming upside down." When I got home Puntja was indeed doing a spastic backstroke. We decided to take him to the pet shop for a consultation, and we gingerly scooped him into his old, smaller bowl for the journey. With Puntja cradled in Lenka's lap, water splashing everywhere, I carefully drove the few miles to the store.<br />We were nearly there, waiting at a stoplight, when we got rear-ended by a limousine, smashing us into the SUV in front of us, squeezing our car like an accordion. The fish bowl hit Lenka in her face, cutting her lip, and the impact sent Puntja flying. When it was over, the car was totaled, my wife was bleeding and Puntja's bowl was cracked and empty.<br />"Where's the fish?" Lenka shrieked after we had climbed out of the wreck and regained our wits. "Where's Puntja?" I crawled back into the car and looked for him. When I found him under the seat, my heart sank. Our happy little fish was dead. I gently placed his corpse into his waterless bowl and sat down on the curb with my wife.<br />That's how the medics discovered us when they arrived 10 minutes later - a woman with a bloody lip and a man holding a fish, trying not to cry. I sat in the back of the ambulance on the way to the emergency room, clutching Puntja's bowl on my lap, watching as one of the medics tended to Lenka's injury. Then the other medic turned to me.<br />"Let me see the fish," he said over the siren. I told him the fish was dead, that he hadn't moved in 20 minutes. "Let me see the fish," he repeated.<br />I handed him the bowl. He poked Puntja with his finger. No response. The medic thought for a moment, then reached into a bag by his side, pulled out a bottle of Evian and filled the fishbowl with the mineral water. He poked at Puntja some more. We were all stunned by what happened next. After a few nudges, Puntja sprang to life. And not only that, he was right side up.<br />We all stared in disbelief as Puntja swam in bottled water, then we broke out cheering. When we got to the ER, Lenka needed a few stitches but was otherwise O.K. I walked away without a scratch. And Puntja came home healthier than ever. And he stayed that way for two whole weeks, until he started swimming upside down again. He passed away shortly after New Year's. ("Internal injuries suffered during the car accident," the pet-store clerk speculated). We gave him a burial at sea, in the Venice Canals where we live. Lenka and I held hands as we watched his small golden corpse drift to the bottom.<br />Two years later, we've healed, mostly. On good nights, we can even eat sushi again. And despite his tragic end, Puntja helped us realize that we were ready for a much larger challenge, that we could indeed take that giant leap into far greater responsibility. About nine months after Puntja's passing, we welcomed another newcomer to our household. We got a cat.Benjamin Svetkey is an editor at large at Entertainment Weekly. </div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiThL9e5NLxV19q320etv_9FphSXJF9hLltvju7kLCUceLGBWVHbZpRrXxpkMso6KMzQLL_Qo62DJusTFP66dDeC31DWquaRJm3ApertemzEI2flfPDwJGROsgzyw5kfimIQ1iMyas_VWg/s1600-h/DSC04455.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981991616524594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiThL9e5NLxV19q320etv_9FphSXJF9hLltvju7kLCUceLGBWVHbZpRrXxpkMso6KMzQLL_Qo62DJusTFP66dDeC31DWquaRJm3ApertemzEI2flfPDwJGROsgzyw5kfimIQ1iMyas_VWg/s320/DSC04455.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgajA2iU6xNZPTTKcwk43mCeX9N8FZumE5mDb75Wzwmtak_Jl9ozBs0B3vMGYx7swgVdNgaHRY5BH3AkBnYR6Y3AqpRKAtTSqJLCGKH11kBJOFVdj5Nc39Z3iYcN0zEbIMMPprJm8ZajIc/s1600-h/DSC04456.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981687477493570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgajA2iU6xNZPTTKcwk43mCeX9N8FZumE5mDb75Wzwmtak_Jl9ozBs0B3vMGYx7swgVdNgaHRY5BH3AkBnYR6Y3AqpRKAtTSqJLCGKH11kBJOFVdj5Nc39Z3iYcN0zEbIMMPprJm8ZajIc/s320/DSC04456.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Obama testifies for federal prosecutors</strong><br />By Peter Baker<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />Every president for more than three decades has had to talk with federal prosecutors at one time or another. President-elect Barack Obama may have set a land speed record by giving his first interview to investigators even before taking the oath of office.<br />Obama sat down last week with four investigators looking into the alleged attempt to sell his former Senate seat. As a witness, rather than a target, Obama seems to have had an easier time with the experience than some of his predecessors. But it is certainly not the way he wanted to begin his presidency.<br />"Here the guy hasn't even gotten his tuxedo for the ball yet and already there's a prosecutor who wants to talk him," said Robert Bennett, one of Washington's most prominent lawyers who has represented members of Congress, cabinet secretaries and even former President Bill Clinton in all manner of politically charged cases. "It's the era that we live in."<br />Another reflection of the era is that Obama and his team evidently made no effort to avoid the interview. In the past, some presidents have cooperated with prosecutors or court proceedings only reluctantly, delaying or trying to limit the parameters of their involvement while expressing concern about their prerogatives as the head of the executive branch. But in recent years, the practice has grown so commonplace that Obama's aides said there was never any debate about whether he would answer questions.<br />"There was absolutely no hesitation whatsoever about making him available - none," said one person involved in the transition.<br />With no known legal exposure himself, of course, that was an easier decision for Obama. As a political matter, Obama, coming into office on promises of transparency and reform, may have had little choice but to cooperate, even if it meant disclosing the sorts of internal deliberations that presidents often guard jealously, like whether he wanted an adviser to serve on the White House staff or in the Senate.<br />In addition, a president-elect could have a harder time making a legal argument about shielding confidential discussions than a sitting president does. The concept of executive privilege, while not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, has been recognized by courts over the years, though it can be outweighed in such compelling circumstances as a criminal investigation. It is a matter of some debate among lawyers whether, as president-elect, Obama would have any claim to executive privilege.<br />Obama was interviewed on Dec. 18 at his Chicago transition office by two assistant U.S. attorneys and two agents from the FBI looking into alleged attempts by Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois to profit from his appointment of Obama's successor to the Senate. Obama was accompanied by his personal lawyer, Robert Bauer, and an associate, but not by Gregory Craig, who has been designated the new White House counsel, Obama advisers said.<br />The U.S. attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, who is leading the investigation into Blagojevich, did not attend. The two-hour interview was not recorded or conducted under oath, although one FBI agent and Bauer's associate took copious notes, and it is a felony to lie to federal investigators even without being sworn in.<br />Obama answered every question posed and his lawyers made no objections, according to one adviser to the president-elect. Two of Obama's aides were interviewed separately and he made no effort to block his advisers from answering questions, as some past presidents have done. Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, brought his lawyer, W. Neil Eggleston, a prominent Washington attorney who was White House associate counsel under Clinton. Valerie Jarrett, named a senior presidential adviser, was accompanied by Vincent Connelly, a Chicago lawyer who was an assistant U.S. attorney.<br />Eggleston declined to comment Wednesday, and Connelly did not respond to an e-mail message.<br />The precedent of presidents agreeing to be interviewed by law enforcement authorities can be traced back 200 years to when Thomas Jefferson offered to provide testimony for use at the treason trial of his former vice president, Aaron Burr. James Monroe provided answers at the White House to questions for the court martial of an appointee. Ulysses S. Grant wanted to testify at the corruption trial of his secretary, but was talked out of it by his cabinet. Instead, he gave a deposition at the White House presided over by the chief justice.<br />But those were rarities until Watergate. Ever since, every president has been called to talk with the authorities, either as a witness or a subject. Gerald Ford provided videotaped testimony in the trial of a woman who tried to assassinate him. Jimmy Carter gave depositions or testimony in several proceedings against others. After leaving office Ronald Reagan provided videotaped testimony in the Iran-contra trial of an aide while George H. W. Bush was interviewed about the scandal while still vice president.<br />Clinton provided sworn testimony at least 10 times, according to David Kendall, his attorney in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky investigations. His testimony to the grand jury about his relationship with Lewinsky became the basis for an article of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives but later rejected by the Senate. President George W. Bush was interviewed by Fitzgerald for 70 minutes about the leak of a CIA officer's name.<br />With all that recent history, Obama had little choice but to agree to an interview, legal veterans said. "You could probably delay it as a good defense lawyer," said Bennett, who managed to push off Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton until after his 1996 re-election. "You could ask a court if there isn't any other alternative. What if he submits an affidavit? Why don't you send him written questions and see if his answers work?"<br />But Obama eventually would have to cooperate, Bennett added. "In the real world, at the beginning of an administration, he wouldn't want to start that way," he said. "He can see the headlines - here's the guy who talks about openness and transparency."<br />While Bennett said he was skeptical that a president-elect could claim executive privilege, Kendall said he thinks Obama would clearly be covered since he is in the process of building a White House. But he agreed that ultimately Obama would have to talk with investigators.<br />The important thing, Kendall said, would be to give the president-elect enough time to prepare with his lawyers so his testimony is as accurate as possible. If a president-elect, with so many issues on his plate, made an innocent mistake of recollection in his discussion with investigators, Kendall said, it would only cause more problems.<br />"This one doesn't feel to me like one where there's particular peril for the president-elect," Kendall said. "But you never know. And you have to have the time to adequately prepare it."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Wall Street stock fraud prosecutions fall sharply<br /></strong>By Eric Lichtblau<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: U.S. officials are bringing far fewer prosecutions as a result of fraudulent stock schemes than they did eight years ago, according to new data, raising further questions about whether the Bush administration has been too lax in policing Wall Street.<br />Legal and financial experts say that a loosening of enforcement measures, cutbacks in staffing at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a shift in resources toward terrorism at the FBI have combined to make the U.S. government something of a paper tiger in investigating securities crimes.<br />At a time when the financial news is being dominated by the $50 billion Ponzi scheme that Bernard Madoff is accused of running, U.S. government officials are on pace this year to bring the fewest prosecutions for securities fraud since at least 1991, according to the data, compiled by a Syracuse University research group using Justice Department figures.<br />There were 133 prosecutions for securities fraud in the first 11 months of this fiscal year. That is down from 437 cases in 2000 and from a high of 513 cases in 2002, when Wall Street scandals from Enron to WorldCom led to a crackdown on corporate crime, the data showed.<br />At the SEC, agency investigations that led to Justice Department prosecutions for securities fraud dropped from 69 in 2000 to just 9 in 2007, a decline of 87 percent, the data showed.<br />U.S. officials took issue with some of the data compiled by the Syracuse group and said that they had maintained a strong commitment to rooting out fraud and abuse in the stock markets. While the SEC could not provide numbers of its own on criminal cases arising from its investigations, Scott Friedstad, the deputy director of enforcement at the commission, said the numbers did not reflect "the reality that I see on the ground."<br />"We are as committed as ever to vigorous enforcement efforts," he said.<br />But a number of investor advocates and securities lawyers who are critical of the SEC's recent performance say they will be anxiously watching the incoming Obama administration to see what steps it may take to restore the agency's battered credibility and re-establish it as a watchdog against corporate abuse.<br />President-elect Barack Obama has named Mary Schapiro, head of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, to lead the SEC, and he has promised an overhaul of the agency and other financial regulatory offices to provide tougher oversight.<br />"I think the SEC has completely fallen down on the job," said Jacob Zamansky, a New York lawyer who specializes in representing investors who have lost money in fraud cases. "They're more interested in protecting Wall Street than protecting investors. The new administration has to do a complete overhaul of the SEC."<br />The FBI, which frequently investigates stock fraud cases either on its own or in partnership with the SEC, has also had a sharp decline in the number of white-collar cases it has brought in the last several years — partly a reflection of a huge shift in staffing and resources to counterterrorism operations since the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said.<br />David Burnham, co-director of the Syracuse research group, which is known as the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, said the decline in stock fraud prosecutions growing out of the FBI "really is no surprise. It's a reflection of a choice that was made right after 9-11 to move investigators into terrorism, and this is the cost of that.<br />"Maybe it's the correct call," he added, "but with both the FBI and the SEC, the federal government is really the only place that does white-collar crime on a systematic basis."<br />The economic collapse of the last few months has brought intense scrutiny of the SEC amid accusations that it failed to foresee and prevent the collapse of one major financial institution after another as a result of risky overinvestment in mortgage-backed securities.<br />"As an overheated market needed a strong referee to rein in dangerously risky behavior, the commission too often remained on the sidelines," Arthur Levitt, who served as chairman of the SEC during the Clinton administration, told the Senate Banking Committee in October.<br />The Madoff scandal, now under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, has ratcheted up criticism even further.<br />Christopher Cox, chairman of the SEC, ordered an internal investigation last week into what he said were the agency's "multiple failures" to investigate credible allegations of wrongdoing by Madoff.<br />The SEC's own data suggests that the agency has put increasing emphasis on using non-criminal means, like civil fines and what are known as deferred prosecution agreements, in dealing with allegations of wrongdoing. The number of SEC cases handled through civil or administrative remedies has grown from 503 in 2000 to 636 this year.<br />Critics of the SEC also attribute the decline in criminal cases to shortages in staffing and resources in the agency's investigative units, policy changes that have reduced the authority of investigators to pursue cases on their own, and a "revolving door" phenomenon that has led investigators to leave the agency for high-paying jobs in the industry that they once helped to monitor.<br />"It's been awful," Sean Coffey, a former fraud prosecutor in New York who now represents investors in securities litigation, said of the SEC's recent enforcement record. The agency has "neutered the ability of the enforcement staff to be as proactive as they could be. It's hard to square the motto of investor advocate with the way they've performed the last eight years."<br />Coffey said he believed the declining number of stock fraud prosecutions is partly a result of the backlash the Bush administration experienced after its aggressive pursuit of corporate crime following the Enron collapse in 2002, which led to the creation of a national task force on corporate wrongdoing.<br />In the last few years, he said, "the administration has been sending the message that we're going to loosen the binds on the market to compete in the global marketplace, and they've pulled the throttle back on prosecutions because it wasn't politically necessary anymore."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>**********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Trustee tries to sell Madoff trading unit</strong><br />By Michael J. de la Merced<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />NEW YORK: As the investigation into Bernard Madoff's money management business intensifies, efforts are under way for a quick sale of the trading unit, which was once the heart of Madoff's operations.<br />Last week, a court-appointed trustee, Irving Picard, hired the investment bank Lazard to manage the sale of the business, which includes a big market-making operation and a proprietary trading desk. Now, the two are trying to find a buyer for the unit before its more than 120 employees drift away.<br />The efforts to sell the trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities are taking place amid a broadening tableau of events related to the fraud case.<br />On Wednesday, New York University sued J.Ezra Merkin, a money manager who had invested $94 million in university funds in Madoff's firm. NYU accused Merkin and two of his funds, Ariel and Gabriel, of placing its money with Madoff without notification or proper due diligence, according to the lawsuit.<br />It was only the latest in a number of lawsuits filed against the so-called feeder funds that poured money into Madoff's vast investment advisory arm.<br />Separately, a judge in New York issued a temporary restraining order barring Merkin "from taking any action to liquidate Ariel" before a Jan. 6 hearing. Merkin is also prohibited from taking any action to move assets of the Ariel or Gabriel funds, according to the order.<br />Wall Street analysts are watching what happens to the trading operations. Madoff's trading business led to his rise to prominence. He began his career by trading over-the-counter stocks. By the 1980s, his firm handled as much as 5 percent of the trading on the New York Stock Exchange.<br />The firm had approximately $300 million in assets in 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, and ranked among the top trading and securities firms in the United States.<br />What set Madoff apart from his peers was his early and aggressive push into electronic trading at a time when the business was still built mainly on the decades-old system of human traders on an exchange floor. At one point, the firm was the largest market maker on the Nasdaq market, regularly operating as both a buyer and seller of many widely traded securities.<br />Among the supervisors of the unit was Peter Madoff, Madoff's younger brother and the firm's chief compliance officer. Madoff's sons, Andrew and Mark, also worked in the trading operations. Those family members have not been implicated in the case.<br />Madoff's firm is being liquidated under the Securities Investor Protection Corp., the government-chartered fund set up to help protect investors in failed brokerage firms, to save at least a small portion of the $50 billion that is estimated to have been lost by investors. The Madoff firm's operations have been frozen by the protection fund, although its employees are still being paid.<br />Several potential buyers have already been contacted to gauge their interest in the business, while other firms have already expressed their interest, a person briefed on the sales process said. Among the potential buyers are other brokerage shops looking to add or expand an equities trading platform and private equity firms. But Picard and Lazard face several challenges, the biggest perhaps being time. A securities firm's most valuable assets are its people, and the longer the sales process takes, the more likely it is that important personnel will begin to leave. That has not happened yet, this person said.<br />And while customers normally use several firms to act as market makers for stocks, many may not return if Madoff's firm is prevented from operating for an extended period of time.<br />Picard and Lazard must also sort through the trading unit's voluminous records, which are in disarray, according to a person with direct knowledge of the Madoff firm's operations. That could make it harder to arrange a sale of the business. Picard could not be reached for comment. A Lazard spokeswoman declined to comment.<br />French group seeks data<br />A group of French shareholders is pressing the government to release a list of French funds exposed to losses from alleged fraud by Bernard Madoff, The Associated Press reported from Paris.<br />The group, SOS Petits Porteurs, said Wednesday that it had asked the Finance Ministry to provide a list of French funds "contaminated by the Madoff virus." It added, "The public at large has the right to know."<br />The group says many depositors are complaining that fund managers are refusing to discuss their potential losses or exposure to Madoff-related investments.<br />Leading French banks, including BNP Paribas and Natixis, have estimated their exposure to Madoff's activities at more than $1 billion.<br />The French market regulator, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, or AMF, has estimated the total exposure of French mutual funds at €500 million, or $702 million. The AMF said Dec. 18 that the majority of those funds were available only to institutional investors or very wealthy clients - not the general public.<br />The AMF urged French fund managers to alert their clients about any Madoff-related investments, but said it was not compiling a list of affected French mutual funds.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Once trusted mortgage pioneers, now pariahs</strong><br />By Michael Moss and Geraldine Fabrikant<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />SAN FRANCISCO: "We are team-oriented, highly ethical, extremely competitive, profit-oriented, risk-averse, consumer-focused, and we try as much as possible to squeeze out any ego. Hubris is the beginning of the end."<br />— Herbert Sandler, June 2005<br />Herbert Sandler, the founder of the Center for Responsible Lending, is standing in his bayfront office watching a DVD that trains brokers to pitch mortgages by extolling the glories of the real estate boom.<br />The video reeks of hucksterism, and it infuriates Sandler.<br />"I would not have approved that!" he declares. "I don't think we should be selling our loans based on home prices continuing to go up."<br />But the DVD was produced in 2005 by a mortgage lender that Sandler and his wife, Marion, ran at the time: World Savings Bank. And the video was a small part of a broad and aggressive effort by their company to market risky loans at the height of the housing bubble.<br />The Sandlers long viewed themselves — and were viewed by many others — as the mortgage industry's model citizens. Now they too have been swept into the maelstrom surrounding who is to blame for the housing bust and the growing number of home foreclosures.<br />Once invited by Congress to testify about good lending practices, the Sandlers were recently parodied on "Saturday Night Live" as greedy bankers who handily sold their bank — and pocketed $2.3 billion in shares and cash — in 2006 before many of their loans began to sour.<br />Last month, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco announced dual inquiries into whether World Savings engaged in predatory lending practices or misled investors about its financial well-being. And the bank has been sued by numerous borrowers who claim they were misled into taking out mortgages they could not afford.<br />At the center of the controversy is an exotic but popular mortgage the Sandlers pioneered that helped generate billions of dollars of revenue at their bank.<br />Known as an option ARM — and named "Pick-A-Pay" by World Savings — it is now seen by an array of housing analysts and regulators as the Typhoid Mary of the mortgage industry.<br />Pick-A-Pay allowed homeowners to make monthly mortgage payments that were so small they did not cover their interest charges. That meant the total principal owed would actually grow over time, not shrink as is normally the case.<br />Now held by an estimated two million homeowners, the option adjustable rate mortgage will be at the forefront of a further wave of homeowner distress that could greatly delay or even derail an economic recovery, mortgage industry analysts say.<br />Wachovia, which bought the Sandlers' bank two years ago, was so battered by the souring portfolio of World Savings that it began writing off losses now projected at tens of billions of dollars and eventually stopped offering option ARMs.<br />Through it all, the Sandlers have maintained they did nothing wrong beyond misjudging the real estate bubble.<br />"I didn't mislead anybody, and to the best of my knowledge, our company didn't, though there may have been an isolated case here and there," Herbert Sandler said. "If home prices hadn't declined by 50 percent, nobody would be raising these questions."<br />Sandler also finds it incredible that borrowers feel victimized by Pick-A-Pay. "All of a sudden their home is worth half of what it was, and they say they didn't know."<br />Yet the Sandlers embraced practices like the use of independent brokers who used questionable methods to reel in borrowers. These and other practices, critics contend, undermined the conservative lending practices that the Sandlers built their reputations upon.<br />"This product is the most destructive financial weapon ever deployed against the American middle class," said William J. Purdy III, a housing lawyer in California who is representing elderly World Savings customers struggling to repay their loans. "People who have this loan are now trapped, and they can't get another loan."<br />The birth of pick-a-pay<br />Marion Sandler, now 78, was a Wall Street analyst in the early 1960s when she and her husband decided to buy a bank that took only savings deposits and made mortgage loans — a thrift, or savings and loan, in banking shorthand — and run it themselves.<br />Herbert Sandler, now 77, was a lawyer in New York who grew up poor on the Lower East Side, the son of a compulsive gambler whose earnings were consumed by loan sharks.<br />The Sandlers searched for a thrift in the sizzling California market and paid $3.8 million in 1963 for an Oakland enterprise called Golden West Savings and Loan Association, which later became the parent company of World Savings. It had a main office and one branch.<br />When Reagan era deregulation arrived, the Sandlers and two other competitors were able to market option ARMs for the first time in 1981. Before that, lawmakers balked at the loan because of its potential peril to borrowers.<br />World Savings initially attracted borrowers whose incomes fluctuated, like professionals with big year-end bonuses. In the recent housing boom, when World Savings started calling the loan Pick-A-Pay, they began marketing it to a much broader audience, including people with financial troubles, like deeply indebted blue-collar workers.<br />As the entire thrift industry soared after deregulation, the Sandlers' business also took off. They avoided financial problems by doing things like scrutinizing borrowers' incomes to make sure loans were manageable and performing astute appraisals so the size of a mortgage was in line with the value of a home.<br />"Our protection was our total underwriting of the loan," Herbert Sandler said. "From scratch."<br />When many of the Sandlers' competitors in the thrift industry later began collapsing under the weight of bad loans and investments, Congress and the media invited the couple to speak about the proper way to do business.<br />"The deregulatory situation attracted bums, charlatans, crooks, phonies, con men," Sandler told an ABC News program in 1990.<br />The Sandlers also held onto World Savings' loans rather than selling them off to Wall Street to be repackaged as securities. They say this made them more alert to risky borrowers than were lenders who sold off their loans.<br />When foreclosures occurred, World Savings executives would drive to the house to see if they had made mistakes appraising the property or underwriting the loan. "We called these the van tours," Sandler said. "And we would say, 'O.K., have we done anything wrong here?' "<br />More philanthropic work<br />As the Sandlers' wealth increased, so did their philanthropy. Over the years, they financed scientific research and groups like Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. More recently they founded and financed ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism enterprise that has collaborated with The New York Times on coverage and a news archive. Its 14-member advisory board includes two top New York Times Co. editors.<br />The Sandlers' giving intersected most directly with their business interests in 2002 when they helped create an advocacy group for low-income borrowers called the Center for Responsible Lending.<br />The center was the successor to a smaller organization in North Carolina, whose director, Martin Eakes, had helped the elderly and minorities avoid predatory banking practices.<br />"I said, 'Isn't that incredible what he is doing?' " Herbert Sandler recalled. "I said to Martin, 'What would it take to do what you do on a national scale?' "<br />Eakes, who became the center's executive director, had also just helped secure a new mortgage lending law in North Carolina that prohibited, among other things, the use of prepayment penalties.<br />"I hated prepayment penalties," Eakes recalled, noting that such charges make it hard for cash-poor borrowers to refinance a loan for one with more manageable terms.<br />While Sandler supported the center's antipredatory goals, he disagreed with Eakes's position on prepayment penalties and sought to change his mind. Eakes says the Sandlers convinced him to drop his opposition to prepayment penalties, "but they never dictated to us what to do."<br />Sandler acknowledges that some lenders used the penalties to lock borrowers into "absolutely awful" loans. But he said his bank used the penalties to fend off unethical brokers who enticed borrowers with low-interest-rate loans that often had hidden fees.<br />"You have to understand how independent brokers work," Sandler says. "They are the whores of the world."<br />Despite that distaste, World Savings made extensive use of brokers. By 2006, they were generating some 60 percent of its loan business, he acknowledged. He said he was compelled to do so because of brokers were a dominant force in the mortgage industry.<br />As a check on the representations that brokers made to borrowers, World Savings sought to telephone applicants to ensure that they understood the terms of their loan. These calls reached only about half of the borrowers, however, according to a former World Savings executive. Sandler did not dispute that point.<br />Customer complaints that an unethical broker had misrepresented the terms of World Savings loans is at the heart of a lawsuit filed against the bank and others in Alameda County, California. The broker was sentenced to a year in prison for misleading at least 90 World Savings borrowers.<br />Sandler points out that the company was itself a victim of this broker, that it cooperated fully with authorities, and that it was not charged with any wrongdoing.<br />Others have also raised questions about how carefully World Savings disclosed lending terms to its borrowers.<br />In August, a U.S. judge in South Carolina ruled that World Savings had violated the federal Truth in Lending Act by telling borrowers that choosing to make minimum monthly payments on Pick-A-Pay mortgages might cause their principal to grow — when in fact it certainly would occur.<br />Wachovia, which is defending the case, has appealed the ruling. Sandler said he was not familiar with this lawsuit, but generally, he says, "Wachovia's legal defense is deficient."<br />A speedy merger<br />By 2005, World Savings lending had started to slow, after more than quadrupling since 1998. The next year, Wachovia bought the bank in a hastily arranged deal. The Sandlers say they sold their firm at the top of the market because they were growing older and wanted to devote themselves to philanthropy.<br />Some current and former Wachovia officials say that the merger was agreed to in days and that it was impossible to conduct a thorough vetting of World Savings' loans. Others say the portfolio was adequately scrutinized.<br />"Herb and his wife had run a tight ship," said Robert Brown, a Wachovia board member. "There was not a huge concern about it because they had not had any delinquencies and foreclosures."<br />Others were less sanguine. The creditworthiness of World Savings borrowers edged down from 2004 to 2006, according to Wachovia's data. Over all, Pick-A-Pay borrowers had credit scores well below the industry average for traditional loans.<br />"I don't think anyone thought a Pick-A-Pay product was a customer-friendly product," says a former Wachovia executive who requested anonymity to preserve professional relationships. "It is easy to mislead them."<br />World Savings lending volume dipped again in 2006 shortly after the sale to Wachovia was initiated, according to the company's federal filings.<br />This prompted World Savings to attract more borrowers by taking a step that some regulators were starting to frown upon, and which the company had been resisting for years: it allowed borrowers to make monthly payments based on an annual interest rate of just 1 percent. While World Savings continued to scrutinize borrowers' ability to manage increased payments, the move to rock-bottom rates lured customers whose financial reliability was harder to verify.<br />Russell Kettell, a former chief financial officer of World Savings, says the merger created "pressure" for "a pretty good-sized increase in loan volume."<br />Asked if Wachovia ordered World Savings to drop its rate, Kettell said, "No, but they wanted volume and wanted growth."<br />A swift increase in option ARM lending had prompted U.S. regulators to weigh tougher controls on lending standards in 2005. Of the $238 billion in option ARM loans made nationally in 2005, World Savings issued about $52 billion, or more than one-fifth of the total.<br />Susan Schmidt Bies, a governor of the Federal Reserve System until last year, said the surge in volume caught regulators by surprise, and that she regrets not acting more quickly to protect borrowers because she believes that they could not understand the risky nature of option ARMs.<br />"When you get into people whose mortgage payments are taking half of their cash flow, they are in over their heads, and these loans should not have been sold to this customer base," she said. "This makes me sick when I see this happening."<br />In March 2006, two months before the Wachovia deal, Herbert Sandler wrote regulators and objected to several aspects of the new rules, including the regulator's conclusion that option ARMS "were untested in a stress environment."<br />He argued in the letter that World Savings had few loan losses in the recession of the early 1990s. Then again, the current financial crisis is far more severe than what occurred then — far more severe than anything the country has faced since the Great Depression.<br />By the third quarter of this year, Wachovia was projecting $26.1 billion of losses on a World Savings loan portfolio worth a total of about $124 billion. About 6.2 percent of the Pick-A-Pay loans were more than 90 days late, it said, compared with an industry average of 8 percent on option ARMs and 1 percent on Wachovia's traditional loans.<br />Wells Fargo, which is now buying Wachovia, is more pessimistic: it expects losses of $36 billion on the loans unless efforts to stem foreclosures help rescue part of the portfolio. The losses caused analysts and others to reassess the Sandlers' legacy.<br />After the "Saturday Night Live" skit, Paul Steiger, the former executive editor of The Wall Street Journal and the editor in chief of ProPublica, was among those who wrote to the show's producer, Lorne Michaels, saying the Sandlers had been unfairly vilified. Michaels apologized for the skit (which suggested that the Sandlers "should be shot") and removed it from NBC's Web site.<br />Herbert Sandler says Wachovia did not work hard enough to help struggling borrowers, and that his loans became scapegoats for other problems at Wachovia. He remains confident that losses on its loans will not reach Wells Fargo's projections.<br />He says World Savings was hit especially hard because it had made so many loans in volatile markets like inland California, but he disputes homeowner assertions that his option ARMs are at fault.<br />"We have not been able to identify one delinquency, much less a foreclosure, that is due to the product," Sandler said, adding that "if home prices had not dropped, you wouldn't see" a single article.<br />Over all, analysts expect the option ARM fallout to be brutal. Fitch Ratings, a leading credit rating agency, recently reported that payments on nearly half of the $200 billion worth of option ARMs it tracks will jump 63 percent in the next two years — causing mortgage delinquencies to rise sharply.<br />Sandler says that his loans are not in the pool that will become distressed in the next few years; he says they reset at a later date. He adds that were he not sure that the market would recover he would have sold his Wachovia stock at the time of the takeover. His charity has sold off much of its Wachovia stock, but he said he and his wife retain a substantial portion of their personal holdings.<br />Still, the Sandlers have their detractors.<br />"As the largest and most respected regulated institution providing option ARMs, I hold the Sandlers responsible because a large percentage of home borrowers — but not all — should have been advised that it was in their best interest to have a fixed-rate mortgage," said Robert Gnaizda, general counsel for the Greenlining Institute, a homeowner advocacy group. "I believe that financial institutions have a quasi-fiduciary responsibility not to mislead the borrower."<br />Sandler insists that World Savings prided itself on ethical conduct and that untoward behavior was never tolerated. "We were also a family, and you expected people to live their personal and business lives in a particular way," he said.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Bush changes mind on presidential pardon for developer<br /></strong>By David Stout and Eric Lichtblau<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush changed his mind on Christmas Eve, pulling back a pardon he had extended a day earlier to a New York developer at the center of a real estate fraud case and adding a bizarre twist to the episode.<br />The developer, Isaac Toussie, who was listed Tuesday as one of the beneficiaries of the president's constitutional power to wipe away a criminal record, is not being pardoned after all "based on information that has subsequently come to light," the White House said late Wednesday afternoon.<br />The terse White House statement did not elaborate, but officials familiar with the case said that presidential aides - and perhaps Bush himself - were concerned about appearances, because Toussie's father, Robert, donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee last April, for what apparently was his first-ever political contribution.<br />He also donated $2,300 to the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.<br />Regardless of how Toussie is perceived by Republicans in Washington, the name of Isaac Toussie is detested by many working-class people in the New York metropolitan area. In 2001, several hundred of them sued in U.S. District Court, accusing Toussie and his father of masterminding a scheme in which inexperienced or first-time home buyers were promised affordable and comfortable suburban houses but instead were sold shoddily built homes in poor neighborhoods and saddled by mortgage payments that shot up surprisingly.<br />"The politically connected get what they want, and little people like us are just left to sink or swim," Maxine Wilson, one of the complaining homeowners, said Wednesday after Toussie's pardon was announced, according to The Daily News. "Thanks to the president for the worst Christmas gift you could have ever given us."<br />Toussie, now 37, pleaded guilty in 2001 to using false documents to get mortgages insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and in 2002 to mail fraud, admitting that he had persuaded officials in Suffolk County, New York, to overpay for land known as the Chandler Estate. It appeared Tuesday that Toussie would have his record expunged of his crimes, which resulted in five months in prison, three years of supervised release conditioned on five months of home detention, and a $10,000 fine.<br />But the White House's announcement Wednesday noted that the U.S. pardon attorney, Ronald Rodgers, had not yet made a recommendation on the Toussie case, and that Bush believed he "should have an opportunity" to do so.<br />It was clear from the timing and wording of the announcement that there had been major confusion or miscommunication, or both, within the White House bureaucracy over the Toussie case. "Quite remarkable," Henry Mazurek of New York, one of Toussie's lawyers, said Wednesday evening, before a meeting with his client to discuss what to do next, if anything.<br />Another of Toussie's lawyers, Bradford Berenson of Washington, said his client was pleased that a pardon was initially announced Tuesday and held out hope that it might still come true. "Mr. Toussie looks forward to the pardon attorney's expeditious review of the application," Berenson said.<br />The episode is particularly embarrassing for Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, who is mentioned by title but not by name in the White House statement, which said pointedly that "the counsel to the president reviewed the application and believed, based on the information known to him at the time, that it was a meritorious application. He so advised the president, who accepted the recommendation."<br />The statement did not explain how Fielding came to believe the petition should be granted.<br />Under Justice Department guidelines, the department's pardon attorney does not generally even consider a petition for a pardon until five years from the time a defendant has completed his sentence.<br />Under that timetable, Toussie's request would not have come up for review until next May, although he submitted his petition in August.<br />"We had not even started processing the application because we knew it did not fit our guidelines," one Justice Department official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue. Nor had the department given the White House any hint of where it stood on the case, the official said.<br />Administration officials and experts in pardon law said they were not aware of a prior instance of a president withdrawing a pardon after it was announced. "This is extraordinary," said Margie Love of Washington, who served as pardon attorney at the Justice Department in the 1990s. The Justice Department official said he thought Toussie would have no grounds to argue that the president could not take back a pardon once it has been issued. "A pardon isn't official until the warrant is received by the person who requested it, and that hasn't happened yet," the official said.<br />The Toussie episode comes as more lawyers appear to be going directly to the White House for consideration of pardons, rather than through normal Justice Department channels, according to people involved in the process. The most well known recent instance came in 2001, when President Bill Clinton pardoned the fugitive financier Marc Rich, even though the Justice Department had not offered a formal recommendation.<br />Sewell Chan and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.</div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfS_81S1IVAD8dBtJ03F6HspeeTtxfWtD7sKnBBsNljylMNlMXL8EVrWD97XoxWw0-3e_yNiqQ3a3rWl5pEFXg3vioTR4bXDALkPywDVDqUsKYV0aWl5tKO-rezIpU1AOgO_dC1DGtt-Y/s1600-h/DSC04457.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981689761229874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfS_81S1IVAD8dBtJ03F6HspeeTtxfWtD7sKnBBsNljylMNlMXL8EVrWD97XoxWw0-3e_yNiqQ3a3rWl5pEFXg3vioTR4bXDALkPywDVDqUsKYV0aWl5tKO-rezIpU1AOgO_dC1DGtt-Y/s320/DSC04457.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Pope urges dialogue in Christmas message<br /></strong>By Rachel Donadio<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />ROME: Pope Benedict XVI called for peace in the Middle East, Darfur and Zimbabwe and stability in other war-torn lands in a particularly politically pointed Christmas greeting to the city and the world.<br />Delivering his annual "Urbi et Orbi" message from the balcony of Saint Peter's Basilica, the pope also spoke to the fears of people suffering from the financial crisis.<br />"Wherever an increasingly uncertain future is regarded with apprehension, even in affluent nations: in each of these places may the Light of Christmas shine forth and encourage all people to do their part in a spirit of authentic solidarity," the pope said. "If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart."<br />Echoing a theme he had struck Wednesday night in his Midnight Mass homily, the pope called for peace in "the Holy Land, where the horizon seems once again bleak for Israelis and Palestinians." Adding: "May it spread throughout Lebanon, Iraq and the whole Middle East.<br />Talks are under way for the pope to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories as early as this spring, including a visit to Bethlehem in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, although the Vatican has not officially announced the visit.<br />The Vatican, which opposed the war in Iraq, has been particularly outspoken in its concern about the state of Christians in Arab lands, who increasingly face persecution and emigration.<br />The pope blessed the efforts of "all those who, rather than resigning themselves to the twisted logic of conflict and violence, prefer instead the path of dialogue and negotiation as the means of resolving tensions within each country and finding just and lasting solutions to the conflicts troubling the region."<br />Benedict also turned his attention to Africa, where he is expected to make his first visit in March, traveling to Angola and Cameroon.<br />Adding: "This light, which brings transformation and renewal, is besought by the people of Zimbabwe, in Africa, trapped for all too long in a political and social crisis which, sadly, keeps worsening."<br />The pope also prayed for "the men and women of the Democratic Republic of Congo, especially in the war-torn region of Kivu, Darfur, in Sudan, and Somalia, whose interminable sufferings are the tragic consequence of the lack of stability and peace."<br />This year Benedict added Icelandic, bringing to 64 the number of languages in which he blessed the faithful. More Articles in World »</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Gunman in Santa suit kills at least 5 in California</strong><br />By Anahad O'Connor<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />In a bizarre Christmas Eve rampage, a 45-year-old man in a Santa Claus outfit showed up at a party in a Los Angeles suburb and opened fire at a group of revelers, killing at least five people and injuring several others, including two children, the police said on Thursday.<br />The suspect, identified by witnesses as Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, later killed himself, the police said.<br />The shooting, which may have been prompted by a marital dispute, occurred just before midnight Wednesday at a two-story home on a cul de sac in Covina, a suburban town about 22 miles east of Los Angeles.<br />At least three bodies were initially discovered inside the home which went up in flames moments after the shooting and coroners found "several" more bodies as they sifted through the rubble at the scene on Thursday morning, according to The Associated Press.<br />Investigators said that about 30 people were inside the home celebrating on Christmas Eve when the costumed man knocked on the door. When a guest opened it, the man stepped inside the house, pulled out a handgun, and immediately started shooting, Lieut. Pat Buchanan of the Covina Police Department said in a telephone interview.<br />Officers quickly responded to a burst of 911 calls, and arrived at the house moments later to find that shots were still being fired inside. They also found the house engulfed in flames, but kept firefighters from getting too close until it appeared that the shooting had stopped. The police said there were three bodies inside the house, which have yet to be identified. Three survivors were transported to the hospital, two of whom had gunshot wounds, Lieutenant Buchanan said. They were described only as an 8-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 16-year-old.<br />Witnesses said Pardo, whose last known address was just outside Los Angeles, stripped off his Santa outfit after the shootings and fled in street clothes. Lieutenant Buchanan said he had been having problems with his wife, the homeowner, who may have been a victim and whose name was not made public. It was also unclear what connection Pardo had to the injured children and the other victims, he said.<br />"We don't know if they were residents of the house or not," the officer said.<br />Covina, a suburb that boasts in its slogan "One mile square and all there," sits at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains in the San Gabriel Valley. It has become a scenic backdrop for films and shows, including several episodes of the television series "Roswell" and the hit show "Knight Rider."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Israel preparing for an invasion of Gaza<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Thursday that militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza would pay a "heavy price" if they continued to target Israel, as the Israeli military wrapped up preparations for a possible large-scale assault on the coastal territory.<br />In Cairo, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt urged Israel to show restraint in his meeting with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, an Israeli official said. Livni insisted that Israel would respond to protect its citizens.<br />On Wednesday, Palestinian militants pummeled southern Israel from Gaza with more than 80 rockets and mortars, causing no injuries but generating widespread panic. Cabinet ministers approved a broad invasion of Gaza, defense officials told The Associated Press.<br />"We will not accept this situation," Barak warned Thursday. "Whoever harms the citizens and soldiers of Israel will pay a heavy price."<br />He did not elaborate. But defense officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to discuss the plans, said the Israeli operation would likely begin with precise airstrikes against rocket launchers and continue with a land invasion. Harsh weather conditions are hampering visibility and complicating air force missions, so the operation won't be launched until the skies clear, they added.<br />Twelve mortars were fired early Thursday, causing no injuries. One landed at Israel's passenger crossing with Gaza as a group of Christians were going through, en route to the West Bank town of Bethlehem for Christmas Day celebrations, the military said.<br />Israel has been reluctant to press ahead with a campaign liable to exact heavy casualties on both sides. Past incursions have not halted the barrages.<br />Israel left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation but still controls its border crossings, which have been blockaded for months in an effort to pressure militants to halt their fire. Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007, after routing security forces loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who is backed by the West.<br />A six-month truce that began unraveling six weeks ago came to a formal end Friday, and rocket fire has been escalating.<br />Livni's meetings with Egyptian leaders in Cairo originally were designed to try to renew the Egyptian-mediated truce. But after the bombardment Wednesday, Livni - who is running for prime minister in Israel's February elections - dismissed that option.<br />When Mubarak urged Israel to show restraint in the face of the rocket barrages, Livni brushed off the idea. "Enough is enough," she said, according to a statement from her office. "When there's shooting, there's a response. Any state would react that way."<br />Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel appealed to the people of Gaza on Thursday to turn against their Hamas rulers, saying they were responsible for the territory's suffering. Olmert told the Arabic-language TV network Al Arabiya that Israel would not hesitate to respond with force if attacks continued.<br />Also Thursday, Abbas visited Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, for the first time since he took office in 2005.</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Deadly bombs strike Iraq</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: A car bomb near a popular restaurant in northwestern Baghdad killed four people and wounded 25 on Thursday, the police said.<br />A few hours later, a suicide car bomber targeting a U.S. military patrol, killing three people and wounding 14 in Muqdadiya, 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, northeast of Baghdad, the police said. The U.S. military said it was checking if there were any U.S. casualties.<br />The explosion near the restaurant in the Shiite district of Shula in Baghdad occurred while policemen and laborers were eating breakfast. Casualties included police officers and civilians, the police said.<br />The Shiite-led Iraqi government declared Thursday, Christmas Day, a national holiday to show what it said was its solidarity with minority non-Muslim religious groups in Iraq.<br />Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq, where the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 unleashed years of sectarian and insurgent attacks. However, car bombs, suicide bombings and assassinations are still routine.<br />A week ago, twin bomb blasts killed 18 people and wounded 53 in central Baghdad.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>German Navy thwarts pirate attack</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />CAIRO: A German military helicopter chased away pirates who were trying to board an Egyptian ship on Thursday off the coast of Somalia. One of the ship's crew was shot in the attack.<br />The ship, a bulk carrier with 31 crew members, was passing through the Gulf of Aden on its way to Asia when gun-toting pirates in a speedboat began pursuing it, said Noel Choong of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center.<br />A passing ship alerted the bureau, based in Kuala Lumpur, which asked a multinational naval coalition force in the area to help, Choong said.<br />In response, the German Navy frigate Karlsruhe dispatched a helicopter, a military spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in accord with military policy.<br />The pirates fled as the chopper reached the vessel, according to a statement from the German military, but not before shooting and wounding one of the ship's crew members.<br />A second helicopter, carrying a medical team, retrieved the wounded crewmember, who is now receiving treatment on the Karlsruhe, the statement said.<br />After the attack, the Egyptian vessel, the Wadi al-Arab, continued on its way to South Korea, where it was delivering a shipment of wheat from Ukraine, said Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmed Rizq of Egypt.<br />Piracy has taken an increasing toll on international shipping this year, especially in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes. Motivated by widespread poverty in their homeland, Somali pirates have made an estimated $30 million hijacking ships for ransom this year.<br />More than a dozen warships are now patrolling the vast gulf. Britain, India, Iran, America, France and Germany are among the countries with naval forces in the waters or on their way there.<br />"Despite increased naval patrols, pirates are continuing to attack ships because the warships cannot be everywhere at the same time," Choong said. "But we are pleased with the quick assistance by the coalition force."<br />He said there had been 110 pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden this year, including 42 hijackings. Most ships were released after a ransom was paid, though 14 ships, with more than 240 crew members, are still being held.<br />A second German frigate responded to another emergency call on Thursday from a different ship in the gulf, the military said. The statement gave no other details on that incident.<br />Japan said Wednesday that it was considering sending military ships to join the coalition. China is scheduled to send warships on Friday. In November, senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen met in Cairo to coordinate efforts to combat piracy.<br />Somalia, a nation of about 8 million people, has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div></div><div><strong>Taliban choking a vital NATO supply line<br /></strong>By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Pir Zubair Shah<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />PESHAWAR, Pakistan: This frontier city boasts a major air base and Pakistani Army and paramilitary garrisons. But the 200 Taliban guerrillas were in no rush as they methodically ransacked a NATO supply depot here two weeks ago.<br />The militants began by blocking off a long stretch of the main road, giving them plenty of time to burn everything inside, said one guard, Haroon Khan, who was standing next to a row of charred trucks.<br />After assuring the overmatched guards they would not be killed - if they agreed never to work there again - the militants shouted "God is great" through bullhorns. They then grabbed jerrycans and made several trips to a nearby gas station for fuel, which they dumped on the cargo trucks and Humvees before setting them ablaze.<br />The attack provided the latest evidence of how extensively militants now rule the critical region east of the Khyber Pass, the narrow cut through the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that has been a strategic trade and military gateway since the time of Alexander the Great.<br />The area encompasses what is officially known as the Khyber Agency, which is adjacent to Peshawar and is one of a handful of lawless tribal districts on the border. But security in Khyber has deteriorated further in recent months with the emergence of a brash young Taliban commander who calls news conferences to thumb his nose at NATO forces, as well as with public fury over deadly missile attacks by American remotely piloted aircraft.<br />Khyber's downward spiral is jeopardizing NATO's most important supply line, sending American military officials scrambling to find alternative routes into Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia.<br />Three-quarters of troop supplies enter from Pakistan, most of the goods ferried from Karachi to Peshawar and then about 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, west through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.<br />A half-dozen raids on NATO supply terminals here have already destroyed 300 cargo trucks and Humvees this month. American officials insist that troop provisions have not suffered, but with predictions that the American deployment in Afghanistan could double next year to 60,000 soldiers, the pressure to secure safer transportation is even more intense.<br />For NATO the most serious problem is not even the terminals in Peshawar but the safety of the road that winds west to the 1,070-meter, or 3,500-foot, Khyber Pass. The route used to be relatively secure: Afridi tribesmen were paid by the government to safeguard it, and they were subject to severe penalties and collective tribal punishment for crimes against travelers.<br />But now the road is a death trap, truckers and some security officials say, with routine attacks like one on Sunday that burned a fuel tanker and another last Friday that killed three drivers returning from Afghanistan.<br />"The road is so unsafe that even the locals are reluctant to go back to their villages from Peshawar," said Gul Naseem, who lives in Landi Kotal, a town near the border.<br />The largest truckers' association here has gone on strike to protest the lack of security, saying the job action has sidelined 60 percent of the trucks that haul military goods. An American official denied that the drop-off was that severe.<br />Escalating violence on the Khyber road has paralleled the rise of Hakimullah Mehsud, a young Taliban commander and lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the main Pakistani Taliban faction.<br />Earlier this year, Hakimullah Mehsud's forces took control of Orakzai Agency and instituted the strict Islamic laws known as Shariah. At a news conference there one month ago, Mehsud declared his intention to intensify attacks on NATO supply convoys. Some security officials say they believe he was behind the assassination in August of a rival militant leader, Hajji Namdar, in Khyber.<br />At the same time, another powerful Khyber warlord, Mangal Bagh, who officials say has not been attacking the convoys, has seen his influence shrink somewhat, easing the path for Mehsud's authority to expand inside Khyber.<br />Increased missile attacks by American remotely piloted aircraft - like one that killed seven people in the South Waziristan Agency on Monday - have enraged residents in Khyber and other tribal areas near the border, increasing sympathy for attacks on convoys.<br />Raising the prospect of an even wider threat to the convoys, an influential Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, staged a rally last week in Peshawar, turning out thousands to condemn the missile strikes. The marchers demanded that Pakistan end the NATO convoys, and they vowed to cut the supply lines themselves.<br />Taliban militants have also moved into Khyber after Pakistani military campaigns in nearby areas like Bajaur Agency. Their migration is reminiscent of a tactic that bedeviled the American military in Iraq for years - dubbed "whack a mole" by combat officers - in which guerrillas eluded large American combat operations and moved to take up positions in areas with understaffed troop contingents.<br />All those factors have been amplified, in the view of some officials, by the torpor of the Pakistani government. Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier who until 2006 was in charge of security in the western tribal regions, said the government had the manpower to drive militants out of Khyber but had mounted only a weak response.<br />He recounted a recent conversation with a senior Pakistani government official. "You have the chance to wake up," he said he told the official. "But if you don't wake up now, there is a good chance you won't wake up at all."Bomb in Lahore kills woman<br />A bomb-rigged truck with government plates exploded in Lahore on Wednesday, killing one person in a heavily guarded neighborhood that is home to many government officials in the eastern Pakistani city, The Associated Press reported.<br />Umer Virk, the head of the Crime Investigation Department in Lahore, said the target of the blast probably was a police officer who headed an operation that led to the death of a leader of the Qaeda-linked militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 2002.<br />The officer escaped the explosion near his home, but it killed a Christian woman and wounded four of her relatives as they drove together to a Christmas function, Virk said.<br />Separately, a Chinese engineer was shot and wounded as he shopped at a market in the northwest, where a wave of militant attacks has taken place.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Mumbai Jews celebrate Hanukah and remember victims</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />By Rina Chandran<br />The parents of a rabbi and his wife slain in last month's Mumbai attack lit a menorah outside a badly damaged Jewish centre Thursday, vowing the centre's work would continue.<br />Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg of New York, father of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, gathered with other community leaders outside the Chabad-Lubavitch centre at Nariman House as part of Hanukah celebrations.<br />The centre was one of 10 sites attacked by Islamist militants in India's financial centre on November 26-29. The attacks, blamed by India and the United States on Pakistan-based militants, killed at least 179 people.<br />Watched by dozens of police and onlookers gathered in the busy street, Nachman Holtzberg recited blessings before a group of rabbis led the delegation in prayer. The parents of Gavriel Holtzberg's wife Rivka were also present.<br />"This home was open to everyone," said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch. "Its activities will continue."<br />Parts of the six-storey Nariman House, which was nearly destroyed in a siege after gunmen stormed in, have been knocked down by city authorities and a team is assessing damage to the rest of the building, Kotlarsky said.<br />"Just a few weeks ago, this city suffered a great atrocity, and tonight we mourn the loss of the young rabbi and his wife who moved to Mumbai to be emissaries," Kotlarsky said.<br />"We also celebrate the victory of right over wrong, and we are committed to continuing the legacy of Gavriel and Rivka. We won't take even one baby step back. We are not leaving Mumbai."<br />The rabbi's 2-year-old son Moshe, who was saved by his nanny and is now with his grandparents in Israel, will return to Mumbai, Kotlarsky said.<br />Gavriel Holtzberg came to Mumbai in 2003 to run a synagogue and Torah classes as part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, an Orthodox Jewish group which has about 4,000 emissaries at more than 3,000 sites around the world.<br />Fewer than 5,000 Jews remain among India's 1.1 billion people, but the faith has a long history in the country, with the first established community thought to have been formed in the southern state of Kerala in 70 AD.<br />(Editing by Andrew Roche)</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>A foreigner who is welcome in Afghanistan</strong><br />By John F. Burns<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />KABUL: History has fostered a notion here that all foreign occupations of Afghanistan ultimately are doomed.<br />There was the catastrophic retreat of a British expeditionary force in 1842. Nearly 150 years later came the Soviet troop withdrawal of 1989. Now, with the Taliban pressing in on this city and dominating the countryside, there are fears that this occupation, too, will eventually fail.<br />But whatever the outcome, Afghans of all ethnic and political stripes, even the Taliban, seem likely to count Alberto Cairo as one foreigner who left the country better than he found it.<br />Cairo, once a debonair lawyer in his native Turin, Italy, is almost certainly the most celebrated Western relief official in Afghanistan, at least among Afghans. To the generation that has benefited from his relief work for the International Committee of the Red Cross, he is known simply as "Mr. Alberto," a man apart among the 15,000 foreigners who live and work in this city.<br />That total includes civilians working for embassies or foreign relief agencies, like Cairo, and troops from 41 nations fighting to hold the line against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In the turbulent history of Afghanistan, there have rarely been as many foreigners living in Kabul, the Afghan capital, nor as much riding on what they achieve.<br />Cairo, 56, arrived long before the vast majority of them, in 1990, after the Soviet occupation. He had transferred from a Red Cross posting in Africa to run the orthopedic rehabilitation program of the organization - a job dedicated to helping Afghans disabled by war injuries to live normally again, by equipping them with artificial legs and arms.<br />What the Red Cross centers have accomplished is visible on the streets of almost every Afghan town and village. Since the Red Cross started the program in 1988, the centers have provided prostheses to nearly 90,000 Afghans, between a third and a quarter of all those thought to have suffered disabling injuries from 30 years of warfare, beginning with the Soviet invasion. Many Red Cross patients were victims of the 10 million mines strewn across the landscape during the Soviet period.<br />Cairo, slim, affable and an energetic enthusiast of tennis, rarely shows the edginess that wears away at the most courtly of foreigners under stress in foreign lands. But a rare impatience shows when the people who know what he has accomplished suggest that he has become a legend here. Rather, Cairo says, it is he, more than his patients, who has been the greatest beneficiary of his years in Kabul.<br />His passion took root the moment he arrived. Not long before, he had abandoned law and retrained as a physiotherapist, seeing it as a path to a more fulfilling life. Now, he says, he cannot imagine another life.<br />"When I'm away from Afghanistan, I can't think of anything but what I have here," he said during a pasta dinner he cooked at his Kabul home.<br />Continuing in English, which he speaks fluently and mixes, when among Afghans, with a strong working command of Dari and Pashto, the principal languages of Afghanistan, he added: "Whenever I go to Europe, I'm scared that for some reason I won't be able to come back. What I'm doing here is so rewarding. For me, it's perfect."<br />The Kabul rehabilitation center is a spacious complex built on an old hospital graveyard in northwestern Kabul. It was assigned to the Red Cross by President Najibullah, the Afghan leader during the last years of the Soviet occupation who was lynched by the Taliban in 1996.<br />The center has remained there ever since, despite a break during a period of ethnic warfare in the early 1990s. Unusually, for a highly visible operation involving foreigners, it has never been attacked.<br />In the traditions of the Red Cross, the orthopedic centers make no distinction on the basis of political affiliation. Asked whether disabled Taliban fighters were at the centers, Cairo replied: "I hope so. We ask for a name when our patients register, but they can give any name, and we don't investigate."<br />In practice, many new patients treated at the centers now, about 6,000 a year, are not war casualties, or even victims of the mines.<br />Two decades of intensive mine-clearing operations by the United Nations and by private charities like the Halo Trust of Britain have cleared most of the minefields in the lower-lying areas where Afghan villagers, particularly farmers, are vulnerable.<br />Instead, many of the new patients are being treated as a result of circumstances not related to war: car accidents, congenital deformities, or the effects of polio or tuberculosis.<br />But the legacy of past fighting and the injuries inflicted in the current conflict - in which both Taliban and coalition forces have caused civilian casualties - keep the centers busy. Of the 90,000 people who have received new limbs, 70,000 revisit the centers every year, usually to replace or readjust their prostheses, which last an average of two to three years for adults and as little as six months for children. All the treatments, including overnight stays, are free.<br />Cairo's passion for his patients is reciprocal, and nowhere is that more evident than out on the open-air testing ground of the Kabul center, where men, women and children, some standing for the first time in years, learn to walk again. Tears flow readily, and much of the gratitude flows to "Mr. Alberto."<br />Shah Mohammed, a 25-year-old police officer who lost a leg this year to a bomb buried by the Taliban, waited in a wheelchair. The Americans? "It is better that they should be here, because of the Taliban," he said. And the Taliban? "If I find them, I'll put them in a grinding machine."<br />He paused, and turned to something more immediate. "Mr. Alberto," he said. "We love him. Please put that down. We love him."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>British marine killed in Afghan fighting</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />A British marine was killed in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand Province, the Ministry of Defense and NATO said Thursday.<br />The marine from the 42 Commando unit died in enemy fire Wednesday while he was on patrol in the Nad-e-Ali district near Lashkar Gah, according to Captain Mark Windsor, a NATO spokesman from the British Royal Navy.<br />His name has not been released.<br />Britain has lost 136 troops in Afghanistan since 2001.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>Forging new relations with Russia<br /></strong>Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />Few U.S. presidents have come to office facing quite the variety of crises that Barack Obama faces, so he may be tempted to put Russia on a back burner - especially as Vladimir Putin is not someone with whom many Americans want to build cooperative relations these days.<br />But Russian-American relations have disintegrated to a dangerous low, with the Kremlin increasingly acting to antagonize the United States, whether by sending warships to Venezuela or by withholding cooperation on Iran. If these issues can be addressed, Russia's potential for helping resolve other crises is too great to dismiss.<br />There is another unwelcome fact: America's European allies are in no mood to take their cue on Russia from Washington. A majority have resisted American efforts to quickly bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The alliance, which cut formal ties with Russia after the Georgian-Russia war last August, has begun a "conditional and graduated re-engagement" with Moscow.<br />Given NATO's declaration that there would not be "business as usual" until Russia withdrew all its troops from Georgia and canceled its annexation of two Georgian provinces, the re-engagement looks a lot like pandering to Russia's energy supplies. But it also reflects the erosion of European trust in American leadership after eight years of George Bush.<br />America's leverage over Russia's behavior is further limited by the widespread conviction among Russians that so long as they were weak, the United States took advantage of them, and that if they want to influence world affairs, they have to assert themselves. The war with Georgia was one result; the recent announcement of $140 billion in military procurement is another.<br />Obama does have a few advantages in dealing with Russia: He is new, and the Russians are no less intrigued by him than the rest of the world. Neither he nor his foreign-policy team can have any illusions about Putin's Kremlin. And Russia is deep in economic crisis.<br />Putin's popularity and power have been based largely on Russia's windfall profits from soaring energy prices. Now that the Russian stock market is in freefall and factories are closing, his ratings are dropping and the liberal opposition has been energized.<br />Obama should signal to the Russians that he wants better relations. That would mean cutting back on belligerent talk and inviting the Russians to high-level consultations on areas in which the United States and Russia can quickly achieve cooperation - say, on combating piracy. Obama could also show readiness to consider renewing the Start 1 treaty on reducing strategic nuclear forces, which expires in December 2009. He could tone down demands for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, especially since neither is ready for it, and he could call for a review of plans to station defensive missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic.<br />For every gesture, the United States would make clear it expects a tangible response, starting with help in ending Iran's nuclear program and continuing with cooperation against international terrorism and a withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia. Obama will have time to get tougher if Russia fails to reciprocate.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>12 militants killed in sweep in southern Russia</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia: Police and security forces have killed 12 suspected militants during a sweep in a volatile province in southern Russia, officials said Thursday.<br />The two-day security sweep which ended Thursday targeted a group of militants hiding in the forested mountains of Ingushetia province, according to the regional branch of the Russian Interior Ministry.<br />Police and security agents found a large number of weapons and ammunition that belonged to the militants, the ministry branch said.<br />Ingushetia sits to the west of Chechnya, where large-scale battles between Russian troops and separatists ended years ago. Militants based in Chechnya continue, however, to stage regular attacks against authorities, and the violence often has spilled to neighboring North Caucasus provinces.<br />Unidentified gunmen ambushed police vehicles in Ingushetia's town of Malgobek, killing an officer and wounding two passers-by in two separate attacks Wednesday, the ministry branch said.<br />It said an unknown assailant also threw a hand grenade Thursday into a house belonging to a prosecutor in Ingushetia's village of Ekazhevo. No one was hurt.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>***********************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>China detains 59 Tibetans accused of inciting violence<br /></strong>By Andrew Jacobs<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />BEIJING: The police have detained 59 people in Tibet on charges that they sought to foment unrest by spreading ethnic hatred and by downloading and selling banned songs from the Internet, Chinese state media reported Thursday.<br />The detainees, none of whom were identified, are accused of acting at the behest of the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader whom the government blames for encouraging separatist sentiment in heavily Tibetan areas.<br />Since Dec. 4, public security officials have been sweeping the markets of Lhasa looking for compact discs that contain "reactionary songs," according to the China News Service. Those who distribute such songs, the report said, "hope to spark violence and damage Lhasa's political stability." Lhasa is the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.<br />Although news reports did not say whether the detainees were formally arrested and charged, they are accused of threatening national security by advocating for an independent Tibet and by expressing disdain for the ethnic Han migrants who now dominate commerce in Lhasa and other Tibetan cities.<br />Such Han residents were the primary target of rioting last March that left at least 21 people dead and traumatized Beijing. "These rumormongers," according to the Web site ChinaTibetNews.com, "seriously undermine the image of the party and the government and harm the public's sense of security."<br />The region is closed to foreign journalists, but human rights advocates based outside the country say that security officials continue to clamp down on dissent and exert heavy control over local religious institutions instrumental in sparking the disturbances.<br />In recent months, officials have handed down prison terms in connection with the March violence to dozens of people, most of whom were convicted of arson, robbery or disrupting public order.<br />According to the government, 1,317 people were detained after the March riots, and 1,115 of those were subsequently released. Exile groups, however, say that hundreds are still in custody and that more than 200 Tibetans were killed during the ensuing crackdown. Such claims are impossible to verify independently.<br />Earlier this month, Radio Free Asia reported that several monks had been sentenced to three-year prison terms for their role in a protest that took place in the Gardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan four days after the Lhasa riots broke out.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Highest Roman Catholic Church official in China to step down<br /></strong>By Mark McDonald<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />HONG KONG: Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the highest official of the Roman Catholic Church in China and a sharp critic of Beijing's record on democratic rights and religious freedoms, said this week that the Vatican had agreed to his request to step down next year as the head of the Diocese of Hong Kong, news agencies reported.<br />He said he would spend more time monitoring Catholic churches in mainland China, according to The Associated Press, which quoted him as saying: "I do not retire to rest. The mainland Chinese church is huge and complicated. Sometimes the pope wants me to give him some advice, so I need more time to research it."<br />Zen, who turns 77 next month, had twice before asked to be relieved of his diocesan duties. Pope Benedict XVI, he said Wednesday, approved his latest request to step down.<br />Zen, who was born in Shanghai and fled to Hong Kong after the Chinese civil war, has led the diocese since 2002. Bishop John Tong Hon, 69, who was born in Hong Kong, has been designated as his successor.<br />The Diocese of Hong Kong has an estimated 250,000 members. Macao, a former Portuguese colony and China's other semiautonomous territory, has the only other Roman Catholic diocese in China.<br />Beijing and the Vatican have not had formal relations since Mao Zedong expelled the papal nuncio in 1951, two years after the Communist takeover. The relationship continues to be strained over the Holy See's recognition of Taiwan.<br />Mao created the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in 1957 to control the church on the mainland. It now has an estimated seven million members. Several million more mainland Catholics worship in underground churches, according to religion scholars. </div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>A Mexican celebration of Christ and community<br /></strong>By Sam Dillon<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />CHINANTLA, Mexico: Hundreds of villagers strolled through cobbled streets here the other night, bearing candles and small, robed statues of Joseph and Mary, arriving eventually at the home of Eva Vargas de Domínguez, a local matriarch, who invited the throngs into her patio for an evening of prayer and piñatas, fireworks and food.<br />Aided by a platoon of neighborhood women, Vargas, a frail-looking widow with stooped shoulders, fed the townspeople 35 gallons of a hearty corn and pork stew and served them hundreds of cups of sweet coffee ladled from simmering vats. Her sons distributed gift bags stuffed with peanuts, fruit and candy.<br />The Christmas season joins people with their loved ones wherever it is celebrated, but in few places, perhaps, does it unite whole villages so thoroughly in communal rituals of music and merrymaking as in rural Mexico.<br />For nine consecutive nights, starting Dec. 16, villages all across Mexico have been re-enacting Joseph and Mary's biblical search for lodging. Each night's procession, called a posada, has led townspeople, marching to the strains of a brass band, to a different home, where humble heads of household like Vargas have fed and entertained the revelers.<br />Santa Claus did not figure in the festivities in Chinantla, and there was no gift-giving. (Most Mexicans exchange gifts on Jan. 6, El Día de Reyes, which celebrates the wise men who took gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Christ child.)<br />Among the participants in Chinantla's posadas has been Daniel Pantaleon, a New York native who works as a computer technician at JPMorgan Chase. Pantaleon, 29, whose parents left Chinantla for New York before he was born, has been celebrating the end-of-year holidays either in New York or here all his life. As a child, he said, he hated Christmas in Chinantla.<br />"My parents were, like, 'Sorry, no gifts, we're doing a piñata and, here, have an orange,' " Pantaleon recalled. "And that made me cry. But now that I've grown up, I appreciate the way traditions are different here. I don't want to hear about Santa Claus or about Toys 'R' Us. Over here, Christmas is all about family and community."<br />Chinantla, nestled in hills 140 miles southeast of Mexico City, is one of many villages in the state of Puebla that have seen thousands of residents move to the New York area in recent decades. Today more Mexicans living in New York are natives of Puebla than of any other Mexican state.<br />Robert Smith, a professor at Baruch College and author of "Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants," a book about the migration from Puebla, estimated that Chinantla's population had dwindled to fewer than 2,000 today from nearly 5,000 in 1970. Most of those who have left return regularly to renew friendships and refresh traditions, he said.<br />"They go back to these villages to take a big drink of Mexicanness," Smith said.<br />One Chinantla man who went to work in the United States but is back, perhaps for good, is José Miguel Mendoza Sosa, 38, who washed dishes for several years in an Italian restaurant in New York. Christmas in the United States, Mendoza said, seems to emphasize shopping and elaborate domestic preparations.<br />"Over there, Christmas takes days and days of work to prepare, all for about 24 hours of fun," he said. "Here we have weeks and weeks of fun."<br />But it takes plenty of work to feed hundreds of villagers, and hosting a night's posada is not cheap. Aurora Arisa, a teacher who coordinates the posadas here, estimated that each host family spent well over $750. The cost can quadruple if there are fireworks, she said.<br />Clementina Sosa and her husband, Roque, hosted a posada this week, serving 2,000 home-made tamales. Early on the morning of the event, teenage girls sat on stools around a washtub, rinsing the corn shucks used to wrap the tamales. Sosa ground boiled corn and toasted chili peppers into a reddish dough with a hand mill, seasoning it with cumin and other spices. Later a dozen whispering women sat patting the dough into spheres, inserting slices of boiled pork and wrapping them in the husks. Boys ferried the baskets of folded tamales to the patio, where Sosa set them to steam in simmering kettles.<br />The spicy stew, known as pozole, (pronounced poe-ZOE-lay), that Vargas served at Sunday night's posada was also produced by dozens of village women. They boiled 35 pounds of dried maize in lime water to soften the kernels on Saturday, then rose Sunday at dawn to wash the corn, now softened into hominy. They set it to boil anew in spring water, adding 26 pounds of sliced pork, several dozen onions, heads of garlic and fistfuls of cumin and bay leaves.<br />"It's work, but it's a kind of entertainment, too," Vargas said, perched on a stool in her smoky kitchen above the simmering stew.<br />After sundown, a Roman candle exploded in the sky, and hundreds of villagers began their pilgrimage. Women with candles led the way, followed by teenage girls shouldering a platform bearing the images of Mary and Joseph, and men blowing trumpets, saxophones and French horns. Dogs howled, children waved sparklers and girls sang sweetly. Imagine a cross between a raucous Mardi Gras parade and a stroll by Christmas carolers through a New England town.<br />When the villagers reached Vargas's house, girls sang in through the iron gate: "We're arriving from Nazareth, we're tired and need lodging."<br />Girls inside resisted "This isn't a hotel, we don't open for anyone!" but eventually relented: "Enter ye pilgrims, we didn't know you were asking/ For overnight lodging for the purest virgin Mary."<br />The gates swung open, and revelers streamed into the patio. Prayers followed, and more songs. Soon Vargas was serving steaming dishes of her rich pozole. There were shouts as children swung with clubs at bobbing piñatas, which, when smashed, poured forth candy, fruit and peanuts.</div><div><br /><br /> </div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwRRfcBlj8AFmjw0MNduJKoHuABV1B1EV277EwIRA6NC0oRTy5Mv16VAAnphdRqu1QGD3njEg6nwgutHio49mgGM00QJ50NHULUfHa6ElkAaX0gOeZJFWKDaWiY08FPTk4_2kqLXRTc4g/s1600-h/DSC04458.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981683208498514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwRRfcBlj8AFmjw0MNduJKoHuABV1B1EV277EwIRA6NC0oRTy5Mv16VAAnphdRqu1QGD3njEg6nwgutHio49mgGM00QJ50NHULUfHa6ElkAaX0gOeZJFWKDaWiY08FPTk4_2kqLXRTc4g/s320/DSC04458.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>In global crisis, flow of migrant money stalls</strong><br />By Sabrina Tavernise<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />TOSH-TEPPA, Tajikistan: In poverty-stricken Tajikistan, the global financial crisis is measured in bags of flour.<br />At least that is how Bibisoro Sayidova sees it, as she looks for ways to feed her five children, since her husband, a migrant worker in Russia, stopped receiving his wages this autumn. Now he is loading large sacks of dried fruit in Moscow on faith.<br />"Sometimes I cry when the kids don't have socks or coats," she said, mixing a stew of water, bread, onion and oil. "We're still hoping he'll get paid."<br />The financial crisis that is in full swing in the world's developed countries is only beginning to reach the poorest, and labor migrants, with feet in both worlds, are among the first to feel it.<br />Flows of migrant money to developing countries, known as remittances, began to slow this autumn, the first moderation after years of double-digit growth, according to the World Bank. The slowdown is expected to turn into a decline of 1 percent to 5 percent in 2009, when the full effect of the crisis hits.<br />Some are already feeling it. Mexico, for example, is likely to have a 4 percent decline in the flows of migrant money in 2008, according to World Bank estimates. The biggest declines next year are expected in the Middle East and North Africa, because of economic slowdowns in the Persian Gulf and Europe.<br />"There's definitely a serious moderation in the growth of remittances," said Dilip Ratha, a senior economist at the World Bank who tracks migrant money flows.<br />The decline will be less severe than for other flows, like foreign investment, Ratha said, but its effects will be amplified in countries like Tajikistan that have come to depend on rapidly growing remittances. The country will rank first in the world in 2008 for remittances as a portion of its economy - 54 percent - according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund.<br />"The Tajik economy is not sustainable without migration," Ratha said. "It is not diversified. People are the most important resource they have."<br />The reason goes back to the Soviet collapse, when factories closed, subsidies from Moscow dried up and villages like Tosh-Teppa, 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, north of Afghanistan, were left to rot. More than 80 percent of the population lived on less than about $2 a day, and Tajiks began to export the only thing they had: themselves.<br />"The population has been completely abandoned by the state," said Paul Quinn-Judge, who runs the International Crisis Group's Central Asian program. "When it comes to providing for basic needs - healthy drinking water, heat in winter - they are utterly failing."<br />The money the migrants sent back was a lifeline. When Borun, a 42-year-old with a degree in agriculture, first went to work in Russia, a vicious civil war had just ended, and his family was eating corncobs to survive. When his two children came down with malaria, there was no money to take them to a hospital, and they died after a local medical office gave them all that it had: aspirin and mosquito netting.<br />"We would have died without that money," said his mother, Umiyavi, 59. Like many people interviewed for this article, Borun was afraid to give his last name for fear the Russian authorities would refuse to let him back in to work.<br />When oil profits were high, workers from Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe poured into Russian cities - as many as 10 million by some estimates - making Russia the country with the second-largest immigrant population, after the United States.<br />Like most Tajiks working in Russia - 700,000 to one million people - Borun worked in construction. It was one of the sectors hit hardest by the credit crunch and falling oil prices this autumn. Borun's wages for a job renovating the Lenin Museum in Moscow were delayed. In November, his employer paid up, but then immediately fired him.<br />"They said those who came from abroad have to go," Borun said, shivering in a thin jacket in his small house in Khodja-Durbod, a village near Tosh-Teppa. About 300 workers were fired, he said, mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks.<br />Economists do not expect effects to be felt broadly in labor markets until well into next year, but the trend of booming remittances has clearly ended. In Tajikistan, remittances rose just 1 percent in November, compared with the same month last year, according to the IMF, down sharply from a record growth rate of about 90 percent early this year.<br />Still, migrants do not seem to be giving up and returning home, which is the biggest worry for Western governments that see large numbers of poor, unemployed men just north of Afghanistan as a potential security risk. Instead, people interviewed over three days last week said they would dig in further to hold on to any chance for a job, particularly if the Russian authorities made good on threats to reduce their numbers.<br />Borun's oldest son is an exception. He worked for a few months gathering scrap metal in Moscow when he was 16. The experience was so painful that he returned to Tajikistan and began riding his bicycle 20 kilometers every morning to a better school.<br />"He saw the way we lived, without respect," Borun said bitterly. "He doesn't want to be like his father."</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>A Hawaiian state of mind</strong><br />By Jeff Zeleny<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />KAILUA, Hawaii: Even at the end of his long journey to win the White House, one question about Barack Obama came up again and again: How did he appear to stay even-tempered and levelheaded while traveling such a grueling road?<br />At least part of the answer can be found here on the island of Oahu.<br />As Obama walks along the beaches while on vacation, returning to the place of his birth and his adolescence, he is relaxing after the most trying year of his life and recharging for the responsibilities that await. In both cases, friends say, he is doing it with an unexcitable steadiness that is a product of his Hawaiian upbringing.<br />The mood of Obama, to many observers here in Hawaii, embodies the Aloha Spirit, a peaceful state of mind and a friendly attitude of acceptance of a variety of ideas and cultures. More than simply a laid-back vibe, many Hawaiians believe in a divine and spiritual power that provides a sustaining life energy.<br />"When Obama gets on television, the national pulse goes down about 10 points," said Representative Neil Abercrombie, Democrat of Hawaii, who was close friends with Obama's parents. "He has this incredibly calming effect. There's no question in my mind it comes from Hawaii."<br />Abercrombie, who has known the president-elect since he was born, said Obama's tranquil, even-keeled mannerisms resembled those of his grandfather, Stanley Dunham. As a child, Obama would follow Dunham everywhere, walking through the neighborhoods of Honolulu and beyond.<br />"He gives off a little oasis of calm," said Abercrombie, who is spending the Christmas holidays in Hawaii. "He is peaceful water in the maelstrom, which will serve him very well in these circumstances when there happens to be a crisis."<br />Only a year ago, many of his admirers fretted that Obama was too passive in his battle against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Later, some Democrats worried whether he had the tenacity to fight Senator John McCain and the Republican establishment.<br />It was only as the economic crisis deepened and a full-on recession was declared that Obama's hard-to-ruffle demeanor came into focus as a valuable attribute not only as a candidate but, presumably, as a president-elect.<br />Obama is spending Christmas secluded in a compound of rental houses that he and his family are sharing with a group of friends from Chicago along the handsome beaches of Kailua, on the windward coast of Oahu. It seems a world away from the hustle of Honolulu, which is the face of Hawaii for many residents of the continental United States who have never traveled to this part of the world.<br />For Obama, it is his first trip back since his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died in the hours before the election. He and his half-sister, who lives on the island, and other family members held a private memorial service on Tuesday at First Unitarian Church in Nuuanu for the woman who helped raise him.<br />"In recent weeks, I have had an opportunity to mourn our grandmother's passing. However, Barack has not," Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, said in a statement to reporters in Honolulu. "I also hope that Barack has an opportunity to wash off his stress in saltwater and re-energize for the long road ahead."<br />As he traveled across the United States mainland during the presidential race, campaigning on a promise of a different kind of politics, Obama was repeatedly asked by voters and reporters whether he had the stomach to win the contest. His standard answer? He learned how and when to use his sharp elbows from navigating the thorny terrain of Chicago politics.<br />Left unsaid was that he learned his composure from Hawaii.<br />"He has more Hawaii in him than Chicago; he's laid-back, cool and collected," said Neil Kent, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who has lived on the island for three decades. "It's hard to express anger here. It's a very small, enclosed environment in which you have to live with other people."<br />Kent, who traveled to Ohio to volunteer for the Obama campaign in the final weeks of the presidential contest, said that as he watched Obama deliver speeches at rallies, there was an unmistakable air of Hawaii in his mannerisms and demeanor.<br />That is not to say, of course, that Obama did not occasionally grow agitated at his advisers, grimace when he was asked to sign one more autograph or openly scowl at reporters who sought to ask him questions during the campaign.<br />Even on the first full day of his Hawaiian vacation, as he walked onto a golf course in Waimanalo, he turned to a group of photographers and declared: "O.K. guys, come on. How many shots do you need?" The next day, aides said he was furious when paparazzi took a shot with a long zoom lens, showing the president-elect's buff pectorals.<br />There is, of course, little expectation of privacy for Obama and his family. But friends say he has no plans to discontinue vacations, to Hawaii and elsewhere, after he becomes president.<br />This summer, as Obama visited in London with David Cameron, the head of the British Conservative Party, he was overheard talking about how leaders need to take time away to think. Without downtime, Obama said, "you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture."<br />So Obama intends to be here until Jan. 1, recharging the Aloha Spirit. </div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama pays tribute to U.S. troops</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />HONOLULU: President-elect Barack Obama offered appreciation to the U.S. military on Christmas Eve in a recorded message and then asked children of uniformed troops if they had their wish lists ready.<br />Obama and wife, Michelle, made their early-morning trek to Marine Corps Base Hawaii just northeast of Honolulu as they had done during the last three days. After about an hour at the base on Wednesday where he went inside a gym for a workout, he walked over to greet more than 60 people who waited for him. The president-elect shook hands while onlookers took pictures with their cellphones and digital cameras.<br />"You guys got your Christmas list?" Obama asked one person standing in the makeshift rope line. He asked another: "Hey man, what's going on?"<br />Earlier in the day, his aides released a recorded message of appreciation to the military members "serving their second, third or even fourth tour of duty."<br />"This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted knowing that a loved one is absent and sometimes in danger," Obama said in the message, which is set to air Saturday morning. "In towns and cities across America, there is an empty seat at the dinner table; in distant bases and on ships at sea, our servicemen and -women can only wonder at the look on their child's face as they open a gift back home."<br />Obama asked the country to look to George Washington's improbable Christmas Day crossing of the Delaware River as inspiration to get through current tough times.<br />The president-elect said in a holiday message that Washington and his army "faced impossible odds" as they fought against the British on Dec. 26, 1776 - the day they surprised Hessian forces and won victories that gave new momentum and hope to American independence. In his own radio address set to air Saturday but released Tuesday, President George W. Bush also highlighted Washington's crossing of the Delaware.<br />Obama used that story to say that "hope endures and that a new birth of peace is always possible" - even as many Americans are serving overseas and others have lost their jobs while the economy sinks deeper into the doldrums.<br />The Labor Department said earlier this month that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, sending the unemployment rate to 6.7 percent, the highest in 15 years.<br />Obama, his family and his close friends are spending 12 days on the island of Oahu, staying at a rented, $9 million beachfront estate. Aides say the Obamas would have no public events during the trip, although he has received his intelligence briefings and met with aides.<br />In earlier years, the Obamas spent the December holidays visiting Obama's maternal grandmother, who died Nov. 2, before Obama's historic Nov. 4 victory. On Tuesday, the Obamas had a private memorial service for Madelyn Payne Dunham, who helped raise him.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSkATUshssJ22aTbBUvQfUou8c327UqUvuUvjV05W6rCUmVZRjLYmg7ByAlGVoc3VteJMquiSNyfBNQXUafN0DhA3_6TPrYnAwW0lqFsRsAA-QQuRba83ztKOIZ2GDMDFY6kKNtbdn7iU/s1600-h/DSC04459.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981677806173938" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSkATUshssJ22aTbBUvQfUou8c327UqUvuUvjV05W6rCUmVZRjLYmg7ByAlGVoc3VteJMquiSNyfBNQXUafN0DhA3_6TPrYnAwW0lqFsRsAA-QQuRba83ztKOIZ2GDMDFY6kKNtbdn7iU/s320/DSC04459.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Thomas L. Friedman: Time to reboot America<br /></strong>Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.<br />It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend's Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong's ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train - with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.<br />Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I've argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn't we Americans at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.<br />The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America's sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.<br />All I could think to myself was: If we're so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out - that's the GM that Fortune magazine just noted "lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job."<br />We can't continue in this mode of "Dumb as we wanna be." We've indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can't afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world's best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.<br />To top it off, we've fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective IQ to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money - rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.<br />For all these reasons, the present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors - as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: GM is us.<br />That's why we don't just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we're borrowing from our kids' future, is spent wisely.<br />It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure - without building white elephants. Generally, I'd like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.<br />America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society - in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people's imaginations. That's really, really dumb. And that's why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.<br />John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the Moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/asia/retail.php">Retail sales dismal in United States and Britain</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/26toyotarecall.php">Toyota issues recall in China</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/auto.php">Japanese auto production plunges</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/deal26.php">Dispute delays Morgan Stanley's China venture</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/gmac.php">GMAC gains bank status, and access to U.S. aid</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/25dong.php">Vietnam devalues currency by 3%</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/jets.php">Market for corporate jets collapses</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/toyota.php">Facing a loss, Toyota considers change in top management</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/25/business/25sales.php">British sales aren't going to be good, industry group says</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/25/business/OUKBS-UK-ZAVVI.php">Zavvi joins list of retail casualties</a> </div><div> </div><div></div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div></div><div><strong>Market for corporate jets collapses</strong><br />By Geraldine Fabrikant<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Maybe General Motors should throw in a fleet of Cadillacs.<br />The automaker is dumping its corporate jets into what some participants say is the worst market they have ever seen.<br />Just seven months ago, hundreds of mega-millionaires, including the sportswear designer Ralph Lauren and the film executive David Geffen, were elbowing one another in the lines to buy a $60 million Gulfstream G650, which was not expected to hit runways until 2012.<br />It did not matter that $500,000 had to be wired to Gulfstream's account at a Midwest branch of JPMorgan Chase at exactly 12:01 a.m. April 15 or that bidders who secured a place in the waiting line could not sell their rights if they changed their minds, according to one bidder.<br />But that was another era, before the credit crisis and before billions of dollars in corporate and individual wealth had been lost.<br />"The jet market stinks," said Richard Santulli, the chief executive of Netjets, the private jet company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company of Warren Buffett.<br />To control costs, companies including Citigroup and Time Warner are selling their jets. Alcatel-Lucent has allowed leases on two jets to expire and has put its third jet up for sale.<br />And the public relations fiasco that engulfed the chief executives of Detroit's automakers when they flew to Washington on company planes to seek a government bailout has underscored the degree to which such travel can seem inappropriate in this recession.<br />GM, which leases seven planes, put most of them on the market before the government said it must do so as a condition of obtaining assistance. The automaker has also closed its air transportation services unit, which had 49 employees.<br />"We could not justify an in-house aircraft operation," said a GM spokesman, Tom Wilkinson. "We are negotiating to transfer the remaining planes to another operator. Ford, too, has shut down its flight department."<br />Jet brokers, who normally have a worldwide clientele, say the market has constricted abroad in recent months as well.<br />"Our inventory is up dramatically, and demand is way down," said Josh Messinger, of J. Messinger Corporate Jet Sales, a jet broker.<br />Santulli said Russians had been big buyers of jets. "But the fall of the Russian stock market has had a huge impact," he said. "The Indian stock market stinks, and the dollar has gotten stronger, which hurts airplane sales."<br />Because jets are priced in dollars, they become more expensive for foreigners as the dollar gets stronger.<br />Among jets, the large-cabin, long-range segment of the market is suffering the most, said Bill Quinn, director of aircraft sales and acquisitions at Cerretani Aviation, based in Boulder, Colorado. That includes planes from Gulfstream, Bombardier and Falcon.<br />Carrying costs are high. A Gulfstream G550 costs about $47 million.<br />Though expenses can vary by state, one mogul's business manager estimated that annual costs ran about $1.3 million, including $500,000 for property taxes and $400,000 for pilots and stewards. Typical operating costs are more than $2,000 an hour in the air, he said.<br />The corporate side of the business is particularly vulnerable because of public scrutiny.<br />"They are not going to do employee layoffs and keep the jets," said Mary Hevener, a tax adviser who specializes in executive compensation at Morgan Lewis & Bockius.<br />Besides, the U.S. Congress stripped away the deductibility of personal travel for executives in 2004 by allowing companies to deduct from taxes only the approximate amount of a first-class ticket, far less than private jet travel costs.<br />Corporate chiefs concerned about public scrutiny are more inclined to look for alternatives than to return to the airlines. Some are examining whether they should take delivery of planes already ordered.<br />One company had been looking to upgrade its two planes. "Now they are weighing whether or not to buy new planes or keep what they have," Quinn said.<br />Some are downsizing. "Some of these guys just move the deck chairs around," he said. "They get rid of the big planes and go to fractional ownership, or they go to charter, or they come back into the marketplace with a leased plane."<br />But every part of the private jet industry has been affected.<br />Netjets lets people buy fractional ownerships in planes, and it sells Marquis jet cards that give customers access to the fleet in 25-hour increments. Those businesses, too, are seeing a slowdown.<br />"People have lost a lot of money, and are careful about how they spend it," Santulli said.<br />"I have never seen it like this," said Mike Silvestri, the chief executive of Flight Options, which sells shares in jets, as well as plans that cover a fixed number of hours a year of private jet use. "Customers are just not flying as much."<br />Some customers are stretching out the hours bought for a single year over a longer period. Flight Options has laid off 134 people, including 104 pilots, and hopes it will be able to bring them back.<br />Santulli said the jet market usually picked up three months after the stock market hit bottom.</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>New U.S. jobless claims hit 26-year high</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped by 30,000 to a 26-year peak last week, government data on Wednesday showed, as the country's year-long recession continued to chill the labor market.<br />Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 586,000 in the week ended Dec 20 from a revised 556,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. It was the highest since the week ending Nov. 27, 1982.<br />Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast 560,000 new claims versus a previously reported count of 554,000 the week before.<br />A Labor Department official said there were no special factors influencing the data and no noticeable impact from severe winter weather in northern parts of the country.<br />The official also said a number of states had reported increasing layoffs in the auto industry, which has been hit hard by consumers cutting back on their spending in the face of rising unemployment and scarcer credit.<br />The four-week average of new jobless claims, a better gauge of underlying labor trends because it irons out week-to-week volatility, increased to 558,000 from 544,250 the week before. This was the highest reading since December 1982.<br />This measure has mounted steadily as the economy suffered from a credit crisis sparked by the housing slump, forcing lay-offs as firms slash costs to offset weaker income.<br />The number of people remaining on the benefits roll after drawing an initial week of aid declined by 17,000 to a less-then-forecast 4.370 million in the week ended Dec. 13, the most recent week for which data are available. Analysts had estimated so-called continued claims would be 4.400 million</div><div> </div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>7 of the year's worst financial ideas</strong><br />breakingviews.com<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />The financial crisis of 2008 was full of surprises. Among the most stupefying were the tales of the complicated instruments that people thought were a good idea during the bull market. More such examples will surely emerge as gallons of toxic waste slosh out of banks and hedge funds in 2009. While waiting for the full inventory, here are seven we hope we won't see again.<br />1. PIK toggles<br />These debt features were popular in 2007 - but it wasn't until 2008 that toggles started to get flicked. "PIK" stands for payment-in-kind, and means issuers can substitute more bonds for actual cash interest payments whenever they want. Sometimes the "rate" goes up when the toggle is switched. That is cold comfort when it becomes apparent that the bonds are not worth anything like face value because the company is going to the wall - the high probability of which, it should be noted, was why the issuer put in a PIK toggle in the first place.<br />2. Minibonds<br />Retail investors in Asia snapped up minibonds early in 2008, attracted by the fact that these instruments, supposedly backed by a lineup of "safe" banks, had a higher yield than normal and were available in small amounts. The catch? They were not bonds at all, but derivative products, some of which had Lehman Brothers as a counterparty. Investors were effectively paying for Lehman to insure its own portfolio. When Lehman cracked, so did thousands of nest eggs.<br />3. Contingent value rights<br />CVRs help fudge the fact that a buyer and a seller cannot agree on price. The buyer simply gives the seller a CVR, or an option on the spoils if the buyer's investment does well. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts used a twist on the theme when it de-listed its European arm, giving shareholders new U.S.-listed stock and a CVR. There are two things wrong with these devices: Either they cripple issuers when payday arrives, or they prove virtually worthless, thanks to reams of small print. Too clever by half.<br />4. Accumulators<br />The accumulator - known waggishly as the "I-kill-you-later" - is a device used to hedge cross-currency transactions. It limits the amount of profit the holder can make, but not the losses. That makes it cheap - and dumb. Citic Pacific lost $2 billion on accumulators when the Australian dollar fell hard. The normally staid conglomerate had not just hedged but had made a giant speculative bet. Citic Pacific was effectively taken over by its Chinese parent Citic - the ultimate slap on the behind.<br />5. Cash-settled options<br />These options, which pay out in cash rather than actual shares, are not new, or necessarily bad. But in Germany they became a battering ram for corporate raiders. Schaeffler, a ball-bearing manufacturer, used cash-settled options to seize control of Continental, an auto parts maker. These options do not need to be disclosed in Germany - even though the holder can, in practice, easily get the underlying shares. Germany has not outlawed this practice. But the fact that Schaeffler is now buried under a mountain of debt should discourage imitators.<br />6. Debt accordions<br />These provisions in some loans let the issuer expand them later - like an accordion - to let in new investors. During the crunch, subordinated investors in a couple of leveraged companies got a grim ultimatum: Slide into the accordion on the company's senior debt and take a big haircut, or end up with peanuts if the company goes bust. Senior lenders, meanwhile, faced the prospect of fighting for scraps with the newcomers if things really went wrong. Accordion facilities are thus as painful to the pocket as their musical counterparts are to the ear.<br />7. Ponzi schemes<br />Take money from Peter. Wait a bit, then take money from Paul. Use Paul's money to pay back Peter, proclaim your stupendous rate of return, rinse and repeat. The Ponzi scheme, named after the 1920s scam artist Charles Ponzi, reached new heights in 2008 with the discovery of $50 billion in alleged fraud by the financier Bernard Madoff, who somehow duped the world's biggest and most conservative investment banks. This kind of fraud is unlikely to die out in 2009. But the epithet itself might. Investors will now be looking out for the "Madoff scheme" instead. - John Foley</div><div> </div><div></div><div>**************************</div><div> </div><div></div><div><strong>Bring out the (cheaper) bubbly<br /></strong>By Eric Asimov<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />NEW YORK: The corks will pop as usual this holiday season, and the bubbly will froth over into the glasses. Toasts will be offered, and the good times will still roll, but perhaps in a more subdued fashion.<br />Fewer of those bottles of sparkling wine are likely to be Champagne this December, at least in the United States. All over the country, people are spending less for wine, and aiming for a lower-key expression of seasonal joy. That means less Champagne.<br />Partly, this is an economic decision. "People are clearly trading down," said Jon Fredrikson of Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates, a wine industry analyst in California. "People are still drinking wine, but it's clearly at lower price points."<br />But emotions and appearances play an important role in the decision as well. Aside from a general shortage of celebratory occasions like mergers, closings, bonuses and office parties, many restaurateurs say that customers are avoiding even the appearance of celebration.<br />"People just don't want to look extravagant today," said Paul Grieco, an owner of the restaurants Hearth, Insieme and Terroir in Manhattan. "They still want to drink, so they cut out the Champagne and go directly to whatever they're drinking with dinner."<br />After several strong years, Champagne sales in the United States began to slip in 2007 as the weak dollar caused prices to rise. About 21 million bottles were shipped to the United States in 2007, down 2 percent from 2006, and the drop became precipitous in 2008. Through August, sales were down 17 percent over the corresponding period last year, according to Sam Heitner, director of the Office of Champagne U.S.A., a trade organization, and that doesn't include the last three months of the year, when much of the Champagne is sold.<br />"We're in uncharted territory," he said.<br />Recognizing the concern over spending, the New York Times wine panel recently tasted 25 sparkling wines priced $10 to $20, the sweet spot these days for good wine values.<br />We restricted ourselves to dry sparkling wines, while ruling out sparkling rosés and reds. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by the husband-and-wife team of Scott Mayger, the general manager of Telepan on the Upper West Side, and Beth von Benz, a wine consultant.<br />The good news is that outside of Champagne, just about any region in the world that makes wine makes sparkling wine, too. Among our 25 bottles were wines from France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Australia, as well as California, Washington State, New Mexico and Michigan.<br />Believe me, that's just the beginning. I've enjoyed good bottles from Austria, Massachusetts and Georgia (the country, not the state).<br />I did set one more parameter: no prosecco. I like prosecco, but I enjoy it best in spring and summer, when its sprightliness seems to match the season. I didn't rule out sekt, the sparkling wine of Germany, but maybe I should have. I've rarely met a sekt I've liked, and neither one in our tasting made our top 10. And I confess, I'm not much of a fan either of cava, the sparkling wine of Spain. One of the three in our tasting, the Reserva Heredad from Segura Viudas, made our top 10 at No.9, though at $20 it was maybe not such a good value.<br />Perhaps in a different context, say, a café in Frankfurt or tapas bar in Barcelona, these wines might have been more appealing. But when they were mixed in with a bunch of bottles made in the fashion of Champagne, with some proportion of chardonnay and pinot noir, the main grapes of Champagne, we preferred those bottles, wherever they came from.<br />Our top bottle, the 2004 brut from Domaine Carneros, was, of course, from California. We found it elegant and delicious, and it just squeaked by two other far-flung bottles.<br />Our No.2, the Contadi Castaldi, was from the Italian region of Franciacorta, which produces some excellent Champagne facsimiles. This one was particularly dry and light-bodied, with aromas of herbs, spices and flowers.<br />And our No.3 was a sparkling wine from Burgundy, the toasty, refreshing Parigot & Richard blanc de blancs, made mostly from chardonnay.<br />While our price range was $10 to $20, most of the wines in the tasting were $15 to $20. One of the few exceptions, and the only one to make the list, was the Crémant de Limoux blanc de blancs from Domaine J. Laurens, which at $13 was our best value.<br />Habitués of the bargain aisle may be familiar with blanquette de Limoux, a sparkling wine from the same region in southern France. This is generally even cheaper than the Laurens, and usually made from the mauzac grape. The crémant is made of chardonnay and chenin blanc, which gives an added smoothness and elegance.<br />Other Champagne-style wines that we liked included three more from California, the Roederer Estate, long a personal favorite of mine, as well as the Piper Sonoma and the Gloria Ferrer.<br />Two other French wines rounded out our top 10. La Cravatine from Fabrice Gasnier was an oddity, a sparkling Chinon made from the cabernet franc grape. But it was light and refreshing, as was our No.10, the herbal-scented crémant d'Alsace from Lucien Albrecht, made from pinot blanc and pinot auxerrois.<br />Let's be honest, none of these bottles will match a very good Champagne. But they cost half what you would pay these days for the least expensive Champagne, and they were enjoyable.<br />Even so, they may all still cost more than many people are willing to spend. Fredrikson said the greatest growth right now is in bottles $6 and under, which includes mass-produced sparkling wines that in my opinion are not worth the money.<br />There may be one bright spot for Champagne. Roberto Rogness, general manager of Wine Expo in Santa Monica, California, which offers an exceptional selection of sparkling wines, reports that even though cavas, crémants and other Champagne alternatives are selling "by the boatload," Champagne sales seem to be holding their own. And Rogness is looking hopefully to next year.<br />"We're starting to get feelers for inauguration parties," he said.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div></div><div><strong>Architecture deluxe and delusional: An era ends</strong><br />By Nicolai Ouroussoff<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Who knew a year ago that we were nearing the end of one of the most delirious eras in modern architectural history? What's more, who would have predicted that this turnaround, brought about by the biggest economic crisis in a half-century, would be met in some corners with a guilty sense of relief?<br />Before the financial cataclysm, the profession seemed to be in the midst of a major renaissance. Architects like Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, once deemed too radical for the mainstream, were celebrated as major cultural figures. And not just by high-minded cultural institutions; they were courted by developers who once scorned those talents as pretentious airheads.<br />Firms like Forest City Ratner and the Related Companies, which once worked exclusively with corporations that were more adept at handling big budgets than at architectural innovation, seized on these innovators as part of a shrewd business strategy. The architect's prestige would not only win over discerning consumers but also persuade planning boards to accede to large-scale urban projects like, say, Gehry's Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.<br />But somewhere along the way that fantasy took a wrong turn. As commissions multiplied for luxury residential high-rises, high-end boutiques and corporate offices in cities like London, Tokyo and Dubai, more socially conscious projects rarely materialized. Public housing, a staple of 20th-century Modernism, was nowhere on the agenda. Nor were schools, hospitals or public infrastructure. Serious architecture was beginning to look like a service for the rich.<br />Nowhere was that poisonous cocktail of vanity and self-delusion more visible than in Manhattan. Although some important cultural projects were commissioned, this era will probably be remembered as much for its vulgarity as its ambition.<br />Every major architect in the world, it seemed, was designing an exclusive residential building here. With its elaborate faux-graffiti barrier, Herzog & de Meuron's 40 Bond Street was among the most indulgent, but it had plenty of rivals, including projects by Daniel Libeskind, UNStudio, Koolhaas and Norman Foster.<br />Together these projects threatened to transform the city's skyline into a tapestry of individual greed.<br />Now that high-end bubble has popped, and it is unlikely to return anytime soon. Jean Nouvel's 75-story residential tower adjoining the Museum of Modern Art has been delayed indefinitely. And developers now seem loath to undertake similar projects. Even if the economy turns around, the public's tolerance for outsize architectural statements that serve the rich and self-absorbed has already been pretty much exhausted.<br />This is not all good news. A lot of wonderful architecture is being thrown out with the bad. Although most of Nouvel's MoMA tower would have been devoted to luxury apartments, for instance, it would have allowed the museum next door to expand its gallery space significantly. It would also have been one of the most spectacular additions to the Manhattan skyline since the Chrysler Building.<br />And it would be a shame if the recession derailed promising cultural projects like Renzo Piano's new Whitney Museum of American Art in the meatpacking district or Foster's interior renovation of the Beaux-Arts New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue.<br />Architecture firms, meanwhile, are suffering like everyone else. With so many projects postponed and so few new ones coming in, many are already laying off employees. Aspiring architects who are just emerging from graduate programs are likely to move on to more secure professions, which could spell a smaller talent pool in the future.<br />Still, if the recession doesn't kill the profession, it may have some long-term positive effects for our architecture. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to invest heavily in infrastructure, including schools, parks, bridges and public housing. A major redirection of our creative resources may thus be at hand. If a lot of first-rate architectural talent promises to be at loose ends, why not enlist it in designing the projects that matter most? That's my dream anyway.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div></div><div><strong>A Bohemian space in posh Milan<br /></strong>By Eric Sylvers<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />MILAN: With its intimate link to the worlds of fashion and design, few would connect Milan to the Bohemian life. But Elinor Schiele's living space does bring to mind the home of a struggling writer or artist.<br />Space is tight, the kitchen is minuscule and sloped ceilings make it hard to walk in some areas. While those problems might have scared away some, Schiele and her husband, Franco Mazzucchelli, have been renting the space in the heart of downtown Milan for 15 years.<br />The 93-square-meter, or 1,000-square-foot, apartment has a combination living and dining room, the mini-kitchen, a bedroom, two small bathrooms, two small studies and a large terrace where Schiele has grown fruit trees, flowers, plants and a wide array of herbs. In good weather she has barbecues on the terrace where, in the distance, a visitor can see the gold statue atop the city's cathedral.<br />"It's a little tight, but we have gotten used to that and I don't know where else in Milan we could get all this in a place that is so central and has a terrace with tomatoes and a fig tree," Schiele said. "I love this space and so does everybody who comes here because it's different from what you usually see in Milan. We hear church bells and birds singing on the terrace."<br />Schiele, who was born in London and lived in New York, came to Milan 30 years ago to work as a model but quickly left the profession when she found out how much she disliked it. But she did meet Mazzucchelli on the trip.<br />For the last 15 years she has worked in mosaics, with most of her commissions coming from the United States. She has moved away from traditional mosaics that use colored glass, and now mostly works with stones and pebbles.<br />Mazzucchelli has lived in the building for 50 years. He and Schiele originally rented an apartment on a lower floor, but they moved to the attic when the building's owner, a university friend of Mazzucchelli, wanted to give the apartment to his daughter.<br />Mazzucchelli had been using the attic as a study so it already was in good condition. But after they moved in, they turned some storage space into an extra room and second bathroom. "We were like Pac Man digging under the roof," Schiele said. "The extra space has been fantastic and changed our lives."<br />In the center of Milan, housing prices can be prohibitive. According to a recent study by the real estate company Tirelli & Partners, an exclusive resident in the city center costs between €2 million and €7 million, or $2.8 million to $9.7 million. And in the fashion district, a five-minute walk from Schiele's residence, apartments sold for an average of €17,000 per square meter, or $2,211 per square foot, in the first half of the year, the study said.<br />"If they got rid of us they could probably get 20 times more in rent," said Schiele, who would say only that the couple's rent is far below market value because they know the building's owner.<br />An apartment with similar characteristics in the neighborhood might rent for about €7,000 a month and cost just under €1 million to buy, according to Livio Naitana, a Milan-based real estate agent.<br />"Prices in Milan have been falling slowly since the spring, but that was after a very long run-up over many years," Naitana said. "Nice apartments used to sell themselves, now it takes a lot more work."<br />"We looked for 10 years and couldn't find anything that we really wanted to buy and prices now are out of sight," Schiele said. "There are areas of Milan that I lust after where I would buy, but the prices are like in London, New York or Paris - sometimes even higher because the beautiful core center of Milan is very small and sometimes the best places change hands and you don't even hear about it."<br />While Schiele and her husband rent in Milan, they own properties in Sag Harbor, New York, and on the volcanic Caribbean island of Montserrat. They spend six months a year in Milan with the remaining time split between the other two places.<br />"We are away often enough that we can justify having a smaller space here in Milan than we'd like," Schiele said. "I still manage to do everything, and we still have big dinners with 20 people where we pack everybody in."</div><div> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div></div><div><strong>Buying a private piece of paradise<br /></strong>By Alex Frew McMillan<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />No man is an island. But plenty of people fancy the idea of owning one.<br />It may seem that Asia would be a magnet for "islomaniacs." Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, with 17,000 islands. The Philippines has about 7,100 or so, depending on the tides. Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam all have extensive coastlines.<br />But real estate laws do not make it easy for foreigners to own property in Southeast Asia, and most islands either do not have clear ownership rights or are already settled. Also, the few places that do come on the market can have prohibitive costs, thanks to demand from hotel developers.<br />Given all those difficulties, several new developments are selling villas on private islands that are adjacent to high-end hotels. Owners can have their island retreat without having to absorb the total cost of keeping it habitable.<br />Aman Resorts is selling villas that start at $3 million on a private island in the Philippines. Owners have unfettered access to the resort's facilities and can live at their property, use it as a holiday home or include it in the company's rental pool.<br />Similarly, Soneva Kiri, a resort run by Six Senses on the Thai island of Koh Kood, is selling villas starting at $4.5 million. There also is a private island for sale nearby at $38 million.<br />And the Jumeirah Private Island project in Phuket, Thailand, is selling private residential villas and estates next to a resort, with prices starting at $3.2 million.<br />The developers of all these projects say it is too early to tell how the global real estate slump and credit crisis will affect sales - or whether persistent political problems in Thailand will take a special toll on that country's projects.<br />There are options for buyers with smaller budgets, like The Village at Coconut Island, a private island just off Phuket, with prices starting around $610,000. Also, a startup called Barefoot Investments is beginning its first project on a private island in the Philippines, the Cacao Pearl in Palawan, with homes starting at $210,000.<br />"There's a wide selection of interest for private islands that would support a development that's a hop skip and a jump from a five-star resort," said David Simister, chairman of CB Richard Ellis for Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. "It's the ideal balance."<br />Marlon Brando's experiences in the South Pacific while shooting the 1962 movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" inspired him to buy Tetiaroa, an atoll surrounded by 13 smaller islands, which he owned until his death in 2004.<br />In recent years, Dick Bailey, an American hotelier based in Tahiti, has been trying to develop a luxury hotel, The Brando, at Tetiaroa. But the controversial project has faced legal wrangling over Brando's will and wishes for the atoll as well as delays.<br />Brando had many ideas for his sanctuary, but few came to fruition - a common problem for island owners. Getting enough potable water is a significant problem. So is access, if the island is remote. And owners have to import all their household goods and building materials.<br />"If the island is too small, just a palm tree and a beach, you can't do anything with that because there is no water," said Charlotte Filleul, general manager of resort property for CB Richard Ellis in Thailand. "It has to be a certain size, and once it is a certain size it is impractical. It is not easy to make it work."<br />But, with enough money, there are ways to get around the problems.<br />Six Senses is offering the Thai island of Koh Raet, with a 10-bedroom villa and full management services, for $38 million. It says the spot, opposite Koh Kood and the Soneva Kiri resort, has drawn interest from potential buyers in the Middle East, Taiwan and Russia, but no one has committed.<br />"There are only so many private islands you can buy, and this one is fully managed and serviced by Soneva," said Adam Taugwalder, the sales and marketing director for the company's residences division.<br />As required by Thai law, it would be sold on a 30-year lease, with two extensions of the same duration; the company promising additional extensions, if possible.<br />Six Senses made its name with its flagship resorts in the Maldives, Soneva Fushi and Soneva Gili. The expansion into private property is something of a gamble for the company, but the founders - the chief executive, Sonu Shivdasani, and his wife and creative director, Eva Shivdasani - say they started their hotels so they could have their own house at Soneva Fushi. Now, they are offering such access to others.<br />The TGR Group is developing a similar project with Jumeirah Private Island, which the owners had originally planned for their own use.<br />"It grew from the idea that it would be fantastic to have a private island in this region," said Anthony Franklin, a TGR partner and its marketing director. "And then once you start to work on the logistics, you realize you need service."<br />TGR is a syndicate of European investors that started looking at Thai property, particularly Koh Samui, after the 2004 tsunami. They took on a local partner in Dilokpol Sundaravej, the former Thailand manager of Bovis Lend Lease and nephew of Samak Sundaravej, who stepped down as Thai prime minister in September.<br />The partners decided Phuket had the international schools and amenities they required, and, with undeveloped beachfront in very short supply there, they decided to expand to nearby islands. But few are suitable, and most are controlled by the Thai Navy.<br />Jumeirah Private Island sits in Phang Nga Bay, just northeast of Phuket and near its international airport. TGR drilled a tunnel under the seabed to put in fiber-optic cables, electricity and water pipes, to turn the island - also called Koh Raet - into a developable site. It also dredged the marina, put in roads and hired the Jumeirah Group, best known for running the sail-shaped Dubai hotel Burj Al Arab, to operate the resort, which is due to open in 2010.<br />The project has three types of private property for sale: 15 estates that start at $6 million, 34 large residences and several smaller, two-bedroom villas.</div><div> </div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihpLo3SlrWppfN74dnjzY1azO_LAxt17bN-vH9KjG-Ku8uE2mVM5DVNFpxGdhmEmf7W6Vb8vrRQnXmoz2OjKm_r6EIcCv9vKYFFA6KOt7oWJPXl9qdgHIjyQ1eYUPfItmW7zFyOq1pVtw/s1600-h/DSC04460.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981679957463394" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihpLo3SlrWppfN74dnjzY1azO_LAxt17bN-vH9KjG-Ku8uE2mVM5DVNFpxGdhmEmf7W6Vb8vrRQnXmoz2OjKm_r6EIcCv9vKYFFA6KOt7oWJPXl9qdgHIjyQ1eYUPfItmW7zFyOq1pVtw/s320/DSC04460.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PL5MCLYod5t7vaUYZOEOTCAOgUOpeAve5x954_B9GpAj4HKMKaoj9mRFjhyphenhyphenJjdmnI10b9nS_4rtywfvDBFlJgaOG3oZ3d7cKZ6CQsDZ3qNorTtVqDBADfJaFqvX2SOswQ80Hhi97IXc/s1600-h/DSC04461.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283981393744054050" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHyOI2ORMJrcWqwB__RM587hKlQ6XdowcNw0fHhOih45g98xNrafFg8klrIECshz5wZrSgstkoPH_o1DaDMIpihUIolBBNU92a_iTp-eoerG7cnJVVZlIRYZE8xGX886Qdb2blNV99how/s320/DSC04481.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XI2v0Pftxr9J65DbDu-DaSVJN7ZolS2OIFjuhluJSt3xdfbGCT3yIhfoGkvRh3JreL29PbpI3xINBRvQb-CWfjkzs5AqFMrv0coBYHdZ4YoeNEZjj7kb_XaY-38wF0YrBhWUarQrTr4/s1600-h/DSC04482.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980817674259282" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XI2v0Pftxr9J65DbDu-DaSVJN7ZolS2OIFjuhluJSt3xdfbGCT3yIhfoGkvRh3JreL29PbpI3xINBRvQb-CWfjkzs5AqFMrv0coBYHdZ4YoeNEZjj7kb_XaY-38wF0YrBhWUarQrTr4/s320/DSC04482.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjedS4D5kUMSz0BUHHZbrzSGBC0lhacWaOrcwZEK66MKwVFfVYQ-Sj-VsmMQ4-AYUL0HZAy1PlqRysIGaEWelY8aHIIJdv81GuC2REH1f35AtEFbcc9dCkMgfSnfH9UJt10MILuYNXu8V4/s1600-h/DSC04483.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980818344233026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjedS4D5kUMSz0BUHHZbrzSGBC0lhacWaOrcwZEK66MKwVFfVYQ-Sj-VsmMQ4-AYUL0HZAy1PlqRysIGaEWelY8aHIIJdv81GuC2REH1f35AtEFbcc9dCkMgfSnfH9UJt10MILuYNXu8V4/s320/DSC04483.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXAQ-0CJpFIJXtHXWIWMbj4ifnryfbqT1uCLo6lz-7ztIngToZMCXC8pvvvsA5ONh4kADmcEomCMZn9NZyaALTbok3sL3BSp2S8SxWoSybS8m7-R6wQEifxqUftKbrctCd_smlQpBLN3Y/s1600-h/DSC04489.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980537933633698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXAQ-0CJpFIJXtHXWIWMbj4ifnryfbqT1uCLo6lz-7ztIngToZMCXC8pvvvsA5ONh4kADmcEomCMZn9NZyaALTbok3sL3BSp2S8SxWoSybS8m7-R6wQEifxqUftKbrctCd_smlQpBLN3Y/s320/DSC04489.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Australian panel criticizes detention of bombing suspect</strong><br />By Raymond Bonner<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />SYDNEY: A special investigating body has issued a report sharply critical of the government's arrest and detention of an Indian doctor who was accused of involvement with the failed terrorist bombers in London and Glasgow in 2007.<br />The eight-month inquiry concluded that the evidence against the doctor, Mohamed Haneef, "amounted to very little" and was "completely deficient." Haneef, who worked in Australia, was detained on July 2, 2007, and within two days the country's domestic intelligence agency concluded that he was innocent, the report said.<br />Yet Haneef was charged with support for a terrorist organization and detained for 25 days. After a judge expressed doubt about the government's case, the prosecution withdrew the charges. But the immigration minister then revoked Haneef's visa.<br />The actions were taken by the center-right Liberal government headed by Prime Minister John Howard. The center-left Labor government, under Kevin Rudd, came to power in November 2007 and ordered the inquiry in March.<br />Howard declined to testify and did not allow a senior aide who handled the Haneef case to testify.<br />Haneef was arrested at the Brisbane airport as he was about to board a flight to India to see his wife, who had recently given birth to the couple's first child. The federal police acted on information from the British police that a cellphone SIM card in his name was found in possession of one of the suspects in the failed London and Glasgow attacks.<br />Earlier this month in Britain, one of the men accused in the attempted bombings, Dr. Bilal Abdulla, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause explosions. He and an accomplice, Kafeel Ahmed, had left two cars loaded with explosives on the street near a popular London nightclub in the early hours of June 29, 2007. The cars failed to explode.<br />A day later, the men drove an explosives-laden Jeep into the passenger terminal of the Glasgow international airport. Ahmed later died of burns.<br />Haneef's SIM card was found in the possession a brother of Ahmed's, Dr. Sabeel Ahmed.<br />During questioning by the Australian police, Haneef said he had given the card to Ahmed, who is a distant cousin, when he left Britain, where he had been studying, in June 2006. ( Ahmed recently pleaded guilty to withholding information from the police about the attack.)<br />The report on the inquiry, written by John Clarke and released on Monday, points out that no effort was made within the government to reconcile the conflicting views held by the federal police and the domestic intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.<br />Clarke was critical of the chief police counterterrorism officer, Ramzi Jabbour. While describing him as "impressive, dedicated and capable," Clarke concluded that Jabbour failed to see that the evidence against Haneef he considered incriminating "in fact amounted to very little."<br />The chief of the Immigration Department at the time, Kevin Andrews, was also rebuked. Clarke described his decision to revoke Haneef's visa as "mystifying."<br />Reacting to the inquiry, Andrews issued a statement saying: "The Australian people expected me to act. I had the courage to do so."<br />Haneef, who now works in Dubai, called the report a Christmas present, saying during a telephone news conference, "Mr. Clarke has made a clear finding with the report that I was totally innocent."<br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHKJyzQ-IA_P4dbf-WbZ7c0YPB8Yfz3GHA9dh8dWG5fz96e4pE_DFJN3YkX7QktyMue8Lglsp2RmFFX-1cnrlzDVP6-wZupy4l0EDxvmw7THVVQ5qJlDB2I0kdgE-e-woaGlagjyUeEAw/s1600-h/DSC04490.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980530192486242" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHKJyzQ-IA_P4dbf-WbZ7c0YPB8Yfz3GHA9dh8dWG5fz96e4pE_DFJN3YkX7QktyMue8Lglsp2RmFFX-1cnrlzDVP6-wZupy4l0EDxvmw7THVVQ5qJlDB2I0kdgE-e-woaGlagjyUeEAw/s320/DSC04490.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDhmc6K61dV7pDHVEbmB-8jQPCAK9ccAc37My-NejyiqXpI-6n08Gna6-IJGDXEI8y7GElQT3LiT_KchZxTTQjNkD0DBuvvMgvMsaSHsiitSzw2Dqyg4SW31MN2nSq1e_v0-cZOrofaKE/s1600-h/DSC04492.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980529406976834" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 250px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDhmc6K61dV7pDHVEbmB-8jQPCAK9ccAc37My-NejyiqXpI-6n08Gna6-IJGDXEI8y7GElQT3LiT_KchZxTTQjNkD0DBuvvMgvMsaSHsiitSzw2Dqyg4SW31MN2nSq1e_v0-cZOrofaKE/s320/DSC04492.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlU7PpxQH_wcMK8h82eg-NZOCkZQeBq-OvCArQfp9qcEnp04xRzIHSjVYXSX66ySFGaEg5lokfYIQeZRW6dFtuKb3Fhi3-uX0x5yKbNVCuir81Ko1gXRiNCPYmGzWDeAIqIWaeVxENg-s/s1600-h/DSC04494.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980521533135618" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlU7PpxQH_wcMK8h82eg-NZOCkZQeBq-OvCArQfp9qcEnp04xRzIHSjVYXSX66ySFGaEg5lokfYIQeZRW6dFtuKb3Fhi3-uX0x5yKbNVCuir81Ko1gXRiNCPYmGzWDeAIqIWaeVxENg-s/s320/DSC04494.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Gm0nXbcvYDu4gjvmYfdoCaOx_aV2pRgRti_h_am5K2WI4wNzQvrCaSTzQ6wc0vPZhWM0dTodxvs26mu8hKkRFBzxb-nc_Ef6UGpYsTrvFM6XZ-PYS2tlCB5C10wJ2h0NVZODmtEzpkY/s1600-h/DSC04495.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980513659155522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Gm0nXbcvYDu4gjvmYfdoCaOx_aV2pRgRti_h_am5K2WI4wNzQvrCaSTzQ6wc0vPZhWM0dTodxvs26mu8hKkRFBzxb-nc_Ef6UGpYsTrvFM6XZ-PYS2tlCB5C10wJ2h0NVZODmtEzpkY/s320/DSC04495.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Turning page, e-books start to take hold<br /></strong>By Brad Stone and Motoko Rich<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels?<br />For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com's wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.<br />The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her show in October, and blame Amazon for poor holiday planning.<br />The shortage is providing an opening for Sony, which embarked on an intense publicity campaign for its Reader device during the gift-buying season. The stepped-up competition may represent a coming of age for the entire idea of reading longer texts on a portable digital device.<br />"The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven't done anything," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading division. "But it's happening now. This is really starting to take off."<br />Sony's efforts have been overshadowed by Amazon's. But this month it began a promotional blitz in airports, train stations and bookstores, with the ambitious goal of personally demonstrating the Reader to two million people by the end of the year.<br />The company's latest model, the Reader 700, is a $400 device with a reading light and a touch screen that allows users to annotate what they are reading. Haber said Sony's sales had tripled this holiday season over last, in part because the device is now available in the Target, Borders and Sam's Club chains. He said Sony had sold more than 300,000 devices since the debut of the original Reader in 2006.<br />It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts' estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Winfrey's endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.<br />Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it, Hildick-Smith said, and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.<br />So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.<br />Amazon's Kindle version of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Winfrey's book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.<br />The Kindle version of the book, which can be downloaded by the device itself through its wireless modem, costs $9.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. The Reader version costs $11.99 from Sony's e-book library, accessible from an Internet-connected computer.<br />Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalogue, their agents say.<br />"E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen," said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world's largest publisher of consumer books.<br />Nobody knows how much consumer habits will shift. Some of the most committed bibliophiles maintain an almost fetishistic devotion to the physical book. But the technology may have more appeal for particular kinds of people, like those who are the heaviest readers.<br />At Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based publisher of bodice-ripping romances, Malle Vallik, director for digital content and interactivity, said she expected sales of digital versions of the company's books someday to match or potentially outstrip sales in print.<br />Harlequin, which publishes 120 books a month, makes all of its new titles available digitally, and has even started publishing digital-only short stories that it sells for $2.99 each, including an erotica collection called Spice Briefs.<br />Perhaps the most overlooked boost to e-books this year — and a challenge to some of the standard thinking about them — came from Apple's do-it-all gadget, the iPhone.<br />Several e-book-reading programs have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and Penguin.<br />All of these companies say they are now tailoring their software for other kinds of smartphones, including BlackBerrys.<br />Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.<br />Meanwhile, the quest to build the perfect e-book reader continues. Amazon and Sony are expected to introduce new versions of their readers in 2009. Adherents expect the new Kindle will have a sleeker design and a better microprocessor, allowing snappier page-turning.<br />Haber of Sony said future versions of the Reader will have wireless capability, a feature that has helped make the Kindle so appealing. This means that the device does not have to be plugged into a computer to download books, newspapers and magazines.<br />Other competitors are on the way. Investors have put more than $200 million into Plastic Logic, a company in Mountain View, California The company says that next year it will begin testing a flexible 8.5-by-11-inch reading device that is thinner and lighter than existing ones. Plastic Logic plans to begin selling it in 2010.<br />Along the same lines, Polymer Vision, based in the Netherlands, demonstrated a device the size of a BlackBerry that has a five-inch rolled-up screen that can be unfurled for reading. There are also less ambitious but cheaper readers on the market or expected soon, including the eSlick Reader from Foxit Software, arriving next month at an introductory price of $230.<br />E Ink, the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that has developed the screen technology for many of these companies, says it is testing color screens and hopes to introduce them by 2010.<br />Many book lovers are quite happy with today's devices. MaryAnn van Hengel, 51, a graphic designer in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, once railed against e-readers at a meeting of her book club. But she embraced the Kindle her husband gave her this fall shortly after Winfrey endorsed it.<br />Van Hengel now has several books on the device, including a Nora Roberts novel and Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." She said the Kindle had spurred her to buy more books than she normally would in print.<br />"I may be shy bringing the Kindle to the book club because so many of the women were so against the technology, and I said I was too," Van Hengel said. "And here I am in love with it."</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrhJAYbnf_OQrc1vN_ZWIKwCuexhkVjk-tUlCLwcSCU57t32Tnsv7P68hBtlnAN4yoMHGUt4ohtTC2wrcPfSi1Je7b2iTg9LVJoQjia2UohWXwnSZSHGuB3H64Utev3g7e7G2xsz_H-PE/s1600-h/DSC04499.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980212933030674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrhJAYbnf_OQrc1vN_ZWIKwCuexhkVjk-tUlCLwcSCU57t32Tnsv7P68hBtlnAN4yoMHGUt4ohtTC2wrcPfSi1Je7b2iTg9LVJoQjia2UohWXwnSZSHGuB3H64Utev3g7e7G2xsz_H-PE/s320/DSC04499.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJRsbMnRu9Ofq4pGUZhoDoFxt8oUxyer5D91_rBWyGx7uysS46FNTFmXNFT3_0huD0RwJv8L2GLQk9ikYDWQNTTokwkkr8Y32mxnvpwvbu-3iZWqBUDrb7VzgP2KZUdKWhqsYNXIxVUiA/s1600-h/DSC04500.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283980214581264866" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLH67oc6Ec2tcdOtbwlKAhMXiwkO8BDbwUlNZdCX3Vq488x-2c2j_Bodc5xBVUZFiFyk3D5l4v0XtsfIpUOszINmQsXzyYjMTY2qiYBuQylQ75CyDtbs-DZwpYcoaJntQYrPCwUQjumL4/s320/DSC04561.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQeQTCxA9ta0r625BWmj8MgZ2Dj9JccWeJgNuspR4riLABd5gMdQvzibCSDvJ4DriGtlw9ca1V4SZ-QsY52XpTb8xFsl-5MzoV2dYl4slfevLC3zrcIEh5FNZw7oTriJE4msY7l23uMDE/s1600-h/DSC04564.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283977195362560226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQeQTCxA9ta0r625BWmj8MgZ2Dj9JccWeJgNuspR4riLABd5gMdQvzibCSDvJ4DriGtlw9ca1V4SZ-QsY52XpTb8xFsl-5MzoV2dYl4slfevLC3zrcIEh5FNZw7oTriJE4msY7l23uMDE/s320/DSC04564.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>A von Trapp takes over the family business and legacy</strong><br />By Stephanie Clifford<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />STOWE, Vermont: When Sam von Trapp, the grandson of Maria, the singing nun made famous by "The Sound of Music," graduated from college, his father offered him a deal: Sam could do whatever he wanted for 10 years before he had to return home here to run the family's ski lodge.<br />His father started calling him to come home after six years.<br />When von Trapp finally returned to take over from his father, Johannes, he had had quite a decade: teaching skiing in Aspen, Colorado, modeling for Ralph Lauren, surfing in Chile and even making People magazine's America's Top 50 Bachelors list in 2001. Recently, he sat in a dark office at the Trapp Family Lodge, the inn his grandmother started, trying to decide what to do with some old curtains.<br />It is hard for anyone to untangle family history and allegiances during the holidays. When your last name is von Trapp, and Americans claim you as part of their own legacy, that task is just that much harder.<br />That legacy weighs on von Trapp even as he considers something as mundane as curtains.<br />In "The Sound of Music," the beloved 1965 movie, Maria, the governess played by Julie Andrews, turned old curtains into play clothes for the seven von Trapp children, just as the real Maria had done. Von Trapp figured that if he sold von Trapp draperies on eBay, he might turn a nice little profit.<br />"Nobody has the level of commitment I do," said von Trapp, now 36, but looking young and athletic for his age. "Nobody has as much to gain."<br />Despite the nostalgic mist around "The Sound of Music," von Trapp is taking over a business for a family that has had its share of ups and downs and disagreements.<br />When the von Trapps arrived in the United States in 1938, they settled in Pennsylvania and made money by singing baroque and folk music. By 1942, the family had bought a farm in Stowe. Maria rented out rooms in the house when the von Trapps were on tour singing.<br />Still, Johannes von Trapp, the 10th and youngest child, remembers growing up relatively anonymously in a quiet, strict home. That began to shift after the 1959 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music," and when the movie opened, everything changed.<br />"You could no longer give your name anywhere without people saying 'Oh, are you ... ?"' said the elder von Trapp, now 69. "The film, for better or for worse, made us a mass market commodity."<br />The von Trapps have never directly profited from the film or Broadway musical: Maria, whose husband died in 1947, sold the rights to the family story to a German film company in the mid-1950s for just $9,000. Johannes and now his son run the cross-country skiing lodge that trades on the family's fame with Austrian food, waitresses wearing dirndls and pictures of the family, but not a single poster from the movie.<br />"'The Sound of Music' was great, but it was an American version of my family's life," said Johannes, who no longer sings, although he still has a pleasant, reedy bass voice. "It wasn't what we were. I just got tired of being cast as a 'Sound of Music' person."<br />The family legacy has been particularly onerous for him.<br />People would ask about Liesl, and he would have to point out that his eldest sibling was not 16 going on 17, but 54 in 1965 - and male.<br />They would ask whether he was Kurt or Friedrich, and he would have to explain that his father and mother had three children together, and he was the youngest. His mother was presented as a near-saint in the movie; in real life, she was difficult and domineering, people who knew her said. By 1969, he had graduated from Dartmouth, completed a master's degree at the Yale school of forestry and was planning on an academic career in natural resources. He returned to Stowe to put the inn's finances in order, and ended up running the place. He tried to leave, moving to a ranch in British Columbia in 1977 and staying a few years, then moving to a ranch in Montana. But the professional management in Stowe kept quitting. "Now I'm stuck here," he said.<br />As long as Maria was alive, the von Trapp siblings grudgingly got along.<br />"She was a very strong-minded, strong-willed woman," said Marshall Faye, a baker who has worked at the lodge for more than 30 years. "She ruled the family. Anything they did had to have her blessing."<br />After Maria died in 1987, the family members - 32 of whom owned stock in the lodge - started to fracture. Johannes engineered a buyout in 1994 and settled lawsuits with relatives in 1999. "I honestly resented the fact that none of my older siblings could've took over the business," he said. "Then I could've run off and done whatever I wanted to do."<br />If he had to run a lodge, he wanted a quiet, dignified one. He enjoys events like the Friday night wine tastings, where he can sip Grüner Veltliners and greet guests in the patrician fashion he learned as a boy.<br />But in the off season, the "Sound of Music" bus tours arrive, full of seniors who line their purses with cellophane so they can stuff them with Austrian pastries at the breakfast buffet. He recently discovered that his gift shop had been selling a stuffed goat that sings "The Lonely Goatherd."<br />"Isn't that awful?" he said, sighing. "My staff hid it from me for months. But it does sell."<br />Since the buyout, the lodge has been profitable, if not enormously so, he said. It provides well for his family - his wife, Lynne, whom he met when she was a singing waitress at the lodge one summer, and his children, Sam and Kristina, who recently moved back to Stowe and built a house on the 2,400-acre, or 970-hectare, property for her own family, he said.<br />For Sam, a generation removed from "The Sound of Music," the burden of being a von Trapp is lighter. He has seen the movie only a couple of times, and is the child of a Vermonter, not the son of an Austrian baron. "For him, there were all those issues in the family, too, that came along with that little leap into fame," Sam said of his father.<br />Since his return, the younger von Trapp has made snow making his big project, spending nights on the snow-covered meadows in 10-degree Fahrenheit (minus-12 Celsius) weather, doing the heavy manual work it requires. He plans to bring back holiday singalongs and to advertise the lodge during ABC's broadcast of "The Sound of Music" on Sunday, which his father once opposed.<br />The movie is "one of the reasons - the big one - that people come here," said Ron Tanner, a marketing consultant who works at the lodge. "The TV ad will be to say, 'Hey, the next generation has taken over the Trapp Family Lodge."'</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVi-14p3RDbWYEAtHWnL8B6FHit9EDxlCxGg6hVuEH4FekQ8R3cNmkqSl_2cmp9ubASmiKyYkgft4gyW3y5r2Nr_fsHBUQ21MWcAHjiZKAcUKqfrgnsmlARUDrWkoabK45mcAVA8kNGmo/s1600-h/DSC04565.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283977188302244322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVi-14p3RDbWYEAtHWnL8B6FHit9EDxlCxGg6hVuEH4FekQ8R3cNmkqSl_2cmp9ubASmiKyYkgft4gyW3y5r2Nr_fsHBUQ21MWcAHjiZKAcUKqfrgnsmlARUDrWkoabK45mcAVA8kNGmo/s320/DSC04565.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>New York Times Co. seeking to sell its stake in the Red Sox</strong><br />By Richard Pérez-Peña<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />The New York Times Co. is trying to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team, seeking to raise cash and shield its newspaper franchise from rapidly falling revenue, a person briefed on the plans said on Wednesday.<br />Under pressure from investors to sell noncore assets in recent years, executives of the Times Company have said repeatedly that they were open to selling the stake, but only on the right terms.<br />But recently, they have been actively shopping the company's stake in New England Sports Ventures, which owns the Red Sox, said the person briefed on the plans, who was not authorized to discuss the matter and was given anonymity. The Times Company informed its partners in the venture of its plans last month.<br />The company executives have suggested that the central aim of any sale is to protect the company's newspapers, particularly the flagship Times. They have also been reluctant to consider the sale of About.com, an Internet site that is profitable and growing.<br />The company paid $75 million for a 17.5 percent stake in New England Sports Ventures, which bought the Red Sox in 2002 along with their stadium, Fenway Park, and 80 percent of New England Sports Network, a regional cable channel.<br />With credit largely frozen, this is a difficult time to be trying to sell any major asset, and it is not clear how much interest there might be, or at what price. But over the long run, prices for sports franchises tend to rise fast.<br />The Times Company reported on Wednesday that revenue from continuing operations in November was down 13.9 percent compared with the month a year earlier. For the year, it was down 7.6 percent.<br />The company recently said it planned to borrow $225 million against its headquarters building on Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, anticipating that it would not be able to renew a revolving line of credit that is set to expire in May.</div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNgMuUh6I8LJOG2cEd5Qva4JvvbcOZIWwEp-0dDXBaO49M0jG0t0s4G8hyphenhyphenL99vtC-UAe0zjF5yUdTcbrpHSQIsAX1-viEDGbDu7Kik-AizIAbxa5Za_cVKg_JCpWqNBtUdmopp6bV7WQE/s1600-h/DSC04566.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283977181304493522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNgMuUh6I8LJOG2cEd5Qva4JvvbcOZIWwEp-0dDXBaO49M0jG0t0s4G8hyphenhyphenL99vtC-UAe0zjF5yUdTcbrpHSQIsAX1-viEDGbDu7Kik-AizIAbxa5Za_cVKg_JCpWqNBtUdmopp6bV7WQE/s320/DSC04566.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrQeF9aOI4tCtpdfxOdpiR_My_tfw4nYooCGOkjZVnsOxPq7wbeBQC7PE8hLFFAnvJTfMF3YjFB7pvwXuNz_l0mHVOxsQ_RdWOjI4LF0RSaGvfpQFkbdD_0eK86aYLcYhdTeRidZVCyGk/s1600-h/DSC04568.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283977179974393570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrQeF9aOI4tCtpdfxOdpiR_My_tfw4nYooCGOkjZVnsOxPq7wbeBQC7PE8hLFFAnvJTfMF3YjFB7pvwXuNz_l0mHVOxsQ_RdWOjI4LF0RSaGvfpQFkbdD_0eK86aYLcYhdTeRidZVCyGk/s320/DSC04568.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC9bc5EbI9wY_iQ1esujB5wJDXvQPoKBeoXqqViYnqahOyggPs6O1PdMrRJuEvhdYD92URgbfsoYeAEmpm9FbKaRRcl1WAhuoj9rw_ZebDlCxXWEwMzwwbdE_cg9W1a9zfrVSFahqwftM/s1600-h/DSC04570.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283977175816832642" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC9bc5EbI9wY_iQ1esujB5wJDXvQPoKBeoXqqViYnqahOyggPs6O1PdMrRJuEvhdYD92URgbfsoYeAEmpm9FbKaRRcl1WAhuoj9rw_ZebDlCxXWEwMzwwbdE_cg9W1a9zfrVSFahqwftM/s320/DSC04570.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008</strong></div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-53856304507298172752008-12-26T06:08:00.027+01:002008-12-26T10:33:11.101+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Wednesday, 24th December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>0500</strong></div><p><br /><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy-SvWuVd4mzymWsSx95yOVxChYqsgm8fLiyriL3NA1S-E04aiVMFi3bMyFyo0BGr3-3XmMuMy4pw8xG-RSh7K4dw1cIw6Akwqpxs337q7JD1gQsvKdvS0RlWLMciO26lWg2FCrW_RTnw/s1600-h/DSC04281.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971909387926226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy-SvWuVd4mzymWsSx95yOVxChYqsgm8fLiyriL3NA1S-E04aiVMFi3bMyFyo0BGr3-3XmMuMy4pw8xG-RSh7K4dw1cIw6Akwqpxs337q7JD1gQsvKdvS0RlWLMciO26lWg2FCrW_RTnw/s320/DSC04281.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><p></p><p><strong>Company at core of China's milk scandal is declared bankrupt</strong><br />By Edward Wong<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />BEIJING: The Chinese dairy company at the center of a tainted milk scandal that shook consumer confidence in China this fall was declared bankrupt by a court on Wednesday, according to a statement by a New Zealand company that owns a substantial portion of the dairy company.<br />The dairy company, Sanlu Group, has suffered financially since the contamination became public in September and is being sued by parents hoping to be paid as compensation for the illnesses or deaths of their children. Six infants died and almost 300,000 fell ill after consuming milk or other dairy products tainted with melamine, a toxic chemical that was added to the products to give them the false appearance of higher protein counts to meet nutrition standards.<br />China has grappled with many scandals involving tainted food, but the melamine scare was the worst in years, leading to product recalls around the world.<br />Fonterra Group, a New Zealand company that owns 43 percent of Sanlu, released a statement on Wednesday that said a receiver would take over management of Sanlu, one of the largest dairy companies in China. The receiver has six months to sell off the company's assets and pay the creditors, Fonterra said.<br />"We were aware that Sanlu was in a very difficult situation and faced mounting debts as a result of the melamine contamination crisis," Andrew Ferrier, chief executive of Fonterra, said in the statement. "This bankruptcy order is not a surprise."<br />The government has been paying hospital bills for children who fell ill from drinking the tainted products. It is unclear whether any parents will receive compensation payments during the bankruptcy process. The melamine scandal has become a politically sensitive issue — government officials were involved in covering up the contamination and have close ties to the company — so courts have yet to allow the lawsuits to be heard.<br />The bankruptcy order was issued by a court on Wednesday in the city of Shijiazhuang, in Hebei Province, where Sanlu is based.<br />Sanlu is only one of many Chinese dairy companies that were affected by the milk scandal. Two other large companies, Mengniu and Yili, had products found with melamine, and both have also suffered immense financial losses as a result, but neither has sought bankruptcy.<br />The discovery of tainted milk in September led to the firing of executives at Sanlu as well as local officials in Hebei Province. Arrests have included low-level suppliers suspected of adding the melamine to milk after buying milk from farmers. The adulterated milk was then resold to large companies like Sanlu.<br />Melamine has also been regularly added to animal feed and is thus suspected of being in much of the food that people in China consume.</p><p></p><p>**************</p><p></p><p><strong>Gulf Arabs may suspend EU free trade talks</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />MUSCAT: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia, has suspended talks with the European Union over a free trade agreement, the bloc's secretary-general said on Wednesday.<br />A Saudi newspaper last week quoted Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani as saying the EU was seeking to include political clauses in the accord, without elaborating. He called on the GCC to suspend the talks.<br />Aimed at boosting trade and investment between the two blocs, the agreement would make it easier for Gulf Arab states to export products, such as petrochemicals, to Europe, which currently imposes taxes on some imports from the region.<br />"We have suspended talks with the EU," the GCC's Abdul-Rahman al-Attiyah told Reuters by telephone in Muscat, where he is taking part in meetings to prepare for a Gulf Arab leaders summit next week.<br />"We will have no objection to resuming talks with them once they are ready to look at all angles of negotiation."<br />There was no immediate response from the European Union.<br />The GCC -- a loose political and economic alliance which also includes the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain -- has been at odds with the EU in recent weeks over the deal, which has been under discussion for nearly two decades.<br />At a meeting of Gulf finance ministers last month, Attiyah said the Gulf would discuss a possible slowdown in free trade talks with foreign partners, pending further studies. The region signed an FTA with Singapore this month.<br />Talks between the group and the EU began in 1990 but were slowed by the GCC agreeing only in 1999 to move towards forming a customs union and a new EU negotiating strategy adopted in 2001 to include the services sector in the talks.<br />(Reporting by Saleh al-Shaibany; Writing by Daliah Merzaban; Editing by Alison Williams)</p><p></p><p><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZJOXK4ELtw3pBN2a8ww066u-YiIrFMVztscUbSwj3wU_Ybd9T-JFtVl29UVKabsj4gHx0LSZnqk6UJ0VZXggSszbZFXzvQadvptCujkY1DrVVnbrV5d9YwJ282fTOvVbmLYSgVxbTBdI/s1600-h/DSC04282.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971608679679858" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZJOXK4ELtw3pBN2a8ww066u-YiIrFMVztscUbSwj3wU_Ybd9T-JFtVl29UVKabsj4gHx0LSZnqk6UJ0VZXggSszbZFXzvQadvptCujkY1DrVVnbrV5d9YwJ282fTOvVbmLYSgVxbTBdI/s320/DSC04282.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>U.S. court reinstates clean-air rule<br /></strong>By Felicity Barringer<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />A federal appeals court in Washington reversed itself on Tuesday and temporarily reinstated a Bush administration plan to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants.<br />In July, the court had struck down the rule, saying the Environmental Protection Agency had exceeded its authority in designing a new emissions-trading system to reduce that pollution, and must rewrite the rule to fix its "fundamental flaws." Environmentalists criticized the decision as a major setback for clean air.<br />In Tuesday's decision, the court said that having a flawed rule temporarily in place was better than having no rule at all. The agency must still revise the rule but has no deadline for doing so.<br />The regulation, known as the Clean Air Interstate Rule, had been the centerpiece of the Bush administration's re-engineering of the Clean Air Act, which set significant targets to reduce pollution around the power plants and in the downwind states whose air quality was affected by the emissions.<br />Tuesday's decision, by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, means that levels of smog-forming nitrogen oxides must be reduced in 28 eastern states and the District of Columbia beginning Jan. 1. Levels of sulfur dioxide, closely associated with the formation of deadly fine soot particles, must be reduced beginning a year later.<br />Environmentalists applauded the decision, saying it could form the basis for stronger controls to be drafted by the new administration. Industry groups were relieved to know what rules would cover their operations for the moment, but were pleased that the court's original objections to the rule were unchanged.<br />The court's second thoughts about striking down the rule came in response to complaints from state regulators, environmental groups, some utilities and the EPA itself.<br />Judge Judith Rogers, concurring with the court's decision, said eliminating the rule "would have serious adverse implications for public health and the environment," because "the rule has become so intertwined" with the overall architecture of current Clean Air Act protections.<br />Both the new Congress and President-elect Barack Obama are expected to tackle the problem of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. That will include determining how the new controls on those emissions should dovetail with controls for mercury, a toxic pollutant, and with the carbon dioxide emissions that are associated with climate change.<br />Bob Meyers, who heads the Air and Radiation office at the EPA, said that he was disappointed that the court did not reconsider its underlying objections to the rule. The regulation, he said, "was one of the main programs the administration was able to put forward to improve public health and the environment."<br />He added, "To the extent that today's hearing restores it — by removing immediate threat of vacating a rule — it is a good day."<br />Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a utility trade group, said in an e-mail message that his group applauded the court for "providing greater near-term certainty for pollution reduction programs and emission markets, and maintaining important health and environmental benefits."<br />But, he added, "It's impossible to predict what comes next."<br />Vicki Patton, the deputy general counsel with the Environmental Defense Fund, said that, while the EPA must redesign the rule to meet the court's objections, "the baton has been handed off to President-elect Obama and his team."<br />The rule, Patton said, "provides a foundation for building a more comprehensive program that protects human health from the full sweep of pollutants that are emitted from coal-fired power plants."<br />On Monday, the EPA issued a report on fine-particle pollution that showed that the number of geographic areas failing to meet federal standards had nearly doubled, to 58, including part or all of 211 counties in 25 states.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Further confusion in Guinea after coup attempt</strong><br />By Jeffrey Gettleman and Alan Cowell<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />NAIROBI, Kenya: The junior military officers who claimed they had seized power in a coup attempt in the impoverished West African nation of Guinea said Wednesday that they may not relinquish control of the country for two years and even went ahead to name one of their own as president.<br />In an apparent attempt to justify a security crackdown, the officers claimed that foreign mercenaries had already invaded their country.<br />As the country sank into deeper confusion, the junior officers appeared on national television wearing camouflage fatigues and red berets, and insisted in a statement that they had acted simply "to save a people in distress." After initially promising elections in 60 days, they said they would hold "free, credible and transparent elections before December 2010."<br />Events in Conakry have been moving swiftly. By Wednesday afternoon, the junior officers announced that Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, who had acted as their spokesman, was Guinea's new president.<br />While the coup attempt has thus far unfolded seemingly without bloodshed, Conakry, Guinea's steamy, seaside capital, seemed to be balanced on a knife-edge between calm and chaos.<br />Bands of roving soldiers ransacked the homes of several ministers and gunshots rang out, residents reported. The junior officers were apparently tightening their grip on strategic buildings, with their supporters firmly ensconced in the national broadcasting headquarters across the street from the American Embassy. There were no immediate reports of casualties.<br />The national radio station blared martial music, including a war song called "The Guinean Army." Many shops across the city were closed, though street vendors continued to sell mangoes, bananas and pineapples.<br />Guinea was plunged into its current political turmoil after Lansana Conté, 74, its strongman ruler for 24 years, died on Monday with no publicly-announced plans in place for a successor. Junior and mid-ranking officers sought to fill the resulting power vacuum by seizing the state broadcasting institutions early on Tuesday and announcing what a senior lawmaker called a "putsch."<br />Despite the seeming confidence of the mutinous officers, civilian officials and some senior army officers continued to deny on Wednesday that the coup attempt had succeeded. The army chief, Gen. Diarra Camara, appealed to the leaders of the attempted take-over to maintain calm so that a state funeral for Mr. Conté could be held on Friday, The Associated Press reported from Conakry.<br />But there were growing signs of alarm among civilian leaders.<br />One senior lawmaker was quoted as urging outside intervention to block the coup attempt. "The international community must mobilize to prevent the military from interrupting the democratic process as laid down by the Constitution," Aboubacar Somparé, the president of the National Assembly, told Reuters.<br />Speaking by telephone, he said the coup plotters were searching for him, but that he was in "a safe place."<br />But the junior officers seemed to be trying to stir up anti-foreigner sentiment by saying that mercenaries were "already inside our territory" and that anyone caught helping them would pay a heavy price. It was not clear how they substantiated their claim.<br />Another civilian official, who asked not to be identified because he was in hiding, said that the new proclamation of elections by 2010 "just proves these guys are going to insinuate themselves in power."<br />The civilian official in hiding said that the upper-ranks of the military, including the army chief of staff, the defense minister and 10 generals, still backed the civilian government and its ranking representative, Mr. Somparé.<br />"The loyalist troops are supporting the president of the assembly," the official said. "We don't recognize the coup leaders. The chief of staff of the army, the defense minister and more than 10 generals are supporting us."<br />Asked why loyalist troops had not used force to dislodge rebels from the national broadcasting headquarters, the official said they were "holding off on attacking the building because it is across the street from the American embassy. That's the only reason they're not attacking."<br />Civilian leaders, the official said, were "safe, they're not arrested and they are communicating with each other but they're not all in the same place."<br />The developments spread alarm across the continent and into Europe.<br />The African Union, Africa's biggest representative body, announced emergency talks in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to see how the continent could respond to what the organization has labeled a "flagrant violation of the Guinea constitution."<br />Guinea's neighbors — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast — are only just emerging from their own conflicts and are desperate to forestall further chaos if Guinea descends into violence. France, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, said it would oppose an unconstitutional seizure of power in Guinea, its former colony.<br />While Guinea's 10 million people are among the world's poorest, their land is rich in minerals, particularly bauxite used to make aluminum.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Activist charged in anti-Mugabe plot<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By MacDonald Dzirutwe<br />A Zimbabwean High Court judge ordered the immediate release on Wednesday of local human rights campaigner Jestina Mukoko and nine other activists charged with plotting to overthrow President Robert Mugabe's government.<br />Mukoko, a former newscaster who headed the Zimbabwe Peace Project, was picked up at gunpoint in Harare on December 3. If found guilty the activists could face the death penalty, lawyers said.<br />Judge Yunus Omarjee ordered police to release 32 activists in total, including Mukoko and the other nine accused. Police deny having 11 of the 32 activists in their custody.<br />"Their continued detention by whosoever is holding them be and is hereby declared unlawful, and they should be released forthwith," Omarjee said.<br />Mukoko and eight other activists would also be treated in hospital and allowed access to lawyers and relatives. Lawyers said there were allegations the activists had been tortured.<br />The case could fuel more doubts about implementation of a power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, seen as a chance of rescuing the once relatively prosperous country from economic meltdown.<br />The opposition says abductions of activists have continued since a June presidential election run-off in which Mugabe was re-elected unopposed after Tsvangirai withdrew, complaining of attacks on his supporters.<br />Mukoko's independent organisation monitored human rights and had compiled reports of violence at this year's elections.<br />The activists were brought to a tightly-secured court in the capital Harare. They included a husband and wife and their two-year-old child.<br />The state-run Herald newspaper said the activists were accused of recruiting or attempting to recruit people for military training to topple the government. Citing a police statement, it said some of the activists had recruited people for training in Botswana, including a police constable.<br />It said the plan was to "forcibly depose" Mugabe's government and replace it with one headed by Tsvangirai.<br />DEADLOCK<br />Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe said the case would be referred to the High Court. "The accused persons will be in custody, unfortunately," he said.<br />Tsvangirai has threatened to suspend negotiations on a September 15 power-sharing agreement if arrests do not stop. He won a first round election in March, but without an absolute majority.<br />Talks on sharing power have been deadlocked over control of key ministries, pushing Zimbabwe deeper into crisis. Hyper-inflation means prices double every day and a cholera epidemic has killed nearly 1,200 people.<br />South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu accused his country, the continent's main power, of betraying its legacy of struggling against apartheid by failing to take strong action against Mugabe.<br />The archbishop told the BBC in an interview that military force against Mugabe's government should not be ruled out.<br />"He must be asked to step down, and if he refuses I really believe that we have to invoke this new doctrine of responsibility to protect," Tutu told BBC radio.<br />Asked whether that meant going in by force, Tutu said: "Yes, yes -- or certainly the threat of it... He needs to be warned and his cronies must be warned that the world is not just going to sit by and do nothing."<br />South Africa's ruling African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma, describing Zimbabwe's situation as "utterly untenable," said it had to be resolved in the New Year.<br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>General Assembly ups U.N. budget for 2008-09</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Patrick Worsnip<br />The U.N. General Assembly increased the world body's two-year core budget by about one sixth on Wednesday, reflecting higher costs of missions in trouble spots and plans for new U.N. jobs.<br />The budget for 2008-09 was set a year ago at $4.17 billion (2.8 billion pounds). Halfway through that 24-month period the Assembly, after talks that lasted through the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, raised it to more than $4.86 billion.<br />U.N. budget negotiations typically pit developing countries that want to see higher spending against major contributors such as the United States, Japan and Western Europe that seek to rein in costs.<br />The United States voted against the original budget because it contained funding for a racism conference due to take place in Geneva next April that Washington sees as anti-Israel. But Wednesday's increase went through by consensus without a vote.<br />General Assembly official Luis Guilherme Nascentes told reporters the main reasons for the increase were higher costs of 27 U.N. missions around the world, especially those in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.<br />The assembly also agreed to fund 92 extra U.N. posts to promote development, which developing countries had pushed for, and 49 for the U.N. political section to back Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's strategy of "preventive diplomacy."<br />Both figures were less than Ban had sought. Ban nevertheless said in a statement he was "deeply appreciative" of the assembly's action.<br />The assembly also agreed to guidelines for Ban's next budget, to be presented next year and cover the two-year period 2010-11, setting a ceiling of just over $4.87 billion.<br />The core budget does not cover peacekeeping or the costs of major U.N. agencies, and by some estimates only accounts for 20 percent to 25 percent of total U.N. spending.<br />The United States has criticized the "piecemeal" approach to budgeting.<br />(Editing by Xavier Briand)<br />Correction:<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtv7UErmtwsmi19oeVPI_sXtJ3frjN782Xi9LKGkSx-t6hZqLT7_X6tob1RXxzpHL_3FMyKLEYpx3wl5RByv3GNpSFm-hL1o5iN0fK4dZF-N3J8jSnmP_5We5046hrdbLJyOYtrpeMyI0/s1600-h/DSC04283.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971605310250162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtv7UErmtwsmi19oeVPI_sXtJ3frjN782Xi9LKGkSx-t6hZqLT7_X6tob1RXxzpHL_3FMyKLEYpx3wl5RByv3GNpSFm-hL1o5iN0fK4dZF-N3J8jSnmP_5We5046hrdbLJyOYtrpeMyI0/s320/DSC04283.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Tumbling gas prices offer relief for American consumers</strong><br />By Jack Healy<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />Tumbling gasoline prices gave consumers more purchasing power last month, and led to a rise in real spending, even as personal income slips and Americans worry about their jobs in a rapidly weakening economy .<br />The Commerce Department reported on Wednesday that consumer spending, when adjusted for inflation, rose 0.6 percent in November, its largest gains in two years. The increase followed a 0.5 percent decline in October.<br />While the unadjusted rate of consumer spending declined 0.6 percent last month, following a 1 percent drop in October, economists suggested that the relative increase in spending was a rare piece of good news for the faltering economy.<br />"The declines in gasoline prices have been extremely large, larger than anything we've seen in the past," said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclay's Capital. "That's providing a lot of spending power to households."<br />Gasoline prices have plunged to $1.66 a gallon from their July peak of $4.11 as Americans drove less, construction projects were halted and the global appetite for oil waned in the economic slowdown. Filling up a 15-gallon tank now costs about $25, compared with $60 this summer.<br />"It's a very substantial amount of money that's been freed up," said Abiel Reinhart, North American economist at JPMorgan Chase. "That's a definite positive for consumers. It's probably the only positive at this point."<br />Financial markets in New York took the mixed news in stride on a shortened trading day before Christmas. At 10:30 a.m., the Dow Jones industrial average was 27 points higher while the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index was up a fraction of 1 percent.<br />American retailers are bracing for a bruising holiday season as Americans bargain-hunt and trim their budgets. Many have slashed their earnings outlooks and are offering deep discounts and "doorbuster" sales simply to entice shoppers into their stores.<br />Households continue to save more money as many Americans adjust to stagnant wages and reduced working hours and brace for the possibility of layoffs. The Commerce Department reported that personal savings increased 1 percent in November compared with 0.7 percent in October.<br />Personal incomes dropped by 0.2 percent last month after increasing 0.1 percent in October.<br />Meanwhile, weekly jobless claims continued to hit new highs, reflecting a bleak picture for American workers. Unemployment has risen 6.7 percent this year and employers cut 533,000 jobs in November.<br />The Labor Department reported on Wednesday that the number of people filing for unemployment insurance for the first time rose to 586,000 in the week ending on Dec. 20, up from a revised 556,000 a week earlier.<br />"The labor markets remain weak, that's the clear message," Maki said.<br />America's manufacturing sector marked another weak month, with new orders to factories for durable goods falling 1 percent to $186.9 billion, the Commerce Department reported. While it was the fourth consecutive month of declines, the drop was actually smaller than Wall Street's expectations of a 3-percent decline.<br />Helping to drive down that November number was a 37.7 percent drop in demand for commercial aircraft. Industrial production has declined 5.5 percent so far this year as automotive assembly lines shut down and home construction grinds to a near standstill.<br />The country's production of cars, machinery, furniture, appliances and a range of other goods has all tumbled this year, according to Federal Reserve data.<br />Many officials expect the economic downturn, already the longest since the Depression, to continue through 2009, and say that unemployment could reach 8 percent to 10 percent.<br />The Commerce Department reported on Tuesday that the economy shrank by 0.5 percent from July to September, and economists say the economy is now contracting at a rate of 4 to 6 percent.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>It's the end of the line for SUV plants in the United States<br /></strong>By Nick Bunkley and Bill Vlasic<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />JANESVILLE, Wisconsin: Even a U.S. government bailout could not save three of the last remaining plants in the United States still making sport utility vehicles.<br />Reeling from its financial problems and a collapsing SUV market, General Motors on Tuesday closed its factories in this city and in Moraine, Ohio, marking the passing of an era when big SUVs ruled the road. The moves followed the shutdown last Friday of Chrysler's factory in Newark, Delaware, which produced full-size SUVs.<br />The last Chevrolet Tahoe rolled off the line here in Janesville shortly after 7 a.m. in the 90-year-old plant, which had built more than 3.7 million big SUVs since the early 1990s.<br />Most of the plant's 1,100 remaining workers were not scheduled to work the final day, but many showed up for an emotional closing ceremony. Dan Doubleday, who had 22 years on the job, broke down in the plant's snowy parking lot afterward.<br />"I was a fork lift driver," he said, glancing at his watch through welling tears. "Until about seven minutes ago."<br />At the Mocha Moment coffee shop around the corner, two co-workers, Michael Berberich and Lisa Gonzalez, exchanged Christmas presents just as they had most years since they were both hired in 1986.<br />"For a while we had it made," Gonzalez said. "I just wish it would have lasted."<br />The fate of the Janesville, Moraine, and Newark plants was sealed this spring, when rising gas prices suddenly made SUVs unpopular, and long before President George W. Bush approved $17.4 billion in emergency loans last week to keep GM and Chrysler out of bankruptcy.<br />While the overall new vehicle market has dropped 16 percent so far this year, sales of big SUVs have plummeted 40 percent.<br />With consumers shifting rapidly to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, GM no longer needed to produce big SUVs in Janesville as well as in a plant in Texas.<br />Still, some Janesville workers felt GM broke a pledge in its 2007 contract with the United Automobile Workers to keep the factory running.<br />"We didn't deserve this," said John Dohner Jr., shop chairman at UAW Local 95. "We've all put a lot of hard work into trying to secure a future here."<br />Shrinking market shares have forced GM, Chrysler and the Ford Motor Company to close more than a dozen assembly plants and shed tens of thousands of workers in recent years. The moves have devastated communities from Georgia to New Jersey and from Michigan to Oklahoma.<br />Even so, GM and Chrysler are likely to close more manufacturing facilities as they overhaul their operations to meet conditions of the federal loans.<br />"The companies are moving very fast now to close plants, but it may be too little, too late," said John Casesa, a principal in the Casesa Shapiro Group, a consulting firm. "They're doing now what they should have done 15 or 20 years ago."<br />GM's Moraine plant was the last to build the midsize Chevrolet Blazers and GMC Envoys that were once among the best-selling vehicles in the country.<br />The Janesville factory built three of the biggest and most profitable vehicles in GM's lineup, the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban and GMC Yukon. The Chrysler plant in Newark also made big SUVs — the Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen.<br />Their closings leave the Big Three with only one factory each still devoted to making traditional big SUVs — Ford in Kentucky, GM in Texas, and Chrysler in Detroit.<br />The Janesville plant once employed more than 5,000 workers and turned out 20,000 Tahoes, Yukons and Suburbans each month. With its closing, residents worried about the future of this city of 64,000 people, about 75 miles southwest of Milwaukee.<br />"Janesville will lose a lot," said Patti Homan, as she finished a strawberry-topped waffle at the nearby Eagle Inn restaurant. "I expect my electricity to go up, water rates to go up, property taxes to go up, and the value of my home to go down."<br />Homan worked in the plant for 23 years, and her father, brother and husband all retired from the factory. "It's generation after generation for so many families here," she said.<br />The empty feelings in Janesville were echoed in Moraine, a suburb of Dayton and last week at the Chrysler plant in Newark.<br />More than 1,000 workers were laid off at the Moraine plant. Under terms of the UAW contract for all its members, they and the workers in Janesville and Newark will collect unemployment checks and payments from GM that together equal about 80 percent of their take-home pay.<br />But those payments will only last about a year. And with the UAW prepared to suspend its "jobs bank" program as a condition of the federal loans, there will be no safety net after that.<br />Some workers will have an opportunity to transfer to other plants. But with the industry contracting so quickly, there is little job security in making a move.<br />"I can't risk transferring," said David Williams, one of the remaining 1,100 workers at the Newark plant when it closed. "I don't want to go 1,200 miles away to get laid off again."<br />Williams installed a sunroof on the last Dodge Durango to come down the assembly line in Newark. Now he plans to take massage-therapy classes and pursue a new career far from the factory floor.<br />"Enough with the concrete," he said. "It's time for some carpet and climate control."<br />On the last day for the Newark plant, 84-year-old Woody Bevans unlocked the weight room at the UAW union hall and began brewing coffee for a handful of retirees who passed the time there.<br />A Texan who started work at the plant when it opened in 1952, Bevans recalled how the factory was first used to build tanks for the Korean War. He retired in 1983, but thought the plant would go on forever.<br />"We had hope right up until the last," Bevans said. "We're really going to feel it when it shuts down. There's a big chain reaction, believe me."<br />The University of Delaware is negotiating with Chrysler to buy the plant and redevelop the 270-acre site with academic buildings and a technology park.<br />After the plant closed, one of the workers, Merle Black, drove directly to a Delaware Department of Labor office and registered for job openings. He is hoping to become a heavy equipment operator, and possibly be involved in the demolition of the factory where he used to install airbag parts.<br />"If I can get in there to help take it apart, I don't mind," Black said. "That's where I spent the last 19 years. That's what I know."<br />The closing of an auto plant draws a crowd, with some people somber and nostalgic and others defiant and energized.<br />Outside the Janesville plant on Tuesday, a few workers posed for pictures in front of the building while others said their goodbyes as they loaded gear in their snow-covered SUVs.<br />One man had two small children with him on the last day. Another man wearing an orange ski mask waved a large American flag as departing workers drove by.<br />Many of the workers trudged over to a one-story, cinder-block building on the grounds of the factory, a bar called the Zoxx 411 Club. A sign said "customers only" and forbade reporters and media from entering.<br />Outside, a cluster of reporters, including a documentary film crew from Japan, tried to interview workers about the last days of the SUV plant.<br />"It's been a good ride, man," said Frank Hereford, a body shop worker, as he left the plant with a microwave oven that heated up countless lunches during many of his 38 years with GM "Good people worked down here."<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Ukraine faces gas cutoff over debt owed to Russia</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev sternly urged Ukraine on Wednesday to fully pay its $2.1 billion debt for Russian natural gas supplies or face sanctions, as a Jan. 1 deadline for payment loomed.<br />Medvedev's statement was the strongest indication to date that Ukraine may face a repeat of January 2006 cutoff of Russian gas shipments which led to a reduction of supplies in Europe. It will likely raise worries in the European Union, which depends on Russia for 40 percent of its gas imports.<br />"If Ukraine fails to pay, we will use a whole arsenal of possible measures, there must be no illusions on this score," Medvedev said in televised remarks. "They must pay the debt to the last ruble if they do not want their economy to face sanctions."<br />Russia's state gas monopoly Gazprom on Wednesday reaffirmed its warning to turn off the taps on Ukraine, if the neighbor doesn't pay off the entire debt by the end of the year.<br />Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said Ukraine's gas company Naftogaz told Gazprom officials that they wouldn't be able to pay the debt.<br />"We asked them a straight question — will you pay up by the end of the year and we received the answer 'no'," Kupriyanov said at a news conference. He said that Ukraine's debt for November and December together with fines amounts to some $2.1 billion.<br />Naftogaz declined to comment saying talks were still ongoing.<br />But in a sign that both countries did not want to upset European consumers, Kupriyanov voiced hope that Ukraine wouldn't siphon gas intended for Europe from a transit pipeline crossing its territory as it did three years ago. He said Ukraine this time has enough gas saved in storage facilities to fulfill its transit obligations.<br />Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko made a similar statement earlier in the day, saying that supplies to Europe would be uninterrupted, as Ukraine has some gas saved up.<br />Ukraine is scrambling for the money amid a devastating financial crisis and relentless political turmoil. The country is relying on a $16.4 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund to mitigate a meltdown as it buckles under a halving of exports and a sharp devaluation of the national currency.<br />The financial crisis is made worse by a messy tug-of-war between Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who accused the president Wednesday of seeking to usurp power by canceling upcoming presidential elections.<br />Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko has urged European countries to put pressure on Kiev to avoid a repeat of the 2006 gas war. The other transit country for Russian gas to Europe is Belarus.<br /><br />***************<br /><br /><strong>Toshiba to build lithium-ion battery plant</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />TOKYO: Toshiba said on Wednesday it would spend tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Japan to meet growing demand, pushing its shares up by as much as 6 percent.<br />The Japanese electronics maker plans to start producing its Super Charge ion Batteries (SCiBs) at the plant in the fall of 2010 with an initial output capacity of several million cells a month.<br />SCiBs can be recharged faster than conventional lithium-ion batteries and are less prone to catching fire, the company said.<br />Toshiba, which competes with bigger rivals Sanyo Electric and Sony in the rechargeable battery market, eventually plans to boost monthly capacity at the plant to more than 10 million cells.<br />The Nikkei business daily reported earlier that Toshiba would spend up to 30 billion yen (224.7 million pounds) to build the factory.<br />The Tokyo-based company already makes SCiBs at another Japanese plant, which has a monthly capacity of 150,000 cells.<br />A typical battery pack is made up of several battery cells.<br />Demand for lithium-ion batteries, widely used in mobile phones, digital cameras and laptop PCs, is expected to expand rapidly due to growing use of hybrid and electric vehicles.<br />Toshiba expects the global lithium-ion battery market to reach 1.7 trillion yen by the year ending in March 2016, and it aims to take at least 10 percent of that market.<br />Shares of Toshiba pared earlier gains and were up 1.6 percent at 322 yen in early afternoon trade, outperforming the Nikkei average , which fell 2.5 percent.<br />(Reporting by Ted Kerr, Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Chris Gallagher)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAeMk3AFWF6ns0mGeco4pQRyrKvUDLHmhfCr6e-4knXOuU5VcGRb8fg4NMTqi23CQpdlQDBLzWnuGYgMwEry6plqseHEZqrVRanTDPIellpvIR6HdSM47FHK_qFfF5z0DebDsf1jxdQh8/s1600-h/DSC04284.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971603440539922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAeMk3AFWF6ns0mGeco4pQRyrKvUDLHmhfCr6e-4knXOuU5VcGRb8fg4NMTqi23CQpdlQDBLzWnuGYgMwEry6plqseHEZqrVRanTDPIellpvIR6HdSM47FHK_qFfF5z0DebDsf1jxdQh8/s320/DSC04284.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Where a Yule log is so much more than Christmas cake</strong><br />By Steven Erlanger and Basil Katz<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />PARIS: There is an economic crisis here this Christmas, but you can't really see it. Paris glitters like a fashion model, lighted with flashing bulbs and studded with diamonds, drinking Champagne and eating cake.<br />Even if more of the jewels are rhinestones, it is only fitting — the Champagne company Moët et Chandon has a curvy bottle dressed in rhinestones, too, and not just any rhinestones: Swarovski crystal. The bottle can be yours, in an elegant chiller, for about $125.<br />"We are into the starification of the product, turning it into a gem," said Marie Mascré, who spent four years at the rival Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin and now runs a wine-marketing company. She pointed to a bottle of 1999 Piper-Heidsieck in a darkly illuminated window, with the word "Rare" running in sexily cursive letters on the shimmering bottle.<br />"These bottles represent a dream, a fantasy, imagination," she said. "You're almost no longer interested in the taste! Maybe you don't have access to a share on a private jet, but you can have your own little moment of luxury, of escape."<br />Every French holiday or celebration is associated with Champagne, but Christmas and New Year's represent a major part of the market, especially because a gift of Champagne is both easy and socially safe.<br />But Christmas is even more important for the Bûche de Noël, the Yule log popular wherever France put down its roots. It is traditionally a spongy cake bound with chocolate butter cream and decorated to look like a chunk of tree cut from the forest, often adorned with marzipan mushrooms and other bucolic delights, like spun sugar moss.<br />In Paris, however, the bûche is another opportunity for creativity, commerce, competition and consumption. Every bakery has bûches, large and small, but the big houses like Dalloyau and Lenôtre, and the artisan pastry and chocolate shops, like Jean-Paul Hévin and Pierre Hermé, all produce special bûches every year.<br />Of course, it's not just the endless variety of flavors but also the quality of the ingredients and the imagination of the designs. Some look like beds, others like suitcases or ice-cream bars. It can be a long way from the forest.<br />Lenôtre actually hires a prominent designer — this year, Hubert de Givenchy — to create a special bûche. Given that St. Hubert is the patron saint of hunters (and of mathematicians, by the way, but of course you knew that), Givenchy designed a cake with two stag heads at each end, cast in clear sugar like crystal, their antlers festooned with gold leaf like a Buddha and lighted from underneath by two tiny LED lamps that last 12 hours.<br />The flavor is chocolate, sourced from Tanzania, Ghana and São Tomé and Príncipe, with a hint of Earl Gray tea.<br />There is a golden ribbon of pulled sugar, "like Murano glass," and, of course, the Givenchy signature on a chocolate plaque. Don't forget the light dusting of 22-karat gold.<br />Only 700 are made for sale, and the cost is $160, compared to $60 to $75 for an "ordinary" Lenôtre bûche. The company, which also has a thriving catering business, expects to sell 15,000 bûches this Christmas.<br />At the high end is Jean-Paul Hévin, selling 2,500 to 3,000 bûches, including an odd and whimsical one of a woman's stiletto-heeled shoe made of chocolate, with even a small scuff mark at the heel, called the "Cinderella." It is filled with three round Christmas tree ornaments of red and gold, also made of chocolate. The price: a little over $100.<br />He also makes a Bûche Maison, in the shape of a house, with a chocolate roof, and smaller bûchettes looking like Eskimo ice-cream bars, with wooden sticks, and a Bûche du Voyage, with a red coating and a detailed handle somehow fashioned out of chocolate.<br />At 50, Hévin employs 70 people, having started 20 years ago with his wife and a third person. "We all want to create something special," he said. "But there is one rule above all, I have to take pleasure in it, and then my clients will find pleasure."<br />There are worries at the huge Parisian wine shop Lavinia, where more than 500 different kinds of Champagne from dozens of producers all compete for the festive euro. Wholesale Champagne sales turned down in October by 16.5 percent compared to last year, according to industry figures, but 2008 will be a good year, the buyers agree, if not quite the record sales of 338.7 million bottles in 2007.<br />"When things go well, people drink to celebrate, and when things go badly, they drink to console themselves," said Yannick Branchereau, Lavinia's director in France. Lavinia has a full range, but also stocks some of France's most revered Champagnes, like the 1982 Salon Blanc de Blancs, Le Mesnil, for $2,800, or the simple 1997 for $420, and Bollinger's 1999 Blanc de Noirs, made from some of the few vines that survived the phylloxera plague of the mid-19th century, for about $1,100.<br />Of course there are French scrooges appalled by all the excess.<br />Périco Legasse, the food critic, said angrily that prices now defined quality. "For Champagne we've arrived at these total price aberrations, and you have to dress them up to attract people's attention with the image, with fashion, with sex."<br />He hated the designer bûches, he said. "In selling these disgusting things at the price of gold, we are coming to the end of the system. This is the sub-primes transposed to consumption."<br />Raphaël Gimenez, the owner of Les Caprices de l'Instant, a wine store, exploded like, well, a shaken bottle of bubbly. "Champagne? Man, that's all about smashing the bottle on your Lamborghini or ripping a thousand-euro bill for the hell of it. It's party, show, not wine," he said. "With the collapse of the price of oil, of gas, of gold and of lead, this kind of crazy superficiality has to end. Why not just say we're broke, and that's it?"<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Humble souls, richly nourished</strong><br />By A. O. Scott<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />Slimane Beiji, the sad, still center of "The Secret of the Grain," Abdellatif Kechiche's bustling and brilliant new film, might be described as an accidental patriarch. A stubborn, taciturn immigrant from Tunisia, Slimane (Habib Boufares) has spent 35 years working in the shipyards of Sète, a rough little French port city on the Mediterranean coast.<br />The other members of his large, cantankerous family — his former wife, Souad (Bouraouïa Marzouk), and their assorted children and grandchildren — live mostly in a battered high-rise housing project. Slimane, meanwhile, keeps a modest room in the blue-collar hotel run by his lover, Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), and her 20-year-old daughter, Rym (the amazing Hafsia Herzi), on whom he dotes as if she were his own.<br />The chief token of his benevolence is the fish Slimane collects from his fisherman buddies and dutifully delivers on his motorbike to the important women in his life: Souad; his older daughter, Karima (Faridah Benkhetache); and Latifa. Their freezers are overflowing with the mullet that is, in Tunisian tradition, served with couscous, the grain of this film's title. (In France, where the movie won four César awards earlier this year, the secret is omitted, and the film is known simply as "La Graine et le Mulet.") When Souad cooks up a batch to feed various kids, friends and in-laws, she puts aside a serving for Slimane, who eats it in the spartan quarters he shares with a semimetaphorical caged bird.<br />Kechiche started out as an actor and has established himself, after directing three features ("La Faute à Voltaire" and "L'Esquive" before this one), as one of the most vital and interesting filmmakers working in France today. In "The Secret of the Grain" he immerses us in the hectic, tender, sometimes painful details of work and domesticity. The camera bobs and fidgets in crowded rooms full of noisy people, so that your senses are flooded with the warmth and stickiness of Slimane and Souad's family circle. The scenes, though they feel improvised, at times almost accidentally recorded, have a syncopated authenticity for which the sturdy old word realism seems inadequate.<br />Not many directors would linger so long, for example, over a toilet-training-related battle of wills between a mother and her 2-year-old, and then pause later to observe a discussion of the same subject among a group of adults at a party. But when Kechiche does just that, you may wonder why so few have bothered before. After all, the messy particulars of child rearing preoccupy every family in every culture and provide an inexhaustible vein of humor, anxiety and contention.<br />And the richness of "The Secret of the Grain" — the secret, as it were, of its deep and complex flavor — lies in the close, tireless, enthusiastic attention it pays to the most mundane daily tasks, especially those involving food.<br />The depth of Kechiche's humanism and his subtle insights into the political dimensions of ordinary experience link his film to the great works of late-period Neo-Realism, even if his anarchic methods have more in common with those of a post-'60s skeptical realist like Mike Leigh than with the old Italian masters. "The Secret of the Grain" is in some ways the descendant of a movie like "Rocco and His Brothers," Luchino Visconti's long, gloriously novelistic 1960 melodrama about a family of migrants that travels from southern Italy to work in the factories of the north.<br />In the background of "The Secret of the Grain" is a similar migration that began in the 1960s, when men and women like Slimane and Souad left the newly liberated North African French colonies to seek their fortunes in metropolitan France, a country they regarded as both benefactor and oppressor. In the decades since, France has reluctantly claimed them and their children as citizens, even as it has stigmatized and marginalized them, and this mutual ambivalence is the implicit subject of this movie and its unstated context. ( Kechiche was born in Tunis in 1960.)<br />But as he did in "L'Esquive," in which the exalted idiom of Classical French literature collided and commingled with the polyglot vernacular of the modern French suburbs, Kechiche declines to dole out obvious, easily assimilated lessons.<br />Life is just too complicated, too unpredictable, too hard and too fascinating. Even as Slimane's story is one of frustration and unfulfilled ambition — after his hours at the shipyard are cut back, he pursues the quixotic dream of converting an abandoned boat into a dockside couscous restaurant — "The Secret of the Grain" bursts with exuberance and irrepressible sensuality. This is mostly thanks to the women in the movie, who through charm, guile and sheer force of will turn the austere fable of their melancholy paterfamilias into a party. It is not that they are naturally carefree but rather that their cares are so tightly woven into their lives that the only practical alternative to despair is an unruly, militant joy.<br />Karima, Souad and Rym are at once Slimane's foils — their bodies are as curvy as his is gaunt, while their frank, abundant talk serves as counterpoint to his decorous silence — and the pillars on which he leans for support. They protect his dignity by declining to point out just how much he depends on them, and allowing him to believe that the opposite is true.<br />The pathos of Slimane's story (as well as the accomplishment of Boufares's performance) arises partly from the understanding that this man, so committed to the idea of his own strength and resilience, is in the end so fragile.<br />To put it in slightly different terms, you could say that Slimane's tragedy is that, having worked so hard for so long, he is left with so little. The couscous restaurant represents his last stand, his grand gesture of protest against a hard fate, and its opening night, teetering on the tightrope between triumph and calamity, is Kechiche's tour de force.<br />An entire family chronicle, along with four decades of French social and economic history, is recapitulated as a lavish, hectic dinner, complete with music and belly dancing. It will leave you stunned and sated, having savored an intimate and sumptuous epic of elation and defeat, jealousy and tenderness, life and death, grain and fish.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_dCr3EbJLQJlYIxXqoXdVz6_nIaZpfBqy72-De7XPouWF_7w7tN-vhj1o-lHIwngZOOWJVal-NiCWu6po3FLVLSbI57LtLB8FqBoqU-ayfttGgTENP8zQjt7rqQWCIpdTdCSkU1hneVc/s1600-h/DSC04285.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971600591092994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_dCr3EbJLQJlYIxXqoXdVz6_nIaZpfBqy72-De7XPouWF_7w7tN-vhj1o-lHIwngZOOWJVal-NiCWu6po3FLVLSbI57LtLB8FqBoqU-ayfttGgTENP8zQjt7rqQWCIpdTdCSkU1hneVc/s320/DSC04285.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Looking back, Bush and Cheney reveal different views</strong><br />By Sheryl Gay Stolberg<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been unusually talkative in recent weeks, sharing candid thoughts in a string of exit interviews. But after eight years of a tight partnership that gave Cheney powerful influence inside the White House, the two are sounding strikingly different notes as they leave office, especially on one of the most fundamental issues of their tenure: their aggressive response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.<br />Bush defends his decisions as necessary to keep the nation safe, yet sounds reflective, even chastened. He has expressed regrets about not achieving an overhaul of immigration laws and not changing the partisan tone in Washington. And the man who got tangled up in a question about whether he had made any mistakes — he could not come up with one in 2004 — recently told ABC News that he was "unprepared for war," and that "the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq."<br />Cheney, by contrast, is unbowed, defiant to the end. He called the Supreme Court "wrong" for overturning Bush policies on detainees at Guantánamo Bay; criticized his successor, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr.; and defended the harsh interrogation technique called waterboarding, considered by many legal authorities to be torture.<br />"I feel very good about what we did," the vice president told The Washington Times, adding, "If I was faced with those circumstances again, I'd do exactly the same thing."<br />The difference in tone, friends and advisers say, reflects a split over Bush's second-term foreign policy, which Cheney resisted as too dovish. It also reveals their divergent approaches to post-White House life. Bush, who is planning a public policy center in Dallas, is trying to shape his legacy by offering historians a glimpse of his thinking, while Cheney, primarily concerned about the terrorist threat, is setting the stage for a new role as a standard-bearer for conservatives on national security.<br />"The president's interviews are about creating a basis for historians to evaluate the context of his decisions differently, with more input from him," said Wayne Berman, who has advised Bush and is a longtime friend of Cheney. "Cheney is living in the moment of, 'There's a serious ongoing threat,' and I believe he sees himself more in a Churchill-like role, as the sentinel issuing the call for vigilance."<br />Bush and Cheney still have lunch together once a week, administration officials say, and the vice president remains the president's staunchest defender. But while Cheney has been "loyal to a fault," said John Bolton, the former ambassador to the United Nations whose views often reflect those of the vice president, he is also "increasingly in a beleaguered position."<br />In the first term, Cheney, backed by his close ally, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was then the defense secretary, was ascendant, and his views about the aggressive use of executive authority and military might held great sway. But after Bush fired Rumsfeld in 2006 — the only presidential decision Cheney has publicly disagreed with — the vice president took a back seat to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who pushed the president to pursue greater diplomacy with two countries he once called "rogue nations," Iran and North Korea.<br />"Our ability to explain what we've been doing in the national security field for eight years has been wholly inadequate," Bolton said, "and part of that is because too many high officials in the administration were embarrassed by the decisions. Cheney has never been embarrassed by it, and now, in the last months, he is freer to make the kind of forceful and emphatic case for it that others were unwilling to make."<br />Bush and Cheney appear to be giving more interviews than their recent predecessors. Dan Quayle, the last vice president not to seek the presidency while in office, gave three exit interviews; Cheney has so far given four. President Ronald Reagan gave five interviews during his last two months in office; President Bill Clinton gave seven. Bush has already given 10, to outlets as varied as Real Clear Politics, the Pentagon Channel, an Arabic television channel and a sportswriter for The Washington Post; the White House says more are to come.<br />Historians say presidents, especially those who serve two terms, often grow reflective at the end of their tenure. "They tend to be exhausted, they're worn out, they're trying to make some sense of their administrations, and there's a natural tendency for them to want to give their own perspective," said Jay Winik, who got to know Bush and Cheney after they read his book, "April 1865," an account of the closing month of the Civil War.<br />Never the introspective type, Bush has been freely answering "how do you feel" queries, which he once routinely dismissed as "goo-goo questions," said his first press secretary, Ari Fleischer. He has also used his interviews to reveal his softer side. He has spoken of "my relationship with the Good Lord," joked about his wife's cooking and spotlighted social programs he regards as achievements, like education reform and his global plan to fight AIDS.<br />If he has criticisms of President-elect Barack Obama, Bush has not shared them; rather, he has hewed to the Bush family credo of graciousness in departure or defeat. ("I think he's discovered his inner Bush," Berman, the adviser, said.) He also opened the door to a possible role for himself in the Obama presidency, citing his own decision to ask his father, the first President Bush, and Clinton to spearhead a fund-raising effort for tsunami victims.<br />"President-elect Obama, I am confident, will call upon presidents to take on a mission," Bush told C-Span. "I will be happy to do it, particularly if I agree with the mission."<br />Cheney has been less diplomatic. Like Bush, he has praised Obama for keeping Robert Gates as defense secretary. But on "Fox News Sunday" this week, Cheney shot back at Biden for calling him "the most dangerous vice president in history." And asked by The Washington Times for his advice for Obama, Cheney talked of the importance of personnel decisions, then volunteered, "Senator Clinton as secretary of state — I would never pick her to be my secretary of state."<br />Both men say they look forward to private life. For Cheney, who has served in four Republican administrations, transitions are nothing new. "It's not my first time at the rodeo," he told The Washington Times.<br />Bush, who became Texas governor 14 years ago, told ABC News that he was eager to "live life without the limelight." Yet both will have more to say. Cheney is likely to write a book. Bush is contemplating a farewell address, and says he will definitely write a book, to give Americans, as he told The Washington Times, "one man's point of view that happened to be in the center of it all."<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Names of those Bush pardoned</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />In addition to issuing a posthumous pardon to Charles Winters, Bush granted 18 other pardons and one commutation on Tuesday.<br />Pardons were given to:<br />William Alvis III, Flushing, Ohio, possession of an unregistered firearm and cocaine distribution<br />John Aregood, Riviera, Texas, conspiracy to harbor and transport illegal aliens<br />Eric Blanke, Parker, Colorado, counterfeiting<br />Steve Cavender, The Villages, Florida, conspiring to import, possess, distribute and dispense marijuana<br />Marie Eppens, Lynden, Washington, conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute marijuana<br />Lydia Ferguson, Sun City, Arizona, aiding and abetting possession of stolen mail<br />Eduviges Gonzalez-Matsumura, Clovis, California, aiding and abetting embezzlement of bank money<br />George Greene Jr., Gray, Georgia, mail fraud<br />James Won Hee Kang, South Barrington, Illinois, trafficking in counterfeit goods<br />Alan Maiss, Reno, Nevada, concealing knowledge of a crime<br />Richard Miller, Tallahassee, Florida, conspiracy to defraud the United States<br />Delano Nixon, Neosho Rapids, Kansas, forging the endorsement on a United States. Treasury check<br />John Overholt, Black Hawk, South Dakota, concealment of information affecting Social Security benefits<br />Morris Parker, Georgetown, South Carolina, concealing knowledge of a crime<br />Robert Reece, Redondo Beach, California, unauthorized absence and missing the movement of a navy ship<br />Donald Roessler, Harrison, Ohio, embezzlement of mail matter<br />Issac Toussie, Brooklyn, New York, false statements to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and mail fraud<br />David Woolsey, St. George, Utah, aiding and abetting violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.<br />Bush commuted the prison sentence of Reed Prior of Des Moines, who was convicted of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>A new spotlight on Libby, the name not on the pardon list</strong><br />By Neil A. Lewis<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The most notable feature of the Justice Department file containing hundreds of formal applications beseeching President George W. Bush to be merciful and grant some sort of clemency before he leaves office may be the one name that is not there.<br />I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has not applied for a pardon, Justice Department officials have said. Libby was convicted of four felony counts in March 2007 for his role in the investigation of the leak of Valerie Wilson's employment with the Central Intelligence Agency.<br />Libby, known as Scooter, has been at the top of the speculative lists that accompany the holiday season, especially in the last year of a presidency, of who might receive a White House gift of clemency, which can take the form of an outright pardon or a commutation of a sentence. Bush had already used his constitutional authority in July 2007 to commute Libby's sentence, wiping out the 30-month prison term imposed by a judge, but leaving intact the conviction and lesser penalties including a $250,000 fine.<br />The conviction means that Libby cannot practice law because he had to surrender his bar membership. Many of his friends have hoped that he might be given a pardon on top of the commutation, not only to allow him to practice law but also to wipe out what they regard as an injustice. Libby was not convicted of leaking Wilson's name, but of obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who were looking into the disclosure of her identity.<br />He became the most senior White House official convicted of a felony since the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration.<br />Since his conviction, Libby has spent his working days as a senior adviser at the Washington office of the Hudson Institute, a policy research organization. Kenneth Weinstein, the organization's chief executive, said Libby had been an invaluable asset.<br />"Everyone here has immense admiration and respect for him," Weinstein said. Libby had advised the institute's fellows on an array of issues, he said, notably the future of Asia, northeast Asian security and terrorism.<br />Although he began working at the institute after his conviction, he took a furlough to fulfill a sentencing obligation of 400 hours of community service at a local organization that provides shelter and support for homeless families and adults. Court officials said his duties from September 2007 to February 2008 involved assisting people in finding shelter and helping the group draft an emergency preparedness plan.<br />Hudson officials would not disclose Libby's salary, which is being underwritten by several of his friends and supporters. Libby declined to comment.<br />Although Libby has not applied for a pardon through Justice Department channels, there is nothing that would bar Bush from using his constitutional authority to grant one.<br />But many in Washington, including one Republican lawyer with a deep knowledge of the pardon process and its politics, said it would be surprising if Bush did so. For one thing, these people said, when Bush commuted Libby's sentence he made a point of saying his action had made the results of the trial just.<br />"The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant and private citizen will be long-lasting," Bush said at the time. "I respect the jury's verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."<br />In one sign that Libby's allies may be lobbying on his behalf, The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial on Tuesday called on Bush to give him a full pardon. "In this dark episode, an honest man became the fall guy in a larger political war over the war," the editorial said.<br />To grant a pardon, especially given that Libby has not asked for one publicly, would most likely expose Bush to criticism that he had shown undue favoritism and was exploiting his authority just before departing the White House. When President Bill Clinton left office eight years ago, he was barraged with criticism for the pardons of 140 people he issued in his final hours including Marc Rich, a fugitive financier whose former wife, Denise Rich, had been a major contributor to Clinton causes.<br />Rich had not applied formally to the Justice Department but had representatives take up the matter directly with the White House.<br />While Libby has not put in an application, the roster of those who have filed with the Justice Department includes other notable names including Michael Milken, the former junk bond king turned philanthropist; Edwin Edwards, a former Democratic governor of Louisiana; John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, and Marion Jones, the former Olympic sprinter.<br />Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, is barred from applying to the Justice Department for clemency involving his recent conviction for violating ethics laws because he has not been sentenced yet. Bush could, however, issue a pre-emptive pardon or commutation of sentence for Stevens.<br />Bush has been more sparing in his authority to grant some kind of clemency than most recent presidents. The beneficiaries of his decisions have typically been people without any public profile who were convicted of minor crimes.<br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>SEC chief defends response to economic turmoil</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox, responding to heavy criticism, said in an interview published on Wednesday he takes pride in his response to the U.S. financial crisis.<br />"What we have done in this current turmoil is stay calm, which has been our greatest contribution -- not being impulsive, not changing the rules willy-nilly, but going through a very professional and orderly process that takes into account unintended consequences and gives ample notice to market participants," Cox told The Washington Post.<br />This caution "has really been a signal achievement for the SEC," said Cox.<br />"When these gale-force winds hit our markets, there were panicked cries to change any and every rule of the marketplace: 'Let's try this. Let's try that.' What was needed was a steady hand," he said.<br />The SEC, created after the 1929 stock market crash to police markets and restore investor confidence, has come under heavy criticism after the Wall Street meltdown and financial scandals exposed lapses in its oversight.<br />Cox last week acknowledged that the SEC had failed to detect the alleged $50 billion (33.8 billion pound) fraud by disgraced Wall Street investment manager Bernard Madoff, despite many warnings.<br />Cox told The Washington Post the biggest mistake of his tenure was agreeing in September to an extraordinary three-week ban on short selling of financial company stocks.<br />Cox told the newspaper he had been under intense pressure from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to take this action and did so reluctantly.<br />They "were of the view that if we did not act and act at that instant, these financial institutions could fail as a result and there would be nothing left to save," Cox said.<br />Cox, a former California Republican congressman, argued that the SEC has carefully defined responsibilities and that it was unfair to blame it for every problem on Wall Street.<br />Cox became SEC chairman in mid-2005. He plans to step down early next year before his five-year term expires.<br />President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Mary Schapiro, chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and a former SEC commissioner, to replace him.<br />(Reporting by Joanne Allen; Editing by Alan Elsner)<br /><br />************************<br /><br /><strong>Russia's liberal opposition loses its voice<br /></strong>By Clifford J. Levy<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin was sitting behind his desk. Before him was a prominent opposition leader named Nikita Belykh, a beefy and bearded liberal with a fondness for scribbling poems on the side. In one, each stanza began with a word that he said characterized Putin's Russia: Autocratic. One-Party. Authoritarian. Aggressive.<br />Yet there Belykh was, ready to abandon it all.<br />Putin had invited Belykh to his office on Dec. 5 to make an offer. Renounce the opposition. Come work for the Kremlin.<br />Belykh was feeling beaten down, "a sense of my own degradation," as he explained in an interview last week.<br />He said he was tired of being vilified in the state-controlled news media, of being hounded by the state security forces, of being arrested at demonstrations, of having his political party thwarted at every turn.<br />And so Belykh, 33, who represented the future of the liberal opposition, said yes. He accepted an appointment as one of the Kremlin's regional governors, turning his back on his party allies and becoming emblematic of the opposition's difficulties this year.<br />A man who had once declared, "I have no intention of doing deals with the Kremlin" was doing just that. His turnabout raised a stark question for those he left behind. If Nikita Belykh cannot take it, who can?<br />"When you have nothing at all, when you cannot even get close in the elections, when all your paths are being cut off, then you just can't have a political party," Belykh said.<br />"A year or two ago, I still had hopes of the possibility of a certain public political life. The elections of 2007 and 2008 showed that those were just illusions."<br />With Belykh's appointment and the liberal opposition in disarray, some of its leaders have sought to band together in a new movement, called Solidarity after the Polish anti-Communist movement. It is being organized by Garry K. Kasparov, the former chess champion, and Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister.<br />The two have said they will attract a following from Russians disgruntled by the Kremlin's handling of the financial crisis. Still, political analysts said the movement had little public support, and it has already become ensnared in disputes with other liberal factions.<br />"The problem that Solidarity faces is that while many of its criticisms are true, its leaders are not perceived by the vast majority of the population as representing the average person's interests," said Boris Makarenko, chairman of the Center for Political Technologies, a research organization in Moscow.<br />In the fall, Belykh said he would embrace Solidarity. Then the message arrived from the Kremlin.<br />Belykh's pact with the Kremlin was a milestone in its lengthy campaign to all but stamp out the liberal opposition. Polls show that roughly 10 to 20 percent of Russians back the agenda of the liberals, which includes a pro-Western, free-market orientation and far less government regulation of industry and the news media.<br />Even so, the party that Belykh used to lead, the Union of Right Forces, received only 1 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections last year, after being subjected to intense pressure by the government. It did not even run a candidate in the presidential election this year. In October, the party disbanded.<br />From its remains, the Kremlin created a new party, the Right Cause. The party is intended to espouse liberal ideas and serve as an outlet for public discontent caused by the financial crisis without challenging the Kremlin's authority.<br />The new party's leaders said they had no choice but to agree to exist under the Kremlin's umbrella. They said that these days, liberals must cooperate if they wanted to attain even modest success in Russia — meaning the ability to raise money for campaigns and garner a few seats in the national and regional legislatures.<br />"It's a shame, it's a very negative thing, but it's reality," said Leonid Gozman, a former leader of the Union of Right Forces who leads the new party. His arm was broken by the police during a demonstration last year.<br />The new party points up the wide-ranging control that the Kremlin has established over the political system. It now oversees the dominant governing party, United Russia; a populist-socialist party, called A Just Russia, that it set up to siphon votes from the Communist Party; and the Right Cause.<br />Belykh did not join the Right Cause, calling it an imitation of an opposition party. Still, in hindsight, his former colleagues said, the damage was done when Belykh agreed to abolish the Union of Right Forces. "People are bought here, people are easily corrupted," said Maria Gaidar, a former senior official of the Union of Right Forces. "To be in the opposition is very difficult in Russia, when you don't have support and money, and you don't see any clear future. Nikita is quite a sensitive and romantic person, but when it comes to his career, he is very cynical and pragmatic."<br />Belykh was holding court last week in the lobby of the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel in Moscow, where the coffee is $10 a cup, meeting with officials and others to prepare for his new life. He is soon to move 500 miles to the east to become governor of Kirov, an economically depressed region.<br />He was wearing a purple buttoned-down shirt, jeans and hiking boots. On a table was a notebook in which he composes poetry. He often sends text messages with snippets of verse to his friends' cellphones.<br />He said he had been stung though not surprised that some opposition politicians had called him a traitor. He sought to explain his decision by arguing that he could do more good by working with the Kremlin. He said he would prove that someone with progressive ideas could succeed in the government.<br />"There should be no fighting for the sake of fighting," he said. "There should be results, a change in the situation in the country."<br />Despite all his attacks on the Kremlin in recent years, he refrained from criticizing Putin, the former president and the current prime minister, and his protégé, President Dmitri A. Medvedev. He suggested that by appointing him, they were seeking to be more inclusive.<br />Asked about the future of the liberal opposition, he said, "Of course, it will be difficult for them."<br />Aleksei Pavlov, a Kremlin spokesman, said Belykh was appointed not because of politics but because he was considered a good manager. Pavlov said Belykh had demonstrated his skills when he served in 2004 and 2005 as a vice governor in Perm, a region near Kirov.<br />"This was a good argument for him to receive the job," Pavlov said.<br />Governors in Russia used to be popularly elected, but Putin did away with that system beginning in 2005, seeking to centralize authority. The president now chooses governors, who are supposed to enforce political order in the regions and round up votes for the ruling party in elections.<br />Belykh insisted that he would not play that role. He said he had told Putin and Medvedev that he would not enter the governing party. They agreed, but only if Belykh did not help the opposition.<br />"Do you understand that your work is focused on managing the region, and not on political statements on behalf of a political party?" Putin asked, according to Belykh.<br />Belykh's former allies said he was being either naïve or disingenuous. They questioned what he would do if the opposition tried to conduct protests in Kirov and the security services wanted to disrupt them.<br />Belykh responded that he would abide by the law, saying that above all, he would be an apolitical governor. When asked whether he would vote for Putin or Medvedev in the next presidential election, Belykh, who typically talks very fast, paused and seemed to choose his words cautiously.<br />"Ah, tough question, yes?" he said. "I don't see any alternative. Given the political landscape, there is nobody else."<br /><br /><br />************************<br /><br /><strong>Madoff dealings tarnish a private Swiss bank</strong><br />By Nelson D. Schwartz<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />PARIS: For generations, the calling card of Swiss private bankers has been the promise of prudence and discretion.<br />Now, as the links between Bernard Madoff and elite private banks like Geneva-based Union Bancaire Privée emerge, this well-polished reputation has been tarnished by the $50 billion Ponzi scheme that Madoff has been arrested for and accused of running.<br />L'Affaire Madoff, as it has become known here and in Geneva, has cast an unwanted spotlight onto the normally shadowy world of private bankers in Switzerland and other cozy hiding places of offshore wealth, like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg.<br />And while there are many Swiss victims in terms of total exposure, UBP is the best-known private bank to get hit, with $700 million of its clients' money invested with Madoff.<br />Founded in 1969 by Edgar de Picciotto, UBP quickly became a giant in the conservative world of Swiss banking, where partnerships like Pictet and Lombard Odier stretch back more than 200 years.<br />With assets of $125 billion and a client base of wealthy individuals, families and institutions that reach from Qatar to Uruguay to Russia and throughout Europe, it is one of Switzerland's biggest pipelines for channeling client money into hedge funds worldwide.<br />About six years ago, that business, known as a fund of funds, began to rake in larger fees when it decided to set up a vehicle called M-Invest Ltd to funnel cash to Madoff's firm.<br />Through this relationship, UBP claimed it was able to gain close insight into Madoff's investment operations, through copies of trade tickets and an unusual degree of access granted by Madoff himself to UBP's representatives, according to a confidential internal letter sent to investors on Dec. 17, obtained by The New York Times.<br />The memorandum, while seeking to reassure investors, could raise questions about why UBP, unlike others who claimed to have seen red flags, did not use its access to delve more deeply into the unusually consistent annual returns that Madoff's funds were reporting.<br />According to the memo, "We have met with Bernard Madoff and various principals several times at Madoff's office, twice within the last year, and have had numerous conversations in between." The letter stated that several of UBP's senior investment professionals met with Madoff in 2004 and 2007, and that UBP's structured risk analysis unit "had a full review in 2006 and recently in 2008 with Madoff himself."<br />The UBP letter acknowledges some concerns over how Madoff's firm combined investment management and brokerage services. But the Geneva bank said it "found comfort" in the fact that the firm was subject to "routine" audits by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Finra, another securities regulator, as well as "Madoff's longstanding reputation in building Wall Street's markets infrastructure." M-Invest was regulated by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, where it was incorporated.<br />UBP was also closely tied to Fairfield Greenwich Group, the New York investment company that was the single biggest gatherer of money for Madoff, sending $7.3 billion his way and collecting more than $500 million in fees as a result.<br />Michael de Picciotto, a nephew of the founder and a top executive of UBP, is a close friend of Andrés Piedrahita, a son-in-law of Walter Noel, the founder of Fairfield Greenwich. Piedrahita played a key role in raising much of the money from Europe and South America that ended up with Madoff.<br />UBP was the also main investment adviser, custodian and leverage provider to Fairfield's huge fund of funds business and De Picciotto in turn was a key adviser to Fairfield, according to an internal document prepared by Fairfield last year for a potential buyer of the firm. In addition, UBP is listed as the sixth-largest investor in Fairfield's funds, for which the bank provided "qualitative and quantitative research and operational due diligence," according to the letter.<br />At one point, the letter boasted that De Picciotto could provide insight into UBP's investment and asset allocation strategy. Through these connections, UBP became entwined with Madoff's investments even as competitors like Société Générale, which turned up a series of red flags during routine due diligence in 2003 at Madoff's New York headquarters, steered clear.<br />"Ultimately, these people were blind to what was going on," said Michel Dominicé, a veteran Geneva hedge fund manager with $200 million under management.<br />He said the links between UBP, Fairfield Greenwich and Madoff, as well as the hundreds of millions in fees the firms earned by steering money to Madoff investments, pointed to conflicts of interests that penalize investors.<br />Dominicé was himself approached by a salesman for Madoff investments three years ago but declined to invest, saying he could not figure out how Madoff earned such steady returns, month after month. "It just didn't make sense," he said.<br />As for the fees earned by UBP and Fairfield Greenwich, Dominicé said: "If you're nasty, you call it corruption. If you want to be more polite, you can call it a lack of professional consciousness."<br />A spokesman for UBP declined to comment. But Christophe Bernard, a top executive responsible for asset management at UBP, told a Swiss newspaper last week: "We did what was necessary."<br />As recently as Nov. 25, representatives of UBP met with Madoff himself in New York according to the interview, which appeared in Le Temps, a Geneva newspaper. "So how can we be reproached?," Bernard asked. "We are victims of a massive fraud, like several other banks and financial companies throughout the world."<br />He went on to defend the bank's financial soundness and said UBP, which did not invest in Madoff's fund on its own behalf, was "not affected and remains top class."<br />To be sure, $700 million in exposure cited by UBP is only a tiny fraction of the $125 billion under management by the bank. UBP also reported a $331 million gross profit in the first half of 2008, up 5.8 percent from a year ago.<br />But for UBP, the headlines have cast a shadow on a reputation that seemed to soar as high as the nearby Alps.<br />For all of its growth — UBP has roughly 1,300 employees worldwide — the bank remains a family affair. Edgar de Picciotto is the chairman and principal shareholder, although he has given day-to-day responsibilities to his son Guy de Picciotto, the chief executive, and several other family members.<br />On Tuesday, as many Swiss bankers prepared to head for the slopes for vacation until after New Year's, a Christmas tree glimmered beside the gold colored entrance to UBP, where visitors are greeted in a reception area of black marble, red leather benches and a large golden globe.<br />In the tight-knit world of Swiss wealth management, experts acknowledged it was a public relations disaster for UBP, but defended the bank's decision-making.<br />"It's not the kind of publicity you seek," said Michel Derobert, secretary general of the Swiss Private Bankers Association. Because it is a private corporation rather than a partnership, Derobert's association does not include UBP, but works with the bank from time to time.<br />"It's not nice," he said. "But it would be surprising in a city like Geneva, where people take of care of clients who seek low risk and steady returns, not to be affected by this kind of case."<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Financier is found dead in a Madoff aftermath</strong><br />By Zachery Kouwe and Michael Wilson<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />Around 4 a.m. on Monday, a prominent hedge fund manager who apparently had lost $1.4 billion with Bernard Madoff, telephoned a longtime client in Paris, sounding upset.<br />"I have to fight for my clients and myself," the money manager, R. Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, told the client, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of investigations into the $50 billion Ponzi scheme Madoff is suspected of orchestrating. "It's a complete nightmare."<br />A little more than 24 hours later, De la Villehuchet was found dead in his office on Madison Avenue. The evidence pointed to suicide, the police said on Tuesday.<br />Security officers discovered the body of De la Villehuchet, a co-founder of Access International Advisors, in a chair, with one of his legs propped on his desk. His wrists and his left biceps were slashed, said Paul Browne, a New York police spokesman. A wastebasket had been placed under his bleeding biceps, Browne said.<br />No suicide note was found, but sleeping pills and a box cutter were discovered under his desk.<br />De la Villehuchet, 65, was in his office at 7 p.m. on Monday and had asked the cleaning staff to clean up early because he would be working late.<br />Later that evening, one of the firm's partners asked a security guard to see if De la Villehuchet was still in his office, but the door was locked, and the guard had no key, the police said.<br />During the last week, as the scale of the scheme came to light, De la Villehuchet had tried unsuccessfully to recover his clients' money, the client said. De la Villehuchet told the client in Paris on Monday morning that he felt that he had betrayed clients and friends.<br />"He said he felt robbed," the client said.<br />A native of the Brittany region of France, De la Villehuchet was described by friends as a man who was devoted to his firm. He founded Access International Advisors in 1994 with Patrick Littaye after his tenure as chairman and chief executive of the United States investment banking arm of the French bank Crédit Lyonnais.<br />De la Villehuchet, an avid sailor and a member of the New York Yacht Club, lived in Westchester County with his wife. The couple also owned a home in Brittany. No one responded to a telephone call to De la Villehuchet's home or to messages left at Access International's offices.<br />Early Tuesday afternoon, several reporters and photographers gathered in front of the narrow entrance to Access International's office on Madison Avenue, a few blocks from Rockefeller Center.<br />Access International is one of several so-called feeder funds that funneled money from investors across the globe into Madoff's collapsed firm. The news of De la Villehuchet's death came as investors in other feeder funds with exposure to Madoff, including Fairfield Greenwich Group and Tremont Group Holdings, began suing those funds alleging negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.<br />Access International managed $3 billion, but its Luxalpha American Selection fund invested all of its assets with Madoff. In a letter to fund investors last week, the New York-based firm called Madoff's arrest "a shocking development" and said it was assessing the situation.<br />Investors in the Luxalpha fund were mostly wealthy European clients of Rothschild investment bank and UBS, which was the custodian and administrator of the Luxalpha fund until this year, when Access International took over.<br />UBS has said that wealthy European clients, attracted by Madoff's stellar returns, had asked the bank to set up a fund to invest with him.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Obama report outlines talks on Senate seat<br /></strong>By Jeff Zeleny<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />HONOLULU: In the days after Barack Obama's election as president, Rahm Emanuel, a top adviser, suggested to Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois that Obama's Senate seat should be filled by Valerie Jarrett, a confidante of Obama.<br />In that same week, as word of her potential interest in the Senate seat spread throughout the Chicago political world, Jarrett spoke with a labor union official in Illinois who said he had spoken to the governor about the possibility of appointing her to the seat. During that conversation, the union leader mentioned that Blagojevich had his eye on a possible cabinet position in the Obama administration.<br />The contact was among the findings of an internal report released Tuesday, compiled by lawyers for the president-elect. The report concluded that Emanuel had as many as six conversations with the governor's office about the Senate vacancy, but that Obama had none, and that neither Emanuel, Jarrett, nor any other Obama associates had any talks about a deal in which Blagojevich would benefit from appointing someone to the Senate seat.<br />Blagojevich was charged by federal prosecutors in Chicago this month on a variety of corruption counts, including an alleged effort to trade the appointment to the Senate seat for a job or money. The report also disclosed that Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett were questioned by federal prosecutors last week in the corruption inquiry of the governor. Obama's two-hour interview took place in his Chicago office, aides said, and he was not under oath or considered more than a witness in the case.<br />Obama did not speak about the matter on Tuesday. He continued his vacation in Hawaii, where he attended a memorial service for his grandmother, who died just before the election.<br />Jarrett, a longtime Chicago friend of the Obama family who will serve as a senior adviser in the White House, had no communication with Blagojevich or his aides, the report said. But it said that three days after the election, she spoke with Tom Balanoff, president of the Illinois chapter of the Service Employees International Union, about the Senate seat and the governor's ambitions to serve in the Obama administration as secretary of health and human services.<br />This conversation, outlined for the first time, could be of interest in the criminal case against Blagojevich, who was recorded on the same day as the Jarrett-Balanoff meeting in wiretapped phone calls expressing an interest in a job with an arm of the union in exchange for a possible Senate appointment. According to an affidavit, Blagojevich was also captured on tape that day telling an unidentified adviser that he was willing to "trade" the appointment for the cabinet post.<br />"Ms. Jarrett did not understand the conversation to suggest that the governor wanted the cabinet seat as a quid pro quo for selecting any specific candidate to be the president-elect's replacement," Greg Craig, who has been designated by Obama as his White House counsel, wrote in the report. "At no time did Balanoff say anything to her about offering Blagojevich a union position."<br />The Obama transition team delayed the report's release at the request of Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who wanted to interview prospective witnesses before it was made public. The delay prolonged questions on whether any Obama aides acted improperly in dealing with the governor's office.<br />In the conversations with Blagojevich immediately after the election, Emanuel recommended Jarrett for the Senate seat, the report said, a position that later turned out to be contrary to Obama's wishes.<br />"In those early conversations with the governor, Emanuel recommended Valerie Jarrett because he knew she was interested in the seat," the report said. "He did so before learning, in further conversations with the president-elect, that the president-elect had ruled out communicating a preference for any one candidate."<br />Emanuel was not available to answer a reporter's questions on Tuesday, aides said, because he had left for a planned holiday trip to Africa with his family.<br />The report suggested that Obama had been more involved in thinking about his Senate successor than his public statements about the topic had indicated.<br />The report said that after Jarrett took herself out of the running for the Senate seat, citing Obama's preference that she work for him in the White House, Obama authorized Emanuel to pass on the names of four people he considered highly qualified to take over his seat: Daniel Hynes, the state comptroller; Tammy Duckworth, the state veterans affairs director; and Representatives Jan Schakowsky and Jesse Jackson Jr., Chicago Democrats.<br />Obama later offered two other names, it said: Attorney General Lisa Madigan of Illinois and the Chicago Urban League president, Cheryle R. Jackson.<br />Those names were passed along by Emanuel in four calls to John Harris, the governor's chief of staff, from early November through Dec. 8, one day before Blagojevich and Harris were arrested.<br />Emanuel, an Illinois congressman, was one of the few members of Obama's inner circle who had a working relationship and talked occasionally with Blagojevich. But his contact with the governor was "totally appropriate," Craig told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.<br />The only other name mentioned in the report was Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close friend of Obama, who was approached by a Blagojevich aide immediately after the election. The aide, the report said, "wanted to know who, if anyone, had the authority to speak for the president-elect."<br />"The president-elect told Dr. Whitaker that no one was authorized to speak for him on the matter," the report said. "The president-elect said that he had no interest in dictating the result of the selection process, and he would not do so, either directly or indirectly."<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>A Kennedy juggernaut? Not quite, some Democrats say<br />By Nicholas Confessore</strong><br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />ALBANY: Resistance is emerging among Democratic officials against Caroline Kennedy as she pursues Hillary Rodham Clinton's seat in the United States Senate, with Governor David Paterson bristling over suggestions that her selection is inevitable, according to his advisers, and other leading Democrats concerned that she is too beholden to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.<br />The governor is frustrated and chagrined, the advisers said, because he believes that he extended Kennedy the chance to demonstrate her qualifications but that her operatives have exploited the opportunity to convey a sense that she is all but appointed already. He views this as an attempt to box him in, the advisers said.<br />"You have people going around saying, 'Oh yeah, it's a done deal,' " said one of the advisers, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the selection process and did not want to anger the governor. "The quickest way to not get something you want is to step into somebody's face."<br />The governor's frustration follows reports last week that Kevin Sheekey, a top deputy for Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has been advising Kennedy, had called a labor leader and told him that Kennedy was going to be senator, "so get on board now," and that a member of Senator Edward Kennedy's staff was helping Caroline Kennedy reach out to unions.<br />It was not clear on Tuesday whether the governor's reaction would seriously damage Kennedy's chances to win the appointment or if it merely reflected Paterson's desire to regain control of the selection process after Kennedy's very public political debut.<br />But Kennedy's ties to Bloomberg's political team and her waffling over whether she would support a Democrat in next year's mayoral race appear to be angering some Democrats. On Tuesday, Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, became the most senior elected official in the state to say that that Paterson should not select Kennedy to the Senate seat.<br />"If I were the governor, I would look and question whether this is the appointment I would want to make, whether her first obligation might be to the mayor of the City of New York rather than the governor who would be appointing her," Silver said during an interview on WGDJ, an Albany radio station.<br />Silver has long had a testy relationship with Bloomberg, fueled by battles over mayoral initiatives like congestion pricing.<br />A spokeswoman for Kennedy declined to comment. Kennedy's advisers, speaking anonymously because they did not want to inflame the situation further, rejected any suggestion that they had portrayed her selection as inevitable and insisted that they had been respectful of the governor's desire for a decorous selection process.<br />The criticism over her bid has also frustrated those advisers, who feel that Kennedy has been whiplashed by assertions that she is at once protected and presumptuous. Both the governor and Kennedy's advisers appear to have been thrown, in part, by Kennedy's overwhelming personal celebrity.<br />Kennedy made dozens of calls to elected officials and other leaders to build interest in her candidacy, and many of those with whom she spoke call her thoughtful and self-effacing.<br />But her refusal to say over the weekend whether she would back a Democratic candidate next year, when Bloomberg will seek re-election as an independent, set off intense reaction among some in the party.<br />A follow-up statement — in which her spokesman, Stefan Friedman, said that Kennedy "fully intends to support the Democratic nominee" — did not assuage those concerns.<br />Moreover, her ties to Bloomberg's operatives have aroused suspicions among Democrats and labor officials that she would be beholden to the mayor. Kennedy hired the consulting firm Knickerbocker SKD, which includes Bloomberg as one of its biggest clients.<br />Those suspicions appeared to be compounded by a comment Bloomberg made on Monday defending Kennedy and suggesting that, though the choice was Paterson's, the governor should move quickly to select a replacement for Clinton, who is expected to be confirmed next month as secretary of state.<br />"We didn't tell him to hurry up on term limits," said another Paterson adviser, referring to Bloomberg's move this fall in which he marshaled votes on the City Council to nullify a city referendum so that he could run for another term.<br />In a conference call on Tuesday, Paterson, who was traveling, declined to address Silver's or Bloomberg's comments. But he reiterated that he had made no selection and would not do so until Clinton was confirmed.<br />"What I'm trying to keep away from is lobbying, coercion and distracting information," he said. He added later: "I don't feel rushed by any of this process. I have said from the very beginning what I thought the right way to do this would be."<br />Silver also praised several other potential appointees to the Senate seat, including Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general. Should Paterson pick Cuomo, the Legislature would be responsible for choosing his successor, and Silver would have by far the most influence over that choice.<br />A spokesman for Silver declined to say whether the speaker had consulted with Paterson before speaking publicly about Kennedy.<br />Even some of Kennedy's potential rivals for the seat expressed some sympathy for her quandary.<br />"Any true Democrat loves Caroline Kennedy," said Thomas Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, who has said he is also interested in the Senate appointment. "I think the way that her handlers and strategists are pushing her and trying to box in the governor is damaging the reputation of someone that we all care about."<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Wal-Mart settles 63 lawsuits over wages<br /></strong>By Steven Greenhouse and Stephanie Rosenbloom<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest retailer, said Tuesday that it would pay up to $640 million to settle some 63 wage-and-hour lawsuits that accused it of forcing employees to work off the clock and go without meal and rest breaks.<br />Some of the cases date back to 2000.<br />"Many of these lawsuits were filed years ago and the allegations are not representative of the company we are today," Tom Mars, executive vice president and general counsel for Wal-Mart Stores said in a statement.<br />The cases, which were brought by different groups of lawyers in various states, involved hundreds of thousands of current and former hourly employees. The total amount to be paid will depend on the number of claims submitted, but it will be at least $352 million, Wal-Mart said.<br />Several lawyers said Wal-Mart had reached the settlement to help turn an embarrassing page as its current chief executive, Lee Scott, turns the job over to Michael Duke.<br />David Nassar, of Wal-Mart Watch, a union-financed advocacy group, said: "They're throwing this weight overboard to lighten their load."<br />Frank Azar of Franklin D. Azar & Associates, co-lead counsel in 14 states, said in a statement Tuesday that he was pleased with the settlement and thought it was fair.<br />"We are equally pleased that Wal-Mart has made tremendous strides in wage and hour compliance," Azar said, "and that it has implemented and agreed to continue to follow state of the art compliance programs so that these improvements will continue into the future."<br />Wal-Mart announced the settlement less than two weeks after it reached a $54.25 million settlement covering 100,000 current and former employees in Minnesota who asserted they were due money over missed breaks and off-the-clock work.<br />In a case still pending, Wal-Mart has appealed a 2005 verdict in which a California jury ordered the retailer to pay $172 million for making employees miss meal breaks.<br />In 2006, a jury in Pennsylvania awarded $78 million against Wal-Mart in a lawsuit over rest breaks and off-the-clock work. Last year, a judge increased that award to $188 million to include damages, interest and lawyers' fees. Wal-Mart has also appealed that ruling.<br />The dozens of wage-and-hour lawsuits have accused Wal-Mart and its managers of various illegal stratagems, among them forcing employees to work unpaid off the clock, erasing hours from their time cards and preventing workers from taking their lunch breaks and rest breaks.<br />Robert Bonsignore of Bonsignore and Brewer, co-counsel in a group of 35 cases consolidated in Nevada and cases covering four other states, said that as a result of the settlement, "Wal-Mart can now say that it has taken action to make its stores a great place to shop and work."<br />Wal-Mart said it expects a related after-tax charge from continuing operations in its fiscal fourth quarter of about $250 million, or 6 cents a share.<br /><br />*************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijaVV5-1CF0d3UrI0y2oXrMQIJKQmUb23TUfTe2il4ILP_pP2rHYJ2j40PS4h-9Zi1vtCfxwlrzvGzZgIat9pEVv8NRBjo3Ty6LSfY8PCoaaiPgK0dpeREKdzPhDgxc0OWWb2s3drG1eg/s1600-h/DSC04287.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971599268848626" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijaVV5-1CF0d3UrI0y2oXrMQIJKQmUb23TUfTe2il4ILP_pP2rHYJ2j40PS4h-9Zi1vtCfxwlrzvGzZgIat9pEVv8NRBjo3Ty6LSfY8PCoaaiPgK0dpeREKdzPhDgxc0OWWb2s3drG1eg/s320/DSC04287.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Somali president to resign, officials say</strong><br />By Jeffrey Gettleman and Mohammed Ibrahim<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />NAIROBI, Kenya: The president of Somalia's beleaguered transitional government, a former warlord who has been steadily marginalized over the past few months and widely blamed for his country's deepening crisis, is expected to resign over the weekend, several Somali officials said on Wednesday.<br />President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed faces a litany of challenges: a powerful Islamist insurgency; a rancorous Parliament that is threatening to impeach him; a united front of Western diplomats who say he has gone from the being the solution for Somalia to being the problem; and neighboring countries, such as Kenya, that have gotten so fed up with him for blocking peace efforts that they are preparing sanctions against Yusuf and his family.<br />"Yusuf was an obstacle to peace," said Ibrahim Isaaq Yarow, the transitional government's deputy information minister. "The parliamentarians were congratulating one another today when they heard the news that the president is resigning."<br />The question is, will his resignation, if it indeed takes place, make a difference?<br />Somalia's government controls no more than a few city blocks in a country nearly the size of Texas. Islamist insurgents with varying agendas control much of the rest. Famine is steadily creeping toward millions of people, the victims of drought, displacement and nearly 18 years of anarchy.<br />Since 1991, Somalia hasn't had a functioning central government. The 13 previous attempts at forming one all failed, disappearing down a vortex of clan-driven violence and suspicion. A further problem is Somalia's deeply entrenched war profiteers – the gun runners, the importers of expired baby formula, the squatter landlords renting out former government property – who will most likely resist any government because they don't want to pay taxes or deal with regulations.<br />Yusuf struggled with all this. He often favored military might versus negotiations, which increasingly seemed out of sync with what many analysts have said Somalia needs. While many other Somali leaders recently agreed to share power with moderate Islamist insurgents, Yusuf refused, calling the Islamists terrorists. He tried to block a measure that would bring moderate Islamists into the government and double the size of Parliament, from 275 seats to 550. Ethiopia, which has several thousand troops inside Somalia, had recently fallen out with Yusuf and the Ethiopians have said they will withdraw all their firepower in the next few weeks.<br />One of Yusuf's aides said the president had had enough.<br />"He has been thinking of resigning for some time but decided that now is the opportune moment," said the aide, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to journalists. "Everyone is talking about peace. Maybe this will help."<br />Yusuf, who is in his late 70s and in delicate health, was selected president in 2004 by his colleagues in the government. His expected exit now kicks off what is surely to be clan-based succession battle. Under the transitional government's charter, the speaker of the Parliament assumes the presidency for a maximum of 30 days until Parliament selects a new leader.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Young Jordanians rebel, embracing conservative Islam</strong><br />By Michael Slackman<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />AMMAN, Jordan: Muhammad Fawaz is a very serious college junior with a stern gaze and a reluctant smile that barely cloaks suppressed anger. He never wanted to attend Jordan University. He hates spending hours each day commuting.<br />As a high school student, Fawaz, 20, had dreamed of earning a scholarship to study abroad. But that was impossible, he said, because he did not have a "wasta," or connection. In Jordan, connections are seen as essential for advancement and the wasta system is routinely cited by young people as their primary grievance with their country.<br />So Fawaz decided to rebel. He adopted the serene, disciplined demeanor of an Islamic activist. In his sophomore year he was accepted into the student group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan's largest, most influential religious, social and political movement, one that would ultimately like to see the state governed by Islamic law, or Shariah. Now he works to recruit other students to the cause.<br />"I find there is justice in the Islamic movement," Fawaz said one day as he walked beneath the towering cypress trees at Jordan University. "I can express myself. There is no wasta needed."<br />Across the Middle East, young people like Fawaz, angry, alienated and deprived of opportunity, have accepted Islam as an agent of change and rebellion. It is their rock 'n' roll, their long hair and love beads. Through Islam, they defy the status quo and challenge governments seen as corrupt and incompetent.<br />These young people — 60 percent of those in the region are under 25 — are propelling a worldwide Islamic revival, driven by a thirst for political change and social justice. That fervor has popularized a more conservative interpretation of the faith.<br />"Islamism for us is what pan-Arabism was for our parents," said Naseem Tarawnah, 25, a business writer and blogger, who is not part of the movement.<br />The long-term implications of this are likely to complicate American foreign policy calculations, making it more costly to continue supporting governments that do not let secular or moderate religious political movements take root.<br />Washington will also be likely to find it harder to maintain the policy of shunning leaders of groups like the Brotherhood in Egypt, or Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, which command tremendous public sympathy.<br />Leaders of Muslim countries have tried to appease public sentiment while doing all they can to discourage the West from engaging religious movements directly. They see the prospect of a thaw in relations with the West, and see these groups as a threat to their monopoly on power.<br />Authoritarian governments view relative moderation as more of a political challenge than extremism, which is a security problem that can be contained through harsh methods.<br />"What happens if Islamists accepted the peace process and became more pragmatic?" said Muhammad Abu Rumman, research editor at the newspaper Al Ghad in Amman. "People see them as less corrupt and as the only real opposition. Israel and the U.S. might look at them differently. The regime is afraid of the Brotherhood when it becomes more pragmatic."<br />The financial crisis only adds to the anxiety of governments in the Middle East that had hoped economic development could appease their citizens, create jobs for legions of unemployed and underemployed young people and dilute the appeal of Islamic movements. But the crisis and the drop in oil prices have hit hard, throwing the brakes on once-booming economies in the Gulf region, and modest economic growth elsewhere in the region.<br />In this environment, governments are forced to confront a reality of their own creation. By choking off democracy and free speech, the only space where groups could gather and discuss critical ideas became the mosque, and the only movements that had room to prosper were religion-based.<br />Today, the search for identity in the Middle East no longer involves tension between the secular and religious. Religion has won.<br />The struggle, instead, is over how to define an Islamic society and government. Zeinah Hamdan, 24, has traveled a typical journey in Jordan. She says she wants a more religious government guided by Shariah law, and she took the head scarf at a younger age than anyone else in her family.<br />But when she was in college, she was offended when an Islamist student activist chastised her for shaking a young man's hand. She wants to be a modern religious woman, and she defines that as working and socializing in a coed environment.<br />"If we implement Shariah law, we will be more comfortable," she said. "But what happens is, the people who come to power are extremists."<br />Like others here, she is torn between her discomfort with what she sees as the extreme attitudes of the Muslim Brotherhood and her alienation from a government she does not consider to be Islamic enough. "The middle is very difficult," she said.<br />Focus on popular causesUnder a bright midday sun one recent day, Fawaz and his allies in the Islamic student movement put on green baseball caps that read, in Arabic, "Islamic Current of Jordan University" and prepared to demonstrate. Fawaz carried a large poster board reading, "We are with you Gaza."<br />The university protest reflected the tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country as a whole: precisely organized, deliberately nonthreatening and focused on popular causes here such as the Palestinians. The Brotherhood says it supports democracy and moderation, but its commitment to pluralism, tolerance and compromise has never been tested in Jordan.<br />Fawaz and about 200 other students stood in a straight line, extending nearly two city blocks, parallel to the traffic on the major roadway in front of the university. More than half of the students were women, many with their faces veiled.<br />State security men in plain clothes hurried up and down the line. "Brother, for God's sake, when will you be angry?" one security agent screamed into his phone, recording for headquarters the slogan on a student's placard.<br />At 12:30 p.m., the male students stepped into the road, blocking traffic, while the women rushed off to the sidewalk and melted back into the campus. One minute later, they walked out of traffic, took off their caps and folded up their signs, tucked them into computer bags and went back to school.<br />"I want to be able to express what I want; I want freedom," Fawaz said, after returning to the campus. His glasses always rest crooked on his face, making him look younger, and a bit out of sorts. "I don't want to be afraid to express my opinion."<br />Fawaz grew up in a small village called Anjara, near Ajloun, about 50 miles from Amman. His father grew up in the Jordan Valley and worked as a nurse in Irbid. Fawaz said he was 8 years old he was first invited to "leadership retreats" with a youth organization of the Brotherhood.<br />When he was 13, the youth group took him on a minor pilgrimage to Mecca. So, he said, he had been enticed by religion at an early age. But he only decided to become politically active — and to join the Brotherhood — when he was denied a scholarship to study abroad.<br />While there are no official statistics on student membership in the Brotherhood, only a fraction of Jordan University students are formally affiliated. Yet many others say they share the same vague sense of discontent and yearning, the same embrace of the Brotherhood's slogan, "Islam Is the Solution," a resonant catchall in the face of many problems.<br />The university, with about 30,000 students from across the country, has long served as a proxy battlefield for Jordan's competing interests.<br />Competing loyalties<br />In Jordan, unlike Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is legal, with a political party and a vast network of social services. It also has a political party, called the Islamic Action Front. While some fear it as too extreme, others argue that it has sold out by working within a political system they see as corrupt and un-Islamic. On campus, the Islamists try to build sympathy, handing out study sheets or copying notes for students.<br />Fawaz decided this year to run as an Islamist candidate for the student council, an influential organization with its own budget and the right to put up posters, distribute fliers and hold on-campus events.<br />The Islamic students' movement had boycotted the elections for years to protest a change of election rules that called for appointing — not electing — half of the council's 80 members. The rule change, decreed by the former university president, was made in order to block the Islamists, who were the most organized group on campus, from controlling the council.<br />That is a direct echo of how the state has long tried to contain the Islamist movement in Jordan. The Brotherhood is allowed to operate, but the government and the security services broadly control the outcome of elections.<br />Indeed, as Islamist movements have swelled, governments across the Middle East have chosen both to contain and to embrace them. Many governments have aggressively moved to roll back the few democratic practices that had started to take root in their societies, and to prevent Islamists from winning power through the voting booth. That risks driving the leaders and the followers of Islamic organizations toward extremism.<br />At the same time, many governments have tried to appease popular Islamist fervor. Jordan recently granted a Muslim Brotherhood-aligned newspaper the right to publish daily instead of weekly; held private talks with Hamas leaders; arrested a poet, saying he had insulted Islam by using verses of the Koran in love poems; and shut down restaurants that had served alcohol during Ramadan, though they had been licensed by the state to do so.<br />This year, the new president of Jordan University permitted all student council seats to be elected, but with rules in place that would, again, make it nearly impossible for the Islamist bloc to have control.<br />Two days before the voting took place, Fawaz was campaigning on the steps of the education building, dressed in his best suit and tie. His campaign message to the students was simply, "For your sake."<br />Running as an Islamist risks consequences: Fawaz said that he was approached by a student in his class who he believed was delivering a message from the security services. "He told me that they will write about me; I will never get a job," Fawaz said.<br />But even when the police ordered him to take down his posters on election day, he remained resolute and confident.<br />"Everybody knows that I am going to win," Fawaz said, without sounding boastful. "Because I represent the Islamic movement."<br />But he did not win. Instead, a candidate representing a large tribe from the city of Salt won, reflecting the loyalty to bonds of kinship and family heritage even as tribal culture has begun to absorb more conservative Islamic practices and beliefs.<br />Yet Fawaz was untroubled. "What is important for me," he said, "is to serve the movement by spreading the word among the students."<br />Amjad al-Absy, 28, remembers the moment when he pledged to join the Muslim Brotherhood. He was 15 and he was identified by Brotherhood recruiters when he was playing soccer in a Palestinian refugee camp. He described how the Brotherhood monitors young men — when they play soccer, go to school, to mosque, to work, as well as in the street and singles out those who appear receptive.<br />"Once you say yes, they put you in a ring, in a family," said Absy. "Outside of the Brotherhood, there is no concern for young men, there is no respect. You are alone."<br />Absy and his friend Tarak Naimat, 24, said that while they were students at the university, they had helped to recruit other young men.<br />"In the computer lab, in the mosque, you buddy up," Naimat said. "Then you participate in events together. Then he becomes a member. If he's advanced, it can take six months. If less, maybe two years."<br />The appeal, Naimat said, was simple: "It gives you the feeling you can change things, you can act, you can be a leader. You feel like you are part of something important."<br />Recruiters to the movement operate in a social atmosphere far more receptive than in the past. Every one of five young men talking near the cafeteria of the university recently insisted that the only way Jordan would have democracy was under an Islamic government, which is what the Brotherhood says it wants to achieve.<br />Muhammad Safi is a 23-year-old with neatly gelled hair and a television-white smile who described himself as the least religious student at the table. He said he had lived in the United States for five years and was eager to marry an American so he could return. Yet he declared: "An Islamic state would be better. At least it would take care of people."<br />A political crossroads<br />The task facing Middle East governments and Islamic leaders is to figure out how to harness the energy of the Islamic revival. The young — the demographic bulge that is defining the future of the Islamic world and the way the West will have to engage it — have embraced Islam with all the fervor of the counterculture.<br />But the movement is still up for grabs — whether it will lead to greater extremism, even terrorism in some cases, and whether the vague dissatisfaction of young people will translate into political engagement or disaffection.<br />So the cycle is likely to continue, with religious identification fueled not only by the Islamic movements, but also by governments eager to use religion to enhance legitimacy and to satisfy demands of their citizens. That, in turn, broadens support for groups like the Brotherhood, while undermining support for the government, said many researchers, intellectuals and political scientists in Jordan.<br />The battle lines are clear on the campus of Jordan University. Bilal Abu Sulaih, 24, is a leader in the Islamic student movement. He returned to school this year to study Islamic law after being suspended for one year for organizing protests, he said. During the year off, he said, he worked as a student organizer for the political party office of the Brotherhood. "We are trying to participate," he said of the movement's role on campus. "We do not want to overpower everyone else."<br />But his reassurances were brushed aside as another student confronted him. "It's not true," shouted Ahmed Qabai, 28, who was seated on a nearby bench. He thrust a finger in Sulaih's direction.<br />"You want to try to control everything," Qabai said. "I've seen it before, your people talking to women and asking them why they're not veiled."<br />Sulaih, embarrassed by the challenge, said, "It's not true."<br />Qabai made it clear that he detested the Muslim Brotherhood, getting more and more worked up, until finally he was screaming. But what he said summed up the challenge ahead for Jordan, and for so many governments in the region: "We all know Islam is the solution. That we agree on."<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Few steps left to finish Iraq-UK troop deal</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: Several steps are needed before Britain and other countries with small troop forces remaining in Iraq can secure final deals permitting their presence after December 31, a British military official said on Wednesday.<br />The clock is ticking on the U.N. mandate that authorises Britain's 4,100 troops, along with smaller contingents from Australia, Estonia, El Salvador and NATO, to be in Iraq.<br />A British military spokesman, who asked to go unnamed, said Iraq's president and two vice-presidents must ratify a measure parliament passed on Tuesday empowering the government to take any steps needed to allow the troops to stay through July 2009.<br />"There will thus be an exchange of letters between each of the governments of the countries who will have troops remaining after 31 December and the government of Iraq," he said.<br />"These will outline the tasks to be performed, the number of troops and the time lines for withdrawal. This exchange of letters can take place as soon as the law is ratified."<br />Britain, the main U.S. ally in the 2003 invasion and which once had 45,000 troops in Iraq, intends to keep about 400 advisers and trainers in the country after the July deadline.<br />With a week left before the U.N. mandate expires, the last-minute manoeuvring was due to parliament's rejection last week of a draft law governing foreign troops.<br />Lawmakers had argued the law needed to be replaced with some sort of treaty or agreement similar in format to the bilateral pact that Washington concluded with Iraq allowing its 140,000 troops to remain through the end of 2011.<br />British officials have said they don't expect Britain to whisk its troops, mostly stationed around the southern oil port of Basra, out of Iraq even if there is no agreement by January 1.<br />(Reporting by Missy Ryan, Editing by Michael Christie)<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Jailed for aiding Israel, but pardoned by Bush</strong><br />By Eric Lichtblau<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Charlie Winters was an unlikely soldier in the fight for a Jewish state 60 years ago. An Irish Protestant from Boston, he took up the clandestine cause from his perch in Miami and helped ferry military planes to Israeli fighters, even flying a B-17 bomber across the Atlantic Ocean himself in 1948.<br />The Israelis have long considered him a hero; Prime Minister Golda Meir hailed his efforts. Yet in the United States, he was a criminal, imprisoned for 18 months for violating the 1939 Neutrality Act and breaking an embargo on weapons to Israel.<br />But on Tuesday, President George W. Bush pardoned Winters nearly a quarter-century after his death. In recent months, prominent Jews including Steven Spielberg and members of Congress mounted a campaign for clemency in Winters's memory.<br />"This is a present for my father," said Jim Winters, 44, a Miami businessman who knew nothing about his father's imprisonment until after his death.<br />"This was a monumental challenge, but my dad's favorite saying was 'Keep the faith,' and we did," Winters said.<br />Bush issued 18 other pardons on Tuesday, as well as one sentence commutation, to people convicted for largely run-of-the-mill crimes. There were no big names on the list, despite speculation that the president might consider leniency for figures like I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former White House aide.<br />Others whose names had been speculated about for pardons but who were not on the list included the financier Michael Milken, the sprinter Marion Jones and Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom.<br />For Winters's survivors and supporters, the unexpected appearance of his name on the pardon list loomed large.<br />"This is a very good day," said Reginald Brown, a Washington lawyer who represented the Winters family in the clemency petition to the Justice Department. "He did a heroic thing, and, at the time, the law didn't reflect our values. The pardon allows the law to catch up with history."<br />Winters, who died in 1984 at the age of 71, becomes only the second person on record to be granted a pardon posthumously, administration officials said. In 1999, President Bill Clinton issued a pardon to Lieutenant Henry Flipper, who was the first black graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1877 and then was convicted of thievery four years later on charges that appeared racially fueled.<br />Winters was among a group of several hundred Americans and Canadians referred to by the Israelis by the Hebrew acronym of "machal," or "volunteers from outside Israel." They secretly helped in Israel's war of independence in 1948, a year after its creation as a Jewish state.<br />The United States banned the sale of weapons to Israel and to other countries in the Middle East, and Israel found itself isolated militarily as it struggled to hold on to its fledgling independence. Winters was rejected by the American military because of a limp left by polio, but he worked during World War II as a government purchasing agent — a trade he would put to use in helping the Israelis in 1948.<br />Winters, then 38, was recruited to the cause apparently by Al Schwimmer, a flight engineer who led American efforts to aid Israel's military. Winters sold three B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers to Schwimmer's group to help fortify Israel's air defenses, and he was credited with personally flying one of the planes to Czechoslovakia.<br />His motives remain something of a mystery, even to his family and friends.<br />In Winters's obituary in The Miami Herald in 1984 — under the headline "Charles Winters, 71, Aided Birth of Israel" — one friend and fellow bomber pilot, Sy Cohen, said: "To the Jewish people in Palestine, this deed that he did was phenomenal. Why should an Irishman from Boston do such a thing?"<br />Whatever his motives, the Israelis recognized Winters's efforts with a formal letter of appreciation from Meir, and they buried his ashes in the ancient Templars Cemetery in Jerusalem.<br />The United States was less appreciative. Winters, Schwimmer and a third American, Hank Greenspun, were prosecuted and convicted for violating the Neutrality Act in their support of Israel.<br />Winters was the only one of the three to be imprisoned for his crime and, until Tuesday, he was the only who had not received a pardon. ( Schwimmer went on to lead Israeli's biggest aviation company; Greenspun became a crusading Las Vegas newspaper publisher.)<br />Jim Winters said his father never said anything about his time in prison or his work for the Israelis, and he would never explain to his son why he was not allowed to own a gun. Only after his father died — and Jim Winters noticed the blue-and-white flowers sent to the funeral by the Israeli government — did the younger Winters begin to learn of his past.<br />"I think the whole prison sentence turned him off from talking about it," Jim Winters said. "But he did what he did because he thought it was right."<br />William Daroff, director of the Washington office of the United Jewish Communities, called Winters "a righteous gentile, a non-Jew who was looking to help out the state of Israel and was one of the unsung heroes of Israel's war of independence."<br />His pardon, Daroff added, should serve "to wipe away the stain of his conviction."<br /><br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Gaza rocket fire intensifies</strong><br />By Isabel Kershner<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Palestinian militants from Gaza increased the range and intensity of their rocket fire against Israel on Wednesday as the Israeli security cabinet weighed options that include broader military action or efforts to renew a truce that recently expired.<br />More than 60 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel by the afternoon, the Israeli military said. The rockets slammed into the Israeli border town of Sderot, the yard of a house and a water park in the coastal city of Ashkelon, an Israeli factory at Nir Oz near the Gaza border, and hit a house outside the Western Negev town of Netivot.<br />The strikes caused extensive damage and widespread panic among the residents, but no serious injuries. Scores of adults and children were treated for shock, the emergency medical service said.<br />The security cabinet meeting lasted about five hours, but no details were made public regarding any decisions about Gaza. An official spokesman for the Israeli government, Mark Regev, suggested that a renewal of mutual calm was still possible but that Israel's patience was running out.<br />Israel "will answer quiet with quiet," Regev said, "but will answer attacks with a response designed to protect our people." Apparently preparing public opinion abroad for possible military retaliation, he said the sole responsibility for the deterioration in the south lay with Hamas.<br />The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, said in a statement that the rocket fire was "a response to Zionist aggression in Gaza and West Bank" and to the economic embargo Israel has imposed on Gaza.<br />An Israeli force killed three Hamas gunmen on Tuesday in a clash close to the border fence in northern Gaza. The military said they were spotted laying explosives. Hamas said two more members of its military wing were killed after carrying out a "jihadi" mission on Wednesday near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. The Israeli military denied that there had been any army activity at that time, and it seemed that the two were killed by their own explosives.<br />A six-month Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza expired last Friday. On Tuesday, Hamas said that Egypt and other mediators had been in touch to discuss another period of calm. Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official, suggested that Hamas would consider renewing the truce if border crossings were opened to allow the regular transfer of goods into Gaza.<br />The intensified rocket fire on Wednesday might have been intended to pressure Israel and Egypt to step up efforts for a new truce.<br />At the same time, Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have warned of a harsh response should Israel decide to embark on a broad military operation in Gaza, and Wednesday's fire gave a taste of what could come.<br />Some Israeli officials have called for tough military action, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have so far maintained a policy of restraint. Defense officials have repeatedly warned that a military invasion of Gaza would be costly in lives on both sides and would not even guarantee an end to the rocket fire.<br />Most of the rockets fired out of Gaza are locally made, short-range projectiles that fall within a few miles of the border. At least two of those fired on Wednesday were imported Katyusha-type rockets with a longer range. Ashkelon, which lies about 10 miles north of Gaza, has been hit occasionally in the past. Attacks on Netivot, about six miles east of the Gaza border, have been rare.<br />Yuval Diskin, an Israeli security chief, said while briefing the Israeli cabinet earlier this week that the Hamas military wing had used the six-month lull to improve its firing capabilities and was now able to reach the outskirts of Beersheba and the port city of Ashdod.<br />The goods crossings on the Gaza border have been almost completely sealed since the truce began to break down in early November. Israel had said it would allow about 40 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza on Wednesday, but it canceled those plans as a result of the heavy rocket and mortar fire.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Voting ends in Indian Kashmir amid heavy security</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />SRINAGAR, India: Hundreds of protesters chanting pro-independence slogans clashed with soldiers in the main city of Indian-controlled Kashmir on Wednesday, the last day of voting in state elections.<br />At least nine people were injured when troops fired tear gas shells and used bamboo batons to stop the protesters marching to the center of Srinagar, a police officer said on condition of anonymity in keeping with department policy.<br />Separatists have urged residents to protest and boycott the poll, saying the election will only strengthen India's hold on the Himalayan region. Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir, where most people favor either independence or a merger with Pakistan. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both.<br />The elections, which began Nov. 17, were being held in seven phases. The results are expected to be announced on Dec. 28.<br />The staggered balloting allowed the government to deploy thousands of security forces in each area in a bid to prevent the deadly violence sparked by elections in 2002 and thwart separatist attempts to enforce the boycott.<br />Voting in earlier stages of the election was largely peaceful, with a higher-than-expected turnout of more than 60 percent, though scattered anti-India protests have continued throughout.<br />Nevertheless, voter turnout was low Wednesday in Srinagar, where authorities banned gatherings of more than five people to thwart possible anti-India protests, the police official said. Troops also sealed off neighborhoods with steel barricades and razor wire to prevent people from congregating.<br />Thousands of government troops wearing bulletproof jackets and carrying assault rifles patrolled the streets and guarded polling stations. Troops outnumbered voters outside the polling stations in several neighborhoods.<br />"How can we vote for the candidates who are being protected by soldiers who have killed thousands of Kashmiris," said Shabir Ahmed, a protester in Srinagar.<br />In Muslim-majority areas in Srinagar, voter turnout was about 20 percent. It was about 70 percent in Hindu-majority areas in Jammu, said B.R. Sharma, the state's chief election officer.<br />Some 1.6 million of the state's roughly 6.5 million eligible voters live in the areas voting Wednesday.<br />Police arrested three men Tuesday they say were planning suicide bombings during polling in Hindu-majority Jammu city. They said the three were Pakistanis, including one who was an active soldier.<br />A Pakistan military official said the man whom Indian police identified as Ghulam Farid had deserted the army in June 2006.<br />Relations between longtime rivals India and Pakistan have been especially tense since last month's shooting attacks in Mumbai, which killed at least 164 people. Indian authorities have blamed Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.<br />India has urged Pakistan to crack down on Lashkar and other militants operating out of Pakistan.<br />Pakistan has arrested several senior members of the banned group and moved against a charity that India and others say is a front for Lashkar, but also urged India to provide further evidence.<br />Separatist groups have been fighting since 1989 to end Indian rule. The uprising and a subsequent Indian crackdown have killed about 68,000 people, most of them civilians.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Pakistan says banned group helped plan attack on hotel<br /></strong>By Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Salman Masood<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A Sunni Muslim extremist group believed to have been involved in the 2002 abduction and murder of the journalist Daniel Pearl helped carry out the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad three months ago that killed more than 50 people, according to a top Pakistani official.<br />The official, Rehman Malik, the government's senior interior adviser, said that the group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which was banned by Pakistan in 2001 and classified by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, helped organize the Sept. 20 bombing, which deeply shook the confidence of Pakistanis by demonstrating that extremists could perpetrate large-scale attacks close to the seat of power in Islamabad, the capital.<br />Malik's comments on the bombing to the Pakistani National Assembly on Monday represented the first time that the government had formally laid blame for the attack with a specific organization. He had previously suggested that Taliban militants operating from Pakistan's lawless western tribal lands might have been behind the bombing.<br />Malik also told the legislators that two men from Toba Tek Singh in Punjab Province had been taken into custody and that the investigation was complete.<br />According to an investigator, a man associated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi drove the truck used in the bombing from the town of Jhang, where it had been loaded with explosives, to Islamabad, where the keys were given to a suicide bomber.<br />The motive for the attack was hatred for Americans, said the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy involved in the inquiry. Other officials have speculated that the bombing was in retaliation for airstrikes in Taliban-held western tribal areas by remotely controlled American planes, or for recent Pakistani military operations against militants there.<br />The driver drove the truck to Islamabad slowly, according to the investigator, making frequent stops to avoid detection. Once in Islamabad, he gave the keys to the suicide bomber, a 22-year-old Afghan named Zakirullah, who drove the truck to the hotel, the investigator said.<br />The militants chose the Marriott as the target because they thought a large number of American marines were staying there, but most of the marines had checked out the day before the attack, the investigator said.<br />Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has long had a reputation for carrying out bloody attacks, especially against Shiite Muslims in Pakistan. In 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization, he said that its involvement in the kidnapping and killing of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, in 2002 "has been confirmed."<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Pakistan parliament urges India to accept help offer</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Zeeshan Haider<br />Pakistan's parliament called on India on Wednesday to respond positively to Pakistani offers of cooperation in investigating the Mumbai attacks and condemned "war hype" between the nuclear-armed neighbours.<br />Tension has been simmering between Pakistan and India since 179 people were killed in last month's attacks in India's financial hub that India has blamed on Pakistan-based militants.<br />Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks, denied any role in the assault and offered to cooperate with India in investigations but at the same warned that its desire for peaceful coexistence should not be taken as weakness.<br />The National Assembly, Pakistan's lower house of parliament, unanimously passed a resolution expressing support for the government and urged New Delhi to reciprocate Islamabad's efforts to defuse tension.<br />"The National Assembly of Pakistan ... calls upon India to respond to the constructive proposals made by the government of Pakistan," Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Malik Emad Khan said while tabling the resolution.<br />The house also urged India to exercise restraint and not to promote activities that harmed regional peace.<br />"(The house) condemns the war hype in a situation where war is not an option given the nuclear capabilities of both countries," the assembly said.<br />Fiery rhetoric has been coming from various quarters on both sides, much of it from media commentators, since the attacks.<br />Pakistan and India have fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947 and went to the brink of a fourth after an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, also blamed on Pakistan-based militants.<br />India has put a pause on a five-year-old peace process that Pakistan had been trying to push forward. Indian officials have said they were keeping all options open, comments the Indian media have widely interpreted to mean that a military response was possible.<br />"INTELLIGENCE FAILURE"<br />India's army chief General Deepak Kapoor visited disputed Siachen, the world's highest battlefield, and bordering areas of Jammu and Kashmir to assess the army's preparedness on Tuesday, but army officials described the visit as routine.<br />"It is important to review the operational preparedness in the region and he has done just that," an army spokesman said.<br />Pakistan's air force on Monday scrambled fighter jets over several cities as part of what the force calls increased vigilance following the rise in tension with India.<br />But most analysts believe the tension is unlikely to descend into war.<br />Retired Indian Major General Ashok Mehta, a security analyst, said he expected sharp exchanges of words to continue until India gave Pakistan the proof it says it has that Pakistan-based militants were involved.<br />"It will go like that until the government of India provides the evidence to the government of Pakistan through diplomatic channels, which India is hesitant about since they do not want to compromise their sources," Mehta told Reuters.<br />Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said the country was prepared for any eventuality though war seemed unlikely.<br />"There's tremendous public pressure on the Indian government because of their intelligence failure (to stop the Mumbai attacks) and now they want to make someone a scapegoat," he told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.<br />"I don't think there will be a war but if they try to do such an adventure then the Pakistani nation is united. All forces in Pakistan are united."<br />Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday asked Pakistan to avoid "war hysteria" and act against militants. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters: "The issue is not war, the issue is terror and territory in Pakistan being used to promote, aid and abet this terror."<br />India has called off a cricket tour of Pakistan and the president of the Pakistan Hockey Federation said its team was pulling out of a four-nation series in India starting next month.<br />"Our government said 'don't go' so we're not going. That's it," federation president Qasim Zia told Reuters.<br />(Additional reporting by Bappa Majumdar in New Delhi, Kamran Haider in Islamabad; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sugita Katyal)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Car bomb kills 1 near India-Pakistan border</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />LAHORE, Pakistan: A bomb-rigged truck with government plates exploded in Lahore on Wednesday, killing one person in a heavily guarded neighborhood that is home to many government officials in the eastern Pakistani city.<br />Two TV stations quoting anonymous intelligence officials reported that authorities had arrested an Indian national in connection with the blast in the city, which is around 30 kilometers, or 19 miles from the Indian border. Lahore's police chief said his force had not detained an Indian, but said intelligence agencies could have done so without his knowledge.<br />Tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have risen sharply over the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai last month, which Indian authorities have blamed on Pakistan-based militants. Islamabad has promised to cooperate with New Delhi, but has said it has yet to share any evidence with it.<br />Dawn TV identified the Indian citizen as Satish Anand Shukla, of Calcutta, and said he was arrested after a cell phone intercept.<br />Pakistan and India have fought three wars over the last 60 years and their relationship is strained by mistrust.<br />India has long accused militants with links to Pakistani intelligence of terrorism on its soil. Islamabad has also alleged India is sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan.<br />Earlier, Umer Virk, the head of Lahore's Crime Investigation Department, said the target of the Lahore blast was likely a police officer who headed an operation that led to the death of a leader of the al-Qaida linked militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in 2002, said<br />The officer escaped the explosion near his home, but it killed a Christian woman and wounded four of her relatives as they drove together to a Christmas function, Virk said.<br />The truck was obliterated, with pieces scattered for 200 yards (meters), while the wall of a nearby house collapsed.<br />Police officer Pervez Rathore said the truck apparently gained access to the neighborhood because of its official plates. The area is walled off and filled with guards.<br />Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a Sunni Muslim militant group blamed for killing scores of minority Shiites across Pakistan. Its members have also been accused of attacks against Westerners in Karachi, the slaying of U.S journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and the September truck bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.<br />Separately, suspected extremists shot and wounded a Chinese engineer as he shopped at a market in the northwest, where a wave of militant attacks has taken place.<br />Islamist militants have carried out hundreds of bombings in the past two years, seeking to destabilize Pakistan's U.S.-allied secular government. Most of the attacks occur in its northwest regions bordering Afghanistan, where the army is fighting al-Qaida and Taliban militants.<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Afghans and U.S. plan to recruit local militias</strong><br />By Dexter Filkins<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />KABUL, Afghanistan: Taking a page from the successful experiment in Iraq, American commanders and Afghan leaders are preparing to arm local militias to help in the fight against a resurgent Taliban. But along with hope, the move is raising fears here that the new armed groups could push the country into a deeper bloodletting.<br />The militias will be deployed to help American and Afghan security forces, which are stretched far and wide across this mountainous country. The first of the local defense forces are scheduled to begin operating early next year in Wardak Province, an area just outside the capital where the Taliban have overrun most government authority.<br />If the experiment proves successful, similar militias will be set up rapidly across the country, senior American and Afghan officials said.<br />The formation of Afghan militias comes on the heels of a similar undertaking in Iraq, where 100,000 Sunni gunmen, many of them former insurgents, have been placed on the government payroll. The Awakening Councils, as they are known, are credited by American officials as one of the main catalysts behind the steep reduction in violence there.<br />But the plan is causing deep unease among many Afghans, who fear that Pashtun-dominated militias could get out of control, terrorize local populations and turn against the government. The Afghan government, aided by the Americans, has carried out several ambitious campaigns since 2001 to disarm militants and gather up their guns. A proposal to field local militias was defeated in the Afghan Senate in the fall.<br />"There will be fighting between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns," said Salih Mohammad Registani, a member of the Afghan Parliament and an ethnic Tajik. Registani raised the specter of the Arbaki, a Pashtun-dominated militia turned loose on other Afghans early in the 20th century.<br />"A civil war will start very soon," he said.<br />The plan, approved this month by President Hamid Karzai, is being pushed forward anyway, to help stem the deteriorating security situation here. The proposal to field what amounts to lightly trained gunmen reflects the sense of urgency surrounding the fight against the Taliban, who were removed from power after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but who have staged a remarkable resurgence in recent years.<br />American commanders say that while they would prefer to field Afghan Army and police forces, they are simply not available.<br />"We don't have enough police," said Major General Michael Tucker, the deputy commander of American forces in the country. "We don't have time to get the police ready."<br />One survey, by the International Council on Security and Development, found that the Taliban had established a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan, up from 54 percent a year ago.<br />In recent months, the Taliban have moved into the provinces around Kabul, including Wardak to its west. In addition to setting up the first local Afghan militias there, American commanders are sending several hundred American soldiers to the province, the first of which have already arrived. Wardak Province is bisected by the country's national highway, which has been the scene of numerous ambushes of supply convoys by Taliban insurgents.<br />The plan for the militias coincides with the arrival of General David Petraeus, who presided over the reduction in violence in Iraq and who has since become overall commander for American forces in Afghanistan and the rest of the region. The Americans are sending 20,000 to 30,000 additional troops over the next year, in addition to the nearly 70,000 American and NATO troops who are already here. President-elect Barack Obama has declared that he will redouble America's efforts to win.<br />The formation of the militias represents at least a partial answer to the question of how American commanders intend to wrest back the initiative from the Taliban over the next 12 months. While some elected officials in the United States have suggested that the Americans and Afghans might try to exploit fissures in the Taliban, possibly breaking off some groups that can be reconciled, the plan for the militias — coupled with the influx of fresh American forces — suggests that American commanders intend to squeeze the Taliban first.<br />American and Afghan officials say they intend to set up local militias of 100 to 200 fighters in each provincial district, with the fighters being drawn from the villages where they live. (Wardak has eight districts.)<br />To help ensure the dependability of each fighter, the Americans and Afghans are planning to rely on local leaders, like tribal chiefs and clerics, to choose the militiamen for them. Those militiamen will be given a brief period of training, along with weapons like assault rifles and grenade launchers, and communication gear, said Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister.<br />In Iraq, American commanders relied almost exclusively on tribal leaders to put Sunni gunmen at their disposal. But in Afghanistan, 30 years of war have left the tribes scattered and attenuated. American and Afghan leaders say they are instead trying to cobble together councils made up of a wider range of leaders.<br />American and Afghan officials say they are confident that they can keep the militias under control, and they said they hoped the militias could carry out a range of duties, like providing intelligence on Taliban movements that American and Afghan forces could act on.<br />"We don't know when bad people move into town," Tucker said. "But the local people know. They know everything."<br />One tribal leader from Wardak Province said that while the Taliban were deeply unpopular in his province, people were worried that local militias could make the situation worse.<br />In an interview, Mohammed Naim Haqmal, a leader of the Nuri tribe, said the Taliban controlled about 80 percent of Wardak Province — essentially everything except the centers of each district. At night, Haqmal said, the Taliban range freely, setting up checkpoints and laying bombs for American convoys traveling on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar.<br />But for all that, Haqmal said, the Taliban were unpopular in Wardak, mainly because their constant attacks prevented people from leading normal lives. Two months ago, Haqmal said, a group of locals in a village called Jajatoo rioted when the Taliban blocked a local road in order to stage an attack on some American forces. Taliban fighters opened fire on the villagers, killing five.<br />"The Taliban want to fight, and that causes problems for the people," Haqmal said. "People just want to live their lives."<br />Still, Haqmal said he was skeptical that the government-backed militias could succeed because the Afghan and American officials were bypassing the traditional leaders of the province. So far, he said, they had selected leaders in the community who lacked credibility with the local people. Moreover, Haqmal said he was worried that the militias would fail to receive proper support and guidance from the government, and end up starting tribal feuds with members of the Taliban.<br />"We already have the Afghan Army and police — they should stick with them," Haqmal said.<br />A Taliban commander based in Wardak Province, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear that he would become a target, predicted that the government militias would find it hard to put down roots in the area, if only because the Taliban had already done so.<br />"We are living in the districts, in the villages — we are not living in the mountains," the Taliban chief said. "The people are with us."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmu9rVVvzOYVH5ROagQ_WrmJVudlhRHAfSFdp1PUFbE4Vhnw7wAVEI8Rw_J3h_zmOO1Yu435udt1pmTt7kl-0dhuB9QdHWUUYUJjEsNAlkdU-AHO1ISfaHThzONEl-opZ1zmpjIdqNaQ/s1600-h/DSC04288.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971175341363218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmu9rVVvzOYVH5ROagQ_WrmJVudlhRHAfSFdp1PUFbE4Vhnw7wAVEI8Rw_J3h_zmOO1Yu435udt1pmTt7kl-0dhuB9QdHWUUYUJjEsNAlkdU-AHO1ISfaHThzONEl-opZ1zmpjIdqNaQ/s320/DSC04288.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Insights both fresh and tested<br /></strong>By David Leonhardt<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />In keeping with an unusual year, this column's annual list of the economics books of the year is going to be a little unorthodox.<br />The typical books-of-the-year list is confined, with good reason, to books that were published during that year. But the crush of recent economic news means that several older books suddenly have a new relevance. So while 2008 books still dominate my choices, you will also find a prophetic book from 2003 and a classic from the late 1950s. The idea is to create a reading list for anyone trying to make sense of the world right now.<br />The obvious place to start is the financial crisis, and the clearest guide to it that I've read is "Financial Shock" by Mark Zandi, a founder of the research firm Moody's Economy.com.<br />Zandi's name may sound familiar. He is probably the most quoted economist in the country. His ubiquity sometimes causes journalists to be afflicted by Zandi syndrome — a sudden onset of fear that we are quoting him too much. But we inevitably get over it because he is a master of digging up data and then explaining it in a language foreign to most economists: plain English.<br />In "Financial Shock," he walks through the three great causes of the crisis — the housing bubble, Wall Street's underestimation of risk and regulators' failure to intervene. He notes that more than 30 percent of homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages were not even aware of crucial terms of their loan, like how much their rate could rise, the Federal Reserve found.<br />He compares Wall Street managers, who believed that the slicing and dicing of mortgages into securities somehow meant the mortgages couldn't go bad, to SUV owners who speed down the highway believing that they are protected from injury. And he explains exactly what Alan Greenspan and other regulators could have done differently.<br />The book is very much a first draft of history. It doesn't attempt historical sweep or dramatic narrative. But it is an impressively lucid guide to the big issues — akin to a slim encyclopedia.<br />For historical sweep, you will need to do what Barack Obama and some of his aides have been doing and read up on the country's last great financial crisis, the Great Depression.<br />I recently read the early parts of Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s trilogy, "The Age of Roosevelt," written more than a half-century ago. It is a bit triumphalist, but its age offers an advantage I hadn't anticipated: you can draw the historical analogies for yourself. The debt-fueled business excesses of the 1920s sound especially, and chillingly, familiar.<br />I also asked Barry Gewen, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, if he would put together a canon of Depression books, and we have posted the list on our economics blog, nytimes.com/economix. At the top is "Freedom From Fear," David Kennedy's 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner (which, at almost 1,000 pages, is still 1,000 pages shorter than the Schlesinger trilogy).<br />To try to keep the current crisis from turning into a depression, the Obama administration is going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars next year, much of it on a vast infrastructure program. And it so happens that one of the better-reviewed nonfiction books of 2008 was, in large part, about infrastructure.<br />The book is "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt. The reviews focused on Vanderbilt's entertaining tour through the anthropology of driving. But "Traffic" also has a larger message.<br />Vanderbilt begins a chapter by telling a story about the 710 freeway in Los Angeles. In 2002, a labor dispute had caused about 1,000 trucks a day to disappear from the highway. Yet overall traffic didn't decline by nearly so much. Other drivers, knowing the trucks were gone, rushed in to fill some of the void.<br />The same thing, in effect, happens when a government builds a new road. Why? Because the current traffic system resembles "a state-subsidized all-you-can-eat salad bar," Vanderbilt writes.<br />People aren't charged for the costs that their driving imposes on others, like time spent waiting in traffic. As a result, the book explains, "the collective result of everyone's smart behavior" — deciding to drive on that new road — "begins to seem, on a larger scale, stupid." The good news is that modest rush-hour tolls can cause significant declines in traffic, mostly by pushing traffic to other parts of the day. And even a 5 percent or 10 percent drop in traffic can cause an enormous reduction in delays, which makes everyone better off in the end.<br />The next book was written more than five years ago, but it's still the closest thing to an obituary for the Big Three car companies, as they once were. It was written by Micheline Maynard, a longtime automobile journalist who now works for The Times, and it's called "The End of Detroit."<br />"Detroit's long reign as the dominant force in the American car industry is over," she wrote, in the first sentence of the first chapter. She predicted that one of the Big Three could collapse within a decade. "The ultimate irony," Maynard continues, is that Detroit "has been defeated by companies that did the job Detroit once did with unquestioned expertise: turn out vehicles that consumers wanted to buy and vehicles that captured their imaginations." The Big Three's ability to solve this problem, quickly, will largely determine their postbailout fate.<br />The other huge story of the year, of course, was politics, and each side of the political spectrum produced a thought-provoking economic book.<br />From the left, Larry Bartels, a Princeton political economist, explained in "Unequal Democracy" that the economy has consistently performed better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones over the last 60 years. For middle-class families, incomes have risen more than twice as fast under Democrats as under Republicans.<br />Bartels makes a strong case that the pattern is more than coincidence. I'm not sure that cause and effect are as tightly linked as he suggests. But his critics have yet to come up with an argument as strong as his.<br />From the right, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam pleaded with their fellow Republicans to come up with an economic strategy beyond tax cuts. In "Grand New Party," Douthat and Salam lay out an alternate agenda, for overhauling taxes, lowering health care costs, improving schools and reducing the number of single-parent families.<br />The unifying theme, they say, "is a vision of working-class independence — from bosses, from bureaucracy, from entrenched interests of all kinds." Their agenda isn't fully worked out, and it isn't likely to take over the Republican platform anytime soon. But it is an admirable start.<br />Finally, I will mention a book that I already recommended once this year — "The Race Between Education and Technology," a history of American education by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz.<br />That's my 2008 list. If anything, I expect next year's crop of books to be even stronger. By then, we are likely to have several more thoughtful books about the economic crisis and perhaps a good yarn or two about Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns or Bernard Madoff.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/25gmac.php">Fed approves GMAC request to become a bank</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/12/24/america/Wall-Street.php">Stocks edge up in light, Christmas Eve trading</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/24toyota.php">New leader expected at Toyota next year</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/24macao.php">Macao gloomy as more layoffs hit once-booming casinos</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/24border.php">Mexican shoppers go north, seeking bargains</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/25markets-fw.php">Stocks mixed on the eve of Christmas</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/25econ.php">Weakness in U.S. spending and factory orders persists</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-TAYLORWIMPEY.php">Taylor Wimpey gets time to arrange refinancing</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-ZAVVI.php">Zavvi joins list of retail casualties</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-MARKETS-STOCKS.php">Hot small caps: Anglo Irish slides despite bailout</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/24/business/24marketsFW.php">Global markets slide after gloomy U.S. economic data</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-GERMANY-ECONOMY-STIMULUS.php">Germany may cap new stimulus plan at 24 billion</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-FORTIS.php">Fortis makes forex loss after BNP deal frozen</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-THEOFFICERSCLUB.php">The Officers Club in administration</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-MARKETS-BRITAIN-STOCKS.php">FTSE gets no Christmas cheer as down on oils</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-HONDA-THAILAND.php">Honda suspends 700 workers due to slow sales</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-BRITAIN-HOUSEPRICES.php">House prices expected to fall 10 percent</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-BRITAIN-economy.php">Economy shrinking faster than first thought</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-FINANCIAL.php">U.S. falls deeper into recession</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-BRITAIN-MORTGAGES-BBA.php">Mortgage approvals slump 61 percent</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/24/business/OUKBS-UK-MARKETS-GLOBAL.php">U.S. stocks end up as oil skids 9 percent</a><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Thrifty consumers to boost value-led small caps in 2009</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Rhys Jones<br />Pawnbrokers, online retailers and takeaway food chains could be among the small-cap winners in 2009, bucking the downward trend after a challenging year that saw smaller stocks lose around a third of their value.<br />"I can see companies in this kind of territory being pretty defensive in 2009," said FinnCap analyst Duncan Hall.<br />Over the past year turmoil in the financial sector has eroded confidence in the wider economy but value-led firms should trade well in 2009 as consumers become increasingly thrifty and companies across Britain slash jobs and investment.<br />Thrift-based operations like Christmas savings club Park Group , pawnbrokers Harvey & Thompson and Albemarle & Bond should do well, as will home credit groups like S & U , Hall said.<br />CORPORATE RESCUE<br />Business rescue and asset recovery company Begbies Traynor also looks set to perform well in the year ahead with its insolvency division likely to trade strongly as casualties from the credit crunch mount.<br />"The fact is that Begbies Traynor does well when smaller businesses do badly and I would expect that to carry on," said Teathers analyst Stephen Thomas. "The company is national and has all regions of Britain covered and the pipeline seems to be full of struggling companies that will need their services."<br />ONLINE RETAIL<br />The downturn has also hit the high street as consumers cut spending amid fears of unemployment and falling house prices.<br />But AIM-listed online fashion retailer ASOS has been bucking this trend, benefiting from the migration of retail spending from the high street to the Internet.<br />"ASOS is a genuine growth story and with clear revenue drivers at home and overseas, underpinning strong growth prospects over the coming years there is a strong likelihood of earnings upgrades," said KBC Peel Hunt analyst John Stevenson.<br />Home shopping firm N Brown is also likely to be boosted by increasing internet penetration, added Stevenson.<br />TAKEAWAY FOOD<br />Consumers are also shunning nights out, preferring to stay in and order takeaway food.<br />Dominos Pizza , which has outperformed the FTSE All Share index by over 50 percent since the start of 2008, will likely continue to pick up trade as consumers choose to stay in rather than go out in response to the economic downturn.<br />"People are trading down, staying at home, and Dominos is taking market share," said Altium leisure analyst Greg Feehely. "We've knocked about 60 percent off the sector this year but have upgraded Dominos by 15 percent, which I think will continue because it has real and continuing momentum."<br />Spain's biggest pizza-delivery chain, Telepizza is also trading well and expects sales to grow during the economic downturn as more people opt to order in.<br />While the takeaway food businesses thrive, its once-booming construction industry continues to flounder as house prices and commercial property values keep falling.<br />London-focussed property developer Telford Homes could be one of the sector's only winners in 2009 with a raft of projects for the 2012 Olympic Games and strategic partnerships set to insulate it from the economic downturn.<br />"Telford is well positioned in east London, an area boosted by high immigration and job creation, which should see them do well in 2009," said Shore Capital property analyst Jon Bell.<br />(Editing by Sharon Lindores)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Banks deposits at ECB rise to 205 billion</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />LONDON: Banks deposited 216.149 billion euros (204.9 billion pounds) at the European Central Bank's overnight account as of December 23, the ECB reported on Wednesday, up from the 215.691 billion euros reported on Tuesday.<br />On the other side of the operation, banks borrowed 1.914 billion euros from the ECB's emergency overnight loan facility, compared with 1.690 billion euros previously.<br />Banks have regularly been parking in excess of 200 billion euros at the ECB in recent weeks, something which is worrying policymakers.<br />The amounts are well above levels when interbank lending markets are functioning properly and a sign that jittery banks are opting to hoard their cash rather than lend it on to each other as fears about the health of the banking sector persist.<br />The overnight loans currently charge an interest rate of 3.0 percent and deposits pay 2.0 percent and compare with the ECB's key interest rate of 2.5 percent.<br />However, the ECB said last week that from January 21 it would increase the gap between the main rate and the overnight deposit and lending rates from 50 basis points to 100 basis points.<br />It means that if the refi rate were left at 2.5 percent, the overnight deposit rate would drop to 1.5 percent and the overnight borrowing rate would rise to 3.5 percent.<br />(Reporting by Marc Jones; editing by David Stamp)<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Egypt competing with Spain for dwindling tourists</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Alaa Shahine<br />Egypt's tourism industry, the country's top hard currency earner, has started to feel the pinch of the global financial crisis, with hotel bookings down 30 percent in January 2009 compared to the same month in 2008.<br />Fathi Nour, chairman of state-owned Misr Hotels, one of the country's biggest hotel firms, said Wednesday the global nature of the turmoil has placed Egypt in competition with top tourist destinations that may slash prices to attract visitors.<br />"Spain has become a competitor. It will reduce prices to attract people. Spain now is looking at Egypt as a competitor. We were not competitors before," Nour, who is also a board member of the Egyptian Hotels Association, told Reuters.<br />The number of visitors arriving in Egypt, home to some of the world's most famous ancient monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza, is expected to reach 13 million in 2008, 19 percent more than in 2007, the tourism ministry said in November.<br />In Spain, meanwhile, the number of tourist arrivals declined by 2 percent to 54.6 million people in the 11 months to November, marking another blow to the country during the collapse of residential construction and real estate sectors.<br />Egyptian Tourism Minister Zoheir Garrana said Monday initial signs show that future reservations will slow down in the first few months of 2009, but he refused to give a forecast for the number of tourists expected for the whole year.<br />"There are still reservations that come in the last minute. But as for the reservations five or six months in advance, there is a slowdown in that," he told reporters.<br />Europeans account for more than 70 percent of tourists visiting Egypt every year. Nour said European destinations may now appear more attractive to tourists within the continent because of their proximity.<br />"For Egypt, 99 percent of the tourists who visit arrive by plane. It is a cost."<br />The Egyptian Central Bank said Sunday revenue from tourism in the first quarter of the 2008/09 fiscal year, which started in July, rose 15.2 percent to some $3.3 billion (£2.2 billion).<br />The Egyptian government has set its target for economic growth for the two years starting July 2008 at 5.5 percent, after a 7.2 percent growth in the 2007/08 fiscal year.<br />Reham El-Desouki, a senior economist at investment bank Beltone Financial, said tourism revenue for the entire fiscal year could stay unchanged at $10.6 billion.<br />Tourism represents 6.6 percent of Egypt's gross domestic product and is the Arab country's main hard currency earner, followed by worker remittances at $8.4 billion, Desouki said.<br />Nour said the expected slowdown in the number of visitors in 2009 should force a shift in policy to focus on promoting Egypt as an affordable destination for middle-class families.<br />A television advertisement that appears on key networks such as CNN promotes Egypt as a land whose best feature is its warm and sunny weather.<br />"Will the European who got fired, or is afraid of being fired, or got a pay cut ... will he think of coming because I am telling him the sun here is nice? He will not come," Nour said. "This concept has to be changed."<br />(Writing by Alaa Shahine; editing by Tony Austin)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVBKk6A9xItneHESTc0ojGohd0zecpi2PgwY8oRel3KbOuCbN7R-uIs5VdsGM-1YL3tsVrcgYpYGYDqngQmDVL47ZjMCVJBd4PPJMMGkr4NpjixMYvvYofyDimuNuiwe_TgQBLhsoctE/s1600-h/DSC04293.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971169584288354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 259px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVBKk6A9xItneHESTc0ojGohd0zecpi2PgwY8oRel3KbOuCbN7R-uIs5VdsGM-1YL3tsVrcgYpYGYDqngQmDVL47ZjMCVJBd4PPJMMGkr4NpjixMYvvYofyDimuNuiwe_TgQBLhsoctE/s320/DSC04293.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPkVsPV_-95lrXAQvjemmLMHQr-o3lsLBFAUqgBiBz-CkWjlr7HoWJEgwp1ey06SGfbDYOkII_R6IedENg5YxzQoWalq1G851vdMgi2S5AMlQLKR-Zu-2ix2tP1AnBtvCI22hZZcxWiwE/s1600-h/DSC04295.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971165290046418" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 225px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPkVsPV_-95lrXAQvjemmLMHQr-o3lsLBFAUqgBiBz-CkWjlr7HoWJEgwp1ey06SGfbDYOkII_R6IedENg5YxzQoWalq1G851vdMgi2S5AMlQLKR-Zu-2ix2tP1AnBtvCI22hZZcxWiwE/s320/DSC04295.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xX_oNhhORlY5k2fYDmlDOaaOzb-NkFwzzs8cQwYJngspIxuH1ZC9qkpgaABdYbbfi3NnTAX7Letc6AwQps8isJAD5CmclYV6CF9diVZQoPeJkHxi7of8G6dzjLTAmsfTHgbA8uc0Wxc/s1600-h/DSC04299.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971165922824514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4xX_oNhhORlY5k2fYDmlDOaaOzb-NkFwzzs8cQwYJngspIxuH1ZC9qkpgaABdYbbfi3NnTAX7Letc6AwQps8isJAD5CmclYV6CF9diVZQoPeJkHxi7of8G6dzjLTAmsfTHgbA8uc0Wxc/s320/DSC04299.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEm_qvwuTtQB7x9XzuwBiBalXkiFrl4zQttMrrTLM3GgvR6GUEdbivE8Uwgl0Wd9pZoioHiiWPVv4tTwG32XJpQPhWsLXiLx8zO-uV7BmQUN9-LqaEQCEVXTSwByk4RWHHD2N5LyPX2lU/s1600-h/DSC04300.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283971158499646594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEm_qvwuTtQB7x9XzuwBiBalXkiFrl4zQttMrrTLM3GgvR6GUEdbivE8Uwgl0Wd9pZoioHiiWPVv4tTwG32XJpQPhWsLXiLx8zO-uV7BmQUN9-LqaEQCEVXTSwByk4RWHHD2N5LyPX2lU/s320/DSC04300.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>A light-filled cathedral radiates hope</strong><br />By Keith Schneider<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />OAKLAND, California: One of only two cathedrals completed this year in the United States, the Cathedral of Christ the Light is a wonder of religious architecture.<br />Designed by Craig Hartman, a partner in the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the $190 million cathedral, which seats 1,300, is a 12-story oval structure. Its light-filled nave, laced together with a web of hidden steel bars, is supported by long timbers of Douglas fir and enclosed by wooden louvers and more than 1,000 panes of glass. The combination of wood, glass, concrete and brushed aluminum somehow creates the sensation of serenity and transcendence.<br />But for residents, city leaders and neighbors, the development is more than just the sanctuary. The 253,000-square-foot complex, on a $32.7 million, 2.5-acre site in Oakland's downtown, also offers a spacious plaza, below-ground parking for 200 cars, a conference center that seats 500 people and an aggressive ministry in free health and law clinics.<br />Oakland's mayor, Ronald Dellums, put it succinctly when he addressed an interfaith service at the cathedral on Sept. 26, a day after its dedication. "Thank you for placing this crown on our city," he said. "Thank you for choosing Oakland."<br />The opening of the Cathedral of Christ the Light, after three years of construction, comes at a moment of economic and cultural reckoning for this uncertain city of 400,000 residents and for more than 500,000 Roman Catholics in the two-county diocese it serves.<br />The economic downturn threatens to reverse years of steady growth in population, as well as improvement in Oakland's downtown housing, office and retail markets. Housing values in and around the city continue to slump — more than 40 percent over the last two years in many suburbs, almost 20 percent in parts of Oakland. Joblessness is nearly 9 percent in the city and is approaching 8 percent in the surrounding communities.<br />Another pernicious fact of life is violent crime. Oakland contends with one of the highest rates of homicide in the nation. Last year, 127 people were murdered in Oakland. As of Dec. 1 this year, 118 killings have occurred, including three within 15 blocks of the cathedral.<br />Some people are leaving. "If you can't protect residents from random violence and crime, then it doesn't matter how walkable a city it is," wrote Susan Glass, the director of media relations at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, in an essay in The San Francisco Chronicle this month.<br />Nine years ago, when planning for the new cathedral began, Bishop John Cummins and members of the planning committee considered sites in the suburbs. They decided that Oakland was the center of the East Bay region and the hub of the diocese, one of the fastest-growing in the country. The new cathedral, opened the same year as the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, replaces the Cathedral of St. Francis de Sales, which was seriously damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieto earthquake and demolished five years later.<br />The cathedral's provost, the Rev. Paul Minnihan, said at the September interfaith service that the location was central to the cathedral's mission of "outreach, advocacy and concern for social justice." The Cathedral of Christ the Light, he said, "brings light and hope to this city and the streets of all of our communities."<br />Just as light is a defining metaphor of Oakland diocese's mission, it is also the central design element of the new cathedral.<br />For more than 1,000 days, people here could watch the ornate choreography of the construction process. The cathedral was built from the top down in order to set the 110-foot laminated timber ribs. From the outside, it looked as if tiny men were swarming through the body cavity of a giant whale.<br />By day, natural light warms the nave of the completed cathedral. It also shines through 94,000 perforations in an angular aluminum screen above the altar, revealing a 58-foot-high image of Christ, reproduced from a sculpture above the Royal Portal at the Chartres Cathedral in France.<br />By night, the cathedral, lighted from the inside, looks like a white crystal, perched on a raised plaza and flanked by much taller office buildings.<br />The cathedral's site along Lake Merritt, a tidal estuary in the city's downtown that has served since the late 19th century as a wildlife sanctuary and a popular recreation area, is crucial, diocese leaders say. "Cathedrals historically were located at the center of the community," said Mike Brown, a diocese spokesman. "They served as gathering place, market, the center of civic and religious activity."<br />To some extent, the Cathedral of Christ the Light is already serving that role. The project generated such a powerful response in and around Oakland that the diocese raised $115 million of the total cost of $190 million from foundations and private donors, many from Oakland.<br />Its presence is influencing the surrounding Uptown Lake Merritt neighborhood, which could very well become the new center of Oakland. An active station stop of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, the commuter rail network that serves the San Francisco region, is only a few blocks away. Lake Merritt's nearby neighborhoods are among the nicest in downtown Oakland. A Whole Foods Market recently opened on Harrison Street, two blocks from the cathedral.<br />Along Broadway, three blocks from the cathedral in the other direction, two restored theaters — the Fox and the Paramount — anchor the recovering Uptown neighborhood, which has a new 25,000-square-foot park.<br />Forest City Enterprises, a Cleveland-based developer, is finishing a 665-unit rental apartment building, part of a 14-acre redevelopment. Signature Properties, based in Pleasanton, California, completed a 132-unit condominium project a few blocks away last year. Slow sales have prompted the company to offer some units as rentals.<br />Forest City also has an exclusive agreement with Oakland to build 250 condominiums in the Uptown district; it plans to start the work when the market picks up. A separate 80-unit affordable rental apartment building is under construction by Resources for Community Development, a Berkeley-based developer.<br />"How often does somebody build a stunning new cathedral right in the middle of an up-and-coming neighborhood?" asked Jeanne Myerson, the president and chief executive of the Swig Company, a San Francisco-based real estate investment and development company that owns the 28-story Kaiser Center office building a block from the new cathedral. "The market is down, but there is still a lot happening in a place becoming a mixed-use transit-oriented district. The cathedral is a once-in-a-lifetime jewel crowning the renaissance of that area."<br />Actually more than one lifetime. With the cathedral in an active earthquake zone, the Oakland diocese asked Hartman to design a building that could last 300 years. The entire cathedral rests on a nest of casters that enable it to move four feet in any direction.<br />Mark Sarkisian, the firm's director of structural engineering, asserts that with regular maintenance, the Cathedral of Christ the Light has a design life of at least 1,000 years. "This building was meant for longer life," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv4JBLfqx6aEF3cCA0X_uMLZZ9W_RKkB3RvHson9sG5yqcfvmk9IQFV-uNrnGckVXeuaFL4xKO5Awk3ck_DhH-zlrGUnxBpg0Z2ljcNzFZWJrP_PajAZ5meYuvo1kucRGqRnVOC3-97ZU/s1600-h/DSC04301.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283970363478400546" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv4JBLfqx6aEF3cCA0X_uMLZZ9W_RKkB3RvHson9sG5yqcfvmk9IQFV-uNrnGckVXeuaFL4xKO5Awk3ck_DhH-zlrGUnxBpg0Z2ljcNzFZWJrP_PajAZ5meYuvo1kucRGqRnVOC3-97ZU/s320/DSC04301.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklrftNmWWo8TRuO9opRFWrznUCwU_6gdUTnm01CSh826Yt7wXXztsyrNEf559e4qsOQSduqaZdo9uIErWOsT1JYzAK3d1_Yf0c0efmlj_tMUckBvGCzdNUssu_mHL4FpHIYhc61tLGHc/s1600-h/DSC04302.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283970355068897426" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjklrftNmWWo8TRuO9opRFWrznUCwU_6gdUTnm01CSh826Yt7wXXztsyrNEf559e4qsOQSduqaZdo9uIErWOsT1JYzAK3d1_Yf0c0efmlj_tMUckBvGCzdNUssu_mHL4FpHIYhc61tLGHc/s320/DSC04302.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4EDBmPALJ80q7-x_hoeBtheNqC-9dxz2tBfku0KWkkujHU0zdL6eUmzprOieDxvRWduFsoA8W7JR75_3a4U7YTPILl1t3rnZ4DStsWkl06CZIg3quyEpFf8H44xghE5YtWILHsAEZqBQ/s1600-h/DSC04303.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283970353257193186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4EDBmPALJ80q7-x_hoeBtheNqC-9dxz2tBfku0KWkkujHU0zdL6eUmzprOieDxvRWduFsoA8W7JR75_3a4U7YTPILl1t3rnZ4DStsWkl06CZIg3quyEpFf8H44xghE5YtWILHsAEZqBQ/s320/DSC04303.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><br /><strong>Los Angeles museum to receive $30 million rescue</strong><br />By Edward Wyatt and Jori Finkel<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />LOS ANGELES: The Museum of Contemporary Art, known for its impressive collection of postwar paintings and sculpture but also for an ambitious exhibition program that has driven it to the brink of financial collapse, said Tuesday it had negotiated a $30 million bailout with Eli Broad, this city's leading cultural patron.<br />The museum said the rescue plan, which involves a restructuring of its management, would allow it to maintain its current headquarters, seen as a linchpin in the revitalization of downtown. It will also prevent the museum from selling off artwork.<br />The plan avoids a painful embarrassment for Los Angeles, which has promoted itself as a leading force in contemporary art.<br />Institutions here have long struggled to raise adequate endowment and operating funds from local business and entertainment leaders. But with the rescue plan now in place, the museum said Tuesday, its trustees have pledged to give more than $20 million over the next five years to support the endowment and operations.<br />Broad's foundation has offered to match the first $15 million as the money is received and to provide an additional $3 million per year for exhibitions for five years.<br />"Today is a great day — it's really the rebirth of MOCA," Broad said at a news conference at the museum, known by that acronym. The president of the Los Angeles City Council, Eric Garcetti, said, "We've known for years that MOCA loves LA, but today we know that LA loves MOCA as well."<br />But the official celebratory tone was undercut by artists in attendance who voiced frustration with the secrecy in which the deal was brokered. Diana Thater and Cindy Bernard, two artists who started an online Facebook group, MOCA Mobilization, to press for the museum's survival, lamented the timing of the announcement — on the cusp of a long holiday — and the absence of a question-and-answer session at the news conference.<br />"It's like at 5 p.m. on a Friday making major announcements," Ms. Bernard said. "It undercuts our ability to have a real discussion, and it underscores MOCA's lack of transparency."<br />As part of the overhaul, Jeremy Strick, the museum's director since 1999, has resigned, and a new chief executive, Charles Young, has been named. Young, 76, a chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Los Angeles, has little museum experience but is known to be friendly with Broad. Young will oversee the museum's day-to-day operations.<br />The museum also announced the creation of an advisory committee whose members are John Lane, the former director of the Dallas Museum of Art; Joel Wachs, the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York; John Walsh, the former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum; and Gary Cypres, a financial adviser. Cypres is married to Kathi Cypres, a museum trustee.<br />David Johnson, a co-chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art's board, said the committee "has no fiduciary duty" but would "help the board to think about directions and leadership." He said he played an instrumental role in assembling the group.<br />Young, a longtime colleague of Broad, was the UCLA chancellor when Broad served on the board of what was then called the UCLA Hammer Museum. Young said his first challenge at the museum would be "to see what budget cuts can be made most quickly" without jeopardizing programming. "We have to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer," he said.<br />Broad said he would not be involved in the museum's search for a new director. Asked about his potential role in choosing Strick's successor, Young said, "I think I will be involved — that's the board's decision.<br />"My advice will be to postpone it for some time," he continued, "until things get to a point where you have an attractive opportunity to offer, where you could attract a better candidate than you could now."<br />Under the rescue plan, the museum said it would also begin a $75 million fund-raising campaign, hire "reputable investment advisers" to manage the endowment, and exhibit its seldom-seen permanent collection "widely, consistent with customary museum practices."<br />Such steps are intended to address severe criticisms that have been leveled at the museum as its financial condition worsened in recent years. Its endowment has declined to about $6 million from roughly $40 million at the beginning of the decade, in large part because the museum has drawn on it to pay for operations, a frowned-upon practice in the nonprofit world.<br />The museum chose Broad's offer over a competing offer to merge with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a larger institution that in February opened a new building devoted to contemporary art that was paid for — and named after — Broad.<br />Many museum supporters opposed the Museum of Contemporary Art's being subsumed into the county museum. But many also expressed doubt about the offer from Broad, a former businessman known for maintaining strict control over his ventures.<br />To address concerns about his power in the city's cultural world, Broad and the Museum of Contemporary Art agreed that "any responsible party" who would agree to the same terms of support for the museum could replace him within 90 days.<br />Paul Schimmel will remain in place as the museum's chief curator. Also remaining are the board's co-chairmen, Johnson and Tom Unterman, who served in oversight roles when the museum repeatedly spent restricted endowment funds to pay for daily operations.<br />The California attorney general is conducting an audit of the museum's finances to determine whether the museum violated any of the restrictions on gifts it received that were used to pay for operating expenses.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkSpoFcqHrTpvn608YVgrmRRjW9V3kGo_c_HIUDyp1cqVlPeVq1YJ9J07lOUyRuYkAFkodcSIMCwamfIJhElCEikqBL2ieAZXNd9i1SpYkV4q2ILpy1SBxcrLJNSQbofTjlC5q15lH0w/s1600-h/DSC04304.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283970351983099794" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihkSpoFcqHrTpvn608YVgrmRRjW9V3kGo_c_HIUDyp1cqVlPeVq1YJ9J07lOUyRuYkAFkodcSIMCwamfIJhElCEikqBL2ieAZXNd9i1SpYkV4q2ILpy1SBxcrLJNSQbofTjlC5q15lH0w/s320/DSC04304.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpgyFZ1dWodDBsjm9ZZi4XEt229rv_1SpWkoGGLkXQWVICwaRFDydg3qMtKVUh-kCCIv6we3cf9AhZ3GazcRWXa3ZTy-UHmx0mzruHToiQkFJXPuoQ9wJnJXl6bJ9CCynSIA9VLNTGvQ/s1600-h/DSC04305.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283970343506997234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWpgyFZ1dWodDBsjm9ZZi4XEt229rv_1SpWkoGGLkXQWVICwaRFDydg3qMtKVUh-kCCIv6we3cf9AhZ3GazcRWXa3ZTy-UHmx0mzruHToiQkFJXPuoQ9wJnJXl6bJ9CCynSIA9VLNTGvQ/s320/DSC04305.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2MKWd4ckKJh8iEodFaA-ddDUs1p4EcPJEBMObF21R15HycR1NOY1i9C-1Ur8XnNo6QHK2vbPhYM2CYzZrS9eTVccdAqHlCaygqPoholQSWTTaMKGR_WNGyvMMYEAAoJhztU4fW3UfA8o/s1600-h/DSC04307.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969981520169618" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2MKWd4ckKJh8iEodFaA-ddDUs1p4EcPJEBMObF21R15HycR1NOY1i9C-1Ur8XnNo6QHK2vbPhYM2CYzZrS9eTVccdAqHlCaygqPoholQSWTTaMKGR_WNGyvMMYEAAoJhztU4fW3UfA8o/s320/DSC04307.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQctfo-EkR2UbtPpc-xrtJYcJyPPfC5es29lbEO0j7t3dK3cB1oS0TaSaNDXDryP_Q79ndBdY4yL1xIBehCYlc0cxsORSFm8JcU3y44C_ouEQRZkCLZ1vi0PMmfVly_uBb64R-Xgyq5Aw/s1600-h/DSC04308.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969974369083682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQctfo-EkR2UbtPpc-xrtJYcJyPPfC5es29lbEO0j7t3dK3cB1oS0TaSaNDXDryP_Q79ndBdY4yL1xIBehCYlc0cxsORSFm8JcU3y44C_ouEQRZkCLZ1vi0PMmfVly_uBb64R-Xgyq5Aw/s320/DSC04308.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyF0SOkD09AOAiwRCrnHPFjnywANBmUcGr4PrnzZLdai6gw1jvzPaLBvktC8EQe7R9N7CrFA3xV6RNzfsnf-OCgmZndZGHxXcdlGEmOXMGw0FdfXgSv40r-PhJ8RSa7FeDXoOfpy2NcpY/s1600-h/DSC04309.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969977636730722" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyF0SOkD09AOAiwRCrnHPFjnywANBmUcGr4PrnzZLdai6gw1jvzPaLBvktC8EQe7R9N7CrFA3xV6RNzfsnf-OCgmZndZGHxXcdlGEmOXMGw0FdfXgSv40r-PhJ8RSa7FeDXoOfpy2NcpY/s320/DSC04309.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5toRhW94aDnO6Q4BvKNX1eN37-SLZdNKLO9XGWlIsAdhfm0ISzw0XHjnLQekeTMfl1P_Qay-OLD2d1JuALllPppOAIA3_ozpq0mGBMEu_UG5zhc04DAOQ9lBaSJHFYhBw_BE-OwARE0/s1600-h/DSC04310.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969971180500578" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs5toRhW94aDnO6Q4BvKNX1eN37-SLZdNKLO9XGWlIsAdhfm0ISzw0XHjnLQekeTMfl1P_Qay-OLD2d1JuALllPppOAIA3_ozpq0mGBMEu_UG5zhc04DAOQ9lBaSJHFYhBw_BE-OwARE0/s320/DSC04310.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Bethlehem fills up with Christmas pilgrims</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh<br />Thousands of Christian pilgrims gathered in Bethlehem's Manger Square on Wednesday to celebrate Christmas under the protection of security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.<br />About 500 security men arrived from the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Jericho to provide security for the holiday. Similar deployments have taken place across the West Bank over the past year with U.S. backing.<br />"We expect about 40,000 visitors in Bethlehem this week," said Khouloud Daibes-Abu Dayyeh, the Palestinian Authority's minister of tourism.<br />The estimate includes Christians from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Israel and the rest of the world. About 900 from Gaza applied for Israeli permission to go to the site where Christians believe Jesus was born, but only 300 got it.<br />"It's better to spend Christmas in Bethlehem because we are close to the church. It's important to visit where Jesus was born," said 58-year-old Italian tourist Messimo Silzestri beneath a giant Christmas tree and decorations in Manger Square.<br />While Gaza teeters on the brink of a major crisis following the end of a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas Islamists in control of the strip, a decline in violence in the West Bank has tempted back tourists who no longer fear gunbattles in the streets.<br />Israel attributes this partly to the barrier it is building in and around the occupied West Bank. For Bethlehem, the barrier takes the form of a daunting concrete wall 4 meters (13 feet) high with watchtowers.<br />MUCH-NEEDED REVENUE<br />Tourism collapsed here when a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000. But this Christmas, the Palestinian tourism minister says, hotel occupancy is rising.<br />"The increase in security and easier movement means we have our largest numbers, and we are making great efforts to restore tourist activity," she told Reuters in Ramallah.<br />"The numbers themselves are not as important as the length of stay," she added. The direct contribution of tourism to the Palestinian economy is reckoned at about $480 million a year.<br />Palestinians say the Israeli barrier is a major obstacle to peace that cripples trade and turns off foreign tourists.<br />Many visitors see the wall between Jerusalem and Bethlehem as an ugly scar defiling a Christian holy site.<br />"Going to the checkpoint and the barrier is really crazy. But being here, it is totally worth it," said 20-year-old Emma Serienni who was on her first visit from the United States.<br />Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Tuesday said the Jewish state must press on with plans to complete the barrier around key parts of Jerusalem, which could be divided in a future deal to create a Palestinian state.<br />There is little prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the time Pope Benedict visits Bethlehem in mid-May 2009.<br />(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta; Writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Jon Boyle)</div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong>Egypt ignores appeals and repatriates 25 Eritreans</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />CAIRO: Egypt repatriated on Wednesday 25 Eritreans caught in Egypt while on their way to Israel as migrants, ignoring appeals from human rights groups that the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR first assess their asylum claims.<br />Airport sources said police had put the Eritreans on an EgyptAir plane for Asmara and had handed them over to EgyptAir security.<br />The Eritreans were caught on the Egyptian-Israeli border a few days ago while trying to slip across into Israel.<br />Hundreds of African migrants have attempted the journey in recent years. This year alone Egyptian police have shot and killed 28 of them and Egypt has deported up to 1,200.<br />The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that Egypt must not deport Eritrean asylum seekers without giving the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) an opportunity to assess their claims.<br />It said that Egypt was holding around 98 Eritrean migrants in a detention centre in Sinai, and UNHCR had no access to them.<br />The London-based rights group Amnesty International said that in Eritrea the asylum seekers would probably be held incommunicado in inhumane conditions for long periods of time.<br />"Any member of the current group, if forcibly returned, could also face torture or other ill-treatment, particularly as many of them are believed to have left Eritrea to avoid forced conscription," it added.<br />The UNHCR office in Cairo said it was investigating the report that Egypt had repatriated the Eritreans. "It seems that this is a group we did not know about," said one official.<br />(Writing by Jonathan Wright)</div><div></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsO-i7r9W-XhwoWU-TgpJmyRCXr6igC8UDeOyQ3ZqNyEAg1ndJyQbUERvQ3cie7Ydrd6Lch0NCZgfskHq1WUJ7KHUuj5n_r0lujfd-KC-If4I_ZQr_MrNlxNBlomc_XPFsWxzz8I77uAQ/s1600-h/DSC04313.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969966715143602" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsO-i7r9W-XhwoWU-TgpJmyRCXr6igC8UDeOyQ3ZqNyEAg1ndJyQbUERvQ3cie7Ydrd6Lch0NCZgfskHq1WUJ7KHUuj5n_r0lujfd-KC-If4I_ZQr_MrNlxNBlomc_XPFsWxzz8I77uAQ/s320/DSC04313.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08gZ-m7v7jDjohJW3y28F-gVQnY_w96m_FHaoQ1tJSCTcUpCyd8faE-W5kEic2qvRU4PuIKgEX0FtMG19j9QZGjRCHamZDF6vny3mUZYY504ZVDuNNx6kevIGyIzeBG8gGyjGyHYFVbo/s1600-h/DSC04314.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969637116515682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj08gZ-m7v7jDjohJW3y28F-gVQnY_w96m_FHaoQ1tJSCTcUpCyd8faE-W5kEic2qvRU4PuIKgEX0FtMG19j9QZGjRCHamZDF6vny3mUZYY504ZVDuNNx6kevIGyIzeBG8gGyjGyHYFVbo/s320/DSC04314.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmTgIf5u849YWFDZoK_BajGWLMX3GSJw_w3JoIdcOsTL2R1_Bj_GRjLAnkIdeZseadfNyNdPXQK2TsA5e0ZNsMqsZCIf64hApOWRhn4FQxrSHyEXoUsj7PCEECa9QjWt65_Cd69u1Sws/s1600-h/DSC04315.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969635120250274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZmTgIf5u849YWFDZoK_BajGWLMX3GSJw_w3JoIdcOsTL2R1_Bj_GRjLAnkIdeZseadfNyNdPXQK2TsA5e0ZNsMqsZCIf64hApOWRhn4FQxrSHyEXoUsj7PCEECa9QjWt65_Cd69u1Sws/s320/DSC04315.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEingcLyJhTDEAdmfR9MEuMiVsnbe7x0lEaETotOoSjE2DMcYDuxGJhIqneASTtvgxRHn7GAw_2Z-5oHNhG7IStX2061tmnJNE7bQAYZuTvPGepcnUEyN6jeIf7qIzIdDP6x7Byx7Amz_Zs/s1600-h/DSC04316.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969633443221458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEingcLyJhTDEAdmfR9MEuMiVsnbe7x0lEaETotOoSjE2DMcYDuxGJhIqneASTtvgxRHn7GAw_2Z-5oHNhG7IStX2061tmnJNE7bQAYZuTvPGepcnUEyN6jeIf7qIzIdDP6x7Byx7Amz_Zs/s320/DSC04316.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibwX44bhBvGGYmcGt5tEP2zbPEzlRew6hDx9tm-YXQRGsAwBzrdLm0IRApP_nndOMOLu8RrwCL-EjIwWIOT4neoCB0k_1cY8f-tBsporArfH5FLpFQTvZVVHrwLsywfDzUPrPu5xeYuEI/s1600-h/DSC04317.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969629074250658" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibwX44bhBvGGYmcGt5tEP2zbPEzlRew6hDx9tm-YXQRGsAwBzrdLm0IRApP_nndOMOLu8RrwCL-EjIwWIOT4neoCB0k_1cY8f-tBsporArfH5FLpFQTvZVVHrwLsywfDzUPrPu5xeYuEI/s320/DSC04317.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Oxot8iXblPWbx_tI16-ui1EWx5N3jrIHK8xx4NwfjAjfpbO9Ol1dEMvl-UPgzqAjr-Dvdj3adyvsIG65NVwbkViv0syeB85lTKbP6OZMaI8F8Am5To9HC1JGxcLRNjDvTGrsszynAQ0/s1600-h/DSC04318.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969629010863698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Oxot8iXblPWbx_tI16-ui1EWx5N3jrIHK8xx4NwfjAjfpbO9Ol1dEMvl-UPgzqAjr-Dvdj3adyvsIG65NVwbkViv0syeB85lTKbP6OZMaI8F8Am5To9HC1JGxcLRNjDvTGrsszynAQ0/s320/DSC04318.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-aDH2lXrOCujoJdO8EZ2HDYP11h8d_o3lZb-eZW8W1Y8PoIqyXq-sjUfMRplDCK1c_4_DA58e6wuCI4nzZV2qqrLJKkY5sRT6ZGhX2AFmi-bvnimK7yJW0vp2wtUt5x3xmz6I5g-e8Cs/s1600-h/DSC04319.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969307356619234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-aDH2lXrOCujoJdO8EZ2HDYP11h8d_o3lZb-eZW8W1Y8PoIqyXq-sjUfMRplDCK1c_4_DA58e6wuCI4nzZV2qqrLJKkY5sRT6ZGhX2AFmi-bvnimK7yJW0vp2wtUt5x3xmz6I5g-e8Cs/s320/DSC04319.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBBu069bKTGoUw-BKV6chA-bUATaO5muSMo-jPAxyPULefFiljl5sPHwUA7Piytxymrd1Lp8AXso-Gm5gyFC3gTT2prMZ4yc7MkPn-WYiZmQZM33Jo2C20PweDDHB1SvZI4niheevYdnk/s1600-h/DSC04320.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969303395637170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBBu069bKTGoUw-BKV6chA-bUATaO5muSMo-jPAxyPULefFiljl5sPHwUA7Piytxymrd1Lp8AXso-Gm5gyFC3gTT2prMZ4yc7MkPn-WYiZmQZM33Jo2C20PweDDHB1SvZI4niheevYdnk/s320/DSC04320.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>U.S. denies its volunteers fought with Georgia</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />MOSCOW: The U.S. Embassy has denied Russian investigators' claims that American volunteers fought on Georgia's side in its war against Russia.<br />The embassy press office issued a statement Wednesday saying it did not know of any U.S. citizens serving as mercenaries in the Georgian armed forces during the war.<br />The embassy also repeated past statements that no American military personnel were in the war zone or involved in the fighting.<br />Russian investigators said Tuesday that volunteers from the U.S. took part in the August fighting over the separatist province of South Ossetia.<br />Russia says 162 South Ossetia residents were killed along with 48 Russian servicemen. Georgia says it lost 169 soldiers and police, and 69 civilians.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0U6cfS5Wp29qkEPS4_oB-pZVp_5y4XXZ70DzTG4_YHzEEXXXlOlH2fKGGUIJHVynIFBLikvkJuq9kC7bJzydRbCLNtZtG1tAlOfZW0opS32DXKJssdquUVE4GEQ_PYby5HdgoaRe47ak/s1600-h/DSC04322.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969303240567106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0U6cfS5Wp29qkEPS4_oB-pZVp_5y4XXZ70DzTG4_YHzEEXXXlOlH2fKGGUIJHVynIFBLikvkJuq9kC7bJzydRbCLNtZtG1tAlOfZW0opS32DXKJssdquUVE4GEQ_PYby5HdgoaRe47ak/s320/DSC04322.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIPMXrwvhhhfH84h9GW7c4PsMQhO4cyqvM2HXjQ5JKQZEvR93W5tjRtqrA7Q-ix9zMozsrm0hTzTb8nMOF7g9RVXs_7WZYEyDnMiBbvI7MrDTDMyEqypd6BtRvVVND6YjZFCNpJrJvvaA/s1600-h/DSC04323.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283969295143371138" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYr2krjXxxlBmQ4Ytg1SYZRG17DDmPJy9s2B7sn2VyVhL56KRBF4xbaGQDc2CxkJYhKPn639sNGekAQxlPgSpK02FM3w76_wsA4O3TjzjKSe2qTpePTrj9y5A7Z-un3FGTyAtrmURZ6VE/s320/DSC04346.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRHSXLIVUct2Nq4fnnbTfDwxXDrs5JSNk8J-BwjwmRez5MjruFvvq4_XmeB0U8zWRv9yH9HzSEFYjHVXb_ZaOVJPnYGUi5ng2-DlzS1Pg5m8vH6IVGS6AdSiHEWDGiXvdYaAVYHrpyLbw/s1600-h/DSC04347.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283967611189259762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRHSXLIVUct2Nq4fnnbTfDwxXDrs5JSNk8J-BwjwmRez5MjruFvvq4_XmeB0U8zWRv9yH9HzSEFYjHVXb_ZaOVJPnYGUi5ng2-DlzS1Pg5m8vH6IVGS6AdSiHEWDGiXvdYaAVYHrpyLbw/s320/DSC04347.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJviTHnxLDS4teJpL3IFSwy3FibwTaR6DKyfrEi5tZ_MjU-TQxX0sQnlgDtehfXNajvbKQlJmX2ctqeni4SQBBkilu35ZMWow6ggj1f-l2r89mjpunG7E89JLaHy2Cliwnzn4qy308u64/s1600-h/DSC04348.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283967257812029122" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 266px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJviTHnxLDS4teJpL3IFSwy3FibwTaR6DKyfrEi5tZ_MjU-TQxX0sQnlgDtehfXNajvbKQlJmX2ctqeni4SQBBkilu35ZMWow6ggj1f-l2r89mjpunG7E89JLaHy2Cliwnzn4qy308u64/s320/DSC04348.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Sport meets survival: An Iditarod without dogs</strong><br />By Michael Brick<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />SUSITNA FLATS STATE GAME REFUGE, Alaska: From Mint Glacier to the Cook Inlet, an eight-inch frozen crust sealed the deep waters of the Little Susitna River. A snowstorm had buckled the ice with a foot of fresh powder, forcing plumes of frigid water up through the crevices to form layers of crisp slush. To the trained eye, such sinkholes appeared as shadows on the ice.<br />"You see those dark patches, and you avoid them," said Bill Merchant, the man responsible for 1,100 miles of voluntary frozen torture known as the Iditarod Trail Invitational.<br />The icy river was serving as a training ground for the contest, which is not the famous annual sled-dog mush, although it uses a similar route. Rather, in this competition the qualifiers, as determined by Merchant's judgment, navigate the trail on their own power: no dogs or motors allowed. Some ski, some bicycle and others run.<br />It is promoted as the longest, most remote winter ultrarace in the world, a slog across century-old marshland trails from the outpost of Knik over the Farewell Hills, up the Yukon River, through the ghost towns of the Kuskokwim Mountains and on to the Bering Sea.<br />The race's start date has been set for March 1, 2009, a week in advance of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.<br />To train aspiring competitors, Merchant set up a camp here on the Susitna Flats, about 28 miles southwest of Wasilla. At a cost of $750, he promised five days of survival training designed to toughen the qualified and to break the rest.<br />Merchant, 55, has taken to calling his race an invitational so he can refuse entry to the unfit. The participants will pay $900 to compete. First prize is free entry the next year. There is no second prize. Along the way the racers can expect little more than three 10-pound food drops. They are required to haul their own survival gear.<br />The invitational evolved from a collection of shorter skiing, hiking and biking contests promoted under names like the Iditasport and the Extreme. By eliminating overnight stops and tripling the distance, organizers of the invitational reimagined the race as a largely unattended free-for-all intended to restore a sense of adventure.<br />"After I did it the first time it turned into almost an obsession, one of those things you think about year-round," said Peter Basinger, 28, who won the Iditarod Trail Invitational last year with a time of 18 days 4 hours 33 minutes. Speaking by telephone from his home in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin, Basinger added: "People need to come into it knowing that it's unlike anything else, in that you really could get hurt out there. You really are on your own."<br />In nine years of racing, only 28 men and 2 women have completed the full route to Nome, including Tim Hewitt, a lawyer from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, who reached the finish on foot in 2001, 2004 and 2008. About 90 percent of the entrants have dropped out along the trail.<br />Only seven racers have registered for the 2009 contest, including Hewitt and Basinger. Partly to generate future entries, the organizers have continued to operate a simultaneous 350-mile race ending in the village of McGrath, about a third of the way to the finish. For this shorter course, 43 men and women have entered under the flags of Britain, Japan, Spain, Australia, Italy, Germany, the United States and (separately) Alaska.<br />For the early December training session, four racers arrived. There was Aidan Harding, 30, a mountain biker from Princes Risborough, England. Despite his lack of experience on snow, Harding was considered a serious racing prospect. There was George Azarias, a young Morgan Stanley banker from New York. A practiced hiker, Azarias had little cycling experience.<br />And there were Jon and Denise Whyte, a married couple in their early 50s with five children from previous marriages. The Whytes, veteran distance racers, intended to ride a tandem bicycle of their own design. Though Merchant had sought to dispel them of that notion, he could not bring himself to refuse entry outright, largely on account of Jon Whyte's reputation.<br />Whyte, a successful veteran of Formula One auto racing crews, had left that sport to design a renowned line of full-suspension mountain bikes bearing his name. For the Iditarod trail, he had built a two-seated silver contraption with a single-wheeled trailer meant to bear the survival gear of a second rider without the additional drag of carving a second rut in the snow.<br />As the late-November snowfall blanketed the strip malls of Wasilla, Merchant drove his charges in an unheated van to a remote parking lot. The racers piled rucksacks and bicycles into an eight-foot plastic bin hitched to the rear of a snowmobile. As the machine kicked up powder and exhaust, the racers made their way to a hilltop, where piles of snow had buried picnic tables.<br />In warmer months this place would provide sanctuary for northern phalaropes, green-winged teal, sandhill cranes, godwits, whimbrels, snipe, dunlin and sandpipers. Its waters would yield hundreds upon hundreds of king salmon. But now the Matanuska-Susitna Valley was quiet. Moose and bard owls, hardy creatures, kept watch from a distance. Now and again a propeller plane flew overhead. The daytime temperatures failed to exceed zero.<br />Merchant, a onetime cowboy and mechanic by trade, cut a blithe figure, seemingly oblivious to the icicles in his salt-and-pepper mustache. He deferred at times to his wife, Kathi Hirzinger-Merchant, a German immigrant more than two decades his junior and a fearless athlete who had cycled the course to Nome. Training camp opened with instructions on trail safety and etiquette.<br />"The key to being safe if it's really cold or the wind is blowing really bad," Merchant said, "is having everything packed in a logical order, where you can find everything in the order you need it. It's not just an inconvenience out here to not be able to find your stuff. It can cause you to lose fingers."<br />The racers practiced unpacking their bikes, melting snow for water and drying their clothes. They ate chocolate and pasta. At night they slept under the stars in thermal bags.<br />On the third morning of camp Denise Whyte lost consciousness in her sleeping bag. Merchant carried her into the kitchen tent, where the racers assembled a makeshift convalescence bed of backpacks, sleeping bags and coats beside a portable wood stove.<br />Jon Whyte bent over his wife.<br />"Feel her cheek," he said.<br />Merchant did.<br />"This one's warm, but this one's cold," he said. "Strange."<br />Jon Whyte said, "She's taking a long time to wake up."<br />Merchant said: "I'm not a doctor, but I've been a guide since 1979. Honestly, I believe what is wrong with her is nerves. Coming out here in the cold, and responding to it, out of her comfort zone."<br />The men touched her cheek again. No change.<br />As a few hours of daylight backlighted the cloud cover, Hirzinger-Merchant led Harding and Azarias out for a 35-mile bike ride. The riders wore lamps on their foreheads like miners. Past a sign that read, "Do Not Enter," they descended to a steep boat launch.<br />Following the frozen river, the riders passed gnarled saplings that leaned inward from the banks. They turned uphill, over a narrow passage of chunky ice that narrowed again before opening to the whitewashed tundra. In the distance was a field of spindly pines. The grade of the trail rose, giving way to the grandeur of Mount Susitna. The riders stared down at the snow, pressed their gloves into the thermal bags attached to their handlebars and deposited their weight on their pedals.<br />Back at the tent, Denise Whyte was stirring. Her husband offered a cup of melted snow. Together they decided to disassemble the tandem bicycle, catch a ride to Anchorage and fly home.<br />"Well, this wasn't quite the way we thought we'd be leaving this camp," Jon Whyte said, packing his bags. "We've got five children. When I dragged you out of our bivy this morning, I thought, 'What am I going to tell Doug?' We can't have that."<br />Denise Whyte took a long drink of the murky water.<br />"We thought this would be the next challenge, so to speak," she told her husband. "But it's not, for me."<br />Outside the tent, Merchant was loading their tandem bicycle into the plastic bin hitched to his snowmobile.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjHiaHT4WVL_2Sokajc-su4OTWSK3NfMAT08ewVO47g_6TnpSLO2I67jnjBrZi2cLjp4Jn9nTZa8QGT9VAnW8M7BiUbNOXMhS1gxf5CVhQI49A5oi9O3DLKJMG-cdjyLbOBELgmlrI8e8/s1600-h/DSC04349.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283967256128500082" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjHiaHT4WVL_2Sokajc-su4OTWSK3NfMAT08ewVO47g_6TnpSLO2I67jnjBrZi2cLjp4Jn9nTZa8QGT9VAnW8M7BiUbNOXMhS1gxf5CVhQI49A5oi9O3DLKJMG-cdjyLbOBELgmlrI8e8/s320/DSC04349.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrCHrsLm4m50VpAakK5VOOoaWt-V-StsLZrir7z-RxaBspFCTsFJvZDh0Bkokqm5TSB3D4pbo_OD5GbP_Gqh0tp5cWkGeVr4m0hfSQiuhyphenhyphen8WgfCiJ9FU1DXFMDmUK-1QprJFoHnUbRxI/s1600-h/DSC04350.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283967258324431106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrCHrsLm4m50VpAakK5VOOoaWt-V-StsLZrir7z-RxaBspFCTsFJvZDh0Bkokqm5TSB3D4pbo_OD5GbP_Gqh0tp5cWkGeVr4m0hfSQiuhyphenhyphen8WgfCiJ9FU1DXFMDmUK-1QprJFoHnUbRxI/s320/DSC04350.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMYGqcHpVgHvyeB3eLzJqVgZc_hr4RVEmYiqdN8NQ61Z7AE78zh9nvM43LHOLnSHSuVoFWWlK6dIOQ0uxZT0ewf81QzGr_4gfXriBkS95bQJtH_9TM9Yq3mS3Szp2Dd8Gs0Kyv2g0e-yg/s1600-h/DSC04351.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283967248855823490" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMYGqcHpVgHvyeB3eLzJqVgZc_hr4RVEmYiqdN8NQ61Z7AE78zh9nvM43LHOLnSHSuVoFWWlK6dIOQ0uxZT0ewf81QzGr_4gfXriBkS95bQJtH_9TM9Yq3mS3Szp2Dd8Gs0Kyv2g0e-yg/s320/DSC04351.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOPRLIinR5tI_o3a_tBSu0hyphenhyphenazbBzqQfVxg9nosy-EfN8BPiHcL8kahk6mt8tG_Xhyl6ioqhod4rWmolP5LaEHl8YXBUmMZKjxy7gr8yD1VH9g-8Iune_xCmjOM66XbUVWLDEcvDaQfEE/s1600-h/DSC04353.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283967242529236114" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOPRLIinR5tI_o3a_tBSu0hyphenhyphenazbBzqQfVxg9nosy-EfN8BPiHcL8kahk6mt8tG_Xhyl6ioqhod4rWmolP5LaEHl8YXBUmMZKjxy7gr8yD1VH9g-8Iune_xCmjOM66XbUVWLDEcvDaQfEE/s320/DSC04353.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKiZi8c1U_6wiZGNQ_2FGWkmLYHjpjANxSpTExYQrLjuaMWm7J-m7N7oBzkWmTfmxjBEpVgkDEkmnS0tat7YVQpE5W4n-LUyRvP3ZP01_KiJZxI04EkudMUVbQ1oF7c0kFTyZv6jVRXiQ/s1600-h/DSC04354.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283966941564743026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKiZi8c1U_6wiZGNQ_2FGWkmLYHjpjANxSpTExYQrLjuaMWm7J-m7N7oBzkWmTfmxjBEpVgkDEkmnS0tat7YVQpE5W4n-LUyRvP3ZP01_KiJZxI04EkudMUVbQ1oF7c0kFTyZv6jVRXiQ/s320/DSC04354.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Indexed trove of Kissinger phone transcripts is completed</strong><br />By Scott Shane<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: It was April 1972, and American B-52 bombers were pummeling North Vietnam. President Richard Nixon got on the phone with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, for an update on the air assault on the port city of Haiphong. The men struggled to persuade each other that the war might still be won.<br />"They dropped a million pounds of bombs," Kissinger said.<br />Nixon was pleased. "Goddamn, that must have been a good strike!" he said.<br />Then the president had a moment of doubt, recalling the dismal experience of his immediate predecessor, Lyndon Johnson: "Johnson bombed them for years, and it didn't do any good."<br />Kissinger reassured his boss, saying: "But, Mr. President, Johnson never had a strategy. He was sort of picking away at them. He would go in with 50 planes, 20 planes. I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month."<br />What the two men said 36 years ago can be known with such precision today because they worked in what was, in retrospect, the golden age of White House taping. Both Nixon and Kissinger had given secret orders to record their calls, each evidently without the other's knowledge.<br />On Tuesday, the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group at George Washington University, published an online edition of transcripts of 15,000 Kissinger phone calls from 1969 to 1977, fully indexed and searchable for the first time. A selection was posted on the archive's Web site, nsarchive.org, and the full collection is available to subscribers, which include many university libraries.<br />Some Kissinger transcripts are posted on the State Department's Web site, but for a comprehensive look at the collection, researchers have had to travel to the National Archives, in College Park, Maryland.<br />"They were in 30 more-or-less chronological boxes," said William Burr, who has overseen the publication for the National Security Archive. "It was pretty daunting."<br />Burr said the Kissinger calls "rank right up there with the Nixon tapes as the most candid, revealing and valuable trove of records on the exercise of executive power."<br />The indexing, the work of three researchers for more than two years, presented some puzzles. Names dropped casually in conversation — "Hal" or "Fred" — had to be identified. And what a government transcriber had heard as "Nelson's tongue," in a 1971 call, turned out to be "Mao Zedong."<br />The collection covers many serious policy matters, like Vietnam strategy, but includes a few calls memorable because they are so bizarre.<br />In April 1971, Kissinger accepted a call from the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who hoped to arrange a meeting between top Nixon administration officials and antiwar activists.<br />"Perhaps you don't know how to get out of the war," Ginsberg ventured.<br />Kissinger said he was open to a meeting. "I like to do this," he said, "not just for the enlightenment of the people I talk to, but to at least give me a feel of what concerned people think."<br />Then Ginsberg upped the ante. "It would be even more useful if we could do it naked on television," he said.<br />Kissinger's reply is transcribed simply as "Laughter."<br />In 1977, after completing his tenure as secretary of state at the end of the Ford administration, Kissinger left his telephone records to the Library of Congress as private papers, not to be opened until after his death.<br />But after the National Security Archive threatened litigation to open them up, the National Archives and the State Department asked Kissinger for copies, which he turned over in 2002.<br />The transcripts have gradually been declassified and released since then, although those of some 800 Kissinger calls from the Ford years are still being withheld by the State Department.<br />The presidential historian Robert Dallek, who drew heavily on the Kissinger materials for his 2007 book, "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power," said the tapes made by Presidents John F. Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon had been an indispensable source for historians. He said there was nothing comparable from the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton or, so far as he knows, George W. Bush.<br />The earlier tapes scared off later presidents from risking the candor of recordings, Dallek said, but at a cost to history.<br />"I worry that we're going to see a somewhat impoverished record on Clinton and Bush," he said. "There's no substitute for having their exact words."<br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqFs0X_ArHhWH_TajI7zTiesB20t-UZC2gXYBK8pvRkZC-0XM9Z_BmOJQC8zm4ug_NAYoJA2dOakeYb247LH0AoD61jDKFXgTTMMvt9iRefGHUnbIlP_ht93OKV6ZhMp9JvLrzByTRrWU/s1600-h/DSC04355.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283966944845736786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqFs0X_ArHhWH_TajI7zTiesB20t-UZC2gXYBK8pvRkZC-0XM9Z_BmOJQC8zm4ug_NAYoJA2dOakeYb247LH0AoD61jDKFXgTTMMvt9iRefGHUnbIlP_ht93OKV6ZhMp9JvLrzByTRrWU/s320/DSC04355.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-ye988ULerSW9ROsvg7h0e60RmVsKa4w45sP6WIe6tddIIstQt4597bq9p6dxrcaeKUsYcYXIa7oUdaWVt-tUHncUquQ5YJwpkqBpOvUAlJOpIjcmbJkN22suvUXwzFTkqWwF6arDD4/s1600-h/DSC04356.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283966938311504962" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 238px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3nx9nXp-tq8cGZHAYbzhsB0gBfswwcvDnO9Fa2e64W2NYDTZTTYmfqOKRfrpfCb5et0q-xABL9OU6tRnemKv3Z7g_7Fdj5qk7Il17hZlzf-iMVbwfNvVNvWPaNj7-NWG6Pe1G29Q9dIw/s320/DSC04394.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Luxury brands a tough sell in wealthier India</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 25, 2008<br />By Rina Chandran<br />On a recent evening at a luxury Mumbai hotel, shoppers tried on sequined sandals and handmade moccasins at Joy Shoes, an Indian family business that has sold out of its only shop for nearly 70 years.<br />Around the corner, a Moschino store with stylish displays of apparel and accessories off the Milan runways stood empty.<br />Starting at 3,500 rupees (47 pounds) for a pair of men's shoes, Joy is not cheap. But the key to its enduring popularity, says Munna Javery, the third-generation owner, is knowing what customers want and maintaining relationships with them over the years.<br />These are just two of the already considerable challenges facing global luxury retailers in India.<br />Despite its growing number of millionaires, India lags emerging market peers China and Brazil because of a lack of quality retail space, high import duties on luxury goods, a cap on ownership in local units, excessive red tape and piracy.<br />India had 123,000 millionaires in 2007 and showed the fastest pace of expansion, a Merrill Lynch/Capgemini report said, but that was the smallest number in the "BRIC" emerging markets quartet, with China already having more than triple that number of super-rich. BRIC comprises Brazil, China, India and Russia.<br />Luxury goods in India also make up the smallest proportion of the overall retail market, just 0.4 percent, according to a Bain & Co report, compared to 2.7 percent of China's retail market.<br />"For luxury in India, the path is bumpy and long," said Mohan Murjani, chairman of the Murjani Group which launched Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and Tommy Hilfiger globally, and partners such brands as Gucci, Calvin Klein and Jimmy Choo in India.<br />"You need size, experience and patience for the long haul."<br />Allowing global retailers access to India has long been a controversial topic because of concerns of job losses, and it was only in 2006 that foreign single-brand retailers were permitted to take up to 51 percent in a local venture, opening the doors to brands such as Gucci, Versace, Chanel and Burberry.<br />But most brands have been forced to curtail their grand ambitions despite an economy that grew about 9 percent in the last three years, with Louis Vuitton only having four shops to show for its five years in the country, compared to 25 in China, already the world's No. 3 market for high-end goods.<br />"In any emerging market you can only target a very small part of the market for luxury," said Claudia D'Arpizio, a partner with Bain & Co in Milan, who authored a recent report on luxury.<br />"In India, in addition to that challenge is the regulatory framework and the undeveloped retail infrastructure," she said.<br />STRONG TRADITION<br />Once the exclusive preserve of maharajas and business tycoons, luxury brands in India have found new customers in an increasingly wealthy middle-class, the growing ranks of working women and a youthful population that is not afraid to splurge.<br />But challenges abound, such as high store rentals and taxes.<br />New Delhi's small Khan Market, with its decrepit buildings, was recently ranked among the world's most expensive retail real estate, where monthly rental is 1,200 rupees ($25) per square foot, higher than better equipped retail areas in Amsterdam and Stockholm.<br />The absence of quality locations has forced luxury brands to set up shop in top-end hotels, which is not ideal, said Murjani, who has just two Gucci stores in India, compared to 16 in China.<br />Add to that the high tariffs on imported goods, which can bump up prices by more than 25 percent compared to Dubai or Singapore, and a long-abiding suspicion of foreign brands from a time when local importers sold overpriced, outdated products.<br />For this, brands have only themselves to blame, Murjani said.<br />"Brands have to satisfy the consumer on the price point, the offering, the total experience -- a small store in a corner of a hotel is not going to do the trick," said Murjani, who last year opened India's largest luxury space, a 3,400-sq ft Gucci store.<br />"Consumers will simply shop in Paris or Singapore," he said, noting Indians still splashed out about $500 million on luxury brands abroad a year, nearly the same amount they spend at home.<br />The money goes mainly on watches, fragrances, sunglasses, leather goods and menswear, with Indian women still favouring traditional apparel and jewellery, despite the growing numbers of Bollywood stars who get decked out in Western designer wear.<br />"India has a strong tradition in luxury apparel and jewellery so it should be easier to sell the concept," D'Arpizio said.<br />"But the preference is for the intrinsic value of the jewellery rather than the brand, so a Cartier or a Tiffany's will have a hard time cracking the market," she said.<br />OWN CONCEPT<br />There is hope for luxury retailers, though.<br />India's trade minister recently said he was "seriously considering" allowing foreign retailers to fully own their units in the country, a legislation analysts say is not so controversial as it does not threaten small mom-and-pop shops and traders.<br />There is pressure from the EU to cut taxes to meet WTO requirements, and high-end retail spaces are coming up in Mumbai, Bangalore and New Delhi, including the Emporio Mall, the first all-luxury complex, with gold-plated ceilings and marble floors.<br />Over the long term, the rising incomes and expanding economies of emerging markets such as India will provide plenty of opportunity for luxury retailers, D'Arpizio said.<br />India's luxury market is likely to grow at an average annual rate of 25 percent over the next five years, she said, trailing only China's 30 percent growth and Brazil's 35 percent.<br />But while India's super-rich may seem better insulated from the financial crisis that has curbed the appetite for luxury goods elsewhere, they will be harder to entice.<br />"India has her own concept of time for absorbing change," said Neville Tuli, chairman of auction house Osian's in Mumbai.<br />"It's not enough to just throw a nice party and talk about the glamour of your brand. It can take 10 years, maybe more to build something, and most companies don't want to wait 10 years."<br />($1=49 rupees)<br />(Editing by Miral Fahmy)</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Casualties expected in Ukraine building gas blast</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine: An explosion almost certainly caused by gas struck an apartment building in southern Ukraine Wednesday, sending concrete cascading down on two entrances and officials said there could be casualties.<br />Local officials in Yevpatoria, in Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, said two entrances in the five-storey building were engulfed in rubble after the 9.30 p.m. local time explosion.<br />Rescue teams dispatched to the scene, along with two cranes, said four people had been pulled alive from the rubble and cries and moans were heard from underneath.<br />The explosion could have affected about eight apartments, with dozens of residents.<br />Gas explosions in often crumbling apartment buildings, with high casualty rates, are common occurrences in ex-Soviet states, particularly in the winter, when residents use more heating.<br />One such blast in October 2007 killed 15 residents in the central city of Dnipropetrovsk.<br />(Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Jon Boyle)</div><div></div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGucRaK0zO60bFJ4MZwt0ogZMvfJk5geZMyVzfrzp8oph3ejsyKnXq6LTg_9odcqay9abszHuQ1tAZrA3N3YQmyMpI4GRncyoOREQwQi-BQhZv5xkO87241lCb-Fr29a6ajjU61MQ9auo/s1600-h/DSC04395.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283963597958553394" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGucRaK0zO60bFJ4MZwt0ogZMvfJk5geZMyVzfrzp8oph3ejsyKnXq6LTg_9odcqay9abszHuQ1tAZrA3N3YQmyMpI4GRncyoOREQwQi-BQhZv5xkO87241lCb-Fr29a6ajjU61MQ9auo/s320/DSC04395.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN07_GMojEQOkMlyLSRbSgjoQ4SEo2JYFzBHU2bZ_MUVLRJ__yY_uFaCdsbSo6gKGfgyGXxDFZzLxrR2gt-nO_isD4DhHVsyk252MWOPZbGJta9VD3-hYoc1z37etdTZXtY1ahLvvMd-Q/s1600-h/DSC04396.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283963594023804834" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8HSFfb8q-mFh_1WhQBc_BSh8SbUUB4EEQC-NIgTaplWtxzrmANj0EWr80rVceX1GcXz4NDp17EB79IMzI7wMFmLNGQxtrThhXATWBYimsrW8Lt5NVzTCCJYGYO0j7gz8d6d1s8zuczWQ/s320/DSC04413.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Log: The directors' cuts</strong><br />By Alessandra Stanley<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />It seems like cheating, or bad karma, but it's possible to have a yule log crackling on the television screen anytime, even several days before Christmas — or on Halloween or Presidents' Day, for that matter.<br />With titles like "Ambient Fire" and "The Happy Holiday Hearth," yule log DVDs offer a dizzying array of flaming options, from stately baroque plumes to crispy, woodsy campfires. There is even a soft-core porn Christmas log: on "Yule a Go-Go," dancers like Ms. Tickle and Bunny Love perform tassled, spangled burlesque-style stripteases to Christmas carols in front of a roaring fire. (Actually, those flames are quite subdued, for perhaps obvious reasons.)<br />There used to just be one yule log on television in the United States. Viewers had to wait for it, and it didn't come with naughty features or special effects. The WPIX Christmas yule log was first shown in New York in 1966, in black and white, and for several uninterrupted hours, apartment dwellers could stare at flames flickering in a hearth as Christmas songs played in the background. Later, other stations around the country began offering yule logs, but in New York the WPIX log, a kitschy tribute to television as the family hearth — not just metaphorically but literally — became a fiercely cherished local tradition, like the Biltmore clock or egg creams. (The flames were reshot in 1970, and that 6-minute, 3-second loop, has been the authentic yule log ever since.)<br />When WPIX decided to stop showing it in 1989, the station was flooded with complaints and in 2001 it brought the log back.<br />Every Christmas, fans fret that this is the year WPIX will cancel the tradition again (or worse, retape and update the fire), and this year there was cause for real concern: WPIX is owned by the Tribune Company, which filed for bankruptcy this month. They worried needlessly. WPIX is planning to show the log on Christmas Day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., with the same ferocious flame work and sentimental songs by Mantovani, Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole.<br />Still, if the current financial crisis has taught the public anything, it's that it is wise to hedge bets. WPIX does not offer a DVD of its yule log, mostly because of the prohibitive copyright costs of the music. Some people make their own recordings, and clips are available on YouTube. But for those who wish to have a yule log in reserve, there are those DVDs, so many in fact that hard choices must be made.<br />Not all yule logs are alike. "Fireplace: Visions of Tranquility," made by the Richard Diercks Company, has intense, almost Bergmanesque cinematography. One of its options, "Night Music," begins with a menacing close-up of a match being struck, and for the first few minutes the camera is so close to the log that it looks like a telescopic image of the moon's surface.<br />"Fireplace" also offers less alarming choices, including "Christmas Goes Baroque," which has a gentle fire and an orchestration of "Jingle Bells" that is so grand it almost sounds like Bach.<br />"The Original Christmas Yule Log Fireplace" is really more of a copy, and that title is likely to offend WPIX loyalists, who know that the original was the brainstorm of Fred Thrower, the president of WPIX Inc. This version, created more than 20 years ago by Steve Siporin, a Californian, has a more lavish Ralph Lauren-style fireplace setting — horse paintings and chintz armchairs — though once the camera closes in on the fire, the flames are quite soothing.<br />This DVD, like most others, has many choices. It also comes with a director's cut: Siporin, in a turtleneck and windbreaker, poses against a backdrop of ocean waves lapping gently on the shore and answers so-called frequently asked questions, starting with how he came up with the idea. Siporin gives WPIX credit, explaining that he saw its log at a friend's apartment while visiting New York in 1981. He then talks at such length about his life and oeuvre that before he's finished, the sun sets in gold and pink stripes behind him.<br />The "Happy Holiday Hearth," from Rhino Home Video, bucks convention with thin logs piled in a triangle, like a teepee, backed by bricks laid at a downward slant. That modernist touch is belied by the highly traditional music, sung by a big chorus with cheesy '50s-style flourishes. My DVD did not allow fast-forwarding, a fatal flaw.<br />Of all, "Ambient Fire," from Jumby Bay Studios, is probably the most practical, because it offers viewers the option of creating their own playlist from nine fireplace images, ranging from an almost Victorian "Holiday Fire," to "Candles," "Just Logs," "Just Flames" and even "Saucy Flames," which looks a lot like "Just Logs," only the saucy logs undulate and even blur, as if to convince viewers that they have had one too many eggnogs.<br />"Yule a Go-Go," a two-disc holiday set from a company by the same name that promises to put "the boob back in the boobtube," is not quite as faithful to the Christmas spirit, but it is likely to make many merry gentlemen all the merrier.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJxrHxLuoZ_yh58QFRWM0BQracvz_ivTSdgH09rm-wVaekyioqPdP43gqc-WraV4WhZkxDFfoMs9Zg7XbqLOshiHVnNm335TapgSN1__hxocUCDq5K0qxmNMUq0-xz9pivx8MJ1eRjGUE/s1600-h/DSC04414.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962644621222674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJxrHxLuoZ_yh58QFRWM0BQracvz_ivTSdgH09rm-wVaekyioqPdP43gqc-WraV4WhZkxDFfoMs9Zg7XbqLOshiHVnNm335TapgSN1__hxocUCDq5K0qxmNMUq0-xz9pivx8MJ1eRjGUE/s320/DSC04414.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSstkcAqUGp3Ru2DL403AlteVQ5mh0Z1bYhMsS5X5opwIvbPRq4EOeYTzcZT103He0RxMV7aS6Ae6IYulhI67KoWGgWshj1LHWcB1kTBvdC1GSSsnZ3r8Kbv6AeYti8rSCCYdSYGYi9no/s1600-h/DSC04416.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962638725012914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSstkcAqUGp3Ru2DL403AlteVQ5mh0Z1bYhMsS5X5opwIvbPRq4EOeYTzcZT103He0RxMV7aS6Ae6IYulhI67KoWGgWshj1LHWcB1kTBvdC1GSSsnZ3r8Kbv6AeYti8rSCCYdSYGYi9no/s320/DSC04416.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilT_cQeKUag4HPn3oLmiEz8NB6tCd0JXUWqz89qQEABEPs8feq2ZSHm_t_YpEJaDgkpDrum1EMYdNuoQnljcfPOBsgiiRzB8Yd08EvB6Va5v6NEFF2QPle92l9Bhxt-U56eZ8dKOgydLs/s1600-h/DSC04417.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962373665097730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilT_cQeKUag4HPn3oLmiEz8NB6tCd0JXUWqz89qQEABEPs8feq2ZSHm_t_YpEJaDgkpDrum1EMYdNuoQnljcfPOBsgiiRzB8Yd08EvB6Va5v6NEFF2QPle92l9Bhxt-U56eZ8dKOgydLs/s320/DSC04417.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhECp_y12yPhvaaSWMijSnS7ouEA23Key6ds_v2qlh3w32HbdhhUaKu1efLI5WFV9SrupGxEQVImKn7LufIRXuMIdvjRgK8wOTyabnYJ6e5K-3YjPNsYOjqCmyB-riloTUbHYYrcY0vKj0/s1600-h/DSC04418.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962370438123266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhECp_y12yPhvaaSWMijSnS7ouEA23Key6ds_v2qlh3w32HbdhhUaKu1efLI5WFV9SrupGxEQVImKn7LufIRXuMIdvjRgK8wOTyabnYJ6e5K-3YjPNsYOjqCmyB-riloTUbHYYrcY0vKj0/s320/DSC04418.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3l0KRqdvI_K2esn1vdKaOVMNUjKZ3QiNG2L8lfmDy7VyJm5oUKporg17tz2ul5JGOFZWNQpLHRoIgAaoxAE0MeoilO1NpwJJk5gUv2MeGnrROH9iH3_KyoVmUfbWHwqi4PKPMU5kdccs/s1600-h/DSC04419.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962366806493522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3l0KRqdvI_K2esn1vdKaOVMNUjKZ3QiNG2L8lfmDy7VyJm5oUKporg17tz2ul5JGOFZWNQpLHRoIgAaoxAE0MeoilO1NpwJJk5gUv2MeGnrROH9iH3_KyoVmUfbWHwqi4PKPMU5kdccs/s320/DSC04419.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTvthnkeYxZiZQePUoCKMKozbPGhitZ7zgbZqeTVcwQt_5cM-RWFSLK5MLHzy6fQETBlDCdpphI1JaASvsqS3HX7dq1kikRYfkDCVI46XVXJ7JGKyNLT28P-RdN8GvauMqe-TXgvyjAQ/s1600-h/DSC04420.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962359174656642" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTvthnkeYxZiZQePUoCKMKozbPGhitZ7zgbZqeTVcwQt_5cM-RWFSLK5MLHzy6fQETBlDCdpphI1JaASvsqS3HX7dq1kikRYfkDCVI46XVXJ7JGKyNLT28P-RdN8GvauMqe-TXgvyjAQ/s320/DSC04420.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFKTzE7IFh9XDQjGFwCdQwqpIA4jWU3-L8fU9gLRwx66RSLofzhtfEsV4xWoGGJeBwIcuaAem45wpTpCAwZcNqG2WGyuilJIQUs1mH9Nw_wKoikifjgdder85L3MmrZDQTPy2py9mrarE/s1600-h/DSC04421.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962361662475154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFKTzE7IFh9XDQjGFwCdQwqpIA4jWU3-L8fU9gLRwx66RSLofzhtfEsV4xWoGGJeBwIcuaAem45wpTpCAwZcNqG2WGyuilJIQUs1mH9Nw_wKoikifjgdder85L3MmrZDQTPy2py9mrarE/s320/DSC04421.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Germany sues Italy in Hague over massacre<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />AMSTERDAM: Germany filed a lawsuit against Italy at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing that an Italian court erred in ordering Berlin to pay damages for a Nazi massacre during World War Two.<br />Germany is contesting an October ruling by Italy's top court ordering Germany to pay around 1 million euros (948,630 pounds) in compensation to the families of nine victims killed by the German army in Civitella, Tuscany in 1944.<br />"In recent years, Italian judicial bodies have repeatedly disregarded the jurisdictional immunity of Germany as a sovereign state," Germany said in its application, announced by the court late on Tuesday.<br />The ICJ, set up in 1945, is a world court for disputes between nations.<br />Germany argues it should be immune from prosecution by private citizens, and allowing the ruling to stand could mean "hundreds of additional cases may be brought against it" by private individuals.<br />German also asked the ICJ to intervene if Italy moved to seize any state assets.</div><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrLiQU9HNn3Xvkr4-GsU718WrBogiEGPAUVD_YSxpotx7gUGcF1U3oCsrePnOL9R3LECx_ZA-vhUztRfNy3aeDH8P3umHiYZNso7aW2P7mv43coDuVH3oQzoU1qye78XbOwSBIcqfxcp4/s1600-h/DSC04424.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962008117548754" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrLiQU9HNn3Xvkr4-GsU718WrBogiEGPAUVD_YSxpotx7gUGcF1U3oCsrePnOL9R3LECx_ZA-vhUztRfNy3aeDH8P3umHiYZNso7aW2P7mv43coDuVH3oQzoU1qye78XbOwSBIcqfxcp4/s320/DSC04424.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Canadian 7-year-old killed by younger brother<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />CALGARY, Alberta: A five-year-old boy in the Western Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, stabbed his seven-year-old brother to death in a family squabble earlier this week but will not face charges, media reports said.<br />The Edmonton Journal reported that the older brother died of stab wounds to the chest after a fight between the two children on Sunday.<br />Under Canadian law, the boy is too young to face charges.<br />Reports said the children's parents were Iraqi Kurds who came to Canada as refugees 15 years ago. They have not commented on the incident publicly.<br />(Reporting by Scott Haggett; editing by Peter Galloway)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU0FSpsE1qWI7IfgBS3nfiGGCBKXPrK3HbPKneWoiaJbf2arLyTJARrfUfgKzu0aZEASLWMIMd5fPrVNLeV9UMVbHqu6TKN_0NreewfsrNeZPRmKPi7DqIes1MVJzTZVlgfDovTLtL0Ss/s1600-h/DSC04425.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962004493972530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU0FSpsE1qWI7IfgBS3nfiGGCBKXPrK3HbPKneWoiaJbf2arLyTJARrfUfgKzu0aZEASLWMIMd5fPrVNLeV9UMVbHqu6TKN_0NreewfsrNeZPRmKPi7DqIes1MVJzTZVlgfDovTLtL0Ss/s320/DSC04425.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKlbIK09jbOYbghFmgK-qM1Ftr0cMLhaPcc4gH2DMpRXVERsY2AU7vz7K_5N58FJD1u4Yn7gKxsfqcaymBEX6R9CNLxlwYI7ZzQORVAsJcy-i8c6mYJrjgLVw_Xk-c2CqVvYnmxTiMCug/s1600-h/DSC04426.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283961998372733746" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKlbIK09jbOYbghFmgK-qM1Ftr0cMLhaPcc4gH2DMpRXVERsY2AU7vz7K_5N58FJD1u4Yn7gKxsfqcaymBEX6R9CNLxlwYI7ZzQORVAsJcy-i8c6mYJrjgLVw_Xk-c2CqVvYnmxTiMCug/s320/DSC04426.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Washington Post and Baltimore Sun will share news content<br /></strong>By Richard Pérez-Peña<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun announced on Tuesday that they would share some of their articles and pictures. The move adds two major players to the fast-growing roster of newspapers that are cooperating with their regional competitors to get more coverage out of their diminished news staffs.<br />The Sun and The Post have, in effect, divided up responsibility for much of the local and sports news in their region. In addition, they will be able to use each other's national and international work for the first time.<br />In the last few months, papers around the country have struck several content-sharing agreements of varying degrees, including The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post and The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale; The Dallas Morning News and Star-Telegram of Fort Worth; and a group of eight major papers in Ohio.<br />"This is something that, as recently as two years ago, you really wouldn't have seen papers doing at all," said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists that owns the St. Petersburg Times. "In the current climate where there's such urgency to get savings to keep pace with the falling ad revenue, I think this is snowballing from one place to another."<br />Under the new agreement, The Post and The Sun will share most local news coverage in Maryland, though not their exclusives.<br />"They will give us coverage of the Baltimore suburbs and Baltimore, and we will give them coverage of the Maryland suburbs of Washington," said Robert McCartney, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news at The Post.<br />On news from remote areas like western Maryland or the Eastern Shore, the papers will confer to decide whether to have one of them cover the story for both. In sports, The Post will be responsible for covering the Redskins football team, the Nationals baseball team and the teams of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Sun will cover the Ravens football team, the Orioles baseball team and horse racing.<br />In some areas, they will not share their work, continuing to compete head-to-head, including coverage of Maryland state government and of University of Maryland sports.<br />"This allows both newspapers to really use their resources to pursue stories that are unique to them, to play to their own strengths," said J. Montgomery Cook, who will become the editor of The Sun next week. "Budgets are tight everywhere, and it helps us to put our resources where we can use them best, and avoid duplication."<br />The two papers' parent companies for years have cooperated to run The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, sharing articles on national and international news, and selling the work to other papers. The Sun, like The Los Angeles Times, is owned by the Tribune Company, and contributes to the news service.<br />Until now, The Post and The Sun have been barred from publishing each other's work from the news service. Under the new agreement, that prohibition will end.</div><div><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOPqTpsxQCevFyLF5MDSbntuTt-_4b9QtTaG7J6z-FhjFYcrNwUn5XyfgkxlCLbaUktSvBPQ6DUpU9qSTBqzjjdWaXSGcgW5DcD8bqkRg1rLPJWsTfz-HtmyBf-JLmwopjdahRBOMqqo/s1600-h/DSC04427.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283962001713657538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdOPqTpsxQCevFyLF5MDSbntuTt-_4b9QtTaG7J6z-FhjFYcrNwUn5XyfgkxlCLbaUktSvBPQ6DUpU9qSTBqzjjdWaXSGcgW5DcD8bqkRg1rLPJWsTfz-HtmyBf-JLmwopjdahRBOMqqo/s320/DSC04427.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVgAYwKc0EQAGXAbOGGVoewyU0k9V4b3xnH7ZSS-Pu26JQOfaSECWFXjrTwDF_fASoS4ixmFTrhqiCjLtdiyZZP187sYHU3ahu5ByNt06XWbbzKaqwlB9hkHdVBHOsNq7D3X4FcFyOGVY/s1600-h/DSC04432.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283961987551460978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVgAYwKc0EQAGXAbOGGVoewyU0k9V4b3xnH7ZSS-Pu26JQOfaSECWFXjrTwDF_fASoS4ixmFTrhqiCjLtdiyZZP187sYHU3ahu5ByNt06XWbbzKaqwlB9hkHdVBHOsNq7D3X4FcFyOGVY/s320/DSC04432.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><strong><br /></strong>Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-45417150025680873622008-12-24T06:05:00.013+01:002008-12-24T08:12:05.358+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Tuesday, 23rd December 2008<div align="center"><strong>The flaws in the China theory of 8</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />breakingviews.com<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Eight is an important number in China. Its association with good fortune makes it a big hit for license plates and cellphone numbers. It is no accident that the Olympic Games in Beijing opened on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008. But the number has another meaning. If economic growth falls below 8 percent, some say the Chinese masses will turn the country into a simmering cauldron of unrest.<br />That thesis has been bandied about by politicians and economists for years. It could soon be put to the test. In 2009, Chinese economic growth is expected to fall to 7.8 percent, according to HSBC, from almost 12 percent in 2007, driven down by the collapse in Chinese exports to the crisis-wracked developed world.<br />Social unrest is a rising threat in China. Recorded incidents increased almost eightfold between 1994 and 2005, after which the government stopped giving comparable data. When economic growth fell from 11 percent to 4 percent in 1989, ugly protests erupted. While the state has tolerated recent peaceful sit-ins by factory workers, coordinated action might leave two options: impose order the hard way or renegotiate the terms of government.<br />Fortunately, the "theory of eight" is probably wrong. What really matters is not how much Chinese economic growth slows, but what happens to unemployment. The two are not perfectly linked. A collapse in capital-intensive industries, for example, would have less effect on jobs than a more modest decline in lower-value, labor-intensive work. Besides, unemployment is not the only reason the masses complain. As people become more prosperous, they are more likely to protest about noneconomic issues like pollution and corruption.<br />What is certain is that unemployment is rising. Urban joblessness is already at 9.4 percent, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The real figure may be higher, and the official national unemployment figure of 4 percent is almost certainly too low. Export sectors alone account for about 50 million employees, and about 4 million have been laid off this year.<br />Meanwhile, economic volatility, which may have more impact on the lives of Chinese people than any single number, is rising. A stable economy rests on two pillars: consumer and government spending, which tend to move slowly - say, one or two percent a year. But 51 percent of Chinese economic growth comes from investment and exports, which can fluctuate by tens of percentage points a year. Huge declines in the equity and housing markets add to a sense of rapid, uncomfortable change.<br />Can China manage this tricky period? Its almost miraculous economic achievement until now suggests it can. The government's plans to spend 4 trillion yuan will help.<br />If just 40 percent of that is new money, it should lift gross domestic product growth by about 3 percentage points in 2008 and 2009, though that is already factored into the 7.8 percent growth estimate.<br />The question is what happens after the stimulus. At best, China will use the giant spending spree as a prophylactic against discontent while managing the transition to a broader, consumption-led economy, in which widespread, stable employment means the risk of unrest is systemically reduced. At worst, it will be no more than a stopgap until U.S. demand picks up again. Finding the better path will be China's big challenge in 2009, and it has nothing to do with luck. - John Foley<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"><br /></div><div align="center"><strong>0330</strong></div><div align="center"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_hKVai5f59zPLzuImcqJ3rHjPIggF3ZQX4ikgaj2ZEjn_ca8bMdzjAaESJnQX3EGf39e5egELWnPKVgOZiheD2twh98MZLVj8sOP3sOHggwhW7Xv_vqOVT6z1AocLGw_LBk5cWiPKSIU/s1600-h/DSC04236.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283221074096980258" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_hKVai5f59zPLzuImcqJ3rHjPIggF3ZQX4ikgaj2ZEjn_ca8bMdzjAaESJnQX3EGf39e5egELWnPKVgOZiheD2twh98MZLVj8sOP3sOHggwhW7Xv_vqOVT6z1AocLGw_LBk5cWiPKSIU/s320/DSC04236.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimu807iS49BlC9zcDU2EcTUJwpYstByvTHL6osNTrjaotPrWvBkApKmUG8Z3oVnGvicVHLe4Z8mfqDGmaxkgMB1crV6clJ8kdGzCrNXPogB7r3k5YTjIzjBnutN_i3FQsGNiqrD4asLSE/s1600-h/DSC04237.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283221073744619170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimu807iS49BlC9zcDU2EcTUJwpYstByvTHL6osNTrjaotPrWvBkApKmUG8Z3oVnGvicVHLe4Z8mfqDGmaxkgMB1crV6clJ8kdGzCrNXPogB7r3k5YTjIzjBnutN_i3FQsGNiqrD4asLSE/s320/DSC04237.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Oxford-educated PM riles rural Thais<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Nopporn Wong-Anan<br />New Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has promised to reach out to all Thais to heal the country's deep political rifts, but he faces an uphill task winning over people like Kwanchai Sarakam.<br />From the "cowboy country" of Udon Thani, 560 km (350 miles) northeast of Bangkok, the 56-year-old radio host has become the standard bearer of Abhisit's exiled political nemesis, Thaksin Shinawatra, who still looms large more than two years after his removal in a military coup.<br />Kwanchai's past as a travelling comedian then country music DJ is a world away from Abhisit's schooling at Britain's elite Eton College and Oxford University, but his hard-hitting and aggressive radio show has made him a powerful political force.<br />For 20 hours a day, his show berates Abhisit, the army and the royalist People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) that seized Bangkok's airports, accusing them of being an unholy alliance set up to rub Thaksin off the political map.<br />Callers frequently use foul language on air, demonstrating the depth of feeling in an impoverished province where most voters say they benefited from Thaksin policies such as cheap public health care and credit for farmers.<br />"Please come and put a curse on this person and send him to hell because he is not the one we voted for," Kwanchai said on air, urging people to attend the burning of an Abhisit effigy.<br />Ominously, he also claims to be rallying thousands of people to travel to Bangkok next week to blockade parliament ahead of Abhisit's maiden address -- just as the PAD did to his predecessor Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin's brother-in-law.<br />"When we fight for a radical change, there will be losses," said Kwanchai, a stocky, swarthy character whose dark complexion and jeans stand in stark contrast to Abhisit's light skin and tailored western suits.<br />Somchai was forced to step down this month when the courts found his People Power Party (PPP) guilty of vote fraud in the election it won a year ago.<br />The verdict incensed people like Kwanchai, who demonstrate their political allegiance by wearing red, a symbolic gesture to the PAD to "stop" interfering in politics. The PAD wears yellow in honour of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.<br />NO RECONCILIATION<br />The reds' anger is heightened by a perceived anti-Thaksin bias in the judiciary, which has convicted Thaksin of graft and sacked two sympathetic prime ministers, and a belief that Abhisit's Democrat-led coalition will not prosecute any PAD leaders for the airport blockade.<br />One core PAD leader is a Democrat party MP and Abhisit's new foreign minister was a regular speaker at PAD rallies.<br />"As long as those yellow-clad lawbreakers are not prosecuted, the new government can't expect reconciliation," said Ratchanee Seewongsa, a 57-year-old laundry worker.<br />No PAD leader has been arrested for the airport blockade while they are all out on bail for the three-month occupation of Government House, but police did arrest one Thaksin supporter who attacked the cars of Democrat MPs leaving parliament last week.<br />"We want the masterminds to order their players to stop all their games and start following law and order," Ratchanee said.<br />Thaksin supporters in Udon, a major U.S. airbase during the Vietnam War, also resent charges by the PAD and Bangkok elite that they are ignorant hicks duped by Thaksin's political populism and alleged vote-buying. "In the past, politicians came with empty pledges and 30 baht ($1) for each vote during campaigns," veteran canvasser Nuanpan Chomson said. "But unlike other politicians and parties, Thaksin actually delivered on his promises."<br />(Editing by Ed Cropley, Editing by Dean Yates)<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Nubians push for a return to their drowned homeland</strong><br />By Daniel WilliamsBloomberg News<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />ASWAN, Egypt: Singing songs and chatting in an ancient language, hundreds of cheerful Nubian travelers gathered at the Alexandria railway station for a long pilgrimage to a lost homeland.<br />Exiles in their own country, they journeyed 18 hours to celebrate a Muslim holiday in the Nile Valley of southern Egypt, a region their ancestors once dominated from a loose confederation of villages along the river banks.<br />In 1964, their shoreline was inundated when the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser, the largest reservoir in the world. Now the Egyptian government has floated plans to develop and populate land surrounding the lake - without reserving space for Nubians. But ethnic minority activists want terrain set aside for new villages so their brethren can live again on the Nile, returning from a northern Egypt diaspora and arid settlements established 44 years ago for displaced families.<br />"The settlements are false Nubia," said Haggag Oddoul, an author who has become an outspoken advocate for resettlement. "To restore our character and community, we need to be rerooted. We need to return."<br />Nubians ruled Egypt in pharaonic times, their armies having ousted Libyan invaders. They speak their own, non-Arabic language and sing songs to drum beats. The river was their economic lifeblood and fountain of memory, identity and lore. Central to old beliefs, it held the spirits of angels and holy men.<br />"The Nile is our mother," said Fikri el-Kashef, a Nubian singer who built a home atop a ridge above his flooded boyhood village of Abu Simbel.<br />Giant statues of Pharaoh Ramses II once gazed down on his backyard. The monuments were moved to high ground nearby when the Soviet allies of Egypt were building the dam, which currently provides 14 percent of the country's electrical energy.<br />The project displaced 60,000 Nubians. They left with hope for a better life and anxiety about what they were leaving behind.<br />"The government promised us paradise, but we thought we were leaving the Garden of Eden," said Oddoul, 64, author of "Nights of Musk," a collection of short stories about old Nubia.<br />Paradise turned out to be a string of 30 hastily built villages eight kilometers, or five miles, east of the Nile to the north of Aswan city, each named for a drowned hamlet. Some of the one-story houses soon cracked or collapsed from faulty masonry. And the Nubians did not see sugar cane and cotton crops as adequate replacements for the fruit, dates and fish of their original homeland.<br />Longing for place after protracted dislocation is a feature of much controversy and conflict in the Middle East. Kurds in Iraq seek to claim the city of Kirkuk, an oil hub they regard as their capital and from which tens of thousands were expelled by Saddam Hussein.<br />Kurdish citizens of Syria and Turkey are arguing that they should be allowed to return to places from where they were removed because of what the authorities called security reasons stemming from civil strife. Palestinians want at least a token "right of return" to places of origin inside Israel from which they fled during that nation's 1948 war for independence.<br />Recent conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, Algeria and Lebanon have driven millions from their homes, according to an April report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a group based in Geneva that tracks refugee movements.<br />Nubians, about 3 million of Egypt's 73 million people, have been leaving their stretch of the Nile Valley for more than a century - some because of poverty, some because of efforts to tame the river's annual floods.<br />The first dam near Aswan was built in 1902; subsequent ones obliterated settlements farther and farther south until all of Egyptian Nubia was under water.<br />Khabairi Gamal, 70, unfurled a hand-drawn map of old Nubia for visitors earlier this month in Aniba, one of the transplanted villages. Young Nubians are forgetting their past, he said. He turns to Islam Fathi and asks where the 23-year-old is from originally.<br />"Well..." Fathi stammered with a smile.<br />"Go home and ask about your grandfather. Ask about it!" stormed Gamal, the village leader. "And do you know Nubian?"<br />"A few - "<br />"Learn it," Gamal ordered. "You see, we have to move back. Otherwise, there will be no Nubia and no Nubians."<br />The organized campaign to return to the banks of the Nile is recent. Oddoul started the debate when, in 2005, he spoke to a group of Egyptian Christians in Washington and compared treatment of the Nubians to ethnic cleansing. Newspapers in Egypt called him a traitor.<br />Nubians have darker skin than Egyptians from the north. In the country's films, they are portrayed as house servants, porters - and stupid.<br />"It's a stereotype based on us being black," said Tarek Agha, 40, a restaurant owner in Aswan.<br />Oddoul said he spoke sharply because of government plans to settle northern Egyptians along Lake Nasser without reserving space for Nubians. More recently, newspapers reported plans for agricultural and tourist developments on about 121,400 hectares, or 300,000 acres. Some space would be designated for foreign investors, the rest would be for domestic developers - with nothing for Nubians.<br />Oddoul and a committee of Nubian leaders are lobbying the governor of Aswan Province for 100,000 acres to be divided between 5,000 recent Nubian college graduates and 5,000 families who he says never received the homes they were promised in 1964. The governor's press office said that the request has been sent to the central government but that no decision has been made yet.<br />"We want new old Nubia," Oddoul said. "We're not against other Egyptians settling on the lake or development. We don't suggest all Nubians should go back. It's unrealistic. But why should we be left out?"<br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Ancient water source vital for Australia<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Michael Perry<br />An ancient underground water basin the size of Libya holds the key to Australia avoiding a water crisis as climate change bites the drought-hit nation.<br />Australia's Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest artesian groundwater basins in the world, covering 1.7 million sq kms (656,370 sq miles) and lying beneath one-fifth of Australia.<br />The basin holds 65 million gigalitres of water, about 820 times the amount of surface water in Australia, and enough to cover the Earth's land mass under half a metre of water, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee.<br />And it is slowly topped up with 1 million megalitres a year as rain filters through porous sandstone rock, becoming trapped in the underground basin.<br />"There is probably enough water in there to last Australia's needs for 1,500 years, if we wanted to use it all," says John Hillier, a hydrogeologist who has just completed the Great Artesian Basin Resource Study.<br />But he and other experts warn that access to the basin's water supply is under threat from declining artesian pressure, which forces the water to the surface via bores and springs.<br />If artesian pressure falls too far, due to excessive extraction of water, the ancient water source will be unreachable, except through costly pumping.<br />Lying as much as two kms (1.2 miles) below ground, some parts of the basin are 3 km deep (1.8 miles) from top to bottom.<br />The basin was formed between 100 and 250 million years ago and consists of alternating layers of waterbearing sandstone aquifers and non-waterbearing siltstones and mudstones.<br />Basin water is extracted through bores and is the only source of water for mining, tourism and grazing in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia states, and the Northern Territory.<br />The underground water spawns A$3.5 billion (1.62 billion pounds) worth of production a year from farming, mining and tourism, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee.<br />The mining and petroleum industry extracts 31,000 megalitres of basin water a year, which is used in production or pumped out as a by-product of mining, and is vital for future expansion.<br />Mining giant BHP-Billiton draws about 11,680 megalitres a year from the basin to operate its Olympic Dam gold, copper and uranium mine in South Australia. It would treble water usage under a plan to double production, with the extra water drawn from the basin and a new desalination plant.<br />Swiss-based miner Xstrata Plc is looking at the basin as a water source for what would be Australia's biggest open cut thermal coal mine, at Wandoan in Queensland, which would supply 20 million tonnes a year, with a mine life of 30 years.<br />But the pastoral industry is by far the biggest user, taking 500,000 megalitres a year to water some of Australia's most productive farmlands.<br />Angus Emmott runs a cattle property called Moonbah in central Queensland and relies on basin water in times of drought.<br />"The bores underpin the social and economic value of this huge inland area of Australia where there wasn't permanent fresh water," said Emmott.<br />"With climate change, we will be more reliant on the Great Artesian Basin, so we're morally obliged to make the best use of that water...so we don't waste it."<br />BASIN WATER THREATENED<br />Since it was first tapped in 1878, an estimated 87 million megalitres has been extracted and up to 90 percent of it wasted.<br />As a result of falling water pressure, more than 1,000 natural springs have been lost and one-third of the original artesian bores have ceased flowing.<br />The extraction of ancient basin water into the atmosphere also contributes to Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, releasing 330,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.<br />A 15-year Great Artesian Basin Sustainability project started in 1990 aims to protect the water supply and the hydraulic pressure necessary to access it.<br />Today, there are still some 3,000 bores which pour water into 34,000 kms (21,130 miles) of open bore drains, with 90 percent of the water evaporating in the outback heat.<br />But more than 1,052 bores have now been controlled and tens of thousands of kilometres (miles) of open drains removed and pipelines laid, saving 272 gigalitres of water a year.<br />Farmers are now fencing off bores and using mobile telephone, satellite and computer imaging technology to control livestock access to bores and control bore flows.<br />"Bores and springs that had previously ceased to flow have begun to flow again. It's a huge change to land management and has allowed better pasture and stock management," said Emmott.<br />"With the capping and piping programme you don't get the bogging of domestic animals, you don't get the maintenance cost of drains and you don't get soil salination," he said.<br />SUSTAINABLE USAGE<br />Farmers and scientists say it is crucial that more work is done to avoid a water crisis in the Great Artesian Basin as there will be greater demand on basin water in the future.<br />"It is absolutely crucial for the existence of communities that it is looked after," said Emmott.<br />"We realise there is a lot there, but we need to look after it very carefully because it needs such a huge time for recharge that if we lose it now it will not recharge in human lifetimes."<br />A A$17 million long-term sustainability report on the Great Artesian Basin announced this month will look at how to ensure water for future mining, pastoral and environmental development.<br />The global commodities boom in recent years has seen mining activity over the basin increase dramatically and authorities expect the mining industry's extraction will continue to rise.<br />"An expansion in exploration and mining activities in the area will place increased demands on securing groundwater allocations for economic development," said Andy Love, from Flinders University in Adelaide, who will lead the study.<br />"Clearly a balance between development and environmental protection needs to be achieved. However, this is not possible without increased knowledge about the amount of groundwater that can be safely extracted," said Love.<br />(Editing by Megan Goldin)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeGR9BPLANtDVFQJsd5pK_6KnlFrLrTcm8RaThKD83AIQZtRiCfYETuMZnSoc6SCt0DrJ-HsW03U9yNpOrnnPuxrowNtEPPfnKERi0aQoEaJws8xrjoZ49wkVBfCmUSIFCnxdjhsBbC7Q/s1600-h/DSC04238.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283221069368276162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeGR9BPLANtDVFQJsd5pK_6KnlFrLrTcm8RaThKD83AIQZtRiCfYETuMZnSoc6SCt0DrJ-HsW03U9yNpOrnnPuxrowNtEPPfnKERi0aQoEaJws8xrjoZ49wkVBfCmUSIFCnxdjhsBbC7Q/s320/DSC04238.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>Losing paradise</strong><br />By Mohamed Nasheed<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />MALÉ, Maldive Islands:<br />Any sensible head of state will tell you that the priority of high office is the defense of the realm. When I was elected president of the Maldives last month, my advisers gave me similar counsel. Like any other nation state, at any point in history, the Maldives must protect itself from the menace of foreign invasion, terrorism and espionage. Still, to be honest, I really don't see any one wanting to invade or attack us.<br />For the first time in the country's history, however, the Maldives face a new threat. This new danger is of apocalyptic, existential proportions, and it looms silently, invisibly and menacingly over our azure horizon. I am talking about climate change and rising sea levels.<br />Looking out from my office window, it is difficult to believe that this view may someday disappear. And what a vista it is: Crusoe islands of swaying palms and snow-soft sand, encircled by turquoise lagoons and coral reefs teeming with all the exuberance of life. I can't help but be reminded of the words of the great Mughal Emperor Jahangir: "If there is a Paradise on earth; it is this, it is this, it is this."<br />I assume that it is a series of ecological accidents that creates such wondrous beauty. The nature of our ecosystem, however, makes us particularly vulnerable to climate change. The average height of our islands is just 1.5 meters above sea level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that sea levels could rise over half a meter by the end of the 21st century, unless urgent steps are taken to halt greenhouse gas emissions. Less optimistic scientists, however, predict sea rises of nearly two meters. Low-lying island states such as the Maldives are living on borrowed time.<br />Some people shrug their shoulders at climate change. The cost of taking urgent action, they say, is too great. If the world has to lose the odd low-lying island state for the sake of unrestrained economic growth, so be it.<br />Such an attitude is as delusional as it is disingenuous. Scientists at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan suggested likely global temperatures rises of two-to-three degrees, unless the world makes rapid and deep cuts in CO² emissions.<br />This sort of warming will inundate the Maldives. But it also brings us to a potential tipping point, after which climate change moves beyond man's control.<br />If we are unable to save countries like the Maldives, it might be too late to save the rest of the world from the apocalyptic effects of self-reinforcing, runaway global warming. The Maldives is the canary in the world's carbon coal mine.<br />As the West's unforgiving winter starts to bite, you might be forgiven for thinking that a warmer world sounds rather nice. You would be mistaken. Any climate skeptic should read Mark Lynas' book "Six Degrees."<br />Like Virgil leading Dante through the circles of hell, each one more appalling than the next, Lynas guides us through a warming world, one degree at a time. By six degrees, the inferno of global warming truly roars. Vast swathes of the globe are uninhabitable, as higher temperatures fuel super-hurricanes and widespread winter flooding, while severe summer droughts spark raging wildfires and famine. Temperate northern Europe is on the receiving end of climate refugees in their hundreds of millions.<br />Last month, the international press reported the previously unthinkable measures the Maldives is taking to insure itself from catastrophic climate change. In the next couple of years I hope to start investing the proceeds of tourism in a sovereign wealth fund. This trust fund will act as a national insurance policy to help pay for a new homeland, should future presidents have to evacuate a country disappearing under the waves.<br />For the sake of the Maldives and the rest of the world, I hope this fund never needs to be used for its ultimate purpose. I hope instead, that it will pay for future mitigation measures such as reinforcing seawalls and boosting coral reef protection, in a world that has stabilized temperatures to tolerable levels.<br />But time is running out. The IPCC suggests the world has one, possibly two, decades to stabilize and then drastically cut emissions if we are to avoid runaway climate change. The task will not be easy - particularly if countries fall into a self-defeating game of refusing to cutback first.<br />But I remain optimistic. If man can walk on the moon, we can take the arduous but surmountable steps needed to decarbonize the world economy. Not to do so would be collective suicide of lemming-like proportions. The time for action is now. For from these paradise islands, I foresee the gates of hell.<br />Mohamed Nasheed, a former journalist and political prisoner, was elected president of the Republic of Maldives last month.<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>***********************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Nubians push for a return to their drowned homeland</strong><br />By Daniel WilliamsBloomberg News<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />ASWAN, Egypt: Singing songs and chatting in an ancient language, hundreds of cheerful Nubian travelers gathered at the Alexandria railway station for a long pilgrimage to a lost homeland.<br />Exiles in their own country, they journeyed 18 hours to celebrate a Muslim holiday in the Nile Valley of southern Egypt, a region their ancestors once dominated from a loose confederation of villages along the river banks.<br />In 1964, their shoreline was inundated when the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser, the largest reservoir in the world. Now the Egyptian government has floated plans to develop and populate land surrounding the lake - without reserving space for Nubians. But ethnic minority activists want terrain set aside for new villages so their brethren can live again on the Nile, returning from a northern Egypt diaspora and arid settlements established 44 years ago for displaced families.<br />"The settlements are false Nubia," said Haggag Oddoul, an author who has become an outspoken advocate for resettlement. "To restore our character and community, we need to be rerooted. We need to return."<br />Nubians ruled Egypt in pharaonic times, their armies having ousted Libyan invaders. They speak their own, non-Arabic language and sing songs to drum beats. The river was their economic lifeblood and fountain of memory, identity and lore. Central to old beliefs, it held the spirits of angels and holy men.<br />"The Nile is our mother," said Fikri el-Kashef, a Nubian singer who built a home atop a ridge above his flooded boyhood village of Abu Simbel.<br />Giant statues of Pharaoh Ramses II once gazed down on his backyard. The monuments were moved to high ground nearby when the Soviet allies of Egypt were building the dam, which currently provides 14 percent of the country's electrical energy.<br />The project displaced 60,000 Nubians. They left with hope for a better life and anxiety about what they were leaving behind.<br />"The government promised us paradise, but we thought we were leaving the Garden of Eden," said Oddoul, 64, author of "Nights of Musk," a collection of short stories about old Nubia.<br />Paradise turned out to be a string of 30 hastily built villages eight kilometers, or five miles, east of the Nile to the north of Aswan city, each named for a drowned hamlet. Some of the one-story houses soon cracked or collapsed from faulty masonry. And the Nubians did not see sugar cane and cotton crops as adequate replacements for the fruit, dates and fish of their original homeland.<br />Longing for place after protracted dislocation is a feature of much controversy and conflict in the Middle East. Kurds in Iraq seek to claim the city of Kirkuk, an oil hub they regard as their capital and from which tens of thousands were expelled by Saddam Hussein.<br />Kurdish citizens of Syria and Turkey are arguing that they should be allowed to return to places from where they were removed because of what the authorities called security reasons stemming from civil strife. Palestinians want at least a token "right of return" to places of origin inside Israel from which they fled during that nation's 1948 war for independence.<br />Recent conflicts in Iraq, Yemen, Algeria and Lebanon have driven millions from their homes, according to an April report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a group based in Geneva that tracks refugee movements.<br />Nubians, about 3 million of Egypt's 73 million people, have been leaving their stretch of the Nile Valley for more than a century - some because of poverty, some because of efforts to tame the river's annual floods.<br />The first dam near Aswan was built in 1902; subsequent ones obliterated settlements farther and farther south until all of Egyptian Nubia was under water.<br />Khabairi Gamal, 70, unfurled a hand-drawn map of old Nubia for visitors earlier this month in Aniba, one of the transplanted villages. Young Nubians are forgetting their past, he said. He turns to Islam Fathi and asks where the 23-year-old is from originally.<br />"Well..." Fathi stammered with a smile.<br />"Go home and ask about your grandfather. Ask about it!" stormed Gamal, the village leader. "And do you know Nubian?"<br />"A few - "<br />"Learn it," Gamal ordered. "You see, we have to move back. Otherwise, there will be no Nubia and no Nubians."<br />The organized campaign to return to the banks of the Nile is recent. Oddoul started the debate when, in 2005, he spoke to a group of Egyptian Christians in Washington and compared treatment of the Nubians to ethnic cleansing. Newspapers in Egypt called him a traitor.<br />Nubians have darker skin than Egyptians from the north. In the country's films, they are portrayed as house servants, porters - and stupid.<br />"It's a stereotype based on us being black," said Tarek Agha, 40, a restaurant owner in Aswan.<br />Oddoul said he spoke sharply because of government plans to settle northern Egyptians along Lake Nasser without reserving space for Nubians. More recently, newspapers reported plans for agricultural and tourist developments on about 121,400 hectares, or 300,000 acres. Some space would be designated for foreign investors, the rest would be for domestic developers - with nothing for Nubians.<br />Oddoul and a committee of Nubian leaders are lobbying the governor of Aswan Province for 100,000 acres to be divided between 5,000 recent Nubian college graduates and 5,000 families who he says never received the homes they were promised in 1964. The governor's press office said that the request has been sent to the central government but that no decision has been made yet.<br />"We want new old Nubia," Oddoul said. "We're not against other Egyptians settling on the lake or development. We don't suggest all Nubians should go back. It's unrealistic. But why should we be left out?"<br /><br /><strong>*******************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Coup attempt in Guinea after strongman dies</strong><br />By Alan Cowell<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />LONDON: The 24-year reign of Guinea's president, one of Africa's longest-ruling strongmen, ended in confusion and chaos on Tuesday as a group of soldiers seized on his death to proclaim a coup that was immediately challenged by government officials.<br />Troops in armored personnel carriers took to the streets of Conakry, the capital of Guinea, an impoverished West African state, but there were no immediate reports of bloodshed, according to news agencies. Rather, the "putsch," as one lawmaker called it, began to unfold in time-honored fashion with a group of officers taking control of the airwaves to announce that the Constitution and the government had been suspended.<br />Soon afterward, the government denied the claim. Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souaré said in a state broadcast that he was speaking from his office and that his government "continues to function as it should," The Associated Press reported.<br />The prime minister was responding to statements by a uniformed army officer on state television and radio that a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy and Development was "taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people," news agencies reported.<br />"The Constitution is dissolved," the officer was quoted as saying. "The government is dissolved. The institutions of the republic are dissolved."<br />President Lansana Conté, 74, whose death on Monday after a long, unspecified illness was announced in the early hours of Tuesday, belonged to a generation of African leaders — the so-called Big Men — who seized power through the gun and ruled ruthlessly.<br />The claimed coup attempt mirrored Conté's own rise to power in a military takeover in 1984, after the death of his predecessor, Ahmed Sékou Touré. Touré ruled with an iron fist when the country became independent from France in 1958.<br />Underpinned by the army, each man ran the country as a personal domain, crushing dissent while Guinea's 10 million people slipped ever deeper into grinding poverty. Despite potential riches from agriculture and minerals — in particular, the world's largest deposits of bauxite, used to make aluminum — Guinea ranks among the world's poorest countries.<br />Conté faced at least two attempts by military elements to eject him from office. He formed a political party to win elections in 1993, 1998 and 2003, but the ballots were widely depicted by independent monitors as fraudulent.<br />Conté's ill health was an open secret among his people for many months, but he did not groom a successor, leaving a power vacuum that some officers and soldiers apparently sought to fill.<br />There was some doubt about the military's appetite for a takeover.<br />"It's a minority of soldiers and officers," the president of the National Assembly, Aboubacar Somparé, told a French television station, France 24. "Guinea is now lawless and going through a restless transition," he said, calling the claimed mutiny a "putsch."<br />"We have heard that officers are negotiating among themselves," he added. "We are waiting for the results."<br />Guinea's chaos underscored concern about the future of multiparty rule in Africa only a few years after the continent seemed to be enjoying a steady blossoming of democracy. In the last two years, the setbacks have included rigged ballots in Nigeria and violence after disputed elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe.<br />The African Union, the continent's biggest representative group, expressed concern about the military's action in Guinea.<br />Agence France-Presse said the takeover was announced by a military captain called Moussa Dadis Camara, who said a "consultative council" of civilian and military personnel would run the country to combat "deep despair," revive the economy and fight corruption.<br />The military broadcast, starting around 7:30 a.m. local time, followed a night of confusion. According to news reports, Conté's death was announced at 2 a.m. at a news conference of civilian and military leaders. Somparé, the president of the National Assembly, urged the Supreme Court to follow the Constitution and name him president.<br />Conté's stewardship of Guinea drew widespread accusations of abuse from human rights monitors. In August, Human Rights Watch said in an assessment that Guinea had "been rocked by civil unrest that has typically been met with brutal and excessive use of force by government security forces."<br />"In January and February 2007, security forces violently repressed a nationwide strike called to protest corruption, bad governance and deteriorating economic conditions, resulting in the deaths of more than 130 protesters," the assessment said. Human Rights Watch also cited evidence of police torture of detainees to extract confessions, among other abuses.<br />The reported coup attempt on Tuesday followed signs of a profound malaise in the country, verging on mass unrest.<br />Last month, frustrated youths took to the crumbling streets of Conakry for three days, throwing stones and setting tires on fire in escalating protests over high gas prices. Witnesses said that at least one person was killed when government troops shot at demonstrators.<br />The threat of a coup emerged long before Tuesday. In May, soldiers took the army's second in command as a hostage to protest poor pay and living conditions.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Congo sees EU sending equipment but not full force</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Francois Murphy<br />The Democratic Republic of Congo said Tuesday it expects the European Union to send equipment to help bolster a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo rather than its own additional peacekeeping force.<br />The European Union has so far failed to agree on a response to a request by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a "bridging force" to help a 17,000-strong U.N. mission in Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC.<br />EU member states have expressed opinions on the plan ranging from enthusiasm to opposition, but Congolese Foreign Minister Alexis Thambe Mwamba said a consensus seemed to be emerging behind a plan that involved sending equipment.<br />"I think we are moving towards an intermediate formula," Mwamba told reporters at a news conference in Paris.<br />Asked what that intermediate solution was, he said: "We are moving towards plans, notably where Europe could probably provide support in equipment to the African (U.N.) troops that are not well equipped."<br />The U.N. force has been unable to contain increased violence in eastern Congo between the forces of renegade General Laurent Nkunda and pro-government militias. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence.<br />The U.N. Security Council last month decided to send a further 3,000 peacekeepers for the U.N. force, and Ban had hoped an EU contingent would serve as a stopgap until those reinforcements arrive, which could take a few months.<br />President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the month, has questioned whether it would be useful to send EU troops, saying not all the U.N.'s blue helmets were deployed.<br />"When there are already 17,000 soldiers and I am told that only 800 of them are serving, I wonder if it is necessary to send another 3,000," Sarkozy said in Brussels on December 12.<br />Mwamba said there was progress among the divided EU on making some kind of contribution where before there was stronger resistance to the idea.<br />"A short time ago, there was a total refusal," he said.<br />"There was a sort of unanimity on the issue that they weren't going to intervene. But today there are countries saying 'Yes, let's study the modalities'," he said.<br />Sarkozy said earlier in the month that Angola was ready to send its own forces into Congo under a U.N. mandate. Mwamba said his country was in talks on the issue but declined to provide details of what Angola was offering.<br />"We are negotiating for the moment with Angola. What I can tell you is that Angola is an extremely positive country and stands behind the Democratic Republic of Congo," Mwamba said.<br />(Editing by Michael Roddy)<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Earthquake strikes northern Italy<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />ROME: An earthquake of 5.2 magnitude struck northern Italy Tuesday near the city of Parma, but no damage or injuries were initially reported, Italy's civil protection agency said.<br />The earthquake was felt across northern Italy, from financial capital Milan to Florence to Trieste, local media reported.<br />The U.S. Geological Survey, which estimated the earthquake's magnitude at a slightly higher 5.3, said it struck at a depth of 28.9 km (18 miles). It ranks quakes in this range as moderate.<br />"The area (near the quake's epicentre) is well constructed, so there shouldn't be serious problems," said Enzo Boschi, president of Italy's national institute of geophysics.<br />He added the quake was "nothing catastrophic" but told Italian media that there could be other quakes of smaller magnitudes in the coming hours.<br />He said the quake was felt in a radius of 100 to 150 km from its epicentre southeast of Parma.<br />(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Gavin Jones; Editing by Jon Boyle)<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ezSZP8NrEMCCcJJ9_FjnkxipreUi96ZsoYmCXT2qVAqP2LYJp8tFASGTns3aD-G_vk_-OeMU2tIwaJ5AV1z0zONhVz2pu6CC7W-aSL8m3NduNckZv9jVLfFdQ1E_WjmMogWWHWNtoc4/s1600-h/DSC04239.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220819508833682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ezSZP8NrEMCCcJJ9_FjnkxipreUi96ZsoYmCXT2qVAqP2LYJp8tFASGTns3aD-G_vk_-OeMU2tIwaJ5AV1z0zONhVz2pu6CC7W-aSL8m3NduNckZv9jVLfFdQ1E_WjmMogWWHWNtoc4/s320/DSC04239.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Natural-gas producers set charter<br /></strong>By Andrew E. Kramer<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />MOSCOW: With Russian support, a dozen countries that are large producers of natural gas founded an organization Tuesday to study methods of influencing global prices for the fuel, much as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries does for crude oil.<br />The development seems likely to further unnerve European Union countries, already wary over their growing dependence on Russian energy and what critics say are efforts by Moscow to use oil and natural gas exports as leverage to reassert sway over former East Bloc nations.<br />Initially, the officials from members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum say, the group will focus on coordinating investment plans to dissuade nations from flooding the market in the future.<br />But if its longer-term goals are realized, the group holds the potential to apply an OPEC-like model of price modulation to another of the world's most basic commodities, even as natural gas is projected to play a larger role in global energy supplies in coming decades.<br />The group is not expected to have much influence over prices in the short term. The forum "will represent the interests of producers and exporters on the international market," the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, told the gathering of energy ministers. "The time of cheap energy resources and cheap gas is surely coming to an end."<br />Still, the meeting came at a bad time for Russian energy diplomacy.<br />Most countries in the Russian-backed forum are also members of OPEC, which has been at odds with Russia this autumn over the country's reluctance to reduce oil output in coordination with OPEC to support prices.<br />The top Libyan energy official, Shokri Ghanem, told the group that Russia should first reduce oil output if it wanted to support natural gas prices, which are linked to crude oil prices. "We are still waiting for a declaration from the Russian Federation that they are cutting their production," he said.<br />The 16 nations in the forum have been meeting since 2001 as an ad hoc gathering. What was new Tuesday was the group's adoption of a charter that would establish a permanent secretariat.<br />The Russian government, said falling energy prices had impelled the members to formalize their organization.<br />As in OPEC, the ministers in the new group espoused an ideology of defiance to the more industrialized countries that are the primary consumers of energy exports and stated the rights of commodity-exporting nations to coordinate efforts to improve the terms of trade.<br />Russia, which also belongs to the Group of 8 industrialized nations and sees itself generally belonging to the club of economically developed countries, has denied the group constitutes a new cartel, like OPEC.<br />A deputy chairman of the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, Aleksander Medvedev, said flatly, "This is a gas non-OPEC."<br />But the energy minister of Venezuela, the country that initiated the formation of the original OPEC in 1960 at a meeting in Baghdad, was not coy about his hopes for the new group as liquefied natural gas is projected to become a more important fuel in global markets in coming decades.<br />"We see this organization as OPEC," Rafael Ramírez said on the sidelines of the meeting. "We are producer countries and we have to defend our interests."<br />"In the long-term, we see this organization as an OPEC organization, as the gas market is developed worldwide, we will have more instruments to influence the market and preserve the value of this natural resource," he said.<br />Natural gas prices are typically linked to the global price of oil, as power plants and other big users often have the capability to switch to fuel oil as an alternative to natural gas. A study the group commissioned said this would likely remain the practice.<br />However, the study noted that the environmental benefits of natural gas, including lower releases of greenhouse gases and greater efficiency, was not now priced into the fuel in international trade, offering room to negotiate the price of natural gas upward.<br />The study also concluded that the market for ship-borne natural gas was transforming the fuel into a global commodity, suggesting the industry would change from one modeled as a utility serving pipeline customers to one built around commodity trading.<br />The forum members are: Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Venezuela, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Qatar, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Trinidad and Tobago, and, as observers, Equatorial Guinea and Norway.<br /><br />************************<br /><br /><strong>Iraq's oil revenues fall 25%<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: Iraq's oil revenues dropped sharply in November even as exports remained steady at 52.8 million barrels, the Iraqi Oil Ministry said Tuesday.<br />Revenue fell more than 25 percent - to $2.3 billion from $3.11 billion in October - because of the steep fall in world oil prices, the ministry announced.<br />Iraq's oil was sold at an average price of $43.542 a barrel, down from $58.902 a barrel. It was purchased by 29 international oil companies.<br />The data also showed that 43.5 million barrels were exported through the Persian Gulf, while 9.3 million barrels were exported via Turkey's port of Ceyhan.<br />Also Tuesday, the ministry set Dec. 31 as the date to open its second licensing round for developing oil and gas fields.<br />Its statement added that Oil Minster Hussain al-Shahristani would kick off the bidding round at a conference in Baghdad. The statement did not divulge the number of fields.<br />Iraq recently opened a first round of bidding for contracts to develop six major oil fields and two gas fields, choosing 34 of 120 companies that applied to participate.<br />The ministry plans to sign these contracts in mid-2009.<br />Iraq sits on more than 115 billion barrels of oil and an estimated 112 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves but decades of wars, UN sanctions, violence and sabotage have battered its oil industry.<br />The drop in oil prices to under $50 per barrel from a summertime high of about $148 has hit Iraq hard since it depends on oil revenues for about 95 percent of its budget.<br />Its government was forced to slash next year's spending plan from $80 billion to $67 billion due to the crisis and now it is mulling more cuts.<br />Early this month, al-Sharistani appealed for help from international oil companies to triple the current daily production of 2.4 million barrels per day to 6 million barrels per day by 2018. In return, he promised "full cooperation and a transparent and competitive environment for fair business."<br /><br />************************<br /><br /><strong>East Timor seen still on brink of anarchy<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />CANBERRA: East Timor remains on the brink of anarchy and could easily slide back into the violence that fractured the country in 2006, a U.N. peacekeeping report was quoted as saying Tuesday.<br />It said a "precipitous fall" in oil revenue also threatened to bring more social unrest in a country where three-in-four households were struggling to find enough food and chronic malnutrition hit one-in-two children under 5 in many areas.<br />East Timor's economy relies on off-shore oil and gas reserves shared with Australia, and which pump around $40 million (27 million pounds) a year into government coffers.<br />The security report, completed earlier this month for the U.N.'s Department of Peacekeeping Operations, said international peacekeepers must stay in the country despite mounting local pressure for them to leave, the Australian newspaper reported.<br />"With regard to the security institutions, there will be no easy choices, and donors should be prepared to provide new reinvigorated assistance in the security area while the government continues to be under pressure to redeem on its social promises," it said.<br />The leaked security assessment warned that nine years after Indonesia's occupation ended and independence in 2002, Asia's youngest nation remained vulnerable to rapid political collapse.<br />After a split among the military and police in early 2006, violence flared between Timorese from the country's east and west, killing 37 people and driving 150,000 from their homes.<br />In February this year, rebel soldiers carried out an unsuccessful attempt to kill President Jose Ramos Horta, who was wounded and flown to Australia for surgery. Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped injury in the attack.<br />The U.N. report said East Timor's police force and courts were largely dysfunctional and required urgent international intervention to strengthen their ability.<br />Local police were struggling to cope with no operational budget and "troubling" tensions were rising with U.N. police due to unrealistic Timorese demands for a stronger role, it said.<br />A U.N. spokeswoman in Dili was not immediately available for comment.<br />More than 2,500 foreign troops and police remain in East Timor to help local security forces maintain stability, the bulk from Australia, New Zealand and former colonial ruler Portugal.<br />The report, prepared as part of the U.N.'s evaluations on the future of its peacekeeping operations in the country, said East Timor's senior political leadership was bitterly divided.<br />Gusmao was facing a difficult political balancing act, with Timor's economic outlook weakening because of the collapse of oil prices sparked by the global financial crisis, while needing to improve social conditions, it said.<br />(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)<br /><br /><br /><br />************************<br /><br /><strong>Emirates claims world's first cross-polar green flight<br /></strong>By Joe Sharkey<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />SAN FRANCISCO: Granted, the environmental credentials of a man whose airline features in-flight showers are subject to question.<br />Nevertheless, Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, the chairman of Emirates, said his airline had demonstrated that smarter preparation and flight-routing could help reduce carbon emissions in air travel.<br />"The whole world is going in this direction" in at least giving consideration to the effects of air travel on the environment, Ahmed said last week as Emirates introduced nonstop service between Dubai and San Francisco. "And everybody should be doing more."<br />The first Emirates airplane flying the route to San Francisco from Dubai was a Boeing 777-200LR, which landed after an 8,100-mile flight that took 15 hours and 20 minutes.<br />Emirates said it was the "world's first cross-polar green flight." By that, Emirates meant that the aircraft, already known for having better fuel efficiency than older long-range planes, had been routed near the North Pole to save about 2,000 gallons, or 7,500 liters, of carbon-emitting fuel. Making the trip required special clearances from Canada, Iceland, Russia and the United States and from the Emirates home state of Dubai, where the plane received priority clearance for departure.<br />There is nothing particularly innovative about airlines tracking near the North Pole to save time and fuel on long-haul flights, though the routes can be tricky because communications and navigation technology are not yet as extensive as they are for standard transoceanic flights.<br />For decades, the North Pole routes were scarcely used, partly because of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was suspicious about aircraft of any type that flew over its far northern airspace.<br />With the end of the Cold War, tension abated just as long-haul aircraft became available to serve the growing demand for nonstop travel between cities half a world apart. United Airlines, for example, had more than 1,400 flights on the polar route last year, up from a dozen in 1999.<br />Emirates is not alone among the world's airlines in promoting better environmental thinking. Continental Airlines, for example, plans a demonstration flight in Houston on Jan. 7 using a 737-800 equipped with engines designed to be powered by a special fuel blend that includes some components derived from plants. (The flight will not carry passengers.)<br />Emirates, which depends on long-haul Boeing and Airbus jets and heavily promotes its luxurious business-class and first-class cabins on the 12- to 16-hour flights it is known for, clearly wants to position itself as a leader in the industry's incipient environmental initiatives.<br />But what about those showers? I'm referring to the latest over-the-top innovation, the recent introduction of two showers for use by first-class passengers on Emirates A380 superjumbo jets. The showers are obviously not an environmental step forward, given the additional fuel needed to carry enough water to let all 14 first-class passengers have two showers, if they want.<br />In fact, said Andrew Parker, an Emirates senior vice president whose duties include the carrier's environmental affairs, first-class passengers have not been using the showers to the extent Emirates originally anticipated when it allotted 500 kilograms (more than half a ton) of weight for the additional water.<br />Usually, he said, the first-class cabins have been full. But passengers "are using half the allotment" of water. Emirates still carries the full load, but Parker said that the airline was re-evaluating the requirements and looking into ways to "reprocess water" on board to cut down on the weight and the extra fuel required.<br />Emirates has three A380s in service and another 55 on order from Airbus. Ahmed said that the airline intended to fly them configured into three classes, with no more than 500 passengers.<br />(The A380 is certified to carry almost 900 passengers in an all-coach configuration, but none of the airlines that have ordered the plane have indicated they were considering doing that.)<br />Meanwhile, it isn't clear whether the first-class A380 passengers have cut back on showers because of environmental concerns, or merely because they don't want to take themselves out of their private compartments and away from the free Champagne. Nor is it clear whether they might object to showering in the future with recycled water on that long flight to the other side of the world.<br />But hey, everybody has to sacrifice.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>PTT PCL to spend $6.6 billion on energy businesses</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BANGKOK: PTT PCL, the biggest listed firm in Thailand, announced a five-year plan on Tuesday to spend $6.6 billion on its core oil and gas businesses despite a gloomy economic outlook and falling energy prices.<br />However, the 2009-2013 investment plan could be revised "as necessary in view of material change in the market environment," the energy group said in a statement.<br />Some 58 percent of the 229 billion baht budget is earmarked for the natural gas business, which generates more than a third of PTT's annual core earnings.<br />PTT runs Thailand's gas pipeline monopoly and controls more than 30 petroleum gas exploration, petrochemical and refinery businesses.<br />Under the plan, more than 70 billion baht will be spent in 2009, rising to 82.5 billion baht in 2010.<br />Some funds would be invested in the pipeline system, which mainly delivers gas from the Gulf of Thailand to PTT plants and other power producers on land.<br />It also set aside money for the construction of a sixth gas separation plant and an ethane plant. PTT also planned to add more stations serving natural gas vehicles.<br />PTT, which is majority-owned by the government, said it would monitor the economic situation in Thailand and globally and make adjustments to its investment plan as needed.<br />Last week, the company said it was reviewing a plan to invest in three natural gas pipelines worth a combined 50 billion baht due to the poor economic outlook.<br />At midday, PTT shares were down 0.6 percent at 167 baht, in line with the overall Thai stock market.<br /><br />*************************<br /><br /><strong>NASA gives space cargo contracts to start-up firms<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Irene Klotz<br />NASA, rejecting aerospace giants Lockheed and Boeing, awarded $3.5 billion (2.37 billion pounds) in contracts to start-up companies on Tuesday to deliver cargo to the International Space Station after the U.S. space shuttles are retired.<br />Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), a Hawthorne, California-based company headed by PayPal founder Elon Musk, and Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp are due to start cargo shipments to and from the space station beginning in 2010.<br />The $100-billion orbital outpost -- being assembled in stages with modules for living and research -- is a joint project by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and European nations.<br />NASA decided to use a commercial contractor for deliveries rather than relying on the Russian Progress cargo vehicles, which help deliver supplies to the space station.<br />Russia will transport U.S. astronauts to and from the station on its Soyuz capsules after the shuttles are retired in 2010. The proposed shuttle replacement will not be ready to fly until about 2015.<br />"These commercial carriers will carry about 40 to 70 percent of our cargo to (the) space station," NASA's associate administrator for space flight, Bill Gerstenmaier, told reporters on a conference call.<br />SpaceX and Orbital Sciences beat out a Chicago-based consortium called PlanetSpace that included three of the U.S. space agency's prime contractors -- Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Alliant Techsystems Inc.<br />SpaceX's contract is for 12 flights for $1.6 billion, while Orbital will make up to eight flights for $1.9 billion.<br />Both companies had previously been awarded NASA contracts, worth a combined $500 million, to develop their orbital cargo delivery systems.<br />SpaceX plans to launch from a complex it built at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, beside the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Orbital plans to fly from NASA's Wallops Island facility in Virginia.<br />(Editing by Jim Loney and John O'Callaghan)<br /><br />*************************<br /><br /><strong>Last day of work at two GM factories</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />MORAINE, Ohio: Employees at the General Motors sport utility vehicle factory here put in their final day at work on Tuesday.<br />The shutdown, after 27 years of production, will eliminate the jobs of 1,080 hourly workers who assembled Chevrolet Trailbalzers.<br />"They're nostalgic," a GM spokeswoman, Courtney Strickler, said of the workers. "They're taking pictures. They are giving each other hugs."<br />GM said in June that it would close the factory because its sport utility vehicles were being shunned by consumers as a result of high gasoline prices.<br />In Janesville, Wisconsin, GM also stopped making SUVs on Tuesday, putting 1,200 people out of work. The factory there will stay open until June to make trucks with Isuzu, but only about 50 people will be needed for that operation.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23gm.php">Investors bet that cash won't save GM</a><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_Rj8LoDjsa7HK6MT61YbGw1AFliWBWaxWfANBz4M4AVddezfywdQVPQvYpr7Dh2wfO-M30-FwTRnt2cw3NsyM_dRNZg6P1x2cGI_z6gBcsSPkPaBbDcTIliHjiHsy6r1ULOQQr6ab-8/s1600-h/DSC04240.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220815475616882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ_Rj8LoDjsa7HK6MT61YbGw1AFliWBWaxWfANBz4M4AVddezfywdQVPQvYpr7Dh2wfO-M30-FwTRnt2cw3NsyM_dRNZg6P1x2cGI_z6gBcsSPkPaBbDcTIliHjiHsy6r1ULOQQr6ab-8/s320/DSC04240.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>In Paris, the wish list for Christmas? Just a home<br /></strong>By Katrin Bennhold<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />PARIS: Julie Lacoste has her own definition of the perfect Christmas present: It has to be a surprise, it has to be useful - but most important, it has to be light. "Portable," as she puts it.<br />Lacoste, 31, and her two sons, Jules, 6, and Orphée, 2, are homeless. Every few weeks they pack one big duffel bag with their belongings, heave it onto a bicycle and move to another apartment. They crash on the floor of a friend's house and rely on the charity of parents at the boys' schools.<br />If they have avoided sleeping on the street so far, it is also because of the publicity Lacoste has reaped with a weekly blog she started in September.<br />This "diary of a homeless mother," recounting the daily routine of juggling her job at a public library, the care for her children and the battle to find a place to stay, has resulted in dozens of offers of temporary accommodation.<br />It has also drawn some skepticism.<br />"There are other cities and villages in France where life is sweet, rents are cheaper and there is work," Sylvaine P. wrote on the blog on Dec. 10. "One gets the feeling that you haven't necessarily always made the right decisions."<br />Lacoste's response is categorical: "Paris is home. I have a job here and friends. All I need is an apartment."<br />"Sometimes it's a little overwhelming," she said one recent morning, drinking herbal tea at a café near their latest address in northern Paris. "Someone even offered me a book contract. But how can I write a book without an ending? I need to get an apartment first."<br />Lacoste, well-dressed and employed, may be an unlikely face of the homeless. But her tale has a growing resonance in France: As the global economic crisis eats into incomes and prices more struggling people out of the housing market, national pride in egalitarian values and a generous welfare system is being punctured.<br />Add a cold spell in the run-up to Christmas, and the plight of those without a stable roof over their heads has once again become a national debate.<br />Seven people have died in the cold in the Paris area since November, most of them in makeshift homeless camps in the forests bordering some of the wealthiest neighborhoods.<br />That brought the countrywide toll so far this year to 343 homeless deaths, compared with a little more than 210 in 2007, according to according to the Abbé Pierre Foundation, a charity dealing with housing issues.<br />"Shame" was the title of a recent editorial in Le Monde, in which the center-left newspaper called on the government to tackle the longstanding housing shortage that has raised rents and pushed up the number of eligible people waiting for subsidized housing.<br />Politicians "would be well-advised to seize the occasion and put into place a real housing policy," the editorial read, "if only to spare this country the shame of seeing the unfortunate die at the gates of Paris."<br />The weekly magazine Le Nouvel Économiste lamented what it called the "seasonal compassion" of the media and the political class that tends to ebb in the warmer months.<br />The issue has embarrassed President Nicolas Sarkozy, who pledged on the campaign trail in 2006 that "two years from now, no one will be obliged to sleep on the sidewalk anymore and die of the cold."<br />The president's office argues that there is enough emergency shelter to protect the homeless from the cold, pointing out that many decline offers for such shelter, including some of those who have recently died.<br />Housing charities say, however, that the argument is dishonest and that the real policy challenge lies in the persistent shortage of affordable housing.<br />The recent suggestion by Sarkozy's housing minister, Christine Boutin, to take the homeless into temporary emergency shelters every time temperatures go below minus-6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) has only fueled a public outcry.<br />"At minus-5 degrees you leave people outside and at minus-6 degrees you force them into a temporary shelter?" scoffed Patrick Doutreligne, head of the Abbé Pierre Foundation. "This is not policy making; this is a public relations exercise."<br />But housing problems go well beyond the poverty and existential dangers facing some 100,000 homeless nationwide.<br />One million people have no stable home here, often despite holding a job, Doutreligne's foundation estimates. Nine out of 10 migrate from one temporary solution to another - like Lacoste.<br />Originally from a village near Bordeaux, in southwestern France, she left behind an apprenticeship on a horse farm and moved to Paris 10 years ago, dreaming of becoming an actress.<br />With her part-time job at a law library south of the Paris city limits, she earns €750 a month, or about $1,050. Divorced from the father of her sons, a Senegalese musician who is also homeless, Lacoste had to give up her 50-square-meter, or about 540-square-foot, apartment in the north of Paris last January when her housemate left. All attempts to find a new one failed and she could no longer afford the monthly rent of €950.<br />She took her sons and moved in with two friends and their children, thinking it would take a few weeks either to find a small place in the private sector or finally get the social housing she first applied for more than four years ago.<br />It has not worked out.<br />"Even when I see an apartment advertised that I can afford, the landlords refuse to schedule a visit when they hear about my situation," she said. "And I still haven't heard back about the subsidized housing."<br />Seven months into her odyssey, she decided to share the experience on a blog.<br />On the welcome page she explains why: "So that everyone understands what it is like, concretely, to be homeless in Paris today."<br />In weekly entries on her brother's old laptop, Lacoste describes the logistical juggling act of living out of one bag and having everything else stored away in three different basements across Paris.<br />Not without humor, she talks about the awkwardness of hiring a baby sitter who is baffled to learn that the place where she would care for the children was yet to be determined.<br />At times she is defensive.<br />"I am homeless, not a tramp," she wrote Sept. 12, venting her anger at those who equate homelessness with poor hygiene and are indifferent to all but the most glaring poverty.<br />One recurrent theme is anxiety: the anxiety of breaking anything in the places they stay; the anxiety of not knowing where next; the anxiety of watching her children cope.<br />For all the moving around, Lacoste says she has endeavored to create some stability for the boys, keeping them in the same kindergarten and school throughout.<br />Thousands of readers from as far away as Angola have been following Lacoste's life - in which so far every episode has the same ending: no home.<br />For Christmas, she has taken her boys to the house of her mother, a retired electricity worker who still lives near Bordeaux.<br />They will get a Christmas tree and presents like other children. But they will not get what they most want.<br />"A house," Jules said.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOyXjY9EeTsCKiRjiO0I46lsVKADh5swretyPuzCmIxx7dcNykqTUzc9TFZxTfbTrmiXEdy_VWQTwQSSwVersh6Okxs_pXnYoQKAuvZCfjh6mPmTLHGve-OouHncydaao5WWG9zXcwtNU/s1600-h/DSC04241.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220812412392642" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOyXjY9EeTsCKiRjiO0I46lsVKADh5swretyPuzCmIxx7dcNykqTUzc9TFZxTfbTrmiXEdy_VWQTwQSSwVersh6Okxs_pXnYoQKAuvZCfjh6mPmTLHGve-OouHncydaao5WWG9zXcwtNU/s320/DSC04241.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Germany calls for international piracy court</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />DJIBOUTI: Germany called Tuesday for an international court to be set up to prosecute Somali pirates who have attacked scores of vessels this year, threatening global trade in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.<br />A sharp rise in piracy in the waters off Somalia has pushed up insurance costs, earned pirate gangs tens of millions of dollars in ransoms and prompted foreign navies to rush to the area to protect merchant shipping.<br />In October, French forces captured nine suspected pirates at sea and handed them over to Somali security forces.<br />Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung of Germany said suspected pirates should face an international court.<br />"It needs to be an international authority. No one wants a 'Guantánamo on the sea,"' Jung said in Djibouti, where he saw off 220 German troops joining a European Union anti-piracy mission.<br />German lawmakers agreed last week to send up to 1,400 soldiers and a frigate - the Karlsruhe - to the Gulf of Aden as part of the EU mission.<br />Jung said the German soldiers, who will provide protection to ships delivering food aid to Somalia would have a "robust" mandate. "Obviously there will be combat situations," he said.<br />Analysts say the piracy problem stems from the chaos onshore and must be tackled on land as well, but the fractured Somali government says it does not have the resources to tackle it.<br />The Horn of Africa nation has been in virtual anarchy since a military dictator, Muhammad Siad Barre, was ousted in 1991. Islamist insurgents control most of the south and feuding clan militias hold sway elsewhere.<br />The Islamists have enforced a strict form of Shariah law in the areas they control and on Tuesday a man accused of murder was executed before a crowd of 4,000 people in Baladwayne, a small rebel-held town near the Ethiopian border.<br /><br />************************<br /><br /><strong>Chinese warships to leave Friday for Somalia<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BEIJING: Chinese warships on a mission to protect their country's vessels and crews from pirate attacks off Somalia will depart Friday, armed with special forces, helicopters and plans to share information with other countries working in the area.<br />The operation, China's first major naval mission abroad, will include the destroyers Haikou and Wuhan as well as a large supply ship, said Rear Admiral Xiao Xinnian, deputy chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army Navy. On board will be two helicopters and traditional weapons like missiles and cannons.<br />"In light of the peculiarity of this operation, we have also dispatched some special forces," Xiao said at a news conference Tuesday, adding, "These special forces will also carry some light weapons that correspond with the specific features and needs of this operation."<br />Though the purpose of the mission was to protect Chinese ships and crews, Beijing has called for stepped up cooperation in anti-piracy efforts. China announced it was sending warships to the area after the United Nations Security Council authorized nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases.<br />"During the escort operation, Chinese ships are ready and willing to strengthen information and intelligence sharing as well as humanitarian rescue operations with vessels of relevant countries according to the situation on the ground," said Senior Colonel Huang Xueping, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense.<br />A Communist Party newspaper has said the mission would initially last three months, but Huang did not give an exact length, saying the duration would depend on the UN mandate and conditions in the area. The ships will depart Friday from the island province of Hainan in southern China.<br />Piracy has taken an increasing toll on international shipping, especially in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes. Pirates have made an estimated $30 million hijacking ships for ransom this year, seizing more than 40 vessels off Somalia's 3,000-kilometer, or 1,900-mile, coastline.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/23/america/OUKWD-UK-NAVY-SUBMARINES.php">US awards GD and Northrop submarine deal</a><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>China signals further interest in aircraft carrier<br /></strong>By Edward Wong<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BEIJING: In the clearest indication yet that China could soon begin building its first aircraft carrier, a military Ministry spokesman said Tuesday that the country was seriously considering "relevant issues" in making its decision about whether to move ahead with the project, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.<br />The spokesman, Huang Xueping, said at a news conference in Beijing that aircraft carriers were "a reflection of a nation's comprehensive power," indicating that Chinese government officials saw value in adding a carrier to the country's fleet. Huang said that China would use any aircraft carrier built in the future to safeguard its shores and defend "sovereignty over coastal areas and territorial seas," Xinhua reported.<br />If China does decide to build the carrier, it will no doubt increase tensions with the United States, Taiwan and Japan, among other governments. China has been expanding its navy at a fast pace. The government has built at least 60 warships since 2000, and its fleet of 860 vessels includes about 60 submarines.<br />Last month, a senior Chinese military official hinted in an interview with The Financial Times that China would like to build an aircraft carrier. The official, Major General Quan Lihua, said having a carrier was the dream of any great military power and suggested that the United States had nothing to fear if China did build a carrier.<br />The United States has 11 aircraft carriers, but only a handful of other nations — including Britain, France, Italy and Russia — have carriers and of those, none have more than a few.<br />The Ministry of National Defense had called the news conference on Tuesday to give details about the deployment of Chinese naval ships off the coast of Somalia, where an increase in piracy has made the shipping lanes the most dangerous in the world. Three Chinese ships are scheduled to head to the area on Friday.<br />The buildup of the Chinese military could change the balance of power across the Taiwan Strait. The Communist Party views Taiwan as a rebel province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. But the United States government has said it may come to Taiwan's defense in the event of hostilities with China.<br />In October, the Pentagon announced the sale of $6 billion of advanced weapons to Taiwan, a move that prompted criticism from China. The United States regularly sells arms to Taiwan, and China has long denounced the sales. More Articles in World »<br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>In West Bank, glimmers of an economic revival<br /></strong>By Isabel Kershner and Ethan Bronner<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BETHLEHEM, West Bank: They are lining up once again by the hundreds, candle in hand - Spaniards, Russians, Sri Lankans - to descend into the ancient grotto where tradition says Jesus was born. Outside in Manger Square, a municipal tree shines with decorations and telephone wires bear glittery stars in seasonal spirit.<br />It might seem obvious that in the days leading up to Christmas, this city, which lives in the hearts of Christians worldwide, would become a tourist magnet. But only six years ago the Church of the Nativity was the site of a five-week standoff between Israeli troops and armed Palestinian militants. Even today, to get into Bethlehem requires passing through an Israeli checkpoint under the shadow of the enormous Israeli separation wall.<br />Yet there are more tourists in Bethlehem this year than at any time in a decade, and their presence signals something beyond the Christmas spirit: life for West Bank Palestinians, oppressive and challenging though it remains, seems to be making substantial, if fragile, improvement.<br />Israeli and Palestinian officials each report economic growth for the occupied areas of 4 to 5 percent and a drop in the unemployment rate of at least three percentage points. The Israelis report that in 2008 wages here are up more than 20 percent and trade by 35 percent. The improved climate has nearly doubled the number of tourists in Bethlehem and increased them by half in Jericho.<br />It is not just tourists. The Bethlehem Small Enterprise Center, financed with German aid, has been open for eight months and busy, helping printers improve their software and olive wood craftsmen their marketing.<br />"It has been the best year since 1999," noted Victor Batarseh, mayor of Bethlehem. "Our hotels are full, whereas three years ago there was almost nobody. Unemployment is below 20 percent. But we are still under occupation."<br />And all this in a year when the global economy has been sinking at an alarming rate.<br />Politically, as the mayor notes, there is little real change. A year of negotiations with Israel is drawing to a close without an agreement on Palestinian statehood.<br />The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whose term ends Jan. 9, has said he will call new elections in the coming months. Hamas says it will name a competing president if he does not step down Jan. 9, raising concerns of further instability. Israel has its own elections in February, adding to the uncertainty.<br />For the Palestinian Authority, the balance between heralding achievements and keeping up criticism of Israeli policies is delicate - especially with the conservative Israeli opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, leading in polls for the elections, advocating emphasis on an "economic peace."<br />The Palestinians say that a sound economy alone will not bring peace, that the conflict requires a political solution.<br />Still, Palestinian forces are guarding major West Bank cities, Israeli troops have stepped back - although they continue nighttime raids on those suspected of being militants - and Israel says it is about to significantly ease some restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank, a prerequisite for further economic growth.<br />A senior Israeli official in the northern West Bank said that 4,000 Israeli Arab citizens were driving in to shop in the area every weekend and that 115 new stores had opened in Tulkarm in the past four months.<br />In addition, the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has secured $1.7 billion in international aid this year, allowing it to resume the payment of salaries to tens of thousands of government employees.<br />Even in Nablus, a volatile city of 200,000 that has been subject to a particularly suffocating Israeli security regime, the atmosphere is beginning to change. A gleaming mall owned by the municipality, under construction since 1999, finally opened this year.<br />Ahmed Ayed, 22, manages a women's clothing store there. Sporting long hair and a goatee, he said the outlet, the sixth in Nablus of a chain owned by his father, opened half a year ago; a seventh has since opened nearby.<br />Ziad Anabtawi, chairman of the Anabtawi Group, which includes import, distribution and investment companies, has recently expanded into the production of premium Palestinian olive oil with an eye abroad. He says the Palestinian economy is much healthier today than it was in the 1990s, when it was based on laborers working in Israel, their entry dependent on Israeli good will. Today, it involves large Palestinian investment companies and bankers.<br />Old Town in Nablus was until recently a danger zone where Palestinian gunmen frequently clashed with Israeli forces. On a recent afternoon, groups of women relaxed, smoking and sharing picnics at a historic bathhouse, the Shefa Hammam.<br />The manager, Muhammad Amer, said the 700-year-old hammam had been hit by Israeli rockets and raided seven times by troops looking for wanted militants during the second intifada, from 2000 to 2005. It was renovated and reopened two years ago.<br />A bastion of Fatah, Abbas's movement, Nablus has also become a stronghold of Hamas, its main rival. A list widely associated with the Islamic group swept local council elections here in 2005, winning 13 council seats out of 15.<br />After the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Fatah vigilantes roamed Nablus torching offices and institutions associated with the rival group.<br />Set on ending the chaos, the Palestinian Authority began a law-and-order campaign there a few months later, deploying hundreds of extra police officers. Israel went along with an amnesty program for wanted men loyal to Abbas.<br />But prosperity, businesspeople there say, depends on Israel's removing the major checkpoints in place since 2002, when at the height of the Palestinian uprising the Israeli Army invaded the cities of the West Bank and set them up, a step it said was necessary to prevent the movement of suicide bombers.<br />For six years, Palestinians have not been able to drive private cars in or out of Nablus without special permission. The Israeli military says that is about to change. Within a few weeks the army is planning to allow Palestinians from the northern West Bank districts of Nablus and Jenin to drive to the south in their own cars, without special permits and with only random inspections.<br />"We as a command are willing to take more risks as hostile terrorist activity goes down," said Colonel Benny Shik, a senior Israeli military official in the West Bank.<br />Mayor Adly Yaish of Nablus said he had heard about the proposed changes and called them "a good start."<br />The way ahead, though, is dotted with pitfalls. The Israeli military emphasizes that all changes can be reversed. And the Israeli measures to suppress Hamas can sometimes be clumsy and counterproductive. Anabtawi and Yaish have each spent time in Israeli detention in the past year on suspicion of having financial links with Hamas. Israeli judges ordered them released.<br />In the West Bank, Hamas is currently subdued, with its armed men deep underground, its political leaders in Israeli jails and those representatives still at large in the local authorities diligently playing by Palestinian Authority rules.<br />The governor of Bethlehem, Salah Tamari, a Palestinian activist and coexistence advocate for decades, said Hamas was weakening in the West Bank as people saw how hard life was under its rule in the Gaza Strip. What he really worried about was a future with Israel, despite his years of Israeli friendships. In his office, the curtains to his right were drawn shut to keep out the view of the opposite hill of Har Homa, a huge Jewish suburb that he had worked against being built in the 1990s.<br />"Israelis are paranoid because of their past, while Palestinians are paranoid because of their present," he said. "But we are doomed to live together or blessed to live together, depending on your point of view.<br />"It is true that the economy is improving slightly. But beyond that, I'm afraid very little is getting easier."<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Iraqi Parliament speaker resigns</strong><br />By Sam Dagher and Graham Bowley<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: The Iraqi Parliament accepted the resignation of the Parliament speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, on Tuesday and immediately authorized the government to approve a resolution to allow British, Australian and other non-American troops to stay in Iraq after the end of the year.<br />After a rowdy session of Parliament last week at which he was accused of hurling serious insults during a debate on the foreign troops bill, Mashhadani resigned but later rescinded his resignation. He offered his resignation again in a special session of Parliament on Tuesday and lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to approve it.<br />"We want to do good, but sometimes we choose the wrong path," Mashhadani said in his resignation speech.<br />It was not immediately clear who would replace Mashhadani, a Sunni, although under Iraq's sectarian quota system the next speaker will also be a Sunni.<br />Over the past week, Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers pressed for his resignation, threatening to boycott Parliament if he did not step down. They complained that Mashhadani was considered a histrionic man who was often brusque with those with whom he disagreed.<br />The uncertainty over Mashhadani's status had held up the vote on the resolution to allow foreign troops from countries other than the United States to stay in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires on Dec. 31. But the Parliament said the government could now strike an agreement on the troops, as long as any non-American foreign presence was finished by the end of July 2009. Britain, the main ally of the United States in the invasion in Iraq in 2003, has already announced that most of its troops would leave Iraq by around May next year.<br />Mashhadani became speaker about two years ago, taking up one of the most prominent positions in the government to be held by a Sunni. But his time in office was controversial. A year ago he refused to resign after his guards were accused of beating up a member of Parliament. In 2006, Mashhadani, a devout Muslim, was accused of insulting secular female lawmakers.<br />And last week, during the uproarious debate on foreign troops, he refused demands to allow discussion of the fate of Muntader al-Zaidi, an Iraqi television reporter who was arrested for throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush at a news conference in Baghdad this month.<br />Graham Bowley reported from New York.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br />H.D.S. Greenway: Out with Bush<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />The image of shoes being thrown at George W. Bush during his tarnished legacy tour of Iraq has already entered legend. That a Saudi offered to pay $10 million for just one of the shoes attests to the power of symbolism. The Turkish cobbler who made the shoes is being inundated with new orders from around the world.<br />It was outrageous, and the Iraqi government may have been embarrassed, but you can count on a substantial number of Arab boys born this month being named Muntader, after Muntader al Zaidi, the thrower. He is in deep trouble in Iraq, but for much of the world he is goody-two-shoes.<br />In Bush's last pathetic days, with the world going broke and his administration in a moral Chapter 11, he continues to misrepresent his culpability in the calamities that have befallen the country on his watch.<br />The most egregious was his statement, when asked if he had any regrets, that he wished the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction could have been better.<br />Bush blithely ignored the efforts his administration went to in order to twist the intelligence to his liking. The march to war was one of the greatest frauds of our time.<br />Bush's legacy includes an unnecessary war in Iraq and a mismanaged war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a congressional report warns that the United States is to be attacked by nuclear or biological weapons within the next few years.<br />Bush's legacy is one of great carelessness. Bush was careless about the way he went to war in Iraq, with no clear plan on what to do with the country once the troops reached Baghdad. There was a carelessness about Afghanistan, letting Osama bin Laden escape, and drawing away assets to fight in Iraq before Afghanistan was stabilized.<br />To this day there is no clear policy for Afghanistan, other than more troops and more war. "That's not a policy," said the former ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, "that's a delivery system."<br />There was carelessness about how Bush handled the Israeli-Palestine issue, uttering noble thoughts but with no follow-up, allowing his underlings to first undermine Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then Condoleezza Rice. There was carelessness in the delegation of power to Vice President Cheney, allowing Cheney to undermine negotiations with North Korea.<br />There was carelessness in the way the administration handled even natural disaster, the "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" quote being the lasting footnote on how Hurricane Katrina was met.<br />There was carelessness during the Bush years about the entire oversight of America's financial system, with regulators, as President-elect Barack Obama put it, "asleep at the switch" while the financial train went off the rails. The Security and Exchange Commission looked the other way while Bernard Madoff pulled off what may be the biggest Wall Street heist in history. There was "not a lot of adult supervision," said Obama.<br />"At least Bush kept us safe," I have heard it said, because no terrorist attack on U.S. soil has come since 2001. But there is no escaping that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, and there was a great carelessness in the way Bush's people refused to consider the danger from Al Qaeda, while terrorism experts, such as Richard Clarke, with his "hair on fire" from anxiety, tried to warn them.<br />There was more than carelessness involved in the erosion of civil liberties and unlawful activities perpetuated by the Bush administration.<br />Nothing has so hurt America's standing in the world as the decision to allow torture. We now know that the worst of the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo can be traced up to the highest levels of Bush's administration.<br />A weary world would like to see the back of the Bush administration, not the least the Republican party to which Bush has done so much damage.<br />With a legacy of wars, water-boarding, and a cesspit of scandal and financial collapse, the Bush legacy has at least one defender. "Mr. Bush served some good purpose to the economy before he left," said the newly prosperous Turkish shoe maker.<br />As for al-Zaidi's pair, they've been destroyed - perhaps to prevent idolatry.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Iraq parliament allows British troops to stay</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Waleed Ibrahim<br />Iraq's parliament approved a measure on Tuesday that clears the way for troops from Britain, Australia and a handful of other nations to stay in Iraq after a U.N. mandate expires at year's end, a senior lawmaker said.<br />A vote on the measure was delayed for several days by squabbling in the parliament, whose speaker resigned just before Tuesday's vote after angering some politicians with his brash style and insults in a session last week.<br />"We authorise the government to take all necessary steps regarding foreign forces other than U.S. forces," said deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiya. He said the measure approved would allow the troops to stay in Iraq through the end of July 2009.<br />Forces from Britain, Australia, El Salvador, Romania and Estonia and NATO have been awaiting a new arrangement to legalise their presence in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires in little over a week.<br />Lawmakers said the resolution empowered the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to strike a deal with these countries permitting their troops to stay, without that deal having to go back to parliament for further scrutiny.<br />"What happened today is parliament giving its authorisation to the government to make such a deal," legislator Jaber Habeeb Jaber told Reuters.<br />He added parliament could do this because the likely agreement sought by the government would be a memorandum of understanding rather than a full blown pact or treaty.<br />POLITICAL STORM<br />On Saturday, parliament on technical grounds rejected a draft law that would have allowed Britain, Australia and other nations to carry out combat operations through May next year and to stay in Iraq through July.<br />Deputies argued that, rather than legislation, a treaty or agreement was needed, similar in format to a U.S.-Iraqi deal that allows the 140,000 troops in Iraq to remain until 2011.<br />The vote was then sidelined by the political storm that resulted in the resignation of parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab physician who emerged out of nowhere to lead the young Iraqi parliament in 2006.<br />Shi'ite and Kurd lawmakers had demanded that Mashhadani, a member of Iraq's largest Sunni bloc, resign. It remains to be seen who will replace him.<br />Officials from Britain, the main U.S. ally in the 2003 invasion, were making contingency plans in case lawmakers were unable to pass a proposal permitting them to stay.<br />Britain's 4,100 troops are posted mostly around the southern oil port city of Basra which, like most of Iraq, has become a much safer place in the past year as violence drops sharply.<br />Prime Minister Gordon Brown confirmed last week that his country would start pulling troops out by the end of May.<br />(Writing by Tim Cocks and Missy Ryan)<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Iranian resistance group criticizes Iraq's efforts to expel it</strong><br />By Sam Dagher<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: An Iranian resistance group on Monday condemned a renewed push by the Iraqi government to deport its members as a result of undue Iranian influence.<br />Some 3,800 members of the group, the People's Mujahedeen, live in a fenced-off camp north of Baghdad, where they have enjoyed the protection of the American military since 2003. The Iraqi government notified the group on Sunday of plans to shut the camp and evict its residents as Iraqi forces take control of the area from the United States.<br />"This reflects the hysterical pressure being applied by the regime of the mullahs on the Iraqi government after it signed the security agreement with America," said a statement by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group of which the People's Mujahedeen is the largest component.<br />Analysts and Iraqi opposition politicians said that the Iraqi government's determination to expel the group may be an effort to appease Iran, which had initially expressed strong opposition to the security agreement concluded last month between Iraq and the United States.<br />The group, which began as part of the Iranian resistance to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's rule in the mid-1960s, was driven into exile after Iran's 1979 revolution and re-formed in Iraq, where it was nurtured by Saddam Hussein. After the American invasion, it was disarmed and its members recognized as refugees by the United Nations.<br />On Sunday, the Iraqi government's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, met with the group's leaders at their base, Camp Ashraf in Diyala Province.<br />"They were told that the government has plans to close the camp and deport its inhabitants to their native country, or voluntarily to a third country, and that staying in Iraq was not an option," said a statement issued by Rubaie on Monday.<br />He said the transfer of security responsibilities for the camp from the American military to Iraqi forces was already under way. He said the group was a "terrorist organization" and was "no longer permitted to engage in any political, media, cultural, religious or social activity in Iraq."<br />The group was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997 and by the European Union in 2002. But in May, Britain's Court of Appeal ruled that the British government was wrong to include the group on its list of banned terrorist groups.<br />In 2002, it provided intelligence on Iran's secret efforts to enrich uranium, which led to United Nations sanctions against Iran and a confrontation with the West that continues today.<br />Since 2003, the group has been thrown into the middle of Washington's foreign policy dilemmas over what to do about Iran. Despite being officially labeled a terrorist group, it has been protected by American soldiers in Iraq since 2003.<br />The State Department declined to comment Monday on the planned eviction.<br />The camp, a sprawling and self-contained gated community, is a virtual oasis in an arid patch of Diyala. During a visit in 2007, this reporter saw American soldiers from an adjacent military base securing the perimeter.<br />Past the gate, members of the group, many of them women in tan uniforms, drove jeeps past manicured parks, artificial lakes and giant sculptures. One sculpture depicts a dove being released by an extended hand. The compound houses clinics, schools and workshops.<br />Since 2003 the People's Mujahedeen, who are mostly Shiite, have been assiduously courting Sunni politicians and tribal leaders in the area. In June, they held a large gathering at their camp attended by several prominent Sunni Arab members of Parliament who are openly hostile to the Iranian government. This meeting set off a political storm in Baghdad, with Shiite parties close to Iran calling for the censure of the members.<br />Ali Ansari, director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the group was "rapidly becoming a political football in the purest sense." He said the Iraqi government saw ridding itself of the group as way to improve relations with Iran, which remains fearful that the group may rearm.<br />Muhammad al-Daini, a Sunni member of Parliament, says the government is making a mistake by bowing to Iranian pressure to expel the People's Mujahedeen before getting firm commitments from Tehran that it will no longer arm and finance militias in Iraq. "We cannot blindly accept Iran's dictates," he said.<br />During his visit to Baghdad in March, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was promised that the People's Mujahedeen would be expelled.<br />"We will strive to get rid of them," the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, said at a news conference with Ahmadinejad.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>UN extends its shield of Iraqi assets for a year<br /></strong>By Neil MacFarquhar<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />UNITED NATIONS, New York: The Security Council has unanimously passed a resolution extending UN protection over Iraq's assets through 2009, effectively shielding it from billions of dollars in international claims stemming from the era of Saddam Hussein.<br />"We need the assurances that Iraq's resources and financial assets are available for the country's recovery program," Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, told the Council on Monday. "Without such assurances, the functioning of the Iraqi government and the current stability could be seriously in danger."<br />A UN mandate since 2003 has covered Iraq's financial assets, along with U.S. and other foreign forces in the country. But given the newly concluded status-of-forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad, that authorization will end Dec. 31.<br />Iraq has sought to extend UN protection for its financial assets to maintain immunity from all those seeking compensation.<br />Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, called the resolution "vital" to guaranteeing Iraq's development. The resolution was introduced by the United States and Britain.<br />Iraq had been hoping for an omnibus resolution that would not only protect its assets from lawsuits for several years but also include a review process to cancel some 50 resolutions on Iraq passed by the Security Council since Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, Zebari said in an interview. Once they are all dealt with, he said, Iraq's full sovereignty will be restored.<br />Initially it seemed that members of the Security Council itself would engage in the review process. But after extended discussions with Zebari over the past week, Council members agreed to allow Iraq to conduct the review with the UN Secretariat, which would then report to the Council for action.<br />The resolution passed Monday did not specify a timetable, but Zebari said he expected the review to begin within six months. Some of the resolutions, for example, deal with the era when the United Nations was punishing Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait and trying to curb any weapons development.<br />There was general sympathy among Security Council members for extending the protection over Iraq's assets while it was getting back on its feet, but the members objected to extending the protection for more than a year at a time, diplomats familiar with the discussions said.<br />Zebari said that the Iraqi Finance Ministry estimated outstanding claims at some $1 trillion and that settlements would have to be reached eventually, but not while the country was rebuilding in the midst of collapsing oil prices.<br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Drug rehabilitation or revolving door?</strong><br />By Benedict Carey<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />ROSEBURG, Oregon: Their first love might be the rum or vodka or gin and juice that is going around the bonfire. Or maybe the smoke, the potent marijuana that grows in the misted hills here like moss on a wet stone.<br />But it hardly matters. Here as elsewhere in the country, some users start early, fall fast and in their reckless prime can swallow, snort, inject or smoke anything available, from crystal meth to prescription pills to heroin and ecstasy. And treatment, if they get it at all, can seem like a joke.<br />"After the first couple of times I went through, they basically told me that there was nothing they could do," said Angella, a 17-year-old from the central Oregon city of Bend, who by freshman year in high school was drinking hard liquor every day, smoking pot and sampling a variety of harder drugs. "They were like, 'Uh, I don't think so.' "<br />She tried residential programs twice, living away from home for three months each time. In those, she learned how dangerous her habit was, how much pain it was causing others in her life. She worked on strengthening her relationship with her grandparents, with whom she lived. For two months or so afterward she stayed clean.<br />"Then I went right back," Angella said in an interview. "After a while, you know, you just start missing your friends."<br />Every year, state and federal governments spend more than $15 billion, and insurers at least $5 billion more, on substance-abuse treatment services for some four million people. That amount may soon increase sharply: last year, Congress passed the mental health parity law, which for the first time includes addiction treatment under a federal law requiring that insurers cover mental and physical ailments at equal levels.<br />Many clinics across the county have waiting lists, and researchers estimate that some 20 million Americans who could benefit from treatment do not get it.<br />Yet very few rehabilitation programs have the evidence to show that they are effective. The resort-and-spa private clinics generally do not allow outside researchers to verify their published success rates. The publicly supported programs spend their scarce resources on patient care, not costly studies.<br />And the field has no standard guidelines. Each program has its own philosophy; so, for that matter, do individual counselors. No one knows which approach is best for which patient, because these programs rarely if ever track clients closely after they graduate. Even Alcoholics Anonymous, the best known of all the substance-abuse programs, does not publish data on its participants' success rate.<br />"What we have in this country is a washing-machine model of addiction treatment," said A. Thomas McClellan, chief executive of the nonprofit Treatment Research Institute, based in Philadelphia. "You go to Shady Acres for 30 days, or to some clinic for 60 visits or 60 doses, whatever it is. And then you're discharged and everyone's crying and hugging and feeling proud — and you're supposed to be cured."<br />He added: "It doesn't really matter if you're a movie star going to some resort by the sea or a homeless person. The system doesn't work well for what for many people is a chronic, recurring problem."<br />In recent years state governments, which cover most of the bill for addiction services, have become increasingly concerned, and some, including Delaware, North Carolina, and Oregon, have sought ways to make the programs more accountable. The experience of Oregon, which has taken the most direct and aggressive action, illustrates both the promise and perils of trying to inject science into addiction treatment.<br />Evidence-based treatments<br />In 2003 the Oregon Legislature mandated that rehabilitation programs receiving state funds use evidence-based practices — techniques that have proved effective in studies. The law, phased in over several years, was aimed at improving services so that addicts like Angella would not be doomed to a lifetime of rehab, repeating the same kinds of counseling that had failed them in the past — or landing in worse trouble.<br />"You can get through a lot of programs just by faking it," said Jennifer Hatton, 25, of Myrtle Creek, Oregon, a longtime drinker and drug user who quit two years ago, but only after going to jail and facing the prospect of losing her children. "That's what did it for me — my kids — and I wish it didn't have to come to that."<br />When practiced faithfully, evidence-based therapies give users their best chance to break a habit. Among the therapies are prescription drugs like naltrexone, for alcohol dependence, and buprenorphine, for addiction to narcotics, which studies find can help people kick their habits.<br />Another is called the motivational interview, a method intended to harden clients' commitment upon entering treatment. In MI, as it is known, the counselor, through skilled questioning, has the addict explain why he or she has a problem, and why it is important to quit, and set goals. Studies find that when clients mark their path in this way — instead of hearing the lecture from a counselor, as in many traditional programs — they stay in treatment longer.<br />Psychotherapy techniques in which people learn to expect and tolerate restless or low moods are also on the list. So is cognitive behavior therapy, in which addicts learn to question assumptions that reinforce their habits (like "I'll never make friends who don't do drugs") and to engage their nondrug activities and creative interests.<br />For Angella, this kind of counseling made a difference. She spent several months in a program run by Adapt, an addiction treatment center here in Roseburg, a small city about 175 miles south of Portland.<br />In treatment, she said, she learned how to "just be with, and feel" bad moods without turning to drink or drugs; and to throw herself into creative projects like collage and painting. The program has helped her reconnect with her father and to enroll in college beginning in January.<br />"I want to be a teacher, and someone at the program is advising me on that," she said in an interview. "That's the plan, to just move out and away from my old life."<br />A friend of hers in the program, Alex, a 16-year-old from Roseburg, said that the therapy helped him monitor his own emotional ups and downs, without being swept away by them. The counselors "are always asking about our stress level, our anger, so you become more aware and have a better idea what to do with it," he said.<br />Almost 54 percent of Oregon's $94 million budget for addiction treatment services now goes to programs that deploy evidence-based techniques, according to a state report completed last month. The estimated rate before the mandate was 25 to 30 percent. The state has not yet analyzed the impact of this change on clients.<br />"Before the mandate, most programs had some evidence-based practices, and since then there has been a lot more interest and awareness of them," said Dr. Traci Rieckmann, a public health researcher at Oregon Health and Science University, who is following the policy implementation with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.<br />Culture clash<br />Yet interest and awareness may not translate into good practice, and Rieckmann says it is not at all clear how many rehabilitation programs claiming to use evidence-based techniques actually do so faithfully. About 400 programs receive state money, and most of them are small, rural outfits that are already stretched to provide counseling, to say nothing of paying for extensive training.<br />"You're talking about therapies, like cognitive behavior therapy, that take time to learn," said John Gardin, the behavioral health and research director at Adapt in Roseburg, who travels the country to teach the skills. "Most places don't have a person like me to do that training, so they're getting two to three days of training, if that; and that's just not enough time to get it."<br />In studies looking at hundreds of programs nationwide, researchers have found a similar gap between what programs may want to do and what they're able to do. "For instance, most programs don't have an MD on staff," said Aaron Johnson, a sociologist at the University of Georgia who has led many of the studies. "Without that, of course, you can't prescribe any medications."<br />Tim Hartnett, the executive director of a Portland treatment program called CODA Inc., which does its own research on patient outcomes, said that the mandate had raised the level of conversation statewide, but that true reform would mean "an integrated system that tracks clients as they move from residential to outpatient treatment, and that defines clear targets" for what a person should expect from each kind of program.<br />"Our goal at CODA is to create a system of care that uses evidence-based practices at just the right dose and just the right time," Hartnett said. "As with many chronic diseases, figuring out dosage and timing are critical."<br />For some addicts, a standard program may not help at all, according to Anne Fletcher, who for her book "Sober For Good" interviewed 222 men and women who had been clean for at least five years. "A lot of these people overcame an alcohol problem on their own, or with the help of an individual therapist," Fletcher said.<br />To complicate matters in Oregon, the state mandate has stirred a kind of culture clash between those who want reform — academic researchers, state officials — and veteran counselors working in the trenches, many of whom have beaten addictions of their own and do not appreciate outsiders telling them how to do their jobs.<br />"I'm a counselor, and I'd be defensive, too: 'What do you mean, all this stuff I've been doing my entire life is wrong?' " said Brian Serna, director of outpatient services at Adapt, who has traveled the state to monitor the use of scientific practices. "So the challenge is to build a bridge between what the science says is effective and what people are already doing."<br />One way to do that, some experts now believe, is to combine evidence-based practice with "practice-based evidence" — the results that programs and counselors themselves can document, based on their own work. In 2001 the Delaware Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health began giving treatment programs incentives, or bonuses, if they met certain benchmarks. The clinics could earn a bonus of up to 5 percent, for instance, if they kept a high percentage of addicts coming in at least weekly and ensured that those clients met their own goals, as measured both by clean urine tests and how well they functioned in everyday life, in school, at work, at home.<br />By 2006, the state's rehabilitation programs were operating at 95 percent capacity, up from 50 percent in 2001; and 70 percent of patients were attending regular treatment sessions, up from 53 percent, according to an analysis of the policy published last summer in the journal Health Policy.<br />"We basically gave them a list of evidence-based practices and told them to pick the ones they wanted to use," said Jack Kemp, former director of substance abuse services for Delaware, in an interview. "It was up to them to decide what to use."<br />For those who are trying not to use, it doesn't much matter how rehab services are improved — only that it happens in time. "Honestly, you just don't care how or why something works for you," said Hatton, the 25-year-old from Myrtle Creek, Oregon. "Just that it does."<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Obstacle seen in bid to curb Afghan trade in narcotics</strong><br />By Thom Shanker<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: A drive by the NATO alliance to disrupt Afghanistan's drug trade has been hobbled by new objections from member nations that say their laws do not permit soldiers to carry out such operations, according to senior commanders here.<br />The objections are being raised despite an agreement two months ago that the alliance's campaign in Afghanistan would be broadened to include attacks on narcotics facilities, traffickers, middlemen and drug lords whose profits help to finance insurgent groups.<br />During a recent visit here, General John Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander, expressed surprise upon learning of what he described as a gap between the decision by alliance defense ministers to authorize aggressive counternarcotics missions and the lack of follow-through because of objections from several of the countries that make up the NATO force in Afghanistan.<br />As the United States and its allies strive to devise a better strategy to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan, American policy makers and military officers say it is critical to choke off the drug money that sustains the insurgency, much as they are working with Pakistan to halt the use of its tribal areas as a haven by the Taliban and other antigovernment forces just across the border from Afghanistan.<br />Seven years after the rout of Al Qaeda and the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, disagreements over how aggressively NATO forces should go after the insurgency's chief source of revenue are only the latest hurdle in a campaign that has been troubled by disputes between the United States and some of its allies about what role NATO soldiers should play in a mission cast as "security assistance."<br />The disagreements also present a major challenge for President-elect Barack Obama as he tries to fulfill a campaign pledge to shift the focus of the American military toward Afghanistan, where the United States remains much more dependent on foreign nations than it does in the Iraq war, which is largely an American conflict.<br />The counternarcotics debate is a reminder of how unwieldy the alliance's military operations can be. United Nations figures show that Afghan insurgents reap at least $100 million a year from the drug trade, although some estimates put the figure at five times as much.<br />In an interview, Craddock said profit from the narcotics trade "buys the bomb makers and the bombs, the bullets and the trigger-pullers that are killing our soldiers and marines and airmen, and we have to stop them."<br />NATO officials in Brussels declined to list the nations that have opposed widening the alliance mandate to include attacks on drug networks, and no nation has volunteered that it has legal objections.<br />But a number of NATO members have in broad terms described their reluctance publicly, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. Their leaders have cited domestic policies that make counternarcotics a law enforcement matter — not a job for their militaries — and expressed concern that domestic lawsuits could be filed if their soldiers carried out attacks to kill noncombatants, even if the victims were involved in the drug industry in Afghanistan.<br />As has been the case in a whole range of combat operations mounted by NATO forces in Afghanistan, each country is allowed to state its reservations and opt out of missions that are viewed as too risky, either politically or militarily. Those "caveats" have been a source of enormous frustration to American commanders.<br />That system of caveats was never intended to halt NATO operations; missions objectionable to one nation can be taken over by another nation's forces. But commanders say that legal objections to counternarcotics operations have prevented the international mix of troops across poppy-rich regions of southern Afghanistan from carrying out the new responsibilities.<br />The NATO-led mission in Afghanistan has more than 51,000 troops, including 14,000 Americans. In a parallel mission, the United States has deployed 17,000 additional troops for a separate combat, counterterrorism and training operation.<br />During a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Budapest in October, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Craddock successfully lobbied the alliance to give troops operating in Afghanistan official permission to mount attacks on narcotics "facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency."<br />General David McKiernan, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, acknowledged that "some of the precise language still needs to be worked out" with allies that objected to taking on counternarcotics missions.<br />In an interview, McKiernan stressed that the goal remained to approve rules of engagement that "give us greater freedom of action to treat narco-figures and facilities as military objectives."<br />Halting the flow of drug money to the insurgency is just one of the challenges facing the Obama administration. Others include the 30 percent increase in insurgent violence over the past year, and the painfully slow growth and continued incompetence of the Afghan police.<br />But Craddock cited bright spots in the mission of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, including a growing number of people from other United States government agencies who are stepping in to help with economic and political development. He also noted the increasing size and professionalism of the Afghan National Army, which Afghans trust more than they do the office of the presidency.<br />McKiernan was put in charge of both the NATO and American operations this year, in an effort to provide more unity of command over the two missions. During a visit to Afghanistan last weekend, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon expected to provide 20,000 to 30,000 more troops to McKiernan, with a significant portion of that increase arriving by next summer.<br />Including the debate on how to battle the drug trade, much of the discussion about the way ahead in Afghanistan is similar to policy debates over the past seven years: the need to generate economic growth and build democratic institutions to inspire confidence among Afghans in their government.<br />Although combat power alone will not defeat the insurgency and its allies in the drug trade in Afghanistan, military analysts say, a problem for years has been that Afghanistan has had too few resources because of the war in Iraq.<br />"What we need are more troops in Afghanistan because we need security, and eventually we will get a strategy," said Roger Carstens, a former Army Special Forces officer who now is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, which has provided a number of its analysts to the Obama transition team at the Pentagon.<br />"If the military cannot secure the population, then political development, economic growth and good government will not take place," Carstens added.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Slain soldiers honored in Mexico<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />At a ceremony on Monday, the government honored the victims of the most gruesome attack yet against the Mexican Army in its half-century battle against drug gangs.<br />Authorities found 12 decapitated bodies in and near Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero State, on Sunday and have identified seven of them as soldiers.<br />President Felipe Calderón said the attack showed that his crackdown was putting pressure on drug cartels, and he promised "firm action" in response.<br />The bodies were found on a major boulevard, accompanied by a sign: "For every one of mine that you kill, I will kill 10."<br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>India arrests 3 suspects in Kashmir</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />JAMMU, Kashmir: The Indian police said Tuesday that they had arrested three men suspected of being Islamic militants, including a Pakistani soldier, believed to have been planning a suicide attack in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.<br />The suspects are members of Jaish-e-Muhammad, one of more than a dozen groups that have been fighting since 1989 to remove Indian control from Kashmir, said Kuldeep Khoda, director general of the police in the Indian part of the area.<br />The arrests come amid rising tensions and increasing pressure from India on Pakistan to crack down on militant groups operating from Pakistani territory in the wake of terrorist attacks on Mumbai.<br />Another Pakistan-based Kashmiri group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been blamed for the Mumbai attacks, in which 163 victims, as well as nine of the 10 accused gunmen, were killed.<br />On Monday, India gave Pakistan a letter purportedly written by Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the only gunman captured after the Mumbai rampage. Kasab wrote that all the gunmen involved in the Nov. 26 attack came from Pakistan, the Indian Foreign Ministry said. He also requested a meeting with Pakistani envoys, the ministry said.<br />Islamabad has not acknowledged that Kasab is Pakistani and has said it is waiting for proof of his citizenship before answering India's demands that it turn over wanted Lashkar leaders.<br />Khoda said that the police did not yet know the intended target of the foiled attack, but he said the three men "had received specialized training in suicide attacks and driving explosive-laden vehicles." One of the men was identified as Ghulam Farid, a Pakistani soldier serving in the Azad Kashmir, or Free Kashmir, regiment, said Khoda, who provided his army service number.<br />There was no immediate response from the Pakistani Army.<br />The men were detained Sunday after checking into a hotel in Jammu, a predominantly Hindu city in Jammu-Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. They were waiting to receive arms and explosives when they were arrested, Khoda said.<br />He said the men apparently had illegally entered India from Bangladesh and were detained after the police received a tip about their location.<br />If Farid is proved to be an active Pakistani soldier, it would be a blow for Pakistan, which denies funding and training the Kashmiri militant groups and says it only provides them with moral support.<br />Pakistan has moved against both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a charity that both India and the international community say is a front for Lashkar, while also calling repeatedly on India to provide more evidence related to the Mumbai attacks. Pakistan has also said that if its citizens are found to be involved, they will be tried in Pakistan.<br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. seeks to ease Pakistan tensions</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Kamran Haider and Bappa Majumdar<br />The top U.S. military officer has sought to defuse tension between Pakistan and India while New Delhi asked Islamabad on Tuesday to avoid "war hysteria" and act to dismantle terrorist infrastructure.<br />India and the United States have blamed Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for last month's attacks in Mumbai that killed 179 people and which have triggered a sharp rise in tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.<br />Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan on Monday on his second visit since the attacks and met army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the head of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, the U.S. embassy said.<br />"Mullen encouraged the Pakistani leaders to use this tragic event as an opportunity to forge more productive ties with India and to seek ways in which both nations can combat the common threat of extremism together," the U.S. embassy said in a statement on Tuesday.<br />Pakistan denies any links to the assault, blaming "non-state actors," and has promised to cooperate in investigations into the assault. At the same time, it has warned that its desire for peaceful coexistence should not be taken as weakness.<br />The two countries have fought three wars since 1947 and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Monday the armed forces could defend the nation in the event of another.<br />India urged Pakistan to avoid "war hysteria" and focus on dismantling terrorist infrastructure.<br />"The issue is not war, the issue is terror and territory in Pakistan being used to promote, aid and abet this terror," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in New Delhi. "Nobody wants war."<br />Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Pakistan should not create "war hysteria" or raise an accusing finger at others.<br />"(The) question is there has been a sinister, heinous terrorist attack on Mumbai from the elements in Pakistan. India has requested Pakistan to take action against the perpetrators," he told reporters.<br />"NO INFORMATION"<br />India has put on hold a five-year old peace process that had brought better ties.<br />While promising to help investigate the attacks, Pakistan has complained that India has yet to share any evidence and the details it has got have come through the media. Indian officials have said they have passed on information.<br />The head of Interpol said India had yet to give it any information about the attacks, adding facts passed to the media by investigators should be shared if accurate.<br />"What is not acceptable internationally is for information to be put in the media and that information, if it's accurate, not to be placed in police databases," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble told a news conference in Islamabad.<br />Until Indian authorities shared information, police around the world would be unable to make any determination about the identity of the attackers, he said.<br />Pakistan has detained scores of militants, including several top leaders, and shut offices and frozen the assets of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) group, which the United Nations says is a front for the LeT.<br />The LeT was set up to fight Indian rule in Kashmir and has been linked by U.S. officials and analysts to Pakistan's ISI who they say use it as a tool to destabilise India.<br />Mullen thanked the Pakistani officials for efforts to arrest members of LeT and other groups involved in the attacks, the U.S. embassy said.<br />The Indian foreign ministry on Monday handed a letter it said was written by the lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Amir Kasab, to Pakistan's mission in New Delhi.<br />Kasab said he and the nine gunmen killed in the siege were from Pakistan, the ministry said. Pakistan confirmed its mission had received a letter and that it was being examined.<br />(Writing by Robert Birsel, Editing by Dean Yates)<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Inquiry on bungled case questions Australia's terror laws</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />SYDNEY: An inquiry into the bungled case of an Indian doctor wrongly linked to terrorism plots in Britain recommended on Tuesday tougher oversight of Australia's laws.<br />In its 310-page report, the government-ordered inquiry found that the Australian Federal Police had no intelligence to justify the arrest of Mohamad Haneef, who became a test case for tough counterterrorism laws introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.<br />Haneef, 29, was working in Queensland State as a doctor when he was arrested by the federal police as he tried to board a one-way flight to India. The arrest came days after one of his cousins allegedly drove an explosive-laden SUV into Scotland's Glasgow airport in a suspected terrorist attack.<br />The police said they thought it was suspicious that Haneef had bought a one-way ticket. Haneef told the police he was rushing to see his sick newborn daughter in Bangalore and planned to return.<br />He was held without charge for 12 days under anti-terror laws before being charged with providing support to a terrorist organization. The charges were later dropped, but his visa was still revoked.<br />Haneef's ordeal triggered a political storm about whether the former conservative government and the federal police were deliberately fueling terrorism fears.<br />"I could find no evidence that he was associated with or had foreknowledge of the terrorist events," a former New South Wales State Supreme Court judge, John Clarke, wrote in the report released Tuesday.<br />The terrorism charge was based on Haneef's giving his cellphone SIM card to his cousin Sabeel Ahmed, one of the men accused in the attempted bomb attacks. The charge was dropped when it was revealed that Haneef's SIM card had not been found in the Glasgow attack vehicle, as a prosecutor had claimed.<br />But with elections looming, Kevin Andrews, who was then the immigration minister, revoked Haneef's visa, saying he was not of good character. Critics said Andrews was making Haneef a scapegoat to burnish the government's security credentials.<br />The court eventually ruled that Haneef's visa should be reinstated. After winning the election, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government ordered Clarke's inquiry.<br />Andrews defended his actions on Tuesday, saying that Australians expected him to act in the case.<br />Clarke recommended that Australia's anti-terrorism laws be independently reviewed and that a case management system for major police investigations be developed.<br />Attorney General Robert McClelland said the government would adopt all of the report's recommendations.<br />In a conference call from the United Arab Emirates, where he now lives, Haneef told reporters that he was pleased with the findings.<br />"It is a very clear finding that I am totally innocent of the matters alleged against me last year," said Haneef, who is considering pursuing compensation from the government.<br /><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>3 militants to die for attack on British envoy</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />SYLHET, Bangladesh: A court in northeast Bangladesh on Tuesday sentenced three Islamic militants to death and two others to life in prison for a 2004 grenade attack that wounded a British diplomat and killed three other people, a government lawyer said.<br />Judge Shamim Mohammad Afzal sentenced Mufti Hannan and two of his associates to death for the attack at a Muslim shrine in Sylhet city, 192 kilometers, or 120 miles, northeast of the capital of Dhaka.<br />Hannan's brother and another person were given life terms, Public Prosecutor Fakhruddin Ahmed said.<br />Lawyers for the defendants — who were all present in court Tuesday — said they would appeal the verdict.<br />Hannan was leader of the banned radical group Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami.<br />The militant outfit wanted to establish strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws. It also sought to avenge the killings of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.<br />Investigators said the attack targeted then-British High Commissioner Anwar Chowdhury.<br />A hand grenade was hurled at the Bangladeshi-born envoy as he left the shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal after Friday prayers on May 21, 2004. A policeman and two bystanders were killed, and 50 others were wounded.<br />Hannan, a radical cleric who is believed to have trained with Islamic fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was arrested in October 2005.<br />Hannan is also accused of planning a deadly grenade attack on an opposition rally in Dhaka that killed 22 people and wounded 300 others on Aug. 21, 2004.<br />Harkatul Jihad is also believed to be behind a spate of bombings at cultural events and movie theaters across Bangladesh in recent years.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Clinton moves to widen role of State Department<br /></strong>By Mark Landler and Helene Cooper<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Even before taking office, Hillary Rodham Clinton is seeking to build a more powerful State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys to trouble spots and an expanded role in dealing with global economic issues at a time of crisis.<br />Clinton is recruiting Jacob Lew, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Lew's focus, they said, would be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps.<br />He and James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to be Hillary Clinton's chief lieutenants.<br />Nominations of deputy secretaries, like Clinton's, would be subject to confirmation by the Senate.<br />The incoming administration is also likely to name several envoys, officials said, reviving a practice of the Clinton administration, when Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross and other diplomats played a central role in mediating disputes in the Balkans and the Middle East.<br />As Clinton puts together her senior team, officials said, she is also trying to carve out a bigger role for the State Department in economic affairs, where the Treasury has dominated during the Bush years. She has sought advice from Laura D'Andrea Tyson, an economist who headed Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.<br />The steps seem intended to strengthen the role of diplomacy after a long stretch, particularly under Secretary of State Colin Powell, in which the Pentagon, the vice president's office and even the intelligence agencies held considerable sway over U.S. foreign policy.<br />Given Hillary Clinton's prominence, expanding the department's portfolio could bring on conflict with other powerful cabinet members.<br />Clinton and President-elect Barack Obama have not settled on specific envoys or missions, although Ross's name has been mentioned as a possible Middle East envoy, as have those of Holbrooke and Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.<br />The Bush administration has made relatively little use of special envoys. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has personally handled most peacemaking initiatives, which has meant a punishing schedule of Middle East missions, often with meager results.<br />"There's no question that there is a reinvention of the wheel here," said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "But it's geared not so much as a reaction to Bush as to a fairly astute analysis of what's going to work in foreign policy."<br />With so many problems, including Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, Miller said it made sense for the White House to farm out some of the diplomatic heavy lifting.<br />In addition to the Middle East, one Democratic foreign policy adviser said, Holbrooke might be considered for an appointment as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and possibly Iran. The adviser said the decision had not been made.<br />A transition official dismissed as "speculation" reports in Indian newspapers that Obama was considering appointing Bill Clinton as a special envoy to deal with Kashmir issues.<br />But another transition official confirmed that Obama's foreign policy advisers were discussing the possibility of appointing a special envoy to India. Steinberg, who is the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, would probably coordinate the work of any special envoys, the official said.<br />The recruitment of Lew - for a position that was not filled in the Bush administration - suggests that Hillary Clinton is determined to win a larger share of financial resources for the department. Lew, a well-connected figure who was once an aide to the House speaker Thomas O'Neill, now works for Citigroup in a unit that oversees hedge funds.<br />"If we're going to re-establish diplomacy as the critical tool in America's arsenal," a senior transition official said, "you need someone who can work both the budget and management side. He has very strong relations on the Hill; he knows the inner workings of how to manage a big enterprise."<br />The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private, said Clinton was being supported in her push for more resources by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and by Obama's incoming national security adviser, General James Jones Jr.<br />For years, some Pentagon officials have complained that jobs like the economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq have been added to the military's burden when they could have been handled by a robust foreign service.<br />"The Pentagon would like to turn functionality over to civilian resources, but the resources are not there," the official said. "We're looking to have a State Department that has what it needs."<br />Clinton's push for a more vigorous economic team, one of her advisers said, stems from her conviction that the State Department needs to play a part in the recovery from the global financial crisis.<br />Economic issues also underpin some of the most important diplomatic relationships, notably with China.<br />In recent years, the Treasury Department, led by Henry Paulson Jr., has dominated policy toward China. Paulson leads a "strategic economic dialogue" with China that involves several agencies. It is not yet clear who will pick up that role in the Obama administration, although Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. is frequently mentioned as a possibility.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Hillary Clinton writes off $13 million she lent campaign<br /></strong>By Michael Falcone<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Senator won't recoup money for campaign<br />Having spent more than a year on a failed effort to win the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has officially recognized the multimillion-dollar toll that the campaign took on her personal assets.<br />Clinton filed papers with the Federal Election Commission over the weekend formally writing off all of the $13.2 million she lent the campaign, plus $77,900 in interest on the loan.<br />Her giving up any hope of reclaiming the money, a step signaled in September when the statutory deadline passed for recouping all but a small piece of it, confirms the financial strain that the fund-raising juggernaut of the Obama campaign placed on Clinton personally.<br />And in addition to the personal loan, the same weekend filing showed that she still owed millions of dollars to dozens of vendors as of Nov. 30. She did manage to chip away at that debt in November, reducing by roughly $1.1 million the $7.5 million she owed at the end of October. The single biggest debt as of the end of November was $5.4 million, to the firm of Mark Penn, her former chief strategist.<br />The shadow of her debt has hung over Clinton ever since she ended her campaign for the nomination in June. The Clintons have held a series of fund-raisers to try to pay it off, and President-elect Barack Obama has been urging his supporters to help with contributions.<br />Clinton even recruited her mother, Dorothy Rodham, to the cause. In early December, Rodham sent an e-mail message to supporters urging contributions to help retire her daughter's campaign debt and offering an autographed children's book about Clinton in exchange for a donation of $250 or more.<br />Now, nominated to be secretary of state, Clinton has been dealing with additional finance-related complications. Former President Bill Clinton has already disclosed a long list of donors to his charitable organizations, making his international dealings more transparent and thus meeting a condition set by Obama for his selection of Clinton.<br />And Congress has removed another stumbling block by adopting a measure to reduce the secretary of state's salary, satisfying an obscure constitutional provision that forbids appointment of a lawmaker to a federal position that was either created or given a pay increase during the legislator's concurrent term.<br />But if Clinton is confirmed as secretary, her ability to raise money to pay off her campaign debt will be sharply restricted. Provisions in federal law could keep her from personally soliciting contributions at all, leaving the job to her presidential campaign committee.<br />Kenneth Gross, a campaign finance lawyer, said that although Clinton could not simply walk away from the remaining debt, she was not under a strict deadline for paying it off. Still, he said, carrying the multimillion-dollar burden with her as she begins her new job would be unpalatable, at the very least.<br />"It weighs on you," Gross said. "It's not going to debilitate her in any way from functioning as secretary of state, but it's a cloud that she would like to make go away."<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Theatre project has dramatic effect on Lebanon jail<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent<br />Cigarette smoke wafts through a hall in Lebanon's biggest jail where an all-male jury is arguing over whether an accused murderer should be hanged.<br />The 12 men, all prisoners themselves, strive for a unanimous verdict. Tempers rise, insults flow, blows are threatened.<br />Then someone forgets his lines. Laughter erupts. They start again. Occasionally the frustration leads to a real quarrel until the firm voice of director Zeina Daccache restores order.<br />In jeans and a black sweater, she castigates, coaxes and cajoles her novice actors, who sulk, talk back and then perform with renewed gusto, just like their counterparts in any theatre.<br />Some tell their own stories in monologues. Hawilo acts out a comical prison visit with his mother who unwittingly got him convicted of dealing drugs instead of just possession. "Good news son, I told the judge you never smoke hashish, you only sell it!" Hawilo mimics her saying, before he pretends to faint.<br />For a few hours each week, these forgotten men taste a world beyond the bars of Roumiyeh, a crowded prison near Beirut that houses Islamist militants as well as 4,000 ordinary criminals.<br />Since she launched her drama therapy project in February, Daccache has won the respect and affection of the convicts, who call her "Abu Ali," reckoning her to be as tough as any man.<br />Anwar, a tall, shaven-headed Iraqi in combat pants and boots, who is serving a 15-year sentence for murder, said she was "like a sister" who had unlocked a door.<br />"It's a kind of freedom for all of us," he said. "It's given me courage to be with others. Before, it was as if we were all wearing masks, but I have discovered a new person in myself.<br />"I was very nervous, jumping on any mistakes, I was impatient and dangerous, but now I take my time, count to 10."<br />Anwar, who has not seen his family in Baghdad for 11 years, said the theatre project, in which he plays the jury foreman, had channelled his anger and saved him from fatal despair.<br />"I was going to commit suicide in the new year, but I have changed my mind," he said. "Before I felt like a criminal, like garbage, but now I feel respected, even by the prison officers.<br />MISSION IMPOSSIBLE<br />Daccache's venture, sponsored by a local human rights group, funded by the European Union and managed by the Ministry of State for Administrative Reform, is unusual in the Arab world.<br />"I thought: Lebanon? No, it's mission impossible," said the 30-year-old actress and drama therapist, who was inspired by visiting a similar project in an Italian prison in 2002.<br />It took her a year to get the money and another to win the go-ahead from wary authorities, but the prisoners are now set to stage their play for guests at the jail in February and March.<br />Prison authorities posted no guards inside the makeshift theatre where Daccache rehearsed her 45 charges.<br />"She's like a window of hope for us," said Hussein, a lank-haired graphic designer serving a five-year drug term who plays guitar in the play's interludes of music and song. "Zeina will become a legend. She really did something for all of us."<br />The boisterous group, chosen from an initial 150 volunteers, is mostly Lebanese, but also includes Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians and an Iraqi, plus two Nigerians and a Bangladeshi.<br />Daccache adapted the play "12 Angry Men" by U.S. author Reginald Rose, for local conditions and her own purposes. She has two sets of jurors to give more prisoners a chance to act.<br />The death penalty, at the heart of the drama made into a film in 1957 by director Sidney Lumet, is still on the books in Lebanon. Executions are rare, however. The last three were in 2004.<br />Several of Daccache's actors are convicted murderers -- one of the "jurors," a soft-spoken middle-aged Egyptian, has spent 14 years in Lebanon on death row.<br />In Roumiyeh, scene of a prison riot in April, the guards have noticed a change among the drama group.<br />"We have seen more motivation. Prisoners feel someone is paying attention to them," said the supervisor of the wing that contains the theatre. "It has lowered the pressure 70 percent."<br />Daccache has enlisted a psychologist to do independent tests on members of her troupe and a control group of other prisoners. "We haven't finished the study, but we already see a huge difference between where they were and where they are," she said.<br />The project takes up all her time. Two rehearsals a week have become five. So why sacrifice those extra hours, and then more to haggle with donors, bureaucrats and prison officials?<br />"I am happiest when I am inside the prison," Daccache says with a grin. "There you are dealing with really authentic people. If a guy is angry, he is really angry. Outside we fake so many things.<br />"Here they don't, maybe because they already lost everything they are ready to restart from zero. We go easy on ourselves, but they don't. They want to prove something, there is something they want to say, and this is the beautiful thing."<br />(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)<br /><br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br /><strong>James Carroll: Jesus and the promise of Christmas</strong><br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />When the Christian holiday dominates the culture, sometimes oppressively, a newspaper column may not seem the most appropriate venue for personal reflections on the meaning of Jesus.<br />Yet even as Western civilization has been nourished by religious and philosophical traditions that have nothing to do with Jesus, it has also been profoundly influenced by the memory of this man. It can be more than merely sectarian to ask, Who was he?<br />The stories told about the nativity - Caesar's census order, Bethlehem, Herod's threat, three kings, star, no-room-at-the-inn, manger, angels, slaughter, flight - do not aim to be historical, yet in its deeper meaning, the beloved Christmas narrative gives us a portrait of a person that squares with the most important features of the actual Jesus.<br />He was a counter-force to the Roman emperor. He was of the poor and powerless. He conveyed his message by indirection - more by poetry than doctrine. At heart, his story is tragic. Yet it is a source of hope and joy, which is why his friends clung to his memory. The problem he addressed was violence.<br />Violence was overwhelmingly the normal condition of the world into which Jesus was born. Jerusalem and its environs had long been what the scholar John Dominic Crossan calls the "cockpit of empire," a crossroads region that had been the scene of brutal imperial conflicts going back 1,000 years.<br />The Jewish people had mostly lived as vassals of one foreign sovereign or another, with oppressive violence a steady note of the Hebrew situation. Survival of Jewish nationhood in this milieu was a marvel, and key to that survival was a conscientious wrestling with the problem of violence, the record of which is the Bible.<br />Rome, when it came, was the most brutal imperial force of all, and its violence peaked several times during the century of Jesus and his movement, beginning with the savaging of the region around Nazareth not long before Jesus was born, and ending with the final destruction of Jerusalem as the story of Jesus was assuming the form we know.<br />But Jesus was not a mere victim of this violence. Acting in his Jewish tradition, he confronted it, rejected it and proposed a new way to think of it. His followers knew at the outset, and ever after, that they failed to live up to the standard he set, but that very knowledge shows that the myth of what Crossan calls the normalcy of violence is broken.<br />Humans have an inbuilt tendency to find the solution of violence in yet more violence, with the result that it spirals on forever. The victory of coercive force is inevitably the cause of the next outbreak of coercive force.<br />Jesus proposed that the answer to violence is not more violence, but is forgiveness and righteousness - or, as we would put it, peace and justice. For 2,000 years, this program has been able to be dismissed as piety's dream.<br />But something new is afoot. Since 1945, the normalcy of violence is armed with weapons that will surely render the human species extinct unless a different way of thinking of violence is found.<br />That is the promise of Christmas.<br />A different way of thinking of violence has already lodged itself in human consciousness. This is not just a Christian phenomenon. The great religions of the world - Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism - and the no-religion of rationalism have all countered the normalcy of violence with assertions of compassion and loving kindness.<br />In the history of Western civilization, no figure has represented that ideal more resolutely than Jesus. His story offers a masterpiece expression of the possibility of forgiveness and righteousness not only as a saving program, but as the basis of an intensely personal relationship.<br />Because Jesus is understood by those who believe in him as offering not only a sign of what is needed, but a way to achieve it - "I am the way," he said - he has survived even for those who regard him in purely worldly terms as an image of a hope that cannot be fully articulated, and that can never be exclusively claimed by any group, including Christians.<br />In that sense, the observances of this week can belong to everyone who chooses to enjoy them.<br />Peace.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Taliban's Omar rejects reports of peace formula</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Sayed Salahuddin<br />The Taliban's supreme leader rejected on Tuesday reports he had sent a letter to the Saudi king involving a formula for ending the war in Afghanistan and conditions for talks with the Afghan government.<br />Mullah Mohammad Omar, who carries a bounty of $10 million (6.7 million pounds) by the United States for his capture, also denied reports saying members of the Taliban's resurgent movement had held talks with pro-Afghan government officials on ending the conflict.<br />"The fact is that the Islamic Emirates has neither held any negotiations in Saudi Arabia or in the United Arab Emirates and neither anywhere else," the Taliban's Website quoted Omar as saying in a statement.<br />"I neither have sent any letter addressed to Saudi... King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, or to the opposite side (Afghan government) and neither have (I) received any message from them."<br />The statement added that whatever was being said on this issue was false and part of a propaganda campaign by vested interests.<br />An Iranian press report had initially said Omar had sent a peace formula to the Saudi king.<br />Other media also spoke about a formula, which included the replacement of tens of thousands of NATO-led troops in Afghanistan by soldiers from Islamic nations, and power sharing with President Hamid Karzai, who has been leading the Afghanistan government since the Taliban's removal in 2001.<br />In the statement, Omar did not repeat the Taliban's past line that the Islamist movement would fight to the last to expel NATO-led troops from Afghanistan, nor mention under what terms the Taliban might engage in talks.<br />A tentative first step towards talks was taken in September when pro-government Afghan officials and former Taliban members met in Saudi Arabia. A second round was expected too.<br />Then the Taliban derided the talks and said they would not enter negotiations as long as foreign troops remained in Afghanistan.<br />Nevertheless, the September meeting offered a glimmer of hope of ending an intensifying Taliban insurgency that has raised fears for Afghanistan's prospects and Western efforts to establish peace and build a stable state.<br />With the spread of the Taliban insurgency more than seven years since their overthrow, and no sight of an end to the conflict, the possibility of talks with the insurgents, or at least some elements, is being considered by Karzai's government and Western allies.<br />They hope to draw moderate Taliban, or perhaps opportunistic commanders, into talks to isolate al Qaeda and its hard-line supporters, analysts say.<br />Violence this year in Afghanistan has been the bloodiest since the Taliban's ouster. About 70,000 foreign troops, 32,000 of them American, are struggling against the Taliban, whose influence and attacks are spreading in the south, east and west.<br />The United States plans to send between 20,000 to 30,000 extra soldiers by next summer.<br />(Editing by Jerry Norton)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinozhn7_w7gLagkFoQw-I7K998KBqaPHukS0g-3rWYNtUNwTSyMSJZ32-GntmgMfKs-WNxfpLN69Z4YN2wMWFLBDtwe5QyHG37NOgW-9O5PhwqonkRiRMeevcvcSKLZQ-h-rAF7eFqRik/s1600-h/DSC04242.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220813616685298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinozhn7_w7gLagkFoQw-I7K998KBqaPHukS0g-3rWYNtUNwTSyMSJZ32-GntmgMfKs-WNxfpLN69Z4YN2wMWFLBDtwe5QyHG37NOgW-9O5PhwqonkRiRMeevcvcSKLZQ-h-rAF7eFqRik/s320/DSC04242.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>In Madoff scandal, Jews feel an acute betrayal<br /></strong>By Robin Pogrebin<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />There is a teaching in the Talmud that says an individual who comes before God after death will be asked a series of questions, the first one of which is, "Were you honest in your business dealings?" But it is the Ten Commandments that have weighed most heavily on the mind of Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles in light of the sins for which Bernard Madoff stands accused.<br />"You shouldn't steal," Rabbi Wolpe said. "And this is theft on a global scale."<br />The full scope of the misdeeds to which Madoff has confessed in swindling individuals and charitable groups has yet to be calculated, and he is far from being convicted. But Jews all over the country are already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and the personal.<br />Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish banker.<br />So in synagogues and community centers, on blogs and in countless conversations, many Jews are beating their chests — not out of contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but because they say Madoff has brought shame on their people in addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind Jewish communities.<br />"Jews have these familial ties," Rabbi Wolpe said. "It's not solely a shared belief; it's a sense of close communal bonds, and in the same way that your family can embarrass you as no one else can, when a Jew does this, Jews feel ashamed by proxy. I'd like to believe someone raised in our community, imbued with Jewish values, would be better than this."<br />Among the apparent victims of Madoff were many Jewish educational institutions and charitable causes that lost fortunes in his investments; they include Yeshiva University, Hadassah, the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. The Chais Family Foundation, which worked on educational projects in Israel, was recently forced to shut down because of losses in Madoff investments. Many of Madoff's individual investors were Jewish and supported Jewish causes, apparently drawn to him precisely because of his own communal involvement and because he radiated the comfortable sense of being one of them.<br />"The Jewish world is not going to be the same for a while," said Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York.<br />Jews are also grappling with the implications of Madoff's deeds for their public image, what one rabbi referred to as the "shanda factor," using the Yiddish term for an embarrassing shame or disgrace. As Bradley Burston, a columnist for haaretz.com, the English-language Web site of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote on Dec. 17: "The anti-Semite's new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater's wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this."<br />The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that Madoff's arrest had prompted an outpouring of anti-Semitic comments on Web sites around the world, most repeating familiar tropes about Jews and money. Abraham Foxman, the group's national director, said that canard went back hundreds of years, but he noted that anti-Semites did not need facts to be anti-Semitic.<br />"We're not immune from having thieves and people who engage in fraud," Foxman said in an interview, disputing any notion that Madoff should be seen as emblematic. "Why, because he happens to be Jewish, he should have a conscience?"<br />He added that Madoff's victims extended well beyond the Jewish community.<br />In addition to theft, the Torah discusses another kind of stealing, geneivat da'at, the Hebrew term for deception or stealing someone's mind. "In the rabbinic mind-set, he's guilty of two sins: one is theft, and the other is deception," said Burton Visotzky, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.<br />"The fact that he stole from Jewish charities puts him in a special circle of hell," Rabbi Visotzky added. "He really undermined the fabric of the Jewish community, because it's built on trust. There is a wonderful rabbinic saying — often misapplied — that all Jews are sureties for one another, which means, for instance, that if a Jew takes a loan out, in some ways the whole Jewish community guarantees it."<br />Several rabbis said they were reminded of Esau, a figure of mistrust in the Bible. According to a rabbinic interpretation, Esau, upon embracing his brother Jacob after 20 years apart, was actually frisking him to see what he could steal. "The saying goes that, when Esau kisses you," Rabbi Visotzky said, "check to make sure your teeth are still there."<br />Rabbi Kalmanofsky said he was struck by reports that Madoff had tried to give bonus payments to his employees just before he was arrested, that he was moved to do something right even as he was about to be charged with doing so much wrong. "The small-scale thought for people who work for him amidst this large-scale fraud — what is the dissonance between that sense of responsibility and the gross sense of irresponsibility?" he said.<br />In a recent sermon, Rabbi Kalmanofsky described Madoff as the antithesis of true piety.<br />"I said, what it means to be a religious person is to be terrified of the possibility that you're going to harm someone else," he said.<br />Rabbi Kalmanofsky said Judaism had highly developed mechanisms for not letting people control money without ample checks and balances. When tzedakah, or charity, is collected, it must be done so in pairs. "These things are supposed to be done in the public eye," Rabbi Kalmanofsky said, "so there is a high degree of confidence that people are behaving in honorable ways."<br />While the Madoff affair has resonated powerfully among Jews, some say it actually stands for a broader dysfunction in the business world. "The Bernie Madoff story has become a Jewish story," said Rabbi Jennifer Krause, the author of "The Answer: Making Sense of Life, One Question at a Time," "but I do see it in the much greater context of a human drama that is playing out in sensationally terrible ways in America right now."<br />"The Talmud teaches that a person who only looks out for himself and his own interests will eventually be brought to poverty," Rabbi Krause added. "Unfortunately, this is the metadrama of what's happening in our country right now. When you have too many people who are only looking out for themselves and they forget the other piece, which is to look out for others, we're brought to poverty."<br />According to Jewish tradition, the last question people are asked when they meet God after dying is, "Did you hope for redemption?"<br />Rabbi Wolpe said he did not believe Madoff could ever make amends.<br />"It is not possible for him to atone for all the damage he did," the rabbi said, "and I don't even think that there is a punishment that is commensurate with the crime, for the wreckage of lives that he's left behind. The only thing he could do, for the rest of his life, is work for redemption that he would never achieve."<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Madoff investor commits suicide</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />NEW YORK: The founder of an investment fund that lost $1.4 billion with Bernard Madoff was discovered dead Tuesday after committing suicide at his Madison Avenue office, marking a grim turn in a scandal that has left investors around the world in financial ruin.<br />René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet was found sitting at his desk at about 8 a.m. with both wrists slashed, Paul Browne, the New York Police Department spokesman, said. A box cutter was found on the floor along with a bottle of sleeping pills on his desk. No suicide note was found.<br />Villehuchet was one of several fund managers to be hit hard in Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Investment funds that lost big to Madoff are also facing backlash and investor lawsuits for not protecting their clients from the alleged fraud.<br />It is not immediately known what kind of scrutiny Villehuchet was facing over his Madoff losses through his Access International Advisors, located a couple of blocks from Rockefeller Center.<br />But Monday night, he told cleaning crews in his building that he wanted them out of his office by 7 p.m. because he was going to be working late.<br />Workers returned Tuesday morning and found the door locked. He was later discovered dead at his desk, with a garbage can placed near his body to apparently catch the blood, Browne said.<br />Villehuchet was a prominent investor who came from a long line of French aristocrats, with the Magon part of his name referring to one of the most powerful families in France.<br />His fund enlisted intermediaries with links to the cream of Europe's high society to garner clients. Among them was Philippe Junot, a French businessman and friend who is the former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco.<br />Villehuchet, the former chairman and chief executive of Credit Lyonnais Securities U.S.A., was also known as an ardent sailor who regularly participated in regattas and was a member of the New York Yacht Club.<br />He lived in an affluent suburb in Westchester County with his wife. They have no children. There was no answer Tuesday at the family's two-story house.<br />"He's irreproachable," said Bill Rapavy, who was Access International's chief operating officer before founding his own firm in 2007.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Irregularity uncovered at IndyMac</strong><br />By Edmund L. Andrews<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Two months before IndyMac Bancorp collapsed in July, at a cost of $8.9 billion to taxpayers, a top U.S. government banking regulator allowed the bank to backdate a capital infusion and gloss over its deepening problems, the U.S. Treasury Department's independent investigator said Monday.<br />In what industry analysts said was an example of the excessively cozy relations between high-flying subprime lenders and U.S. government bank regulators, the Office of Thrift Supervision's West Coast director allowed IndyMac's parent company to backdate an $18 million contribution to preserve its status as a "well-capitalized" institution.<br />Investigators reported that similar officially approved backdating appears to have occurred at other financial institutions, though they did not name them.<br />IndyMac, based in Pasadena, California, was one of the nation's biggest subprime mortgage lenders at the time. But analysts said it was already in trouble when the maneuver occurred, because of rising default rates and a big stockpile of subprime loans on its books that investors abruptly refused to buy.<br />The Office of Thrift Supervision's western regional director, Darrel Dochow, allowed IndyMac Bank to receive $18 million from its parent company on May 9 but to book the money as having arrived on March 31, according to the Treasury Department's inspector general, Eric Thorson. The backdated capital infusion allowed IndyMac to plug a hole that its auditors had belatedly found in the bank's financial results for the first quarter. If IndyMac had not been able to plug that hole retroactively, its reserves would have slipped below the minimum level that regulators require for classifying banks as well capitalized.<br />Though the $18 million transaction was minuscule in comparison to IndyMac's $32 billion in assets, it had tremendous significance. If IndyMac had lost its well-capitalized status it would not have been allowed to accept "brokered deposits" from other financial institutions. Brokered deposits are typically high-yielding certificates of deposit arranged by brokers and sold to savings and loans. IndyMac relied heavily on brokered deposits, which amounted to $6.8 billion or 37 percent of its total deposits last spring.<br />"This is very significant in terms of whether IndyMac was over or under the OTS's thresholds for capital," said Bert Ely, a veteran banking analysts in Alexandria, Virginia. "But what's really troubling is that it seems to have been going on elsewhere."<br />The episode had a link to the savings-and-loan scandals of the late 1980s, which cost the U.S. government more than $100 billion.<br />Dochow played a central role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s, overriding a recommendation by federal bank examiners in San Francisco to seize Lincoln Savings, the giant savings and loan owned by Charles Keating. Lincoln became one of the biggest institutions to collapse. Keating served four and a half years in prison before his fraud and racketeering convictions were overturned. He later pleaded guilty to more limited charges, and was sentenced to the time already served.<br />Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said the regulator's behavior raised new doubts about the Office of Thrift Supervision, which has long had a reputation for being the most permissive of all the U.S. bank regulators.<br />"The role of the Office of Thrift Supervision, as the name says, is to supervise these banks, not conspire with them," Grassley said in a statement. "If the Office of Thrift Supervision is turning a blind eye to capitalization requirements, Congress needs to know."<br />John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said the $18 million maneuver was "a relatively small factor" in the collapse of IndyMac. But he said he had removed Dochow from his job as the agency's western director pending the results of a separate inquiry.<br />Thorson, the Treasury's inspector general, described an intricate process by which the Office of Thrift Supervision, or at least Dochow, had quietly helped IndyMac paper over its difficulties.<br />In a letter to Grassley, Thorson said that IndyMac's auditor, Ernst & Young, had discovered several issues in early May that required IndyMac to retroactively adjust its financial results for the three months that ended on March 31.<br />Those adjustments would have reduced IndyMac's capital to a level that would have deprived it of its classification as a well-capitalized institution.<br />IndyMac executives did not dispute the adjustments, according to Thorson. But they did meet with Dochow on May 9 to ask if they could backdate the $18 million capital injection by retroactively listing it as a "receivable" on IndyMac's books as of March 31, Thorson said.<br />Dochow agreed, and IndyMac filed an amended report for its first quarter that showed a higher capital ratio, Thorson said. To investors, there was no sign that IndyMac's capital had ever dipped below what was required to qualify for well-capitalized status. In fact, the amended report slightly increased the capital ratio above what the bank had originally reported.<br />William Black, a senior bank regulator during the savings and loan crisis and the author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One," said Dochow's lenience highlighted the longstanding unwillingness of the Office of Thrift Supervision to take charge.<br />"The OTS did nothing effective to regulate any of the specialized large nonprime lenders," Black said. "So what you got was what the FBI accurately described as early as 2004 as an epidemic of mortgage fraud."<br />Black said that the Office of Thrift Supervision had never put IndyMac on its watch list of troubled institutions before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took it over in July and booked a loss of $8.9 billion to its insurance fund.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>LATIN AMERICA: Debt legitimacy comes under scrutiny</strong><br />Oxford Analytica<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Some Latin American governments are increasingly questioning the 'legitimacy' of their public debt. Questioning the need to service and repay debt incurred by previous governments, despite having ability to pay, is an innovative strategy that aims to elevate the needs of domestic citizens by making additional resources available to them, at least in the short term. However, it runs contrary to the rules and expectations underpinning the global financial architecture.<br />The government of Ecuador on December 12 declared the first debt default in Latin America since Argentina in 2001:<br />•The government decided not to make a 30.6 million dollar interest payment on its Global 2012 bond, having allowed a 30-day grace period to lapse.<br />•A similar payment, of 30.47 million dollars on its Global 2015 bond, looks like it may also be missed when its 30-day grace period ends on January 14, 2009.<br />'Strategic default'. Ecuador's current default is extremely unusual in that it is the result of a strategic decision by the government, rather than of the inability to pay. It is this strategic nature that makes the playing out of the case of Ecuador extremely important from the perspective of the international financial system:<br />•'Success'. If Correa's gamble appears to pay off initially, by seeming likely to succeed in substantially reducing his county's debt burden without a significant economic deterioration, this could embolden other governments in the region and elsewhere to make similar moves.<br />•'Failure'. However, if it soon becomes apparent that the cost of Ecuador's default is too high, in terms of a virtual elimination of (already reduced) access to international credit markets -- including companies' access to trade finance -- and an ensuing worsening of fiscal problems (probably including an inability to meet accelerated debt obligations even if it wished to), then this would be likely to discourage other countries from taking similarly belligerent approaches.<br />Failure is more likely than success, which is the main reason why such 'strategic defaults' have generally not been tried in the past. Nonetheless, there is a risk that a small number of countries -- including Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela -- might follow Ecuador's lead in the near future in classifying some of their external debt as 'illegitimate'.<br />Wider reaction. There is certainly a significant degree of truth to the argument that debts incurred by previous authoritarian and/or corrupt governments in developing countries have not ultimately had the domestic social benefits expected. Some non-governmental organizations, such as the Jubilee Debt Campaign, have long sought to bring to wider debate issues surrounding the 'legitimacy' of developing countries' debt burdens and appear generally sympathetic to the idea of strategic default if the social burden of continuing debt servicing and repayment is very onerous.<br />In a worst-case scenario, the actions being taken by Quito and being contemplated by some other regional governments could embolden countries all over the world to engage in strategic defaults on their debts. Though unlikely, this could lead to the unraveling of parts of the global sovereign debt system, with dire long-term consequences. More likely is that Ecuador and any other countries pursuing strategic defaults will suffer severe economic collapses in the short-to-medium term, deterring other countries from doing so.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Drugs trade threatens to corrode Ghana's image</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Alistair Thomson<br />Hopes of future oil prosperity have given a lift to Ghana's presidential election race, but drug trafficking threatens to spoil the West African country's image with the stain of corruption.<br />During the heated election contest, to be decided in a December 28 run-off, lurid headlines in the partisan press accused both main rival parties of collusion in trafficking or of using drug dollars to win votes.<br />Hard evidence was lacking, but the allegations are indicative of Ghana's failure to tackle an illicit trade experts fear is turning West Africa into a "Coke Coast" and of corruption that threatens to cloud a bright future.<br />After years of military rule and economic instability, Ghana has been seen as a success story since President John Kufor was elected in 2000, attracting foreign donors and investors eager for a safe haven in a restive region.<br />Yet tonnes of cocaine vanishing from police surveillance, a parliamentarian jailed in the United States for trafficking heroin, and the sabotage of efforts to combat smuggling or graft are more reminiscent of the region's failed or failing states.<br />"I think it's an extremely serious threat," said Patrick Smith, editor of newsletter Africa Confidential.<br />"It's not just the transhipment, it's the criminalisation of the economy and of institutions. There is growing hard drug use among Ghanaians. They are all mutually reinforcing factors, and yet the government has not come down hard on them," Smith said.<br />Yao Gede, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Ghana, said the record of Kufuor's administration in attracting investment and extending health and education services was undermined by widespread suspicions of graft.<br />"There is that perception of corruption in the country, there is the belief that resources have not been shared equitably," he said.<br />Increased investment in Ghana, encouraged by the start-up of offshore oil production scheduled for late 2010, raises the stakes for both the criminal networks and those fighting them.<br />"We hear of ... people being approached with huge cash offers to sell their houses to Colombians and Venezuelans, and it's clearly (money) laundering," said Smith.<br />BUYING INFLUENCE<br />Nigerian gangs began smuggling heroin through the country in the 1980s, said Antonio Mazzitelli, regional head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency describes Ghana as a common transit country for heroin.<br />Eric Amoateng, a member of parliament for Kufuor's ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), was arrested in 2005 for smuggling 136 pounds (62 kg) of heroin into New York's Newark airport.<br />Amoateng was jailed last year by a U.S. court after quitting his seat, but enjoyed significant support from parliamentarians and constituents who regarded him as a philanthropist.<br />"There is a perception on the ground that it has got worse under the current regime ... That is one of the major issues of the campaign," said Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an analyst at U.S. risk consultancy Eurasia Group.<br />The NPP's chosen successor to Kufuor, Nana Akufo-Addo, is counting on the party's record after eight years in power to defeat opposition chief John Atta Mills, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in next Sunday's run-off.<br />Neither party's record is unblemished. Under former coup-leader turned president Jerry Rawlings, the NDC ruled Ghana throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s when heroin smuggling networks became entrenched.<br />DISAPPEARING DRUGS<br />In recent years, cocaine trafficking has been spread across West Africa by rich, well-armed Latin American gangs who have used the impoverished region as a transhipment route to smuggle drugs into Europe.<br />"Although Ghana is mainly a transit point for drugs, there is an increasingly organised framework within which these transactions take place," Kwesi Aning, head of conflict prevention at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Ghana, wrote in a 2007 report on criminal networks.<br />The sums involved can be devastating for law enforcement in a country where anti-drugs officers are paid $90 a month.<br />In 2006, around 2 tonnes of cocaine smuggled into Ghana on board a merchant ship simply vanished after it was seized by police. The case rocked the establishment.<br />Operation Westbridge, a British-backed programme, has helped counter trafficking by "mules" who carry or swallow small bags of cocaine to smuggle it on flights to Europe. But Ghana's land and sea borders remain vulnerable to bigger shipments.<br />"Judging by the number of scandals ... traffickers and drug money have infiltrated law enforcement agencies at all levels," UNODC's Mazzitelli said.<br />"It's certainly a threat, and drug money -- criminal money -- can become an obstacle, or a competitor, to licit investment. Ghana wishes to be a financial hub in West Africa, and it has all the qualities for becoming it, but certainly it has to protect its banking system," he said.<br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>The world according to Dick Cheney</strong><br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. After all, he said, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln did worse than that.<br />So Cheney and Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history - Roosevelt's decision to force Japanese-Americans into camps and Lincoln's declaration of martial law to silence his critics? That's not exactly a lofty standard of behavior.<br />Then again, it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Cheney has done in a series of exit interviews where he has made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years.<br />The invasion of Iraq was exactly the right thing to do, not an unnecessary war that required misleading Americans. The post-invasion period was not bungled to the point where Americans got shot up by an insurgency that the Bush team failed to see building.<br />The horrors at Abu Ghraib were not the result of the Pentagon's decision to authorize abusive and illegal interrogation techniques, which Cheney endorsed. And only three men were subjected to waterboarding. (Future truth commissions take note.)<br />In Cheney's reality, the crippling budget deficit was caused mainly by fighting two wars and by essential programs like "enhancing the security of our shipping container business."<br />Well, no. The Bush team's program to scan cargo for nuclear materials at air, land and sea ports has been mired in delays, cost overruns and questions about effectiveness. As for the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office has said the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy were the biggest reason that the budget went into the red.<br />Some of Cheney's comments were self-serving spin (as when The Washington Times helpfully prodded him to reveal that even though the world might have seen Bush as insensitive to the casualties of war, Cheney himself made a "secret" mission to comfort the families of the dead.)<br />Cheney was simply dishonest about Bush's decision to authorize spying on Americans' international calls without a warrant. He claimed the White House kept the Democratic and Republican congressional leadership fully briefed on the program starting in late 2001. He said he personally ran a meeting at which "they were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike" that the program was essential and did not require further congressional involvement.<br />But in a July 17, 2003, letter to Cheney, Senator Jay Rockefeller, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to "reiterate" the concerns he expressed in "the meeting today." He said "the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues."<br />Cheney mocked Vice President-elect Joseph Biden for saying that he does not intend to have his own "shadow government" in the White House. Cheney said it was up to Biden to decide if he wants "to diminish the office of vice president."<br />Based on Cheney's record and his standards for measuring these things, we're certain a little diminishing of that office would be good for the country.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>No improper contact with governor, says Obama report<br /></strong>By Jeff Zeleny<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />HONOLULU: An internal report issued on Tuesday by lawyers for President-elect Barack Obama found that his top advisers had numerous contacts with the office of Governor Rod Blagojevich and attempted to guide his choice to fill a vacant Illinois Senate seat, but none of the talks suggested an attempt to play along with the governor's alleged attempts to sell the seat.<br />Rahm Emanuel, the new White House chief of staff, had two conversations with Blagojevich and four calls with John Harris, the governor's chief of staff, about the Senate seat. He provided a list of six names of Illinois Democrats whom Obama favored to fill his Senate seat.<br />"At no time in the discussion of the Senate seat or of possible replacements did the president-elect hear of a suggestion that the governor expected a personal benefit in return for making this appointment to the Senate," said the report, which was written by Gregory Craig, the new White House counsel.<br />In a question-answer session just after the report's release, Craig described the contacts between Emanuel and the governor's chief of staff as "totally appropriate and acceptable" as well as "predictable." In his conversations with the governor in the days immediately after the election, the report said, Emanuel was pushing Valerie Jarrett for the Senate seat. Emanuel said he made the recommendation before he knew that Obama "had ruled out communicating a preference for any one candidate."<br />Jarrett, a close friend of the Obama family and a senior adviser to the campaign, removed her name from consideration for the Senate seat so she could work in the White House as a senior adviser to Obama.<br />Jarrett had a conversation with a union official, who told her that Blagojevich had expressed interest in becoming health and human services secretary in the Obama cabinet, Craig said. At the time of the conversation, on Nov. 7, Jarrett was still being mentioned as a candidate for Obama's Senate seat.<br />However, Craig said, the union official was not acting as an emissary for the governor, and Jarrett told the union official it was "ridiculous" for the governor to even think of getting such a post, given the investigations swirling around him long before the latest controversy erupted.<br />The report, which was made public on Tuesday afternoon in the form of a five-page memorandum to the president-elect from Craig, showed more involvement from Emanuel in filling the Senate seat than had previously been known.<br />But Craig said there was no evidence of wrongdoing or suggestions that Emanuel was asked to provide favors to the governor in exchange for the Senate seat.<br />The report said that Emanuel "discussed the merits of potential candidates and the strategic benefit that each candidate would bring to the Senate seat."<br />Emanuel gave the names of four Democrats from Illinois whom Obama "considered to be highly qualified," including Dan Hynes, Tammy Duckworth, Representative Jan Schakowsky and Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. In later telephone calls, Emanuel also mentioned the names of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Cheryle Jackson.<br />" Harris did not make any effort to extract a personal benefit for the Governor in any of these conversations," Craig wrote in the report. "There was no discussion of a cabinet position, of 501c(4), of a private sector position or of any other personal benefit to the governor in exchange for the Senate appointment."<br />Obama, who is on vacation with his family here in Hawaii, is not planning to answer questions or speak publicly about the report.<br />The report, and the timing of its release, was a product of cooperation from the office of Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who is leading the U.S. government investigation into Blagojevich. But according to people familiar with the report, lawyers who compiled the Obama review did not have access to wiretapped telephone conversations between Obama aides and the governor's office.<br />Last week, Fitzgerald asked the Obama transition team to delay the release of its report so prosecutors could interview witnesses in the Blagojevich investigation. The office had yet to complete its interviews late last week, people familiar with the case said, and asked the Obama team not to release its report on Monday.<br />At a news conference three days after the election, Obama said he was staying out of the matter. "There are going to be a lot of good choices out there," he said, "but it is the governor's decision to make, not mine."<br />Craig has worked with the United States attorney's office, which has repeatedly suggested that Obama's staff is not suspected of any wrongdoing.<br />The Obama report may not be the final word on the case. The review was compiled from memory by Obama's aides, rather than from recordings of any phone calls.<br />The taped conversations, which were picked up through the court-approved wiretapping of Blagojevich and his chief of staff, Harris, will not become public until the case moves through the courts or goes to trial.<br />Asked whether he thought the prosecutor should release the tapes, Craig declined to answer, declaring that the matter was the prosecutor's business. As for whether any new guidelines might be necessary for Obama staff members regarding whom they talk to, Craig dismissed the idea, saying no new rules were needed because the few conversations that occurred with the governor's people were "completely innocent, completely appropriate." More Articles in US »<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Impeachment panel hears of Blagojevich fund-raising</strong><br />By Christopher Maag<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />SPRINGFIELD, Illinois: Even in a state infamous for pay-to-play politics, Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois created a "sea change" in campaign fund-raising chicanery, aggressively courting state contractors for big contributions that helped him collect an "astonishing" $58 million in the last eight years, according to testimony on Monday before the state legislative committee that is considering whether to impeach him.<br />The description came from the director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, Cindi Canary, who said her group's research showed that the governor's fund-raising had recently appeared to go into overdrive, as he apparently tried to collect as much money as possible before new restrictions on contributions took effect.<br />Giving the governor extra time to raise money was "like handing an arsonist the keys to a gas station and a box of matches," Canary said.<br />One supporter whose four affiliated companies gave a total of $650,000 in apparently coordinated campaign donations was later appointed to the Illinois Gaming Board, she said.<br />Canary also said that the governor had taken in far more in donations than his predecessors, for a total $58.3 million over eight years, and that he had relied much more heavily on donations of $25,000 or more.<br />The 21-member committee is considering whether to impeach Blagojevich, who was arrested on Dec. 9 on charges of widespread corruption, including scheming to sell the United States Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. Blagojevich has adamantly proclaimed his innocence.<br />The United States attorney in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, did not respond on Monday to the committee's request for information. Nor did Barry Maram, director of the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services, respond to many of the committee's questions regarding the governor's expansion of health care benefits in defiance of the Legislature.<br />"I find that appalling," Representative Lou Lang, a Democrat from Skokie, said of Maram's refusal to appear.<br />Ed Bedore, a member of the State Procurement Policy Board, which reviews state contracts, raised questions about $6 million worth of questionable spending by the Blagojevich administration.<br />One lease involved 215 parking spaces for state employees near Blagojevich's office in downtown Chicago, Bedore said. Another lease would have paid $2.6 million extra to one of Blagojevich's campaign contributors.<br />"The people of Illinois are suffering," Bedore said.<br />Edward Genson, Blagojevich's lawyer, told the committee that the Blagojevich administration had eventually withdrawn the questionable contracts. Later, Genson questioned Canary about campaign donations.<br />"The fact of the matter is that campaigns cost a lot more money now than they used to, isn't that correct?" Genson said. Canary agreed.<br />The committee agreed to a request from Genson to adjourn for a week, to give him time to find witnesses to testify on Blagojevich's behalf.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Mugabe dismisses U.S. stand on power-sharing pact<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By MacDonald Dzirutwe<br />Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe described U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday as a "dying horse" after the United States said it could no longer support a Harare government that includes him.<br />U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer said on Sunday Mugabe reneged on a power-sharing deal and he was "completely out of touch" and was responsible for turning the once prosperous country into a "failed state."<br />Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed on September 15 to form a unity government, a pact supported at the time by the United States. But that agreement has unravelled due to a fight over control of important ministries.<br />"The inclusive government does not include Mr Bush and his administration. It doesn't even know him. It has no relationship with him, so let him keep his comments, they are undesired, irrelevant, quite stupid and foolish," Mugabe said at a burial ceremony for a ruling party official.<br />"We realise these are the last kicks of a dying horse. We obviously are not going to pay attention."<br />Zimbabwe has sunk deeper into crisis while the stalemate drags on.<br />Hyper-inflation means prices double every day, a cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,100 people and the opposition has accused the ruling party of abducting its supporters, a charge it denies.<br />Western countries including the United States blame Mugabe for Zimbabwe's woes and have intensified calls for him to step down.<br />There is little Western powers can do to force Mugabe out. Sanctions have failed to weaken him and analysts say his Western foes would not contemplate military intervention because Zimbabwe is not seen as a strategic country with key resources such as oil.<br />Mugabe has also remained defiant in the face of tough criticism from regional leaders.<br />Most African leaders, including neighbour South Africa, Africa's biggest economy, have stopped short of calling on him to quit.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioAbVu8v2qgpskPWUdnoMCUEWxQzCpXR8cdvsWdSR7QvkslpkJ_8coxKLwu_vQ0npAuPQVhybKXOfICGCjdwTq5WTXVD58h-5mXWZwRMqQBTH6OTlNAy0LOxJnYlgeuSaux-1srN3XKNE/s1600-h/DSC04243.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220805479416482" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioAbVu8v2qgpskPWUdnoMCUEWxQzCpXR8cdvsWdSR7QvkslpkJ_8coxKLwu_vQ0npAuPQVhybKXOfICGCjdwTq5WTXVD58h-5mXWZwRMqQBTH6OTlNAy0LOxJnYlgeuSaux-1srN3XKNE/s320/DSC04243.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgOwKry47fb3fSwTpmj7026-BwlPIWQktjQbbpmEopArvQktffTjECDpb477peQGh6DCL9M2W_lSkuHyufR3p5Lq0Irfnx5Rv8n7oYGHjt3a__mtMnvQiMsL-eU-TG1YcOTrhI0biezQc/s1600-h/DSC04244.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220551149353122" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgOwKry47fb3fSwTpmj7026-BwlPIWQktjQbbpmEopArvQktffTjECDpb477peQGh6DCL9M2W_lSkuHyufR3p5Lq0Irfnx5Rv8n7oYGHjt3a__mtMnvQiMsL-eU-TG1YcOTrhI0biezQc/s320/DSC04244.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>U.S. house sales fall sharply<br /></strong>By Jack Healy<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Home sales declined dramatically last month and housing prices posted their sharpest decline in four decades as a rapidly slowing economy discouraged many potential buyers from tip-toeing into the market.<br />Sales of existing homes declined 8.6 percent last month, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.49 million, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade association. The median price of a home fell 13 percent in November, to $181,300 from $208,000 a year ago. That was the lowest price since February 2004.<br />"They're about as god-awful as they can get," said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG. "This is pretty breathtaking stuff."<br />The troubles plaguing the housing market, which is at the heart of America's financial crisis, are only multiplying as the broader economy deteriorates. Even though mortgage rates dropped after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to record lows near zero percent, economists said that housing would continue to lag as unemployment increases and the spiral of slumping consumer spending and waning industrial growth continues.<br />"Housing dragged down the markets this summer," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight. "Now it's the economy and financial markets that are dragging down housing."<br />The economy was shrinking over the summer and corporate profits were falling even before the financial crisis struck with full force. On Tuesday, the U.S. Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the third quarter as corporate profit fell 1.2 percent.<br />Analysts are forecasting that those declines will be followed by much larger decreases this quarter as the longest recession in a quarter century gains intensity.<br />Stock markets dived into negative territory as investors took in the economic news. Just before the market closed, the Dow Jones industrial average was down about 100 points or 1.25 percent while the wider Standard & Poor's 500-stock index was down 0.8 percent.<br />Shares of major homebuilders such as Toll Brothers and Pulte Homes were trading lower. Sales of single-family homes dropped 8 percent from October to November while the sales of condominiums and co-ops fell an even sharper 13 percent, the Realtors association reported.<br />The pool of unsold homes grew slightly to 4.2 million last month. At the current sales rate, it would take 11.2 months to burn off the excess inventory, which is up from a 10.3-month supply in October.<br />The U.S. Commerce Department also reported that new home sales dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 407,000 in November, from a downwardly revised rate of 419,000 in October. The median price of a new home sold in November was $220,400, down 11.5 percent from the period a year ago. It was the biggest year-over-year price decline since a 12.7 percent drop in March. Investors on Wall Street seemed to take the economic news in stride.<br />Housing values have plummeted since the peak of the market in July 2006, when the median home price was $230,200. But the housing bubble burst, sales declined, credit dried up and a flood of foreclosed homes hit the market, a combination of events that pulled median prices down 21 percent to their November levels.<br />Still, some economists said that home prices will fall even farther before they dip low enough to entice potential home buyers. Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR, said that some parts of the country may only be halfway through such a retrenchment.<br />"You need to have a correction, you need to have an adjustment," Shapiro said. "The faster it happens, the better."<br />Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, said that 45 percent of all home sales in November were so-called "distressed sales," meaning that the sellers faced foreclosure, or they were forced to sell their home for less than the value of the mortgage. That was slightly higher than the previous month.<br />"It's probably the largest price drop since the Great Depression," Yun said. "There needs to be some measure to counter this pessimism. Without housing market stabilization, it'll be very difficult for the economy to recover."<br />That trend is especially pronounced in regions of the country hit hardest by housing's boom and bust. In parts of Southern California, more than half of all houses sold in November had gone through foreclosure at some point in the last 12 months, according to MDA DataQuick, a real-estate research firm.<br />"Outside of distressed properties, the market is nonexistent almost," Frederick Cannon, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said of the California market. "You don't want to sell into it. Most people are saying, 'I'll just stay in this house.' "<br />In California's Riverside County, real-estate agent Gary Crutchley said that he had sold six homes in the last four months. Three were foreclosure sales, two were "short sales" in which homeowners sold to avoid a foreclosure, and one was a traditional sale — a couple who had saved their money, and were now looking to buy into a distressed market.<br />"They're few and far between," Crutchley said.<br />GDP falls 1.2 percent in U.S.<br />The U.S. Commerce Department said Tuesday that the U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the July-September quarter, The Associated Press reported from Washington.<br />Corporate profits fell 1.2 percent in the quarter, the department said. The fall in GDP was unchanged from an estimate made a month ago. The decline in corporate profits was slightly larger than the 0.9 percent fall estimated a month ago.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. house sales fall sharply</strong><br />By Jack Healy<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Home sales declined dramatically last month and housing prices posted their sharpest decline in four decades as a rapidly slowing economy discouraged many potential buyers from tip-toeing into the market.<br />Sales of existing homes declined 8.6 percent last month, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.49 million, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade association. The median price of a home fell 13 percent in November, to $181,300 from $208,000 a year ago. That was the lowest price since February 2004.<br />"They're about as god-awful as they can get," said Robert Barbera, chief economist at ITG. "This is pretty breathtaking stuff."<br />The troubles plaguing the housing market, which is at the heart of America's financial crisis, are only multiplying as the broader economy deteriorates. Even though mortgage rates dropped after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to record lows near zero percent, economists said that housing would continue to lag as unemployment increases and the spiral of slumping consumer spending and waning industrial growth continues.<br />"Housing dragged down the markets this summer," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight. "Now it's the economy and financial markets that are dragging down housing."<br />The economy was shrinking over the summer and corporate profits were falling even before the financial crisis struck with full force. On Tuesday, the U.S. Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the third quarter as corporate profit fell 1.2 percent.<br />Analysts are forecasting that those declines will be followed by much larger decreases this quarter as the longest recession in a quarter century gains intensity.<br />Stock markets dived into negative territory as investors took in the economic news. Just before the market closed, the Dow Jones industrial average was down about 100 points or 1.25 percent while the wider Standard & Poor's 500-stock index was down 0.8 percent.<br />Shares of major homebuilders such as Toll Brothers and Pulte Homes were trading lower. Sales of single-family homes dropped 8 percent from October to November while the sales of condominiums and co-ops fell an even sharper 13 percent, the Realtors association reported.<br />The pool of unsold homes grew slightly to 4.2 million last month. At the current sales rate, it would take 11.2 months to burn off the excess inventory, which is up from a 10.3-month supply in October.<br />The U.S. Commerce Department also reported that new home sales dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 407,000 in November, from a downwardly revised rate of 419,000 in October. The median price of a new home sold in November was $220,400, down 11.5 percent from the period a year ago. It was the biggest year-over-year price decline since a 12.7 percent drop in March. Investors on Wall Street seemed to take the economic news in stride.<br />Housing values have plummeted since the peak of the market in July 2006, when the median home price was $230,200. But the housing bubble burst, sales declined, credit dried up and a flood of foreclosed homes hit the market, a combination of events that pulled median prices down 21 percent to their November levels.<br />Still, some economists said that home prices will fall even farther before they dip low enough to entice potential home buyers. Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR, said that some parts of the country may only be halfway through such a retrenchment.<br />"You need to have a correction, you need to have an adjustment," Shapiro said. "The faster it happens, the better."<br />Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, said that 45 percent of all home sales in November were so-called "distressed sales," meaning that the sellers faced foreclosure, or they were forced to sell their home for less than the value of the mortgage. That was slightly higher than the previous month.<br />"It's probably the largest price drop since the Great Depression," Yun said. "There needs to be some measure to counter this pessimism. Without housing market stabilization, it'll be very difficult for the economy to recover."<br />That trend is especially pronounced in regions of the country hit hardest by housing's boom and bust. In parts of Southern California, more than half of all houses sold in November had gone through foreclosure at some point in the last 12 months, according to MDA DataQuick, a real-estate research firm.<br />"Outside of distressed properties, the market is nonexistent almost," Frederick Cannon, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said of the California market. "You don't want to sell into it. Most people are saying, 'I'll just stay in this house.' "<br />In California's Riverside County, real-estate agent Gary Crutchley said that he had sold six homes in the last four months. Three were foreclosure sales, two were "short sales" in which homeowners sold to avoid a foreclosure, and one was a traditional sale — a couple who had saved their money, and were now looking to buy into a distressed market.<br />"They're few and far between," Crutchley said.<br />GDP falls 1.2 percent in U.S.<br />The U.S. Commerce Department said Tuesday that the U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, declined at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the July-September quarter, The Associated Press reported from Washington.<br />Corporate profits fell 1.2 percent in the quarter, the department said. The fall in GDP was unchanged from an estimate made a month ago. The decline in corporate profits was slightly larger than the 0.9 percent fall estimated a month ago.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23transplants.php">Foreign automakers in the U.S. cut back</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/oil.php">Oil expected to remain below $60 a barrel in 2009</a><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Expected bad news doesn't scare Wall Street<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Investors were relieved Tuesday after a government report on the U.S. economy met expectations and eased their concerns that the recession is deepening.<br />The Commerce Department reported third-quarter gross domestic product, a measure of the economy that tallies the value of goods and services, fell at an annual rate of 0.5 percent. That was in line with analysts' expectations and matched the government's estimate of a month ago.<br />While the readings show further weakness, investors have likely already priced in very low expectations. The concern, however, is that the current quarter will be much worse.<br />That also helped investors get past a report that showed sales of new homes fell in November to the slowest pace in nearly 18 years, while new home prices dropped by the biggest amount in eight months.<br />New home sales fell by 2.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 407,000 units, a weaker performance than economists had expected and was the slowest sales pace since January 1991. The median price of a new home sold in November was $220,400, a drop of 11.5 percent from the sales price a year ago.<br />In midmorning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 11.79, or 0.14 percent, to 8,531.56.<br />Broader indexes were also higher. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 2.00, or 0.23 percent, to 873.63. The Nasdaq composite index added 5.11, or 0.33 percent, to 1,537.46.<br />On Monday, stocks fell moderately as investors pulled back on discouraging news from Toyota Motor Corp. and drugstore operator Walgreen Co. - two companies that have been viewed as better-positioned than many of their peers. The announcements provided fresh evidence that even stronger companies are not immune to a severe drop in consumer spending.<br />Bond prices were little changed Tuesday. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.15 percent from 2.17 percent late Monday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, was unchanged at 0.02 percent from late Monday.<br />In corporate news, greeting-card company American Greetings Corp. said it swung to a third-quarter loss, hurt by hefty charges and a decline in sales. Shares fell $3.00, or 30 percent, to $6.82.<br />Trading volume was light, and is expected to remain so the rest of this week as investors head into the holidays. Analysts are mindful that light volume tends to skew the market's movements, and warned that this week may not suggest any long-term trends.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>ECB head says markets underestimating crisis response</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />PARIS: Markets are underestimating the importance of steps central banks and governments have taken in response to the financial crisis, Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, said on Tuesday.<br />Interbank lending rates have eased in the past weeks following massive government stimulus plans in Europe and a series of interest rate cuts by major central banks, but strong tensions remained, Trichet, the ECB president, said in a speech at a Paris-based think-tank.<br />"There is an underestimation in the financial sphere of the very great importance of the decisions that were taken," said Trichet, adding that banks were still "very influenced" by mistrust that had set in from mid-September.<br />Confidence, which Trichet said would remain a watchword going into 2009, had shown some signs of picking up,<br />Trichet urged all leaders to assume their responsibilities in the difficult months ahead, and urged European countries that still have budgetary room for manoeuvre to use it to stimulate growth.<br />The European Union's stability pact caps public deficits in member states but includes provisions giving governments greater leeway in times of economic downturn.<br />Trichet said some countries still had some leeway under the pact's rules and urged them to make the most of it, while cautioning others that observers believed their policies were untenable in the medium-term.<br />The ECB was "absolutely in agreement with the use of the room for manoeuvre offered by the stability pact in current circumstances, which are abnormal," he said.<br />MUM ON RATES<br />Trichet said agreement was growing among many nations over how to prevent a recurrence of the current crisis and improve the regulatory landscape of the global financial system.<br />"There is a large consensus on a much higher level of transparency for financial instruments, markets and much more transparency for financial institutions," he said.<br />But Trichet gave little away on future monetary policy decisions.<br />"I have nothing to add or to withdraw from what I have already said," he said, referring to an ECB news conference held earlier this month.<br />"We will do what is necessary to maintain price stability."<br />The ECB lowered rates by three quarters of a percentage point to 2.5 percent this month, its largest cut ever, and some analysts have been expecting it to pause after the recent series of cuts and leave rates on hold in January.<br />Recent data from the euro zone, however, has underscored the depth of the economic downturn and fuelled speculation that the ECB may need to act again soon.<br />Turning to the euro, Trichet said the currency had proven its credibility since its inception almost a decade ago and had helped shield Europe from the ravages of the global financial crisis.<br />More countries in Europe would adopt the euro going forward, Trichet said, adding that if Britain decided to do so one day, he would support it.<br />"Britain knows that it is welcome to join the euro. That has always been said by all the governments and the ECB, and as you know, it is a decision which lies with the people of Britain themselves."<br />(Reporting by Tamora Vidaillet, Francois Murphy and Veronique Tison; Editing by Leslie Adler)<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Investors lose faith in the bankers of HSBC</strong><br />By Landon Thomas Jr. and Julia Werdigier<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />LONDON: Through more than a year of giant bailouts and bankruptcies, HSBC was one of the few big banks to emerge with its reputation largely intact.<br />HSBC, the global financial giant, did bet on subprime mortgages — and lost. But it nonetheless managed to maintain a robust market value compared with its diminished peers, lending it an aura of unrivaled durability.<br />So much so that during a recent parliamentary debate in Britain, where HSBC is based, an opposition politician scorned the government's borrowing policies by asserting that Britain's creditworthiness had fallen behind that of HSBC.<br />Now, as the bank faces a sharp slowdown in the emerging markets where it earns the bulk of its profit, many investors are questioning HSBC's ability to maintain this exalted standing.<br />Last week, HSBC shares listed in London sank more than 17 percent, hit by several analysts' reports contending that the bank would be required to raise money or to cut its dividend sharply. On Monday, HSBC shares in Hong Kong fell 3.3 percent, after falling more than 9 percent late last week. In addition, there was the acknowledgment that HSBC might have lost the $1 billion it had invested with Bernard Madoff, the New York money manager who authorities say has confessed to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.<br />As banks throughout the world face uncertain futures amid the worst financial crisis since the Depression, HSBC — which spans the globe from its original home in Hong Kong to the Middle East, Latin America and North America — offered a vivid counterpoint.<br />Its share price outpaced the main indexes and still trades near its book value. Its assets are growing, with the $2.3 trillion on its books expected to grow by almost 20 percent this year.<br />Not only has the bank spurned government money, it has been — at least so far — one of the few financial institutions of size not to be required to raise capital.<br />But with the recent drop in its shares, HSBC's critics are raising questions about the bank's globe-girdling strategy, particularly its insistence on sticking with its struggling consumer finance unit in the United States.<br />HSBC gets three-quarters of its profit from emerging markets, which have underpinned its recent success. But three-quarters of its loans are still exposed to the stricken markets of the United States and Britain, which some investors argue will hold it back, after the global economy recovers.<br />HSBC became the world's top subprime lender when it bought Household International in the United States in 2003. According to Knight Vinke, a small asset manager in Monaco that owns less than 1 percent of the bank's shares, the parent group has injected $60 billion into HSBC Finance — including the purchase price of $15 billion — in a so far fruitless bid to turn around this flagging business. According to its research, the money would be better deployed in faster-growing emerging markets.<br />A spokesman for HSBC disputed the figure, saying the total amount was about $20 billion.<br />Knight Vinke argues that HSBC should leave this business and focus on its core area of expertise in Asia.<br />"There are steps to be taken, but if all else fails, you may have to walk away from it," said Glen Suarez, an executive at Knight Vinke.<br />"We see HSBC's comparative advantage being in developing its business in Asia," he said. "We have always felt that subprime and Household International was a problem."<br />In a report produced this year, Knight Vinke said that HSBC had been overly optimistic in assessing the risk of its subprime exposure and that if the bank were to take a write-down reflecting the full reality of its potential losses, it could total as much as $30 billion — a number that would require the company to raise cash.<br />HSBC declined to address Knight Vinke's assertions publicly, saying the firm's small investment position undermined its credibility.<br />Still, bank executives and board members have met with Knight Vinke as it pressed its position.<br />HSBC's position is that its subprime loans, while substantial, are different from those of most other banks because they are not bundled into complex — and at this point nearly worthless — securities like those that forced Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and others to take large losses. As a result, management argues, HSBC is not obliged to write down these assets as long as they produce a cash flow.<br />The bank has also said that it is a global institution, with a need to be in markets from Shanghai to St. Louis, and that it considers the United States housing market to be a crucial part of its strategy. It also said that writing off its investment in HSBC Finance would do lasting damage to its reputation.<br />As its rivals took their lumps, HSBC maintained a healthy cushion against losses of about 8 percent, a conservative position compared with the greater leverage of other banks. But now that troubled institutions like Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Citigroup have raised large sums of equity to bolster their balance sheets and enjoy the explicit or implicit support of national governments, HSBC no longer looks so secure.<br />What is more, the advancing slowdown in HSBC's core emerging markets franchise is putting additional pressure on its earnings.<br />HSBC has said that its capital position was strong, but declined to comment on the recent reports predicting that it would seek a capital increase, which would dilute the value of existing shares. It has been careful to leave open the possibility of raising new funds in conjunction with a deal, or a major investment in a business.<br />For all the new questions, Julian Chillingworth, chief investment officer at Rathbones in London, said HSBC remained a refreshing contrast to an industry that seemed to lose its head in the housing bubble.<br />"It may well be that they have to raise capital, but there's a much better chance for them to get support," he said. "They didn't commit the sins of others of relying on the wholesale markets, and they've been quite prudent."<br />HSBC executives are by and large an austere, conservative lot, compared with their more expansive counterparts. Their attitude toward the banking excesses has been one of polite disdain as they turned down opportunity after opportunity to buy into the American investment banking market.<br />It is an approach that conveys a degree of rectitude not often seen in bankers these days. The self-denying tone flowed from the top, conveyed by the bank's former chairman, John Bond.<br />His successor, Stephen Green, spare and unobtrusive, carries on this tradition, serving as an ordained priest in the Church of England.<br />He is also the author of a book titled "Serving God? Serving Mammon?" that wrestles with the idea of being a man of faith in the City of London.<br />Still, the bank has not been immune to temptation — witness the $1 billion it is likely to have lost from extending loans to funds that invested with Madoff's firm.<br />There are signs, too, that the bank may be on the verge of some major decisions — particularly with regard to its troubled American business.<br />John Thornton, the former president of Goldman Sachs and a man known for his aggressive strategic thinking, joined the group board this month. He will also serve as nonexecutive chairman of HSBC North America — a position that will require him to work two days each week and will pay him $1.5 million a year.<br />It is not clear what, if any decision will be taken. Even with its recent troubles, the firm's position is strong enough to support a midsize deal, especially for a bank with a strong position in the American Hispanic market, an area that has long been of interest for HSBC.<br />And analysts say that even HSBC cannot stay above the troubles around it.<br />"I'm surprised the shares have done so well in relative terms," said Daniel Tabbush, an analyst at Crédit Lyonnais Securities, who wrote one of the reports that precipitated the stock sell-off.<br />"Now, we're looking at the exposure to commercial U.K. real estate, the unsecured loan book, credit cards. Many banks around the world said they don't have to raise capital, and then they do."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Blindsided by crisis, economists rethink profession along with theories</strong><br />By Drake BennettThe Boston Globe<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BOSTON: The deepening global economic downturn has been hard on a lot of people, but it has been hard in a particular way for U.S. economists.<br />For most people, pain and apprehension have been mixed with amazement at the complexity of what has unfolded: the dense, invisible lattice connecting home prices to insurance companies to job losses to car sales, the inscrutability of the financial instruments that helped spread the poison, the sense that the ratings agencies and regulatory bodies were overmatched by events, the recent wild gyrations of stock markets.<br />It is hard enough to understand what is happening, and it seems absurd to think we could have seen it coming beforehand. The vast majority of us, after all, are not experts.<br />But academic economists are. And with very few exceptions, they did not predict the crisis, either. Some warned of a housing bubble, but almost none foresaw the resulting cataclysm. An entire field of experts dedicated to studying the behavior of markets failed to anticipate what may prove to be the biggest economic collapse of our lifetime. And now that we are in the middle of it, many frankly admit that they are not sure how to prevent things from getting worse.<br />As a result, there is a sense among some economists that as they try to figure out how to fix the economy, they are also trying to fix their own profession.<br />The discussion has played out in blog posts and opinion pieces, in U.S. congressional testimony, at conferences and in working papers. A field that has increasingly been defined, at least in the public eye, by quirky studies explaining the economics of our everyday lives has turned decisively, in the past couple months, to more traditional economic turf.<br />And at U.S. economics powerhouses like Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, faculty lunch discussions that once might have centered on theoretical questions and the finer points of Bayesian analysis are now given over to dissecting bailout plans. Long-held ideas - about the stability of the business cycle, the resilience of markets and the power of monetary policy - are being challenged.<br />"Everyone that I know in economics, and particularly in the worlds of academic finance and academic macroeconomics, is going back to the drawing board," said David Laibson, a Harvard economist. "There are very, very, very few economists who can be proud."<br />A few suggest, as well, that there are deeper problems in the discipline. U.S. economists are asking aloud whether the field has grown too specialized, too abstract and too divorced from the way real-world economies actually function. They argue that many models used to predict the dynamics of financial markets or national economies have been scrubbed clean, in the interest of theoretical elegance, of the inevitable erraticism of human behavior.<br />As a result, the analytical tools of the trade offer little help in a crisis and have little to say about the sort of collapses that led to this one.<br />"You can't just say, 'I have a model for tremors that works great - I just can't explain earthquakes,"' said Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard who has studied financial crises.<br />Historically, periods of severe economic distress have shaken up economics and helped drive its evolution. And amid the current crash, there is an urgent search for approaches and models that might better illuminate ways to speed the recovery, forecast future meltdowns and help better describe the unruly flow of money.<br />The question of how well economists can model crises takes on an even greater importance because of the central role economic experts will play in the U.S. administration of President-elect Barack Obama - not only at the Federal Reserve, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Treasury Department, but in the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a newly formed body created by Obama and led by the former Fed chairman Paul Volcker.<br />Obama has a reputation for placing a great deal of stock in expertise and the power of data. For better or worse, the evolving understanding of economic breakdowns will have ample opportunity to test itself against the real thing.<br />Along with everything else they have done, the financial meltdown and economic slump have spurred unprecedented political attention and participation by economists.<br />"In my lifetime as an economist I've never seen economists so engaged by what's going on," said Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. "At the University of Chicago people always talk economics at lunch, but for the last three months they've all been talking about the crisis and the bailout and writing op-eds."<br />This is something of a change. The topics economists study often have little to do with the average person's economic life. As in almost any academic field, practical relevance sometimes has little to do with judgments about what questions are most interesting and rewarding.<br />This divergence was exacerbated, many economists say, during the span of almost uninterrupted economic growth that began in the late 1980s, a period when many practical questions in the making of economic policy came to be seen as having been settled. For years, leading economic figures like Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan argued that the United States had more or less brought the business cycle to heel.<br />Partly as a result, many bright young economists turned to questions that were quirkier, or more purely mathematical. To the wider public, the most visible ramification of this was the boom in papers and books about the economics of everyday life. Economists like Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago, Ray Fisman of Columbia, Edward Miguel of the University of California, Berkeley, and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania used economics as a forensic tool to examine family dynamics, speed-dating, parking scofflaws, basketball games and the life choices of street criminals.<br />For those who stayed on more traditional economic turf, however, the trend was toward narrower and more abstract questions. Financial economists set out to figure out why it was that stocks earned more than bonds or to devise better ways of calculating the correlation between the price of a single asset and the price of the market it was part of.<br />Wolfers, being an economist, describes these intellectually challenging but less policy-relevant questions as a sort of scholarly luxury good. "During good times we all consume more luxuries," he said, "but during a bad economy, it feels to macroeconomists that what we should be doing is stuff to help today."<br />Some economists have suggested that this focus may account for the failure of so many to see the warning signs of the financial crisis and to predict the size and scope of its fallout.<br />Others see a broader problem, in that the sort of behavior that has been seen in everyone from home buyers to investment bankers in recent months is hard to fit into economists' analytical tools. The models used by macroeconomists do a poor job of describing the messiness of an actual market in flux.<br />As a result, economists end up oversimplifying such situations when they model them - or simply avoid studying them at all.<br />"We have a very restrictive set of language and tools, and we tend to work on the problems that are easily addressed with those tools," said Jeremy Stein, a financial economist at Harvard. "Sometimes that means we focus on silly questions and ignore greater ones."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Recession cocktails may take edge off dark year</strong><br />Reuters<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />By Martinne Geller<br />Liquor companies and bartenders are finding inspiration in the financial crisis, devising new recipes and reviving old cocktail standards to keep spirits alive during the holidays.<br />They hope to lure Americans who are drinking more at home or finding that parties are drying up to cut costs.<br />The industry has seen a resurgence of drinks that hark back to the prewar eras of Prohibition and the Great Depression, such as the Sidecar, the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan.<br />Julian Cohen, head of the consumer insights team at Fortune Brands Inc's beverage division, said those "heritage cocktails," traditionally made with heavier-flavoured spirits like bourbon and cognac, mirror a wider preference.<br />"You're seeing a lot of darker flavours -- honeys, blackberries and raspberries, versus things like pomegranate and papaya," Cohen said. "When times are tough we want to go to things that are comfortable ... that are part of our history."<br />That may help explain the rush at the Edison, a swank bar in downtown Los Angeles, whose menu boasts vintage drinks like the Singapore Sling and the Vesper Martini, introduced in Ian Fleming's 1953 James Bond novel, Casino Royale.<br />During "Happy Hour" on Thursdays, the speakeasy-style lounge charges the Depression-era price of 35 cents for libations with names like Bourbon Bailout. Your 401K is a drink served with a postcard soliciting comments on whether patrons' retirement accounts are half-empty or half-full.<br />"On Fridays, we have massive lines -- about 300 people turn up at the bar," said Greg Rogers, a bar spokesman. "We have seen an uptick in recent months in sales as well as patrons."<br />On a recent evening, Rebecca Mulligan, a 27-year-old painter, drank a cocktail called The Hemingway instead of her usual glass of merlot.<br />"I have (become) more adventurous now," she said of the drink, made with champagne and absinthe. "You need to keep your mind off the depressing depression talk."<br />Stolichnaya, a Russian vodka brand, has been working with bartenders to concoct drinks with names like Rejected Resume, Battered Bull and Welfare Punch, said a spokeswoman. Absolut vodka owner Pernod Ricard is packaging its unflavored vodka in a mirrored bottle holder reminiscent of a disco ball to liven up home parties.<br />BREAD, MILK, BOOZE<br />According to a survey conducted in October, about one-fifth of U.S. businesses were choosing not to have office parties this year. Out of those that were having parties, only 71 percent planned to serve alcohol.<br />On a personal level, declining home values, job losses and drained stock portfolios have forced many Americans to become more frugal in their purchases and leisure time.<br />Spirits makers therefore have good reason to reconsider their tactics.<br />"We're having to take a second look at everything we do just to ensure that we're in tune with the consumer out there, aware of what their concerns are and how they're having to adjust their lives," said Monsell Darville, a marketing executive with privately-held Bacardi USA Inc, which sells Bacardi rum, Grey Goose vodka and Bombay Sapphire gin.<br />Consumers are "cocooning", said Ivan Menezes, president and chief executive of Diageo's North American business. They are still drinking, but if they can no longer afford a Cosmopolitan at their favourite hotspot, they may be making a Sidecar in their kitchen instead.<br />U.S. sales of spirits at retailers like grocery and liquor stores rose 1.2 percent by volume in the four weeks ended November 15, according to Nielsen data, while sales of table wine rose 0.9 percent.<br />In both cases, that is an improvement from the 1.1 percent increase for spirits and the 0.3 percent increase for wine in a year earlier.<br />Such trends mean the maker of Johnnie Walker whisky and Smirnoff vodka is focussing more this year on in-store promotions, rather than events at bars, Menezes said.<br />COCKTAILS ON THE COUCH<br />The alcohol business will still benefit from a move to drinking at home.<br />Diageo, the world's top alcohol company, expects underlying profit growth of 7 to 9 percent for its current fiscal year, which ends in June.<br />France-based Pernod, the No. 2 drinks group, expects double-digit annual profit growth. Brown-Forman Corp, maker of Jack Daniel's whiskey and Finlandia vodka, posted better-than-expected profit earlier this month and raised its 2009 earnings view.<br />"While the recession that we're in may keep (people) from going out and buying that $10,000 (6,780 pound) cocktail with the diamond in it on New Years Eve, they are trying different cocktails while they're out, and experimenting with them at home," said Danielle Eddy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS).<br />To capitalise on that trend, which is expected to last into the new year, spirits makers are offering ready-mixed cocktails for home consumption, such as Seagram's Gin & Juice, Bacardi Mojitos and Smirnoff Cosmopolitans and Pomegranate Martinis.<br />David Ozgo, chief economist for DISCUS, a spirits trade group, is expecting U.S. spirits sales to grow about 2 percent by volume this year, and 4 to 5 percent by revenue.<br />That compares with annual growth rates of about 3 percent by volume and 7 percent by revenue up until 2007, when growth began to slow with the start of a recession.<br />"We're not exactly like the auto industry or the housing industry, where we completely tank when the economy goes into a recession," Ozgo said. "But at the same time, we do see our ups and downs with the economic cycle."<br />(Reporting by Martinne Geller; Additional reporting by Syantani Chatterjee in Los Angeles; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Eddie Evans)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/business/rupiah.php">Indonesian banking chief calls stimulus plan crucial</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/ship.php">China stimulus plan could help shippers, if they survive</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23craft.php">For U.S. craft sales, the recession is a help</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/deal24.php">A bad year for private buyouts</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23gdp.php">U.S. economic growth worst since 2001</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23spain.php">Spain's budget deficit jumps to $20 billion</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/23/business/OUKBS-UK-FINANCIAL-IMF-ECONOMIST.php">IMF says governments must be ready to spend more on stimulus</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/jobs.php">Asia bankers brace for job cuts</a><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>Put your money where your mouth is</strong><br />By Roy Blount Jr.<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />It is at this special time of the year, and especially of this extra-special year in particular, that we realize how urgent is our need to foster love and faith and brotherhood and... at any rate, faith, and by that I mean consumer confidence.<br />When Americans, of all people, are afflicted with what the singer-songwriter Roger Miller called "shellout falter" - a reluctance to spend - then the whole world is liable, as Miller put it so well in his song "Dang Me," to "lack $14 having 27 cents."<br />Are we going to let it be said that all we had this Christmas to cheer was cheer itself? No! Let's put the holly back in shopaholic, let's get jingle-bullish.<br />We owe it to ourselves, to the world and to future generations. The more presents we spring for now, the lighter the tax burden will be down the line.<br />You notice how much more merrily that last sentence bounced along because I chose "spring" to express spending, instead of, say, "plunge," and "lighter" instead of, say, "less staggering." Words are important. So let's say "bah, humbug" to b-words like bailout and bankrupt. Let's digress from anything ending in -ession. Let's entertain some new, upbeat holiday words.<br />Why not wake up tomorrow morning feeling consumptious? Rhymes with scrumptious, and approaches sumptuous. When we're consumptious we've got that fire in the belly that's burning a hole in our pocket. We're going to be pumping bucks today, we're going to open our hearts to goods and services, we're going to take it upon ourselves to help America, and consequently the world, re-conomize. In so doing, we can personalize what is just about the only appealing phrase regarding the economy that has emerged this year: each of us can be his or her own stimulus package.<br />The season of giving is upon us. Need that sound like such a threat? Let's see if we can spruce up that venerable old word generous, which can be so cringe-inducing when we hear it spoken over the phone by a stranger calling on behalf of a charity. "I hope you will be as generous this year as last" puts us on the spot, so let's spread generous out. I don't think we want to go to heterogenerous, because people might think we're talking about sex, and there will be plenty of time for that after we get our mercantile heat back on. (For this reason, even businesses whose appeal is essentially spicy should resist, for now, the temptation to send their customers illicitations.)<br />But autogenerous, as in autobiographical, might remind us that giving unto others is also giving unto ourselves, especially if others give back unto us and therefore unto themselves, and we buy our presents at their store and vice versa. Does auto- strike an ominous note? Let me just say that if each of us becomes a cargiver this Christmas, there will be a lot more shining faces this New Year in Detroit. And Japan.<br />Let's not shrink from taking a look at the word Christmas. It's a fine old word and I for one would be loath to suggest that it has lost its edge entirely. But it doesn't exactly sing. The only thing it rhymes with is isthmus, and that but loosely. How do you like the sound of Jingle Day? Says bells and sunshine, says catchy marketing, says plenty of change. The rhymes sell themselves: mingle, tingle, Kringle, Pringles, bling'll, and hey, sleigh, pray, pay, hooray. We might even go a little more on-the-nose: Ka-chingleday.<br />And incidentally, when you take your tree down and put your ornaments away for next year (yes, of course there will be a next year, don't even ask such a question), do you know the best way to protect those ornaments? By wrapping them in newspaper. Several sheets per ornament. Maybe a whole newspaper section per ornament. And magazines and books are good to put between wrapped ornaments for further protection.<br />Not to knock the tissue-paper industry, but what has it ever done for, say, people who support themselves and their families (not to mention the Jingle Day puppies their families have been promised) by thinking up words?<br />Roy Blount Jr. is the author of "Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists and Spirits of Letters, Words and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips and Secret Parts ... With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Students march as gunman shoots police bus in Greece</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Daniel Flynn and Lefteris Papadimas<br />Hundreds of anarchists chanting "cops, pigs, murderers" marched through Athens on Tuesday hours after a gunman opened fire at a riot-police bus in a third week of anti-government protests since police shot dead a teenager.<br />An unidentified gunman shot at the bus carrying 19 officers when it stopped at traffic lights outside a university campus in eastern Athens at around 5 a.m.<br />Two bullets hit the bus, bursting a tyre, but no one was injured in the incident, which is being investigated by counter-terrorism police.<br />It came after a two-day lull in Greece's worst riots in decades, sparked by the shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.<br />"It's worrying us," police spokesman Panagiotis Stathis told Mega TV. "We collected seven bullet cases from the spot."<br />A police official, who asked not to be identified, said the shots were believed to come from the campus and were fired from a military weapon. Authorities are investigating a call from a previously unknown group called Public Action to a popular Greek news website claiming responsibility.<br />Police are forbidden by law from entering the university without permission. It has become the epicentre of disturbances which have caused hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) in damage and lost business for shopkeepers in the capital.<br />Some 500 anarchist students, including dozens who are occupying the Athens law school, marched through central Athens, many of them chanting "cops, pigs, murderers" and waving red and black flags. They burnt an effigy of a pig's head wearing a police hat outside parliament.<br />Unlike demonstrations during the previous two weeks, the protests remained largely peaceful. The only incident reported was when a gang of youths who broke away from an earlier student march overturned an empty police car in central Athens.<br />The fatal police shooting of Grigoropoulos on December 6 unleashed widespread discontent at high youth unemployment, government scandals, right-wing reforms and an economic slowdown due to the global crisis.<br />The violence has shaken a conservative government that has a fragile one-seat majority and trails the opposition in opinion polls by around 6 percentage points. Some analysts say months of street protests could force early elections next year.<br />(Reporting by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Michael Roddy)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Young Muslims build a subculture on an underground book</strong><br />By Christopher Maag<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />CLEVELAND: Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called "The Taqwacores," about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo.<br />"This book helped me create my identity," said Naina Syed, 14, a high school freshman in Coventry, Connecticut.<br />A Muslim born in Pakistan, Naina said she spent hours on the phone listening to her older sister read the novel to her. "When I finally read the book for myself," she said, "it was an amazing experience."<br />The novel is "The Catcher in the Rye" for young Muslims, said Carl Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.<br />Now the underground success of Muslim punk has resulted in a low-budget independent film based on the book.<br />A group of punk artists living in a communal house in Cleveland called the Tower of Treason offered the house as the set for the movie. The crumbling streets and boarded-up storefronts of their neighborhood resemble parts of Buffalo. Filming took place in October, and the movie will be released next year, said Eyad Zahra, the director.<br />"To see these characters that used to live only inside my head out here walking around, and to think of all these kids living out parts of the book, it's totally surreal," Muhammad Knight, 31, said as he roamed the movie set.<br />As part of the set, a Muslim punk rock musician, Marwan Kamel, 23, painted "Osama McDonald," a figure with Osama bin Laden's face atop Ronald McDonald's body. Kamel said the painting was a protest against imperialism by American corporations and against Wahhabism, the strictest form of Islam.<br />Noureen DeWulf, 24, an actress who plays a rocker in the movie, defended the film's message.<br />"I'm a Muslim and I'm 100-percent American," DeWulf said, "so I can criticize my faith and my country. Rebellion? Punk? This is totally American."<br />The novel's title combines "taqwa," the Arabic word for "piety," with "hardcore," used to describe many genres of angry Western music.<br />For many young American Muslims, stigmatized by their peers after the Sept. 11 attacks but repelled by both the Bush administration's reaction to the attacks and the rigid conservatism of many Muslim leaders, the novel became a blueprint for their lives.<br />"Reading the book was totally liberating for me," said Areej Zufari, 34, a Muslim and a humanities professor at Valencia Community College in Orlando, Florida.<br />Zufari said she had listened to punk music growing up in Arkansas and found "The Taqwacores" four years ago.<br />"Here was someone as frustrated with Islam as me," she said, "and he expressed it using bands I love, like the Dead Kennedys. It all came together."<br />The novel's Muslim characters include Rabeya, a riot girl who plays guitar onstage wearing a burqa and leads a group of men and women in prayer. There is also Fasiq, a pot-smoking skater, and Jehangir, a drunk.<br />Such acts — playing Western music, women leading prayer, men and women praying together, drinking, smoking — are considered haram, or forbidden, by millions of Muslims.<br />Muhammad Knight was born an Irish Catholic in upstate New York and converted to Islam as a teenager. He studied at a mosque in Pakistan but became disillusioned with Islam after learning about the sectarian battles after the death of Muhammad.<br />He said he wrote "The Taqwacores" to mend the rift between his being an observant Muslim and an angry American youth. He found validation in the life of Muhammad, who instructed people to ignore their leaders, destroy their petty deities and follow only Allah.<br />After reading the novel, many Muslims e-mailed Muhammad Knight, asking for directions to the next Muslim punk show. Told that no such bands existed, some of them created their own, with names like Vote Hezbollah and Secret Trial Five.<br />One band, the Kominas, wrote a song called "Suicide Bomb the Gap," which became Muslim punk rock's first anthem.<br />"As Muslims, we're not being honest if we criticize the United States without first criticizing ourselves," said Kamel, 23, who grew up in a Syrian family in Chicago. He is lead singer of the band al-Thawra, "the Revolution" in Arabic.<br />For many young American Muslims, the merger of Islam and rebellion resonated.<br />Hanan Arzay, 15, is a daughter of Muslim immigrants from Morocco who lives in East Islip, New York. In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, pedestrians threw eggs and coffee cups at the van that transported her to a Muslim school, she said, and one person threw a wine bottle, shattering the van's window.<br />At school, her Koran teacher threw chalk at her for requesting literal translations of the holy book, Arzay said. After she was expelled from two Muslim schools, her uncle gave her "The Taqwacores."<br />"This book is my lifeline," Arzay said. "It saved my faith."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Huge water main break traps commuters on Md. road<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BETHESDA, Md.: A massive, aging water main ruptured Tuesday and sent a wave of water down a suburban Washington road, transforming the street into a raging river and trapping nine motorists who had to be rescued from the frigid deluge by emergency workers in helicopters and boats.<br />The water gushed down River Road and rocked cars. Two people in a minivan were plucked by helicopter out of the roaring rapids, water crashing and spraying around them as they were lifted to safety in a basket. Other motorists escaped 4-feet deep water by boat.<br />Montgomery County fire officials said five people were checked for hypothermia; temperatures outside were in the 20s.<br />"The water tumbled over the car like a wave," said Silvia Saldana, of Springfield, Va., who was traveling to work when she became trapped. "I started to pray."<br />In a frantic 911 call released by authorities, an unidentified stranded motorist cried and pleaded for help.<br />"I can't see anything," the woman screamed. "I need help!"<br />"Stay calm, ma'am. We're coming," the operator says.<br />It was not immediately clear what caused the pipe to burst. Temperature, age and other factors can contribute to water main breaks.<br />Fire spokesman Pete Piringer said crews had trouble getting to people because of the swift-moving water. Officials said 150,000 gallons of water per minute were rushing out at one point, spilling rocks, dirt and other debris onto the road.<br />Trees fell onto a power line and knocked down a utility pole. Schools in the county closed early because of widespread water outages. A hospital where three people rescued were treated and released diverted ambulances and closed its trauma division because of lost water pressure.<br />Hebert De Rienzo tried to turn his small hatchback around as water began rising in and around his car, splashing on him and his fiancee. Christmas presents were ruined.<br />"We couldn't open the windows because the water would come through," he said. "We were scared."<br />A man who lives about 50 feet from the street described the unexpected flood after the pipe, about 5 1/2 feet in diameter, ruptured.<br />"I thought it might be a minor leak, then suddenly I stepped outside and, 'My God!'" said Raj Bhansaly. "It looked literally like the Potomac River."<br />From his house, Bhansaly said he saw two cars tied to rescue vehicles with ropes.<br />Firefighter Anthony Bell was on a fire truck when he saw brown water on the road and realized something wasn't right.<br />"We were wondering if we could make the rescue," he said. Bell and other firefighters raced through the water and pulled four people from three cars.<br />"I've been here 20 years," he said, "and I've never seen anything like this."<br />John White, a Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission spokesman, said it was not yet clear what caused the break.<br />Because of the water's intensity, fire officials didn't allow utility workers to immediately shut down valves where the break occurred, White said. But crews were able to shut down valves farther down the pipeline, stopping the flow. Authorities said the water went into a nearby creek.<br />Water pressure was being restored late Tuesday to hundreds of customers, including the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, which are located in the area.<br />There have been several major water main breaks this year in the wealthy suburb of Montgomery County. In June, a rupture closed more than 800 restaurants and left tens of thousands of people scrambling for clean drinking water.<br />The sanitation commission has warned its system is aging, overtaxed and underfunded. It serves 1.8 million suburban Maryland customers and has had an increasing number of water main breaks, including 1,357 between January and November this year. Last year, it had a record 2,129 breaks or leaks.<br />White said the pipe that broke Tuesday was installed in 1964.<br />The American Water Works Association, a Denver-based nonprofit that works to improve water quality, said billions of dollars are needed to replace aging pipes nationwide.<br />Spokesman Greg Kail said old pipes continue to be a major factor in water main breaks. Some pipes are 50 to 100 years old, he said.<br />"We are seeing a higher rate of breaks nationwide," he said. "We expect that rate to increase in the next 10 to 20 years."<br />___<br />Associated Press writers Brian Westley and Nafeesa Syeed in Washington and AP photographer Jacquelyn Martin in Bethesda contributed to this story.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>In budget crises, American states reluctantly halt road projects</strong><br />By Jennifer Steinhauer<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />LOS ANGELES: With cars whizzing behind him along one of Southern California's most congested and detested freeways, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger warned Monday that the state was "on a track toward disaster" as it ceases highway, school and bridge construction because of budget and credit woes.<br />California, which has suspended nearly $4 billion in public works projects, is one of a half dozen states delaying or halting projects because of capsizing budgets, an inability to attract investors to the municipal bonds used to bankroll many projects and a reduction in gasoline tax revenues — which underlie a lot of transportation financing.<br />The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has identified 5,000 transportation projects nationwide that lack the dollars to proceed; many of them, like the $730 million project here to add 10 miles of high-occupancy-vehicle lanes to the 405 Freeway — Schwarzenegger's backdrop on Monday — have been stopped midstream.<br />"They just haven't been able to find the resources," Tony Dorsey, the spokesman for the association, said of the halted projects.<br />More than 40 states are struggling with revenue shortfalls, and lawmakers across the country are cutting, taxing and pleading their way toward solvency. Fixing bridges, expanding highways and other infrastructure projects have faced the same fate as government entitlement programs, state jobs and other items.<br />Jeffrey Caldwell, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Transportation, said, "Projects not currently under construction or significantly far in the development process were either delayed or completely removed from plans for future construction."<br />In addition to the weak economy and lower gasoline tax revenues, states are "concerned about the market and cost of debt," said Scott Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers in Washington<br />In fact, there has been very little interest among institutional investors in municipal bonds since the financial markets began to collapse this fall, and states have had to rely on individual investors — far less plentiful and reliable than institutional investors — to buy bonds.<br />Right after Washington cobbled together its plan to bail out banks, California, which uses bonds to pay for projects as well as to cover its short-term cash needs, sold $5 billion in notes, and 80 percent of the buyers, rather than the typical 30 percent, were individuals.<br />Last month, when the state tried to restructure existing debt with an additional $523 million offering, it had to reduce the offering by two-thirds, said Tom Dresslar, the spokesman for Bill Lockyer, the California treasurer.<br />"The institutional investor interest was nil," Dresslar said.<br />Further, the State Legislature's inability, with the governor, to figure out a way to deal with the state's $15 billion budget gap has weakened the market's confidence in California, something other states could face if the fiscal situation deteriorates.<br />This month, Standard & Poor's downgraded the $5 billion in revenue bonds issued by California last month and put more than $50 billion of debt on watch for a downgrade.<br />"The bottom line is we are not viewed as a quality investment," Dresslar said, adding that California is not in position to offer the sort of fat interest rates needed to get offerings off the ground.<br />California and other states are clearly holding out hope that President-elect Barack Obama will pump some federal money into the stalled infrastructure projects, and some may even be delaying work until they have a chance to make the case for federal spending. Obama has proposed a stimulus package intended to create or save three million jobs, largely through financing infrastructure improvements.<br />"It happens to be that the Obama administration wants to rebuild America," Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said at a news conference here.<br />Steve Swartz, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Transportation, said most projects in that state scheduled for December and January had been suspended because of uncertain financing.<br />"We're hopeful, keeping our fingers crossed like every other state, that a stimulus package will come through," Swartz said. "If it does, we'll be in good shape."<br />In the meantime, some states might think twice about proclaiming great calamity in the face of crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment and lack of state financing, said Matt Fabian, director of Municipal Market Advisors, an independent consulting firm.<br />The strategy might attract the attention of the federal government, but it does little to entice investors in municipal bonds.<br />"We have seen over the last three months that every bridge is about to collapse, every highway is a danger and every hospital is full of anthrax," Fabian said. "By putting out a lot of headlines about those issues, local governments are undermining the only base we have left. There is no institutional demand for municipal bonds, so we are relying completely on individuals, and individuals get scared by those headlines."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Two dead in Texas freeway shooting spree</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />DALLAS: A gunman was still at large on Monday after killing at least two people in a shooting spree on highways in and around Dallas, police and local media said.<br />Four separate shootings in less than an hour paralyzed traffic during the busy early evening rush hour, police said.<br />"We are working on the possibility that they may all be related," said Joe Harn, a police spokesman in the city of Garland, near Dallas.<br />A motorist was killed in Garland as his car was stopped at a traffic light. The gunman, reported to have been in a pick-up truck, then sped away.<br />Minutes later, there were three shootings on a major freeway leading into Dallas, leaving a truck driver dead.<br />Television footage showed traffic backed up as police closed off the crime scene around the 18-wheeler truck.<br />(Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by John O'Callaghan)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Shoplifting rises in U.S. as economy drops</strong><br />By Ian Urbina and Sean D. Hamill<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Richard Johnson is the first to admit it was a bad idea.<br />Recently laid off from a job building trailers in Elkhart, Indiana, Johnson came up a dollar short at Martin's Supermarket last month when he went to buy a $4.99 bottle of sleep medication. So, "for some stupid reason," he tried to shoplift it and was immediately arrested.<br />"I was desperate, I guess," said Johnson, 25, who said he had never been arrested before. As the economy has weakened, shoplifting has increased, and retail security experts say the problem has grown worse this holiday season. Shoplifters are taking everything from compact discs and baby formula to gift cards and designer clothing.<br />Police departments across the United States say that shoplifting arrests are 10 percent to 20 percent higher this year than last. The problem is probably even greater than arrest records indicate since shoplifters are often banned from stores, rather than arrested.<br />Much of the increase has come from first-time offenders like Johnson making rash decisions in a pinch, the authorities say. But the ease with which stolen goods can be sold on the Internet has meant a bigger role for organized crime rings, which also engage in receipt fraud, fake price tagging and gift card schemes, the police and security experts say.<br />And as temptation has grown for potential thieves, so too has stores' vulnerability.<br />"More people are desperate economically, retailers are operating with leaner staffs and police forces are cutting back or being told to deprioritize shoplifting calls," said Paul Jones, the vice president of asset protection for the Retail Industry Leaders Association.<br />The problem, he said, could be particularly acute this December, "the month of the year when shoplifting always goes way up."<br />Two of the largest retail associations say that more than 80 percent of their members are reporting sharp increases in shoplifting, according to surveys conducted in the last two months.<br />Compounding the problem, stores are more reluctant to stop suspicious customers because they fear scaring away much-needed business. And retailers are increasingly trying to save money by hiring seasonal workers who, security experts say, are themselves more likely to commit fraud or theft and are less practiced at catching shoplifters than full-time employees are.<br />More than $35 million in merchandise is stolen each day nationwide, and about one in 11 people in America have shoplifted, according to the nonprofit National Association for Shoplifting Prevention.<br />"We used to see more repeat offenders doing it because of drug addiction," said Samyah Jubran, an assistant district attorney in Knoxville, Tennessee, who for 13 years has handled the bulk of shoplifting cases there. "But many of these new offenders may be doing it because of the economic situation. Maybe they're hurting at home, and they're taking a risk they may not take otherwise."<br />Much of the stolen merchandise is sold online.<br />Dave Finley, president of the Web company Leadsonline.com, which offers software that helps store owners track stolen goods being sold online and at pawn shops, said his company had seen a 50 percent increase over the past year in the number of shoplifting investigations handled by the company.<br />Security experts say retail theft is also being facilitated by Web sites that sell fake receipts that thieves can use to obtain cash refunds for stolen merchandise.<br />Andreas Carthy, the creator of one such site, denied that he was assisting with fraud.<br />"We provide a no-questions-asked service," he said in an e-mail message, adding that his site was intended for people looking for prank gifts or students seeking to inflate spending to get more generous allowances from their parents.<br />At about $40 each, the Web site - which insists they are "for novelty use only" - sells about 80 fake receipts a month, Carthy said.<br />Local law enforcement and retailers have been trying new tactics to battle shoplifting and other forms of retail crime.<br />In Savannah, Georgia, a local convenience store chain has linked its video surveillance to a police station so officers can help monitor the store for shoplifting and other crimes. In Louisiana, the police have been requiring shoplifters, even first-time offenders, to post $1,000 bail or stay in jail until their court date. On Staten Island, in New York, malls have started posting the mug shots of repeat shoplifters on video screens.<br />"There are more of them, and they seem more desperate," said a store manager about shoplifters at the nation's largest shopping center, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, which has seen a 19 percent increase in shoplifting this year over last.<br />The manager, who asked not to be identified because she was not permitted to speak to reporters, said stealing gift cards was especially popular during the holidays.<br />Shoplifters also seem to be getting bolder, according to industry surveys.<br />Thieves often put stolen items in bags lined with aluminum foil to avoid detection by the storefront alarms. Others work in teams, with a decoy who tries to look suspicious to draw out undercover security agents and attract the attention of security cameras, the police said.<br />"We're definitely seeing more sprinters," said an undercover security guard at Macy's in Oakland, California, referring to shoplifters who try to make a run for the door.<br />Bob Driehaus contributed reporting.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbWRFF09r7TvH3gYQLVkduOZoZpKyCzEwslP3x7zMIEHSs_o0UHoBIXONkVKAMxTN4_wkPeNK2_7Lz2HqaK_Q8LxJi_stYPcjS1O53KDhtKGr4jDahFRuNl6zQ2febSVJBHRr7_ZU6co/s1600-h/DSC04245.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220552665870914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbWRFF09r7TvH3gYQLVkduOZoZpKyCzEwslP3x7zMIEHSs_o0UHoBIXONkVKAMxTN4_wkPeNK2_7Lz2HqaK_Q8LxJi_stYPcjS1O53KDhtKGr4jDahFRuNl6zQ2febSVJBHRr7_ZU6co/s320/DSC04245.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Petition over detained Chinese writer goes international<br /></strong>By Edward Wong<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BEIJING: More than 160 prominent writers, scholars and human rights advocates outside mainland China have signed an open letter to President Hu Jintao asking him to release a well-known intellectual who was detained earlier this month. The letter was posted on the Internet on Tuesday.<br />The <a title="" href="http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/22/letter-consortium-release-liu-xiaobo-chinas-president-hu-jintao" target="_self">letter</a> to Hu indicates that the case of Liu Xiaobo, the intellectual, is quickly turning into the latest human rights cause célèbre in China and could further embarrass the Communist Party at a time when Chinese leaders are celebrating the 30th anniversary of its policy of "reform and opening up."<br />Among the writers signing the letter are three Nobel laureates in literature - Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney and Wole Soyinka - as well as other scribes who regularly champion freedom of expression, including Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie.<br />Just as notable is the fact that an array of foreign China scholars have signed the petition. Academics specializing in Chinese studies are often cautious about taking stands on political issues deemed sensitive by the Communist Party because the Chinese government has a track record of denying visas to people who publicly oppose the party's views. Some of the scholars who signed the petition are already on the Chinese government's blacklist, while others still have regular access to the country.<br />The scholars include Geremie Barmé of Australian National University; Richard Baum of the University of California, Los Angeles; and Andrew Nathan of Columbia University.<br />Well-known scholars in Hong Kong, which is controlled by China but enjoys greater freedoms than the mainland, also signed the letter.<br />Liu, a 53-year-old literary critic and dissident, was taken by security officers from his home on the night of Dec. 8 and has not been heard from since. Human rights advocates say that Liu has been made a target because he was one of the driving forces behind "<a title="" href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22210" target="_self">Charter 08</a>," a bold manifesto demanding democratic reforms and accountability from the Communist Party that was signed by more than 300 Chinese from various backgrounds and recently posted on the Internet.<br />Other people who signed the manifesto have also been detained and questioned by the authorities. All except Liu have been released.<br />The officers who detained Liu also took computers, mobile phones and personal papers from his home. His wife and other family members have received no word of his whereabouts or condition.<br />The open letter to Hu that was posted on Tuesday says: "For the international community to take seriously China's oft-stated commitment to respect human rights and the rule of law, and for China's own citizens to trust the judicial system to redress legitimate grievances, it is urgent that China's central leadership ensure that no one be arrested or harassed simply for the peaceful expression of his or her views."<br />The letter notes that although Liu was twice detained for several years, he has never been convicted of any crime.<br />Baum, the political scientist in Los Angeles, helped popularize the petition by circulating it on Chinapol, a listserv managed by Baum that is read by many scholars of China. Baum said that he usually tried to avoid using the listserv for political causes, but that this case was different.<br />"While I have always tried to maintain Chinapol's political neutrality, some violations are so egregious that I cannot, as a sentient being, remain neutral," he said in an e-mail exchange.<br />Bruce Jacobs, a professor of Asian languages and studies at Monash University in Australia, said he signed the petition because "Liu was clearly arrested because of Charter 08."<br />"That concerned me," he said, "I've been very concerned with human rights in China for a long time, and recently it's gotten worse."<br />Liu has been a pillar of political dissent in China for years. He supported the Tiananmen Square protests of June 1989 and continued his dissident writings afterward, work that led to detention by the authorities. Starting in 1996, he spent three years in re-education through labor for having "repeatedly stirred up trouble and disrupted public order." Since 1999, he has been allowed to continue his activism, presumably with the permission of the country's leaders, but has been under surveillance.<br />Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that if Liu is formally arrested and charged, then that would mean Chinese leaders want to show intellectuals that the Party is hardening the line and unwilling to tolerate any dissent.<br />"He's been detained before," Bequelin said. "But if they send him to jail, that sends a political signal."<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Enlivening Beijing's Legation Quarter</strong><br />By Jen Lin-Liu<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BEIJING: Clad in a pinstripe suit, gold cuff links, and tortoise-shell glasses, Handel Lee's hands shudder in front of him like the vibrating engine of a motorcycle. "It's about escape," he said. "It's the whole feel, the rumbling sound. Certain guys like that - the percussion. You go with the roads. You lose yourself."<br />Though challenged by tough economic times and other problems, Lee said he wanted to channel the excitement of that winding road into Beijing's new Legation Quarter. He sat in the Italian restaurant Sadler savoring a plate of crudo. As chairman of the Legation Quarter, Lee said he aimed to turn a compound of stately neoclassical buildings adjacent to Tiananmen Square - which once housed the U.S. Embassy - into a destination art and dining hotspot.<br />After a five-year renovation and many delays, the Legation Quarter is coming alive as chefs in the slate-gray stone and brick buildings serve small streams of diners, and art openings draw Beijing's movers and shakers. The large square lawn, misted by sprinklers for dramatic effect, was recently the site for a Versace fashion show, with the actors Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh in attendance.<br />Taking time away from his profession as a lawyer, Lee, a 47-year-old Chinese-American, has spearheaded a string of Chinese renovation projects that have turned languishing historic buildings into, as he put it, "gathering places for the most creative people in society."<br />The chef Daniel Boulud's restaurant, Maison Boulud, is the Legation Quarter's anchor tenant. "He's passionate about wine, architecture, art and food," Boulud said of Lee. He's someone who can dream it and build it."<br />Lee's Courtyard Gallery and Restaurant became one of Beijing's first established contemporary art galleries and a successful restaurant not long after it opened in 1997.<br />Lee also headed a Shanghai project called Three on the Bund that pioneered luxury retailing, art and restaurants along that city's riverfront in 2004. The Michael Graves-designed renovation project re-enlivened a historic building with tenants like Giorgio Armani and the restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten.<br />Lee has had his share of setbacks. Another proposed project in Shanghai, a renovation of the former British Consulate by Zaha Hadid, was indefinitely postponed last year after the developer with whom Lee was working was jailed in connection with a government corruption scandal. A restaurant and nightclub in Beijing set up at the location of an imperial ice warehouse closed in 2007 after a year of poor business. And the Courtyard's gallery is no longer as prominent as it once was after relations soured with the director, who went on to start a rival gallery.<br />"Handel brought urban sophistication to the Beijing art scene 10 years ahead of the curve," said Phil Tinari, a Beijing-based contributing editor to Artforum. "He is a guy who's driven to complete projects, and he always needs something new on the horizon."<br />Now Lee is feeling the pressure of the global financial crisis, which is beginning to strain Chinese luxury developments. Aside from the several million dollars of his own money that he said he put into the Legation Quarter, investors include a holding company called Hong Kong Construction and a real estate company, Vantone.<br />To date, Maison Boulud, which opened just before the Beijing Olympics this summer, has been the most successful of the Legation Quarter's venues. Lee, surveying the half-filled dining room, said the restaurant had attracted a strong local following, illustrating the potential of China's small but growing upper class.<br />Also on offer are Spanish tapas and sushi at the twin restaurants called Agua and Shiro Matsu. Guests can browse through luxury watches at a Patek Philippe outlet or installations at the Beijing Center for the Arts. Lee said an underground repertory theater will follow by mid-2009.<br />Numerous setbacks have delayed the opening of the $40 million-plus Legation Quarter. Lee and his partners originally intended the venture to be a mixed-use complex, with a balance of retail shops, galleries and restaurants. When luxury retailers like Chanel opted for other Beijing locations, the plan was revised.<br />Even that revision met challenges. The chef Vongerichten pulled out, as did several other high-end restaurateurs and the London-based Boujis nightclub. Government bureaucracy held up approvals on renovation work.<br />For every month that the project has been delayed, Lee said, the costs have increased by almost a million dollars.<br />Lee's frustration is palpable. He lashed out at luxury retailers, calling them "lemmings" for setting up in "bland, nondistinctive" Beijing shopping malls that offered better lease terms. "All I could offer them was the most elegant, historic setting in China," he said.<br />Lee's interest in the Legation Quarter project goes beyond the financial. His maternal grandfather, Philip Fugh - a close aide to John Leighton Stuart, the last U.S. ambassador to China before the 1949 Communist takeover - attended meetings in the building that now houses Maison Boulud. Fugh and his family fled with Stuart to Bethesda, Maryland, where Lee was born in 1961. He moved to Beijing in 1991.<br />Today, Lee's lifestyle is a far cry from a first visit with relatives in Beijing in the early 1980's. "They had two bowls," he said. "I got one of them, my mother got the other, and everyone else ate off of shards of porcelain. I felt like I had to do something."<br />To Lee, that "something" was to create a level of "elegance and refinement and sophistication" that has not existed in China in the last half century. He scoffs at his critics, who say that only a small percentage of the population can afford to enjoy his ventures. "I could make a lot more money doing low-end or medium-end" development, he said. "But that's not important."<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulTp53QxB1yVewqhTqurUC_09-QCSzE41RLecqk6imexKoGA1O4v_WCe_Sxa8d6XKcBueirQ56VTgpxS_XMm67KsRxEN-CU_RwaauKQRly-Ur-0nvQoAaffebkGw-q7ZlNMI1bYe0jm8/s1600-h/DSC04246.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220545362925906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulTp53QxB1yVewqhTqurUC_09-QCSzE41RLecqk6imexKoGA1O4v_WCe_Sxa8d6XKcBueirQ56VTgpxS_XMm67KsRxEN-CU_RwaauKQRly-Ur-0nvQoAaffebkGw-q7ZlNMI1bYe0jm8/s320/DSC04246.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzf_eP6-BRqMHvnGqgb4cDIXY39Y1tYV4esEjJayQUU9b2lsz6Q1oP5zlB9x_o1T6atJRjyY_DwtwPJXTF2s480jtM_X1VpY6Pf7itDlPqFieoVyEJZicsVt9f9Gww1OS__IT9WcfFZbA/s1600-h/DSC04247.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220542778594514" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBnaegqqH50D9fqf_2lGKEe8YqXyXpLKvd-K_BkAVRykFdk7kaU2yys6oLgx6VYv6mqBVP1jMWyLb558ZEXL4rhy3-JFAp4pHPCRSjl8ditPEJ1fYTbRDxEClGmndrhXV52vNjgOLOMcA/s320/DSC04251.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_tVmee_dA2cH-qthp3BHa7fNUooMjCWsm34sA8GwxiShKFwFOv1ghRLaETNc-IPT_gT9piAZMHJyUBMzjWFaXX3LvAscdrcfLvnkLK2lrYz_wXM936vkVeAaV9FVE7bdNNq7xIMQu8E/s1600-h/DSC04252.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220232632982194" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI_tVmee_dA2cH-qthp3BHa7fNUooMjCWsm34sA8GwxiShKFwFOv1ghRLaETNc-IPT_gT9piAZMHJyUBMzjWFaXX3LvAscdrcfLvnkLK2lrYz_wXM936vkVeAaV9FVE7bdNNq7xIMQu8E/s320/DSC04252.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSOlEXvbf_mDUIh0hFTvFazTCjvfcY7JqIbjoTkKdu1C6OX33bKZ-bPh_59rJSf2eCbCmgeosHd0llx0eZfvVz8hQ2Evm1vnUkUVr_sU_c1WBd5HBb1I6x1xUVb7x5yjDMyA7JDZZxkJY/s1600-h/DSC04253.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283220231850253682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSOlEXvbf_mDUIh0hFTvFazTCjvfcY7JqIbjoTkKdu1C6OX33bKZ-bPh_59rJSf2eCbCmgeosHd0llx0eZfvVz8hQ2Evm1vnUkUVr_sU_c1WBd5HBb1I6x1xUVb7x5yjDMyA7JDZZxkJY/s320/DSC04253.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-k_Jj7BvvHQ64BTsIFG916NX0-kioNn0XgqWOqC3JfxX0ozD0KYPDKBy4_JmtaXeAHLKwTkVEuhZblw1YQSzhSQIp5skuo7QOU-Yppkz2hWi838aQCwvtXMNl8-lbPsy0FfAc2rTRp9I/s1600-h/DSC04254.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219819952882482" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-k_Jj7BvvHQ64BTsIFG916NX0-kioNn0XgqWOqC3JfxX0ozD0KYPDKBy4_JmtaXeAHLKwTkVEuhZblw1YQSzhSQIp5skuo7QOU-Yppkz2hWi838aQCwvtXMNl8-lbPsy0FfAc2rTRp9I/s320/DSC04254.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiufK8wUm97MEIEnUQWOWKya-ZptKj7v_qd6OehyHID6A2EVzcFAZhjtS543qdd1Uomba3rxMbxz5L26Wzr9iJ7uqwKTCwz-TvZYd2c1h4qLDiuQcoRaOxu3GVJklgQKVM9XvfYD16fIQ/s1600-h/DSC04255.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219815210796306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiufK8wUm97MEIEnUQWOWKya-ZptKj7v_qd6OehyHID6A2EVzcFAZhjtS543qdd1Uomba3rxMbxz5L26Wzr9iJ7uqwKTCwz-TvZYd2c1h4qLDiuQcoRaOxu3GVJklgQKVM9XvfYD16fIQ/s320/DSC04255.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><strong>At house party on U.S. health care, the diagnosis is it's broken</strong><br />By Robert Pear<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />VIENNA, Virginia: When a dozen consumers gathered over the weekend to discuss health care at the behest of President-elect Barack Obama, they quickly agreed on one point: they despise health insurance companies.<br />They also agreed that health care was a right; that insurance should cover "everything," not just some services; and that coverage should be readily available from the government, as well as from employers.<br />Those were the conclusions of a house party held here in Northern Virginia at the home of Karima Hijane and Theodore Kolovos, information technology consultants who have been married for seven years. It was one of more than 4,200 such events being held around the country from Dec. 15 to 31, as part of an experiment in grass-roots politics and policy-making, to provide recommendations to the president-elect.<br />"We have to keep the momentum going," said Hijane, 34, who was a volunteer in the Obama campaign and is active in women's health advocacy. "We are not lobbyists. We are simple citizens. We want to make sure that our voices are heard and that health care is reformed."<br />One of the people seated around Hijane's dining room table, Bruce Chatman, worked for IBM for 29 years. Corporations, he said, have too much influence in the legislative process and the health care system. He wants to counterbalance their power with the energy and passion of citizens lobbying for themselves.<br />Chatman, a Chicago native who lives in Fort Washington, Maryland, said he had been inspired by Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" and started working for his campaign as a volunteer in April 2007.<br />"I don't believe health care should depend on people making money," Chatman said. "The profit motive has to be tempered, especially on the administrative side of the health care business."<br />Shiva Makki, an economist, complained that in many cases, insurers did not cover the costs of screening procedures and preventive care.<br />Dr. Lawrence Nelson, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health who emphasized that he was speaking as a private citizen, said: "The incentives in the current health insurance system are upside down. The less care you provide, the bigger your profits."<br />Nelson said he liked Obama's proposal to create a new public plan, similar to Medicare, that would compete with private insurance companies.<br />Alex Lawson, a volunteer in the Obama campaign now trying to build public support for Obama's agenda, said a public plan would give people a choice they do not have.<br />"A public insurance plan would not take anything away," Lawson said. "It just adds another option."<br />After one speaker expressed a mild concern about too much involvement by the government, Kolovos said: "Everyone is afraid of government bureaucracy. But what we have now, with the filing and adjudication of insurance claims, is also bureaucratic."<br />Several people at the health care forum said they were frustrated by the current arrangement under which health insurance is tied closely to the workplace.<br />Hamudi Almasri, a 35-year-old information technology consultant at a small company that does work for the Labor Department, said that when he changed jobs, he had to change health plans and doctors.<br />"If I change employers, why should it be such a hassle?" Almasri asked.<br />His wife, Li Yang, said: "When I move from one doctor to another, my information is lost. In many cases, the doctors don't talk to each other. In a country where information technology is so advanced, there's no system linking all these doctors together. It's a hindrance to treatment."<br />Li said she and her husband "had a few surprises" when they started shopping for a better health insurance policy on their own.<br />"If we wanted a baby," Li said, "insurers would not cover the maternity care if conception occurred within six months after we purchased the insurance. We were shocked."<br />In many cases, the standard individual insurance policy does not cover maternity care, though such coverage can be bought for an additional premium. Even then, some insurers stipulate that maternity benefits will be available only if a woman waits for a certain amount of time before becoming pregnant.<br />The Obama transition team asked for "particularly poignant stories to highlight the need for health care reform," and such stories were abundant at the round table here.<br />Almasri said that when his infant daughter had severe eczema, she had to wait several months to see a dermatologist in their HMO network. By then, he said, "the symptoms were all cleared up."<br />Hijane said she had gone from doctor to doctor for more than a year before she got correct diagnoses for premature ovarian failure and celiac disease, a digestive disorder.<br />"Instead of being able to focus on my health," Hijane said, "I focused on insurance to cover the tests and treatments. Everything we did was designed to find a job with good health insurance."<br />The Obama transition team did not ask people how a new health care system should be financed, but several people here said that individuals and businesses should have to pay a small health care tax — some preferred to call it a "contribution" — so that everyone could be covered.<br />Chatman said he expected insurance companies and others in the health care industry to resist many of Obama's proposals.<br />"This is warfare for the health care of our country," Chatman said. "The question is, Will money win, or will the people win? If we lose, we'll be a second-class country."</div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><div><strong>The allies lay down a marker</strong><br />The Boston Globe<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Politely yet firmly, America's European allies have rebuffed the Bush administration recently in two major ways. At a summit in Brussels of NATO foreign ministers, the allies were determined to renew dialogue with Russia and delay indefinitely any decision on admitting Georgia and Ukraine as members. This stance creates a welcome opportunity for President-elect Barack Obama, who has a chance to reconfigure relations with NATO allies and with Russia.<br />The foreign ministers were tactful in rejecting the positions that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice espoused, but the message was clear. After eight years of tension with the Bush administration, the NATO allies of "old Europe" wanted to assert their interests and lay down a marker for the Obama administration.<br />The foreign ministers decided to resume talks with Russia in the context of the so-called NATO-Russia Council - talks that had been suspended in the aftermath of Russia's war with Georgia last August. This decision amounted to a negation of the Bush administration's policy of refusing to conduct business as usual with the Kremlin.<br />The other crucial decision in Brussels was no less a denial of Bush administration requests. At a NATO summit last April, the Europeans turned down a Bush proposal that Georgia and Ukraine be accorded the fast-track application status known as Membership Action Plan, or MAP. In Brussels, Rice sought the alternative of informal Georgia-NATO and Ukraine-NATO councils.<br />Sensing an end-run around the formal application process and the veto it guaranteed to each of the 26 NATO members, Germany Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after the summit that the allies "decided today that there will be no shortcut." In other words, Georgia and Ukraine cannot gain entry into NATO until Germany and the other European allies are sure their relations with energy-supplier Russia will not suffer.<br />This will not be a bad starting point for Obama if he wants to forge sounder, more cooperative relations with Russia as well as the European allies.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9GmD9KR3Cs720-nypodMJUBREOqLwVYbvU4V18Y-aAWLlYmLAMqvzggkXTjxM7J0aFOZKq7BtNkzI-cPWLSo3ENT2vlPqXAKZ6DYl-iY-Odl4oMmtsvDCHAk6M_inFYoz2FWweJ3jmak/s1600-h/DSC04256.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219814034677650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9GmD9KR3Cs720-nypodMJUBREOqLwVYbvU4V18Y-aAWLlYmLAMqvzggkXTjxM7J0aFOZKq7BtNkzI-cPWLSo3ENT2vlPqXAKZ6DYl-iY-Odl4oMmtsvDCHAk6M_inFYoz2FWweJ3jmak/s320/DSC04256.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0uFDIuqX5v00H03dORNRczbvk0QU5XU73wJRwXVbSqZxKkaL6BaitvUVUnUmOajHFOvfeVXYaQqRTZJWxsLgzxoZrWDpnakqoEwf_HqDw6rIulZ7JpYziBs1Q0xP5gabD_PHf5AxP0w/s1600-h/DSC04257.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219807760445474" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0uFDIuqX5v00H03dORNRczbvk0QU5XU73wJRwXVbSqZxKkaL6BaitvUVUnUmOajHFOvfeVXYaQqRTZJWxsLgzxoZrWDpnakqoEwf_HqDw6rIulZ7JpYziBs1Q0xP5gabD_PHf5AxP0w/s320/DSC04257.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9POKr99uG_28eypWLMzUX3zVt1Oo3PzY5KrCOuil5x5suk3CK0-YwQiLZHxboetRA-oMcpea3m0CtWOAslOP-yJKtPgafg3Dj1AeqbnM-RBMSMK1N_kRevcpOC31bwt8FjPUJ8eM88Q/s1600-h/DSC04258.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219801675083682" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9POKr99uG_28eypWLMzUX3zVt1Oo3PzY5KrCOuil5x5suk3CK0-YwQiLZHxboetRA-oMcpea3m0CtWOAslOP-yJKtPgafg3Dj1AeqbnM-RBMSMK1N_kRevcpOC31bwt8FjPUJ8eM88Q/s320/DSC04258.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FT0yrgNHR5R6kexIpNE-w-rPFyV-aPeuaawUCwRk9R5Nd5xP3v3LwD16y8fdx66azlkwkuiB_veyB8dRS2guMqzPpjryJjKE7UBWmI64tHZQpAwknZOWhSUzpSVYCtYqqlsKAiXD-Mc/s1600-h/DSC04259.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219487258929458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FT0yrgNHR5R6kexIpNE-w-rPFyV-aPeuaawUCwRk9R5Nd5xP3v3LwD16y8fdx66azlkwkuiB_veyB8dRS2guMqzPpjryJjKE7UBWmI64tHZQpAwknZOWhSUzpSVYCtYqqlsKAiXD-Mc/s320/DSC04259.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_Q1_7gagXJthtMZCKQ_ISsBQtZzmRpLeihWaKRRb4t7GdXPfWzYyN5YKJ29W-AHcY8lXStN1HchXPpjR4PzYFbATcWxjaaX5uZRxV-F5JuWm-ICYFVe02GrOKrgPcve5X-Zv8Ohcd2Q/s1600-h/DSC04260.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219482537819778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6_Q1_7gagXJthtMZCKQ_ISsBQtZzmRpLeihWaKRRb4t7GdXPfWzYyN5YKJ29W-AHcY8lXStN1HchXPpjR4PzYFbATcWxjaaX5uZRxV-F5JuWm-ICYFVe02GrOKrgPcve5X-Zv8Ohcd2Q/s320/DSC04260.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijmba4TygshOkTOYaoHZRdZpFdDbRY8bVOVaB64lI-ucw5jcUHygprP_z4iuPX1JngxbqjP7IuL-lF5B4Tigh7tHc5Zzp_utZQg66bEOmPH7d3h3hkau2ZMTVosYYSSWJ0nQVGHNFPgr4/s1600-h/DSC04261.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219481313671186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijmba4TygshOkTOYaoHZRdZpFdDbRY8bVOVaB64lI-ucw5jcUHygprP_z4iuPX1JngxbqjP7IuL-lF5B4Tigh7tHc5Zzp_utZQg66bEOmPH7d3h3hkau2ZMTVosYYSSWJ0nQVGHNFPgr4/s320/DSC04261.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH3j9Hcym9d06pDdQaiO_gaAhssZum9RDGZI93WDl1U843gnY2uA4WZ24djcEsAPl9VM2L_MKUDdlgvEm8woY0onZNmLL0SU4BLXHf3OA6j0Hnb74klUKfPNkkcfy45-if0CY71EKM-g0/s1600-h/DSC04262.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219475348153986" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH3j9Hcym9d06pDdQaiO_gaAhssZum9RDGZI93WDl1U843gnY2uA4WZ24djcEsAPl9VM2L_MKUDdlgvEm8woY0onZNmLL0SU4BLXHf3OA6j0Hnb74klUKfPNkkcfy45-if0CY71EKM-g0/s320/DSC04262.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Mn0NKVrTWA73imPW8FFmQqmhOrkYGHDSAe1UNX_c_mUwy3yooejO66g6w5UwaUkGucKdrySo9HLf7vydSFv9KJbIm_aO_Dcod6mKRM77H6MxAlcv2SCUYc7CUArzEC6R-f4jZHLnjTc/s1600-h/DSC04263.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219477783147954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Mn0NKVrTWA73imPW8FFmQqmhOrkYGHDSAe1UNX_c_mUwy3yooejO66g6w5UwaUkGucKdrySo9HLf7vydSFv9KJbIm_aO_Dcod6mKRM77H6MxAlcv2SCUYc7CUArzEC6R-f4jZHLnjTc/s320/DSC04263.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh72DKP-3YxDM1T0Qnq6mBr4Rb1DXcRXVYcGLwqs0QIVzdqoQkBnYsponH2OvOjZMfE_8FiAKFApZW-yxUD31ok8rPgOYlu1o30ZDidfbqSxysGegqidsd3sjoeFZnYshOUFtdZJ16OsW8/s1600-h/DSC04264.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219240188476018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh72DKP-3YxDM1T0Qnq6mBr4Rb1DXcRXVYcGLwqs0QIVzdqoQkBnYsponH2OvOjZMfE_8FiAKFApZW-yxUD31ok8rPgOYlu1o30ZDidfbqSxysGegqidsd3sjoeFZnYshOUFtdZJ16OsW8/s320/DSC04264.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Do you believe?<br />By Judith Warner<br /></strong>Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Last Thursday, I put the finishing touches on my column and then, throwing all caution and reason to the wind, I began to bake cookies. For teacher gifts. At 9:30 p.m.<br />This was a very stupid idea.<br />I am a terrible baker, under the best of circumstances. I am good for nothing after 10 p.m., when the preventive meds I take for migraines kick in. I should have known that embarking on intricate melting and mixing and measuring at the end of a long day, with an overeager and overtired 8-year-old at my elbow ("Vacation starts tomorrow, Mommy! Who cares about sleep?") was a recipe for disaster.<br />But it's the season of miracles, and I was not to be deterred.<br />For I am resolved, this Christmas-and-Hanukkah-time, to be cheery and happy and hopeful. This despite the bad economy. This despite the string of late-night mess-ups (It's not my fault! The dog ate my gifts!) that netted the teachers a mere four cookies apiece, separated by a very generous amount of brightly colored tissue.<br />And this despite - and, indeed, in large part because of - the steady stream of e-mail news roundups I've been receiving for the past couple of weeks, all sending me the message that for sensitive, thoughtful, decent souls, really, the holidays are no time to be happy at all.<br />The miserable missives began before Thanksgiving, when the Council on Contemporary Families sent out a helpful list of sources and story ideas on topics like "Not Home for the Holidays" (for parents estranged from their adult children), "How to Keep Your Sex Life Alive During Hard Economic Times and Holiday Stress" (a two-fer), "The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Gender Traps and the Holidays," and, from a person called a "cyberpsychology specialist," "Long-Distance Couples and Happy Holidays: Digital Lifesavers and Land Mines."<br />More recently, Psych Central, a news consolidator that has the gall to call itself "Your Mental Health Break," sent out an eight-page compilation of holiday-themed links to stories like "Ho-Ho-Ho-Holiday (Office) Parties: Bah Humbug?," "Seasonal Stepfamily Stress," "Managing Children's Expectations" and "Transforming Holiday Angst Into Gratitude."<br />At first, I greeted the e-mails with a smile. ADDitude magazine kicked off the season with an article on The Holiday Husband ("he can only handle things for so long,") which was accompanied by a picture of a man trying to read his morning newspaper as his wife anxiously stood over him trying to Make Plans. This made me laugh so hard that I spilled coffee all over my desk and immediately forwarded the article to my husband, Max, with the thought that we might send it out instead of a family Christmas card. (I received no response.)<br />But, after weeks of "coping" tips, "de-stressing" guides and how-to's on "beating the holiday blues," I ended up kind of sad. And vaguely resentful.<br />It wasn't that I was tempted to make light of people's difficulties, cast doubt upon their mental-health issues or deny that the holidays can be stressful for all the reasons that they're supposed to be fun. It's not as though I am any stranger to "Managing Unhappy Relatives at Holiday Time," as Psych Central puts it. I know that for many people, anticipating happiness as family gatherings loom is an act of faith on a par with expecting Santa Claus to come down the chimney.<br />But without some belief in the possibility of happiness, without some willful suspension of our attunement to the dreariness of reality, the holiday season really is nothing more than a forced march of shopping wrapped in a laundry list of neuroses.<br />One of the greatest risks, I think, of living in a secular world - as I, semi-regretfully, do - is something I might call the Woody Allenization of everything. Too much reason. Too much self-awareness. Too much blah-blah. Too little wonder, and marvel and faith - in the largest and vaguest sense of the word.<br />You have, in this climate, to carve out whatever little islands of belief that you can. My 11-year-old daughter, Julia, resolutely refuses not to believe in Santa Claus. No number of mall Santas, varying in face and demeanor, no amount of presents delivered straight to the door by UPS, can shake her from her faith. This is, I suppose, her way of preserving a sense of mystery and miracle in her otherwise secular world, where chocolate Santas at school have gone the way of the Pledge of Allegiance. And I admire her greatly for it.<br />I haven't been able to believe in Santa Claus since first grade. But I will, this year, approach our extended family Christmas gathering with an anticipation of joy and peace.<br />Miracles, after all, can happen, they say. If you believe.Judith Warner writes Domestic Disturbances, a column at nytimes.com.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu9jtiN6MUWZiGUmU755yf-aOZnTY4zn1tfcCmatmgrxb5s1-3iTpv9aP4MfZWq0n2BnySX_0Vniy5c7sXHsbawz8DjCs44j_Dmdh4w7iN4DhxE3BhqA3VPSfQpv7SfR1rVzlLEgu-WV8/s1600-h/DSC04265.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219240874118322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu9jtiN6MUWZiGUmU755yf-aOZnTY4zn1tfcCmatmgrxb5s1-3iTpv9aP4MfZWq0n2BnySX_0Vniy5c7sXHsbawz8DjCs44j_Dmdh4w7iN4DhxE3BhqA3VPSfQpv7SfR1rVzlLEgu-WV8/s320/DSC04265.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>A generation left behind by Filipino migrant workers</strong><br />By Carlos H. Conde<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />MANILA: Dolores Gerong's one wish this Christmas is to be back in the Philippines with her three children.<br />She is driven by more than holiday sentiment. Nearly two years ago, she left her country to work as a maid in Hong Kong, becoming one of the millions of Filipino migrant workers scattered around the globe.<br />The three teenage daughters she left behind need her, she says. Her husband cannot help: He has been working as a driver in Saudi Arabia for the past 14 years.<br />"I'm worried each time my sister, who lives with them, tells me they often stay out late at night, spending money that I worked hard to earn on frivolous things, and not performing as well as they used to in school," Gerong, 35, said by telephone from Hong Kong. "I need a serious talk with my children."<br />Gerong's anguish is a familiar refrain in the Philippines, where nearly nine million people - 10 percent of the country's population - have left to take jobs overseas. These industrious migrants are willing to endure separation, sometimes for years at a time, to help support families back home.<br />Their contribution is also appreciated by their government. Migrants' remittances, valued by the World Bank at $17 billion last year, are credited for keeping the fragile Philippine economy afloat. In recognition of their value, the government has stepped up vocational training and other programs to enhance Filipino workers' attractiveness on the global market. Concerns have been voiced over how the current financial crisis could affect overseas employment.<br />But questions are increasingly being raised about the social costs of this heavy dependence on absent workers, especially now that the majority are women, most of whom are mothers who have left their children behind.<br />According to several recent studies, the "feminization of migration" is exacting a steep toll.<br />Filipino men have long gone abroad for jobs, mainly in construction and seafaring. But in the past two decades the ever-rising demand in the developed world for English-speaking caretakers - nurses, nannies and domestic servants - has opened the door wide for Filipino women. They are now found in great numbers in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Southeast Asia, notably Hong Kong and Singapore.<br />They are increasingly less likely to be found back home in the Philippines, caring for their own families. An estimated six million Philippine children are growing up now with at least one parent absent because of migration.<br />That the absent parent is now usually the mother has resulted in "displacement, disruptions and changes in care-giving arrangements," Vanessa Tobin, deputy director for programs at Unicef, said at a conference on migration in Manila in September.<br />Adolescents seem especially hard hit. A study released this year by the non-profit Asia-Pacific Policy Center in Manila indicated that children between 13 and 16 are the most affected, with many dropping out of school, experimenting with drugs or getting pregnant.<br />Indeed, one of Gerong's great concerns now is that her eldest daughter has a boyfriend. "It upsets me that I am not there to see her through this," she said.<br />Rosemarie Edillon, executive director of the Asia-Pacific Policy Center, said, "It is worrisome that children in this age group, which requires the most adult attention, are actually the ones being neglected."<br />In its study of 120 households in several villages in the northern province of Ilocos Norte, the group's researchers found that children with at least one migrant parent had a higher incidence of common health problems like ear infections or scabies.<br />"You would expect that they would have the money to buy medicines, but there's only so much a grandmother can do," Edillon said. Many children of migrants are left in the care of a grandparent or other relatives.<br />Rebecca Lucero, who left her three-month-old son behind 18 years ago to work at a Holiday Inn in Dubai, decided to go home to the Philippines for good in 2000, when the boy was 10. It was a decision that Lucero said nearly erased the guilt she had felt when she left Patrick in her mother's care. (Her husband, Rodrigo, is still working in a hotel in Dubai.)<br />"I am really glad I returned just when Patrick was entering his teen years," Lucero said. "Now, I can watch him grow up and guide him. I have been playing catch-up since I returned, but it is all worth it."<br />In Lucero's neighborhood, where 75 percent of the more than 1,000 households have at least one parent working abroad, steps are being taken to address the impact of migration on children.<br />Few work harder at this than Nimfa Melegrito, who runs Sammaka - a Tagalog-language acronym for the Organization of Migrant Workers and Their Families - from her home in a slum area of Quezon City.<br />Melegrito, 62, is herself a former migrant worker - she spent 10 years as a dressmaker in Saudi Arabia - and feels that her family paid a price for her absence. Although she was able to send money back, she was less involved in the lives of her children, none of whom finished college as she had hoped. Melegrito is convinced that "things would have been different had I been around to care for them."<br />Melegrito and her organization are trying to help migrants' families cope with their many problems. "Teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, poor grades - name it, and we've faced it," she said.<br />They have been cooperating with groups like the private, nonprofit Kanlungan Center for Migrant Workers to provide counseling and other support services to these families. A top goal is to provide training and placement for better-paying jobs in the Philippines, to wean migrants' families from their heavy dependence on remittances from migrant relatives, Melegrito said.<br />Her group has also enlisted the participation of migrants' teenage children. One of them is Rommel Miñoza, 14, who has been living with his grandmother since he was 2 while his mother works as a beautician in Saudi Arabia.<br />"He's a good child, and he knows the sacrifices his mother has made just to send home a few hundred dollars a month," said the grandmother, Inocencia Miñoza.<br />Rommel tends to break down in tears whenever his mother is mentioned. "Even though we constantly communicate through the cellphone, I miss her," Rommel said.<br />The boy said he honors his mother every time he participates in a project for Melegrito's group, which has been arranging gatherings so these children can socialize. Sometimes, Melegrito's group brings in students from exclusive private schools in the Manila area to coach the migrants' children with their studies and help them to overcome their isolation.<br />"We need this kind of community support, so these children do not feel abandoned at the very least," Melegrito said.<br />Scholars like Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, have long advocated the need for the larger community to take a more active role in addressing the impact of migration.<br />Although Filipinos are known for their extended families - according to Unicef, 63 percent of families with a mother working abroad have a grandparent or other relatives living with them - Parreñas thinks Philippine society has not done enough to recognize the special circumstances of the migrants' families with their missing parents.<br />"'Family Values' courses in school do not mention such families, but instead textbooks insist on normalizing the nuclear family with a father and mother and children living together," Parreñas wrote in an e-mail message.<br />The Philippines, she added, "faces the challenge of adjusting to its changing family forms and accordingly recognize the experiences and welfare of kids with migrant parents, so they do not feel like the 'oddball' in society."</div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>MEANWHILE</strong></div><div><strong>When to fly was to soar</strong><br />By Ann Hood<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island: MEANWHILE<br />When I stepped off the plane from Miami into the Charlotte, North Carolina, airport for a connecting flight home, I immediately knew something was wrong. Hordes of desperate people crowded the terminal. I quickly learned that flights headed to the Northeast were canceled because of a storm. The earliest they could get us out of Charlotte was Tuesday. It was Friday. A gate agent stood on the counter and shouted: "Don't ask us for help! We cannot help you!"<br />I joined a mob that ran from terminal to terminal in search of a flight out. Eventually, I found six strangers willing to rent a van with me. We drove through the night to Washington, where I took a train the rest of the way to Providence.<br />The real problem, of course, is that incidents like this happen every day, to everyone who flies, more and more often. It really gets to me, though, because for eight years I was on the other side, as a flight attendant for TWA.<br />I know the days are gone when attendants could be written up if we did not put the linen napkins with the TWA logo embossed on them in the lower right-hand corner of the first-class diners' trays. As are the days when there were three dinner options on flights from Boston to Los Angeles - in coach. When, once, stuck on a tarmac in Newark for four hours, a planeload of passengers got McDonald's hamburgers and fries courtesy of the airline.<br />I have experienced the decline of service along with the rest of the flying public. But I believe I have felt it more acutely, because I remember the days when to fly was to soar. The airlines, and their employees, took pride in how their passengers were treated.<br />A friend who flew for Pan Am and I share stories about cooking lamb chops and dressing them in foil pantaloons; we debate the beauty of my Ralph Lauren uniform versus her Oleg Cassini. I like to tell her how we would have the children on board serve the after-dinner mints, delicious pale green circles with TWA stamped on them. We remember the service we provided - dare I say cheerfully? Proudly?<br />Now, passengers aren't served at all. During the meal-less flights, with scowling flight attendants who have snickered when I asked for a blanket and the seat pockets crowded with trash, I cannot help but remember how we passed out magazines, offered playing cards to bored passengers, refilled coffee cups. If we didn't, passengers complained. We had a stack of complaint cards at the ready, right next to the dry-cleaning vouchers we handed out if we spilled anything on someone.<br />Our names were embroidered on our aprons, and the passengers used them. At TWA, there was a rumor about a flight attendant who had her apron embroidered with the name O. Miss, as in "O. Miss, I need more 7-Up," and "O. Miss, may I have a pillow?" But that was an airborne legend. We couldn't get away with something like that.<br />I remember the first time I stepped on to a Lockheed L-1011 as a flight attendant in 1979. I marveled at the beauty of that plane. I put on my apron with my name across the top, and I smiled at the people who had saved up their money, put on their Sunday best, and chosen TWA. It was not so long ago that flying had that civility, that glamour, when flying through the sky really felt like something special.<br />Airlines offer valid excuses for cutting back service. But what are they gaining when passengers leave a flight disgruntled, mistreated and hungry? It is surprising how easy it is to please passengers. Cereal and lots of coffee in the morning can do wonders for someone who had to leave home at 4 a.m.<br />What works best of all, of course, is a smile. I trained for six weeks to become a flight attendant. Although the main focus was safety, I spent almost as much time learning good service. Airline employees' frustration and exasperation are all too evident to their passengers.<br />When I was hired, we had a joke that to get the job we had to answer every question with, "I love people and I love to travel." But it was true. I loved bantering with businessmen and talking about books with passengers. I looked forward to them telling me where they had been and where they were going.<br />I know times are tough for the airlines, but things weren't any better when I was flying. The oil crises of the 70s brought not just long lines at the pump but mandatory unpaid furloughs for us in the air. And then came deregulation; our jobs felt as precarious as airline jobs do today.<br />Yet even so, we had dignity, passengers and crews alike. We were together up there at 35,000 feet, and for those hours in the clouds and stars, all of our worries stayed on the ground below.Ann Hood is the author of "The Knitting Circle" and "Comfort." </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCk21rUEJ-UVceE_9_7gl2fYs-cLQthQwfFxFbC1Njpj9k5D2NxqgcDyaQ8YZulZ6I7inV02mMaTcp9A8Z4DfsPUK7Q4C2wrvmi3m2eKZWEAWO5Lfgf5UoWQvxQOvRCOKtaxhN5BwqPwc/s1600-h/DSC04266.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219242423412162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCk21rUEJ-UVceE_9_7gl2fYs-cLQthQwfFxFbC1Njpj9k5D2NxqgcDyaQ8YZulZ6I7inV02mMaTcp9A8Z4DfsPUK7Q4C2wrvmi3m2eKZWEAWO5Lfgf5UoWQvxQOvRCOKtaxhN5BwqPwc/s320/DSC04266.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28l0to8MiVL3_BVJaJICIO8SZFKFWH8NkG37OSKkbR8D5O7xByZqelb5znBPoSmWG9YrPmJ-Y2RxZupv5R5td2UVoizVIy51Cd-2iAdjlexxo6XiPc9-SkW5OVZ2s91s1GNgyRG6yojg/s1600-h/DSC04268.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219235188935938" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28l0to8MiVL3_BVJaJICIO8SZFKFWH8NkG37OSKkbR8D5O7xByZqelb5znBPoSmWG9YrPmJ-Y2RxZupv5R5td2UVoizVIy51Cd-2iAdjlexxo6XiPc9-SkW5OVZ2s91s1GNgyRG6yojg/s320/DSC04268.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Germany arrests Rwanda genocide suspect</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />BERLIN: German police in the city of Frankfurt arrested a 51-year-old Rwandan man suspected of involvement in genocide, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.<br />The Hutu, identified only as O.R., was mayor of an area in northern Rwanda and is suspected of taking part in the mass killings of Tutsis in 1994.<br />In particular, he is suspected of involvement in a massacre in Nyarubuye in April 1994 in which several thousand Tutsis were killed, the prosecutors said in a statement.<br />It is the second high-profile detention in Germany of an individual linked to the Rwandan genocide in the last two months.<br />In November, German police held Rose Kabuye, an aide to the Rwandan President, for questioning in France over the death of a former president that sparked the mass killings of Tutsis and some moderate Hutus in the central African nation in 1994.<br />She has since been extradited to France, although the Rwandan government said earlier Tuesday she would be allowed to Rwanda on bail.<br />The prosecutors' office in the southern city of Karlsruhe said German authorities had been investigating O.R., who was arrested Monday, since March.<br />Only last week, a U.N. court handed a life sentence to a former army colonel accused of masterminding the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994.<br />(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Giles Elgood)</div><div></div><div>*****************</div><div></div><div><strong>Cyprus files charges over airline disaster<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />NICOSIA: Cypriot prosecutors filed charges in court Tuesday against five people for a 2005 plane crash which killed 121 people in Greece's worst air disaster.<br />The Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 was travelling from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague when it crashed north of Athens on August 14 2005, killing everyone on board.<br />In documents submitted to Cyprus courts Tuesday, public prosecutors listed charges of manslaughter and causing death through negligence.<br />Prosecution officials said five people were named in the documents. Their identities were not publicly disclosed.<br />"Indictments will be delivered and the date set for the individuals to respond is February 26," Cyprus's deputy attorney-general Akis Papasavvas said. "The charges concern two of the three most serious offences under the Cyprus penal code."<br />Failure to switch a valve regulating oxygen supply to the aircraft knocked its pilots and most of the passengers unconscious shortly after the plane took off from Larnaca, investigators found.<br />The aircraft glided on autopilot in Greek air space for two hours before it ran out of fuel and smashed into a hillside.<br />A flight attendant with a trainee pilot's licence, probably the only person conscious on the plane, took the controls and tried in vain to avert the disaster. He was spotted in the cockpit by Greek pilots of two F-16s scrambled to trail the Boeing.<br />An inquiry by Greek authorities published in October 2006 cited perceived deficiencies in the safety culture of the airline.<br />Under Cyprus law, manslaughter carries a maximum jail term of life, and death through negligence or reckless behaviour four years.<br />Helios, which was renamed after the disaster, has since shut down.<br />(Writing by Michele Kambas, editing by Richard Williams)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrod4rAiPuL1MnwJ4jCPHgOYHm5IvfyJneuYjhqCu95uIEQhC10vZeR7BcjcW76xFXJcO0nWTyn4nhmbV3UwHo1irbrWU_L6JGoa65av8SZ_6K_vmv9cdIZoBAM25w_53XqhB5vZrC1UE/s1600-h/DSC04270.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283219230094789298" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrod4rAiPuL1MnwJ4jCPHgOYHm5IvfyJneuYjhqCu95uIEQhC10vZeR7BcjcW76xFXJcO0nWTyn4nhmbV3UwHo1irbrWU_L6JGoa65av8SZ_6K_vmv9cdIZoBAM25w_53XqhB5vZrC1UE/s320/DSC04270.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMyKbr7IHIbsfa-WU_MGLqgh0nZacUiisbond7ZF8pOTylbyQmeDhC95hZn3EExx4wXyX3TBlxx39Z-mZNDdaf9Fnjiinjt3-M5C-jjre62zRFrLrYOsCNtkEZXgXbmMsJzIidAebt2So/s1600-h/DSC04271.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283218937095592482" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMyKbr7IHIbsfa-WU_MGLqgh0nZacUiisbond7ZF8pOTylbyQmeDhC95hZn3EExx4wXyX3TBlxx39Z-mZNDdaf9Fnjiinjt3-M5C-jjre62zRFrLrYOsCNtkEZXgXbmMsJzIidAebt2So/s320/DSC04271.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgam7h0PLbjJ0yuhyphenhyphen0ViqGM9Q7j-YaGhlNtVScDbakvDNS0sQ8Po8rtSYBmHxfrI2LC2UI7xYES_EDg-tF6zB9-pPOf8NR7_sXtCnCj_-Zmii00HIXgpSZrx5C5FnPfHz1Xx5fHIV1KM2Y/s1600-h/DSC04272.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283218930497170610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgam7h0PLbjJ0yuhyphenhyphen0ViqGM9Q7j-YaGhlNtVScDbakvDNS0sQ8Po8rtSYBmHxfrI2LC2UI7xYES_EDg-tF6zB9-pPOf8NR7_sXtCnCj_-Zmii00HIXgpSZrx5C5FnPfHz1Xx5fHIV1KM2Y/s320/DSC04272.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmKWao60u-lQ2lMf1Pm5DycqdUJinjBsH4NrFY13eNYtkRtU2kQVt3-M0tHcOt9ND0q8_Kn140JONTNnM54maDiz8-UGFLTt0d_c8611tr4wlYxoh-6pLVBJSbitwrDI7QdvEplI-3kw/s1600-h/DSC04273.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283218932524337154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghmKWao60u-lQ2lMf1Pm5DycqdUJinjBsH4NrFY13eNYtkRtU2kQVt3-M0tHcOt9ND0q8_Kn140JONTNnM54maDiz8-UGFLTt0d_c8611tr4wlYxoh-6pLVBJSbitwrDI7QdvEplI-3kw/s320/DSC04273.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong> </strong></div><div><strong>More readers picking up electronic books</strong><br />By Brad Stone and Motoko Rich<br />Wednesday, December 24, 2008<br />Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from pages to pixels?<br />For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com's wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.<br />The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her talk show in October.<br />The shortage is providing an opening for Sony, which embarked on an intense publicity campaign for its Reader device during the gift-buying season. The stepped-up competition may represent a coming of age for the entire idea of reading longer texts on a portable digital device.<br />"The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven't done anything," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading division. "But it's happening now. This is really starting to take off."<br />Sony's efforts have been overshadowed by Amazon's. But this month it began a promotional blitz in airports, train stations and bookstores, with the ambitious goal of personally demonstrating the Reader to two million people by the end of the year.<br />The company's latest model, the Reader 700, is a $400 device with a light and a touch screen that allows users to annotate what they are reading. Haber said Sony's sales had tripled this holiday season over last, in part because the device is now available in the Target, Borders and Sam's Club chains. He said Sony had sold more than 300,000 devices since the debut of the original Reader in 2006.<br />It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts' estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Winfrey's endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.<br />Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it, Hildick-Smith said, and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.<br />So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.<br />Amazon's Kindle version of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle " by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Winfrey's book club, now represents 23 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.<br />Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalogue, their agents say.<br />"E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen," said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world's largest publisher of e-books.<br />Nobody knows how much consumer habits will shift. Some of the most committed bibliophiles maintain an almost fetishistic devotion to the physical book. But the technology may have more appeal for particular kinds of people, like those who are the heaviest readers.<br />At Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based publisher of bodice-ripping romances, Malle Vallik, director for digital content and interactivity, said she expected sales of digital versions of the company's books someday to match or potentially outstrip sales in print.<br />Harlequin, which publishes 120 books a month, makes all of its new titles available digitally, and has even started publishing digital-only short stories that it sells for $2.99 each, including an erotica collection called Spice Briefs.<br />Perhaps the most overlooked boost to e-books this year — and a challenge to some of the standard thinking about them — came from Apple's do-it-all gadget, the iPhone. Several software programs for reading e-books have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times.<br />Both of these companies say they are now tailoring their software for other kinds of smartphones, including BlackBerrys. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster and Penguin.<br />Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.<br />Meanwhile, the quest to build the perfect e-book reader continues. Amazon and Sony are expected to introduce new versions of their readers in 2009. Adherents expect the new Kindle will have a sleeker design and a better microprocessor, allowing snappier page-turning.<br />Haber of Sony said future versions of the Reader will have wireless capability, a feature that has helped make the Kindle so appealing. This means that the device does not have to be plugged into a computer to download books, newspapers and magazines.<br />Other competitors are on the way. Investors have put more than $200 million into Plastic Logic, a company in Mountain View, California, The company says that next year it will begin testing a flexible 8.5-by-11-inch reading device that is thinner and lighter than existing ones. Plastic Logic plans to begin selling it in 2010.<br />Along the same lines, Polymer Vision, based in the Netherlands, demonstrated a device the size of a BlackBerry that has a five-inch rolled-up screen that can be unfurled for reading. There are also less ambitious but cheaper readers on the market or expected soon, including the eSlick Reader from Foxit Software, arriving next month at an introductory price of $230.<br />E Ink, the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that has developed the screen technology for many of these companies, says it is testing color screens and hopes to introduce them by 2010.<br />Many book lovers are quite happy with today's devices. MaryAnne van Hengel, 51, a graphic designer in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, once railed against e-readers at a meeting of her book club. But she embraced the Kindle her husband gave her this fall shortly after Winfrey endorsed it.<br />Van Hengel now has several books on the device, including a Nora Roberts novel and Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." She said the Kindle had spurred her to buy more books than she normally would in print.<br />"I may be shy bringing the Kindle to the book club because so many of the women were so against the technology, and I said I was too," Van Hengel said. "And here I am in love with it."</div><div></div><div>****************</div><div></div><div><strong>Julius Fast, 89, writer of both fact and fiction, is dead<br /></strong>By William Grimes<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Julius Fast, who won the first Edgar Award given by the Mystery Writers of America and went on to publish popular books on body language, the Beatles and human relationships, died on Tuesday in Kingston, New York. He was 89.<br />His death was confirmed by his daughter Jennifer Fast Gelfand. He had lived in New York until suffering a stroke a year and a half ago.<br />Fast, the younger brother of the novelist Howard Fast, won instant acclaim as a mystery writer. "Watchful at Night," his first novel, was written while he was still in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. Its cover identified him as Sergeant Julius Fast. The book won the inaugural Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1946 for the best first novel published in 1945.<br />Fast followed up with several more detective novels, including "Walk in Shadow" (1947) and "A Model for Murder" (1956), before branching out into pop psychology, health and relationships. His most successful book, "Body Language" (1970), which analyzed the unconscious messages sent out by the human body, inspired several sequels, notably "The Body Language of Sex, Power and Aggression" (1976), "Body Politics" (1980) and "The Body Book" (1981).<br />Fast was born in New York in 1919. After earning a bachelor's degree at New York University, where he was a pre-med student, he spent three years in the army, which assigned him to a blood lab in Boston. While in the army he edited a collection of science fiction stories, "Out of This World" (1944), and then turned his hand to crime fiction.<br />In 1946 he married Barbara Sher, also a writer, who survives him, and with whom he wrote "Talking Between the Lines: How We Mean More Than We Say" (1979). Besides his daughter Jennifer, of Shady, New York, other survivors are a son, Timothy, of Des Moines; another daughter, Melissa Morgan of Casselberry, Florida; and five grandchildren. Howard Fast died in 2003.<br />To support his growing family, Fast worked as a writer and editor at several medical magazines. A stint at a podiatric publication provided the raw material for "You and Your Feet" (1970), but his wide-ranging interests account for the variety in titles like "The Beatles: The Real Story" (1968), "The New Sexual Fulfillment" (1972) and "Weather Language" (1979).<br />In 1988 he published "What Should We Do About Davey?," a semiautobiographical novel about an awkward adolescent employed at a boys' camp in the Catskills that was very much like the one owned by Fast's uncle.<br />Often he wrote to order for publishers rushing a book into print on a timely subject, like the findings of the sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson. Within months of the publication of "Human Sexual Response" in 1966, Fast produced "What You Should Know About Human Sexual Response." He also wrote books on how to quit smoking, how men and women can overcome their incompatibilities and the meaning of new research on Omega-3 fatty acids.<br />"Julius is a fast writer," said Tom Dardis, the editor who commissioned his Beatles book. "That's no pun on his name."</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOQeGCdOa25-vQFYLq0KHehe6gByuW16cqbtgmMXt_h6q3dSX_G4AO3ZxzQMmRbWgSfk2iZTGnbPUq0bwjO1SvlPpgOVIlzo3Oqp1Nl4FL_G8IEDQUznzjTjB0ZAYtSTPCwhKXedI0S5U/s1600-h/DSC04278.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283218926525196226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOQeGCdOa25-vQFYLq0KHehe6gByuW16cqbtgmMXt_h6q3dSX_G4AO3ZxzQMmRbWgSfk2iZTGnbPUq0bwjO1SvlPpgOVIlzo3Oqp1Nl4FL_G8IEDQUznzjTjB0ZAYtSTPCwhKXedI0S5U/s320/DSC04278.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-GO4jQGiKm9e7yKO3qhd0CbqfSxpUCNmmzHne36oAgyofLaQz6vfDBq4exllLlZFbi4GEVEFXmlyw_4oVIxXZYrXOwZcyQQGasz6BG8_iz2zQTwoK1dR_v8SX5v6sKBJLQARbB4sqt0/s1600-h/DSC04279.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283218926052449170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-GO4jQGiKm9e7yKO3qhd0CbqfSxpUCNmmzHne36oAgyofLaQz6vfDBq4exllLlZFbi4GEVEFXmlyw_4oVIxXZYrXOwZcyQQGasz6BG8_iz2zQTwoK1dR_v8SX5v6sKBJLQARbB4sqt0/s320/DSC04279.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong></div><div><strong>Mortgage approvals slump 61 percent<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By David Milliken<br />The number of mortgages approved for home purchase slumped to a fresh record low in November, with the seasonally-adjusted number falling to 17,773 -- almost 61 percent down on the same time last year.<br />Mortgage approvals are now barely one third of the average level at the peak of the housing market in 2007, the data from the British Bankers' Association showed.<br />The news spells further gloom for house prices, which are 15 percent lower than a year ago, and continues a stream of bad data that has led many economists to expect the Bank of England will cut interest rates to a record low of 1 percent next month.<br />Underlying net mortgage lending showed its weakest monthly change since April 2001, rising by 2.9 billion pounds in November, down from October's 3.3 billion rise.<br />BBA statistics director David Dooks blamed part of the drop on banks and prospective home-buyers pausing to take stock after the Bank slashed interest rates by 1.5 percentage points in November.<br />"The 1.5 percentage point November reduction ... caused lenders to re-assess product ranges and borrowers to re-consider future borrowing costs, so consequently there was another drop in market activity," he said.<br />The average value of a new mortgage for home purchase was 117,000 pounds, 23.7 percent lower than a year ago and greater than the percentage fall in house prices recorded in separate data from major mortgage lenders for last month.<br />"People remain concerned about the impact of the rapidly slowing economy on their personal finances," Dooks added.<br />The tumble in approvals for home loans was mirrored in sliding approvals for refinancing deals and other mortgages.<br />Remortgages were down almost 50 percent on the year at 29,798 and other mortgages were down 44 percent at 22,295.<br />Howard Archer, chief UK economist for IHS Global Insight, said the data spelt further gloom for the housing market.<br />"The outlook for the housing market remains bleak. Ongoing very tight credit conditions, still relatively stretched housing affordability on a number of measures (and) faster rising unemployment ... form a powerful set of negative factors weighing down on the housing market," he said.<br />The BBA data also showed that Britons were continuing to use their credit cards in the run-up to Christmas. Net card borrowing was up 200 million pounds in November, 7.9 percent higher than a year ago.<br />(Editing by David Stamp/Tony Austin)</div><div></div><div>********************</div><div></div><div><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23pound.php">British economy dropped more than previously reported</a> </div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div></div><div><strong>The pound under pressure<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />LONDON: The pound remained on the defensive on Tuesday, pressured by a gloomy economic outlook and recent comments by Bank of England policymakers which fuelled expectations for more aggressive monetary easing.<br />Markets will scrutinise final gross domestic product numbers for the third quarter at 9:30 a.m., which are expected to fall 0.5 percent from the previous quarter, unchanged from a preliminary estimate.<br />At 8:39 a.m., the euro was up 0.1 percent at 94.05 pence, having climbed to a session high of 94.55 pence earlier in the day.<br />The pound hovered near an all-time low of 95.56 pence hit last week, and many in the market say that is only a matter of time before the pair hits parity.<br />"We'll probably see a surge towards parity in euro/sterling although the expectations for the Bank of England to adopt quantitative easing are somewhat priced in," said Lee Hardman, currency economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.<br />Trade-weighted sterling was at 76.0, a touch above 75.7 hit late on Monday, the lowest level according to daily Bank records going back to 1990.<br />The pound was slightly higher against the dollar at $1.4890.<br />Bank Deputy Governor John Gieve said on Monday that the country needed some form of new instrument which would be more effective in managing the economy.<br />"We need to develop some new instruments, which sit somewhere between interest rates, which affect the whole economy ... and individual supervision and regulation of individual banks," he told the BBC.<br />The bank rate stands at 2.0 percent, its lowest in 50 years, but economists expect the Bank to cut rates further towards zero. It has already eased by 300 basis points since October.<br />Gieve's comments raised expectations that the Bank may be ready to take more unconventional steps to keep pumping in liquidity into the banking system even after rates fall to near zero, like in the United States.<br />"With the pound rapidly becoming a financing currency, the reasons to be long sterling in 2009 appear all but non-existent," said Calyon analysts in a research note.<br />(Reporting by Tamawa Desai, editing by Mike Peacock)</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /><br /></div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008</strong></div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-45101035612120289982008-12-23T04:36:00.028+01:002008-12-23T07:56:23.414+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Monday, 22nd December 2008<div align="center"><strong>'The Day the Earth Stood Still': It's the apocalypse, hee-hee, ho-ho</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />Reviewed by A.O. Scott<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />The Day the Earth Stood Still<br />Directed by Scott Derrickson<br />Long after we are gone, science fiction movies about our impending extinction will instruct whoever comes next that we were a strange, neurotic species indeed. We could not - cannot - get enough of fantasies of destruction, meant at once to inflame and soothe our fear of vanishing altogether, whether through war, ecological catastrophe, disease or alien invasion.<br />We know we have it coming, and a movie like "The Day the Earth Stood Still," either in its 1951 version or in the "reimagining" which began its worldside release this month, invites us to feel fleetingly bad about that even as we are encouraged to laugh it off. The laughter - at the earnest reckoning occasioned by a weary-looking extraterrestrial and his giant robot; at the panic and distress their visit provokes - serves as a necessary balm. Like other overwhelming emotions, the fear of apocalypse becomes more palatable when it is turned into camp.<br />The old "Day," made early in the atomic age, has long inspired this kind of laughter. It has also, in part because of its expressive, shadowy black-and-white cinematography, retained a measure of haunting, unsettling weirdness.<br />Any hope that the new "Day," directed by Scott Derrickson from a script by David Scarpa, might also someday rise above its pulpy, corny, somber silliness rests mainly on the shoulders of Keanu Reeves.<br />Those shoulders are perfect for filling out a dark, narrow suit, just as Reeves's deadpan basso and permanently perplexed features make him an ideal Klaatu, as the space visitor is called. Klaatu's job is to assist, calmly and methodically, in the extermination of the human race, a task he tries, with evident fatigue, to explain to his hysterical, violent would-be victims.<br />Only one will listen: Dr. Helen Benson, played with a bit too much ennui by Jennifer Connelly. Helen, an expert in astrobiology, is part of a team of scientists taken into government custody by force when a giant orb seems about to crash into the Earth. Instead it lands in Central Park, disgorging that giant metal Cyclops robot (a near replica of the one from the earlier movie) and poor Klaatu.<br />The secretary of defense (Kathy Bates) responds with military force, which only speeds the process of humanity's annihilation and demonstrates that our executioners may have a point. We're such a brutal, dumb, incorrigible life form that the only way the planet can survive is if we're no longer on it. (In 1951 the case against us was mainly pacifist. Now the anti-militarism has a more urgent and explicit ecological dimension.) A metastasizing swarm of metal bugs - the best special effects in a movie that often looks cheap and bedraggled - is dispatched to eat us and everything we've made, or at least everything on the New Jersey Turnpike.<br />But wait, Helen pleads. We can change! To provide evidence of this transformative potential she takes Klaatu to see her mentor, Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), a scientist who listens to Bach and was awarded a Nobel Prize for "altruistic biology." Apparently this is the Swedish Academy's euphemism for pimping: The good doctor's advice to Helen about how to approach Klaatu is to "persuade him not with your reason, but with yourself."<br />Still, any movie that awards a former Monty Python cast member a Nobel Prize in anything cannot be all bad. And "The Day the Earth Stood Still" could be worse. Its scenario and many of its scenes feel ripped off rather than freshly imagined - why do aliens always seem to end up in New Jersey? - and the relationship between Helen and her stepson, Jacob (Jaden Smith), does not quite add the necessary element of heart-tugging sentiment.<br />After "Wall-E" and "I Am Legend" and the dozens of apocalypse flicks since the last "Day the Earth Stood Still" we can surely do better. Even Klaatu looks bored and distracted, much as he did back when we knew him as Neo<strong>.</strong></div><p><strong></strong> </p><p><strong></strong> </p><p><strong></strong> </p><p><strong> </p><div align="justify"><br /></div></strong><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong>0430</strong></div><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_BPbxOyCii3fOCb_LhxYAVUpx1N8q9zIA0j4ZLzfJOupRM-nkDJmx7BcfUC9laRXyp65Hk6H44oGYRJsYnMm2qTMvcS1yFi5MGX63bQE59xFsAJ9767NgLP5RBJ1iLMgrg44ZVVn2g4/s1600-h/DSC04109.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833832485116098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_BPbxOyCii3fOCb_LhxYAVUpx1N8q9zIA0j4ZLzfJOupRM-nkDJmx7BcfUC9laRXyp65Hk6H44oGYRJsYnMm2qTMvcS1yFi5MGX63bQE59xFsAJ9767NgLP5RBJ1iLMgrg44ZVVn2g4/s320/DSC04109.jpg" border="0" /></a> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Bulgarian winemakers pin hopes on quality</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Tsvetelia Ilieva<br />Bulgaria's economy is fast losing steam, exports are shrinking and corruption is threatening the European Union aid that has underpinned growth. But the Todoroff winery has a strategy.<br />"We expect a collapse which we will try to overcome with high-quality wine," says its manager Kiril Izmirov.<br />Wines from the Balkan country have been known more for quantity than quality, and Bulgaria now accounts for only 0.6 percent of world production.<br />Boutique wineries such as Todoroff, which have made use of European Union funds in the past five years to recast Bulgaria's reputation, hope a mix of Thracian mystery and top-quality grapes from one of the world's oldest winemaking regions will help.<br />Perched on the hillsides of what was once the heart of ancient Thrace, Todoroff includes a chic hotel that offers body therapy based on grape products. Its bet is that consumers will keep drinking wines and, even if overall prices come down, good quality at a reasonable price can survive.<br />Financial problems and an economic slump in Bulgaria's main export markets -- Russia, Britain, Poland and Germany -- are likely to reduce sales abroad by about 30 percent this year, says Radoslav Radev, managing director at Vinimpex, Bulgaria's biggest wine exporter, controlled by Belvedere of France.<br />Tighter credit has cramped the wine industry's investment plans globally and consumption of expensive drinks has suffered. Analysts say demand generally will remain high, however, and financial turmoil opens the way to consolidation and efficiency.<br />"The view is that consumers would not walk away from wine because it is considered by many as a luxury for the masses," said Arend Heijbroek, a wine analyst at Dutch Rabobank.<br />"The overall demand will remain roughly the same. We will not see an enormous drop in volumes that consumers are buying<br />but they may cut down the prices," he added.<br />Bulgarian industry officials say mass producers, mainly former state-owned wineries now in private hands, will suffer most from the slowdown because of a drastic drop in demand from Russia, which takes 80 percent of total exports.<br />"The exports for Russia have almost halted," said Yordan Vutchkov, a member of the supervisory board of the national vine and wine chamber. "Buyers are not placing new orders as they cannot get credits."<br />The chamber expects a further 20 percent drop in total exports for 2009.<br />ANCIENT GLORY<br />Todoroff -- created in 1945 in the southern hamlet of Brestovitsa and then nationalized during the communist era -- said its sales had been unchanged for the first nine months at 1.45 million levs (640,000 pounds).<br />The winery, which is listed on the Sofia bourse, said surging credit and labour costs are starting to have an effect.<br />But the nearly 300 boutique wineries that have sprung up in the small Black Sea nation, competing in wine with neighbouring Greece and Romania, have made good use of EU farm aid and foreign investment to replant weed-choked vineyards.<br />"The boutique wineries are the future," said Alexander Kanev, executive director of Bessa Valley, funded by German Count Stephan von Neipperg, who also owns six wine cellars in Bordeaux.<br />"There will always be people ready to pay for exclusive wine," said Kanev, adding his company had increased sales so far this year.<br />Analyst Heijbroek agreed: "The road forward for Bulgaria is to search for authentic varieties and increase the quality of these wines. Because there is always a demand for something really unique."<br />Bulgaria's winemaking roots date back to the Thracians who inhabited the territory as early as 2000 BC. Their thick, sweet, red wines were praised by Greek poet Homer and cherished throughout the ancient world.<br />Under communism Bulgaria became the world's sixth-largest producer in the 1970s, shipping more than one million bottles a day to the Soviet bloc and smaller quantities to Western Europe and the United States.<br />Cheap, low-quality wine still dominates -- bottles are widely sold for less than two or three euros at home and wholesale exports to Russia fetch less than one euro per litre.<br />The transition to a market economy and farming neglect in the 1990s have caused total annual exports to shrink to about 1.2 million hectolitres from more than 4.0 million in the 1980s.<br />AUTHENTIC VARIATIES<br />Now, producers can tap a 3.2 billion euro EU-backed farm program through to 2013.<br />Officials and winemakers hope the corruption that prompted Brussels to freeze more than half a billion euros in farm and road aid to Bulgaria this year will not affect future projects, as Sofia steps up the fight against fraud and graft.<br />"These funds will almost completely protect them," said Deputy Agriculture Minister Dimitar Peichev.<br />Todoroff is among boutique wineries that have used EU money to achieve recognition for their efforts to promote labels made of native grapes at world wine fairs.<br />The winery, which this autumn picked its first crop of the Mavrud variety from 30 newly planted hectares, has won a place in the Top 100 of respected U.S. magazine Wine&Spirits with its Mavrud 2003 Galeria.<br />Mavrud dates back to the Thracians and has a deep ruby colour, an aroma of berries and soft tannins.<br />Another winery in the region shares the same approach, and has planted about 150 hectares with Mavrud and native Rubin vines.<br />"There is cabernet and cabernet sauvignon all over the world," said Yordan Stefanov, executive director of Vinzavod Asenovgrad. "We have to find a way to promote our varieties on the global market. That will certainly increase our chances."<br />(Additional reporting by Anna Mudeva; Editing by Anna Mudeva and Sara Ledwith)</p><p> </p><p>********************</p><p><strong>Fading Austrian towns look east for revival<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Sylvia Westall<br />Wolfsthal, about 50 km (30 miles) from Vienna, is the end of the line.<br />When the train from the Austrian capital pulls into this silent village on Austria's eastern border with Slovakia, only a trickle of people alight and head home past a closed cafe and empty football pitch.<br />Many of its young people have been drawn to Vienna in search of work, leaving a dwindling, predominantly older population.<br />But some small towns like this have seen a glimmer of new life since the European Union's Schengen zone expanded a year ago, allowing passport-free travel to and from eastern Europe. By offering cheap land and easy development, they have been tempting young Slovakians to move in.<br />Most Austrians were hostile towards the Schengen expansion last December: 60 percent opposed the move on security grounds at the time, said market research group OGM. Now some towns hope to become quasi-suburbs of the Slovakian capital Bratislava which is just a 20-minute drive away.<br />"We started to clear spaces for building because it was very important for the village that we could change the make-up of our population," Wolfsthal Mayor Gerhard Schoedinger told Reuters.<br />"When the people came, land was bought, and the price of land started to rise, there was an uncomfortable feeling among some people. But...when people could put a face to them, most of the reluctance went away."<br />Schoedinger, who is married to a Slovakian whom he met while he was working as a border guard, said those who move in are educated to university level and an asset.<br />Dennis Span has bought some land in Hainburg, a pretty Austrian town down the road from Wolfsthal, after finding it hard to get planning permission in Slovakia.<br />The 31-year-old Dutch systems engineer currently lives in Bratislava with his wife, who works for an information technology company.<br />"The main reason is the price in relation to the quality," he said. "We couldn't wait any more and there are lots of good reasons to move to Austria. The services are much better, the infrastructure is very different than in Slovakia and a small town is much more comfortable."<br />Hainburg sold 53 land plots this month, with three-quarters going to buyers from across the border.<br />"The main reason for this is that property in Austria is cheaper than around Bratislava, but better legal protection as well as schools and kindergartens also play a big role," said Erich Rieder, the town's administrator.<br />ARE YOU LOCAL?<br />Some town authorities have been working hard on cross-border ties. Wolfsthal's school gives Slovak lessons and holds joint cultural events, Hainburg welcomes Slovakian health workers into its clinics and care homes.<br />More Slovakians are also shopping across the border in Austrian discount stores, where they find a better, cheaper range of goods than at home, Hainburg's Rieder said.<br />The Austrian government says it does not have figures to show the economic impact, but in terms of population growth, the Schengen expansion could already be having an effect.<br />From January to October the number of Slovaks living in Austria rose by 11 percent, faster than previously, while the Hungarian and Czech populations rose 7 percent each according to preliminary data. The number of all foreigners moving to Austria grew by 2 percent over the same period.<br />Some welcome the influx to the Alpine republic, which like many countries in western Europe must contend with an ageing population and a shortage of skilled workers.<br />Economic bodies last month called for increased migration of workers, especially in the face of the economic crisis.<br />"In such times the economy needs highly skilled forces to trigger incentives for growth," Martin Gleitsmann of the Austrian chambers of commerce was quoted as saying by Austrian media at a presentation on the issue.<br />Some have called for a points system to fast-track work permits for skilled migrants.<br />"We must finally wake up and realise that Austria is a country of immigration," said industrialist Georg Kapsch at the presentation, estimating Austria needs 20,000-40,000 foreign workers each year.<br />WARM WELCOME?<br />But in a country where anti-immigration far-right parties won nearly a third of the vote in September's national elections, such talk is controversial.<br />Freedom, the main far-right party, has called for a halt to immigration and a ministry for repatriating foreigners, although it reserves its sharpest language for those of Turkish origin.<br />The mainstream conservatives have also tried to appeal to the right, insisting that German and a good understanding of Austrian "values" be preconditions to immigration.<br />In Wolfsthal, some are guarded about efforts to attract foreigners.<br />"Things have definitely changed here," said Mario Leskovits, a 27-year-old Austrian bartender who hopes more young Slovakians will boost the numbers on his football team. "I now have Slovakian neighbours and we get on fine."<br />But he notes that not everyone is as enthusiastic.<br />"Some families integrate well, others don't. They keep to themselves or don't always speak German. Some people don't like it because they are buying land in the village and it is expensive for young people to do the same."<br />Other border towns are not encouraging immigration from the east.<br />In Deutschkreutz, a market town near the Hungarian border which deployed a private frontier patrol a year ago, the number of foreign children entering local schools has been a problem, according to the far-right mayor.<br />But the interior minister expects around 1,500 temporary Austrian troops guarding the Hungarian and Slovakian borders will step down by the end of 2009, as they're no longer needed.<br />"It has only taken a year to prove that neither Austria nor other countries need worry about new dangers from the expansion," Hungarian Ambassador Istvan Horvath said last month.<br />(Editing by Sara Ledwith)</p><p> </p><p>*******************</p><p><strong>New Israeli crossings said hurting Palestinian trade</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: A new network of crossing points for Palestinian goods, built into Israel's barrier in and around the occupied West Bank, may hurt exports, not facilitate them as Israel claims, the World Bank said on Monday.<br />Israel will require all Palestinian commercial traffic to move through these crossing points once the barrier, made up of concrete walls and wire fences, is completed, the international lending agency said in a report.<br />Contrary to Israeli assertions that the crossings will allow the Israeli army to ease the movement of people and goods within the West Bank, the World Bank said internal restrictions have only increased and the new system has the potential to become "another serious constraint to Palestinian businesses."<br />David Craig, the World Bank's director in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, said Palestinian economic growth hinged on the private sector being able to boost exports. "The new restrictions ... undermine this goal," he said.<br />Israel says its West Bank barrier, condemned by a 2004 World Court ruling as illegal, is meant to keep out suicide bombers.<br />Palestinians call it collective punishment and a land grab that denies them territory that they want for a future state.<br />At the new crossing points, trucks on the Palestinian side transfer their goods to trucks on the Israeli side, back-to-back. Israel uses a similar system along its border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which faces severe shortages of many goods because of an Israeli-led blockade.<br />The World Bank said the back-to-back system would create added delays and uncertainties for Palestinian businesses already hamstrung by Israel's network of hundreds of checkpoints, roadblocks and other barriers in the West Bank.<br />Israel said it was committed to expanding the new facilities as necessary to ensure there are no queues and that all vehicles move through the crossing points within 30 to 60 minutes.<br />Limited Palestinian exports from the West Bank mostly travel through Israeli ports to destinations abroad. Israel does not allow exports from the Gaza Strip, citing Hamas control on the Palestinian side of the crossing points.<br />"As long as the internal barriers exist and exports and imports are forced to go through a system of back-to-back transfer, the Palestinian private sector is unlikely to prosper," the World Bank said.<br />An increasingly attractive alternative to Israeli ports would be Palestinian exports through Jordan, including the sea port of Aqaba, the report said.<br />But that would require Israel to make changes at the Allenby Bridge crossing point in the Jordan Valley to accommodate more shipments, the World Bank said.<br />(Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Sami Aboudi)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br /> </p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh1shsuGaloVSulLWymm606SCsCEHNltFcT9bjF9T1f_Sdj0t04ngKS-jPAgRSYjge0YgZKiryA7HJPvL3nEHAdC2lfo27VmpLWnpfFdv_l8FcC8vJN1Pimq1nUlG5IBE3ewpjNsyWKqk/s1600-h/DSC04110.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833566203888882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh1shsuGaloVSulLWymm606SCsCEHNltFcT9bjF9T1f_Sdj0t04ngKS-jPAgRSYjge0YgZKiryA7HJPvL3nEHAdC2lfo27VmpLWnpfFdv_l8FcC8vJN1Pimq1nUlG5IBE3ewpjNsyWKqk/s320/DSC04110.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>In Zimbabwe, survival lies in scavenging</strong><br />By Celia W. Dugger<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />NZVERE, Zimbabwe: Along a road in Matabeleland, barefoot children stuff their pockets with corn kernels that have blown off a truck as if the brownish bits, good only for animal feed in normal times, were gold coins.<br />In the dirt lanes of Chitungwiza, the Mugarwes, a family of firewood hawkers, bake a loaf of bread, their only meal, with 11 slices for the six of them. All devour two slices except the youngest, age 2. He gets just one.<br />And on the tiny farms here in the region of Mashonaland, once a breadbasket for all of southern Africa, destitute villagers pull the shells off wriggling crickets and beetles, then toss what is left in a hot pan. "If you get that, you have a meal," said Standford Nhira, a spectrally thin farmer whose rib cage is etched on his chest and whose socks have collapsed around his sticklike ankles.<br />The half-starved haunt the once bountiful landscape of Zimbabwe, where a recent United Nations survey found that 7 in 10 people had eaten either nothing or only a single meal the day before.<br />Still dominated after nearly three decades by their authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabweans are now enduring their seventh straight year of hunger. This largely man-made crisis, occasionally worsened by drought and erratic rains, has been brought on by catastrophic agricultural policies, sweeping economic collapse and a governing party that has used farmland and food as weapons in its ruthless and so far successful quest to hang on to power.<br />But this year is different. This year, the hunger is much worse.<br />The survey conducted by the United Nations World Food Program in October found a shocking deterioration in the past year alone. The survey, recently provided to international donors, found that the share of people who had eaten nothing the previous day had risen to 12 percent from zero, while those who had consumed only one meal had soared to 60 percent from only 13 percent last year.<br />For almost three months, from June to August, Mugabe banned international charitable organizations from operating, depriving more than a million people of food and basic aid after the country had already suffered one of its worst harvests.<br />Mugabe defended the suspension by arguing that some Western aid groups were backing his political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, who bested him at the polls in March but withdrew before a June 27 runoff. But civic groups and analysts said Mugabe's real motive was to clear rural areas of witnesses to his military-led crackdown on opposition supporters and to starve those supporters.<br />The country's intertwined political and humanitarian crises have become ever more grave with a cholera epidemic sweeping the nation, its health, education and sanitation systems in ruins and power-sharing talks at an impasse. Meanwhile, Mugabe has blamed Western sanctions, largely aimed at senior members of his government, for the country's woes.<br />His information minister even charged last week that Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler, had started the cholera outbreak spread by water contaminated with human feces as an act of "biological chemical war force," a charge widely derided as paranoid or cynical.<br />But for all Mugabe's venom toward the West, a central paradox rests at the heart of his long years in power. It was the failed policies of Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, including their calamitous seizure of commercial farms, that made this nation so utterly dependent on aid from the European and American donors he so reviles. And the same applies to Western leaders: Despite their scathing denunciations of him, it is their generous donations that have helped him survive by preventing outright famine among his people.<br />"You're acting to save lives, knowing that by doing so you are sustaining this government," said one aid agency manager, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "And unfortunately, ZANU-PF is good at exploiting this humanitarian imperative."<br />American-financed charities and the World Food Program have been feeding millions of Zimbabweans since late 2002, at a cost of $1.25 billion over the years. After a slow start this year because of the aid suspension, the United States and the United Nations are feeding almost half of Zimbabwe's population this month.<br />But the World Food Program is short of nearly half the food needed for January, said Richard Lee, a spokesman.<br />"You're not looking at mass starvation yet," said Sarah Jacobs, of Save the Children, adding that without an urgent infusion of food, "we may be reporting an even scarier, more horrible situation by January."<br />No food aid has reached the village of Jirira in Mashonaland, near Harare, the capital. So each morning, people rise before the sun and stumble from their huts, beneath the arching canopy of a starry sky, to fill metal pails with the small, foul-smelling hacha fruit. Those who arrive as dawn breaks find the fruit has already been picked clean.<br />The sweet, fibrous, yellow pulp of the fruit has become the staple of the villagers' diet. The fruit is now infested with tiny brown worms. Nevertheless, the women peel it, crush it and soak it in water. Some of the worms float to the surface and can be skimmed off. The mashed ones they eat.<br />Parents search for other sources of food as well. Bengina Muchetu tries to quiet her 2-year-old daughter Makanaka's pangs with a dish of tiny, boiled wild leaves.<br />Maidei Kunaka grinds the animal feed she earns in exchange for her labor on a nearby ostrich farm an unappetizing amalgam of wheat, soy bean, sand and what she calls "green stuff" to nourish her three children.<br />"It's not tasty, but we at least have something in our stomachs," she said.<br />Villagers around here date the onset of Zimbabwe's decline to the year 2000. It was then that Mugabe first felt the sting of political defeat, when a referendum that would have given him greater executive powers was defeated.<br />He took his vengeance, unleashing veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war and gangs of youth to invade and occupy highly mechanized, white-owned commercial farms that were then the country's largest employer and an engine of export earnings. In time, thousands of farms were taken over. Farm workers and their families about 1 million people altogether lost their jobs and homes, according to a 2008 study by Zimbabwean economists for the United Nations Development Program.<br />Land redistribution often turned into a land grab by the political elite, and frequently poor farmers who received land did not get necessary support. The annual harvest of corn, the main staple food, has fallen to about a third of its previous levels, the Development Program reported.<br />The narrow roads that threaded this part of Mashonaland used to be lined with beautifully tended farms, residents say. Now, much of the land is overgrown with grasses. Trees sprout in the fields.<br />In Nzvere, a group of scrawny men sat under a Musasa tree, rolling cigarettes in bits of newspaper and chewing over the central fact of life in rural Zimbabwe: It is impossible to make a living as a farmer anymore.<br />In the 1990s, these men said, they harvested a cornucopia of vegetables on their small farms and sold the surplus in Harare. Now their land doesn't yield nearly as much. With the formerly white-owned, large-scale farms no longer productive, the economies of scale that kept prices low for hybrid seed and fertilizer are gone. These small farmers cannot afford the higher prices.<br />The dollars and cents of farming simply do not add up, they said. The government monopolizes the buying and selling of corn through the Grain Marketing Board. With inflation running officially at hundreds of millions of percent, anything the board pays them is worthless by the time they get it out of the bank.<br />The farm redistribution has done them no good, they said, instead benefiting those who helped the governing party grab the land. Even when food aid has come, only those in the governing party hierarchy have gotten any, the farmers said.<br />So they have become scavengers, living off the land and surviving on field mice and wild fruit, white ants and black beetles.<br />The story is much the same in Jirira. Hacha fruit has mostly sustained the villagers, but soon the season will be over. And then what? "Only God knows what will happen," Mapisa said.<br />The suffering is not limited to the countryside.<br />This month, the Mavambo Trust, a small charitable group that works in a suburb of Harare, had its Christmas party, with a lavish feast of cornmeal porridge, chicken, vegetables and soft drinks. It was ample for 250 children, but more than 500 showed up. As word spread, famished children arrived early in the morning to wait by the steaming, fragrant pots of food. "So many came we couldn't even shut the gates," said Sister Michael Chiroodza, a Catholic nun.<br />Mavambo also runs a daily lunchtime feeding program for children on the grounds of a Catholic church. One recent afternoon, Annah Chakaka drifted into the church courtyard with her orphaned grandsons, Bhekimuzi, 13, and Bekezela, 10. They had come to beg for cornmeal to take home.<br />The boys, their handsome faces chiseled by hunger, said they do little now but help their grandmother with chores fetching water, washing clothes, sweeping the floor. That, and hunting for food. They usually walk three miles to a muhacha tree to collect its hacha fruit.<br />But on this morning, Chakaka said it had been difficult to wake the boys. They just lay there, too weak to get up. "Today we were just too hungry to look for wild fruit," she said.<br />They drifted from the church's courtyard as they had come, empty-handed.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Living with the U.S. airline bag fee<br /></strong>By Susan Stellin<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Americans seem to be enamored of change these days. And despite the cries of protests when airlines started charging for checked luggage, it seems baggage fees are a change we can live with after all.<br />For business travelers, especially, the fees have been less of a headache than many expected.<br />"Business travelers tend to be among those that are more likely to qualify for exemptions, either through premium status or traveling on a full-fare ticket," said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines, who added that the new policy has caused few bumps.<br />"By all accounts it's gone smoother than we anticipated," he said. "Our biggest concern was that we might see people trying to take things that were inappropriate as carry-ons, but it hasn't been a big problem."<br />About half of American's domestic passengers check luggage. But the average number of checked items has fallen from 1.2 per customer to less than one bag, mostly due to fewer people checking two bags, Smith said.<br />Luggage fees have settled at around $15 for the first checked bag and $25 for the second one, each way.<br />Most airlines waive their luggage fees for elite frequent fliers, passengers in first or business class, customers who purchase full-fare economy tickets and those traveling on government or military fares.<br />In addition, Continental gives customers who use its co-branded Chase credit and debit cards one free checked bag, and that benefit is extended to anyone listed in the same reservation as the card holder who checks in at the same time.<br />Other airlines offer discounts to passengers who pay their luggage fees online: Spirit Airlines gives $10 off the first checked bag to those who prepay on its Web site, while United is offering a 20 percent discount on its first bag fee to customers who pay online through Jan. 31, 2009.<br />So far, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue and Virgin America are among the holdouts that still allow passengers one free checked bag, while Southwest still allows two free checked items.<br />But passengers who do not fall into any of the privileged categories can still avoid fees. How?<br />Travel light.<br />As obvious as it sounds, traveling light the old-fashioned obsession of many a frequent flier to reduce frustration can reduce fees as well. Some frequent fliers have gotten packing light down to a science.<br />"I had a trip to Germany and I was very proud of myself because I was able to do it with just a carry-on," said Brian Lynch, who works for a manufacturer based in Elmsford, New York<br />Since he has elite status, Lynch's packing light has nothing to do with fees, but with fear. In 2004, his checked luggage was lost 17 times.<br />"I applied to the Guinness Book of World Records," he said. "But I didn't get it because until I recognized that this was an amusing pattern I didn't save any of the receipts."<br />Although he always got his luggage back, he became a convert to the carry-on-only credo.<br />Like many of his breed, he dreaded that the new luggage charges would cause cabin chaos but he hasn't experienced that problem.<br />"Maybe the airlines have just insulated their best customers," he said.<br />Perhaps not all their best customers. Nick Pandher, who works in sales for a technology company near Los Angeles, disagrees.<br />"The overheads are really crowded," he said. "I've seen many flights where they're ready to close the door but they have to deal with bags."<br />Pandher said he travels with only a carry-on, packing half the clothes he needs and relying on laundry services to get through longer trips.<br />He also avoids checking the demonstration kit he takes to client meetings, opting to ship it rather than dealing with the airport hassle and airline fees which can be $100 or more extra for an oversize or overweight bag.<br />"We just use FedEx now," he said. "It's $200 but we don't have to worry about it getting there or schlepping it through the airport."<br />Indeed, the slow handling of checked luggage seems to be more of a deterrent than the fees, which most business travelers can put on their expense accounts anyway.<br />"If they're going to charge people to check baggage, they need to guarantee some kind of timeliness," Pandher said.<br />Another frustration for passengers is increased scrutiny of the number and size of carry-on bags.<br />Brian Warner and his wife were passing through security at San Francisco International Airport in November when an employee who was not wearing an airline or Transportation Security Administration uniform asked his wife to prove her rolling suitcase was within the size limit by placing it in a metal template.<br />"It had inches to spare," Warner said. "It was mildly annoying."<br />Although he and his wife would be exempt from baggage charges because of their elite status and would sometimes prefer to check luggage, they generally don't, as a result of having waited 45 minutes at the baggage carousel in Seattle.<br />"We've traveled as long as a month just with carry-ons," he said. "We'll go to those lengths just to avoid checking because of those nightmares."<br />Warner said he has also seen more jockeying for carry-on space, an observation that Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, confirmed.<br />"We are hearing anecdotally from our flight attendants that there are more bags coming into the cabin with the new fees," she said. "It's definitely an issue. Flight attendants have to work harder to make sure that they fit in the overhead bins."<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Forest plan in Brazil bears the traces of an activist's vision</strong><br />By Alexei Barrionuevo<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />RIO DE JANEIRO: Twenty years ago, a Brazilian environmental activist and rubber tapper was shot to death at his home in Acre State by ranchers opposed to his efforts to save the Amazon rain forest.<br />After his death at age 44, Francisco Alves Mendes, better known as Chico, became a martyr for a concept that is only now gaining mainstream support here: that the value of a standing forest could be more than the value of a forest burned and logged in the name of development.<br />This month, Brazil took what environmentalists hope will be a big step forward in realizing Mendes's vision. The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva introduced ambitious targets for reducing deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions in a nation that is one of the world's top emitters of this heat-trapping gas.<br />The plan promises to make Brazil a more influential player in global climate-change discussions, helping to push the United States and the European Union to agree to emissions cuts and head off the adverse effects of climate change. It could also encourage more pledges from wealthy countries seeking to essentially pay Brazil to preserve the forest for the good of all humanity.<br />But some environmentalists question whether the new targets, which would reduce Brazilian deforestation by 72 percent by 2017, are achievable in a country that has shown few signs of adjusting its development model as a major food provider to the world, especially in the midst of a global economic crisis.<br />To achieve the first phase of planned cuts, Brazil would have to reduce deforestation next year by 20 percent, to less than 4,000 square miles. That would be the lowest amount per year ever recorded in Brazil, said Paulo Adario, the Amazon campaign director for Greenpeace in Brazil.<br />Brazil's economy is centered on the export of agricultural products, like soybeans and beef, and commodities like iron ore.<br />"The Brazilian model is to be the food supplier to the world and a big supplier of ethanol," Adario said. "The economy will continue to move in the same basic direction. There is no magic in Brazil."<br />Up until now, Brazil's economic choices have driven much of the deforestation in the Amazon, he said. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, the military government encouraged landless families to settle in the region. Road-building, land speculators and ranchers followed, and the forests fell at a quickening pace.<br />The burning and decomposition of trees produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.<br />Mendes organized tappers to confront crews and flew abroad to confront lenders paying for roads. His efforts to stop logging in an area planned for a forest reserve led to his death. Since his killing, on Dec. 22, 1988, more than 20 reserves have been created, protecting more than eight million acres.<br />Mendes was an early advocate of the idea that people who live in the forest could create livelihoods from sustainable forest resources, rather than the one-time economic benefit of cutting down trees. Carbon financing, the compensation of forest dwellers for pursuing sustainable industries, would provide an added incentive, which is vital given the uncertain markets for natural rubber and other non-timber forest products.<br />"The notion that we in the north will help pay for that climate service is an important development and represents the mainstreaming of the concept that Chico Mendes and those like him were pioneers in creating," said Richard Moss, the head of climate change programs at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington.<br />The killings of Mendes and of Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old Catholic nun who was gunned down in 2005 for speaking out against logging in the Amazon, ratcheted up international pressure on Brazil to find ways to limit forest clearing without sacrificing development.<br />"Brazil was always on the defensive when it came to the question of climate change," said Carlos Minc, Brazil's environment minister. "And now it has completely changed, passing a bolder plan than India and China."<br />Minc said the plan would help meet a demand of some of the more developed countries, including the United States, which has said it would not agree to firm emissions targets until less-developed countries that produce significant amounts of greenhouse gases do the same.<br />Deforestation produces more than a fifth of human-generated carbon dioxide by some estimates. Some 75 percent of Brazil's carbon dioxide emissions come from deforestation, Minc said.<br />Brazil's plan would sharply slice those emissions, reducing them by some 4.8 billion tons by 2018. Some environmentalists contend that deals involving compensation for forest protection could weaken climate agreements in many ways. They also say the plan leaves the most difficult targets to the government that will follow da Silva's. His term ends in 2010.<br />Still, it is viewed by some scientists and climate experts as major step forward. "For the first time we have out in the open very clear goals for reduction in deforestation," said Walter Vergara, the lead climatologist for Latin America at the World Bank.<br />The global recession could end up being a godsend by lowering demand for agricultural goods.<br />But it could also slow the flow of technology needed to make industries more efficient and limit pledges from foreign governments like Norway, Sweden and Germany, whose payments would help preserve the forest. So far, those countries have not suggested that they would reduce their contributions, Minc said.<br />"The global recession and the climate crisis don't necessarily have to be adversaries, with one competing for the resources of the other," Minc said.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. environmental groups sue over mining rule<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Environmentalists sued the Bush administration on Monday, trying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from changing a U.S. rule they say keeps mining waste from entering mountain streams.<br />"The notion that coal mining companies can dump their wastes in streams without degrading them is a fantasy that the Bush administration is now trying to write into law," said Judith Petersen of Kentucky Waterways Alliance, one of the groups that sued in U.S. District Court in Washington.<br />At issue is mountaintop mining, in which forests are clear cut and holes are drilled to blast apart rock. Massive machines then scoop coal from the exposed seams. The rock and dirt left behind is dumped into adjacent valleys, changing the natural shape of the earth, lowering the height of the mountain and covering streams.<br />Current policy says land within 100 feet (30 meters) of a stream cannot be disturbed by mining unless a company can prove it will not affect the water's quality and quantity. The new regulation would allow mining that would alter a stream's flow as long as any damage to the environment is repaired later.<br />Opponents want a federal judge to overturn or delay the new regulation.<br />"This is among the eleventh hour land mines planted by the Bush administration that an EPA headed by Lisa Jackson stands to inherit," Earthjustice lawyer Jennifer Chavez said, referring to President-elect Barack Obama's pick to head the agency. "We are doing what we can to make it easier for the incoming administration to undo the damage wrought by the last one and restore our nation's commitment to protecting the waters and summits" of the Appalachian mountains.<br />The U.S. Office of Surface Mining said on Dec. 12 that where excess soil, coal remnants and other material can be disposed of has received conflicting interpretations by courts in recent years.<br />"We believe that the new rule is consistent with a key purpose of the Surface Mining Law, which is to strike a balance between environmental protection and ensuring responsible production of the coal essential to the nation's energy supply," said C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior, Land and Minerals Management, in announcing the change.<br />Mining industry groups, though, argue the rule change has been in the works for years, and would change very little over how mountaintop removal mining is done.<br />"There's been an enormous amount of overreaction to this," West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney said Monday. "They're trying to make it something that it truly is not."<br />EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said the agency "approved the new rule because it strengthens the environmental review required for mining activities and reduces potential adverse effects to water quality and fish and wildlife resources."<br />___<br />On the Net:<br />EPA "stream buffer zone" regulation: <a href="http://www.epa.gov/EPA-IMPACT/2008/December/Day-12/i29150.htm">http://www.epa.gov/EPA-IMPACT/2008/December/Day-12/i29150.htm</a><br />Environmental groups lawsuit: <a href="http://www.earthjustice.org/library/legal_docs/sbz-rule-final-complaint-12-1">http://www.earthjustice.org/library/legal_docs/sbz-rule-final-complaint-12-1</a><br />9.pdf<br /><br />**************************<br /><br /><strong>Seattle sees most snow in a decade</strong><br />By William Yardley<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />SEATTLE: December means darkness in this Northwest city. Combine the clouds with the rain and with the fact that Seattle receives less winter daylight than most other cities in the United States and the sum of it all can seem like concentrated gloom.<br />Yet on Sunday, the first full day of winter, much of the city was instead a bright white blur. Snow fell, recoating the streets with as much as eight fresh inches after a week of wintry weather that has closed schools, canceled flights and defied expectations. And more snow is in the forecast.<br />"We've got to write this one down," said Kate Allyn, a 40-year resident, standing at the top of Phinney Ridge, a neighborhood in north Seattle that, like many others in this hilly city, became a miniature mountain playground over the weekend. "We're used to 45 degrees and drizzle. We usually get our snow by driving 45 minutes to the mountains."<br />It has been at least a decade since Seattle has seen such snow, and temperatures in the teens have been in record territory. On Sunday, children as well as people in their 40s zoomed down slopes on sleds and snowboards.<br />"Nobody's panicking," said Marty Spiegel of Greenwood True Value Hardware. "Though there was some disappointment that we sold out of sleds."<br />Of course, in a city of transplants, there was no shortage of seen-it-all folks from snowier climes who mocked how snow brings Seattle to a standstill. A favorite punch line was the Seattle Public Schools, which canceled classes Wednesday on the mere threat of more snow. None fell that day.<br />And not every image was a postcard. Two charter buses carrying about 80 students slid through a barrier above Interstate 5 on Friday, coming dangerously close to crashing down on the highway. No one was injured.<br />The precision of the forecasting was a popular topic. Clifford Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, fielded hundreds of queries on his weather blog.<br />"Several of you commented about the nature of the snow last night," Mass wrote Sunday morning. "Most of you are used to the large, dendritic crystals that fall when temperatures are near freezing." He added, "Last night, you got to enjoy the type of snow they get in colder climates."<br />Elsewhere in the nation, weekend storms knocked out power to thousands of customers and created hazardous conditions for holiday travelers. Gusty winds in the Midwest, where wind chills dipped to minus 30, produced whiteouts that contributed to at least two vehicle pileups, The Associated Press reported, and blizzard warnings were issued for parts of Maine.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHtkR9zfrEFxtIGMfQJQOKkTzBhJN1arcWdKQvKh525MFNyVOskxpKIPGk7EwI-6GeqBrOOuza1Z7oqXNN-9DhOiOIBOcRtf6sZlwQv2cm4q_chyIDishYqxZrKLpx-A6Fj9a-s7djaSI/s1600-h/DSC04111.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833560762229538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHtkR9zfrEFxtIGMfQJQOKkTzBhJN1arcWdKQvKh525MFNyVOskxpKIPGk7EwI-6GeqBrOOuza1Z7oqXNN-9DhOiOIBOcRtf6sZlwQv2cm4q_chyIDishYqxZrKLpx-A6Fj9a-s7djaSI/s320/DSC04111.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Électricité de France wins approval to buy British Energy<br /></strong>Bloomberg News<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BRUSSELS: Électricité de France, the world's biggest operator of nuclear power plants, won conditional approval Monday from the European Commission to buy British Energy Group for £12.5 billion, allowing the French utility to become the largest power producer in Britain.<br />Approval of the $18.5 billion deal is dependent on EDF's agreement to sell two nonnuclear power plants in Britain, electricity in the British wholesale market and land on which a new reactor can be built, the commission, the antitrust regulator of the 27-nation European Union, said in a statement.<br />The French state-controlled utility agreed in September to buy British Energy, the largest electricity producer in Britain, and gain control of eight atomic stations. The purchase would add commercial clients to the five million households supplied by EDF's British unit and allow the company to build at least four new-generation Evolutionary Power Reactors in Britain.<br />The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, is seeking to expand nuclear power to replace aging generators, cut energy imports and lower carbon dioxide output. Britain this year passed a law requiring that by 2050, CO2 emissions must be reduced 80 percent from 1990 levels.<br />The terms of the EU endorsement "will make the deal more expensive for EDF because it will get less existing generating capacity, but this was to be expected," Alicia Carrasco, an analyst at Standard & Poor's, said by telephone. "When EDF decided to buy British Energy it was looking for future growth in nuclear power in the U.K." Some 77 percent of French electricity is generated by EDF's 58 reactors in the country.<br />"Although the combined entity would not have extremely high market shares, the commission found during its investigation that the transaction, as initially notified, would have been likely to raise serious competition concerns in four main areas," the commission said.<br />The decision is conditional upon EDF's commitment to divest the 790-megawatt gas-fired Sutton Bridge plant, owned by EDF Energy, and another at Eggborough, a 1,960-megawatt coal-fired station owned by British Energy. Bondholders have an option they can exercise next year, which they got as part of a 2002 deal that prevented British Energy from collapsing.<br />The EU was concerned that the merged company might "withdraw electricity supplies from the market in order to increase price," according to the statement. That "would have led to a reduction of liquidity which could have had negative effects in both the wholesale and the retail supply markets."<br />EDF confirmed plans to sell the two power stations and 5 to 10 terawatt-hours of electricity a year from 2012 to 2015.<br />"The European Commission's decision marks a major step toward the conclusion of the acquisition of British Energy," EDF said, adding that it expected the takeover to become effective "in early January 2009."<br />The EU also asked EDF to unconditionally divest a site potentially suitable for building a new nuclear station located at either Dungeness or Heysham in Britain, and to end one of the merged entity's three grid-connection agreements with National Grid at Hinkley Point in southwest England.<br />The commission expressed concern that there were a "limited number of sites" for new atomic generators and "high concentration" in ownership. "British Energy owns many of the sites likely to be suitable" for new nuclear plants while EDF owns critical land at two such locations, it said.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Russia seeks a leading role among exporters of natural gas</strong><br />Bloomberg News<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will host energy ministers from the world's largest exporters of natural gas on Tuesday in Moscow as Russia seeks to take a leading role among producers of the fuel.<br />Putin, who turned Gazprom into a global energy company during his presidency, is scheduled to open the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. The forum is expected to agree on a charter transforming it from a loose, consultative body into a formal organization with a permanent secretariat.<br />The annual meeting was delayed several times amid reports that member nations disagreed over the future role of the group. Western consumer countries have warned against the formation of a cartel modeled after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The Gas Forum has 14 members, including Iran, Algeria and Qatar, which are also members of OPEC.<br />"Maybe it's a bright image, but the mechanisms of OPEC can't be used on the gas market," Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom's chief of exports, said last week. "In this case, it's not necessary to make comparisons."<br />Russia supplies a quarter of European gas through pipelines. As demand grows for liquefied natural gas - gas chilled to a liquid for transport by tanker - a global market is forming that reduces the importance of pipelines and encourages spot trades.<br />Gazprom plans to start loading its first LNG cargo in February, opening up new markets for Russian gas in Japan, South Korea and North America. Gazprom, a state-run company, formed a "gas troika" in October with Qatar and Iran for joint exploration and production projects. Together, the three countries hold more than half of the world's gas reserves.<br />Four cities are vying to be the home of the Gas Forum's permanent secretariat, Medvedev said. St. Petersburg will compete with Algiers, Tehran and Doha, Qatar, he said.<br />The Gas Exporting Countries Forum held its first meeting in Tehran in 2001. The last ministerial meeting was held in Doha in April 2007.<br />During his presidency, from 2000 to May this year, Putin consolidated state control over the country's oil and natural gas industry, with Gazprom as the flagship for Russia's new economic might. The company, based in Moscow, is pursuing projects from Libya and Vietnam to Alaska and Bolivia.<br />After oil prices started tumbling from a record in July, a Putin deputy, Igor Sechin, began pushing for closer coordination with OPEC, of which Russia is not a member.GDF seeks pipeline stake<br />Gazprom said Monday that GDF Suez, the French utility, had expressed interest in taking a minority stake in the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, which is to run from Russia to Germany, Reuters reported from Moscow.<br />Gazprom said that such proposals had been made while its chief executive, Alexei Miller, met with GDF Suez executives on Monday in Paris, where GDF is based. GDF Suez plans to buy as much as 2.5 billion cubic meters, or 88 billion cubic feet, of natural gas per year from Nord Stream, which is being built by Gazprom, the German companies BASF and E.ON and the Dutch company Gasunie.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/22/business/OUKBS-UK-AUTOS-AUSTRALIA.php">Australia General Motors unit to build small car</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBdAyCN_MC6wLnAJO4R3Pw40JurislGOzT5e5rAvRCPz6hvjuOCliwEhYZssKti-tLpFzo-FcXtZrtr9tRd8wCXs5htVev-7ZjdnWaCt3J2cWkrm0K5X6CSkWe2VyBOfdIt20xQtGxO1k/s1600-h/DSC04112.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833562192676210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBdAyCN_MC6wLnAJO4R3Pw40JurislGOzT5e5rAvRCPz6hvjuOCliwEhYZssKti-tLpFzo-FcXtZrtr9tRd8wCXs5htVev-7ZjdnWaCt3J2cWkrm0K5X6CSkWe2VyBOfdIt20xQtGxO1k/s320/DSC04112.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Stella McCartney sets up shop at Paris's Palais Royal</strong><br />By Jessica Michault<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />PARIS: The shops of the Jardins du Palais Royal got a new neighbor this month. Now the antique stores, art galleries and toy shops will have a fashion maverick and rock royalty among the owners. The designer Stella McCartney has opened her first Paris flagship store in one of the cobblestone galleries that surround the tranquil tree-lined square.<br />Although located in the heart of the city, the Palais Royal, built by Cardinal Richelieu in the early 17th century, is not a luxury destination in the way that Avenue Montaigne or Rue Saint Honoré are for customers of high-end fashion. And that is why McCartney decided it was the right spot for her seven-year-old brand.<br />"We are more of a brand to be discovered by people and I think Palais Royal has just the right balance" of being known to Parisians and also getting "a little tourist action as well," said the designer as she gazed out of the windows of her new store.<br />Having just arrived from Tokyo where she opened another flagship store in the trendy Aoyama neighborhood, McCartney said she was feeling a bit overwhelmed. In addition of the Paris and Tokyo shops, she now has flagship stores in New York and London<br />The inside of the Paris store has a very different look than that of McCartney's other locations. There is a cool, modern feel with an undercurrent of femininity, but nothing is overtly girly. The light Japanese ash wood walls, cut in a book-matching style, catch what little light there is in the receded Palais Royal galleries and warm up the space. The tactile ceramic tiles used for display counters were designed by McCartney and three sculptural brass columns of shimmering metal that the designer calls "rain units" are used as clothing racks.<br />"I always like to keep little secret surprises and hide them in the changing rooms," said McCartney. This means galloping horses, a lifelong love of the designer, sculpted from layers of recycled cardboard, or the names of her kids carved into the paneling, which is reminiscent of the Shel Silverstein book "The Giving Tree."<br />The opening of two new stores in a time of economic crisis could be a worry for most brands. But McCartney is hopeful that in the hard times to come the added value of buying from a luxury company that is environmentally and animal friendly will give customers another reason to choose her brand.<br />The Stella McCartney store is situated near the end of the Palais Royal galleries at number 114-121 Galerie de Valois.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>From a hinterland, Hmong forge a home<br /></strong>By Simon Romero<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />CACAO, French Guiana: Ly Dao Ly gazed at the jungle beyond his groves of tropical fruit trees, rambutan and cupuaçu, on a recent afternoon. Under the equatorial sun, his thoughts drifted to the setting for the secret war in Southeast Asia that forced him to flee to this remote French outpost decades ago.<br />"Sometimes I imagine that I am seeing the mountains of Laos in those green hills," said Ly, 50, a farmer and baker who was born into the Hmong, the mountain tribe that waged a CIA-backed guerrilla war against the Communist Pathet Lao in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s.<br />Made into cold-war castoffs when the Communists won that proxy war in 1975, more than 100,000 Hmong (pronounced MONG) refugees were resettled around the world in places like St. Paul; Fresno, California; Thailand; France; Australia; and quietly, but successfully this former prison colony on South America's northeastern hump.<br />Since arriving more than 30 years ago, the Hmong, who account for only about 1.5 percent of French Guiana's 210,000 people, have thrived. Once penniless, the refugees and their families produce up to 80 percent of the fruit and vegetables sold in this overseas French department, which must import other food at a high cost from mainland France or Brazil.<br />"If it were not for the Hmong, we joke that we would starve in this strange place," said Mariangela Bragance, a former municipal council member for Kourou, a nearby city kept afloat by the satellite-launching activities at the Guiana Space Center.<br />Long viewed as outcasts in Laos and other parts of Southeast Asia, the Hmong here are known for their success, on display in their large homes with new Peugeot and Toyota pickup trucks parked outside. Their nearly homogenous enclaves in Cacao and two other villages, Javouhey and Régina, are unlike anywhere else on this continent.<br />Walking Cacao's dirt roads one hears mostly Hmong, interspersed with a bit of French. Some women wear sarongs. Merchants sell tapestries depicting the saga that led them to this jungle, after treks in the mid-1970s to Thai refugee camps from their mountain homeland in Laos, a former French colony.<br />"Our philosophy was to use our human capacity to support ourselves," said Ly Chao, 62, a Hmong agronomist who was one of the founders of the settlements here in the 1970s.<br />France gambled that the Hmong refugees, some of whom were living in French cities, could successfully develop a hinterland that had repelled earlier colonization efforts. "The gamble worked because after all the years of war we were ready to do something else," said Ly, the agronomist. "We were even ready to work the soil."<br />The first Hmong arrived from France in 1977 and were greeted with protests from the Creoles, an ethnic group descended from African slaves, who chafed at what was viewed as preferential treatment for a new ethnic group in an impoverished area. French authorities initially gave each Hmong a few dozen francs a day on which to survive.<br />The settlers pooled those payments to buy fertilizer and tractors. Slowly, after years of labor, the Hmong became self-sufficient. They now grow large quantities of previously scarce vegetables, like lettuce, and tropical varieties of fruit like cupuaçu, which is oblong, has a white pulp and is found in the Amazon basin.<br />Eventually, the tensions subsided. "The Hmong largely kept to themselves and were allowed to acculturate on their own terms," said Patrick Clarkin, an anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who studies the Hmong of French Guiana.<br />While the Hmong maintain ties with relatives abroad, they emphasize their own place in the diaspora. For instance, they refer to Hmong in the United States as Vang Pao Hmong, a nod to the influence wielded there by Vang Pao, 79, the exiled general in California who is facing charges in the United States of plotting to overthrow the Laotian government.<br />And academic studies have shown the Hmong here to have more robust physical health and less pessimism about their circumstances than their brethren in the United States, where some Hmong communities have had difficulty adapting to cities or suburbs and have been plagued by suicides and health problems.<br />"We miss Laos, of course, and I have a brother who says it is pleasant to live in Omaha," said Ly May Ha, 50, Ly Dao Ly's wife. Together they bake croissants and baguettes for sale in Cacao as the sun rises over the village each day. Later, they tend their orchards and pens filled with peccaries, a wild pig-like animal that is a delicacy here.<br />"Our life is in this place," she said, "where we are free to be ourselves."<br />The rhythms of existence here seem far removed from the cities where many Hmong have settled in the United States or France. On the weekends, young Hmong play pétanque, a game that, like bocce, consists of pitching metal balls at a target. Older men, sipping bottles of Heineken, boast of jungle hunts for peccaries and tapirs.<br />As in any small village, some younger Hmong complain of boredom and isolation. Hmong Lee, 40, who moved to mainland France for 10 years before returning, decided to settle for something between the farm founded by his parents and the bustle of a European city. He now works at a furniture store in the capital, Cayenne.<br />"This isn't Paris," he said, speaking about this obscure corner of South America. "But then again, who wants Paris when the sun shines here and we're free to be Hmong?"<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtN2fpMT7suqyOxTXNqWMswxfZNevSe3Ff-RAjS1jB54CnwgoXh-2WCDK9jCsrhtul58jewwRkrFE1s7-ZwthLCJWKFDxWSpgwYI4I_rYcSMWyszbgjo0R4tdj-2uqrSU8WP6kv4gqbm4/s1600-h/DSC04113.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833556911870466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtN2fpMT7suqyOxTXNqWMswxfZNevSe3Ff-RAjS1jB54CnwgoXh-2WCDK9jCsrhtul58jewwRkrFE1s7-ZwthLCJWKFDxWSpgwYI4I_rYcSMWyszbgjo0R4tdj-2uqrSU8WP6kv4gqbm4/s320/DSC04113.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Parents of China quake victims file lawsuit<br /></strong>By Edward Wong<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />DEYANG, China: A group of parents whose children were among the 127 killed in the collapse of an elementary school during the May earthquake that devastated western China have confirmed that they filed a lawsuit against government officials and a construction contractor. The lawsuit is the first filed by grieving and angry parents who say shoddy construction cost the children their lives.<br />Radio Free Asia reported the lawsuit in early December, but China's official news media have not mentioned it. This weekend, the parents confirmed the filing in telephone interviews. They said the court has yet to tell them whether it will hear the case.<br />The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 1 in a court here in the city of Deyang, in Sichuan Province, the region hit hardest by the May 12 earthquake, which left 88,000 people dead or missing. Up to 10,000 schoolchildren were killed as some 7,000 classrooms and dormitory rooms collapsed across the quake zone, according to government estimates.<br />In the following weeks, parents took to the streets in towns across Sichuan to demand that local officials investigate the construction of the schools.<br />In some cases, crying parents were taken away by riot police officers. Later in the summer, local governments promised compensation payments to parents if they signed agreements stating they would no longer demand investigations or complain about school construction.<br />The parents who filed the lawsuit on Dec. 1 are the fathers and mothers of children who died in the collapse of No. 2 Primary School in the town of Fuxin, where at least 127 students were killed. Many of the parents signed the compensation agreements, but some decided in the fall to go ahead with the lawsuit. The lawsuit names as defendants the town government of Fuxin; the education department of the nearby city of Mianzhu; the school principal; and the company that built the school.<br />Chen Xuefang, one of the plaintiffs, said that the parents were demanding compensation equivalent to $19,000 per child. Over the summer, the local government had offered parents the equivalent of $8,800 in cash and several thousand more dollars in postretirement pension payments if they agreed to drop the issue of the collapsed schools.<br />Zheng Rongqiong, whose 10-year-old daughter was among those killed at Fuxin No. 2, said that parents of 57 children were taking part in the lawsuit.<br />Officials from the city of Deyang, which oversees the administration of Mianzhu, have been pressing the parents to drop the lawsuit, she said, but the parents have refused.<br />Some parents have declined to join the lawsuit because they believe there is little or no chance of winning, and money spent on lawyers will be wasted, said Zheng, 35. The plaintiffs have contributed nearly $150 each to help pay for the travel expenses of a lawyer from Shanghai who has agreed to represent them.<br />Over the summer, many and possibly all of the parents now involved in the lawsuit signed the local government's agreement demanding silence in exchange for compensation payments, Zheng said. Some parents expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome and said they might file a formal petition with the central government in Beijing despite having signed the agreement.<br />"We hope that once we win this lawsuit, it will point out all the people responsible for the deaths of our children," Zheng said.<br />An official at the Mianzhu Education Department said Monday that he was aware of the lawsuit, but declined to discuss it over the telephone. A woman at the offices of the town government of Fuxin said by telephone that she had no immediate response to the suit.<br />In legal cases that involve politically sensitive issues, judges and lawyers in China often come under great pressure from government officials to keep the cases from going forward.<br />One parent said a court official met with several parents on Dec. 8 to say that the court would not accept the case. But the court has yet to give a formal answer.<br />In similar legal action, parents in three provinces filed lawsuits this fall against dairy companies after tens of thousands of children across China fell ill and at least four died from drinking milk and baby formula tainted with a toxic chemical called melamine.<br />Although local officials had been involved in covering up the poisonings, judges have so far declined to hear any lawsuits. After the earthquake, the central government assigned a committee of experts to look into the school collapses, but the committee has yet to issue a final report. In September, an official from the committee, Ma Zongjin, said at a news conference in Beijing that a rush to build schools during the Chinese economic boom might have led to shoddy construction that resulted in the student deaths. He said more than 1,000 schools had one of two major flaws they were built on the earthquake fault line or they were poorly constructed.<br />Government officials at all levels have tried to suppress discussion of the school collapses. A documentary that asks tough questions about a school collapse in the rural town of Muyu, in northern Sichuan, has attracted intense scrutiny from the central government.<br />The director, Pan Jianlin, showed the film, "Who Killed Our Children?" at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea in late October. Afterward, he told Reuters, people contacted his relatives and friends to urge that they press him to stop his work.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Pig that survived earthquake inspires Chinese<br /></strong>By Mark McDonald<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />HONG KONG: A pig that survived on charcoal and rainwater for 36 days while trapped under earthquake debris has been voted China's most inspirational animal for 2008, according to state media.<br />The 7.9-magnitude quake that struck Sichuan Province on May 12 collapsed schools, bridges, dams, houses - and a farm shed that trapped the pig. When it was finally rescued June 17, the animal was a mere slip of a thing at 50 kilograms, or 110 pounds, down from its pre-quake weight of 150 kilograms.<br />The farmers who owned the pig sold him for $430 to Fan Jianchuan, the owner of a private museum in the ancient town of Anren, near the city of Chengdu. Fan put the plucky survivor into a livestock exhibit at the museum and gave him a new name - Zhu Jianqiang, meaning Strong-Willed Pig. Fan also took out a 10-year life insurance policy on the pig, who became a nationwide media sensation.<br />Fan, a real estate developer, started his museum in 2005 to commemorate Chinese troops who fought the Japanese in World War II. But he has since added other patriotic and inspirational exhibits, including a memorial to the Sichuan earthquake victims. Among the items on display - a dusty school backpack, a stuffed green frog, a photograph of a dead child's hand still gripping a pen.<br />The star attraction, however, has been Strong-Willed Pig.<br />He was voted China's most inspirational animal in a poll on the online forum Red Net, according to the state newspaper China Daily. The other spots in the top 10 went to six dogs, a bird, a turtle and a cat. This was the second straight victory for a pig: Last year's winner was a sow that fought off a butcher trying to slaughter its "husband."<br />It seems, however, that Strong-Willed Pig has not handled his celebrity very well. One of his handlers, quoted by the newspaper, said the pig has become cranky, fat and lazy, unwilling even to walk around his pen or raise its snout for pictures.<br />The pig, the handler said, "has developed a temper that many of its fans may not want to see."<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>China seeks 3.6 million quilts for quake survivors</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BEIJING: Quake survivors living in prefabricated housing in China's mountainous Sichuan province need 3.6 million quilts and the same number of cotton-padded clothes to survive the winter, state media said on Monday.<br />More than 80,000 people were killed in the May 12 disaster, with millions now living in resettlement sites surrounded by the rubble of their old homes and facing a colder winter than normal.<br />"Weather experts have forecast that temperatures in the quake-hit areas will be 0.5 degree Celsius to 1 C lower than usual. The areas are likely to get more rain, snow and frost too," the China Daily said, quoting provincial government officials.<br />The temperature was 4 C (39 Fahrenheit) on Monday while the temperature in the Chinese capital, Beijing, in the north, was well below freezing.<br />The quake damaged the homes of more than 3.5 million families in rural areas, where Spartan coal-pellet heating is the norm.<br />"Though many of these families have been moved to proper structures, about 530,000 of them will have to stay in prefabricated houses this winter," the newspaper said.<br />(Reporting by Nick Macfie)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilndOTabwm_ckhYUhoPDct_twTGfW7jdv33sqvitXw2YFkFvH_qk0oAnAfQbRCh_3qafa7_FIio9NjFORmA_HemlPCraRukFOMaDESzRIaItd_ZMYyZ4v8C1e72TI-3RT4Rd7pQsDfzTA/s1600-h/DSC04114.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833557566778098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilndOTabwm_ckhYUhoPDct_twTGfW7jdv33sqvitXw2YFkFvH_qk0oAnAfQbRCh_3qafa7_FIio9NjFORmA_HemlPCraRukFOMaDESzRIaItd_ZMYyZ4v8C1e72TI-3RT4Rd7pQsDfzTA/s320/DSC04114.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Is Putin getting an opening to return as president?<br /></strong>By Clifford J. Levy<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />MOSCOW: The Kremlin's plan to extend the term of the Russian presidency to six years from four years received final legislative backing on Monday, but speculation over what the change meant for Vladimir Putin's future showed no signs of abating.<br />Both Putin, the prime minister and former president, and his protégée, President Dmitri Medvedev, have said the longer term is intended to strengthen the presidency. In recent weeks, they have both brushed aside questions about whether its real goal is to pave the way for Putin to return to the presidency relatively soon.<br />The speculation is that Medvedev would resign in the coming months and cede the post to Putin, who could then serve for six years.<br />On Monday, after the upper house of Parliament acted on the constitutional revision, the chamber's speaker, Sergei Mironov, a close Putin ally, also sought to dampen questions about the proposal.<br />"The fact that these changes are being carried out in the first year of a presidency and of a Parliament," Mironov said, "indicates that they are not opportunistic, not occurring because of impending elections and not aimed at specific people. They respond to a request of Russian society for the stability of government and political development."<br />Medvedev introduced the proposal in November, only six months after taking office. He also called for increasing the term of members of Parliament to five years from four years. Medvedev was elected president with the endorsement of Putin, who was barred by the Constitution from running for a third consecutive presidential term.<br />The two have been ruling as a tandem, though Putin is widely considered Russia's paramount leader.<br />The Kremlin pushed Medvedev's proposal assertively, and it encountered little opposition as it was approved by Parliament and regional legislatures.<br />Still, people in political circles have continued to debate it, in part because Medvedev introduced it so soon after taking power. The conjecture has only deepened with the financial crisis, which has touched off a wave of capital flight from the country, reversing years of strong growth when the price of oil was high.<br />The prime minister, rather than the president, has traditionally received the blame in Russia in times of national distress, and some analysts have said Putin would prefer not to continue in the job for that reason during the financial crisis.<br />"The goal of the 'amendments' special operation was to rescue the national leader from the prime minister's responsibility for the state of economy and give him a chance to dance at the new old post," Andrei Piontkovsky, a Kremlin critic, wrote on Monday in Grani.ru, an online journal.<br />Anti-graft laws advance<br />Senators passed anti-corruption laws proposed Monday by Medvedev, but some lawmakers expressed doubts that the measures would be successful after being watered down, Reuters reported from Moscow.<br />Corruption is widespread in Russia and many Russians mistrust the state.<br />The anti-corruption bill, approved earlier by the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, was backed by 139 members of the upper house, or Federation Council. One senator voted against and two abstained.<br />Some senators, usually loyal to the president, said the changes offered few weapons for fighting graft.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>European security agency must end mission in Georgia<br /></strong>By Ellen Barry<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />MOSCOW: The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe must end its 16-year mission in Georgia early next year because it is unable to resolve a deadlock with Russia, one of its member states, over whether to treat the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign nations.<br />At a meeting Monday at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, Russia's envoy to the organization refused to extend the Georgia mission, which expires Dec. 31, unless members agreed that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were separate countries. Though Russia is the only one of the organization's 56 member states that has formally recognized the enclaves, the organization works by consensus.<br />In an interview, the Russian ambassador to the organization, Anvar Azimov, called his counterparts in the OSCE "inflexible and unconstructive" for refusing to join Russia in recognizing the enclaves.<br />"In my opinion, my colleagues do not want to recognize an evident fact," he said. "Sooner or later, they will understand that this is the reality. The train has gone, and the process is irreversible."<br />The decision prompted furious reactions from fellow diplomats and the Georgian authorities. Since 1992, the organization has operated a mission focused on the Georgian-Ossetian conflict, and its staff has grown to around 200. For years, the mission oversaw negotiations between clashing sides in South Ossetia, and it now includes 28 trained military monitors and sponsors various human rights and democracy-building programs.<br />Julie Finley, the U.S. envoy to the group, said the move would undermine stability throughout the Caucasus, a region where multiple ethnic conflicts risk erupting into all-out war.<br />"I'm fascinated by the fact that a so-called power chooses to be the only oarsman in the boat that doesn't put an oar in the water," she said. "If you're big, you're big, and you demonstrate your bigness by being constructive."<br />"I don't think you would find this behavior today out of the leadership of China," she added. "What are these people thinking?"<br />After war broke out in South Ossetia in August, the OSCE's military monitors were barred by Russian and Ossetian authorities from working inside South Ossetia. Instead, they have patrolled outside its boundaries, together with 200 unarmed civilian monitors from the European Union, often parking their conspicuously flagged vehicles in the tense space between Georgian and Ossetian checkpoints.<br />In an attempt to bridge the diplomatic gap, Finland proposed parallel, independent Georgian field offices in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital, and Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, but Russia could not accept the linkage. Azimov said that Russia had put forward its own compromise - a three-month extension of the mandate that made it clear South Ossetia and Abkhazia were not part of Georgia - but that Western governments had rejected the idea.<br />Aleksi Harkonen, the Finnish ambassador to the group and head of Finland's OSCE chairmanship task force, said the closure of the mission would leave the EU - in which Russia has no voice - as the primary international body monitoring the cease-fire.<br />"We have told the Russians to think twice," he said, but without success. "They have a policy line where they really don't care how much they isolate themselves."<br />The mission will begin the closure process in January against the protests of Georgian authorities, who say an international presence is important to preventing further conflict.<br />"This action is just another illustration of Russia's challenge to Georgia's sovereignty and challenge to international institutions and international law and order" said Giga Bokeria, deputy foreign minister of Georgia. "They basically just don't want to have an international presence on the ground. They don't want anyone outside to monitor their activities."Russia plans arms buildup<br />Russia plans a huge increase in its weapons procurement for three years beginning in 2009, with 300 tanks, 14 warships and almost 50 airplanes, a senior government official said Monday, Reuters reported from Moscow.<br />The official, Vladislav Putilin, deputy head of the military-industrial commission, said after a cabinet meeting that the government planned to allocate 4 trillion rubles, or about $142 billion, to bankroll equipment purchases to modernize its armed forces.<br />The move comes after Russia's five-day war with Georgia in August. Russia won, but the conflict exposed a Soviet-style army with obsolete equipment, poorly coordinated command, outdated communications and a lack of spy drones and high-precision bombs.<br />Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov afterward touted a military overhaul - Russia's most radical since the end of World War II - aiming to turn the army into a smaller, but more mobile and better-equipped force.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzHyjHBMrqeQwlAPVqBYRrmN2eIXvh7Zbbc-FQ4GPoblpY65suqrJMpNiyIKuJPSI1176UwpbnHGebwIR_LYbCOVOujIH4EIdkeCPhHB0JBX02PcV-LzkFUAwq2ikWPKaHVXuQC5FFfco/s1600-h/DSC04115.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833204302568018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzHyjHBMrqeQwlAPVqBYRrmN2eIXvh7Zbbc-FQ4GPoblpY65suqrJMpNiyIKuJPSI1176UwpbnHGebwIR_LYbCOVOujIH4EIdkeCPhHB0JBX02PcV-LzkFUAwq2ikWPKaHVXuQC5FFfco/s320/DSC04115.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Toyota expects first operating loss in 70 years</strong><br />By Martin Fackler<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />TOKYO: Toyota Motor announced Monday that it expected its first loss in 70 years in its core vehicle-making business, underscoring how pain from the current economic crisis was spreading across the global auto industry.<br />Analysts said the fact that Toyota was stumbling, even with its stable of fuel-efficient models, pointed to still harder times ahead for other automakers, especially those like the Big Three in the United States, which have depended on the gas guzzlers that have fallen out of favor.<br />Toyota also did not project the number of cars it expected to sell in the new year, as it normally does in December, which analysts said further highlighted the industry's uncertain future.<br />With about $18.5 billion in cash and relatively little debt, Toyota is still in far better shape to weather the downturn than the U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler, which received $17.4 billion in emergency loans Friday from Washington.<br />Still, analysts said Toyota's downward revision, its second in two months, underscored the way the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression was threatening even the healthiest auto companies. While GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler have been hit particularly hard, their global counterparts in Asia, Europe and the United States will all start reporting losses as well, analysts said.<br />Analysts said they expected next year to be even more painful for the industry than this one, amid forecasts that the global economy would continue to slide until at least the summer. This could cause a shakeout, driving cash-strapped weaker companies into the arms of a smaller number of bigger, richer players.<br />"It is just a matter of time before all major automakers are losing money," said Koji Endo, an auto analyst in Tokyo for Credit Suisse Securities. "And things will just get worse next year, when companies start losing money for the second consecutive year."<br />On Monday, Toyota said it expected a loss during the current fiscal year of ¥150 billion, or $1.66 billion, from its auto operations. Toyota said that would be its first operating loss since 1938, a year after the company was founded.<br />A loss this year would also be a huge reversal from the ¥2.3 trillion in operating profit Toyota earned in the past fiscal year.<br />Toyota, the Japanese auto giant that has been neck and neck with GM for the status of the largest vehicle maker in the world, said it still expected to eke out a narrow net profit of ¥50 billion for its group, which also includes the automaker Daihatsu and the truck maker Hino. Toyota did not specify what accounted for the net profit, but it could be because of investments not included in the core business performance reflected in operating income.<br />Toyota, which just a few months ago seemed unstoppable after eight consecutive years of record profits, said it had suffered from plunging vehicle sales, not only in North America but even in once-promising emerging markets, which many had hoped would prove immune to the U.S. malaise.<br />"The change in the world economy is of a magnitude that comes once every hundred years," Toyota's president, Katsuaki Watanabe, said at a news conference in Nagoya, Japan, near the company's Toyota City headquarters. "We are facing an unprecedented emergency."<br />Watanabe said the company would respond by suspending investment in new plants, including the delay of a new factory in Mississippi announced last week, and by moving some production lines to single shifts. The company has even unplugged electric hand dryers at some offices in an effort to cut costs.<br />In Japan, this could lead to a realignment of the eight automakers in the country. They are globally competitive but have begun feeling increasing pain from the global downturn.<br />On Monday it was becoming clearer that automakers worldwide were sharing the pain.<br />The two South Korea carmaking affiliates, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors cut their joint 2008 sales forecast by 12.5 percent and said they would freeze pay for managers amid slumping vehicle demand. Separately, Ssangyong Motor, also of South Korea, said it might not be able to meet its December payroll on time.<br />Europe has not been immune to the pain.<br />Last week, the Italian automaker Fiat extended its program of temporary plant closures in Italy by two months into February. Fiat acknowledged this month that its car business needed a partner to survive the economic crisis.<br />PSA Peugeot Citroën, the top French carmaker, has temporarily halted production in dozens of factories across the country in recent weeks.<br />Autos sold in Europe by American carmakers are slumping more than their rivals, as consumers fear their manufacturers might not survive. In November, the European sales of GM fell 39 percent and those of Chrysler fell 56 percent.<br />For Japanese carmakers, the biggest sales drops have come in the United States, traditionally the Japanese companies' most profitable market. After years of increasing market share at the Big Three's expense, Japanese companies are experiencing sharply lower sales. In November, Toyota's U.S. sales dropped 33.9 percent and Honda Motor's 31.6 percent, faring just slightly better than GM, which had a 41 percent decline.<br />Sales are also down in their home market, both because of the crisis and longer-term demographics in rapidly aging Japan. Last week, an industry group said that new car sales in Japan would fall below five million vehicles next year for the first time in 31 years.<br />Japanese automakers have responded by cutting global production by 2.2 million vehicles during the current fiscal year. They have also cut profit forecasts, laid off workers and delayed investment in new factories.<br />Last week Honda, Japan's second-largest carmaker, cut its profit forecast for the current fiscal year by two-thirds. The company's president, Takeo Fukui, spoke of an "abrupt change" in the conditions facing the global industry, a "severe business environment" and a "sharp sales downturn" since mid-September.<br />The auto slowdown has worsened an increasingly nasty recession in Japan's export-dependent economy, the world's largest after the United States. On Monday, the Finance Ministry in Japan said exports had plunged 26.7 percent in November, the largest drop in 28 years, to push the nation into a rare trade deficit for the month.<br />The financial turmoil has also hurt Japanese carmakers by driving up the value of the yen, which has jumped some 25 percent since last summer. A higher yen makes Japanese autos and other products more expensive overseas.<br />On Monday, Toyota cited the currency as one reason for revising its forecast. Analysts say Toyota has been seen as the most vulnerable of Japan's big automakers because it had been investing heavily in new products, including a full-sized pickup truck for the U.S. market, just when auto sales started to fall.<br />"They've caught the same cold that Detroit has caught," said Christopher Richter, a senior analyst in Tokyo at Calyon Capital Markets Asia. "Everything is going wrong for Toyota this year."<br />On Monday, Toyota also lowered its worldwide vehicle sales forecast for the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, to 7.54 million vehicles, far below the 8.9 million vehicles it sold last year. It said the decline would be particularly large in the United States, where it expected to sell 2.17 million vehicles this fiscal year, down from 2.96 million last year.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/business/23markets.php">U.S. shares turn lower amid quiet trading</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/europe/london.php">Woolworths closing all of its stores</a><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>In Madoff's wake, scrutiny of accounting firms<br /></strong>By Michael J. de la Merced<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />As more details unfurl in the Bernard Madoff fraud case, so do the lawsuits. And the big accounting firms, which oversaw many of the feeder funds that funneled billions of dollars into what prosecutors describe as the largest Ponzi scheme ever perpetrated, are likely to be among the defendants.<br />Though Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities itself was audited by small firms, questions are arising over how major firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG overlooked several red flags related to the operations over a number of years. The big accounting firms are likely to face queries about why they gave their seal of accounting to the astoundingly steady positive returns booked by a fund manager whose investment strategy was nearly completely opaque.<br />One investor in a feeder fund, New York Law School, has already sued BDO Seidman, the auditor of one of its money managers, arguing that the firm failed to notice warning signs related to the $50 billion scandal.<br />The district attorney for Rockland County, New York, Thomas Zugibe, has also begun inquiries into Friehling & Horowitz, the three-person accounting firm that provided services to Madoff's firm. Many have asked how a company as small as Friehling a three-employee firm based in New City, New York, that occupies a 13-foot-by-18-foot storefront space in an office plaza could have handled an operation as large as Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Friehling & Horowitz is also the subject of a preliminary ethics investigation by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants started after the scandal broke.<br />Another small accounting firm, Sosnik Bell, handled paperwork for investors in Madoff's firm, according to Clusterstock, a financial news blog. Sosnik Bell, based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, processed forms for these investors, and then forwarded its work to the investors' own accountants. Executives from Sosnik Bell could not be reached for comment.<br />A more lucrative place for victims of the fraud, however, are at the giant accounting firms that audited the investment managers who directed money into Madoff's firm.<br />In several other fraud cases, accounting firms, which are responsible for scrutinizing the financial underpinnings of companies, have become targets for investor lawsuits. Ernst & Young paid $300 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Cendant related to fraud at one of the conglomerate's subsidiaries. It had earlier paid $335 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Cendant shareholders.<br />Also last year, Pricewaterhouse agreed to pay $225 million to settle auditing malpractice claims tied to the Tyco scandal, which saw the convictions of top executives for grand larceny, conspiracy and securities fraud. Pricewaterhouse's payment amounted to about 7 percent of total amount paid in Tyco lawsuits.<br />But the Madoff case presents an unusual situation, said Scott Berman, a partner at the law firm Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman who represents investors in several feeder funds. Previous cases focused on the auditors of the firm at the center of the scandal, not the auditors of investment managers one rung removed.<br />"I expect that this is an issue that has not been litigated before," Berman said.<br />With many of the feeder funds' managers having taken losses from their own personal exposure to Madoff's firm, the accounting firms may be a likely target for investors seeking to recoup at least some of their money.<br />PricewaterhouseCoopers was the main auditor for Sentry, the largest fund run by Fairfield Greenwich Group, the $14.1 billion investment manager that has lost the most money so far in the Madoff scandal. The accounting firm was tasked with minding Sentry, which had about $7.5 billion invested in Madoff's firm.<br />"The company has not yet settled on a legal strategy," said a Fairfield spokesman, Thomas Mulligan.<br />A spokesman for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mike Davies, said, "No claim has been asserted against the PWC member firm in relation to Madoff, and we know of no valid basis for any claim."<br />The lawsuit by New York Law School, filed in federal court in New York last week, names J. Ezra Merkin, the money manager who placed $3 million of the school's money into Madoff's firm. But it also sues BDO Seidman, the American arm of BDO International and the auditor for one of Merkin's funds, Ascot Partners.<br />In its lawsuit, New York Law School said that BDO Seidman had "utterly failed" in its auditing of Ascot Partners. The lawsuit says that BDO Seidman failed to flag Ascot's reliance on a single money manager, Madoff, as well as Madoff's reliance on Friehling & Horowitz.<br />BDO Seidman has said that it never audited Madoff's firm, just Merkin's, and that its audits of Ascot Partners "conformed to all professional standards."<br />Berman, however, said the firm had a duty to dig deeper. "I don't think that they can simply, blindly accept what Madoff did without doing their own auditing work," he said.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Hedge fund's gains from Madoff are under scrutiny</strong><br />By Alex Berenson and Eric Konigsberg<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Since Bernard Madoff was arrested less than two weeks ago in connection with a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Fairfield Greenwich Group has portrayed itself as an unwitting victim of the fraud, the biggest of Madoff's many losers.<br />Clients of Fairfield, a secretive hedge fund advisory company based in Connecticut, lost $7.3 billion to Madoff's fund. Prosecutors say the fund was a Ponzi scam that depended on new investment money to make payments on earlier investments. But for Fairfield, working with Madoff was hugely profitable.<br />Internal documents from Fairfield show that the firm took more than $500 million in fees since 2003 alone from the money it placed with Madoff. Nearly all those fees went to a handful of Fairfield executives, including Walter Noel, Fairfield's founder, who used the money to build a glamorous life, splitting his time among homes in New York, Connecticut, Florida and the Caribbean.<br />As it raised money all over the world, Fairfield also made detailed pledges about how it would monitor and track Madoff's investments, the documents show. Now, investors and regulators are sure to ask whether Fairfield made good on those promises, or whether it was a facilitator of the Madoff scandal as well as a victim.<br />Similar questions may arise for the dozens of banks and hedge funds around the world that reaped extraordinary fees for steering investments to Madoff over the past decade. None of them, however, earned more from their Madoff business than Fairfield did during the firms' 20-year relationship.<br />Fairfield promised its investors that money could not be moved from its accounts with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities without two signatures. It said that it would independently calculate the value of the funds it invested at Madoff's firm at least once a week. It promised to reconcile statements from individual trades with Madoff's custodial records.<br />It is not clear what Fairfield did to make good on those pledges.<br />A spokesman for Fairfield, Thomas Mulligan, offered a statement characterizing the firm as a victim of Madoff.<br />"Fairfield Greenwich Group is in the process of gathering and reviewing all of the factual information relevant to its having been defrauded by Bernard Madoff," Mulligan said in the written statement. "It made efforts to verify the information it received from Madoff."<br />"Following its review, Fairfield Greenwich expects to be in a position to provide more specifics," he said.<br />Mulligan also said that Fairfield Greenwich, and its partners, had about $60 million invested with Madoff.<br />That sum, while significant, is less than 1 percent of the overall amount that the firm placed with Madoff, and barely 10 percent of the fees that Fairfield had reaped since 2003 from its client investments with Madoff.<br />Fairfield raised money for Madoff mainly through a fund called Fairfield Sentry, which supposedly had $7 billion in assets by 2007.<br />As it sought new investors for Fairfield Sentry, Fairfield highlighted its close control over the fund and the protections it would provide investors.<br />In a "due diligence questionnaire" made available to potential investors in Sentry, Fairfield promised that it was calculating the value of Sentry's assets weekly and monthly. It also said Citco Fund Services, an independent hedge fund administrator based in the Netherlands, was separately calculating the value of Sentry's assets each month.<br />Further, Fairfield promised that both it and Citco were double-checking the monthly statements it received from Madoff's firm against records of the assets in the fund. To prevent unauthorized stock trades or the unauthorized removal of cash from Sentry's accounts, "the movement of cash among the Fund's accounts requires two signatures," Sentry said.<br />Mulligan did not respond to questions about whether Madoff could have moved money or securities out of Fairfield Sentry's accounts without its approval. Reached Friday, a manager at Citco Fund Services in Amsterdam asked for questions via e-mail, then did not respond to them.<br />Another document, this one prepared in 2007 as Fairfield Greenwich considered selling itself in what at the time was a very rich market for hedge-fund advisory companies, shows just how much money it had made from its relationship with Madoff.<br />According to the document, Fairfield generated $250 million in revenue and $200 million in profit for the year that ended Sept. 30, 2007. Nearly 65 percent of that money came from fees on Sentry, and nearly all the profits were distributed among the firm's 21 partners.<br />Fairfield's employees were also lavishly compensated, with at least four receiving more than $5 million in pay.<br />In early 2008, several private equity and investment firms were approached by Fairfield about purchasing a share of the company. A partner of one that considered buying a stake that he estimated was between one-third and one-half of Fairfield - the firm was valuing itself somewhere between $1 billion and $1.5 billion - said that he had been scared off about 20 minutes into his initial meeting with a team of Fairfield managers.<br />"They were just incredibly squishy and vague, even during the warm-up," said the prospective buyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement with Fairfield. "I asked them to tell me about the manager of the fund Sentry feeds into, and I was told, 'We don't really talk about him."'<br />Like Madoff's firm, Fairfield was at least in part a family business. Four of Noel's sons-in-law worked at Fairfield. But unlike Madoff, Fairfield's partners, led by Noel, were not shy about spending their money and taking a high profile in wealthy New York society circles.<br />"The last few years, they really made a play to be a part of that New York-Southampton social axis," David Patrick Columbia, the editor of NewYorkSocialDiary.com, said of Noel and his family. "It happened so fast that you really noticed them."<br />Noel, whose primary residence and office remain in Greenwich, Connecticut, has at least five luxury homes. Along with his Greenwich house, whose value has been estimated at $4.2 million, he has homes in Southampton, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida. And since 2000, the Noels have also maintained an apartment in New York. The combined value of those homes is more than $20 million.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>With Stevens's fall, pipeline for lobbyists shutting off</strong><br />By David D. Kirkpatrick<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Until recently, there were few better ways to start a lobbying career than by leaving the office of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.<br />With 40 years of seniority on important Senate committees, Stevens, a Republican, wielded unrivaled power over industries like fishing, forestry, communications, aviation and the military, steering billions each year to pet Alaskan projects like Eskimo whaling, missile defense and even salmon-based dog treats called Yummy Chummies.<br />His power made his good will a valuable commodity on K Street, where many lobbying firms are located. During the past five years, just nine lobbyists and firms known primarily for their ties to Stevens reported over $60 million in lobbyist fees, not including other income for less direct "consulting." The most recent person to leave his staff to become a lobbyist reported fees of more than $800,000 in just the last 18 months.<br />So when Alaskan voters narrowly rejected Stevens's bid for re-election last month, just days after a jury convicted him of federal ethics violations, it was in some ways like the closing of the plant in a company town.<br />"It is sort of a miasma of 'Wow, no Ted Stevens tomorrow?' " said Ronald Birch, Stevens's first chief of staff and the informal dean of what might be called the Stevens lobby.<br />Birch was the first person to open a Washington office specializing in lobbying the senator, and one of his partners is the senator's brother-in-law, William Bittner, who has shared a series of profitable real estate investments with Stevens as well.<br />Although his law firm has a big practice in Anchorage, Birch said, "I would be Pollyannaish if I didn't think some of our clients would say 'Thank you very much, we are going to go find Obama's new best friend.' "<br />Others turned to dark humor, lashing out at the voters who cut off the main wellspring of the political pork that Alaskans and their lobbyists have enjoyed for so long. "They don't understand the connection between Ted and the way of life they have come to take for granted," read one e-mail message circulating among former Stevens staff members on K Street. "For those of us long on the dole, the coming reality will take some getting used to."<br />Through a spokesman, Stevens declined to comment. He will be succeeded in January at the start of the new Congress by a Democrat, Mark Begich.<br />Stevens's former aides are hardly the only Washington lobbyists to rise and fall with a single congressional patron. Representative John Dingell, the powerful Michigan Democrat first elected in 1955, long sustained a coterie of lobbyists sometimes known as the Dingell Bar. They, too, are feeling the pinch at the moment from his recent loss to Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, of the gavel as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.<br />But Stevens Alaska's "Uncle Ted" is in a class by himself. For most of the last decade he was a dominant voice on both the Senate appropriations and commerce committees, which govern federal spending and business regulation. He had formed such a tight alliance with Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a Democratic counterpart on both panels they called each other "brother" or sometimes "co-chairman" that their influence barely waned when one or the other party lost power.<br />"One of the things that made a Stevens lobbyist so valuable is that he could deliver," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers who studies the Senate. "When somebody who had his ear said something would happen, it usually happened. You could really trade on it. It was the coin of the realm."<br />Stevens's preference for one lobbyist over another was big news in industry trade publications, and he did not hesitate to exert his influence.<br />When his friend and former aide Mitch Rose was angling for a job as president of the National Association of Broadcasters three years ago one of the loftiest perches on K Street, which had paid its previous occupant more than $1 million a year Stevens and his staff all but threatened to shut out any other hires. "Regardless of what the NAB does or doesn't do, Senator Stevens's go-to guy on broadcasting issues will still be Mitch Rose," a top Stevens aide, Lisa Sutherland, told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, warning that Rose's rival "starts with a serious handicap, not knowing the issues and not knowing the people."<br />When the group passed over Rose nonetheless, Stevens toasted his protégé to a room of communications industry lobbyists at a start-up party for his new one-man lobbying shop. Bolstered by the endorsement, Rose reaped more than $1.2 million in lobbying fees over the next nine months, according to his filings.<br />And what of the discussed boycott? To maintain an open line to Stevens, the association hired Sutherland, who left Stevens not long after delivering those warnings to open her own one-woman consulting and lobbying shop, Creative Government Solutions. After working for Stevens for more than 20 years, virtually her entire career, she has reported nearly $900,000 in lobbying fees over the last 18 months, including more than $200,000 in fees from the broadcasters. Other clients include Motorola, U.S. Telecom and the National Business Aviation Association, all with important interests before Stevens.<br />Sutherland, who declined to comment, is married to a lobbyist, Scott Sutherland. He works for the hunting and conservation group Ducks Unlimited, for which Stevens has allocated more than $3 million in federal spending since 2005 to map Alaskan wilderness. A spokesman for the organization said the project and its financing had nothing to do with the Sutherlands' marriage.<br />Rose, who worked for Senator Bob Dole for four years before spending nine years with Stevens, noted that he had broadened his contacts on Capitol Hill by spending six years as a lobbyist with the Walt Disney Company immediately after leaving Stevens's office in 2000. "When I was at Disney we dealt with a lot of people," Rose said. "Stevens was only a part of it."<br />Earl Comstock, a lobbyist and former Stevens staff member known for his close ties to the senator, represents a mixture of telecommunications and fishing companies as well as Alaskan concerns like Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, the Charter Halibut Task Force and the city of Kodiak.<br />Stevens's departure "certainly isn't helpful," Comstock said. "But I am not an access lobbyist. I am an issues lobbyist," Comstock continued, saying clients hired him because of his policy expertise.<br />Sometimes, Comstock explained, his job was to translate clients' arguments into the terms of most interest to the senator: the sometimes-parochial interests of Alaska. "Part of the reason why someone might hire me is to help them figure out a way to say, 'Even though this is not directly an Alaskan issue, here is why you ought to be interested,' " Comstock said.<br />Stevens "was progressively parochial," Rose agreed. "If you were rolling out a new wireless technology, 'Could it be demoed in Alaska?' That was always the catechism," he said. (The mobile phone service in Alaska is remarkably good, several mayors said.)<br />Critics have charged that Stevens assisted his aides-turned-lobbyists with federal money in more direct ways, too. He earmarked money to buy a property in Seward owned by one, to build a bridge connecting Anchorage to properties owned by two and to help the brother of a former aide-turned-lobbyist start the Arctic Paws salmon dog treat business. "We have Ted Stevens to thank for it," the brother, Brett Gibson, told The Associated Press in an interview about his business.<br />Several clients represented by Stevens specialists said that they had hired their lobbyists only for their policy expertise, without regard to connections. But some acknowledged privately that they were rethinking their lobbying contracts now that Stevens is leaving the Senate.<br />"The word I would use is access," said Mayor Bruce Botelho of Juneau, explaining his city's decision to hire a former Stevens aide, John Roots, to lobby the senator on its behalf. As for whether the city would retain Roots after Stevens had gone, Botelho added, "I am not prepared to say."<br />( Roots said he did not expect his business to suffer, emphasizing that he had not worked for Stevens since 1995.)<br />Jim Whitaker, the mayor of the borough of Fairbanks, said his municipality currently retained two lobbying firms, Birch's firm and another called Blue Water Strategies, because of their ties to Stevens. He had observed the cluster of Stevens-related Washington lobbyists and considered it "something to take advantage of," he said. But Whitaker is considering discontinuing those contracts. "I have thought about it," he said. "I am in a wait-and-see mode."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Cheney defends Bush and derides Biden<br /></strong>By Rachel L. Swarns<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Vice President Dick Cheney, in a television interview, defended the White House's use of broad executive powers during the last eight years, saying he believed that historians would ultimately look favorably on the Bush administration's efforts to keep the nation safe.<br />Cheney said the Bush White House had been justified in expanding executive authority across a broad range of policy, including the war in Iraq, treatment of terrorism suspects and the domestic wiretapping program. And he said the president "doesn't have to check with anybody" - not Congress, not the courts - before launching a nuclear attack to defend the nation "because of the nature of the world we live in" since the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001.<br />The vice president also sharply criticized Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr., offering a pointed response when asked about Biden's plans to operate differently from him as vice president and about a remark by Biden during the vice-presidential debate that Cheney had been "the most dangerous vice president we've had in American history."<br />"If he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that's obviously his call," Cheney said of Biden in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." He added that President-elect Barack Obama "will decide what he wants in a vice president. And apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."<br />It was the second interview that the normally media-averse vice president granted in a week, just short of a month before he and Bush are to leave office. Cheney's unapologetic tone was in marked contrast to that in several recent interviews in which he has been reflective, expressing regrets about his failure to win passage of immigration legislation and to change the tone of the debate in Washington.<br />When asked about another comment Biden made during the vice-presidential debate, Cheney said the vice president-elect "can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature, which provides for the executive."<br />There is ample historical precedent, Cheney said, for the Bush administration's policies.<br />"If you think about what Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War, what FDR did during World War II," Cheney said, referring to Franklin Roosevelt by his initials. "They went far beyond anything we've done in a global war on terror. But we have exercised, I think, the legitimate authority of the president under Article II of the Constitution as commander in chief in order to put in place policies and programs that have successfully defended the nation."<br />Cheney also said the Supreme Court was "wrong" to override the Bush administration's initial policy of detaining terrorism suspects without granting them access to the protections of the Geneva Convention or granting them the right to challenge their detention.<br />And he said he strongly disagreed with Bush's decision to fire Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, saying, "he did a good job for us."<br />"I did disagree with that decision," Cheney said. "The president doesn't always take my advice."<br />In a separate interview on "This Week" on ABC on Sunday, Biden described his approach to the vice presidency, saying his primary role would be to offer Obama what he described as "the best, sagest, most accurate, most insightful advice."<br />The vice president-elect said he would "restore the balance" to the office, and he offered his own critical assessment of Cheney, saying the vice president's recommendations to Bush on the war and counterterrorism issues were "not healthy for our foreign policy, not healthy for our national security."<br />"His notion of a unitary executive, meaning that, in time of war, essentially all power, you know, goes to the executive, I think is dead wrong," Biden said.<br />"I think it caused this administration, in adopting that notion, to overstep its constitutional bounds, but, at a minimum, to weaken our standing in the world and weaken our security," he said.<br />Biden said the information that he had been given in daily intelligence briefings had only strengthened his belief that Bush and Cheney had mishandled counterterrorism policy.<br />Biden said that he was still committed to closing the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that he remained critical of the Bush administration's surveillance and detention programs, saying, "we have created, not dissuaded, more terrorists, as a consequence of this policy."<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br /><strong>Paul Krugman: Life without bubbles</strong><br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />America.<br />Whatever the new administration does, we're in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic hell. After that, things should get better, as President Barack Obama's stimulus plan - O.K., I'm told that the politically correct term is now "economic recovery plan" - begins to gain traction. Late next year the economy should begin to stabilize, and I'm fairly optimistic about 2010.<br />But what comes after that?<br />Right now everyone is talking about, say, two years of economic stimulus - which makes sense as a planning horizon. Too much of the economic commentary I've been reading seems to assume, however, that that's really all we'll need - that once a burst of deficit spending turns the economy around we can quickly go back to business as usual.<br />In fact, however, things can't just go back to the way they were before the current crisis. And I hope the Obama people understand that.<br />The prosperity of a few years ago, such as it was - profits were terrific, wages not so much - depended on a huge bubble in housing, which replaced an earlier huge bubble in stocks. And since the housing bubble isn't coming back, the spending that sustained the economy in the pre-crisis years isn't coming back either.<br />To be more specific: the severe housing slump we're experiencing will end eventually, but the immense Bush-era housing boom won't be repeated. Consumers will eventually regain some of their confidence, but they won't spend the way they did in 2005-2007, when many people were using their houses as ATMs, and the savings rate dropped nearly to zero.<br />So what will support the economy if cautious consumers and humbled homebuilders aren't up to the job?<br />A few months ago a headline in the satirical New York City newspaper The Onion, on point as always, offered one possible answer: "Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble to Invest In." Something new could come along to fuel private demand, perhaps by generating a boom in business investment.<br />But this boom would have to be enormous, raising business investment to a historically unprecedented percentage of GDP, to fill the hole left by the consumer and housing pullback. While that could happen, it doesn't seem like something to count on.<br />A more plausible route to sustained recovery would be a drastic reduction in the U.S. trade deficit, which soared at the same time the housing bubble was inflating. By selling more to other countries and spending more of our own income on U.S.-produced goods, we could get to full employment without a boom in either consumption or investment spending.<br />But it will probably be a long time before the trade deficit comes down enough to make up for the bursting of the housing bubble. For one thing, export growth, after several good years, has stalled, partly because nervous international investors, rushing into assets they still consider safe, have driven the dollar up against other currencies - making U.S. production much less cost-competitive.<br />Furthermore, even if the dollar falls again, where will the capacity for a surge in exports and import-competing production come from? Despite rising trade in services, most world trade is still in goods, especially manufactured goods - and the U.S. manufacturing sector, after years of neglect in favor of real estate and the financial industry, has a lot of catching up to do.<br />Anyway, the rest of the world may not be ready to handle a drastically smaller U.S. trade deficit. As my colleague Tom Friedman recently pointed out, much of China's economy in particular is built around exporting to America, and will have a hard time switching to other occupations.<br />In short, getting to the point where our economy can thrive without fiscal support may be a difficult, drawn-out process. And as I said, I hope the Obama team understands that.<br />Right now, with the economy in free fall and everyone terrified of Great Depression 2.0, opponents of a strong federal response are having a hard time finding support. John Boehner, the House Republican leader, has been reduced to using his Web site to seek "credentialed American economists" willing to add their names to a list of "stimulus spending skeptics."<br />But once the economy has perked up a bit, there will be a lot of pressure on the new administration to pull back, to throw away the economy's crutches. And if the administration gives in to that pressure too soon, the result could be a repeat of the mistake FDR made in 1937 - the year he slashed spending, raised taxes and helped plunge the United States into a serious recession.<br />The point is that it may take a lot longer than many people think before the U.S. economy is ready to live without bubbles. And until then, the economy is going to need a lot of government help.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>EDITORIAL</strong><br /><strong>The printing press cure</strong><br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />The Federal Reserve as much as admitted last week that lowering the benchmark interest rate - even to zero - would not be powerful enough medicine to revive today's ailing economy. And so it has opted for the printing-press cure, pledging for the foreseeable future to pump vast sums into banks, other financial firms, businesses and households.<br />Economic history - of the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan's "lost decade" in the 1990s - suggests that the Fed is doing the right thing. Confronted then, as now, with the twin scourges of deepening recession and incipient deflation, governments did more damage with too little intervention than they would have done with too much.<br />But that doesn't make such intervention "good." It's a big and unfortunate risk in itself.<br />Flooding the economy with freshly printed money may prevent a self-reinforcing downward spiral. But it may cause trouble long after the present danger has passed. One reason is that it could cause inflation later. In a worst-case scenario, inflation, or the fear of inflation, could dissuade foreign investors, who finance the United States' debt, from buying and holding dollars. That, in turn, could provoke a disorderly decline in the currency, sending prices and interest rates sharply higher.<br />For the Fed, engineering the new rescue programs is a technical challenge. It will have to be remarkably deft in draining the system of excess dollars in a timely way. It will also need to be vigilant for signs that the dollar is being unduly pressured, and be prepared to react.<br />For Barack Obama, the challenge is one of leadership. As president, Obama will have to convey optimism without overpromising. He will have to inspire confidence, even in the absence of a dramatic turnaround which is simply not in the cards. To his credit, Obama has already warned the American people that conditions will get worse before they get better.<br />In the attempt to make them better, the first question facing the next administration is the size of the stimulus. The latest numbers are in the $700 billion range. The economy certainly needs the help, but Obama officials will have to be mindful of the possible long-term negative effects of their outsized borrowing.<br />They must also ensure that the money is not misused to benefit high-income constituents. To jump-start the economy requires getting money to those who will spend it rapidly and in full. That includes unemployed workers, low- and middle-income families and state and local governments.<br />The stimulus package must also be accompanied by a foreclosure prevention measure. In the campaign, Obama favored amending the law so that bankrupt homeowners could have their mortgages reworked under court protection. That would let many people keep their homes without burdening taxpayers with the cost of the loan modifications. But Obama has not yet given details about his next moves. If bankruptcy reform is not an immediate plan, he should target the next $350 billion installment of the $700 billion bailout fund on foreclosure prevention.<br />While Obama must continue to level with the American people - the economy is unlikely to turn up until 2010 at the earliest, and even then will probably rebound slowly - his near-term moves will go a long way toward making the burdens yet to come more bearable.<br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br /><strong>Philip Bowring: Free trade under threat</strong><br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />HONG KONG: China, almost as much as the U.S., may hold the key to whether the global recession leads to a vicious cycle of protectionism and contracting trade.<br />The world is unlikely to experience anything approximating the two-thirds shrinkage in trade seen between 1930 and 1933. For one, manufacturing systems are now much more integrated across borders and international investments so important that there is scant large corporate interest in protectionism. Another is that Smoot-Hawley, the mother of self-defeating protectionist measures that proliferated in the 1930s, is still viewed across the globe as a warning.<br />Nonetheless, the recent arrival of China as a major player in global trade raises new issues. We do not need a Smoot-Hawley to bring about a sustained contraction in trade any more than that legislation was solely to blame in the 1930s.<br />China's role now is probably even more important than its trade volumes - large as they are - suggest. Here is why.<br />Just like the U.S. in 1930, China has massive foreign-exchange reserves and starts the recession in a very strong trade position. Thus, at the broadest level, Beijing has least excuse for measures to protect local employment by artificially curtailing imports. Indeed, China has, in theory at least, the most leeway to stimulate domestic demand and imports.<br />So far, such stimulation appears to be its principle response - but that will not be easy for structural reasons. Failure to get quick results could easily lead to protectionist responses, of which some glimpses have already emerged.<br />Competitive devaluations are perhaps the most dangerous. These measures start in Asia and eventually lead to formal trade barriers as protection against "unfair" trade practices. The post-September rise of the dollar against the Chinese yuan and most other Asian currencies (excluding the yen) caused concerns that the region would attempt to sustain exports with currency manipulation. In an unusually tart comment, the Asian Development Bank warned countries against buying dollars to depreciate domestic currencies. Some Asian currency declines have reversed, nonetheless the Asian instinct for currency undervaluation to boost exports is alive and well. China matters particularly because other countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan have taken to following its lead.<br />China also has an effect on other developing countries. China hitherto has been willing to cut tariffs unilaterally rather than on a horse-trading basis. But one result is that many actual levels are below the maximum under its World Trade Organization agreements. Thus it can increase them without breaking rules. Other countries are in a similar position but China is crucial because its liberalization went too fast and far.<br />India, Brazil and Russia have to greater or lesser degrees followed China on the liberalization path but now find that commodity exports are dropping dramatically while their domestic industries remain under pressure from Chinese imports. For the time being, protectionist measures by such nations have been isolated and industry-specific but more barriers will probably rise, particularly if China continues to run massive surpluses with them. In turn, these may provoke copy-cat moves by trade partners in regional arrangements.<br />Pressures from China's own companies are another danger. China's leadership and senior bureaucrats recognize how much it has benefited from trade and investment liberalization - 30 years of which were celebrated last week. But much of the benefit is perceived to have gone to foreign-invested firms that account for about 50 percent of exports rather than to the big quasi-state enterprises catering largely to the domestic market. They have more inclination toward protectionism and are also the recipients of cheap credit and subsidies that make them targets for foreign anti-dumping actions.<br />Support for freer trade is also waning at the political level. Worker layoffs have been particularly acute in low-tech manufacturing industries in southern China. A government that places social stability above all else will give the back seat to the longer-term benefits of foreign trade. Meanwhile, Chinese losses on its investments in once revered U.S. financial houses have soured the Chinese on Western-made rules and foreign advice. China is also understandably reluctant to see the yuan value of its dollar holdings continue to fall.<br />China may even have to rethink the value of its trade relations with Asian neighbors. The collapse in Western demand has exposed the fact that much intra-regional trade was in components for finished products sold in the West. Questions will be asked about whether it really makes sense to invest much political capital in regional trade liberalization.<br />These dangers to free trade do not add up to a repeat of the 1930s, but they all need watching.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Rich-poor gap worries Chinese planners<br /></strong>By Alan WheatleyReuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BEIJING: Yu Yongding, an economics professor in Beijing, recalled the other day that the well-off Chinese he used to come across at plush hotels overseas were mainly Taiwanese. Today, they are more likely to be mainlanders.<br />"I don't know how they get so rich!" Yu exclaimed. "Income distribution is very problematic in this country."<br />And it is a problem that is set to get even worse. As long as the rising tide of economic growth was lifting all boats, the widening gap between rich and poor was generally tolerable. Now, as the economy turns down sharply, tensions are mounting, to the evident discomfort of China's leadership.<br />Zhou Tianyong, a researcher at the Central Party School in Beijing, said a surge in unemployment next year and an increasingly skewed distribution of wealth "through theft and robbery" could test the party's grip on power. "This is extremely likely to create a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil," Zhou wrote this month in the China Economic Times.<br />During the past 30 years of market reforms, China has done a remarkable job of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But some people have done better - much better - than others.<br />In 1985, urban Chinese earned 1.9 times as much as people in the countryside, which is home to 60 percent of the population. By last year, they earned 3.3 times as much - a ratio that rises to between 5 and 6 if unequal access to basic public services is taken into account, according to the United Nations' latest Human Development Report for China.<br />China is not alone. The Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of inequality, has risen in two-thirds of developing Asian countries since the early 1990s, the Asian Development Bank calculates.<br />If income were distributed perfectly equally, the coefficient would be zero; if all income were in one person's hands, it would be one.<br />China's Gini coefficient stood at about 0.30 in the late 1970s but had risen to about 0.45 in 2005.<br />And now comes the financial meltdown, which is already taking a toll on poorer workers with low wages and casual contracts. In recent weeks millions of migrant workers have been streaming back to their villages from shuttered factories in eastern China.<br />"Those people who are at the bottom of the income and wage hierarchy will be hit much more than those who are the top," said Gyorgy Sziraczki, a researcher at the International Labor Organization in Bangkok.<br />"So it's very likely that the current crisis will bring increasing wage and income inequalities in the coming two to three years," he said.<br />What is to be done? Some governments were stirring even before the financial tsunami struck.<br />Hong Kong introduced a voluntary minimum wage for selected low-wage jobs two years ago to protect the working poor. It proved ineffective, so the government now plans a universal statutory minimum wage.<br />Strengthening other labor market policies could also mitigate income inequalities. Malaysia, for instance, has announced retraining grants, something South Korea introduced - along with unemployment insurance - after the Asian financial crisis a decade ago.<br />"What we learned was that one of the preconditions for having a prescription for the crisis was to strengthen the social safety net," said Kim Choong Soo, South Korea's ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.<br />Researchers say the imperative for Beijing is for a big increase - and better distribution - of spending on health, education and pensions.<br />According to Chinese research cited by the United Nations, between 30 and 40 percent of the urban-rural income gap can be explained by unequal access to such public service. That is because government outlays on things like schools and clinics amount to a subsidy for consumers, who would otherwise have to dig more deeply into their own pockets.<br />Strengthening public services would also dovetail with the declared intent of several governments, including China's, to increase domestic demand and rely less on exports and related investments.<br />"If many countries head in the direction of more balanced growth in the future, that could have a positive impact on income inequalities," said Sziraczki, the ILO researcher.<br /><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/business/22german.php">German economy expected to contract 2.7% in 2009</a><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>City offers snapshot of troubles across U.S.</strong><br />By Peter S. Goodman<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />COLUMBIA, South Carolina: Even before the job fair opens, the line snakes into the parking lot of the state fairground, a muted parade of lives derailed by layoffs.<br />"It kills me, it eats me up inside," said Raymond Vaughn, who has been out of work for seven months, since he lost his job as a window installer. His fiancée now pays the bills. "I go into this fantasy world where I'm like, 'I'm in the wrong life, and I'm actually a millionaire.'<br />"It really bothers me I can't do the things I'd like for her. Sometimes you get where you feel less than a man."<br />As the U.S. economy sinks deeper into one of the more punishing recessions since the Great Depression, frustration and fear color the national conversation.<br />This city in the center of South Carolina is an ideal listening post, a modern-day Middletown. According to a range of indicators assembled by Moody's Economy.com - including job growth and change in household worth - this metropolitan area came closer than any other to being a microcosm of the country over the past decade.<br />This is now an unfortunate distinction. Some 533,000 jobs disappeared from the U.S. economy in November, the worst month since 1974.<br />In South Carolina, a government panel is predicting that the state's unemployment rate could reach 14 percent by the middle of next year.<br />No speculative real estate bubble can explain what is happening in this metropolitan area of roughly 700,000 people. Neither the brick Georgian homes in the city's core nor the ranch-style houses on the suburban fringes rose or fell much in value. The financial wizards of Wall Street seem far from the palmetto-dotted campus of the University of South Carolina and the domed State Capitol downtown.<br />Yet as the toll continues to mount from an era of financial recklessness - as banks cut credit from households and businesses, reinforcing austerity - the damage has spread to Columbia, choking economic activity from shopping malls to factories.<br />"This was not of our doing," said Doug Woodward, an economist at the University of South Carolina. "We just got swept up in the crisis of confidence."<br />The Carolinas may conjure up thoughts of textile mills and tobacco fields, but Columbia has a diverse economy. The state government is a major employer. So is the university, along with hospitals and banks. The Fort Jackson army base employs 9,200 people. United Parcel Service has a regional hub here. Michelin operates a tire factory next door in Lexington County. Computer Science Corp. develops software north of the city.<br />Early in the year, layoffs were concentrated among factory and warehouse workers.<br />"Now, they run the gamut," said Jessica Horsely, a case manager at the local employment office. "You see a heightened sense of desperation. People are just grasping for anything."<br />President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to spend as much as $775 billion on his economic plan, including infrastructure projects like bridges, roads and classrooms, to put people back to work.<br />The mayor of Columbia, Bob Coble, is consumed with capturing some of those dollars for his city. He has assembled a list of ready-to-go projects totaling $140 million that he said could generate construction jobs and propel further economic development.<br />Coble, a Democrat who has been mayor for 18 years, has in mind the redevelopment of North Main Street, a bedraggled corridor of hard-luck retailers that lacks sidewalks in many spots, with exposed power lines dipping down to cracked pavement. That project is already under way, putting down sidewalks and burying power lines in a $19 million first phase. An additional $54 million could complete it.<br />Similar projects have restored shine to Columbia's downtown, which was in a similar state of decay a decade ago, and nurtured the Vista neighborhood, a collection of brick warehouses transformed into trendy eateries.<br />The mayor has also been focused on expanding the so-called Innovista project, a campus developed by the university centered on research in areas like hydrogen-powered fuel cells and biotechnology.<br />The aim is to cluster research labs, private companies and condominiums.<br />"This will be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform a city with projects that have been on the books," the mayor said over breakfast at a Sheraton hotel that recently opened downtown. The building was once home to a bank, and its original vault has become a cozy martini bar. "These are not bridges to nowhere."<br />Yet questions confront the notion of putting people to work through federal largess. The governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, a Republican, has been an ardent opponent of federal aid for states, branding it pork-barrel spending. If the money is delivered to state agencies like the Department of Transportation, which has its own list of priorities, Columbia might end up disappointed.<br />Despite the attractiveness of Main Street, new sidewalks have drawn few retailers. North Main Street runs through a largely poor area, making it even less likely that improvements will attract business.<br />Meanwhile, the recession intensifies.<br />At the state fairgrounds, Lori Harris, 47, waited for the job fair to open. A year has passed since she graduated from college with an associate degree in medical assisting, yet she said she has been unable to find a decent job.<br />Harris previously ran her own house-painting company, but opted for a more stable career in a growing field. She saw an ad for the degree program on television: "Come become a medical assistant!"<br />Such talk seems farcical now. She is paying $95 a month toward $23,000 in student loan debt. She is living with her boyfriend, who is supporting her, not always cheerfully. She has no health insurance and cannot see a specialist for a torn rotator cuff and recently applied for food stamps.<br />"I tried to better myself," she said, "and I'm getting nowhere."<br />She was offered one job, as a medical technician dispensing pills to patients. The pay was $7.50 an hour.<br />She wondered if her age explained the rejections. Or her Boston accent. Or the smell of her cigarette-smoking.<br />As the doors opened, people filed in quietly, entering a dark warehouselike space with concrete floors.<br />"You want a job that makes you smile," proclaimed a placard at a booth for Wendy's, the fast food chain. Another sign advertised the benefits for counter workers, among them: "free uniforms."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><strong>Obama announces task force to assist middle-class families<br /></strong>By Jeff Zeleny<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />KAILUA, Hawaii: President-elect Barack Obama on Sunday announced the creation of a task force to bolster the standard of living of middle-class and working families in America, tapping Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. to lead the effort with four members of the cabinet.<br />"Our charge is to look at existing and future policies across the board and use a yardstick to measure how they are impacting the working- and middle-class families," Biden said in a statement on Sunday. "Is the number of these families growing? Are they prospering?"<br />The effort, which is called the White House Task Force on Working Families, is intended to focus on improving education and training for working Americans as well as protecting incomes and retirement security of the middle class. The group, officials said, will work with labor and business leaders.<br />The task force is the first discrete assignment for Biden. He said the Obama administration would measure the success of its economic policy by whether the middle class was growing and prospering. Other members of the group include the secretaries of labor, education, commerce, and health and human services, as well as the top economic advisers to the president.<br />As Obama opened the first full day of his holiday vacation in his native Hawaii, the effort was announced by transition officials in Washington. The president-elect did not speak about the plan, as he spent the day out of public view with his family and a small group of friends from Chicago who are accompanying him in Hawaii.<br />"My administration will be absolutely committed to the future of America's middle-class and working families," Obama said in a statement, repeating a central tenet from his presidential campaign. "They will be front and center every day in our work in the White House, and this task force will be one vehicle we will use to ensure that we never forget that commitment."<br />With the president-elect on vacation, Biden took a leading role for the coming administration, making his first appearance since the election on a Sunday morning news program. In an interview on "This Week" on ABC, Biden said the economy was in sharper decline than he had assumed. "President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around," he said. "We've got to begin to stem this bleeding here and begin to stop the loss of jobs in the creation of jobs."<br />During the campaign, Obama often derided the blue-ribbon panels and commissions that administrations sometimes form. But the working families task force, his advisers said, was more substantive because it included members of the cabinet who have the president's ear and the authority to carry out proposals.<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>The richest fictional characters<br /></strong>By David M. Ewalt and Michael Noer<br />Forbes.com<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />The Standard & Poor 500 is down about 40 percent over the last 12 months. There have been nearly 190,000 layoffs at America's 500 largest companies in just the last six weeks. And the U.S. government is spending a trillion dollars to keep the economy afloat.<a title="" href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/18/fictional-characters-wealth-oped-fictional1508-cx_de_mn_1218fictionalintro_slide.html?partner=iht" target="_blank">In Pictures: The Forbes fictional 15</a><br />Times are tough - even if you're imaginary.<br />This year's edition of the Forbes Fictional 15, our annual listing of fiction's richest, features significant turnover and turmoil. More than half of last year's members fell off the list, and those who remain are poorer on average; 12 months ago, you needed at least $1.3 billion to make the cut. This year, you only need $800 million.<br />Economic woes thrust a new member of the Fictional 15 to the top spot: Uncle Sam, the 232-year-old former frontiersman and U.S. Army recruitment officer. This American icon is enjoying a second act on Wall Street, thanks to his contrarian strategy of investing exclusively in companies on the brink of bankruptcy. His infinite net worth can be attributed to his crafty purchase of the U.S. Mint in 1792; this guy can print his own cash.<br />Last year's richest fictional character, Scrooge McDuck, fell to second place, with a net worth of $29.1 billion. But don't feel bad for the quacking Croesus; the record-high price of gold increased his fortune significantly. McDuck's bottom line was also buoyed by his penny-pinching ways and lack of charitable giving.<br />Third place Richie Rich wasn't as lucky. "The richest kid in the world" saw his net worth tumble from $16.1 billion to $12.3 billion thanks to ill-timed investments in Web 2.0 start-ups. But despite these setbacks, Rich continues to make splashy charitable donations, including airdropping cans of foie gras onto starving Kurdish villages and leaving $1 million tips for waitresses.<br />Eight former billionaires dropped off the list, including Willy Wonka, whose candy company was hit hard by the rising cost of cocoa beans. Dark wizard Lucius Malfoy lost big investing in cauldron derivative swaps. And Princess Peach, heir to the Mushroom Kingdom, fled abroad after a revolution toppled her regime. Peach is reportedly in close consultation with advisers, hoarding fire flowers and invincibility stars, and plotting return to power.<br />Shifting fortunes caused some members to return to the list. Corporate raider Gordon Gekko (No. 4, net worth $8.5 billion) is widely credited on Wall Street for creating collateralized debt obligations. He fell off the list in 2005 after being convicted of insider trading and securities fraud. Now out of prison, Gekko shorted the S&P 500 and bank stocks near their peak. Conspicuously seen celebrating at Manhattan restaurant the night Lehman Brothers collapsed, he's quoted as saying, "Greed is good...for me, not them!"<br />Not all of our new members are from planet Earth. Jabba The Hutt (No. 5, $8.4 billion) oversees a massive crime syndicate in the Outer Rim Territories, controlling gunrunning, extortion and the Kessel spice trade. This morbidly obese billionaire employs an elite staff of bounty hunters, assassins and ne'er-do-wells; associates say he "has no use for smugglers who drop their shipments at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser."<br />This year, the Fictional 15 also features a listing of the world's most expensive fictional homes. These properties span the real estate gamut from Tony Stark's sweet bachelor-pad in "Iron Man" ($50.8 million) to Tara ($17.2 million), the antebellum plantation from "Gone with the Wind." The source material was equally varied, ranging from videogames (Croft Manor from "Tomb Raider," $46.1 million) to literature (Jay Gatsby's West Egg mansion from "The Great Gatsby," $42.5 million).<br />To qualify for the Fictional 15, we require that candidates be an authored fictional creation, a rule which excludes mythological and folkloric characters. They must star in a specific narrative work or series of works. And they must be known, both within their fictional universe and by their audience, for being rich. Net worth estimates are based on an analysis of the fictional character's source material, and valued against known real-world commodity and share price movements. In the case of privately held fictional concerns, we sought to identify comparable fictional public companies. All prices are as of market close, Dec. 17, 2008.<br />We reserve the right to bend or break any of our own rules. And, yes, we know Uncle Sam is folkloric.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>An American holiday tour goes from quaint to over-the-top</strong><br />By Neil Genzlinger<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />NEW YORK: December visits to the great Gilded Age mansions, so lovely in their holiday finery, have always been two-way conversations between you and the ghosts of those who once lived there. "Fabulous," you would say. "I am so jealous." And the ghosts would cockily respond, "Oh yeah; the only thing better than having money is showing it off."<br />But this December, with economic calamity all around us, you may find the conversations running a bit differently. "Fabulous," you'll still say, "but I am so glad I don't own this colossal maintenance nightmare." And the ghosts, having been reminded like the rest of us that ostentation can be fleeting, are a bit chastened as you walk through their homes and hear about how they lived.<br />"Perhaps the 60 floral arrangements a day were a bit much," Frederick Vanderbilt may whisper in your ear as the tour guide leads you through his 54-room mansion in Hyde Park, New York. In Baltimore at the Evergreen Museum, former home of the Garrett family, Alice Whitridge Garrett may confess, "We're not particularly proud of the 23-karat-gold toilet seat." And at Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, New York, was that an ever-so-faint "I'm sorry" that just escaped the lips of Jay Gould, whose financial manipulations sometimes cost others their life savings?<br />Such, at least, were the spectral murmurings I heard on recent visits to five mansions that are marking the holidays with special decorations and programs. The conversations between me and the ghosts weren't all gloom and contrition; the serene beauty of these places still warms the soul, and in the angel-filled murals at Staatsburgh in the Hudson Valley and the stained-glass religious scenes at Glencairn near Philadelphia there is a sense of reverence just right for the season. Yet with opulence at its all-time uncoolest right now, the Christmas mansion tour doesn't feel as benign as it once did.<br />My first stop was at Staatsburgh, the former home of Ogden and Ruth Mills: 79 rooms worth of white rectangularity.<br />Ogden was a financier whose father, Darius Ogden Mills, made big money in banking, railroads and mining; Ruth was a daughter of the prominent Livingston family. When she inherited the Staatsburgh property, the 25-room home on the site was deemed inadequate. By 1896 the couple had remade it into the fortress we see now.<br />In the entryway, a glorious 25-foot, or 7.6-meter, Christmas tree is in place, enfolded by a staircase. Smaller Christmas trees also adorn the house, and, as in all the mansions, good taste reigns. No wire-frame reindeer or giant inflatable Santas here.<br />I paused in the lavishly set dining room, pondering the incongruity of beauty that is also a burden. On the table was a centerpiece so big that monkeys could live in it. It was Ruth Mills' ghost, I think, who, slightly embarrassed, whispered to me, "Next year we're going with something smaller."<br />A few miles south is the Vanderbilt Mansion, another rectangular giant with a river view, owned by the National Park Service. The dark woods of the interior nicely set off the Christmas trees and other decorations, and (as at Staatsburgh and Lyndhurst) there are plenty of angels on hand for the holidays, in the ceiling murals.<br />The house, my tour guide said, is small by Vanderbiltian standards: It would fit in one wing of Biltmore in North Carolina, she said. That was home to George and Edith Vanderbilt. The Hyde Park mansion, completed in 1898, was the country estate of Frederick and Louise. Frederick, who died in 1938, was apologetic as the guide pointed out various extravagances. The walls of his study, for instance, are covered with a 17th-century Belgian tapestry. "If I had it to do over again, it'd be paint," he said. "Probably a semigloss."<br />Farther south on Route 9 in the Hudson Valley is Lyndhurst, built in 1838 and owned successively by a mayor of New York (William Paulding) and a prosperous merchant (George Merritt). The house, though, is most identified with Jay Gould, often labeled one of the era's foremost robber barons, who bought it in 1880.<br />Lyndhurst, acquired in 1961 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is a castlelike feast for the eyes, and inside, the Christmas decorations include delightful scenes invoking classic children's stories. One, in an upstairs bedroom, tweaks Gould himself, specifically his attempt to corner the gold market in 1869: It depicts the Rumpelstiltskin tale about spinning straw into gold.<br />"God, I hate that display," Jay, who died in 1892, confided to me as we took in the sunset from his backyard. It's fashionable these days for market manipulators to apologize for ruining lives, and Jay grudgingly did.<br />Any regrets about the extravagances of Lyndhurst in this time of renewed austerity? "Hey, I didn't build the place, remember," he said.<br />From Tarrytown it was south to Bryn Athyn, Pennyslvania, in Philadelphia's northern suburbs, the site of another building that prompts comparisons to European castles: Glencairn. It is the former home of Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn, 90-plus rooms in a Romanesque style, complete with tower.<br />Glencairn is not a true Gilded Age mansion - that would be Cairnwood next door, home to John Pitcairn (1841-1916), Raymond's father, who made his turn-of-the-century millions in plate glass and other industries. Raymond, an amateur architect, began construction of Glencairn in 1928. He also collected many of the artworks it contains, incorporating ancient reliefs right into the walls.<br />Much of the art on permanent display carries a religious theme (both John and Raymond Pitcairn were strong supporters of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, a Swedenborgian denomination), so Christmas can be found here any day of the year - in a Madonna-and-child window, a 13th-century relief depicting the adoration of the Magi. But seasonal displays are on view now as well, like a four-panel stained-glass rendering of the Nativity story by Lawrence Saint.<br />From Bryn Athyn it was south to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where the 48-room Garrett Mansion has since 1990 been the Evergreen Museum, devoted to the family's art collection. It's quite a display: Vuillard and Picasso and Degas on the walls; miniatures from Asia in display cases; Tiffany hanging from the ceilings. ("That upstairs hallway with five Tiffany chandeliers in rapid succession?" Alice's ghost whispered to me. "Today I'd go with those fluorescent energy-saving bulbs.")<br />For the holidays it's all supplemented with appealing decorations, beginning with a one-horse open sleigh at the entrance. Best touch: a Christmas tree decorated entirely in kitchen utensils.<br />But nothing on this lively tour tops the gold toilet seat. "I know, I know," sighed Alice, whose husband, T. Harrison Garrett, was given the house by his railroad-magnate father. "It's over the top. But everyone who comes here still asks to see it."<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Biden defends expanded U.S. recovery plan<br /></strong>By Jackie Calmes and Brian Knowlton<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. defended on Sunday plans for an expanded economic recovery plan against charges it would unwisely inflate the national deficit, saying bluntly that the incoming administration's first and most urgent goal was "keeping the economy from absolutely tanking."<br />Faced with worsening forecasts for the economy, President-elect Barack Obama is expanding his economic recovery program and will seek to create or save 3 million jobs in the next two years, up from a goal of 2.5 million jobs set just last month, several advisers to Obama said Saturday.<br />Obama and Biden had spoken during the presidential campaign of a stimulus plan worth perhaps $150 billion to $200 billion. Now, Biden confirmed: "There's going to be real significant investment, whether it's $600 billion, or more or $700 billion. The clear notion is, it's a number no one thought about a year ago."<br />What had changed, he said on ABC's "This Week," was that "the economy is in much worse shape than we thought." He said that economists of all stripes agreed that "the scope of this package has to be bold; it has to be big."<br />Yet, even Obama's more ambitious goal would not fully offset as many as 4 million jobs that some economists are projecting might be lost in the coming year, according to the information he received from advisers in the past week. That job loss would be double the total this year and could push the nation's unemployment rate past 9 percent if nothing were done.<br />The new job target was set after a meeting last Tuesday in which Christina Romer, who is Obama's choice to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, presented information about previous recessions to establish that the current downturn was likely to be "more severe than anything we've experienced in the past half-century," according to an Obama official familiar with the meeting.<br />Officials said they were working on a plan big enough to stimulate the economy but not so big to provoke major opposition in Congress. Obama's advisers have projected that the multifaceted economic plan would cost $675 billion to $775 billion. It would be the largest stimulus package in memory and would most likely grow as it made its way through Congress, although Obama has secured Democratic leaders' agreement to ban spending on pork-barrel projects.<br />Biden said, as Obama has before, that the plan will aim not just to create jobs, but to do so in ways that will benefit the country over the long term. Examples, he said, would be inbuilding a "smart" nationwide electric grid that makes it easier to transmit wind- and solar-generated energy; or in transferring medical data from paper to electronic form, with near-term costs but long-term savings.<br />For now, the vice president-elect said, the urgent goal was "to stem this bleeding" in jobs; the fast-rising deficit would be dealt with later.<br />The message from Obama was that "there was not going to be any spending money for the sake of spending money," said Lawrence Summers, who will be the senior economic adviser in the White House.<br />Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, who was an adviser to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, said, "My advice is, err on the side of too big a package rather than too little." In an interview, Zandi, who lately has advised Democratic leaders in Congress, also said he would probably soon raise his own recommendation of a $600 billion stimulus.<br />Besides new spending, the Obama plan would provide tax relief for low-wage and middle-income workers of roughly $150 billion, Democrats familiar with the proposal said. The government would probably reduce the withholding of income or payroll taxes so that most workers received larger paychecks as soon as possible in 2009, an Obama adviser said.<br />The sorts of jobs Obama would propose to create involve construction work on roads, mass transit projects, weatherization of government buildings and installation of information technology in medical facilities, among others.<br />The outlines for Obama's emerging plan, which he is developing in consultation with Congress, including some Republicans, were mostly settled last Tuesday when he met for four hours with economic and policy advisers. Obama and his family left Saturday for a two-week vacation in Hawaii, his native state, but the advisers will take his guidance including instructions to be "bolder," according to one and complete a draft in time for his return on Jan. 2.<br />The new Congress convenes on Jan. 6. The House and Senate, with larger Democratic majorities, will work to pass a bill for Obama to sign shortly after his inauguration, on Jan. 20.<br />The Obama blueprint covers five main areas of spending and tax breaks: health, education, infrastructure, energy, and support for the poor and the unemployed.<br />Summers said the president-elect set short- and long-term themes in choosing the plan's components: "Creating jobs for people who need them, and doing things that need to be done to lay the foundation for an economy that works for middle-class families."<br />At the meeting on Tuesday, Romer also laid out recommendations from private sector analysts and liberal to conservative economists for a government stimulus that ranged from $800 billion to $1.3 trillion over two years. Those consulted included Martin Feldstein, a conservative economist and longtime Republican presidential adviser, who is at the low end, and Lawrence Lindsey, a Federal Reserve governor and Bush administration economist, who has recommended up to $1 trillion.<br />Even before the election, Feldstein was publicly arguing that whoever was elected should immediately begin working with Congress on a big spending package. Since then, Feldstein has also been revising his assessment upward as the economy weakened further. "Without action," he wrote in an e-mail exchange, "the economy will continue to decline rapidly."<br />Many decisions about the details have not been made, or are tentative pending consultations with Congress. Several hundred billion dollars could go to states and cities to finance public works and subsidize their health and education programs so that local governments do not have to raise taxes and cut essential programs, steps that would be counterproductive economically.<br />The Obama team has a list of $136 billion in infrastructure projects from the National Governors Association that consists mostly of transit construction but also includes port expansions and renewable energy programs. For education, besides money to build and renovate schools, Obama will call for money to train more teachers, expand early childhood education and provide more college tuition aid.<br />Federal money to local governments would come with a "use it or lose it" clause under Obama's plans, advisers say. The president-elect will also propose to direct some money to public and private partnerships for major projects like a national energy grid intended to harness alternative energy sources such as wind power.<br />For those "most vulnerable" because of the recession, as the Obama team describes the needy and jobless population, the president-elect will propose expanding the length of unemployment compensation, as well as food aid and additional support.<br />With millions more Americans losing their health care coverage, either through job losses or because they can no longer afford to pay for insurance, Obama will propose major new spending to subsidize states' share of Medicaid and their children's health programs, and to expand health care coverage for those who lose insurance from their employers.<br />Obama plans a down payment on his campaign promise to help pay for hospitals and other medical providers to computerize their health records to save billions in paperwork and administrative costs. He might also propose subsidies to train more nurses, both to create jobs now and address a looming shortage in the health professions.<br />Obama has spoken in recent days with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Last week, Reid's office sent an e-mail message to senators saying that in conversations with the Obama transition team, "we have communicated our willingness to work within these parameters as closely as possible and urge all offices to do the same."<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Australian companies feeling credit crunch<br /></strong>By Sonali Paul and Cecile LefortReuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />MELBOURNE: The credit crunch is likely to get worse before it gets better for Australian companies, as foreign lenders retreat and Australian banks keep tighter control over whom they lend to.<br />The top Australian banks are all gearing up to shoulder a bigger lending burden, having raised about $14 billion in debt and equity over the past three months, seeing opportunities as foreign banks step back.<br />Australian and New Zealand companies have more than $24 billion in debt due in 2009 within the realm rated by Standard & Poor's, which includes the global miner Rio Tinto.<br />Rio Tinto, with $8.9 billion due, and the coal-to-groceries conglomerate Wesfarmers, with 3.5 billion Australian dollars, or $2.4 billion, due, make up about half the total refinancing need.<br />"Those refinancing pressures are building," said Anthony Flintoff, S&P's senior director of corporate ratings in Australia.<br />The rating agency warns that while the need is not too large in 2009, the burden will be much bigger in 2010, as a lot of debt that was refinanced this year will come due, as will leveraged buyout debt from three to six years ago.<br />"You've got these coincident factors that are going to make that the really difficult year, if conditions remain as they are," Flintoff said.<br />Bank executives say that depending on how sharply foreign lenders pull back, Australian banks will be hard-pressed to fill the breach. That would force more Australian companies to raise equity, cut capital spending or cut dividends.<br />"We've seen more foreign banks withdrawing from business lending" because "foreign bank head offices dictate capital allocation," said Paul Dowling, principal analyst at the Sydney-based banking research firm East & Partners.<br />"Domestic banks will not be able to take up that slack entirely," he said, adding that Australian banks were already under pressure to supply credit.<br />The property sector and businesses exposed to discretionary consumer spending might be most vulnerable.<br />"Foreign banks have sizable exposure to real estate, and if they decided to pull back from that sector, it would be a challenge," said Joseph Healy, executive general manager for business and private banking at National Australia Bank.<br />In the retailing sector, Wesfarmers is considered to be facing the most pressure, having bought the major Australian supermarket group Coles and the retailers Target, Kmart and Officeworks for 19 billion Australian dollars at the top of the market last year.<br />If it runs into problems refinancing its debt, it might have to cut capital spending, which would set back its turnaround plan for the Coles business and clip earnings growth in turn. It is also vulnerable on coal earnings, which are expected to slide in 2009.<br />The company has indicated it wants to tap the Eurobond market for as much as 3 billion, or $4.2 billion, but analysts say that's dicey.<br />"The private placement market, the U.S. bond market, Euro market - who knows which will be the first or the deepest to start to accommodate some of these companies?" Flintoff said.<br />In the property sector, groups with stronger balance sheets should be able to raise capital, but not the weaker trusts.<br />"The property sector was one of the first sectors to feel the pullback from foreign banks," said Linda Laznik, treasurer at the embattled real estate investment trust GPT Group. "The loan market has been dead for a long time. You can't get money. No one will lend."<br />"There aren't that many alternatives," she said. "The only one is equity raising, and that's why everyone has been turning to it in the last month or so."<br />Stockland Group, one of the largest Australian property trusts, has yet to feel the impact of a foreign lending retreat. It recently refinanced 350 million Australian dollars with a foreign bank, said its managing director, Matthew Quinn. But Stockland, like other companies, has already turned to the share market for funds and shored up its balance sheet further this week, flagging a cut in its dividend.<br />And when will foreign banks come back to ease the pressure? "We don't see them coming back for new business until the second half of 2010," said Dowling of East & Partners.<br />Cecile Lefort reported from Sydney.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>A word insolvent companies avoid</strong><br />By Noam Cohen<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />Perhaps I am like the person who hears the fire truck at night and has to follow to see what's going on. I am a journalist, after all.<br />Last week, I typed in the Web address: www.madoff.com. When I got there, all that was left of the Web site for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities were charred embers. And a note tacked onto a rickety door frame from the authorities ordering the place shuttered. (It was, in fact, a hyperlink to a PDF of a court order, but you get the drift.)<br />This online glimpse of the decline of a prominent investment firm that the authorities say defrauded its clients out of billions of dollars seemed, oddly enough, to bring back the early days of the Internet when as the saying went a Web site was a front porch for the public.<br />Today's commercial Web sites with Flash animation and sophisticated, interactive software are much more like billboards, sales catalogs and cashier lanes than front porches. Yet when a company experiences tough times, its Web site can lose some its just-so veneer and offer important insights about how, or if, new management intends to move forward.<br />The Bear Stearns Web site, for example, is still alive and kicking, though it does usher you toward its new parent company, JPMorgan Chase, while the word "strength" dominates the middle of the page.<br />The Web site for Commerce Bank has vanished entirely; type in its address and you arrive at TD Bank's Web site. The Lehman Brothers site today is plain and gray it links to Barclays, which bought its North American assets, and to the Lehman bankruptcy proceedings, as well as other companies that bought pieces of the firm.<br />Using a database of large commercial bankruptcy filings compiled by Professor Lynn LoPucki of the University of California at Los Angeles Law School, I was able to visit the Web sites of more than 20 companies that sought bankruptcy protection this year. While at nearly all of them you would be hard-pressed to find the B-word anywhere near their front pages, many provide a handsome button or tab under the word "reorganization."<br />Pilgrim's Pride, a food processing company with a cute-as-a-button Web site, uses the reorganization header, but appears to be alone in writing in clear print, "On Dec. 1, 2008, Pilgrim's Pride Corporation voluntarily filed for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code."<br />A pair of home builders, Kimball Hill Homes and Tousa, while avoiding the word "bankruptcy," had a prominent tab or button linking to information about their reorganization plans. At the Tousa Web site, for example, the page is full of guidance about Chapter 11 for customers, investors and suppliers.<br />By contrast, and more typically, are the sites for retail outlets like Circuit City, the electronics chain, or Bally Total Fitness, where you have to burrow very deeply to find any mention of the companies' financial condition.<br />Then there is the case of the retail chain Linen 'N Things, which has a banner at the top of the page that reads, "Going Out of Business! Our Last Holiday Season!"<br />Though the public has become more accustomed to the idea of bankruptcy and how it can be used to keep a business running, several business experts said, it is impossible to deny that the mention of bankruptcy can scare away the public. Using the term carries risks, especially in businesses that want to maintain a good relationship with customers.<br />But, these experts pointed out, ignoring a bankruptcy filing entirely carries risks as well by appearing to be desperate or lamely trying to pull a fast one on your customers.<br />To a public relations executive with an Internet bent like Matthew Harrington of Edelman, there is also an ethical obligation.<br />"If it is going to be addressed in a public way, don't hide it on the Web site," he said. "It doesn't need to be there forever, but there should be an acknowledgment of it somewhere on the home page."<br />Beyond showing respect for your customers, for businesses that use the Internet to deal with suppliers there are also benefits to telling your story in your own words to help the business operate smoothly.<br />In many ways, the term reorganization does the trick nicely a word that signals to suppliers and investors what's happened and the company's future plans. But while the strategies would seem to indicate forethought by companies in bankruptcy, in fact there is a danger that they could neglect the Web site in the rush of other concerns.<br />Frederick Felman, the chief marketing officer for MarkMonitor, which provides online brand protection for companies, said a company's online presence was valuable, often worth millions, and had to be looked after in the chaos of a bankruptcy filing. "Don't forget about it," he said. "You wouldn't forget that you have $3 million in stock in a retail chain going bankrupt. You'd work out the deals that make sense."<br />A case in point is the Sharper Image, which was bought in auction in May as part of strategy to close all of its stores and leverage the brand's reputation through licensing.<br />Customers going to the site today will see a stripped-down single page with a note, "New site coming soon, for further information please e-mail us."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Judge OKs Lehman settlement with Barclays and JPMorgan<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Emily Chasan<br />A U.S. bankruptcy judge approved a settlement calling for $1.27 billion (£857 million) in cash plus securities with a face value of $5.7 billion to be transferred to Barclays in connection with its purchase of the core U.S. brokerage business of Lehman Brothers Holdings.<br />The settlement relates to fund transfers made the week of September 15 to keep Lehman's brokerage business operating while the parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.<br />U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck approved the settlement on Monday and said the Lehman creditors committee could conduct further inquiries into the agreement if it chose.<br />"This settlement represents a significant benefit to (Lehman Brothers) and is the right thing to do," Peck said, citing representations made by lawyers for JPMorgan Chase & Co , Barclays, Lehman and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in court on Monday.<br />The securities being transferred, many of them mortgage-backed securities, have declined substantially from their original value, lawyers for the various parties said in court. They declined to give the current value of the securities.<br />According to court papers, the $7 billion in cash and securities stemmed from a sum Barclay's had expected to receive after loaning $45 billion to the Lehman brokerage business on September 18, two days before the court approved its purchase of the unit.<br />The broker-dealer needed the funds to guarantee its short-term obligations. It had been given assistance earlier that week from the New York Fed, which made a short-term loan worth $46.22 billion to Lehman.<br />Barclays had expected $49.7 billion to be returned to it from Lehman as part of its loan, but only $42.7 billion could be transferred before the court ordered the liquidation of Lehman's brokerage business.<br />The securities and cash will come from Lehman Brothers Inc accounts at JPMorgan Chase & Co , according to court papers. JPMorgan has agreed to release liens it has on those accounts. Lehman Brothers Inc is the brokerage business that is being liquidated by a trustee to facilitate the transfer of customer accounts to Barclays and other parties.<br />Harvey Miller, a lawyer representing bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings, told the court that the brokerage's former parent company did not object to the settlement and that it would spare the company significant future litigation.<br />(Reporting by Emily Chasan; editing by John Wallace)<br /><br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/23/business/23nzecon.php">New Zealand GDP drops by most in 8 years</a><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Caterpillar to cut its managers' pay</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Caterpillar Inc., the mining and construction equipment maker, said Monday that it would cut executive compensation by up to 50 percent next year because of weakening global demand.<br />Pay for senior managers also will be reduced next year by 5 to 35 percent, the company said. Other management and support staff members will see a reduction of up to 15 percent.<br />Caterpillar, based in Peoria, Illinois, said the cuts reflected planned reductions in its incentive program and equity-based compensation. It has instituted a hiring freeze and plans to suspend merit increases for managers and support employees.<br />American-based management and support employees were also being offered incentives to leave voluntarily, the company said. Eligible employees have until Jan. 12 to join the program.<br />"We understand these decisions will disrupt the lives of many of our employees and their families, and we regret the need to take these steps," the chief executive, James Owens, said in a statement.<br />The announcement was the latest cost-cutting measure by the company, which has laid off employees and cut contract workers in response to the global economic turmoil that has hurt demand for its products.<br />The company said Monday that it would continue to carry out cost-saving measures, including temporary factory shutdowns and more layoffs as needed.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Some U.S. employers avoid layoffs with other cuts<br /></strong>By Matt Richtel<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />Even as layoffs reach historic levels, some employers in the United States have found an alternative to slashing their work forces. They're nipping and tucking instead.<br />A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules. These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.<br />In some cases, workers are even buying in. Witness the unusual suggestion made in early December by the chairman of the faculty senate at Brandeis University, who proposed that the school's 300 professors and instructors give up 1 percent of their pay.<br />"What we are doing is a symbolic gesture that has real consequences - it can save a few jobs," said William Flesch, an English professor.<br />He said more than 30 percent had volunteered for the pay cut, which could save at least $100,000 and prevent layoffs for several employees. "It's not painless, but it is relatively painless and it could help some people," he said.<br />Some of these cooperative cost-cutting tactics, though not unique to this downturn, are effectively democratizing the cost-cutting process.<br />More broadly, the reasons behind the steps - and the rationale for the sharp growth in their popularity in just the past month - reflect the peculiarities of this recession, its sudden deepening and the changing dynamics of the global economy.<br />Companies trimming their work forces say this economy plunged so quickly in October that they do not want to prune too much, lest it should just as suddenly roar back. They also say they have been so careful about hiring and spending in recent years - particularly in the past 12 months - that highly productive workers, not slackers, remain on the payroll.<br />At some companies, employees are supporting the indirect wage cuts - at least for now. The downturn hit so hard, with its toll felt so widely through hits on pensions and retirement plans and with the future so murky, that employers and even some employees say it is better to accept minor cuts than risk more draconian steps.<br />The rolls of companies nipping at labor costs with measures less drastic than wholesale layoffs include Dell (extended unpaid holiday), Cisco (four-day year-end shutdown), Motorola (salary cuts), Nevada casinos (four-day workweek), Honda (voluntary unpaid vacation time) and The Seattle Times (a week of unpaid furlough for 500 workers, for a saving of $1 million). There are also numerous midsize and small companies trying such tactics.<br />To be sure, these efforts are far less widespread than layoffs, and outright pay cuts still appear to be rare. Over all, the average hourly pay of rank-and-file workers - who make up about four-fifths of the work force - rose 3.7 percent between November 2007 and last month, according to the latest Labor Department data.<br />Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm that tracks compensation trends, published survey data last week that found that 23 percent of companies planned layoffs in the next year, down from 26 percent that said in October that they planned such action.<br />Companies seem particularly determined to find alternatives to layoffs in this recession, said Jennifer Chatman, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.<br />"Organizations are trying to cut costs in the name of avoiding layoffs," she said. "It's not just that organizations are saying, 'We're cutting costs,' they're saying, 'We're doing this to keep from losing people."'<br />She said the tactic builds long-term loyalty among workers who are not laid off and spares the company from having to compete again to hire and train anew.<br />That was part of the thinking at Global Tungsten & Powders, a metal plant in Towanda, Pennsylvania, whose business has dropped 25 percent in a year. The company has already cut overtime and travel, as well as purchases of office supplies and equipment. It is now encouraging its 1,000 workers to take unpaid furloughs to stave off deeper cuts.<br />"We have a very skilled and competent work force and the last thing we want to do is lose them when we're assuming this economy is going to come back," said Craig Reider, the company's director of human resources. Workers, he said, are buying into the concept.<br />"In this holiday season, many employees want to support our efforts here to minimize costs," he said.<br />In San Francisco, a Web design firm called Hot Studio laid off a handful of workers when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. But the company's owner, Maria Guidice, said the tactic had been painful, and she did not want to repeat it. This time, her first step is to take away bonuses - for the first time in the company's 12-year history - and instead give people paid time off over the holidays.<br />"In 2000, it was like 'cut the heads,"' she said of the ethos of the era. This time, she says, it feels different. "Our No. 1 priority is to keep people employed and to do that we're going to bank the money and keep it for when we need it," she said, adding, "I know some people are super bummed, but they understand we're trying to keep the work force intact."<br />Several employees at Hot Studio said they did not mind the policy. "People feel they'd much rather have a job in six months than get a bonus right now," said Jon Littell, a Web designer.<br />The magnanimous feeling will probably pass, said Truman Bewley, an economics professor at Yale who has studied what happens to wages during recessions. If the sacrifices look as though they are going to continue for many months, he said, some workers will grow frustrated, want their full compensation back and may well prefer a layoff that creates a new permanence.<br />"These are feel-good, temporary measures," he said.<br />But John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a company that tracks layoffs, said employers were being driven now not by compassion but by hard calculations based on data they had never had before. More than ever, he said, companies have used technology to track employee performance and productivity, and in many cases they know that the workers they would cut are productive ones.<br />"So companies know that when they're cutting an already taut organization, they're leaving big gaps in the work force," he said.<br />At Pretech, a concrete manufacturer in Kansas City, Kansas, that has not had a layoff in 15 years, part of the rationale is pride. The company has cut overtime, traded a $5,000 holiday party for an employee-only barbecue lunch, and trimmed its pipe-making operation to four days from five, which allows it to save on heating and electrical costs.<br />Business is down sharply in some of the company's divisions, but Pretech is also transforming to take on more work making concrete for infrastructure jobs, like the kind the government might support through stimulus efforts, said the company's co-owner, Bob Bundschuh.<br />He said employees seemed to embrace the changes, knowing that a small sacrifice in overtime pay could preserve their jobs and the health insurance benefits that go with them.<br />"We're optimistic about the future," he said, adding that he thought things could turn around in six months. If so, "We want our guys to stay around because they're good guys and they work hard."<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/22/business/OUKBS-UK-HYUNDAI-MEASURES.php">Hyundai Motor cuts hours further on weak sales</a><br /><br /><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Slumping markets put dent in takeover fees for banks<br /></strong>By Michael FlahertyReuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />HONG KONG: Fees from mergers and acquisitions, a major source of revenue for investment banks, are down by one-third this year, after plunging global markets crippled financing for takeovers and led to the collapse of a record number of deals.<br />The picture for the fees in the first half of next year is not looking any brighter, investment bankers say, as few see any real recovery in global markets soon.<br />Private equity buyers are still mainly on the sidelines, unable to get loans for big deals.<br />In a sign of the times, the revenue from fees for advising buyers and sellers of distressed companies and corporate restructurings is expected to increase as tough economic times continue.<br />That activity will keep fees flowing into banks, though the size of deals in this category are typically smaller than those reaped in heavy takeover periods.<br />"There is no single geography left untouched," said Matthew Hanning, Asia-Pacific head of mergers and acquisitions and corporate advisory at UBS. "Any entity anywhere with debt maturing may potentially be faced with liquidity issues. And if they are, then M&A is likely to become one of their strategic options."<br />In addition to distressed deals, countries like China and Japan are likely to feed the flow of deals, as companies there with large cash reserves have shown an increasing appetite for overseas acquisitions.<br />Any way the 2008 results for merger and acquisition fees are viewed, however, presents a grim picture of the current takeover climate.<br />Global merger and acquisition fees have fallen 32 percent this year to $34.2 billion, according to calculations by Thomson Reuters and Freeman & Co.<br />Goldman Sachs earned the most in these fees, according to the data, taking in $1.58 billion. JPMorgan ranked second with $1.32 billion and UBS third with $1.1 billion. Goldman raked in nearly $3 billion last year in these fees, data show.<br />The fee results are seen by some as more important than the overall advisory rankings, because fees translate into actual revenues for the banks. It is fairly common to get credit but no money for advising on a deal.<br />Yet fee rankings are also inexact, because most agreements are negotiated in private. Freeman & Co. says it uses a proprietary algorithm to tally fees that are not disclosed.<br />For banks helping to sell a company, an upfront fee is usually paid, plus fees for completing the deal. Advisers defending against an offer earn a payout if the hostile bidder fails.<br />For firms advising buyers, some upfront fees may be negotiated, but in most cases bankers get the lion's share of their fees if their clients complete the takeover. Closing fees are, on average, about 1 percent of the total transaction.<br />More takeover offers fell apart this year than ever before.<br />Advisers for BHP Billiton's failed hostile offer for its rival, Rio Tinto, were on the losing end of the largest ever withdrawn merger.<br />The all-share bid lost about two-thirds of its value in the months before it collapsed but was still worth $66 billion when BHP pulled out last month.<br />According to Thomson Reuters and Freeman, based on the peak offer, BHP's advisers were expected to receive a total of $140 million in fees, an estimate that includes upfront and closing fees. They likely made only between $10 million and $15 million.<br />Merger and acquisition fee totals are down 40 percent in the United States, 34 percent in Europe, and 11 percent in Asia, excluding Japan.<br />"Compared to other areas, like the debt and equity markets, deals and fees in the M&A space are holding up fairly well," said Hanning, of UBS, who is based in Hong Kong.<br />For involvement on any Asian deal outside of Japan, UBS ranked No. 1, with estimated fees of $120 million on 52 deals, according to calculations by Thomson Reuters and Freeman.<br />Asia, however, is the region most in need of merger and acquisition fees to make up for lost revenue from equity capital market deals.<br />Equity capital markets in Asia in the last two years generated about 70 percent of banking fees. By comparison, such deals in the United States generated about 25 percent of the fee pool, while mergers and acquisitions made up about 50 percent, Freeman says.<br />Equity capital market activity is all but dead around the globe, as investors are unwilling to put money into initial public offerings or other types of equity issuances, with a few exceptions.<br />In Asia, Credit Suisse ranked second in mergers and acquisitions with $109.9 million in fees on 58 deals, and JPMorgan third with $108.7 million on 42 deals. Morgan Stanley, ranked first last year, fell to sixth place with $101.4 million in fees on 54 deals, according to Thomson Reuters and Freeman.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Investors tiptoe back into stocks</strong><br /><strong>By Natsuko Waki</strong><br />Reuters Monday, December 22, 2008<br />LONDON: Global investors lifted their equity holdings for the second month running in December and sold bonds, thanks to signs of stabilizing stock markets and tumbling government bond yields, Reuters polls showed Monday.<br />Surveys of 44 leading investment houses in the United States, Japan, continental Europe and Britain showed an average mixed-asset portfolio holding 56 percent in stocks, up from 54.8 percent in November. However, it still remained below the long-term average holding of almost 60 percent.<br />Bond holdings fell to 33 percent in December from 34.3 percent the previous month, above the long-term average of around 32 percent.Cash rose to 5.4 percent from 5.3 percent.<br />A rise in the respondents' equity holdings comes as world stocks, measured by MSCI, rose nearly 20 percent after hitting a five-and-a-half-year low on Nov. 21.<br />A worldwide round of central bank interest rate cuts and the introduction of stimulus packages in major developed and emerging economies have helped convince many investors that stock markets might bottom before long, or have already done so.<br />"We expect stock prices to rise, bolstered by various countries' measures to deal with the financial system and boost their economies," said Yuichi Kodama, senior economist at Meiji Yasuda Life in Tokyo.<br />A recent investor rush into safer government bonds, especially in the United States, pushed short-term yields below zero and long-term yields to multi-decade lows. This is also encouraging fund managers to move back into risky assets.<br />"Treasuries are the latest bubble," said Keith Wirtz, president and chief investment officer of Fifth Third Asset Management. "Given the low yield levels today - macro concerns as well as liquidity preferences - government notes are overpriced. We see a market correction on the horizon."<br />U.S. fund managers raised their stock holdings in December, reversing sales a month earlier during a hedge-fund-driven sell-off.<br />The 12 fund management companies in the United States poll had 61.9 percent of their assets in equities in December, up from 60.9 percent in November on a like-for-like basis.<br />These firms decreased their bond holdings to 29.6 percent in December from 30.4 percent the previous month, while holding 2.9 percent of their assets in cash.<br />Continental European fund managers raised their equity holdings to a four-month high and cut bond holdings.<br />The 11 investment houses in the poll cut bond holdings to 37.6 percent from a 21-month high of 39.5 percent in November.<br />Allocation to equities rose for the second straight month to 46.3 percent, its highest since August. Cash holdings rose to 5.9 percent from 4.3 percent.In Britain, fund managers raised stocks to 63 percent of their portfolios while they cut back on bonds to 22.7 percent. Cash dipped to 7.5 percent.<br />"Many of the building blocks for a recovery in financial markets are falling into place," said Andrew Milligan, head of global strategy for Standard Life Investments. "<br />There is considerable value in a number of asset classes, bonds and equity, even parts of commercial property."<br />Japanese fund managers also raised their global stock weighting. The average stock allocation for 12 fund managers rose to 52.8 percent in December, from 52.3 percent in November, which had matched a three-year low hit in October.<br />Bond allocations ticked down to 42.2 percent in December from 42.3 percent last month. Cash also fell to 5.1 percent from 6.1 percent.<br />The weighting for U.S. and Canadian shares rose to 47.3 percent from 44.9 percent, while those for euro zone equities also rose to 14.5 percent from 13.1 percent.<br />Within bonds, the weighting for the euro zone rose to 39.7 percent - its highest level since 40.2 in April 2004 - from 39 percent, on the view that the euro zone still had a lot of room left for more rate cuts, compared to other areas.<br />The weighting for U.S. bonds fell to a six-month low of 29.6 percent from 30.4 percent, partly on worries about a further decline in the dollar.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Breakingviews.com: Game changes for hedge funds</strong><br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />Hedge funds have suffered a shakeout in 2008. The average hedge fund fell almost 20 percent, according to Hedge Fund Research. No fund has yet required a bailout. But many won't be around in the new year, and those that have survived are battered and bruised. Hedge fund managers must accept that the industry won't be quite the same again.Here are six changes they need to prepare for:Liquidity is the new watchword. Like investment banks, hedge funds didn't think much about the structure of their financing during the boom times. But a flood of redemption requests in late 2008, just as they were struggling with illiquid markets and scarce credit, caught them out. Many hedge funds annoyed their investors by blocking withdrawals. In the future, funds that invest in illiquid assets will need to lock in their investors longer. And those wishing to give investors regular access to their money will have to focus on liquid markets.Fees will face greater scrutiny. The archetypal hedge fund charges 2 percent of assets and skims off 20 percent of investment gains, the longstanding "2-and-20" structure. But some funds have had to offer breaks on fees lately to persuade investors not to take their money out. Investors will be more selective and are likely to put downward pressure on fees. All the same, it is probably too soon to sound a Last Post bugle call for 2-and-20.High-water marks will blur. A hedge manager who loses money normally has to get the fund back up to its previous high for each investor, the so-called high-water mark, before the investor has to pay any more performance fees. Broadly speaking, a fund that is down 20 percent from its peak and has a standard high-water mark mechanism would need to deliver returns of 25 percent before getting back to its high-water mark and earning performance fees again on further gains.That prospect is daunting. It can leave hedge funds short of cash and their employees wondering where their bonuses will come from. Some managers will throw in the towel. This is why some already use a modified mechanism allowing them to earn reduced performance fees on gains even before they have recouped earlier losses in full. Expect more funds to adopt similar policies.Regulation will intensify. Many hedge funds, including big names like the Citadel Investment Group, have had a horrid 2008. But unlike the banking sector, they have not needed bailouts. That doesn't, however, mean hedge funds will escape tighter regulation. Big losses, excess leverage, unexpected curbs on investor withdrawals and the impact of short-selling on fragile markets make hedge funds easy targets for a crackdown.Regulators also missed warning signs surrounding Bernard Madoff, who is accused of running a Ponzi scheme that cost investors as much as $50 billion. His investment operation appeared like a hedge fund in that it was private and he purportedly traded options as well as stocks. Watchdogs and investors will, therefore, share a desire for greater disclosure, so long as it is meaningful. The challenge will be in writing sensible regulations that can be applied across a diverse industry.Concentration will accelerate. Consolidation among hedge funds was under way before the pain of 2008. Hedge funds are set to start the new year managing little more than half the nearly $2 trillion in investors' money that they held earlier in 2008. Only a handful of top performers - like Paulson & Co., which oversees $36 billion - are bigger than they were a year ago. Smaller firms, many of which have lost money and become smaller still, will be vulnerable to closure and consolidation. Funds under management will become increasingly concentrated among larger hedge funds, which are favored by institutional investors and in some cases have achieved better investment performance than their rivals.Unleveraged returns should improve. The credit boom allowed funds to prosper even if their investment strategy was simply to use borrowed money to amplify tiny returns. But a smaller hedge-fund industry operating in a deleveraged financial world should be able to find more opportunities to make decent returns without exploiting leverage.That's another way of saying that after a rotten year, stable and committed hedge funds should be able to do well again. That's cold comfort for those who have lost big. But it suggests that some in the industry will live to fight another day. - Richard Beales<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Buffeted "quants" are still in demand</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Phil Wahba<br />Last week, New York University and Carnegie Mellon sent a new class of math whizzes out into a profession that is both blamed for the financial collapse and charged with preventing it happening again.<br />Many of these so-called quantitative analysts, or "quants," graduating from elite financial engineering courses will end up writing computer programs that handle an ever greater share of market trading.<br />Because some of their mathematical models failed to take into account factors that later turned out to be crucial, quants have been blamed for compounding risk and exacerbating the crash in financial markets.<br />But far from going into decline, those with financial engineering degrees are still in demand as hedge funds and banks seek ways to measure previously unforeseen risks and factor them into their models.<br />The profession's reputation took a beating in August 2007, when some quant funds -- which try to beat the market by crunching vast amounts of data at lightning speed -- lost a third of their value in a matter of days.<br />Many blamed the math commandos for failing to factor in extreme events, in this case unprecedented numbers of home mortgage foreclosures.<br />Critics and practitioners alike agree they need to improve their modelling, and that begins at the elite financial engineering programs, which have come to be known as "quant farms."<br />Both New York University and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which between them minted about 100 new quants this month, have tweaked their curricula, lest their graduates miss another brewing disaster.<br />Meanwhile, at Columbia University, the masters of financial engineering program has tried to give its students a wider view of the market outside mathematical models, said program director Emanuel Derman.<br />"You have to understand you are dealing with people and markets, and they don't respond the way physical systems do," said Derman, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs .<br />PLUS CA CHANGE<br />As the mortgage crisis gathered steam last year and financial markets became volatile, quant funds, which make up about 7 percent of the hedge fund universe, were caught flat-footed.<br />To raise cash, they started selling stocks, which created unusual moves in stock prices, throwing other quant models off. Finally, the selling snowballed into a full market panic.<br />"Before you know it, you have a chain reaction and the whole market dives on the basis of what amounts to a mathematical prediction," said Peter Morici an economics professor at the University of Maryland.<br />"You create a mathematical herd. That's why so often these schemes based on math models end in tears."<br />Among those in tears were investors in Goldman Sachs' Global Opportunities Fund, which lost a third of its value, or $1.8 billion, in a single week in August 2007. Other big quant funds also haemorrhaged that month.<br />In his book "A Demon of Our Own Design," published in April 2007, hedge fund manager Richard Bookstaber made the case that financial innovation actually adds to risk because it fails to take emotion into account.<br />The models increasingly assume rational behaviour, instead of the way humans really behave, he wrote.<br />Some institutional investors have said quants become too enamoured of their creations to notice when they turn into mathematical Frankensteins, especially in new, untested markets such as securities based on bundled mortgages.<br />"They get caught up in their religion -- they keep going merrily along on autopilot," said Matt McCormick, an analyst and portfolio manager with Bahl & Graynor Investment Counsel in Cincinnati. "There's no substitution for grey hair and your gut when you see valuations that are out-of-whack."<br />Nassem Taleb, a former trader who wrote the best seller "Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable," is even more outspoken. "Quants and quant programs are dangerous to society," he said.<br />The failure last year to foresee that subprime borrowers might default on their mortgages is only the latest example of mathematical models that rule out possible sets of circumstances because they were highly unusual.<br />In 1998, Connecticut hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management collapsed because its mathematical model failed to foresee the Russian debt crisis.<br />"And LTCM was constructed by Nobel laureates," Morici said.<br />Those laureates, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, along with Fischer Black, are considered the fathers of quantitative analysis for the Black-Scholes model, developed in 1973, for predicting option prices.<br />That model has underpinned countless portfolio management strategies, including portfolio insurance, which combines options and market indices to protect a portfolio's value, and which some blame for worsening the spiral that led to the 1987 market crash.<br />In that episode, critics charged, the model failed to factor in the difficulty of selling stocks as required by the strategy. As selling grew harder, more stocks were sold, feeding the panic.<br />But defenders of the profession say at least some of the criticism should be directed at the fund managers who come up with the strategies, rather than the quants who implement them.<br />And, as long as the strategy is working, no one wants to question it.<br />"It's an arms race where no one has an incentive to pull back on their own," said Andrew Lo, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Financial Engineering, another quant farm.<br />"When people are making money, it's virtually impossible to get them to take their hand out of the fire."<br />TWEAKING CURRICULUM<br />Quant farms started appearing at leading engineering schools in the United States in the mid 1990s, with Carnegie Mellon first out of the gate with its master's in computational finance in 1994.<br />Now there are more than 20 programs from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, to University of California at Berkeley.<br />Abroad, they have sprouted at schools such as HEC Montreal, City University in London and Bocconi University in Milan.<br />"Quants need to question their own assumptions," said Gregg Berman, co-head of RiskMetrics Group's risk management business and a former quant. "Unfortunately in quantitative finance, there are many who come from a schooling that's very theoretical."<br />One suggestion he has is to teach students more about how interconnected the various players in finance are. "We have to understand how contagion can spread between strategies. Risk management should not be divorced from investment management."<br />New York University, for example, is planning to introduce more classes aimed at reducing mispricings, which have wreaked havoc with models. It will also beef up its teaching of "crash risk," said Petter Kolm, the quant program's deputy director.<br />Kolm defends this field of study against critics.<br />"Quant finance is bringing a scientific method into finance," he said. "Fifty years ago it was more of an art, more about a qualitative assessment and experience, and now it's a more vigorous framework."<br />TIGHT JOB MARKET<br />The bloodbath on Wall Street has dimmed the job prospects of the new batch of baby quants leaving programs this month.<br />"This is the toughest market I've ever seen," said Rick Bryant, executive director of the quant program at Carnegie Mellon. "Right now we're 69 percent placed."<br />Columbia and NYU are seeing the same thing.<br />"The job situation is going to be worse for a while, that's for sure," said Columbia's Derman. "Historically, quants have worked at investment banks, and in the past few months there has been a mass evaporation of investment banks."<br />Kolm said about 55 percent of half of New York University's class of 2008 has been placed. Normally that rate would be between 80 and 90 percent at this point.<br />But that's not to say there are no high-paying jobs waiting for them.<br />"Risk management is still a growth area, and pension funds, hedge funds and mutual funds are still looking for talent," Carnegie Mellon's Bryant said.<br />Some jobs, such as those in investment banks' structured credit desks, are largely gone, but there are areas where quants remain in high demand. Such as hedge funds.<br />"If they've survived, they're hiring and are looking for people to who can sniff through the toxic waste and price CDOs (collateralized debt obligations)," Bryant said.<br />Even the former investment banks are still hiring for certain jobs, he said. For example, one student has been hired by Morgan Stanley to price and assess counterparty risk, something that was "hardly on anyone's radar last year."<br />For all the lashing the profession has taken, it is still hard to get into.<br />Columbia admits only about 10 percent of students who apply and the schools collectively only churn out about 2,000 new quants per year worldwide.<br />Bryant said his graduates from 2007 commanded a mean base salary of $96,000, with an large majority getting signing bonuses that averaged $37,000.<br />Listings at the job search site quantfinancejobs.com shows how well paid they continue to be. One New York based electronic trading fund last week was advertising for a quant trader for between $150,000 and $500,000, while a London-based hedge fund was offering between 90,000 pounds and 200,000 pounds for a PhD quant trader.<br />"The quest for the holy grail goes on," Bryant said. "People will continue to try to beat the market using quantitative models and the latest technology."<br />(Reporting by Phil Wahba; Editing by Eddie Evans)<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/12/22/business/OUKBS-UK-BRITAIN-FOOTFALL.php">Shopper numbers fall over weekend</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/business/22eurozone.php">Industrial orders plunge in Europe</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/business/22yen.php">Japanese exports fell at record pace in November</a><br /><br /><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>China fights "Mafia-style" gangs as crisis bites<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BEIJING: China plans to set up a new police division to combat growing Mafia-style gang violence as the global financial crisis bites and millions find themselves out of work, state media said on Monday.<br />Police were keeping "a close eye" on crimes stemming from unemployment as falling demand from overseas leads to the closure of factories, especially in the once-booming south, a senior official from the Ministry of Public Security was quoted as saying.<br />"Murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, assault ... they dare do anything," an unidentified director of the ministry's organized crime investigation division was quoted as saying. "Gang-related crimes have become a threat to our social stability and the economy."<br />At least four million migrant workers have lost jobs in the cities. Urban unemployment is running at 9.4 percent, double the official figure, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) estimated last week.<br />On top of that, more than six million students will try to enter China's workforce next year, half a million more than last year.<br />"Tremendous economic and social changes that the country is going through are behind gang crimes," Liang Huaren, a professor in criminal law at China University of Political Science and Law, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.<br />"The large number of laid-off workers and migrants, as well as the widening gap between the rich and the poor, are also the reasons."<br />(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie)<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Aeroflot flight lands in Athens after bomb threat</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Lefteris Papadimas<br />An Aeroflot flight from Athens to Moscow turned back in midair on Monday after receiving an anonymous bomb threat, but no explosives were found after police searched the plane in the Greek capital.<br />The Airbus A-319 carrying 49 passengers had been flying for around an hour when officials at Athens' Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport ordered it to turn back.<br />"An unknown man called and said there was a bomb on the Aeroflot plane headed from Athens to Moscow," a Greek civil aviation official told Reuters.<br />"We told the pilot to return to Athens for the appropriate checks. The plane was near the border with Turkey at the time."<br />Passengers were quickly disembarked from the flight and police conducted a thorough search but failed to find any explosives.<br />An airport official told Reuters that the aircraft will fly to Moscow later today.<br />(Additional reporting by Tatiana Fragou in Athens and Moscow bureau)<br /><br />***************<br /><br /><strong>Private colleges worry about a dip in enrollment<br /></strong>By Tamar Lewin<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />First came the good news for St. Olaf College: early-decision applications were way up this year.<br />Now comes the bad news: the number of regular applications is way down, about 30 percent fewer than at this time last year.<br />"To be quite honest, I don't know how we'll end up," said Derek Gueldenzoph, dean of admissions at the college, in Northfield, Minnesota. "By this time last year, we had three-quarters of all our applications. The deadline's Jan. 15. If what we've got now is three-quarters of what we're going to get, we're in big trouble. But if this turns out to be only half, we'll be fine."<br />Not all private colleges are reporting fewer applications this year. Even in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, where most colleges seem to have dwindling numbers, some are getting more applications than ever. Still, in a survey of 371 private institutions released last week by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, two-thirds said they were greatly concerned about preventing a decline in enrollment.<br />Getting exactly the right enrollment always a tricky proposition is especially crucial for small colleges with tuition-driven budgets. One case in point came last month, when Beloit College in Wisconsin announced it would eliminate about 40 positions because 36 fewer students than expected had enrolled. The college has about 1,300 students and gets three-quarters of its $55 million budget from tuition.<br />Admissions officers nationwide point to several possible reasons for the drop in applications. Some students have pared their college lists this year. Many more are looking at less-expensive state universities. Many institutions accepted more students under binding early-decision programs, and each such acceptance drains off an average of 8 to 10 regular-decision applications. And some experts suspect that students are delaying their college plans.<br />The deadline at most colleges is still a few weeks off, so a last-minute flood of applications could raise the numbers to last year's level. But admissions officers say they are not counting on that.<br />"I've been doing this a long time, and I don't remember a year when applications started out behind and didn't end up behind," said Steve Thomas, director of admissions at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where early-decision applications were higher than usual but regular applications are running about 14 percent behind.<br />At Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where early-decision applications were up, regular applications are down about 15 percent, said Gail Sweezey, the director of admissions.<br />"One thing that's happened this year is that there's all this talk, and one-sided media stories, about how private colleges are unaffordable," Sweezey said. "It's become almost viral that there's no loans, that schools are having problems. The truth is that a lot of private colleges have more financial aid available this year, but there's lots of misinformation out there. And my guidance counselor friends tell me students may be applying to fewer places and turning to their state university, which will be at capacity."<br />If some private colleges are grappling with the specter of too few applications, public universities and community colleges are having the opposite problem more students at a time when their state financing is being slashed.<br />In California and Florida, some public institutions have been forced to cap enrollment. And even in states like Pennsylvania, where the number of high school graduates is declining, applications to public universities are growing.<br />"We have 47,971 applications as of now, compared to 45,760 at this time last year," said Anne Rohrbach, executive director of undergraduate admissions at Pennsylvania State University. "We've been making offers since October, and we've already had 1,638 students say yes, compared to 1,096 at this time last year."<br />Generally, Ivy League universities with generous aid packages to low- and middle-income families have as many applicants as ever and even more applying for financial aid.<br />"We had 27,462 applications last year, and we've been running almost exactly on last year's pace," said William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard College, which has eliminated early decision. "More students are applying for financial aid. It's a significant increase, four full percentage points ahead of last year."<br />Yale received 5,556 applications this year, 14 percent more than last year, for its nonbinding single-choice early action program, said Jeffrey Brenzel, the dean of admissions, who added that regular applications were running higher, too.<br />Dartmouth has more applications than ever, early and regular, as do Duke University, the University of Denver and the University of Rochester.<br />Jonathan Burdick, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Rochester, said the school's reputation for generous merit aid helped draw applicants.<br />"This is a time when families may be looking at options that are less costly," Burdick said. "There are a lot of families who may make $180,000 to $200,000 but can't afford $50,000 a year and might apply to a Rochester, where merit aid this year can be as much as $14,000."<br />Many selective private colleges say fewer applications are no problem.<br />"We're down about 16 percent now, and I think we'll be down 10 to 15 percent at the end, Jan. 1," said Monica Inzer, the dean of admission and financial aid at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. "If our acceptance rate goes up a little, that's O.K."<br />Mark Hatch, vice president for enrollment management at Colorado College, said he expected to have about 5 percent fewer applicants this year and took a similar view.<br />"We admitted 26 percent last year, and if it's 31 percent this year, we'll make more people happy," Hatch said. "I think the economic uncertainty has families, even families of means, telling their children to round out their college lists with state universities. This year, families want two safety nets, one for the first hurdle, admission, and one for affordability. Anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of parents this year listing their occupation as unemployed."<br />At many colleges, financial aid requests are up significantly. At Connecticut College, for example, 42 percent of the accepted early-decision students applied for financial said, compared with 34 percent last year and 36 percent qualified for aid, compared with 24 percent last year.<br />This has been a particularly difficult year for small private colleges that accept a majority of their applicants.<br />Stephen MacDonald, the president of Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, where applications are down about 15 percent, is taking steps to lure more students, including adding lacrosse for men and women and hiring a prominent coach, which he thinks will attract 20 to 25 students.<br />"We've also increased our scholarship award to children of alums, from $500, which is a nice gesture, to $2,500 a year, which is more than a gesture," MacDonald said.<br />"We could still end up down 3 percent, which could sting," he said. "This is a time when schools like ours, private liberal arts colleges that don't have a big name, are in a potentially dangerous realm."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBFgG1-47PaWt2KmzjIGzpFJRsoTRHvoETFC2EzE3Rv8Xte-lJILRDTtUB_7p0BUBG5Gp8_19TnHv2vZEQW4-DWQVbAh56QinCu7Lnji44AKAK3sSV84ZIndZebmymr1YUC-Bpv_k3Q4/s1600-h/DSC04116.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833201500400514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGBFgG1-47PaWt2KmzjIGzpFJRsoTRHvoETFC2EzE3Rv8Xte-lJILRDTtUB_7p0BUBG5Gp8_19TnHv2vZEQW4-DWQVbAh56QinCu7Lnji44AKAK3sSV84ZIndZebmymr1YUC-Bpv_k3Q4/s320/DSC04116.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>India gives Pakistan letter said to be gunman's</strong><br />By Somini Sengupta<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />NEW DELHI: India on Monday gave Pakistan what it called proof of Pakistani involvement in last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The move built public pressure on India's neighbor, where the senior-ranking member of the American military arrived for talks for the second time since the attacks.<br />The Indian Foreign Ministry announced late Monday that it had given Pakistani officials here what it described as a letter from the lone surviving attacker. In the letter, the Indian ministry said, the gunman, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, said he and his nine accomplices were "from Pakistan." India did not make the specific contents of the letter public.<br />Pakistan's Foreign Ministry acknowledged receipt of the letter, saying only that "the contents of the letter are being examined." The government in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, has denied any links to the terrorist attacks and pressed India to offer proof. American officials have in turn pressed Pakistan to do more to crack down on terrorist groups operating within its territory.<br />India and the United States have attributed the three-day attack on India's financial capital to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned group based in Pakistan that has fought Indian forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir for years.<br />The attacks killed 163 victims, and 9 of the assailants, and have raised tensions between India and Pakistan. A scheduled cricket match between them has been canceled and peace talks, including a planned expansion of trade, have been suspended. Pakistan has arrested several members of the banned group, but it said it would not turn over fugitives and suspects wanted in the Mumbai or previous attacks in India to the Indian authorities.<br />On Monday, the Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said that New Delhi was prepared to act against Pakistan, even if other nations were not. "While we continue to persuade the international community and Pakistan, we are also clear that ultimately it is we who have to deal with this problem," he said.<br />Mukherjee has said India does not plan to go to war, but he maintained that it had not ruled out any options. "Pakistan's response so far has demonstrated their earlier tendency to resort to a policy of denial and to seek to deflect and shift the blame and responsibility," he said.<br />Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, repeated that his country did not invite war either but was prepared to respond.<br />"If war is imposed upon us, the whole nation would be united and the armed forces are fully capable of safeguarding and defending the territorial integrity of the country," the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan said.<br />The United States has sought to cool tempers in Islamabad and New Delhi. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited both capitals in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, as did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.<br />On Monday, a statement from the American Embassy in Islamabad said Mullen had met with the leaders of the Pakistani Army and spy agency, commending the arrests of the Lashkar leaders and urging them to "prosecute the cases fully and transparently." He encouraged them "to use this tragic event as an opportunity to forge more productive ties with India and to seek ways in which both nations can combat the common threat of extremism together," the statement said.<br />Pakistan and India have fought three wars since being carved out of British India in 1947.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>India says Pakistan shifting Mumbai blame</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Bappa Majumdar and Zeeshan Haider<br />India accused Pakistan on Monday of trying to shift blame for the Mumbai attacks and demanded it do more to dismantle militant networks, while a top U.S. commander landed in Islamabad for more talks.<br />As tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours simmered, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said the armed forces were fully capable of defending the country and the people would be united if war was imposed.<br />India and the United States have blamed Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for last month's attacks which have provoked a sharp rise in rhetoric between the nuclear-armed neighbours who have fought three wars since 1947.<br />Pakistan denies any links to the assault on India's financial heart, which killed 179 people, blaming "non-state actors," and has promised to cooperate in investigations. However, Pakistan says India has provided no evidence for it to investigate.<br />"Pakistan's response so far has demonstrated their earlier tendency to resort to a policy of denial and to seek to deflect and shift the blame and responsibility," Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.<br />Mukherjee reiterated that India was keeping all its options open after the Mumbai attacks, comments the Indian media have widely interpreted to mean that a military response was still possible. Mukherjee said that was not his intent.<br />Amid the war of words, the Pakistani air force conducted an exercise, causing delay to two civilian flights in the eastern city of Lahore, said Muhammad Latif, a spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines.<br />A Pakistani air force spokesman would only say the air force had "enhanced its vigilance" in view of the situation.<br />Gilani said Pakistan's desire for peaceful coexistence should not be taken as weakness.<br />"However, if war is imposed upon us the whole nation would be united and the armed forces are fully capable of safeguarding and defending the territorial integrity," Gilani's office quoted him as telling Pakistan's high commissioner to India.<br />LETTER FROM GUNMAN<br />On Sunday, Mukherjee said India had given Pakistan specific evidence about who was behind the Mumbai attacks, including intercepted satellite telephone conversations and an account given by the lone surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab.<br />A Pakistani spokesman said India had provided no evidence and the only information it was getting was through the media.<br />"We are doing our own investigation but it can go only so far because we do not have anything from the scene of the crime, we do not have anything from India," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq.<br />The Indian foreign ministry later said it had handed a letter written by Kasab to Pakistan's acting high commissioner in New Delhi in which Kasab said he and the nine gunmen killed in the siege were all from Pakistan.<br />Kasab had also asked to meet Pakistani diplomats.<br />Some Indian analysts said they feared the stridency of the Indian reaction might be painting Pakistan into a corner.<br />"We should have given Pakistan more time and by making the kind of remarks we have made, we have taken away any other option. We have spoken too soon and too loosely," New Delhi political commentator Prem Shankar Jha told Reuters.<br />The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, arrived in Pakistan for his second visit since the attacks for talks on "regional issues," a U.S. embassy spokesman said.<br />Early this month, Mullen urged Pakistan to investigate all links to Mumbai and to broaden its campaign against militants.<br />Sadiq said Pakistan was doing everything possible: "We have done more than what is required by the U.N. Security Council."<br />A U.N. Security Council committee this month added four Lashkar leaders to a list of people and groups facing sanctions for ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban.<br />LeT was set up to fight Indian rule in Kashmir and has been linked by U.S. officials and analysts to Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence military spy agency, who they say use it as a tool to destabilise India.<br />The U.N. sanctions also covered what the committee said was a new alias for Lashkar-e-Taiba -- the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). Lashkar was banned in Pakistan in 2002.<br />Pakistan has detained scores of militants and shut offices and frozen the assets of the JuD which says it is an Islamic charity with no Lashkar connection.<br />In response to the attack, India has imposed a "pause" on a nearly five-year old peace process, that had brought better ties, and cancelled a cricket tour of Pakistan.<br />(Writing by Paul Tait, Editing by Robert Birsel and Ralph Boulton)<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>From Munich to Mumbai</strong><br />By Ami Pedazhur<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />AUSTIN, Texas:<br />Now that India and the world are over the initial shock of the terrorist attacks last month in Mumbai, efforts to understand what happened and prevent future calamities are being hampered in ways familiar to Israelis like myself, who have lived through far too many such events: pointless efforts to place blame, and a failure to put the attacks in the proper historical context.<br />First, contrary to much punditry in India and the West, these attacks did not indicate the emergence of a new form of terrorism.<br />Actually, after decades in which terrorism had evolved mostly in the direction of suicide bombings, Mumbai was a painful reminder of the past.<br />The multiple hostage-takings and shootings, carefully planned and executed, were a throwback to the wave of hijackings and hostage situations that were the trademark of terrorists in the Middle East from the 1960s until the 1980s.<br />Like the Mideastern terrorists, those in Mumbai created a drama by aiming at high-profile targets - the hotels that are hubs for Western tourists and businessmen. They knew that viewers around the world would be glued for days to the constant stream of images on their TV and computer screens.<br />In addition, the fact that most of the Mumbai terrorists landed from the sea was another ugly flashback. For years, terrorists favored arriving at Israel's beaches on speed boats to take hostages in residential neighborhoods.<br />One of the most notorious perpetrators was Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 led a group of terrorists to the beach of Nahariya and shot a police officer and a civilian, Danny Haran, before smashing the skull of Haran's 4-year-old daughter, Einat. Kuntar was released this year from Israel in a prisoner exchange, and in Damascus was awarded the Syrian Order of Merit.<br />From a counterterrorism perspective, the events in Mumbai were even more worrisome. Though they did not detonate explosive belts, the attackers were truly suicide terrorists. They did not take their hostages for the purpose of negotiations, and it is quite clear that they did not hope to leave the scene alive. They also created chaos by attacking several locations at once.<br />When terrorists have the advantage of surprise, it really does not matter how well trained the counterterrorism forces are. It takes a long time to figure out what is going on, to gather tactical intelligence and to launch a counterattack.<br />No one should be aware of these facts more than the Israelis who in the 1970s endured a series of similar, albeit less sophisticated attacks.<br />Hence, I have been very surprised to hear Israeli security experts criticizing the Indian response. These experts probably forgot the devastating civilian death tolls of the attacks in Maalot in 1974 (22 Israeli high school students killed), at the Coastal Road in 1978 (37 murdered, including 13 children) and at Misgav Am in 1980 (two kibbutz members killed, one an infant). These incidents all illustrated the extreme difficulty of rescuing hostages even when the attacked state has highly trained forces and a lot of experience.<br />Yes, Israel has had a few successes that have been glorified around the world. The most famous were the raids on hijacked planes in Lod, Israel, in 1972 and at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. But these two airport rescues cannot be compared with the events in Mumbai.<br />The Israeli successes were due mainly to the fact that the terrorists were interested in negotiating, giving security forces the opportunity to gather intelligence, devise a rescue plan and take the hijackers by surprise. Hostages and rescuers were killed in both cases. Yet no security experts argued at the time that the Israeli forces were inadequately prepared or failed in their execution.<br />It is clear that the Indian security forces made some mistakes. However, mistakes are inherent in such crises. At the same time, given the complex nature of the attacks, it seems likely the death toll could have been much higher. After the initial confusion, the Indians seem to have done a thorough job of gathering intelligence and carefully planning their counterattacks. The execution itself was careful and thorough.<br />Israel and India both face a lasting terrorism challenge. Yet, if I was asked to give India policy recommendations, I would be extremely cautious about advocating the Israeli approach. Protecting a huge multiethnic, multireligious country like India is far more challenging than securing a rather homogeneous, tiny state like Israel.<br />Just to illustrate, Israel's airport security is rightly considered to be a model for the world. However, the Israeli security establishment took years and experienced a number of direct attacks on travel hubs before it slowly introduced its impressive security measures. That Israel has only one major international airport - Ben-Gurion, near Tel Aviv - made the process much easier. And so far, Israel has not been able to tightly secure more challenging targets like train and bus systems.<br />The Israeli experience teaches that countering terrorism is a long and frustrating process of trial and error. Terrorists are fast to respond to new obstacles.<br />For example, the security barrier erected after the start of the second intifada in 2000 has brought a sharp decline in the number of suicide attacks. But Hamas adapted quickly: Suicide bombers have been replaced by rockets. While the number of casualties caused by the rockets is significantly lower, I am not convinced that residents of the towns near Gaza feel any safer.<br />The Mumbai attacks showed just how difficult it is for large, multiethnic states to protect themselves against terrorism, something Americans have known well since 9/11. There is certainly much for New Delhi and Washington to learn from the Israeli experience, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. While Israel has much to be proud of in how it has handled terrorism, it also has much to be humble about.A<br />mi Pedazhur, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of the forthcoming book "The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism."<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Missiles are said to kill 8 in northwest Pakistan</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan: Suspected U.S. missile strikes killed eight people Monday in northwest Pakistan, where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are believed hiding, officials and witnesses said.<br />The identities of those killed in the two attacks the latest in a stepped up American campaign in the lawless region close to the Afghan border were not immediately known.<br />Meanwhile, the government said an al-Qaida-linked terror group was suspected of helping carry out the September suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.<br />Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik's charge against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was the first time Pakistan has blamed a specific group for the bombing, which killed more than 50 people.<br />Monday's missiles struck about 5 miles (8 kilometers) apart just south of Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area, said local security official Bakht Janan. A house and a vehicle were destroyed in the attacks, which killed four people in each location, he said.<br />Witnesses told The Associated Press that an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a vehicle fired on one of the drones before it launched a missile.<br />The U.S. has carried out more than 30 missile strikes since August in Pakistan's lawless, semiautonomous tribal areas, targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants blamed for attacks in Afghanistan.<br />While the missile strikes have killed scores of militants, Pakistan has criticized them as an infringement of its sovereignty and say it undermines its own battle against extremism.<br />Most of the missiles are believed launched from unmanned spy planes that take off from Afghanistan. Washington rarely confirms or denies the attacks and has pushed Islamabad to crack down on militants in the tribal areas.<br />The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Pakistan Monday to meet with senior government officials.<br />Mullen arrived from Afghanistan, where he said the U.S. would send up to 30,000 additional troops to the country by summer to fight the resurgent Taliban.<br />Pakistan has arrested three people in the Sept. 20 Marriott truck bombing, but no one has been formally charged.<br />Malik told lawmakers that assailants packed explosives into the truck in Jhang town in Punjab province, south of Islamabad. He said the plot was "assisted" by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but gave no more details on its involvement.<br />Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a Sunni Muslim militant group accused of killing hundreds of minority Shiites across Pakistan. Experts say in recent years it has formed links with al-Qaida. The group has been accused of attacks again Westerners in Karachi and two assassination attempts against former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.<br />Also Monday, Interior Ministry spokesman Shahidullah Baig said an investigation was launched into the theft of a large cache of weapons seized after last year's army assault on the Red Mosque, which left scores of occupying militants dead. The mosque was historically used as a jumping off point for militants en route to the fight in Kashmir.<br />Shahidullah Baig said 10 police officials, including the head of the Aapbara police station where the weapons were stored, had been arrested.<br />"The weapons have gone missing from the store, and it was learned recently that it has been happening in phases," Baig said.<br />He would not specify what was missing, but police seized assault rifles, pistols, hand grenades, rockets, rocket launchers and machine guns after the mosque assault in July 2007, a watershed moment in the country's struggle against militancy.<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>NATO to engage Afghan tribes in Taliban fight</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Golnar Motevalli<br />While U.S. forces prepare to send up to 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, behind the scenes Afghan government officials are working to engage tribal elders as a way of undermining the growing influence of Taliban insurgents.<br />Engaging with leaders in rural areas of Afghanistan is part of a new NATO and U.S. strategy in Afghanistan; to promote traditional methods of local rule and undercut the lawlessness that feeds in the strengthening Taliban insurgency.<br />"The only way you can bring peace and stability to this country is to revive the traditional rule of people within the community in governance and security," Barna Karimi, deputy minister for policy at the Interdependent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) said.<br />The IDLG is an Afghan government department which leads community outreach to elders in rural areas of Afghanistan where their word is respected and often determines local law.<br />Using shuras -- meetings of tribal leaders -- the IDLG wants power-brokers in remote areas to cherry-pick civilians for jobs in the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.<br />"This shura will sign a memorandum of understanding on how the government should work and how the community should help the government not to shelter insurgents in their houses, not to feed them, not to house them, not to help them," Karimi said.<br />The commander of NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, U.S. General David McKiernan recommended the plan in Washington last month as a way of improving government effectiveness at a local level in a country which has little history of central rule.<br />"What they are talking about is empowering local militias and what they are focussed on is money, development, training and governance," said a Brussels-based NATO diplomat.<br />TRIBAL RULE<br />The plan is one plank of the "clear, hold and build" strategy that General David Petraeus employed with success in Iraq and now as overall commander of Afghanistan is likely to recommend to President-elect Barack Obama in a forthcoming strategic review.<br />McKiernan spoke of providing the local shuras with "the wherewithal, the authority and some resources" to help provide security, but said the plan was different to the so-called the Awakening Councils, that turned their guns on al Qaeda in Iraq.<br />By helping to provide security at a local level, the shuras could take some of the pressure off Afghan forces while the U.S. military works on nearly doubling the Afghan army to some 134,000 and reforming the notoriously corrupt police.<br />The plan is to be implemented first of all on a trial basis, focussing on areas along the key highway from the capital Kabul to Kandahar, the main city in the south, NATO officials said.<br />But McKiernan, like other officials, has avoided talk of arming militias, an idea fraught with problems in Afghanistan where long-standing, complex ethnic, tribal and local rivalries often pit one village, valley, tribe or region against another.<br />"There's a lot of inter-fighting and internal disagreements between local tribes," Afghan parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai told Reuters. "They will start to abuse the same weapons they are responsible for ... It's a big threat to the community."<br />The extent to which the local shuras would be allowed to arm their communities is currently being debated by the Afghan government and the NATO-led force.<br />Afghan President Hamid Karzai said this week that arming militias would be a "disaster."<br />"Getting weapons in Afghanistan is not a problem, everybody is armed," the Brussels-based NATO diplomat said.<br />"I've not heard about anyone talking about giving them weapons and a lot of people talking about not giving them weapons," the diplomat said.<br />(Editing by Valerie Lee)<br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. awards GD and Northrop submarine deal</strong><br />Reuters<br />Tuesday, December 23, 2008<br />By Andrea Shalal-Esa<br />The U.S. Navy awarded a $14 billion (9.4 billion pound) contract to General Dynamics Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp for eight Virginia-class submarines, the Pentagon announced on Monday.<br />The multiyear contract will mean the production of one submarine in 2009, one in 2010 and two submarines in each of the following three years, the government said.<br />The production schedule and design changes shaved 20 percent off the acquisition costs, and give contractors more stability in their business outlooks, the Navy said.<br />General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Virginia, is the lead contractor on the nuclear-powered submarines, but construction is shared equally with Northrop, which is based in Los Angeles.<br />"It brings stability to the submarine program, to our work force and to the shipbuilding supplier industrial base for the next decade," Matt Mulherin, general manager of Northrop's shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, said in a statement.<br />General Dynamics does its submarine work at its Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Connecticut<br />The vessels are designed for a range of missions such as anti-submarine and surface ship warfare, delivering special operation forces, intelligence and surveillance.<br />"By providing money over a period of several years, it becomes easier for the contractor to plan ahead and cut the cost of each vessel," said Loren Thompson, defence analyst with the Lexington Institute in Virginia.<br />He said the multiyear contract would help reassure shipyard workers in New England and Virginia "that their jobs will exist five years from today."<br />Ronald O'Rourke, analyst with the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said the Navy already had 10 of the new attack submarines in service or under construction, and the new orders would bring the total to 18.<br />Overall, the Navy has said it plans to build 30 of the Virginia-class submarines.<br />(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Toni Reinhold)<br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Question of semantics on troop withdrawal: How many is 'all'?<br /></strong>By Elisabeth Bumiller<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: It is one of the most troublesome questions right now at the Pentagon, and it has started a semantic dance: What is the definition of a combat soldier? More important, when will all U.S. combat troops withdraw from the major cities of Iraq?<br />The short answers are that combat troops, defined by the military as those whose primary mission is to engage the enemy with lethal force, will have to be out of Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, the deadline under a recently approved status-of-forces agreement between the United States and Iraq.<br />The long answers open up some complicated, sleight-of-hand responses to military and political problems facing President-elect Barack Obama.<br />Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all U.S. combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed "trainers" and "advisers" in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.<br />"Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back," said John Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the U.S. Army's new counterinsurgency field manual.<br />The issue is a difficult one for Obama, whose campaign pledge to "end the war" ignited his supporters and helped catapult him into the White House. But as Obama has begun meeting with his new military advisers - the top two, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are holdovers from the Bush administration - it has become clear that his definition of ending the war means leaving behind many thousands of U.S. troops.<br />One reason is that Obama is facing rapidly approaching, and overlapping, withdrawal deadlines, some set by the Bush administration and the Iraqis, and some set by him.<br />After June 2009 looms May 2010, 16 months after Obama's inauguration, the month he set during the campaign to have U.S. combat forces out of Iraq entirely. Next comes December 2011, the deadline in the status-of-forces agreement to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq.<br />"If you're in combat, it doesn't make any difference whether you're an adviser: You're risking your life," said Andrew Krepinevich, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research group. "The bullets don't have 'adviser' stenciled on some and 'combat unit' on another."<br />There are 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, including service and support personnel. General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, declined to tell reporters earlier this month how many of them might remain in cities after the June 2009 deadline and said the exact number still had to be negotiated with the Iraqi government.<br />But some experts, like Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in military strategy at the Brookings Institution, argue that roughly 10,000 U.S. troops should remain in Baghdad after next June, with thousands more in other cities around the country.<br />For his part, Odierno made clear that the Iraqis still needed help - and that the United States would hardly disappear. "What I would say is, we'll still maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq, even after the summer," he said.<br />Military officials say they can accomplish that by "repurposing" whatever combat troops remain. From the military's point of view, a combat soldier is not so much what he is called but what he does.<br />For example, in an area south of Baghdad once called the "triangle of death" because of the Sunni insurgents there, a combat brigade of 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division has been replaced with what the U.S. Army calls a transition task force of 800 to 1,200 troops with the mission to train and advise the Iraqi Army.<br />Although the Americans still have the task, among other duties, of calling in airstrikes if Iraqi patrols get in trouble, Nagl, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security, a research group, argued that the new role for U.S. troops represented more than a semantic difference.<br />"It's no longer Americans providing the muscle," he said. "Now it's Iraqi patrols with a small group of American advisers tucked inside."<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Charges dismissed in Iraq against ministry detainees</strong><br />By Campbell Robertson and Suadad al Salhy<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: The Ministry of the Interior released a statement on Monday detailing the charges against its officials who were detained last week in a security crackdown.<br />The officials were under suspicion of making fake badges and identification cards, the statement said, that provided access to the Interior Ministry building, which the statement described as a target of terrorist attack.<br />At first the investigation was an internal matter overseen by the interior minister, but Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki later expanded the investigation beyond the ministry and created a committee that included a judge.<br />The judge dismissed the charges and ordered the detainees released, the statement said, but it gave no further explanation. The status of the detainees, said to number 24 by the ministry, remains unclear, though a ministry official said Monday that they were still in custody.<br />Sherwan al-Waili, the minister of national security, mostly echoed the account in the Interior Ministry's statement in an interview in his office. But he added that "in this case specifically" the detainees were not being investigated for affiliation with Al Awda, a banned political party related to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which ruled Iraq for 35 years. Asked if there was an investigation at the ministry that did involve illicit Awda connections, Waili declined to comment further.<br />This directly contradicts statements by the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, who said that the inquiry was about a terrorist operation against the ministry as well as ties to Al Awda.<br />Waili said the interior minister had been fully aware of all the charges throughout the investigation, but Bolani said in an interview on Friday that the most serious charges came as a surprise to him. Waili also said that government investigators had given Bolani the forged badges and identification cards for forensic analysis but that the minister had done nothing with them.<br />The Interior Ministry has been a source of anxiety for the Maliki government for a number of reasons. It has a history of being associated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a powerful Shiite party that is a rival to the Dawa party of the prime minister and that pushed for Bolani's candidacy for interior minister in 2006. Bolani also created his own party, the secular Iraqi Constitutional Party, though he said he relinquished his leadership position when he became the interior minister.<br />Also on Monday, a special session of Parliament was called to vote on the dismissal of the Parliament speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. After a rowdy session of Parliament last week at which he was accused of hurling serious insults, Mashhadani resigned but then later rescinded his resignation.<br />While there appears to be significant support for his dismissal, the vote was postponed to give party leaders time to discuss their options, including who would replace him, said Ahmed Abdulsattar, a member of Tawafiq, Mashhadani's own bloc.<br />"As Tawafiq, we suggested him to be speaker, and we've supported him twice before in the same kind of crisis," said Abdulsattar, who added that other lawmakers said they would boycott the Parliament if Mashhadani remained speaker. This time, he said, "we've reached a dead end."<br />Also in Parliament, a vote on a resolution that would allow British, Australian and other foreign troops to stay on Iraqi soil after the end of the year was postponed until the issue with the speaker is worked out.<br />Meanwhile, the trial of Muntader al-Zaidi, the reporter who was arrested for throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush last week, was scheduled to begin on Dec. 31 at the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, one of his brothers said. The Central Criminal Court is a special court set up to address serious criminal charges. The lawyers for Zaidi are trying to transfer the case to another court, said the brother, Maytham al-Zaidi.<br />In a television interview on Sunday, another of the reporter's brothers said Zaidi had been tortured while being held.<br />But Abdulsattar al-Berikdar, the spokesman of the Supreme Judicial Council, said Zaidi "did not ask to be submitted to a medical committee and did not tell the judge that he was tortured or register a complaint against anyone." The spokesman added, "If he had, then of course the court would take the suitable procedure."<br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>Some Arab women find freedom in the skies</strong><br />By Katherine Zoepf<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates: Marwa Abdel Aziz Fathi giggled self-consciously as she looked down at the new wing-shaped brooch on the left breast pocket of her crisp gray uniform, then around the room at the dozens of other Etihad flight attendants all chatting and eating canapés around her.<br />It was graduation day at Etihad Training Academy, where the national airline of the United Arab Emirates holds a seven-week training course for new flight attendants. Downstairs are the cavernous classrooms where Fathi and other trainees rehearsed meal service plans in life-size mockups of planes and trained in the swimming pool, where they learned how to evacuate passengers in the event of an emergency landing over water.<br />Despite her obvious pride, Fathi, a 22-year-old from Egypt, was amazed to find herself here.<br />"I never in my life thought I'd work abroad," said Fathi, who was a university student in Cairo when she began noticing newspaper advertisements recruiting young Egyptians to work at airlines based in the Gulf. "My family thought I was crazy. But then some families don't let you leave at all."<br />A decade ago, unmarried Arab women like Fathi, working outside their home countries, were rare. But just as young men from poor Arab nations flocked to the oil-rich Gulf states for jobs, more young women are doing so, sociologists say, though no official statistics are kept on how many.<br />Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascination in much the same way.<br />The dormitory here where the Etihad flight attendants live after training looks much like the city's many 1970s-style office blocks, its windows iridescent like gasoline on a puddle. But there are three security guards on the ground floor, a logbook for sign-ins and strict rules. Anyone who tries to sneak a man back to one of the simply furnished two-bedroom suites that the women share may be dismissed, even deported.<br />In the midst of an Islamic revival across the Arab world that is largely being led by young people, gulf states like Abu Dhabi which offer freedoms and opportunities nearly unimaginable elsewhere in the Middle East have become an unlikely place of refuge for some young Arab women. And many say that the experience of living independently and working hard for high salaries has forever changed their ambitions and their beliefs about themselves, though it can also lead to a painful sense of alienation from their home countries and their families.<br />At almost any hour of the day or night, there are a dozen or more young women with identical rolling suitcases waiting in the lobby of their dormitory to be picked up for work on Etihad flights. Though several are still drowsily applying makeup and the more steady-handed have perfected a back-of-the-bus toilette that takes exactly the length of their usual ride to Abu Dhabi International Airport they are uniformly well ironed and blow-dried. Those with longer hair wear black hair-ties wrapped around meticulously hair-netted ponytails. They wear jaunty little caps with attached gauzy scarves that hint at hijab, the head coverings worn by many Muslim women. Like college students during exams, all of them gripe good-naturedly about how little they have slept.<br />There are exclamations of congratulation and commiseration as the women learn friends' assignments. Most coveted are long-haul routes to places like Toronto and Sydney, Australia, where layovers may last many days, hotels are comfortable and per diem allowances from the airline to cover food and incidentals are generous. Short-haul flights to places like Khartoum, Sudan, are dreaded: more than four hours of work, followed by refueling, a new load of passengers, an exhausting late-night return flight to Abu Dhabi and the shuttle bus back to the dormitory tower with its vigilant guards.<br />Upstairs, scrubbed of their thick, professional makeup, most of the women look a decade younger. They seem to subsist on snack food: toast made, Arabic-style, by waving flaps of pita over an open flame; slivers of cheap, oversalted Bulgarian cheese; the Lebanese date-filled cookies called ajweh; pillowy rolls from a local Cinnabon outlet that one young Syrian flight attendant proclaimed herself addicted to (an expression she used with self-conscious delight, a badge of newfound worldliness).<br />They watch bootlegged DVDs "Desperate Housewives," "Sex and the City" bought on layovers in Bangladesh and Indonesia. They drift along the tiled floors between their rooms in velour sweatpants and fuzzy slippers, and they keep their voices low: someone is always trying to catch a wink of sleep before her flight.<br />A Lonely Existence<br />It is a hushed, lonely and fluorescent-lighted existence, and it is leavened mostly by nights out dancing. Despite the increasing numbers of women moving to the gulf countries, the labor migration patterns of the last 20 years have left the Emirates with a male-female ratio that is more skewed than anywhere else in the world; in the 15-to-64 age group, there are more than 2.7 men for every woman.<br />Etihad flight attendants are such popular additions to Abu Dhabi's modest hotel bar scene that their presence is encouraged by frequent "Ladies' Nights" and cabin-crew-only drink discounts. It is almost impossible for an unveiled woman in her 20s to go to a mall or grocery store in Abu Dhabi without being asked regularly, by grinning strangers, if she is a stewardess.<br />One evening last fall, an Egyptian flight attendant for Etihad with dyed blond hair and five-inch platform heels led a friend a 23-year-old Tunisian woman wearing a sparkly white belt who said that she had come to the Emirates hoping to find work as a seamstress up to the entrance of the Sax nightclub at the Royal Meridien Hotel.<br />Just inside, in the bar area, several young Emirates men in white dishdashas were dancing jerkily to deafening club music.<br />Clutching her friend by the elbow, the Egyptian woman indicated one of the bouncers. "Isn't he just so yummy?" she shrieked. The bouncer, who had plainly heard, ignored her, and the women filed past. Despite appearances, explained the Egyptian flight attendant who asked not to be named because she was not authorized by Etihad to speak to the news media sex and dating are very fraught matters for most of the young Arab women who come to work in the Emirates.<br />Some young women cope with their new lives away from home by becoming almost nunlike, keeping to themselves and remaining very observant Muslims, she said, while others quickly find themselves in the arms of unsuitable men. "With the Arabic girls who come to work here, you get two types," the Egyptian woman said. "They're either very closed up and scared and they don't do anything, or else they're not really thinking about flying they're just here to get their freedom. They're really naughty and crazy."<br />Treated Like a Heroine<br />Rania Abou Youssef, 26, a flight attendant for the Dubai-based airline, Emirates, said that when she went home to Alexandria, Egypt, her female cousins treated her like a heroine. "I've been doing this for four years," she said, "and still they're always asking, 'Where did you go and what was it like and where are the photographs?' "<br />Many of the young Arab women working in the Gulf take delight in their status as pioneers, role models for their friends and younger female relatives. Young women brought up in a culture that highly values community, they have learned to see themselves as individuals.<br />For many families, allowing a daughter to work, much less to travel overseas unaccompanied, may call her virtue into question and threaten her marriage prospects. Yet this culture is changing, said Musa Shteiwi, a sociologist at Jordan University in Amman. "We're noticing more and more single women going to the gulf these days," he said. "It's still not exactly common, but over the last four or five years it's become quite an observable phenomenon."<br />Unemployment levels across the Arab world remain high. As the networks of Arab expatriates in the gulf countries become stronger and as cellphones and expanding Internet access make overseas communication more affordable, some families have grown more comfortable with the idea of allowing daughters to work here. Some gulf-based employers now say they tailor recruitment procedures for young women with Arab family values in mind. They may hire groups of women from a particular town or region, for example, so the women can support one another once in the gulf. "A lot of girls do this now because this has a reputation for being very safe," said Enas Hassan, an Iraqi flight attendant for Emirates. "The families have a sense of security. They know that if their girls start flying they won't be thrown into the wide world without protection."<br />A Feeling of Displacement<br />Yet not everyone can make peace with life in the United Arab Emirates, the young flight attendants say. Even the landscape block after sterile block of hotels and office buildings with small shops and takeout restaurants on their lower floors can contribute to a feeling of displacement. Nearly all year long, for most of the day, the sunlight is bright white, so harsh that it obliterates all contrast. Despite vigilant watering, even the palm trees on roadsides look grayish and embattled.<br />Some of the young women tell stories of fellow flight attendants who have simply slipped onto planes to their home countries and run away, without giving notice to the airline.<br />The most successful Arab flight attendants, they say, are often those whose circumstances have already placed them somehow at the margins of their home societies: young immigrant women who are supporting their families after the death of a male breadwinner, for example, and a handful of young widows and divorced women who are eventually permitted to work overseas after their prospects of remarriage have dimmed.<br />Far more than other jobs they might find in the gulf, flying makes it difficult for Muslim women to fulfill religious duties like praying five times a day and fasting during Ramadan, the Egyptian attendant noted. She said she hoped to wear the hijab one day, "just not yet." A sense of disconnection from their religion can add to feelings of alienation from conservative Muslim communities back home. Young women whose work in the gulf supports an extended family often find, to their surprise and chagrin, that work has made them unsuitable for life within that family.<br />"A very good Syrian friend of mine decided to resign from the airline and go back home," the Egyptian flight attendant said. "But she can't tolerate living in a family house anymore. Her parents love her brother and put him first, and she's never allowed out alone, even if it's just to go and have a coffee."<br />"It becomes very difficult to go home again," she said.<br /><br />***************************<br /><br /><strong>Back on the map: Tangier is a crossroads of history and hedonism</strong><br />By Gisela Williams<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />TANGIER: Dusk was falling on Tangier, and small cliques of nattily dressed expats were sipping mint tea and socializing on the top floor of the Hotel Nord-Pinus, a sumptuous riad-style guesthouse in the Casbah. A gentle sea breeze wafted through the arched doorways and filled the stylish lounge, decorated with embroidered Moroccan pillows and modern photography, with an air of exclusivity.<br />Down the street, a different scent drifted from the fabled Café Hafa, once the haunt of Beat poets and musicians like the Rolling Stones. Two dozen young men were sitting on battered folding chairs, several discreetly smoking kif - tobacco blended with hashish.<br />This Moroccan port has always been a city of extremes - a surreal crossroads where Northern Africa meets Europe, the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean, and hedonism and history seem to intermix.<br />But while the gritty authenticity of Tangier is still there, a new generation of artists and expats is giving this fabulously shabby port a new shine.<br />In the heady years after World War II, when Tangier was still in diplomatic limbo as an International Zone, its craggy shores became a gay-friendly haven for spies, globe-trotting businessmen, beatniks in exile and eccentric foreigners. This is where William S. Burroughs wrote the bulk of "Naked Lunch," which marks its 50th anniversary next year, and where Paul Bowles completed his haunting and existential cult classic, "The Sheltering Sky."<br />As recently as the last decade, Tangier was still considered a down-on-its-luck town riddled with drugs and hustlers. But while sleazy dives, decayed buildings and dark alleys can still be found, a stylish new Tangier has emerged, fueled by royal investments and a thriving arts community. There are now renovated architecture gems like the '40s Cinemathèque de Tanger, quirky boutiques loaded with one-of-a-kind objects, and cafés that draw a sophisticated but idiosyncratic crowd.<br />That crowd today includes the model Jacquetta Wheeler; Bruno Frisoni, the designer for Roger Vivier; and the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, who recently bought a starkly modern house next door to the Café Hafa.<br />Much of Tangier's renaissance can be traced back to Morocco's young king, the 45-year-old Mohammed VI. Unlike his father - the late King Hassan II who ruled Morocco for 38 years and was said to have despised Tangier - the new king is an enthusiastic champion.<br />Instead of an urban wasteland, he sees Tangier as a cultural and commercial gateway between Africa and Europe. The young king installed Mohamed Hassad, a forward-thinking politician known for turning around Marrakesh, as the governor of the Tangier region. The king was also the driving force behind Tanger Med, a giant new cargo port whose administrative center was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. Also in the works is a high-speed train network that would cut the travel time between Tangier and Marrakesh to less than three hours.<br />Despite the changes, the surreal jumble of Escheresque alleyways, crooked white facades and shady courtyards that make up Tangier's historic heart hasn't changed since Bowles wrote "Without Stopping," his 1972 autobiography that recounts his itinerant love affair with North Africa.<br />In it, Bowles described Tangier as "rich in prototypal dream scenes: covered streets like corridors with doors opening into rooms on each side, hidden terraces high above the sea, streets consisting only of steps, dark impasses, small squares built on sloping terrain so that they looked like ballet sets designed in false perspective, with alleys leading off in several directions; as well as the classical dream equipment of tunnels, ramparts, ruins, dungeons and cliffs."<br />And the slightly sinister and exotic underbelly that inspired Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" is still found at places like Café Hafa and Café Central, a faded coffeehouse in the seedy but always buzzing Petit Socco square, where everyone seems to have something to hustle among the fin-de-siècle facades.<br />But there is also a glamorous new side to Tangier, where socialites air-kiss by the palm-lined swimming pool at La Villa Josephine, a lavish hillside retreat. Or where coiffed ladies nibble on prawn cocktails at the restaurant of the Le Mirage resort, built on a cliff overlooking an expanse of caramel-colored sand.<br />On a breezy Friday afternoon last summer, Le Mirage was filled with wealthy Moroccans, bronzed European families and ladies dressed in Palm Beach whites and peacock-colored caftans. They sat on a portico-shaded terrace, exchanging gossip about other expats and recent trips to Marbella, Spain. Burroughs wouldn't have lasted two minutes in this crowd.<br />"There's a wonderful term in ornithology that is perfect for the kind of people that end up here," said Elena Prentice, an American painter and philanthropist who lives in Tangier. "They are called accidentals, birds that end up in an area they don't really belong.<br />Everyone in Tangier is some form of accidental."<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>How to win Islam over</strong><br />By Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would convene a conference of Muslim leaders from around the world within his first year in office.<br />Recently aides have said he may give a speech from a Muslim capital in his first 100 days. His hope, he has said, is to "make clear that we are not at war with Islam," to describe to Muslims "what our values and our interests are" and to "insist that they need to help us to defeat the terrorist threats that are there." This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well-intentioned, of course. But the premise is wrong.<br />Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that "Islam" and "the West" are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between "civilizations" or "cultures" concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden's narrative.<br />Instead, Obama, the first "post-racial" president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the U.S. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.<br />This will be an uphill battle, since this view of a monolithic, dangerous Islam has gained wide acceptance. Whether we're talking about civil war in Iraq, insurgency in Afghanistan, unrest in Kashmir, conflict in Israel-Palestine, nuclear ambitions in Iran, rebellion in the Philippines or urban violence in France, people routinely - but wrongly - single out Islam as the explanation, rather than nationalism or separatism, political ambitions or social ills. This in turn reinforces the idea of a global struggle.<br />Even the recent attacks in Mumbai, India, cannot be seen primarily through the prism of religion. What the terrorists and supporters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group believed to have carried out the attacks, have achieved is to make normal relations between India and Pakistan impossible for the foreseeable future. Such groups have always used regional conflicts like that in Kashmir to hold on to power.<br />Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its "leaders."<br />Who are these leaders anyway? If Obama picks heads of state, he will effectively concede bin Laden's point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity - or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.<br />And such a conference would have negative effects for Western Muslims. By lending weight to the idea of a natural link between Islam and terrorism, it would reinforce the perception that they constitute a sort of foreign body in Western societies.<br />Most Western Muslims want first and foremost to be considered as full citizens of their respective Western country, not part of any diaspora. And most of them share the so-called Western values.<br />If the idea of a Muslim summit meeting should be dropped, then what should Obama do?<br />No more - but also no less - than carrying out the ambitious program he put forward during the campaign: closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, withdrawing from Iraq, banning torture, pushing for peace in the Middle East and so forth.<br />These are not in any sense concessions to "Islam," but on the contrary a reassertion that American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others.<br />Obama should also put more faith in the capacity of the rest of the world to recognize that America has turned the page on eight catastrophic years. After all, Americans have just elected a president whose middle name is Hussein. That name goes a long way with many Muslims.<br /><br /><em>Olivier Roy is a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Justin Vaisse is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.</em><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Five convicted of conspiracy to attack U.S. base<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Jon Hurdle<br />Five men were convicted on Monday of conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers in a planned attack on an Army base in New Jersey that prosecutors described as a bid to wage Islamist holy war against America.<br />The U.S. attorney said he would seek life sentences for the five foreign-born defendants, who were also found not guilty on charges of attempted murder after an eight-week trial.<br />Prosecutors had told the court the defendants were inspired by al Qaeda. Defence attorneys had argued that while the men talked the talk of militancy, it was all bravado and they had no real intention of carrying out the attack on Fort Dix army base, which was never executed.<br />Family members and defence lawyers said they believed the verdicts were influenced by suspicion of Muslims since the September 11 al Qaeda attacks.<br />The defendants, all born outside the United States, are ethnic Albanian brothers Shain, Dritan and Eljvir Duka who together ran a roofing business in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Serdar Tatar, a convenience store clerk who was born in Turkey; and Mohamad Shnewer, a Jordanian-born taxi driver from Philadelphia. They are aged 23 to 30.<br />Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra said prosecutors will press for sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing was set for April 22-23.<br />Dritan and Shain Duka were also found guilty of possessing weapons to be used in the planned attack.<br />The five defendants smiled as they entered the court but did not react visibly when the verdicts were read. Defence lawyers said they would consider an appeal after sentencing.<br />FBI MOLES TAPED PLOTTERS<br />The men were arrested in May 2007 after a 14-month investigation in which two people working for the FBI infiltrated the group and obtained hundreds of hours of audio and video recordings of the men plotting an attack.<br />The probe was launched when an electronics store clerk went to the police after being asked by one of the men to copy a tape containing scenes of militants firing guns into the air.<br />As well as planning to attack Fort Dix, about 40 miles (65 km) east of Philadelphia, prosecutors said the men discussed attacks on other military targets including Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and the U.S. Coast Guard in Philadelphia.<br />Serpil Tatar, sister of defendant Serdar Tatar, called the conviction "a big lie" that had undermined her faith in the United States. She denied her brother was a terrorist, saying: "My brother was crying for the people who died on September 11."<br />Attorney Richard Sparaco said Tatar's Muslim religion "seriously counted against him" in the trial.<br />Michael Riley, attorney for Shain Duka, said there was a danger people would accept the government's charges of terrorism too readily in the wake of the September 11 attacks.<br />"We can't accept whatever our government says at face value," Riley said.<br />Jurors said they did not reach their verdict lightly.<br />"This has been one of the most difficult things that we have ever had to do," the members of the sequestered jury said in a statement read to the court by U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler after six days of deliberations.<br />Marra rejected defence family claims the men were manipulated by FBI informants into plotting the attack and denied they were convicted because of their religion or ethnicity. "The verdict was based solely on the words and actions of these defendants," he said.<br />(Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Cynthia Osterman)<br /><br /><br /><br />***********************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>A little respect<br /></strong>By Abubakar N. Kasim<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />TORONTO:<br />If Santa Claus were ever to pay me a visit and grant me a wish, I would reply with one word: respect.<br />I would wish that society at large would show some respect toward me and my faith.<br />I am judged negatively whenever someone of my faith is accused of committing a crime.<br />I am viewed as an enemy within, a home-grown fanatic whom everyone should guard against.<br />I am harassed at the boarding gate when I leave the country, as if I was going to an Al Qaeda convention.<br />I am also bullied by the customs and immigration officers when I come back home, as if I don't belong here.<br />I am pulled aside for extra inspections, as if I was carrying instructions on making weapons of mass destruction.<br />I am told repeatedly to tell the real truth about what I am bringing with me that I have not declared.<br />When a crime occurs where a Muslim is the primary suspect, I am asked to issue a statement in the strongest possible terms against terrorism and to dissociate myself from the crime. Whatever language I use in my denunciation, I am told is not enough and I must do more.<br />On the day after the crime, the headline reads: "Moderate Muslims Fail To Speak Up," even though I have spoken and have condemned the crime.<br />When I try to access my own money, the bank teller reminds me of the seriousness of money laundering.<br />A bank supervisor recently alleged that my signature did not match the signature they had in my file. I emptied my wallet and showed all my identifications, to no avail.<br />Although I have lived in Canada for more than a decade and have been working hard to pay taxes and make ends meet, I am still viewed as a foreigner who belongs somewhere else.<br />A colleague at the airport where I work asked me recently, "Why did you choose Canada, a Christian country, and did not go to your own people instead?"<br />Another coworker said the other day that she cannot tolerate seeing Muslim women covering up. "I feel the urge to remove the piece of rag by force," she said. "Why in the world would she hide her beauty?" she added.<br />Another airline employee suggested that we should stop Muslim women from entering the country if they choose to wear the hijab.<br />I cried like a child when a friend said that the only way the world can solve the problem of terrorism is to nuke the Muslim world. Only then will the planet live in real peace, he said.<br />It is deeply troubling to see how Muslims are treated in society. While I was having dinner at work, my colleagues next to me were discussing the shooting death right after the Sept. 11 tragedy of a Sikh man in the United States who was thought to be a Muslim. One of the people involved in the conversation blamed the murderer for not doing his homework in making sure that the person he was targeting was a real Muslim. The people in the cafeteria did not find the statement troubling and they all laughed approvingly.<br />We are reminded - again and again - that freedom of expression has limits. But when the same freedom involves the dehumanization of Muslims, it has no limit.<br />I don't think I am asking too much if I expect some respect from my fellow countrymen.<br />I might have some lunatics in my midst but who doesn't? If Christians are not held responsible for the death and destruction their co-religionist George W. Bush caused in Iraq, why should I be held responsible for the acts of a few mad men who might create mayhem in the name of my faith?<br />Abubakar N. Kasim is a freelance writer based in Toronto, working as a customer service representative for a major airline.<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>Let Russia stop Iran<br /></strong>By Oded Eran, Giora Eiland and Emily B. Landau<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />Tel Aviv: Nine months have passed since the UN Security Council approved its most recent resolution imposing sanctions on Iran. That resolution, like its two predecessors, has failed to deter Tehran, which will soon be in a position to create a working nuclear weapon. Western intelligence establishments estimate that date as not later than mid-2010.<br />The problem with any Security Council resolution is that Russia and China, two of the five permanent members, have refused to adopt biting measures. Without tougher sanctions, there is no hope that Iran will reconsider its determination to make a bomb and finally begin to negotiate seriously with the West. Sanctions that would hurt Iran, like an embargo on its imports of gasoline, could deter Tehran from pursuing the bomb.<br />The key to a tougher Security Council resolution is Russia, and this provides an opening for Barack Obama. After taking office, he should offer Moscow a grand bargain. For its part, the United States would suspend or even cancel its plans to set up the missile defenses in Eastern Europe that the Kremlin adamantly opposes, and also adopt a more cautious stance as far as admitting into NATO the countries that Russia views as part of its zone of influence.<br />Russia's side of the bargain would be to join in the West's tougher stance against Iran's nuclear military program and to stop supplying Iran with conventional weapons, many of which then find their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon and other militant groups in the region.<br />If Russia were to support much stronger economic pressure on Iran, Obamacould proceed on a double track: first to put the threat of military intervention back on the table, but also to offer to conduct direct talks with Iran without preconditions. What would be asked of Tehran initially would be a gesture of good faith: It would, three months after the start of the negotiations, have to make an implicit commitment to halt its enrichment activities. (Tehran would not be required to make a public declaration, which it fears would make it look weak in the eyes of its populace and its neighbors.)<br />Negotiations would have to deal with issues that go beyond the nuclear file. Iran views itself as a regional power, proud of its history, its rich culture and its military and technological capacity.<br />The dialogue would involve the Persian Gulf security situation in general, the future of the American presence in Iraq, Syria's role in Lebanon, and efforts to settle the unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan.<br />If such a three-way deal could be pulled off, everyone wins with very little loss of face. The United States would gain a leading role in the international arena, reversing years of questionable Bush administration decisions. And, as it claims the missile defense system is intended primarily to defend against an Iranian nuclear attack, the deal would obviate its need.<br />Russia would give up its weapons sales and some commercial sales to Iran, but there is much more profit for Moscow to be made trading with a respectable Iran than a pariah state. The American reversal on missile defense would be portrayed as a victory for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and Moscow would gain international respectability by helping to avert the serious crisis that would occur should Iran develop the bomb.<br />Iran, in exchange for relinquishing its nuclear dreams, would avoid painful sanctions, be readmitted to the international community and eventually gain the economic and political benefits of being recognized as a regional power.<br />Unless something changes the dynamic soon, Iran will become a nuclear power, which will put the Obama administration in a terrible bind. Not only would it complicate America's projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, it would also certainly derail any peace negotiations among Israel and its Palestinian and Syrian neighbors.<br />The United States and Israel will both welcome new political leadership next year. We hope that the new prime minister of Israel can see the wisdom of such a deal among America, Iran and Russia, and persuade Obama that it could transform the Middle East and the entire international scene. The alternative is more stalemate and an Iran that grows more menacing by the day.<br /><br /><em>Oded Eran is the director of the Institute for National Security Studies. Giora Eiland, a retired major general in the Israeli Army, and Emily B. Landau are senior research associates at the institute</em>.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Russia denies selling missile system to Iran</strong><br />By Michael Schwirtz and Nazila Fathi<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Russia is not selling Iran an advanced air-defense system, Russia's agency for monitoring international defense cooperation said in a statement on Monday, refuting claims by an Iranian official reported Sunday that the system was already being delivered.<br />"Military-technical cooperation with Iran is conducted on a planned basis corresponding with agreements signed earlier and in observance of all international obligations," the agency, the Federal Military and Technical Cooperation Service, said in a statement posted on its Web site.<br />"Information that has appeared in several media outlets about deliveries of the S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran does not correspond to reality," the statement said.<br />The S-300, called the SA-20 in the West, is a surface-to-air missile system that can track aircraft and fire at them from more than 100 miles away.<br />Iran's IRNA news agency on Sunday quoted the Iranian official, Esmail Kosari, deputy head of Parliament's Commission for Foreign Affairs and National Security, as saying, "After a few years of talks with Russia, now the S-300 system is being delivered."<br />Russia's main weapons exporter, Rosoboronexport, said in a statement on Monday that Russia supplies Iran only with defensive weapons and weapons systems, including the Tor-M1 anti-aircraft system.<br />"Russia conducts military-technical cooperation with Iran in strict compliance with the international commitments of the Russian Federation according to current non-proliferation regimes, and cannot be a source of concern for other countries," the statement on the company's Web site says.<br />In September, amid reports that a deal on the sale of the weapons system was near, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei Nesterenko, denied that Russia would sell the missile system to Iran. "We do not intend to supply those types of armaments to countries in the region," he was quoted as saying in the semiofficial Fars news agency of Iran.<br />Israeli officials have long lobbied to prevent Russia from selling the system to Iran. On Sunday, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, said a senior Russian official had told Israel that the new report about delivery of the S-300 was false. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel asked the Kremlin this autumn not to go ahead with the sale.<br />In the IRNA report on Sunday, Kosari referred to Israeli efforts to prevent the arms sale, saying that Israel could not damage relations between Russia and Iran.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Tehran says it's getting missiles<br /></strong>By Nazila Fathi<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />TEHRAN: An Iranian official said Russia had started delivering an advanced air-defense system to Iran, despite earlier denials by Russia that a deal had been reached, the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday.<br />The official, Esmail Kosari, the deputy head of Parliament's Commission for Foreign Affairs and National Security, was quoted by IRNA as saying, "After a few years of talks with Russia, now the S-300 system is being delivered."<br />The S-300, called the SA-20 in the West, is a surface-to-air missile system that can track aircraft and fire at them from more than 100 miles away.<br />In September, amid reports that a deal was near, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei Nesterenko, denied that Russia would sell the missile system to Iran. "We do not intend to supply those types of armaments to countries in the region," he was quoted as saying in the semiofficial Fars news agency of Iran.<br />The Interfax news agency reported that the Russian Foreign Ministry had said it was "investigating" the Iranian reports.<br />Israeli officials have long lobbied to prevent Russia from selling the system to Iran. On Sunday, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, said a senior Russian official had told Israel that the new report about delivery of the S-300 was false. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked the Kremlin this fall not to go ahead with the sale.<br />In the IRNA report on Sunday, Kosari referred to Israeli efforts to prevent the arms sale, saying that Israel could not damage relations between Russia and Iran.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Germany considers taking released Guantánamo prisoners</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BERLIN: Germany is considering taking released inmates from the U.S.-run Guantánamo Bay prison camp who refuse or cannot return to their home countries when it finally closes down, officials said Monday.<br />The foreign minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier, has asked officials to look into the legal, political and practical aspects of accepting former inmates, a ministry spokesman, Jens Plötner, said Monday. Steinmeier then plans to discuss the issue with his European Union counterparts at a meeting in January.<br />The prison camp, at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba, has attracted widespread international criticism, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has long advocated closing it. President-elect Barack Obama has also made closure a priority.<br />Plötner said that taking released inmates to Germany would need to be discussed with the new Obama administration, which takes office Jan. 20.<br />Steinmeier "has made clear that he does not want to see the plan to close Guantánamo fail due to the need to find somewhere for those prisoners who cannot return to their home countries," Plötner said at a news conference.<br />Officials did not specify what the status of the former inmates would be if they were accepted in Germany.<br />According to the United Nations, there are about 250 inmates in Guantánamo, and human rights campaigners have said 40 to 50 of them could face persecution if they were deported to their home countries.<br />Merkel's spokesman, Thomas Steg, said Germany would not accept prisoners if conditions were attached.<br />"One thing is clear: The Americans cannot ask for any special terms - no other agreements, swaps or other strings attached," Steg told reporters.<br />Last week, the U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, asked that plans be updated for closing Guantánamo in case Obama requested it soon after taking power.<br />Obama has provided few details about his plans. He has suggested that some prisoners could be prosecuted in federal courts. Those men could be held in federal or military prisons. But the Obama transition office has not offered details of where the remainder might be held.<br />Portugal has said it is willing to resettle some detainees and has urged other European countries to help.<br />"The time has come for the European Union to step forward," Portugal's foreign minister, Luís Amado, said in a letter to other European ministers released Dec. 11.<br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Iraqi who threw shoes at Bush was tortured, his brother says</strong><br />By Timothy Williams<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: The television reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush was burned by a cigarette in the hours after his arrest on Dec. 14 and was beaten so badly by Iraqi security personnel that one of his teeth was knocked out, the reporter's brother said Sunday after a visit to the jail.<br />The reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, has been jailed since hurling his shoes at Bush during a news conference here last week. Zaidi has not been formally charged, but he faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of the crime of aggression against a foreign leader during an official visit.<br />A spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki did not return phone calls seeking comment on Sunday about the allegations, but the Maliki government previously denied that Zaidi had been mistreated while in custody.<br />It was Maliki's security detail that detained Zaidi after he hurled his shoes. Zaidi was seen being beaten before he was pulled from the room where the news conference by Bush and Maliki was held.<br />On Sunday before the torture allegations were made public, Maliki said that he had received a letter from Zaidi saying that a terrorist had persuaded him to throw the shoes.<br />"A person urged him to commit this act, and this person is known to us as a person who beheads people," Maliki said, without divulging the person's name.<br />Zaidi's family has maintained that he was acting out of his own frustration with the American invasion.<br />The visit by one of Zaidi's brothers was the first by either a relative or a lawyer that the reporter had been allowed since being jailed. He has not been seen publicly since his arrest.<br />During an interview broadcast Sunday on Al Baghdadia, the Cairo-based satellite television network for which Zaidi works, his brother Uday, 33, said that Zaidi had been stripped to his underwear before being placed in a cell and tortured during the 24-hour period after his arrest.<br />"He told me he was sleeping on the floor of the cell when a very large man came in and dumped cold water on him and began hitting him with a thick cable," Uday al-Zaidi said in the TV interview.<br />He said his brother had told him that he was brutally beaten by several men and burned on his right ear by a cigarette. Uday al-Zaidi said that on Sunday his brother had bruises on his face, stitches on the bridge of his nose and swelling in his legs, arms and hands.<br />His jailers had periodically demanded that he state in a videotaped confession that he had been ordered to commit the act by enemies of the prime minister, Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had told him.<br />Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had said: "After the torture and the cold-water shower, I told them to bring me a blank sheet of paper and I would sign it, and they could write whatever they wanted. I am ready to say I am a terrorist or whatever you want."<br />But Muntader al-Zaidi told his brother that the men had stopped beating him and did not force him to write or sign anything. The journalist said that a letter to the prime minister written by him from jail expressing regret for the attack had not been coerced, his brother said. It was unclear if this was the same letter Maliki referred to.<br />Uday al-Zaidi said his brother told him that he had bought the shoes used at a market in Cairo.<br />Meanwhile, leaders of the blocs in Parliament reached consensus on Sunday on a resolution that would allow troops from Britain, Australia and other countries to operate on Iraqi soil after the end of the year.<br />The resolution grants the Iraqi government the authority to set the terms for the presence of those troops, as long as they are to be out of Iraq by the end of July, said Taha Diraa, a lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a leading Shiite party.<br />Parliament is scheduled to vote on the resolution on Monday.<br />Iraqi lawmakers are also considering whether to strip Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, of his position. Lawmakers said that Mashhadani was considered a histrionic man who was often brusque with those with whom he disagreed, and that he had insulted members of Parliament on Wednesday at a rowdy session dealing with the bill governing foreign troops.<br />If the vote passes, Mashhadani will keep his seat in Parliament but lose the speaker's post. It is one of the most prominent positions in the Iraqi government now held by a Sunni.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>December 31 trial date for Iraqi shoe-thrower<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Ahmed Rasheed<br />The Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush and called him a "dog" will stand trial on December 31, a court official said on Monday.<br />TV journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi is charged with "assaulting a foreign head of state visiting Iraq," said Abdul Satar Birqadr, spokesman for Iraq's High Judicial Council.<br />"The Criminal Court has set a date for trial on December 31 and a three-judge panel will run the hearings," he said.<br />"The case is not complicated and I expect it won't take a great deal of time to reach a ruling," he said, adding that it was up to the court to determine a sentence.<br />U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has condemned Zaidi's actions but he will likely not want to alienate Zaidi's many supporters, particularly as he and other politicians weigh their parties' odds in provincial elections next month.<br />The defendant's lawyer said his client had been severely beaten following the shoe-throwing incident at a December 14 news conference in Baghdad, but Zaidi's brother said the reporter would do the same again if he had the chance.<br />Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had told an investigative judge on Sunday that he had expected to be shot after hurling his first shoe.<br />But when that did not happen, "'that gave me time to throw the second (shoe),'" Zaidi quoted his brother as saying. "'If the clock were turned back, I'd do the same thing over again.'"<br />The trial of Zaidi, whose actions struck a chord among those who blame Bush for the horrific bloodshed unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, will likely be closely watched.<br />In an unusual move that may reflect the sensitivity of the case for Maliki, Iraqi authorities will give the media full access to the trial.<br />Zaidi, who visited his brother for over an hour at an undisclosed location where he is being held in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, said that "the signs of torture were clear on (Muntazer al-Zaidi's) face and his body."<br />He said the reporter has a tooth missing, his nose was injured and there were bruises on his arms and legs.<br />Zaidi's brothers have previously said he suffered a broken arm but in recent days have retracted those allegations.<br />Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had been tortured into telling the authorities that someone persuaded him to throw his shoes at Bush. Maliki referred on Sunday to an alleged accomplice or instigator as someone known for cutting off heads but did not elaborate.<br />The prime minister has sought to soothe outcry over the reporter's fate. He met praised the Iraqi media when he met journalists on Sunday, pledging justice would run its course -- even if that meant Zaidi went free.<br />(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim; Writing by Missy Ryan; Editing by Jon Boyle)<br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Syrian leader says direct talks with Israel are possible</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />DAMASCUS: President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said Monday that indirect talks his country has held with Israel could move to direct talks and conclude with a peace deal.<br />"If this foundation is successful then direct negotiations would represent a successful phase and then naturally, peace would be achieved," he was quoted by Syria's official SANA news agency as saying.<br />Assad, whose country has held four indirect rounds of talks with Israel in Turkey this year, said he hoped the administration of President-elect Barak Obama would help by actively pursuing peace in the Middle East.<br />"It is natural that at a later stage we would move to the phase of direct talks," he said. "We cannot achieve peace through indirect negotiations only."<br />Assad likened the indirect talks, suspended since September's resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to laying down the foundations of a building.<br />He said UN Security Council resolutions should be the basis for any talks.<br />Indirect talks between Syria and Israel have focused on the disposition of the fertile Golan Heights. Israel captured the plateau in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it more than a decade later - a move unanimously rejected as null by the United Nations Security Council.<br />The two countries held almost 10 years of direct talks under U.S. supervision that collapsed in 2000 over the scope of a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.<br />But the two countries resumed indirect talks this year following Turkish mediation. Assad's comments coincided with a visit to Ankara by Olmert, now caretaker prime minister.<br />Assad said he hoped there would be no war in the Middle East under the incoming U.S. administration.<br />"We hope that this administration works seriously, practically and realistically towards achieving peace in our region," he said, adding, however, that Obama's first priority would have to be Iraq.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80YbSUfcH42505uMU2BN0Lzinilx24bXrhanER4J-zWOhRftUQ2IOdMVTWpnyAmC3pGwr4HLcwUnQsaaDy_Dv_GfFPwNsiaN7Z6_4GFYhA9q3MCQOhSH3Lkpbmg4yauS0BITp2N6u5RQ/s1600-h/DSC04117.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833194754485554" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80YbSUfcH42505uMU2BN0Lzinilx24bXrhanER4J-zWOhRftUQ2IOdMVTWpnyAmC3pGwr4HLcwUnQsaaDy_Dv_GfFPwNsiaN7Z6_4GFYhA9q3MCQOhSH3Lkpbmg4yauS0BITp2N6u5RQ/s320/DSC04117.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>In parts of Eastern Europe, mentally ill kept under wraps<br /></strong>By Matthew Brunwasser<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />PRAVDA, Bulgaria: Across the former Soviet bloc, many mentally ill are without rights as a result of unrevised rules in place before free markets and democracy started taking hold, according to human rights groups.<br />The name of this isolated spot in the lush Danube plains means justice or, carried over from Russian, it means truth. Little of either definition has penetrated the local care home for men with mental disorders, a bleak establishment most easily reached by a bone-jarring six-hour ride from Sofia, the capital.<br />In the Communist era, this is where authorities hid the mentally ill from public view. Today, the small complex of scrappy, two-story buildings is still a favored destination for city folk to send away mentally ill relatives - and not worry about hearing from them again.<br />All across the former Soviet bloc, the laws governing guardianship mostly date back to the Communist era. In the tumult of the two decades since free markets and imperfect democracy took hold in Eastern Europe, these are among the few unrevised rules, and hundreds of thousands of people are without rights as a result, according to human rights groups.<br />A two-year study of guardianship systems in eight countries completed early this year by the Mental Disability Advocacy Center in Budapest found jail-like regimes for patients suffering from a wide range of mental disabilities, from mental illness to intellectual disability. The center, a privately funded nongovernmental organization, estimates that one million people live under guardianship in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union and are subject to "significant, arbitrary and automatic" violations of human rights.<br />Guardianship involves the transfer of legal capacity from one individual to another. Across Eastern Europe, laws deprive mentally ill adults of all rights to make decisions, regardless of their differing abilities. Guardians decide where they live, how to spend their money, how they use their property rights or access courts, and even determine their relationships. Often, they use their powers to send them to large state institutions forever.<br />Guardianship laws in Bulgaria and across the region provide no effective oversight of guardians who assume control of their wards' property or bank accounts, the Budapest center found.<br />"We call it civil death," said Victoria Lee, a human rights lawyer at the Mental Disability Advocacy Center. "Once you are under guardianship, that's it. You basically become a non-person. These guardianship systems have no safeguards."<br />Since the law assumes that guardians act in the best interest of their wards, there are no legal mechanisms to prevent them from neglecting responsibilities or seeking financial gain. While the directors of social care institutions are required by Bulgarian law to submit yearly audits of their wards' finances, for example, the fine for failing to do so is 0.20 Bulgarian levs, or about 14 U.S. cents.<br />Chaotic legislation, unclear standards and ineffective judiciaries in some countries in Eastern Europe mean that it is relatively easy for a family member to convince a judge that someone with a mental illness or intellectual disability should be placed under guardianship - simply because a family member wants control over assets.<br />"It's not for riches," said Aneta Genova, a lawyer from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, an international human rights group, representing several wards at Pravda. "It's usually for little things, like using a room in an apartment, or renting or selling a property."<br />Some countries are trying to change the system. In Hungary, for instance, the draft civil code being considered by Parliament has introduced supported decision-making.<br />With guardianship, "it's easy to get in, but almost impossible to get out," said Oliver Lewis, executive director of the Mental Disability Advocacy Center. "The law should provide support for people who need assistance, not remove their rights altogether."<br />Legal appeals to remove guardianship and restore legal capacity can lead to "Kafka-like" situations, Lewis said, because in many countries in Eastern Europe the procedures require the consent of the guardian. "Often the guardians don't want the people to appeal, because it is in their financial interest to have the person remain under their guardianship."<br />The director of the Pravda home, Beyti Hussein, testifies to the abandonment and helplessness of the residents under his care. He said this was aggravated by their inability to make decisions themselves.<br />"In most cases, people are sent here in order to not bother their families," Hussein said, noting that 57 of the 70 men in the center were under total guardianship and only 4 were from the region. "At the same time, the families use their properties and don't want to have anything to do with them or accept any responsibilities."<br />Hussein said a typical story was one about identical twin brothers, Kiril and Metodi Mitsev, 46. They have schizophrenia and came to Pravda in 2000. Their brother Julian, appointed their guardian by a court, has never visited. And because his permission is required for them to travel, they are not allowed to leave the area except on group excursions led by the home.<br />According to documents kept by the home, the brothers own shares in two buildings and land in Kyustendil, southwest of Sofia, as well as an apartment in Sofia. Their only income is about 40 Bulgarian levs per year from their elderly father's pension.<br />"I can't say why he doesn't come," Metodi said of his brother Julian. "But my father says, 'You can't count on your brother."'<br />Neither Mitsev brother seemed to know about guardianship when questioned about the issue. They know only that they feel powerless.<br />"These people are resigned to their fate," said Stoyanka Dimitrova, a social worker at the home. "There is no one to protect them and no one to show them how to claim what is rightfully theirs."<br />Metodi does the talking for the brothers. His gregariousness balances Kiril's introversion. The front of Metodi's blue denim shirt is monogrammed. He said he had to constantly counter his brother's desire for them to dress alike.<br />"If we were closer to Sofia it would be easier to visit our father and we could find a lawyer," Metodi said. Their father is too old to make the long trip to Pravda. Changing homes would require the consent of their guardian.<br />"A lot of years have gone by," Metodi said, staring off pensively into the plains surrounding the home. "We are far away from the city and miss civilization. We have no girlfriends here. I miss taking getaways."<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyR4XSMNDZwh9siBxSdDBZO8vti6kD8rqCGDxKuxHGK4S10fVvYHWSB5nFCft3I9Z4UxIjsy4ne1jd8l5q1CrhBn70keamBpRroKeT9EdS-SGFImcX9Zf4piKU43jYJpnYRAbWgg7aCs/s1600-h/DSC04118.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833193302041042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyR4XSMNDZwh9siBxSdDBZO8vti6kD8rqCGDxKuxHGK4S10fVvYHWSB5nFCft3I9Z4UxIjsy4ne1jd8l5q1CrhBn70keamBpRroKeT9EdS-SGFImcX9Zf4piKU43jYJpnYRAbWgg7aCs/s320/DSC04118.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Germany tracing artwork and its Nazi past<br /></strong>By Judy Dempsey<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />STUTTGART: This industrial southwestern city is often considered the heart of German engineering and entrepreneurial elan. Rebuilt after the Allied bombing raids in 1945, it reflects the Swabian region, known to this day as a home of hard work, thrift and industriousness.<br />But there is another aspect to this almost ascetic region. Stuttgart has a spectacular art museum, with a wonderful 20th-century collection. Paintings by the German modernists are here, including Franz Marc's "Kleine blaue Pferde" and Lyonel Feininger's "Barfüsserkirche."<br />These two paintings, however, are just some of the tens of thousands of art works in the country's museums that have become caught up in the seemingly never-ending consequences of Germany's Nazi past. Big galleries and museums are being inundated with claims by lawyers representing the descendants of persecuted and murdered German Jews.<br />The lawyers claim that art owned by Jews had been seized or sold under duress before 1945. After the war, many of these paintings resurfaced in auction rooms, private collections or museums. Sixty years later, critics say that German museums have been extremely reluctant to give back art acquired under dubious circumstances.<br />The issue has become deeply emotional among museum directors, lawyers and the descendants of Jews because it captures the difficulties in dealing with what was until recently a little known - or, at least, little discussed - aspect of Germany's past.<br />"This is about dealing with a miserable part of our history, which some of the museums would prefer not to confront: how museum directors collaborated with the Nazi regime," said Monika Tatzkow, a lawyer who specializes in property claims.<br />In June 1937, Hitler ordered museums to get rid of any paintings that contained "German degenerate art since 1910." Thousands of avant-garde paintings, many by Jewish artists or owned by Jews, were removed from museums. Some were stolen or put into safekeeping. Others were sold - probably below the market value - by Jewish families desperate to obtain visas to escape Nazi Germany.<br />After the war, the German government was slow to address the issue of restitution. During the 1950s, it compensated some of the owners or their descendants, but the numbers and sums were insignificant. The issue then slumbered for decades.<br />It was not until 1998, when the government attended a seminal conference in Washington devoted to returning art to the descendants of Nazi victims, that it began to take the issue seriously. Despite some misgivings from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin that there would be an avalanche of new claims for restitution, Germany, along with 43 other countries, agreed that any art works confiscated during the Nazi era were to be searched for, identified and the rightful heirs determined. Then, "a fair and just solution" would be reached with the heirs.<br />Last week, the issue bubbled to the forefront once more. Art directors, lawyers and Jewish descendants attended a government-sponsored conference in Berlin to assess the results of the 1998 Washington conference, and the consensus emerged that Germany was still lagging behind other countries.<br />"The German government has taken very positive steps, but we are disappointed with the approach of most of the museums," said Gideon Taylor, executive vice president of the nongovernmental Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, a group dating to the 1950s. "Many of the German museums have been very slow to carry out the provenance research which is necessary for there to be a fair and just claims process and, as importantly, an open and proper accounting of history."<br />There is no single explanation for this failure. Some museum directors say they lack sufficient staff or funds to undertake the research. Others fear that if they establish the provenance, or legal ownership, they could end up giving back many paintings, leaving several museums bereft of prestigious collections. And if they tried to buy them back, they complain that they would have to compete with big auction houses and could not outbid private collectors or dealers.<br />"Whatever the reasons for this foot dragging, what is at issue is the past, namely how the museum directors complied with Hitler's decree," Tatzkow said. "Those same directors were reinstated after 1945. The museums have been reluctant to deal with restitution in any serious way because they are afraid it would show just how complicit, how 'brown,' the directors were in banning those works of art."<br />Sean Rainbird, director of Stuttgart's Staatsgalerie, is cooperating with a new, state-backed, public Internet database that attempts to trace the ownership history of the paintings. He is also digging through archives in Stuttgart to establish how the museum obtained works banned by the Nazis that made their way onto the market after 1945.<br />"There is the issue of enforced transactions of every sale of every Jewish collection that happened during the Nazi times," said Rainbird, a former curator of the Tate Modern in London. "There were cases where individuals were allowed to take their collections out of the country, and there were some dealers, in a gesture of solidarity, who helped them and were dealing with them in an honest way.<br />"The issue is establishing a legal situation with title," he added. "Some archives were lost, some receipts were lost. It is very complicated."<br />Despite such difficulties, Rainbird has made it his priority to trace the ownership titles of many of his contemporary German paintings. Indeed, the museum recently returned Paul Klee's "Rhythm of the Windows" (1920), which it then bought back for more than 2 million, or $2.8 million. As for the Marc and Feininger paintings, their future has yet to be resolved.<br />"The Marc came to us from a collection in 1978," Rainbird said.<br />By now, museums are coming under political pressure from the federal government, even if it means muddying the question of ownership. "There is the political impulse from Berlin that one should return paintings to the original owners without finding out all the details, or the circumstances, for instance, if any of these paintings had been legitimately acquired," Rainbird said.<br />It is as if the German government wants to be rid of the problem once and for all. In an ideal world, that attitude would not be proper, either. But faced with the reluctance of many museum directors, such political pressure may be necessary to redress some of the injustices of the past.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>LETTER</strong><br /><strong>The public memory</strong><br />Regarding the article "Purging history of Stalin's terror" (Nov. 27): Memory is a central terrain on which democracies are constructed, negotiated and secured for the future. The inextricable relationship between history and human rights is increasingly being recognized by local and international bodies.<br />During its recent bid to enter the European Union, Turkey's refusal to take responsibility for the Armenian genocide was judged as a key indicator of its commitment to human rights.<br />Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in half a dozen countries, from South Africa to Peru, have mandated spaces for remembering and confronting the most difficult aspects of their nations' histories, recognizing this as a fundamental requirement of an open society.<br />All governments must be held accountable for maintaining open access to their pasts.<br />This is not a simple matter of whether an archive is open or closed. Democratizing history - and using history to sustain a healthy democracy - requires public forums for people to wrestle with their pasts, in all its glories and dishonors.<br />Erasing the memory of past political repression and the resistance against it lays a strong foundation for cultures of repression today.<br />Creating ongoing spaces for debate on all aspects of the past and its implications for a ever shifting present reality, on the other hand, can build a popular culture of democratic engagement. Every nation's treatment of its past needs to be taken seriously as a bellwether for its commitment to human rights.<br />Liz Sevcenko, New York<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>In case of war with China, Japan wanted U.S. to deploy nuclear weapons</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />TOKYO: The longest-serving prime minister of Japan, who also was a Nobel Peace laureate, asked the United States in 1965 to deploy nuclear weapons against China if war broke out between the Asian rivals, according to newly declassified government files obtained by Kyodo news agency.<br />On his first trip to Washington as the Japanese leader, Eisaku Sato told Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that U.S. military forces could launch a nuclear attack on China by sea if needed, Kyodo said Monday.<br />Under its post-World War II Constitution, Japan renounces war as a sovereign right and prohibits the use of force in international conflicts.<br />The new details of Sato's discussions with the United States reveal a more complicated picture behind his strong public stance against nuclear weapons as well as his intense distrust of China.<br />His comments came a day after his talks with President Lyndon Johnson on Jan. 12, 1965, during which he sought to reconfirm a U.S. promise to defend Japan under the U.S.-Japan security treaty, according to Kyodo. The documents show that Johnson assured the Japanese leader of Washington's commitment to the pact.<br />China triggered Japanese and U.S. concerns about the country's emergence as a nuclear power after Beijing tested its first atomic bomb, on Oct. 16, 1964.<br />Sato, in office from 1964 to 1972, also told McNamara that although Japan was technically capable of building atomic weapons, it had no intention of doing so, according to documents that were routinely declassified by the Japanese Foreign Ministry after 30 years, and obtained by Kyodo.<br />The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<br />It was Sato who introduced in 1967 Japan's "Three Non-Nuclear Principles," which has guided the country's nuclear policy since then. The resolution, approved by Parliament in 1971, states that Japan will not own or make nuclear weapons, nor permit them into Japanese territory. Japan also joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty during the time Sato was prime minister.<br />His efforts were recognized by the Nobel committee in 1974, when he shared the Peace Prize with the Irish human rights advocate Sean MacBride.<br />Sato's attitude toward the Chinese was frosty at best. Japan and China never established diplomatic relations during Sato's eight years in office, with Tokyo calling for Beijing to first recognize Taiwan.<br />Japan is the only country to have undergone a nuclear attack. The United States dropped separate atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the waning days of World War II.<br />The current U.S.-Japan security treaty, signed in 1960, obliges both countries to "maintain and develop" their ability to defend against armed aggression and to cooperate if Japan came under attack.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIjG40Eqx3npI6HPpB8g5kdFifNM-aYn0HOxQ21Dw8rVbGE30kVGipa5M6pvrnEvVbqZolW9yqpQhNLB2kWpG7PCUjOpiX6vqOepm3u3rt6k_c-92aM-aEUg1Ug8yCmlARUSDLx0slu8/s1600-h/DSC04119.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282833187910781154" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeIjG40Eqx3npI6HPpB8g5kdFifNM-aYn0HOxQ21Dw8rVbGE30kVGipa5M6pvrnEvVbqZolW9yqpQhNLB2kWpG7PCUjOpiX6vqOepm3u3rt6k_c-92aM-aEUg1Ug8yCmlARUSDLx0slu8/s320/DSC04119.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTWizjAGx0bWQPZ1w83vCF15COUmv7byVAIqK05McbndO_WigpzLl9WVzjdig5U9qLFVqXl47HgXdUE1T5D_7FgrOxHnsDqStDitlW2AUWdNEMcxLprKSafTvIsPfnJ79o0wi8Cs5jgk8/s1600-h/DSC04120.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282832830139656418" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiksVtllNeogriIzQferb443k2ubuD8FObVnB2U1r-vTJgU07D9BzDjtdOpn40abpSrJg16lq4TdZM_-9PKc5rqY3FXyEJkDmN9FXP0PUPOpeXTExkPwVftf0PALKDzqEB62vbS9DAH6c/s320/DSC04153.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Decapitated soldiers blow to Mexico<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Mica Rosenberg<br />Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed on Monday not to back down from the fight against powerful drug cartels who decapitated eight soldiers in the most serious blow to the army in a 2-year-old offensive.<br />Police found the beheaded and tortured bodies tied up in the city of Chilpancingo, about an hour north of Acapulco, during the weekend.<br />The heads were stuffed in a black plastic bag and tossed outside a shopping centre with a note saying, "For every one of us you kill, we are going to kill 10," Mexican media reported.<br />An ex-police commander, also without a head, was found with the soldiers.<br />The gruesome attack was the worst against the army since Calderon deployed some 45,000 troops to take on drug gangs after coming to office in 2006.<br />"We are committed to this fight with all of its consequences," Calderon said at an event honouring a military hero. "We will not stand down and there will be no truce with enemies of the state," he said.<br />Calderon's assault against drug gangs has netted several major smugglers wanted in the United States, but violence in Mexico has worsened. More than 5,300 people have died this year, over twice as many as in 2007, as traffickers fight each other and the government over drug smuggling routes.<br />Washington, which has promised Mexico hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to buy equipment and provide security training, now sees Mexican cartels as its No. 1 drug threat.<br />It was not clear which faction was behind the beheadings. The main drug gangs are the Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico and a federation of smugglers run out of the northwestern state of Sinaloa by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.<br />The violence threatens to scare away investors and hit Mexico's economy, already shaky from the global financial crisis.<br />Mexican cartels are increasingly taking the place of the Colombian organisations who once ruled the international cocaine trade. Colombians have ceded many traditional trafficking routes to the United States to the Mexican gangs, preferring lower profile roles or focussing on Europe.<br />"There are no drug trafficking organisations left in Colombia that think they can go toe-to-toe with the nation-state; the cartels up in Mexico actually think that they can," a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official based in Colombia told Reuters.<br />Calderon deployed the soldiers to fight organised crime in part because they are seen as less corrupt than police.<br />But military men from generals to foot soldiers have said they too are being offered thousands of dollars to turn a blind eye to shipments or call off anti-drugs operations.<br />(Additional reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez, editing by Patricia Zengerle)</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirtjZIAn6x1AFyMbTpy5J8DXkM2Ig3fJ0J_2R9kMwUniuiOpPw6ZEpzlPv5SA_P5zOFbYXxAMqL72Wz2EtMufU-8hNsSbz_dhAdUqkwEDrjeTfeutYeIPhvk4hD5P45uloqaJfnstIX-w/s1600-h/DSC04155.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282831259114315842" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyBD_-Vl_YxgKhBO2wI21Ykm46PKXeQ4uaAD3S0tGSl5adxxTnfhaGK2XxhR5pjiLFAinS_XMEcwGWPLzIvyJpHWKkuXLo_Rcd3lYsZ6Gp1WaVH-iaevP_WhPibtDxkgg2BpsDFJloe5Y/s320/DSC04175.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfwLGIcG8Mu3sYgDUsS-qo7-QYsJ7gQ9c93PKPyCOL8ixP0NJbvFJwGnyQKJkF9Hc-8PxFpTHGcJsOboYZM1rbwdxwrIKNKwL_KQNvdPpUgsEjZZw3P26Z67gnO9XNPel1ElaHum0mgR4/s1600-h/DSC04176.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829773759139570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfwLGIcG8Mu3sYgDUsS-qo7-QYsJ7gQ9c93PKPyCOL8ixP0NJbvFJwGnyQKJkF9Hc-8PxFpTHGcJsOboYZM1rbwdxwrIKNKwL_KQNvdPpUgsEjZZw3P26Z67gnO9XNPel1ElaHum0mgR4/s320/DSC04176.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Book Reviews: 'Peripheral Vision'<br />Reviewed by Maria Russo<br />Monday, December 22, 2008</strong> </div><div><br />BOOKS Peripheral Vision<br />By Patricia Ferguson.<br />366 pages. Other Press. $24.95.<br />The unexpected misery of having it all - the husband, the baby, the wished-for fancy career - is a phenomenon with a growing literary trail. In the United States, the problems presented by the modern female high-functioner tend to be the territory of memoirists and manifesto writers: Leslie Bennetts, Judith Warner, Caitlin Flanagan, Linda Hirshman. But in Britain, it's fiction writers who have been probing the situation. In a way that makes more sense: What ails the privileged contemporary daughters of feminism is so subtle and multifaceted, rooted in such a mash-up of internal and external forces, that the novel may be the ideal way to capture it. The results can be humorous and slight (Allison Pearson) or humorous and deep (Helen Simpson) or visceral and disturbing (Rachel Cusk), but at the very least they omit the phrase "work-life balance." To the list of fiction-writing British explorers of the modern feminine condition add Patricia Ferguson, a former nurse and midwife whose sixth book, "Peripheral Vision," is both cheerful and emotionally wrenching.<br />Ferguson begins by introducing Sylvia Henshaw, an eye surgeon in her early 30s who is accomplished, attractive and at war with herself. In the aftermath of an emergency C-section, she finds she can't connect to her much older husband or her "unbearably fragile" baby. "The glorious relief, two months later, of going back to work!" Diagnosis: Acute high-achieveritis, postpartum variety. Body torn in two, heart like a stone, future obliterated.<br />Prognosis: Not fatal. So don't let on. Do you want them to think you're a freak of womanhood? Sylvia's predicament is the heart of the novel, but it's just the entry point into an ambitious narrative that jumps back and forth in time, with a cast of characters, both men and women, whose connections aren't fully revealed until the end.<br />Back in the 1950s there's Iris, a beautiful young nurse whose capacity for nurture masks a crippling emotional wound from her childhood.<br />There's Iris's patient George, whose eye was mutilated in a household accident. There's George's mother, Ruby, who's pulled herself up after a deprived childhood and will never forgive herself for what she let happen to her only child. There's heedless Rob, training to be a surgeon and in love with Iris, though his snobbish mother is aghast at her commonness. In the mid-1990s, we have Sylvia and Adam, who fell for Sylvia after his wife left him for a younger man. And then there's Sylvia's childhood friend Will, an actor whose best years appear to be behind him as he cares for his dying mother.<br />Ferguson uses her medical background not just to believably depict her characters' working lives but often to crawl inside their skin. No doubt the eyeball and its ailments have never been presented in such smooth and friendly prose. The same goes for Ferguson's straightforward and compassionate descriptions of maternity wards and aging and dying bodies. As horrific as some of her images are, there's no McEwanesque lurking revulsion. The eye surgery play-by-play ends up being so absorbing that you're ready to forgive the obviousness of the novel's overarching metaphor: the contingency of vision, the trouble we so often have seeing what's right in front of us.<br />Clearly, Ferguson understands that our physical and emotional lives aren't separate. "All the while she is entirely absorbed," reads one passage, describing Sylvia's bliss as she operates. "Her heartbeat is slow. All the processes of her body are calmed. Within she feels the great lively peace of creativity." Soon, though, she must face the long drive home - "which is not long enough" - and her waiting baby.<br />For while Sylvia's work brings her immense satisfaction, she is a novice in the more inchoate realm of love.<br />If sexual love takes Iris's life toward a tragic turn while it only detours Sylvia's, that difference is mainly the result of the progress women made in the second half of the 20th century. And if that progress has also created, in Sylvia, for example, new kinds of problems, "Peripheral Vision" makes it clear that compared with what women in the 1950s were up against, these problems are more readily solved.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Vanity is so last year<br />By Natasha Singer<br /></strong>Monday, December 22, 2008<br />With hindsight, the first decade of this century may come to be viewed as the era of the mass medicalization of attractiveness.<br />The advent of cosmetic Botox in 2002 posited the eradication of wrinkles as an affordable luxury amid a booming economy.<br />On American television, reality shows like "Extreme Makeover" and "Dr. 90210" normalized vanity medicine, making cosmetic operations seem cuddly and carefree. Meanwhile, lenders rushed in to offer specialized lines of credit for cosmetic procedures.<br />And, somewhere along the way, the body became the new attire, a mutable status symbol subject to trends in proportion, silhouette, technology and disposable income.<br />But now, will financial hardship demote the pursuit of physical perfection?<br />Will the vogue for a smoothed face in which only the mouth moves, or a mix-and-match body of mature breasts atop boyish hips become outmoded? Will aesthetic values loosen up, allowing the occasional wrinkle to take on a certain measure of authenticity?<br />"There comes a point when you are putting too much time and money into your vanity," said Peri Basel, a practice consultant in Chappaqua, New York, who advises cosmetic doctors on marketing strategies.<br />"For me, the vanity issue is: Where does it stop? If you are going for buttock implants, do you really need that?"<br />Indeed, a few indicators suggest that financial constraints are beginning to interrupt the narrative of better living through surgery - at least temporarily. Sixty-two percent of plastic surgeons who responded to a recent questionnaire from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons said they had performed fewer procedures in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the latest anecdotal information from the group.<br />At the society's annual meeting last month in Chicago, some prominent surgeons said they had openings and for the first time agreed to negotiate fees with patients.<br />More recently, a quarterly earnings statement from Mentor Corporation, a breast implant manufacturer, reported that the number of breast implants sold in the United States decreased 5 percent during the three months ending Sept. 26 over the same period last year. In the last month, two manufacturers of cosmetic medical devices have closed.<br />"In Orange County, where plastic surgery is a part of their culture, doctors told me business is down 30 to 40 percent," said Thomas Seery, the president of realself.com, a site devoted to reviewing vanity-medicine procedures. "That tells me something is fundamentally changing there."<br />Even a few celebrities, those early adopters of appearance technology, have started to deride the plasticized look that sometimes accompanies cosmetic interventions, a harbinger perhaps of a new climate of restraint in which overt augmentation seems like bad taste.<br />Call it a Botox backlash. Last month in interviews with different magazines, the actresses Courteney Cox and Lisa Rinna said they did not like the look of excessive facial injections.<br />"It's not that I haven't tried Botox - but I hated it," Cox said in an interview in Marie Claire. "You know you've messed up when people who are close to you say, 'Whoa, what are you doing?"'<br />Academics who study body image and body modification said it was too soon to know how financial constraints might alter attitudes toward beauty maintenance.<br />But several researchers forecast how consumers might reappraise the idea of appearance upkeep in light of basic needs, family obligations, romantic aspirations, professional status and personal values.<br />Although a recession may propel some people to seek more procedures, many consumers will reduce or forego cosmetic treatments, they said.<br />In uncertain times, people tend to re-evaluate their priorities, dismissing aspirational purchases as frivolous, said Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of "Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture."<br />"Cosmetic surgery is going to become the new SUV, something that you can do without, that is less justifiable for you and your family," Pitts-Taylor said.<br />Cosmetic surgery has weathered other cataclysms. For example, consumers cut back on beauty operations after the terrorist attacks of 2001, a year in which procedures like liposuction, tummy tucks, nose jobs and eye-lid procedures declined, according to estimates from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.<br />Pitts-Taylor predicted that cosmetic procedures would experience a resurgence when the economy eventually recovers. "It is absurd to suggest that cosmetic surgery is dead or will not be used by the middle class in the future," she said.<br />Doctors and manufacturers are counting on it.<br />On Dec. 1, Johnson & Johnson said it planned to buy Mentor Corporation, the breast implant manufacturer, for about $1.1 billion.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Book Reviews:</strong> </div><div>Reviewed by Maria Russo</div><div>Monday, December 22, 2008 </div><div> </div><div><strong>Roads to Quoz<br />An American Mosey<br />By William Least Heat-Moon<br /></strong>581 pages. Little, Brown & Company. $27.99.<br />Few people, aside from truckers, semi-well-known country singers, and maybe a few highway-obsessed hobbyists, have been to as many places in the United States of America as William Least Heat-Moon. He refers to himself, justly, as "an elder of the road." His book "Blue Highways" (1982), which he began in a van on the day his wife and his job left him, is in a lot of ways synonymous with the transcendent experience of the American road trip, a luxury-condo-free view that Lewis and Clark might have discovered if they had traveled by Airstream rather than canoe. A quarter- century later, the very phrase "blue highways" is still shorthand for those mini-nirvanas, those epiphanylike road moments that, in Heat-Moon's latest book, "The Road to Quoz," he now refers to by the disused word quoz (rhymes with schnoz): "a noun, both singular and plural, referring to anything strange, incongruous or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious."<br />"I'm speaking about a quest for quoz," he writes as he sets off, "of which I'll say more as we go along, but until then, you might want to see Quoz as a realm filled with itself as a cosmos is with all that's there, not just suns and planets and comets, but dust and gas, darkness and light and all we don't know, and only a fraction of what we can imagine."<br />"The Road to Quoz" is not one long road trip, but a series of shorter ones, taken over the past few years: a circumnavigation of Maine's North Woods by car; a trip along the coast from Baltimore to Florida by boat; and a voyage in Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains by rail bike (a bicycle retooled to cruise along abandoned railroad tracks), on which, Heat-Moon writes, "the movement was that in a dream where gravity doesn't exist."<br />Though the trips are short, the book feels long, in part because the author defiantly refuses to offer any kind of thesis: he praises quilts, moseying precisely at moments where we start wondering where we're headed. He gestures toward various schemas, but his point is serendipity and joyous disorder. "A genuine road book should open unknown realms in its words as it does in its miles," he writes.<br />Sometimes the moseying leads to lovely moments. On a bluff at the end of the Ouachita River, in Louisiana, the author's wife says, "I wish somebody would come along." Enter Tuffy Parish, a retired rope-company worker, who takes them to a little spot the locals use to meditate on the river's end, where they stand quietly. Seeing Heat-Moon's notebook, Parish says, "You put in how we take care of the end of the river." Sometimes this sort of trip leads to wonderful people: Jack Kerouac must be happy in his Buddhist Catholic afterlife to know that the guy taking care of the 120-foot-long scroll manuscript for "On the Road" is an ancient text-loving Buddhist Hoosier named Jim Canary, who has been waived through by excited airport security officials who mistook it for the Dead Sea scrolls.<br />The road almost inevitably tricks a road-book author into adding sentences he will one day wince at, having only imagined they were good, like a mirage. The difference between "Blue Highways" and "The Road to Quoz" is that the author has gone from what feels like a love of the road to a love-hate of it, or at least an impatience with aspects that are unavoidable, such as other people. The road gets to all of us, especially after thousands and thousands of miles. But in the end, it's best not to let the road get your quoz out of joint.<br /></div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRKQWkTUiuG23wHiS_BsKgxA3yaK5vZjlIM-eWgr7jJ08m0cpKxdI5vzQHxx0QmoC5nd0L4DZsPJ5ZVmvIbFj-g0jVmcgesQyvXEFaI4A7_hXZhQLDG3uR-gsiJPfC3Khf8HLJb5ukoVY/s1600-h/DSC04177.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829354110969042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRKQWkTUiuG23wHiS_BsKgxA3yaK5vZjlIM-eWgr7jJ08m0cpKxdI5vzQHxx0QmoC5nd0L4DZsPJ5ZVmvIbFj-g0jVmcgesQyvXEFaI4A7_hXZhQLDG3uR-gsiJPfC3Khf8HLJb5ukoVY/s320/DSC04177.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FqEzt1pDE1-0KYXbgzV3OoAloH8CwJzM0_y8nFrgXbZhOGEw5Ml9qy8zfS47WS0alzelLDy2MPaGKdeiyzzDcckiyHqsQC0oHM-eD9wGJp1cyB7pX-mzf6GiLJAokr_zcJW5cvef79E/s1600-h/DSC04178.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829348137263458" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEE3oVKjtKoL7uChtJre_NDy8JfmYvS8NwS1VyucPLLFzVG2YpuksIEk64uMDRPQgBTGjhkZQrSQ5dFG-J7wx7LGUvneVS3BgIMPTZXeC_Mxg9WZqU5LjeK0QqkJewo3rowCYaaGd4FVM/s320/DSC04180.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv7t8lK7Tv-Nzt2fwS_knWu_RD1-NCgpIMe2DeeQ-LGhrHxuRDcVeA3U5Z38bt3UgejoKFcCjOuVOd-LMarrxzOR7fXo1nOWRWDKmo5CgiqJukQv5bbUrXoUBoyMZAeNaiTYTopFdGLqg/s1600-h/DSC04182.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829344949912050" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv7t8lK7Tv-Nzt2fwS_knWu_RD1-NCgpIMe2DeeQ-LGhrHxuRDcVeA3U5Z38bt3UgejoKFcCjOuVOd-LMarrxzOR7fXo1nOWRWDKmo5CgiqJukQv5bbUrXoUBoyMZAeNaiTYTopFdGLqg/s320/DSC04182.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoZsxciyUj3-2WppozZN1Op3MaDSKSjCzg3JyPUyD-23qhcW7WVkh6bzjDKRoKYZz2cLtI_zfYweW2HsrkLU35LcZgyHXku0jmI0chKD1T0LNSK4Inyt_ogtXGtYxfsUOTxDds1VM5Q5w/s1600-h/DSC04184.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829025891053698" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoZsxciyUj3-2WppozZN1Op3MaDSKSjCzg3JyPUyD-23qhcW7WVkh6bzjDKRoKYZz2cLtI_zfYweW2HsrkLU35LcZgyHXku0jmI0chKD1T0LNSK4Inyt_ogtXGtYxfsUOTxDds1VM5Q5w/s320/DSC04184.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuB9a_NoE8NgLj4liP2cSokM5lsgcszCRMiYR1kI8tNE3esgpGzQMQ6iTxOWYhbXoWRknUodE_bePN6kuZaE5Z5rEm_tudipG6Zl_dM3gsPLcX6FfBE4mlGjnhrFrJUAe83ZGKPcuNp5g/s1600-h/DSC04186.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829021014735778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuB9a_NoE8NgLj4liP2cSokM5lsgcszCRMiYR1kI8tNE3esgpGzQMQ6iTxOWYhbXoWRknUodE_bePN6kuZaE5Z5rEm_tudipG6Zl_dM3gsPLcX6FfBE4mlGjnhrFrJUAe83ZGKPcuNp5g/s320/DSC04186.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3bptJuP-WuqEaM4BK9dujYDUx0L-bPWfSu79pXIQRDHSn8bOIjj5CBu5-99Jx0kg7Tv1ZNTSp4xP0B2D7Y_UyMNhwz2wZJSz1De9I-WUSXU4EmLlkMXRguEvvv672o8q4jx3RgI4TbE8/s1600-h/DSC04187.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829023282130562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3bptJuP-WuqEaM4BK9dujYDUx0L-bPWfSu79pXIQRDHSn8bOIjj5CBu5-99Jx0kg7Tv1ZNTSp4xP0B2D7Y_UyMNhwz2wZJSz1De9I-WUSXU4EmLlkMXRguEvvv672o8q4jx3RgI4TbE8/s320/DSC04187.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qgxTJ2Q_Ca7wyebjYF_e9J8EGi5-Ltca0qCXtE3cvLqdr1e-Vra58xoBLyzcXm0z0ycVa6GgLLqEZhLnuJfcijCKfDNRz4YHDgFRXMdtyEHsj9Hknv-eE2iR3h9iTTpcP67JvA1J8x4/s1600-h/DSC04188.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829023310711954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_qgxTJ2Q_Ca7wyebjYF_e9J8EGi5-Ltca0qCXtE3cvLqdr1e-Vra58xoBLyzcXm0z0ycVa6GgLLqEZhLnuJfcijCKfDNRz4YHDgFRXMdtyEHsj9Hknv-eE2iR3h9iTTpcP67JvA1J8x4/s320/DSC04188.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV2baIACKa33OTPkeflLfEiRJVp-vRdjyAO2FSrNzolSoiA1H9O4u1YzdIKCqtJr2dW-zUePEgumEaBsosuK2L7p9mE-BId9qgUBFwMzmK_seAcM8ggTYQmJkGPbywYCJbADs_9mA92jg/s1600-h/DSC04189.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282829017246875010" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV2baIACKa33OTPkeflLfEiRJVp-vRdjyAO2FSrNzolSoiA1H9O4u1YzdIKCqtJr2dW-zUePEgumEaBsosuK2L7p9mE-BId9qgUBFwMzmK_seAcM8ggTYQmJkGPbywYCJbADs_9mA92jg/s320/DSC04189.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIdkGkzBnv9PRw24DF4WxqB4GkqbRrR3YS4lb5wDg2nPtTmco8Qb0LHqV1XAfCJF8WLqcF07Kr2N-QTAod4nSKUpYoikY3uSq96g_fn261m0reHBJEjGp72afZ8l-Oxb-zypa7qPcm0Ug/s1600-h/DSC04190.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828667869442866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIdkGkzBnv9PRw24DF4WxqB4GkqbRrR3YS4lb5wDg2nPtTmco8Qb0LHqV1XAfCJF8WLqcF07Kr2N-QTAod4nSKUpYoikY3uSq96g_fn261m0reHBJEjGp72afZ8l-Oxb-zypa7qPcm0Ug/s320/DSC04190.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-dwJiHyi9qGz2LlyQjwSgaweMML21LPs8GqPVFvrFGppxWJuB3hO1pqsrZ3bDmw301mNCVqxoD3l4ambwIsL43civ7hRnhsW6OK1Ix7gj1uSTID1xe91f8_CVYAd-N5BT1FhIYme_XI/s1600-h/DSC04192.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828670670999458" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-dwJiHyi9qGz2LlyQjwSgaweMML21LPs8GqPVFvrFGppxWJuB3hO1pqsrZ3bDmw301mNCVqxoD3l4ambwIsL43civ7hRnhsW6OK1Ix7gj1uSTID1xe91f8_CVYAd-N5BT1FhIYme_XI/s320/DSC04192.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPenxGjWnR1v4StIJHQ0BEm4e8SHURYUwDZ14N9uwEXVWOdUlBgfGMO4ajrp1ILnR99WF97Jbhk66CcT1Wz4vyxaxj0ZUJMKMx9gn0ATxiQpJ8fwYPbyvhtFkxQRtsIoU2x8zATOTe1iQ/s1600-h/DSC04193.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828664430977506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPenxGjWnR1v4StIJHQ0BEm4e8SHURYUwDZ14N9uwEXVWOdUlBgfGMO4ajrp1ILnR99WF97Jbhk66CcT1Wz4vyxaxj0ZUJMKMx9gn0ATxiQpJ8fwYPbyvhtFkxQRtsIoU2x8zATOTe1iQ/s320/DSC04193.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Suspected arms dealer testifies in Thailand<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />BANGKOK, Thailand: A Russian businessman dubbed the "Merchant of Death" for allegedly arming dictators and guerrillas sought Monday to prevent his extradition to the U.S., telling a Thai court he was not involved in a scheme to sell weapons to Colombian rebels.<br />Viktor Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, has long been linked to some of Africa's most notorious conflicts, allegedly supplying arms to former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.<br />He has repeatedly denied any involvement in illicit activities and has never been prosecuted, despite being the subject of U.N. sanctions and a travel ban.<br />The U.S. is seeking Bout's extradition on charges he conspired to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons, including 100 surface-to-air missiles and armor-piercing rockets to leftist rebels.<br />The 41-year-old Russian who was purportedly the model for the arms dealer portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 movie, "Lord of War" was arrested in March during a sting operation in which undercover U.S. agents posed as rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC.<br />The leftist group, which has been fighting Colombia's government for more than four decades, is listed by the U.S. as a terror group.<br />But on Monday, dressed in an orange prison uniform with shackles around his ankles, he told the court he was set up by the Americans.<br />"I never met anyone from FARC. I've never talked to anyone from FARC," Bout told the court. "I didn't do anything wrong in Thailand."<br />U.N. reports have said Bout parlayed his contacts in the post-Soviet arms industry into a weapons-dealing business, setting up a network of more than 50 aircraft around the world to supply arms that fueled a litany of conflicts, mostly in Africa.<br />The U.N. suspects his clients included Taylor, Gadhafi, the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now known as Congo, and both sides of the civil war in Angola.<br />The world body imposed a travel ban on him that accused him of supporting efforts by Taylor's regime in Liberia to destabilize neighboring Sierra Leone.<br />Bout scoffed at the U.N. allegations on Monday, telling the court that his aviation business only shipped "legal items."<br />"The U.N. is not a court," he said, his voice rising as he waved his hands in the air. "It is a group of countries and it doesn't have the capacity to check what I send on my planes."<br />The extradition hearing has drawn an unusually vigorous response from Russia, according to Douglas Farah, who wrote the 2007 book on Bout, "Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible." The co-author of the book, Stephen Braun, is an editor at the Washington bureau of The Associated Press.<br />Farah said the Russian government has run sympathetic stories in government media about Bout and lobbied senior Thai officials for his release. Two officials from Russia's Embassy in Thailand were in court on Monday.<br />The Duma, or lower house of parliament, has also issued a statement calling for him to be returned to Russia.<br />"The Russians have made great efforts to get him out beyond what they would do for a normal Russian citizen," Farah said. "Over the years, he's been incredibly useful to the Russian intelligence apparatus particularly in delivering weapons to states such as Iran and their proxies in Lebanon."<br />Farah said the Russian government is concerned that he could reveal details about his dealings with Moscow were he to be put on trial in the United States.<br />"I think they would prefer to have him back in Moscow under their control than having him testify in open court in the United States," Farah said.<br />Facing the judges in a wooden chair on Monday, Bout often appeared agitated as he detailed his arrest and nine-month detention in a Bangkok prison. But at one point, he turned and flashed a victory sign and smiled at his mother, who along his wife attended the hearing.<br />Bout testified that he came to Bangkok "to relax" and meet with several Thai executives "who wanted to purchase airplanes."<br />"I did not commit any terrorist acts," Bout said.<br />Bout and his attorneys offered up a laundry list of reasons he should be set free: The arrest warrant was flawed. He committed no crime in Thailand. The United States had no business prosecuting him. He is a victim of worsening relations between the United States and Russia.<br />Bout faces charges in the United States of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill U.S. officers or employees, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile. He could face a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.<br />The extradition hearing will continue Tuesday and is expected to finish this week. A ruling is not immediately expected.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSybCNK6P6NWgqjkPs8LgfgOoFP-YqTYM4pJB0TpFewV0HHszZS0xl-Szk9ze6cRFf9heH6Gtv0F9JNQFhpHcUnKR1TvlIGoOE8dh4NYGjTyKlQzERQcrLeJQCz6Z6eRT7D3EZafoWKsU/s1600-h/DSC04194.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828656009427362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 230px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSybCNK6P6NWgqjkPs8LgfgOoFP-YqTYM4pJB0TpFewV0HHszZS0xl-Szk9ze6cRFf9heH6Gtv0F9JNQFhpHcUnKR1TvlIGoOE8dh4NYGjTyKlQzERQcrLeJQCz6Z6eRT7D3EZafoWKsU/s320/DSC04194.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQZ_w45Tc9OuNWtm_PRLHuq3kqpeqT8E8kffMwwrI-6tXT63VvE-J6wic7s2qSPfT42jSAvI1E9pA3AoYhlzOzkhAj2r8lssGWuqlSOIRNFkx_I45nA78YKvNPayATO8eQPYAxIKQm5G8/s1600-h/DSC04195.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828650657285506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQZ_w45Tc9OuNWtm_PRLHuq3kqpeqT8E8kffMwwrI-6tXT63VvE-J6wic7s2qSPfT42jSAvI1E9pA3AoYhlzOzkhAj2r8lssGWuqlSOIRNFkx_I45nA78YKvNPayATO8eQPYAxIKQm5G8/s320/DSC04195.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKtb-H7SvjJEfk1aka98gb7WW5Tfn4rSTSrytjJHBS3OPtCM68qkwOBxhlphSYHqhvyIXTMXU35KdHUgS0stvnR26crAHyx7_L2uvhbxHUKqMOVTH4N1qEob7eC6sUYcOkQa0xnP5A6g/s1600-h/DSC04196.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828258899248466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoKtb-H7SvjJEfk1aka98gb7WW5Tfn4rSTSrytjJHBS3OPtCM68qkwOBxhlphSYHqhvyIXTMXU35KdHUgS0stvnR26crAHyx7_L2uvhbxHUKqMOVTH4N1qEob7eC6sUYcOkQa0xnP5A6g/s320/DSC04196.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8LNCjg02LxJyeKjvmThFRVwM-TW75ELg2PM858IFlDHEMg9_K8EtkDfjl9bvLVID3kRuG-Dvf8UehoKWe8rIeug8bo80Dq_TX2Gb3Va_WA0isUi9EMpn_RFY73R9-epfqpHVYD-bbGs5b/s1600-h/DSC04197.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828253201982578" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 205px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8LNCjg02LxJyeKjvmThFRVwM-TW75ELg2PM858IFlDHEMg9_K8EtkDfjl9bvLVID3kRuG-Dvf8UehoKWe8rIeug8bo80Dq_TX2Gb3Va_WA0isUi9EMpn_RFY73R9-epfqpHVYD-bbGs5b/s320/DSC04197.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_VXuBPvS10kc1BJ1LpUQJIfgEQ8I7P07l4a0fJf5CVUMhcZchSNgLcfaLPqCWW5jEs31PviY0McG3WZw5naFi39k5kDFeNiQiX3YbkQI9Vsy2Km2Nxq4xlhd9k9wJtcP59RcRKDtaupk/s1600-h/DSC04199.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828252514214978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 256px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_VXuBPvS10kc1BJ1LpUQJIfgEQ8I7P07l4a0fJf5CVUMhcZchSNgLcfaLPqCWW5jEs31PviY0McG3WZw5naFi39k5kDFeNiQiX3YbkQI9Vsy2Km2Nxq4xlhd9k9wJtcP59RcRKDtaupk/s320/DSC04199.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqTDRh3NXytfDBptnQ1GfgYYqHpx5KdDY4301zblYnuCyl5L4lglBhe-x-T02navwcmFXYOC44LwX6N8NPCaP1ZJlyhZdPN6x94PfoFQPbo5TuKvF3Kcr9DBhHaxZqoKQHLQ1fTSMRkBQ/s1600-h/DSC04200.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828249033840018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqTDRh3NXytfDBptnQ1GfgYYqHpx5KdDY4301zblYnuCyl5L4lglBhe-x-T02navwcmFXYOC44LwX6N8NPCaP1ZJlyhZdPN6x94PfoFQPbo5TuKvF3Kcr9DBhHaxZqoKQHLQ1fTSMRkBQ/s320/DSC04200.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpKWmGf2tVNkFsXIktAzgOgWajTWcsuGZbqTdmW2diOhSrEW6r5yfUpFYOjK4v_hhAJKbanykrJ6QJZ9bCB4qLWRWTMfWlnJoQXAHwoWPyeBYV-ME9-5HAf5L8du4H3ZpKwFKwmdqcz2U/s1600-h/DSC04201.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282828243967322194" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpKWmGf2tVNkFsXIktAzgOgWajTWcsuGZbqTdmW2diOhSrEW6r5yfUpFYOjK4v_hhAJKbanykrJ6QJZ9bCB4qLWRWTMfWlnJoQXAHwoWPyeBYV-ME9-5HAf5L8du4H3ZpKwFKwmdqcz2U/s320/DSC04201.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Sudan man accused of aiding Darfur war crime court<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />KHARTOUM: A Sudanese man appeared in court Monday accused of working to overthrow the state by passing on documents about a Darfur war crimes suspect to the International Criminal Court.<br />Lawyers said Mohamed Alsary Ibrahim was the first person in Sudan to be prosecuted for cooperating with the ICC and faces death by hanging if convicted.<br />An officer from Sudanese military intelligence told Khartoum north court Ibrahim offered to pay a contact $10,000 (£6,750) for documents that might incriminate a government minister wanted for masterminding a series of atrocities in Darfur.<br />The intelligence officer, Omar Abdel, said Ibrahim had been trying to find documents to "fabricate a relationship" between Ahmed Haroun, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs, and the "Janjaweed," pro-government militias accused of war crimes in Darfur.<br />The ICC has already issued arrest warrants for Haroun and a Darfur militia leader. Sudan, which is not a signed-up member of the international court, has refused to hand them over.<br />In July, the ICC's chief prosecutor also asked judges to issue a warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accusing him of orchestrating genocide in the region.<br />Sudanese government officials have repeatedly described the ICC as a tool of western powers bent on overthrowing the Khartoum government.<br />International experts estimate the war in Darfur has killed some 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.<br />Khartoum mobilised mostly Arab militias to crush the revolt and denied accusations that mass killings and rapes took place during the counter-insurgency.<br />CASH FOR DOCUMENTS<br />Abdel told the Khartoum court Monday Ibrahim had been offered money in exchange for incriminating documents by a group of Sudanese and Jordanian nationals, all with joint U.S. citizenship, that he had met during a trip to Dubai.<br />Abdel said Ibrahim approached an officer in Sudan's Popular Police Force in June and asked him to get hold of a bundle of documents on training camps run by the organisation in Darfur.<br />At the height of the Darfur conflict, Haroun was state minister in the Ministry of Interior, a body with responsibility for Sudan's police forces.<br />The ICC indictment against Haroun accuses him of funding and visiting camps in Darfur used for the training and arming of government-backed militias. Haroun denies all the charges.<br />Abdel, answering questions from defence and prosecution lawyers, said the police officer tipped off military intelligence about Ibrahim's request. Officers set up a sting operation and arrested Ibrahim the next day, he added.<br />Abdel said officers found evidence Ibrahim had already emailed a number of documents to his Sudanese-American contacts, who had specifically asked him for documents the ICC could use.<br />Ibrahim faces seven charges under Sudanese criminal law including working to overthrow the constitutional government, waging war against the state, dealing with an enemy country, spying and passing on confidential military documents. Lawyers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said people convicted of the first two charges faced the death penalty.<br />The case was due to continue Tuesday.<br />(Reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz, writing by Andrew Heavens; editing by Tim Pearce)</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Sudan asks U.N. for aid for at least 18,000 refugees</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />CAIRO: At least 18,000 Eritrean and Somali refugees have arrived in Sudan since the start of the year, and the government is struggling to provide them with aid, a Sudanese government official was quoted as saying on Monday.<br />The official, quoted by the Egyptian state news agency MENA, said the United Nations had not done enough to help Sudan cope with the influx. "What aid has arrived is modest compared to the number of refugees," the Commissioner for Refugees in Sudan, Mohammed Ahmed al-Aghbash, told MENA, putting the number of Somali refugees at around 5,000.<br />Somalia is mired in anarchy and Eritrea is still recovering from decades of war.<br />A human rights group criticised Egypt this week for giving Eritrean authorities access to refugees who may fear persecution by their government, while denying the UN refugee agency access to those same refugees.<br />The Sudanese government has called on the United Nations to provide urgent aid for the refugees.<br />(Writing by Alastair Sharp, editing by Tim Pearce)</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh34767rufP8rV_trGkcYWmLLB41DmNyqlwrdi27scGyBHGk9i8BYRmwopNjxqWQa8Y_FqMTRkXZXiQnxQHg5zpjHDqNnyFNkpdGPIJQ8-wh4Cr7mW5Bwyjn80UuG0hTCETumY6jFC27Sc/s1600-h/DSC04203.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827839176516226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh34767rufP8rV_trGkcYWmLLB41DmNyqlwrdi27scGyBHGk9i8BYRmwopNjxqWQa8Y_FqMTRkXZXiQnxQHg5zpjHDqNnyFNkpdGPIJQ8-wh4Cr7mW5Bwyjn80UuG0hTCETumY6jFC27Sc/s320/DSC04203.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyxOy5MzgEJJSkVpy_JcedquWUP8clmfs4S7yEuteq6IcIZDFKqrDFXLu4o32jeoUf8IeGsajN_yAXZ2IXk7sgNexTCrRLxFizkJQBZIoYxwFKmlVsuqEWe-Ejee4U2ur5PwRr9FNu9Ys/s1600-h/DSC04204.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827837048772562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyxOy5MzgEJJSkVpy_JcedquWUP8clmfs4S7yEuteq6IcIZDFKqrDFXLu4o32jeoUf8IeGsajN_yAXZ2IXk7sgNexTCrRLxFizkJQBZIoYxwFKmlVsuqEWe-Ejee4U2ur5PwRr9FNu9Ys/s320/DSC04204.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6wDCFrqk3GO7DSZACHEGeukFr70tgobWGthqfMI9gcH3ZnGtOvC14I4CaOgW6Y8ILOMsR5GAoeA4hRax-p2ShXH2ARusKQYSDAlCMvC3gwMyTHHR-Lnja_fXAiXt9AWBN756PR_qrdHE/s1600-h/DSC04205.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827834719493522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6wDCFrqk3GO7DSZACHEGeukFr70tgobWGthqfMI9gcH3ZnGtOvC14I4CaOgW6Y8ILOMsR5GAoeA4hRax-p2ShXH2ARusKQYSDAlCMvC3gwMyTHHR-Lnja_fXAiXt9AWBN756PR_qrdHE/s320/DSC04205.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULL9cR1xg0UczIVXu5fVPT-tnx1jwdd0XRyLBAoFwMuliGVT7TWDKr8OLPQp8zrwONrylLPBKFB7jYgcj8l9GMC-jy1YtGQp5IMqnIG9gDpeBMB-Tpvsdwa_OJvSqHFpAKCmd2sWQgBg/s1600-h/DSC04206.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827830142145074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULL9cR1xg0UczIVXu5fVPT-tnx1jwdd0XRyLBAoFwMuliGVT7TWDKr8OLPQp8zrwONrylLPBKFB7jYgcj8l9GMC-jy1YtGQp5IMqnIG9gDpeBMB-Tpvsdwa_OJvSqHFpAKCmd2sWQgBg/s320/DSC04206.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_W-DCjU49xbjTR5FTe2n6I0C9XWCLNOGiuRsNo9c5KrNnHx_KRCJXbKAeh71eHhuwCQ3i3y6hGJmFvRSSgMcouf5p1ihqx0AhgXDZ9CXdGeq_P70asMRUBSX1X8g9AmBOGjK-GAwRNH0/s1600-h/DSC04208.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827828881258130" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 277px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_W-DCjU49xbjTR5FTe2n6I0C9XWCLNOGiuRsNo9c5KrNnHx_KRCJXbKAeh71eHhuwCQ3i3y6hGJmFvRSSgMcouf5p1ihqx0AhgXDZ9CXdGeq_P70asMRUBSX1X8g9AmBOGjK-GAwRNH0/s320/DSC04208.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHxZDR608Esf1MpXl9LyFBRaieVmWko0DPUbG39m68JvkMMcxOntD2bZWAEDT9M_HsNnntTBGhtNLaYM53g2CWBwvbIcIuqbrjh0sJycmEffFxCI1W3Mbq-pgcc9F69pMRsN9qJa1b59c/s1600-h/DSC04209.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282826279793150530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHxZDR608Esf1MpXl9LyFBRaieVmWko0DPUbG39m68JvkMMcxOntD2bZWAEDT9M_HsNnntTBGhtNLaYM53g2CWBwvbIcIuqbrjh0sJycmEffFxCI1W3Mbq-pgcc9F69pMRsN9qJa1b59c/s320/DSC04209.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Six Russians killed in Egyptian bus accident<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />ISMAILIA, Egypt: Six Russian tourists were killed and 17 others were injured Monday when their bus overturned between two Egyptian resorts in the Sinai peninsula, police sources said.<br />The bus was travelling from Dahab on the east coast of the peninsula to Sharm el-Sheikh at the southern tip and overturned about 10 km (six miles) south of Dahan, they said.<br />The injured include Russians and other unidentified nationalities, they added.<br />It is the third time in four months that an Egyptian bus carrying tourists has overturned with fatal results. Seven Belgians were killed in one accident in October and three Italians when a bus overturned in September.<br />(Writing by Jonathan Wright)</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzms_Yo6dKog2KyG3HiTV234T5ThE7-n82BZrOTGrhllfAuEdLI-pbUDIUyD6r7aI9kgKFqpzxrfEMeTjJE-jCoVxkM7mbgQucYXSt0t8LR9qPfJrj0ywK-HohGO3OwxnRZJlXnyUgko0/s1600-h/DSC04212.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282826277799621826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzms_Yo6dKog2KyG3HiTV234T5ThE7-n82BZrOTGrhllfAuEdLI-pbUDIUyD6r7aI9kgKFqpzxrfEMeTjJE-jCoVxkM7mbgQucYXSt0t8LR9qPfJrj0ywK-HohGO3OwxnRZJlXnyUgko0/s320/DSC04212.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy9lYo31DhMT28EQrtZCaW3Y_tZ6O2BT4XjSsOuTNDQ60LsWk_7IKdxjfqKErLdhKMCJmEgmfB0C5JaxAoAkuOqfhxYSuO2JK-gn-eUGfNMsXznn30WRKu6lWRq1Dfqao1ieDej3D_CSM/s1600-h/DSC04213.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282826278059734242" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy9lYo31DhMT28EQrtZCaW3Y_tZ6O2BT4XjSsOuTNDQ60LsWk_7IKdxjfqKErLdhKMCJmEgmfB0C5JaxAoAkuOqfhxYSuO2JK-gn-eUGfNMsXznn30WRKu6lWRq1Dfqao1ieDej3D_CSM/s320/DSC04213.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcf2Z3Owi-RILxKOBmlGopfI2I_ai-Kruq06W75vQL0iJsBxeVI6oJCHEt892ddLshL4oXQqT3XcXZuK5gM2u2QZOkTQBajGqCwSgzXP2hffGHYSwpumJ92rZWgHpRVS2ZtieZM5538d8/s1600-h/DSC04214.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282826271837991554" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcf2Z3Owi-RILxKOBmlGopfI2I_ai-Kruq06W75vQL0iJsBxeVI6oJCHEt892ddLshL4oXQqT3XcXZuK5gM2u2QZOkTQBajGqCwSgzXP2hffGHYSwpumJ92rZWgHpRVS2ZtieZM5538d8/s320/DSC04214.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrNAzmknNpjg1EAYv6aWgqZt3InU6LA1AUN75WKMvFY3E2L7WOITXbj5X09583yWmbLu56fqmSLqChawrTe5O9UehvcHOtRRfrvo4f68xxUVkzL4DG2zQGQukz37bw4GmXM9uqq6GCPM/s1600-h/DSC04215.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282826273468454354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrNAzmknNpjg1EAYv6aWgqZt3InU6LA1AUN75WKMvFY3E2L7WOITXbj5X09583yWmbLu56fqmSLqChawrTe5O9UehvcHOtRRfrvo4f68xxUVkzL4DG2zQGQukz37bw4GmXM9uqq6GCPM/s320/DSC04215.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827254880565106" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 317px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqUEvEjMIGSg2t4reb8wX-AxclJs648zWR9jorBifs6pkr1ZnnjiQjTFmHoHh0IV7qAlKRzoO9mqp4GaCus64gkYQTDEBPuyFCZHAJ1v54wgntLnrhwGcsoysPAqHJOSuZKjL8ibVWyI/s320/DSC04217.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282826481443975634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2nTZOV1xZA7jmFFKoma3mKdE6Kaxhm4cktNhU7qvcB7TcNBdws8JA8ehjaIu1zSjmzpm-0oUK5ThOWHEfNxDc9bHdGSZcFqItiGAHcHpUSbbY38DWx8UYd-Bov-5m_BqRZMcL1VHmdo/s320/DSC04216.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTXwLBM-DsvCLOBqpqfZXWBhBKbx10VVlAFFTUpFo_yFojSdiYKyTS7ucntOnwdSP48VHOylhbzmxkffMet6C4fGY5_-F9StCflVc6FZbZwthrWTDfRKOISxVPhVJAns_kcp6Fn14hNc/s1600-h/DSC04218.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282825616847749570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTXwLBM-DsvCLOBqpqfZXWBhBKbx10VVlAFFTUpFo_yFojSdiYKyTS7ucntOnwdSP48VHOylhbzmxkffMet6C4fGY5_-F9StCflVc6FZbZwthrWTDfRKOISxVPhVJAns_kcp6Fn14hNc/s320/DSC04218.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmQBkL9ftR8PVJrO8tK5-tQTOeKgAJUPARfZQO82QNc0bghksqUFClZfdMllIi27zyYLi5_b43UnyWfktIdXfM7H7OGpCJv04ieFUPl3CcLfTKpQRt7VO520jSMVSSb_k8eIqa5QTCY58/s1600-h/DSC04221.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282825613096908674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmQBkL9ftR8PVJrO8tK5-tQTOeKgAJUPARfZQO82QNc0bghksqUFClZfdMllIi27zyYLi5_b43UnyWfktIdXfM7H7OGpCJv04ieFUPl3CcLfTKpQRt7VO520jSMVSSb_k8eIqa5QTCY58/s320/DSC04221.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0mSAkpjTepDFRQlXhj2tG07Utjq1YAmS7EOhMKEYmkriq1hKAb105Toy_RxmYBKbTB6xcEt7jTphV8tThekv4Y7hqDbDGCxUQ_fmWn1yifBO4T_7gOvIX06ugZ0oULyyY7j61DmbFrrQ/s1600-h/DSC04222.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282825155040673730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0mSAkpjTepDFRQlXhj2tG07Utjq1YAmS7EOhMKEYmkriq1hKAb105Toy_RxmYBKbTB6xcEt7jTphV8tThekv4Y7hqDbDGCxUQ_fmWn1yifBO4T_7gOvIX06ugZ0oULyyY7j61DmbFrrQ/s320/DSC04222.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>The war against Christmas toys<br /></strong>By Alex Beam<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />MEANWHILE<br />Ah, Christmastime. Store tramplings, nervous breakdowns, prickly clumps of holly showing up where you least expect them. And the annual, mindless War on Toys. It makes a fella feel gosh-darned sentimental.<br />Every year, like clockwork, the family of Boston lawyer Edward Swartz stages a holiday-time press conference, decrying the "10 most dangerous toys" in the stores. Every year, like beaten, groveling, guileless dogs, the media give the Swartz's outfit, World Against Toys Causing Harm (WATCH), free publicity for its dubious claims. That must be because there is so little happening in the world.<br />This year is no exception. WATCH "fearlessly exposed potentially dangerous toys to the general public," the nonprofit's Web site proclaims.<br />What are the 10 toys to avoid this Christmas? Beware the Play-a-Sound Book with Cuddly Pooh! Shun the Spiderman Adjustable Toy Skates! For heaven's sakes, don't let your children play with Kenscott's 4-foot-wide inflatable Giga Ball! "Children as young as 4 years old are encouraged to 'crawl inside' this colorful inflatable ball, in order to 'spin, tumble, [and] bounce,"' the Swartzes write, adding: "WATCH out!"<br />The Giga Ball sounds like a lot of fun, I suggest to James Swartz, director of WATCH and son of the founder. "Of course they are fun. We don't dispute that," he says. "Our point there is that people should at least think about how it can be used in the real world."<br />To be fair, the Swartzes aren't the only killjoys roaming the aisles. For a number of years, US PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) has been staging its own Christmastime publicity-gathering enterprise, "Trouble in Toyland." It publishes a slightly shorter list of hazardous toys - e.g., Littlest Pet Shop, a lead key chain that would be a bad idea to swallow - and warns: "Simply because a toy does not appear on this list does not mean that it is safe."<br />One can never be too vigilant. Given that the Swartzes have been putting on their little charade since 1973, and given that the Consumer Product Safety Commission has been regulating and recalling hazardous toys for well over 30 years, is it just possible that toys are safer now?<br />"There has been a lot of progress made in terms of awareness," Swartz says, "but toys are just as dangerous. A lot of the same type of hazards appear on the shelves over and over again. There is a lot of work to be done."<br />There is so much work to be done that a few years ago the Swartzes decided to sink their hooks into summer as well. "Summer itself is a time of outdoor fun and activity but also of peril," is the WATCH-word. So they have laid on an additional press event bewailing the many hazards that await children during the dangerous months of unsupervised leisure: campfires, water guns, tipping soccer goals, trampolines, and...bleachers. "Between 1980 and 2003, 19 people died from injuries sustained after falling from bleachers," their Web site states.<br />But aren't these people mostly drunk, adult, Red Sox fans? There's nothing in this data that refers to children. "Whether they are children or not, there are still summer safety issues," Swartz says. Something tells me he doesn't want to hear about my trips to New Hampshire to buy slingshots for my sons.<br />A more welcome, albeit short-lived, Christmastime tradition was the full-page ad that the Greenwich, Connecticut-based rich guy Ray Dalio took out in major newspapers decrying Yuletide commercialism. "No sooner does Thanksgiving end, than the loathsome shopping season begins - a monthlong compulsion to buy something, anything, for anyone," read Dalio's ad in last year's Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and other papers.<br />In lieu of mobbing the malls, Dalio urged you to "give people donations to their favorite charity. And request that they give donations to your favorite charities. A lot more money would go to people who need it."<br />Dalio, a Harvard Business School grad who captains the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, spent $2 million on his "redefining Christmas" campaign last year. This year, not so much. Instead of newspaper ads, "they opted for radio," publicist Marianne O'Hare tells me. "They had limited money to spend." Dalio commissioned six 15-second radio spots to run on some nationally syndicated shows and bought some sponsorship messages on National Public Radio.<br />Of the switch from newspaper to radio, O'Hare tells me: "Don't take it personally." But I do.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Holiday countdown for luxury at a bargain<br /></strong>By Jessica Michault<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />PARIS: The clock is ticking for those still looking for their last few holiday gifts. The two remaining shopping days before Christmas can be a nightmare in which the desire just to have something, anything, to scratch another name off the list can be overpowering. The result is often fewer thoughtful gifts and more a hodgepodge of sometimes costly items. Budget is key this season. Top fashion houses are stocking some lower priced items in hopes that their names will appear under the tree.<br />Under 100<br />The Marc by Marc Jacobs line has a number of fun items for under 100, or $143. White rain boots for 5, a heart mirror for 5, a skull pin for 9 and a quilted satin Bowler bag for 20 are just a few of the items on offer. Viktor and Rolf teamed up with Swarovski to create a line of jewelry that includes a striking striped petal ring for 50. And their "No" bracelet in black or red patent leather goes for 95. Gucci has a gift that gives back: the Tattoo Heart Collection gives 25 percent of the sales of each product to Unicef. The line includes a 65 white, scented candle and a Fendi comb in a handy, candy-colored leather container for 100.<br /><strong>From 100 to 300</strong><br />Prada's key chains in the form of a monkey or teddy bear at 120 are sure pleasers. Jil Sander's exotic leather bracelets cost between 100 and 150 each. Wonder Woman inspired the large comic book tote designed by Diane von Fürstenberg, at 140. The woman who has everything might try a pair of Tom Ford tanning bed eyeglasses rimmed in pink gold for 140. Gloves make a great holiday gift and Causse has a number of high fashion designs that fit in this price bracket, including a pair of old-school-style mittens in gold leather and trimmed in white wool for 207. Gifts from Dior Homme include a set of rectangular cufflinks paved in Swarovski crystal for 210 and a buttonhole butterfly pin in white or mother of pearl for 300, could do the trick for a husband or boyfriend.<br /><strong>From 300 to 500</strong><br />Roberto Cavalli's decorative locket necklaces in the form of hearts have a little mirror hidden inside, making them both pretty and practical at 365. Look no further than Christian Lacroix for a brooch that goes with everything. The designer has a number of models in his collection that cost between 300 and 400 each. From Celine comes a number of accessories designed for a weekend getaway to the mountains. A pair of white "Après-Ski" boots trimmed in fox fur for 395 is a great warm-up for any winter wardrobe. With or without snow they look chic. An iconic enamel bracelet from Hermès could satisfy almost anyone. Prices range from 303 for the slimmest version to 460 for the extra large. Finally, for the artist in the family there is Caran d'Ache's 20th anniversary box of Supracolor pencils. Decorated in the colorful sketches of Alber Elbaz, who uses his pencils to create fashion designs for the house of Lanvin, 495.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o9ckM1C1trUD1LwXcTDFosU6SAItggKARp8DrCewKZIahWNFASybz2DOGPrhEigycXwYKZS4_AZFuM6-kmx1tGr1aCW5M9Gk8eQVxkIrtr1RNubRHl8qxKVFDwgNdUyyIZA1b2qz06Q/s1600-h/DSC04223.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282825154086987954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o9ckM1C1trUD1LwXcTDFosU6SAItggKARp8DrCewKZIahWNFASybz2DOGPrhEigycXwYKZS4_AZFuM6-kmx1tGr1aCW5M9Gk8eQVxkIrtr1RNubRHl8qxKVFDwgNdUyyIZA1b2qz06Q/s320/DSC04223.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282827253790409074" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVproEoi4vh8N6GMTfWmftaMPXfBFJEgs6IVvfKYWlcB1hj1UtpJWnH08tqrSsgje1-yLuO0Mk0rHxw9wb8iERNrI1HIUNpoqfkp3S7eP2E86PSS4fJso8CNtv4leV40vdN1tURYVGgiM/s320/DSC04226.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAOVyFd9uNAMT_azAo9sYvRf3XVtCr53PkSVVVJiCjwGowzauSqtIWKCzTLQcUc0OIHi7IA0SbCNZz-ojy2AELKM6hmyYYaxY062FRc-KKp9mb3xf7poWSZpLctvuIW97mO-uojQgH4I/s1600-h/DSC04225.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282825152784414978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPAOVyFd9uNAMT_azAo9sYvRf3XVtCr53PkSVVVJiCjwGowzauSqtIWKCzTLQcUc0OIHi7IA0SbCNZz-ojy2AELKM6hmyYYaxY062FRc-KKp9mb3xf7poWSZpLctvuIW97mO-uojQgH4I/s320/DSC04225.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong></strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>U.S. newspaper shuns Web, and thrives<br /></strong>By David Carr<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />With 2008 drawing to a brutal close on the media beat bankruptcies, daily newspapers that are no longer daily, magazines that are downsizing into brochures a little ray of light appeared in my e-mail inbox. It was from a newspaper owner, of all people.<br />Into the teeth of a historic recession, the newspaper had just published the biggest issue in its history. The product is double-digit profitable, and it has been growing at a clip of about 10 percent a year since it was founded in 1999, right about the time the Web was beginning to put its hands around print's neck.<br />Finally, I thought, a story about a print organization that has found a way to tame the Web and come up with a digital business approach that could serve as a model. Except that TriCityNews of Monmouth County, New Jersey, is prospering precisely because it aggressively ignores the Web. Its Web site has a little boilerplate about the product and lists ad rates, but nothing more. (The address is trinews.com, for all the good it will do you.)<br />"Why would I put anything on the Web?" asked Dan Jacobson, the publisher and owner of the newspaper. "I don't understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?"<br />Other publications much larger than TriCityNews have been wondering about pumping resources into a medium that does not seem to show a promise of returns any time soon.<br />Writing in The New York Observer, John Koblin pointed out that when Forbes, Portfolio and Fortune went through recent retrenchments, the Web staffs were hit the hardest. That may be just an old print reflex, but there is a rational argument to be made that the part of the apparatus that has a working business model, declining or not, should receive the resources.<br />At a time when Web entrepreneurs like Nick Denton of Gawker Media are predicting a 40 percent decline in Web display advertising, it's probably not a great time to be indexing into the Web either.<br />And there are signs that the free ride for consumers may be coming to an end. I started getting notices to renew my subscription to The Wall Street Journal and its Web site and waited, as I have in the past, for the deeply discounted offer. It never came. And according to company statements in October, paid subscriptions for The Journal's Web site were up more than 7 percent from a year ago.<br />A few caveats before we turn back the clock on publishing history. TriCityNews employs 3.5 people (the half-time employee handles circulation), has a print run of 10,000, and has a top line that can be written in six figures. Still, by setting rates low almost 10 years ago and never raising them or offering a Web option, Jacobson has built a reliable cadre of advertisers who call for ads, sign up for full pages, and pay in advance. There are no people working for sales commissions.<br />Editorially, the newspaper is boosterish "we want people to think of Asbury Park as the center of the universe," he said with notes of skepticism typical of alternative weeklies. There are six columnists in addition to the full-time staff, and they write with a mix of attitude and reporting that Jacobson describes as a "plog," a blog on paper.<br />The low cost of entry on the advertising side means that almost anyone a bar, a retailer, a gym can afford a full-page ad, and the preponderance of them leads to an elegant-looking product.<br />"I don't allow our name to be used on any kind of content on the Web not bulletin boards or listings or anything," Jacobson said. "I don't want anybody to connect The TriCityNews and the Internet. I don't want anything that detracts from the paper and the presence of those big, beautiful full-page ads."<br />Unlike other alt weeklies that borrowed heavily and consolidated newspapers in the hopes of creating a rolled-up Web product, Jacobson prefers to publish in a medium that pays for itself.<br />Creative Loafing, a chain of weeklies based in Tampa, Florida, bought up The Washington City Paper and The Chicago Reader and moved aggressively to invest editorial resources online. The chain filed for bankruptcy in September.<br />And Jacobson is more than happy to be known as the Fred Flintstone of the publishing world. "There may come a time when the Web is all there is, and we will try to adapt," he said, "and if we don't, well, hey, we had a great run. But right now, the Web makes no business sense for us."<br />Many people would tell, and in fact have told, Jacobson that he was bound to go the way of the eight-track tape, but from what he has seen, there are a lot of routes to obsolescence.<br />He said that as a consumer, he's not a print snob; in fact, he no longer buys the physical version of newspapers he once did. "I just get on the Web site, I look at what I need to and I never look at the ads," he said.<br />There is no doubt that readers benefit in all sorts of ways from digitized journalism and searchable listings online, but that ease of use has not been accruing to the benefit of the publications that provide that information, or very often, their advertisers.<br />When it comes to brand advertising, print has a strong track record. Advertisers like the analog presentation in TriCityNews for the same reason they come back in droves to Vogue.<br />Jacobson, 47, is a former lawyer and politician he was a New Jersey assemblyman in the '90s who started The TriCityNews in January 1999 with $15,000 he had won in a personal injury lawsuit. The company is called Limited Risk Inc.<br />"Right after we started, the dot-com bust happened and we have been running scared ever since. We live off the land and run it very lean," he said. "There is no debt, our office in downtown Asbury Park is very small, and we have never raised our rates, so people tend to stick with us regardless of what is happening in the economic cycle."<br />The three full-time employees met for their annual Christmas dinner the other night.<br />"All of us," Jacobson said, "are pretty happy with our lifestyles I was able to quit practicing law quite a few years ago and are thankful that we seem to have secure jobs and what seems to be a good future in a pretty tough industry."</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>In Denver, a Web site tries to save a newspaper</strong><br />By Dan Frosch<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />DENVER: On Dec. 13, a group of staff members from The Rocky Mountain News gathered at the downtown Denver Press Club and agreed that they would no longer stand idle as their beloved paper careened closer and closer to a dire fate.<br />And they decided to use the Internet widely credited with hastening the demise of newspapers to get the job done.<br />The paper, known informally as The Rocky, had recently been put up for sale, with the distinct possibility it could close next year. The group of about 30 met for two hours trying to figure out how they could save one of Colorado's oldest businesses, which has been churning out news here since before the Civil War. "The overall attitude at the meeting was that they weren't going to sit around and do nothing," said David Milstead, the paper's finance editor.<br />In what staff members said was possibly the first effort of its kind, they decided to start a Web site, iwantmyrocky.com, so that readers could voice their support for the paper and The Rocky's own employees could publicly make the case for its survival.<br />"Our thinking is twofold," said John Ensslin, a longtime reporter and the group's spokesman. "We want to drive home how bereft our customers would feel if The Rocky would go away. And beyond that, we want to show any other person that acquiring The Rocky would be a valuable asset."<br />According to Scripps, The Rocky, a tabloid, has a full-time editorial staff of 199 and a weekday circulation of 225,000, compared with a decade ago when there were 210 full-time editorial staffers and a weekday circulation of 325,000.<br />Barely a week before the Web site appeared, Rich Boehne, president and chief executive of the E. W. Scripps Company, had told a stunned newsroom on Dec. 4 that the company's flagship paper, beset by $11 million in losses in nine months this year, was up for sale. If nobody bought the Rocky by mid-January, Boehne said Scripps would consider closing the paper.<br />For months, Denver had been filled with with rumors that one of the city's two dailies, The Rocky or The Denver Post, would go under. After about a century of hardscrabble competition, the papers had begun a joint operating agreement in 2001, splitting business and production costs but keeping separate newsrooms.<br />Even with the agreement, The Rocky and The Post, owned by William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, still slugged it out for bragging rights on coverage, with The Rocky garnering Pulitzer Prizes in 2006 for feature writing and photography.<br />But this year, as the newspaper market continued to deteriorate, talk that Scripps was trying to unload The Rocky became louder. At one point, there were whispers that the paper would shut down immediately after the Democratic National Convention left town in late August. Even so, when the news came down from Scripps, many staff members were shocked.<br />"I am beyond stunned," said the veteran political reporter Lynn Bartels. "To me, what happened was literally like a ship capsizing in the middle of the night."<br />For Bartels, the Web site represents a final plea for help.<br />The site says staff members want to "preserve and protect" the legacy of The Rocky and "fight for the jobs of more than 200 Coloradans and the many others that would be affected by the newspaper's closure." It also urges readers to write to Scripps and Colorado's congressional delegation.<br />In the site's first posting, the Rocky columnist Mike Littwin wrote: "We meet in this strange place in a noble effort to save The Rocky Mountain News. And if we can't save The Rocky, we can, at minimum, make some noise before we go."<br />So far, hundreds of people have posted comments.<br />Though he is not part of the group who started the site, The Rocky's editor, publisher and president, John Temple, praised it and pointed out that the newspaper's own Web page now links to the site.<br />"I think it's great that people are taking it into their own hands and trying to have an impact on their own future, and I support that," Temple said. "Obviously, people are concerned, and what the Web site reflects is their wanting to have influence and impact and to take action."<br />In the meantime, staff members are intent on drawing attention to the plight of The Rocky or perhaps, as Littwin muses on the site, "the odd billionaire to join our cause."<br />Bartels put it this way: "The Titanic may be going down, but at the very least, we have to try to save some furniture and fashion a lifeboat."</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>One man's vision for newspapers' future, as insulation</strong><br />By Ian Austen<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />OTTAWA: The Canadian ad agency Taxi has developed a program for clothing homeless people that relies on an industry suffering hard times of its own: newspapers.<br />This winter the Salvation Army is distributing 3,000 jackets in Canada that were envisioned, executed and donated by the ad agency. The secret ingredient for warmth is shredded newspapers.<br />"There are ironies to this," said Steve Mykolyn, the executive creative director in Taxi's Toronto office. "We create lots of newspaper ads. And while we hope people read them, we can now say without a doubt our advertising works. It works as insulation."<br />The jacket's creation dates back to 2007. Mykolyn said he was challenged by his teenage son to consider the situation of homeless people who live near their downtown home. By coincidence, at that time Taxi was soliciting projects from employees to mark its 15th anniversary.<br />Cyclists in the Tour de France slip newspapers under their jerseys on mountain summits to reduce the chill on subsequent descent, and Mykolyn learned from researchers that cellulose insulation, common in homes, is often made from recycled newspaper.<br />After enlisting Lida Baday, a prominent Canadian fashion designer, to design a jacket lined with multiple pockets for holding shredded paper, Mykolyn tested the concept by spending eight hours in an industrial freezer.<br />Once infused with newsprint, the jacket proved so warm that Mykolyn had to remove one of the two sweaters he wore, "and I learned that it's very boring standing in a cold space for a long time."<br />The jackets, which are also waterproof, have been given a brand name, 15 Below the temperature in Celsius at which Toronto begins to issue cold weather alerts, equal to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. But they bear only a tiny logo so people are not stigmatized for wearing the coats.<br />Taxi paid for the initial run of jackets with money that would otherwise have gone to small Christmas gifts for clients and suppliers. (In lieu of a gift, they received a newspaper wrapped in a note about the jackets.)<br />Along with the Salvation Army, Taxi is trying to find a larger corporate sponsor to keep the program running. The jacket's future, Mykolyn added, hinges on another factor as well.<br />"It really does require that newspapers stay in business," he said.</div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>NYT says Paris mayor letter slamming Kennedy a fake</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />By Claudia Parsons<br />The New York Times has identified as fake a letter it published on Monday that denounced Caroline Kennedy's bid to become a U.S. senator and was attributed to the mayor of Paris.<br />Kennedy, the daughter of slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, has been touring New York state in recent days to drum up support for her bid for the U.S. Senate seat of Hillary Clinton, who has been nominated secretary of state.<br />The letter signed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe said Kennedy's bid to fill Clinton's senate seat was "surprising and not very democratic, to say the least."<br />"We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model," the letter said, describing Kennedy's bid as "in very poor taste."<br />"This letter was a fake," the Times said in an editor's note on its Web site later on Monday. It said the letter had been e-mailed to the paper and that staff sent an e-mail back to the mayor to verify it, but did not hear back.<br />"At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoe's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us," the paper said. "We did not do that."<br />It said the Times had expressed its regrets to Delanoe and the paper was reviewing its procedures to verify letters.<br />Interest in Kennedy, 51, seeking the Senate seat has been enhanced by her family's status as an American political dynasty. One of her uncles, Robert F. Kennedy, was a senator from New York who was running for president when he was assassinated in 1968. Another uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, is one of the most powerful members of the Senate.<br />The fake letter was the latest embarrassment for a paper that saw its reputation hammered in 2003 when national reporter Jayson Blair resigned after fabricating quotes, falsifying datelines and using material from other newspapers.<br />(Editing by Doina Chiacu)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBIoBXVrHVdi40wm60fPcyNC4jVz7uosNAdXS9MIpvOrLvzp3dAYY5jALFecLkl2q9oYfvDktR8aj1VzfE6J7qaqp8_L-8VypMNggR7mAIRPkSmi4LWwBT_BhnRCk3s56mfRjAdm11aPw/s1600-h/DSC04230.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282825149173144210" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBIoBXVrHVdi40wm60fPcyNC4jVz7uosNAdXS9MIpvOrLvzp3dAYY5jALFecLkl2q9oYfvDktR8aj1VzfE6J7qaqp8_L-8VypMNggR7mAIRPkSmi4LWwBT_BhnRCk3s56mfRjAdm11aPw/s320/DSC04230.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>House prices forecast to fall 10% in Britain</strong><br />Published: December 22, 2008<br /><a id="articleLocation" title="Click to view map" href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/22/business/realty.php#">LONDON</a>: House prices in Britain will fall 10 percent next year as banks rein in mortgage lending and buyers are deterred by the economic slowdown, a leading property researcher forecast Monday.<br />Hometrack acknowledged that because of the market turmoil it was not as sure about its prediction as in previous years, but the fact it has published one at all bucks a trend among British research groups who have abandoned house price estimates because of market volatility.<br />"It is harder to forecast," Richard Donnell, Hometrack's director of research, said. "This is a central forecast, but the range is getting wider." He could not specify how much wider the range was for 2009 than it had been in previous years.<br />Hometrack said its central forecast was for house prices to fall a further 10 percent in 2009 and 3 percent in 2010 - on top of a decline of 9 percent in 2008 - making the peak to trough fall in real estate prices of about 22 percent. It did not give a monetary figure prediction.<br />The real estate research company expects repossessions will reach a near record high of 70,000 next year as homeowners struggle to make mortgage payments during a recession. That is up from 45,000 in 2008, and close to the highest level ever recorded by Hometrack - of 75,500 in 1991, when the country was last in a recession.<br />Unlike Hometrack, Nationwide, Halifax and the Council of Mortgage Lenders have all decided not to publish a house price forecast for 2009.<br />Halifax said it will not publish estimates because it is in the middle of being taken over by Lloyds TSB Group, and so does not think it is appropriate to publish independent figures which could be at odds with Lloyds's view of the market.<br />The other two researchers cited market volatility as the reason for canceling their usual annual forecasts.<br />"Because things are moving so rapidly, we think it would add to the confusion by putting too much emphasis on a number that could change quickly," said Sue Knight, a spokeswoman for Nationwide.<br />Nationwide has published annual forecasts every year since 1988, except in 1992 and 1993 when the last British house price slump was at its worst.<br />Nationwide said prices would be pushed down by a combination of banks' unwillingness to lend amid the financial crisis and the fact that buyers would be few and far between because of rising unemployment and a shrinking economy.<br />It did not make a forecast for house values but predicted that net mortgage lending would grow just 15 billion pounds in 2009 - down from 39 billion pounds in 2008 and 107 billion pounds in 2007.<br />"It's an incredibly volatile environment," said Sarah Robson, spokeswoman for the Council of Mortgage Lenders, "and it's incredibly difficult to publish a forecast on house prices in this environment."</div><div> </div><div>*************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Pound hits new low vs FX basket<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />LONDON: The pound fell to a record low on a trade-weighted basis and hovered near an all-time trough against the euro on Monday on the view that UK interest rates will fall further in the new year.<br />The euro came close to Thursday's record high of 95.56 pence, keeping high the prospect that the two currencies could soon hit parity, while the pound fell more than 1 percent against the dollar.<br />In an otherwise quiet day for news, sterling came under selling pressure as Bank of England policymakers said monetary policy alone may not be enough to shield the UK economy from the effects of the financial crisis.<br />"The market has it in for the pound at the moment," Standard Bank head of G10 currency research Steve Barrow said.<br />The pound fell to 75.8 on a trade-weighted basis, the lowest on daily records held by the Bank that go back to 1990.<br />At 3:17 p.m., the euro gained 1.6 percent to 94.75 pence, close to a record high of 95.56 pence hit on Thursday.<br />The pound lost 1 percent against the dollar to $1.4755, having earlier hit $1.4688, its lowest in more than a week.<br />Bank deputy Governor John Gieve on Monday told the BBC that that UK required a new instrument to manage the economy. Writing in a UK newspaper, fellow policymaker Tim Besley said a "raft of essential policy measures" other than monetary policy were needed.<br />The currency has been battered by the prospect of interest rates falling further in the UK than in the euro zone, where rates are at 2.5 percent, and worries about a sharply slowing UK economy.<br />UK rate futures indicate that a cut of 50 basis points from 2.0 percent in January is largely priced into the market, with more cuts likely in February and March.<br />"If the ECB continues to resist pressure to cut rates then this will keep upside pressure on euro/sterling," Standard Bank's Barrow said.<br />While recent comments from Bank policymakers have suggested that UK interest rates could fall to near zero, European Central Bank policymakers have given no hint of euro zone rates falling this far.<br />ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi warned about the risks of monetary policy being too lax, according to Rome daily Il Messaggero, while fellow board member Juergen Stark said he saw no risk of deflation.<br />The belief that rates will keep dropping significantly is expected to ensure continued downward pressure on the pound going into the new year, with many analysts predicting that parity against the euro is in sight.<br />"It seems only a matter of time before the euro gets to parity (with the pound)," James Hughes, market analyst at CMC Markets said.<br />(Reporting by Jessica Mortimer)</div><div> </div><div>***********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Bank says rate cuts cannot end crisis</strong><br />Reuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />LONDON: Monetary policy alone cannot help the economy avoid some of the worst consequences of the global credit crunch, two key members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) said on Monday.<br />Sir John Gieve, the Bank's deputy governor, said Britain needed some form of new instrument which would be more effective in managing the economy.<br />Referring to interest rates as "a blunt instrument," Gieve said authorities needed "to complement interest rates... with something which is more financial sector specific."<br />"We need to develop some new instruments, which sit somewhere between interest rates, which affect the whole economy... and individual supervision and regulation of individual banks," he told the BBC.<br />"We need to develop something which bridges that gap and directly addresses the financial cycle and prevents the financial cycle and the credit cycle getting out of hand."<br />The official interest rate, set by the Bank of England, has been cut three times since October, 3 percentage points in all, and is now at a post-war low of 2 percent.<br />Tim Besley, another member of the Bank's MPC, wrote in the Daily Mail newspaper that interest rates alone were not enough to bring Britain's flagging economy back to life.<br />"A raft of essential policy measures, beyond what the MPC can do, continues to be targeted towards returning the banking system to normal functioning," he wrote. "This remains a high priority."<br />"There is no quick or easy fix for where we are now. What we need is a measured approach, combining policies that deal with the challenges collectively.<br />The Bank of England announces its next interest rate decision on January 8. Many economists expect it to cut rates to as low as 1 percent following the decisions by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan to cut their rates to close to zero this month.<br />The BBC said Gieve also cast doubt on the quality of the financial institutions now in British public ownership -- Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.<br />"There are some books -- Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley -- which clearly have a level of defaults in them. (I'm) not quite sure how that will balance out against the residual of the capital," he said.<br />(Reporting by Kate Kelland and David Milliken, editing by Tomasz Janowski)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /><br /> </div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008</strong> </div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-8964728157988480562008-12-22T04:59:00.022+01:002008-12-22T07:35:42.175+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Sunday, 21st December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong>1030</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><p><br /></p><p> <img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470464857647010" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirTXBn8CPmkws1V0hLpCMAl3_UDSj4atqMxbc1wU3H7OAjg3VUWiJdUgIEzRoVvSMXCGhkY6LamJNr3VDX8rp32-BV1FzmJTWoT9RNm35l2TEEFRI9mbFykhSLxE8H7Dz36EQUr5msGnA/s320/DSC03941.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470461183419602" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl_MM4LEcQ9HH_RlgVCIlaTwDXwQ4m8pebQAJ0BuStWRuE9_ZjFFtlQCJN758eliR7wZZuU_dDvAhRhCKjPTExU6mj3tgqm7f1qAI7VxbQxiBRi8ZAOPKAjelya3JbasjoOUluUOCbA7k/s320/DSC03942.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470150503361634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxc2V11yqYqy0JF9ZeiGRtP63S0GZEd_I98f2K8qaP6vedz8b-Q2maF_zzCi4ikkD33WuUeac3KBjVbVcbjqDkle9K-kqd8DrEUtbW7vZ0r3g9JzPt5J0z0uPjrjyzcNsJYZi-5l8Y5cI/s320/DSC03947.jpg" border="0" /> </p><p><strong>A complex deal ensnares a rural cooperative<br /></strong>By Gretchen Morgenson<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Collateral damage from the credit crisis continues to crop up in the most unlikely places. Consider southern Indiana, where the Hoosier Energy Rural Electric Cooperative, serving 800,000 farm, small-business and residential customers, is under threat.<br />Unlike many other enterprises today, Hoosier is not in financial distress. It is, in fact, thriving.<br />What imperils the cooperative is the kind of financial alchemy that has magnified our money mess: an atrociously convoluted deal that Hoosier struck with John Hancock Life Insurance in 2002.<br />Because part of that deal is now in jeopardy, John Hancock is trying to force a termination payment of $120 million that could push Hoosier into bankruptcy protection.<br />Problems with the Hoosier-John Hancock transaction are the subject of a lawsuit in a U.S. district court in Indianapolis. David Hamilton, chief judge in the Southern District of Indiana, recently granted Hoosier's request for a preliminary injunction preventing any termination payment from being made until the dispute between the parties could be resolved.<br />Like most electric cooperatives, Hoosier does not generate significant profits. Any earnings are either kept to offset future losses or returned to members of the cooperative. Its nonprofit status is central to the deal vexing Hoosier today.<br />The deal was offered to Hoosier as a way for the cooperative to sell tax losses that it couldn't use to a profit-generating company that could. John Hancock was that company. Known as a "sale-in, lease-out"- SILO for short - the arrangement was fashioned by Babcock & Brown, an Australian investment firm.<br />Detailed in 4,000 pages of fine print, the SILO was a deal only a Wall Street contortionist could love. Its components included a sale and leaseback, two credit-default swaps and a tax shelter similar to those that the Internal Revenue Service has since deemed abusive.<br />In other words, a trifecta of tortured finance.<br />The investment bankers and lawyers on the deal made out, of course; they generated $12 million in fees, court filings show.<br />Here's how the SILO worked: Hoosier leased some assets at one of its power plants to John Hancock for 63 years, beyond the useful life of the assets. John Hancock paid $300 million to Hoosier, which leased the assets back for 30 years, agreeing to make regular payments to Hancock.<br />Other nonprofit entities, like transit agencies in some large American cities, did similar deals; several U.S. agencies blessed the arrangements when they became popular in the early part of the decade.<br />Of the $300 million received in the deal, Hoosier kept about $20 million. It deposited the rest with Ambac Assurance, a financial guarantor. Ambac got involved because the transaction required an insurer to enter into two credit-default swaps guaranteeing that the lease payments would be made to John Hancock over the life of the deal. If Hoosier defaulted on its obligations under the contract, Ambac would pay John Hancock an early-termination fee, then demand the same amount from Hoosier.<br />Since the deal was struck, Hoosier has made all the necessary payments. But problems loomed last June when the credit rating agencies cut Ambac's debt rating to a level that was no longer acceptable under the SILO's terms.<br />Hoosier had 60 days to find a new insurer with stronger ratings. If it failed, Ambac would have to fork over $120 million to John Hancock, then demand that amount from Hoosier. Because Hoosier has already deposited some money with Ambac, the cooperative would have to pay an estimated $110 million over four years.<br />When Hoosier was unable to find a replacement insurer within 60 days, John Hancock gave the cooperative additional time. But it lost patience. On Oct. 23, it informed Hoosier that a default had occurred and that the termination payment of $120 million was due in a week.<br />Oddly, John Hancock's notice of default came even though Hoosier was in final negotiations with Berkshire Hathaway to execute a surety bond to replace the Ambac contract, according to court filings. Hoosier's board had just approved the change when John Hancock pulled the plug.<br />Hoosier's creditors started to shut down some of the cooperative's lines almost immediately, the company said. And Judge Hamilton wrote that John Hancock's move could force Hoosier into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.<br />A filing could have other effects - like making the cooperative default on hundreds of millions of dollars of other loans, lines of credit and long-term supply contracts.<br />On Nov. 25, the judge granted the temporary restraining order.<br />So why is John Hancock forcing the termination payment issue when a replacement for Ambac seemed imminent?<br />Hoosier has some thoughts on that. It believes that John Hancock is trying to use Ambac's difficulties to generate a quick $120 million.<br />"Hoosier has been extremely disappointed that John Hancock is using our nation's credit crisis to try to reap a windfall," said Reed Oslan, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago representing Hoosier. "Hancock's position has caused severe economic strain at Hoosier, and it will continue to protect itself as necessary."<br />No, no, no, says Jonathan Chiel, John Hancock's chief counsel. He says his company's actions have nothing to do with trying to snare a windfall. "We only want Hoosier to find a suitable replacement for Ambac," he said, "and we are more than willing to keep the transaction in place under those circumstances."<br />The company must also look out for its shareholders, Chiel said.<br />Still, it seems odd that John Hancock is pressing the default even though its deal may run afoul of Internal Revenue, as similar SILOs have. It could be required to pay back taxes and penalties if the IRS ruled against it.<br />Hoosier is not vulnerable to an adverse IRS ruling on the transaction, other than probably having to repay John Hancock the $20 million or so that it received when the deal was done. Hoosier was careful to ensure that it had no risk or responsibility if the SILO was ruled a sham.<br />"The IRS will certainly deny the tax benefits that Hancock is claiming," testified Alan Joseph Bankman, an expert witness in the case who is a professor at Stanford Law School. He told the court that Internal Revenue has offered tax amnesty to entities that have struck SILO deals, if they give up future benefits and return 80 percent of deductions taken.<br />About 80 percent of companies involved in such deals have accepted the IRS's amnesty offer, the judge said in a recent opinion.<br />But not John Hancock. Its general counsel said the company believes its deal would pass muster with the IRS. It has no interest in unwinding it.<br />What a web our financier friends have woven around us. Unhappily, it seems that no one can escape its entanglements.</p><p><br /> </p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470111591196226" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGbgp-PLi6y-Z4eh7EjHVezPBNH2kG5Hibu89PylR9HC1ler2S5Sx49KD5rL0lqyWxz9Wbj9C4Xomd_c1kUKQaKxy4aU-DpubMUDZiew6Pm6Xk_erFxwuvyD0EZ4al2oZdVJehd6I2MoY/s320/DSC03948.jpg" border="0" /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Humanitarian crisis brews in southern Philippines<br /></strong>By Jonathan Adams<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />TALAYAN TOWN, Philippines: The 50 soldiers came into Hassan Kalipa's home in broad daylight, looking for rebels. He served them coconuts.<br />Later that day - Aug. 29 - gunfire erupted a couple of kilometers away from Kalipa's village of Linamunan, in the southern Philippines, which has seen an upsurge in fighting between government forces and rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in recent months.<br />The soldiers moved a mortar into the village to fire on the rebels. So, fearful of getting caught in the cross-fire, Kalipa, 31, and other Muslim farmers and their families fled their village.<br />They ended up in a camp in a public market here, about seven kilometers, or four miles, from Linamunan.<br />Kalipa and his fellow villagers are among hundreds of thousands of civilians whose lives have been turned upside down by conflict in the southern Philippines.<br />More than 2,000 are living in tents and thatched huts in the evacuation camp in the predominantly Muslim province of Maguindanao. Kalipa says some of the displaced return to their villages during the day to farm rice, coconut and corn fields, then come back to sleep in the camps.<br />They will not go back for good until the military leaves - and takes its mortar with it. "We're afraid to go back to our homes," Kalipa said.<br />The displaced villagers are the human fallout of a political failure: the breakdown in August of the peace process between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Four months after talks broke down and violence erupted, the lives of the villagers remain on hold.<br />As far as such conflicts go, casualties are low - which may explain the relative lack of attention to this troubled corner of Southeast Asia. In a report in late October, the International Crisis Group estimated that more than 200 had died in renewed violence since August, half of them civilians.<br />The relatively small numbers are due to the nature of this war. The military is playing a cat-and-mouse game with three MILF commanders blamed for attacks on civilian areas in August, with only occasional, brief engagements that often produce no casualties.<br />But even if casualties are light, a heavy climate of fear has paralyzed entire communities and polarized them along religious lines. The result, say aid workers, rights groups and others, is one of the worst humanitarian situations since all-out war raged on the island of Mindanao in the 1970s.<br />In a report in late October, Amnesty International accused both sides of human rights abuses. It says that the conflict displaced 610,000 at its peak.<br />Some 240,000 people have since returned to their homes; the rest are still living in relatives' homes or in primitive evacuation camps. The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has delivered food and aid to nearly 130,000 in 100 such camps.<br />"While the armed conflict in the Philippines's south is not new, the number of civilians directly affected by this most recent escalation of hostilities has increased dramatically, with no clear end in sight," Amnesty International said in the report. If perpetrators of rights abuses are not brought to justice and violations continue, the group said, "Mindanao may find itself approaching a human rights crisis."<br />One obstacle to talks is what to do about the three "rogue" commanders. The MILF wants a halt to military operations against the three and an independent investigation into allegations of atrocities. But the government considers them criminals who must face justice.<br />"They must take control of those people," Hermogenes Esperon, presidential adviser on the peace process, said in an interview at his office in the capital, Manila. "Otherwise, how could we be talking at the negotiating table?"<br />Still, the government is optimistic about the resumption of talks. It recently named the head of a new negotiating panel and says talks could resume by Christmas. But the MILF poured cold water on that, saying Dec. 14 in a statement on its Web site that the government's recent comments were "empty talk."<br />Even if the two sides do resume dialogue, the way forward in the peace process is far from clear. After 11 years of on-and-off negotiations, the MILF had accepted a preliminary deal, due to be signed Aug. 5, that would have expanded an autonomous Muslim area and given it greater control over its resources and revenues.<br />But Christian leaders in Mindanao loudly opposed that deal, fearing some Christian areas could come under Muslim control. They helped persuade the Philippine Supreme Court to issue an injunction against the agreement. The court later ruled the deal unconstitutional, arguing it would have effectively partitioned the Philippines.<br />Looking back, most analysts and observers put most of the blame for the breakdown on the government. They say it did not sufficiently consult with affected communities ahead of a deal and did not shore up support in Manila for the agreement. The MILF "has reason to feel deeply dismayed about what happened with the court rulings," said a U.S. official who did not want to be quoted by name discussing sensitive peace negotiations.<br />"The government underestimated the public backlash to the settlement, and they were caught off guard," said Scott Harrison, managing director of Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a risk consultancy. "They felt they could ramrod this through and everyone would just sign on the dotted line. But it raised a firestorm."<br />In an interview at his Cotabato City home, the MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu blamed President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's administration for failing to win consensus on the Aug. 5 deal from the legislative and judicial branches. Kabalu said that the rebels want to resume talks but that some now question the administration's sincerity in wanting a deal.<br />"Many believe a peace deal isn't really possible under this president," he said. But he added that the group would give the government "the benefit of the doubt, to prove we are really for peace."<br />They may have little choice. Forty years of fighting has shown that there is no military solution to the problem in Mindanao, many specialists say, including Esperon, the government peace adviser, and Abhoud Syed Lingga, director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, a nonprofit nongovernmental research institute in Cotabato City.<br />"The situation now is moving toward a strategic stalemate," Lingga said in an interview at his office. "There are no good options for both sides except to negotiate a solution."<br />Back in the evacuation camps, the civilians wait. Aid groups are helping, but conditions are still rough. Kalipa said 11 people had died in his camp in recent weeks, suffering from diarrhea and high fever.<br />Amigos Maminto, 60, has been displaced for the second time. In the 1970s, as war raged in Mindanao between the military, Muslim rebels, and Christian and Muslim vigilantes, Maminto and many others fled their homes.<br />Some 35 years later, he has once again fled his home in Linamunan, this time with four of his children and several grandchildren.<br />"As long as there is no peace deal between the government and MILF, I expect a similar situation in the future," Maminto said. "I fear fighting will happen again."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Mauritania junta frees president from house arrest</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Hachem Sidi Salem and Vincent Fertey<br />Mauritania's military junta Sunday freed from house arrest ousted President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who vowed to fight to return to the office he lost in a bloodless coup in August.<br />The generals who overthrew Abdallahi, the first democratically elected president of the west Saharan Islamic state, had said this month they would release him as part of negotiations to head off threatened European Union sanctions.<br />Former colonial power France, which holds the rotating EU presidency, welcomed the release but reiterated the international community's demand that the ousted president be restored to office. "The solution to the current crisis is a return to constitutional order," it said in a statement.<br />Mauritania's coup leaders have refused to reinstall Abdallahi, who won multi-party elections last year.<br />The ousted president was freed after he was driven to the dusty coastal capital by security officers from his hometown of Lemden, 200 km (125 miles) to the south. He later returned to Lemden with friends, supporters said.<br />In an interview published Sunday by the French newspaper Le Monde, Abdallahi said he considered himself "the legitimate, democratically-elected president."<br />"I'll push my freedom to the limits the coup leaders put on it. I am firmly resolved to fight to make this coup d'etat fail," he said in the interview, which was conducted shortly before he was freed from house arrest.<br />Abdallahi told Le Monde he would make political contacts at home and abroad and could try to attend the next summit of African Union leaders at the end of January in Addis Ababa.<br />His daughter Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi said his release "was not a real freedom." "I doubt he'll be allowed to leave the country," she told Reuters.<br />Abdallahi supporters described the release as an attempt by junta chief General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who led the August 6 coup, to avoid more sanctions against Mauritania, the world's No. 7 iron ore exporter and an oil producer since 2006.<br />"The fight today ... is not whether Abdallahi is detained or released ... but his return to the presidential chair," said Jemil Ould Mansour, an Islamist politician and member of the pro-Abdallahi National Front for the Defence of Democracy.<br />Nouakchott's streets were calm Sunday and there were no demonstrations for or against the ousted president.<br />TARGETED SANCTIONS<br />The European Union and the United States, which view Mauritania as a valuable ally in the war against Islamist militant groups in the Sahara, have strongly condemned Abdallahi's overthrow and are pushing for his reinstatement.<br />On November 21, the EU threatened individually targeted sanctions against Abdel Aziz and members of his military administration if they did not restore constitutional rule.<br />The EU says it will avoid sanctions that hurt Mauritania's 3 million people and continues to pay Nouakchott more than $100 million a year for fishing rights, underpinning the budget.<br />Friday, the United States said it would axe trade benefits for Mauritania as of January 1 in response to the coup. Washington has cut back military and non-humanitarian aid since the coup and banned junta members from entering the U.S.<br />Junta chief Abdel Aziz has promised to hold presidential elections and has announced a process of national consultations starting December 27 to discuss the transition to the polls.<br />But Abdallahi, though invited, refused to take part. "I'm saying categorically 'No'! If I said yes, that'd be legitimising the coup and accepting the fait accompli," he told Le Monde.<br />Although there have been some pro-Abdallahi demonstrations, a wide section of Mauritania's political establishment supported the coup. Critics said his government was elitist and did little to shield the population from rising fuel and food prices.<br />(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)<br />(Additional reporting by James Regan in Paris; Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Dan Magnowski; editing by Michael Roddy)<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><strong>U.S. won't support a Zimbabwe government that includes Mugabe, envoy says</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Spokes Mashiyane<br />Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has reneged on a power-sharing deal and the United States will no longer support a government that includes him, a top U.S. envoy said on Sunday.<br />U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer told reporters in Pretoria Mugabe was "completely out of touch" and was responsible for turning the once prosperous country into a "failed state" where food is scarce and the currency worthless.<br />Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed on September 15 to form a unity government, a pact supported at the time by the United States. But that agreement has unravelled due to a fight over control of important ministries.<br />Since then, Zimbabwe has sunk deeper into crisis. Hyper-inflation means prices double every day, a cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,100 people and the opposition has accused the ruling party of abducting its supporters.<br />"We feel that Robert Mugabe has reneged on that deal," Frazer said, citing political violence, the spread of cholera, and moves by Mugabe to unilaterally take control of important ministries and posts.<br />"The power sharing agreement ... needs to be implemented with someone other than Robert Mugabe as president."<br />Western nations, Zimbabwe's neighbours and investors had hoped a unity government with Tsvangirai as prime minister would wrest enough control from Mugabe to reverse policies they blame for Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, and avert total collapse.<br />"Today we know better," Frazer said, adding she had been sent by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to explain the U.S. shift in policy to other southern African countries.<br />"OUT OF TOUCH"<br />While some southern African countries such as Botswana have criticised Mugabe, most African leaders, including neighbour South Africa, have stopped short of calling on him to quit.<br />Frazer said she had urged Zimbabwe's neighbours to step up the pressure, saying they were protecting him by failing to take a tougher diplomatic line.<br />But South Africa reiterated on Sunday it had not changed its position and urged the parties to implement the power-sharing deal urgently.<br />"We believe in that agreement as the way for Zimbabwe to deal with its problems," said Thabo Masebe, a spokesman for South African President Kgalema Motlanthe.<br />Mozambique's president also called for the quick formation of a coalition government.<br />Frazer said the United States had been poised to help rescue Zimbabwe's collapsing economy as soon as the deal was implemented, including possible relief on $1.2 billion in debt to international institutions and the easing of sanctions.<br />"That's off the table now with Robert Mugabe remaining in government," she said.<br />Western countries including the United States blame Mugabe for Zimbabwe's woes and have intensified calls for him to step down. Rice said this month his departure was well overdue.<br />Mugabe regularly rails against Western leaders, saying they are using cholera as an excuse to topple him and blaming economic sanctions for the meltdown.<br />He says Tsvangirai is a western puppet and has vowed he will never "surrender" to attempts to oust him. Tsvangirai says Mugabe is trying to relegate him to a junior partner in the unity government.<br />There was no immediate comment from Harare on Sunday.<br />Frazer said she expected "a lot of hot rhetoric" from Mugabe, saying he was "completely out of touch" with the fact 5 million of his people would need food aid by January.<br />"He has no idea," she said. "He's getting plenty of groceries."<br />(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare and Charles Mangwiro in Maputo; Writing by Rebecca Harrison in Johannesburg; Editing by Elizabeth Piper)<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Nigeria forces are implicated in the killings of Muslims<br /></strong>By Lydia Polgreen<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />DAKAR, Senegal: Government security forces were implicated in the deaths of at least 90 of the hundreds of people killed in religious violence in the central Nigerian city of Jos last month, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.<br />At least 400 people died when fighting broke out between Muslim and Christian gangs in the city on Nov. 28 and 29 after a dispute about local elections. Each side accused the other of rigging the vote.<br />Muslims and Christians mingle uneasily in the so-called middle belt region of Nigeria, and tension frequently flares along religious, ethnic and political fault lines.<br />Initial accounts of the killing in Jos indicated that the gangs had set upon each other's neighborhoods, burning churches, homes, businesses and mosques.<br />But based on testimony from witnesses interviewed in the aftermath of the violence, Human Rights Watch researchers documented seven shootings in which the police had killed at least 46 men and boys, almost all of them Muslim.<br />In addition, military troops killed 47 people, also nearly all Muslims, according to the rights group's investigation.<br />Human Rights Watch is an independent group based in New York.<br />The regional governor had issued a shoot-to-kill order in the city to quell the violence, which had erupted with sudden ferocity.<br />Witnesses described seeing police officers hunt down men and kill them at close range, according to the report.<br />"The duty of the police and the military was to stop the bloodshed generated by this extremely tragic episode of intercommunal violence, not contribute to it," Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch who visited Jos in the days after the killings, said in a statement.<br />Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, and its 140 million people are divided almost evenly between Islam and Christianity. Tensions between the religious groups have exploded periodically, often as proxy for deeper divisions over land, power and politics.<br /><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Obama names 4 top science advisers<br /></strong>By Gardiner Harris<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: In his selection of four top scientific advisers, President-elect Barack Obama has signaled what are likely to be significant changes in policies governing global warming, ocean protections and stem cell research.<br />"It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America's place as the world leader in science and technology," Obama said in a radio address on Saturday, when he announced the appointments.<br />John Holdren, a physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, will serve as the president's science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which overseas ocean and atmospheric studies and performs much of the government's research on global warming.<br />Holdren will also be a co-chairman the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with the Nobel Prize-winning cancer research Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Eric Lander, a genomic researcher.<br />"Whether it's the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create 21st century jobs today more than ever, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation," Obama said.<br />Like Steven Chu, the energy secretary-designate, Drs. Holdren and Lubchenco advocate mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, which the Bush administration opposed. Both served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Holdren said last year that the world needed to undertake "a massive effort to slow the pace of global climatic disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable."<br />Lubchenco has documented enormous dead zones in oceans that have resulted from climate change and has advocated placing vast ocean areas off-limits to fishing and mineral exploitation. In an e-mail message on Saturday, she wrote: "NOAA will play a central role in addressing pressing challenges of our time stabilizing the climate, restoring ocean health and coastal vitality. Jobs and a healthy environment go hand in hand and both are enabled by good science."<br />Varmus is president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Lander is a professor of biology at MIT and helped lead the effort to sequence the human genome.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470115007604434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnuTOIEp8bdLyL3wTrhMnsJUb0Dy13cLAdY8LXNamvQzw_WOG4QJWpfCr-TNyp_qnIbOo5GbzbfgA_IKb4snXV4LnSOaaBXDONMM1cvquj1v6YrqcpHwO0-porDrQUDyNGjc9saxV4Qgc/s320/DSC03949.jpg" border="0" /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>The man behind the French nuclear power expansion<br /></strong>By Matt GilReuters<br />Monday, December 22, 2008<br />PARIS: Pierre Gadonneix, chief executive of Électricité de France, has firmly established the French power giant in the English-speaking world by acquiring half of Constellation Energy's U.S. nuclear plants for his company and taking over British Energy.<br />With his tenure set to expire in November of next year, the question is, will Gadonneix have the time to persuade the rest of the world to join in a revival of nuclear power?<br />The French lead the world in civil nuclear power technology, a piece of Gallic savoir-faire little publicized in the United States, and EDF operates the world's largest network of such power stations.<br />With the $4.5 billion investment in Constellation last week, EDF is betting that its clean European Pressurized Reactor plants can resuscitate an industry largely stalled since the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, and provide a showcase for the world market.<br />Listing China, South Africa and Italy as potential markets, Gadonneix told French media recently that the aim of EDF was to "take part as investor, builder and operator in the global rebirth of nuclear energy."<br />Gadonneix, who was born in New York and holds both French and U.S. citizenship, could be the person to achieve that, as his success in the United States and Britain shows.<br />"He has pulled off a double coup and it was not easy," said Colette Lewiner, head of utilities at French consultancy Capgemini. "He got his strategy up and running in a satisfactory way."<br />Despite heading Gaz de France, the state natural gas monopoly, for 17 years, Gadonneix held free market views, which helped him be selected in Sept. 2004 to handle the controversial part-privatization of EDF by then-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.<br />At EDF, where colleagues know Gadonneix as "Gado," the byword for the business leader is "tenacity." His own favorite saying is derived from tennis, his favorite sport: until the second bounce, the ball is still in play.<br />"Tenacity, yes," said Jacques Mallard, a friend of Gadonneix's who has known him for 35 years. Mallard leads Optim Actif, a French asset management company involved in real estate.<br />"What some people say - and you see it in the papers sometimes - is that he is not very enterprising, that he lacks daring, but I don't think that is true," Mallard said. "He takes risks, but they are calculated and under control. He knows his limits and goes no further."<br />Gadonneix's determination to keep the ball in play will be crucial in the months to come, as EDF integrates its new U.S. and British assets while sustaining a 35 billion, or $50.3 billion, European investment plan and pursuing other foreign acquisitions.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>LUKOIL seen to agree loan</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Katya Golubkova and Olga Popova<br />Russia's LUKOIL has agreed with banks on raising a major loan that will allow it to purchase a significant stake in Spanish energy major Repsol, government and industry sources told Reuters.<br />"I know that LUKOIL has closed the deal to attract money on Repsol," said a Russian government source, who asked not to be named. He did not give the size of the loan, neither did he say whether it was a foreign or a Russian loan.<br />A source close to LUKOIL confirmed information about the loan: "Yes we have raised the loan, but haven't closed the deal (to buy into Repsol) yet," he said.<br />LUKOIL's spokesman denied the company had raised the loan: "It is not true," he said, declining further comment.<br />LUKOIL has long declined to acknowledge it was in talks over buying a stake of up to 30 percent in Repsol, and last week its chief executive, Vagit Alekperov, said his firm had not agreed a deal.<br />Minority shareholders in LUKOIL, Russia's No.2 oil producer, have raised concerns about the deal, which could cost over 10 billion euros (9.28 billion pounds), and said they would prefer to see LUKOIL invest in production at home<br />LUKOIL, Russia's largest private oil producer, has long pursued expansion abroad as a move that would not only help it rival global majors but also give it a bigger diplomatic role in a resurgent and increasingly assertive Russia.<br />Russian officials have refrained from commenting on the deal, but earlier this month Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said the government was prepared to give political backing to the bid should LUKOIL ask for it.<br />Spanish Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian has said LUKOIL's stake in Repsol should be capped.<br />A second source close to the talks said he believed LUKOIL had dropped plans to buy 30 percent in Repsol and would buy less in order to avoid making a buy-out offer.<br />"LUKOIL wants to buy at 22 euro (per Repsol share), not at 28 euro as the Spanish want. I have a feeling they want to agree on the price before Christmas," he said.<br />Sources have told Reuters that LUKOIL is talking to Spanish builder Sacyr Vallehermoso and savings bank La Caixa about buying out their stakes in Repsol. (Additional reporting by Tanya Mosolova and Dmitry Zhdannikov, writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by Simon Jessop)<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470689036673778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF0DC9OXRljYGq-hgf-l7IzerAdbVekfcprsjT6cC72A9Qwj5ir8YdTt73YQM4go8K6u6thYkQutU06gW105glGdKFuMQxN12FeX28CqWRST2iOKxGsZBmbWc1EA0R29QNjoUrNpT1M7w/s320/DSC03940.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><strong>François-Xavier Lalanne, sculptor, dies at 81</strong><br />By William Grimes<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />François-Xavier Lalanne, whose menagerie of surrealistic animal sculptures included a cast-iron baboon with a fireplace in its belly, giant turtledoves that doubled as armchairs and a herd of topiary dinosaurs, died Dec. 7 at his home in the village of Ury, south of Paris. He was 81.<br />The family declined to state the cause of his death, which was confirmed by his wife and partner, Claude.<br />A painter by training, Lalanne created his own brand of surrealism when, in 1964, he unveiled "Rhinocrétaire," a life-size rhinoceros, whose side folded out into a writing desk. Endlessly inventive, he generated a zoo's worth of animals in the decades that followed: a "landscape fish," designed for the outdoors, with a rectangular hole in the middle that framed the natural scene like a painting; a giant fly, executed in brass, steel and porcelain, which did double duty as a toilet; and, most famous of all, 24 sheep covered in genuine sheepskin. Some of the sheep had faces, while others were shaggy bolsters that stood on sheep legs.<br />He wanted, he once said, to bring the notion of usefulness to sculpture and to demystify art, which he regarded as a fun house rather than a cathedral. Hence the sheep. "Just the fact that you can squat on it reduces the risk of this inappropriate devotion," he once said.<br />Lalanne was born in Agen, in southwestern France, and received a Jesuit education. At 18 he moved to Paris and enrolled in the Académie Julian, where he studied drawing, painting and sculpture. After completing military service he rented a studio in Montparnasse, next to that of Constantin Brancusi, who was a decisive influence on his work.<br />Through Brancusi, Lalanne met artists like Max Ernst, Jean Tinguely, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. Just as influential on his art was his brief stint as an attendant at the Louvre, where he worked in the galleries of ancient Egyptian and Assyrian art, surrounded by animal sculptures.<br />Lalanne managed to find a joke in the situation. "On Tuesdays, when the museum was closed, I couldn't help myself, I just had to saddle up on the statue of the Apis bull," he recalled.<br />Davy Graham, a British guitarist whose musical fusions, technique and tuning shaped generations of musicians, died Monday at his home in London. He was 68.<br />His Web site confirmed the death, saying it was caused by a seizure. Graham had been battling lung cancer.<br />Graham's blend of Celtic music with blues, jazz, spiky syncopations and Eastern modes - he called it folk-Baroque - has been widely influential since the early 1960s, particularly with musicians who sought to revitalize and extend British folk traditions. Among them were the members of Pentangle and Fairport Convention as well as John Martyn, Martin Carthy and the guitarist Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Protesters and politicians condemn French mosque fire</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />LYON: French President Nicolas Sarkozy joined Muslim groups Sunday in condemning attackers who set fire to a mosque in a Lyon suburb, and hundreds gathered outside the building to protest against racism and Islamophobia.<br />The fire at the mosque in the Lyon suburb of Saint-Priest was started early Saturday before morning prayers and caused damage to the entrance, walls and religious books before being put out.<br />Sarkozy denounced the "shameful and racist" incident and called for the perpetrators to be found quickly and punished.<br />Islamic groups and politicians condemned the attack as a "despicable" and "criminal" act.<br />Organisers of the demonstration said some 3,000 people of different religions gathered outside the mosque, while police said they estimated the number at around 600.<br />"This mobilisation shows the will of the Muslim community not to accept being treated in this way any longer and to respond each time," Kamel Kabtane, head of Lyon's Grand Mosque, told the demonstrators.<br />Azzedine Gacci, president of the Muslim regional council, said there had been some 10 "Islamophobic acts" in the last two years and called for a national demonstration by all religions and for Islamophobia to be condemned alongside anti-Semitism and racism.<br />Police were investigating the fire but had not yet found who was responsible, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said.<br />Hundreds of tombstones in the Muslim part of a military cemetery near the northern French town of Arras were damaged earlier this month in the third such attack on the site in less than two years.<br />(Reporting by Catherine Lagrange; writing by James Regan; editing by Tim Pearce)<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4BIdFCKB3dzYnt4UQOU_biMNRKod7lIqn22EXLIQxKG6FUFZOdJYfbgueZlNOWJtTvRCITTgp6_7EdlOiJCIsXJxsbDKhQErkEta0maSnHuGHYWlU40SLQ5zPK16tV1dhE97o8Qcuuo/s1600-h/DSC03943.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470452434888994" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir4BIdFCKB3dzYnt4UQOU_biMNRKod7lIqn22EXLIQxKG6FUFZOdJYfbgueZlNOWJtTvRCITTgp6_7EdlOiJCIsXJxsbDKhQErkEta0maSnHuGHYWlU40SLQ5zPK16tV1dhE97o8Qcuuo/s320/DSC03943.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Olmert rejects calls for harsh response to Gaza rockets </strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, on Sunday brushed aside calls for an immediate large-scale operation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in response to an escalation of cross-border rocket fire after a truce expired.<br />Palestinian militants have fired more than 50 makeshift rockets and mortar shells at Israel since a six-month-old Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with Hamas ended Friday.<br />Over the weekend, one Palestinian militant was killed in an Israeli airstrike and at least one person in southern Israel was wounded by shrapnel from a mortar shell.<br />Unless Hamas stopped the salvos, the army would have no choice but to take "severe action," said an Israeli cabinet minister, Isaac Herzog, though he did not describe what that might entail.<br />"It needs to be clear," he said. "A strike in Gaza will come, and it will be hard and painful."<br />But Olmert, who is leaving his post early next year, suggested a more measured approach for now, underscoring the difficult choices facing the government in the weeks before an election on Feb. 10.<br />The rocket fire has increased pressure on Olmert and his government to launch a major operation that could result in heavy casualties on both sides, create a severe humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and spark an international outcry.<br />Likud, a party led by a former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that is leading in the polls, accused Olmert and his government of failing to protect Israeli civilians bordering the Gaza Strip, which Hamas Islamists seized in June 2007.<br />"A government doesn't rush to battle," Olmert told his cabinet, "but doesn't avoid it either."<br />He cautioned fellow ministers and opposition parties against making "bold statements" and indicated that he favored a wait-and-see approach. "Israel will know how to give the proper response at the right time in the right way, responsibly," he said.<br />Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is in the running to become prime minister in elections, said: "The Hamas government in Gaza must be toppled, the means to do this must be military, economic and diplomatic. Whenever they shoot at Israel, Israel must respond."<br />A total of 10 salvos from Gaza hit Israel on Sunday, prompting the army to make an airstrike against a rocket launcher and to keep border crossings closed, preventing the passage of humanitarian supplies.<br />An Israeli airstrike on Saturday killed a militant from Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the secular Fatah faction of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.<br />The Islamic Jihad militant group has claimed responsibility for most of the rocket fire.<br />Civilians on both sides seemed to shrug off the end of the cease-fire, which many in Gaza feel never delivered the expected easing of the Israeli blockade, and many in Israel feel never produced the sought security from Palestinian attacks.<br />The truce had been eroding since early November when a deadly Israeli raid prompted militants to step up rocket attacks, most of which cause no injuries and little damage.Food and aid for Gaza<br />The Egyptian Red Crescent said Sunday that it would send five trucks carrying food and medical aid to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, Reuters reported from Ismailia, Egypt.<br />Muhammad Orabi, head of the organization in North Sinai, said the trucks were loaded with 40 tons of flour, 20 tons of rice and some medical supplies.<br />An Egyptian official at the Rafah border crossing with the coastal strip said the Egyptian authorities had agreed with Israel to allow the trucks in on Monday.<br />A boat carrying international activists delivering medical aid docked in the Gaza Strip on Saturday after sailing from Cyprus despite an Israeli naval blockade of the territory.<br />Israel patrols the coastal waters around Gaza but has not obstructed the activists from sailing to the enclave.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Livni and Netanyahu vow to topple Hamas rule</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Adam Entous<br />The top candidates to become Israel's next prime minister vowed on Sunday to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip and officials authorised strikes on a wider range of Islamist targets after a six-month-old truce ended in violence.<br />The threats by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and right-wing Likud party chief Benjamin Netanyahu followed a cabinet meeting in which outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert cautioned against rushing into a large-scale ground operation in the Hamas-ruled enclave in response to escalating rocket fire by militants.<br />Such an operation could result in heavy casualties on both sides, fuel a major humanitarian crisis in the aid-dependent Gaza Strip and spark an international outcry against Israel.<br />Until now, the Israeli military has carried out limited air strikes against rocket launchers, but defence sources said the air force now had a green light to go after other Hamas targets as well. The sources would not identify what those potential targets might be and when those air strikes might begin.<br />If elected premier in a Feb 10 election, Livni, who heads the centrist Kadima party, said her government's "strategic objective" would be to "topple the Hamas regime" using military, economic and diplomatic means. She did not set a timetable.<br />Netanyahu, Livni's main rival for the premiership, called for a more "active policy of attack," accusing the current government of being too "passive."<br />"In the long-term, we will have to topple the Hamas regime. In the short-term, ... there are a wide range of possibilities, from doing nothing to doing everything, meaning to conquer Gaza," Netanyahu said during a visit to a house in the southern Israeli town of Sderot that was hit by a rocket.<br />Palestinian militants have fired nearly 60 of the makeshift rockets and mortar shells at Israel since the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with Hamas ended on Friday, the Israeli army said. Over the weekend, an Israeli air strike killed one militant and at least one person in Israel was injured by a shell shrapnel.<br />HANIYEH UNFAZED<br />Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas's government in Gaza, brushed aside Israeli threat: "Nothing can finish off our people."<br />Hamas official Ayman Taha said the Islamist group, which took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after routing rival Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, predicted Hamas's rule would outlive Livni's.<br />Olmert had cautioned his cabinet against making "bold statements" about an operation in the Gaza Strip and suggested that he favoured a wait-and-see approach.<br />"A government doesn't rush to battle, but doesn't avoid it either," Olmert said. "Israel will know how to give the proper response at the right time in the right way, responsibly."<br />Underscoring the military challenge facing Israel in the densely-populated Gaza Strip, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said even an incursion involving two-to-three divisions, or more than 20,000 troops, may not be enough to stop rocket fire.<br />Government ministers promising to topple Hamas "do not know what they are talking about," Barak said.<br />But pressure on the government to act is mounting.<br />Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, told ministers on Sunday that Hamas has longer-range rockets that could strike the city of Beersheva, a major population centre some 40 km (25 miles) from the Gaza Strip.<br />"It needs to be clear. A strike in Gaza will come, and it will be hard and painful," cabinet minister Isaac Herzog said.<br />Polls show a tightening race between Livni and Netanyahu to replace Olmert as prime minister, and both candidates have stepped up anti-Hamas sabre-rattling in recent days.<br />Since the cease-fire ended on Friday, the Islamic Jihad group has claimed responsibility for most of the rocket fire at Israel, which kept border crossings closed, preventing the passage of humanitarian supplies.<br />The cease-fire had been eroding since early November when a deadly Israeli raid prompted militants to step up rocket attacks, most of which cause no injuries and little damage.<br />(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Katie Nguyen)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><strong>Gaza militants hit Israeli house with rocket<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />SDEROT, Israel: A rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip struck a house in southern Israel on Sunday as cross-border violence escalated after a six-month-old truce expired last week.<br />No one was injured in the rocket attack in the town of Sderot, which sits about two kilometres from the border with the Gaza Strip, but rescue workers said a man was injured in a nearby community by a mortar that hit the field he was working.<br />An Egyptian-brokered cease-fire reached in June between Israel and Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip came to an end on Friday, though cross-border violence has been increasing for weeks.<br />An Israeli air strike killed a Gaza militant on Saturday, and an air strike destroyed a rocket launcher in northern Gaza on Sunday.<br />The Islamic Jihad militant group has claimed responsibility for most of the rocket fire. An Israeli military spokesman said at least 49 rockets and mortars have been fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel since the truce ended.<br />(Writing by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Jon Boyle)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Maker of 'Bush shoe' helps Turkey's trade balance<br /></strong>By Sebnem Arsu<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />ISTANBUL: When a pair of black leather oxfords hurled at President George W. Bush in Baghdad produced a gasp heard around the world, a Turkish cobbler had a different reaction: They were his shoes.<br />"We have been producing that specific style, which I personally designed, for 10 years, so I couldn't have missed it, no way," said Ramazan Baydan in Istanbul. "As a shoemaker, you understand."<br />Although his assertion has been impossible to verify - cobblers from Lebanon, China and Iraq have also staked claims to what is quickly becoming some of the most famous footwear in the world - orders for Baydan's shoes, formerly known as Ducati Model 271 and since renamed "The Bush Shoe," have poured in from around the world.<br />A new run of 15,000 pairs, destined for Iraq, went into production Thursday, he said. A British distributor has asked to become the Baydan Shoe Co.'s European sales representative, with a first order of 95,000 pairs, and a U.S. company has placed an order for 18,000 pairs. Four distributors are competing to represent the company in Iraq, where Baydan sold 19,000 pairs of this model for about $40 each last year.<br />Five thousand posters advertising the shoes, on their way to the Middle East and Turkey, proclaim "Goodbye Bush, Welcome Democracy" in Turkish, English and Arabic.<br />For now, Baydan's customers will have to take his word for it. The journalist who launched the shoes at a news conference a week ago, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, was wrestled to the ground by guards and has not been seen in public since. Explosives tests by investigators destroyed the offending footwear.<br />But Baydan insists he recognizes his shoes. Given their light weight, just under 11 ounces each, and clunky design, he said he was amazed by their aerodynamics. Both shoes rocketed squarely at Bush's head and missed only because of deft ducks by the president.<br />Throwing a shoe at someone is a gross insult in Arab countries, and Bush is widely unpopular in much of the region. But as he enters his last weeks in office, he seems to have gained a small foothold of appreciation here.<br />Noting the spike in sales, Serkan Turk, Baydan's general manager, said, "Bush served some good purpose to the economy before he left."<br /><br />**********************************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br /><strong>Roger Cohen: Two shoes for democracy</strong><br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Of all the questions Barack Obama needs to ask right now, the most important should be addressed to the Secret Service: How the heck did Muntader al-Zaidi get his second shoe off?<br />Al-Zaidi, of course, is the Iraqi television journalist who expressed his rage at the U.S. occupation of his country by hurling first one shoe, then the other, at President George W. Bush in Baghdad. He's now in detention.<br />As for his shoes, they're not going to end up on some gilded stand in a dusty museum somewhere in the Arab world. They've apparently been destroyed at a laboratory during a search for explosives. Yes, you read that right.<br />The shadow of Richard Reid, the would-be shoe-bomber of 2001 whom most regular air travelers would happily submit to protracted torture, extends even to Iraq. One thing's for sure: Al-Zaidi, now a hero in much of the Arab world, won't be short of replacement footwear once he emerges from captivity.<br />When that will be is anyone's guess. He's apologized to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Bush has urged the Iraqis "not to overreact."<br />One theory is that time enough is needed for the journalist's bruises to fade. One certainty is that the pummeling he got was as intense as the reaction to what he did was slow. A second shoe is one too many. Change the last letter in shoe and you have shot.<br />These, however, were mere shoes. The throwing of them was offensive - and harmless. Journalists should not throw shoes, even at inept American presidents. Still, with apologies to the late E.M. Forster, I'm tempted to call this incident: "Two Shoes for Democracy."<br />Bush, when the shoes came his way, was in the Green Zone, the walled four-square-mile home to Western officialdom and the Iraqi government that has about as much in common with the rest of Iraq as Zurich has with Falluja.<br />For all it reflects of Iraqi life beyond its walls in what is sometimes called the Red Zone, the Green Zone might as well be in Baton Rouge.<br />This sprawling urban garrison, where U.S. forces moved into Saddam Hussein's Mesopotamian Fascist Republican Palace right after the 2003 invasion, is a monument to failure. As long it exists in the center of Baghdad, Iraqi democracy will be hollow.<br />It is openness, accessibility and accountability that distinguish democracies from dictatorships. Or it should be. A country governed from a fortress inaccessible to 99 percent of its citizens may be many things, but is not yet a democracy.<br />Al-Zaidi's gesture broke those barriers, penetrated the hermetic sealing, and brought Red-Zone anger to Green-Zone placidity. In this sense, his was a democratic act.<br />What it said was: "Tear down these walls." What it summoned was the deaths, exile and arbitrary arrests that U.S. incompetence has inflicted on countless Iraqis - a toll on which al-Zaidi has reported. What it did was thrust Bush, for a moment, out of the comfort zone of his extravagant illusion. Perhaps, for a second, the other shoe dropped.<br />After the incident, I heard from a U.S. friend now serving in the joint security station in Sadr City, the teeming Shiite district of Baghdad from which al-Zaidi hailed. He wrote: "We did not get a fusillade of shoes thrown over the concrete barriers and razor wire. One college engineering student in Sadr basically said re: the press conference incident: 'Well that's the democracy you brought us, right?"'<br />Or rather, it was a glimmering of such a democracy. Anyone throwing a shoe at Saddam Hussein would have been executed, along with numerous other members of his family, within hours of such an incident. Iraq is slowly learning the give-and-take of a system where differences are accommodated rather than quashed.<br />But the process is slow. Recovering from murderous despotism takes a minimum of a generation.<br />Al-Zaidi's anger was that of a Shiite - at the U.S. occupation and at all the loss. There is fury and fear, too, among Sunnis, whose "awakening" dealt a devastating blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq but whose mistrust of the now-dominant Shiite is visceral. Another of Obama's pressing questions should be: Does my 16-month withdrawal timetable risk reigniting sectarian war?<br />One thing is certain: Before the United States pulls out its combat troops, the Green Zone must cease to exist. While it's there, it's a sign that Iraqis - all Iraqis - have not yet learned to live together. The district chairman in Sadr City said this to my U.S. friend last week: "The Green Zone needs to be deleted."<br />That was the message in al-Zaidi's gesture. He's being held for insulting a foreign leader and could face long imprisonment. But the Green Zone is an insult to all Iraqis. Al-Zaidi should be released and an Iraqi-American commission on terminating the Green Zone established at once.<br />Bush dodged a shoe; he cannot dodge shame.<br />Readers are invited to comment at my blog: <a title="" href="http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/opinion/passages/index.php" target="_self">iht.com/passages</a><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Iraq forces stronger but not standing alone yet</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Missy Ryan and Tim Cocks<br />Iraq faces a major test next year when its unseasoned forces cast off U.S. military primacy to defend a fragile peace in a country that only recently stood at the brink of sectarian civil war.<br />Iraqi forces, which have grown seven-fold since 2003, are seen as far more professional and prepared than they once were.<br />"We're now ready to take over everything, in terms of security," said Hussein Azab, an Iraqi Army major who oversees the Al Hurriya district of Baghdad. "I can't see any reason why we can't patrol the streets by ourselves now."<br />But many Iraqi officials acknowledge that inadequate equipment, incomplete training and a host of other problems mean they are not yet ready to ensure Iraq does not slide back into the horrific violence that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.<br />The test for Iraqi forces, who now number around 610,000, occurs as U.S. troops curtail their combat activities under a bilateral security pact that takes effect on January 1, 2009.<br />U.S. raids and other operations will require Iraqi permission, and U.S. soldiers will need arrest warrants for searches and detentions. U.S. troops are supposed to be confined to training and support roles in Iraqi cities by the middle of next year, and all must be out of the country by end-2011.<br />Officials from the United States, which has spent some $20 billion (13.3 billion pounds) on Iraq's security forces and justice system since it ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, describe Iraqi forces in terms that parents reserve for less-than-exceptional children.<br />"Much better, but not there yet," or "making headway," are common refrains. In some areas, the best U.S. officials hope for in the short run is what they call "Iraqi good enough."<br />In a recent basic training class in Kut, south of Baghdad, police recruits with close-shorn heads and blue uniforms sat packed in a small classroom as their instructor drilled them on how to avoid becoming yet another police killed on duty: don't eat every day at the same place; vary your route to work.<br />It is part of a four-week basic training course for police recruits at the centre that lacks proper instructors and basics like fuel and ammunition.<br />During a visit from Major-General Mike Milano, a senior U.S. advisor to Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, Iraqi police trotted out a homemade RPG they use to train recruits -- their proof they are making do with enough support from Baghdad.<br />AIR SUPPORT, LOGISTICS WEAK POINTS<br />On Iraqi streets, a frequent sight are skinny Iraqi policemen, holding ageing weapons and protected at best by flimsy and ill-fitting bullet-proof vests.<br />They are a sharp contrast to U.S. soldiers, rumbling by in state-of-the-art armoured vehicles, draped with sophisticated body armour and night-vision goggles.<br />Iraqi security entities have long been beset by political intrigue, sectarian rivalries, and corruption. In late 2007, things were so bad that an independent U.S. commission recommended dissolving the entire National Police.<br />The situation has improved, but U.S. officials say Saddam's fear-infested rule left a corrosive legacy, including a slow-moving bureaucracy, an inability to spend budgeted funds and decision-making concentrated at the top.<br />If you made a wrong decision under Saddam "you'd be killed or your hand would be cut off," said Lieutenant General Frank Helmick, who heads U.S. and NATO efforts to train Iraqi forces.<br />Still, Helmick and others say Iraq's military is far more capable now. Iraq now controls security in 13 of 18 provinces and as of October, 107 of 164 Iraqi Army battalions had taken the lead from U.S. forces or were operating independently.<br />Last spring, Iraqi soldiers gave Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki a big political boost when they trounced Shi'ite militias in Iraqi-led offensives in Baghdad and southern Basra.<br />"By the end of 2011, we will be able to fight terror. We will be able to maintain internal security," said Mohammed al-Askari, spokesman for Iraq's Defence Ministry.<br />(Additional reporting by Khalid al-Ansary; Editing by Michael Christie)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Targeted Mumbai hotels open with tighter security<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />MUMBAI, India: The blood has been mopped up, the grenade-scarred marble replaced, the bullet holes covered over.<br />But the reopening Sunday of parts of the iconic Taj Mahal hotel less than a month after militants stormed the building, spraying staff and guests with gunfire and grenades comes with more than just a new plaster and paint job. There are new security measures and officials promise a new type of luxury hotel: an "invisible fortress" that can protect guests as well as pamper them.<br />"We can be hurt, but we will never fall," a defiant Ratan Tata, chairman of Taj owner Tata Group, said as guests checked into Taj tower for the first time since the Nov. 26 attacks.<br />The Trident portion of the Oberoi hotel complex also reopened on Sunday, though the main areas of both luxury hotels are expected to stay closed for months. But with the holidays approaching, the two landmarks rushed to woo guests back.<br />Police manned barricades outside the Taj Sunday night while armed, undercover guards kept watch inside. Everyone walking into the lobby was asked for proof of their hotel reservation. Visitors handed their bags over for inspection and walked through metal detectors as their luggage was scanned through X-ray screening machines.<br />Among those checking in was a Californian who survived the attacks. During the siege, Deepak Dutta, 50, said he spent 24 hours locked in his room praying before being rescued.<br />Dutta said he checked into the very same room Sunday "to show the terrorists that our spirit cannot be shaken."<br />"The Taj is like a second home to me and the staff members are like my family," he said. "I'm happy that the Taj is back in action."<br />The majestic Taj Mahal an icon of Indian pride and a playground for the global elite for over a century and the sleek, sea-front Oberoi were among 10 sites targeted in the rampage. At the end of the militants' 60-hour standoff with police, 164 people and nine gunmen were dead, including dozens of guests and staff members from the two hotels.<br />At the Oberoi complex's Trident hotel, a Hindu priest chanted prayers and a Muslim cleric read from the Quran on Sunday. Hotel staff in ivory saris greeted guests with flowers. Candles flickered in the lobby.<br />A German tourist said she was going ahead with her vacation plans despite the attacks.<br />"All over the world such things are happening. You can have an accident even at home. Therefore we were not afraid to come to India," she said, only giving her first name, Angelika.<br />At the Taj Mahal, hotel officials unveiled a memorial for the 31 staff and guests who died in the three-day siege. The Tree of Life is based on a 6-foot- (2-meter-) tall bronze sculpture that originally stood beneath the dome and survived the siege unharmed.<br />A pianist played in the lobby, as guests were welcomed with traditional marigold garlands. Some received the red "tilak" dab typically rubbed on forehands during prayer ceremonies. The tower's five restaurants were fully booked, with waiting lists.<br />"There is still much work to do, but we are all determined to rebuild the Taj brick by brick until it outshines even its former glories," Tata said.<br />But beyond the cosmetic renovations, R.K. Krishna Kumar said he and his colleagues have set out to reconstruct a hotel for a new age one capable of withstanding another militant attack while still indulging guests.<br />"A world-class hotel needs to be an invisible fortress," said Kumar, vice chairman of Indian Hotels Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Tata Group, the Taj's owner. "There is a new phase as far as the hotel industry is concerned."<br />Restoration of the entire complex should be done by the first quarter of 2010, he said.<br />An international security firm is helping upgrade security and hotel staff are working closely with police. The company also has urged the government to create a new, elite terror team within the police corps.<br />The Mumbai attacks exposed glaring gaps in India's security and intelligence apparatus, and many criticized the government for not being better prepared for the attacks.<br />"People do not need to worry about security. The state administration and the police would put in all efforts to prevent terror attacks," Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan said, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.<br />Thirty-one people including a dozen hotel employees were killed inside the Taj as friends and family looked on.<br />Staffers who showed up for their 10 p.m. shift on Nov. 26 instead spent that night huddled in the courtyard across from the hotel, trying desperately to guide friends to safety.<br />"Left. Left. Crawl. Go toward the office," one man said sternly into his phone as the blaze beneath the Taj's historic dome flared up.<br />A firefighter who removed victims' bodies from the hotel's main kitchen recalled: "The floor was full of blood. It smelled of blood."<br />All that is gone now.<br />"You'll see not a trace of what happened," Kumar said. "It's back to business."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Australia lifts restrictions on ex-Guantánamo inmate</strong><br />By Raymond Bonner<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />SYDNEY: David Hicks became a completely free man at one minute past midnight Sunday morning, for the first time since being picked up by the Americans in Afghanistan seven years ago this month and later becoming the first terrorism suspect to be sentenced by a military commission at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.<br />"When he gets out of bed, it will be a new era for him," said his father, Terry Hicks, who was preparing for the first Christmas with his son, now 33, since he went off to Pakistan in 1999.<br />"It's going to be quite exciting," Terry Hicks said about Christmas with his son, at their home in Adelaide. But given his son's "mental state," he was not planning anything special. "We are just going to try to be as normal as possible," he said by telephone from Adelaide.<br />Until Sunday morning, David Hicks, who returned home last year on Dec. 29, was under a control order imposed by the police. He was required to be home from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.; required to report to the police twice a week; prohibited from leaving his home state without police permission; and limited to one e-mail account, one cellphone and one land line.<br />A high-school dropout, Hicks had become an adventurer in his late teens, skinning kangaroos in the Australian outback and training horses in Japan, and he was planning to ride the Silk Road on horseback. But he fell in first with Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was backed by the Pakistani government at the time. The group is now suspected of planning the attacks on Mumbai last month. He then made his way to Afghanistan, where he fought alongside the Taliban.<br />Hicks's case was highly politicized. For years, the Australian government did virtually nothing while he was at Guantánamo Bay. Then, under mounting public outcry, the government put pressure on the Bush administration to release Hicks or give him a trial.<br />Under a plea agreement in March 2007, Hicks pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support for terrorism and was sentenced to nine months in prison, which he was allowed to serve in Australia.<br />When he was released, the police unexpectedly imposed the control order. The control order expired at midnight Saturday, and the police have said they would not going to renew it.<br />The end of these restrictions now allows Hicks to turn more of his attention to rehabilitation, his father said.<br />He said his son now has great difficulty concentrating. He has a part-time job, his father said, but finds it difficult to work more than a couple of days because of the trouble he has retaining information or remembering his tasks for the next day.<br />Hicks is also now free to speak to the news media, but his father has said he is not yet prepared to do so. "He wants to get himself right first," his father said. "He's got a lot of issues. He wants to be more confident, more assured."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Extra U.S. troops aim for Afghan "tipping point"</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Jon Hemming<br />The British army once tried to drive the Taliban from Garmsir in southern Afghanistan with just 17 British, 10 Estonian and 200 Afghan troops. Now the U.S. army wants to pour troops into the area to make lasting gains.<br />For two years after the British attack, Garmsir went back and forth between Taliban and government control, thousands fled and it was only when more than 2,000 U.S. Marines launched a major operation in April this year that the town was fully captured and relative calm restored.<br />That is the kind of difference the U.S. army wants to make by sending up to 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan by summer.<br />After an initial reinforcement of some 3,000 U.S. troops to the south of Kabul in January, most of the extra deployment will be to the south to bolster British, Canadian and Dutch forces that U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said recently are just "holding their own" in the fight with the resurgent Taliban.<br />"That's where the toughest fight is," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, announcing the planned reinforcements in the Afghan capital Saturday.<br />Garmsir is a good example of what the extra U.S. troops may achieve, NATO officials said.<br />"When we put Marines out there earlier this year ... they found themselves in a pretty tough fight pretty quickly," Mullen said. Fierce clashes ensued for more than a month and hundreds of Taliban were killed before the Marines pulled out and handed security to British forces and the Afghan National Army (ANA).<br />"As the Marines left down there, there was concern about whether or not we would hold. The Brits and the ANA have held Garmsir," Mullen said.<br />Garmsir bazaar is now open again, life is returning to the dusty, battle-scarred town and more than $3 million (2 million pounds) has been earmarked for development.<br />The operation illustrates the "clear, hold and build" strategy employed by U.S. Gen. David Petraeus with success in Iraq.<br />Petraeus is now in overall command of operations in Afghanistan as well and his ideas are likely to form the core of a review of strategy in Afghanistan to be presented to President-elect Barack Obama.<br />"TIPPING POINT"<br />U.S. General David McKiernan, the commander of international troops in Afghanistan, has said he wants the extra forces to reach a "tipping point" against the Taliban.<br />He no longer wants to launch operations to clear an area unless he has the forces, preferably Afghan, to hold onto it and bring in aid and development.<br />The trouble is there are not yet enough fully trained and equipped Afghan soldiers and police to provide that sort of security to all of Afghanistan's nearly 400 districts.<br />The United States is committed to nearly doubling the size of the Afghan army to 134,000 troops in the next three years and is working hard to reform the notoriously corrupt police.<br />U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told CNN in an interview Sunday that Iraq and Afghanistan were similar in size geographically, but the Iraqi forces numbered a much larger 600,000.<br />"Until (the Afghans) can do that on their own, there is a need for increased forces that we've agreed to deploy with coalition partners in order to not only be able to clear and area, but also be able to hold and build," he said.<br />In the meantime, a proposal to "empower local leaders" and arm local militias to secure their own areas, somewhat akin to the "awakening councils" in Iraq, is being hotly debated by international forces and the Afghan government.<br />Given Afghanistan's complex web of ethnic, tribal and local rivalries, the proposal is fraught with difficulties.<br />"One of those things you won't hear is arming of the tribes," U.S. Gen. Robert Cone told Reuters this month. "In many districts you have multiple competing tribes, so which tribe are you going to arm, which warlord are you going to re-enable?"<br />The proposal is for the Afghan government to engage with local elders representing the tribes who will then vouch for individuals to be recruited into a force that will be responsible for security in their area, supervised by the ANA.<br />"The generals clearly have a strategy now that they want to implement, the question is: will it work?" said one military official who declined to be named.<br />(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in Washington)<br />(Editing by Tim Pearce and Cynthia Osterman)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. may double size of its force in Afghanistan</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />KABUL: The top U.S. military officer said over the weekend that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by next summer to 60,000 - the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested.<br />Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Saturday that 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there.<br />This year has been the deadliest for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion that intended to overthrow the rule of the Taliban, which had played host to the Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. Suicide attacks and roadside bombs have become more common, and Taliban fighters have infiltrated wide swaths of countryside and now roam in provinces around Kabul.<br />U.S. commanders have long requested an additional 20,000 troops to aid Canadian and British forces in two provinces near Kabul and in the south. But the high end of Mullen's range is the largest number any top U.S. military official has said could be sent to Afghanistan.<br />Mullen said the increase would include combat forces but also aviation, medical and civilian affairs support troops.<br />"So some 20,000 to 30,000 is the window of overall increase from where we are right now," he said at a news conference at a U.S. base in Kabul. "We certainly have enough forces to be successful in combat, but we haven't had enough forces to hold the territory that we clear."<br />Over all, there are more than 60,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. Mullen said any increased U.S. deployment would be directly tied to force levels in Iraq, where U.S. commanders are drawing down troops.<br />"The Taliban and extremists are more sophisticated and effective," Mullen said. "They haven't won any battles, but they certainly have increased the level of violence, and we're very focused on that. That's why the additional forces are so important - to be able to provide security for the Afghan people so these other areas can be developed."<br />U.S. officials already have plans to send four ground brigades and an aviation brigade to Afghanistan.<br />On Sunday, officials said that Afghan and coalition troops found and destroyed 2.5 tons of marijuana in an abandoned school in southern Afghanistan, while coalition troops killed four militants and detained five during an operation elsewhere in the south.<br />The operation on Saturday targeted a Taliban militant "known to traffic weapons and coordinate roadside bomb attacks," the military said.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>New U.S. spy chief would face fractious agencies</strong><br />By Mark Mazzetti<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />President-elect Barack Obama's expected appointment for director of national intelligence would put Dennis Blair, a retired admiral, in the position of riding herd over 16 often fractious intelligence agencies and streamlining an office many in Congress have criticized as bloated.<br />Blair, as the nation's spy master, would on some days be the first person to greet Obama in the morning with a dossier of the threats facing the United States.<br />Obama still has not settled on a candidate to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, members of his transition team said Saturday. That selection has been a particular headache as the president-elect has sought to find a CIA director steeped in terrorism and counter-proliferation but not closely linked to controversial Bush administration policies like the CIA's detention and interrogation program and the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping.<br />Transition aides said Blair would help select a CIA director, which could give him an upper hand in the turf battles that still plague the spy community.<br />In recent months, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, has clashed with the CIA director, Michael Hayden, on personnel matters, particularly over McConnell's insistence on filling top jobs in overseas stations with officers from across the intelligence community, not just the CIA.<br />The agency since its founding has been in control of the foreign stations. Hayden has argued that the CIA's responsibilities for gathering intelligence using undercover officers makes it best suited to run the overseas posts and work with foreign spy services.<br />Obama aides said the official announcement of Blair's selection was not expected until next month, after the president-elect returns from a vacation in Hawaii. They said Obama would most likely reveal his CIA choice at the same time.<br />Blair has a reputation for quickly digesting complex and often conflicting information, although his Navy background raised concerns from some members of Congress about the "militarization" of intelligence at a time when the Pentagon still controls a significant part of the intelligence budget.<br />McConnell is also a retired admiral. Hayden is a retired Air Force general.<br />Blair, a native of Maine descended from generations of Navy veterans, graduated from Annapolis in the same year as Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Senator Jim Webb of Virginia; and Oliver North, the former Marine colonel who became embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal.<br />Blair earned a master's degree at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and speaks Russian.<br />While at the helm of the U.S. Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002, he won praise for counterterrorism operations he ran against the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, where Navy Seals and CIA operatives worked with the country's army to capture or kill the members of the network in remote parts of the country.<br />But he also clashed with lawmakers and State Department officials over his efforts to strengthen ties to Indonesia's military, which he saw as an important moderating force in the Muslim nation. Some officials in Washington objected to the Pentagon's dealing with a military with a long track record of human rights abuses.<br />In 2001, Blair was one of the brightest stars in the military firmament: an admiral with a platinum résumé whom many considered a lock to become the next Joint Chiefs chairman.<br />But the new defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, considered him too outspoken and independent, and thought that he was out of step with parts of President George W. Bush's foreign policy agenda, particularly about the military threat posed by China. Moreover, he was a longtime friend of the Clintons, having studied at Oxford with former President Bill Clinton.<br />Blair was passed over for the job and eventually retired.<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>EDITORIAL</strong><br /><strong>Building a better defense for America<br /></strong>Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />In recent weeks, we have called for major changes in America's armed forces: more ground forces, less reliance on the Reserves, new equipment and training to replace Cold-War weapons systems and doctrines.<br />Money will have to be found to pay for all of this, and the Pentagon can no longer be handed a blank check, as happened throughout the Bush years.<br />Since 2001, basic defense spending has risen by 40 percent in real post-inflation dollars. That is not counting the huge supplemental budgets passed - with little serious review or debate - each year to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such unquestioned largess has shielded the Pentagon from any real pressure to cut unneeded weapons systems and other wasteful expenses.<br />As a result, there is plenty of fat in the defense budget. Here is what we think can be cut back or canceled in order to pay for new equipment and other reforms that are truly essential to keep this country safe:<br />End production of the Air Force's F-22. The F-22 was designed to ensure victory in air-to-air dogfights with the kind of futuristic fighters that the Soviet Union did not last long enough to build. The Air Force should instead rely on its version of the new high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which comes into production in 2012 and like the F-22 uses stealth technology to elude enemy radar.<br />Until then, it can use upgraded versions of the F-16, which can outperform anything now flown by any potential foe. The F-35 will provide a still larger margin of superiority. The net annual savings: about $3 billion.<br />Cancel the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer. This is a stealthy blue water combat ship designed to fight the kind of midocean battles no other nation is preparing to wage. The Navy can rely on the existing DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class destroyer, a powerful, well-armed ship that incorporates the advanced Aegis combat system for tracking and destroying multiple air, ship and submarine targets. The Navy has sharply cut back the number of Zumwalts on order from 32 to two.<br />Cutting the last two could save more than $3 billion a year that should be used to buy more of the littoral combat ships that are really needed. Those ships can move quickly in shallow offshore waters and provide helicopter and other close-in support for far more likely ground combat operations.<br />Halt production of the Virginia class sub. Ten of these unneeded attack submarines - modeled on the cold-war-era Seawolf, whose mission was to counter Soviet attack and nuclear launch submarines - have already been built. The program is little more than a public works project to keep the Newport News, Virginia, and Groton, Connecticut, naval shipyards in business.<br />The Navy can extend the operating lives of the existing fleet of Los Angeles class fast-attack nuclear submarines, which can capably perform all needed post-cold-war missions - from launching cruise missiles to countering China's expanding but technologically inferior submarine fleet. Net savings: $2.5 billion.<br />Pull the plug on the Marine Corps's V-22 Osprey. After 25 years of trying, this futuristic and unnecessary vertical takeoff and landing aircraft has yet to prove reliable or safe. The 80 already built are more than enough. Instead of adding 400 more, the Marine Corps should buy more of the proven H-92 and CH-53 helicopters. Net savings: $2 billion to 2.5 billion.<br />Halt premature deployment of missile defense. The Pentagon wants to spend roughly $9 billion on ballistic missile defense next year. That includes money to deploy additional interceptors in Alaska and build new installations in central Europe. After spending some $150 billion over the past 25 years, the Pentagon has yet to come up with a national missile defense system reliable enough to provide real security. The existing technology can be easily fooled by launching cheap metal decoys along with an incoming warhead.<br />We do not minimize the danger from ballistic missiles. We agree there should be continued testing and research on more feasible approaches. Since the most likely threat would come from Iran or North Korea, there should be serious discussions with the Russians about a possible joint missile defense program. (We know the system poses no threat to Russia, but it is time to take away the excuse.) A research program would cost about $5 billion annually, for a net savings of nearly $5 billion.<br />Negotiate deep cuts in nuclear weapons. Under the 2002 Moscow Treaty, the United States and Russia committed to reduce their strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 each by 2012. There has been no discussion of any further cuts. A successor treaty should have significantly lower limits - between 1,000 and 1,400, with a commitment to go lower.<br />President-elect Barack Obama should also take all ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert and commit to reducing the nation's absurdly large stock of backup warheads. These steps will make the world safer. It will give Obama a lot more credibility to press others to rein in their nuclear ambitions.<br />It is hard to say just how much money would be saved with these reductions, but in the long term, the amount would certainly be considerable.<br />Trim the active-duty Navy and Air Force. The United States enjoys total dominance of the world's seas and skies and will for many years to come. The Army and the Marines have proved too small for the demands of simultaneous ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are the forces most likely to be called on in future interventions against terrorist groups or to rescue failing states. Reducing the Navy by one carrier group and the Air Force by two air wings would save about $5 billion a year.<br />Making these cuts will not be politically easy. The services are already talking up remote future threats (most involving a hostile China armed to the teeth with submarines and space-age weapons). Military contractors invoke a different kind of threat: hundreds of thousands of layoffs in a recession-weakened economy. We are all for saving and creating jobs, but not at the cost of diverting finite defense dollars from real and pressing needs - or new programs that will create new jobs.<br />The cuts above could save $20 billion to $25 billion a year, which could be better used as follows:<br />Increase the size of the ground force. The current buildup of the Army and the Marine Corps will cost more than $100 billion over the next six years. Trimming the size of the Navy and Air Force, deferring the deployment of unready missile defenses and canceling the Osprey will pay for much of that.<br />Pay for the Navy's needed littoral combat ships. These ships, which operate in shallow waters to support ground combat, cost about $600 million each. Canceling the DDG-1000 destroyer (more than $3 billion per ship) and the Virginia class submarine (more than $2 billion each) will help provide that needed money.<br />Resupply the National Guard and the Reserves. At the present rate for replacing weapons left behind or destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Guard will still be more than 20 percent short of what it needs in 2013. Canceling the F-22 will provide enough money to do better than that years sooner.<br />Some of these changes would have been made already if the Pentagon procurement system were more responsive to present needs and less captive to service and industry lobbyists. Defense Secretary Robert Gates complains about what he calls "next war-itis," the system's built-in preference for what might be needed in potential future wars over what is clearly needed now. Privately, most of the service chiefs concede that their budgets, which have seen little discipline since Sept. 11, have some margin for cuts.<br />Congress will need to develop a lot more realism and restraint. Lobbyists pushing costly and unneeded weapons systems find ready allies in lawmakers looking to create or protect federally financed jobs in their districts. Big contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics have become masters at spreading those jobs around to assemble broad Congressional voting blocs. Work on the F-22 has been parceled out to subcontractors in 44 states.<br />Gates, who will stay on, must make reforming the procurement system a priority. The era of unlimited budgets is over, and Gates needs to make tough calls and stick to them. Congress must give more weight to the nation's overall needs and less to parochial interests.<br />Fixing the Pentagon's procurement process will require the full backing of Obama. We believe American taxpayers are eager to support changes that would make the country more secure while making more effective use of their money.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>The Syrian strategy</strong><br />By Danielle Pletka<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Can Syria be the cornerstone of a new Middle East? Washington is abuzz with talk of a "strategic realignment" that would split Syria from Iran and upend the status quo in the Middle East. This must be a pleasing prospect to the incoming Obama administration: visionary, and in stark contrast to the Bush administration's reflexive hostility to Syria.<br />But is it a real possibility, or foreign policy alchemy?<br />On its face, the notion seems crazy. Syria has been nothing but trouble for years - funneling killers into Iraq to oppose coalition forces, assassinating its opponents in Lebanon, arming Hezbollah to attack Israel and starting a nuclear weapons program with help from North Korea.<br />Nor does Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, seem cut out for the role of a 21st-century Anwar Sadat. Insecure in his own palace, erratic in his statements and crude in his stewardship, Assad seems more likely to be the victim of a coup than a champion of peace.<br />Nonetheless, the foreign-policy establishment in Washington has come up with a framework to bring him back into the diplomatic fold.<br />It would involve returning the American ambassador (who was recalled from Damascus after the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri); ratcheting up American involvement in the Syria-Israel peace talks being mediated by Turkey; requesting that Syrian security forces take part in patrols with Iraqi forces along their border; abandoning efforts to pursue a UN tribunal on the Hariri murder; and directly engaging Iran on a new diplomatic track.<br />These are bold ideas, and the payoff is proportionately exciting: an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights and peace between Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Such a situation would isolate Iran in the region, deprive Hezbollah of its mandate (what would it do if Syria and Lebanon were at peace with the Zionist enemy?) and rob Palestinian rejectionists of their most reliable sponsor, giving them more incentive to negotiate with Israel.<br />Unfortunately, like most epic foreign policy visions, the reality is more complicated. To begin with, there is the false premise that the Bush administration has indulged in a petty and harsh policy toward Damascus that edged President Assad into a defensive crouch.<br />Rather, the reverse is true. From the day Colin Powell started at the State Department in 2001, American officials have tried to coax, cajole and, as a last resort, threaten Syria into better behavior; all entreaties have met with rejection.<br />Equally untrue is the idea that a grand bargain with Damascus is a revolutionary new idea. In fact, President Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, traveled more than 20 times to Damascus. More recently, the Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, recommended that the United States "engage directly" with Syria.<br />Yet Iran and Syria's ties have only deepened. Indeed, Iran most likely had a role in financing Syria's construction of the illicit North Korean nuclear reactor, remains one of the largest foreign investors in the country and conducts joint training with the Syrian military on advanced Russian-supplied weaponry.<br />It is not inconceivable that the regime in Damascus might throw its supporters in Tehran under the bus in exchange for prestige, cash and a free hand in Lebanon. But it is unrealistic to expect Assad to dispose of Hezbollah and Hamas in the same way. Assad - broadly disliked at home, a member of a mistrusted Alawite minority, comically inept at managing his country's resources - can maintain his grip on power only as long as he is seen as a vital instrument of Israel's defeat.<br />Herein lies the fatal flaw of this transformational vision. It assumes that Syria's leaders want Syria to become a normal state, when in fact, it is essential to the regime's survival that it remain a pariah.<br />Assad and his mafia have made an art of extorting subsistence assistance from the outside world, most recently by holding out prospects for better relations with the West and Israel. But a new Middle East would mean the end of Assad, which is why he will always turn back to Iran, and why the road to peace in the Middle East will never run through Damascus.Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Lebanon's control of Syria border still tenuous<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent<br />Crossing back and forth from Lebanon into Syria is woven into the daily habits of Hassan Atiyeh and other residents of this remote border valley.<br />"If I don't go in the morning, I go in the evening," said Atiyeh, 27, a shopkeeper in the dirt-poor village of Knaisseh.<br />"Anything we have here is from Syria -- gas, diesel, bread. We can't live a moment without the Syrians."<br />Lebanon and Syria, which have never formally demarcated their frontier, agreed to work on this after forging diplomatic ties in October for the first time in their difficult history.<br />They have also agreed to cooperate on border security, a hot issue partly because Syria's foes complain that weapons supplies for Hezbollah -- which has re-armed since Israel's 2006 war with the Lebanese Shi'ite group -- still transit Syrian territory.<br />Lebanon is now tentatively seeking a better grip on its northern frontier with Syria, aided by Germany and other Western donors, but has not done much on its trickier eastern flank.<br />Little has changed for the 30,000 residents of Wadi Khaled, where 18 villages are sprinkled among sparse wheat fields and pasture in a northeastern pocket of Lebanon bulging into Syria.<br />"People are very poor. Some have cows, sheep or land, but otherwise there's no work," said Mohammed al-Hajjeh, who runs a small rock-crushing plant in Hnaider beside the shallow Kabir river that flows along Lebanon's northern boundary.<br />"The Lebanese army blocked the crossings here, but people open them again," he said, peering below his blue woollen cap at an earth barrier obstructing a dirt track to the river.<br />"The Syrian tractor trailers stop over there and the Lebanese trailers stop here and they transfer the goods."<br />But the 46-year-old father of 10 said times were hard even for smugglers, who once prospered by trafficking cheap Syrian diesel for sale in Beirut, Tripoli and elsewhere. Subsidy cuts in Syria and a newly introduced subsidy in Lebanon have eroded the price gap that made the trade lucrative.<br />Yet the lorries laden with Lebanese cement trundling slowly over potholed roads towards Syria, or parked in border villages, show illegal trade in another commodity is still thriving.<br />MANSIONS AMID POVERTY<br />And in sharp contrast to the mostly humble dwellings of Wadi Khaled, elaborate villas are also springing up, testifying to the fortunes made by the kingpins of the smuggling business.<br />"Some people profit, some don't," Hajjeh shrugged.<br />During Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon, which ended in 205, "no concept of border security...was ever implemented," a U.N. assessment team reported in 2007.<br />Lebanon launched a German-led pilot project to improve security on the northern border after the 2006 war with Israel.<br />That led to the formation of an 800-strong joint border force combining army, police, customs and intelligence men. Donors provided scanners, vehicles and communications kit.<br />This force has now established at least a minimal presence in Wadi Khaled and other points along the northern border.<br />"You can't go any further, beyond here it's Syria," said a soldier at a checkpoint on a lonely farm road near Hnaider.<br />An earth barricade thrown up by the joint border force blocks a former smuggling route across the Kabir river near a village just east of the official Arida border post.<br />Syrian security men stand on the opposite bank barely 100 metres away, at the edge of a scruffy village where plastic greenhouses lie among houses and pine trees.<br />"There is no coordination with the Syrians, we don't even say 'hi'," said one Lebanese army officer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to journalists.<br />Syria has deployed extra forces of its own along its borders with Lebanon in recent months, saying it wants to curb smuggling and counter Islamist militants based there.<br />Lebanon's new president, interior minister, army commander and security chief have visited Damascus since the political deal defused a violent showdown among Lebanese factions, leading to formation of a national unity government in July.<br />It is not clear whether effective border cooperation will result. So far Lebanon has made only modest advances.<br />JUST AS PENETRABLE<br />"There are, at most, disconnected islands of progress, but there has been no decisive impact on overall border security," a follow-up U.N. assessment mission reported in August.<br />The report, endorsed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urged the Beirut government to formulate a strategic plan to define its objectives for the border and how to achieve them.<br />Without this, donor support may weaken. Britain has already disengaged from a direct role in the northern border project. But Beirut's "unity" government is deeply divided.<br />A majority anti-Syrian coalition is uneasily yoked with Hezbollah and its allies, many of whom see no need for a major drive for border control or involvement of foreign forces.<br />"There are no problems between Lebanon and Syria in this regard," retired army general Abbas Nasrallah, a senior official in the pro-Syrian Shi'ite Amal movement, told Reuters.<br />The Lebanese army could police the border adequately, he argued, especially if it were given modern equipment such as helicopters, night-vision gear and electronic devices.<br />Hezbollah views international pressure on Lebanon to tighten its hold on the border as part of efforts to weaken it and protect Israel.<br />The U.N. Security Council Resolution ending the 2006 war called for all Lebanese factions to be disarmed but limited the mandate of U.N. peacekeepers to the south of the country.<br />"The international community missed an opportunity," wrote former Israeli diplomat Oded Eran for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "As a result, Hezbollah has more than doubled its pre-war arsenal of long- and short-range missiles and rockets by way of the porous Syrian-Lebanese border."<br />In Wadi Khaled, far from Hezbollah's likely arms supply routes, Sunni villagers say they ply the border out of daily necessity and natural ties with relatives in Syria. The same applies to many Shi'ite villages on the eastern frontier.<br />"Wadi Khaled is very close to Syria and we feel it is one region," said Aisha al-Khatib, 60, pointing out her Syrian daughter-in-law as the family drank tea outside their house.<br />(Editing by Sara Ledwith)<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Russia said to be starting missile delivery to Iran</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />TEHRAN: Russia has begun delivering S-300 air defence systems to Iran which could help repel any Israeli and U.S. air strikes on its nuclear sites, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.<br />"After few years of talks with Russia ... now the S-300 system is being delivered to Iran," IRNA quoted Email Kosari, deputy head of parliament's Foreign Affairs and National Security committee, as saying.<br />Kosari did not say when the deliveries began. Iran's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report. Russia's Foreign Ministry also declined comment, saying it may react on Monday.<br />The United States, its European allies and Israel say Iran is seeking to build nuclear arms under the cover of a civilian atomic energy programme. Iran denies the charge.<br />Israel's insistence that Iran must not be allowed to develop an atomic bomb has fuelled speculation that the Jewish state, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, could mount its own pre-emptive strikes.<br />In October, Russia's Foreign Ministry denied media speculation that Moscow would sell the medium-range S-300 system, adding Moscow had no intention of selling weapons to "troubled regions."<br />But Russia's RIA news agency last week quoted "confidential sources" as saying that Russia was fulfilling a S-300 contract with Iran.<br />The most advanced version of the S-300 system can track targets and fire at aircraft 120 km (75 miles) away. It is known in the West as the SA-20.<br />Russian arms sales and nuclear cooperation with Iran have strained relations with Washington, which says Tehran could use them against their interests in the region and also against its neighbours.<br />Russia, building Iran's first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr, says Tehran does not have the capability to make nuclear weapons.<br />Kosari said the S-300 system would be used "to reinforce Iran's capability to defend its borders."<br />"The delivery of this system is a display of good relations between Iran and Russia, which cannot be harmed by Israel," IRNA quoted Kosari as saying.<br />(Additional reporting by Conor Sweeney in Moscow; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Katie Nguyen)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguM07kcKwpJZiIxYsnKWtuaK3govdK8jv8xLGc01SgQE6K92YE0fsyueVYKX-PaAcByDdHs8to_EUlasnfR5BsgvI3Q-B4iAPthmsLQ0awBqAbtW3Byqn3Kv-2hWNskGfHLiwb7_6ERow/s1600-h/DSC03943.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470451099114578" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguM07kcKwpJZiIxYsnKWtuaK3govdK8jv8xLGc01SgQE6K92YE0fsyueVYKX-PaAcByDdHs8to_EUlasnfR5BsgvI3Q-B4iAPthmsLQ0awBqAbtW3Byqn3Kv-2hWNskGfHLiwb7_6ERow/s320/DSC03943.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOPPK81ixypBOUQ8nH5HVBqCQBcVt6zILlv46V3BGGDOS1ByOte5W2eePmez3YLml2vMGf07C-DjS0PqsdIhR475QtHhhhYIhN2d1czxP9wNgSD74-lhKH1aEF6PUNR-vwP5v5aFqp9DM/s1600-h/DSC03945.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470444638958866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOPPK81ixypBOUQ8nH5HVBqCQBcVt6zILlv46V3BGGDOS1ByOte5W2eePmez3YLml2vMGf07C-DjS0PqsdIhR475QtHhhhYIhN2d1czxP9wNgSD74-lhKH1aEF6PUNR-vwP5v5aFqp9DM/s320/DSC03945.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1b71ZJ71777fwaHhm8aE1s4P8KaDwB7TJ617UUVXpkKiQhqfBA9BNWVwQZMkR6cy5-KYBqe_LdqCC77yS2lDMvbgs8xk1Qxm1ghACsI_RwtwKDtgAJzOGEtF_yfrBGGqefh1CYzc2F4/s1600-h/DSC03946.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470154209975250" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ1b71ZJ71777fwaHhm8aE1s4P8KaDwB7TJ617UUVXpkKiQhqfBA9BNWVwQZMkR6cy5-KYBqe_LdqCC77yS2lDMvbgs8xk1Qxm1ghACsI_RwtwKDtgAJzOGEtF_yfrBGGqefh1CYzc2F4/s320/DSC03946.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Bush drive for home ownership fueled housing bubble</strong><br />By Jo Becker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Stephen Labaton<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: "We can put light where there's darkness, and hope where there's despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home."<br />- President George W. Bush, Oct. 15, 2002<br />The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse when Bush and his economics team huddled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a briefing that, in the words of one participant, "scared the hell out of everybody."<br />It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group.<br />The president listened as Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money.<br />Then his Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.<br />"How," he wondered aloud, "did we get here?"<br />Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of home ownership, Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, "faced with the prospect of a global meltdown" with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.<br />There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.<br />But the story of how the United States got here is partly one of Bush's own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.<br />From his earliest days in office, Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own homes with his conviction that markets do best when left alone. Bush pushed hard to expand home ownership, especially among minority groups, an initiative that dovetailed with both his ambition to expand Republican appeal and the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards.<br />Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal. And the regulator Bush chose to oversee them - an old school buddy - pronounced the companies sound even as they headed toward insolvency.<br />As early as 2006, top advisers to Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn. As recently as February, for example, Bush was still calling it a "rough patch."<br />The result was a series of piecemeal policy prescriptions that lagged behind the escalating crisis.<br />"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," said Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser, who left the White House in December 2007. "Had we, we would have attacked them."<br />Looking back, Keith Hennessey, Bush's current chief economic adviser, said he and his colleagues had done the best they could "with the information we had at the time." But Hennessey did say he regretted that the administration had not paid more heed to the dangers of easy lending practices.<br />And both Paulson and his predecessor, John Snow, say the housing push went too far.<br />"The Bush administration took a lot of pride that home ownership had reached historic highs," Snow said during an interview. "But what we forgot in the process was that it has to be done in the context of people being able to afford their house. We now realize there was a high cost."<br />For much of the Bush presidency, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and war; on the economic front, its pressing concerns were cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security, a government retirement and disability benefits program. The housing market was a bright spot: Ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college.<br />Lawrence Lindsay, Bush's first chief economic adviser, said there was little impetus to raise alarms about the proliferation of easy credit that was helping Bush meet housing goals.<br />"No one wanted to stop that bubble," Lindsay said. "It would have conflicted with the president's own policies."<br />Today, millions of Americans are facing foreclosure, home ownership rates are virtually no higher than when Bush took office, Fannie and Freddie are in a government conservatorship, and the bailout cost to taxpayers could run in the trillions of dollars.<br />As the economy has shed jobs - 533,000 last month alone - and his party has been punished by irate voters, the weakened president has granted his Treasury secretary extraordinary leeway in managing the crisis.<br />Never once, Paulson said in a recent interview, has Bush overruled him. "I've got a boss," he explained, who "understands that when you're dealing with something as unprecedented and fast-moving as this, we need to have a different operating style."<br />Paulson and other senior advisers to Bush say the administration has responded well to the turmoil, demonstrating flexibility under difficult circumstances. "There is not any playbook," Paulson said.<br />The White House issued an unusually extensive, and highly critical, response to The Times article on Sunday, saying that it had shown "gross negligence" in its reporting and that the story "relies on hindsight with blinders on and one eye closed."<br />"The Times's 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view," the statement said.<br />In recent weeks Bush has shared his views of how the nation came to the brink of economic disaster. He cites corporate greed and market excesses fueled by a flood of foreign cash - "Wall Street got drunk," he has said - and the policies of past administrations. He blames Congress for failing to reform Fannie and Freddie.<br />Last week, Fox News asked Bush if he was worried about being the Herbert Hoover of the 21st century. "No," Bush replied. "I will be known as somebody who saw a problem and put the chips on the table to prevent the economy from collapsing."A policy gone awry<br />Darrin West could not believe it. The president of the United States was standing in his living room. It was June 17, 2002, a day West recalls as "the highlight of my life." Bush, in Atlanta to introduce a plan to increase the number of minority homeowners by 5.5 million, was touring Park Place South, a development of starter homes in a neighborhood once marked by blight and crime.<br />West had patrolled there as a police officer, and now he was the proud owner of a $130,000 town house, bought with an adjustable-rate mortgage and a $20,000 government loan as his down payment - just the sort of creative public-private financing Bush was promoting.<br />"Part of economic security," Bush declared that day, "is owning your own home."<br />A lot has changed since then. West, beset by personal problems, has left Atlanta. Unable to sell his home for what he owed, he said, he gave it back to the bank last year. Like other communities across the United States, Park Place South has been hit with a foreclosure crisis affecting at least 10 percent of its 232 homes, according to Masharn Wilson, a developer who led Bush's tour. "I just don't think what he envisioned was actually carried out," she said.<br />Park Place South is, in microcosm, the story of a well-intentioned policy gone awry. Advocating home ownership is hardly novel; Bill Clinton's administration did it, too. For Bush, it was part of his vision of an "ownership society," in which Americans would rely less on the government for health care, retirement and shelter. It was also good politics, a way to court black and Hispanic voters.<br />But for much of Bush's tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put home ownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers like West.<br />So Bush had to, in his words, "use the mighty muscle of the federal government" to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending.<br />Concerned that down payments were a barrier, Bush persuaded Congress to spend as much as $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs.<br />And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down. Republican congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view.<br />The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. "Corporate America," he said, "has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place."<br />And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment. But Bush populated the financial system's alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more.Like minds on laissez-faire<br />The president's first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission promised a "kinder, gentler" agency. The second was pushed out amid industry complaints that he was too aggressive. Under its current leader, the agency failed to police the catastrophic decisions that toppled the investment bank Bear Stearns and contributed to the current crisis, according to a recent inspector general's report.<br />As for Bush's banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks.<br />The administration won that fight at the Supreme Court. But Roy Cooper, North Carolina's attorney general, said, "They took 50 sheriffs off the beat at a time when lending was becoming the Wild West."<br />The president did push rules aimed at requiring lenders to explain loan terms more clearly. But the White House shelved them in 2004, after industry-friendly members of Congress threatened to block confirmation of his new housing secretary.<br />In the 2004 election cycle, mortgage bankers and brokers poured nearly $847,000 into Bush's re-election campaign, more than triple their contributions in 2000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The administration did not complete the new rules until last month.<br />Today, administration officials say it is fair to ask whether Bush's ownership push backfired. Paulson said the administration, like others before it, "over-incented housing."<br />Hennessey put it this way: "I would not say too much emphasis on expanding home ownership. I would say not enough early focus on easy lending practices."<br />Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.<br />Rich Addicks/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution<br />Bush unveiled a plan to increase home ownership by members of American ethnic minorities in a speech in Atlanta in June 2002.</div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Thomas L. Friedman: China to the rescue?<br /></strong>Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />HONG KONG: I had no idea that many of those oil paintings that hang in hotel rooms and starter homes across America are actually produced by just one Chinese village, Dafen, north of Hong Kong. And I had no idea that Dafen's artist colony - the world's leading center for mass-produced artwork and knockoffs of masterpieces - had been devastated by the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble. I should have, though.<br />"American property owners and hotels were usually the biggest consumers of Dafen's works," Zhou Xiaohong, deputy head of the Art Industry Association of Dafen, told Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post.<br />"The more houses built in the United States, the more walls that needed our paintings. Now our business has frozen following the crash of the Western property market."<br />Dafen is just one of a million Chinese and American enterprises that constitute the most important economic engine in the world today - what historian Niall Ferguson calls "Chimerica," the de facto partnership between Chinese savers and producers and U.S. spenders and borrowers. That 30-year-old partnership is about to undergo a radical restructuring as a result of the current economic crisis, and the global economy will be highly impacted by the outcome.<br />After all, it was China's willingness to hold the dollars and Treasury bills it had earned from exporting to America that helped keep U.S. interest rates low, giving Americans the money they needed to keep buying shoes, flat-screen TVs and paintings from China, as well as homes in America. Americans then borrowed against those homes to consume even more - one reason we enjoyed rising wealth without rising incomes.<br />This division of labor not only nourished our respective economies, but also shaped our politics. It enabled China's ruling Communist Party to say to its people: "We will guarantee you ever-higher standards of living, and in return you will stay out of politics and let us rule." So China's leaders could enjoy double-digit growth without political reform. And it enabled successive U.S. administrations, particularly the current one, to tell Americans: "You can have guns and butter - subprime mortgages with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years, ever-higher consumption and two wars, without tax increases!"<br />It all worked - until it didn't.<br />With unemployment now soaring across the U.S., said Stephen Roach, the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, Americans - "the most overextended consumer in world history" - can no longer buy so many Chinese exports. We need to save more, invest more, consume less and throw out most of our credit cards. But as that happens, we need China to take our discarded credit cards and distribute them to its own people so they can buy more of what China produces and more imports from the rest of the world.<br />That's the only way Beijing can sustain the minimum 8 percent growth it needs to maintain the political bargain between China's leaders and led - not to mention pick up some of the slack in the global economy from America's slowdown.<br />However, if I've learned one thing here, it's just how hard doing that will be. China's whole system and culture nourish saving, not spending, and changing that will require a huge "cultural and structural" shift, said Fred Hu, chairman for Greater China for Goldman Sachs.<br />In China, for instance, to buy a home you have to put at least 20 percent down, and the average is 40 percent. If you try to walk away from the mortgage, the bank will come after your personal assets.<br />Moreover, China can't just shift production from the U.S. market to its own consumers. Not many Chinese villagers want to buy $400 tennis shoes or Christmas tree ornaments.<br />Also, China has no real Social Security, health insurance or unemployment insurance. Without that social safety net, it's hard to see how Chinese don't end up saving most of their stimulus. "You open up the newspaper every day, and you hear about this factory shutting down or that supplier going belly-up," said Willie Fung, whose company, Top Form International, is the world's leading bra maker. "You can never be too careful in this financial climate."<br />As such, "the world should not have a false hope that China can cushion the global downturn," by stimulating its domestic demand in a big way, said Frank Gong, head of China research for JPMorgan Chase.<br />"The best thing China can do is keep its own economy stable."<br />It's good advice. China is not going to rescue us or the world economy. We're going to have to get out of this crisis the old-fashioned way: by digging inside ourselves and getting back to basics - improving U.S. productivity, saving more, studying harder and inventing more stuff to export. The days of phony prosperity are over.</div><div> </div><div>**************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Paradise, jolted by the financial crisis</strong><br />By Fred A. Bernstein<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />THE Web site for Molasses Reef a planned Ritz-Carlton resort in the Turks and Caicos promises "barefoot luxury" and "island life the way it was meant to be." But these days, the resort buildings, which include a hotel and large villas, stand empty and unfinished.<br />Lehman Brothers was financing the project. And after the investment bank's demise in September, construction was halted, leaving the developers and their contractors with a host of problems.<br />Among them was the fate of laborers brought over from China by the Ashtrom Group, an Israeli construction conglomerate. On Oct. 15, about 60 of them followed Ashtrom managers around the island of West Caicos, demanding to be paid. (The standoff ended when Ashtrom paid the workers money owed to them by a subcontractor, an Ashtrom executive told The Associated Press.)<br />But Jonathan Siegel, the managing partner of the Logwood Hotel Development Company, the partnership that owns Molasses Reef, said he has spent two months dealing with the fallout from the incident. "Of the 400 Chinese workers, everyone has gone home, with the exception of about 50 guys," he said. "Those guys will be off West Caicos by Dec. 31."<br />His goal now, he said, is to "protect the asset," by which he meant the unfinished buildings. Important tasks, he said, include keeping the interiors dry and even providing air-conditioning in places where mold might form before construction can resume.<br />Lehman had been bankrolling a number of hotel projects, including two in New York: the Nobu Hotel, partly owned by the actor Robert De Niro and set to rise in Lower Manhattan; and a Shangri-La hotel planned for Midtown. Work on both projects has halted. At Molasses Reef, Logwood had already spent about $200 million of Lehman's money, Siegel said, and construction was about 75 percent complete.<br />Bjorn Hanson, an associate professor at the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University, said he believed that of the hotel projects that stopped this year because of the credit crisis, fewer than 10 percent had already broken ground. But, he added, such projects have the potential to create countless disputes with contractors over unpaid bills, with governments over taxes, with franchisors over fees, and even with neighbors concerned about the dangers posed by unsecured construction sites. (He said he was not familiar with the particular problems at Molasses Reef.)<br />A newsletter published by the Molasses Reef developer before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy showed a pair of 52-foot yachts that would shuttle guests to and from the Turks and Caicos island of Providenciales. (Other guests would arrive by private plane or helicopter.) Room rates were expected to start at about $600 a night, and Gray Kunz, a celebrated New York chef, was slated to open three restaurants at the resort.<br />Indeed, the hotel was going to be called a Ritz-Carlton Reserve. Simon Cooper, the president and chief operating officer of Ritz-Carlton, a division of Marriott International, described that title as denoting "signature, one-of-a-kind boutique resorts located in choice settings, each with a distinctive personality and sense of place."<br />The resort was to include the hotel and 75 Ritz-Carlton-brand villas, with prices starting at $2.6 million. Lehman was both a part-owner of the project and its main lender, according to Siegel and Karim Alibhai, the founder and principal of the Gencom Group. Gencom, based in Miami, is the controlling partner of Logwood.<br />Alibhai said Gencom had weathered crises before, but that this was a "very unfortunate situation that no textbook could have prepared us for." He added, a bit ruefully, that "the only lender that ended up going bankrupt, out of all the lenders, is Lehman Brothers."<br />Lehman had already disbursed about $200 million for construction of the hotel, Siegel said.<br />"But you don't get all the money at once," he explained. "Each month, you'd put in a draw request for the next $22 million or $18 million or $20 million, and then you'd pay that month's bills."<br />He said that there were no warning signs before the process came to an abrupt halt three months ago. "The people we were dealing with at Lehman were as surprised as we were," he added. The project quickly went into what he called suspension mode.<br />Siegel, who divides his time between New York and Turks and Caicos, now has to ensure that the buildings are secured before construction can begin again. "Right now we've got to batten down the hatches," he said. He said he hopes construction will resume in 90 to 180 days, but "that's just an optimistic guy talking."<br />"Right now," he added, "we have no financing."<br />Siegel said he was working to determine the fate of the Lehman Brothers loans. "We don't have a 'get out of jail free' card, to pretend we don't owe the money," Siegel said. "Before you can find new money, you have to deal with the bankrupt entity."<br />Alibhai says he is searching for another bank possibly one outside the United States to provide $250 million in replacement funding. That would be used to complete Molasses Reef as well as two other Gencom hotel projects that Lehman was financing: a Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, California, which is about 70 percent complete, and a Ritz-Carlton in the Bahamas, which had not yet broken ground. According to Siegel, at least $100 million more is required to complete Molasses Reef.<br />One thing that's clear is that money to salvage the hotel won't come from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, which is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. "We are a management company and cannot provide the needed funding to complete the project," said Vivian Deuschl, a company spokeswoman, when asked about Molasses Reef.<br />Still, Siegel said a bit of optimism in his voice that Ritz-Carlton could introduce to him a potential investor.<br />"It's not their role to fix our problems," he said of Ritz-Carlton, "but they have a vested interest in seeing our problems fixed."</div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>A city that shopped till it dropped</strong><br />By Brad Stone<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Emeryville, California: As he points to some Uggs boots on display in his shoe store, Jason Wayman looks forlorn.<br />He used to have trouble keeping this ever-trendy footwear in stock at his store, called Elements, in this small city across the bay from San Francisco. Now, he watches as a steady stream of shoppers still try the boots on, but often leave without buying.<br />"You can see them doing the calculations in their minds: Will they ever be on sale? Is this an expense I can afford right now?" he said.<br />The situation would be difficult for any retailer in any community. But the people of Emeryville are feeling the pain of this disappointing holiday shopping season more acutely than most.<br />A 1.8-square-mile sliver of a city wedged between Berkeley and Oakland, Emeryville is a retail mecca. It is also one of many American cities that hitched its wagon over the last several decades to what seemed like the limitless ability of American shoppers to spend money.<br />Now that faith in the retail engine is being sorely tested. Consumer spending dropped 7.8 percent in November, according to the U.S. government, and many economists think it will fall further as consumers are buffeted by losses in the stock market, declines in home values and the unsettling fear that they may lose their jobs.<br />"I would be worried if I were a city father or mother in a town like Emeryville," said Joseph Gyourko, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. "Not all this retail can make it, given the fact that Americans have to cut consumption to restore their savings."<br />Once a largely abandoned, polluted industrial wasteland, the Emeryville of today is almost all densely developed. Companies like Pixar, Peet's Coffee and Tea, the Chiron unit of Novartis and a host of Internet and biotech start-ups call it home.<br />That would seem to give the city a degree of shelter from a sharp drop-off in consumer spending but perhaps not enough. Twenty-five percent of the city's revenue comes from sales taxes collected largely at four large retail centers, including a six-year-old, upscale outdoor promenade, Bay Street Emeryville, home of Elements. The city also has a comprehensive collection of big-box stores, from Best Buy to Home Depot to the huge blue IKEA that hulks prominently over Interstate 80.<br />Along with declining property taxes and the woes of California's state government, declining sales tax revenue has helped to open up significant deficits in Emervyille's municipal budget. According to California's Board of Equalization, Emeryville's sales tax collections fell 23 percent in the third quarter this year from the same period last year, among the steepest drops in the state.<br />"We are definitely vulnerable," said Patrick O'Keefe, the city manager, who has proposed new taxes and cuts in spending and government hiring.<br />Emeryville's woes aren't confined to retail. The downturn has touched all aspects of its economy. The Townhouse Bar and Grill, a 19-year-old restaurant, is located in a former speakeasy a building that's a souvenir of the wilder Emeryville of the Depression era.<br />Ellen Hope Rosenberg, the Townhouse's owner, said executives used to fill the restaurant at lunchtime. Now some may have just stopped coming perhaps, she speculates, as expense accounts dry up. And not a single company has bought out the place for a holiday party. (Last year, five did.)<br />Like other restaurateurs around the country, Rosenberg has taken emergency precautions: replacing expensive dishes on the menu like filet mignon with lower-price alternatives like top sirloin and cutting back drastically on her staff's hours.<br />The abrupt decline in consumer and corporate spending raises a disturbing existential question for Emeryville and other communities like it.<br />Did a city that worked so hard to clean up the mess left by abandoned steel mills and rubber plants ultimately trade one kind of urban blight for another, more modern variety?<br />RETAILERS and restaurateurs throughout Emeryville tell variations on the same story: An already lackluster year for sales hit the wall in September. On a recent late afternoon, when shoppers would normally be flooding the premium stores along the Bay Street shopping center, designed to look like a quaint urban village, stores like the Gap, Banana Republic, Magnolia Audio and Video, Kay Jewelers and Bath and Body Works were almost eerily quiet.<br />For Agnes Hsu, owner of Teacake Bake Shop, the biggest problem is not the amount of traffic in her store or the number of shoppers willing to pay for the frosted cupcakes and cookies that have earned her a loyal following. Teacake also depends on supplying treats to birthdays and wedding showers, and that business, she said, "started to flat-line" about the time Lehman Brothers and AIG hit the headlines this fall.<br />"That's when even the affordable luxuries were hit," she said. "I guess people are just baking their own birthday cakes."<br />Ron Weller, general manager for Madison Marquette, Bay Street's owner, acknowledges the pain being felt in the retail world. But he said it was too early to judge conclusively the holiday turnout on Bay Street. The promenade, he said, is "holding its own."<br />"We are busy," he added, "but of course, everyone has everything on sale."<br />Across town from Bay Street is another Emeryville attraction, the Emerybay Public Market, nestled along the unsightly train tracks that bisect the city. This mall, opened in 1988, includes a movie theater, a Borders bookstore, a smattering of other stores and an inner food court of two dozen ethnic food stalls. For people who run some small businesses there even the shoeshine man, idly thumbing through his checkbook during lunchtime one day this month 2008 has been a year to forget.<br />Denise Russell-Lewis, owner of Jamaica Place, which offers dishes like jerk chicken and curry goat, describes being squeezed between declining sales and increasing costs prompted by higher energy prices. The price of a 50-pound box of parboiled rice, for example, jumped to $20 from $16 earlier this year; a 10-pound box of skinless tilapia rose to $31 from $22. Neither adjusted after the price of oil reversed course, and Russell-Lewis says she is now late on her lease payments.<br />"In this business we expect fluctuations," she said. "But not at the level we are experiencing. This is more drastic."<br />Denise Pinkston of TMG Partners, Emerybay's owner and Jamaica Place's landlord, said Emeryville's location at the heart of one of the country's most populous regions meant that the city would almost certainly persevere.<br />"We might all be making less money, but we'll still be here in three years when the recovery is in full swing," she said.<br />But for some entrepreneurs, any prospective recovery is too late. The Blue Sky Family Club, a family restaurant and play space with organic pizza and nonelectronic games, opened its doors in September to the worst financial environment since the Depression. It closed less than two months later.<br />"We got ran over by a tidal wave," said the owner Patrick O'Laughlin, still audibly shaken from the experience a month later. "It's a concept I still believe in. But will I revisit it? Probably not."<br />IN 1988, Powell Street Plaza became Emeryville's first pure shopping center a Garden of Eden of sorts for the city's retail resurgence. Residents recall that it sits on land once occupied by a company whose odd assortment of products included gopher poison. Today, the plaza is an island, surrounded by a loud, unpleasant cordon of traffic-jammed streets and highway overpasses.<br />The shopping center appeared relatively busy on a weekday earlier this month. It boasts one of the most popular Trader Joe's stores in the East Bay, a new Beverages & More and a Starbucks that draws a reliable crowd of morning commuters streaming into Oakland.<br />But there are also signs of recession-related trouble. A Shoe Pavilion recently departed after the company, which is based in Sherman Oaks, California, announced in October that it was liquidating assets. That empty storefront sits next to a still-vacant lot that once belonged to a Jo-Ann Fabrics & Crafts, which moved this year to a neighboring city. Next door to that is a Circuit City the electronics retailer that filed for bankruptcy protection last month. Regency Centers, Powell Street's owner, says it is filling its two vacancies.<br />City boosters acknowledge that dependence on the retail industry is creating some new problems for the city. But they look at the larger picture, and a city that has remade itself from a polluted eyesore into a regional destination.<br />In a way, over the last 122 years of its existence, this peculiar city of only 9,000 permanent residents has been a microcosm of the evolving American economy at nearly every stage of growth. In the late 19th century, the city was an agricultural hub and a center for handling cattle and processing meat; it became widely known in the region for its foul smell.<br />During the Depression, Emeryville was jammed with speakeasies, racetracks and brothels and became known as a somewhat lawless center for entertainment. Then, until the 1970s, the city was the industrial cradle of Northern California, full of steel mills and factories, until the heavy industry migrated overseas, leaving polluted lands in its wake.<br />Most locals take pride in what happened next. Civic leaders banded together and created a redevelopment agency that allowed the city to borrow money for the cleanup through the sale of long-term bonds. Then it basically gave away the land to developers, along with rich tax incentives, and is slowly paying back the debt with the new property tax revenue.<br />Bay Street Promenade, for example, was built on heavily polluted lands once covered by a paint plant. The huge blue IKEA store opened in 2003 on the former site of Judson Steel, once among the largest steel manufacturers in the Western United States.<br />Emeryville officials note that the city has a more diversified revenue stream than places like Detroit, the capital of the beleaguered auto industry, or parts of Southern California in the 1980s that were wholly dependent on aerospace and military contractors.<br />BUT that is of little consolation to area businesses, whose problems are likely to become worse as Emeryville tries to address its new challenges. With new budget holes opening, the City Council has proposed a variety of new taxes, including a levy to raise additional money for the city's parks and take pressure off of other parts of the budget.<br />City managers are considering other tax increases as well, like raising the charge on the city's lone surviving card room, the Oaks Card Club, whose tax contributions comprise 8 percent of the city annual budget.<br />Its owner, John Tibbetts, says the recession has affected the gambling industry because people have less to wager with. Business has declined 15 percent from last year, after the card room raised the "drop," or fee per hand, to $4 from $3. Tibbett appeared before city managers last month to argue against increasing the gambling tax and appears to have won the argument, at least for now.<br />"If the city does need more money, I thought it should be broad-based and not have one individual business singled out," he said.<br />Emeryville has another possible answer to its fiscal problems: it is pursuing even more retail-oriented development, which would derive new sales and property taxes. The city is cleaning up an undeveloped lot north of Bay Street and planning an expansion of the shopping center perhaps a Macy's or a Nordstrom, with a high-rise hotel and more condominiums.<br />That strategy in effect, betting anew on the curative powers of the American shopper has some Emeryville residents worried. Members of a small but increasingly vocal group, Residents United for a Livable Emeryville, say the city has given too much power to developers and made too large a bet on the American consumer without extracting benefits for people who call it a permanent home.<br />"We want jobs that have a future," said Tracy Schroth, one of the group's co-founders, who married a longtime Emeryville resident, Scott Donahue, six years ago. "We want a community that is aesthetically and culturally interesting, as opposed to a big retail center that creates a lot of traffic and noise and has no soul."</div><div> </div><div>********************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Recession? Time to slash the flower budget</strong><br />By Nina Reyes<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />PITY Lauren Huber, 27, a Baltimore bride-to-be who began planning her wedding 12 months ahead only to see the economic downturn force her to forgo not just the icing on the cake, but the cake itself.<br />Her fiancé, Ryan Priem, who is 28 and a salesman, saw his income drop, and the couple found themselves spending the $35,000 set aside for their March 2009 wedding on everyday living expenses. They began trimming costs from every aspect of their event.<br />The big hotel to which they had committed early in the process suddenly seemed unaffordable. So Huber sold her $3,400 Amsale dress on Craigslist and plans to wear a less costly one. She canceled the morning-after brunch, cut a half-hour off the photographer's services and halved the size of the bouquets. Finally, she canceled the cake, as dessert is already included in the dinner she ordered.<br />"We can do without," she said. "Dessert is tiramisù, so we'll get pictures of us slicing that instead."<br />She's hardly alone. As the financial condition of the country worsens, the wedding industry, so long considered recession-proof, is seeing fairy-tale weddings stripped of their sprites, their sparkle and everything else that suggests splurge.<br />Some couples are slashing guest lists to include just immediate family and very dear friends, leaving aunts, cousins and the friends of friends out entirely, and bridal consultants say that they are seeing more couples postponing their events until they can be more certain they will have the money to pay for the wedding they want. Others are ratcheting up plans for quick, simple weddings that allow them to more readily take advantage of a safety net woven from the government and corporate benefits available to married couples.<br />Still other couples, armed with the skills they learned in a go-go economy, are trying to forcefully renegotiate with vendors to keep some semblance of their ideal wedding.<br />One bride had put down a deposit and locked into a contract with a site in a town south of Philadelphia, where she and her fiancé live. Given the amount of debt piling up from their graduate school studies, she suddenly thought that the $30,000 to $40,000 she had planned to spend on her wedding seemed ridiculous.<br />Furthermore, the downturn in the economy left the bridegroom's parents unable to provide as much financial support as the couple had hoped for. And although the wedding venue has been accommodating, it is not willing to make a refund. The bride is now aiming for something in the under-$20,000 range. To get there she has cut the number of people she has invited from 200 to 115, and made her wedding dinner a less costly luncheon, hoping to save another $30 to $40 a person.<br />"You can negotiate prices with any wedding vendor," said Kristal Joiner, the wedding coordinator at Event Source Northwest in Kirkland, Washington State, a company that has seen plenty of clients seek to do just that recently. But businesses like Joiner's, which specialize in supplying disc jockeys and masters of ceremonies, are also caught in an economic squeeze.<br />"We understand that people don't have as much money these days," Joiner said. "We can cut back on hours, or we can do a couple less speakers, or we'll throw in an extra hour." However, she added, "We have to charge what we're worth and make money, so it's a little difficult."<br />The same economic forces that are encouraging couples to trim their expectations may actually be encouraging more of them to marry sooner, if less expensively. Some who earn their livelihoods in the wedding business report that they are seeing more couples opt for hurry-up weddings that will allow them to claim married-filing-jointly status on their income taxes for 2008.<br />"Whereas last year I did 197 weddings, this year I'm up to 299 weddings," said the Rev. Marie April Gismondi, a nondenominational minister with the Church of Ancient Ways in Babylon, New York "I'd say a lot more of them are those quick-I-want-to-get-married-this-week weddings."<br />To be sure, a certain number of couples each year schedule their unions to take advantage of the tax break. "December is a kind of funny month," said Sari Venegas-Skalnik, a bridal consultant in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, who recently has had three couples come to her with plans for weddings on short notice. "We get a lot of last-minute pop-ups. People who say, 'I'm already going on vacation, what do I have to do to get married?' "<br />But Gismondi, who is also the vice president of the American Association of Wedding Officiants, said she's seeing an unusual spike for some simple economic reasons. One bride, she said, "who was paying $400 and change a month on her health insurance," told her that by marrying she would save nearly $5,000 a year in premium payments.<br />Getting out of town can have its advantages, too. Susan Alexander Shapiro, the owner of BravoBride (bravobride.com), a Web site for the purchase and sale of new and used wedding items, said that some couples who had planned large formal weddings "now are doing destination weddings because it's cheaper."<br />"Typically there are fewer guests," she said, and "some places will even offer a 'free wedding' if you stay at their resort, which means they will throw in the cake, Champagne, bridal bouquets and more."<br />But even those who have not yet felt the sharp bite of the economy's incisors have been chastened.<br />"They don't want to look ostentatious," said JoAnn Gregoli, a wedding planner who is also the New York metropolitan coordinator for the Association of Bridal Consultants. "They say, 'Make it simple.' You don't want to be there promoting your wealth to people who don't have it."<br />She pointed out that the industry's woes have created opportunities, too.<br />"It's a buyer's market if you're still getting married and you have the money," she said.<br />Andi Vance, a 31-year-old bride-to-be from Chicago, has used the recession to put her priorities in order. She began planning for her September 2009 wedding with a budget in the $15,000 to $25,000 range, but when the economy began to falter, she decided a down payment on a house was more important to her than a dream wedding.<br />So instead of the $5,000 venue, she booked a cabin for $150 at Malabar Farm, a state park in Lucas, Ohio. She also decided to use flowers from her mother's garden and intends to have a hometown friend take pictures.<br />She is now searching for a secondhand dress. And in a perfect marriage of technology and parsimony, in lieu of a band she is going to hook up an iPod to a speaker system.<br />"We'll be able to do it for under $10,000," she said of her event. "Right now, we just need to save money. The wedding is one day. The house is going to last a lot longer than that."</div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Extended U.S. benefits are a lifeline for many unemployed Americans<br /></strong>By Michael Luo<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />HUDSON, Florida: Rick Rockwell plopped his large frame down in front of his laptop on Thursday morning, next to a foot-wide sheaf of unpaid bills still in their envelopes, lined up like an accordion on his desk. He logged into his bank account to see if his unemployment check had been deposited yet.<br />His balance, however, remained stuck at $57.17.<br />"That's amazing to me," Rockwell said. "It still hasn't posted yet."<br />So Rockwell began another day as a man of the middle class who is now living on an economic precipice.<br />Rockwell, 56, who estimates he has sent out more than 400 job applications over the last year and gone to just four interviews, is one of the more than 5.4 million people across the country receiving unemployment benefits. And Rockwell is part of arguably the hardest-luck group of all those who have been out of work for so long that they are depending on a second emergency extension of unemployment insurance that Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed last month.<br />In the 21 states and the District of Columbia currently with three-month average unemployment rates above 6 percent that means 20 more weeks of what has become an economic lifeline for many in the midst of one of the deepest recessions in the past century. Florida's rate for November was 7.3 percent. (The other states get seven additional weeks.)<br />For Rockwell, who lost his job in January as a sales manager at a computer store that he and his brother owned, the weekly checks of $275 the maximum allowed him under Florida law and a little less than half his former take-home pay have become like a crucial piece in the game Jenga, in which players construct a tower of blocks by removing one at a time from the bottom and moving it to the top. Rockwell is playing a balancing act so he can keep the edifice of his former life from crumbling, paying off certain bills and letting others lapse, so he can stay just ahead of his creditors.<br />Rockwell has been without benefits for more than a month after he exhausted the first U.S. government extension, which lasted 13 weeks, on top of the 26 weeks he had received from the State of Florida, back in October.<br />After supporters were unable to get the legislation through Congress before the election, Bush signed the second extension in late November. Florida, like other states, has been rushing to get checks to so-called gap people like Rockwell whose benefits had expired. Advocates estimate there are about 800,000 of them nationwide.<br />"States are really overwhelmed in terms of responding to claims," said Andrew Stettner of the National Employment Law Project. "They were pushed beyond the brink in terms of doing the second extension."<br />Florida added 50 staff members to its unemployment insurance division in recent weeks, bringing its total to around 870. It also recently added 345 lines to its phone system for a total of just over 1,000, and has extended its call-in hours.<br />There are, of course, people who are much worse off than Rockwell; but there are also many who have had much more of a financial cushion to get through this crisis.<br />Last year, he was making $31,200 a year as sales manager of a small computer store that he had started 15 years ago with his brother, Rodney.<br />But the rise of big-box stores like Best Buy, along with the recession, combined to drive their store, Comp-U-Save, into the ground.<br />"All of a sudden, the floor came out from underneath it," said Rodney Rockwell, who closed his old store in October and re-opened under a new name.<br />The brothers agreed that Rick would leave in January because the store, by that point, was depending mostly on its repair business, which was Rodney's specialty. They also figured that because Rick was younger and had some background managing restaurants, he would be able to find a job relatively easily.<br />He had a little over $5,000 in his bank account, mostly what was left over from a $40,000 second mortgage he took out on his home four years ago for home repairs that never materialized.<br />But Rockwell has been succumbing to a slow economic death, which accelerated significantly in the last month as his unemployment benefits lapsed.<br />His mortgage lender has begun foreclosure proceedings on his modest two-bedroom home, which he bought in 1998 and still owes $117,000 on. He has begun packing to move into his 84-year-old mother's two-bedroom condominium nearby.<br />He is in danger of losing his red 2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder convertible, a prized possession that he keeps gleaming in his garage, because he is behind in his payments. He has listed for sale both that car and a 1996 Toyota RAV4, which he owns outright and keeps in the driveway, but he is hoping to keep the Spyder. The only reason he can still drive it at all is because his mother, who is mostly living just on Social Security, paid his car insurance for this month.<br />He is two months behind on his electric bill. A partial payment by a local church that he went to recently for help helped him stave off losing his power. His water bill is in arrears as well.<br />Rockwell was settling into his love seat two weeks ago to watch the teenage drama "One Tree Hill" an afternoon pleasure he developed while sitting around out of work when he found his cable had been cut off.<br />Last Wednesday, after returning home from dinner with a reporter, Rockwell found a note on his door from his neighbor that someone had been looking for him.<br />It turned out to be a collection agency for one of his credit cards. Rockwell has racked up about $15,000 in bills on various cards, reaching his limit on all but one.<br />In a final indignity, Rockwell wakes up most mornings flat on his back on the ground because the air mattress he now sleeps on, after his waterbed sprang a leak earlier this year, has a hole in it.<br />Rockwell now spends most of his days hunched in front of his laptop. He spends several hours going through new job postings in the morning and then devotes himself to several Internet marketing schemes promising riches that he has stumbled upon.<br />Keeping in mind the criticism of those who say expanded unemployment benefits keep people from working, Rockwell conceded he might appear to be too picky in the jobs he would accept. He has mostly ruled out commuting to Tampa, a much larger city an hour away, because of the distance. He has also tried to confine himself to looking for management-level restaurant jobs.<br />"I'm not going to clean grills, take out the garbage," Rockwell said. "I've done that before, but I feel I'm beyond that."<br />His home is overflowing with sports memorabilia autographed posters, baseballs and cards of every sort that he has collected. He has sold off some but is reluctant to part with others at fire-sale prices.<br />On Thursday, Rockwell spent several hours plowing through job listings and wound up applying or re-applying, actually to just two, one for a restaurant manager at an Arby's in nearby New Port Richey and one for a shift supervisor job at a Wendy's in Tampa.<br />He logged into his bank account again the next day and found to his surprise that his unemployment check had finally been deposited. It is a small reprieve for now.</div><div> </div><div>**************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>More U.S. companies cut matching retirement funds under 401(k) plans</strong><br />By Mary Williams Walsh and Tara Siegel Bernard<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />U.S. companies eager to conserve cash are trimming their contributions to a popular workers' retirement plan, putting a new strain on America's tattered safety net at the very moment when many workers are watching their accounts plummet along with the stock market.<br />When FedEx slimmed down its pension plan last year, it softened the blow by offering workers enriched contributions to make up for the pension benefits some would lose under the so-called 401(k) plans. But last week, with Americans sending fewer parcels and FedEx's revenue growth at a standstill, the company said it would suspend all of its contributions for at least a year.<br />"We will have to work more years and retire with less money," said Lee Higham, a 44-year-old senior aircraft mechanic at FedEx, who has worked there for 20 years. "That's what we are up against now."<br />FedEx is not the only one. Eastman Kodak, Motorola, General Motors and Resorts International are among the companies that have cut matching contributions to their plans since September, when the credit markets froze and companies began looking urgently for cash. More companies are expected to suspend their matching contributions in 2009, according to Watson Wyatt, a benefits consulting firm.<br />For workers, the loss of a matching contribution heightens the pain of a retirement account balance shriveling away because of the plunging stock markets.<br />"We are taking a beating," said another FedEx mechanic, Rafael Garcia. "In a year, I lost $60,000 of my 401(k). You can't make that up."<br />To many retirement policy specialists, the lost contributions are one more sign of America's failure as a society to face up to the graying of the population and the profound economic forces it will unleash.<br />Traditional pensions are disappearing, and Washington has yet to ensure that Social Security will remain solvent as baby boomers retire and more workers are needed to support each retiree.<br />The company cutbacks may mean that some employees put less money into their retirement accounts. Even if they do not, the cuts, while temporary, will have a permanent effect by costing many workers years of future compounding on the missed contributions. No one knows how long credit will remain scarce for companies, or whether companies will start making their matching contributions again when credit loosens and business improves.<br />"We have had a 30-year experiment with requiring workers to be more responsible for saving and investing for their retirement," said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research. "It has been a grand experiment, and it has failed."<br />In the typical 401(k) plan, the employer's matching contribution is more than just money for retirement. It also motivates employees to set aside more of their own money for old age. The more that workers save in a 401(k) plan, generally, the more "free money" they can get from their employers under the matching provisions.<br />Retirement policy specialists said they did not expect employees to react immediately to the loss of this incentive by stopping their own contributions. Study after study has shown that employees procrastinate when it comes to retirement-plan chores, and in this case the inertia may work, unwittingly, in their favor.<br />Americans, however, are facing extreme household financial pressure. President-elect Barack Obama has said that he would support allowing withdrawals from retirement plans without penalties, which would provide short-term relief but would further undercut American's long-term savings.<br />Benefits specialists said that if matching contributions continued to dwindle, fewer newly hired workers could be expected to join 401(k) plans. And employees might eventually slow or stop their contributions if the recession dragged on and their own cash ran short.<br />"The problem is, we are heading into this serious recession, and we don't know how long it will go on for," said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. "The bottom line is, people will have less money in their 401(k) plans, not just because the financial crisis has decimated their assets, but also because they will not have the employer match for some time."<br />Currently, most companies that offer 401(k) plans do provide some sort of matching contributions, according to David Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America, an association of employers that provide such plans.<br />The most typical arrangement is for employers to match 50 cents of every dollar their employees set aside in their retirement accounts, up to 6 percent of pay. Sometimes the match is more, sometimes less, and some employers vary it depending on profitability. Over all, the employer's cost usually works out to about 3 percent of payroll.<br />The latest 401(k) cutbacks underscore workers' vulnerability in an age when companies have been replacing defined-benefit pension plans with the newer 401(k) design. Modern 401(k) plans give workers the power to opt in and out and require them to invest their own money, bearing market risk on their own. That may be appealing when the markets are rising, but it can be terrifying when they fall, as they have recently.<br />An employer's contributions to a traditional pension plan cannot be switched on and off at will. U.S. government rules set a firm contribution schedule, with deadlines and penalties for companies that fall behind. Employers also get significant tax and accounting benefits from operating a traditional pension plan, so they tend to think long and hard before freezing such a plan to save money when the economy cools.<br />In a 401(k) plan, by contrast, the employer has much greater freedom to stop making matching contributions when times are tough. The contributions are normally measured as a percentage of payroll, and the savings from any cuts are realized immediately. That greatly simplifies planning and making changes.<br />"Every percent you cut is a percent of payroll," Munnell said. "It comes down to the choice of laying people off, or cutting back on some fringe benefits."<br />Many of the latest 401(k) cutbacks are turning up in industries with obvious financial problems, like the auto industry, health care and newspaper publishing. Industries that depend on free-spending consumers, like resorts and casinos, are also seeing cuts. Often when one company in an industry cuts its benefits others will follow, to keep their labor costs competitive.<br />General Motors and Ford Motor have both suspended their matching contributions to their salaried employees' 401(k) accounts, although their pension plans for unionized workers are unchanged.<br />Motorola, struggling to stay competitive, stopped contributions to its 401(k) plan this month and froze its pension plan as well. Other recent cuts have occurred at Resorts International, Vail Resorts and Station Casinos.<br />In addition to stopping their 401(k) matching contributions, companies have been freezing salaries this autumn, shifting more of the cost of health care to their workers, and laying people off.<br />"These are really hard times and people are losing their jobs, and in some ways, a suspension of a 401(k) match, while bad, is probably one of the lesser evils out there," Munnell said.<br />In announcing the suspension of the contributions last week, FedEx made clear that its workers in the sorting centers would not be the only ones feeling the pinch. Pay to senior executives is to be cut by 7.5 percent to 10 percent, and the chief executive, Frederick Smith, said he would take a 20 percent pay cut. The cutbacks are projected to save $200 million in the remainder of the 2009 fiscal year and $600 million in the 2010 fiscal year.</div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama unveils task force to help families<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Paul Eckert<br />U.S. President-elect Barack Obama unveiled a new task force on Sunday charged with helping struggling working families, as an aide said Obama's economic recovery plan would be expanded to try to save 3 million jobs.<br />The White House Task Force on Working Families, to be headed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, would aim to boost education and training and protect incomes and retirement security of middle-class and working families whose plight Obama had made a central issue of his campaign.<br />Biden's panel of top-level officials and labour, business, and activist representatives would help keep working families "front and centre every day in our work," Obama said in a statement released by his transition office.<br />Biden said the economy was in worse shape than he and Obama had thought it was.<br />"President-elect Obama and I know the economic health of working families has eroded, and we intend to turn that around," Biden told ABC's "This Week."<br />"We've got to begin to stem this bleeding here and begin to stop the loss of jobs in the creation of jobs," he said.<br />An transition aide said grim forecasts for the economy Obama will inherit when he takes office on January 20 prompted him to raise the job-creation target of his economic recovery plan to 3 million jobs created or saved in the next two years.<br />Last month, Obama's stated goal had been to protect 2.5 million jobs with a combination of middle-class tax cuts, money for public works programs like the building of roads and mass transit as well as money to bolster health and other social programs.<br />"There is going to be real significant investment, whether it's $600 billion (400 billion pounds) or more, or $700 billion," Biden said. "It's a number no one thought about a year ago."<br />The Obama administration could not afford to worry initially about the ballooning national deficit in the face of the most severe recession in the post-war era, he said.<br />"There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That's the only short run," said Biden.<br />Some Democrats are pressing for a package in the $1 trillion range, though other lawmakers are wary of the discussion of price tags upward of $600 billion.<br />Republican Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia told CNN's "Late Edition" that taxpayers must be protected amid a pricey bailout for the auto industry and other potentially costly measures to revive the economy.<br />"Most American taxpayers are scratching their head wondering when all this bailout stuff is going to end and probably thinking when is my bailout coming," he said.<br />But Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank argued that failure to act "will cost us even more."<br />"This economy is in the worst shape since the Great Depression and if we do not respond in a very firm way, it gets worse and worse and feeds on itself," he told CNN.<br />(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Ross Colvin in Honolulu; editing by David Wiessler)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>A scheme with no 'off' button</strong><br />By Catherine Rampell<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />So, what's the exit strategy?<br />Mathematically speaking, Ponzi schemes are doomed. They work by bringing in new investors to pay off old ones. In pure form, there's never any actual business activity; the money just rolls backward from ever-increasing numbers of investors to keep up the appearance of profits. This means the scheme requires an infinite supply of new suckers.<br />Anyone sophisticated enough to concoct a Ponzi scheme and con experienced investors and government agents, as the New York financier Bernard Madoff is accused of doing must also be sophisticated enough to do the math here.<br />So how can Ponzi perpetrators possibly expect to extricate themselves from their ploys? Based on historical examples relayed by a few biographers, historians and finance experts, the exit strategies seem to fall into four general categories:<br />CUT AND RUN These Ponzi schemers, a subset of the "Music Man" breed of professional swindler, are the small-time crooks, the snake-oil salesmen. They plan to rip off everyone in River City, hop on a train, change identity, and then start over, from the top, in the next town.<br />Few big-time Ponzi schemers go this route, however. That's because big Ponzi schemes usually exploit the trust of a tightly knit social network. Madoff is accused of victimizing wealthy Jews. The Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, a Philadelphia-area scheme that collapsed in 1995, preyed largely on Christian religious organizations.<br />If you're well enough connected to create a large-scale Ponzi scheme, though, you're probably too well-connected to be able to, or perhaps even want to, cut yourself loose. Charles Ponzi himself passed up chances early in the 20th century to sneak back to his Italian homeland unnoticed.<br />"He was bringing his mother over to Boston, from Rome," says Mitchell Zuckoff, a professor at Boston University who wrote "Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend." "He was canceling the honeymoon he'd planned to take to Italy with his new wife. He could have taken the money and run, but instead he chose to put down roots."<br />TURN (OR RETURN) THE BUSINESS INTO SOMETHING LEGITIMATE This group is likely to have started out with some hope for legitimacy. They solicit seed money for a brilliant investment idea, but the idea falls through. Rather than declare failure, they recruit new investors to pay off the old ones.<br />The fraud is just temporary, the swindlers tell themselves. They delude themselves into thinking they'll come up with another, better idea some day.<br />This appears to have been Ponzi's strategy; he had grand plans for international postal arbitrage but couldn't make the logistics work. "He truly thought he could eventually turn around and go legitimate," Zuckoff said.<br />This exit strategy pretty much always fails because the schemers are looking for the big scalp and there's never an investment profitable enough to fill that deepening pocket of debt.<br />NO EXIT These schemers, usually from relatively humble backgrounds, are deeply insecure. They have felt like impostors their whole lives, whether in the country club or on the trading floor, says James Walsh, author of "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man." Expecting exposure for something, sometime, somewhere, they rationalize their fraudulent behavior. They delay the inevitable as long as they can and live well until they get caught.<br />GET ELECTED TO PARLIAMENT After scamming millions of Russians in the 1990s, Sergei Mavrodi promised his investors a taxpayer bailout if they elected him to the Duma. Upon election, he received parliamentary immunity from prosecution.<br />Admittedly, this exit strategy has limited applicability. It didn't even work very long for Mavrodi, who landed in prison when his immunity was revoked.<br />The details of Madoff's scheme are unclear, though he is accused, in court documents, of having described it as a Ponzi scheme. Some experts guess that, given his business's longevity, he may have hoped to return to legitimacy one day.<br />Most Ponzi schemes last a year at most, says Utpal Bhattacharya, an Indiana University finance professor. (Ponzi's lasted just nine months.) So it seems likely that Madoff, an investment manager since 1960, started out legitimate or semi-legitimate. People in that position sometimes foolishly think they can hide a one-time loss with new investors' money, and make up for it with a big gamble later.<br />In other words, Ponzi schemers don't necessarily start out as such, and as sophisticated as they are, they may not consciously recognize that they have created one. They delude themselves into thinking the ploy is just a stopgap measure, an attempt to hide a loss until they can once again dream up something brilliant.</div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>UBS fund said to have invested $1.4 billion with Madoff</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />GENEVA: A Luxembourg-based fund run by Switzerland's biggest bank UBS invested $1.4 billion (934 million pounds) with Bernard Madoff, the U.S. fund manager accused of running a $50 billion fraud, Swiss weekly NZZ am Sonntag said on Sunday.<br />UBS declined to comment on the size of fund, which the newspaper called Luxalpha.<br />Spokesman Christoph Meier told Reuters: "Madoff was not on our recommended list of direct investment options."<br />However, he noted that UBS, the world's biggest wealth manager, had a number of wealthy clients, family offices and intermediaries who could request the bank to set up funds of funds of their choice.<br />The Financial Times reported on Saturday that UBS was seeking to absolve itself of any duty to safeguard investor assets in Luxalpha. UBS declined to comment on that report.<br />Funds managed by Swiss banks have been prominent victims of Madoff, who is accused of running a global Ponzi scheme in which earlier investors are paid off with investments from newer clients.<br />(Reporting by Jonathan Lynn; Editing by Erica Billingham)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Ireland to pour billions into 3 main banks</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Kevin Smith and Carmel Crimmins<br />The Irish government will invest 5.5 billion euros (5.12 billion pounds) in the country's three main lenders, taking majority control of Anglo Irish Bank after a loan scandal there rocked an already beleaguered industry.<br />Investors have been waiting for months for a bailout plan to match schemes in other countries, but pressure on the government intensified this week after Anglo Irish revealed its chairman had kept shareholders in the dark about 87 million euros (80 billion pounds) worth of loans he had received from the lender.<br />Its shares slumped to a record low of 19 euro cents and the financial regulator has launched a probe into directors' loans at all major Irish banks.<br />"This is a new beginning. We have to have proper lending, responsible lending, lending for the real needs of the economy," Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said on Sunday.<br />Dublin will invest 2 billion euros each in market leaders Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks via preference shares giving 25 percent voting rights over what the government described as "key issues."<br />The government will be able to intervene in areas such as appointing directors, changes in capital and ownership changes. The banks have also signed up to a credit package designed to boost lending to companies and home buyers.<br />The injections, in the first quarter of next year, will boost core tier one capital ratios at the two banks to around 8 percent from around 6 percent currently, bringing them into line with international peers.<br />The package will be paid for from funds set aside during Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economic boom and originally intended to meet the state's future pension obligations.<br />Analysts said the deal was attractive for the two main players because it was not as dilutive or as costly as the British 37 billion pound bailout plan unveiled in October.<br />"It's a substantially better package than the British one as far as the banks and their shareholders are concerned," said Kevin McConnell, head of equity research at Bloxham Stockbrokers.<br />The government will also underwrite plans by Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks to raise up to 1 billion euros each in additional capital. No details of that capital raising were given.<br />CONTROVERSIAL MOVE<br />The government will make an initial investment of 1.5 billion euros in Anglo Irish Bank, giving it 75 percent control of the lender and a fixed annual dividend of 10 percent. Dublin said it would make further capital if required in order to ensure Anglo remained a "sound and viable institution."<br />Anglo's chairman, chief executive and one non-executive director have already walked the plank over the loan scandal and Lenihan said the rest of the board would be "reconstructed" after an extraordinary general meeting next month to approve the capital increase.<br />Donal O'Connor, who was appointed this week to replace Sean FitzPatrick as chairman, will remain.<br />The move to bail out Anglo Irish, a niche lender that has fallen foul of struggling commercial property markets, is controversial following the loan scandal.<br />"I highly doubt the capacity of that bank to start lending money again," said Leo Varadkar, a spokesman from the main opposition party, Fine Gael.<br />"I think in the case of Anglo a wind-down operation may have been more appropriate."<br />But Lenihan stressed that Anglo, a one-time poster boy Ireland's economic revival, had a viable future.<br />"We believe that with appropriate public direction this bank can survive and can be turned around in time."<br />In return for the state funding, all three banks will be expected to boost their lending to small and medium-sized businesses by 10 percent next year and increase lending to first-time buyers by 30 percent. There will also be a new code of practice for business lending.<br />After riding high on the back of a dizzying property boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ireland's banks have seen their share prices haemorrhage as the real estate bubble burst and the global credit crunch hit.<br />Ireland was one of the first European countries to react to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September with a radical 485 billion euro scheme to guarantee bank liabilities which infuriated neighbouring countries who were forced to follow suit.<br />But the government then stayed on the sidelines while other countries recapitalised their banks preferring for lenders to raise their funds privately.<br />With no deals sealed and the Anglo scandal hitting the headlines last week, Dublin was forced to lay out its own investment plans.<br />(Additional reporting by Paul Hoskins; editing by Gary Crosse)</div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Kuwait's Global says HSBC adviser in debt talks</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />KUWAIT: Kuwait's Global Investment House , downgraded by two ratings agencies for allegedly not meeting debt obligations, said it named HSBC as an adviser with foreign lenders after meeting with them on Sunday.<br />Shares in Kuwait's biggest investment bank closed down 8.2 percent on Sunday.<br />Last week, Global named Commercial Bank of Kuwait as an adviser for its borrowing needs after it said it was in talks with local banks to secure loans worth $1 billion (669 million pounds).<br />Global said in a statement on Sunday it had added HSBC as an international adviser to help renegotiate its loans with foreign banks and reschedule debt, while CBK is still its local financial adviser.<br />"The debt restructuring process was formally commenced today (Sunday) following a well-attended meeting in Kuwait with the company's bank lenders. The banks have agreed to form a steering committee to continue discussions with the company and its advisers," Global said in the statement.<br />"The management of Global is committed to resolving the process as quickly as possible and is confident that this will be achieved to the benefit of all stakeholders."<br />The investment bank said earlier this month it was in talks with local banks to secure loans worth $1 billion to replace short- and medium-term foreign loans with local loans. It also sold its stake in a Bahraini lender at a loss to secure financing.<br />Global shares tumbled last week after Fitch Ratings downgraded the firm's long-term Issuer Default Rating to 'C' from 'BBB', citing its "inability to meet an obligation due on December 15 ... due to cash flow problems."<br />Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings on Global to 'SD/SD' from 'BBB/A-3', following Global's "non-payment of a $200 million syndicated loan due on December 15," the agency said.<br />On Sunday, Kuwaiti daily al-Rai cited banking sources as saying the company was close to getting a $1 billion syndicated loan from local banks.<br />Last month, Kuwait said it would set up a bail out fund for investment firms to help them cope with the global financial crisis after the Gulf Arab state was forced to step in and rescue Gulf Bank in October.<br />The central bank has said it expected some investment firms to run into trouble due to their exposure to global markets since many investments are financed through loans.<br />Global Investment House is licensed as an investment firm but offers investment bank services such as underwriting issues or managing funds. It buys into firms and then sells them to investment funds.<br />(Reporting by Rania El Gamal, editing by Maureen Bavdek)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>***************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>An inside look at the Siemens bribery factory</strong><br />By Siri Schubert and T. Christian Miller<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />MUNICH: Reinhard Siekaczek was half asleep in bed when his doorbell rang early one morning two years ago.<br />Still in his pajamas, he peeked out his bedroom window, hurried downstairs and opened the front door. Standing before him in the cool, crisp dark were six German police officers and a prosecutor. They held a warrant for his arrest.<br />At that moment, Siekaczek, a stout, graying former accountant for Siemens, the German engineering giant, knew his secret life had ended.<br />"I know what this is about," he told the officers crowded around his door. "I have been expecting you."<br />To understand how Siemens, one of the world's biggest companies, ended up paying $1.6 billion last week in the largest fine for bribery in modern corporate history, it is worth delving into Siekaczek's unusual journey.<br />A former midlevel executive at Siemens, he was one of several people who arranged a torrent of payments that eventually streamed to well-placed officials around the globe, from Vietnam to Venezuela and from Italy to Israel, according to interviews with Siekaczek and court records in Germany and the United States.<br />What is striking about Siekaczek's and prosecutors' accounts of those dealings, which flowed through a web of secret bank accounts and shadowy consultants, is how entrenched corruption had become at a sophisticated company that externally embraced the principles of a transparent global marketplace built on legitimate transactions.<br />Siekaczek said that from 2002 to 2006, he oversaw an annual bribery budget of about $50 million at Siemens. Company managers and sales staff members used the slush fund to cozy up to corrupt government officials worldwide.<br />The payments, he said, were vital to maintaining the competitiveness of Siemens outside of Germany, particularly in his subsidiary, which sold telecommunications equipment. "It was about keeping the business unit alive and not jeopardizing thousands of jobs overnight," he said during an interview.<br />Siemens is hardly the only corporate giant caught in prosecutors' cross hairs.<br />Three decades after Congress passed a law barring U.S. companies from paying bribes to secure foreign business, law enforcement authorities around the world are bearing down on enterprises like Daimler and Johnson & Johnson, with scores of cases now under investigation.<br />But the Siemens case is notable for its breadth, the amounts involved, and the raw organizational zeal with which the company deployed bribes to secure contracts. It is also a model of something that was once extremely rare: cross-border cooperation among law enforcement officials.<br />German prosecutors opened the Siemens case in 2005. The U.S. authorities became involved that year because the company's shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.<br />In its settlement last week with the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Siemens pleaded guilty to charges that it had violated accounting provisions within the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws bribery abroad.<br />Although court documents are salted throughout with the word "bribes," the Justice Department allowed Siemens to plead to accounting violations because it cooperated with the investigation and because pleading to bribery violations would have barred Siemens from bidding on contracts in the United States. Siemens does not dispute the U.S. government's account of its actions.<br />Siekaczek's telecommunications unit spent $5 million in bribes to win a cellphone contract in Bangladesh, paying the son of the then-prime minister and other senior officials, according to court documents. Siekaczek's group also paid $12.7 million to senior officials in Nigeria for government contracts.<br />In Argentina, a different Siemens subsidiary paid at least $40 million in bribes to win a $1 billion contract to produce national identity cards. In Israel, the company provided $20 million to senior government officials to build power plants. In Venezuela, it was $16 million for metro rail lines. In China, $14 million for medical equipment. And in Iraq, $1.7 million to Saddam Hussein and his cronies.<br />Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar and Somalia are the five countries where corporate bribery is most common, according to Transparency International, a nonprofit group. The SEC complaint said Siemens paid its heftiest bribes in China, Russia, Argentina, Israel and Venezuela.<br />"Crimes of official corruption threaten the integrity of the global marketplace and undermine the rule of law in the host countries," said Lori Weinstein, the Justice Department prosecutor who oversaw the Siemens case.<br />All told, Siemens will pay more than $2.6 billion: $1.6 billion in fines and fees in Germany and the United States and more than $1 billion for internal investigations and reforms.<br />The Siemens general counsel, Peter Solmssen, during an interview in Washington, said the company acknowledged that bribes were at the heart of the case. "This is the end of a difficult chapter in the company's history," he said. "We're glad to get it behind us."<br />Siekaczek, who cooperated with the German authorities after his arrest in 2006, has already been sentenced in Germany to two years of probation and a $150,000 fine.<br />"I would never have thought I'd go to jail for my company," Siekaczek said. "Sure, we joked about it, but we thought if our actions ever came to light, we'd all go together and there would be enough people to play a game of cards."<br />Siekaczek is not a stereotype of a white-collar villain. There are no Ferraris in his driveway, or villas in Monaco. With white hair and gold-rimmed glasses, he passes for a kindly grandfather - albeit one who can discuss the advantages of offshore bank accounts as easily as a soccer match.<br />Siemens began bribing officials long before Siekaczek applied his accounting skills to the task of organizing the payments.<br />"Bribery was Siemens's business model," said Uwe Dolata, the spokesman for the association of federal criminal investigators in Germany.<br />Before 1999, bribes were tax deductible as business expenses under the German tax code, and paying off a foreign official was not a criminal offense.<br />Inside Siemens, bribes were referred to as "NA" - a German abbreviation for the phrase "nützliche Aufwendungen," which means "useful money." Siemens bribed wherever executives felt the money was needed, paying off officials not only in countries known for government corruption, like Nigeria, but also in countries with reputations for transparency, like Norway, according to court records.<br />In February 1999, Germany joined the international convention banning foreign bribery, a pact signed by most of the world's industrial nations. By 2000, the authorities in Austria and Switzerland had become suspicious of millions of dollars of Siemens payments flowing to offshore bank accounts, according to court records.<br />Rather than comply with the law, Siemens managers created a "paper program," a toothless internal system that did little to punish wrongdoers, according to court documents.<br />Siekaczek's unit was one of the most egregious offenders. Court documents show that the telecommunications unit paid more than $800 million of the $1.4 billion in illegal payments that Siemens made from 2001 to 2007. Managers in the telecommunications group decided to deal with the possibility of a crackdown by making its bribery procedures more difficult to detect.<br />So, on a winter evening in late 2002, five executives from the telecommunications group met for dinner at a traditional Bavarian restaurant in a Munich suburb. Surrounded by dark wood panels and posters celebrating German engineering, the group discussed how to better disguise its payments, while making sure that employees did not pocket the money, Siekaczek said.<br />To handle the business side of bribery, the executives turned to Siekaczek, a man renowned within the company for his personal honesty, deep company loyalty and experiences in the shadowy world of illegal bribery.<br />"It had nothing to do with being law-abiding, because we all knew what we did was unlawful," Siekaczek said. "What mattered here was that the person put in charge was stable and wouldn't go astray."<br />Indeed, he considers his personal probity a point of honor. He describes himself as "the man in the middle," "the banker" or, with tongue in cheek, "the master of disaster." But, he said, he never set up a bribe. Nor did he directly hand over money to a corrupt official.<br />Siekaczek set things in motion by moving money out of Austria to Liechtenstein and Switzerland, where bank secrecy laws provided greater cover and anonymity. He also reached out to a trustee in Switzerland who set up front companies to conceal money trails from Siemens to offshore accounts in Dubai and the British Virgin Islands.<br />Each year, Siekaczek said, managers in his unit set aside a budget of about $40 million to $50 million for the payment of bribes. For Greece alone, Siemens budgeted $10 million to $15 million a year. Bribes were as high as 40 percent of the contract cost in especially corrupt countries. Typically, amounts ranged from 5 percent to 6 percent of the value of a contract.<br />The most common method of bribery Siemens engaged in involved hiring an outside business consultant to help "win" a contract. This was typically a local resident with ties to the country's leaders. Siemens paid a fee to the consultant, who in turn delivered the cash to the ultimate recipient.<br />Siemens has acknowledged having more than 2,700 business consultant agreements, so-called BCAs, worldwide. Those consultants were at the heart of the bribery scheme, sending millions to government officials.<br />Siekaczek was painfully aware that what he was doing was illegal. To protect evidence that he did not act alone, he and a colleague began copying documents stored in the basement of the headquarters in Munich that detailed the payments. He eventually stashed about three dozen folders in a hiding spot that he still refuses to disclose.<br />In 2004, Siemens executives told him that he had to sign a document stating he had followed the company's compliance rules. Reluctantly, he signed, but he quit soon after. He continued to work for the company as a consultant before resigning in 2006. As legal pressure mounted, he began hearing rumors that Siemens was setting him up for a fall.<br />"It wasn't going to be possible to make me the only one guilty because dozens of people in the business unit were involved," Siekaczek said. "Nobody was going to believe that one person did this on his own."<br />The police knocked on Siekaczek's door on the morning of Nov. 15, 2006. At almost the same time, about 200 officers were sweeping across Germany, into the Siemens Munich headquarters and the homes of several executives.<br />In addition to Siekaczek's detailed payment records, investigators secured five terabytes of data from Siemens offices - a mother lode of information that was the equivalent of five million books. Siekaczek turned out to be one of the biggest prizes of the day. After calling his lawyer, he immediately announced that he would cooperate.<br />U.S. officials began investigating the case shortly after the raids became public. Knowing that it faced steep fines unless it cooperated, Siemens hired a U.S. law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton, to conduct an independent, internal investigation and to work closely with U.S. government investigators.<br />All told, U.S. investigators and the Debevoise lawyers conducted more than 1,700 interviews in 34 countries. They collected more than 100 million documents, creating special offices in China and Germany just to hold the records from that one investigation. Debevoise and outside auditors racked up 1.5 million billable hours, according to court documents. In corporate filings, Siemens has put the total cost of the internal inquiry - including corporate restructuring - at more than $1 billion.<br />At the same time, Siemens worked hard to purge the company of senior managers who participated in the bribery schemes and to overhaul company policies. Several senior managers have been arrested. Klaus Kleinfeld, the company's chief executive, resigned in April 2007. He has not been accused of any crime and has denied wrongdoing. He is now head of Alcoa, the aluminum manufacturing giant based in Pittsburgh. Saying that its board fully supported Kleinfeld, Alcoa declined to comment on the SEC action.<br />Last year, Siemens acknowledged in SEC filings that it had found "significant evidence of collusion" by past corporate officials to "misappropriate funds and abuse authority." In August, Siemens said it planned to recover monetary damages from 11 former board members for activities related to bribery. Negotiations continue between the company and board members, according to a Siemens spokesman.<br />Earlier this year, Siemens's current chief executive, Peter Löscher, vowed to make Siemens "state of the art" in anticorruption measures. It has increased training and tied management bonuses to compliance with its ethics code.<br />Siemens still faces legal uncertainties. The Justice Department and German officials said that inquiries continued and that current and former company officials might be prosecuted.<br />Analysts and legal experts say Siemens is the latest in a string of high-profile cases that are slowly changing attitudes toward corruption.<br />For his part, Siekaczek is unsure about the legacy of the case. After all, he said, bribery and corruption are still widespread in many countries.<br />"People will only say about Siemens that they were unlucky and that they broke the 11th Commandment," he said. "The 11th Commandment is: 'Don't get caught."'</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>****************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Caroline Kennedy measures up to the job<br /></strong>By Albert R. HuntBloomberg News<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Caroline Kennedy has none of the right credentials to be a United States senator, critics charge; choosing her would be unconscionably trading on her famous name, they say.<br />Claiming that an impeccable curriculum vitae is essential for the office, these critics have ridiculed her possible appointment as "depressing" or "insulting" or celebrity-driven.<br />This is nonsense. The daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy is a talented woman who possesses a collegial charm that would serve her well in the Senate. None of the other candidates that Governor David Paterson of New York reportedly is considering to replace Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton is as compelling a choice.<br />Sure, it's trading on a famous name. Where have these Rip van Winkles been? Today's Senate includes the names of Bayh, Dodd, Landrieu, Murkowski, Rockefeller, Dole, Casey, Sununu, Pryor and Kennedy, all political legacies.<br />In the 1990s, two men named Bush were elected governors of Texas and Florida, running on their father's prominent name.<br />There are two questions about Kennedy: Is she prepared for the rigors of New York politics, and is she intellectually and temperamentally suited to be a good senator? Upstate New York considers itself a Third World region, desperate and often ignored. Hillary Clinton's political success in the state derived from the huge amount of attention she paid to this area. Can Kennedy quickly learn that the Buffalo Bills are not a barbershop quartet and empathize with heartbreaking stories in Elmira?<br />She is not a carpetbagger, having spent most of her life in New York City, though mostly in Manhattan.<br />In Staten Island, there was a farewell party the other day for a departing politician, which, The New York Times reported, was attended by "men with oiled pompadours, women with teased updos and floor-length furs, retirees and grizzled members of a Vietnam veterans' motorcycle club." Geographically, that's only a few miles from Park Avenue; culturally, it's Mars.<br />Even some close friends worry whether the private Kennedy is ready for this rough-and-tumble world. Presumably she has thought about that in seeking the post. If so, she's capable of conquering these challenges.<br />This is a woman whose capacity matches her charm. She hasn't held office or paid her political dues but has been the guiding force behind the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, an author of several scholarly books on privacy as well as best-seller anthologies, and a force in improving the New York school system during Michael Bloomberg's mayoralty.<br />I serve on the Kennedy Library's Profile in Courage committee with her. It is a bipartisan group of senators, distinguished historians and high-powered social activists. Not one, including her Uncle Teddy, is more influential in internal deliberations than Caroline Kennedy.<br />She has all the qualities - intellectual curiosity; a friendly, at times pointed, sense of humor; and a deferential manner (she hails her own cabs) - that are the stuff to make a good senator.<br />Some question whether she has sufficient ego for the U.S. Senate; the other New York senator, Charles Schumer, has enough for both.<br />All things equal, it's better for politicians to pay their dues. Many don't. In New York, Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg started at the top. The fabled Daniel Patrick Moynihan was uninvolved in electoral politics until winning a Senate seat in 1976, aside from an ill-fated campaign for city council president.<br />Sometimes it's just obvious that a neophyte candidate brings unique skills: the basketball player Bill Bradley, when he ran for the Senate from New Jersey in 1978, or the former White House aide Rahm Emanuel, with an unusual appreciation of the nexus of politics and policy, when he ran for the House six years ago.<br />None of the often-mentioned alternatives to Kennedy, including the New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, or Representative Gary Ackerman, possess these qualities. Nor on character do they measure up to her.<br />Moreover, political pedigrees can be overrated. Few paid more dues than Dick Cheney.<br />One of the most important figures in 20th century public life was Terry Sanford of North Carolina, one of the great governors in modern times. As president of Duke University, he led that institution to international acclaim. He was elected to the Senate in 1986, and never lived up to that renown; he never found comfort in the institution and was defeated for re-election.<br />In recent weeks, there has been a lot of press attention on Tennessee's junior senator, Bob Corker. The state's senior senator, Lamar Alexander, is a more impressive and formidable figure - a former governor, university president and secretary of education.<br />Yet as Alexander prepares for a second Senate term, like Sanford, he has yet to find a sweet spot in the chamber.<br />By contrast, a predecessor of his, Howard Baker, first ran with few credentials. He had been a lawyer, and his claim was that his father was a congressman and his father-in-law, Everett McKinley Dirksen, the Republican leader of the Senate. Trading on family fame, he won in 1966.<br />Throughout three terms, he became a terrific senator, a majority leader who worked effectively across the aisles. He was later President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff.<br />An even more dramatic example might be the young man who was elected four years before Baker, and with even fewer credentials. Riding a celebrated family name, he defeated more experienced rivals in both the Democratic primary and the general election.<br />That was Edward Kennedy in 1962. He has gone on to become one of the most influential senators in the history of the institution.<br />If she is appointed, neither Caroline Kennedy nor most anyone else today will match her uncle's accomplishments. Whether she stays for two years or 20, she would add value to an institution that has been so enriched by her family.</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Protests over car tariffs spread across Russia</strong><br />By Clifford J. Levy<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />MOSCOW: Small demonstrations occurred in several Russian cities over the weekend against the government's plan to raise tariffs on imported automobiles, and the riot police broke up one protest Sunday in Vladivostok in the East, briefly detaining scores of people, news agencies reported.<br />While each demonstration drew only a few hundred people, they have turned into perhaps the most visible evidence of discontent with the government over the financial crisis. When the price of oil was high and the Russian economy was soaring, the government enjoyed broad popularity, but the recent downturn has caused a rise in unemployment, a drop in the value of the ruble and growing anxiety among the public.<br />The government announced the tariffs on imported cars in an effort to protect the beleaguered domestic car industry. But imported cars are highly popular among Russians, causing the protests.<br />In an apparent sign of the Kremlin's concern over the tariff issue, it dispatched special riot police units to Vladivostok to quell the protest, according to witnesses quoted by news agencies. Other protests had occurred in the city this month over the tariffs.<br />Amateur video posted online by people who said they were at the demonstration in Vladivostok on Sunday showed riot police officers dragging protesters into vans.<br />The authorities said they broke up the demonstration against the tariffs because its sponsors had not received official permission.<br />An Associated Press reporter in Vladivostok said the police officers beat several people, threw them to the ground and kicked them.<br />Vladimir Litvinov, who heads a local rights group, told The Associated Press that officers behaved "like beasts" and should not have ended the gathering because it was peaceful and not political.<br />Litvinov said that he supported "a civilized resolution to all the problems," but that he did not support sending "Moscow riot police to break up a gathering in our city," where "they start breaking arms and legs and heads."<br />"People are very, very angry," he added. "It's hard to predict what might happen now."<br /> </div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Hundreds of Greek protesters clash with police<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Daniel Flynn and Angeliki Koutantou<br />Hundreds of Greek youths fought running battles with police in Athens late Saturday as anti-government protests entered a third week since police shot dead a teenager.<br />Students threw stones and petrol bombs at riot police outside university buildings late into the night after a vigil to mark the December 6 killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos turned violent.<br />Police blocked surrounding roads and fired teargas at the youths, who sheltered in the university campus which police are banned from entering. A group of anxious mothers waited outside to escort their children from the building.<br />"There are more than 600 students and they're running in and out of the university, throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails," said a police official, who asked not to be named. No injuries were reported.<br />Across the country, hundreds of schools and several university campuses remain occupied by students. In the northern city of Thessaloniki, demonstrators briefly occupied a radio station and a cinema.<br />The protests, the worst Greece has known in decades, have fed on anger at youth unemployment, government reforms and the global economic crisis.<br />For most of Saturday, Athens was calm and the streets were busy with Christmas shoppers.<br />As darkness fell, a group of anarchists rampaged through the upmarket district of Kolonaki, torching two cars and throwing petrol bombs into the office of a company supplying credit data to banks and the finance ministry, police said.<br />A police official had earlier said the offices belonged to the finance ministry.<br />Earlier, a march in support of immigrants' rights ended in scuffles with police when demonstrators pelted them with eggs and rubbish outside parliament.<br />Some protesters tried to set fire to the municipal Christmas tree in the central Syntagma square outside parliament, a replacement for a tree burnt down in earlier demonstrations. Riot police with shields formed a circle round the tree while protesters danced round them holding hands.<br />Union leaders and students have announced more rallies for the new year.<br />The protests have caused hundreds of millions of euros in damage, rocking a conservative government that has a one-seat majority and trails the opposition in polls. Some analysts say continued street protests could force early elections.<br />(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou; editing by Tim Pearce)</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqLkvuD2HgM4KuC6p1wXrmvvSUmlkJvLNICiElfa0Ozm5Ctjkxj0CkdSR-VDvpffxhSuixrDyXw3INbY9PlncoWtywDBZk-w_dmrHvD59TqKz_ZwhKyZGo-iqqBm4CiC2jjaTVRfcREQ/s1600-h/DSC03950.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282470084047930258" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioqLkvuD2HgM4KuC6p1wXrmvvSUmlkJvLNICiElfa0Ozm5Ctjkxj0CkdSR-VDvpffxhSuixrDyXw3INbY9PlncoWtywDBZk-w_dmrHvD59TqKz_ZwhKyZGo-iqqBm4CiC2jjaTVRfcREQ/s320/DSC03950.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Sharp differences between Cheney and Biden on vice presidential role<br /></strong>By Brian Knowlton<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The transition in the vice presidency was in full view Sunday, with the incoming officeholder, Joseph Biden Jr., describing it as something like counselor in chief with no single policy focus, and the departing one, Dick Cheney, saying that if Biden "wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call."<br />Biden also underscored the vast challenge posed by the worsening economic situation. The new administration's first and most urgent mission when it takes office on Jan. 20, he said, would be to keep the economy "from absolutely tanking."<br />Amid growing curiosity over how Biden will balance a vow to scale back the powers of his office against a desire to play a vital and central role, he said that President-elect Barack Obama had asked him to oversee a task force dedicated to strengthening the middle class. "We'll look at everything from college affordability to after-school programs," Biden said on the ABC News program "This Week" in his first extensive interview since the election.<br />But he also said that he had received a commitment from Obama, during a conversation before the election that lasted three and a half hours, to include him in formulating every decision of import.<br />"I said, 'I want a commitment from you that in every important decision you'll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy, I'll get to be in the room,"' Biden said. And indeed, he said that with every cabinet appointment Obama had decided on, "I've been in the room."<br />Still, the contrast with Cheney - who is not known to have spent any time on after-school programs during his vice presidency, and who on Sunday vigorously defended the expanded scope of powers he has assumed - could not have been much sharper.<br />Moreover, while President George W. Bush has struck a decidedly reflective tone in the interviews he has granted as his presidency winds down, Cheney remained unyielding.<br />The sharp edge of some of his comments might not be terribly surprising; during the election campaign, Biden had criticized Cheney as "probably the most dangerous vice president we've had in American history."<br />Cheney, appearing on "Fox News Sunday," at one point brushed off Biden's attacks as "campaign rhetoric."<br />But Cheney pointedly criticized Biden's knowledge, saying that while Biden had taught constitutional law in Delaware and for years served on the Judiciary Committee, "he can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive," a reference to a comment by Biden that Article I of the Constitution lays out the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch. In fact, that article primarily deals with the legislative branch.<br />In Biden's interview, taped before Cheney's aired, he seemed inclined at first to shrug off their differences. But pressed, he did not back down.<br />Biden said he believed that the recommendations Cheney had given Bush had "been not healthy for our foreign policy, not healthy for our national security, and it has not been consistent with our Constitution."<br />"His notion of a unitary executive, meaning that in time of war, essentially all power goes to the executive, I think is dead wrong" and had tended "to weaken our standing in world and weaken our security," he said.<br />Biden said his role would be "to give the president of the United States the best, sagest, most accurate, most insightful advice and recommendations" he can offer.<br />In other matters, Biden confirmed that the incoming administration planned to observe its promise for a 16-month pullout of most combat troops from Iraq, though some military commanders say that might be difficult. "We will be out of Iraq in the way in which Barack Obama described his position during the campaign," Biden said.<br />He sidestepped any judgment on whether any members of the Bush administration should face legal action over any detainee abuse either at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. That, he said, should be up to the Justice Department.<br />And while Cheney has suggested that Biden's views might change once he learns the breadth and urgency of threats against the country, Biden took exception. He said that as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he had been one of the eight congressional leaders included in the most sensitive intelligence briefings, and that since the election, he had received presidential-level briefings. "I have learned nothing thus far that would change my view," he said.<br />Biden also defended plans for a sweeping economic stimulus package that some critics say might be too large. In today's dire situation, he said, "the scope of this package has to be bold, it has to be big. The economy's in much worse shape than we thought it was in."</div><div> </div><div>**************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Poet chosen for inauguration is aiming for a work that transcends the moment</strong><br />By Katharine Q. Seelye<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Elizabeth Alexander, who teaches at Yale, was plucked last week from the relatively obscure recesses of contemporary poetry for a moment on the world stage. President-elect Barack Obama has commissioned her to compose and read a poem for his inauguration, making her only the fourth poet in American history to read at one and elevating the art to unaccustomed prominence in the national psyche, at least for a day.<br />Obama's inauguration, on Jan. 20, calls for an "occasional poem," written to commemorate a specific event. This is not precisely what Alexander does, but she is preparing for the challenge.<br />"Writing an occasional poem has to attend to the moment itself," she said in an interview, "but what you hope for, as an artist, is to create something that has integrity and life that goes beyond the moment."<br />To prepare, she has delved into W. H. Auden, particularly his "Musée des Beaux Arts" ("About suffering they were never wrong/The Old Masters"), and the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize, for poetry. Auden, she said, "asked very large questions about how we stand in history." And Brooks has had a major influence on her work.<br />"She should have been the one, were she living, for this," Alexander said of the honor bestowed by Obama. "The Bard of the South Side. She wrote from Obama's neighborhood for so many years." Here she recited Brooks's familiar line: "Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind."<br />"Language like that," Alexander said, "has eternal life."<br />Alexander, 46, is the incoming chairwoman of the African-American studies department at Yale and the mother of two sons, 9 and 10. She writes often of race, gender and class, in both poetry and prose, nurtures young black poets through Cave Canem, a poetry workshop, and has been a friend of Obama for more than a decade.<br />Asked if she thought that the friendship played a role in her being picked for the inauguration, she said no. The Obamas have many friends and know other poets, she said.<br />"One of the things we've seen with every choice he's made is that it's based on what he perceives as excellence," Alexander said. "I don't think you would let friendship determine who you chose to do something like this. You can do lots of things to be nice to your friends you can invite them to an inaugural ball. But I don't think friends have to do each other this kind of favor."<br />Alexander was born in Harlem, where her father's family was rooted, but grew up in Washington, where she attended Georgetown Day School and Sidwell Friends, then Yale. Politics, she said, was "in the drinking water in my house." Her father, Clifford, was a civil rights adviser to President Lyndon Johnson and was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act. He was the first black to be named secretary of the army and chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.<br />Her mother, Adele, teaches African-American women's history at George Washington University. Her brother, Mark, teaches at Seton Hall Law School and served as policy director to Bill Bradley's presidential campaign in 2000. An expert in campaign finance, he was a senior adviser to Obama's campaign and is a member of his transition team.<br />Alexander has been on the faculty of several universities, including the University of Chicago, where she taught creative writing and African-American literature and won the Quantrell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. It is there in the 1990s that she met Barack and Michelle Obama.<br />"We're of the exact same generation," she said. "They are people with whom I have a lot in common."<br />There was some question about whether Obama would include a poet at all in his inaugural program. There have been only three: Robert Frost in 1961, Maya Angelou in 1993 and Miller Williams in 1997.<br />Obama has not said publicly why he wanted a poet or why he chose Alexander. But Emmett Beliveau, the executive director of Obama's inaugural committee, said that having a poet shows "the important role that the arts and literature can play in helping to bring our country together" and that Alexander "is an incredibly accomplished author and academic."<br />Paul Muldoon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who teaches at Princeton and is poetry editor of The New Yorker, said he guessed that Alexander was chosen on "literary merit." He said her work "addresses a wide range of issues with terrific complexity."<br />And Angelou said that when she heard of Alexander's selection, she smiled. "She seems much like Walt Whitman," she said. "She sings the American song."<br />Alexander said she believes her poetry "attends to history," including "sometimes thorny and difficult American history," even as it speaks in contemporary moments and landscapes.<br />And she said Obama is attuned to the value of poetry. "He has said the precise and distilled and mindful language of poetry is perhaps something that can create a moment of meditation for us," she said.<br />After examining previous inaugural poems, she has decided that hers will be brief. "This is one small piece of many pieces and we know what the centerpiece is," she said, referring to Obama's inaugural address.<br />"President-elect Obama is extremely efficient with language," she added. "It is tremendously rich and tremendously precise but also never excessive. I really, really admire that. That's a poet's sensibility. I'm going to follow his lead."</div><div> </div><div>***********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Police raid Iran Nobel Laureate's office</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />By Parisa Hafezi<br />Iranian police Sunday raided and closed the office of a watchdog group led by Iran's Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi ahead of a celebration to mark International Human Rights Day.<br />Iran's judiciary confirmed the closure of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, saying it was involved in "illegal" activities.<br />"Tehran prosecutor ordered the closure of the office of Human Rights Defenders Centre because of its illegal activities," the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.<br />"The centre was acting as a (political) party without having legal permit. It had illegal contacts with local and foreign organizations. It had organised news conferences and seminars."<br />Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel peace prize, criticised the raid, saying it will not stop human rights activists in Iran.<br />"The closure of the office without providing a legal warrant is illegal. We will protest against it," Ebadi told Reuters. "It will not deprive us from our rights activities."<br />Narges Mohammadi, deputy head of the centre, said that dozens of policemen, including plainclothes security agents, entered the office without showing a search warrant.<br />"A policeman said he was not obliged to show a warrant because he was wearing a police uniform," Mohammadi told Reuters.<br />The raid came hours before the centre was to hold a celebration of the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day, which fell on December 10, Mohammadi said.<br />Ebadi used a United Nations forum in Geneva Wednesday to condemn hardliners in power in some Muslim countries and rulers of the world's last communist states as abusers of human rights.<br />Ebadi, an outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic's rights record, said Muslim dictatorships used religion to underpin their own power.<br />The Iranian rights advocate has repeatedly criticised Iran's human rights record, citing what she says was a rising number of political prisoners and the highest number of executions per capita in the world last year.<br />Over the years, Ebadi's advocacy of human rights has earned her a spell in jail and a stream of threatening letters and telephone calls.<br />Iran's government rejects accusations that it violates human rights and accuses its Western foes of hypocrisy and double standards.<br />(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Sami Aboudi)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Maybe it can't: A trap in Obama's spending plan</strong><br />By Louis Uchitelle<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />As the recession deepens, President-elect Barack Obama is gearing up to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on public investment projects, counting on them to lift the economy, as they have in the past.<br />But this time that may not happen. Public spending, American style, has worked best in good times, when people have jobs and executives are eager to invest. A new public highway is soon lined in good times with stores and malls filled with consumers. A dollar spent by government generates three or four from the private sector.<br />That symbiosis makes a humming economy hum more, as it did in the 1950s and '60s. But it may not work that way when the American economy is in full retreat, as it was in the 1930s and seems to be today.<br />As a measure of the current disaster, the Federal Reserve last week lowered interest rates to an unheard-of near-zero percent and offered in effect to give away money if a fearful nation would only spend it. But panicked by investment losses or fearful for their jobs, people tend to hold back. In such circumstances, a new road could be lined not by shopping malls, but by empty, overgrown land.<br />That is the risk facing Obama's plan. By January, Congress will probably be asked to approve an outlay of more than $700 billion. Spent in one year on construction, research or equipment, it might well offset the contraction at first. But unless it also revived general confidence, the economy could collapse again, once the money was gone.<br />"If that spending can't get the private sector going, then it is just a make-work maintenance operation," said Stanley Moses, an economist at Hunter College in New York.<br />History illustrates how tricky it can be to make public spending work as intended. The many dams Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration built generated an abundance of electricity, lowering its cost so that families could afford to operate the appliances then becoming available. The construction itself put money into workers' pockets. But the appliances were too costly for most families during the Depression, and the manufacturers wouldn't extend credit. For all the money spent by the Roosevelt administration, public investment was failing to jump-start a key private-sector industry.<br />His administration was inventive, however, and found a way around the problem by subsidizing installment purchases. That was when appliance production finally rose. In time, installment plans evolved into consumer loans and charge cards, and that helped make the American consumer economy the envy of the world.<br />These symbiotic relationships between the public and private sectors playing off each other in ways hard to anticipate and hard to channel became an essential ingredient of American prosperity from World War II until the mid-1970s.<br />"It is not in the nature of a market system to have adequate private investment all of the time," said Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "So we used public investment to smooth things over and improve the climate for private investment."<br />That changed. In the 1970s, the public reacted against high taxes and growing budget deficits, and conservatives argued that putting money in private hands would lift the economy more effectively. Public investment tapered off, and was used less as a tool of economic policy as the economy experienced the increasingly sharp ups and downs of the 1980s, 1990s and the new century.<br />Now, in the opening months of the worst bust since the Great Depression, Obama is expected to seek sustained outlays over at least two years to repair roads, bridges and waterways; to build and repair public schools; to expand the broadband network; to digitize medical information; to advance green technology. An economic adviser says his goal is "to encourage private investment, particularly in areas where we have too little investment today, for example, solar systems and wind power."<br />But Obama is bucking a deep private-sector funk, a bit like what Roosevelt described in his first Inaugural Address as "fear itself nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." Borrowers and lenders have pulled back. Business investment has plummeted. So has consumer spending. "A psychology of bad times is becoming the mindset of the public," says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, a survey operation.<br />Like Roosevelt's dams, Obama's expenditures will no doubt generate jobs and wages in the construction phase. But in 1937, Roosevelt, thinking that the private sector could sustain itself, pulled back on public spending. Some historians say this was a big reason the economy sank again. .<br />Obama faces a similar danger. Green-technology spending might spawn a far more efficient solar panel, but investors still might shrink at manufacturing it. What if consumers having lost equity in their homes and scrimping on cars, vacations, even college tuition were reluctant to buy and install the panels? "There are so many problems today and no good news, and that is enough to stop the impact of what Mr. Obama does," said Moses of Hunter College.<br />The president-elect and his advisers recognize this danger. But they and many others, including some Republicans see no other choice. "The most important thing the new administration can do at a moment when the collective psyche has been so shattered is to spend money now on tangible things," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, who advised John McCain's presidential campaign. "People want to see up front a repaired bridge, a new energy technology, a better water system. They want to feel these will have huge benefits down the road, and that might get them spending again."<br />Whatever the obstacles, Obama's plan would mean giving up the view widely held since the 1970s by economists, policy makers and business executives that the private sector, by itself, is the key source of prosperity and full employment, and government spending is inefficient.<br />Perhaps with that in mind, Obama evoked as an illustration of his plan's breadth not the desperate 1930s, but the prosperous 1950s and '60s. That was when President Dwight Eisenhower and Congress set out to build the Interstate System of highways a gift to an expanding auto industry and to trucking that also linked the country, encouraging all sorts of other investments.<br />But there is a big difference between Eisenhower's era and Obama's. By 1950, the Depression's gloom had been banished by the common effort of World War II, followed by immense postwar demand for American production. Road building was just one public investment that set off huge private outlays. The space program stands out; so does military spending, which spurred computer development and created the Internet. And Medicare, born in the 1960s, became intertwined with private medicine.<br />Such symbiotic successes prompted a French journalist, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, to issue a warning to Europe in 1968. In "The American Challenge," a best seller, he wrote that "the government official, the industrial manager, the economics professor, the engineer and the scientist have joined forces" to support American economic growth, and that the juggernaut would soon reduce Europe to an American colony.<br />He was wrong. Europe outpaced the United States in its embrace of public-private symbiosis. And now Obama proposes, in effect, to restore the formula in this country.</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama drawing on longtime interest in car industry<br /></strong>By Micheline Maynard<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />DETROIT: Barack Obama leveled a stern warning at General Motors and Chrysler after the U.S. government promised them billions of dollars to help them survive: "The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices."<br />Once he becomes president, the bailout announced last week will give Obama a tool to prod the industry to change, but it will also test his resolve as he pushes it in new directions.<br />Obama, after all, has been thinking out loud about the future of the American automobile industry for years, since well before his presidential campaign began. He co-sponsored two bills in 2006, during his second year as a U.S. senator - one to raise fuel economy standards, and the other to encourage the use of alternative fuels.<br />His writings and speeches on the auto industry suggest a keen interest in finding ways, including new technology, to improve the fuel efficiency of the cars and trucks that Americans drive.<br />But with Detroit in a fragile financial state, it is unclear how many compromises Obama will have to make in pursuing his agenda for the auto industry as he juggles other priorities like providing a stimulus program for the broader economy. The United Automobile Workers union, which backed Obama, will want a say in the changes he envisions for the automakers.<br />Car companies, which take long lead times to develop products, will need sales of big trucks and sport utility vehicles, which may pick up again as gasoline prices fall, to bring in much-needed revenue.<br />By all accounts, Obama's personal interest in the industry stems from his interest in environmental issues, and he has a ready resource about how the industry operates in Martin Nesbitt, a close friend who worked in financial planning at GM.<br />Obama delivered his clearest prescription to the automobile industry in May 2007, when he appeared at Cobo Convention Center in Detroit before an audience of 2,000 auto industry executives.<br />In a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit, Obama said the Big Three had done little to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and needed to improve their vehicles' fuel efficiency.<br />"The auto industry's refusal to act for so long has left it mired in a predicament for which there is no easy way out," Obama said.<br />He suggested initiatives similar to the legislation he had introduced in Congress and which he emphasized in his campaign. They included a 4 percent annual increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, equal to about one mile per gallon a year, and incentives for the companies to develop more fuel-efficient cars.<br />Obama said he would provide as much as $3 billion to Detroit auto companies and their suppliers to retool their factories in order to produce smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.<br />In fact, Congress later included up to $25 billion for the companies for that goal. General Motors and Chrysler initially tried to tap that money for their depleted cash reserves, before receiving assistance from the administration of President George W. Bush.<br />Environmentalists say the speech in Detroit was a sign of commitment to prodding the auto companies to build more fuel-efficient vehicles.<br />"I think he gets it," said Daniel Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign for the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington consumer advocacy group. "The speech at Econ Club was a brave one, but a thoughtful one."<br />Obama, who received standing ovations at the beginning and conclusion of his speech, said he wanted to be blunt with the Detroit companies on their home turf.<br />"I'm making this proposal here today because I don't believe in making proposals in California and giving a different speech in Michigan," he said. His goal was "not to destroy the industry, but to help bring it into the 21st century," he said.<br />In his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," Obama wrote that "fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E85, a fuel formulated with 85 percent ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry. It is a future American car companies can attain if we start making some tough choices now."<br />He also did not spare the UAW from criticism.<br />"For years," Obama wrote, "U.S. automakers and the UAW have resisted higher fuel-efficiency standards because retooling costs money, and Detroit is already struggling under huge retiree health-care costs and stiff competition."<br />Obama said he wanted to help the companies and the union, pointing out that he had introduced legislation calling for automakers to receive assistance meeting health care costs, if they would invest the savings in developing hybrid-electric vehicles - an idea he repeated in his Detroit speech.<br />But, Obama wrote, "we can't afford to hesitate much longer."<br />With Detroit in crisis, there is little room for hesitation after he reaches office.<br />Obama's Treasury Department will have to assess whether the union and the companies have met the requirements of the loans given them by the Bush administration, which legal experts say Obama could easily amend.<br />But he also has said that he wants to protect American jobs.<br />Soon after Bush finished announcing the terms of the $17.4 billion in assistance for the auto companies Friday, the UAW union was calling on Obama, for whom it had rallied support in important Midwestern states, to revise it.<br />The union wanted him to discard a requirement that auto workers agree to wage and benefit concessions that would bring their compensation in line with that paid nonunion workers.<br />Representative John Dingell Jr., a Michigan Democrat and a longtime union advocate, said: "I strongly urge President-elect Obama to revisit this issue as his first priority upon being sworn in, and to ensure that assistance to the automakers is provided in a way that is fair to working Americans."<br />Becker, a longtime critic of Detroit environmental policies, said he did not believe that Obama would force companies to submit to drastic measures.<br />"I don't think they need to be afraid of Obama. He's not going to say 'by next Tuesday, everything has to be 40 miles per gallon,"' Becker said. "But in 10 years? Maybe."Canada gets its own bailout<br />Moving to pre-empt a possible shift of auto production to the United States, both the Canadian and Ontario governments offered the industry 4 billion Canadian dollars in emergency loans, Ian Austen reported from Ottawa.<br />"I will not fool you," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in Toronto on Saturday. "There is obviously money at risk here and there may well be more money at risk going forward." The amount equals about $3.3 billion.<br />The Canadian auto industry, which exports about 90 percent of its production, accounts for a greater percentage of Canada's manufacturing economy than its parent companies contribute to that of the United States.<br />Many U.S. and Japanese automakers operate factories in Ontario, as do parts makers that feed plants throughout North America.<br />A loss of the U.S. manufacturers would be a particularly severe blow to Ontario, which is home to all of the Canadian auto assembly plants. About 400,000 people in Ontario work in the industry, said Dalton McGuinty, the provincial premier.</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Never again</strong><br />By Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Some we see; others remain invisible to us. Some have names and faces; others we do not know. They are the victims of genocide and mass atrocities, their numbers too staggering to count.<br />This month was the 60th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It has been 20 years since the United States became a party to the treaty. Despite six decades of efforts to prevent and halt systematic campaigns of massacres, forced displacements and mass rapes, such atrocities persist. Why are we still lacking the necessary institutions, policies and strategies?<br />It is not because the public doesn't care. We have seen a surge in interest in this country, galvanized by the crisis in Darfur and driven in large part by students and faith-based organizations. And it is not because our leaders do not care. Over the years, many champions in Congress and successive administrations have demanded more action to stop genocide.<br />When we were in the Clinton administration, we experienced firsthand the challenges of responding to such crises, sometimes because the political will was lacking, but more often because the American government simply does not have an established, coherent policy for preventing and responding to mass atrocities.<br />Moreover, a lack of dedicated resources for prevention and the absence of bureaucratic mechanisms allowing rapid analysis and response have impeded timely action. What is needed is a national blueprint to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.<br />Barack Obama should demonstrate at the outset of his presidency that preventing genocide is a national priority. No matter how one calculates American interests, national borders today provide little sanctuary from international problems. Left unchecked, genocide will undermine American security.<br />First, genocide fuels instability - usually in weak, undemocratic, corrupt states. It is in these states that we find terrorist recruitment and training, human trafficking and civil strife.<br />Second, genocide and mass atrocities have long-lasting consequences that go far beyond the states in which they occur.<br />Refugees flow into bordering countries and then across the globe. The need for humanitarian aid can quickly exceed the capacities and resources of a generous world. The international community, including the United States, is called on to absorb displaced people and to undertake relief efforts. And the longer we wait to act, the higher the price tag.<br />Third, America's standing in the world is eroded when we are perceived as bystanders to genocide. Yes, we must understand that preventing mass killings may eventually require military intervention, but this is always at the end of the list of intervention options, not the beginning.<br />We must learn to recognize the early warning signs of genocide and move quickly to marshal international cooperation, to bring diplomatic and economic pressure to bear against those who violate the norms of civilized behavior.<br />Success will require that the president summon political will not only during a crisis but before one emerges. This means taking on inertia within the government, investing political capital, doing the heavy lifting of persuasion. It means fending off critics and cynics.<br />It means taking risks.<br />We are keenly aware that the incoming president's agenda will be daunting from day one. But preventing genocide and mass atrocities is not an idealistic addition to our core foreign policy agenda. It is a moral and strategic imperative.Madeleine K. Albright, the U.S. secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, and William S. Cohen, the U.S. secretary of defense from 1997 to 2001, are the co-chairmen of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. </div><div> </div><div>********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>Econo-threats<br />By Charles Duelfer and James Rickards<br /></strong>Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />The economic crisis has made it painfully obvious that the U.S. economy has become very vulnerable to broken gears in the global financial system. But this is not simply a financial or economic problem - it is a grave national security risk, and the U.S. government must treat it as such. Historically, Washington's national security and financial apparatuses have operated independently. Intelligence analysts have focused on explicit threats posed by weapons and conflicts. Those parts of the government charged with ensuring economic health have a different mind-set, monitoring capital markets where they assume threats are not malicious, but competitive in nature. This needs to change.<br />For a model, consider the evolution that took place in the 1990s with respect to cyber-threats. While this was initially the preserve of information technology experts and companies, government officials came to recognize the enormous potential threats to the power grid, the Internet and government computer systems.<br />In terms of economic security, however, a complicating factor is that financial experts and national security officials view risk in very different ways. The meltdown on Wall Street is largely a result of an overriding incentive to see risks as low. The group dynamic among financial houses was to lend more under more precarious conditions - if you didn't, a competitor would.<br />Conversely, the national security community tends to maximize risk assessments. Aerospace companies sell more weapons if the threat is seen to be increasing. It's all about playing up risk - sometimes too far, as the miscalculation over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction threat showed.<br />Despite these divergent views of risk, the talents of professionals in the capital markets and national security experts must be combined if America is to identify and respond to financial threats.<br />For example, while China has behaved appropriately during the global financial crisis, there is no doubt that its enormous reserves give it de facto veto power over some of Washington's interest rate and exchange rate policies. What would we have done if Beijing had responded differently? And the desires of Russia (then fighting in Georgia) were a consideration during the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts, because it is one of the largest holders of government agency debt.<br />Al Qaeda has declared that damage to the American economy is its second-most important goal after mass casualties. Presently, who would warn the White House if foreign entities made a concerted attack on our financial system? Who is charged with detecting such activity?<br />The Obama administration needs to place a new priority on the national security implications of capital and commodities markets. The National Security Council needs to draw together the powerful talents and tools from segregated agencies to tackle the problem.<br />U.S. spy agencies alone lack the direction and expertise to provide the real-time market analysis required. It calls for talent more likely found among hedge fund managers and open-market traders. After all, the data does not need to be captured clandestinely - much is readily available from exchanges and other open sources. Quick analysis - with the sorts of quantitative engines traders use, redesigned for national financial security objectives - may be the most critical aspect.<br />There is a tremendous range of global threat indicators that can be gleaned from careful scrutiny of trading activity. For example, in August 2006 an unexplained decline in certain airline stocks took place shortly before the arrests in Britain of terrorists plotting to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners.<br />The global financial meltdown is going to give our enemies new ideas to create economic havoc. We don't have much time to plan our response.Charles Duelfer, the former director of the Iraq Survey Group, is the author of the forthcoming "Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq." James Rickards was general counsel of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management and oversaw its rescue by the Federal Reserve. </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO1_2q3T8RY4TaV4zjP542AQWgzHTKJPwmP7DkZP5EeOHBtLXX5hOhmjotEesukVIobJOPV-tNIEk82WFmsnBfhTmDY1zyZfCBdojgHe4GlFs0XTaZzbc75gczwT34k8nVnv0kp5PmutY/s1600-h/DSC03952.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469793332677442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO1_2q3T8RY4TaV4zjP542AQWgzHTKJPwmP7DkZP5EeOHBtLXX5hOhmjotEesukVIobJOPV-tNIEk82WFmsnBfhTmDY1zyZfCBdojgHe4GlFs0XTaZzbc75gczwT34k8nVnv0kp5PmutY/s320/DSC03952.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Russian push on treason raises fears</strong><br />By Michael Schwirtz<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />MOSCOW: In a country where government critics already feel vulnerable, legislation to expand the definition of treason has inspired a new round of hand-wringing about how far the state will go to rein in dissenters and regulate Russians' contact with foreigners.<br />Even certain conversations with a foreign reporter could be "considered treason under the new legislation," contends Ernst Chyorny, the leader of a human rights group in Moscow, because they could be seen as "consultative" support to a foreign entity. And that, he says, could land a violator in prison for as long as 20 years.<br />As with existing law, the legislation would forbid actions considered detrimental to Russian security. But the legislation, if passed, would remove qualifiers that require such actions to be "hostile" and directed against the "external security" of Russia.<br />In addition, it would prohibit Russians from passing certain information not only to other countries but also to foreign nongovernment groups.<br />Many of those groups, which the Kremlin often accuses of fronting for spy agencies, have been among the most vocal critics of the government's curtailment of media and civic freedoms and the consolidation of power under Vladimir Putin, the former Russian president who is now prime minister.<br />Taken together, critics say, the changes could further muddle what they say are already ambiguous espionage laws and perhaps - at worst - presage a return of the Soviet-era practice of prosecuting government critics as traitors. But it remains unclear whether the bill will pass the Parliament in its current form, and, even then, whether and how the government would employ the rules.<br />Gennady Gudkov, a former intelligence officer who is a deputy chairman of the security committee in the State Duma, or lower house of Parliament, said some elements of the new legislation were unclear and could be amended when the Duma begins deliberating it, perhaps in January.<br />Government officials have defended the proposed changes, backed by Putin and his allies in the Russian security services, saying they are needed to clarify and update current laws that have failed to keep pace with the law-dodging ingenuity of modern spies, who, officials say, increasingly work through foreign nongovernment organizations.<br />The government became especially concerned about such groups because it was suspicious of their ties to the protagonists in the so-called "color revolutions" that toppled Kremlin-friendly governments in Georgia and Ukraine.<br />The new bill accompanies other legislative changes proposed recently that would appear intended to strengthen the control of the authorities as Russia succumbs to the effects of the global financial crisis.<br />In particular, some see the maneuvers as part of a strategy by Putin, who was an officer in the KGB and then the director of its successor, the FSB, to expand further the authority of his former security service colleagues, who have come to dominate the government since Putin came to power as president in 2000.<br />"The secret police de facto captured the government a long time ago," said Lev Ponomaryov, who leads the Moscow group For Human Rights. "Now they want to capture it de jure."<br />More worrisome, critics say, is that it comes on the heels of legislation, which hinges on the signature of the president, Dmitri Medvedev, that eliminates jury trials in treason cases, handing them instead to judges who are beholden to the government for their jobs.<br />Even the Public Chamber, which includes many Kremlin-appointed civic leaders, has condemned that measure.<br />"The legislation is motivated by the interests of the security services, which seek to eliminate the need to investigate criminal cases without legal violations as well as the need to prove the guilt of suspects in a real contest with defense attorneys before courts that involve representatives of the people able to hand down not only guilty verdicts but also acquittals," the group said in a statement last week.<br />People on both sides of the debate over the latest legislation agree that the old laws on treason and espionage were too vague. But critics say the proposals could further endanger those who run afoul of the security services, including employees of nongovernment organizations, journalists and academics - especially scientists.<br />Scientists have suffered the brunt of what critics have deemed "spy mania" by the security services in recent years, in good part because their work often involves sharing information with foreign colleagues - something that was intensely regulated in the Soviet era.<br />"Scientists are not able to communicate with one another, because it is unclear how this contact will be interpreted by investigators," said Anna Stavitskaya, a prominent human rights lawyer who has defended several scientists in recent years.<br />At least a dozen scientists have been charged with espionage, in cases pursued by the security services since Putin came to power. Prominent academics and human rights groups inside Russia and abroad have accused overzealous officers of fabricating evidence and pressuring judges in many of these cases.<br />In a rare embarrassment for the security services, investigators were forced last year to dismiss a case against two Siberian physicists, the brothers Igor and Oleg Minin, who were accused by the FSB of revealing state secrets in one of their academic works, even though their manuscript had been cleared by their university as containing no classified materials.<br />Chyorny, whose human rights group has defended scientists at the European Court of Human Rights, said he feared that the new legislation would make it much more difficult to overcome such accusations.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>In Russia, a religious revival brings new life to Orthodox media<br /></strong>By Sophia Kishkovsky<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />MOSCOW: By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, there were nearly 600 newspapers and magazines throughout Russia devoted to Orthodox subjects. They were all shut down by the Soviet regime by 1918.<br />Today, in a country that was officially atheist less than two decades ago, there are again hundreds of newspapers, magazines and newsletters covering the world's largest Orthodox church. There are also as many as 3,500 Russian Orthodox Web sites. Some priests are blogging.<br />This month, when Patriarch Aleksy II died, nearly an entire day of live television coverage was devoted to the funeral, and days before and after were dedicated to documentaries about his life and talk shows discussing his death.<br />When Sergei Chapnin, a journalist who edits the Moscow Patriarchate's official newspaper, organized the first Russian Orthodox media festival in 2004, a government bureaucrat called to inquire about the event.<br />"I could tell he thought we would have 50 people or so attending," said Chapnin about the first festival, which brought together 400 journalists. "I said there are about 500 publications with up to 10,000 journalists connected to them. There was silence at the end of the line."<br />And the Orthodox media, like the church itself, have not always fallen into step with the Kremlin line. The Moscow Patriarchate and most Orthodox media have addressed the war with Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia as a tragic misunderstanding between two countries that share an Orthodox Christian heritage.<br />Vladimir Legoyda, the editor of Foma, the most influential of the Orthodox glossies, said that Kommersant, a business newspaper, inundated him with phone calls after the patriarch's death.<br />"That they came to us and are paying very active attention to this theme, this is a change," he said, but adds: "I want to be a realist. I understand that society doesn't change so easily and maybe so quickly."<br />The revival of Orthodoxy is reflected both as a trend in the secular media and the main topic of a stable of publications that have appeared to discuss religious faith both with newly devout believers and those who are still finding their way in the church.<br />After 70 years of state-imposed atheism and 20 years that have run the gamut from glasnost to post-Soviet chaos to a revival of Russian pride, Russians have increasingly embraced their Orthodox roots.<br />Kommersant was the journalistic training ground for Yulia Danilova, editor in chief of Neskuchny Sad, another Orthodox glossy. It has editorial offices in a church located on the grounds of Moscow's Hospital No.1 and is known for its charity work. A colleague from Kommersant who works with her at the magazine is an ordained Russian Orthodox deacon. Another editor used to work for Moskovsky Komsomolets, a Soviet newspaper turned tabloid, and secular glossies, but moved to Neskuchny Sad when those publications began to conflict with her deepening religious faith.<br />Foma, Legoyda's magazine, is named after the Apostle Thomas, or "doubting Thomas," who needed to touch Jesus's ribs before believing in his resurrection. A large icon of that scene hangs in the conference room at the magazine's office, which looks like the newsroom of a successful college newspaper.<br />The magazine has a staff of about 30 and a monthly budget of over $100,000 for all of its expenses and projects, which include a Web site and radio program. It is financed mostly by sponsors, with some money coming from advertising and subscriptions.<br />Foma is the most successful Orthodox glossy, with a print run of 30,000, but it is small compared to secular publications. Chapnin said his newspaper, Tserkovny Vesnik, or The Church Herald, had a print run of about 20,000, the same as Neskuchny Sad printed in November.<br />Successful diocesan publications might print about 10,000 while others, in the provinces, average about 3,000.<br />While the magazines are most easily found in churches and religious literature stores, Foma can be found on many newsstands, next to secular papers.<br />The Orthodox magazines are supported by advertising, which is weighted towards offers of icons and religious literature. And the financial crisis is taking its toll on Orthodox publications as well, requiring some belt-tightening.<br />Legoyda is also the chairman of the department of international journalism at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, a training ground for future diplomats.<br />He began going to church as a student in Moscow in the early 1990s, then, as an exchange student in California, he met punk rockers turned Orthodox monks and helped them put out a magazine called "Death to the World" that used the punk esthetic to talk about Orthodox themes.<br />Back in Russia, Legoyda started to reach out to young people outside the usual church context. He has published a collection of his articles in a book titled "Do Jeans Stand in the Way of Salvation?"<br />As Orthodoxy has become more ingrained in Russia, Legoyda said Foma had addressed different levels of religious skepticism.<br />"We were never didactic," he said. "We always said that we have doubts too. But if before someone might have said they doubt the existence of God, now they don't. Instead they wonder if they should go to church."<br />The popularity of Orthodoxy has created new problems.<br />"Today a person easily calls himself Orthodox but doesn't change his life," he said. "Orthodoxy, as any religion, means changing your life."<br />That has especially become an issue in the coverage of celebrities, both in the Orthodox and secular media and prompted debates about the dangers of "Orthodox glossies" and "Orthodox glamour" and the absurd juxtapositions that often arise when secular glossies touch on Orthodoxy.<br />Foma often features interviews with celebrities who now speak openly about how important religious faith is in their lives.<br />Danilova, the editor of Neskuchny Sad, says she worries that glossy Orthodox magazines risk reducing religion to an attractive lifestyle.<br />"There is a danger that people will organize a very nice Orthodox lifestyle and stop at that," she said. "Bake the right pies, have the right braid like in the old days. But this is avoiding the problems of contemporary life."<br />Neskuchny Sad features many articles about charity, but also addresses other issues of spiritual and general interest from the point of view of Orthodox theology and practice. Recent issues include stories like "What do angels look like?" and "Should Communists be put on trial?"<br />Orthodoxy turns up in some of the most unexpected places. Nikolai Uskov, editor of the Russian edition of GQ magazine, has an unusual accent among the magazine covers hanging on his wall: an elaborate medieval-looking certificate of honor from Patriarch Aleksy II given to him for his work as editor of the Catholic section of the Orthodox Encyclopedia. It hangs surrounded by GQ covers featuring Jennifer Aniston and Hugh Jackman.<br />Uskov was a scholar specializing in the history of Christianity and monasticism in early medieval Western Europe before he switched gears and became editor of GQ. But even a glossy magazine editor in Russia, he said, could not escape Orthodoxy, because it had been embraced by the elite.<br />"The church has become part of public ritual," he said. "Glamorous people must believe, go to church, have icons and go on pilgrimages to places such as Optina Pustyn and Valaam and tell everyone about this," he said referring to two famous Russian Orthodox monasteries.<br />But Orthodox glossies feature stories that will never be found in GQ.<br />"Our No.1 subject is veneration of the 'New Martyrs,"' said Legoyda, referring to victims of Bolshevik and Stalinist terror who died for their Orthodox faith and were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. "Just as in the first three centuries of Christianity, people in this country, in Soviet times, were martyred for Christ, except many more were martyred here."<br />Foma writes about the martyrs in every issue. "This is our sacred treasure," Legoyda said.</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWBZMDw7t5XH4CL-gfA54QrcQ-WeaGEh7g0DZ8GHKWy_ZyAwNt8oQ0KWOo60RKuUKfmrpjCGXTQ4ZetTRrZuD-BBuVYpsNzu2CQA04xzk1um5lbfDCKFsUVrBH7NOZx20_5vd8CRz2AWM/s1600-h/DSC03953.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469784678171874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWBZMDw7t5XH4CL-gfA54QrcQ-WeaGEh7g0DZ8GHKWy_ZyAwNt8oQ0KWOo60RKuUKfmrpjCGXTQ4ZetTRrZuD-BBuVYpsNzu2CQA04xzk1um5lbfDCKFsUVrBH7NOZx20_5vd8CRz2AWM/s320/DSC03953.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>East German church recovers stained-glass windows from Russia<br /></strong>By Judy Dempsey<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany: This drab Eastern German city, which was almost completely destroyed during the last days of World War II, boasts the most spectacular medieval stained glass windows that any mayor could dream of showing, especially during Christmas festivities.<br />The windows have finally been returned to their home in the Marienkirche, or Church of Our Lady, after a more than 60-year exile in Russia. At 20 meters tall, or 65 feet, they depict scenes from the Old Testament in fantastically powerful images and strong colors.<br />In an unusual gesture, the Russian government returned the last of 117 glass panes to Frankfurt an der Oder last month, ending a long diplomatic effort by both the local and the federal government. "It is a further sign of reconciliation and the friendship between our countries," Bernd Neumann, the German culture minister, said during the ceremony marking the windows' return.<br />These last few windows, once restored, can now be built back into the restored Marienkirche, from where they had been taken by German curators just before 1945, when the 700-year-old church was destroyed as the Red Army advanced. They were brought for safekeeping to the Neue Palais in Potsdam, where Soviet troops confiscated them as booty.<br />In contrast to the Marienkirche windows, the vast majority of the 2.3 million cultural items that the Red Army took during its advance through Germany in 1945 still remain in Russia, including paintings and libraries, porcelain and sculptures.<br />Stalin regarded the confiscated art not only as a way to strip Germany of part of its cultural identity but as the price to pay for the unimaginable devastation committed by the German Army in Russia during the war. The Russian government still uses this argument to retain the vast majority of the art.<br />"The issue of looted art is often treated in the media as one in which it is the Russians who owe a debt," Vladimir Kotenev, the Russian ambassador to Germany, said at the ceremony to celebrate the Marienkirche windows' return. "It is often carelessly, or intentionally, forgotten that during the raids of the Wehrmacht, many Russian museums were systematically plundered."<br />In April 1998, the Russian Parliament even passed a law declaring that "cultural valuables translocated to the U.S.S.R. after World War II" were the property of the Russian Federation. The only exceptions was property owned by the Roman Catholic Church, Jews or political victims who had suffered under fascism.<br />Mayor Martin Patzelt of Frankfurt an der Oder said the past was difficult to overcome.<br />"Russia's unwillingness to return the art shows just how deeply complicated is the relationship between Germany and Russia, even when it comes to art," he said. "I can understand sometimes why Russia has been so reluctant to return the art. It is about the destruction wrought by German troops in Russia during World War II."<br />Ever since the late 1940s, successive German governments had been trying to persuade the Russian authorities to return the war booty, which the Germans call Beutekunst, or looted art.<br />"It was almost impossible to find out what had become of these cultural items," said Britta Kaiser-Schuster, project leader of the German-Russian Museums' Dialogue. This independent foundation, established in 2005 and supported by 80 German museums whose art may be held by Russia museums, works with its Russian counterparts in an attempt to examine the storage depots, identify the works of art held there and improve cooperation.<br />"The only time Moscow agreed to give back any items to museums in any great number was in 1958, but that was to the museums in East Berlin," Kaiser-Schuster said. "Maybe it was because the Soviet Union supported the East German Communist regime's attempts to create its own cultural identity vis-à-vis West Germany. Who knows the real reason?"<br />In the case of the Marienkirche's windows, it had been assumed that the 117 stained-glass panes had been destroyed, lost or stolen. Sandra Meinung, who is now responsible for restoring the windows, said that during the 1980s the authorities in Frankfurt an der Oder had made several inquiries with few results.<br />Then in 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing and Germany was reunited, a Russian art historian discovered 111 panels packed away in a storage depot belonging to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. That discovery triggered extensive diplomatic efforts by the Lutheran community in Frankfurt an der Oder.<br />But the Kremlin was in no rush to return the panels, or indeed any other cultural items. It was not until 2002 that the first of the 111 panes were returned to the Marienkirche - after the Parliament sanctioned their return. German diplomats said it was a gesture by Russian president at the time, Vladimir Putin, who was making his first official visit to Germany.<br />The remaining six panes were discovered in Zagorsk, an Orthodox monastery just outside Moscow that is under the jurisdiction of the Pushkin Museum. They have now been brought back, too.<br />But there is one more twist to the story. Despite the beauty of the windows and how they symbolize the immensely complicated relationship between Russia and Germany, they have failed to generate any real pride in the city's cultural and religious inheritance.<br />On a recent visit to the church, the glorious stained glass windows were hardly visible. Besides the absence of lighting, it was impossible to appreciate the proportions, the color and the powerful images; a makeshift stage was blocking the view of the windows. The rest of the church was being turned into a Christmas market.<br />Patzelt, the mayor, said the number of parishioners, 5,600 from a population of 61,000, is dwindling, and besides it would cost enormous sums of money to restore the Marienkirche to its former glory. In a city with high unemployment and hit hard by reunification when much of the old state-run enterprises were closed, there are other priorities. "The church is a now a social-cultural center," Patzelt added.<br />Even on Christmas, the church will remain dark or dimly lit. Only one religious service a year, an ecumenical one, is held in the Marienkirche, on New Year's Eve. "For the past 50 years, services have been held in another church, because the Marienkirche was in ruins for most of that time," Patzelt said. "The Marienkirche's altar and baptismal font were moved to the nearby Getraudenkirche. It is difficult to change things."<br />Meinung, the expert who is restoring the windows, seems resigned to this status quo. "It should mean so much to the people of Frankfurt an der Oder to have these windows on display again," she said. "It should encourage a sense of pride and identity."</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Bosnia lacks money to clear mines</strong><br />By William J. KoleThe Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />SARAJEVO: Muriz Jukic keeps reliving the day last winter when his tractor hit a land mine, unleashing shrapnel that tore out one of his eyes and left him stumbling and screaming.<br />"I dream about that flash and I wake up soaked in sweat," said Jukic, 43, who was wounded while gathering firewood near his home in Vitinica, a village in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.<br />Thirteen years after Bosnia's three-year war ended, mines are still claiming scores of victims. A closer look shows the problem is not that officials do not know where most of the explosives are buried, but they just cannot seem to scrape together enough cash to remove them.<br />Under an international treaty, Bosnia was supposed to be free of mines by next March. Instead, it has quietly obtained another decade to clear 220,000 remaining mines and other unexploded ordnance that pose a hidden menace to schoolchildren, farmers, hunters, hikers and woodsmen.<br />The authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the most mine-infested nation in Europe, acknowledge the problem. Take all the former front lines where most of the mines lurk, put them end to end and you would have a belt reaching more than a third of the way around the world.<br />Since the war ended, mines have inured 1,665 people, including 487 fatalities. This year, 19 people were killed and 18 others hurt.<br />Eliminating the threat "is not the impossible task we once thought it would be," said Sylvie Brigot, executive director of the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, based in Geneva. "It's possible to get rid of all these mines, provided there's a plan in place so funding is secured."<br />But a review of documents and interviews with senior officials coordinating the effort found that Bosnia was raising only about a third of the $50 million a year that Prime Minister Nikola Spiric said his impoverished nation needed to rid itself of mines by 2019.<br />Unlike many other crisis areas worldwide, where soldiers laid the mines and military records detail where they were buried, Bosnia must also grapple with "guerrilla minefields" where records are more sketchy, said Ahdin Orahovac, deputy director of the national Mine Action Center.<br />A typical record, he said, might indicate that there were three mines near an apple tree. But when officials scout for the spot, what was an orchard is now a forest, "and all we know is that somewhere there are three mines."<br />"It's the biggest problem in the world," said Orahovac, pointing to a large map covered with clusters of colored dots. Blue marks places that have been cleared. Red marks areas still mined. And there is a lot of red.<br />Salih Hadzic is among the people working to find the mines. Wearing a flak vest, a helmet with a protective visor and green cotton pants stained with soil, he sweeps a squawking metal detector over a hillside on the outskirts of Sarajevo.<br />"I have to concentrate; if I let my mind wander, it could be fatal," said Hadzic, who is forbidden to drink alcohol, goes to bed by 10 p.m. and works in painstakingly slow 30-minute intervals with mandatory breaks.<br />"But when I go home after work," he said, "I know I've conquered another couple of square yards where children can play and no one's going to get hurt or killed."</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Serb veterans from Kosovo war clash with police</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />BELGRADE, Serbia: About 1,000 Serbian veterans of the Kosovo war clashed Sunday with special police who prevented them from marching to the boundary with the breakaway region.<br />The ex-Yugoslav army reservists blocked a key regional road for several hours demanding back pay for their service in the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.<br />Serbian police said that six officers were hurt in the clashes and that four protesters were detained. Protest leader Dejan Milosevic reported ten protesters hurt.<br />The protesters also said they were seeking the release of two veterans imprisoned for war crimes in Kosovo. And Milosevic said the reservists were angered by the formation of Kosovo's armed forces and the naming of a former rebel fighter as the commander on Saturday.<br />The war in Kosovo erupted in 1998 when ethnic Albanian separatists launched a rebellion against Serbian rule. NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 to stop a crackdown by its troops .<br />Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February with Western backing. Serbia has refused to recognize the split even though it has had no control over Kosovo since 1999.</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Ceremonies mark 20th anniversary of Lockerbie disaster<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />LONDON: The Scottish town of Lockerbie on Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people.<br />More than 150 people attended a wreath-laying ceremony Sunday at Dryfesdale Cemetery in Lockerbie, which features a memorial stone for those who died. Two churches in the area held services to coincide with the anniversary of the moment the plane came down, just after 1900 GMT on Dec. 21, 1988. Services were also held at Heathrow Airport near London and at Syracuse University in New York and Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.<br />All 259 people on board the flight from Heathrow to New York were killed when a bomb exploded while the plane flew over Lockerbie. Eleven people on the ground also died.<br />A Libyan secret service agent, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, is the sole person to have been convicted of the bombing, but he has won the right to appeal against his January 2001 conviction by successfully convincing judges that a "miscarriage of justice" may have occurred during his trial.<br />Megrahi, who is suffering from incurable prostate cancer, is due to have his appeal heard next year.<br />The Lockerbie bombing drove relations between Libya and the West to a breaking point. But the dynamics of the case have changed since Muammar el-Qaddafi engineered a rapprochement with the West in the dangerous times following the attacks of Sept 11, 2001.<br />Qaddafi, a self-styled revolutionary leader who once seemed to thrive on confrontation, has renounced terrorism and voluntarily dismantled his clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons.<br />Britain, the United States and Libya are now publicly committed to working together to contain the threat of international terrorism. Libya has paid billions of dollars to the families of Lockerbie victims and has accepted "general responsibility" for the attack.<br />U.S. officials, and the families involved, said in November that Libya had made the final compensation payments. Since then, Libya has started restoring diplomatic ties with Britain and the United States and United Nations sanctions on Libya have been lifted.<br />But if much of the political fallout from the Lockerbie air disaster has been resolved, doubts remain about who was behind the explosion 20 years ago Sunday in the skies above Scotland.<br />Some of the victims' families are still not convinced that Megrahi, 56, is to blame for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The Reverend John Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter Helga was killed on the flight, attended all but one week of Megrahi's nine-month trial before deciding the Libyan was probably not responsible.<br />"I came away from the court 85 percent convinced he did not do it, based on the evidence I heard," said Mosey, from Cumbria, England. "He was convicted on circumstantial evidence and not beyond all reasonable doubt."<br />Mosey is putting his faith in the appeal set to be heard next year - if Megrahi lives that long. The prisoner is suffering from incurable prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of his body, but his lawyer's bid to free him on humanitarian grounds has failed.<br />Mosey thinks the bombing may have been carried out by a Palestinian organization backed by Syria and Iran, as many believed in the immediate aftermath. He thinks the focus was shifted to Libya - an archenemy of then-President Ronald Reagan - for political reasons.<br />"Sadly, I believe there is not the political will to catch the real perpetrators and this terrible case will remain unsolved," he said.<br />Megrahi was granted a new appeal in June 2007, after his lawyers claimed British and U.S. authorities tampered with evidence, disregarded witness statements and steered investigators away from suggestions the bombing was an Iranian-financed plot carried out by Palestinians to avenge the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by U.S. forces several months earlier.<br />In a statement summarizing its 800-page report, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it had found new evidence that led its members to believe "that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."<br />That view is rejected by almost all of the Americans who lost family members in the explosion, said Kara Weipz of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, whose late brother was on board.<br />"Most people absolutely, unequivocally believe it was al-Megrahi," said Weipz, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group. "His guilt was never in doubt."<br />The Palestinian groups suspected of being involved have steadfastly denied any link to the plot.</div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div> </div><div><strong>New "Chemical Ali" trial begins<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />HALABJA, Iraq: Hundreds of Iraqi minority Kurds demanded on Sunday the execution of a Saddam-era official known as 'Chemical Ali' for the killing of 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 gas attack.<br />Ali Hassan al-Majeed, a Sunni Arab who was Saddam's cousin and a member of his inner circle, has already been sentenced to death twice, once in 2007 for his role in killing tens of thousands of Kurds in Saddam's military 'Anfal' campaign.<br />Majeed and three other high-ranking officials accused of mounting attacks on civilians appeared at Iraq's High Tribunal at the opening of a trial for the March 1988 attack.<br />Prosecutors described how relatives of 483 plaintiffs were gassed to death in the Kurdish border town of Halabja.<br />Majeed's second death sentence came this month for his part in crushing a Shi'ite revolt after the 1991 Gulf War.<br />Disputes within the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, however, have so far stalled Majeed's execution.<br />In Halabja, more than 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Baghdad, hundreds of Kurds waved banners and shouted for Majeed and his fellow defendants to be executed.<br />"We ask the court to execute Chemical Ali and to heal the wounds he caused by gassing our beloved," said Shereen Hassan, a Halabja housewife who took part in the protest.<br />"I will never rest until I see him hanged," said Peshtwan Qader.<br />At the time of the massacre, Iraq had been at war with Iran for almost eight years, and Saddam's government alleged Halabja residents were aiding Kurdish militants and siding with Iran.<br />Fouad Saleh, the town's mayor, urged the Iraqi government to pay victims' families compensation.<br />Majeed's Halabja trial will be headed by Judge Mohammed al-Uraibi, a Shi'ite jurist who also headed Majeed's first two trials, a court spokesman said.<br />Also charged in the case are Sultan Hashem, a former defence minister, and two intelligence officers. All the defendants are already facing life sentences or execution.<br />Majeed has been held in a U.S. detention centre but is due like thousands of other detainees to be handed over to the Iraqi government under a security pact taking effect on January 1. U.S. military officials in Baghdad on Sunday could not immediately confirm whether Majeed was still in their custody.<br />(Reporting by Sherko Raouf in Halabja and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Missy Ryan; Editing by Michael Christie)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY-zMVHuhr4lmCLbJ2bGxde3RgOLsCNeZM8V61LLZuc6mhFL8dFybiwJQI5sXrT9DI1vwaDzQjLM_IS9MInfxnpTLoGEvaJyCAXS7C2t3X1WwaSBlEWWBnwU_xRByhkP1odlTnngD4t7c/s1600-h/DSC03954.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469780590828162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY-zMVHuhr4lmCLbJ2bGxde3RgOLsCNeZM8V61LLZuc6mhFL8dFybiwJQI5sXrT9DI1vwaDzQjLM_IS9MInfxnpTLoGEvaJyCAXS7C2t3X1WwaSBlEWWBnwU_xRByhkP1odlTnngD4t7c/s320/DSC03954.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvH0wgT5Q0RfKQPRl6T8cpG1eK6xjipc2-m0rPwj0s7CtGBNJCYkrj_Qw-J71iPei5l7rcVJJxF2d19fnevrBUh714Y7wGSIJMq-EneA4dmMlShC2glQ8NDQRoxVFOe6tltAHnws4YS_0/s1600-h/DSC03956.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469776358322738" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvH0wgT5Q0RfKQPRl6T8cpG1eK6xjipc2-m0rPwj0s7CtGBNJCYkrj_Qw-J71iPei5l7rcVJJxF2d19fnevrBUh714Y7wGSIJMq-EneA4dmMlShC2glQ8NDQRoxVFOe6tltAHnws4YS_0/s320/DSC03956.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Philip Seymour Hoffman: Called to serve on stage and screen</strong><br />By Lynn Hirschberg<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />When he was 12 years old, Philip Seymour Hoffman saw a local production of "All My Sons" near his home in Rochester, New York, and it was, for him, one of those rare, life-altering events where, at an impressionable age, you catch a glimpse of another reality, a world that you never imagined possible.<br />"I literally thought, I can't believe this exists," Hoffman told me on a gray day in London early in the fall. He was sitting in the fifth row of the audience at Trafalgar Studios in the West End, where he was directing "Riflemind" (a play about an '80s rock band that may or may not reunite after 20 years), dressed in long brown cargo shorts, a stretched-out polo shirt and Converse sneakers without socks. His blond hair, still damp from showering, was standing in soft peaks on his head.<br />At times, especially when he is in or around or anywhere near a theater, Hoffman, who is 41, can seem like an eager college student - bounding from seat to stage to give direction, laughing at an in-joke regarding a prop that keeps disappearing - but when the conversation shifts to a discussion of his acting in movies like "Capote," for which he deservedly won every award that's been invented, or "Doubt," out this month, he seems to turn inward and ages markedly.<br />"The drama nerd comes out in me when I'm in a theater," he explained now, as the actors rehearsed. "When I saw 'All My Sons,' I was changed - permanently changed - by that experience. It was like a miracle to me. But that deep kind of love comes at a price: For me, acting is torturous, and it's torturous because you know it's a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That's beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great - well, that's absolutely torturous."<br />Hoffman turned his attention to the stage, where two actors were rehearsing a sex scene. He jumped out of his seat and ran to the stage. He proceeded to correct the scene. He bent the actress back over a couch and metamorphosed into a desperate character, the former manager of the band, driven by the hope of sudden riches and his lust for the guitar player's wife. He played just enough of the scene and, then, he switched back to being Phil, the regular guy in the baggy shorts. It was stunning.<br />"I don't know how he does it," Mike Nichols, who has directed Hoffman on the stage ("The Seagull") and in movies ("Charlie Wilson's War"), told me later. "Again and again, he can truly become someone I've not seen before but can still instantly recognize. Sometimes Phil loses some weight, and he may dye his hair but, really, it's just the same Phil, and yet, he's never the same person from part to part. Last year, he did three films - 'The Savages,' 'Charlie Wilson's War' and 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead' - and in each one he was a distinct and entirely different human.<br />"It's that humanity that is so striking - when you watch Phil work, his entire constitution seems to change. He may look like Phil, but there's something different in his eyes. And that means he's reconstituted himself from within, willfully rearranging his molecules to become another human being."<br />From his first roles in movies like "Scent of a Woman," in which he played a villainous prep-school student, to the lovesick Scotty J. in "Boogie Nights," to the passionate and ornery rock critic Lester Bangs in "Almost Famous," Hoffman has imbued all his characters with a combination of the familiar and the unique. It's not easy; it's the sort of acting that requires enormous range, as well as a kind of stubborn determination and a profound lack of vanity.<br />Hoffman works a lot - he's a very active co-artistic director of the LAByrinth Theater Company, a multicultural collective in New York that specializes in new American plays. LAB mounted five productions last year, thanks in large part to Hoffman's diligent involvement with every aspect of the process, from fund-raising to directing to acting.<br />In his 17-year-long career, Hoffman has also made more than 40 films, including "Doubt," for which he has been nominated for a Golden Globe as best supporting actor, and "Synecdoche, New York," which was also released this year. He has a movie coming out next spring, "The Boat That Rocked," in which he plays a D.J., and he lent his voice to "Mary and Max," which has just been chosen to open the Sundance Film Festival.<br />In "Doubt," which was originally a play, Hoffman is a Catholic priest who may or may not have been inappropriate with a young male student. He is suspected and accused by the principal of the parish school, a nun named Sister Aloysius, played by Meryl Streep.<br />As usual Hoffman struggled with the character. "On every film, you'll have nights where you wake up at 2 in the morning and think, I'm awful in this," he said while the cast of "Riflemind" took a break between the first act and the second. "You see how delicate it is - a little movement to the right or the left, and you're hopelessly hokey."<br />The film revolves around the question of the priest's culpability, but that is not what mattered to Hoffman. Hoffman plays the priest as a reformer, a man interested in a more philosophical and tolerant approach to religion. Since playing the role, he has been asked repeatedly if Flynn "did it." He won't answer.<br />"I wouldn't ever say whether the priest is innocent or guilty because I saw 'Doubt' as being about something larger," Hoffman said. "What's so essential about this movie is our desire to be certain about something and say, This is what I believe is right, wrong, black, white. That's it. To feel confident that you can wake up and live your day and be proud instead of living in what's really true, which is the whole mess that the world is. The world is hard, and John is saying that being a human on this earth is a complicated, messy thing."<br />We met over lunch the next day at a hotel called One Aldwych, which was near the theater. He was wearing khaki pants and a windbreaker, and he was carrying a worn paperback copy of "Othello." He will portray Iago in a new production of the play next year, directed by the avant-garde theater and opera director Peter Sellars. Othello will be played by John Ortiz, Hoffman's friend and a founding member of LAB, which will be affiliated with the production.<br />When you sit across from him, it is difficult to imagine Hoffman playing anyone as angry and diabolical as Iago. With his pale, lightly freckled skin, blue eyes and solid build, he looks more like an avuncular scholar than a military man (or a priest or ...). His demeanor and appearance are so fundamentally regular that it seems impossible that he has played such a vast array of anything-but-regular characters.<br />And Hoffman is adept at getting beyond the merely physical embodiment of a role. In his work, Hoffman is willing to be ugly, pimpled, sexually scarred, miserably unhappy, fleshy and naked. He is never hesitant to reveal the soft underbelly - the insecurities, the (perhaps humiliating) desires, the longing.<br />"I'm much more vain in my life than I am when I'm working," he said as the food arrived. "I wish I looked different as Phil walking around or Phil waking up. I'm going to be 41, and I'll go to the bathroom and get a good glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I'm like, What happened? All youth has left me for good. That fear that makes people crazy will strike me at those moments. But when I'm working, I'm grateful for the way I look. I'm grateful for the fact that I have a body with which I can do what I need to do and I can come off as ... anybody."<br />The son of a Xerox employee and a lawyer ("My mother is crazy about my career - she goes to the festivals and comes to the play readings"), Hoffman was the second youngest of four kids. He was raised Catholic.<br />In 1984, when he was nearly 17, Hoffman auditioned and was chosen to attend the New York State Summer School of the Arts, a highly selective program in Saratoga Springs. There, he and Bennett Miller, who directed Hoffman in "Capote," became great friends. Later they were both accepted to New York University.<br />In 1991, when Hoffman was 24, he was cast in the Al Pacino film "Scent of a Woman" as the prep-school student who betrays his classmate, the lead character. "That's when I first noticed Phil," Nichols said. "He summed up all the ways those boarding-school bullies were scary. There is something deeply ethical about Phil as an actor that was apparent even then - he has the integrity and commitment to represent his characters without any judgment."<br />Paul Thomas Anderson also admired Hoffman's performance in "Scent of a Woman." He then wrote a part for Hoffman in "Boogie Nights" and, later, in "Magnolia" and cast him in "Punch-Drunk Love." Those supporting roles - a repressed film-crew member in love with a porn star, a saintly hospice nurse, a menacing proprietor of a phone-sex operation - became part of Hoffman's collection of precisely drawn, scene-stealing characters.<br />"I remember seeing Philip in 'The Talented Mr. Ripley,"' Streep told me. "He played a rich, spoiled snob, and I sat up straight in my seat and said, 'Who is that?' I thought to myself: My God, this actor is fearless. He's done what we all strive for - he's given this awful character the respect he deserves, and he's made him fascinating."<br />Hoffman's role in "Mr. Ripley" was Freddie Miles, a close friend of the golden-boy protagonist, whom Hoffman played as a somewhat boorish, future captain of industry living in a constant state of plush pleasure.<br />Unlike Freddie, however, most of Hoffman's characters have been profoundly vulnerable, often disenfranchised misfits. In Todd Solondz's "Happiness," for example, he played Allen, an insecure man who masturbates while making obscene phone calls.<br />"Around 2004," Bennett Miller said, "Phil was where Truman Capote was in his life before he wrote 'In Cold Blood.' He was respected by everyone, but he hadn't fulfilled his true potential on film."<br />Capote was a dramatic departure for Hoffman. Not only is he in nearly every frame of the movie, but the man was entirely contradictory - he was charismatic but an outsider; always watchful but loved a party; inordinately talented but competitive to a fault. Capote was seductive, manipulative, insecure, dishonest and ruthless. It intrigued Hoffman that Capote was very successful but a bit lost and, like him, wasn't sure which path to take. Strangely, "Capote" was Hoffman's "In Cold Blood," the project that changed everything.<br />"Playing Capote took a lot of concentration," Hoffman said now. "I prepared for four and a half months. ... The part required me to be a little unbalanced, and that wasn't really good for my mental health. It was also a technically difficult part. Because I was holding my body in a way it doesn't want to be held and because I was speaking in a voice that my vocal cords did not want to do, I had to stay in character all day. Otherwise, I would give my body the chance to bail on me."<br />Three months after Hoffman returned from London, on a freezing Friday night in early December, he was standing in front of the Public Theater in the East Village of Manhattan smoking a cigarette. He was there to see an early staging of "Philip Roth in Khartoum," a new play by David Bar Katz that LAByrinth is producing.<br />In September, "Riflemind" had opened in London to stinging reviews, even if Hoffman's direction was noted with less vitriol. He then returned to New York, where he lives downtown with Mimi O'Donnell and their son, Cooper, and daughter, Tallulah, in time for the birth of their third child - a girl named Willa - in late October. "It's three kids now and I'm very tired," Hoffman said. "I'm a little lost in my brain."<br />Hoffman has always been attracted to the idea of an artistic community, particularly in the theater, which is part of why he is so attached to LAB. He met Mimi, a costume designer who has recently begun directing, at LAB ("I hired her," Hoffman joked), and the company members are some of his closest friends.<br />There are few other Academy Award-winning actors who have devoted themselves to the full-time running of a theater company. "It sounds noble, but it's really not," Hoffman said. "I do this because it gives me a home, a place where I can come and work. The movies are great, but they require a different kind of concentration, and then they're over. Theater was my first love, and it's been the biggest influence on my life. The theater is why I got into acting and why I'm still in acting."<br />Let's hope that Hoffman doesn't give up his film career. "I heard that (Clint) Eastwood is saying that this will be his last film as an actor," Hoffman said. "There's part of me that feels that way during almost every movie. On 'Synecdoche,' I paid a price. I went to the office and punched my card in, and I thought about a lot of things, and some of them involved losing myself. You try to be artful for the film, but it's hard. I'd finish a scene, walk right off the set, go in the bathroom, close the door and just take some breaths to regain my composure. In the end, I'm grateful to feel something so deeply, and I'm also grateful that it's over." He smiled. "And that's my life."<br />Lynn Hirschberg is editor at large for The New York Times Magazine.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTJw1bPD_fZcJxq8tQKO-HGhF55Xu3C7PX3kdcwHFRYQDBzKTyM135DiWXq93BRMcwNq6NWSc5OS_SdGP1i6cs82iba2j-ja14Zm-nDCkGDEIrh7pAGh0faPlxS63u-nPXLHBIf-clNJk/s1600-h/DSC03957.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469768647872962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTJw1bPD_fZcJxq8tQKO-HGhF55Xu3C7PX3kdcwHFRYQDBzKTyM135DiWXq93BRMcwNq6NWSc5OS_SdGP1i6cs82iba2j-ja14Zm-nDCkGDEIrh7pAGh0faPlxS63u-nPXLHBIf-clNJk/s320/DSC03957.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqe_0y4I286l9TrfCQZWkcsPQMcCnYFkkPAopoUjsbVekGU2D8zik8ch2GrPmafkR9HU4qGJrjU7I5u_P5KgdTV5CZFba8MejaOxp4Jb8pBvMU84OGudAAS7IP5UTZVLDbzeOmjFaFwOY/s1600-h/DSC03958.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469437995308978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqe_0y4I286l9TrfCQZWkcsPQMcCnYFkkPAopoUjsbVekGU2D8zik8ch2GrPmafkR9HU4qGJrjU7I5u_P5KgdTV5CZFba8MejaOxp4Jb8pBvMU84OGudAAS7IP5UTZVLDbzeOmjFaFwOY/s320/DSC03958.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-kFq4HO0RlfyuG1N4VCkBDioq7eL9IGwYNk4cFVHsy_aFgW9hpXkIwxQZBWfooPCgN8y-9IfSmuUwTvPb4pdk8YOWoSq2PzrkczTP_NAhRWKX1q9zrKAqIYJzCda-EtpdC-kv8rdQFSo/s1600-h/DSC03959.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469439456817890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-kFq4HO0RlfyuG1N4VCkBDioq7eL9IGwYNk4cFVHsy_aFgW9hpXkIwxQZBWfooPCgN8y-9IfSmuUwTvPb4pdk8YOWoSq2PzrkczTP_NAhRWKX1q9zrKAqIYJzCda-EtpdC-kv8rdQFSo/s320/DSC03959.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoTVk9b_o1zTKAmVkekzAm72NrVjm2Prk0UNNVOP-DqBQD5cWAX3WRz09w_Mstq3LRMcax0JIeTb41QYMvmLqtAGITUCiF08LEsyYWq8kVatEO8pFZVGbyvxXdqOcaUDa-q8iTkxveGkY/s1600-h/DSC03961.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469436191690930" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoTVk9b_o1zTKAmVkekzAm72NrVjm2Prk0UNNVOP-DqBQD5cWAX3WRz09w_Mstq3LRMcax0JIeTb41QYMvmLqtAGITUCiF08LEsyYWq8kVatEO8pFZVGbyvxXdqOcaUDa-q8iTkxveGkY/s320/DSC03961.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>In the face of loss, celebrating ties that bind</strong><br />By A. O. Scott<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />A year ago the big crisis in the film world which always has to be in some crisis or another was a glut of movies. Last December my colleagues and I feared we would crack under the strain of winnowing more than 600 releases into lists of 10. Filmmakers and studio executives, meanwhile, worried that so many pictures crowding into theaters would overwhelm the audience and cripple the business.<br />Now, at the end of 2008, all signs point to a future of scarcity, a bleak and blighted landscape that has already begun to materialize around us. There are fewer companies putting out movies and fewer salaried critics writing about those movies than there were a year ago, and the attrition is sure to continue. But there are not, or not yet, fewer movies demanding attention. This year new films arrived on New York screens at the rate of more than 50 per month. By Dec. 31 the annual tally of film reviews published in The New York Times will once again exceed 600.<br />The problem, though, is not a surfeit of movies. Honestly, how could there be too many movies? The problem is that too many of them are the wrong movies. The box office may have remained robust, but all year the enterprise of moviemaking and the practice of movie watching have been shadowed by fatigue and irrelevance. This was not entirely the fault of the Hollywood studios and their somewhat beleaguered specialty divisions, which continue to exert a near-monopolistic hold on what is shown in American multiplexes and art houses. It was awfully hard for any scripted spectacle to compete with an election that was at once a hugely consequential political event and a nonstop media bonanza. And no blockbuster could match the slow-motion, real-life disaster epic of a collapsing economy, a horror show that has kept most of us queasy, riveted and in a perpetual state of anxious suspense.<br />Such unexpected competition from real life, however, serves only to emphasize the shortcomings of mainstream moviemaking, which runs more and more on caution, complacency and the willingness to turn any fresh idea into a marketing formula. I'm not thinking only, or primarily, of the puerile comedies and comic book spectaculars of summer, but rather of the somber and polished dramas that arrive in the waning weeks of the year as a stimulus package for Oscar-campaign publicists.<br />"Doubt," "The Reader," "Frost/Nixon," "Revolutionary Road" all of these transplants from stage or page are impeccably acted, exquisitely production-designed excursions into the recent past. And each one is a hermetically sealed melodrama of received thinking, feverishly advancing a set of themes that are the very opposite of provocative. The suburbs are hell on earth. Richard Nixon was a monster. Literature is good for you. Religious authority is bad. The Nazis too. Kate Winslet is hot.<br />Why argue? And, for all the shouting and finger pointing that goes on in these films, they exist to be admired, not argued about or with. The interesting movie debates of 2008 were incited by the populist entertainments of summertime, "Wall-E" and "The Dark Knight," contrasting allegories pitched at the anxieties of the moment. Curiously enough, the makers of "Wall-E" took it upon themselves to deny that the film was a parable of environmental devastation as well as a disarmingly sweet love story, while some who commented on "The Dark Knight" pushed the allegorical interpretation as far as it would go, reading the film as a cloaked apologia for unless it was a veiled critique of President George W. Bush and his policies.<br />That was perhaps a bit much, but "The Dark Knight" did bring some of the central preoccupations of Bush-era filmmaking to a grim, lustrous apotheosis. For most of the past seven years the actual, political contours of the post-9/11 world have been left mainly to documentarians, while the realm of pop-culture fantasy has bloomed with poisonous flowers of grief, vengeance and dread. Christopher Nolan's second exploration of the Batman mythos was a cartoon opera of good and evil, solemn enough to seem important, but vague enough to avoid the risk of overt topicality.<br />Its glum, masochistic exploration of terror and vigilantism was artful, but also seemed strategically incoherent, its central moral question what kind of hero do we need? posed with more grandiosity than insight. And by year's end the central standoff between a mournful, angry avenger and a figure of pure anarchic malice has taken on the fusty air of cliché. In due course Max Payne and the Punisher came to collect their brutal payback, joining a vigilante army that even managed to conscript poor James Bond, once the avatar of puckish, British political heroism.<br />But at least he survived, and may recover his sense of humor in time for Bond 23. That makes him one of the lucky few, since the only theme more pervasive than vengeance this year was martyrdom. I would spoil the whole month of December if I listed the movies that end with the main character's embrace of death, frequently in an uncompromising, implicitly self-aggrandizing act of sacrifice.<br />But somehow all this messianism and overblown superheroism rings false, both within individual films and out here in the rumpled, stressed-out, hopeful, uneasy world where movies live. Who will save us? Whom should we kill? These don't strike me as the most useful questions right now, and they are generally not the kind posed by the films I found most challenging and interesting this year, which in general were less concerned with moral abstractions than with ethical predicaments.<br />Consider Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky" and Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy," each one about a woman making her way in an indifferent and sometimes hostile world. Poppy and Wendy are mirror images (Wendy being decidedly unhappy and unlucky), difficult people who challenge the people around them, and the audience, to care. And while neither film has an overtly political message, each implicitly challenges us to think about what how the world as presently organized constrains and limits our impulses toward compassion, generosity and fellow feeling.<br />These impulses are easily sentimentalized of course. And while I am suspicious of easy affirmation or forced happy endings, I am nonetheless grateful for movies that, in spite of everything, investigate the possibility of hope. The 10 movies listed below are not all expressions of optimism, but they are all about the obligations, responsibilities and accidents that bind people together, within and across formally constituted families and communities. And they are also about the refusal to give up, to give in to darkness or despair. These are movies, as Harvey Milk might put it, about various kinds of "us-es" about how fragile such connections can be and about how necessary they are. In the year to come we will need more movies like them.<br />WALL-E The visual sublimity of Andrew Stanton's latest Pixar masterpiece is matched by a depth and sweetness of feeling not seen since the heyday of Charlie Chaplin. I don't know why it seems so fitting that the year's most humane hero should be a robot, or that its most tender love story should involve a romance between two soulful machines.<br />SILENT LIGHT Another otherwordly love story, this one set in a Mennonite settlement in Mexico. The director, Carlos Reygadas, photographs people and landscapes with a devotion as deep as the spiritual conviction that is his subject. Rarely has a film depicted religious experience with such power and clarity, bringing the audience uncannily, exaltingly close to a state of holiness.<br />THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN Abdellatif Kechiche's long, warm, bustling couscous epic, set among mainly second-generation North African immigrants in a sagging French port city, is both the best family drama in a year filled with them and the best of a dazzling and diverse crop of French movies released in America in 2008.<br />MAN ON WIRE Part true-crime story, part elegy, James Marsh's documentary about Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope dance between the towers of the World Trade Center is like found poetry: beautiful, charming and hauntingly strange.<br />THE EDGE OF HEAVEN Fatih Akin, a German director of Turkish descent, explores the complicated links between his two homelands in this knotty, moving drama of converging destinies and chance encounters.<br />HAPPY-GO-LUCKY As Poppy, Sally Hawkins is like a flesh-and-blood, female Wall-E: hard-working, steadfast, compulsive, perhaps slightly annoying and capable, by dint of sheer decency and determination, of saving humanity from its worst impulses.<br />WENDY AND LUCY This tiny sliver of a story a girl, traveling to Alaska with her dog, runs into trouble somewhere in Oregon is heartbreaking and resonant, an intimation of hard times coming and a sad, sober assessment of just how alone each of us may be in facing them.<br />MILK In Gus Van Sant's accessible, intelligent biography, Harvey Milk, the San Francisco gay rights activist and city supervisor assassinated along with the city's mayor in 1978, is not a martyr or a saint, but rather an excitable, passionate champion of dignity and freedom. Let "Che" fight it out with "W" for a distant second place. This is the best political film of the year.<br />RACHEL GETTING MARRIED The addiction story may feel a little familiar, but Jonathan Demme's sprawling family-therapy wedding blowout is bracing for the window it offers into a mixed-up, multi-everything America that has existed, up to now, just about everywhere except in our movies and our politics.<br />CADILLAC RECORDS Joy and pain; rhythm and blues; blacks and Jews. Darnell Martin's group portrait of the Chess Record label is a smart and insightful history lesson, and you can dance to it too.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfIgRdX3WFFXSj6I6qjRLFOQeFJIHZJ_dqqTnbZq3LvNUAeDkiNhnoX2QXpNvONrUAIkbryDY4zTVOhBCCVcywMsOKTzOgblG-7thkS0xAyu4RSZ3O31OoWxEZ65OZ0GLlLdyVcgjpTN0/s1600-h/DSC03963.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469425377531234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 191px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfIgRdX3WFFXSj6I6qjRLFOQeFJIHZJ_dqqTnbZq3LvNUAeDkiNhnoX2QXpNvONrUAIkbryDY4zTVOhBCCVcywMsOKTzOgblG-7thkS0xAyu4RSZ3O31OoWxEZ65OZ0GLlLdyVcgjpTN0/s320/DSC03963.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE3YNQujrVqvySYnyujagj6ItDpk76hX19RSZfiIRw1Z-IGyoshmKyDcvOUzLDCXTgtVy-OQunrNQM4clKiy_6hC02GgkP9I2aVNGx2wmhSsyzw6BKp32dhSKNo4TsEZHdDbcYmE08Y5E/s1600-h/DSC03964.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469425289561874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 195px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE3YNQujrVqvySYnyujagj6ItDpk76hX19RSZfiIRw1Z-IGyoshmKyDcvOUzLDCXTgtVy-OQunrNQM4clKiy_6hC02GgkP9I2aVNGx2wmhSsyzw6BKp32dhSKNo4TsEZHdDbcYmE08Y5E/s320/DSC03964.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN0F5v9QxzWIlZ6HgyGFEbX5szLPT5d2zLYNnS_Mhb-kCiNPZ8f0C7kQGDpQiPU0hm6A2bdHTx7izNVvETB0vgMWUc8wxjZ9Jq8GMu5F0j-DK084wbaqbIQpPqZuiRIp59xMwXU_YfwXo/s1600-h/DSC03970.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469147188324178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 257px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN0F5v9QxzWIlZ6HgyGFEbX5szLPT5d2zLYNnS_Mhb-kCiNPZ8f0C7kQGDpQiPU0hm6A2bdHTx7izNVvETB0vgMWUc8wxjZ9Jq8GMu5F0j-DK084wbaqbIQpPqZuiRIp59xMwXU_YfwXo/s320/DSC03970.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>BOOK REVIEW</strong></div><div><strong>Book Reviews: "Songs for the Missing"<br /></strong>Reviewed by Erica Wagner<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008</div><div>Songs for the Missing By Stewart O'Nan 287 pages. Viking. $25.95.<br />We call it ordinary life. It's low down on the news agenda, for the most part; but hidden on the inside pages of a newspaper there are always, somewhere, single paragraphs that hint at the dread and wonder from which we are built. A house fire, a car accident, a death accidental or intentional. Our eyes pass over the words in an instant; but for those whom the words actually touch, the world shifts forever on its axis.<br />Over the course of 11 previous works of fiction, Stewart O'Nan has lent the quiet grace of his writing to these lives. "Songs for the Missing" begins in the summer of 2005, with Kim, a small-town Ohio girl, who's just finished her last year of high school and is working a summer job and hanging out with her friends before leaving for college and a whole new start. Kim helps her 15-year-old sister, Lindsay, learn to drive; later, she's pulled over for speeding as she goes to meet her boyfriend, J.P., and they hang out by the river before she heads off to get ready for her afternoon shift at the Conoco. But she doesn't show up for work; in the morning her room hasn't been slept in. She vanishes, it would seem, from the face of the earth. That's Chapter 1. The rest of the novel's generous, thoughtful narrative traces the impact of her disappearance on her family, her friends, her community. This is a novel about loss and healing; a novel that acknowledges the depth of loss and the limits of healing.<br />Kim's dad, Ed Larsen, sells real estate in a market going down the tubes. Her mother, Fran, works at the local hospital. There's Lindsay and their dog, Cooper. None of them, of course, could have anticipated an event like Kim's disappearance, and part of O'Nan's skill is the way in which he makes circumstances that might otherwise seem predictable (that the police are interested in the case but never quite interested enough, that Lindsay both longs for and resents her vanished sister) feel as unpredictable as if they were happening, in real time, to the reader. This is where fiction like O'Nan's trumps those brief paragraphs of journalistic "reality." The Larsens' shattered universe lives and breathes.<br />You could call this novel many things. You could call it a mystery. You could call it a thriller. You could even call it a self-help book, for reading it slowly and carefully causes one to consider love and sorrow in a much larger context than simply that of this well-paced tale. O'Nan has a remarkable ability to pinpoint the ways in which hope and suffering are intertwined - and he does this while shifting easily between the viewpoints of his characters, so smoothly that the joints are invisible, yet so clearly that the reader is never lost. Each voice is distinct, and distinctly alive.<br />Sadness can throw up walls around those who feel it; but O'Nan opens doors to that sorrow. Not only to sadness, but to strange, frightening glimmers of contentment too. When Kim has been gone for more than a year, Ed and Fran go fishing together; fishing is Ed's inner temple, while Fran's has been devoting herself to the search for Kim, updating the Web site, getting nationwide coverage of her daughter's disappearance. The scene when the two of them leave together at dawn to sit in a small boat on the lake in the fog, trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to catch bass, is one of minor redemption. Such moments are rarely noticed in our lives, and they don't have the power to heal any great ills. And yet they have power, all the same<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqntbsiOabqGDBsbXe63UHHUcX57uUFxl0AczZoTcQ8WANjtJQwkbcvZjLr3lagkCBo20P3e-pXhElyjpJ4V8dc2Mzl5QklHJSB1O0oUREXLoy2IXf6BYwJpgYWZ2nLGfZ6_zPfLg0UU/s1600-h/DSC03971.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469143476927858" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 227px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqntbsiOabqGDBsbXe63UHHUcX57uUFxl0AczZoTcQ8WANjtJQwkbcvZjLr3lagkCBo20P3e-pXhElyjpJ4V8dc2Mzl5QklHJSB1O0oUREXLoy2IXf6BYwJpgYWZ2nLGfZ6_zPfLg0UU/s320/DSC03971.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAIH1KPGveMPWlYfdH-sLPO8Na7cFjsJwMUqkpqcdUOKdVj_8vyn7waUVEH5dFz75iRTaDyWneHUBUDi1S16_JFqmGv7WYQWPn96ydHRaFtbIrY5YAfVTRMxCYS54uEeAVhJXU4d9PiYg/s1600-h/DSC03972.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469142016139970" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 275px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAIH1KPGveMPWlYfdH-sLPO8Na7cFjsJwMUqkpqcdUOKdVj_8vyn7waUVEH5dFz75iRTaDyWneHUBUDi1S16_JFqmGv7WYQWPn96ydHRaFtbIrY5YAfVTRMxCYS54uEeAVhJXU4d9PiYg/s320/DSC03972.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Australian Navy, doctors complete complex rescue of Vendee Globe sailor<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />PERTH, Australia : The Australian Navy and medical officials say the rescue of a French sailor in a round-the-world race was one of the most physically demanding they had ever completed.<br />French yachtsman Yann Elies was rescued Saturday from his boat 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) south of Perth after breaking his left thighbone during the Vendee Globe round-the-world race on Thursday.<br />Elies had not had any pain relief for 48 hours until Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) doctor David McIlroy and officers from HMAS Arunta boarded his yacht on Saturday.<br />RFDS medical director Stephen Langford said Sunday that McIlroy had described the rescue as "probably the most exciting but also most physically demanding rescue he's ever done."<br />"The thing that's different to this rescue compared to (the rescues of racing sailors) Isabelle Autissier and Tony Bullimore and those guys is that they were effectively ... fully-abled sailors who were being rescued from vessels that had broken," Langford said.<br />"Whereas in this case you're actually trying to take someone off who is ... seriously injured and are unable to help clamber off the boat themselves and that made it all the more difficult."<br />British sailor Bullimore was rescued in 1997 and French yachtswoman Autissier in 1999 in two Australian Navy missions in the South Pacific Ocean during round-the-world races.<br />The Vendee Globe Web site said Elies was diagnosed with a fractured left femur and several broken ribs.<br />"In those sorts of conditions, really cramped, the boat banging around and he was trying to put in an anesthetic block to block the nerves in the yachtsman's leg to take away some of the pain, and then put some IV fluids in and some other pain relief," Langford said.<br />"They ... managed to splint his leg and get him in to a rescue stretcher and then had to transfer that stretcher across from the yacht to the inflatable boats with lines on each end. That's a difficult sort of thing."<br />Local media reported that the Arunta was due to dock in Fremantle south of Perth on Monday.<br />Fellow competitor Marc Guillemot had changed his course to assist Elies, sailing past his stern to hurl water and medicine aboard his yacht on Friday. Guillemot stayed nearby until the rescue ship arrived.<br />"It was like a dream. It didn't seem real," Guillemot said. "They took care of that magnificently."<br />Sam Davies, skippering Roxy, had also left the race to assist Generali, but both he and Guillemot will now resume the competition.<br />The Vendee, a single-handed race for men and women without any stopovers, set off from Les Sables d'Olonne on Nov. 9.<br />Thirty Open 60 race boats - high-tech carbon-fiber yachts built to be fast yet tough - began the race, but more than a third of the fleet has been forced to retire less than halfway into the race.<br />The Vendee takes the fleet around the three great capes - the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn - marking the southern tips of Africa, Australia and South America.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_dVsd1wdlPOEn0I_1uJZLUjtiqx0P23ZihL4T8BZzQF3zMqLk-hpGaRtn1uvPd-JKui9gSOHjg9Gl38809PKfu-xJtWr0exjdUKWCUn6KPsmLsIG_DqKKPkYgPy0XMBSozwB6TywuTQg/s1600-h/DSC03973.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469141748781714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_dVsd1wdlPOEn0I_1uJZLUjtiqx0P23ZihL4T8BZzQF3zMqLk-hpGaRtn1uvPd-JKui9gSOHjg9Gl38809PKfu-xJtWr0exjdUKWCUn6KPsmLsIG_DqKKPkYgPy0XMBSozwB6TywuTQg/s320/DSC03973.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Americans moving around less</strong><br />By Sam Roberts<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Only about one in 10 Americans moved in the last year - roughly half the proportion that changed residences as recently as four decades ago, census data show.<br />The monthly Current Population Survey found that fewer than 12 percent of Americans moved since 2007, a decline of nearly a full percentage point compared with the year before. In the 1950s and 1960s, the number of movers hovered near 20 percent.<br />The number has been declining steadily, and 12 percent is the lowest rate since the Census Bureau began counting people who move in 1940.<br />An analysis by the Pew Research Center attributes the decline to a number of factors, including the aging of the population (older people are less likely to change residences) and an increase in two-career couples.<br />The Pew analysis is drawn from census data and a survey, which found that 63 percent of Americans said they had moved to another community at least once in their lives, while 37 percent said they lived in the community where they were born.<br />According to the census' American Community Survey, New York retained first place in the proportion of residents who were born in the state - more than 81 percent - with those from outside the New York City area generally less mobile.<br />The top five also included Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, generally Rust Belt states with older populations.<br />In contrast, fewer than 14 percent of Nevadans and 28 percent of Arizonans were born in those states.<br />Measuring the percentage of people born in a state who still live there, Texas ranked first, with nearly 76 percent.<br />Alaska recorded the smallest share of people born in the state and still living there, 28 percent, followed by Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana.<br />The telephone survey of 2,260 adults in October found that 57 percent had never moved outside their home state, while 15 percent had lived in four or more states.<br />About 23 percent say their current home is not where their heart is - typically because they were born someplace else, where they lived longer or their family still resides. About half who identify home as someplace else want to stay put; 40 percent say they would like to return.<br />Most people who do not move are kept close to home by family ties, the survey found, while most who do move are drawn by better jobs.<br />The Pew survey found that among all foreign-born adults, including recent arrivals, 38 percent describe home as their country of birth.<br />Among those who have lived in the United States 20 years or more, 76 percent describe the country as home.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_a9Ztw_dBjJRaxpoNPdS0pWY4ho3u2DMQh4ZsG8GHfnsXqO6lUUzvDgGGOxyXzzxuMKyRvo05BXR8nBL6nw1nP-9kkRFlU8KKRqsxlDHtb4QJZXRulhrUoVus3qghihyVwpewQPeSd4A/s1600-h/DSC03975.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282469136522775826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_a9Ztw_dBjJRaxpoNPdS0pWY4ho3u2DMQh4ZsG8GHfnsXqO6lUUzvDgGGOxyXzzxuMKyRvo05BXR8nBL6nw1nP-9kkRFlU8KKRqsxlDHtb4QJZXRulhrUoVus3qghihyVwpewQPeSd4A/s320/DSC03975.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihs8NklgIkixryKX-qcq1x_Gl5NAiqnmw6KLmNKvbtptQJKrP23OF8I0oupLDLPiq2NLm_1-pKuHb3P1qiGrkPCLiqWdJgrmVG58uhLN1SQk7d9cbBhA07AjX3C6pkjgefffhxY1Y0jhY/s1600-h/DSC03984.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282468850975515634" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1mgiwg2xFL_itkfD5yKJw84SWL9lQjzKt7uDYjxZZs3cC1b6Xs1BClaOhxEKjJqcLilMsa_AtMApWjb86GRPZXPOe46y7-h5VIwfsMaQcrKEri0kdv13BtXszr7ifv2fKYO1rMViqVKs/s320/DSC04105.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfFLF_JbKxfoMKPBcMgetfAC7b8ZHaG1ZQKhxKFVGfwuTjZxssrVMy8s0V4naWI339pgMu5gOyqczyRDtHK7TyhGdHtZeQW54-b5yyeARytnG6k5OLFglTUsCWgP9cZygyuW0s6Rnzr4k/s1600-h/DSC04106.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282465283529610306" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfFLF_JbKxfoMKPBcMgetfAC7b8ZHaG1ZQKhxKFVGfwuTjZxssrVMy8s0V4naWI339pgMu5gOyqczyRDtHK7TyhGdHtZeQW54-b5yyeARytnG6k5OLFglTUsCWgP9cZygyuW0s6Rnzr4k/s320/DSC04106.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><strong>Amsterdam's gay Christmas features Mary in drag</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />AMSTERDAM: This city played host Sunday to a Christmas celebration for its gay community that featured a Nativity tableau with a man in drag playing the part of Mary.<br />Frank van Dalen, chairman of the advocacy group Pro Gay that organized the event, known as Pink Christmas, said that it sought to raise Amsterdam's profile as a capital for gays.<br />Van Dalen said the event cost 15,000, or $20,800, and that it had been sponsored by the City Council. He added that he hoped it would become a regular attraction, as is the gay pride parade that brings tens of thousands of visitors to Amsterdam each year.<br />"Our objective is not to be offensive," he said. "This is about visibility."<br />Nevertheless, Christians for Truth, an independent religious group, asked the City Council to cancel the event, saying it made a mockery of Christian tenets. "By portraying Joseph and Mary as homosexuals, a twisted human fantasy is being added to the history of the Bible," the group said in a statement.<br />The Amsterdam City Council did not comment.<br />Van Dalen cited a report released last month that said homophobia was an ingrained problem in Amsterdam, despite the city's freewheeling reputation. The study, conducted by the University of Amsterdam, reported 67 violent attacks against gays in 2007.<br />A man who performs under the name of Wendy Mills wore a blonde wig and high-heel black boots Sunday to play the part of Mary, while the actor playing Joseph wore black leather trunks and a silver shawl. The five-person manger scene was staged in the courtyard of a nightclub and visitors were invited to be photographed with the group.Motion against Proposition 8<br />In a sharp rebuke to supporters of a contested state ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, the California attorney general has filed a legal opinion with the State Supreme Court arguing that the measure is constitutionally indefensible and should be overturned.<br />The attorney general, Jerry Brown, had previously hinted of his opposition to the measure, Proposition 8, but made his legal opinion concrete Friday in a brief to the court, which is reviewing the measure.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiloJ7hBnzNExcscez8RaIk6auAReL0HjKLc3nhcHn3lDui0b3m669sSJp32XBLA35jlW3ZooIIa9QyhgOB7IW4lWRrPOdZ7YQpf_HMCOdHUZSgPjtunVCcBTf_msGlNj4NJVUQu0sql-Y/s1600-h/DSC04107.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282465280017612050" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiloJ7hBnzNExcscez8RaIk6auAReL0HjKLc3nhcHn3lDui0b3m669sSJp32XBLA35jlW3ZooIIa9QyhgOB7IW4lWRrPOdZ7YQpf_HMCOdHUZSgPjtunVCcBTf_msGlNj4NJVUQu0sql-Y/s320/DSC04107.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008</strong></div><div align="center"><strong><br /></strong>Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-67670382074394939662008-12-21T12:20:00.013+01:002008-12-21T14:51:26.257+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Saturday, 20th December 2008<div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong>0428</strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong> </div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqK38feeVlLuMTu14kIG2Cle4UC_VwkunOagahLdV8dicsXyuFNVzLdo-X-FiWGjkfVIlRp51d-Mbnguy9rLLo1hsmwYzwY7CC0PPWZ1acuAaofzXZXcpRNHUO5IOD35wQG59_6jlsWGk/s1600-h/DSC03684.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282228251123790354" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD1g66uLe7cNRGHhTXuoWyehl9X5PDB0AH8IAZhpQrWpiewz1hmdi2Q5zQCdgCpmq_8Xw6BKoSewVDI6A7cY1w-1p9WeuPQB80rdxw-TJgBkNZR7uw-GkHGuMWeunkBtQ1LiGg5qsRiV0/s320/DSC03695.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Can the cycle of poverty be broken?</strong><br />By Tina Rosenberg<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />PASO DE COYUTLA, Mexico: Forty-nine years ago, the anthropologist Oscar Lewis published a book called "Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty," detailing a single day in these families' lives. One family, headed by Jesús Sánchez, a food buyer for a restaurant, continued to tell its story in a second Lewis book, the widely read "Children of Sánchez."<br />Lewis singled out elements of a culture that, he argued, keep those socialized in it mired in poverty: machismo, authoritarianism, marginalization from organized civic life, high rates of abandonment of illegitimate children, alcoholism, disdain for education, fatalism, passivity, inability to defer gratification and a time orientation fixed firmly on the present.<br />Lewis was a man of the left. He saw the culture of poverty as a defense mechanism adapted by the poor in response to capitalist inequality. Then Edward Banfield, a conservative political scientist, introduced the notion that the culture of poverty was immutable; in his 1970 book, "The Unheavenly City," he argued that poverty was a product of the poor's lack of future-orientation, and that nothing government could feasibly do would change that orientation or stop parents from transmitting it to their children.<br />Persistent poverty has since retreated from the political debate. But outside the headlines there has been a gentle evolution in thinking about its causes and potential cures. The most interesting development in that evolution is coming once again from Mexico, this time from the grandchildren of the children of Sánchez.<br />We do not know exactly where Jesús Sánchez was born, but it was a village in Veracruz and it easily could have been Paso de Coyutla, a village of 134 families in the mountains along the San Marcos River. Until just a decade ago, Paso de Coyutla was one of the most marginalized places in Mexico, a place where men scratched out a living farming ever-more-subdivided patches of corn, joined by their children who left school too early, robbed of a future by the need to work.<br />There, on a recent trip, I met Irma Solís, 37, and Pedro Hernández, 43, a couple that has four children. Their grandparents were poor, their parents are poor and they are poor. Hernández, a stocky man with thick, graying hair and a mustache, raises corn; Solís gathers the husks to sell for wrapping tamales. Early this year, Hernández had to borrow $1,000 at a crippling 20 percent monthly interest rate to buy seeds and fertilizer. When I arrived in July, he had just harvested and sold the crop - but earlier than he would have liked, because he could no longer afford the interest. He made just enough to repay the debt.<br />In Paso de Coyutla, it seemed that the culture of poverty was indeed immutable. There was every reason to think that life would be exactly the same for Solís and Hernández's four children. But it may not be. Today their oldest daughter, Maleny, who is 17, is finishing high school and wants to be a teacher. Her 13-year-old sister, Maria Fernanda, wants to be a nurse. Two younger brothers also plan to stay in school. Maleny's bus takes up to 20 children from Paso de Coyutla to her high school every day.<br />The change did not come gradually. The town has transformed itself in the past decade, a result of a deceptively simple government program called Oportunidades; in 1997, Paso de Coyutla became one of the first places in Mexico to enroll. The program gives the poor cash, but unlike traditional welfare programs, it conditions the receipt of that cash on activities designed to break the culture of poverty and keep the poor from transmitting that culture to their children.<br />Until recently, for example, children like Maleny did not go to high school. Though Maleny's school is public, families often prefer not to pay the fees they're assessed or to pay for school supplies, food and transportation. More important, if she were not in school, she, too, could be working in the fields. Such work is especially common among girls, as their education has been widely derided as a waste of money in rural Mexico: Why educate someone who is just going to get married?<br />Now Maleny goes to school because her mother is enrolled in Oportunidades. Solís gets $61 a month from the Mexican government on the condition that Maleny goes and maintains good attendance. If she worked in the fields and earned a typical salary, she would be paid $7.40 for an eight-hour day. Such grants start for students at about age 8, increase for each year of school and are higher for girls, which gives families added incentive to send them.<br />Solís also receives money for the family's food - again, subject to certain requirements. She gets a $27-a-month basic food grant if she takes her family to regular preventive health checkups at Paso de Coyutla's clinic, which provides vaccinations, Pap smears and the like. She must also attend a monthly workshop on a health topic, like purifying drinking water. In total, the grants the family receives for food and the oldest three children's educations come to almost as much as Hernández earns farming.<br />Five million families are enrolled in the program nationwide - a quarter of all households, including virtually every Mexican family at risk for hunger. Seventy-three of the 134 families in Paso de Coyutla are enrolled today. Oportunidades is now the de facto welfare system in Mexico, and it is the first time modern Mexico has had an effective anti-poverty program.<br />The elegant idea behind the program - give the poor money that will allow them to be less poor today, but condition it on behaviors that will give their children a better start in life - is called conditional cash transfers, and the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank promote it heavily. At least 30 countries have now adopted Oportunidades, most of them in Latin America, but not all: Countries now using or experimenting with some form of conditional payments include Turkey, Cambodia and Bangladesh.<br />In the mid-1990s, Mexico's anti-poverty programs were a failure. A third of the population lived in extreme poverty, which meant their income did not even pay for food. Mexico's help for the poor was dispensed mainly in the form of subsidies on milk, tortillas and bread - a program that was inefficient, badly targeted and corrupt.<br />In 1994, the Mexican peso crashed, and the next year the economy contracted by more than 6 percent. President Ernesto Zedillo asked Santiago Levy, an under secretary in the Finance Ministry, for new ideas on how to protect the poor.<br />Levy, who had been a professor of economics at Boston University, had concluded that food subsidies were an inefficient way to give money to the poor. So why not just directly give them cash? He set up an experiment in two small cities in Campeche State and found that people preferred getting cash to buying subsidized food and were willing to meet conditions. Armed with his data, he won approval to start the program gradually, beginning in the most marginalized villages, like Paso de Coyutla.<br />Surveys show that 70 percent of Oportunidades payments is spent on food - mostly fruit, vegetables and meat. Much of the rest goes to children's shoes and clothing and home improvements. The program is also designed to combat the typical afflictions of Latin American social programs. Local political leaders have no influence and so cannot use the payments to extort political support. Oportunidades staff members do not handle money - local banks hand out the envelopes of cash, and recipients are encouraged to open bank accounts to receive direct transfers.<br />Since Oportunidades has virtually no infrastructure, it is relatively inexpensive, costing Mexico about $3.8 billion annually. Salvador Escobedo, Oportunidades' director, boasts that 97 percent of the budget goes directly to beneficiaries.<br />The program does have its problems. For one thing, Oportunidades is less effective in urban areas than in the countryside. This may be because it is newer in cities, and the supply of schools and clinics lags behind the increased demand. Even in the countryside, I met with some students who had classes with as many as 42 children, and I saw some clinics with half-day waits for appointments.<br />Yet in general, Oportunidades is, in many respects, an astonishing success. In 1994, before the peso crisis, 21.2 percent of Mexicans lived in extreme poverty. In 1996, just after the crash, 37.4 percent did. But that figure had dropped to 13.8 percent by 2006. Mexico's economic growth during the decade averaged an unspectacular 3 percent, which would not by itself have produced such gains for the poor. In Mexico today, rates of malnutrition, anemia and stunted growth have dropped, as have incidences of childhood and adult illnesses.<br />But the most pronounced effects have been in education. Children in the program drop out less frequently, repeat fewer grades and stay in school longer. In some rural areas, the percentage of children entering middle school has risen 42 percent. High-school enrollment in some rural areas has increased 85 percent.<br />The women of Paso de Coyutla describe themselves as different people than they were 10 years ago. In large part, they have come to believe in their own capacity to take care of their families, they believe they are part of a group, they organize to improve the village, they invest all they can in their children's futures.<br />Before Oportunidades started, a major objection was that it could increase domestic violence. Many poor, rural Mexicans are machista, and it's easy to imagine that they would be provoked by Oportunidades, which requires women to leave the house to attend workshops, get their money and go to the clinic. Some of the workshops are about women's rights or self-esteem. Women also get their own money and control how it is spent.<br />Among the most macho was Solís's own husband. "He was very angry in the beginning of the program," she said. "He'd come pull me out of a meeting, yelling: 'Your child fell down and hurt himself! See what happens when you abandon your house!"'<br />Pedro Hernández cheerfully pled guilty. "I didn't accept it at first," he said. "If the clothes were hanging on the line and it started to rain, I wouldn't take them down - I'd go pull her out of a workshop. Or I'd complain my food was cold. I didn't want to heat it up myself."<br />What changed him was a burst appendix two years ago. Because of Oportunidades, the family received priority at a public hospital, where the operation cost $100, not the $3,000 the private hospital wanted. "I realized that it helps," he said. "We have food, shoes, school supplies; the kids have education. We have fewer problems."<br />Oportunidades is only an anti-poverty program, just one part of a solution that includes creating better jobs. But if Mexico can do that, it will have access to a work force that, because of Oportunidades, has acquired more of the good health and education necessary to take advantage of those jobs.</div><div><br /> </div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3gRLYg0lVfSuHGfW29KI0dOOtuss0CXWlNX2_dTWYpfuAi8KALAprW46ts5BR7n15ipXuzqFJHAQ37iI6XLxwq0og52Po5J_d-ciEONcrU-x_Wuu8cfiTdwOTh7BqhLvYWCvQVAgd54k/s1600-h/DSC03696.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282227231101811986" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3gRLYg0lVfSuHGfW29KI0dOOtuss0CXWlNX2_dTWYpfuAi8KALAprW46ts5BR7n15ipXuzqFJHAQ37iI6XLxwq0og52Po5J_d-ciEONcrU-x_Wuu8cfiTdwOTh7BqhLvYWCvQVAgd54k/s320/DSC03696.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Big 3 remain in trouble</strong><br />By Micheline Maynard<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />DETROIT: With a lifeline from the White House, General Motors and Chrysler will survive for the next few months while they revamp.<br />But will they thrive again?<br />The plans from the car companies offer little in terms of fresh ideas. Instead, they are focused more on slow-selling models, persuading GM's debt holders to accept stock and getting union wages more in line with those paid by foreign brands in the United States.<br />Such moves are certainly necessary in the short term, but no company can keep cutting its way to prosperity. Even President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that Detroit automakers should not "squander the chance" to change their management practices.<br />To be sure, it takes years and enormous investments to develop new vehicles, and much of Detroit's focus throughout this decade has been on shedding workers and closing plants in response to its shrinking market share.<br />But the Detroit carmakers also have to find some new hits, just as they did in the 1990s with the SUVs, minivans and pickups that helped them - along with a national policy that encouraged the cheap gas that fueled the big and profitable vehicles - earn billions.<br />After the spike in gas prices this year, and continuing volatility in oil prices, the car companies' next great hope will be in fuel-efficient vehicles that they can sell in the hundreds of thousands, not just as niche models, and earn a profit from them.<br />Brian Johnson, an analyst with Barclays Capital, said the auto companies' challenges came down to four C's: cash, cost reduction, cars and culture.<br />The cash and cost reduction will come through the federal aid and the revamping plans they submitted in return for the help. "But they quite obviously need to get a different management culture that's capable of getting consumers to pay close to the same price of a Honda or a Toyota," Johnson said. "That's been the challenge for a decade."<br />In fact, Detroit still depends heavily on pickups and SUVs, as well as crossover vehicles, which are sport utilities built on car underpinnings.<br />Through November, light trucks made up 58 percent of GM's sales; they account for 63.5 percent of Ford's sales and 72.2 percent for Chrysler.<br />In fact, Toyota has sold more Camry models alone this year than Chrysler has sold of all its cars, according to Motorintelligence.com, a firm that follows industry statistics.<br />The Detroit companies say their sales mix will change soon. GM has pinned its future on the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric car due two years from now, and another small Chevrolet, the Cruze, aimed at many of the same customers who have bought Toyota Corollas the last 40 years.<br />Though it has continued work on the Volt, it suspended work on the Cruze, and delayed building a new engine plant in Flint, Mich., needed for both cars, while it waited to see the outcome of the bailout bid.<br />Ford, which did not seek federal assistance because its cash reserves are stronger, is about to introduce a hybrid-electric version of its Fusion, a family sedan.<br />Chrysler discontinued its only hybrid model earlier this fall. It is relying on Nissan of Japan to develop its small cars.<br />And, at a briefing for journalists this week, Chrysler showed future models that included more new Jeeps, including an electric one, new pickups and muscle cars, according to Jalopnik.com, a Web site that follows the industry (and whose term for the crisis in Detroit - "carpocalypse" - is catching on in the industry).<br />"GM and Ford both have game plans," said Ray Wert III, the Web site's editor in chief. "Chrysler's is mired in the last decade, and not ready for the next one."<br />Chrysler's dependence on light trucks is a holdover from years when Americans could rely on cheap gas, which has returned because of a weakening global economy.<br />But the mix of vehicles will become a more critical issue as the industry approaches 2020, the year when its fleet of vehicles will have to be able to achieve an average fuel economy of 35 miles per gallon.<br />It is a level that European and Japanese carmakers already have to achieve at home, for the most part, to provide cars to consumers who have long paid high gas prices. GM and Ford also build popular fuel-efficient cars abroad, but they are more expensive than what American consumers are used to paying for small cars.<br />Falling gas prices are good news for Detroit in the short term, as consumers may warm again to the idea of buying SUVs and pickups, which would provide much-needed revenue to the Detroit companies.<br />But GM and Chrysler can no longer rely so heavily on those vehicles for their future - particularly the future that Obama appears to have in mind for them while he keeps an eye on their progress to become viable business.<br />That may mean pushing the market in a direction that not all car buyers want.<br />"For the American consumer, the drive to fuel economy revolves around the price of gasoline," said Ron Pinelli, president of Motorintelligence.com. "When gas is cheap, they don't want to spend the money to get a car that's fuel-efficient."</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Gunmen attack vessels in Nigeria and kidnap Russians</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By Randy Fabi<br />Gunmen in speedboats attacked three oil services ships and kidnapped at least two Russians in separate incidents in Nigeria's Niger Delta, private security and industry sources said on Saturday.<br />The Falcon Crest and Falcon Wings were attacked late on Friday off the coast of southern Nigeria's Akwa Ibom state near crude oil facilities operated by Canada's Addax Petroleum.<br />A Filipino captain on one of the vessels was killed, one security source said. The gunmen were believed to have fled to nearby Cameroonian waters.<br />No group has claimed responsibility.<br />Akwa Ibom, which shares a border with Cameroon, has seen an increase in piracy and kidnappings in the past few months.<br />Nigeria handed over the nearby oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon four months ago, angering many Nigerians whose families have since resettled in Akwa Ibom.<br />Militants in the area have objected to the August 14 transfer, which complied with a World Court ruling.<br />Friday's attacks took place in the offshore area known as OML 123, referring to the 370 sq-km licence area controlled by Addax. Six similar incidents occurred earlier this year, the most recent two weeks ago, a security source said.<br />Addax and police officials were not immediately available for comment.<br />A third ship, operated by Nigerian oil company Monipulo, was attacked by pirates early on Saturday near the Abana offshore oilfields, located close to the Nigeria-Cameroon border.<br />Gunmen in speedboats also attacked a housing compound and kidnapped two Russians working for an aluminium company in the port town of Ikot Abasi in Akwa Ibom early on Saturday, security sources said.<br />The two Russians worked for Nigeria's sole aluminium smelter plant ALSCON, which is owned by the world's largest aluminium producer Russia's United Company RUSAL. The Russian firm confirmed its workers were kidnapped.<br />Piracy is common in the Gulf of Guinea off Nigeria's Atlantic coast while attacks on oil industry facilities and kidnappings for ransom are frequent in the creeks of the Niger Delta, home to Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.<br />The militants say they are fighting for a fairer share of the region's natural resources. Criminal gangs also fund themselves through the theft of crude oil and ransoms.<br />Hundreds of foreigners have been seized in the region since early 2006, most of whom have been released unharmed.<br />The insecurity has cut Nigeria's oil output, which averages around 2 million barrels per day, by a fifth over the past three years.<br />(Additional reporting by Austin Ekeinde in Port Harcourt and Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow; Editing by Michael Roddy)</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_zHIii2UYZ26e7iLGe-cRKJCigPI-nvqFiM185Jc3gzMjQF05ilr3GQ6gYPnSGJLMkILh-oLPydKHy9WTvVB0mpv2hofOOxB8XcFoW9-BX4E7JLcDdhBM0UMgidoxzMm11F6xBI1_O0/s1600-h/DSC03698.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282227228037797346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_zHIii2UYZ26e7iLGe-cRKJCigPI-nvqFiM185Jc3gzMjQF05ilr3GQ6gYPnSGJLMkILh-oLPydKHy9WTvVB0mpv2hofOOxB8XcFoW9-BX4E7JLcDdhBM0UMgidoxzMm11F6xBI1_O0/s320/DSC03698.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>SocGen said to end year healthy<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />PARIS: French bank Societe Generale will end the year in a healthy state despite a rogue trading scandal and the financial crisis, Chief Executive Frederic Oudea told the i-Tele television channel on Saturday.<br />The CEO described 2008, which saw the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in the largest U.S. bankruptcy case in history, as a year of rupture.<br />SocGen began the year by revealing it had fallen victim to the world's worst rogue trading scandal when it unveiled 4.9 billion euros (£4.6 billion) of losses it said were caused by unauthorised trades by junior trader Jerome Kerviel.<br />However, it said it escaped with negligible exposure to the alleged $50 billion fraud by Wall Street broker Bernard Madoff that came to light this month.<br />"I don't see anything comparable to Lehman (happening in 2009)," Oudea said. "I think the world has learnt the lesson from Lehman."<br />SocGen saw its net profit drop 84 percent in the third quarter, with non-recurring items from Lehman and other writedowns related to the market slump having a pretax impact of 1.2 billion euros.<br />"Societe Generale is healthy at this end of year," Oudea told i-Tele. "It was able to show just how it was capable of managing - efficiently, it seems to me - such a shock," referring to the rogue trading scandal.<br />Looking ahead to early next year, Oudea added that the main issue for people's confidence would be jobs rather than spending power.<br />(Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Victoria Main)</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3QZOieVwst2YkHiHkbCcqCYSn7tJrLgV7A7IXcITsbJ4PPsVWa8UBjvHEals1jkLwD0O5Q84RVy_NSyuAQYML1gh2koxsfuNREbMCO97F0FmaUWVFNhc1E7s4D7cvpnK9ea3tJ1I5d2k/s1600-h/DSC03699.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282226684208458274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3QZOieVwst2YkHiHkbCcqCYSn7tJrLgV7A7IXcITsbJ4PPsVWa8UBjvHEals1jkLwD0O5Q84RVy_NSyuAQYML1gh2koxsfuNREbMCO97F0FmaUWVFNhc1E7s4D7cvpnK9ea3tJ1I5d2k/s320/DSC03699.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBYBje9JMJdxAzKNBuHBkNTdAuTQvB-6DBRaGlY6832tcH18HtFwQ-zExriXN5XEkTlTaJJhWSavTPHfW5T5mx4IKzZgpp211cgYrDbbW5hbPtCyf3IaPvgrzXYI2sByeuk4WZ_qlalKY/s1600-h/DSC03700.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282226683184922690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBYBje9JMJdxAzKNBuHBkNTdAuTQvB-6DBRaGlY6832tcH18HtFwQ-zExriXN5XEkTlTaJJhWSavTPHfW5T5mx4IKzZgpp211cgYrDbbW5hbPtCyf3IaPvgrzXYI2sByeuk4WZ_qlalKY/s320/DSC03700.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Congo warlord has wide ambitions<br /></strong>By Lydia Polgreen<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />BUNAGANA, Congo: At the entrance to this bustling border town is a most unusual sight: a speed limit sign. In fresh red, white and blue paint, it is a rare manifestation of order in a nation better known for chaos.<br />The seemingly innocuous signpost is emblematic of the growing might and wider ambitions of Laurent Nkunda, the renegade Congolese general and warlord who now holds part of Congo's future in his grip.<br />"I am fighting for the destiny of this country," said Nkunda, offering up the orderly streets and neatly terraced farms of the surrounding countryside as evidence of what Congo might be like if he ran things. "What we want is to restore the dignity of this country and these people."<br />But beneath the veneer lies a ruthlessness of a piece with Congo's unbroken history of brutality. With a military campaign in October and November that was met with a feeble response from both the Congolese government and UN peacekeeping forces here in eastern Congo, Nkunda has pushed the nation to its most dangerous precipice in years. Many here fear a new regional war or that an alliance of convenience between Nkunda and other enemies of the president could lead to the ouster of Congo's first democratically elected government in four decades.<br />That Nkunda, who is suspected of committing a litany human rights violations, could be a leading figure in such a move is a chilling thought for many Congolese. A recent journey through territory he controls revealed a host of contradictions between the image he puts forward and reality, including evidence of mass killings, the extraction of onerous payments from residents, illegal profiteering from the mineral trade and the conscription of child soldiers.<br />Nkunda's campaign began as a local insurgency aimed at redressing the grievances of a small Tutsi minority that felt threatened by the lingering aftershocks of the Rwandan genocide. But it has grown into a rebellion with a broad set of aims that include the removal of President Joseph Kabila, who was elected in 2006 after more than 40 years of tyranny and war in this country.<br />"We have national ambitions," Nkunda declared, a hint of triumph in his voice. "We are talking about Congo."<br />Some of this talk may be grandiose bluster from a man fond of referring to himself in the third person and who prefers to be photographed holding a scepter capped by a silver-plated eagle's head. Nkunda is despised by many in eastern Congo for his brutal tactics. He is also widely perceived as a proxy for Rwanda, a country whose meddling Congolese citizens largely detest. The general claims he does not want to replace Kabila, merely to sit down and have direct talks.<br />But Nkunda's forceful new challenge poses grave risks for Kabila, who is weaker than ever. The national army was routed on the battlefield, retreating virtually without a fight, pillaging and raping as it went.<br />The country's once fast-growing economy is in shambles as the prices of minerals have plummeted in the global recession, and Kabila is increasingly unpopular.<br />In the face of Kabila's plummeting stature, Nkunda has cultivated an image as a disciplined crusader bent on bringing order to the country. He dresses in sharp uniforms or flowing, immaculate white robes. He has claimed to be an evangelical minister, and at times wears a pin that reads, "Rebels for Christ."<br />Nkunda and his top commanders say their fighters have a commitment to discipline as well: Drunkenness, looting and rape are offenses punishable by imprisonment and possibly death, according to senior rebel officers.<br />But in 2002, when Nkunda was a commander in a different rebel group, he participated in the mass killing of 160 mutineers in the city of Kisangani, human rights groups say. According to Human Rights Watch, "Forces under Nkunda's command bound, gagged, and executed twenty-eight persons and then put their bodies in bags weighted with stones and threw them off a Kisangani bridge."<br />Two years later, Nkunda's men took the city of Bukavu, and days of killing and rape followed, investigators say. Since 2005, when he formed his own rebel group, known as the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, his forces have carried out a number of massacres, according to human rights investigators, most recently at Kiwanja, in early November, where 150 people were executed.<br />In Nkunda territory, the general says, civilians are never harmed and live without fear of violence or looting. His men offer up the endless, Eden-like valleys around this town as proof. Terraced into rows as tidy as seats in an amphitheater, the land bespeaks a kind of ordered plenty.<br />But farmers here say they are forced to hand over a precious portion of their harvest to feed the fighters: 45 pounds of beans or grain, and as much as $20 a season in taxes, an enormous sum in a place where most people live on far less than a dollar a day.<br />Nkunda said his rebellion is not motivated, like so many others fighting here, by plunder of Congo's natural resources.<br />"I am not here for minerals," he said. Indeed, there are almost no mines in the areas under his control, and Nkunda has avoided getting directly involved in mining, fearing the taint of blood minerals that has stained virtually every group fighting here, including Congo's own army.<br />But his fighters collect taxes on virtually every commercial vehicle and bushel of crops that come out of territory they control, according to residents and a U.N. report released last week. They even take a cut of the $300 permits sold to tourists wishing to see Congo's rare mountain gorillas.<br />"The money goes to the rebels," said one of the park rangers who monitors the animals. "None of it comes to us."<br />Nkunda's men also profit from Congo's minerals. Thousands of tons of tin ore, coltan and other minerals pass through the border crossing here to Uganda, headed to Kenya's Indian Ocean port, and the rebels take a slice of the taxes collected here, U.N. officials say.<br />Nkunda denied this, saying his men sent all taxes to the government.<br />According to rebel officials, in Nkunda territory children are never made to wield Kalashnikovs and kill. But boys like Eric, who is now 16 but says he has been fighting with armed groups since he was kidnapped by Hutu militiamen at the age of 9, say Nkunda's rebellion forces hundreds of children to fight.<br />Nkunda seems to have little trouble drawing new recruits, because each man is issued a uniform, a gun and training, unlike Congolese soldiers, who can go months without salaries. Some fighters are drawn to the rebels for ethnic reasons, but many others simply want to fight on the side that wins. His force is more disciplined, Nkunda says, because they are fighting for a cause they believe in.<br />Nkunda seems determined to play the role of statesman in waiting, receiving visiting diplomats and emissaries like a chief of state. He rejects the legitimacy of the Kabila government, so the U.N. appointed the former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, to cajole Nkunda back to the negotiating table.<br />"What is democracy?" Nkunda mused, worrying his scepter, which has grown brassy over the years as his rebellion has flourished. "Democracy is not elections. Democracy is legitimacy. And legitimacy comes from what you are doing to your people."<br />Nkunda is all but certain to face an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for atrocities committed during his years fighting here, human rights investigators say, most recently in Kiwanja, where his men executed civilians and torched camps that housed 30,000 displaced people.<br />"Nkunda destroyed my life," said Anorite Zawadi, 27, whose 8-year-old daughter disappeared when Nkunda's troops razed the camp in which her family lived. The girl has not been seen since.<br />"He has no mercy on us," she continued. "He brings only death and sorrow."</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Tuareg rebels kill 14 in Mali raid<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />BAMAKO: Tuareg rebels killed at least 14 soldiers in an attack on an army post close to Mali's border with Mauritania on Saturday, Malian military sources said, testing a five-month cease-fire in the African gold producer.<br />Gunmen in more than 20 four-wheel-drive vehicles raided the post at Nampala, some 400 km (250 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako before dawn, one source said.<br />"It is carnage, there are 14 soldiers killed including the chief of the post, 15 others injured, and it appears that hostages were taken," a second military source said, citing a provisional death toll.<br />The first source said fighters under the command of Tuareg insurgent chief Ibrahima Bahanga carried out the attack.<br />"We think they are rebel chief Bahanga's men," he said.<br />In July, Algeria brokered a cease-fire between Mali's government and the Tuareg rebels. For more than a year Tuareg fighters have attacked army posts and convoys to press for greater rights for their people in the largely desert West African country.<br />But doubts remain about the participation of Bahanga, a veteran rebel chieftain seen as something of a rogue element in the Malian Tuareg insurgency.<br />(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Daniel Magnowski; Editing by Katie Nguyen)</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wC88opqQWfbIeAQS1riIuc5zPw3eRjlJm1BEcqJKoYR5LemyQDds_D4GTP5bhNVUUCTCap4inqcl7b2ngqKu9vcQfjDroe8xp1VmYYedw_ap6mYlwmCcRmA-IWuO4cnwELDkbj_Is68/s1600-h/DSC03701.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282226674836976146" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3wC88opqQWfbIeAQS1riIuc5zPw3eRjlJm1BEcqJKoYR5LemyQDds_D4GTP5bhNVUUCTCap4inqcl7b2ngqKu9vcQfjDroe8xp1VmYYedw_ap6mYlwmCcRmA-IWuO4cnwELDkbj_Is68/s320/DSC03701.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcswnGyp2nVAw8kUZqGGauwfHTpG_T5A1DVGPqP3lHE-WYAiBjnJz-YPTpzu7gP5ItKHnOkhkeOZVLit0y7UFJcnmwi8gbfK8QiGIGSgqMHRemL1Pf27ktTbNiDBX165Lts4bjtLutAKI/s1600-h/DSC03702.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282226669805728050" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8vOIEIuAqBxBOEHkvHSEBae92qeobKOArlgNTG2lBaq4ovdkiS3HYqo9cZ2yjHXuIr694maQzt5Efs5X0o-Uj-SNvKviBymEBG4pF3gXTkarCNXzY-1868AF5OjAygZmnDP5zWl3Dg7w/s320/DSC03739.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-nsknZSBtGWGWtjYq726jtZviYPWU3xFC7JVuVK9uGenFp0RCoJkdWNZXrf3bXlNvopScc25Gc3gPxjZtkf7RDKsBvjY4hM4ZxWmYasRfrn0XlC_tI-uG9OOfmWum3QLWdnq3GmUa1M/s1600-h/DSC03742.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282220439562702882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-nsknZSBtGWGWtjYq726jtZviYPWU3xFC7JVuVK9uGenFp0RCoJkdWNZXrf3bXlNvopScc25Gc3gPxjZtkf7RDKsBvjY4hM4ZxWmYasRfrn0XlC_tI-uG9OOfmWum3QLWdnq3GmUa1M/s320/DSC03742.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>WITNESS - Basra family meeting shocks Iraqi-Briton<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />Mohammed Abbas is a Baghdad-based correspondent for Reuters. He was born in Basra, Iraq, but emigrated with his parents to Britain when he was one year old in 1980. In the following story, he describes his experience returning to Basra and meeting family for the first time.<br />By Mohammed Abbas<br />My family in Britain argues with the neighbours about noise, but for my cousins in Iraq, one of a host of less trivial grievances was their neighbours' hospitality to cross-dressing al Qaeda fighters.<br />I met cousins, aunts and uncles for the first time on a recent trip to Basra in Iraq's Shi'ite south, which I had left 28 years ago to live in Britain. Some cousins looked like me and were about the same age, but our lives had been very different.<br />Basra was once the front line in Iraq's war with Iran and my Shi'ite aunt and her five children fled in the 1980s and went to live in western Anbar province, a mostly Sunni region.<br />My aunt told me the people there were very welcoming, until the sectarian blood-letting started shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.<br />A stream of what looked like women in all-enveloping black robes, or abayas, would come to their neighbours' door, then lift their veils to reveal bearded al Qaeda fighters.<br />The Sunni Islamist group and other Sunni insurgents, many smuggled in from neighbouring countries, came to rule Anbar at the height of the anti-U.S. insurgency.<br />My cousins would have to let al Qaeda members into their homes and pretend to be Sunnis, and with a $700 "donation" in their pocket, the al Qaeda types would pretend to believe them.<br />The neighbours' son went on to blow himself up in a botched suicide bombing, and his mother distributed sweets to celebrate his "martyrdom."<br />Eventually the sectarian hatred was so bad there were calls from mosque minarets for Sunnis to kill Shi'ites, and insurgents would come to my aunt's door asking for her sons. So the family fled again, back to Basra.<br />MORBID SAFARI<br />For another aunt, a Sunni, Basra was no refuge. Her husband's brother was kidnapped and held for ransom. He was returned severely beaten.<br />Until a government crackdown last March, the oil-rich and mostly Shi'ite city was largely run by militias and armed gangs.<br />Despite the sectarian violence, my mixed-sect family in Basra all got along. Many families in Iraq contain both Sunnis and Shi'ites, belying media representations of two mutually exclusive groups out for each other's blood.<br />But on the six-hour drive down from Baghdad, my hope that Basra would be the green city of palm trees and canals described to me by my parents gradually faded.<br />Besides the Iran-Iraq war, the city had been through two Gulf wars and sanctions since my parents left to study in Britain in 1980. They were against Saddam Hussein, and had decided not to return.<br />I was less than 1 year old when I left Basra. Although I had no memories of the city, I had patched together an image from what I was told were comparable scenes on family trips to the Middle East. My mother had taken the best of the region and created Basra in my head.<br />My first sight of it as an adult were the slums on its outskirts, which were swimming in filthy pools of rainwater.<br />The sides of the road were piled with rubbish, including a dead horse, dead dogs, dead buffalo, dead cats, dead sheep and one nearly dead camel -- a morbid safari of Iraqi fauna.<br />Basra had once been described as the "Venice of the Middle East." With a lot of imagination -- and while holding your nose -- you can get an idea of the rubbish-strewn city's past.<br />Bridges criss-cross numerous canals, but the water is filthy. There are some palm trees, but many were destroyed during the war with Iran. There is the Shatt al-Arab waterway, with its corniche, but it too is full of rubbish and rusty sunken ships. One of Saddam's yachts lies grounded on its side.<br />HIP AND SWINGING<br />As elsewhere in Iraq, the people of Basra dress conservatively, the women in veils and most men in the drab largely Chinese-made clothing that has flooded the country.<br />Flicking through an aunt's photo album, I was shocked to see how hip Basra once was. In the sixties and seventies it had a reputation as a swinging cosmopolitan city.<br />My Shi'ite aunt, who was stooped and wore an abaya, had once with her beehive hairstyle, thick eyeliner and A-line dress looked like British singer Amy Winehouse. Her late husband looked like a member of the U.S. band the Blues Brothers.<br />My grandmother, now virtually toothless, veiled and in constant prayer, was stunning in a little red dress with matching handbag and pumps.<br />More recent photos showed more conservative clothing, as Iraq descended into war and chaos under Saddam and later fell under the sway of religious parties.<br />My family in Basra did not begrudge my life of relative comfort and safety in Britain, and were glad I had not gone through what they had.<br />One evening my Sunni aunt took me to where my parents once lived, in the old part of Basra. For once, it was just as my parents had described.<br />A full moon illuminated grand villas with arched doors and windows. Wooden intricately carved balconies leaned over a narrow canal below.<br />It was beautiful, and I didn't have to hold my nose.<br />(Editing by Michael Christie and Sara Ledwith)</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Abuse of prescription drugs rises among Iraqi soldiers<br /></strong>By Mudhafer Al-Husaini and Erica Goode<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: For an Iraqi Army soldier patrolling Baghdad's unpredictable streets, each 12-hour shift is an exercise in terror and uncertainty.<br />So Ahmed Qasim pops a small white tablet called Artane to help him through his duties.<br />"For me, it helps me to get the job done," he said. "I can't bear working without taking Artane. It makes me happy and high, but I still can control myself."<br />The abuse of prescription drugs, widely available in Iraq on the black market and through private pharmacies, has significantly increased since 2003, doctors and other health specialists say, nourished by the stresses of the war and the lack of strict government regulation.<br />Dealers do a brisk business in tranquilizers, painkillers and other drugs, specialists say, and drug abuse is a problem in the prisons and among Iraqis who live in poor neighborhoods or who are unemployed.<br />But in recent years, Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also turned to drugs to ease the stresses of their jobs. In particular, they are abusing artane, a medication that is used to treat Parkinson's disease and that can have euphoric effects when used in high doses.<br />"They believe that this Artane allows them to become courageous, to become brave," said one doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. about the issue.<br />"They take it so that there is no anxiety, no fear," he said, "so they can break down doors and enter houses with no shame."<br />No clear evidence exists that the misuse of prescription drugs has a significant effect on how soldiers and police officers perform their duties. Nor are any figures available on how widespread drug abuse is in the security forces or whether most of those who use the drugs do so daily.<br />But Qasim, 26, estimated that one out of three soldiers in his army unit take Artane or other drugs while on duty. Jalal Ammar, 45, an Iraqi police officer, said "probably 30 percent" of the police officers he worked with used Artane and other medications. Dr. Amir al-Haidari, the manager of drug addiction programs for the Ministry of Health of Iraq, said that alcohol abuse was once a bigger problem than prescription drug abuse, "but after the American invasion of Iraq, alcohol became limited because of the security situation and religious restraints."<br />Now, he said, "the long duties, the suicide attacks and the killing are all factors that drive the security forces members toward Artane and other drugs."<br />Dr. Haidari added that the Health Ministry had begun a campaign to close private pharmacies that sell drugs illegally and to place more restrictions on prescriptions. He said the problem was no worse in the security forces than among civilians.<br />The ministry, Dr. Haidari said, is also trying to open more treatment centers for addicts. Only one hospital in Iraq, Ibn Rushid psychiatric hospital in central Baghdad, has a ward devoted to treating alcohol and drug abuse.<br />General Ahmed al-Khafaji, an official at the Interior Ministry concerned with police affairs, denied that drug abuse was a significant issue among Iraqi police officers.<br />"We don't accept any kind of addiction within the security forces or our troops from the police," he said, adding that any police officer who was found to abuse drugs "will be dismissed from our ministry forever."<br />Major General Qassim Atta of the Iraqi military said that the soldiers in Baghdad "have very good mental health and high spirits."<br />Asked about the abuse of prescription drugs, he said, "Maybe there are some negative points here and there, but you cannot generalize based on such cases."<br />On the street, Artane, Valium and other drugs are known by nicknames, including "the capsule," "the eyebrow" and "the cross." Ammar said that when police officers talked among themselves about the drugs, they referred to them as "appetizers" or "takeout."<br />Drug use is forbidden in the Iraqi security forces, but Qasim said that soldiers took drugs discreetly and that "everyone in the army knows about it."<br />Still, he said, "you can't take them clearly in front of the officers."<br />Qais, the owner of a private drugstore who would give only his first name because his activities are illegal, says that he sells Artane and other drugs without prescriptions and that he has been arrested three times. However, he has used bribes to avoid prosecution, he said.<br />"I don't deal with strangers unless they come through my known network," he said. "I have some people who distribute the drugs, and they are well-trusted people. I have other customers who take large amounts of drugs, and they come in from time to time or I deliver it to them in specific locations."<br />Because of the stigma attached to drug addiction, many addicts do not seek treatment, doctors said. When soldiers or police officers do go to Ibn Rushid for help, they arrive in civilian clothes and are often reluctant to reveal their military status.<br />One patient who sought treatment at the hospital for Artane addiction in the spring told a doctor that he was in the army, but he became visibly alarmed when a visitor began asking him more questions about his job.<br />In a rare study of drug addiction, conducted at Ibn Rushid several years ago, the researchers, Dr. Amir Hussein and Dr. Shalan al-Abbudi, found that cases of prescription drug abuse had increased substantially from 2002 to 2004. In 2004, 58.4 percent of the patients admitted to the addiction unit were there for prescription drug abuse, compared with 27 percent in 2002. Cases of alcoholism dropped to 40.8 percent in 2004 from 73 percent in 2002.<br />Artane was by far the most popular drug abused by the addicts, the study found, with Valium a close second. Other drugs included Ativan and Mogadon, also tranquilizers, Somadril, a muscle relaxant drug in the same class as Artane, and codeine cough syrup.<br />Unlike some tranquilizers and drugs like cocaine or heroin, Artane does not produce physical addiction. but can produce psychological dependence. But the drug's label warns that alcohol, barbiturates or narcotics can intensify its effects.<br />Psychiatrists familiar with Artane abuse say that addicts vary in how frequently they use the drug, sometimes taking it only when they are under stress.<br />Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine who specializes in drug addiction and advises Iraqi psychiatrists on mental health treatment, said that widespread Artane abuse was almost unheard of elsewhere.<br />"It's been very strange for me having worked in the field 20 years in the U.S. and never having seen an Artane addict," Dr. Humphreys said, "yet that is almost always the first kind of case Iraqi colleagues ask me how to treat."<br />Nazar Amin, a psychiatrist at Sulaimaniya University in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq who has studied Artane abuse, said that it began before the war between Iraq and Iran, when some athletes started using the drug in training.<br />But Artane abuse increased during the war and became common in prisons, where relatives or guards smuggled it to inmates.<br />"As far as I know, the addiction is mostly psychological rather than physical," Dr. Amin said.<br />A 25-year-old police officer in Baghdad said he began taking Artane and Valium two years ago "to escape the bitter reality" and continued to use the drugs.<br />The police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from his superiors, says he often uses Artane for night shifts, while guarding the police station or "going on a mission in the scary and dark streets of Baghdad after midnight."<br />He has seen "so many explosions and picked up so many corpses, including those of my colleagues," he said. "Anyone would collapse under such high stress."<br />"We don't commit suicide," he said, "and that's why we resort to Artane and other drugs."</div><div> </div><div><strong>*****************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>Iraq to release officers held in security crackdown</strong><br />By Campbell Robertson and Tareq Maher<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: All 24 Interior Ministry officers who were arrested in a security crackdown will be released, according to the interior minister, who publicly condemned his own government's investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics.<br />The minister, Jawad al-Bolani, in a series of interviews and at a news conference on Friday, insisted on the innocence of the officials detained on charges of aiding terrorism and having inappropriate ties with political parties, including Al Awda, an illegal party that is a descendant of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.<br />"It's because of the competition of the provincial elections," Bolani, who arrived in the country Friday after a week away, said of the arrests in an interview. "It's just electoral propaganda, and that's playing with fire."<br />In his forceful rejection of the charges, Bolani was careful not to mention names and was not specific in explaining how these arrests could benefit anyone specifically in the run-up to the crucial provincial elections next month. But it seemed, at least temporarily, to be a serious blow to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, given the crackdown's close association with him.<br />It also seemed to raise the temperature of Iraqi politics, possibly fueling a rivalry between Bolani and Maliki, both prominent Shiite politicians, in a way that could damage either or both of them. Attempts to reach the prime minister's spokesman were unsuccessful.<br />News of the arrests has already led to an angry response from other Iraqi political leaders, particularly those in rival parties to Dawa, Maliki's party, who were angered by what they saw as a largely politically driven operation to intimidate rivals near the elections.<br />The Ministry of the Interior, which controls Iraq's internal security, including its police forces, has a history of being affiliated with members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a powerful Shiite party that is a rival to Dawa, and some officers were members of the Baath Party before the U.S. invasion.<br />Maliki set up the committee overseeing the investigations, said General Ahmed Abu Raqeef, one of the five security officials on the committee. And though officials have offered conflicting accounts, some reported that it was a security force that reports directly to Maliki that carried out the arrests.<br />The committee itself ordered the release, the Interior Minister said. It was unclear about the state of the detained officials from other security agencies, like the Ministry of Defense, who have been arrested. The seriousness of the accusations rattled many leaders in Baghdad, where rumors of coups and political plotting are epidemic. The anxiety remained even as officials played down the most significant of the charges.<br />Bolani's move in seeking to free the detainees could prove a breakthrough moment for him. Politically ambitious, Bolani has not been seen previously as a major political player but has been working to expand his secular Iraqi Constitutional Party.<br />An adviser to Bolani who was not authorized to speak publicly said that he and the prime minister had disagreed when arrests were ordered two months ago.<br />But even on Friday, as he insisted that the arrests be reversed, Bolani sought to avoid a head-on confrontation with Maliki. Asked about Maliki's involvement in the operation, Bolani simply said: "Maliki is always on the side of justice." He said he had not talked to Maliki but planned to do so in the coming days.<br />But he had strong words for the forces that ordered up and carried out the arrest.<br />"The information provided by the security sides is supposed to be accurate," Bolani said. "They are supposed to responsible for their information and to be sure before moving to the next step. To be frank, this operation lacks professionalism, especially on the issue of the arrests."<br />He said he had been aware of the investigation but discounted it until he discovered that the charges included affiliation with Baath-related parties and a plot to target the ministry building in a terrorist operation - allegations he suggested were too serious for the men accused.<br />Among those who had been under investigation, Bolani said, were an official who has been in the hospital awaiting his surgery, a man who has already been in prison for months, and a man who works in the archives department taking care of files. Many of them, including one of the generals detained, worked in the traffic directorate.<br />"When and how are they going to occupy the ministry?" he asked. "Our officers are kept from their families and their kids because of insurgents and Qaida and militias and even their kids can't be normal like other kids. Is this their reward after five years of sacrifices?"<br />Again, Bolani did not mention names but an aide said that the charges were drawn up by the Ministry of National Security.<br />Bolani's sudden declaration of the detainees' innocence seemed at first to make an already murky series of events even less clear.<br />While officials on Thursday publicly rebutted rumors that had been circulating earlier in the week that the officials who had been detained were in the very early stages of planning a coup, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Karim Khalaf, said that they had been held on charges of being associated with Al Awda, a descendant of the Baath Party, a serious charge in itself.<br />Bolani said that Khalaf had only been speaking from the information he had been provided in the charges, which, he said, came from secret informants.<br />"These charges are part of political targeting of the Ministry of Interior," Bolani said. "I expect other plots and conspiracies against the Ministry of Interior in the coming days."<br />Suadad al-Salhy contributed reporting.</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Ambush raises unsettling questions in Afghanistan</strong><br />By Kirk Semple<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />KABUL, Afghanistan: It was one of the most humiliating attacks the Afghan security forces had ever suffered. On Nov. 27, Taliban insurgents ambushed a supply convoy in the northwest province of Badghis, killing nine Afghan soldiers and five police officers, wounding 27 men, capturing 20 others, destroying at least 19 vehicles and stealing five, Afghan officials said.<br />The Afghan authorities quickly learned that the man suspected of having orchestrated the attack, Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir, had only weeks before been in police custody on charges of aiding the Taliban.<br />Dastagir had been personally released by President Hamid Karzai after assurances from a delegation of tribal elders that he would live a peaceful life, officials said this month.<br />The ambush, and the presidential pardon that allowed the insurgent to go free, have become the subject of a governmental inquest and the source of profound embarrassment for the Afghan government.<br />The case has also underscored the vulnerabilities of the Afghan security forces as the Taliban have multiplied their presence around the country and, in only the past few years, have gained strength in regions that were once relatively peaceful, like the northwest. Developing the Afghan security forces is a cornerstone of the American-led effort to defeat the insurgents.<br />"This is an important subject for everybody because we haven't had these sorts of casualties before," said General Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense.<br />Karzai has publicly said little, if anything, about the case. His spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, acknowledged in an interview last week that the president had released Dastagir from detention in September after a meeting with a delegation of tribal elders and politicians from Badghis who appealed for his freedom.<br />From time to time, Karzai issues pardons for detainees, though these orders often happen without publicity. In traditional Afghan society, problems are often resolved through quiet discussions among tribal elders and other community leaders.<br />"They thought he was a good person and not an enemy of the state," Hamidzada said. "Based on their advice, he decided to release him."<br />"Many people are taken into custody illegally and are lumped with the Taliban and others," he added. "They're not all Taliban, they're not all terrorists."<br />The spokesman said it was not yet certain whether Dastagir had led the ambush, though General Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the evidence indicated that he "played the main role."<br />Reached by telephone late Saturday, Dastagir laughed when asked whether he had been involved in the ambush. "Definitely!" he exclaimed, and laughed again. "I am a jihadist, I will continue my jihad," he declared. "My morale is very high."<br />The Taliban insurgency, which is based in Afghanistan's southern and southeastern provinces, along the border with Pakistan, has steadily expanded to other parts of the country, particularly in the west and northwest.<br />In the past three years, the size of the Taliban presence in Badghis, a mountainous and sparsely populated province on the border with Turkmenistan, has multiplied from almost nothing to a force that numbers in the high hundreds, if not more, and that has cowed local officials and has come to dominate large areas of territory, provincial officials said.<br />This growth, residents and local officials say, has been relatively unchecked by Afghan and international security forces.<br />The insurgency has also become increasingly tenacious in the neighboring provinces of Herat and Faryab. In the telephone interview on Saturday, Dastagir, who said he was speaking from Badghis, vowed to solidify the Taliban's foothold in those provinces and press the insurgency's campaign farther. "We will infiltrate the other provinces in the north," he said.<br />Several officials said Karzai's release of Dastagir was a major setback in the struggle to roll back the Taliban presence in Badghis.<br />"The Afghan and foreign security forces don't have a strategy for security in Badghis," said Qari Dawlat Khan, the leader of the provincial council.<br />The autopsy of the ambush also revealed flaws in military planning and intelligence gathering, including fundamental problems in the command of the unit that been attacked, the Afghan National Army's 207th Corps, Afghan officials said.<br />Before the Badghis ambush, the unit had suffered significant losses in several insurgent attacks in the past two years in Badghis and the western provinces of Farah and Herat, and the performance of the unit's commander was under review, officials said.<br />The convoy's mission was to carry supplies for the police from Qala-i-Nau, the provincial capital, to Balamorghab, a Taliban stronghold about 70 miles away along poor roads, officials said.<br />On Nov. 26, about 200 Afghan soldiers and police officers set out from Qala-i-Nau, spent the night in the village of Mangan, near the border, then resumed driving early the next morning.<br />As the road passed through a gorge near Balamorghab, insurgents hiding on the bluffs above opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said. The initial volleys blew up an oil tank-truck that was positioned toward the head of the convoy, blocking the road and dividing the forward vehicles in the convoy from the others.<br />The ensuing battle lasted several hours, ending only after four helicopters, two from the Afghan army and two from the international forces, arrived with Afghan commandos to help repel the insurgents.<br />Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said the attack was "totally unexpected," in part because the commanders had taken the tribal elders at their word and believed that the local Taliban fighters would not initiate any attacks after the release of Dastagir.<br />Since the attack, the government's top security officials have been called to testify before Parliament twice. Muhammad Eqbal Safi, a member of Parliament and the chairman of the lower house's military committee, said the officials' explanations about the security forces' lack of readiness "did not convince us."<br />A high-level official in the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, informed Parliament last week that intelligence officials had warned military and police officials of a possible Taliban ambush in late-November, Safi said.<br />Mohammad Yaqub, a lawmaker from Badghis, who was not in the delegation that visited Karzai, said it was commonly believed that there were several hundred, and possibly thousands, of Taliban fighters in the province. The convoy, he said, "was like handing food to the enemy."<br />Rangeen Mushkwani, a senator from Badghis who attended the elders' meeting with Karzai, said the Taliban ordered the delegation to plead for Dastagir's release. "These people did not come by their own choice," Mushkwani said. "They were forced to come."<br />Mushkwani said that he attended the meeting only to protect his relatives in Badghis. "Because my relatives, my cousins, my family members are living under the authority of the Taliban, I couldn't say that I wasn't going," he said.<br />According to Hamidzada, Karzai's spokesman, the president has requested the names of the delegation's members. If the investigation determines that Dastagir was responsible for the ambush, he said, the government would hold the elders responsible.<br />"Karzai took a political gamble and released him," Yaqub, the lawmaker from Badghis, said of Dastagir. The president, he added, was "deceived."</div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Militants kill three Pakistanis supplying NATO<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By Ibrahim Shinwari<br />Pakistani Taliban militants killed three truckers returning after taking fuel to Western forces in Afghanistan, officials said on Saturday, the latest in a growing spate of attacks on NATO supplies.<br />In a new tactic in fighting against NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, militants have launched a string of attacks aimed at chocking off supplies through the Khyber Pass, the main route for supplies in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.<br />Militants have destroyed more than 300 trucks laden with food and military goods in attacks on depots on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar this month, forcing NATO to look for alternative routes.<br />The latest attack occurred on Friday night when militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at oil-tankers in the Landi Kotal area of the Khyber region, when they were coming back from the Afghan border.<br />"Two drivers died on the spot while the third succumbed to his injuries today," said Khyal Hussain, a government official in Khyber.<br />The U.S. military sends 75 percent of supplies for the Afghan war through or over Pakistan, including 40 percent of the fuel for its troops, the U.S. Defence Department says.<br />The upsurge in attacks has exposed the vulnerability of NATO supplies and forced the alliance to look for alternatives routes, including through Central Asia into northern Afghanistan.<br />There are two routes into landlocked Afghanistan from the Pakistani port of Karachi, one through the Khyber Pass and the other through the town of Chaman to the southwest, leading to the Afghan city of Kandahar.<br />Supplies have been disrupted by the violence but some have been getting through from depots on the outskirts of Peshawar, through the Khyber Pass to the border at Torkham<br />The main truckers' association that handles the bulk of NATO supplies between Karachi and Peshawar said this month its members would no longer transport supplies because of the violence.<br />But an association official said on Saturday some of its members were going back because they needed the income.<br />"While security remains our paramount concern, this is our livelihood and we have to do something to get things going," Nadeem Akhtar, general secretary of the Karachi Goods Carrier Association, told Reuters.<br />About 60 trucks crossed the border on Saturday, according to Jehangir Afridi, a government security official in Khyber.<br />About 5,000 Islamist party supporters rallied in Peshawar on Thursday to call on the government to block supplies for Western forces in response to U.S. missile strikes on al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan.<br />(Additional reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi; Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Robert Birsel and Dean Yates)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Up to 30,000 new U.S. troops in Afghanistan by summer</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By Golnar Motevalli<br />The United States is aiming to send 20,000 to 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan by the beginning of next summer, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Saturday.<br />Washington is already sending some 3,000 extra troops in January and another 2,800 by spring, but officials previously have said the number would be made up to 20,000 in the next 12 to 18 months, once approved by the U.S. administration.<br />"Some 20 to 30,000 is the window of overall increase from where we are right now. I don't have an exact number," Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters in Kabul.<br />"We've agreed on the requirement and so it's really clear to me we're going to fill that requirement so it's not a matter of if, but when," he said.<br />"We're looking to get them here in the spring, but certainly by the beginning of summer at the latest."<br />U.S. Army General David McKiernan, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan, has asked for the extra troops to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in the east and south of Afghanistan.<br />U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged a renewed focus on Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001 after the September 11 attacks.<br />The United States now has some 31,000 troops in Afghanistan.<br />After the January deployment, most of the reinforcements are to be sent to southern Afghanistan to bolster mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops who have suffered heavy casualties in the last two years fighting in the Taliban heartland.<br />"That's where the toughest fight is," Mullen said. "When we get additional troops here, I think the violence level is going to go up. The fight will be tougher."<br />He said beefing up U.S. forces in Afghanistan was linked to winding down in Iraq.<br />"Available forces are directly tied to forces in Iraq. As we look to the possibility of reducing forces in Iraq over the course of the next year, the availability of forces to come here in Afghanistan will increase," Mullen said.<br />INDIA-PAKISTAN<br />Mullen said the attacks by Islamist militants in Mumbai last month showed the need to reduce Indian tensions with Pakistan and that would help bring stability to Afghanistan.<br />"That's another big piece of the strategy, what I would call regional focus to include Pakistan, Afghanistan and India ... leadership in all three of those countries to figure out a way to decrease tensions, not increase tensions," Mullen said.<br />He said the late arrival of winter this year had meant there were still significant flows of militants from the tribal belt along the Pakistani side of the border, but better cooperation with the Pakistani military was nevertheless helping.<br />"We're not there, we still have a long way to go but we've actually made a lot of progress," Mullen said.<br />Mullen said the Afghan government was not as strong as he had anticipated and engaging with tribal areas in remote parts of Afghanistan could be central to future operations.<br />"We may have overstated the focus on the ability of the central government to have the kind of impact that we wanted given the history here in Afghanistan," Mullen said.<br />Mullen also said at the same time, more must be done to boost economic development in Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, and to make the Afghan government more effective.<br />"No amount of troops, no amount of time will provide a solution here without development," he said.<br />(Editing by Ralph Boulton)</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>India bans Goa beach parties in wake of Mumbai blast</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />NEW DELHI: Authorities in India's tourist destination of Goa have banned Christmas and New Year parties on its beaches, following security threats after the Mumbai attacks, a top police officer said on Saturday.<br />"No party will be allowed in the open on any beach of Goa between December 23 and January 5," Kishan Kumar, the Inspector General of Police told Reuters on Saturday.<br />"Obviously there is a security threat, but we cannot say anything more specific at the moment," he said by telephone from Goa.<br />At least 179 people were killed in Mumbai last month in a militant attack, which India says was carried out by Islamist militants from Pakistan.<br />India has tightened security around the country, especially in coastal areas following the Mumbai attacks, in which militants used a sea route to reach India.<br />Thousands of tourists travel to Goa every month to visit its beaches, also famous for night-long parties.<br />"Tourism is a lifeline of Goa, this decision will seriously affect tourism," Vikram Varma, a lawyer in Goa, said.<br />"After all, Christmas is just round the corner."<br />(Reporting by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Ralph Boulton)</div><div> </div><div>***********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Palestinian leader Abbas visits Russia's Chechnya</strong><br />Reuters<br />Sunday, December 21, 2008<br />GROZNY, Russia: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived on Sunday in Grozny, capital of Russia's troubled region of Chechnya.<br />Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov welcomed Abbas at the airport to take him to his residence along a road decorated with photos of their previous meetings.<br />Kadyrov is seen by Chechens as dedicated to the revival of the Muslim religion and has met several influential Muslim leaders from Arab states.<br />"We feel at home here. We thank the Almighty that we came to the Chechen Republic," Abbas told journalists through an interpreter.<br />Kadyrov, a former rebel who now declares loyalty to the Kremlin, held talks with Abbas during the haj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.<br />Chechnya, on Russia's southern border, is now relatively peaceful after two wars fought by separatist rebels and Islamist militants against Moscow's rule starting in 1994.<br />Some analysts say that, in return for quelling rebel attacks, the Kremlin has let Kadyrov enforce some Islamic rules, such as requiring women working in government offices to wear headscarves and long skirts, and imposing periodic alcohol bans.<br />A Kremlin spokesman in Moscow said Abbas would stay in Russia until December 22, when he was due to hold talks with President Dmitry Medvedev.<br />(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Oleg Shchedrov; Editing by Kevin Liffey)</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Israeli air strike kills Gaza militant</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By Nidal al-Mughrabi<br />An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian militant in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, a day after the end of a six-month-old cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas rulers of the enclave, the army and Palestinians said.<br />An Israeli military official said the air strike targeted a group of militants firing rockets towards Israel.<br />Palestinian medics said a militant was killed and another was wounded when a missile exploded in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. The attack came hours after two rockets fired from Gaza landed in Israel, causing no damage or injuries, the army said.<br />Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, said the militants belonged to its ranks. It identified the man killed in the air strike as Ali Hijazi, 25.<br />Shortly after the air strike, Hamas said its militants had fired six mortar shells at an Israeli army post near the southern Gaza Strip. The army confirmed the attack, which it said caused no damage or injuries.<br />Hamas declared the end of the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with the Jewish state in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, raising the prospect of an escalation in cross-border fighting.<br />Armed Islamist factions in Gaza went on alert on Friday and warned Israel not to attack the coastal enclave.<br />Under the truce, brokered by Egypt in June, Palestinian militants would halt rocket fire in return for Israel gradually easing its blockade of the Gaza Strip to allow in more aid.<br />But the cease-fire has been eroded almost daily since early November after a deadly Israeli army raid into Gaza prompted showers of largely ineffective rockets into Israel.<br />Egypt said on Friday it had not been asked to repair the truce.<br />(Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Katie Nguyen)<br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9_JmJVEE61mQ38rEdxaBEUAxw7fPI20nLpSs5C8Z8WFIjsT_HVWP6fKmYYErLmo2TLm3H8XRARozcgJfKhjY22DSsGFSyCl1Y48CJAIJeOYalqw0FseXOYLTiZkTeVA706Vr3Q435SM/s1600-h/DSC03744.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282220436121160530" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgop01L3MFV58xHZLham_K3CcT4n88S3mC6emdpFld92WbB_GAoGLmAzIjy8z06nN_cl55ge2mlkBbZQKUDdmovLmq34EOsVnFGfmrp6wR8bvK14qJLYZVmYCumV0FYqHO3WcVauNEJVJY/s320/DSC03772.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLhyg_sgNYQWmyKI53Pvb7KGt7__qJdARzHParVj7uyUu23K_JDppBXVKf4VEOAakq_0g-dRLTdfTxPdFWzTqIfGfK_exjoyI0f6PtBkIAryoaBvhx_Lq-G8uxhsULWQ7nVsUK4g_er0Q/s1600-h/DSC03773.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218494121385586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLhyg_sgNYQWmyKI53Pvb7KGt7__qJdARzHParVj7uyUu23K_JDppBXVKf4VEOAakq_0g-dRLTdfTxPdFWzTqIfGfK_exjoyI0f6PtBkIAryoaBvhx_Lq-G8uxhsULWQ7nVsUK4g_er0Q/s320/DSC03773.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBkaNTfxUZ-uma3tx3ahRkJcl2A3xBfWhEgfTXx1dw_vnIomSI13uFMermZL1OUQpcI9qJS3QqM5iWwVwWpWgWac0fQ7-3uCXC9CEDfeiUC4_USsAE5y898Ys1q19fOBL74Wkt1OUCbQ/s1600-h/DSC03774.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218488483475042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZBkaNTfxUZ-uma3tx3ahRkJcl2A3xBfWhEgfTXx1dw_vnIomSI13uFMermZL1OUQpcI9qJS3QqM5iWwVwWpWgWac0fQ7-3uCXC9CEDfeiUC4_USsAE5y898Ys1q19fOBL74Wkt1OUCbQ/s320/DSC03774.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><strong>The world wasn't big enough for this Ponzi scheme<br /></strong>By Diana Henriques<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By the end, the world itself was too small to support the vast Ponzi scheme constructed by Bernard Madoff.<br />Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.<br />Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club. A Swiss hedge fund manager, Michel Dominice, still remembers the pitch he got a few years ago from a salesman in Geneva. "He told me the fund was closed, that it was something I couldn't buy," Dominice said. "But he told me he might have a way to get me in. It was weird."<br />Madoff's agents next cut a cash-gathering swath through the Gulf, then Southeast Asia. Finally, they were hurtling with undignified speed toward China, with invitations to invest that were more desperate, less exclusive. One Beijing business executive who was approached said it seemed the Madoff funds were being pitched "to anyone who would listen."<br />The juggernaut began to sputter this fall as investors, rattled by the financial crisis and reaching for cash, started taking money out faster than Madoff could bring fresh cash in the door. He was arrested on Dec. 11 at his New York apartment and charged with securities fraud, turned in the night before by his sons after he told them his entire business was "a giant Ponzi scheme."<br />The case is still viewed more with mystery than clarity. But whatever else Madoff's game was, it was certainly this: The first worldwide Ponzi scheme - a fraud that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any similar scheme in history, entirely eclipsing the puny regional ambitions of Charles Ponzi, the Boston swindler who gave his name to the scheme nearly a century ago.<br />"Absolutely - there has been nothing like this, nothing that we could call truly global," said Mitchell Zuckoff, author of "Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend," who is a professor at Boston University.<br />These classic schemes typically prey on local trust, he added. "So this says what we increasingly know to be true about the world: The barriers have come down; money knows no borders, no limits," he said.<br />While many of the known victims of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities are prominent Jewish executives and organizations - Jeffrey Katzenberg, Yeshiva University, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and charities set up by the publisher Mortimer Zuckerman and the Hollywood director Steven Spielberg - it now appears that anyone with money was a potential target. Indeed, at one point, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a large sovereign wealth fund in the Middle East, had entrusted some $400 million to Madoff's firm.<br />Regulators say Madoff himself estimated that $50 billion in personal and institutional wealth from around the world was gone. It vanished from the estates of the North Shore of Long Island, New York, from the beachfront suites of Palm Beach, Florida, from the exclusive enclaves of Europe. Before it evaporated, it helped finance Madoff's coddled lifestyle, with a Manhattan apartment; a beachfront mansion in the Hamptons; a small villa overlooking Cap d'Antibes on the French Riviera; a Mayfair office in London; yachts in New York, Florida and the Mediterranean.<br />Just as the scheme transcended national borders, it left local regulators far behind. Its lies were translated into a half-dozen languages. Its larceny was denominated in a half-dozen currencies. Its warning signals were missed by enforcement agencies around the globe. And its victims are scattered from Abu Dhabi to Zurich.<br />Indeed, while the most visible pain may be local - an important charity forced to close, an esteemed university embarrassed, a fabric of community trust shredded - the clearest lesson is universal: When money goes global, fraud does too.Bernie who?<br />In 1960, as Wall Street was just shaking off its postwar lethargy and starting to buzz again, Bernie Madoff set up his small trading firm. His plan was to make a business out of trading lesser-known over-the-counter stocks on the fringes of the traditional stock market. He was just 22, a graduate of Hofstra, a small university in the suburbs of New York.<br />By 1989, Madoff 's firm was handling more than 5 percent of the trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange. Financial World ranked him among the highest paid people on Wall Street - along with two far more famous financiers, the junk bond king Michael Milken and the international investor George Soros.<br />In 1990, Madoff became the nonexecutive chairman of the Nasdaq market, which at the time was operated as a committee of the National Association of Securities Dealers.<br />His rise on Wall Street was built on his belief in a visionary notion that seemed bizarre to many at the time: That stocks could be traded by people who never saw each other but were connected only by electronics.<br />In the mid-1970s, he had spent over $250,000 to upgrade the computer equipment at the Cincinnati Stock Exchange, where he began offering to buy and sell stocks that were listed on the Big Board. The exchange, in effect, was transformed into the first all-electronic computerized stock exchange.<br />"He was one of the early innovators," said Michael Ocrant, a journalist who has been a longtime skeptic about Madoff's investing success. "He was known to promote the idea that trading would be going electronic - and that turned out to be true."<br />Unlike some prominent Wall Street figures who built their fortunes during the heady 1980s and '90s, Madoff never became a household name among American investors. But in the clubby world of Jewish philanthropy in the New York area, his increasing wealth and growing reputation among market insiders added polish to his personal prestige.<br />He became a generous donor, then a courted board member and, finally, the money manager of choice for many prominent regional charities.<br />A spokeswoman for the New York Community Trust, Ani Hurwitz, recalled a Long Island couple who asked the trust in 1994 to invest their proposed $20 million fund with Madoff. "We have an investment committee that oversees all investments, and they couldn't get anything out of him, no information, nothing," Hurwitz said. "So we told the donors we wouldn't do it."<br />But many charities did entrust their money to Madoff, to their eventual grief. The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, for instance, reported that it had lost $5.7 million on an investment with Madoff that was made at the donor's behest. (That donor has pledged to cover the loss for the hospital system, its spokesman said.)<br />Other groups saw the handsome returns on those initial investments and put more of their money into Madoff's firm, their leaders said. "Look, for years we made money," one said.<br />Most successful business executives intertwine their personal and professional lives. But those two strands of Madoff's life were practically inseparable. He sometimes used his yacht, Bull, as a floating entertainment center for clients. He used his support of organizations like the Public Theater in New York and the Special Olympics to build a network of trust that began to stretch wider and deeper into the Jewish community.<br />Through friends, the Madoff network reached well beyond New York. At Oak Ridge Country Club, in Hopkins, Minnesota, known for a prosperous Jewish membership, many who belonged were introduced to the Madoff firm by one of his friends, Mike Engler.<br />The quiet message became familiar in similar pockets of Jewish wealth and trust: "I know Bernie. I can get you in." Engler died in 1994, but many Oak Ridge members remained clients of Madoff. One elderly member, who said he was too embarrassed to be named, said he had lost tens of millions of dollars, and had friends who had been "completely wiped out."<br />Dozens of now-outraged Madoff investors recall that special lure - the sense that they were being allowed into an inner circle, one that was not available to just anyone. A lawyer would call a client, saying: "I'm setting up a fund for Bernie Madoff. Do you want in?" Or an accountant at a golf club might tell his partner for the day: "I can make an introduction. Let me know." Deals were struck in steakhouses and at charity events, sometimes by Madoff himself, but with increasing frequency by friends acting on his behalf.<br />"In a social setting - that's where it always happened," said Jerry Reisman, a lawyer from Garden City, one of the New York suburbs on Long Island, who knew Madoff socially. "Country clubs, golf courses, locker rooms. Recommendations, word-of-mouth. That's how it was done."<br />With his wife, Ruth Madoff, a nutritionist and cookbook editor, they were considered affable and charming people. "They stood out," Reisman said. "Success, philanthropy, esteem - and, if you were lucky enough to be with him as an investor, money.<br />"That was the most important thing; he was looked on as someone who could make you money. Really make you money."The go-betweens<br />By the mid-1990s, as Madoff's wealth and social standing grew, he had moved far beyond the days when golf-club buddies were setting up side deals to invest with him through their lawyers and accountants. Some of the most prominent figures in the world of Jewish entrepreneurship began to court Bernie Madoff - and, through them, he reached a new orbit of wealth.<br />He could not have had a more effective recruiter than Jacob Ezra Merkin, a lion of Wall Street who was also president of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York.<br />Philanthropies embraced Merkin. He headed the investment committee for the UJA-Federation of New York for 10 years and was on the boards of Yeshiva University, Carnegie Hall and other organizations. He became the chairman of GMAC, the finance arm that General Motors spun off.<br />Installed in these lofty positions of trust, Ezra Merkin seemed to be a Wall Street wise man who could be trusted completely to manage other people's money. One vehicle through which he did that was a fund called Ascot Partners.<br />It was one of an unknown number of deals that prominent financial figures set up in recent years and marketed to investors, who thought they were tapping into the acumen of some Wall Street titan, like Merkin.<br />As it turned out, their money wound up in the same place - in Bernie Madoff's hands.<br />These conduits began to steer billions of dollars into the Madoff operation. They operated below the financial radar until Madoff's scheme collapsed, when investors suddenly got letters from the sponsoring titan disclosing that all or most of their money was probably gone.<br />Ascot itself attracted $1.8 billion in investments, almost all of which was entrusted to Madoff. New York Law School put $3 million into Ascot two years ago and has initiated a lawsuit in federal court that accuses Merkin of abdicating his duties to the partnership.<br />Zuckerman, the billionaire owner of The Daily News in New York, rebuked Merkin in a televised interview, saying he had been misled about what Merkin had done with some $30 million from Zuckerman's charitable foundation.<br />Behind a wall of lawyers, Merkin did not take calls since sending out a "Dear Limited Partner" letter on Dec. 11. In the letter, he noted that he, too, was one of Madoff's victims and had suffered big losses alongside his investors.<br />Another conduit was the Fairfield Greenwich Group, started in 1983 by Walter Noel. A courtly native of Tennessee, Noel had spent time at larger firms, notably at Chemical Bank, where he started its international private banking practice, before setting out on his own.<br />The Noel family had access to prestigious social circles. Noel's wife, Monica, was part of the prominent Haegler family of Rio de Janeiro and Zurich, and their daughters married into international families that provided additional connections for the firm.<br />In 1989, Noel merged his business with a small brokerage firm whose general partner was Jeffrey Tucker, a longtime New Yorker who had a law degree from Brooklyn Law School and a résumé that included eight years with the enforcement division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.<br />Again and again, this pedigreed experience was emphasized by Fairfield as it built itself into a fund of funds, investing in other hedge funds. It boasted to its prospects that its investigation of investment options was "deeper and broader" than those of most firms because of Tucker's experience in the regulatory ranks.<br />Though he is not nearly as prominent as the Noels, who move in the forefront of Connecticut society, Tucker benefited just as much from Fairfield's success. Indeed, last year he led a coalition of thoroughbred racing interests that sought to bid for New York State's horse-racing franchise.<br />It was Tucker who introduced Fairfield to Madoff. In the early 1990s, Fairfield began placing money with him, according to George Ball, the former president of E.F. Hutton and Prudential-Bache chief executive who knows Noel socially.<br />That began a long partnership that helped the Fairfield firm earn enviably steady returns, even in down markets - and that lifted Madoff into a global orbit, one that soon extended his reach into some of the most fabled banking centers of Europe.<br />If the wealthy Jewish world he occupied was his launch pad, the wealthy promoters he cultivated at Fairfield Greenwich were his booster rocket.<br />Fairfield Sentry was one of several feeder funds that became portals through which money from wealthy foreign investors would flow into Madoff's hands - collecting those exclusive, steady returns that had made him the toast of Palm Beach and the North Shore so many years before.<br />The Sentry fund quickly became Fairfield's signature product, and it boasted of stellar returns. In marketing materials, Fairfield trumpeted Sentry's 11 percent annual return over the past 15 years, with only 13 losing months. It was a track record that grew increasingly attractive as markets grew more volatile in recent years.<br />Though Fairfield Greenwich has its headquarters in New York and its founder, Noel, operated from his hometown, Greenwich, Connecticut, a wealthy New York suburb, a recent report showed that foreign investors provided 95 percent of its managed assets - with 68 percent in Europe, 6 percent in Asia, and 4 percent in the Middle East.<br />Friends and associates say that Noel's sons-in-law spent much of their time marketing the firm's funds in either their home countries or regions where they had their own family connections.<br />Madoff's higher profile in the highly competitive world of hedge fund management intensified the skepticism about his remarkably consistent returns. There were a scattering of inconclusive regulatory investigations - efforts so unavailing that the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington has ordered an internal investigation to determine how the agency could have missed so many red flags and ignored so many credible complaints over the years.<br />But foreign regulators were not any quicker to notice Madoff's oddities - or the rapidly expanding pool of money entrusted to the various feeder funds he serviced.<br />Madoff wasn't well known on the social circuit in Switzerland. Instead, Swiss money managers would go to him, visiting his offices in New York. Indeed, seeing Madoff there was a bit like visiting the Wizard of Oz: Despite his unerring success in generating smooth returns, he seemed quite ordinary, lacking the flamboyance of other well-heeled money managers.<br />"He did not look like a huge spender, seemed like a family man," said one veteran Geneva banker, whose firm had money with Madoff but insisted on anonymity because of the likelihood of lawsuits from angry clients. "He talked about the markets."<br />The only thing that struck the Swiss banker as odd was the bull memorabilia strewn about his office. "It seemed strange for a guy to have all these bulls, little sculptures, paintings of bulls," he recalled. "I've seen offices with bears. This was bulls."<br />But the aura of exclusivity was the constant, he said. "This was the usual spiel: 'It's impossible to get in, but we can get you some if you're nice.' He made it look difficult to get into."<br />What began as a quietly coveted investment opportunity for the lucky few in the Jewish country clubs of Long Island became, in its final burst of growth, a thoroughly global financial product whose roots were obscured behind legions of well-dressed, multilingual sales representatives in the financial capitals of Europe.<br />Indeed, often with the assistance of feeder funds, Madoff was now in a position to seek and procure money from Arab investors, too. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, with assets estimated earlier this year to be to be approaching $700 billion, wound up in the same boat as Jewish charities in New York: caught in the collapse of Bernie Madoff.<br />In early 2005, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority had invested approximately $400 million with Madoff, by way of Fairfield Sentry, according to a confidential Fairfield report from 2007. By now Fairfield Sentry had more than $7 billion invested with Madoff and was his largest investor - and now, it says, his largest victim.<br />The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, in turn, was one of Fairfield Sentry's largest investors. Even after it took two significant redemptions from the fund, in April 2005 and 2006, its stake the following year of $132 million comprised 2 percent of the fund's assets under management.<br />The 2007 report lists Philip Toub, one of Noel's sons-in-law, as the firm's agent with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority investors. Toub, a partner in Fairfield Greenwich Group, is married to Alix Noel and is the son of Said Toub, a wealthy shipping executive from Switzerland.<br />Other investors for whom Toub is listed as the agent include the Public Institute for Social Security, apparently a reference to the Kuwaiti government agency; the National Bank of Kuwait; and Safra National Bank of New York, controlled by the Safra family of Brazil.<br />And Fairfield was finding new fields for Madoff to cultivate. In 2004, the firm turned its eyes to Asia, forming a partnership with Lion Capital of Singapore to create Lion Fairfield Capital Management, a joint venture meant to introduce Asian investors to the firm.<br />"Many investors believe that Asia holds the best global opportunities for hedge funds over the next two to five years, as compared to the U.S. and Europe," Richard Landsberger, a Fairfield partner and director of Lion Fairfield, told HedgeWorld in 2006.<br />Yet it appears that Sentry remained Fairfield's chief focus in this new vineyard. Among the institutions that had invested in the fund are Korea Life Insurance, with $30 million to $50 million; Taiwanese Insurance Cathay Life, with about $12 million; and Samsung Investment & Securities, with about $6.3 million.<br />As it moved into Asia, Fairfield set up another feeder fund, Stellar Absolute Returns, incorporated in Singapore and meant to funnel investors' capital into Sentry. According to data from Bloomberg News, Stellar borrowed $3 for every $1 of investor money it received, in an effort to extract higher returns.<br />Last year, Jeffrey Tucker went to Asia to educate potential investors in Beijing and Thailand about hedge funds, seeking to allay their concerns about previous blow-ups in the industry like Long-Term Capital Management, a Connecticut hedge fund that was bailed out under the supervision of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1998 when its exotic derivative investments brought it to the brink of a costly collapse.<br />"China is moving slowly as the reformers become familiar with what we do," Tucker told HedgeWorld in November 2007. "It's the same thing in Thailand. There are misunderstandings about hedge funds."</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Charity that trusted Madoff closes</strong><br />By Geraldine Fabrikant<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />NEW YORK: The Madoff scandal is proving so big that even some large charities will not recover. One of the leading U.S. philanthropies, the Picower Foundation, announced Friday that it was shutting down.<br />The foundation has given $268 million to groups like the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Human Rights First, the New York Public Library and the Children's Health Fund since it was established in 1989 by Barbara Picower and her husband, the investor Jeffry M. Picower, in Palm Beach, Fla.<br />Listed previously at $1 billion, the foundation's assets were managed by Bernard L. Madoff, Barbara Picower said in a statement, and his "act of fraud has had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of lives as well as numerous philanthropic foundations and nonprofit organizations."<br />The foundation, listed as the 71st-largest in the nation by the Council on Foundations, is far larger than the JEHT Foundation, funded by Jeanne Levy-Church, which earlier this week announced it would close. It was created in 2002 to promote justice, equality and human dignity and tolerance. Other smaller foundations that were dependent on Madoff funds have also said they would shut their doors.<br />Picower's statement said that the foundation had provided support for a wide array of organizations. Last year its beneficiaries included the City Parks Foundation and the School District of Palm Beach County as well as the Jewish Outreach Institute and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<br />Between 2004 and 2007, it gave away about $70 million. In 2002, it made a $50 million grant to build and staff a center for brain research at MIT. At the time it was the biggest gift from a private foundation to that university. That gift has been fully funded.<br />The foundation's collapse adds to other losses in the world of philanthropy since the economy soured. The Starr Foundation, which had been funded with stock in American International Group, has lost at least $1 billion, or one-third of its value, as AIG's shares plunged on its government rescue.<br />William Zabel, of Schulte Roth & Zabel, which is representing the Picower Foundation, called the scandal "sad and devastating to the Picowers and the world of finance." The foundation's 2007 tax filings list many investments, approximately two-thirds of them equities, including Johnson & Johnson, Caterpillar and AT&T. About one-third of the assets were reported as U.S. Treasuries. The investments were virtually entirely handled by Madoff, Zabel said.<br />Jeffry Picower appears to have made a fortune in a 2004 deal struck by Cardinal Health to acquire Alaris Medical Systems for $1.6 billion. Picower owned 65 percent of Alaris.<br />He was said to have been friends with Madoff for 30 years. But he has brushed up against other financiers whose conduct caused him losses. In 1990, Picower recovered some of the money he had invested in Ivan Boesky's biggest arbitrage fund. Boesky pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges in 1986.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Regulator to probe banks after Anglo Irish scandal</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By Carmel Crimmins and Jonathan Saul<br />Ireland's financial regulator will review the treatment of directors' loans at major lenders amid mounting anger on Saturday that shareholders were kept in the dark about director borrowings at Anglo Irish Bank .<br />Anglo's chairman Sean FitzPatrick and chief executive David Drumm resigned within hours of each other this week after FitzPatrick said he had transferred loans of around 87 million euros (81 million pounds) that he had received from the bank to another bank before each year-end over a period of eight years.<br />Due to this transfer, the loans, which FitzPatrick said he received on commercial terms, did not appear in annual accounts available to shareholders.<br />Anglo also said total director loans amounted to 150 million euros at the end of September.<br />Ireland's financial regulator, whose chief executive Patrick Neary has faced calls to resign following the revelations, said on Saturday it would probe directors' loans at all banks and building societies covered by a 400-billion-euro government guarantee programme.<br />The Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority became aware of the loans at Anglo Irish in January but its board said on Saturday it was only notified about them on Wednesday.<br />The regulator said it would be reviewing its own response to the directors' loans at Anglo Irish.<br />Staff from the regulator have been placed full-time in all of the covered banks and building societies -- Allied Irish Banks , Bank of Ireland , Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent , Irish Nationwide Building Society and the Educational Building Society.<br />"There is a degree of anger out there among ordinary people at what has occurred at Anglo and that is why we do need real accountability," John Gormley, a government minister and head of the Green Party, told national broadcaster RTE.<br />"There would appear to have been a certain amount of complacency in relation to this matter."<br />The government has vowed to support Anglo Irish, whose market value has plummeted to just 266 million euros from a height of around 13 billion euros in 2007, but investors and senior politicians have questioned whether taxpayers should bail out the niche commercial lender.<br />"The reason that we are putting in state capital is to get confidence and lending going again. If Anglo is not going to be a lender for the foreseeable future that's not a great place to put our capital," said Richard Bruton, finance spokesman for the main opposition party, Fine Gael.<br />"We need to put our scarce cash into banks that have a long-term future."<br />A spokeswoman for Anglo Irish Bank declined to respond to Bruton's comments.<br />"SHAMEFUL EPISODE"<br />The Irish Times newspaper said the government was set to inject 3 billion euros into Anglo Irish and become a majority shareholder. The finance ministry and Anglo Irish declined to comment on the report, which did not cite any sources.<br />In an editorial, the newspaper also questioned the merit of bailing out Anglo following what it described as a "shameful episode."<br />The government has promised to invest 10 billion euros to recapitalise the Irish banking sector, which has seen billions wiped off its market value amid a global credit crunch and a rapidly deteriorating local economy.<br />Anglo Irish, which is heavily exposed to a struggling commercial property sector, has been the worst affected stock.<br />Ireland was among the first countries to respond to the financial crisis with a two-year guarantee of bank liabilities worth 440 billion euros but it has not nationalised or bailed out any banks and they have not raised equity themselves.<br />The government has said it expects to deliver definite proposals by early January on a recapitalisation plan that will be made in tandem with private investment.<br />The regulator has said it would undertake an urgent review of events surrounding directors' loans in Anglo Irish Bank and will report its findings in three weeks.<br />FitzPatrick said while the transfer of the loans did not breach banking or legal regulations, it was "inappropriate."<br />(Writing by Carmel Crimmins, editing by Michael Roddy)</div><div><br /><br />*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Publisher opens inquiry into article on Wyeth drug</strong><br />By Duff Wilson<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />The medical publisher Elsevier said Friday that it would investigate a U.S. senator's recent allegation that one of its journals published an article on hormone replacement therapy that was improperly ghostwritten by a drug company promoting the product.<br />The senator, Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, had raised questions about the May 2003 "Editors' Choice" article in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, published by Elsevier, which is part of the Dutch-British publishing giant Reed Elsevier.<br />The article, signed by Dr. John Eden, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, was among articles Grassley has cited that were favorable to drugs made by the pharmaceutical company Wyeth.<br />Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee who is investigating drug companies' influence on doctors, contends that Wyeth commissioned the articles and had them ghostwritten by a medical writing firm. Only after the articles were conceived and under way did the firm line up doctors to put their names on them, Grassley contends.<br />"The charges made by Senator Grassley's office with regard to the article published in 2003 by Dr. Eden are a significant concern to The Journal and Elsevier," Glen Campbell, senior vice president for Elsevier's U.S. Health Sciences Journals unit, said in a statement. "As with any charge of misconduct or inappropriate publishing acts, The Journal has launched its own investigation into the claims of ghostwriting and undisclosed financial support."<br />The journal article, published more than a year after a landmark U.S. government study linked Prempro, a Wyeth hormone product, to breast cancer in women, said there was "no definitive evidence" the hormones caused breast cancer.<br />Eden's article did not mention any involvement by Wyeth or DesignWrite, the medical writing company hired by Wyeth. He acknowledged the contributions of two people for "editorial assistance" but did not disclose that they worked for DesignWrite. The standard industry guidelines for medical journals require the authors to identify all significant contributors.<br />Eden said in an interview by e-mail that he stood by the article's contents but declined to elaborate. "I cannot comment as these matters are before the Senate," he said. "I am also aware of ongoing lawsuits around these matters."<br />In a statement Friday, Wyeth said the academic authors had not been paid by Wyeth and had "substantive editorial control" of the articles.<br />Grassley said in a statement that he appreciated the publishing company's response and would continue his own investigation.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Barclays said to see 1-2 years of tight credit</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />LONDON: Bank lending will take 1-2 years to return to normal, and asset prices need as much as 18 months to stabilise, Barclays Chief Executive John Varley said in an interview released on Saturday.<br />Varley told BBC television that banks were still lending, but there needed to be a reduction in the overall amount of debt in the economy.<br />"I think that we will see the process of reduced borrowing play out over at least the course of the next 12 months ... maybe 24 months," he said.<br />"That is a painful process, it's a process through which the world absolutely has to go," he said.<br />"As soon as asset prices stabilise, then we will see the financial economy recover. And when will that occur? That will occur some time over the course of the next 18 months," he said.<br />In a separate interview with Sky News earlier in the week, Varley said that he expected British house prices to fall a total of 30 percent from the peak values set in summer 2007.<br />(Reporting by David Milliken, editing by Mike Peacock)</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Japan proposes record budget to bolster economy</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />TOKYO: Japan unveiled a budget proposal Saturday that, if approved, will push spending to record levels as the government scrambles to battle an ever-deepening recession.<br />The Finance Ministry's draft budget suggested a spending increase of 6.6 percent to 88.5 trillion yen ($990.9 billion) for the next fiscal year the biggest ever figure in an initial proposal.<br />The world's second-largest economy fell into a recession in the third quarter, and the signs since then point toward more misery ahead. The latest outlook by the Cabinet Office projects Japan's economy to shrink this fiscal year and manage only flat growth the following year.<br />The budget proposal said general spending will rise to 51.7 trillion yen ($578.9 billion) in the year starting April, even though tax revenue is projected to fall 13.9 percent to 46.1 trillion yen ($516.2 billion).<br />As a result, Japan will see its primary budget deficit jump to more than 13 trillion yen ($145.6 billion) from 5 trillion yen ($56 billion) this year, and will boost bond issuances by 31.3 percent to cover the revenue shortfall.<br />The draft budget is scheduled for Cabinet approval on Wednesday and will likely be submitted to parliament in January.<br />The expansion is likely to derail Tokyo's efforts to slim down toward its goal of balancing the budget by 2011. But Prime Minister Taro Aso, facing plummeting popularity ratings, has made it clear that this is no time for fiscal discipline.<br />On Friday the central bank cut its key interest rate to 0.1 percent, joining the U.S. Federal Reserve in pushing borrowing costs close to zero. And in its gloomiest assessment this year, the Bank of Japan cited the harsh impact of tumbling exports, weakening domestic demand, job losses and growing credit crunch.<br />"Under these circumstances economic conditions have been deteriorating and are likely to increase in severity for the immediate future," it said in its statement.<br />The prime minister has responded by introducing a slew of fiscal stimulus measures, including a 27 trillion yen ($302.3 billion) package in October and a 43 trillion yen ($481.5 billion) plan earlier this month.<br />The Cabinet on Saturday approved a 4.79 trillion yen ($53.6 billion) supplementary budget for this fiscal year through March to fund some of the stimulus steps. Among Aso's measures are expanded credits for small businesses, lower highway tolls and a cash payout to every household to spur spending.<br />Still, it may not be enough to trigger a turnaround for Aso and his Liberal Democratic Party, which looks increasingly likely to lose its decades-long grip on political power.<br />The embattled Aso has repeatedly come under fire for verbal gaffes and a lack of leadership through the global economic crisis. His approval rating has plunged to about 20 percent in the three months since taking office.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Regulator saved India from bank bubble</strong><br />By Joe Nocera<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />MUMBAI: "What has taken a number of us by surprise is the lack of adequate supervision and regulation," Rana Kapoor was saying the other day. "This was despite the fact that Enron had happened and you passed Sarbanes-Oxley. We don't understand it. Maybe it's because we sit in a more controlled economy but..." He smiled sweetly as his voice trailed off, as if to take the sting off his comments. But they stung nonetheless.<br />Kapoor is an Indian banker, a former longtime Bank of America executive with a Rutgers MBA who, along with his business partner and brother-in-law, Ashok Kapur, was granted government permission four years ago to start a private bank, which they called Yes Bank. In the United States, Yes Bank is the kind of name a go-go banker might give to, say, a high-flying mortgage lender in the middle of a bubble. (You can even imagine the slogan: "Yes is part of our name!") But Yes Bank is not exactly the Washington Mutual of India. One news release it hands out to reporters who come calling is an excerpt from a 2007 survey by The Financial Express: "No. 1 on Credit Quality amongst 56 Banks in India," reads the headline.<br />I arrived in Mumbai three weeks after the terrorist attacks that killed 200 people - including, tragically, Yes Bank's co-founder Kapur, who had served as the company's nonexecutive chairman and was gunned down while having dinner at the Oberoi hotel. (His wife and two dinner companions miraculously escaped).<br />My hope in traveling to Mumbai was to learn about the current state of Indian business in the wake of both the credit crisis and the attacks. But in my first few days in this grand, sprawling, chaotic city, what I mainly heard, especially talking to bankers, was about America, not India. How could we have brought so much trouble on ourselves, and the rest of the world, by acting in such an obviously foolhardy manner? Didn't we understand that you can't lend money to people who lack the means to pay it back? The questions were asked with a sense of bewilderment - and an occasional hint of scorn. Like most Americans, I didn't have any good answers. It was a bubble, I would respond with a sheepish shrug, as if that were an adequate explanation. It isn't, of course.<br />"In India, we never had anything close to the subprime loan," said Chandra Kochhar, the chief financial officer of India's largest private bank, Icici. (A few days after I spoke to her, Kochhar was named the bank's new chief executive, in a move that had long been anticipated.) "All lending to individuals is based on their income. That is a big difference between your banking system and ours." She continued: "Indian banks are not levered like American banks. Capital ratios are 12 and 13 percent, instead of 7 or 8 percent. All those exotic structures like CDO and securitizations are a very tiny part of our banking system. So a lot of the temptations didn't exist."<br />And when I went to see Deepak Parekh, the chief executive of HDFC, which was founded in 1977 as the country's first specialized mortgage bank, practically the first words out of his mouth were these: "We don't do interest-only or subprime loans. When the bubble was going on, we did not change any of our policies. We did not change any of our systems. We did not change our thought process. We never gave more money to a borrower because the value of the house had gone up. Citibank has a few home equity loans, but most banks in India don't make those kinds of loans. Our nonperforming loans are less than 1 percent."<br />Yet two years ago, the Indian real estate market - commercial and residential alike - was every bit as frothy as the U.S. market. High-rises were being slapped up on spec. Housing developments were sprouting up everywhere. And there was plenty of money flowing into India, mainly from private equity and hedge funds, to fuel the commercial real estate bubble in particular. Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, Blackstone, Citibank - they were all here, throwing money at developers. So why did the Indian banks stay on the sidelines and avoid most of the pain that has been suffered by the big American banks?<br />Part of the reason is cultural. Indians are simply not as comfortable with credit as Americans. "A lot of Indians, when you push them, will say that if you spend more than you earn you will get in trouble," an Indian consultant told me. "Americans spent more than they earned."<br />Parekh said, "Savings are important. Joint families exist. When one son moves out, the family helps them. So you don't borrow so much from the bank." Even mortgage loans tend to have down payments in India that are a third of the purchase price, a far cry from the United States, where 20 percent is the new norm. (Let's not even think about what they used to be.)<br />But there was also another factor, perhaps the most of important of all. India had a bank regulator who was the anti-Greenspan. His name was Dr. V.Y. Reddy, and he was the governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Seventy percent of the banking system in India is nationalized, so a strong regulator is critical, since any banking scandal amounts to a national political scandal as well. And in the irascible Reddy, who took office in 2003 and stepped down this past September, it had exactly the right man in the right job at the right time.<br />"He basically believed that if bankers were given the opportunity to sin, they would sin," said one banker who asked not to be named because, well, there's not much percentage in getting on the wrong side of the Reserve Bank of India. For all the bankers' talk about their higher lending standards, the truth is that Reddy made them even more stringent during the bubble.<br />Unlike Alan Greenspan, who didn't believe it was his job to even point out bubbles, much less try to deflate them, Reddy saw his job as making sure Indian banks did not get too caught up in the bubble mentality. About two years ago, he started sensing that real estate, in particular, had entered bubble territory. One of the first moves he made was to ban the use of bank loans for the purchase of raw land, which was skyrocketing. Only when the developer was about to commence building could the bank get involved - and then only to make construction loans. (Guess who wound up financing the land purchases? U.S. private equity and hedge funds, of course!)<br />Then, as securitizations and derivatives gained increasing prominence in the world's financial system, the Reserve Bank of India sharply curtailed their use in the country. When Reddy saw U.S. banks setting up off-balance-sheet vehicles to hide debt, he essentially banned them in India. As a result, banks in India wound up holding onto the loans they made to customers. On the one hand, this meant they made fewer loans than their U.S. counterparts because they couldn't sell off the loans to Wall Street in securitizations. On the other hand, it meant they still had the incentive - as U.S. banks did not - to see those loans paid back.<br />Seeing inflation on the horizon, Reddy pushed interest rates up to more than 20 percent, which of course dampened the housing frenzy. He increased risk weightings on commercial buildings and shopping mall construction, doubling the amount of capital banks were required to hold in reserve in case things went awry. He made banks put aside extra capital for every loan they made. In effect, Reddy was creating liquidity even before there was a global liquidity crisis.<br />Did India's bankers stand up to applaud Reddy as he was making these moves? Of course not. They were naturally furious, just as American bankers would have been if Greenspan had been more active. Their regulator was holding them back, constraining their growth! Parekh told me that while he had been saying for some time that Indian real estate was in bubble territory, he was still unhappy with the rules imposed by Reddy. "We were critical of the central bank," he said. "We thought these were harsh measures."<br />"For a while we were wondering if we were missing out on something," said Kochhar of Icici. Banks in the United States seemed to have come up with some magical new formula for making money: make loans that required no down payment and little in the way of verification - and post instant, short-term, profits.<br />As Luis Miranda, who runs a private equity firm devoted to developing India's infrastructure, put it: "We kept wondering if they had figured out something that we were too dense to figure out. It looked like they were smart and we were stupid." Instead, India was the smart one, and we were the stupid ones.<br />Kochhar said that the underlying risks of having "a majority of loans not owned by the people who originated them" was not apparent during the bubble. Now that those risks have been made painfully clear, every banker in India realizes that Reddy did the right thing by limiting securitizations. "At times like this, you tend to appreciate what he did more than we did at the time," said Kapoor.<br />Parekh added, "He saved us."<br />As the credit crisis has spread these past months, no Indian banks have come close to failing the way so many U.S. and European financial institutions have. None have required the kind of emergency injections of capital that Western banks have needed. None have had the huge write-downs that were par for the course in the West. As the bubble has burst, which lenders have taken the hit? Why, the private equity and hedge fund lenders who had been so eager to finance land development. Us, in others words, rather than them. Why is that not a surprise?<br />When I asked Kapoor for his take on what had happened in the United States, he replied: "We recognize it as a problem of plenty. It was perpetuated by greedy bankers, whether investment bankers or commercial bankers. The greed to make money is the impression it has made here. Anytime they wanted a loan, people just dipped into their home ATM. It was like money was on call."<br />So it was. And our regulators, unlike theirs, just stood by and let it happen. The next time we're moving into bubble territory, perhaps we can take a page from Reddy's book - sometimes it's better to apply the brakes too early than too late. Or, as was the case with Greenspan, not at all.<br />None of this is to say that the global credit crisis hasn't affected India. It certainly has. I'll be back after the holidays with more columns from India, including how Sept. 15 - the day Lehman Brothers defaulted - changed everything, even here, on the other side of the world.</div><div> </div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtncCuUxXcqUOhCzWtc7G6RRLbFe92bO06RmIMgfzbTsNSLTAvig4QQNoljbZPy-F35fmFDtKcDC-hSTjDCGIIHQfo-AAs1MoFWBofxvdAHKhT8IJMTFjOhuuQKO3rMzVJdALq2dXp5q0/s1600-h/DSC03776.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218071201306098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtncCuUxXcqUOhCzWtc7G6RRLbFe92bO06RmIMgfzbTsNSLTAvig4QQNoljbZPy-F35fmFDtKcDC-hSTjDCGIIHQfo-AAs1MoFWBofxvdAHKhT8IJMTFjOhuuQKO3rMzVJdALq2dXp5q0/s320/DSC03776.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwjPVSr7l0PMouMbW_5TBvkS8YHXDPRPCAMu_V2UC2d7XVV5daZZW58uQTWloxG12_qOJtuV0OgYaJC_847NFalBEt33EJd7vBi76b4xdRdCaNnaCVrloJbwseidIr3x-JbqJZG9BPz8/s1600-h/DSC03777.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218066454465874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwjPVSr7l0PMouMbW_5TBvkS8YHXDPRPCAMu_V2UC2d7XVV5daZZW58uQTWloxG12_qOJtuV0OgYaJC_847NFalBEt33EJd7vBi76b4xdRdCaNnaCVrloJbwseidIr3x-JbqJZG9BPz8/s320/DSC03777.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCBvCUnSJOlp96ajlWKZyWqvhGd2oBT8-7af5PUl4R9TF-5vsh_IpMX_sP55UVfp22Nd_l1y1BH8EB3rfwbEf6FJ0a-v_dlqSwXftNebroiAs8arLwJvULqgA0lSj5KbFaA47AWlR5Pns/s1600-h/DSC03778.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218057700189026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCBvCUnSJOlp96ajlWKZyWqvhGd2oBT8-7af5PUl4R9TF-5vsh_IpMX_sP55UVfp22Nd_l1y1BH8EB3rfwbEf6FJ0a-v_dlqSwXftNebroiAs8arLwJvULqgA0lSj5KbFaA47AWlR5Pns/s320/DSC03778.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXD885kJK1qKXlXupQVKu7qgJTk33IWpKcVVrovZVTEsy3Ucm0HTuqnvueMW5bJ2dFE3uRmK9NJM69UHBh_s0ZKvqtyS572cHkpPlwAQP_2On6xFEO96Ng-yKB61vqIVMZBw4TLyPBoFs/s1600-h/DSC03779.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218053952076466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXD885kJK1qKXlXupQVKu7qgJTk33IWpKcVVrovZVTEsy3Ucm0HTuqnvueMW5bJ2dFE3uRmK9NJM69UHBh_s0ZKvqtyS572cHkpPlwAQP_2On6xFEO96Ng-yKB61vqIVMZBw4TLyPBoFs/s320/DSC03779.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjmmc83Nr-aYwxSxdOM_lycNjD7M5gbYsBKslsSTULsMpd1BaSZXiCojiJeXnS-PMLLSFaknBDXzhLFWzx6RqkJwD_S6IubUgIFo8HLrsEImlcVSsBHM__dz_xewLYKa4NCFv_MzNUCGQ/s1600-h/DSC03780.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282218051344988626" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjmmc83Nr-aYwxSxdOM_lycNjD7M5gbYsBKslsSTULsMpd1BaSZXiCojiJeXnS-PMLLSFaknBDXzhLFWzx6RqkJwD_S6IubUgIFo8HLrsEImlcVSsBHM__dz_xewLYKa4NCFv_MzNUCGQ/s320/DSC03780.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZU37RmYyFKG0AWdW2HdgOtU1kK30mblT2wTWRrMXEUwn3J8qBMlf9x5Z6C7YfpwRDFDhPt7OFCiRkll82UaWiBVSuhlgx0txP03PV6xo3aj48yXgqbhePOEdwOk3BJBuOdorGZCTbPs/s1600-h/DSC03783.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282217559751779874" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTZU37RmYyFKG0AWdW2HdgOtU1kK30mblT2wTWRrMXEUwn3J8qBMlf9x5Z6C7YfpwRDFDhPt7OFCiRkll82UaWiBVSuhlgx0txP03PV6xo3aj48yXgqbhePOEdwOk3BJBuOdorGZCTbPs/s320/DSC03783.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama to tilt toward domestic issues</strong><br />By Peter Baker<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: As he assembles his governing team, President-elect Barack Obama has launched a significant reorganization of the White House designed to focus more attention on critical domestic issues that he thinks have been underemphasized in recent years.<br />By creating high-powered offices within the West Wing to coordinate health care, housing and energy initiatives, Obama has signaled a shift in priorities from President George W. Bush, who spent much of his tenure fashioning a new national security apparatus in a time of war and terrorist threat.<br />In fact, Obama's transition team is considering whether to undo some of what Bush did in terms of security structures within the White House. Transition officials said they were thinking about whether to fold the White House Homeland Security Council created by Bush into the National Security Council. They said they might reassign responsibility for coordinating the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq back to the national security adviser instead of a separate "war czar."<br />While Obama's advisers said he would still make national security one of his central priorities regardless of how he reorganized the White House, they said the focus on other areas reflected the challenges of the moment. With the economy in crisis and climate change on the rise, they said, Obama cannot afford to keep the same organizational structure as his predecessor.<br />"After eight years of a White House that had only a sporadic interest in the domestic front, Obama has made clear that he's going to be attacking domestic problems on all cylinders," said Bruce Reed, head of President Bill Clinton's Domestic Policy Council and now president of the Democratic Leadership Council.<br />At the same time, the collective moves represent an increasing concentration of decision-making in the White House at the expense of the cabinet, a trend that has accelerated under presidents of both parties in recent years. And they suggest a willingness by Obama to tolerate, and even encourage, competing power centers within his own administration.<br />Every new president puts his stamp on the White House to suit his priorities and the imperatives of his era, sometimes making changes that survive only his administration and sometimes permanently altering the structure of power. The National Security Council was created under Harry S. Truman. The White House drug control office was created under Ronald Reagan. The National Economic Council was created by Clinton.<br />Obama is building new offices to coordinate his plans to expand health care, promote clean energy and revive the housing market. His choices to fill those posts also suggest how much influence they will have. He named a former Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, as health care czar, and a former director of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner, as energy czar.<br />Moreover, he effectively bolstered the clout of the National Economic Council by installing a former Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, to lead it.<br />What remains unclear is how these prominent White House officials will share responsibility with the relevant department and agency heads. Summers once led the Treasury Department, but that job now falls to Timothy Geithner, who used to work for him during the Clinton administration. Browner likewise once led the EPA, but now a former subordinate, Lisa Jackson, will direct the agency.<br />Daschle, a streetwise veteran of Washington, opted to avoid that sort of dichotomy by insisting on taking the White House job in addition to his nomination as secretary of health and human services. He will straddle the divide between White House and cabinet the way Henry Kissinger did when he was national security adviser and secretary of state in the 1970s.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx9KZ6dd7W95ScAJ6qVnL7n1U9Zpv0gsTjE2icY-Cz53qdlrhrAHXxvfNa0_w596mV6y_meJceVEaNtF_zR6-qAagyjLYj6NqX4iHibTE2njCwL2rbz5Rbs5Kf66O4L3yw05XzIgBRQvk/s1600-h/DSC03784.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282217559436290082" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx9KZ6dd7W95ScAJ6qVnL7n1U9Zpv0gsTjE2icY-Cz53qdlrhrAHXxvfNa0_w596mV6y_meJceVEaNtF_zR6-qAagyjLYj6NqX4iHibTE2njCwL2rbz5Rbs5Kf66O4L3yw05XzIgBRQvk/s320/DSC03784.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0DpDuaP_c8hGp9OJdnXVVeiaKQ_jH2qr_96YlkGdXT5B6mtxaQGvx4YYv0YZQXlqtyDgYuiAts4TXE6GGytus67j2JKS6X2u_VjvVbDUTsqwdcDoXVsvekZKI0Jd_MjWkoRYS5psp9c8/s1600-h/DSC03785.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282217554009590962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0DpDuaP_c8hGp9OJdnXVVeiaKQ_jH2qr_96YlkGdXT5B6mtxaQGvx4YYv0YZQXlqtyDgYuiAts4TXE6GGytus67j2JKS6X2u_VjvVbDUTsqwdcDoXVsvekZKI0Jd_MjWkoRYS5psp9c8/s320/DSC03785.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMzYoVyi-OEEPhK75syaRNbehmQrhL37Xf22Y09I4a_tP_T0z76HlkFnC0fsbbTTtzq2-4byG-8jUI6t_dOrJMX-Lgw-a6_eDiFX5yem41tyzHFMtdXz81EiYIVJHV6ilMSi3CqcB9PI/s1600-h/DSC03786.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282217556179929762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcMzYoVyi-OEEPhK75syaRNbehmQrhL37Xf22Y09I4a_tP_T0z76HlkFnC0fsbbTTtzq2-4byG-8jUI6t_dOrJMX-Lgw-a6_eDiFX5yem41tyzHFMtdXz81EiYIVJHV6ilMSi3CqcB9PI/s320/DSC03786.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMn50ubsZuF6vjPEao13HmyM_ME_px7U-s6DMsHR73M6d-aMc6idEf-JrfJKerIBmoHGGYJwxdd-x2rhrvQIf8Xzd8JtGPhVQqnEjeV9pQBimKTks0w87XYbCY4a2aoNsnd7PG_g3qIw/s1600-h/DSC03787.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282217551146131730" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMn50ubsZuF6vjPEao13HmyM_ME_px7U-s6DMsHR73M6d-aMc6idEf-JrfJKerIBmoHGGYJwxdd-x2rhrvQIf8Xzd8JtGPhVQqnEjeV9pQBimKTks0w87XYbCY4a2aoNsnd7PG_g3qIw/s320/DSC03787.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeoMGgXI1IgdNYHvbE0BOAGpisZ4-sR674-G2-siyUIffjb_UwnKrUoi3t1MyIXE3kW2IqWNMZdOlPrd1vHhWdiQ9WuFpH1zcHJZ4WEl4e3HR3LEZIxN0DlGlRRzfIOFg2h4tjKz5YlUE/s1600-h/DSC03788.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282207802014297362" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeoMGgXI1IgdNYHvbE0BOAGpisZ4-sR674-G2-siyUIffjb_UwnKrUoi3t1MyIXE3kW2IqWNMZdOlPrd1vHhWdiQ9WuFpH1zcHJZ4WEl4e3HR3LEZIxN0DlGlRRzfIOFg2h4tjKz5YlUE/s320/DSC03788.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_LV2JRJ3758_o2VvwA40gIbHzGyrxCpNnpA80eIG0OSkYurfP8j26lXJWFcma2VJQRSt-uuhDK9mYfcYGdArOBzsF2V0VAqnDrbzYpopqeTy2YnVDG_y_NftWlxpFZsPabgJbIEG5JQo/s1600-h/DSC03789.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282207796512308930" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_LV2JRJ3758_o2VvwA40gIbHzGyrxCpNnpA80eIG0OSkYurfP8j26lXJWFcma2VJQRSt-uuhDK9mYfcYGdArOBzsF2V0VAqnDrbzYpopqeTy2YnVDG_y_NftWlxpFZsPabgJbIEG5JQo/s320/DSC03789.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipN1VY9EbWn7Kwf1AV_xVsMQj1kjJsJeQTzFn-57WD3_m0Vexz-uPIFcJeNZyf-i8CI3wcTyaiWAADq55FzIgGcOhdvzFc8MZ4se8eMos1y4_jgqYSX4hN1GbNSRmQucELDipNy5tYuNI/s1600-h/DSC03791.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282207791626926434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipN1VY9EbWn7Kwf1AV_xVsMQj1kjJsJeQTzFn-57WD3_m0Vexz-uPIFcJeNZyf-i8CI3wcTyaiWAADq55FzIgGcOhdvzFc8MZ4se8eMos1y4_jgqYSX4hN1GbNSRmQucELDipNy5tYuNI/s320/DSC03791.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDZ1dDtghokFSvQZPYj8M3eWw6MUL-L1Ye-hpZiITQrE83chjVSjtfvT2JVuZtnVhGVpGjQngiMowyUJmKO7KGLiovVOq3w86zUXpd3cHYRIcmRIrn6KXDWsIjs0cBOE-49grnOedQDx0/s1600-h/DSC03792.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282207786133993922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDZ1dDtghokFSvQZPYj8M3eWw6MUL-L1Ye-hpZiITQrE83chjVSjtfvT2JVuZtnVhGVpGjQngiMowyUJmKO7KGLiovVOq3w86zUXpd3cHYRIcmRIrn6KXDWsIjs0cBOE-49grnOedQDx0/s320/DSC03792.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQJikUhZAOY_Hrp0lqs0qP0QgLPIJhxJ77CEViYjiJzxWN3u3Td9e7v6c-6YBilOAi413h9PnTUSdoRFXCKcQ20T_ZljjvE6nMrJw3JutrRSa25Mfs8tgtGtcraQXImIemECn430y2XjQ/s1600-h/DSC03793.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282207772036698882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQJikUhZAOY_Hrp0lqs0qP0QgLPIJhxJ77CEViYjiJzxWN3u3Td9e7v6c-6YBilOAi413h9PnTUSdoRFXCKcQ20T_ZljjvE6nMrJw3JutrRSa25Mfs8tgtGtcraQXImIemECn430y2XjQ/s320/DSC03793.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><strong></strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrJjAwj09BzWHlDG3zlSqzqMvpFihI_m5agB-6xL9Ku0WuAZMrJelYmRFhwLWBGtd_gjOuozjkr4DJvdYgRHdcQCYSHSd2SU575LhmLoCln6-ex8u0gdkzK3he9kaEjyogiRhBTkbR_H4/s1600-h/DSC03794.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282206517341909538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrJjAwj09BzWHlDG3zlSqzqMvpFihI_m5agB-6xL9Ku0WuAZMrJelYmRFhwLWBGtd_gjOuozjkr4DJvdYgRHdcQCYSHSd2SU575LhmLoCln6-ex8u0gdkzK3he9kaEjyogiRhBTkbR_H4/s320/DSC03794.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOFXW64YghA5bFBivMUtDfBqGAv2JBgzpuH3hjWdThmtdkJ9uKgwV48XHs1vrI9VSGImKuqE9jyNS_nArwoh4n1gS1vZaNvg4TQAfu-jNDMFLcgg7PyqS4Ck8rwf5Rk4DQZC5HLP3HFAg/s1600-h/DSC03795.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282206512953993250" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOFXW64YghA5bFBivMUtDfBqGAv2JBgzpuH3hjWdThmtdkJ9uKgwV48XHs1vrI9VSGImKuqE9jyNS_nArwoh4n1gS1vZaNvg4TQAfu-jNDMFLcgg7PyqS4Ck8rwf5Rk4DQZC5HLP3HFAg/s320/DSC03795.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>Five dead and 18 missing in Pakistan mall collapse</strong><br />Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />RAWALPINDI, Pakistan: A burning shopping centre collapsed in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on Saturday, killing five people and trapping about 18, a city official said.<br />The four-storey centre housing about 400 shops in one of the city's main commercial areas caught fire Friday night and burnt for hours. The blaze was nearly under control when part of the building collapsed.<br />"According to our information, five people have been killed and some 18 others, including four rescuers, are trapped under the debris," city official Haseeb Athar told reporters.<br />Police said seven people had been pulled alive from the rubble.<br />The cause of the fire was not known but stocks of garments and leather goods in many of the shops were believed to have fuelled the blaze.<br />(Reporting by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Kevin Liffey)</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiianMjphOqHHkyjf-dB3fIubP_IfT4BZ3FLekiuSlxx-2Em8gzJvCME046szh99nOXvgyN5bCEMpJQliRiaHP68dCkOhhBcEpPO6fgTepdq4ESlEWCHCU5-vrV7bFlgyLvNXKwbMMS8d4/s1600-h/DSC03801.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282206510924054034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiianMjphOqHHkyjf-dB3fIubP_IfT4BZ3FLekiuSlxx-2Em8gzJvCME046szh99nOXvgyN5bCEMpJQliRiaHP68dCkOhhBcEpPO6fgTepdq4ESlEWCHCU5-vrV7bFlgyLvNXKwbMMS8d4/s320/DSC03801.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_-63uw3g4_f-E-f2UgCUbxsZt7ik-hz2cJbgHAJeW1D-W2T8mDhuLKMEfDKwxIDmUY68lE-nO7Rk23dmtfpppRlUMpNSR-b79p0i-Scj4pxwO9VbZdCW9ETSywz5pwpLkRtOdZHkLuXw/s1600-h/DSC03804.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282206102801060562" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikGPWY8iZCn9_NpRxZTnG9ORE7lKuslwA1vnJS9ctU_QKJ2-VqzFs-WQPlYR9QVXwpiq1Lry_oLCWY7ujlKa3Sobvce9LzFLV53AP9oEYyST94wGzTWYMIHfBh5FW6NHqpaSwBP9_bGlE/s320/DSC03922.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNbfy1t3a0Z0EvGhMi3kQsNCup_Q7Axo5Xl2QSVGTfTcc6KDb0b2TKlyR2lZmZSSD5D2NNjMqUByLzsLspr0ra1NJT70Lv0EziOsmCvLqm3_UmdTZNLQRxUt8zQL9AxjvrHWr_pDDYRb4/s1600-h/DSC03924.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282202205678817522" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNbfy1t3a0Z0EvGhMi3kQsNCup_Q7Axo5Xl2QSVGTfTcc6KDb0b2TKlyR2lZmZSSD5D2NNjMqUByLzsLspr0ra1NJT70Lv0EziOsmCvLqm3_UmdTZNLQRxUt8zQL9AxjvrHWr_pDDYRb4/s320/DSC03924.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcUUI79WLqDemem1e8E9BjatRsSQOhLliZHT3ilZq6LInB-fEd5J4Sl5f61lPU-a4wDPpA18TJNcoYmv1ijf5Cai0Ljhj-zB8FBsaKEpZDqgAjQnpPP3RTDmqsBEpoWw7e5iapEv-M_08/s1600-h/DSC03930.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282202206010390530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcUUI79WLqDemem1e8E9BjatRsSQOhLliZHT3ilZq6LInB-fEd5J4Sl5f61lPU-a4wDPpA18TJNcoYmv1ijf5Cai0Ljhj-zB8FBsaKEpZDqgAjQnpPP3RTDmqsBEpoWw7e5iapEv-M_08/s320/DSC03930.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKqlxdmq14dUlpagEGUUmmjC3XQdm0YpgQeXO0ywA55zUsU8ovZayRzsiS7i0TGzPpJ2EATYGcLEehqYujIjc55w0SDY03pI8nwGoxmcdM0CF7LYFE1Ji1HBt3fEPjp71TOjhICoYxk5Q/s1600-h/DSC03936.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282202200694816882" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 263px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKqlxdmq14dUlpagEGUUmmjC3XQdm0YpgQeXO0ywA55zUsU8ovZayRzsiS7i0TGzPpJ2EATYGcLEehqYujIjc55w0SDY03pI8nwGoxmcdM0CF7LYFE1Ji1HBt3fEPjp71TOjhICoYxk5Q/s320/DSC03936.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8BueYG6zKYQ9goJMXmi7emV6ebY_B73GHS1CPO1LLdxWeGMkZ-v7rW4hhYtFxfIMNt_jXHJ5aCw8OL5mLuAvW92bsAW3DbIRUHcroLp7L5x0oAwLqzOkxLcKBk214kTsDF-2GThNxf0s/s1600-h/DSC03937.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282202193990524098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8BueYG6zKYQ9goJMXmi7emV6ebY_B73GHS1CPO1LLdxWeGMkZ-v7rW4hhYtFxfIMNt_jXHJ5aCw8OL5mLuAvW92bsAW3DbIRUHcroLp7L5x0oAwLqzOkxLcKBk214kTsDF-2GThNxf0s/s320/DSC03937.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>China blocks access to sister site of IHT</strong><br />By Keith Bradsher<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />HONG KONG: The Chinese authorities have begun blocking access from mainland China to the Web site of The New York Times even while lifting some of the restrictions they had recently imposed on the Web sites of other media outlets.<br />When computer users in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou tried to connect on Friday morning to the site, nytimes.com, they received a message that the site was not available; some users were cut off on Thursday as early as 8 p.m. The blocking was still in effect on Saturday morning. The International Herald Tribune is the global edition of The New York Times.<br />The Chinese-language Web sites of the BBC, Voice of America and Asiaweek, all of which had been blocked earlier in the week, were accessible by Friday. The Web site of Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, was blocked earlier in the week and still restricted on Friday.<br />Chinese officials had few explanations for the restriction on The Times's site. "Concerning your particular question, we're not really familiar with the details," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing who declined to give his name. "Web site maintenance is not within the job purview of the Foreign Ministry."<br />Tang Rui, an official with the government's International Press Center in Beijing, said he also had no specific information. "It might be a technical problem," he said, declining to elaborate.<br />A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine Mathis, said there did not appear to be a technical issue.<br />Access to the Web site was not restricted Friday in Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but which still allows freedom of speech, including on the Internet. Internet users in Japan and the United States were also not experiencing difficulties on Friday in viewing the site.<br />Rebecca MacKinnon, a researcher at Hong Kong University who specializes in China's Internet controls, said the reasons for the restrictions were mysterious. "All anybody can offer is speculation," she said.<br />In the months leading up to the Olympic Games in Beijing in August, during the Games and immediately after, the Chinese government temporarily unblocked access to some Web sites and eased curbs on the ability of foreign correspondents to travel within China. It has not tightened the travel restrictions since then.</div><div><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_MQyCPXI6OzzM_Fc7XVobQQnZ80zO1jvVldYspkkI1p4aKiidNDYQA_hG5xyh_i57fhGSzGTOfzRAPn0HZXIkpXbgQmoIi06kFMeyKoB4DsWODIltnAxi8r5eEiMFi5vjbG8wReTAdk/s1600-h/DSC03939.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282202191446741426" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB_MQyCPXI6OzzM_Fc7XVobQQnZ80zO1jvVldYspkkI1p4aKiidNDYQA_hG5xyh_i57fhGSzGTOfzRAPn0HZXIkpXbgQmoIi06kFMeyKoB4DsWODIltnAxi8r5eEiMFi5vjbG8wReTAdk/s320/DSC03939.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><strong><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France</strong></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-81613614065538505872008-12-20T05:00:00.027+01:002008-12-20T07:28:38.448+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Friday, 19th December 2008<div align="center"><strong>French Institute in Athens attacked</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />ATHENS: Masked youths attacked the French Institute in Athens with firebombs on Friday, while Greek union members and university professors geared up for anti-government rallies outside Parliament.<br />Some windows of the French Institute, a cultural and educational center, were smashed but the interior was not seriously damaged in the attack by about 20 people, police said. A nearby bank ATM was also damaged, but nobody was injured.<br />"Spark in Athens. Fire in Paris. Insurrection is coming," read one slogan spray-painted onto the building's walls in French. Another, written in Greek, read "France, Greece, uprising everywhere."<br />The French ambassador to Greece. Christophe Farnaud, who visited institute, said French cultural institutions in Greece would be closed temporarily "as a precaution."<br />Athens has seen near daily hit-and-run attacks by youths throwing firebombs in the past two weeks, after the fatal police shooting of a 15-year-old boy sparked the worst riots Greece has seen in decades. The rage unleashed by the Dec. 6 shooting has lifted the lid on years of dissatisfaction over social inequality, poor employment prospects for young people and increasing anger with the conservative government's economic policies.<br />In western Athens, some 1,500 people held a peaceful protest against a separate shooting in which police say an unknown gunman shot a 16-year-old boy in the wrist late Wednesday.<br />"This is an answer to state repression," said one demonstrator, university student Dimitris Andriotis. "We will not stop coming out into the streets until our demands are met."<br />In contrast to Thursday's riots, central Athens was calm Friday, with crowds of Christmas shoppers out and men in Santa Claus suits holding ponies for children to be photographed on.<br />Greece's two largest umbrella trade union organizations were to rally later in the day to protest the government's 2009 budget, and professors also planned to protest outside Parliament on education issues.<br />Students also planned a mass concert Friday in central Athens to support the youthful uprising against "state repression."<br />On Thursday, a demonstration in central Athens against police brutality by 7,000 students and teachers turned violent, sending Christmas shoppers and panicked families fleeing to safety. Around 200 youths wearing masks hurled firebombs and chunks of marble at riot police, who responded with stun grenades and acrid tear gas.<br />Mothers snatched children from a carousel in the main square. Waiters stumbled from cafes, choking on the tear gas. Rioters tried to burn the capital's latest Christmas tree, just days after it replaced another tree that had been burned.<br />Athens police say more than 300 have been arrested in the violence so far.<br />The two policemen involved in the shooting death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos have been jailed pending trial. One has been charged with murder and the other as an accomplice.<br />After two weeks of riots, a slogan spray-painted outside the Bank of Greece summed up the mood: "Merry crisis and a happy new fear."</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong>Indonesia stages anti-terror drill ahead of holiday</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />JAKARTA: Indonesian security forces launched a major anti-terror drill on Friday ahead of the Christmas holidays, a period when the Southeast Asian nation previously suffered bomb attacks.<br />Indonesia has not suffered a major attack for three years, but it is still considered at risk from Islamic militants.<br />"It is still fresh in our memory, tragedies in Indonesia," Indonesian Police Chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri told an opening ceremony in Jakarta, noting as well recent militant attacks in Mumbai.<br />Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, but has large minorities of other religions including Christians and there were a series of bomb attacks on churches on Christmas eve in 2000.<br />The exercise involving more than 6,500 personnel will be conducted in the waters of the busy Malacca Strait, as well as hotels and transport hubs in major cities and in Bali.<br />The three-day drill includes a simulation of a hotel siege following the deadly attacks in Mumbai, where hotels were major targets.<br />TV footage showed heavily armed, balaclava-clad police scaling down the side of a hotel in Bandung in West Java to rescue hostages.<br />Raids often involving Detachment 88, an anti-terrorism unit funded and trained by the United States and Australia, have led to the arrest of hundreds of militants suspects in Indonesia.<br />But illustrating the dangers the country still faces, police recently foiled a plan to bomb an oil storage facility in north Jakarta, and in July police found bombs stored in the ceiling of a house in Palembang, Sumatra, and linked the group involved to the regional militant organisation Jemaah Islamiah.<br />Jemaah Islamiah has been blamed for deadly attacks in recent years in Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>0800</strong><br /><br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi15xm4ygdBbWErxAZBAKNo4C8sgi05VGu8jFwZxWeLmjnH-wNs_f7eN_FS6khmXGFK6mwpPiDFL2_eWIfb-4jl64j_86B4jBJV0zgr2GbhR7C1ZH0oOM4YUHVHmSD1WsB7G8PfUc9GgEs/s1600-h/DSC03647.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719503916536178" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi15xm4ygdBbWErxAZBAKNo4C8sgi05VGu8jFwZxWeLmjnH-wNs_f7eN_FS6khmXGFK6mwpPiDFL2_eWIfb-4jl64j_86B4jBJV0zgr2GbhR7C1ZH0oOM4YUHVHmSD1WsB7G8PfUc9GgEs/s320/DSC03647.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Obama chooses labor secretary and trade cabinet representative</strong><br />By Helene Cooper and Steven Greenhouse<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama completed selections for his cabinet Friday, nominating Representative Hilda Solis, Democrat of California, as labor secretary and the former mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, as U.S. trade representative.<br />Obama announced the selections in Chicago at his final news conference before he goes to Hawaii for a Christmas break. He also formally announced his selection of Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois, for transportation secretary.<br />The announcements capped a flurry of selections in the past week as Obama raced to fill his 15-person cabinet before the holiday week.<br />Of the remaining vacancies on Obama's team, all are non-cabinet posts, most prominently top intelligence jobs, with Obama still not settled on a new director of the CIA and apparently not ready to announce the expected appointment of Dennis Blair, a retired admiral, as director of national intelligence.<br />He filled one of the non-cabinet positions Friday, naming Karen Mills, a venture capitalist, to lead the Small Business Administration. She has advised Governor John Baldacci of Maine on economic matters and is a founding partner of Solera Capital, a New York-based equity firm.<br />All four appointments announced Friday must be confirmed by the Senate.<br />With his choices of a labor secretary and a trade representative, Obama appears to have sought to appeal to each side in the divisive battle over free trade. Solis, a longtime labor advocate who is of Central American heritage, has been skeptical about free-trade agreements, while Kirk, a lawyer with a political bent, comes from the mainstream Texas establishment and has spoken out in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement.<br />As mayor of Dallas in 2000, Kirk was among a group of political leaders who called for permanently normalizing trade relations with China, saying that "you're either a part of the global economic community or you're going to be left out of it."<br />While Obama said during his primary campaign against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that Nafta should be renegotiated, he did not emphasize that approach during the general election campaign. Free-trade proponents hope he will moderate his stance, as his predecessors have, now that he has been elected president.<br />"He has been an outspoken free-trade advocate, and as mayor of Dallas, recognizes the positive economic impact from trade agreements," said Julia Hughes, senior vice president for the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel.<br />Labor activists who would speak only on condition of anonymity expressed wariness about Kirk, but made clear their strong support for Solis, a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives. Solis was first elected to Congress in 2000 and represents a largely Hispanic and Asian district in the Los Angeles area.<br />Officials of the AFL-CIO, an influential labor federation, said they had pushed her name for labor secretary soon after Obama was elected, although her name did not rise to the fore until several other leading candidates - including the former House whip David Bonior and Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas - withdrew their names or were ruled out.<br />Solis has championed a bill, called the Employee Free Choice Act, that is organized labor's No. 1 priority because it would make it far easier to unionize workers. The business community bitterly opposes the bill. She is the only member of Congress on the board of American Rights at Work, a pro-union group pushing for the bill.<br />"We're thrilled at the prospect of having Representative Hilda Solis as our nation's next labor secretary," said John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO president. "We're confident that she will return to the Labor Department one of its core missions: to defend workers' basic rights in our nation's workplaces. She's proven to be a passionate leader and advocate for all working families."<br />Labor leaders say they are very pleased that she joined them in opposing the Central American Free Trade Agreement as well as the pending trade agreement with Colombia.<br />By contrast, the reaction of business groups to the choice of Solis ranged from tactful displeasure to sharp dismay.<br />"We're disappointed that she supports the Employee Free Choice Act," said Randel Johnson, the vice president of labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "She's not a pick whose philosophy we didn't expect. We will disagree with her on some issues and work with her on some."<br />Obama has also settled on John Holdren, a Harvard physicist best known as a proponent of cutting emissions of heat-trapping gasses, intensifying energy research and limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, as his science adviser, according to two people close to Holdren. Obama is expected to make that announcement in his radio address Saturday.<br />Another scientist, Jane Lubchenco, an Oregon State University marine biologist and an advocate for ocean conservation and action on global warming, has been tapped to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees much of the country's research on climate.<br />Andrew C. Revkin contributed reporting.<br />Economic blueprint in works<br />Obama's advisers say they hope to finish an economic recovery blueprint by Dec. 25 so that Democratic congressional staff members can draft legislation by the new year, as the two branches of government try to converge on a two-year plan by late January that could total just under $1 trillion, The New York Times reported from Washington.<br />"The goal for completing action on this important legislation should be as close to Jan. 20 as possible," said an e-mail message from the office of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to senior Senate Democratic staff members.<br />Some Obama advisers have sought to tamp down expectations that Obama could sign a package immediately after he is inaugurated. The opposition of some Senate Republicans and House and Senate negotiations on a final compromise could force delays into February.<br />Democrats familiar with the early deliberations say the preliminary price tag has grown to about $800 billion from the roughly $600 billion that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, had estimated in recent days.<br />Mark Zandi, a Republican economist who is advising the Democrats, said in an interview that the worsening economy could push his updated recommendation in January up to $1 trillion for a two-year government stimulus.<br /><br /><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>EU ministers agree on plan to revive fish stocks<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BRUSSELS: European Union ministers struck a deal on Friday to cut many of next year's fish catches for overexploited mainstays like cod in an effort to ward off the collapse of stocks but still ensure a livelihood for fishermen.<br />Cod quotas will mostly be cut by 25 percent in 2009 from this year's volumes, although a recent agreement with a non-EU member, Norway, and signs of a small stock improvement in the North Sea will mean a 30 percent rise in those shared waters.<br />Scotland won a victory, avoiding a closure of its whitefish fishery on the west coast by agreeing to strict rules on fishing tackle and accepting quota cuts for some species.<br />"Scientific advice shows that the recovery plan is beginning to work," the EU Fisheries Commissioner, Joe Borg, said after the deal was reached on the second day of talks.<br />Elsewhere, a ban on anchovy fishing in the Bay of Biscay will continue until at least spring 2009 because there have so far been few signs of a recovery in stock numbers. This fishery is of prime importance to France and Spain.<br />"There are no signs yet that this stock is recovering, but we will review the situation in the spring," Borg said.<br />In the waters off western Scotland, catches of cod, haddock and whiting have fallen sharply over the past 10 years because of overfishing. Borg had wanted to give those whitefish "breathing space" to repopulate, by stopping targeted fishing and bringing in new fishing tackle to let them escape from the nets.<br />In the meantime, fishermen could continue to catch commercially valuable species like prawns and monkfish. Revenue from west Scotland fishing is worth about £85 million, or $126 million, a year, with prawns accounting for slightly more than half.<br />To offset this, there will be quota cuts for cod, herring, haddock and whiting in west Scotland waters that vary between 25 and 42 percent, Borg said.<br />"The bulk of the west-coast fleet will now be able to make a living in 2009, although a number of fishermen face a huge challenge in delivering the agreed conservation measures," the Scottish Fisheries Minister, Richard Lochhead, said in a statement.<br />EU ministers also agreed to stricter rules on fishing tackle used by cod trawlers, in an effort to stop overfished species from being thrown back in the sea and left to die when caught by accident along with other species - known as discards.<br />"Appropriate observer schemes will be set up to ensure this is carried out," Borg said.<br />Borg won approval for his proposal to phase out fishing for two species of deep-sea shark, spurdog and porbeagle, over the next couple of years, with ministers agreeing to set minimum landing sizes for any landings of these species in the meantime.<br /><br /><br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><strong>A water entrepreneur with a thirst for more<br /></strong>By Simon Marks<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: For Duncan Goose, founder of the British bottled water company One, it took a chance remark by a friend in a London pub to give him the impetus to start his business.<br />The remark - that a billion people on the planet have no access to clean water - stimulated the idea for a nonprofit entity whose returns are used to develop irrigation projects in Africa.<br />"We wanted to make everything simple, transparent and logical," Goose, 40, said during a recent interview in Paris. "This is water for water. You can understand thirst."<br />The first bottles of One water came off the production line in July 2005. Today, the company is rapidly expanding, with production units in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia and the United States. Revenue for the year through July 2007 was £1.2 million, or $1.8 million, a 173 percent jump from a year earlier. Profit after tax was £263,000. The company expects revenue growth of 28 percent in the current financial year, which ends Jan. 31.<br />The bottled water market is highly competitive and difficult to enter, but One benefits from its focus on the so-called ethical market, where producers agree to abide by certain standards in production and marketing. "Ethical waters are a small but fast-growing niche," said Richard Hall, the chairman of Zenith International, a food and beverage consulting firm in Bath, England.<br />Britain's £1.5 billion market for bottled water is dominated by major players like Danone, Nestlé and Highland Spring. But Hall said that One had several things going for it: "The story is simple and the benefit is direct. The issue is massive, yet the brand solution becomes personal," he said.<br />Goose was born and brought up in Edinburgh and later studied business at Coventry Polytechnic. In the summer after his first year at university he interned for the marketing consulting firm WRPO, based in London. At the end of his internship in 1988 it offered him a job, which found him "working with anything from Durex condoms to beer brands," he said.<br />In 1991 he left to help create a marketing consulting firm, called Black Cat. The company was later sold to WPP, netting him a tidy sum.<br />At this point, Goose said, memories of his grandfather, who served as the mayor of West Norfolk, and his grandmother, who worked for various humanitarian charities throughout her life, prompted him into "doing something else." He sold almost all of his possessions and started an around-the-world trip by motorcycle that landed him, in 1998, in the middle of Hurricane Mitch, which destroyed much of Honduras and killed more than 11,000 people.<br />"We were running soup kitchens and getting water for people," Goose said. "We managed to raise $100,000 that rebuilt 13 villages. A little bit of money used in the right way can make a huge difference."<br />Shortly after his return came that night in his local pub, and the germ of an idea to create One. The initial difficulties included the colossal fees many retailers required to put the bottles on their shelf space. A group of Goose's friends worked for free to help keep the fledgling water company going. Their big break came when Total, the French oil company, agreed to sell One water at its British service stations. The Morrisons, Waitrose, Tesco and Co-op supermarket chains soon followed.<br />Once the money started to come in, Goose and a team of employees started to build water pumps in African communities. The pumps, called play pumps, connect to children's carousels which pump water up into a 2,500-liter, or 660-gallon, tank connected to a tap.<br />"A tank that size gives autonomy to the population," said Jake Hayman, managing director of Playpumps Europe, manufacturer of the pumps that One uses in its irrigation projects. The installation of a freshwater pump also means that young children do not need to walk huge distances to collect water and can spend more time in school.<br />One has financed the installation of 187 such pumps in Africa. Maintenance costs are sustained by revenue from advertisements on the side of the tanks.<br />The success of the water business has encouraged Goose to embark on similar projects. He recently introduced One condoms in Britain, with all profit going toward the Donald Woods Foundation, a charity that encourages people to get tested for HIV.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7oBxk1zEuIuDoJ-s6pSZQamVu6QfALBaPDMT570hHxu0FB2uVmp9teA7Wm24qPoLy-FoY406wacAqH-IaYp2f4oQMQZVIHfwgLZ6HI0DvSX2qZWpZi6g3ei4pWcx3kcDeSU_U1Y0kV6o/s1600-h/DSC03648.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719300688741922" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7oBxk1zEuIuDoJ-s6pSZQamVu6QfALBaPDMT570hHxu0FB2uVmp9teA7Wm24qPoLy-FoY406wacAqH-IaYp2f4oQMQZVIHfwgLZ6HI0DvSX2qZWpZi6g3ei4pWcx3kcDeSU_U1Y0kV6o/s320/DSC03648.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>BOOK REVIEW</strong><br /><strong>Jeffrey Yang's 'An Aquarium'</strong><br />By Karl Kirchwey<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />An Aquarium Poems By Jeffrey Yang. 63 pages. Graywolf Press. Paper, $15.<br />Here is a first book written from a very high floor of the Tower of Babel, and the view is exhilarating. Not since D. H. Lawrence's "Birds, Beasts and Flowers!" or the bestiary written by Kenneth Rexroth for his daughters has a poet wrung so much human meaning from the natural world. But whereas Lawrence is discursively tender, and Rexroth wry and epigrammatically clever, Jeffrey Yang speaks in tongues as if touched with a Pentecostal flame. He leads the reader through a net of allusions in poems barnacled with hard words. A typical Yang poem begins with the title "Oarfish"; traces it to the abode of humans called Midgard in Norse myth; invokes the ourobouros, the serpent devouring its own tail in a symbol of infinity; quotes the 19th-century American artist Elihu Vedder, the Baroque religious scholar Sor Juana and Lawrence's poem "Fish"; glances at the Homeric word "oarismos" (roughly, "pillow talk"); and ends with guanine, a chemical that codes genetic information and also a substance found in fish scales. Nonetheless, as Ezra Pound would say, it all coheres - not just in art but in life. Yang is an editor at New Directions, which has published Rexroth, who edited a collection of D. H. Lawrence's poems (and, like Yang, translated Chinese poetry). In fact, a fragment of Pound's own Canto 36 is quoted by Yang, who is "testing the overtones" of language and history by means of a collage of brilliant fragments just as his master did, exploring the "divine quiddity" of the world.<br />Compounding his ingenuities, Yang has also arranged the poems in this book as an abecedary, proceeding from A ("Abalone") through to Z ("Zooxanthellae"). What might feel like a gimmick instead leaves the reader dazzled at Yang's polymathic knowledge: dazzled, but not threatened, since the advent of Google means that allusiveness in poetry is no longer the challenge it used to be. In any case, as one ancient master tells us, "What people / know is inferior to what they do not know." Yang writes with a keen ear for the sound of language; indeed, his poems' openings sometimes seem like verbal spasms, before they smooth into grammar: "Abalone Rumsen aulon/ Aristotle auriform Costanoans / cultivated, Brueghel painted, / awabi Osahi dove for / on September 12, 425 A.D." Subject, verb and object resolve only gradually out of such a music. These poems are concerned with translation and with metaphor, both of which involve a "carrying across" from the natural into the human world; from the past into the present; from one language or civilization into another. Often they use the mousetrap form of the epigram, sudden and pleasing: "The barnacle has the longest penis / of any animal in proportion / to its body size. Happiness / and proportion: / never be ashamed of evolution." Modesty figures among the lessons to be learned from nature, too; and honesty; and patience. And the poetic vehicle for these lessons is capable of great delicacy. A poem describing a kind of tetra, the familiar aquarium fish, reads in its entirety: "You can see straight thru / an X-ray fish to its heart. / We are just as transparent / so be true, gentle, honest, just. . . ."<br />Accordingly, politicians are at one end of the moral spectrum for Yang, and our genetic near-neighbors the dolphin and the manatee are at the other. For in addition to its other strengths - so considerable that they may distract the reader from its most important accomplishment - this is a moral book, in the best sense of the word. "Philosophy's shadow: poetry. Poetry's / shadow: philosophy," Yang writes. And chief among nature's lessons, it seems, is that of symbiosis or "mutualism," exemplified by the type of algae that gives its name to the book's final poem. Zooxanthellae live in tropical seas, dependent upon coral but also benefiting it. In this poem, the lines of which change progressively into prose as if under the torque of outrage, the peacefulness of such a coexistence is juxtaposed with the coldbloodedness of those American scientists and soldiers who first uprooted certain Pacific islanders, then destroyed their atolls in increasingly devastating nuclear tests and finally returned to their desolation to sample the extent of nuclear poisoning. "Mutualism" thus becomes a foil for the absolute corruption of natural instinct, which is more characteristically human. In fact the lesson is more complicated than this: the algae described are dinoflagellates; their presence in high concentrations in the flesh of fish causes sickness in the humans who eat it. The partners in symbiosis are not neutral, as Yang notes in an earlier poem: "Some causes / are invisible to the naked eye. / Strive for equilibrium / rather than neutrality."<br />This poet is obsessive, as was the 17th-century English writer and physician Sir Thomas Browne, who tried to reconcile science and religion, and who believed he read numbers and lessons in nature that were of significance to humans. Browne has the last word in this book, in a concluding epigraph that reads in part: "Thus there is something in us that can be without us and will be after us." He could have been describing an isotope of uranium - or just good poetry, which is what Jeffrey Yang has delivered in this book.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Doctor cleared of harming man to obtain organs</strong><br />By Jesse Mckinley<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />SAN FRANCISCO: A California transplant surgeon was acquitted on Thursday of a charge that he had intentionally harmed a donor to speed extraction of the patient's kidney and liver. The verdict closed a case that had drawn widespread attention to the medical, and ethical, complexities of organ transplantation.<br />The surgeon, Dr. Hootan Roozrokh, was found not guilty of a single felony charge of abuse of a dependent adult, after two other felony charges — administering harmful substances and unlawful prescription — were dropped last spring. Prosecutors had argued that Roozrokh, 35, prescribed excessive amount of drugs during a failed harvesting procedure on a brain-damaged donor, Ruben Navarro, in San Luis Obispo, in February 2006.<br />The doctor's lawyer, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, had said that Roozrokh, a surgeon based in San Francisco who had flown in to retrieve the organs, had been trying to ease the patient's suffering after other doctors failed to perform their duties.<br />"Dr. Roozrokh was put in an untenable situation where he could have walked out," Schwartzbach said, "but had he walked out, there was no one there to care for Ruben."<br />Roozrokh is believed to be the first doctor accused of such actions. The verdict came after a two-month trial and two days of jury deliberation. The San Luis Obispo deputy district attorney who tried the case, Karen Gray, did not return a call for comment.<br />Roozrokh, an Iranian émigré and naturalized American, had been trying a lesser-used technique known as donation after cardiac death, which involves removing a patient from life support before extracting organs.<br />Most donations involve brain-dead patients, but a growing demand for organs has led to an increase in such cardiac procedures, which require speedy retrieval after a patient's heart stops.<br />But Navarro, 25, who had been brain-damaged and disabled by a neurological disorder, did not die immediately after his ventilator was removed, succumbing eight hours later. The Associated Press said the jury issued a statement with its verdict saying the case illustrated a "desperate need" for clear policy on cardiac death donations.<br />Among transplant groups, the verdict on Thursday was greeted with a mix of relief and concerns about the impact of the case on potential donors.<br />"I think we must acknowledge the sensitivities of the events on the ground," said Dr. Goran Klintmalm, a former president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, "and extend our sympathies for the surgeon."<br />Schwartzbach said, "Nobody can give him back the three years he's lost, both personally and professionally."<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>The pope's real message for Obama<br /></strong>By John L. Allen Jr.<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />The roughly 67 million Catholics in the United States make up nearly one-quarter of the American population, but just 6 percent of the global Roman Catholic total of 1.1 billion. Ninety-four percent of the Catholics in the world, in other words, are not Americans, which may help explain why the pope and his lieutenants are not always think American thoughts when they get out of bed in the morning.<br />That's a useful bit of context to bear in mind in light of a tough new Vatican document on bioethics, released one week ago, that ratchets up the church's condemnations of embryonic stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, the "morning-after pill" and a host of other techniques it regards as violations of human dignity.<br />In the United States, the tendency may be to see the document, titled "Dignitas Personae," or "Dignity of the Person," as a battle plan for resistance to the incoming Obama administration. In reality, that amounts to trying to shove a square peg into the round hole of American politics.<br />For one thing, the document has been in the works for years, so it is hardly a rapid response to the American elections. Moreover, the Vatican doesn't want to be at loggerheads with Barack Obama, because it sees a range of matters where it's more in sync with him than it has been with President Bush. On Dec. 3, for example, the Vatican simultaneously signed and ratified a new international treaty banning cluster bombs, a measure Bush opposed - a reminder that Catholic social teaching and Republican politics are not always a match made in heaven.<br />What the Vatican may not fully appreciate, however, is that putting out a hard-nosed pro-life document right now, at least in the United States, may be the political equivalent of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.<br />In the '08 elections, pro-life Catholics emerged as the dominant voice of the religious right. To be sure, Obama won a majority among Catholics. Yet the sharpest anti-Obama rhetoric from religious leaders came not from old culture warriors like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson but rather from some Catholic clergymen.<br />Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, Missouri, for example, warned voters that their eternal salvation might be at stake if they supported Obama. A couple of pro-life priests even suggested that Catholics who voted for Obama should go to confession. (Their bishops, it should be said, quickly rejected that idea.)<br />Cardinal Francis Stafford, a former archbishop of Denver who today heads a Vatican court, described Obama's rhetoric on abortion as "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic," and compared the election results to the Garden of Gethsemane - the spot where, according to the Bible, Jesus agonized before his crucifixion.<br />In that context, "Dignitas Personae" risks being read as encouragement for the most ardent pro-life forces in America to let slip the dogs of war.<br />Of course, many Catholic bishops and many ordinary Catholics in America believe that while Obama's positions on abortion and stem cell research are troubling, there are also important areas of common ground.<br />That seems to be the balance the Vatican is trying to strike. Pope Benedict XVI sent a telegram of congratulations to Obama calling his election a "historic occasion," and the two men later spoke by telephone. A papal spokesman said the Vatican hopes to work with him on Iraq, the Holy Land, Christian minorities in the Middle East and Asia, and the fight against poverty and social inequality.<br />To be clear, the Vatican yields to no one in its pro-life commitments. In effect, "Dignitas Personae" is a reminder that there will be no "truce," no strategic silence, about the defense of human life from the moment of conception. The question now is whether the Vatican will find an equally effective way to mobilize those Catholics who hope to build bridges.<br />This is one case in which the pope would do well to think a few American thoughts.<br />John L. Allen Jr. is the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter and the author of "The Rise of Benedict XVI."<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Expansion of biking in U.S. parks is proposed</strong><br />By Kirk Johnson<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />DENVER: Mountain bikers, now barred from most backcountry areas in national parks, could have thousands of miles of trails opened up to them under a rule change proposed Thursday by the Interior Department.<br />The proposal raised tensions between hikers and bikers, who face off against one another on dirt byways all over the country. Each group is burdened with a stereotype that is part true and part myth: thrill-seeking gear heads on one side, plodding leaf peepers on the other, each group accusing the other of not fully appreciating the great out-of-doors.<br />"The question is whether it can be managed well — whether one group doesn't deprive others of their enjoyment," said Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers and land managers.<br />In any case, Ruch added, "it's a symptom of growing user conflict in the national park system."<br />The proposal would not take effect until the middle of next year at the earliest, National Park Service officials said, meaning that the Obama administration will decide on the issue. Under the plan, many trail usage decisions would be made at the level of individual parks, rather than at the central National Park Service office.<br />Both sides say that would accelerate trail decisions and probably result in a new arena of discussion — or conflict — at each park headquarters, with administrators being lobbied by the two groups. Existing trails would be the main focus of the change; most proposals for new trails would still have to go through a more lengthy process of review at the Park Service headquarters.<br />Opponents said that the rule change could open up to bicycling millions of acres now designated as potential wilderness (bikes would still be banned in outright wilderness areas), and that changes in usage could affect whether those lands were eventually given permanent wilderness protections by Congress.<br />"Seventy-five million Americans hike, and they want solitude and a slow-paced connection with nature," said Gregory Miller, the president of the American Hiking Society, an umbrella group of 275 local organizations. "We see this as potentially undermining and diminishing that experience."<br />Biking groups say that the national parks are in trouble, with backcountry camping and visits down sharply in recent years, and that young people are more likely to connect with outdoor life and physical fitness through biking. Overnight backcountry camping stays fell by about 21 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to the National Park Service.<br />"We think mountain biking could bring new and younger visitors to the parks who are not now finding the recreational opportunities that they are seeking," said Mark Eller, a spokesman for the International Mountain Bicycling Association, a group based in Boulder, Colorado, that has been pushing for a park expansion of mountain biking for years.<br />Eller said he thought that the potential for conflict was overstated and that bikers, hikers and horseback riders could all get along with enough care and planning.<br />A spokesman for the National Parks Conservation Association, which monitors the parks, said the group's biggest concern was that a speeded-up local process could allow decisions to take place behind closed doors.<br />"There's no good reason for this," said the spokesman, Tony Jewett, the group's senior director for the Northern Rockies region. Jewett said that bikes could have a place in the parks — 25 parks already allow some mountain biking — but that thorough review should be the watchword.<br />"It would make it easier to have mountain biking in the national parks with less public scrutiny," he said. "Our position is that these types of changes should be in public sunlight."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2STUF0tyBwfdBkQ6KAorUi6HbD7vF0DjUWbD_T6ZvP0QUa0x1VoZmZTUjJXuxs8LYQCl8cm96BW69LrJG0EglfMjsy7iA3OdoFVhf7moShCA0NfSpCDqheVbh1HgRG4PmqWcH6SiwAM/s1600-h/DSC03649.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719295343925538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY2STUF0tyBwfdBkQ6KAorUi6HbD7vF0DjUWbD_T6ZvP0QUa0x1VoZmZTUjJXuxs8LYQCl8cm96BW69LrJG0EglfMjsy7iA3OdoFVhf7moShCA0NfSpCDqheVbh1HgRG4PmqWcH6SiwAM/s320/DSC03649.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><strong>As energy prices sink, Louisiana budget takes a beating<br /></strong>By Adam Nossiter<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />NEW ORLEANS: Six months ago, it was springtime in Louisiana, dollars were raining in from high oil prices, and the tax cuts and highway spending couldn't come fast enough in the euphoric Legislature.<br />But now oil has plummeted and the joy is gone in a poor state that for a time seemed insulated by natural resources from the national downturn. The budget cuts - big ones - are about to begin.<br />In Louisiana, the oil-drunk always ends badly. This time, though, the political stakes are bigger than in the past, as the Republican Party's national pinup, Governor Bobby Jindal, has to absorb the brunt of the state's abrupt shift in fortunes. After glorying in the largess earlier this year, Jindal has been issuing sober news releases about hiring freezes and the new austerity.<br />His fate is tied as much as anybody's to Louisiana's overdependence on oil. Severance taxes, which are taxes on natural resource extraction and in Louisiana mostly come from oil and gas, made up just over 8 percent of state tax revenue in 2007, according to Census Bureau data, much less than Alaska's 64 percent, but higher than Texas' 6.9 percent. The total take, including royalties and leases from oil, gas and other resources, accounts for just under 17 percent of the Louisiana budget.<br />But while the leading good-government group here, citing that addiction, warned last May against the Legislature's plan for a $360 million income tax cut, Jindal called the tax break "terrific news" and happily signed it into law as legislators cheered.<br />Admonitions on fiscal prudence went unheeded, as they have so often here, and the bill is now due. Earlier this year there was an $865 million surplus; now Louisiana has a $341 million shortfall in its current-year budget, and next year the projected deficit is $2 billion. It joins 43 states with current and forecast budget gaps in the reckoning of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group.<br />Health care and higher education will probably suffer cuts, the latter perilous in a state that regularly bemoans chronic white-collar outmigration, a trend that touched the governor's own family when his brother moved out of Louisiana. Jindal recently pointed out that his state was the only one in the South to regularly lose more people than it gained. Now, in the universities that are supposed to be magnets and incubators, faculty positions will go unfilled; academic programs will probably be cut.<br />There could be some $109 million in education spending cuts alone, and an additional $160 million in health care cuts, much from Medicaid - unfavorable circumstances for the rollout of Jindal's ambitious new plan to partly privatize Medicaid in the state.<br />"Anybody paying attention knew we were laying the groundwork for fiscal problems, as we cut taxes and raised spending," said James Brandt, president of the Public Affairs Research Council in Baton Rouge, an independent group in Baton Rouge. "We hate to say, 'we told you so.' But unfortunately, we seem to be going right down that boom-and-bust cycle again."<br />Although the Louisiana numbers are small compared with, say, those in California, which is looking at an $14.8 billion gap, they have come as a shock in a state that was until recently patting itself on the back, not only over $127-a-barrel oil last spring (it is now below $40) but also big jumps in sales and income tax collections as a result of the post-Hurricane Katrina boom.<br />In the year after the hurricane alone, there was a 19 percent increase in sales tax revenue, much of it from home reconstruction and replacements for lost household items.<br />Jindal entered office this year with the happy duty of spending a $1 billion surplus - and he and the legislators promptly did so, appropriating millions of dollars for highways, ports and a medical research facility, and widely dispensing tax breaks, including one to parents of private school students.<br />The cheery mood in the state Capitol continued all spring, as the legislators then decided to roll back a much-hated income tax increase passed earlier in the decade, costing the state hundreds of millions in revenue in coming years.<br />"We had so many new members, and they were overwhelmed by the new dollars," recalled State Senator Eric LaFleur, a Democrat. "They felt they ought to give some of it back. I think there was a euphoria on the House side: 'Man, we ought to be giving this money back.' Lot of those guys hadn't been around long enough."<br />LaFleur said he had had misgivings about the tax cut but had voted for it, as did every other member of both chambers.<br />James Richardson, an economist at Louisiana State University and a member of the state's official revenue-estimating board, said legislators had been lulled by the post-Katrina revenue. "They felt they had the ability, because you had all this money coming in," Richardson said. "We were chasing the dollars up the slope."<br />Indeed, there was teeth-gnashing when Gregory Albrecht, the legislature's chief economist, used what most felt to be a lowball forecast for the price of oil, $84 a barrel, when forecasting the revenue the state could spend. "You can tell by the subtext of the questioning - 'why are you so low?"' Albrecht recalled. "Money was coming in like crazy. Why worry about delaying a tax cut?"<br />The seasons have turned, and the mood here now is much darker. Now, it is the president of Louisiana State University who is gnashing his teeth.<br />"If we have an open position, we have to stop that looking," said John Lombardi, the university system president. Next year, he said, "we may have to confront the possibility of eliminating academic programs."<br />The consequences are real in a state long ago overtaken by regional neighbors more tightly focused on educational institutions. "It reduces the state's competitiveness in attracting new business," Lombardi said. "This is a real economic development issue for the state."<br />Brandt, of the public affairs council, said cutting education would only increase migration from the state. Louisiana, he said, has "gotten by with these resources others don't have."<br />"We've not made the decisions we need to," he said, "to get us out of the high-poverty, low-education cycle."<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3_UgBRIBPysvYqa6nAFQ7TJ7XqjRv2o2cbRjpDEpAhcG54LJ4p2XmtmOPm2pkARSiJtFJuQNlqZQOcLBmHPXmJZd94qT51-pVVgg97pQdqVqkQJGVhoznwzQjQn879Au_MmjSWJxZ1I/s1600-h/DSC03650.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719293877034274" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ3_UgBRIBPysvYqa6nAFQ7TJ7XqjRv2o2cbRjpDEpAhcG54LJ4p2XmtmOPm2pkARSiJtFJuQNlqZQOcLBmHPXmJZd94qT51-pVVgg97pQdqVqkQJGVhoznwzQjQn879Au_MmjSWJxZ1I/s320/DSC03650.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>French politicians fear youth violence along Greek pattern</strong><br />By Celestine BohlenBloomberg News<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: Firebombs and breaking glass, tear gas and burning cars. The images from Greece this month were enough to put the fear of youth into the hearts of European leaders.<br />That dread was palpable in France when President Nicolas Sarkozy abruptly delayed for one year a plan to overhaul France's high schools, after students from Bordeaux to Brittany took to the streets in protest.<br />Those demonstrations haven't turned violent yet. But French history, and the example of Greece, suggests they might. At least that is what people like Laurent Fabius, a Socialist Party leader, are saying on French radio.<br />"What we see in Greece is not out of the realm of possibility in France," Fabius said on Europe 1. "When you have such an economic depression, such social despair, all it takes is a match."<br />An editorial in the daily newspaper Libération said the decision to delay the education law - which would change schedules and academic requirements for the last three years of lycée, or high school - was purely defensive. "One senses among the team in power a hesitation, a dread of riots, a fear of explosion," wrote Didier Pourquery.<br />The rapid rise in unemployment among people under age 25, particularly in southern Europe, is one concern. In Spain, for instance, youth unemployment shot up from 18.4 percent in August 2007 to 28.1 percent in October 2008. The average jobless rate for young people in Italy, Greece and France is well above the average for the European Union, according to Eurostat, the Luxembourg agency that collects EU statistics.<br />"All these events have at their core a sense among youth that their lives are not going anywhere, and they have nothing to lose," said Ken Dubin, a visiting associate professor at University Carlos III in Madrid.<br />But economics alone doesn't explain the restlessness in universities and high schools. Students, after all, have no jobs to lose.<br />Experts speak of another worry, which is the seemingly anachronistic resurgence of vague radical movements, loosely called anarchist, which hark back to the destructive ideology of Mikhail Bakunin, the 19th-century Russian revolutionary, and to the rebellious rhetoric of the 1960s and 1970s.<br />Some of it isn't that threatening, like recurring play of the 1979 song, "Another Brick in the Wall," by Pink Floyd, on Alpha radio during the week-long protests in Athens. "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control / No dark sarcasm in the classroom," goes the angry refrain.<br />But the violence wasn't far behind the slogans. By the third day of rioting, the estimated damage in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece's two biggest cities, was more than €1 billion, or $1.4 billion.<br />The riots in Greece began as spontaneous protests to the killing of a 15-year-old student by the police in Athens on Dec. 6, after a group of youths stoned a police car. It spread to university centers around the country, quickly morphing into a wider contest between young people and the police and by extension, the government. Tens of thousands of people continued the protests on Thursday.<br />Greece has a history of violent demonstrations that dates from the colonels' junta in the 1970s. The National Technical University in Athens, known as the Polytechnic, has been off-limits to police in homage to the events of Nov. 17, 1973, when the government sent a tank crashing though the university gates, igniting a popular uprising.<br />Now the Polytechnic is again occupied by protesters, who have built barricades from broken marble and paving stones, and stockpiled Molotov cocktails and other weapons.<br />The role of these so-called anarchists in the weeklong protests is still not clear. But their message - loaded with anti-capitalist, anti-government and anti-globalization themes - is unmistakable. Also clear is their bent for violence.<br />"What they provide is a template that others with less ideological commitment can use," said Stathis Kalyvas, a political science professor at Yale University. "If you have a demonstration where 10 of them start throwing stones, soon the 500 others following them will join in."<br />France isn't the only country nervously watching the events in Greece. Students in Italy and Spain have also staged protests against proposed changes to schools and universities recently. In Madrid, Barcelona and Seville, they took over administration offices this month in opposition to changes mandated by the EU that would link higher education to marketable job skills.<br />In Italy, hundreds of thousands of angry teachers, students and parents mobbed Rome on Oct. 30 to protest an overhaul of the education system, in what was described as the largest student demonstration since 1968.<br />Each country brings its own issues, and history, to these demonstrations; like Greece, France has a tradition of street protests turning ugly.<br />In October 2005, youths in the suburban and largely Muslim ghettoes of Paris went on a rampage, causing €160 million in damage, after two teenagers were killed as they were being chased by police. In 2006, university students staged demonstrations that dissipated into random violence, as hundreds of thousands protested a proposed law that would create flexible work contracts for young people. The government eventually withdrew the legislation.<br />This year's "lycée" protests also carried hints of escalating violence. A high school principals' association in the Bouches-du-Rhône region warned on Dec. 5 of "an unheard-of aggression and near-impossibility of dialogue" with protesting students. Philippe Guittet, head of the association, told the newspaper Le Monde that he suspected the protests were propelled by "militant forces" working behind the scenes.<br />France chose to defuse the situation by withdrawing the contested schools legislation. In Greece, the government, eager to restore calm, has decided for now to cede the Polytechnic to the protestors.<br />That might buy peace for now, but it won't necessarily soothe the anger.<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Out of the shadows, French bronzes are a revelation</strong><br />By Souren Melikian<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: Major subjects have a curious way of escaping attention. The exhibition of "French Bronzes - From the Renaissance to the Century of Enlightenment," on view at the Louvre until Jan. 19 before re-opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Feb. 23, will make some wonder why it took so long for this stunning art form to be a focus.<br />The show is a first in the field, and the accompanying book edited by the Louvre curators Geneviève Bresc-Bautier and Guilhem Scherf, breaks new ground. Both will long be remembered.<br />One reason why the art of bronze statues and bas-reliefs has been overlooked until now by exhibition organizers may be that so much of it forms part of standing monuments. As Edgar Allan Poe observed, what is in plain sight is easily overlooked. In the case of bronzes, the eye glides over them, distracted by the architectural setting.<br />Not many tourists passing through the "musée national" that the château de Fontainebleau has become stop to take a close look at the remarkable bronze stag heads that project from the stone pedestal supporting a bronze group of Diana the Huntress. The statue of the Roman deity clutching the horns of a leaping stag was cast by Balthasar Keller after the Antique. A reinterpretation of the model, it is a great work of art in its own right. But highly perched, its detail is not easily seen. The stag heads and the bronze dogs seated on each corner of the lower level, all done by Pierre Biard I, rank among the great animal portraits in the round of early 17th-century European art. Yet, few visitors will have anything but a hazy recollection of the animals looked at from afar.<br />Similarly, some of the very greatest works stand inside churches, where the dim light makes it impossible to see the detail of blackish brown bronzes. As for the masterpieces preserved in museums from Dresden to Los Angeles, these never appear in sufficient numbers to give an overview of the art. And, all too often, visitors miss them because they are poorly lit - a weakness from which the Louvre show is not immune.<br />Not surprisingly, most of the greatest bronzes in the show will come as revelations to all but specialists. Some are made more exciting by the latest finds of art-history sleuths.<br />The author of a stunning funerary low-relief preserved in the Louvre was only identified last year after an art historian, Guy-Michel Leproux, discovered legal documents setting out the features of the work requested by those who commissioned it in 1560. The documents name Jean Goujon. In her analysis, however, Bresc-Bautier notes that while the style is that of Goujon, the sculptor is not known to have been involved in bronze casting - he may have only directed the work.<br />Several important bronzes are on loan from places away from the beaten path of museumgoers. A marvelous portrait of Catherine de Medicis, the consort of Henry II of France, which was cast in the early 1600s after a model by Germain Pilon, will only be familiar to those who have made the trip to Windsor Castle, where it has been sitting since 1818.<br />Even more than individual revelations, it is the little-known splendor of the French Renaissance art of bronze portraiture that is truly breathtaking.<br />Traditional art lovers tend to think of Italian bronzes as the ultimate form of the art, and for sheer vigor, German masters arguably outdid their European contemporaries. The profound psychological probe that can be read into the greatest portraits of Ponce Jacquio, active from 1553 until 1570; or Barthélémy Prieur, who died in 1611, will leave many feeling that 16th-century France was the greatest.<br />Seen at close quarters, the head of André Blondel de Rocquencourt, an aristocratic warrior whose likeness was immortalized by Goujon in a 1560 funerary relief, is as unforgettable as a Rembrandt portrait. The knitted eyebrows over the closed eyes suggest exhaustion with the faintest touch of wistfulness, as if the man had been wondering in his last moments about the meaning of a life full of sound and fury.<br />Even triumphant figures seem to convey some inner interrogation. The Dresden Diana strides forward, one arm raised, to pull an arrow out of her quiver, the other steadying a bow. The eyes, which stare ahead with commanding authority, are wide open, as if searching the world to find out what the ultimate issue is to be. Rarely was lyricism so subtly modulated by the flicker of uncertainty tucked away in the souls of many humans.<br />Prieur is probably the greatest among the 16th-century French sculptors whose work was cast in bronze. A small allegory of Navarra in the form of a woman's bust may not have caught many visitors' attention in the Museum of Fine Arts at Chartres. Yet in its rendition of a young bride's reverie as she contemplates her future it is unrivaled.<br />Perhaps, the marvelous bronze would be better known had it always been recognized as Prieur's work. That is not so, even though a French historian, Clément de Ris, made the suggestion as long ago as 1874.<br />Were it not for the discovery of the inventory of Prieur's possessions - in which two small bronze female portraits done as allegories of France and Navarre, about 20 centimeters, or about 8 inches, high, are described - art historians might still retain long-held attributions to Pilon or Jacquio.<br />Certainty about authorship tends to be elusive in this field. Two of the most subtle pieces in the show, the female allegories of "Magnanimity" and "Magnificence" on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which turned up without any early provenance at a Paris auction in 1991, are simply "attributed to the circle of Ponce Jacquio." And when another pair of allegories came up at Christie's London in 1986, it was credited to "the Della Porta family workshop."<br />Such hesitations were already common in the 16th century. The bronze genii attached to the funerary memorial of Christophe de Thou erected by his son between 1583 and 1585 in a now vanished Paris church, Saint-André des Arts, were seen by a Dutch traveler in September 1585 shortly after the epitaph had been executed. The young man called Arnold van Buchell asserted that the funerary monument was "the work of Pilon, the most skillful French sculptor of our time." The art historian Regina Seelig-Teuwen, who sees in them the hand of Prieur like all other scholars, does not dwell on the reasons that might have led an eye-witness to state Pilon's name, now dismissed out of hand. The very meaning of the genii in the monument remains a matter of debate.<br />If so much remains uncertain about specific bronzes, it is hardly surprising that factors behind the changes that the art as a whole underwent in the 17th century essentially elude us.<br />Around the middle of the century, the conscious effort to go back to Ancient Greek and Roman classical forms became overriding. The profound psychological probing of the 16th century began to give way to pure formality.<br />A few artists like François Anguier somehow retained the magic of earlier times. His fabulous low relief of a Roman sacrificial ritual, cast in the late 1640s with the explicit purpose of replicating in bronze a Roman marble relief then preserved in the Villa Borghese, actually reinterprets it with a lyrical sense of movement. The drapes swirl around the women as if the natural elements were in harmony with their alacrity.<br />But by the second half of the 17th century the spirit ceased to blow. Pedestrian realism took over. François Girardon's equestrian statue of Louis XIV destroyed at the Revolution is known today through smaller versions of the period. These have a technical perfection that fails to disguise their blandness.<br />In the 18th century, sculptors were alternately flippant and lachrymose when they did not sink into bourgeois realism one rung below that of the late Louis XIV age. French bronze makers retained their technical virtuosity, but their inner force was burnt out. Unlike painting, where the isolated genius of Chardin shone, there was no exception to disprove the rule.<br /><br /><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>France and other countries consider further stimulus plans</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: France and several other European countries are preparing to enact further economic stimulus plans next year if required, officials said Friday.<br />President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is prepared to add to this month's €26 billion, or $37 billion, stimulus package, his chief of staff said, as business confidence fell to the lowest in 15 years and an economic slump deepened.<br />"The government will take all measures adapted to the situation" to support the economy, said Claude Guéant, the secretary general for Sarkozy, during an interview with the France 2 television station. "Today there is nothing that leads us to think we might need more, but if needed, other measures would be taken."<br />His remarks follow signals from leaders in Germany and Britain that an initial round of bank bailouts and economic stimulus would not be enough to counter the recession.<br />The European Commission also declared on Friday that there were "substantial downward risks regarding economic prospects for 2009 as well as 2010. The euro-area economy has entered into recession territory," Guéant said. "Financial market conditions remain fragile and are likely to be tighter for longer than expected."<br />"Quick and decisive action is needed to prevent a downward spiral," he added.<br />President-elect Barack Obama is also expected by some to propose a stimulus plan of $850 billion, an amount that has grown as the U.S. economy sinks deeper into a recession.<br />The economic minister for France, Christine Lagarde, said Friday that six European Union countries were preparing new economic recovery plans to complement programs already decided. She did not name the countries.<br />"Six member states are working on new measures or new plans," she told reporters after a special cabinet meeting with Sarkozy to discuss plans to support the French economy. "The plans which are being prepared outside our territory will have effects that are also important for France."<br />The French economy, the second-largest of the 15 countries sharing the euro after Germany, will contract by the most since 1974 this quarter and slip into a recession early next year, according to an Insee forecast released on Friday.<br />Gross domestic product in France will probably decline 0.8 percent this quarter, after a 0.1 percent increase in the three months through September. The economy will shrink 0.4 percent in the first quarter, and 0.1 percent in the following three months, Insee predicted. Insee's confidence index slid to the lowest in 15 years in December.<br />Insee expects the economy to lose 191,000 jobs in the first half of next year after an estimated drop of 125,000 in the second half of 2008.<br />"We should create 150,000 jobs with the stimulus package in 2009," Patrick Devedjian, the minister in charge of implementing the package, said on Europe 1 radio.<br />Germany is on course for its worst contraction since 1993 next year as a global slowdown saps export demand.<br />The German Finance Ministry said Friday that the economy's downward slide was likely to gather speed in the final quarter of this year, but that deflation was not a major concern.<br />In its December monthly report, the ministry said exports would probably deteriorate further in the coming months as the global economic slump hits Germany's trading partners.<br />"Against this background, an accelerated decline in overall economic activity is to be expected in the fourth quarter," the ministry wrote in the report. "The price environment has recently calmed - but deflationary tendencies are not to be feared."<br />The European Central Bank has cut its benchmark rate by 175 basis points to 2.5 percent since early October to shield the economy from the impact of the global financial crisis.<br />Steel firm cuts production<br />ThyssenKrupp said Friday that its steel unit would cut production and working hours for its 20,000 workers as global demand slumps, Bloomberg News reported from Frankfurt.<br />Staff at almost all plants of the Düsseldorf-based ThyssenKrupp Steel may lose as many as five shifts a month between February and September after the company reached an agreement with works councils Thursday. Output will fall, Dietmar Stamm, a spokesman for the unit, said declining to be more specific.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>French first lady wins damages over bag<br /></strong>By Maïa De La Baume<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />A French court on Thursday ordered a clothing company to pay nearly $60,000 to France's first lady, Carla Sarkozy, for selling bags with a nude photo of her on them. Sarkozy, a former model, filed a lawsuit last week against Pardon, a fashion firm based on the French island of Réunion that sold a canvas shopping bag featuring a 1993 black-and-white photograph of her posing nude for an AIDS campaign. The court ruled that the bag violated Sarkozy's image rights. Peter Mertes, the head of Pardon, said his company would appeal.<br /><br />******************<br /><br /><strong>Australian navy to rescue stricken French sailor</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />SYDNEY: An Australian navy ship is sailing into the Southern Ocean Friday to rescue a stricken French round-the-world sailor who broke his leg when his yacht hit a large wave.<br />The HMAS Arunta frigate may take three days to reach 34-year-old Yann Elies on his 60-foot yacht, which is about 900 nautical miles south of Perth on Australia's west coast.<br />"But he's in a pretty dire situation with a broken leg and onboard a yacht by himself in the middle of the Southern Ocean," Stephen Langford, a doctor, told local radio from the Arunta.<br />Elies is competing in the Vendee Globe round-the-world solo yacht race. His yacht Generali was hit by a large wave on Thursday night as he changed sails, throwing him against the boat and breaking his thighbone.<br />"A sudden jolt when he was on the foredeck stopped the boat very suddenly, he was thrown to the deck, and he has broken his left leg," Erwan Steff, logistics and administration manager for Team Generali, said on the race website (www.vendeeglobe.org).<br />"He crawled back inside the boat to be safe and there he called us, his team, to request immediate assistance."<br />Two fellow competitors were also sailing towards Elies.<br />"The job of these two skippers is mostly psychological support, that is to say that Yann knows that two fellow skippers are close by," said Vendee Globe Race Director Denis Horeau.<br />"If absolutely necessary, and I emphasise absolutely necessary, we can count on their assistance," he said on the race website.<br />(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719515244392450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOQTFbZqb3vlfFm50riz-byPcBFugcgBYnXTeRUxR1tEimXGcut8cCVT5JX_huMVHNVt_1e89eF_-b1dNngn0t2dDe7kcn0mbp-ns4YLoDqBMisQNlR80Z_GkNRjp4Hlh9xU7A95lQqH4/s320/DSC03645.jpg" border="0" /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719513305083826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_lfnQ1XPSzA0QVSK6mEbgmA2oYutC1xMxJNU_pJY_mDyCPjmGQZ7ful0_lJJKXAQbPiZWUUuoja2Jt5nXsM2PfOmXK2ESRmkupl5b7BsComWjA3qBe1d55r5trX2N5CSUyz84IJxcZW0/s320/DSC03646.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br /><strong>Rice says only an idiot would trust North Korea<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview released on Friday only an "idiot" would trust North Korea, which is why the United States is insisting on a way to check its nuclear claims.<br />A 2005 multilateral deal under which Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear programs has become snagged on Pyongyang's refusal to spell out a protocol on how to verify its disclosures about its nuclear programs.<br />The sticking point appears to be North Korea's reluctance to allow inspectors to take samples to test a declaration of its atomic program that it submitted this year as part of the aid-for-disarmament agreement.<br />U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped an agreement on verification with North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in October 2006, would have opened the way to dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear arms capacity.<br />Speaking to a group of foreign policy experts and students on Wednesday, Rice rejected criticism from U.S. conservatives who believe the Bush administration has been too trusting of Pyongyang in recent years.<br />"Nobody was trusting of the North Koreans. I mean, who trusts the North Koreans? You'd have to be an idiot to trust the North Koreans," she said in the appearance at the Council of Foreign Relations think tank, prompting laughter.<br />"That's why we have a verification protocol that we are negotiating," she added, according to a transcript released by the State Department on Friday.<br />Rice said the North had agreed to a verification protocol but had refused to write down some of its verbal assurances clarifying the document's "ambiguities."<br />Rice said there was still a chance to persuade Pyongyang to carry out the six-party accord struck in 2005 by the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.<br />Rice defended the negotiations, saying that as a result of them North Korea had not produced any plutonium since 2005 and had begun to disable its nuclear complex at Yongbyon.<br />She said it had also turned over thousands of pages of documents as well as some samples that "have led us to be more suspicious of some things that they might be doing."<br />She did not appear disheartened by the current impasse.<br />"This is a process that still has a lot of life in it," she said. "North Korea negotiates this way sometimes in ups and downs."<br />(Editing by Peter Cooney)<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>********************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>OBAMA AND AFRICA</strong><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><strong>A clear vision<br /></strong>By Donald Steinberg<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Nowhere in the world is Barack Obama's entry into the White House more anticipated than in Africa. Throughout the continent, the elevation of a son of Africa to the world's most powerful position is a source of pride and validation, and a promise of a more mature, robust, and sympathetic relationship between Africa and America. To fulfill this promise, however, there must be a clear, pragmatic vision of what this new relationship will look like.<br />For three decades, U.S. policymakers have looked at Africa through thick lenses. In the 1980s, their vision was shaped by the Cold War, the antiapartheid movement, and deference to former colonial powers.<br />In the 1990s, there was a welcome shift toward encouraging democracy, economic growth, and good governance, and Africa benefited significantly. But too often American policymakers empowered African "big men" who talked the talk but did not walk the walk.<br />Most recently, the Bush administration largely saw Africa through a terrorism lens, and curried favor with those prepared to sign on - often rhetorically - to the war on terrorism. Positive steps, including U.S. support for battling HIV/AIDS and resolving conflicts, were overshadowed by this preoccupation.<br />Throughout this period, Africa was also seen as a basketcase of conflict, poverty, and disease, worthy of charity and pity. Regrettably, these visions often had devastating effects, especially by prioritizing military assistance that propped up authoritarian leaders and emergency relief that saved lives but did little to address the long-term problems.<br />To discard the distorting lenses means recognizing that Africa is struggling with armed conflict, extreme poverty, weak governance, devastating disease, and abusive regimes. Half the children in sub-Saharan African under age 5 suffer from stunted growth, 2 million children under 15 are afflicted with HIV/AIDS, 43 percent of the population lives on less than $1 per day, and senseless conflicts rage in eastern Congo, northern Uganda, Somalia, Darfur, and Zimbabwe.<br />There will be immediate pressure on Obama to address these festering conflicts. However, a clear vision of Africa means recognizing that America has multiple interests there: to ease the suffering of those in dire straits; to create markets for American exports and investments; to ensure access to energy supplies; and to promote stable societies that can resist extremism and terrorism, and close the door to trafficking in people, drugs, and arms.<br />It means accepting the common interests of Africa and America in democracy, good governance, respect for human rights, transparency, peaceful resolution of conflict, socio-economic development, and the fight against terrorism.<br />Some basic principles should guide this effort. First, democracy, good governance, and sustainable development demand strengthening institutions, not individuals. These goals are best promoted by strong judiciaries and legislatures, independent and credible electoral systems, professional security services under civilian rule, and broad-based and unhindered civil society, including women's groups.<br />Second, external contributions to governance, peacemaking, and development are most effective when channelled through institutions that empower Africans themselves, including the African Union, the New Economic Policy for African Development, and the Millennium Challenge Account. Further, the United Nations and World Bank should be supported in the areas of peacekeeping, post-conflict reconstruction, institution-building, and socio-economic advancement, in part as a burden-sharing exercise.<br />Third, Africans need trade and investment as much as foreign aid. Programs like the African Growth and Opportunity Act have created jobs in Africa by facilitating exports in sustainable sectors, helping address the dangerous phenomenon of youth unemployment. Such programs will be even more important as the global financial meltdown dries up foreign investment, reduces prices for African commodity exports, shrinks remittances from diasporas working abroad, and slashes foreign aid.<br />Of course, Africans have their own responsibilities to build this new relationship. They must adopt the policies and practices that can make new American engagement effective and sustainable. They must abandon winner-take-all power structures, crack down on corruption, reform abusive militaries and police forces, empower civil society, respect rule of law and human rights, and give priority to investments in health, education, housing, and other social services. It is a challenging list, but steps are essential if Africa is to benefit from the clear-eyed American engagement that will hopefully come its way.<br />Donald Steinberg, deputy president of the International Crisis Group, served as special assistant for Africa.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Mugabe asks Tsvangirai to be sworn in as PM<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />HARARE: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Friday he had sent letters to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai inviting him to be sworn in as prime minister.<br />"I have sent letters so that they can come and I can swear (in) and appoint them. We have not reached a stage where we can say with a degree of certainty that they (the opposition MDC) want to be part of this," Mugabe told supporters.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Mugabe says Africa lacks courage to oust him</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />HARARE: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has said that African nations lack the courage to use military force to oust his government, the state-run Herald newspaper reported on Friday.<br />"How could African leaders ever topple Robert Mugabe, organise an army to come? It is not easy," Mugabe was quoted as saying in a meeting of his party's central committee on Thursday. "I do not know of any African country that is brave enough to do that."<br />(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe)<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Zimbabwe cholera deaths rise to 1,123<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />HARARE: The death toll from Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has risen to 1,123 and 20,896 people have been infected with the easily preventable disease, the United Nations said on Friday.<br />The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that the new figures were effective as of December 18. The OCHA had reported 1,111 deaths and 20,581 infections in its previous update on Thursday.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>*******************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Darfur youth build power amid chaos<br /></strong>By Neil MacFarquhar<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />HAMADIYA CAMP, Sudan: The sheik was in a panic.<br />The agitated youth in this West Darfur camp, young men and adolescents who would traditionally defer to his authority, had gotten wind of his presence at a ceremony also attended by a government official. Terrified of being accused of treason, he begged United Nations officials to rush to his aid and vouch that he had not even broached the topic of compromise involving his people's cause.<br />The "shabab," or young men in Arabic, have become a conspicuous political force in the camps for the 2.7 million people displaced by violence across Darfur. Increasingly angry and outspoken about their uncertain fate, the generation that came of age in the camps is challenging the traditional sheiks, upending the age-old authority structure of their tribal society and complicating efforts to achieve peace in the war-stricken region.<br />"They are much more extreme than the sheiks," said the UN official who related the episode of the frightened sheik, speaking anonymously to avoid jeopardizing his own acceptance among the shabab. "And they are hotheaded."<br />Eleven tribal sheiks around Zalingei - where Hamadiya is one of five refugee camps housing 120,000 people - have been murdered since the beginning of 2007. One sheik was found with a nail hammered into his forehead. Another was shot at point-blank range. The cases remain unsolved, but some suspicion falls on the shabab.<br />"The sheiks and the traditional leaders have been influenced by the government, so the young people don't believe that the sheiks are still loyal to both the cause and the people of Darfur," said Abdallah Adam Khater, a Khartoum-based publisher and political writer from Darfur. ("Influenced" is one local euphemism for "bribed.")<br />In the short run, the emergence of the shabab makes any peace negotiations even more tangled as rebel leaders will have to keep one eye focused on their most combustible constituents, who are opposed to any compromise with the government.<br />In Kalma camp in South Darfur last year, the Fur tribe rose up to evict all members of the Zaghawa clan to punish their leaders for signing the first Darfur peace agreement with the government. The protests, led by the shabab, helped drive more than 10,000 people from the camp. The youths in the camp who led the protests called it the "Kalma intifada," and it resulted in the killing of several shabab participants.<br />In the long run, outsiders also worry that a cohesive militant group will organize across Darfur's many camps. Hamas emerged in Gaza in 1987 after a generation had been raised in camps under Israeli occupation, and the Taliban draws significant recruits from Afghan refugees mired in Pakistan.<br />The shabab, strident in their politics, watch warily for any signs of compromise with the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is being sought by an international prosecutor on charges of genocide and war crimes against the people of Darfur. Humanitarian officials suspect that there are jails that the shabab help run in the camps, and that they mete out punishment like whippings to transgressors.<br />At Zalingei, UN officials have learned to give traditional sheiks 24 hours' notice before any gathering outside the camps so that the sheiks can seek approval from elected shabab representatives.<br />The Zalingei police chief, a member of the Fur tribe that dominates the camp, actually has relatives there. But when he attends a wedding or other family gathering, he has to drive his own car because the sight of his official vehicle might spark a riot, the UN official said.<br />During a recent tour of Hamadiya camp by top UN officials, Shafiq Abdullah, 33, one shabab leader, verbally attacked a Sudanese reporter from Khartoum as a government stooge so vehemently that the UN deployed security around him.<br />Abdullah reeled off four prerequisites before the shabab in any camp would agree to negotiations between Darfur rebels and the government: disarming the government militias; prosecuting those responsible for war crimes, starting with Bashir; expelling anyone who settled on land stolen from the displaced farmers; and implementing all UN Security Council resolutions on Darfur.<br />"We organize protest marches against anyone who says we should negotiate with the government for the sake of Darfur," Abdullah said. "I speak out for the sake of our case, even if I have to die."<br />Sheiks can no longer guarantee that they can win over men like Abdullah.<br />"The traditional structure of authority is beginning to break down," said a Western diplomat in Khartoum who has wide experience in the camps. "The rebel leaders can no longer control the population through the sheiks."<br />With about 80,000 residents, Kalma is among the largest and most volatile of the camps. When a group of high-ranking UN officials were inspecting a water pumping station there in late November, Muhammad Ahmed Ismael, a gangly 20-year-old, waded in among them.<br />"We are not free in Kalma!" Ismael shouted, pronouncing his words syllable by syllable in English learned in the camp school and gesticulating like the lawyer he aspires to become. "Look at our sheiks; they are not free! The security can come into Kalma at any time!"<br />Camp education, which often stops at the eighth grade, has both expanded and constricted the horizons for men like Ismael. English was not taught in their now-razed villages. But their heightened awareness has fueled grievances about the wrongs committed against them and about their lack of opportunity.<br />"You cannot call them a unified group with one political ideology, but they are all angry; that is the factor unifying them," said Khater, the writer.<br />Leaving the shabab feeling isolated, without hope for the future, would be dangerous, he added, since the youth may "support any kind of violent acts."<br />The expense of maintaining the camps is phenomenal. Of the $7 billion in donations that the UN is seeking for emergency relief worldwide in 2009, $1 billion is for Darfur.<br />Kalma, though a squalid shantytown built mostly of straw and mud brick and standard UN-issue plastic sheeting, exudes a certain air of permanence. An extended market dominates the main drag. Shiny metal storage tanks that supply much of the camp's water sit on solid concrete bases.<br />The camp boasts some 10 mosques and eight cemeteries. Residents say they fear leaving its confines lest they fall prey to the "janjaweed," which they now use to describe any enemy, not just the government-allied militias that have wreaked so much havoc in Darfur.<br />The civilians who fled to Kalma when it opened in early 2004 are about to start their sixth year here. The shabab complain that life is monotonous, the hutches miserable and the camp battered constantly by a hot, dusty wind.<br />"Before, our desires were simple when it came to education, to culture - all we really thought about was farming," said Adam Haroun Ahmed, 20, who arrived in the camp at age 15. "The colonization, the oppression, all the brutal things done to us by the janjaweed caused us to change our views."<br />When asked to describe his old village, his school friends jostling around him shouted down the idea.<br />"It is something in the past, almost imaginary," one yelled. Another chimed in, "It is so far from our reality that we don't want to be there."<br />The camps have become de facto no-go zones for the Sudanese government, which regularly announces that it will clear them out - in contravention of all humanitarian standards. The government paints the camps as havens for rebels and criminal gangs who steal cars and cultivate "bango," or marijuana.<br />Government forces tried a weapons raid in Kalma last August, deploying scores of troops in some 60 vehicles. The camp's word-of-mouth early-warning system, something the shabab helped mobilize, soon had thousands of residents pouring into the streets to block their entrance. The troops opened fire in the ensuing melee, killing 33 residents and wounding at least 70, according to the UN. The government troops retreated, but vowed to try again.<br />Not everyone finds the transformation of the Darfur youth entirely bad. Khater, the writer, noted that the war had raised their awareness about issues like human rights. The key is to resolve the conflict to avoid allowing their frustrations to bubble for years, he said.<br />For now, some shabab like Ismael have been employed as community police volunteers by the UN peacekeeping force to help fight camp crime.<br />Ismael rejects the idea of ever resuming life on his father's farm.<br /><br />*****************************<br /><br /><strong>U.N. says Darfur peacekeepers still need helicopters<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />UNITED NATIONS: U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Darfur have been hamstrung by the failure of countries to provide the force with helicopters and other vital equipment, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.<br />Briefing the U.N. Security Council, U.N. under-secretary-general for peacekeeping Alain Le Roy said millions of people were living in refugee camps, including 100,000 driven from their homes in the last six months.<br />A joint United Nations/African Union UNAMID force, set up in January, was supposed to have 26,000 soldiers and police in the west Sudanese region, which is about the size of France.<br />The United Nations had initially hoped to get 80 percent of the force on the ground by the end of its first year. In October, following a string of holdups, it lowered that to 60 percent. Figures released this week showed it would struggle to meet even that target.<br />"For over one year we have been requesting pledges for a multi-role logistics unit, a medium transport unit, a heavy transport unit, an aerial reconnaissance unit, light tactical helicopters, and 18 medium-utility helicopters," Le Roy said.<br />"Pledges for these resources have been, and still are, outstanding," Le Roy said, urging countries with the capability to come up with the equipment without delay.<br />Years of fighting in Darfur has killed 200,000 people and driven more than 2.5 million from their homes, international experts say.<br />Le Roy said violence continued despite a unilateral cease-fire declared by the Sudanese government. He said government forces had conducted air strikes in recent months, while rebel groups had attacked government forces.<br />(Reporting by Claudia Parsons, editing by Alan Elsner)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*****************************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>War-weary Kashmiris enjoy a period of calm</strong><br />By Somini Sengupta<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BOTHOO, Indian-administered Kashmir: More than a decade before the attacks last month in Mumbai, militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba showed up here, turning this pine-ringed village into a lair that became known as "the cat's attic."<br />Locals immediately recognized that they were different from the Kashmiri guerrillas before them. These fighters were mostly from the Punjab Province of Pakistan. They were well armed, well trained and ruthless. They introduced suicide bombings here in 1999. The following year they attacked a nearby Indian Army camp, recording the screams of the soldiers holed up inside and then playing them back to locals, who lapped it up.<br />But today, after years of being caught in the middle of an insurgency that has been brutally suppressed by Indian forces, Kashmiris are weary of the fighting. Lashkar militants still make the treacherous passage over the hills from Pakistan, people here say, though fewer of them come. The valley is quieter than it has been in years.<br />In recent weeks, Kashmiris have even reached a new watershed: channeling local grievances into the polling booth and turning out in record numbers to vote in the staggered state election, the last phase of which is Dec. 24.<br />Overall turnout figures have soared over 60 percent, according to the state election office, and the voting has been notably free of violence and coercion, at least by Kashmiri standards. The militants, in an apparent concession to Kashmiri fatigue, did not threaten those who took part in the vote. In this district, turnout was 59 percent.<br />But the fact that Kashmiris are turning out to vote does not mean that they have embraced India, as weeks of massive protests this summer demonstrated. They continue to chafe under the restrictions of the Indian security forces, whose human-rights record in Kashmir has been internationally criticized for years.<br />Kashmiris are voting to demand ordinary things: roads, electricity, jobs.<br />"The main problem here is unemployment," said Shafqat Shabir, 18, a first-time voter in the nearest town, Bandipore, on Election Day last month.<br />He and his friends had taken part in the anti-Indian demonstrations earlier in the year, screaming "azadi," or freedom from India. Azadi, said his friend Afaq Hussain Mir, 22, is "our birthright."<br />That cause remains essential to Lashkar, and it is still its most effective recruiting tool. Formed more than two decades ago with the help of the Pakistani intelligence agencies, the original mission of Lashkar was to challenge India's hold on this fertile, mostly Muslim valley, which the two countries have fought over for six decades.<br />As peace talks progressed in recent years between India and Pakistan, Lashkar sharply reduced its attacks in Kashmir. At the same time, Lashkar has moved on to bigger, higher-profile targets throughout India.<br />The targets included a science center in southern Bangalore, a Hindu temple in eastern Varanasi and, the most audacious of all, Mumbai, the financial capital, where a three-day siege killed 163 people and 9 gunmen.<br />While Lashkar has denied any link to the Mumbai attacks, the one surviving gunman, from among at least 10, said he belonged to the group and named known Lashkar commanders as his trainers.<br />The link to Kashmir remains strong. The man identified as the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, Zaki ur-Rahman Lakhvi, once served as a commander here in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Residents say his son, known as Qasim, is among the more recent Lashkar fighters who have trickled over the border.<br />In October 2007, Zaki ur-Rahman Lakhvi was killed in an all-night gun battle with Indian soldiers on the outskirts of Bandipore.<br />Sympathy for the militants coexists with fear, frustration and admiration. When Lashkar first landed on the doorsteps of the villagers, people here recalled, residents trekked down to the bazaar and bought provisions for them. Despite being brazen killers, people said, the Lashkar cadres were surprisingly well-behaved guests.<br />They did not interfere in village disputes, as members of some of the other militant groups had. They did not harass women. They never ordered the men and women of Bothoo to stop praying at the shrine of a female Sufi saint, as other radical Islamist groups had. However, they never prayed there themselves.<br />But the people paid a high price for the presence of the militants. As Lashkar established itself here, Indian security forces fought back, turning this remote village into a war zone. Men lost limbs. Women lost their husbands. For years, no one was safe.<br />After the Indian Army set up a camp in the middle of Bothoo, the village chief said he begged the local Lashkar commander not to attack. If he did, the village chief said he feared that the army would retaliate by burning the whole place down, as it had done elsewhere.<br />The village chief spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of making enemies - he said his brother had been killed by Lashkar militants after they accused him of being an informant.<br />Even today, loss hovers over these tin-roofed houses. Memories are raw. Rosha Begum Reshi said she lost her husband after Indian soldiers accused him of being a militant. They dragged him out of the house and shot him to death.<br />Nazir Ahmad Reshi lost a leg when members of another Pakistani militant group, Jaish-e-Muhammad, shot him as he tried to save a neighbor from their wrath. Today, at 28, he hobbles on crutches. He cannot work. He cannot leave the village.<br />His father, Ghulam Reshi, lean and angry, spoke bitterly about the fighters who crossed the border from Pakistan. He no longer cared which group they belonged to. They were not welcome.<br />"They wasted my son's life," he said. "Our own people didn't commit these atrocities. It was as though they started sending convicted murderers from the other side."<br />Despite such frustration, many still fear that without a political solution soon to the Kashmir conflict, Kashmiris, especially the young, will grow impatient and support the insurgency once again.<br />For Kashmiris like Ahmad Reshi, a carpenter, the prospect of more fighting inspires dread, and for good reason. In 1995 the army shot him in the right arm, he said. In 2002 the Jaish fighters shot him, he said, this time in the left ankle. He said he had been interrogated by the army eight times in the last 20 years.<br />The village has been quiet lately, but the militants still come to the place known as the cat's attic, he said. They carried satellite phones, which they used to report their achievements, including the killing of an informant, to handlers across the border. They were never without a full magazine of ammunition, he said. They were fearless, he said, to the point of recklessness.<br />"The problem will not go away," Reshi said. "Unless there is a political solution, it will come down. It will not go away."<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Pakistan to issue Bhutto coin</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />KARACHI: Pakistan will issue a coin bearing a portrait of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to mark the first anniversary of her murder in a suicide attack.<br />The State Bank of Pakistan will issue 300,000 of the commemorative 10 rupee (8 pence) coins with Bhutto's image and the words "Daughter of the East, Benazir Bhutto (Shaheed)," inscribed in Urdu. Shaheed means martyr.<br />Chief bank spokesman Syed Wasimuddin said Friday the government had decided to issue the coins and they would be released on December 27.<br />Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi on December 27 last year after speaking at a rally for a general election she had hoped to win. The government said a Pakistani Taliban commander was responsible for the attack.<br />Her party went on to win the polls in February, helped by a wave of sympathy for her, and it heads a coalition government.<br />Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, became president in September after former army chief Pervez Musharraf stepped down under threat of impeachment.<br />(Reporting by Sahar Ahmed; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sugita Katyal)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>E-mail from Afghanistan</strong><br />By Christopher McCarthy<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Hey everybody,<br />I left Japan about three weeks ago. The commercial flight went from Okinawa to Utapao, Thailand, to Dubai, finishing in Manas, Kyrgyzstan. We stayed there for 24 hours, then boarded a military flight to Bagram Air Base.<br />The processing there lasted about two days, and then it was a helicopter ride to Jalalabad, and finally to a Forward Operating Base (FOB). It is located in the Kunar Valley, roughly on the border between the provinces of Nuristan and Kunar. Pakistan is roughly 12 miles to the east.<br />The U.S. Army shares this base with the Afghan National Army (ANA). I am at this particular FOB with four other Marines and a Navy corpsman (medic) to train and mentor the ANA to make them capable of conducting large operations on their own.<br />Overall, this particular battalion is pretty good. They show up on time, keep accountability of personnel and weapons and show a reasonable amount of discipline. Their biggest downfall is making the logistics work. They are having problems with supplies and fuel, so we're helping them get a handle on that.<br />The terrain here is mountainous and dry. Think New Mexico. Some of the higher peaks are snow-capped already, and all of it is steep. In order to survive, the local people have built terraces all over the Kunar Valley. They grow corn and wheat in these terraces.<br />The people are predominantly Pashtun and Sunni. Most are subsistence farmers in the valley, and in higher elevations they are herders. Goat and sheep are the most common animals, but there are a few cows as well. The majority of children attend school, but they take about two months off in the winter, and two months off in the summer. There are tons of kids. The women wear burkas, but they also work in the fields, which is unusual for Afghanistan.<br />A World Food Program convoy was hijacked to our south at the mouth of a valley. The World Food Program is an NGO run by the UN. They do not like to be associated with the military, so they just sent the trucks up the valley. It's pretty easy to see tons of wheat driving by, so the Taliban stopped the trucks and pulled the drivers out and roughed them up a bit.<br />We received a report that this was happening, so we adjusted our convoy to look at the trucks. When our convoy stopped, there were no bad guys around. The enemy was in the middle of unloading these trucks, heard we were coming and left. They stole some wheat, it's unknown how much, courtesy of the people of Australia. The ANA drove the wheat trucks back to the FOB; it will be distributed soon.<br />The next day, we heard the same thing was going on, but it was local taxi drivers who were getting hassled. So we went in a convoy down south again and looked around. There was nothing to see, just some guy claiming he was hijacked and roughed up a bit. It was a pretty brilliant setup. On the way back, one of the Ford Ranger trucks the ANA drive was hit by an IED (improvised explosive device). All American personnel and local interpreters drive in Up-Armored HMMWVs. Obviously, an extended-cab Ford Ranger doesn't provide the same protection. There were seven ANA soldiers in the truck. Five were killed instantly.<br />After the IED went off, we started getting shot at from ridge lines directly in front of us and across the river. It's called a complex ambush, and it is not a good situation. So my turret gunner started returning fire. I got out, and my Gunnery Sergeant got out, and started returning fire. Then we saw the two wounded ANA soldiers. The corpsman was in the turret, so he got out, the driver jumped in the turret, and I became the driver. My corpsman wanted to run up and help the wounded ANA, but I told him to walk on the far side of the HMMWV while I drove, so he wouldn't get shot running up. By that time, no one was shooting to our front, just to our side from across the river.<br />We approached the wreckage, and the corpsman started assisting the wounded. I tossed a smoke grenade to provide obscuration so no one could shoot directly at us. We loaded two of the dead and two wounded into the back of a Ford Ranger. I called up to higher informing them of the needed casualty evacuation. The terrain does not allow for a helicopter landing zone anywhere, so we had to drive to one.<br />By the time we left, the enemy had withdrawn into the high terrain and was gone. The U.S. Army was with us at the time and provided an escort. At the first landing zone, there was no ETA on the bird. This FOB has a very good surgical team and a landing zone, so we pushed all the way there.<br />The U.S. Army and ANA soldiers picked up the wreckage and the remaining bodies. Overall, a very bad day. The Marines I was with did an excellent job throughout, but the corpsman really shined, providing medical care in a timely manner in a difficult environment.<br />But the ANA has some very brave soldiers. The U.S. Army was receiving a convoy the next day and needed to provide security for it. Despite the terrible night prior, they went out the next day, in the same Ford Rangers.<br />There are a lot of funny stories. One day one of the senior ANA officers came to our office. We try to keep all negative Western influences out of sight, but it was a surprise visit. He picked up a Maxim off the table and started looking through it. The room got kind of nervous, because our lieutenant colonel was there, and he is very adamant about keeping this stuff away from the Afghans. Finally he came to a page with a blonde on it. He showed it to everyone in the room and said in English, with a serious face, "This girl very poor. She cannot afford many clothes." We started laughing.<br />The Marines we replaced would randomly go up to each other and ask, "You know what is awesome about America?" After a pause they would reply in unison "Everything." I am starting to see what they meant.<br />I will try to attach some pictures next time, and I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season.<br />First Lieutenant Christopher McCarthy of the U.S. Marine Corps is currently serving as an embedded trainer with the Afghan National Army.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>OPINION</strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>THE AFGHANISTAN PARADIGM</strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>Defense no longer starts at home</strong><br />By Margaret Blunden<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />LONDON: Barack Obama's transition team is reportedly working on plans to send a further 20,000 troops to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The President-elect has made it clear that he expects European allies to increase their troop deployments and to lift the "burdensome restrictions" hampering the efforts of the NATO-led forces there.<br />Governments of the 40 other participating countries, predominantly from Europe, will find themselves trapped between a desire to accommodate the new president, whose election they acclaimed, and the opposition of their electorates at home.<br />Public opinion in most participating countries is against sending more troops to Afghanistan. European electorates are skeptical about the effectiveness of the whole anti-terror strategy. A BBC World Service poll conducted between July and September 2008 found that clear majorities in 22 out of the 23 countries surveyed either thought that the U.S.-led war on terror had failed to weaken Al Qaeda or had actually made it stronger.<br />But in Britain, the largest contributor of troops after the United States, Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently acknowledged that a further 300-strong reserve contingent has been quietly transferred to Afghanistan from Cyprus. Among smaller European contributors, governments of the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Slovakia all announced in 2008 that they would be deploying more troops, ignoring public-opinion polls.<br />European governments may be calculating that domestic opposition will fade if, as hoped, a surge in Afghanistan in the New Year proves as decisive as the troop surge has in Iraq. But what is at issue here goes far beyond Afghanistan. NATO and European Union governments have failed to take their electorates with them into the new security environment of the 21st century.<br />Defense is still popularly understood as protection of national territory. In the past, the readily comprehensible threat of invasion by the armies of a foreign power could be relied on to rally patriotic support for governments and armed forces. The new security challenges - terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and transnational crime networks among them - have shifted priorities from territorial defense within Europe to peace support and stability operations far outside it.<br />The internationally integrated, rapid reaction forces needed for global power projection challenge conventional notions of what the armed forces are for. The idea that fragile states may now be more threatening than powerful ones is counterintuitive.<br />Gordon Brown claims that a "chain of terror" leads through Afghanistan and Pakistan to British streets. Defense Secretary John Hutton urges that events far from Britain's shores, and British engagement in them, have the same significance as the invasions of Belgium in 1914 and of Poland in 1939. These arguments involve a series of complex assumptions resistant to the quick political sound-bite. The man-in-the-street continues to doubt that the security of Manchester runs through Mazar-e-Sharif.<br />Meanwhile, new concepts of security, and a paradigm shift in military doctrine are transforming the structure of European armed forces and defense industries in ways little understood outside decision-making circles.<br />Modern strategy demands professional, technologically equipped forces, trained to understand how the information revolution has changed the nature of warfare. Highly mobile national forces are increasingly rotated and trained within multinational units, the NATO rapid reaction force or the smaller EU battlegroups. The escalating costs of advanced, information-based military technology are forcing the pace of integration across the board. This dynamic spans joint technological projects, transnational defense industry mergers, multinational military units and multinational operations.<br />The integration of European defense is weakening ties between the armed forces and civilian populations. There are implications for the sovereignty and accountability of national decision-making, particularly of small states.<br />It is difficult for governments to resist multinational decisions to deploy highly integrated multinational units. Defense collaboration, within the European Union as within NATO, is subject to intergovernmental agreement. But some analysts are suggesting that integration now amounts in practice to the denationalization of defense, or even the pooling of sovereignty. Meanwhile, the democratic accountability of governments, and the political identity of citizens, lag behind at the national level.<br />As European electorates increasingly oppose distant troop deployments, governments of European states large and small may be tempted to resort to subterfuge, or to play "two level games," sending different messages to their international partners and to their domestic constituencies.<br />This would be a mistake. The world's most serious security challenges may indeed be global in nature, but the average citizen's political perspective remains obstinately local. Decisions about troop contributions to Afghanistan should provide the occasion for addressing, rather than fudging, this fundamental issue.<br />Margaret Blunden is professor emeritus at the University of Westminster in London.<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Three Danish soldiers killed in Afghanistan<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />COPENHAGEN: Three Danish soldiers were killed and one was wounded on Friday when their armoured vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb or mine in Helmand province in south-west Afghanistan, the Danish Army Central Command said.<br />Their vehicle was travelling north of the town of Gereshk in a supply column when it was struck, the army said.<br />The injured soldier has been evacuated to a field hospital.<br />Two Danes were killed earlier this month in fighting.<br />Denmark has about 700 combat troops in Afghanistan. Seventeen have died in combat so far and three others were killed while trying to dismantle a mine.<br />(Reporting by Kim McLaughlin; Editing by Charles Dick)<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. orders combat aviation troops to Afghanistan<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: Defence Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a combat aviation brigade to Afghanistan as part of a buildup of forces to counter rising insurgent violence, a U.S. military official said on Friday.<br />The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. Army brigade of about 2,800 soldiers, equipped with both attack and transport helicopters, would deploy next year.<br />The brigade will form part of an increase of some 20,000 troops requested by U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander of all NATO and most U.S. forces in Afghanistan.<br />McKiernan has asked for the extra troops to halt a growing insurgency made up of Taliban militants and other groups, particularly in the east and south of Afghanistan.<br />He has also requested four more combat brigades of ground forces -- about 14,000 troops -- and extra support units.<br />One of the ground combat brigades is scheduled to deploy in January and Gates, who will continue as Pentagon chief under President-elect Barack Obama, told reporters last week he expected to provide two more by late spring.<br />The United States has some 31,000 troops in Afghanistan, some of them operating independently and some operating as part of a 51,000-strong NATO-led security assistance force.<br />(Reporting by Andrew Gray; Editing by Kristin Roberts)<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Iraqis to investigate beating of shoe-thrower<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: A judge announced an investigation Friday into the beating of an Iraqi journalist moments after he hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush, and said investigators destroyed the shoes in their search for explosives.<br />The statement by Dhia al-Kinani, the investigating judge, was the first official word that Muntader al-Zaidi was hurt after his outburst at a news conference by Bush and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. According to the judge, Zaidi suffered a bruised face and eyes.<br />Zaidi has been in custody since the Sunday attack and has not been seen since by relatives or a lawyer.<br />One of his brothers, Uday, alleged Friday that the isolation indicates he was abused.<br />"Until now, neither an attorney nor anyone from his family has seen him and this is clear evidence that Muntader was under intense torture," he said at a demonstration by about 20 family members just outside the Green Zone.<br />"The investigation process is now under way in mysterious circumstances," he added.<br />Zaidi was wrestled to the ground seconds after throwing his shoes, and the judge said videotape of the scuffle would be studied carefully.<br />The journalist "was beaten in the news conference and we will watch the tape and write an official letter asking for the names of those who assaulted him," the judge said. He said Zaidi could choose not to pursue charges related to the beating; he did not say why he decided to open an investigation.<br />Zaidi was not the only person who ended up with a bruised eye.<br />The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, suffered an eye injury when she was hit in the face with a microphone during the melee.<br />The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Friday that the treatment of Zaidi was a matter for Iraqi authorities to deal with.<br />"Certainly, nobody wants anybody to be mistreated while they're in custody," he said. "I can't attest to these allegations, however."<br />Zaidi's case has become a rallying point among opponents of the U.S. invasion and military presence in Iraq. A Saudi reportedly offered $10 million for just one of the shoes and an Iranian cleric suggested they should become museum pieces.<br />Despite widespread sympathy for Zaidi among Iraqis, Kinani said the case cannot be dropped - though he noted that neither Bush nor Maliki had sought charges. Maliki was standing next to Bush at the time of the attack.<br />"This case was filed because of an article in the law concerning the protection of the respect of sovereignty," he said.<br />The journalist is expected to face charges of insulting a foreign leader. A conviction could bring a sentence of two years in prison.<br />The judge also confirmed that Zaidi had written a letter of apology to Maliki. A spokesman for Maliki had said Thursday that Zaidi asked for a pardon in the letter. But Zaidi's brother Dhargham told The AP that he suspected the letter was a fake.<br />The prime minister can recommend to Iraq's president that a pardon be granted, but the judge said such a pardon can be issued only after a conviction. There have been no indications whether or not Maliki is likely to recommend a pardon.<br />The judge said the Zaidi investigation would be completed and sent to the criminal court on Sunday, after which a court date would be set within seven to 10 days.<br />Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated again Friday for Zaidi's release.<br />At Friday prayers in Baghdad's Shiite stronghold Sadr City, a cleric, Mohanad al-Moussawi told, worshipers that "al-Zaidi's life must be protected and he must be immediately, immediately, immediately released."<br />In London, about 50 protesters shook their shoes at the U.S. Embassy in a show of support for Zaidi. </p><p> </p><p>********************</p><p><strong>IW: After 5 years of American presence in Iraq, including a NYT Bureau, NYT journalists - who completely missed the significance of the shoe story when it broke - here admit that they had to turn to a local hire that Sunday night to "ask what it all meant." Even after having it explained, it wasn't the lede story on Monday. It was Bush's completely inconsequential farewell tour that took the space, not the shoe attack and what it meant in the Arab world. How quickly we forget the images of the fall of Bagdhad in 2003 and the beating with shoes of the statue of S.Hussein. </strong></p><p><strong>Watching Favre from Baghdad<br /></strong>By James Glanz<br />Wednesday, December 17, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: After nearly five years of covering the conflict in Iraq, I am leaving soon for a saner assignment. Having seen and felt more during those years than I can either process or express for now, I am spending a lot of time trying to understand, really understand, why the Green Bay Packers let Brett Favre go to the Jets.<br />I am a Packers fan from birth, and my father covered some of the great Lombardi teams as a television sports anchor out of Madison, Wisconsin, when I was in grade school. Vince Lombardi had what now might be called a Favre-like ability to awe and charm at the same time. At the first news conference Dad attended in Green Bay, before he knew anyone with the team, Lombardi noticed the new guy 10 rows deep in the gallery and stepped away from the lectern to offer his hand and that big grin. He said, "I'm Vince Lombardi."<br />"Like I didn't know," Dad said Sunday, when I phoned him from Baghdad to catch up and talk a little football. "I almost had to take out my driver's license to tell him what my name was."<br />The news conference was a first lesson in genuine star power. There would be many more for my father, Irv Glanz, as well as a few for me.<br />But I hadn't called him to talk about the old days; I wanted to tell him I had watched the Jets beat the Bills on Sunday after years of not being able to see regular-season football games on satellite television in Baghdad.<br />A colleague once likened reporting here to sending dispatches from Mars. Sunday was like watching the National Football League on Mars. Imagine sitting in a Mars lander on the endless dunes and watching Leon Washington take the ball from Favre and break off a 47-yard run for a touchdown as if he were the only player in a zero-gravity suit. At that moment, the remote and chilly reaches of the solar system all seemed to be friendly places, even if you were not really a Jets fan.<br />It was so much fun that I asked Mudhafer al-Husseini, an athletic young Iraqi in our newsroom, to stop by my office and watch some of the game. (As the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, I run a compound of about 120 Iraqi translators, reporters, guards, drivers and other staff.)<br />Mudhafer was at first distracted, because Sunday was the day an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, and <strong>our Western correspondents were constantly calling Mudhafer to ask what it all meant.<br /></strong>When his cellphone had stopped ringing, Mudhafer said with classic Iraqi bluntness, "I never liked this game." He looked blankly at the screen as Favre faked a handoff and threw deep to David Clowney, who made an astonishing one-handed catch. A few plays later, Favre made one of his wild heaves downfield and was intercepted. Unmoved, Mudhafer said, "I like soccer and I can understand it."<br />But the truth is, Mudhafer is a sports fan in the transcendent sense. I explained the rules and what was happening as the game went along, and by the time J.P. Losman fumbled and Shaun Ellis scored - looking like a large man stumbling dangerously down a hill - Mudhafer was jumping and yelling with me.<br />"I like this game now, because it holds your breath!" he said.<br />Ignoring the broadcasters, Mudhafer also recognized immediately that the cameras were framing the game with Favre's expressions: hands-on-hips chagrin when he threw the interception, lowered eyes on the sideline as Buffalo seemed close to running out the clock, and the leprechaun hops when Ellis lurched into the end zone.<br />That was another lesson of the Lombardi years, when his nervous pacing, plumes of agitated breath, Jovian scowls and big grin told you where the game stood. Stars on that scale could win you games, and they did, but they also gave you the characters you needed for your personal narrative of the contest. Those narratives, not the newspaper stories or the play by play, turn a team logo into an institution with a history and a right to belong in a certain time and place.<br />The distance from Mesopotamia to the Meadowlands, about 6,000 miles, or 9,600 kilometers, brings with it a certain perspective. After Mudhafer left, the crawler at the bottom of the TV screen gave the last in a dismal progression of scores for the Packers-Jaguars game: a 20-16 Green Bay loss.<br />I know that for the analytical minds of my profession, a final judgment on the moves set in play by the Favre trade must wait for a range of subtleties involving the impending showdown with Chad Pennington and the Dolphins; the relative quarterback ratings of Favre and Aaron Rodgers, who is now under center for the Packers; and a million other factors. But in the Book of Titletown, the only thing that could possibly have justified forcing someone of Favre's stature to leave Green Bay for New York is an immediate and obvious swing in wins or some other stirring improvement.<br />The Packers, who went to the National Football Conference title game last year, are 5-9 and out of the playoffs. The Jets, who had four wins last year, are 9-5 and still in the hunt. This tells me that the football bureaucrats who let Favre go, and whose names I cannot keep straight over here, will see the wrath of the Packers gods - Lombardi presiding - come down on their helmetless heads. Soon.<br />You can read Homer to see how that one ends. In a less epic vein, Dad retold the story of buying expensive golf shoes just before a tournament for Wisconsin sportscasters and Packers players, then shooting well and having his choice of the prizes. They included a nice pair of golf shoes for which he had no use.<br />"Vince came up and put his arm around me and said, 'Irv, take the golf shoes,"' Dad said. "I took the golf shoes."</p><p><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Iraq preachers demand release of Bush shoe attacker</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Waleed Ibrahim<br />Muslim preachers from both sides of Iraq's once-bloody Sunni-Shi'ite divide appealed to the government on Friday to release the journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush.<br />The family of TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi, meanwhile, protested at an entrance to the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad where they believe he is being held in a hospital after being badly injured during his arrest.<br />At Baghdad's main Shi'ite mosque, al-Kadhum, preacher Mohammed al-Shami leading Friday prayers demanded that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki free Zaidi.<br />"We hold them responsible for his safety," the preacher said. "They are responsible for his life, his health and psychological condition."<br />At Baghdad's main Sunni Arab mosque, preacher Abu-Hanifa asked Maliki for an explanation.<br />"From this place we call on the prime minister and ask him, 'Tell us why you have detained a person who made such a heroic and fair act? A stand that all of us should have taken a long time ago'," Uthman Raheem said in his sermon. "Why do you detain a man who stood up in the face of injustice?"<br />Fighting between minority Sunni Arabs who dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the majority Shi'ite Arabs now in ascendancy killed thousands of people during the bloodshed unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.<br />The violence has finally begun to die down even though suicide and car bomb blasts, many attributed to Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, remain routine.<br />The cause of the journalist who also called Bush a "dog" at the news conference in Baghdad where he threw his shoes, narrowly missing the president, has bridged Iraq's divides.<br />Many Iraqis, whether Sunni or Shi'ite, blame Bush personally for the tens of thousands who died in the years of warfare.<br />In the western city of Falluja, a Sunni preacher praised Zaidi on Friday and called him a courageous man who honoured all Iraqis with his action.<br />LOCATION YET UNKNOWN<br />Zaidi's whereabouts were unknown on Friday. He appeared on Tuesday before an investigatory judge and could face trial on charges of "aggression against a president," a crime that carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.<br />Zaidi's lawyer said the court overseeing his case had opened a new case related to alleged beating of the reporter.<br />Dhiaa al-Saadi, head of the Iraqi lawyers' association, said the court had accepted his request to open a new proceeding against the people who had allegedly beaten Zaidi, according to Saadi, while he was being detained and afterwards.<br />Saadi said he had not met with Zaidi and did not know where he was being held, but said that, according court documents, the reporter's face and body were bruised.<br />At one of the heavily-guarded entrances to the Green Zone, an area that houses many government offices and foreign missions, Zaidi's family and a few dozen supporters waved banners and vowed to continue to protest until he was freed.<br />"We know nothing about him or about his health and if he's dead or still alive. We are asking to see him," said Um Saad, one of the journalist's sisters.<br />His aunt, Um Zaman, broke into tears.<br />"When I saw them beating him on television and he shouted in pain ... We want to see him, even if I am the only one allowed in for God's sake," she said.<br />(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Michael Christie; editing by Ralph Boulton)<br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Iraq minister dismisses coup plot<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Waleed Ibrahim<br />Iraq's Interior Minister vigorously denied Friday reports that the arrest of several officers was related to a plot to overthrow the government.<br />"It is a big lie. The public must understand this," Interior Minister Jawad Bolani said at a news conference the day after Baghdad was seized by rumours surrounding the arrest of more than 20 officers from Iraq's interior and defence ministries.<br />"It was clearly motivated by politics and was not related to security," said Bolani, an independent Shi'ite who is seen as having largely wrested Iraq's strategic Interior Ministry from the grip of militias.<br />The New York Times reported Thursday that a spate of arrests of ministry officials was linked to suspected attempts to reconstitute Saddam Hussein's banned Baath party and that some of those arrested were believed to be plotting a coup.<br />The report sent shockwaves around Baghdad, where politicians are gearing up for provincial elections in January and struggling to find political unity after more than five years of war.<br />Thursday, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the 23 arrested officers were under suspicion of being part of the al-Awda ("Return") party, seen as a new incarnation of the once omnipotent Baath party outlawed after the U.S-led invasion. Defence Ministry officials also were detained, the office of the general commander said.<br />Links to the Baath party are still poisonous in Iraq even though the government has taken tentative steps to reverse some U.S-mandated purges of Baathist officials from government.<br />Other officials said the arrests were related to corruption or suggested they were driven by manoeuvring ahead of the January 31 vote, which may alter Iraq's delicate balance of power.<br />An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday night that all of the officers arrested had been released.<br />Still, the affair raised questions about fissures within Maliki's fragile coalition government, including Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds who still sometimes trade barely veiled jabs.<br />It also brings up doubts about rule of law in Iraq, where U.S. officials say arrests are often politically motivated.<br />Maliki is staring down rival Shi'ites and other parties ahead of the elections, which may set the tone for general elections in late 2009.<br />Bolani, an independent Shi'ite appointed by Maliki, recently founded his own political grouping, the Constitutional Party, which would be a competitor against Maliki's Dawa party.<br />The New York Times reported the arrests were carried out by an elite counterterrorism force reporting to Maliki's office. But the Interior Ministry spokesman, Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf, said Thursday they were made by ministry officials. Bolani did not address this question in the news conference.<br />"I do not rule out that 'outside hands' were involved in this case," Bolani said.<br />"The Interior Ministry stopped influence of some political parties who used to interfere in the affairs (of government). That success does not suit those parties," he said.<br />During Iraq's short history as a nation, military coups have brought leaders to power at least three times.<br />(Writing by Missy Ryan; editing by Michael Roddy)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>How a Zionist in Israel went from leader to public scourge</strong><br />By Ethan Bronner<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: There was a time not so long ago when Avraham Burg was viewed by many Israelis as proof that the inherent tensions of Zionism - religious versus secular, insular versus worldly, Jewish state versus state of all its citizens - could be reconciled with grace. Here was a religiously observant Jew with a cosmopolitan outlook, a decorated paratrooper who believed deeply in peace with the Arabs, an eloquent, fast-rising public figure accessible to a broad range of citizens.<br />Widely known by his nickname Avrum, Burg, a happily married father of six and the son of one of Israel's most admired and longest-serving government ministers, was talked about as a candidate for prime minister. Long before his 50th birthday, he had headed the World Zionist Organization and served as speaker of the country's Parliament.<br />But four years ago Burg not only walked away from politics. He pretty much walked away from Zionism. In a book that came out last year, and has just been translated and released in the United States, he said Israel should not be a Jewish state, that its law of return granting citizenship to any Jew should be radically altered, that Israeli Arabs were like German Jews during the Second Reich and that, in fact, the entire society felt eerily like Germany just before the rise of Hitler.<br />In other words, rather than reconciling the country's complex tensions, Burg ended up imploding from them.<br />"I realized something about myself and Israel that frightened me," he said recently, looking back over the past few years. "I realized that Israel had become an efficient kingdom with no prophecy. Where was it going? What is a Jewish democratic state? What does it mean that Jews define themselves by genetics 60 years after genetics were used against them?"<br />Israel is no stranger to self-examination. Its leaders and thinkers, indeed many of its average citizens, are aware that nearly everything about the place defies normal categorization and is subject to debate. This is a source of both pride and irritation. But many said that Burg, 53, was not just asking delicate questions. He was poisoning the well from which the nation - and he - had long drawn its water.<br />As Ari Shavit, a writer for Haaretz newspaper, said to him in an interview when the book was published here, "Your book is anti-Israel in the deepest sense. It is a book from which loathing of Israeliness emanates."<br />Burg rejected that accusation and still does. He wrote from love, he said, and if the issues he raised are troubling, if they cause a stir, that was very much his aim.<br />There is no doubt that he raises some serious questions: Is Israel too focused on the Holocaust as a touchstone of history? Can it stay both Jewish and democratic over the long term or is it time to look for another model? What kind of future is there for Israeli Arabs?<br />Less clear, however, is whether Burg has provided any serious answers. This is partly because his book and discourse vacillate between two poles - congratulating Jews and the Zionist movement for their success thus far and warning them that they are turning into a kind of self-justifying Sparta, a warlike entity on the verge of tragedy.<br />His central point is summed up in the English title of his book: "The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from its Ashes." The Nazi slaughter of six million Jews, he says, has become the central trope of Israeli life, dominating it in a way that distorts the country's outlook. Teenagers are sent on trips to Auschwitz; every enemy of Israel (Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran) is viewed as the reincarnation of Hitler."<br />Burg has shifted the title of his book over the years. When he was writing it, he called it "Hitler Won." When he published it in Hebrew he called it "Defeating Hitler."<br />Partly, he said in the interview, his thinking is evolving, and partly his American editors made some smart cuts and suggestions. But it also seems clear that he has modified and adjusted his arguments, especially for a foreign audience. Some of his more alarming assertions in the Hebrew version (for example that the Israeli government would soon be likely to pass the equivalent of the Nuremberg laws, like making it illegal for Jews and Arabs to marry) are gone in the English one.<br />Asked what precipitated his initial shift from mainstream public figure to more marginal public scourge, Burg points to a process that began in 2001 when he ran for leadership of the Labor Party and lost in a tight race that he says was stolen from him through backroom deals.<br />It was not so much the loss, he asserts, as the realization that he had poured his heart and soul into winning something that he had thought so little about.<br />"I knew how to get elected, but what was I going to do once I got there?" he recalled thinking. Maybe, he felt, it was lucky that he lost. He took five weeks and walked part of the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey by himself. "In five weeks I met 11 people, none of them Jewish," he said. He realized that life here was too insular for him, that it was time to step outside the provincial concerns of the extended Jewish family.<br />Burg, born and raised in one of West Jerusalem's most admired neighborhoods and a graduate of the Hebrew University, comes from one of the country's iconic families. His father, Yosef Burg, barely escaped the Nazis when he left Germany in September 1939 and was a minister for nearly four decades. His mother was a survivor of the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929.<br />But Burg wanted a clean slate. He decided to leave politics and build an international business, stop writing bills and news releases and write books, stop taking short runs and train for marathons. And so he has. He is co-owner of a company that takes over failing businesses and rebuilds them for sale, has published two best-selling books and is a long-distance runner. He travels frequently and added a French passport to his Israeli one, a benefit of his wife's origin.<br />Burg's many friends and acquaintances - he is a man of great charm and wit, with a large social appetite - have been left bewildered by it all, saying the soft, flowery answers he has offered to his big tough questions have left them cold.<br />Tom Segev, for example, a left-wing historian and Haaretz columnist, said in a review that the book was "one of the most spaced out and in-your-face books this country has seen in many years."<br />What are Burg's prescriptions? He wants a new Jewish identity focused not on the particular but on the universal, asserting that "if we do not establish modern Israeli identity on foundations of optimism, faith in humans and full trust in the family of nations, we have no chance of existing." He wants Israel to dismantle the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and replace it with the headquarters for the International Criminal Court, making this the epicenter of international prevention of genocide.<br />In truth, he has gained almost no traction here with such recommendations. Yet what is perhaps most interesting of all is that Burg continues to play a public role in Israel. He is invited to speak to young people, he writes occasional opinion columns and he is greeted warmly, even embraced, in this city's cafes. This may be because, despite it all, Avrum Burg is family. And whether he likes it or not, Israelis look out for family.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />******************************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Hamas renounces cease-fire with Israel<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Hamas formally announced the end of its unwritten, often-breached truce with Israel on Friday as Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired four more rockets into southern Israel.<br />The Israeli military said troops guarding Israeli farmers in fields adjoining Gaza also came under sniper fire from across the border. There were no injuries reported in any of the incidents.<br />In a statement posted on its Web site, the Islamic militant group Hamas said that Israel had breached agreements by imposing a painful economic blockade on Gaza, staging military strikes into the densely populated coastal strip and continuing to hunt down Hamas operatives in the West Bank.<br />"We hold the enemy fully responsible for ending the truce and we confirm that the Palestinian resistance factions headed by Hamas will act," the statement said.<br />There was no immediate Israeli comment about the Hamas announcement that it would not extend the cease-fire past its end Friday. Israel said previously that the six-month-old truce, brokered by Egypt, did not have an official expiration date and that the government was interested in prolonging "understandings" with Hamas.<br />In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was critical of the move by Hamas.<br />"I sincerely hope that there will not be a resumption of the violence," she said, "because that is not going to help the people of Gaza, it is not going to help the Palestinians, it is not going to help the Palestinian cause."<br />President George W. Bush and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, were meeting in Washington on Friday to assess the stalled U.S.-backed negotiations with Israel that will almost certainly fail to meet a year-end deadline for a peace deal.<br />In what is likely their last face-to-face talks before Bush leaves office next month, Bush and Abbas were meeting days after the United Nations Security Council endorsed the administration's Annapolis peace process. Bush introduced the signature initiative on Mideast relations with Abbas and the outgoing Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in November 2007.<br />Bush had his final meeting with Olmert last month.<br />Hamas, which violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and much of the international community, and Israel does not officially have direct contacts with it.<br />Though violence and casualties dropped significantly under the cease-fire agreement, the truce has increasingly unraveled since early November, when Israeli soldiers entered Gaza to destroy a tunnel that the army said could have been used in a cross-border raid. In response, Palestinian militants resumed firing rockets at Israel.<br />Even before the truce began fraying, Israel did not allow the free transfer of goods in and out of Gaza. Since cross-border fighting resumed in November, Israel has kept the borders virtually sealed, allowing in only minimal humanitarian aid.<br />There were protests against the Gaza blockade in several Mideast states Friday.<br />In Lebanon, thousands of supporters of the militant group Hezbollah swarmed Beirut's southern suburbs, some chanting "Death to America!" and "Israel is the enemy of Muslims!" In the southern city of Sidon, about 1,000 Hezbollah supporters staged a sit-in at the main square, halting traffic for about three hours.<br />About 3,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria joined a demonstration at the Sbeineh camp outside the capital, Damascus.<br />In the Gulf island state of Bahrain, security forces clashed with thousands of protesters who were demanding that Arab governments take action to end the Gaza blockade.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br />BOOK REVIEW<br /><strong>Gustav Niebuhr's 'Beyond Tolerance'<br /></strong>By Kenneth L. Woodward<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Beyond Tolerance Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America. By Gustav Niebuhr. 218 pages. Viking. $25.95.<br />Religious tolerance is a necessary but overrated virtue. Its practice comes easiest to the religiously indifferent and to the condescending: "You know this is a Protestant country," President Franklin D. Roosevelt reminded two non-Protestant members of his administration, "and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance."<br />What lies beyond tolerance? Respect and recognition - not just for individuals but also, as Gustav Niebuhr argues, for the faiths to which they are committed. Formerly a religion reporter for The New York Times and now an associate professor of religion and the media at Syracuse University, Niebuhr here gathers tales of interfaith dialogue and good will; he estimates they are representative of the practices of thousands of American believers. He claims these efforts are "largely untold." If that is so, it's only because such dialogues are no longer news. American Protestants, Catholics and Jews have been talking interfaithfully for more than 50 years.<br />What's different, what gives Niebuhr's book, "Beyond Tolerance," its few bursts of energy, is the addition of Muslims to the conversation. Indeed, my guess is his search for interfaith understanding could not have found a publisher before 9/11. Since then, inviting Muslims to talk has become an act of mutual protection as much as one of respect for all parties to the conversation.<br />One of the better anecdotes Niebuhr relates involves an Episcopal priest in New Jersey who encountered the local police chief right after the twin towers fell and urged him to send officers to protect a nearby mosque. Another revolves around a synagogue on Long Island whose rabbi, in the early '90s, searched out the nearest Muslim congregation and initiated a series of exchanges on their respective faiths and religious practices. One chapter is devoted mainly to the Festival of Faiths in Louisville, Ky., which promotes visits to various houses of worship and sponsors lectures on world religions.<br />In between such stories - and often, regrettably, in the middle of their telling - Niebuhr makes reference to such stalwarts of religious reconciliation as Thomas Merton, Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama. He also reprises key moments in this country's history of religious freedom. There are, in other words, legal and cultural precedents for the local welcome wagons of interfaith hospitality he describes.<br />Even so, Niebuhr often fails to provide necessary information about the different religions and organizations he discusses. Surely we ought to learn more about Muhammad than what this single sentence supplies: "Islam has Five Pillars, starting with the shahada, the declaration that there is only one God and that Muhammad, a seventh-century Arabian trader, was his final prophet."<br />Niebuhr devotes several pages to the second Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Chicago in 1993. He mentions rituals and workshops but ignores the one document the assembly discussed in common, the Declaration of a Global Ethic, which proposed a set of principles and values that all religions could support.<br />Niebuhr is apparently not interested in the textual traditions of world religions, and he sometimes misinterprets the scriptures he cites. The central teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita, for example, is not "selfless . . . duty," which sounds like Protestant noblesse oblige, but the more demanding Hindu practice (yoga) of disinterested action, which requires renunciation of the fruits of any deed.<br />My main quarrel is with Niebuhr's emphasis on process over substance. The point of interfaith dialogue is to learn something. As any veteran of these conversations can attest, you never really understand your own religion until you develop a deep and sympathetic understanding of at least one other. But Niebuhr hardly ever tells us what insights participants have gained from listening to one another, not even how their attitudes might have changed as a result.<br />We don't hear about these things, the reader has to assume, because Niebuhr does not consider them important. "The world's major religions," he writes, "are essentially neutral systems in the way they affect human temperaments." To the contrary: religion, for those who take it seriously, has enormous power to shape not only who we are and how we relate to others but also which virtues we privilege, which course of action in any situation we find right and worthy. Compassion, to cite one common interfaith topic, has a very different meaning for Buddhists than it does for Christians. Were differences like this not important, the interfaithful would have nothing much to discuss, nothing to learn from one another.<br />Niebuhr sees interfaith dialogue as a way to overcome the "absolutism" of fundamentalists in all religions. And yet, these are precisely the believers who refuse to engage in conversation with religious others. Conversely, the problem with a lot of local interfaith encounters is that they rarely get beyond the show-and-tell stage to grapple with rival truth claims.<br />Niebuhr regards interfaith understanding as a "civic discipline," much like honesty in paying taxes. But most Americans would have to travel a long way to find a Sikh or Zoroastrian or Native American to talk to. Muslims are a different matter. We must engage them here because across the world they sit on a lot of oil, because we have troops on Muslim soil and because, next to Christianity, Islam is the world's largest religion. It is not for nothing that Niebuhr begins and ends his search with 9/11.<br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Iraqi police discover seven severed heads<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: Iraqi police discovered seven decomposing, severed heads and two decomposing bodies on Friday in an half-built house in eastern Baghdad, police said.<br />The discovery took place in Ur, a mainly Shi'ite district of northeastern Baghdad.<br />Such finds were a routine occurrence in Iraq during the height of the sectarian and insurgent violence unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. But violence has dropped and such discoveries are much less common now.<br />(Editing by Elizabeth Piper)<br /><br />**************<br /><br /><strong>Last South Korean troops sent to Iraq return home</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />SEOUL: South Korea, which once had the third-largest contingent of foreign soldiers in Iraq, ended its mission there on Friday by bringing home all of the troops it had deployed to the country.<br />Several hundred South Korean soldiers who had been given a non-combat assignment in a relatively safe Kurdish area of Iraq were greeted by a band and presented with flowers after arriving in Seoul.<br />The South Korean government earlier this year said it no longer saw the need to keep soldiers there. The government had sent the troops upon the request of its major ally, the United States.<br />"(The troops) have successfully accomplished their four-year and three-month long mission and have come back to Seoul," the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.<br />South Korea sent 3,600 soldiers to Iraq in 2004 in what was the largest foreign troop deployment after the United States and Britain, but has been rolling back troop levels amid public opposition to the mission.<br />The past few months have seen a string of departures by U.S. military allies in Iraq as violence subsides and the end of a U.N. mandate authorizing their deployment to the country approaches.<br />(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Junghyun; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)<br /><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>Don't link Islam to terror, Islamic chief urges</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Robert Evans<br />The world's top diplomat for Islam called on Friday for an end to what he termed efforts to equate the religion with terrorism and said the 'demonisation' of Muslims around the world must be fought.<br />But speaking soon after the U.N. General Assembly passed an Islamic-sponsored resolution condemning "defamation of religion" for the fourth year in a row, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said his group was committed to respecting freedom of expression.<br />There was a "rising tide of incitement to religious hatred and discrimination and intolerance targeting Muslims," he told a meeting called by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) at the United Nations in Geneva. The 57-nation OIC, based in Saudi Arabia, represents 1.5 billion Muslims.<br />"Attempts to equate Islam with terrorism should be stopped. Stereotyping and demonisation of Muslims should be combated," said Ihsanoglu, a Turkish history professor who became OIC Secretary-General in 2005.<br />In a statement on Ihsanoglu's remarks, Geneva spokesman for the International Humanist and Ethical Union Roy Brown argued that Islam was often linked to terror because perpetrators of many terrorist acts identify themselves as Muslims.<br />Critics of the OIC -- including countries who voted against the "defamation" motion at U.N. headquarters in New York on Thursday -- say many Islamic states use defamation or "blasphemy" laws against minorities and free-thinkers.<br />Referring to the U.N. vote, in which for the first time since the OIC introduced a "defamation" motion in 2005 more countries voted against or abstained than voted for, Ihsanoglu said the motives of the Islamic grouping were misunderstood.<br />FREEDOM OF SPEECH<br />The aim of the OIC, he declared, "is not to protect religion against critics based on objective and rational interrogation." The body, he added, "is firmly committed to respect for freedom of expression, which is a fundamental human right."<br />In a statement issued earlier this week, watchdogs on freedom of expression for the U.N.'s Human Rights Council and for key regional inter-state organisations in Africa, Europe and Latin America called for an end to "defamation" resolutions.<br />The four, three of them prominent developing country human rights lawyers, said that where "blasphemy" laws existed they had often been used "to prevent legitimate criticism of powerful religious leaders and to suppress the views of minorities, dissenting believers and non-believers."<br />In an echo of their comments, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told Friday's meeting that when criticism of religion became incitement to hatred "urgent but proportionate" action should be taken.<br />But, she added, "speech critical of religions does not necessarily constitute such incitement" and that it should always be assessed "stressing the importance of protecting the rights of both religious minorities and non-believers alike."<br />(Editing by Stephanie Nebehay and Ralph Boulton)<br /><br /><br /><br />****************<br /><br /><strong>President of Brazil unveils plan to upgrade military in effort to be global power</strong><br />By Alexei Barrionuevo<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BRASÍLIA: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil unveiled a new national defense strategy on Thursday, calling for upgrading the military forces and remaking the defense industry. The plan also called for a debate in Brazil on whether mandatory military service should be enforced and how the armed forces should be professionalized.<br />With the commanders of Brazil's army, navy and air force in attendance, Da Silva said in a speech here that Brazil, despite its pacifist history, needed a stronger defense against potential aggression if it was to continue on the road to becoming a global power.<br />The new strategic vision, more than a year in the making, calls for Brazil to invest more in military technology, including satellites, and to build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet that would be used to protect territorial waters and Brazil's deepwater oil platforms. The proposal also calls for an expansion of the armed forces to protect the country's Amazon borders and for retraining troops so they are capable of rapid-strike, guerrilla-style warfare.<br />"Brazil's vision of its military's role fits well with the country's growing international seriousness and economic and institutional capacity," said Michael Shifter, a vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy research group in Washington. "It is seeking to be a more cohesive national power, and that requires exercising full control over its vast territory and borders."<br />Despite the country's recent economic boom and the strong role the military has traditionally played in Brazilian society, military spending has been stagnant and troop levels have remained steady around 312,000, the government said. Brazil spent a lower proportion of its gross domestic product on defense in 2006 than four of its South American neighbors — Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia — according to the Security and Defense Network of Latin America, a research group based in Buenos Aires.<br />The president's new military strategy, outlined in a 101-page document, has been introduced as drug trafficking increases along Brazil's Amazon borders and as some of the country's neighbors — including Venezuela, Colombia and Chile — have been upgrading their militaries. Venezuela has been particularly active, buying $4 billion in arms from Russia. Brazilian officials denied that Venezuela's bolstering of its armed forces or plans by the United States Navy to revive a Fourth Fleet to patrol the South Atlantic had directly influenced the creation of the new military strategy.<br />"We are not concerned by the strength of our neighbors, but we are concerned by our own weakness," said Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the minister of strategic affairs and a co-author of the plan. "The national defense strategy is not a circumstantial response to circumstantial problems. It is a far-reaching inflection, a change of course and a change of direction."<br />Relations between Brazil and Venezuela remain essentially friendly, and Latin American leaders are touting regional unity as a way to weather the global recession. Da Silva and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela are pushing for the creation of a South American defense council, an idea that was discussed this week at a meeting in Brazil of leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean.<br />The new defense strategy does call for Brazil to become more independent of other countries' military technology. It emphasizes a reorganization of the nation's defense industry to focus on forming partnerships with other countries so that Brazil is involved in creating the new technologies. "We are no longer interested in buying weapons off the shelf," Mangabeira Unger said.<br />Brazilian officials have approached a number of countries about potential partnerships, including the United States, India, France, Russia and Britain.<br />The Brazilian Army would be reshaped to be a more mobile, quick-strike force. Only about 10 percent of its soldiers are now trained for rapid deployment. The entire army would be reconstituted at the brigade level to be able to strike quickly, "so that a warrior would also be a guerrilla," Mangabeira Unger said.<br />The plan also involved enforcing existing laws on mandatory conscription to draw people from all classes, not just the poorer ones, to make for a more highly skilled fighting force.<br />"This will be a novel debate for Brazil about national sacrifice," Mangabeira Unger said. "There has been no moment in our national history when we have squarely had the kind of debate that I hope we will have now."<br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><strong>Pentagon looks at Guantanamo closure<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By David Morgan<br />The Pentagon is working on a plan to shut the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that would be available to President-elect Barack Obama when he takes office on January 20, a defence official said on Thursday.<br />U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has asked his staff to come up with an assessment of what it would take to shutter the prison camp that has become a blemish on the international reputation of the United States.<br />"If this is one of the president-elect's first orders of business, the secretary wants to be prepared to help him as soon as possible," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.<br />"(Gates) has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down -- what would be required specifically to close it, and move the detainees from that facility, while at the same time, of course, ensuring that we protect the American people from some dangerous characters."<br />Obama has pledged to close the prison located at the U.S. naval station in southeastern Cuba, which has come to symbolize aggressive detention practices that opened the United States to allegations of torture.<br />There was no immediate word on how soon Obama might address the Guantanamo question. But the president-elect, who has repeatedly called its closure a top foreign policy priority, said in the current issue of Time magazine that he hoped to have the jail shut during the first two years of his term.<br />Gates, who was appointed by Bush, but has agree to stay on under Obama, also wants Guantanamo shut.<br />The jail currently holds about 250 detainees apprehended as part of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks.<br />LENGTHY, COMPLEX PROCESS<br />Defence officials said the task of closing Guantanamo is likely to be a lengthy, complex process that would involve all three branches of the government.<br />"You look at this sort of thing early because that's when you have momentum for bringing about change. With a new administration coming in, you've got people who are willing to do what's necessary," said one defence official.<br />Officials said members of the Office of the Secretary of Defence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will provide Obama with a set of options for tackling the complex issues raised by Guantanamo. It was not clear whether the Pentagon would recommend a specific course of action to the new president.<br />The Obama administration would need to decide where to hold current detainees, particularly about 110 prisoners who the Pentagon believes are too dangerous to be released from U.S. custody. Options might include military installations on U.S. soil and civilian federal prisons.<br />The United States would also need to decide what kind of court system should handle trials for roughly 80 detainees. There are now charges against 20.<br />"The request has been made, his team is working on it so that he can be prepared to assist the president-elect should he wish to address this very early in his tenure," the press secretary said.<br />Addressing these issues could require input from a number of other government entities including the Justice Department, judicial officers and Congress, officials said. In fact, Gates has said that Congress should pass legislation to protect the American public by preventing any former Guantanamo detainee from living in the United States.<br />The Guantanamo tribunals are scheduled to reconvene on January 19 for pretrial hearings for Canadian captive Omar Khadr, who is set for trial the following week on charges of murdering a U.S. soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan.<br />(Additional reporting Caren Bohan in Chicago and Jane Sutton in Miami, Editing by Howard Goller)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9VxRZB55B9x4jAfGrVcg0nlU6IBIbGruIOTNcj-6eXXRrf_hc_WDymimJcpZFapU6w8yqHh93x3ecQf0V7BDgEAv5VASShLMMjWm15duoyhMuny7fS5rkpu3qT5Aup6QxQys-Kfm5PlI/s1600-h/DSC03651.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719288331510162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9VxRZB55B9x4jAfGrVcg0nlU6IBIbGruIOTNcj-6eXXRrf_hc_WDymimJcpZFapU6w8yqHh93x3ecQf0V7BDgEAv5VASShLMMjWm15duoyhMuny7fS5rkpu3qT5Aup6QxQys-Kfm5PlI/s320/DSC03651.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Sales growth of flat-panel TVs is expected to slow</strong><br />By Eric A. Taub<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Sales of flat panel TVs are going flat.<br />In a reversal of fortune, television sales in the United States are predicted to drop in 2009, according to a new report from DisplaySearch, a market research firm. It would be the first sales decline in at least a decade, said DisplaySearch, and the first decline in revenue since 2000.<br />TV makers have long argued that TVs were recession-proof because Americans would continue to buy them as a cheap way to entertain their families. But consumers are now starting to shun the LCD and plasma sets, even as prices fall sharply.<br />In 2009, sales of all types of TVs in North America are predicted to decline by 4 percent. LCD TV sales are expected to increase in North America by 2 percent over 2008, a fraction of the 22 percent gain in 2008 and the 77 percent rise in 2007.<br />"There was an unnaturally high growth in sales due to the transition to digital TV and the replacement of picture tube TVs," said Paul Semenza, a senior vice president at DisplaySearch. "You would expect a reversion to the mean, but this is beyond that."<br />Semenza began to notice a rapid drop in production from August to November. By the fall, flat-panel manufacturers in Taiwan that supply to various brands began to cut back production as name brand manufacturers needed panels only from their own facilities.<br />The flat-panel factories are now running at 80 percent capacity, down from the 90 percent rate of just a few months earlier. A similar shift is now happening in South Korea, Semenza said.<br />Worldwide, LCD shipments will continue to grow about 17 percent in 2009, the market researchers predict, but almost all of that growth will come from emerging markets, where few own flat-panel sets.<br />LCD revenue will drop by 16 percent, while revenue from all types of TVs will fall by 18 percent. In North America, revenue will decline by 24 percent.<br />None of this is good news for consumers. Semenza expects that prices for LCD sets 32 inches and smaller will remain fairly stable. Retail prices on TVs 42 inches and larger will not decline as fast as they have in years past.<br />Some makers of the flat panels for big-screen TVs are delaying the construction of factories that produce panels more efficiently and that allow them to undercut competitors with lower prices.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Vanity is so last year<br /></strong>By Natasha Singer<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />With hindsight, the first decade of this century may come to be viewed as the era of the mass medicalization of attractiveness.<br />The advent of cosmetic Botox in 2002 posited the eradication of wrinkles as an affordable luxury amid a booming economy.<br />On television, reality shows like "Extreme Makeover" and "Dr. 90210" normalized vanity medicine, making cosmetic operations seem cuddly and carefree. Meanwhile, lenders rushed in to offer specialized lines of credit for cosmetic procedures.<br />And, somewhere along the way, the body became the new attire, a mutable status symbol subject to trends in proportion, silhouette, technology and disposable income.<br />But now, as the country plunges into recession, will financial hardship demote the pursuit of physical perfection?<br />Will the vogue for a smoothed face in which only the mouth moves, or a mix-and-match body of mature breasts atop boyish hips become outmoded? Will aesthetic values loosen up, allowing the occasional wrinkle to take on a certain measure of authenticity?<br />"There comes a point when you are putting too much time and money into your vanity," said Peri Basel, a practice consultant in Chappaqua, New York, who advises cosmetic doctors on marketing strategies. "For me, the vanity issue is: Where does it stop? If you are going for buttock implants, do you really need that?"<br />Indeed, a few indicators suggest that financial constraints are beginning to interrupt the narrative of better living through surgery — at least temporarily. Sixty-two percent of plastic surgeons who responded to a recent questionnaire from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons said they had performed fewer procedures in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the latest anecdotal information from the group.<br />At the society's annual meeting last month in Chicago, some prominent surgeons said they had openings and for the first time agreed to negotiate fees with patients.<br />More recently, a quarterly earnings statement from Mentor Corporation, a breast implant manufacturer, reported that the number of breast implants sold in the United States decreased 5 percent during the three months ending Sept. 26 over the same period last year. In the last month, two manufacturers of cosmetic medical devices have closed.<br />"In Orange County, where plastic surgery is a part of their culture, doctors told me business is down 30 to 40 percent," said Thomas Seery, the president of realself.com, a site devoted to reviewing vanity-medicine procedures. "That tells me something is fundamentally changing there."<br />Even a few celebrities, those early adopters of appearance technology, have started to deride the plasticized look that sometimes accompanies cosmetic interventions, a harbinger perhaps of a new climate of restraint in which overt augmentation seems like bad taste.<br />Call it a Botox backlash. Last month in interviews with different magazines, the actresses Courtney Cox and Lisa Rinna said that they did not like the look of excessive facial injections.<br />"It's not that I haven't tried Botox — but I hated it," Cox said in an interview in Marie Claire. "You know you've messed up when people who are close to you say, 'Whoa, what are you doing?' "<br />Meanwhile, Rinna, late of "Dancing With the Stars," said that she had gone overboard with skin-plumping injections and planned to cut back.<br />ACADEMICS who study body image and body modification said it is too soon to know how financial constraints might alter attitudes toward beauty maintenance. But several researchers forecast how consumers might reappraise the idea of appearance upkeep in light of basic needs, family obligations, romantic aspirations, professional status and personal values. Although a recession may propel some people to seek more procedures, many consumers will reduce or forego cosmetic treatments, they said.<br />In uncertain times, people tend to re-evaluate their priorities, dismissing aspirational purchases as frivolous, said Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.<br />"Cosmetic surgery is going to become the new S.U.V., something that you can do without, that is less justifiable for you and your family," said Dr. Pitts-Taylor. She is the author of "Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture."<br />J. Kevin Thompson, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, theorized that people might reduce spending on their appearance after reassessing their immediate needs. "It would be a rational decision to put the safety of your home first," said Thompson, who has studied body image disorders and obesity for 25 years. A psychological theory called Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in which physical necessities like food, health and security trump conceptual needs like self-esteem, may account for people who choose basics over beauty, he said.<br />Thompson, who emphasized that he was speculating in the absence of survey data, suggested that people may also make decisions about their appearance by scrutinizing the grooming practices of their friends, acquaintances, and even celebrities, a behavior called social comparison.<br />"In terms of body image, they look around at their friends," Thompson said. "If everyone is cutting back, they may change the norm based on what others are doing."<br />Meanwhile, fence-sitters who were contemplating but had never undergone a cosmetic procedure may now lose interest.<br />"Looking at the economy and their bank balances, they might now be saying 'No' and be glad to have a reason to resist the beauty imperatives of cosmetic surgery," Dr. Pitts-Taylor said.<br />And what about people who already consume cosmetic medicine on a regular basis?<br />Basel, the practice consultant, said she had amended her beauty routine, but had not relinquished her desire to manage her appearance.<br />"Let's face it, if you don't look great, you are not going to your reunion and you are not going on Facebook," said Basel, who blogs about beauty at itsthelatest.com. She described her cosmetic cutbacks: out went the personal trainer, in came the gym classes; antiwrinkle injections are a must, but major operations have gone by the wayside.<br />Amy Krakow, the president of Propaganda Marketing Communications, a public relations firm in New York, who had been interviewed for an article in 2007 about high-maintenance beauty routines, has also made some concessions. She recently changed her hairstyle to include bangs — a camouflage technique that allows for fewer Botox injections, she said.<br />"I'll change my hair colorist," Krakow said. "I'll give up my crazy Japanese hair straightening. I'll stretch out my Botox. I'll even go for fewer plastic surgeries. But I do have to look good in my business. I look younger, therefore I can represent younger and hipper clients."<br />Although economic constraints may cause some people to hit the pause button on beauty interventions, financial uncertainty may impel others to try it.<br />After all, body modification is more than a desire to increase attractiveness. It is an attempt to impose control over life by molding the flesh.<br />Deborah A. Sullivan, a sociology professor at the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, said that people who feel forced to forgo cosmetic medicine might experience a loss of control in their lives.<br />"I think it will intensify the sense of downward mobility: 'I can't even get my wrinkles treated,' " Dr. Sullivan said. She is the author of "Cosmetic Surgery: The Cutting Edge of Commercial Medicine in America."<br />Against a tide of people eschewing cosmetic medicine in the new economy, she also predicted a counter current of consumers having procedures to feel proactive.<br />"People who would not have considered it, when they get laid off at 45, 50, 55 and are back on the job market, might consider it as they try to enhance their human capital," she said.<br />Cosmetic surgery has weathered other cataclysms. For example, consumers cut back on beauty operations after the terrorist attacks of 2001, a year in which procedures like liposuction, tummy tucks, nose jobs and eye-lid procedures declined, according to estimates from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.<br />Dr. Pitts-Taylor predicted that cosmetic procedures will experience a resurgence when the economy eventually recovers. "It is absurd to suggest that cosmetic surgery is dead or will not be used by the middle class in the future," she said.<br />Doctors and manufacturers are counting on it.<br />On Dec. 1, Johnson & Johnson said it planned to buy Mentor Corporation, the breast implant manufacturer, for about $1.1 billion.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br /><strong>Economic crisis may have terrible impact on aid<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />TOKYO: The global financial crisis could have a "terrible" impact on humanitarian efforts around the world, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday, as many donor countries focus on their own economic woes.<br />Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, urged major industrialised nations to place the same importance on human lives as multi-billion dollar bank rescues.<br />"I'm afraid this will have a terrible humanitarian impact," Guterres said at a news conference during a visit to Tokyo when asked about the fallout the economic downturn would have on aid.<br />"It will be inconceivable if in a world where people are spending hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to rescue banks, the same determination will not be shown to rescue human lives."<br />The UNHCR in October urged governments not to cut aid to humanitarian agencies, but leading economies have plunged into recession since then and the global economic outlook remains bleak.<br />The largest donor to the UNHCR is the United States, which gave more than $505 million (336 million pounds) between January and October 31, followed by the European Commission at around $130 million and Japan at about $110 million, the UNHCR website showed. Other major donors include the United Kingdom and Germany.<br />Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, also welcomed Japan's plan to accept a small number of refugees seeking "third country" resettlement outside both their home country and the country to which they initially fled.<br />Japan has frequently been criticised for its reluctance to accept refugees. About 40 people were granted asylum status in 2007, while other developed countries such as the United States and France accepted over 10,000 people.<br />In a meeting with Guterres on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said Tokyo would accept about 30 refugees from Myanmar who are living in refugee camps in Thailand in the year to March 2010.<br />"This is indeed a very important symbolic measure, and we hope it will translate itself into a positive development in the future," Guterres said.<br />Japan faced a record number of about 1,500 applications from asylum-seekers this year, nearly double the 2007 figure, the UNHCR said.<br />Poor conditions in military-ruled Myanmar combined with Japan having chaired the Group of Eight nations in 2008 may be among the reasons for the rise, said Mihoko Kashima, a spokeswoman for the Japan Association for Refugees, a non-governmental organisation in Tokyo.<br />Most of those granted asylum in 2007 were from Myanmar.<br />(Reporting by Yoko Kubota, Editing by Dean Yates)<br /><br /><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>*****************</strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Blagojevich denies any criminal wrongdoing</strong><br />By Monica Davey and Jack Healy<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />CHICAGO: Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, who has been accused of scheming to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, said on Friday that he would not resign and insisted that he had done nothing wrong, saying defiantly, "I will fight, I will fight, I will fight."<br />In his first statement since he was arrested on U.S. government charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes, Blagojevich was alternately emotional and combative, his voice breaking as he told reporters that he would be vindicated, and asked Illinois residents to withhold their judgment.<br />"I intend to stay on the job and I will fight this thing every step of the way," he said in an appearance at the James Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. "I will fight, I will fight, I will fight, till I take my very last breath. I have done nothing wrong."<br />Within minutes of his appearance, state Republicans reiterated their calls for a special election to determine Obama's replacement in the Senate, and the state's lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, issued a statement chastising Blagojevich.<br />"On behalf of the people of Illinois, I plead, plead with the governor to step aside," Quinn said. "There is no way Governor Blagojevich can in my mind fully protect the people of Illinois, their safety, their welfare. I think the people of Illinois are held hostage right now to this situation."<br />At his appearance, Blagojevich derided the "false accusations and a lynch mob" that had brought his political career to its knees, but offered no specific defenses to the charges against him, and did not answer broader questions about his actions or his ability to effectively govern as he prepares for a criminal trial and fights off impeachment.<br />In a 76-page criminal complaint, prosecutors have accused Blagojevich of, among other things, seeking to profit from his sole authority to appoint Obama's replacement in the United States Senate. In taped conversations released by Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney in Chicago, Blagojevich is quoted saying, "I want to make money" on the Senate seat.<br />"I'm dying to answer these charges," he said at his appearance on Friday. "I'm dying to show you how innocent I am."<br />But Blagojevich said he would wait for his day in court to do so. He then quoted several lines from the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling, and left the glare of flashbulbs without taking any questions. He wished "Happy holidays" again and again as dozens of reporters shouted questions.<br />Friday's press conference was the latest twist in the saga of Blagojevich, which has taken one dramatic turn after another since two FBI agents arrived at the governor's Chicago home at 6 a.m. on Dec. 9, and arrested him.<br />Although Blagojevich has made only fleeting public appearances since then, the public focus on him has mushroomed. Questions mount about whether he will remain in office, and fight impeachment proceedings in the state's House, and how he can govern effectively with criminal charges hanging over him and politicians across Illinois and the country calling for his resignation.<br />The Illinois House began proceedings to impeach him this week after a raft of lawmakers — including the lieutenant governor, 50 Democratic United States senators, and Obama — called for his resignation.<br />The Illinois attorney general filed an action with the Illinois Supreme Court seeking to have Blagojevich declared unfit to serve, but the suit was dismissed without comment this week.<br />On Chicago's North Side, legions of reporters have staked out the governor's home, transforming his brief public appearances — climbing into a black SUV, standing on his front porch, jogging through snowy streets — into breaking news.<br />The governor's aides say Blagojevich has been going into the office regularly, and signed laws addressing medical regulation, families with autistic children and tax cuts for filmmakers who shoot movies in Illinois. A spokeswoman has called the governor's schedule "business as usual."<br />But even as Blagojevich has said little during the past 10 days, his lawyer, Edward Genson, has mounted a pugilistic defense of the governor. He has said that Blagojevich had done nothing wrong, condemned the legislative action against the governor as a "real witch hunt" and said that lawmakers on the impeachment committee were unfairly biased.<br />On Wednesday, Blagojevich ratcheted up the anticipation that he would finally address the charges against him.<br />"I can't wait to tell my side of the story," he told reporters. ""There's a time and place for everything. That day will soon be here."<br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><strong>Illinois inquiry goes beyond criminal complaint</strong><br />By Catrin Einhorn<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />SPRINGFIELD, Illinois: Lawmakers here made it clear on Thursday that the inquiry into the possible impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich would extend beyond the federal criminal complaint against him, questioning witnesses on whether Blagojevich had abused his powers in the ordinary work of governing.<br />"These are not as sensational as the criminal charges," State Representative Lou Lang said of instances in which Mr. Blagojevich had been accused of failing to heed legislative decisions or ignoring federal law. "But in terms of abuse of power, in terms of the running of the governor's office and in terms of his ability to continue to serve, these are very critical issues."<br />Lang, a Democrat, is among 21 legislators holding hearings here to determine whether the House should go ahead with impeachment proceedings against the governor. Some lawmakers had considered the possibility of an impeachment inquiry for months, but feared political fallout and that it would be stymied in the Senate, where the governor had a powerful ally. Blagojevich's arrest last week on federal charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes changed all that.<br />Blagojevich is accused, among other things, of trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. Through his lawyers, he has denied any wrongdoing.<br />Blagojevich was not in Springfield, and once again made no public statements Thursday. But his criminal lawyer, Edward Genson, attended the hearing for a second day, even as uncertainty grew about how the governor would pay his legal bills.<br />Lisa Madigan, the Illinois attorney general, denied a request on Thursday by Genson that his fees be financed with public money, and federal authorities advised officials with Blagojevich's campaign fund not to spend any of that money, which amounted to $3.6 million as of June 30, public filings show.<br />On Wednesday, Genson had argued that Madigan should appoint publicly financed lawyers, including himself, to represent Blagojevich, because under normal circumstances that job would fall to her office. Genson suggested Madigan could not represent the governor without conflict because she had sought to have Blagojevich removed by the State Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the court declined to consider her request.<br />In a sharply worded letter, Ann Spillane, Madigan's chief of staff, called his request "meritless."<br />"It is absurd to suggest that taxpayers must finance the defense of a criminal action against Governor Blagojevich who is accused of corruptly betraying the public trust for personal and financial gain," Spillane wrote.<br />After the hearing on Thursday was adjourned, Genson brushed off Madigan's response, saying he had known she would never agree to his request. He seemed unworried about how Blagojevich, who federal prosecutors say complained of financial difficulties, would pay him.<br />"At this point, this is a historic sort of thing," he told reporters, adding, "I want to have some input."<br />Much of the testimony before the special committee centered Thursday on the machinations behind two high-profile and controversial moves by the Blagojevich administration: to expand health care to middle-income parents unilaterally in 2007 after the proposal was defeated in the State Legislature, and to buy flu vaccine from a European supplier before receiving necessary federal approval during the shortage scare in 2004-5.<br />The health care expansion is now tangled in court, and the flu vaccines were blocked from entering the United States. The vaccines, worth $2.6 million, were donated to Pakistan, but The Chicago Tribune reported that Pakistani heath officials destroyed all 500,000 doses because they had expired.<br />In Chicago, Blagojevich reported to his downtown office on Thursday morning. He took action on about 60 clemency cases and signed a bill into law having to do with medical licensing provisions, said his spokesman, Lucio Guerrero.<br />"Our hard-working physicians are one of the most important resources to the people in Illinois," Blagojevich said in a statement. "Ensuring that we have the adequate framework in place to properly license them is of utmost concern."<br />The impeachment inquiry reconvenes Monday, by which time lawmakers hope that the United States attorney's office will have provided them with a list of witnesses whose testimony here will not interfere with the criminal case.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*******************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>With Madoff, even winners may lose out<br /></strong>By Alex Berenson<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Amid the thousands of people caught up in the alleged multibillion-dollar fraud of Bernard Madoff, some investors stand out.<br />They made money.<br />One client said he invested more than $1 million with Madoff over a decade ago. As his portfolio rose in value, he took out several million dollars. While his statements showed several million dollars in his Madoff account when the fund collapsed last week, the client still ended up ahead.<br />How many clients of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities profited unwittingly on what Madoff described as a big Ponzi scheme. But given the structure of Ponzi schemes, which use money from later investors to pay early investors, many longtime clients may actually have wound up ahead.<br />"In a Ponzi scheme, not all investors lose," said Tamar Frankel, a law professor at Boston University who has written on Ponzi schemes. "Those who manage to get out in time retain their investments and some of their gains."<br />But previous court rulings regarding financial frauds suggest the winners could be forced to give up some of their gains to losers.<br />One of the unanswered questions so far is precisely how much investors lost over all.<br />When Madoff confessed and was arrested last week, he told FBI agents that the losses might be $50 billion, according to court filings. Various institutions and individuals so far have reported losses totaling more than $20 billion, but it is unclear how much of that is cash they actually invested and how much represents paper profits based on the falsified returns Madoff said investors were earning.<br />Madoff regularly delivered returns of 10 to 17 percent to investors, a very good year-in, year-out return but on the low end of the 10 to 100 percent a year typically dangled by promoters of Ponzi schemes.<br />But assets that can guarantee those returns year after year without risk simply do not exist. Instead of profitable investments, Ponzi schemes repay initial investors by raising more money from new investors. The schemes typically collapse when the promoter cannot bring in enough money to pay existing investors seeking redemptions.<br />Joel Cohen, the deputy head of litigation for the Clifford Chance law firm and a former federal prosecutor who specialized in business and securities fraud, said that payments to early investors are an integral part of any Ponzi scheme.<br />"You need to deliver returns in the range that you promised to attract investors," Cohen said.<br />Yet even Madoff's most fortunate clients may wind up having to give back some of their gains, as investors might have to do in another recent financial fraud, the collapse of the hedge fund Bayou Group in 2005.<br />In the Bayou case, in which investors lost $400 million, a bankruptcy judge ruled that investors who withdrew money even before Bayou collapsed might have to return their profits, and possibly some of the initial investments, to the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the unwinding of Bayou.<br />The returned money is to be distributed among all investors, who are expected to receive only about 20 to 40 percent of their original investments.<br />Madoff's winning clients are likely to face similar legal challenges. In fact, the Madoff client who profited from his investment spoke on the condition that he not be identified, out of concern that he might be sought out to repay some of his gains to the receiver or bankruptcy trustee for Madoff.<br />Jay Gould, a former lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission who now runs the hedge funds practice at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, said the client was correct to be concerned. New York State law may allow the receiver or bankruptcy trustee to demand that Madoff's investors return money they received from the scheme anytime in the last six years, Gould said.<br />Such so-called clawbacks may occur even if the client had no idea that the gains were fraudulent, he said.<br />"The idea is that the whole thing was a fraudulent undertaking, so nobody should profit from it, and everybody should be put on equitable footing," Gould said.<br />But in a sign of the complexity of securities law, Cohen said he did not agree with Gould's interpretation.<br />"I don't think it's that easy to claw back money from something that happened six years ago," Cohen said. "There's no level of fiduciary duty between investors. If someone put in a million dollars five years ago, and made 11 percent, and took their money out after one year, are they required to give back the 11 percent? I think that's inaccurate."<br />Even determining which investors made money will be enormously complicated.<br />Madoff's practices appear to have gone on for many years and entangled thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of clients, who invested both directly with him and through third-party hedge funds. Some of those investors never took out a cent, while others took out only a fraction of what they invested and a few took out more than they put in.<br />Jesse Gottlieb, a life insurance broker in New York, said his account statements show that he had about $17 million at the Madoff firm when it collapsed.<br />Gottlieb declined to say how much cash he had invested, but he said he had taken out only a small amount of money from his investments with Madoff, which were held in trusts for his sons.<br />Gottlieb said he knew of other investors who regularly cashed out portions of their accounts. In most cases, they were retirees who left their principal with Madoff, but lived off the annual 10 to 17 percent returns he provided, Gottlieb said.<br />The complexity of situations like the one that Gottlieb described means that investors may wind up suing each other, as well as the hedge funds and banks that brought them into Madoff's funds and the auditors who worked for those hedge funds.<br />"This is so big, and there are so many people situated differently," Gould said. "Everybody is potentially adverse to everybody else."<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Jury issues first death sentence in New Hampshire since the 1950s</strong><br />By Katie Zezima<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BOSTON: A New Hampshire jury on Thursday issued the state's first death sentence in nearly a half-century.<br />The jury decided that Michael Addison, 28, who was convicted of capital murder last month in the 2006 shooting of a police officer, should die by lethal injection. Defense lawyers said they would appeal the verdict, which will automatically be reviewed by the State Supreme Court.<br />The police officer, Michael Briggs, 35, was on a bicycle patrol in Manchester, New Hampshire, when he and his partner encountered Addison and an accomplice, who were wanted for a series of crimes. Addison shot Officer Briggs once in the head at close range to avoid arrest, prosecutors said.<br />Addison was arrested hours later at his grandmother's house in Boston.<br />His lawyers admitted that he shot Officer Briggs but argued that the crime was not premeditated. They also said their client should be spared the death penalty because he had a traumatic childhood.<br />But the New Hampshire attorney general, Kelly Ayotte, who argued the case, said Addison was a hardened criminal intent on killing Officer Briggs, a five-year veteran of the Manchester Police Department and the father of two.<br />"A life sentence doesn't do justice in this case," Ayotte said during closing statements.<br />A New Hampshire inmate has not been executed since 1939. The last time a New Hampshire court issued a death sentence was in 1959, for two convicts, but a 1972 ruling by the United States Supreme Court spared their lives.<br />State law limits the offenses that can result in execution. They include murdering a police officer, murder for hire and murder in the course of kidnapping.<br />"The death penalty hasn't been used that often in New Hampshire, probably because there are not many death-penalty-eligible cases," said Albert Scherr, a professor at Franklin Pierce Law Center, in Concord. "It's a small state, and there are not much more than 30 homicides a year."<br />This is the second capital murder trial that Ayotte's office has prosecuted this year.<br />In October, a jury convicted John Brooks, a millionaire businessman, of capital murder for hiring three men to kill a handyman who Brooks believed had stolen from him. A jury last month rejected the death penalty in Brooks's case and sentenced him to life in prison.<br />The two cases have raised the issue of race in a state that is 95 percent white. Officer Briggs and Brooks are white; Addison is black.<br />Judge Kathleen McGuire, who is presiding over the Addison case, said race had not precluded Addison from receiving a fair trial. Ayotte pointed out in an interview after the verdict that the jury foreman was black. Also, jurors signed a statement saying race had played no role in their decision.<br />But Professor Scherr expressed skepticism.<br />"Brooks was very wealthy and white; Addison was not wealthy and black," he said. "You can't not think about what role that might have had."<br /><br />********************<br /><br /><strong>Madoff scandal stuns Palm Beach Jewish community<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Jim Loney<br />Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion (33.1 billion pound) Wall Street fraud scheme has hurt and embarrassed the Jewish community of Palm Beach, the Florida town of the mega-wealthy where the financier found so many of his investors.<br />Madoff made his connections at the Palm Beach Country Club, an oceanfront hideaway founded by Jews excluded from other posh clubs in one of America's wealthiest towns.<br />His suspected Ponzi scheme, which has devastated charities and bilked some of Palm Beach's richest families, has stirred anger, disappointment and some soul-searching in a town that at the height of the winter social season is 50 percent Jewish, said Rabbi Moshe Scheiner of the Palm Beach Synagogue.<br />"I know a number of people who have been hurt by this, wonderful people who have been extremely generous with their wealth to make the world a better place," he said. "It's a shame they won't be in a position to do the good things they have been doing."<br />HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS LOST<br />The fraud, one of the largest in U.S. history, appears to have struck hardest at Jewish families and charities across the United States, where Madoff's allure spread by word of mouth, and at European banks and wealth managers that bought into his funds for their rich clients.<br />Madoff's connections won him a following in Palm Beach, a beach enclave with a permanent population of 10,000 that triples when winter cold hits the Northeastern United States. A financial adviser said he knew of several local families that had lost more than $100 million each.<br />The charitable foundation of Carl Shapiro, the 95-year-old philanthropist who introduced Madoff to some of his eventual investors at the Palm Beach Country Club, said it had about 45 percent of assets, $345 million at the end of 2007, invested with Madoff.<br />The ripples reached into Jewish communities across America and swept up luminaries like billionaire real estate investor Mort Zuckerman and director Steven Spielberg.<br />Total losses to the Jewish community were unknown, but the Jerusalem Post, in what it called a partial review, said at least $600 million in Jewish charitable funds were wiped out.<br />The newspaper said the Madoff losses "may amount to the most spectacular financial disaster to hit Jewish life since the Great Depression, with unconfirmed losses totalling up to $1.5 billion."<br />Among the hardest hit appear to be New York's Yeshiva University, which said its investment with Ascot Partners, a money manager that had most of its assets with Madoff, was recently valued at about $110 million, and the Shapiro Foundation.<br />The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach has not been affected so far, spokesman Bill Orlove said, but it just started its annual fundraising campaign last week and it was too soon to tell if the scandal would curtail donations.<br />HOME OF THE RICH<br />No one answered a knock this week on the massive polished wooden door at Madoff's $9.4 million Palm Beach home on the Intracoastal Waterway tucked behind a towering ficus hedge. The backyard pool is fringed with palms and flowering bougainvillea and a gray Lexus sits in the gravel drive, which encircles a banyan tree.<br />While luxurious, Madoff's winter getaway in no way compares with the vast Palm Beach playgrounds along the Atlantic Ocean. Donald Trump recently sold one of those estates for $95 million and another changed hands for $77.5 million.<br />Madoff's home is a short distance from the exclusive Palm Beach Country Club, which seeks no visitors. The clubhouse, behind manicured hedges and separated from the Atlantic by a narrow roadway, has no sign out front to identify it and employees are quick to chase away interlopers.<br />Founded by oil tycoon and developer Henry Flagler as a winter resort for the rich, Palm Beach has long been a haunt of American bluebloods like the Vanderbilts, Kennedys, Trump and a host of lesser-knowns from the U.S. Northeast.<br />The scale of the fraud raised fears of an anti-Semitic backlash in a town with a long history of discrimination, said author and Palm Beach resident Laurence Leamer.<br />BACKLASH?<br />"The Jews were so discriminated against they couldn't even go until 1965 to The Breakers and other local hotels," said Leamer, whose forthcoming book, "Madness Under the Royal Palms," chronicles the elite island.<br />While the scam has brought to light the overwhelming charity of the Jewish community, Leamer said, it had already triggered anti-Semitic reaction on the Internet.<br />People are saying, "Look at these devious, dishonest Jews, how they've brought us down.' You will find things on the Web of people trying to blame the Jews for what's happened," he said.<br />The Anti-Defamation League said it had noted anti-Semitic Web postings related to the Madoff scandal.<br />"This is an opportunity for the anti-Semites to promulgate bigotry and hatred," said Andrew Rosenkranz, the ADL's Florida director. "We hope the community will be proactive in flagging the comments as offensive and that the moderators of these sites will be diligent in removing the offensive material."<br />While Madoff made many of his connections among the Jews of New York and Palm Beach, the scandal should not be portrayed in terms of their religion, some Jews say, noting many of the victims were also Jewish.<br />Bette Greenfield, a resident of Deerfield Beach, Florida, lost $300,000 invested with Madoff by her father through his connections in the Jewish community.<br />Her father thought Madoff was "a prince," she said.<br />"He was just a scoundrel. He stole from everyone," she said. "This is not a Jewish issue."<br />Now 71 and retired, Greenfield said she was going to try to turn her hobby, making jewellery, into a business to make up for the losses.<br />Scheiner, the rabbi, said while it was "obviously disappointing" that Jews had been taken by a fellow Jew, there was a deeper sense of betrayal that Madoff had taken advantage of charities and that the needy would suffer as a result.<br />"Nobody is sitting around crying," he said. With the approach of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, Palm Beach Jews are re-evaluating priorities and "reaching out for more spirituality."<br />"Jews are people who have defied the odds and hope for a better tomorrow. Life goes on and you can't let this paralyse you. We've been through a lot worse, obviously."<br />(Editing by Howard Goller)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Unlikely player pulled into Madoff swirl<br /></strong>By Stephen Labaton<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Eric Swanson received a startling call last Thursday from his wife, Shana Madoff, who said that something was terribly wrong. Officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department had swooped down on the offices of Madoff Investment Securities, where Shana Madoff was the compliance lawyer, seizing records and asking pointed questions as they began investigating one of the largest frauds in Wall Street history.<br />Swanson, who only a year earlier had married into the Madoff family, had an intimate familiarity with the SEC For 10 years he had been a midlevel official at the commission's Washington headquarters. He had also occasionally worked on matters involving the Madoff firm in the years before he became romantically involved with Shana Madoff in 2006, just as he was preparing to leave the SEC. Shana Madoff is the niece of Bernard Madoff, the central figure in the scandal, and the daughter of Peter Madoff, who was the firm's chief compliance officer.<br />As the investigation unfolds, Swanson finds himself in the unusual position of having newfound roots in the family at the center of the scandal and older ties to the government regulator that failed to uncover the scheme.<br />As both come under closer scrutiny for the events that have led up to the loss of billions of dollars, Swanson has been attacked in blogs and some news accounts that have suggested his relationship with the Madoffs was a central reason that the commission turned a blind eye to the Ponzi scheme.<br />Earlier this week, Christopher Cox, the SEC chairman, appeared to make a veiled reference to Swanson when he criticized earlier botched inquiries into the firm by the commission and said that an internal investigation would look at "all staff contact and relationships with the Madoff family and firm, and their impact, if any, on decisions by staff regarding the firm."<br />Eric Starkman, a spokesman for Swanson, said Swanson would fully cooperate with such a review. But in fact, the work Swanson did that touched on the Madoff firm was relatively minor, and no evidence has emerged that Swanson did anything involving the firm after he became close to Shana Madoff in the spring of 2006, current and former commission officials with knowledge of his work said in recent interviews.<br />Moreover, in the years leading up to his involvement with Shana Madoff, Swanson aggressively pursued an enforcement action against a company whose board included his future father-in-law, Peter Madoff, and whose chief executive was one of Madoff's closest friends.<br />Former colleagues in the regulatory world and professional adversaries described Swanson as a straight arrow, earnest by-the-book Midwesterner who worked long hours and received excellent job evaluations. Several said they always saw him act aggressively but fairly in his years at the commission and that they never saw any evidence of him favoring any company, including Madoff Securities.<br />"I remember him as a very hard-working, dedicated and smart guy," said Joseph Lombard, a former market regulation counsel to Arthur Levitt Jr. when he was the SEC chairman in the 1990s. "You have people at the agency, like anyplace, who are more or less committed to the enterprise. Eric was all in. He believed in the ability of regulation to make markets better. He was an advocate of aggressive action against people who had fallen short."<br />Jeffrey Spill, a deputy director of the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities involved in a case brought against Ameriprise Financial when Swanson worked at that firm, described Swanson as "straight and professional."<br />Swanson, 41, arrived at the commission's office of compliance inspections and examinations in 1996 after clerking for a U.S. appeals court judge in South Carolina. A native of Minneapolis, he graduated from the University of Minnesota and the Hamline University School of Law.<br />The office he joined is in charge of monitoring the stock markets and making sure that companies comply with an arcane set of regulations that are intended to protect investors as they execute trades. In 1999 and 2004, he played a peripheral role in examinations of the Madoff firm, current and former officials said. In the later examination, his work was reassigned to another lawyer who, after a promotion, was looking to expand his workload.<br />From 2002 to 2005, Swanson was involved in developing a case against the National Stock Exchange. At the time, Peter Madoff was a director and Madoff Securities was a significant investor in the company. The case, which was settled in 2005, was unusual in that it was one of the few to name a top executive of the company as a defendant. It accused David Colker, the exchange's founder and chief executive, of violations. Colker is a close friend of Peter Madoff. The commission penalized the exchange and Colker for failing to enforce investor protection rules from 1997 to 2003. The commission concluded that the exchange had failed to properly monitor a rule that prohibited dealers from trading for their accounts ahead of customer orders.<br />Swanson left the commission in 2006 to become chief counsel and vice president for regulatory strategy at Ameriprise, a financial services company. Early this year, he became general counsel of BATS Trading, a new trading exchange.<br />Swanson has told friends that he met Shana Madoff at a breakfast at the offices of A. G. Edwards in St. Louis in October 2003. At the time, Shana Madoff was on a compliance committee of an industry group. It held regular meetings around the nation with regulators and industry executives and lawyers to examine market and regulatory trends.<br />The two maintained what one associate described as a professional relationship, occasionally seeing each other at industry meetings. In April 2006, they became romantically involved while he was visiting New York. On Dec. 8, her birthday, he proposed to her. They were married soon afterward and he had an opportunity to meet many of the members of his new family.<br />The scandal has taken more than a personal toll on Swanson and his wife. Shana Madoff has told friends that she has lost a substantial portion of her assets, which she invested with her uncle.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Tax deductions for theft losses could help some Madoff investors<br /></strong>By Lynnley Browning<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />For the legions of investors who appear to have been swindled by Bernard Madoff, there could be some relief.<br />Tax rules allow investors who fall prey to criminal theft perpetrated by their investment advisers or brokers to claim a tax deduction stemming from their losses.<br />The rules, which are intended to aid investors cheated through embezzlement, pyramid schemes, extortion or robbery, could potentially put hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars back into the pockets of Madoff's stunned investors. They include the publishing magnate Mort Zuckerman; the owner of the New York Mets, Fred Wilpon; a foundation run by the filmmaker Steven Spielberg; and wealthy clients and banks from Palm Beach to Switzerland.<br />But it is unclear whether the Internal Revenue Service will see things that way. "We are aware of the situation, but beyond that, we have no comment," Bruce Friedland, an IRS spokesman, said on Thursday.<br />Gary Zwick, a tax lawyer at Walter & Haverfield in Cleveland, said, "It's fair to say that many people will take the position that the theft loss rules will apply, but the government may not take that approach."<br />Investors who can prove they were cheated may also be able to claim a refund for U.S. taxes paid over the last two years on "phantom" interest income from their investments with Madoff. But they cannot claim a refund for taxes paid on any capital paid back to them. Madoff, who was arrested last Thursday, ran what prosecutors contend is history's largest Ponzi scheme.<br />On the tax front, a formal declaration that Madoff's investment funds are bankrupt would help investors. "Embezzlement followed by bankruptcy is a pretty good indication that you're not going to get your money back and will have a theft-loss claim," said D. Matthew Richardson, a tax lawyer at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton in Los Angeles. Madoff's firm, Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, is currently being liquidated by a court-appointed trustee.<br />But before investors can claim the deduction, they have to clear a tall hurdle: they have to be reasonably certain that they will not recover their money. Proving that could take years, as investigators and regulators pore over Madoff's books and a wave of lawsuits emerges.<br />It is unknown whether Madoff used investors' money not just to pay early investors but also to stash in his personal bank accounts overseas or to underwrite a lavish lifestyle. Any such assets, as well as insurance, could be a source of recovery for investors — and could dilute any tax write-offs. The charities that fell victim to Madoff would not be eligible for any relief because they are exempt from taxes.<br />"I think it's 100 percent certain that investors will get the theft-loss deduction, but nobody's going to get it right away, and it may take five years," said Alvin Brown, a tax lawyer and former manager in the IRS's chief of legal department.<br />Under theft-loss rules, investors can generally deduct 90 percent of their losses against their adjusted gross income, according to Robert Willens, a tax and accounting authority. Investors who argue that the loss arose from a for-profit transaction — the point of investing — may be able to deduct 100 percent. "Investors in programs sponsored by Bernard Madoff may find that their losses will be mitigated by certain ameliorative provisions of the tax code," Willens said.<br />The rules permit losses stemming from theft to be deducted in the year in which the loss is discovered by the investor, even if it took place earlier. They also allow investors to carry back theft-losses for three years — one more year than under the rules for capital losses — and to carry losses forward for 20 years. Investors compute losses according to the adjusted basis in their investment, not the current fair-market value.<br />The theft-loss deduction is not the same as the more commonly used capital loss deduction, which applies to securities that decline in value.<br />In 2006, the IRS processed more than 206,000 claims for theft-loss and casualty deductions — the IRS groups the two — worth more than $5.1 billion. Claims filed under the Madoff scheme would most likely dwarf that dollar figure.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>U.S. Judge orders tighter surveillance of Madoff</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />NEW YORK: A U.S. judge ordered on Friday that disgraced investment adviser Bernard Madoff be detained in his Manhattan apartment 24 hours a day with electronic monitoring "to prevent harm or flight," a modification of his bail conditions.<br />The order signed by U.S. magistrate judge Theodore Katz in District Court in Manhattan eliminated the earlier night curfew as part of his release on $10 million (6.7 million pounds) bail to impose round-the- clock electronic monitoring.<br />"The defendant will employ a security firm to provide the following services to prevent harm or flight: round-the-clock monitoring at the defendant's building, 24 hours per day, including video monitoring of the defendant's apartment doors," the order said.<br />Madoff, 70, was arrested on December 11 and accused in a criminal complaint of one count of securities fraud. In the complaint, Madoff is quoted as saying his investment advisory business was a fraud "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme" that may have lost as much as $50 billion (33 billion pounds).<br />Friday's court order said the security firm will provide additional guards on request and install communications devices to be able to send a direct signal to the FBI "to prevent harm or flight."<br />It said "other than for scheduled court appearances, the defendant shall be subject to home detention in his Manhattan apartment, 24 hours per day, with electronic monitoring."<br />Authorities are investigating Madoff, who may have swindled thousands of investors in a Ponzi scheme, including major charities and investors all over the world.<br />(Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Andre Grenon)<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Madoff agrees to extension of asset freeze</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Grant McCool<br />Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street investment adviser accused of running a $50 billion (£33.5 billion) securities fraud, has agreed to extend court orders freezing his assets and appointing a receiver for his firm, according to court documents.<br />A hearing in federal court scheduled for Friday in the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission civil case against Madoff, 70, was cancelled after the agreement with the regulator.<br />Madoff, arrested on December 11, is also accused in a criminal complaint of one count of securities fraud.<br />A federal court froze the assets of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and appointed Lee Richards, an attorney at Richards Kibbe & Orbe in New York as a receiver. Madoff also consented to the broker-dealer part of the firm going under the receivership of the Securities Investor Protection Corp, which was created by Congress in 1970.<br />As part of the extension order signed by U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton late on Thursday, Madoff consented to providing a verified written accounting of his firm's records by December 31.<br />These include "all assets, liabilities and property, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, investments, business interests, loans and lines of credit," according to court documents in the SEC case.<br />Madoff is free on $10 million bail. He has been ordered to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and is confined to his luxury Manhattan apartment except for appointments prearranged with authorities.<br />The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that an SEC memorandum showed Madoff's firm may have had thousands of clients. The report said the regulator and other investigators are also examining whether Madoff's wife, Ruth Madoff, had any role in the alleged fraud.<br />Madoff, a former Nasdaq stock market chairman who counted celebrities and many friends among his investors, was unable to obtain four co-signers to guarantee the bond after his arrest.<br />Only two people, his wife and brother Peter, who also worked at Madoff's firm, signed for the bond to keep him out of jail.<br />In lieu of two additional signatures, Madoff and the government agreed on Wednesday that his wife would surrender her passport and put up a $3.1 million home in Montauk, New York, and a $9.4 million home in Palm Beach, Florida, as collateral.<br />The couple's $7 million Manhattan apartment has also been put up as collateral, and Madoff has also surrendered his passport.<br />The SEC case is SEC v Madoff, 08-10791, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). The criminal case is U.S. v Madoff, 08-2735 in the same court.<br />(Reporting by Grant McCool; editing by John Wallace)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>EDITORIAL</strong><br /><strong>You mean that Bernie Madoff?<br /></strong>Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Warren Buffett once noted that "you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." The collapse of what prosecutors say was the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, orchestrated by the New York money manager Bernard Madoff, has left a large number of powerful and smart people shivering on that beach.<br />Madoff's suspected multibillion-dollar fraud, discovered as falling markets exposed the fiction of its 10 percent annual profits, provided a stark reminder of how greed impairs judgment, duping some of the world's supposedly savviest investors for decades.<br />It raises once more a fundamental question of these times: Where were the regulators when all of this was happening?<br />Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, acknowledged this week that the agency had received "credible and specific" allegations about the scheme at least a decade ago. He promised an internal inquiry to figure out why the agency did not thoroughly investigate.<br />Two years ago, the commission's enforcement arm in New York opened an investigation into whether Madoff's business was a Ponzi scheme but closed it after finding only mild violations that "were not so serious as to warrant an enforcement action."<br />The SEC's failings go much farther than missing this one outrageous scheme. The agency urgently needs new leadership, more resources and high-level political backing to recover its role as Wall Street's top cop.<br />Though many details remain unknown, Madoff's activities should have set off plenty of alarms. His firm posted improbably constant returns, regardless of market volatility. It claimed to employ strategies that at such a large scale should have produced highly visible movements in options markets, yet passed undetected. Its auditor was a tiny, unknown outfit.<br />While it is particularly embarrassing to have overlooked what appears to be a low-tech fraud invented 100 years ago, the SEC's failure to pursue the case aggressively exemplifies its lackadaisical approach to enforcing the law on Wall Street. That has gotten much worse during the Bush administration.<br />Like other agencies, the SEC has suffered from this administration's fierce aversion to government regulation. Under Cox, the enforcement division has been hampered by budget cuts and rule changes that have made it more difficult to impose penalties on companies found guilty of wrongdoing.<br />In a series of recent reports, the office of the SEC's inspector general, H. David Kotz, detailed the commission's repeated failure to pursue investigations. It criticized the agency for not exercising any oversight over Bear Stearns in the months preceding its collapse, among other criticisms.<br />The SEC's inability, or unwillingness, to catch Madoff is extremely troubling. Mary Schapiro, the head of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority and President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be chairwoman of the commission, has a reputation for diligence. The SEC will need that, as well as financing and strong political backing. All of us, not just Madoff's clients, are paying the price for the regulators' failure to do their job.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Convicted Nigeria ex-governor to pay fine</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Tume Ahemba<br />A Nigerian court fined a former governor of the southwestern state of Edo 3.5 million naira (17,345 pounds) for corruption which he intends paying as an alternative to serving six months in jail.<br />Lucky Igbinedion, who was charged in January with embezzling 2.9 billion naira, pleaded guilty to one count of corruption in a plea bargain at a Federal High Court in the southeastern city of Enugu on Thursday, officials said.<br />Igbinedion will also refund about 500 million and forfeit three properties, including one in the capital Abuja, presiding Judge A. Abdu-Kafarati said.<br />The sentence angered the anti-graft Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which critics had often accused of lacking the will to prosecute former leaders. The agency said it would appeal against the ruling.<br />"We are quarrelling (with) the option of a fine. Such options would not serve as deterrent to others who might want to commit such crimes," EFCC spokesman Femi Babafemi said.<br />President Umaru Yar'Adua came to power about 18 months ago pledging zero tolerance for corruption in one of the world's most tainted countries, but faces questions from critics over his commitment to the campaign.<br />Igbinedion, who was governor in Edo from 1999-2007, is the second governor from the previous administration to be convicted on corruption and money laundering charges since Yar'Adua took power in the world's eighth largest oil exporter.<br />OTHER GOVERNORS<br />A former governor of the oil-producing state of Bayelsa, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, was sentenced to two years in prison in July 2007 in a plea bargain, but spent only a few months in jail as he had been in detention since December 2005.<br />Alamieyeseigha was arrested with almost 1 million pounds in cash in his London home in 2005. He was charged by British authorities with money laundering but skipped bail and returned to Nigeria where state governors have immunity from prosecution. They lose immunity once they leave office.<br />Nine other ex-governors who served under former president Olusegun Obasanjo are facing corruption charges, but there has been no significant progress in the cases against them as they have dragged from one adjournment to another.<br />Nigeria's 36 state governors have discretionary powers over millions of dollars of public funds and sometimes behaved like feudal monarchs in their states, doling out cash and perks to political supporters and persecuting opponents.<br />Many top government officials in Africa's top oil producer looted public funds with impunity and the appearance of some former leaders in court makes front-page headlines in a country where they were long seen as above the law.<br />(Additional reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja)<br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>COLUMNIST</strong><br /><strong>Paul Krugman: The Madoff economy<br /></strong>Friday, December 19, 2008<br />The revelation that Bernard Madoff - brilliant investor (or so almost everyone thought), philanthropist, pillar of the community - was a phony has shocked the world, and understandably so. The scale of his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme is hard to comprehend.<br />Yet surely I'm not the only person to ask the question: How different, really, is Madoff's tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?<br />The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of America's income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it's not just a matter of money: The vast riches achieved by those who managed other people's money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.<br />Let's start with those paychecks. Last year, the average salary of employees in "securities, commodity contracts, and investments" was more than four times the average salary in the rest of the economy.<br />Earning a million dollars was nothing special, and even incomes of $20 million or more were fairly common. The incomes of the richest Americans have exploded over the past generation, even as wages of ordinary workers have stagnated; high pay on Wall Street was a major cause of that divergence.<br />But surely those financial superstars must have been earning their millions, right? No, not necessarily. The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion.<br />Consider the hypothetical example of a money manager who leverages up his clients' money with lots of debt, then invests the bulked-up total in high-yielding but risky assets, such as dubious mortgage-backed securities. For a while - say, as long as a housing bubble continues to inflate - he (it's almost always a he) will make big profits and receive big bonuses. Then, when the bubble bursts and his investments turn into toxic waste, his investors will lose big - but he'll keep those bonuses.<br />O.K., maybe my example wasn't hypothetical after all.<br />So, how different is what Wall Street in general did from the Madoff affair? Well, Madoff allegedly skipped a few steps, simply stealing his clients' money rather than collecting big fees while exposing investors to risks they didn't understand. And while Madoff was apparently a self-conscious fraud, many people on Wall Street believed their own hype. Still, the end result was the same (except for the house arrest): The money managers got rich; the investors saw their money disappear.<br />We're talking about a lot of money. In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America's GDP, up from less than 5 percent a generation earlier. If that extra 3 percent was money for nothing - and it probably was - we're talking about $400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse. But the costs of America's Ponzi era surely went beyond the direct waste of dollars and cents.<br />At the crudest level, Wall Street's ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven't closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (hello, Senator Schumer), politicians have walked when money talked.<br />Meanwhile, how much has our nation's future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?<br />Most of all, the vast riches being earned - or maybe that should be "earned" - in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.<br />Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that "the financial system as a whole has become more resilient" - thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there's an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they're doing.<br />After all, that's why so many people trusted Madoff.<br />Now, as we survey the wreckage and try to understand how things can have gone so wrong, so fast, the answer is actually quite simple: What we're looking at now are the consequences of a world gone Madoff.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>2 top executives at Anglo Irish Bank resign<br /></strong>By Matthew Saltmarsh<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />A major Irish bank was shaken Friday by the revelation of €87 million in undisclosed personal loans to the bank's chairman - prompting his resignation as well as that of the chief executive, and highlighting how fast the nation's once-booming financial sector has fallen.<br />Sean FitzPatrick, the chairman of Anglo Irish Bank and one of the most prominent business figures in Ireland, announced late Thursday his resignation from the bank after regulators discovered that he had hidden the personal loans from the shareholders for years.<br />The scandal sent the shares in the bank plummeting to a record low before recovering. The government assured support, but the matter could complicate Dublin's commitment to recapitalize Irish banks by early next year. Indeed, some analysts said the government may now have to move to prop up Anglo Irish as soon as this weekend.<br />Another casualty of the affair was Anglo Irish's chief executive, David Drumm, who resigned Friday with immediate effect following the admission of FitzPatrick's "inappropriate" transfer of loans.<br />FitzPatrick had repeatedly transferred the loans out of Anglo Irish into a rival institution, Irish Nationwide, and back again over an eight-year period ending in 2007 to ensure they were not disclosed to shareholders in annual accounts, according to the bank.<br />As of the end of September, the bank said, FitzPatrick had €87 million, or $120 million, in loans, of a total €150 million loaned to directors. The bank said all the loans had been made on normal commercial terms and conditions and had been approved by the board.<br />"This transfer of loans did not breach banking or legal regulations," the bank said in a statement. "It was, however, inappropriate from a transparency point of view."<br />Anglo Irish declined to comment further, and FitzPatrick was unavailable for comment beyond a statement in which he said that he had broken no laws. "It is clear to me, on reflection, that it was inappropriate and unacceptable from a transparency point of view," it said.<br />"I have always pursued high standards in my personal and professional life," FitzPatrick added, "and I failed to meet those standards in this instance."<br />FitzPatrick joined Allied Irish in 1979, rising to become chief executive in 1986, a position that he used to help propel the bank. He became chairman at the start of 2005.<br />FitzPatrick also resigned his nonexecutive roles from the boards of some of the best-known Irish companies like Smurfit Kappa, which makes construction equipment, the food company Greencore, and Aer Lingus.<br />Writing in The Irish Times in September 2005, FitzPatrick called for a looser touch in the regulation of financial firms.<br />"The pronounced moves towards greater control and regulation could squeeze the life out of an economy that has thrived on intuition, imagination and a spirit of adventure." he said. "What I see from where I am sitting is a general acceptance by most of the media that business is dodgy or suspect and it needs to be highly regulated.<br />"This theme is there in much of what I read and it needs to be challenged, because it undermines the fundamental that underpins economic growth."<br />During the 1990s, FitzPatrick helped Anglo Irish expand its balance sheet, in particular by lending to developers and construction projects in the economy then known as the "Celtic Tiger." In terms of assets it still ranks behind Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish.<br />Indeed, of the major Irish-owned lenders, only Irish Nationwide has the same kind of exposure to the faltering property market as Anglo Irish, analysts said. "He has been a visionary driving force and has made an enormous contribution not just to the bank but to the business sector in Ireland," said Donal O'Connor, who replaced FitzPatrick as chairman. "This is a sad day for Sean, his family, friends and colleagues."<br />As of September, he owned 0.65 percent of the bank's shares, making him the largest individual investor. The largest institutional investor is the fund manager Invesco, with 6.9 percent.<br />FitzPatrick was paid €320,000 in 2006 and received a bonus of €533,000, according to Bloomberg data. In 2004 he was paid €775,000 with a bonus of €1.6 million.<br />Philip Lane, a professor of international macroeconomics at Trinity College Dublin, said the bank was seen as being close to the governing Fianna Fail party. FitzPatrick and the former Fianna Fail prime minister Bertie Ahern attended an event together this month in Wicklow County Council, where, according to The Irish Times, Ahern joked that despite the recent rout in banking shares, "I think Seanie has a bit left!"<br />Lane said the case raised questions about the transparency of the regulatory approach in Ireland. In response to the financial crisis, "the government has taken the decision to do everything behind closed doors and that has cost a lot in terms of investor certainty," he said.<br />A statement Friday from the regulator, the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland, said it became aware, following an inspection this year, of "matters surrounding loans from Anglo Irish Bank to Sean FitzPatrick."<br />"While it does not appear that anything illegal took place in relation to these loans, the Financial Regulator was of the view that the practices surrounding these loans were not appropriate." The central bank would not add to the statement.<br />"We've got no idea what these loans were for - they could have been personal, they could have been reinvested," said Ciaran Callaghan, an analyst at NCB in Dublin.<br />Media reports in Ireland have also raised questions about the bank's relationship to Sean Quinn, once the richest man in Ireland.<br />He was loaned money by Anglo and subsequently became the largest shareholder in the bank before cutting the holding.<br />Analysts said the scandal could also affect the pace of the government's support for the banking sector.<br />The Finance Ministry said last weekend that it would use up to €10 billion from a mixture of sources - the National Pension Reserve Fund, private equity groups and existing shareholders - to bail out Irish banks.<br />The lenders likely to be supported include AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life & Permanent, Irish Nationwide and EBS. They were asked to submit their own rescue proposals by the start of January, although Lane at Trinity College said that timetable might now have to be accelerated.<br />Another victim of the incident was Lar Bradshaw, who resigned as a director at Anglo Irish Bank Friday. Bradshaw held a loan, jointly with FitzPatrick, which was temporarily transferred to another bank prior to year end. The bank said Bradshaw was unaware that this transfer took place, but believed that it was in the bank's best interest that he resign.<br />The lender said it was looking for a replacement for Drumm. FitzPatrick's successor, Donald O'Connor, said that he was initiating a review of how Anglo-Irish is managed internally - specifically its policy of providing loans to its directors.<br />"The bank will move on from this," O'Connor said.<br />A spokesman for the regulator declined to comment beyond the statement, which also noted that "these matters remain under investigation."<br />In a statement, the finance minister, Brian Lenihan, reiterated his commitment to underwrite the capital needs of Anglo Irish Bank "on appropriate terms and to ensure its long-term strength and viability as a bank of systemic importance in Ireland."<br />He noted that those recapitalization discussions were already "far advanced" and that the details of the talks could announced very shortly.<br />Lenihan also welcomed the board's decision to conduct a review and said that the regulator was already in touch with the bank "on these issues."<br />Anglo Irish Bank was founded in 1964 and became a publicly quoted company in 1971. It is quoted on the Dublin and London stock exchanges.<br />The shares rose 9 percent at the end of trading, ending up at 35 cents.<br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><strong>Ex-Lehman trader charged in insider trading case</strong><br />By Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael J. de la Merced<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />"Where has my goose gone? Come back little goose."<br />So went an instant message from a day trader to his broker, seeking a tip as part of a $4.8 million insider-trading scheme disclosed by regulators on Thursday.<br />Prosecutors accused the broker, Matthew Devlin of Lehman Brothers, of illegally passing on inside information about at least 12 coming mergers — including InBev's takeover of Anheuser-Busch and Dow Chemical's acquisition of Rohm & Haas — that he surreptitiously obtained from his wife, a public relations executive whom he repeatedly referred to as his "golden goose."<br />The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York charged four people, including Matthew Devlin, with conspiracy and securities fraud that took place over more than four years, during the latest takeover boom. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against seven people and is seeking to reclaim trading profits from two others, including a Playboy playmate.<br />The case harks back to a case in the 1980s when Martin Siegel, of Kidder Peabody, and Dennis Levine, of Drexel Burnham Lambert, traded inside information ahead of big mergers using cryptic phrases like "Your bunny has a good nose."<br />Matthew Devlin is accused of taking advantage of confidential information gleaned from his wife, Nina, who was employed by the Brunswick Group, a London-based public relations firm that has become a big player in the world of high finance.<br />Financial public relations firms like Brunswick are often as deeply embedded in deals as the bankers and lawyers who negotiate them. Employees like Nina Devlin are made privy to secret discussions as top executives shape the public strategies of the deals.<br />Prosecutors say the scheme began in March 2004, when Matthew Devlin began passing on tips about deals like General Electric's purchase of InVision to Jamil Bouchareb, a friend who was a day trader and restaurateur. Bouchareb, in turn, passed on tips to his girlfriend, Maria Checa, a Playboy playmate; to his parents; and to his business partner, Daniel Corbin. Corbin passed on various tips to his father, Lee Corbin, a lawyer.<br />Devlin also tipped off a Lehman colleague, Frederick Bowers, on several occasions, who, in turn, tipped another client, Thomas Faulhaber. Devlin also tipped Eric Holzer, a friend and tax lawyer at Paul Hastings who regularly did the Devlins' taxes. Holzer also tipped his father.<br />In return, prosecutors say, Matthew Devlin was given cash kickbacks, a Cartier watch, a Barneys New York gift card, a widescreen TV, a Ralph Lauren leather jacket and a lesson at a Porsche driving school.<br />Devlin has pleaded guilty to four counts of conspiracy and one count of securities fraud; Nina Devlin was not implicated, and prosecutors contend that she was unaware of her husband's dealings. Indeed, Matthew Devlin told Bouchareb and Daniel Corbin several times that his wife would divorce him if she discovered his insider trading, according to the criminal complaint.<br />"She was completely unaware that confidential information about her job was being used as the basis for securities trading," James J. Benjamin Jr., a lawyer for Nina Devlin, said in a statement. "She is devastated by this terrible situation."<br />In a statement from Brunswick, the firm said, "Our employee was the victim of a criminal act by her spouse."<br />Lilly Ann Sanchez, a lawyer for Jamil Bouchareb, said her client would plead not guilty. "The facts aren't always as presented by the government," she said. "We are surprised by the allegations and believe that once all the facts are revealed, Bouchareb will be exonerated."<br />The Devlin case appears similar to some others filed in recent years. In 2006, a stockbroker pleaded guilty to insider trading after profiting from inside information gained from his girlfriend, a lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. And last year, a man who was a vice president at Oracle pleaded guilty to trading on information about potential acquisitions that he obtained from his wife, an executive assistant to Lawrence Ellison, the technology giant's chief executive.<br />The scheme nearly fell apart in April 2006, when Brunswick received a notice from Finra, the securities industry's own watchdog. The notice showed Holzer on a "watch list" for trading. It appears Nina Devlin communicated that information to her husband. Nonetheless, the group continued to trade in various other deals like Electronic Arts's bid for Take-Two Interactive.<br />Prosecutors contacted Lehman Brothers earlier this year, before the firm filed for bankruptcy, notifying them that they were investigating Matthew Devlin and Bowers. Lehman was told not to take any action against the two.<br />In a statement, Barclays Wealth, which absorbed the Lehman unit that Matthew Devlin and Bowers worked for, said: "Barclays Wealth — and Lehman Brothers prior to its acquisition — cooperated fully with law enforcement authorities to assist them in their investigation into this alleged insider trading ring."<br />By the fall, Matthew Devlin began cooperating with U.S. investigators, including by secretly taping conversations with Bouchareb, Daniel Corbin and Holzer. He persuaded Bouchareb to acknowledge on tape that they might need a back story for their earlier trading.<br />"Right, right, right," Bouchareb said. "Don't worry, we're on it."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Banks try new ways to handle bonuses</strong><br />By Louise Story and Eric Dash<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />It may be the season to be wealthy — at least on Wall Street, where banks are awarding annual bonuses despite a growing outcry over pay.<br />But this bonus season is shaping up to be like no other. The normal buzz of money — big money — is all but silenced. While many bankers will still collect six- or even seven-figure bonuses, the average payout for rank-and-file employees will be cut substantially.<br />The changes are palpable. Like a growing number of senior executives, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Robert Rubin of Citigroup will not request bonuses, people familiar with their plans said.<br />Goldman Sachs will cap some partners' cash payouts at $222,000, although it will also pay them in stock.<br />And on Thursday, Credit Suisse, the Swiss financial giant, told its senior investment bankers that they would be paid, in part, by using some of the bank's troubled investments, an arrangement that could pay off — or yield little.<br />In a call with bankers on Thursday, a Credit Suisse executive acknowledged that many ordinary people are angry that bankers will collect bonuses given the pain in the markets and the broader economy.<br />"In an industry where many competitors have gone out of business, people have lost their jobs, where regulators are ratcheting up their requirements, the public at large doesn't believe investment bankers should be paid much, if anything," said Paul Calello, the head of the investment bank, according to two people who were on the phone call.<br />Many bankers and traders say the financial turmoil is not their fault and they depend on bonuses for the bulk of their pay. Critics counter that no bonuses should be paid, given the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that has been injected into banks and the financial system.<br />"This should be a year of no bonuses for any firm that took bailout money," said Peter Singer, a philosophy professor at Princeton and a pre-eminent ethicist. Nearly every chief executive in the industry and many other top executives have declined to take bonuses, though some, like John Thain of Merrill Lynch, did so begrudgingly. While Dimon of JPMorgan does not intend to request a bonus, his deputies are expected to receive bonuses based on their divisions' performance, said people briefed on the situation. JPMorgan's board will make the final decisions in January.<br />Two chief executives who have not publicly said they would decline bonuses are Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America and Vikram Pandit, who inherited the problems at Citigroup last December.<br />Pandit has not decided whether to accept a bonus, people familiar with his plans said. But Rubin, an influential Citigroup board member and adviser, will not request a bonus for the second year in a row. That decision comes as Rubin faces criticism that he failed to prevent Citigroup's ill-fated push into the mortgage business.<br />Citigroup's board will not determine the awards for any of its executives until next year, said Shannon Bell, a spokeswoman for the bank. The spotlight on the industry has also generated more discussion of boomerang bonuses — payments that can be pulled back later if a trader's bets turn out to have been flawed or if they leave the firm.<br />Credit Suisse's move on Thursday followed decisions by Morgan Stanley and UBS to introduce policies for recovering compensation that was based on inaccurate earnings, and others are expected to follow. Such policies are meant to damp the likelihood that employees will focus only on the short-term performance of their investments.<br />Credit Suisse is the first bank to link bonuses to troubled assets left over from its past. The bank — one of the few that did not receive taxpayer money — said it would put $5 billion of the assets into a new investment vehicle. Shares of the vehicle, which mostly includes commercial mortgage loans and leveraged loans, will be given to its managing directors and directors as part of their bonuses, replacing some of the stock that would have been paid in bonus money.<br />The plan could turn out to be a bonanza for Credit Suisse bankers. The bank has marked the assets down to 65 cents on the dollar, on average, so the bank's shareholders have already suffered much of the pain. That means if the assets appreciate, the bank's employees — not shareholders — will benefit.<br />However, the asset plan allows the bank to save money on compensation this year, which benefits shareholders, a spokeswoman said. And many banks have sold troubled assets to outsiders at steep discounts, passing on any future gains.<br />To be sure, Wall Street bonuses, although diminished, are still far higher than those in many other industries. At Goldman, for instance, partners who were paid $12 million to $15 million last year will be paid $3 million to $4 million this year — an 80 percent reduction, people briefed on the matter said. But everything above $222,000 of those lofty sums will be paid in restricted stock and stock options. Workers at Goldman who are not partners could receive more than that amount in cash in their bonuses.<br />Morgan Stanley, which notified workers of their bonuses on Tuesday, has reduced its bonus pool by roughly 50 percent this year, to $2 billion. That pool includes the amount that will be paid in cash or stock this year, though it does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred compensation that could be paid if those workers remain at the bank, people familiar with the matter said. Bonuses were cut more than 60 percent for members of the bank's management and operating committees.<br />Merrill Lynch will be the next bank to notify workers of its bonuses, beginning Friday and continuing into next week. Its new parent, Bank of America, played a role in limiting bonuses.<br />The questions that linger among compensation experts are how much this year's pull-back in pay and new rules will change behavior in the industry when more lucrative times return.<br />"Wall Street disproportionately focuses on short-term results compared to other industries," said Richard Cellini, a senior vice president at Integrity Interactive, a consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts. "In the short run, we all look like geniuses. It's the middle run that counts in most businesses."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>After 30 years of reform, economic perils on China's path<br /></strong>By Jim Yardley<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />SHENZHEN, China: The ruling Communist Party threw itself a big party on Thursday. The country's leadership marked the 30th anniversary of the reform era that transformed China into a global economic power and, in doing so, changed the world.<br />At a triumphant ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, President Hu Jintao invoked Deng Xiaoping, who consolidated power in 1978 and began "reform and opening." Hu emphasized the party's unwavering focus on economic development. "Only development makes sense," said Hu, quoting Deng.<br />But beyond the oratory, Hu and other Chinese leaders are now facing a new era in which Deng's export-led economic model, as well as his iron-fisted political control, face unprecedented challenges. Global demand for Chinese goods has slumped, unrest is on the rise in the industrial heartland, and China is scrambling for a new formula to preserve stability and ensure growth.<br />The downturn is so swift — exports fell last month for the first time in seven years — that Beijing is being forced to abruptly shift priorities. Until recently, Hu had been trying to curb excesses like rampant pollution and income inequality that posed environmental and social challenges to long-term development. Now, those priorities seem eclipsed.<br />Instead, leaders are restoring tax breaks for exporters and pushing down the value of China's currency to encourage exports. At the same time, they are casting about for ways to spur domestic demand and wean China's economy off its dependence on foreign markets swept up in the global financial crisis.<br />Politically, Chinese reformers had hoped the symbolic weight of the anniversary and the nation's post-Olympic glow might propel some measure of political reform to address official corruption and help defuse rising social tensions.<br />But as Beijing worries about strikes and mass layoffs even in some of its most prosperous areas, official tolerance of political dissent has seemingly narrowed. This month, a prominent dissident was detained after authoring an open letter calling for greater democracy. An editor at one of the country's leading newspapers was reassigned after publishing articles deemed too politically provocative. "We must draw on the benefits of humankind's political civilization," Hu said in his Thursday speech, according to Reuters. "But we will never copy the model of the Western political system."<br />If any place symbolizes China's reform era, it is Shenzhen, a city conceived from Deng's imagination — and one now at the cross hairs of the economic downturn. Thursday's celebration was timed to a 1978 political meeting, the Third Plenum, which anointed Deng as China's leader and introduced "reform and opening." Two years later, Deng pointed at a sleepy fishing village in coastal southern China, near Hong Kong, and ordained it the country's first "special economic zone" to experiment with foreign investment and export manufacturing. Today, Shenzhen is a city of more than 10 million people ringed by thousands of factories.<br />A factory district just outside Shenzhen, Fuqiao Industrial Park, is a snapshot of the economic troubles rippling through the region. Several small factories in the park have closed in recent months. At Wang Jinda Industries, the lettering had been scraped off the entrance after the owner closed last week. Two customers had arrived for a shipment of goods only to find an empty factory.<br />Meanwhile, some factories that remained open were struggling. Workers at a large printing factory said owners had stopped recruiting new workers in September while many others had quit. Several workers said wages had dropped significantly as owners were reducing the length of shifts. A few workers accused owners of deliberately trying to drive down wages to force workers to quit. "Everybody is worried," said Lin Baozeng, 26, a cashier at a canteen inside the industrial park. Her daily lunch crowd has dwindled to about 100 migrant workers from 500.<br />"If the economy is bad," Lin added as her 3-year-old daughter played nearby, "how can I afford to raise my child?"<br />As yet, gauging the scale of factory closures remains difficult in Shenzhen and surrounding Guangdong Province, the country's main export engine. Guangdong was already making a concerted effort to move up the manufacturing value chain at a time when rising labor costs and greater government regulations were making some smaller, cheaper exporters unprofitable. But the recent export slowdown is having an unanticipated impact. More than 7,000 small and medium-sized factories have closed in recent months. Shenzhen's mayor said 50,000 people in the city alone had lost their jobs in the last few months.<br />And there are mounting signs that the problems could be far broader. Over all, China's economy will continue to expand next year, but some economists say the rate of growth could fall as low as 5 or 6 percent, far slower than the double-digit pace of the preceding several years.<br />State media have reported that 4.85 million migrant workers have returned to the countryside early before next month's annual Lunar New Year holiday. Some inland provinces have already announced subsidies for unemployed returnees. On Thursday, the country's official news agency, Xinhua, reported that 6.5 million migrant workers may be jobless next year.<br />Beijing has recently restored some export subsidies that had been repealed as part of earlier efforts to rebalance the economy toward domestic demand. Huang Yasheng, a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said such subsidies made short-term political sense, given the huge numbers of jobs provided by factories, but did not address China's long-term economic challenges. "I see the export supports as a crisis measure," Huang said. "They really have no other way to maintain employment."<br />Huang said the government's focus on exports and expanding the role of state-owned corporations since the 1990s had meant too little of the country's wealth had trickled down to ordinary people. He said household incomes had lagged well behind overall growth, meaning that hundreds of millions of ordinary people still had relatively little spending money — a major problem when the government is trying to rapidly increase domestic consumption. "It's a huge challenge," said Huang, author of the recent book "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics" (Cambridge, 2008).<br />China's immediate answer is a stimulus program focused on infrastructure like railways and ports. State-owned banks are being ordered to make credit easily available, and business taxes on real estate sales were waived this week. Such steps may be crucial to buttressing the Chinese economy and preventing a deeper global recession. Yet some Chinese officials are wary of the potential impact of another phase of state-led industrial development.<br />The government stimulus program enacted in response to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis enabled China to avoid the recessions suffered by neighboring nations. Yet it also propelled enormous investment in heavy industry that is a major reason China is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.<br />In an opinion piece in the online edition of People's Daily, Pan Yue, the outspoken vice minister of the Ministry of Environment, blamed Western excess for the global crisis and warned that China risked ruin if it blindly pursued Western industrial models.<br />"China's reform and opening has achieved in 30 years the economic gains of more than 100 years in the West — yet more than 100 years of environmental pollution in the West have materialized in 30 years in China," Pan wrote. "The present global economic crisis shows that if China continues down the old road of Western industrial civilization, it will only come to a dead end."<br />China is a far more open and dynamic place than the country Deng first unleashed three decades ago. Much of that change has come from ordinary people pushing for more space in society, just as much of China's economic success has come from the entrepreneurial energy and hard work of its work force. Yet Communist Party leaders have been careful to hoard political power: independent unions and political opposition remain illegal.<br />Earlier this year, Shenzhen's leaders seemed eager to position the city as a pioneer of political reform. Shenzhen officials published a reform plan that advocated some local elections and greater leeway for local legislatures and courts to make decisions. But those plans, later tempered by provincial leaders, now seem derailed as officials are focused on maintaining social stability.<br />Some influential Chinese say more should be done. Yu Keping, a scholar at a leading Communist Party research institute who has advised top leaders, published essays this week in leading Chinese newspapers about the need for greater democratization to combat corruption.<br />In an interview with The New York Times, Yu called for "breakthrough reform." But he also said that change must come incrementally, given the need for social stability, with an initial emphasis on better governance and rule of law. "We need to promote democratization in China," Yu said. "On the other hand, we need to promote social stability. If we had an election right now, we might end up like Thailand."<br />In fact, the limited momentum toward modest political change could well be sidelined by economic problems, some experts say. "A real huge question is how the economic downturn is going to affect any sort of political reform," said Joseph Fewsmith, a Boston University professor who studies Chinese politics. He said officials may deliberately slow implementation of a new rural land reform law approved this fall to grant farmers the ability to transfer their land rights.<br />"People worried about social stability are going to proceed very, very slowly," Fewsmith said.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>In U.S. fall, parallels aren't lost on Japan</strong><br />By Martin Fackler<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />TOKYO: When the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate to virtually zero this week, what was a historic move in Washington sounded like old hat here in Tokyo.<br />That was because the Bank of Japan had kept rates near zero for most of the past decade in an effort to end a long period of economic stagnation here, and only raised them again two years ago. The view among many economists is that the zero-interest policy finally worked in Japan after the regulators took aggressive steps that succeeded in restoring faith in the Japanese financial system, and Tokyo's ability to oversee it.<br />Now, with the Fed and President-elect Barack Obama turning to the same sorts of unconventional policy weapons to battle the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression, economists specializing in Japan and former Japanese bankers say they hope that lesson is not lost on Washington. They say the United States needs to take the same kinds of confidence-building steps, and much more quickly than Japan did.<br />"Japan had years of trial and error to gets its response right, but the United States doesn't have that kind of time because markets are changing so fast," said Akio Makabe, an economist at Shinshu University. "The Fed has to move, and has to move fast, to restore confidence."<br />On Friday, the Bank of Japan also cut its benchmark rate to 0.1 percent from 0.3 percent, saying that it was following the Fed's "dramatic rate cut" to lower borrowing costs and jolt global demand. On Tuesday, the Fed lowered short-term rates to a range of zero to 0.25 percent, and vowed to pump money directly into credit markets by buying mortgage-related debt and corporate bonds.<br />The Bank of Japan also announced it would try to shore up ailing Japanese credit markets by buying commercial paper, a type of short-term corporate debt. Central banks in Europe have also cut rates in recent weeks as concerns mount that the entire global economy could contract next year for the first time in decades.<br />The rate cut Tuesday by the Fed also made short-term borrowing costs lower in the United States than in Japan for the first time in 15 years. This helped drive up the yen to 13-year highs this week, as investors tend to favor currencies that offer higher rates of return. The Bank of Japan said its rate cut Friday was partly aimed at capping gains in the yen.<br />The Bank of Japan first lowered interest rates to zero in 1999 for a year and then again in 2001 for five years. The Japanese central bank was trying to contain a domestic financial crisis in Japan not unlike the one now crippling global markets, in which collapsing real estate and stock prices had caused the bankruptcy of large financial companies, like Yamaichi Securities in 1997.<br />The central bank's hope was that by lowering borrowing costs to virtually nil, it could encourage commercial banks to lend more money to businesses and consumers, rekindling demand.<br />But economists and former Bank of Japan officials say the biggest lesson they learned was that cutting rates alone had almost no effect when the financial system has fallen into a crisis as deep as the one Japan faced in the 1990s, or as the one currently gripping global markets.<br />Japanese banks simply refused to lend in an environment where borrowers could suddenly go bankrupt, saddling them with huge, unforeseen losses. The Bank of Japan tried even more extreme measures, like using its powers to create money to essentially stuff cash into the nation's commercial banks in hopes they would start lending again.<br />Exasperated central bankers found that commercial banks just let the money pile up instead of lending it out.<br />The experts say the United States faces a similar situation now, after the sudden collapse in September of Lehman Brothers created fears of additional failures. They also fault the piecemeal bailout of Citigroup with giving the impression that Washington was approaching the crisis in an ad hoc manner, without a consistent policy for dealing with ailing lenders.<br />In the case of Japan, they say, credit only began to flow freely again after 2003, when regulators adopted a tough new policy of auditing banks, and requiring weaker ones to raise new capital or accept a government takeover. Economists said the audits finally removed the fear that had paralyzed credit markets by convincing bankers and investors that sudden failures were no longer a looming risk, and that the true extent of problems at banks and other companies was finally being revealed.<br />They add that Washington needs to do something similar to make banks and financial companies more transparent, and reassure investors that there were no more Lehman Brothers looming on the horizon.<br />"The United States needs to do it like Takenaka did," said Anil Kashyap, a professor of business at the University of Chicago, referring to Heizo Takenaka, the former banking minister who initiated the 2003 audits. "We need someone to come in and give a good housekeeping seal to banks. That is the only way to get rid of the uncertainty."<br />The economists and former central bankers said another lesson from the Japanese experience was the importance of consistency. This became painfully apparent in 2000, they said, during one of the bank's more embarrassing episodes, when it raised interest rates, only to quickly lower them back to zero a year later when the economy tanked.<br />Former Bank of Japan officials said they learned that bankers and investors would only lend in difficult economic times if they believed that rates would stay low for a long time, ensuring them adequate profits. By making future interest rates hard to predict, the Bank of Japan ended up undermining its own policy, these experts said.<br />They said the Fed needs not just to lower rates, but to assure banks and investors that rates will stay low until the economy recovers.<br />"We learned that zero rates work by building expectations," said Rei Masunaga, an economist and former director general at the Bank of Japan. "Zero interest rates take time to be effective."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />**********************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Bush offers emergency loans up to $17.4 billion to GM and Chrysler<br />By David M. Herszenhorn and David E. Sanger<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush announced Friday that he would extend up to $17.4 billion in emergency loans to prevent the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler, but he left it up to the next administration to determine how much sacrifice to demand from the hobbled automakers and their workers as part of the government's effort to nurse Detroit back to health.<br />The loans, as GM and Chrysler teeter on the brink of insolvency, essentially throw the companies a lifeline from the taxpayers that will keep them afloat until March 31. At that point, the administration of Barack Obama will determine if the automakers are meeting the conditions of the loans and should continue to receive government aid or must repay the loans and face bankruptcy.<br />But the assistance falls far short of settling the future of the American auto industry and does nothing to bring fresh management to the industry.<br />It is still unclear whether the U.S. automakers can do more than simply cut back on their operations and develop new vehicles capable of taking on their competitors. They also need to introduce new engine technologies to radically improve fuel efficiency and reduce the huge impact of the automobile on the global environment. And none of those goals will be achievable without a change in energy policy aimed at making fossil fuels more expensive, analysts said.<br />The money to aid the automakers will come from the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion financial stabilization fund, and shortly after Bush's announcement the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., who will oversee the aid to the auto industry, said that Congress would need to release the second $350 billion for that program in short order.<br />Ford Motor is not seeking government help.<br />By law, once Paulson makes a formal request, Congress has 15 days to reject it and deny the additional money. It was unclear when that request would be sent or if lawmakers who have left Washington for the holidays, would return to debate it. The administration's handling of the program has come under sharp criticism and several lawmakers in both parties have suggested they would oppose the release of more money.<br />Bush made his announcement a week after Senate Republicans blocked legislation to aid the automakers that had been negotiated by the White House and congressional Democrats. The loan package announced by the president includes roughly identical requirements from that bill, which had been approved by the House of Representatives.<br />Bush, in a televised speech before the opening of the U.S. financial markets, said that under other circumstances he would have let the companies fail, a consequence of their bad business decisions. But given the recession, he said the government had no choice but to step in.<br />"These are not ordinary circumstances," Bush said. "In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action." He said that a reorganization under bankruptcy protection was not a workable alternative.<br />The support for the Detroit automakers, coming amid a devastating drop in auto sales around the world, has already set off a scramble in Europe and Asia to provide handouts to local companies as well.<br />While the European Union has not ruled out challenging the U.S. aid as an unfair trade subsidy, governments in Europe are planning to offer billions of euros in development aid, tax breaks and loans to support their own manufacturers. In Asia, Japan is not expected to go much beyond tax breaks to encourage car purchases, but the Chinese auto industry has already received help from the government, including cuts in fuel prices and a loan to Chery, a big Chinese automaker.<br />In the United States, the loan deal requires the companies to quickly reduce their debt by two-thirds, mostly through debt-for-equity swaps, and to reach an agreement with the United Automobile Workers union to cut wages and benefits so they are competitive with those of employees of foreign-based automakers in the United States.<br />The debt reduction and the cuts in wages were central components of a proposal by Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. That alternative deadlocked on a demand by Republicans that the wage cuts take effect by a set date in 2009, while the union had pressed for a deadline in 2011.<br />The plan announced Friday offered a compromise between the positions, by making the requirements nonbinding and allowing the automakers to reach different arrangements with the union, provided that they explained how those alternative plans would keep them on a path toward financial viability. It would provide $13.4 billion in emergency loans, with an additional $4 billion available in February,<br />To gain access to the loans, GM and Chrysler must agree to concessions, including limits on executive pay and the elimination of private corporate jets.<br />Under the plan, Bush essentially handed off to Obama what will become one of the first, most difficult calls of his presidency: a political and economic judgment about whether GM and Chrysler are financially viable.<br />If, by March 31, Chrysler and GM cannot meet that standard - and clearly they could not meet it now - the $13.5 billion in Treasury loans would be "called" for immediate repayment, with the government placed in priority, ahead of all other creditors.<br />In effect, the White House has required the auto companies to cut the equivalent of $13.5 billion in costs within three months, in order to repay the government money and receive another infusion of capital that will keep them operating for the rest of the year outside of bankruptcy protection, or else providing financing while they reorganize in bankruptcy.<br />That is an enormous amount of savings to find in such a short period, industry analysts said, especially given the bleak conditions under which the companies are operating. Auto sales are the worst since the early 1980s, and there has been no sign that banks or the car companies' financing arms would loosen tight restrictions on loans.<br />The car companies have already retained bankruptcy and restructuring advisers, who have been providing regular updates to board members on the steps the automakers would be required to take under a number of possibilities.<br />Under the loan plan, the companies are supposed to complete negotiations with the union and their creditors, suppliers and dealers by March 31. Any judgment on the accords they reach with those groups will inevitably be both economic and political. And there is little doubt the companies will require more support from Washington to survive long enough to return to profitablity.<br />Obama, in a statement, praised Bush's action and warned the automakers not to waste their chance at achieving financial stability.<br />"Today's actions are a necessary step to help avoid a collapse in our auto industry that would have devastating consequences for our economy and our workers," Obama said. "The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices and begin the long-term restructuring that is absolutely required to save this critical industry and the millions of American jobs that depend on it."<br />Obama and his economic team will have to make a convincing, public case that the wage cuts, plant closings and creditor agreements justify further support for the industry. But Obama will be under tremendous political pressure as well. If his new team concludes that the automakers have not struck the right deals, it would mean a move to bankruptcy court, and probably widespread layoffs that would ripple far beyond the companies themselves.<br />Obama was elected partly with the support of the unions, who liked his talk of protecting jobs by renegotiating trade agreements. Now, in his first months, he will be asking them to give back gains they have negotiated over decades.<br />Because the bailout legislation failed in Congress, administration officials said that the loan package would essentially take the form of a contract between the government and the automakers. Officials said they expected the agreements would be signed by the end of the day.<br />Both GM and Chrysler have announced drastic cutbacks, including an extension of the normal holiday-season idling of factories, with some operations to be suspended for a month or more. Other automakers, including Honda and Ford, also plan cutbacks in production as the entire industry deals with the economic downturn and a plunging demand for cars and trucks.<br />Ford, which is in better financial condition that GM and Chrysler, said it supported the effort.<br />"All of us at Ford appreciate the prudent step the administration has taken," Ford's chief executive, Alan Mulally, said in a statement. "The U.S. auto industry is highly interdependent, and a failure of one of our competitors would have a ripple effect that could jeopardize millions of jobs and further damage the already weakened U.S. economy."<br />In a statement, GM reacted with a mixture of gratitude and relief.<br />"We appreciate the president extending a financial bridge at this most critical time for the U.S. auto industry and our nation's economy," Greg Martin, a company spokesman, said. "This action helps to preserve many jobs, and supports the continued operation of GM and the many suppliers, dealers and small businesses across the country that depend on us."<br />In a statement to employees, Robert Nardelli, the chief executive of Chrysler, said the company would hold up its end of the bargain. "The receipt of this loan means Chrysler can continue to pursue its vision to build the fuel-efficient, high-quality cars and trucks people want to buy, will enjoy driving and will want to buy again," Nardelli said.<br />GM shares were up in afternoon trading Friday, and Bush's announcement helped send the broader markets higher as well. Chrysler is not publicly traded.<br />But some critics of a taxpayer-financed rescue of the auto industry have warned that the money will just be wasted on companies that are suffering not just because of the recent economic downturn but because of decades of poor business decisions.<br />The decision to use the stabilization fund was also a major turnabout for Bush, who for weeks had insisted that the Treasury program should not be used to help the automakers.<br />In the end, it was clear that Bush did not want GM or Chrysler, both American icons, to go down on his watch.<br />Bill Vlasic and Micheline Maynard contributed reporting from Detroit.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />******************<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Obama team is seeking stimulus bill by new year</strong><br />By Jackie Calmes<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama's advisers hope to finish an economic recovery blueprint by Dec. 25 so that Democratic congressional staff members can draft legislation by the new year, as the two branches of government try to converge on a two-year plan by late January that could total just under $1 trillion.<br />"The goal for completing action on this important legislation should be as close to Jan. 20 as possible," said an e-mail message from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office to senior Senate Democratic staff members.<br />Some Obama advisers have sought to tamp down expectations that Obama could sign a package immediately after he is inaugurated. The opposition of some Senate Republicans and House and Senate negotiations on a final compromise could force delays into February.<br />Democrats familiar with the early deliberations say the preliminary price tag has grown to about $800 billion from the roughly $600 billion that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had estimated in recent days.<br />Mark Zandi, a Republican economist who is advising the Democrats, said in an interview that the worsening economy could push his updated recommendation in January up to $1 trillion for a two-year government stimulus.<br />About a fifth of the Obama package could go toward health care, Democrats say. The biggest piece would be up to $100 billion to subsidize the states' growing Medicaid caseloads of the poor. Obama also will call for a down payment on the $50 billion he proposed during his campaign to help medical providers buy information technology and save costs on health records.<br />Obama is considering roughly $200 billion in tax relief for low-wage and middle-class workers, including a payroll tax holiday to fatten paychecks and encourage Americans to spend more and spur economic activity, according to several people with knowledge of the options he is weighing.<br />The Obama plan has five main parts, according to Democrats in Congress and the Obama transition office. Besides the health care financing, it would propose billions of dollars for energy-saving programs, public works projects, school construction and renovation, and expanded jobless aid and food stamps for "the most vulnerable," as well as tax cuts.<br />The scale and speed of the emerging package could exceed anything in recent memory, according to White House and congressional veterans, in keeping with Obama's admonition that the size of the stimulus must be proportionate to the economy's ills.<br />The president-elect, in a four-hour meeting on Tuesday, made a number of decisions to guide his senior advisers while he is on a two-week vacation starting on Saturday; more than once he goaded them to think bigger and "bolder," participants said.<br />The Obama plan could end up at about 15 pages, an adviser said, leaving precise legislative language and some details to Congress. The House and Senate will be working simultaneously to draft separate but similar measures.<br />Pelosi hopes to have the House finish in the second week of January. The Senate Finance Committee has scheduled votes to begin on Jan. 8; subsequent debate on the Senate floor could take more than a week.<br />The Senate leadership e-mail message on Thursday, which outlined the Obama team's plans and set a Jan. 20 goal for completion, also sought to limit senators' add-ons that could inflate the package and violate Obama's vow against pork-barrel spending.<br />"Only those items that spend out quickly, create jobs and constitute sound national policy should be considered for inclusion in the package," the message said.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpuqu8i6wFPwKIxpCfKB3S51WWF_TLa9t4PJNCAlFhHe9Ogd7ZHkh9VfvLlgVqiPmteFQO9fmj8qfZkHznq94DZeaJd_NOdooXkMseTOPOZEOmGhDb43-nmPgQRZUbwV9xG067AjFQ_0U/s1600-h/DSC03653.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719282796006194" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpuqu8i6wFPwKIxpCfKB3S51WWF_TLa9t4PJNCAlFhHe9Ogd7ZHkh9VfvLlgVqiPmteFQO9fmj8qfZkHznq94DZeaJd_NOdooXkMseTOPOZEOmGhDb43-nmPgQRZUbwV9xG067AjFQ_0U/s320/DSC03653.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisG26J-IUg7UvJZiuc7jY7QrX8U1JV63pv0UZXOdOKWaTCkZUR5_-1nbl8yCf-_9a-4KHVtWW7GE4MCWxLIxAFz3uRGgaBMAd3Ds1R-29u2i5rO1m0F7npF2U6O-kcUarXUYL2XQYJSl8/s1600-h/DSC03654.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719037803590594" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisG26J-IUg7UvJZiuc7jY7QrX8U1JV63pv0UZXOdOKWaTCkZUR5_-1nbl8yCf-_9a-4KHVtWW7GE4MCWxLIxAFz3uRGgaBMAd3Ds1R-29u2i5rO1m0F7npF2U6O-kcUarXUYL2XQYJSl8/s320/DSC03654.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Japanese wartime files show Allied prisoners toiled in mine of current leader's family</strong><br />By Norimitsu Onishi<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />TOKYO: The Japanese government has acknowledged for the first time that Allied prisoners during World War II were made to work at a coal mine owned by the family of Prime Minister Taro Aso, contradicting longstanding denials by the Japanese leader.<br />The admission came after the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, under prodding from an opposition lawmaker, released documents showing that 300 British, Dutch and Australian prisoners of war worked at a mine owned by Aso Mining during the last four months of World War II in western Japan.<br />At a parliamentary session on Thursday, officials of the health and foreign ministries acknowledged the validity of the documents, which, totaling some 43 pages, were retrieved from the basement of the Health Ministry building.<br />The acknowledgment was another embarrassment for Aso, whose popularity has plummeted since assuming office only three months ago. Erratic stewardship over an increasingly shaky economy and a series of insulting remarks leveled at various groups have pushed his approval ratings to about 20 percent and drawn public attacks from inside his own Liberal Democratic Party.<br />One of Japan's wealthiest politicians, Aso has long denied what historians and survivors of his family's coal mine have consistently asserted: that the mine, like many others during the war, had used prisoners of war as well as forced laborers from Asia. In the 1970s, Aso served as president of the company, which is now called the Aso Group and is run by his family.<br />Last month, questioned in Parliament about the use of prisoners of war at his family's mine, Aso said "no facts have been confirmed" and that he was only "four or five years old at the time."<br />Aso has yet to comment on the documents released by the Health Ministry.<br />Yukihisa Fujita, a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Party who questioned Aso on the subject, said there was always overwhelming evidence of the mine's use of prisoners of war, including U.S. government documents.<br />Japan has long used the absence of official Japanese government documents to deny wartime crimes, rejecting documents from other countries or accounts of survivors.<br />According to scholars, Japanese officials burned documents in Japan and across Asia in the days and weeks following their defeat to avoid postwar prosecution. But many scholars believe that significant documents survive.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>*****************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Germany releases one of the last Red Army Faction members<br /></strong>By Judy Dempsey<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />BERLIN: Christian Klar, one of the last members of the terrorist far-left Red Army Faction to remain in prison, was released Friday after serving 26 years of a life sentence, according to the Justice Ministry in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.<br />The Red Army Faction, which was also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, carried out a series of assassinations of leading German figures during the late 1970s and early 1980s, killing 34 people. It disbanded in 1998, several years after renouncing violence. It subscribed to a Marxist-Leninist ideology and sought to overthrow the capitalist West German government and to fight perceived American imperialism.<br />A German court announced the pending release of Klar, 55, last month, after ruling that he had served the minimum 26 years of a life sentence for killing three prominent West Germans and their bodyguards and trying to kill a U.S. Army general. He was released a few weeks earlier than planned after the authorities in Stuttgart said he no longer posed a threat. He will remain on parole for five years.<br />Two years ago, Klar asked President Horst Köhler to grant him a pardon and early release, but the request for clemency was turned down. Klar was sentenced in 1985 for, among other crimes, his role in the kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the German employers' federation; Siegfried Buback, a federal prosecutor; and Jürgen Ponto, chairman of Dresdner Bank.<br />With Klar's release, Birgit Hogefeld is the last member of the Red Army Faction to remain behind bars. A fellow gang member, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, was released last year after serving 24 years in prison for murders in the 1970s. Eva Haule, who was convicted of participating in the murder of an American soldier in 1985 and later in the bombing of the Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt when it was the main base for U.S. forces in Europe, was also released last year after 21 years in prison.<br />The assassinations carried out by the Red Army Faction rocked the political establishment, which was still coming to terms with the Baader-Meinhof gang, named after its founding members,Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader.<br />In a bid to crack down on the movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the German state at first reacted harshly by introducing emergency legislation and curbing civil liberties.<br />Jailed terrorists were denied access to their lawyers, and at one stage armored personnel carriers patrolled Bonn, then the seat of the West German government. Prison conditions for Red Army Faction members were criticized by some liberal politicians in Germany. The tough measures were slowly reversed.<br />Politicians, however, questioned why the country's postwar generation had adopted such violent actions against the state.<br />Klar was held in solitary confinement for seven years. Several terrorists committed suicide in prison, giving rise to speculation that they might have been murdered by state commandos.<br />While public interest the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Army Faction have waned in recent years, a certain fascination with the groups' motives and background has been rekindled by a new film, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex." Critics and the victims of families have slammed it for its facile attitude to violence.<br />The film - produced by Bernd Eichinger, who won fame with "The Fall," his portrayal of Hitler's last days in his besieged Berlin bunker - is based on a book by Stefan Aust, who until recently was editor of Der Spiegel magazine.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>*******************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>U.S. tax break may have helped housing bubble</strong><br />By Vikas Bajaj and David Leonhardt<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />"Tonight, I propose a new tax cut for homeownership that says to every middle-income working family in this country, if you sell your home, you will not have to pay a capital gains tax on it ever — not ever."<br />— President Bill Clinton, at the 1996 Democratic National Convention<br />Ryan Wampler had never made much money selling his own homes.<br />Starting in 1999, however, he began to do very well. Three times in eight years, Wampler — himself a home builder and developer — sold his home in the Phoenix area, always for a nice profit. With prices in Phoenix soaring, he made almost $700,000 on the three sales.<br />And thanks to a tax break proposed by President Bill Clinton and approved by Congress in 1997, he did not have to pay tax on most of that profit. It was a break that had not been available to generations of Americans before him. The benefits also did not apply to other investments, be they stocks, bonds or stakes in a small business. Those gains were all taxed at rates of up to 20 percent.<br />The different tax treatments gave people a new incentive to plow ever more money into real estate, and they did so. "When you give that big an incentive for people to buy and sell homes," said Wampler, 44, a mild-mannered native of Phoenix who has two children, "they are going to buy and sell homes."<br />By itself, the change in the tax law did not cause the housing bubble in the United States, economists say. Several other factors — a relaxation of lending standards, a failure by regulators to intervene, a sharp decline in interest rates and a collective belief that house prices could never fall — probably played larger roles.<br />But many economists say that the law had a noticeable impact, allowing home sales to become tax-free windfalls. A recent study of the provision by an economist at the Federal Reserve suggests that the number of homes sold was almost 17 percent higher over the last decade than it would have been without the law.<br />Vernon Smith, a Nobel laureate and economics professor at George Mason University, has said the tax law change was responsible for "fueling the mother of all housing bubbles."<br />By favoring real estate, the tax code pushed many Americans to begin thinking of their houses more as an investment than as a place to live. It helped change the national conversation about housing. Not only did real estate look like a can't-miss investment for much of the last decade, it was also a tax-free one.<br />Together with the other housing subsidies that had already been in the tax code — the mortgage-interest deduction chief among them — the law gave people a motive to buy more and more real estate. Lax lending standards and low interest rates then gave people the means to do so.<br />Referring to the special treatment for capital gains on homes, Charles Rossotti, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner from 1997 to 2002, said: "Why insist in effect that they put it in housing to get that benefit? Why not let them invest in other things that might be more productive, like stocks and bonds?"<br />The provision — part of a sprawling bill called the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 — exempted most home sales from capital-gains taxes. The first $500,000 in gains from any home sale was exempt from taxes for a married couple, as long as they had lived in the home for at least two of the previous five years. (For singles, the first $250,000 was exempt.)<br />Wampler said he never sold a home simply because of the law's existence, but it played a role in his decisions and also became part of his stock pitch to potential customers who were considering buying the homes he was building in the desert. He would point out that the tax benefits would increase their returns on a house, relative to stocks.<br />"Why not put your money on the highest-yielding investment with the highest tax benefit?" he said recently.<br />During the boom years, he prospered. But today he owns 80 acres of land on the outskirts of Phoenix that he cannot sell. He owes $8 million to his banks, which may soon foreclose on his land.<br />"I am literally dying on the vine," he said.<br />The change in the tax law had its roots in a Chicago speech that Senator Bob Dole, Clinton's Republican opponent in the 1996 presidential election, gave on Aug. 5 of that year. Trailing Clinton in the polls, Dole came out for an enormous tax cut, including an across-the-board reduction in the capital-gains tax.<br />The proposal made Clinton's political advisers more nervous than almost anything else during the campaign. The campaign's chief spokesman, Joe Lockhart, traveled to Chicago to stand outside the ballroom where Dole was speaking and make the case that the Dole tax cut would cause the deficit to soar.<br />At the same time, Clinton's aides began scrambling to come up with their own tax proposal. Dick Morris, the president's chief outside political adviser, argued that Clinton could assure his re-election by matching Dole's call for a big cut in the capital-gains tax.<br />But members of Clinton's economic team, led by Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, disliked that idea. They thought it would undo the tough work the administration had done to reduce the budget deficit. So they instead went looking for smaller tax cuts that would allow their boss to campaign as both a fiscal conservative and a tax cutter.<br />Getting rid of capital gains on most home sales seemed like the perfect idea.<br />Treasury officials had become interested in that provision earlier in Clinton's term after Jane Gravelle, an economist at the Congressional Research Service, had called it to their attention, according to Eric Toder, an official in the tax policy office at the time. He and his colleagues were looking for ways to simplify the tax code, and Gravelle told them that eliminating capital-gains taxes on houses was an excellent candidate.<br />The tax forced homeowners to keep track of all their renovations over many years, because the cost of those renovations could be subtracted from their taxable gain. Even renovations on previous homes often qualified, as long as people had deferred the tax in the past by buying a new house at least as valuable as their old one.<br />"It was very hard for people to keep track of that information," said Leslie Samuels, the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy from 1993 to 1996.<br />People could also avoid the tax under a one-time exemption, for profits of up to $125,000, if they were older than 55. Thus, the tax raised relatively little revenue — perhaps just a few hundred million dollars in today's terms. "It was the worst kind of tax system," Gravelle said recently. "It raised very little revenue, but it caused all these distortions and compliance problems."<br />Three weeks after Dole's speech, with support from top Treasury officials, the proposal made it into Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention. During the presidential debates that followed, he used it to parry Dole's calls for a big tax cut. The following summer, Clinton signed the provision into law.<br />At the time, Realtors and home builders lobbied for the provision and there was only scant opposition. Grover Norquist — a conservative activist and adviser to Newt Gingrich — said home sales did not deserve special treatment. But Republicans ended up voting for the bill by even wider margins than Democrats.<br />Today, it is the subject for considerably more debate. Gravelle and Samuels said they thought the law had done more good than ill. And William Gale, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said he did not think that the change in the law was central to the bubble. Low interest rates, he said, were far more important.<br />The law's defenders say that it also removed at least one tax incentive that had pushed homeowners to trade up. Before 1997, people had to buy a house that was at least as valuable as their previous one to avoid the tax, or else take the one-time exemption. Now they could buy a smaller property or move into a rental.<br />But many economists say the net effect of the law was clearly to inflate the real estate market. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal policy group in Washington, criticized the exemption as "a backward policy" that "helped push more money into housing."<br />A spokesman for Clinton declined to comment for this article.<br />Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the provision has been the study by a Federal Reserve economist, Hui Shan, who did the analysis while at MIT. Shan looked at homeowners with significant equity gains, before and after 1997, and compared the likelihood of their selling their house. Her study covered 16 towns around Boston and took into account a host of other factors, like the general rise in home prices at the time.<br />Among homes that had appreciated less than $500,000, she concluded that the change caused a 17 percent increase in sales in the decade after 1997. Before the law changed, many people apparently avoided paying the tax by simply staying in their homes.<br />Shan also found that sales actually declined among homes with more than $500,000 of gains after the law passed. (Under the new law, couples have to pay taxes on gains above $500,000, even if they roll all those gains into a new house.) Nationwide, however, less than 5 percent of home sales over the last decade had gains of more than $500,000, according to Moody's Economy.com.<br />Despite the criticism, there has been little political support for trimming the tax breaks for housing. In 2005, a bipartisan panel of tax experts, which was appointed by President George W. Bush and included Rossotti, concluded, "The tax preferences that favor housing exceed what is necessary to encourage homeownership." Among other things, it recommended increasing to three years the amount of time people had to stay in homes to claim the tax break on a sale. But Bush and other policy makers largely ignored the panel's report.<br />Geo Hartley, a lawyer who has lived in Los Angeles and Washington over the last two decades, captures the divergent effects that the law appears to have. Hartley, who is 59 and single, said he found the old law "weird," because it led him to buy bigger houses than he wanted.<br />Since the law changed, Hartley has bought smaller homes. But he has also moved more frequently, knowing that most of the gains on his houses would not be taxed. He lived in one house in Los Angeles for a full decade before 2000. Since then, he has moved three times, making a handsome — and mostly tax-free — profit each time.<br />"It's part of the thinking that gets you more motivated to buy and sell property," said Hartley, who now lives in a town house in Washington that he is trying to sell, "and have the American dream of owning a home."</div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>********************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>W. Mark Felt, 95, "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame<br /></strong>By Tim Weiner<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the FBI when he helped bring down President Richard Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died on Thursday. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, California.<br />His death was confirmed by Rob Jones, his grandson.<br />In 2005, Felt revealed that he was the source who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. His decision to unmask himself, in an article in Vanity Fair, ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years.<br />The disclosure even surprised Woodward and his partner on the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein. They had kept their promise not to reveal his identity until after his death. Indeed, Woodward was so scrupulous about shielding Felt that he did not introduce him to Bernstein until this year, 36 years after they cracked the scandal.<br />The three met for two hours one afternoon in November in Santa Rosa, where Felt had retired. The reporters likened it to a family reunion.<br />Felt played a dual role in Nixon's downfall. As a secret informant, he kept the story alive in the press. As associate director of the FBI, he fought the president's efforts to obstruct the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-in.<br />Without Felt, there might not have been the disclosures of Watergate - shorthand for the revealed abuses of presidential powers in the Nixon White House, including illegal wiretapping, burglaries and money laundering. Americans might never have seen a president as a criminal conspirator, or reporters as cultural heroes, or anonymous sources like Felt as a necessary if undesired tool in the pursuit of truth.<br />Like Nixon, Felt authorized illegal break-ins in the name of national security and then received the absolution of a presidential pardon. Their lives were intertwined in ways only they and a few others knew.<br />Nixon cursed his name when he learned early on that Felt was providing aid to the enemy in the wars of Watergate. The conversation was recorded in the Oval Office and later made public.<br />"We know what's leaked, and we know who leaked it," Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, told the president on Oct. 19, 1972, four months after a team of washed-up CIA personnel hired by the White House was caught trying to wiretap the Democratic Party's national offices at the Watergate.<br />"Somebody in the FBI?" Nixon asked.<br />"Yes, sir," Haldeman replied. Who? the president asked. "Mark Felt," Haldeman said.<br />"Now why the hell would he do that?" the president asked in a wounded tone.<br />No one, including Felt, ever answered that question in full.<br />Felt later said he believed that Nixon had been misusing the FBI for political advantage. He knew that Nixon wanted the Watergate affair to vanish. He knew that the White House had ordered the CIA to tell the bureau, on grounds of national security, to stand down in its felony investigation of the June 1972 break-in. He saw that order as an effort to obstruct justice, and he rejected it. That resistance led indirectly to Nixon's resignation.<br />Felt had expected to be named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, who had run the bureau for 48 years and died in May 1972. The president instead chose a politically loyal Justice Department official, L. Patrick Gray, who later followed orders from the White House to destroy documents in the case.<br />The choice infuriated Felt. He later wrote that the president "wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover's position who would convert the bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine."<br />Hoover had sworn off break-ins without warrants - "black bag jobs," he called them - in 1966, after carrying them out at the FBI for four decades. The Nixon White House hired its own operatives to steal information, plant eavesdropping equipment and hunt down the sources of leaks. The Watergate break-in took place six weeks after Hoover died.<br />While Watergate was seething, Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, a violent left-wing splinter group. The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes. The FBI had no search warrants. He later said he ordered the break-ins because he felt national security required it.<br />In a criminal trial, Felt was convicted in November 1980 of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. Nixon, who had denounced him in private for leaking Watergate secrets, testified on his behalf. Called by the prosecution, he told the jury that presidents and by extension their officers had an inherent right to conduct illegal searches in the name of national security.<br />"As Deep Throat, Felt helped establish the principle that our highest government officials are subject to the Constitution and the laws of the land," the prosecutor, John Nields, wrote in The Washington Post in 2005. "Yet when it came to the Weather Underground bag jobs, he seems not to have been aware that this same principle applied to him."<br />Seven months after the conviction, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt.<br />After the pardon, Nixon sent him a congratulatory bottle of champagne.<br />Felt then disappeared from public view for a quarter of a century, denying unequivocally, time and again, that he had been Deep Throat.<br />William Mark Felt was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, on Aug. 17, 1913.<br />After graduating from the University of Idaho, he was drawn to public service in Washington and went to work for Senator James Pope, a Democrat from Idaho.<br />Days before Pearl Harbor, after earning a law degree in night classes at George Washington University, Felt applied to the FBI and joined it in January 1942. He spent most of World War II hunting German spies.<br />After stints in Seattle, New Orleans and Los Angeles, Hoover named him special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City and Kansas City offices in the late 1950s. Rising to high positions at the headquarters in the 1960s, he oversaw the training of FBI agents and conducted internal investigations as chief of the inspection division.<br />In early 1970, while waiting in an anteroom of the West Wing of the White House, Felt chanced to meet a Navy lieutenant delivering classified messages to the National Security Council staff. The young man in dress blues was Bob Woodward. By his own description fiercely ambitious and in need of adult guidance, Woodward tried to wring career counseling from his elder. He left the White House with the number to Felt's direct line at the FBI.<br />On July 1, 1971, Hoover promoted Felt to deputy associate director, the third in command at the headquarters, beneath Hoover's right-hand man and longtime companion, Clyde Tolson. With both of his superiors in poor health, Felt increasingly took effective command of the daily work of the FBI. When Hoover died and Tolson retired, he saw his path to power cleared.<br />But Nixon denied him, and he seethed with frustrated ambition in the summer of 1972.<br />One evening that summer, a few weeks after the Watergate break-in, Woodward, then a neophyte newspaperman, knocked on Felt's door in pursuit of the story. Felt decided to co-operate with him and set up an elaborate system of espionage techniques for clandestine meetings with Woodward.<br />If Woodward needed to talk, he would move a flowerpot planted with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment on P Street in Washington.<br />If Felt had a message, Woodward's home-delivered New York Times would arrive with an inked circle on Page 20. Woodward would leave his apartment by the back alley that night and take one taxi to a downtown hotel, then a second to an underground parking garage in Arlington, Virginia.<br />Within weeks, Felt steered The Post to a story establishing that the Watergate break-in was part of "a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage" directed by the White House. For the next eight months, he did his best to keep the newspaper on the trail, largely by providing, on "deep background," anonymous confirmation of facts reporters had gathered from others. The Post's managing editor, Howard Simons, gave him his famous pseudonym, taken from the pornographic movie then in vogue.<br />By June 1973, Felt was forced out of the FBI. Soon he came under investigation by some of the same agents he had supervised, suspected of leaking information not to The Post but to The New York Times. He spent much of the mid-1970s testifying in secret to Congress about abuses of power at the FBI. He then faced his federal indictment for his role in those abuses, his trial, his conviction and finally his pardon.<br />Millions of Americans knew him only as a shadowy figure in the 1976 movie made from the Watergate saga, "All the President's Men," which made "Woodward and Bernstein" legends of American journalism. In the movie, Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) gives Woodward (Robert Redford) probably the most famous bit of free advice in the history of investigative journalism. It was a three-word road map to the heart of the matter: "Follow the money."<br />Felt never said it. It was part of the myth that surrounded Deep Throat.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>********************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>An iconic race's enduring thrills and chills</strong><br />By Christopher Clarey<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Silence is hard to come by in the annual Sydney-to-Hobart race. There is the drone or the shriek of the wind, the crash of the waves against the hulls, the ominous harmonics of equipment under great stress, and the shouts and mutters from the crews as they try, once again, to sail their yachts of various shapes and prices from the majesty of Sydney Harbor to the safe haven of Hobart across the Tasmanian Sea.<br />But this year, silence will be a requirement for at least two minutes. It has been 10 years since six men died in the storm-swept 1998 edition of this Australian institution, and the minute of silence before the start and another after the finish will honor those sailors as well as others who perished in the race in earlier years.<br />"I think it is an appropriate way to show our respects to those who didn't make it; I'm not sure if there's any other better way to do it," said Ed Psaltis, who was skipper of the small yacht that won overall honors in 1998 despite the horrific conditions that some ashen competitors compared to a cyclone or hurricane.<br />A single wreath will also be laid in Hobart by Matt Allen, commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, which organizes the race, and Clive Simpson, his counterpart at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania. Allen and other club officials have contacted the families of the sailors who died in 1998 and received tentative commitments from some family members to be in attendance in Hobart.<br />"What happened is part of the history of the race, you can't deny it," Psaltis said. "One of the guys who died in 1998, Jim Lawler, was a very close friend of my father's, so it was a personal thing for me."<br />"And he was no average yachtie," Psaltis added. "He was a very accomplished seaman, so to have him perish really knocked me for six. It just showed that even if you are among the best you can still get taken out. What it shows you, above all, is that the sea is the boss, and you are its servant and don't even try to think otherwise."<br />Larry Ellison, the American billionaire who took line honors in that 1998 race in his maxi Sayonara, gleaned enough amid the 80-knot winds and 60-foot, or 18-meter, waves and reminders of his mortality to conclude that he never wanted to race the 628 nautical miles from Sydney to Hobart again.<br />He has been true to his word. Since then, he has focused his big sailing ambitions and budgets on the America's Cup and other inshore regattas.<br />But Australians like Psaltis have a more elemental connection to their island nation's premier yacht race, which was first contested in 1945, just months after the end of World War II. Psaltis, 47, like many a Sydney-to-Hobart skipper, has a regular job that has nothing to do with sailing: He is a partner in Sydney with the accounting firm of Ernst & Young.<br />Yet despite the torments of 1998 and of other stormy, hazardous years, he has continued to put himself on the starting line on Dec. 26. This will be his 28th Sydney-Hobart race, and the 10-member crew on his modified Farr 40, still named Midnight Rambler, will include three other men who sailed with him in 1998: Chris Rockell, John Whitfeld and Bob Thomas, Psaltis's co-owner and longtime navigator.<br />"Look, after 1998 I certainly thought very hard about it post-race, along the lines of: 'I've got a wife and three kids. What am I trying to do, to try and kill myself in a stupid yacht race?"' Psaltis said. "But I firmly believe that the human spirit wants challenges and actually craves challenges, and to go through life controlled in a regimented, risk-free environment is, I think, no life at all."<br />The Hobart - as its participants often call it - is, however, a more regimented race than it was 10 years ago. Safety requirements have been significantly increased and, as with all offshore races, safety equipment has improved because of technological advances. More of it has been made compulsory, including Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, or EPIRBs.<br />At least 50 percent of each crew must take a course on safety at sea and 50 percent must have completed a Category One ocean race. Sailors under the age of 18 are no longer permitted to take part. The Australian authorities have revised and upgraded their contingency plans for rescue and emergency situations.<br />"The truth is, 1998 was the biggest maritime rescue operation in the history of Australia," Allen said. "So I think it's made people focus. I think in 1998 people knew the race was occurring. They knew that efforts may need to be deployed, but I think it's a lot better coordinated and understood and prepared for than 10 years ago."<br />The consensus is that crews are better prepared, as well.<br />"People tend to go into the race when they think the boat and crew are up to it, rather than when they think it would be fun to go and do the race," Allen said.<br />"People don't take the race lightly," he added. "You don't have, as I've seen in some other races around the world, people getting together for one race of the year. Pretty much most of the crews in the Sydney Hobart are people racing pretty much continuously."<br />Not all of the Hobart's traditional charms have resisted the professionalization and restructuring of the race, however.<br />The emphasis on safety has increased costs, for example.<br />"It probably costs about 60,000 Australian dollars to get the average boat trumped up to do the race," Psaltis said, or the equivalent of $42,500. "In 1998, it was 30,000 to 40,000. The cost of sails has gone up, everything has gone up, but safety is one more issue making it harder."<br />"Some would say the safety standards now are too onerous," he added. "I don't believe that. The only reticence I have is that they are taking the sport of ocean racing further from the average person."<br />The surprise is that neither the new regulations nor the global economic downturn has affected participation rates this year. Although there have been some high-profile withdrawals, including a Russian maxi called Trading Network, the fleet of 104 yachts for the race this year is the second-highest number of entrants since 1998.<br />"I think it's because people have built boats a while ago or ordered boats a while ago, and that's probably a reflection of earlier economic times," Allen said. "People have boats, and they might as well go sailing in them."<br />Among those who plan to sail this year is John Walker, who was already the oldest skipper in the race's history and is now 86. Rob Fisher and Sally Smith, the children of an avid Sydney-Hobart competitor, will become the first brother and sister to skipper yachts in the race in the same year.<br />There is also Todd Leary, once Tasmania's leading professional power-boat racer, who will be relying on nothing but wind power for his first Sydney-Hobart.<br />The overall winner is not easy to predict, although there are many who like the look and lines of Loki, a newly launched 63-foot yacht designed by Reichel-Pugh in San Diego. But for the moment, there is little doubt about who will cross the finish line first in Hobart.<br />Wild Oats XI, the 98-foot maxi owned by the Australian Bob Oatley, has taken line honors the last three years and is a heavy favorite to become the first yacht to do it four times in a row. Its crew had to scramble to make final-hour repairs last year, but there have been no such dramas in the run-up to the race this year.<br />"These boats are clearly faster than any other boats," Allen said of the maxis. "It's more a boat-management issue and seamanship issue for them, and absolutely, to get it there four times in a row unscathed would be a great tribute to the skills of the crew."<br />But then Wild Oats XI has never had to sail through what Ellison and Psaltis sailed through in 1998.<br />"We got through it, but only through the skin of our teeth," Psaltis said. "For 10 hours, we were surviving rather than racing. It was the worst I've seen and something I don't want to see again. It certainly did change our lives."<br />"There's a real unspoken bond between the seven of us who were on the boat," he added, "and that will be there till we die."</div><div></div><div>*******************</div><div>BOOK REVIEW</div><div><strong>A grand master of memory, and a martyr partly forgotten<br /></strong>By Anthony Gottlieb<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />Giordano Bruno Philosopher, Heretic By Ingrid D. Rowland Illustrated. 335 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27; Hill & Wang, £17.99.<br />It has become an overused word, but Giordano Bruno may justly be described as a maverick. Burned at the stake in Rome on Ash Wednesday in 1600, he seems to have been an unclassifiable mixture of foul-mouthed Neapolitan mountebank, loquacious poet, religious reformer, scholastic philosopher and slightly wacky astronomer. His version of Christianity is impossible to label.<br />Educated by the Dominicans - the guardians of Catholic orthodoxy in those days - he revered certain scriptures and the writings of St. Augustine, always doubted the divinity of Jesus and flirted with dangerous new ideas of Protestantism, and yet hoped that the pope himself would clear him of heresy.<br />Bruno was a martyr to something, but four centuries after his immolation it is still not clear what. It doesn't help that the full records of his 16 interrogations in the prisons of the Roman Inquisition have been lost or destroyed.<br />The enigma of Bruno runs deeper than that, as Ingrid D. Rowland, a scholar of the Renaissance who teaches in Rome, makes clear in her rich new biography, "Giordano Bruno." Was he some sort of scientific pioneer, to be compared with Galileo, whose milder encounter with the Roman Inquisition - indeed, with the same inquisitor, Cardinal Bellarmine - followed not long afterward? Like Galileo, Bruno rejected the earth-centered cosmology and Aristotelian physics endorsed by the church. In the 19th century, historians of science saw him as an early proponent of atomic theory and the infinite universe. Or was Bruno an occultist dreamer, more magician than mathematician, as the renowned historian Frances Yates influentially argued in the 1960s? Either way, Bruno suffered for speaking his mind, though he also had a lot of bad luck, some of which he brought upon himself.<br />His story begins in Nola, a small city to the east of Naples. Bruno referred to himself as "il Nolano," and Rowland echoes this, calling him "the Nolan" and frequently speaking of the "Nolan philosophy." (This moniker may be harmless to many today, but it has awkward connotations for those who remember the Nolans of the 1970s and 1980s European pop scene, and their biggest hit, "I'm in the Mood for Dancing.") The son of a well-connected professional soldier, Bruno entered the Neapolitan convent of San Domenico Maggiore at the age of 14 and was quickly noticed for two things. First, there was his prodigious memory: as a 20-year-old he was sent to perform his feats of recall before the pope. The ancient art of enhanced memorization was what he was best known for in his own time, and teaching it to others was his most marketable skill. Mnemonic feats were not only a practically useful party trick, but were often held to enable a practitioner to arrive at a systematic understanding of the world. Second, there was his religious unorthodoxy. As a boy, he removed all pictures from his convent cell, keeping only a crucifix, and he scoffed at a fellow novice for reading a devotional poem about the Virgin.<br />Although he was ordained a priest in 1572 and licensed to teach theology three years later, he was soon under investigation by the local head of the Dominicans for his irregular and outspoken views. By 1576 he had fled to Genoa and abandoned his clerical garb, teaching astronomy and Latin in a nearby town. The next 15 years were spent wandering through Europe on a hunt for patrons and professorships. First came Venice, then Padua, then Lyons, then a copy-editing job in Calvinist Geneva, where he was jailed and excommunicated for publishing an attack on a local philosopher. After two years of lecturing in Toulouse on Aristotle and astronomy, he had some success in Paris teaching the art of memory, with Henry III as royal patron. It was in Paris that he published a long philosophical drama, "The Candlemaker," which Rowland implausibly suggests can be staged successfully, despite its five-hour running time. Its title page names the author as "Bruno the Nolan, the Academic of no Academy; nicknamed the exasperated." In 1583 Bruno joined the household of the French ambassador in London, where he published his major philosophical works, all dialogues, in which he espoused an infinite universe teeming with life. The timing was bad for such unorthodox cosmology. A century earlier, a German cardinal and mathematician, Nicholas of Cusa, made similar suggestions; but back then the church was not yet threatened by Protestant heresy and took a more relaxed attitude to strange views. A century later, a book by a writer of the early French Enlightenment, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, popularized the same idea. Bruno was both too late and too early to paint a universe in which man and his planet were not the center of a cozy domain.<br />In 1591 Bruno returned to Italy, where the real trouble began. A Venetian grandee, Giovanni Mocenigo, invited Bruno to teach him the art of memory, and Bruno moved into the family's palazzo on the Grand Canal. After seven or eight months, relations between the two men began to cool (there are also suggestions that relations between Bruno and Mocenigo's wife heated up), and the Venetian denounced him. Among the many unacceptable things Mocenigo claimed to have heard Bruno say, listed in a letter to the Inquisition in May 1592, were that Christ was a wretch and a magician, that the world is eternal but divine punishment is not, that bread does not turn into flesh in the Eucharist, that the Virgin cannot have given birth and that all friars are asses.<br />Bruno made a few unwise admissions to his Inquisitors, but denied most of the accusations.<br />One informant was not enough for a conviction - a second witness was needed - and Bruno was willing to repent in order to gain release. The matter could have ended there, but the Roman Inquisition asked for Bruno's extradition, and Venice, after months of negotiations, complied. The Romans interviewed many of Bruno's old cellmates from Venice, and found one - an unstable Capuchin friar, himself later burned at the stake - who falsely believed that Bruno had denounced him and decided to return the favor.<br />Even with this second witness, it took the Roman Inquisition nearly seven years to bring the case to its sorry conclusion, and it managed to do so only when the Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine took charge. Rowland quotes Bellarmine as once saying that "I hardly ever read a book without wanting to give it a good censoring." Bruno's fate was sealed when he unsuccessfully attempted to appeal over the heads of the Inquisition to the pope himself.<br />Rowland's telling of Bruno's end is gripping. As an intellectual biography, however, the book has too little examination of his ideas. Although Rowland would like us to see Bruno as a martyr to science, his work comes across more as theologically inspired science fiction. He was a poetic speculator, not an empirical or systematic investigator. Thus it is still not clear what the great master of memory should be remembered for.<br /></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNB8tzlfqhYxaTazrZxX2jgw0oD1xCZpYbXVPc7nuu_SXFd6P2MWFS70KC9bSU3m-IAdwv7DtlECBv0rKpfxUZ-Le_zmjfL_DM1KiRCUd2GdZt1ZGYyV7s2yt6JupmjGR5k-HfKtXS14/s1600-h/DSC03655.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719033266783714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNB8tzlfqhYxaTazrZxX2jgw0oD1xCZpYbXVPc7nuu_SXFd6P2MWFS70KC9bSU3m-IAdwv7DtlECBv0rKpfxUZ-Le_zmjfL_DM1KiRCUd2GdZt1ZGYyV7s2yt6JupmjGR5k-HfKtXS14/s320/DSC03655.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div><strong>Chinese court fines Web user in "cyber-violence" case</strong><br />By Mark McDonald<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />HONG KONG: In the first case involving cyberviolence and a "human flesh search engine" in China, a court has fined a Web site and an Internet user for posting personal and intimate details about an unfaithful husband, his mistress and a spurned wife who committed suicide.<br />While the fines in the case were small, legal scholars said the ruling could carry a wider significance as the Chinese government and the Communist Party search for ways to police the Internet. A recent rise in online vigilantism could lead the authorities to issue more dramatic restrictions on Internet users and Web sites.<br />The court ruling, which was announced Friday, specifically mentioned "cyberviolence" and the possibilities for abuse by human flesh search engines, which the three-judge court called "an alarming phenomenon."<br />The term comes from a widely used compiler of blogs and search engines in China called Renrou, which in Mandarin means human flesh. Renrou searches have been used by countless bloggers to hunt down otherwise-anonymous Chinese citizens in cases ranging from love triangles to political outrage to cold-case murders.<br />"For sure the court sees human flesh search engines as a problem and recognizes the need to do something about them," said Anne Cheung, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. She said that the ruling directs the Ministry of Information Industry in Beijing to draw up specific guidelines that define personal data and privacy.<br />In the case, after the wife's suicide in December 2007, her personal diary was publicly posted on the Internet by her sister. The sorrow and despair of her final days, which she had recorded in a private blog-diary, set thousands of outraged human flesh searchers to work, tracking down the husband and his mistress for vengeance.<br />It didn't take long. The husband, Wang Fei, 28, soon began receiving death threats, harassing calls at work and vilification on the Internet. He and his girlfriend, a 23-year-old co-worker, were forced to leave their jobs at a prestigious advertising agency. And outraged "netizens" besieged his parents' apartment with protests, threats and obscenities.<br />The persecution by the Internet vigilantes "seriously hampered my normal life," said Wang, quoted by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. In April he sued for violation of privacy and defamation, seeking about $20,000 in damages.<br />The People's Court in Beijing fined the Web site, Daqi.com, the equivalent of $440, plus court fees. Zhang Leyi, a friend of the dead woman, also was fined. Zhang created a site, orionchris.cn, that included the so-called death blog and essentially led to the vigilantism. He was ordered to pay $734 and fees.<br />Cheung, the law professor, said the fines were almost nominal amounts. In its ruling, the three-judge court chastised Wang, who admitted his infidelity, and said it had reduced the amount of the fines because of his moral lapses.<br />The blog-diary of his late wife, Jiang Yan, 31, was called "The Migratory Bird That Flies North." It included sorrowful passages and short poems about her failed marriage. The day after Christmas 2007 she posted a photograph of her husband with his mistress apparently on vacation together in Rome. Three days later she jumped to her death from the 24th floor of an apartment building.<br />Another popular site in China, tianya.com, was the third defendant in the case but was not fined. The ruling said the site had tried to control the online frenzy by removing personal information from its site about Wang.<br />The court ruling was reported Friday by Xinhua.<br />A recent survey by the China Youth Daily, cited by Xinhua, found that 80 percent of respondents believe Renrou should be regulated by the state. Nearly two-thirds said it could become "a new way of venting anger and revenge," and 20 percent feared they might become targets of a Renrou campaign.<br />A sampling of Renrou-style incidents shows their reach, their potential for social shaming - and in some cases their ferocity.<br />Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman at Duke University in North Carolina, was seen trying to mediate a campus standoff in April between pro-Tibetan activists and pro-Beijing Chinese students. She was identified - and then vilified on the Web as a traitor to her country. One message said if Wang returned to China "your corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces." Her parents' home in Qingdao also was located in a human-flesh search, and someone dumped a bucket of excrement on their doorstep.<br />A man was hunted after he was spotted in Paris disrupting the Olympic torch relay, which was a source of great pride across China. Later, Internet users searched for the father of Guo Wenjun, a Chinese shooter who won a gold medal at the Beijing Games. Guo, in comments at the Games, said her father abandoned the family when she was 10 years old, which quickly led to a nationwide manhunt. The searchers became so intrusive, however, that Guo's family reportedly asked for the effort to be abandoned.<br />A nurse was fired from her job after she was identified in an Internet video in 2006 showing her stepping on the head of a kitten, even plunging a stiletto heel through one of the kitten's eyes. Within a week, a Renrou campaign tracked down the woman, Wang Jue, who apologized, saying she had been depressed over a failed marriage. The Shanghai Daily newspaper said her video had been used to draw people to a Web site selling DVDs of "small animals being stomped to death by aggressive women."<br />A husband using the Internet name Freezing Blade posted the details of an apparent affair in 2006 between his wife, Web-named Quiet Moon, and a college student known as Bronze Mustache. But the husband posted the student's real name, which led to an online manifesto by someone calling herself Spring Azalea, who demanded that Bronze Mustache be denounced and ostracized. Bronze Mustache posted an online video denying the affair, saying he had only met Quiet Moon along with other players of the video game World of Warcraft. The attacks on him became so severe that even Freezing Blade, the alleged cuckold, asked that they be stopped.<br />A college student posted an online video saying she did not much care about the victims of the massive earthquake that struck Sichuan Province in May. When the video migrated to a Chinese Web site, her comments infuriated Renrou users - who in short order found the woman's name, her address and phone number, even her blood type. She was hounded so badly she had to withdraw from school.</div><div></div><div>***************</div><div></div><div><strong>Taiwan seizes illicit drugs on one of first cargo flights from China</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />TAIPEI: About 30 kilograms of the party drug ketamine arrived on one of the first direct cargo flights between the political rivals China and Taiwan following six decades of hostile relations, a Customs official said Friday.<br />Airport Customs agents in Taipei found 66 pounds of the powdered hallucinatory drug on Thursday packed into eight boxes on a Chinese cargo plane, customs officials said.<br />"Our expectation was that direct cargo links could possibly lead to drug smuggling," said Lin Shu-chi, deputy Taipei Customs Office head. "I can't say this was beyond our imagination."<br />The ketamine was worth 930,000 Taiwan dollars, or $28,500, Lin said.<br />Taiwan and China opened direct cargo routes and introduced daily direct passenger flights on Monday for the first time since 1949 to help Taiwan investors save time and money on travel and factory shipments.<br />China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when the Communists led by Mao Zedong won the Chinese civil war and the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.<br />The jump in trade and transit links underscores how quickly ties have warmed under the island's pro-China president, Ma Ying-jeou, who took office in May on a pledge to improve cooperation with Beijing.<br />A 31-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in connection with the ketamine, which was destined for a convenience store in central Taiwan, local media said.</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGOXESSTglK-PoP0noDAreJ7HNRslma-iCPI0cT8_wlCiUUWYW_T9R-HKqmp04e3uO2BZ596vzhruQ0LirQlG_yDuczSnCmN3etkhudSxEKz-PO0tKpfchSPfm5zvUkGgaWmYuI3zR9U/s1600-h/DSC03657.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719033839260098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGOXESSTglK-PoP0noDAreJ7HNRslma-iCPI0cT8_wlCiUUWYW_T9R-HKqmp04e3uO2BZ596vzhruQ0LirQlG_yDuczSnCmN3etkhudSxEKz-PO0tKpfchSPfm5zvUkGgaWmYuI3zR9U/s320/DSC03657.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>Over lunch, Russia and NATO begin to re-engage</strong><br />By Steven Erlanger<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: The secretary general of NATO had lunch Friday with the Russian ambassador to the organization, beginning the "conditional and graduated re-engagement" with Moscow that NATO foreign ministers approved earlier this month.<br />The ambassador, Dmitry Rogozin, said the lunch at an Italian restaurant near NATO's suburban headquarters outside Brussels was a step toward more normal relations after the brief Georgian-Russian war in August.<br />"The most difficult thing is to make the first step," Rogozin told reporters. "We are at the beginning of the difficult route to restore trust."<br />In mid-January, there would be "an informal NATO-Russia council meeting at the level of ambassadors," Rogozin said.<br />The NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made no direct comments, but a spokeswoman, Carmen Romero, said the two men "agreed to look at ways to restart the engagement." She said the two sides would look to hold an informal meeting of the council at the ambassadorial level next month.<br />The Russian foreign minister, meanwhile, said that a discussion of the origins of the war with Georgia would be a precondition to normal relations.<br />NATO cut off formal ties with Moscow in the aftermath of the August war, and said there would be no "business as usual" until Russia agreed to pull its troops back to their prewar positions and cancel its recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are a part of Georgia.<br />But the beginnings of the war remain disputed, with many NATO allies believing that the Georgian leadership either began the war or fell headfirst into a Russian trap, giving Moscow a pretext to retaliate. Most West European countries, dependent on Russia for oil and especially natural gas, have been eager to restart relations with Moscow despite its occupation of the two regions, and they overcame hesitation from the Bush administration and eastern European countries, which wanted Moscow to pay a stiffer price.<br />Still, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made her last visit to a NATO foreign ministers' meeting on Dec. 2, she agreed that the United States would not object to a gradual, phased re-engagement between NATO and Russia. "The idea of working through a kind of informal contact, with the NATO-Russia Council, is not a problem for us," Rice said then. De Hoop Scheffer was charged with initiating the informal contacts with Rogozin.<br />During an interview the next day with The New York Times, De Hoop Scheffer said, "Russia is such an important factor in geopolitical terms that there is no alternative for NATO than to engage Russia."<br />What mattered in the conversation with Russia, he said then, was to try to understand "what was behind Georgia" and the short war, and whether it meant a lasting change in Russia's attitude toward international law, sovereign borders and the "disproportionate" use of force.<br />He said he would report back to NATO foreign ministers, probably in March, on whether to deepen contacts with Russia still further.<br />The softer American position on contacts with Russia was seen as a tradeoff with Germany, which agreed to leave a decision for later on the precise mechanism for a future NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine - effectively, for an Obama administration.<br />In Moscow on Friday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia had conditions, too. "Now, when our NATO colleagues talk about restoring relations," he said, "we will insist that the restoration of ties starts with the discussion of the causes of the Caucasus crisis which our NATO partners dodged in August."<br />The United States ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volcker, said Friday, "We signaled our unhappiness with Russia using military force to invade Georgia and change borders by force of arms, yet we also signaled a desire for a cooperative relationship with Russia."<br />The European Union also has renewed dialogue with Moscow.<br />Russia critical of U.S. stance<br />A senior Russian diplomat harshly criticized the U.S. stance in arms control talks Friday, saying it could further erode mutual trust and undermine global stability, The Associated Press repoted from Moscow.<br />The United States and Russia have begun talks on a successor deal to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which expires in December 2009, but a cold spell in Russia-U.S. relations has stymied talks.<br />Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russian and U.S. negotiators had failed to agree on the basic approach as to which weapons should be counted under the new deal.<br />Russia wants to count missiles, bombers and submarines along with nuclear warheads fitted to them, as was done in the Start I treaty, while the United States agrees only to count nuclear warheads, Ryabkov said.<br />U.S. officials argued that missiles, bombers and submarines must not be subject to a nuclear arms control deal because they can also carry conventional weapons.<br />Ryabkov spoke after a round of arms control talks earlier in the week.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisIbHgrv_vbcLdRnDj_8MFtjD0_-z7U11YwsUobAmGpNcLfrp7xUNlmKsfMrMI5qTOqShTboCM6qcz4XIYjWY7qo6penQdET327meaQoPw2CH_J8pW33EVMhSgZXm0aYcOMBvpG_YCVec/s1600-h/DSC03658.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719028656052690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisIbHgrv_vbcLdRnDj_8MFtjD0_-z7U11YwsUobAmGpNcLfrp7xUNlmKsfMrMI5qTOqShTboCM6qcz4XIYjWY7qo6penQdET327meaQoPw2CH_J8pW33EVMhSgZXm0aYcOMBvpG_YCVec/s320/DSC03658.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAKSxCn5bP5XXznwCComieGgWYs8HkmxWPRuCBx9Ykfl-evMp484jO9GtksRunlKQHwAtFcpwi5siHBd_K4BT29YZ4Bdfq16gEwBXsh-GfW09Q3tlxL3FqbbnrArq2mVv2ElpBO4uwRyY/s1600-h/DSC03659.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281719031400572466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAKSxCn5bP5XXznwCComieGgWYs8HkmxWPRuCBx9Ykfl-evMp484jO9GtksRunlKQHwAtFcpwi5siHBd_K4BT29YZ4Bdfq16gEwBXsh-GfW09Q3tlxL3FqbbnrArq2mVv2ElpBO4uwRyY/s320/DSC03659.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div></div><div><strong>On both sides of Atlantic, '08 was a year to forget, poll finds</strong><br />By John C. Freed<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: As 2008 draws to a close, Americans are more inclined than West Europeans to say Happy New Year, though both groups are rather pessimistic over all, according to a new poll for the International Herald Tribune.<br />The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive for the IHT and the news channel France 24, shows overwhelming gloom in Europe about the state of the economy, with the French adhering to their reputation: 5 in 6 people surveyed in France expressed pessimism. The average was 7 in 10 for the other European nations surveyed: Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. The most optimistic Europeans are the Germans, but even there, 63 percent are pessimists.<br />Stereotype prevailed on the other side of the Atlantic, too, but even the famous American optimism failed to overcome the harsh reality of unrelentingly negative news, as the survey shows the United States divided almost exactly evenly between optimists and pessimists.<br />One of the American pessimists is Megan Thomas of Port Jefferson Station, New York, who was among the poll's respondents who agreed to answer follow-up questions. She said she had been looking for work for three months - without even getting an interview - and was cutting back on holiday spending.<br />"I am giving less to less of my family," she said. "I just can't afford to use the little savings that I have."<br />Some of the negativity, no doubt, can be ascribed to reinforcement by friends or the news media; in every country surveyed, people thought their personal situation was better than the country as a whole. In France for instance, 63 percent were pessimistic about their personal economic situation, a drop of 20 points from those who saw the national economy in a negative light.<br />And when the question was made even more specific - whether 2008 was positive or negative for the respondent - the ratio was around 3 to 2 on the negative side across the board, even in the United States.<br />Another respondent, Melanie Tassi of St. Leonards on Sea, England, said she and her husband had declared personal bankruptcy in October. Like many respondents, she despaired of the direction of the culture.<br />"We are led to believe that we are impoverished in some way if we do not have the wide-screen TV or the new car every year," she said. "We have lost the desire to look after each other."<br />The level of gloom is far higher than when the same question was asked two years ago, with a negative viewpoint rising by about 25 percentage points in all the countries except Spain, where it leaped even more. In December 2006, only 15 percent of Spaniards were pessimistic about their personal situation; now the number is 59 percent.<br />In considering the year in review, two events stood out for respondents in all nations: the financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. People in all six countries surveyed thought Obama's election would be good for the United States.<br />"I believe that the U.S.A. will be the driver of the world recovery," said another respondent, Ted Foan of Chesterfield, England. "His leadership will be crucial for engaging other countries, especially if he can change perceptions of America's role in the world."<br />Turning to the coming year, when asked what they would like to change in their lives, most Europeans had a simple answer: their political leaders, including their head of government. Americans agreed, except that only 20 percent were already prepared to discard Obama.<br />Other popular subjects for change on both sides of the Atlantic were the respondent's physical appearance, job or car. Few would change their spouse, friends, parents or children if they could.<br />In every country surveyed, people planned to spend less on holiday gifts this year than last, with the biggest change coming among Americans: 61 percent plan to spend less, as against just 5 percent who plan to spend more.</div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>U.N. council says warcrimes courts may need follow-on<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Saturday, December 20, 2008<br />By Patrick Worsnip<br />The Security Council acknowledged on Friday that a follow-up body may be needed to continue the work of U.N. war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, which are meant to wind up in 2010.<br />The Hague-based Yugoslavia court, set up in 1993, and the Rwanda court based in Arusha, Tanzania, established in 1994, are both struggling with their case loads and have both indicated their work is not likely to end by the deadline.<br />In a unanimous formal statement, the council noted "with concern" that the tribunals had already failed to meet the end-2008 deadline for first-instance trials.<br />"The Security Council acknowledges the need to establish an ad hoc mechanism to carry out a number of essential functions of the tribunals, including the trial of high level fugitives, after the closure of the tribunals," it said.<br />The mechanism should be a "small, temporary and efficient structure," it added. U.N. member states are concerned about the costs of the existing tribunals.<br />A U.N. working group has already begun studying a possible follow-up body to succeed the tribunals, but diplomats said this was the first time the Security Council had publicly recognized the need for one.<br />The Yugoslavia court will stage a major trial next year -- that of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, whose military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, also indicted by the court, is still on the run.<br />The court's chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said on Thursday he hoped Mladic, thought to be in Serbia, could be caught in time to put him on trial along with Karadzic.<br />The Security Council said it would have to authorise any "ad hoc mechanism" in a resolution. It called on the working group to focus on the "main outstanding issues" and recommend as soon as possible how the mechanism would work.<br />It also asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report within 90 days on possible locations for the mechanism, saying these should be where the United Nations is already present.<br />The council called on the existing tribunals to carry out their work as fast as possible and to focus on the most senior leaders indicted, transferring lesser figures to national justice systems to deal with.<br />It called on countries where fugitives are suspected to be hiding -- a possible reference to Serbia among others -- to step up efforts to arrest and hand over those indicted.<br />Separately, the Security Council passed a resolution on Friday authorizing Ban to appoint extra short-term judges for the Rwanda court, where five long-term judges are expected to quit soon.<br />(Editing by Jackie Frank)</div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPmryoa6k3AWx871SW_TLV05LhN32gVWXgjmPyfCCAFHz_qPnIgYBcZGiPObu33YKNKjz1KOa9KTK6k_pbbFDZYgkj-EC40si4vQC4RnysJIOD3pyzwLOBLlkAclBb7fCTy23uWqqaOhI/s1600-h/DSC03660.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281718749257471602" style="DISPLAY: block; 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It "would also lower health insurance premiums in the private sector," the report said.<br />Without action by Congress, the report said, health costs will continue to soar, the number of people without insurance will rise by nearly one million a year, to a total of 54 million in 2019, and spending on health care will increase to 25 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from 16 percent in 2007.<br />In keeping with its duty to provide objective, impartial analysis, the budget office did not endorse any options, but it fleshed out many ideas circulating on Capitol Hill.<br />Democrats and many Republicans say they will make a serious effort to overhaul the health care system in 2009. Those changes are essential for economic recovery, they say.<br />But Obama and other Democrats have not been precise about the cost of their proposals, nor have they said in detail how they would pay for them. One of the Democrats' favorite proposals, rolling back tax cuts for high-income people, is already scheduled to occur in 2011, so, under the bookkeeping rules used by Congress, it would not produce a windfall of new revenue.<br />Lawmakers from both parties said they would pay close attention to the cost of new federal subsidies for health coverage because these subsidies — unlike the one-time bailouts for banks and other financial institutions — would be recurring federal obligations for years to come.<br />Requiring employers to provide health insurance to their employees or pay a fee to the federal government would bring in $47 billion of new federal revenue in the next 10 years, the report said.<br />A proposal to establish a national insurance pool for people who cannot obtain coverage on their own in the individual market would cost $16 billion in the next decade, it said.<br />Obama and many other Democrats want the government to negotiate with drug manufacturers to get lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries.<br />The Congressional Budget Office said such negotiations "would produce small if any savings" because the government would not have enough leverage to secure significant discounts beyond those already obtained by private insurance companies that manage the Medicare drug benefit.<br />But the budget office said Medicare could save $110 billion in the next 10 years if Congress simply imposed a form of price controls, requiring drug makers to provide the government with a 15 percent rebate, or discount, on brand-name drugs covered by the new Part D of Medicare.<br />Eliminating a notorious gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs, known as a doughnut hole, would cost more than $130 billion over 10 years, the report said.<br />Research to compare the effectiveness of different drugs and treatments might help doctors and patients make better decisions.<br />But it would not save the government much — $1.3 billion in the next decade — and it would reduce total spending on health care in those years by less than one-tenth of 1 percent, the budget office said.<br />The federal government could save $12 billion in the next decade if it established a procedure for approval of generic versions of expensive biotechnology drugs, the report said. It did not estimate the additional savings for consumers and employers, which could be substantial.<br />The report sets forth an elaborate proposal that would allow doctors and hospitals to share in the savings if they improve the quality and reduce the cost of care for people on Medicare.<br />Under the proposal, Medicare would pay bonuses to groups of doctors who met certain performance measures.<br />In response to such financial incentives, the report said, doctors would become more efficient and would reduce "the volume and intensity of services provided to their patients," saving $5 billion for Medicare in the next decade.<br />In one particularly sobering chapter, the report notes that, under existing law, Medicare will cut fees paid to doctors by 21 percent in 2010 and by about 5 percent in each of the next few years.<br />To avoid such cuts and freeze payment rates at their 2009 levels would cost the government $318 billion over the next decade, the report said.</div><div><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStNbGY6DbYrWNvid9VePcRV1Ogb4zEeaBJmudvKHmH00I7WFAcF3eF2qVkj45LD2Vkhy2Lqbl610rh6TZAQyZfo4G7p68NoJJbRtRmaoZf0OALbXVM4qAK78e0LisZxLiKNPjAYWbSnQ/s1600-h/DSC03680.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281717927758791410" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiStNbGY6DbYrWNvid9VePcRV1Ogb4zEeaBJmudvKHmH00I7WFAcF3eF2qVkj45LD2Vkhy2Lqbl610rh6TZAQyZfo4G7p68NoJJbRtRmaoZf0OALbXVM4qAK78e0LisZxLiKNPjAYWbSnQ/s320/DSC03680.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>IHT rolls out a broad range of editorial changes</strong><br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />PARIS: William Schmidt, an editor at The New York Times who was to assume the top editorship of the International Herald Tribune next month, will instead remain in New York, where he has been promoted to deputy managing editor with the mission of helping The Times navigate the financial pressures confronting the news business.<br />In an unexpected shift, Schmidt, who had been an assistant managing editor in charge of The Times's newsroom administration, will take on his new position to "assume an even larger role in steering The Times and IHT newsrooms through this sensitive economic period," according to a statement from the news organizations.<br />As part of the restructuring, Martin Gottlieb - the interim global edition editor for the last six months - will remain in that role, but based in New York, with frequent trips to the IHT newsrooms in Paris and Hong Kong.<br />Alison Smale, managing editor of the IHT, was appointed executive editor Friday, becoming the first woman to lead the daily operations of the 121-year-old newspaper.<br />Smale, a British citizen, has served as managing editor of the IHT since 2004. She came to the newspaper from The New York Times where she started in 1998 and became deputy foreign editor in March 2002. Previously, she was The Associated Press bureau chief for most of Eastern Europe, covering the fall of communism in 1989.<br />Tom Redburn, who presided over the IHT's business coverage for the past half year after serving as a deputy business editor at The Times, will take on the role of managing editor. A former reporter at the International Herald Tribune, Redburn has revamped the business desk of the IHT since his arrival and will continue to guide financial coverage.<br />The IHT, based in Paris, is the global edition of The New York Times and is printed at 35 sites throughout the world and sold in more than 180 countries. The New York Times, which acquired full control of the IHT in 2003, has been accelerating integration with preparations under way to redesign the IHT and merge its Web site with that of The Times next spring.<br />Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, publisher of the IHT, stressed that Schmidt's changing role was not a sign that job cuts were planned, as layoffs have become common in the industry.<br />"It is our intention to try to get through this year and the immediate future by not reducing our staff," Schmidt added, noting that "what differentiates The Times is its quality and its robust staff and we would like to get through this by looking for efficiencies in other ways."<br />Also promoted Friday at the IHT were Ursula Liu, who as general manager of newsrooms will oversee budget and staffing issues and many of the ongoing efforts to integrate the journalism of the IHT and The Times, and Kyle Jarrard, currently the head of copydesks, who was named associate managing editor/nights.</div><div></div><div>******************</div><div></div><div><strong>Big advertising companies cutting thousands of jobs</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />By Paul Thomasch<br />Two of the world's largest advertising companies, Omnicom Group Inc and Interpublic Group , are cutting thousands of jobs in the face of an advertising downturn that is shaping up as the worst since the Internet bubble burst in 2001.<br />Battling an industrywide slump caused by a pullback in spending in the all-important automotive, financial services and retail categories, Omnicom Group Inc will cut 4 percent to 5 percent of its worldwide staff by the end of this week, according to a source close to the situation.<br />The cuts amount to 2,800 to 3,500 positions out of a worldwide headcount of about 70,000.<br />Sources close to Omnicom rival Interpublic Group say its agencies are also considering targeted cuts, following promises by Chief Executive Michael Roth to manage the business "conservatively" in the face of the downturn.<br />Roth told investors in October that the parent company of DraftFCB, McCann Erickson, Lowe and dozens of other agencies would remain "extremely focussed on controlling costs and managing margins" as the financial crisis weighed on spending.<br />For now, sources estimate that job losses at the Interpublic agencies will amount to less than 5 percent of the worldwide staff, meaning no more than 2,000 jobs.<br />At Omnicom, the job cuts began last week and will be completed by the end of the week, according to a source.<br />In a statement, Omnicom said: "Given current economic conditions, our companies have reviewed their staffing levels as they relate to their current business requirements. Some, but not all, will have to make adjustments."<br />Omnicom, which has posted some of the industry's best results in recent years, is home to high calibre agencies BBDO Worldwide, PHD and DDB Worldwide.<br />Their client list includes premier companies such as Procter & Gamble Co , AT&T Inc , McDonald's Corp , Apple Inc , Adidas AG , and Visa Inc .<br />But spending cuts are coming from all marketing areas as corporations try to keep costs low. Chrysler, the automaker which has said it needs a cash infusion to survive, is also a top client of Omnicom's BBDO.<br />Overall, ad industry experts expect U.S. ad spending to decline by about 5 percent next year, the biggest drop in eight years, and said that the marketing industry may not recover before 2010.<br />Shares of Omnicom closed unchanged at $27.60 on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Interpublic fell 13 cents, or 3.07 percent, to $4.10.<br />(Reporting by Paul Thomasch; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernard Orr)</div><div><br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_px2kwcKvOv5bw8Q6JSGYrzqC6mH9j4avRNdE1Gq80cSX6Ck_yP806E4dydXK8uU3SJ4Ti8Qet-WQrWBqdy9sG-wHrKfPh7ekK7Y1CYF1YUkVXNlNm_w6Fq17PPGmHkT0nTyq66R0pYg/s1600-h/DSC03683.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281717923131352834" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_px2kwcKvOv5bw8Q6JSGYrzqC6mH9j4avRNdE1Gq80cSX6Ck_yP806E4dydXK8uU3SJ4Ti8Qet-WQrWBqdy9sG-wHrKfPh7ekK7Y1CYF1YUkVXNlNm_w6Fq17PPGmHkT0nTyq66R0pYg/s320/DSC03683.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div></div><div><strong>Laura Ashley underlying sales fall sharply</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />LONDON: Laura Ashley Holdings, the fashion and homewares retailer, on Friday reported a sharp fall in underlying sales, blaming the difficult economic climate, and said the outlook was "challenging."<br />The company, which trades from 231 stores in the UK, said that in the first 20 weeks of its second half, to December 13, sales on a like-for-like basis, which strips out the impact of new space, were down 9.9 percent.<br />"Tough trading conditions in the current economic climate, combined with the effects of new store openings on existing stores have affected like-for-like UK store sales," it said.<br />Total sales increased 9.7 percent, reflecting a net six additional stores during the period.<br />The group said its Asian franchise partner has begun a program to open 80 stores in China over the next five years, while its Middle East partner has also committed to expanding its brand presence.<br />Laura Ashley said although the outlook remained "extremely challenging" it expected to trade "broadly in line with the board's expectations."<br />Prior to Friday's update analysts at house broker Numis were forecasting a year to end-January 2009 pretax profit of 16.1 million pounds.<br />At 8:13 a.m. shares in Laura Ashley, which have halved over the last year, were unchanged at 12 pence, valuing the business at 87 million pounds.<br />(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Rhys Jones and Hans Peters)<br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><strong><div><br /></div><div align="center"><br /></strong>Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-64710391834685575812008-12-19T09:46:00.036+01:002008-12-19T12:36:44.638+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Thursday, 18th December 2008<div align="center"><strong> Bioterrorism</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Preventing a greater threat</strong> </div><div align="center"> </div><div align="justify"><br />OPINION</div><div align="justify">By Bob Graham<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />In May 2002, I visited Pokrov, a largely abandoned Soviet-era agricultural research center east of Moscow. Originally established to produce vaccines for animals, Pokrov became a laboratory for biological weapons, especially anthrax, in the final years of the Cold War.<br />We entered the building, which stored samples of all the materials produced at Pokrov. The woven wire and electrified fence that at one time had secured the building was a fallen, rusting heap. The security alarm to the main entrance had been turned off and the door was ajar.<br />Up two flights of steel-grate stairs were the storage rooms, two tennis court-sized rooms filled with commercial refrigerators. Several refrigerators had two common features: note cards listing the materials inside and flimsy strings encircling them. Our hosts explained that a broken string would indicate that someone had possibly opened the refrigerator and stolen the materials inside.<br />I left Pokrov without much confidence in the security afforded the most lethal biological materials in the world.<br />Earlier this month, the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which I chaired, presented its final report, "World At Risk," to President Bush, Vice President-elect Joe Biden and congressional leaders.<br />The report concluded that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013."<br />But the type of catastrophe may be a surprise to some. In fact: "Terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon."<br />The closest the United States has come to a bioterrorist attack was in October 2001, when letters contaminated with anthrax bacterial spores were mailed to two senators, a television anchorman and an employee of the National Enquirer.<br />Seven letters were mailed, containing less than 15 teaspoons of anthrax. This miniscule quantity resulted in five deaths, placed 30,000 people at risk, closed government buildings for months and produced economic damage estimated at $6 billion.<br />It isn't hard to imagine the consequences in death, destruction, panic, and dollars of a large-scale biological attack using anthrax spores manufactured from a vial like those in the refrigerators at Pokrov.<br />Biological materials are more ubiquitous and less secure than nuclear.<br />Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies have wisely expended tens of billions of dollars to identify, capture, and secure nuclear materials.<br />The same cannot be said for lethal pathogens. The United States has cut back its biological threat reduction programs in Russia, and the Russians have refused greater transparency at their Ministry of Defense controlled biological weapons facilities. There is little reason to believe that the lethal pathogens of Pokrov are secure from falling into terrorist hands.<br />While the rugged and persistent anthrax spores remain the pathogen of first resort, the last two decades have seen an explosion of biological dangers.<br />Since 9/11, the federal government has poured billions into defensive research on pathogens that might be used for bioterrorism.<br />There are now 14,000 U.S. scientists authorized to work on these materials, increasing the risk of a few bad apples with access. Shockingly, there continues to be no comprehensive regulation within the United States or internationally of the sites where lethal pathogens are produced or of the scientists capable of their production.<br />Al Qaeda remains intent on securing lethal pathogens for use against the United States. Agents of Osama bin Laden have been intercepted attempting to procure biological capabilities and materials in Europe and Asia.<br />The laboratories we discovered in Kandahar after the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan have been relocated to the tribal areas of Pakistan. As Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy, has observed, "Only a thin wall of terrorists' ignorance and inexperience now protects us."<br />Nuclear terrorism has been described as the ultimate preventable catastrophe. We hope so, and we also hope and believe our commission report has created a roadmap for significantly reducing the risk that the worst bacteria and viruses will fall into the hands of the worst terrorists and nations.<br /><em>Bob Graham, a former governor of Florida and U.S. senator, was chairman of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.</em></div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="justify"><em></em> </div><div align="center"><strong>Moroccan gets 20 yrs in jail for Madrid bomb links</strong> </div><div align="justify"><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />RABAT: A Moroccan man was jailed for 20 years on Thursday for links to the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, the state news agency MAP reported.<br />Abdelilah Hriz, 29, was found guilty of forming a criminal gang and a series a terrorism-related offences including helping to destroy public property using explosives, MAP said, citing the judgement of the Sale criminal appeal court, near Rabat.<br />Prosecutors had requested life imprisonment based on the charges, which also included collecting funds for terrorism. Hriz denied any involvement in the attacks.<br />Hriz, from the northern Moroccan city of Kenitra, was arrested in Syria and transferred to Morocco where a court sentenced him to three years in prison. But he was acquitted in May 2007 for lack of evidence.<br />In February, Hriz was detained again after Spanish investigators produced new evidence which they said linked him to the attacks.<br />A Spanish judge travelled to Morocco and took DNA samples from Hriz that matched samples picked up in two places linked to the attacks, MAP said, quoting Spanish police laboratory tests.<br />Ten bombs, packed into sports bags and detonated with mobile phones, tore through packed commuter trains on the morning of March 11, 2004.<br />Three weeks later seven men, including two suspected ringleaders of the bombings, blew themselves up in an apartment after police closed in on them.<br />Following a lengthy trial, a Spanish court last year sentenced two Moroccans and a Spaniard to 42,924 years in jail for the attacks.<br />The high nominal sentences reflected convictions on multiple counts but under Spanish law nobody can serve more than 40 years in jail.<br />(Reporting by Tom Pfeiffer, editing by Nita Bhalla)</div><div align="justify"> </div><p><em></em> </p><p><em></em> </p><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>0404</strong></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4DFpF2MvmQpfMLuKTpBNzwkvd7zcovNP7UjWOjp31Nxf6p44chV3wL55rnMlkidksrp-rxdD4Y38uq48XtMfDI6XO5Hy5W_8KdAeHzSBnMjhe0U_kqqeXuztNogKJDhT0wQ1tT56_k64/s1600-h/DSC03558.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429882530599442" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4DFpF2MvmQpfMLuKTpBNzwkvd7zcovNP7UjWOjp31Nxf6p44chV3wL55rnMlkidksrp-rxdD4Y38uq48XtMfDI6XO5Hy5W_8KdAeHzSBnMjhe0U_kqqeXuztNogKJDhT0wQ1tT56_k64/s320/DSC03558.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ73aKfN43qyge0XAJI34DgrP-SCYwJ1rpikdAcNYlGqFXf23Ov7rnJsMW6RSSGFBFw1B67Bx4EOVqdnthwy0Fl3zeKtSh72jd0rwgNQNqDPEy_NOn4oRjyHFSzZ2BDKJbr0DUlHAYZzQ/s1600-h/DSC03559.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429878186250418" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ73aKfN43qyge0XAJI34DgrP-SCYwJ1rpikdAcNYlGqFXf23Ov7rnJsMW6RSSGFBFw1B67Bx4EOVqdnthwy0Fl3zeKtSh72jd0rwgNQNqDPEy_NOn4oRjyHFSzZ2BDKJbr0DUlHAYZzQ/s320/DSC03559.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div><strong>South Korea trade fight gets ugly</strong><br />By Martin Fackler<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />TOKYO: The parliamentary battle over a contentious free trade deal in South Korea led to a confrontation on Thursday in which opposition lawmakers used a sledgehammer to knock down the doors of a blockaded room in which a committee was discussing the agreement.<br />Television footage showed fire extinguishers being sprayed at the opposition lawmakers trying to get into the room . At least one person was shown bleeding from the face.<br />The members of the opposition Democratic Party were trying to stop the trade agreement with the United States from advancing to the floor of parliament for a final vote. The governing party has been seeking to ratify the trade pact by year's end, saying it would improve South Korea's competitiveness and ties with the United States. Opponents say it will hurt South Korean farmers.<br />Violent clashes in the South Korean parliament, called the National Assembly, are not unheard of, reflecting the nation's feisty brand of democracy. The trade agreement with the United States has been a particularly thorny issue, after massive demonstrations in Seoul earlier this year against the import of American beef.<br />Thursday's assault came after the opposition party had threatened to block the deal by using physical force if necessary. Fearing an attack, members of the foreign affairs committee, under control of the governing Grand National Party, had barricaded themselves inside the room as they met.<br />Security guards and aides from the governing party stood outside the barricaded doors, where scuffles broke out when a dozen opposition lawmakers showed up. The opposition lawmakers then used at least one sledgehammer and crowbars to tear through the doors, only to be thwarted by piles of furniture thrown up as a second line of defense.<br />The mayhem failed to prevent the pact from being formally introduced to the committee, a step in the process of bringing it to a full parliamentary vote.<br />The deal to lower tariffs and other trade barriers was signed last year by negotiators from South Korea and the United States, but cannot take effect until ratified by lawmakers in both nations.<br />The pact faces stiff opposition in United States Congress, where many fear it could disadvantage struggling American automakers. </div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Chinese author of book on famine braves risks to inform new generations<br /></strong>By Verna Yu<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BEIJING: For such a bold writer, Yang Jisheng comes across as a surprisingly quiet, almost shy, scholarly man. Yet this slightly built 68-year-old retiree has become something of a thorn in the side of the Chinese authorities in recent years.<br />After a 35-year stint as a journalist for Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, Yang has made a name for himself writing about things the Chinese Communist Party would rather people forgot.<br />His latest book, "Mu Bei" ("Tombstone"), published this year in Hong Kong, has been hailed as the most comprehensive and authoritative account by a mainland Chinese writer of the Great Famine of late 1958 to 1962, which was precipitated by the calamitous economic policies of Mao's Great Leap Forward and cost the lives of tens of millions of Chinese.<br />The title, he writes in the opening passage, has several meanings: "It's a tombstone for my father who died of starvation in 1959, it's a tombstone for the 36 million Chinese who starved to death, it's a tombstone for the system that led to the Great Famine."<br />He adds: "There was also a great political risk involved in writing this book. If something happens to me because of this, at least I'm making a sacrifice for the sake of my ideals, so this would also be a tombstone for myself."<br />The two-volume, 1,100-page work is banned in China, as is his previous book, "Political Struggles in China's Age of Reform," which contains his account of the 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and three interviews with former Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang. Zhao, who was purged for sympathizing with the students, met with Yang while under house arrest.<br />The authorities were so nervous about that first book - the interviews had been publicized in the overseas press - that they summoned him several times and ordered him to cancel its publication. He refused, and it was released in Hong Kong in 2004. After Zhao died in 2005, Yang was monitored by a plainclothes police officer to ensure he did not attend the funeral.<br />"My wife was really quite scared, but she couldn't stop me," he laughed in an interview in the office of the history journal Yanhuang Chunqiu, where he is deputy publisher. "She didn't want me to write, because that had led to a lot of trouble."<br />Why then does he feel compelled to write about such sensitive topics?<br />"There are too many lies in China in the past, even history can be fabricated," said Yang, in the earthy accent of his native Hubei Province.<br />"Deceiving children is a sin," he said. "But they have deceived two, three generations of people already, so this generation cannot lie to the next generation again."<br />He said for many young Chinese today, events like the famine, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen crackdown hardly register. So he feels it imperative that he write down what he knows and has seen.<br />Yang says that he himself was among those deceived and, as a state journalist, propagated the lies he was told.<br />After he graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1966, the year the decade-long Cultural Revolution began, he was assigned to be a reporter at Xinhua. Like other journalists at the time, he followed Communist Party guidelines, writing nothing but praise of the leadership.<br />"When I looked through hundreds of stories I wrote during the Cultural Revolution, I realized that over 90 percent of them could not stand the test of history," he said. "You could say I'm not personally responsible, but I feel I owe it to history."<br />A fervent adherent of Communist ideals in his early years, Yang said he long believed that Mao's Great Leap Forward - an ambitious plan of rapid industrialization - was a success, even though his own father was among its victims. In 1959, he did not occur to him that his father's death was part of a larger man-made catastrophe.<br />"I didn't blame the government at all. I didn't know what was happening in faraway places. I thought what happened in my home village was an isolated phenomenon," said Yang, who at the time was working at a school elsewhere in the country.<br />It was not until nearly a decade later that he learned, from a Red Guard document, that the governor of Hubei had said that 300,000 had died in his province alone during the famine.<br />"Once I realized we had been deceived, a strong feeling grew within me," he said. "The more they wanted to hide the truth, the more I wanted to seek the truth."<br />To produce "Tombstone," Yang spent more than a decade conducting meticulous research and extensive interviews with witnesses and academics across China. As a Xinhua journalist, he had access to archival materials.<br />"It is clearly the most thorough historical description of the Great Leap Famine in any language," said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, who has also written about the famine and its consequences.<br />Working from official population statistics and his own estimates of under-reported deaths based on his investigations, Yang Jisheng concluded that at least 36 million people died of starvation during the famine.<br />Yang's book describes horrendous scenes. Desperate people ate anything they could find: roots, bark, mud, bird droppings and, when these ran out, human flesh from corpses on the street or even of their own relatives.<br />In Tongwei County in the northwestern province of Gansu, one of the worst- affected regions, as much as a third of the population died, Yang writes. One witness told him that corpses lay everywhere, in ditches, by roads, in farm fields. Those still alive looked for bodies to eat. One young woman killed and ate her own daughter.<br />But this catastrophe has remained a taboo subject. The Chinese government still plays down the man-made disaster as "three years of natural disasters."<br />But Yang puts the blame squarely on Mao's policies. During the Great Leap, farmers had to leave their crops untended to work at steel production. While harvests fell, local officials exaggerated production figures to please Mao. Because provinces delivered crops to the state to supply cities and export quotas based on those inflated figures, farmers were left to starve. No one dared to speak out, fearful of questioning Mao.<br />Although there are already several books on the topic by overseas authors, Yang thought it was time that a mainland Chinese tackled this grim chapter of history. "If a country cannot face its past, it has no future," Yang said.<br />He came to this conclusion after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, in which hundreds of civilians were killed.<br />"That incident really shook me," Yang said. "After that, I felt that we should really be more critical of our political system and reflect more deeply upon those past lies."<br />Yang, a Communist Party member, said he wrote the book in the hope that the party could learn from past mistakes and pursue political reform. He thinks China should adopt a multi-party system and not be "an obstacle in history" standing in the way of the broader trend toward democracy.<br />Yang knew he could be censured for writing candid accounts. "I'm in my 60s," he said. "If I end up in jail for the sake of my book, it's nothing to be ashamed of. I'd see that as an honor."<br />But, while the book cannot be published here, he has been pleasantly surprised that no one from the government has summoned him for a reprimand.<br />"At least they are allowing me to talk about this, this is relatively open-minded of them," he said. "This would have never been possible, say, 10 or 20 years ago."</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Man pleads guilty to YouTube baby food threat</strong><br />Reuters<br />Friday, December 19, 2008<br />NEW YORK: A New York man pleaded guilty on Thursday to posting videos on YouTube in which he claimed he had arranged to poison millions of containers of Gerber baby food with the intent to kill babies.<br />Anton Dunn, 43, who called himself "Trashman," pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting threats in interstate commerce and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, said acting U.S. attorney Lev Dassin.<br />Dunn posted his first video -- in which he wore a black mask -- on April 20, 2008, and followed up with a further two videos, posted on July 24 and July 27.<br />"In the video, entitled "gerbersbabyfoodalert," Dunn stated that Gerber employees acting at his direction had poisoned millions of bottles of Gerber baby food, to kill babies who ate it," Dassin said in a statement.<br />"Dunn further stated that it was "too late" to do anything about the poisoned baby food because it had already been shipped to consumers," he said.<br />Gerber, which is owned by Switzerland-based Nestle SA, found no evidence that anyone had tampered with its baby food.<br />Dunn will be sentenced on March 20.<br />(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by Anthony Boadle)</div><div> </div><div><br /><br /><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi19KNIvkGaEHapQBWlddHpptnfs7EjHdjpOmr8Qx80O_xYb4adG8QTINbE8OQ-wODvZ3oDfNq7N9vkPZ_tXGCfYzTZ3ZS2CgPYIeEfPB1lWBicRJY2PsEY6AZdDnV485YIoFtAOtn01iU/s1600-h/DSC03560.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429875645342450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi19KNIvkGaEHapQBWlddHpptnfs7EjHdjpOmr8Qx80O_xYb4adG8QTINbE8OQ-wODvZ3oDfNq7N9vkPZ_tXGCfYzTZ3ZS2CgPYIeEfPB1lWBicRJY2PsEY6AZdDnV485YIoFtAOtn01iU/s320/DSC03560.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl20JxLpVGBCB6c_VMHzu3aicueowyWdRGbQjohwVAbiTZZSGZhseDAFLxaRxhU0vBpudVFPsJOBTCS7ENQxsBHXCL91JqF27hnaUVLpXy5U-8UfNvHL2EGAR74yml0amCGmdi2WjN64w/s1600-h/DSC03561.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429871914671314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl20JxLpVGBCB6c_VMHzu3aicueowyWdRGbQjohwVAbiTZZSGZhseDAFLxaRxhU0vBpudVFPsJOBTCS7ENQxsBHXCL91JqF27hnaUVLpXy5U-8UfNvHL2EGAR74yml0amCGmdi2WjN64w/s320/DSC03561.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCBwk1lpxRNbvddg9YFCWKOhnH9drtryuFQYPrBx7d2FA8ApzDkYBW8VXiZOn2EaGvcCEaM__T6BsmPJwFkl5vur2-awB2xCGDT552DZNSl7ARtpefF_zGo9F-9tmO7e65KZBh4MjwPHU/s1600-h/DSC03562.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429865935550770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCBwk1lpxRNbvddg9YFCWKOhnH9drtryuFQYPrBx7d2FA8ApzDkYBW8VXiZOn2EaGvcCEaM__T6BsmPJwFkl5vur2-awB2xCGDT552DZNSl7ARtpefF_zGo9F-9tmO7e65KZBh4MjwPHU/s320/DSC03562.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Assembly approves Sarkozy plan for French television<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />PARIS: Early in the New Year, advertising will begin to disappear from public television in France, the start of a major shakeup ordered by President Nicolas Ask that critics say will give him virtual control of the airwaves.<br />Sarkozy calls the change a "veritable cultural revolution" that will restore quality to public networks that have increasingly had to compete with the sometimes lower-brow programming of private channels.<br />The plan to pull ads from the country's four public channels, approved by the National Assembly on Wednesday night, also allows Sarkozy to select the chief of the French public broadcasting company, France Télévisions - alarming critics who say the project sends France back decades to the days when television was the tool of the presidency.<br />"The ultimate goal is nothing more than to put public television on a leash to prepare for the 2012 presidential elections," said Didier Mathus, a Socialist lawmaker who led a campaign against the legislation.<br />The plan will be enacted even though the Senate has not yet taken up the measure. It is expected to do so early next year. The plan calls for the gradual removal of all advertising from public broadcasting, beginning on Jan. 5 with prime time and overnight programming. The government will guarantee financing of 450 million, or $640 million, a year over the next three years to replace lost ad revenue.<br />Financing is to come mainly from two new taxes: a 0.9 percent tax on revenue of Internet service suppliers and telephone operators, foreign included, and a tax on advertising revenue of private TV channels - 1.5 percent to 3 percent depending on how well they fare from year to year.<br />Sarkozy has said the goal is to restore the networks' public service identity, lost in ratings wars with private channels, mainly TF1, the most widely watched station in France. The president's office has said the reform amounts to a lifeline as ad revenues are threatened by recession.<br />Detractors contend that the revamp is a thinly camouflaged boost for TF1, which is owned by Martin Bouygues, a close friend of Sarkozy's for 30 years. They say TF1 will win much of the advertising lost by public networks.<br />Sarkozy has been accused of being too close to media chiefs ever since he was elected in May last year.<br />"Even if Sarkozy has no such evil intentions," said Divina Frau-Meigs, a media sociology professor at the Sorbonne, "the suspicion is there."<br />The unions representing journalists said they feared that the plan would lead to cost cuts and job losses. They have called for a strike on Jan. 5 to protest.<br />Sarkozy's revisions have historical precedent: nearly all presidents of the Fifth Republic have reorganized the airwaves. In 1959, Charles de Gaulle created the public television monolith known as ORTF, a virtual propaganda tool. President François Mitterrand, a Socialist, ended state control over public broadcasting in 1982.<br />"This affair will boomerang on you," warned François Baroin, a former minister and member of Sarkozy's party.<br />With the growth of multimedia and youth-driven ratings, some experts said a streamlining was in order.<br />"If you are reforming France, as Sarkozy says he is, you reform broadcasting," said Michael Palmer, a media expert at the University of Paris. "The way it's been done gives credence to the idea that it has been inspired," he added, "by people who are close to the private-sector TV channels."</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Fracas in Parliament delays French Sunday shopping bill<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />PARIS: Legislation that would make it easier for French shops to open on Sundays has been delayed until next year, Prime Minister François Fillon said Thursday after rowdy scenes in Parliament during the night.<br />The legislation is a pet project of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose main election slogan was "work more to earn more," but it has built up over several weeks into a big political headache.<br />Sarkozy says the economic crisis has made it even more urgent to make the French labor market more flexible, encourage consumption and increase workers' purchasing power. He says more Sunday work would help achieve all those goals.<br />But critics of the legislation, many of whom are in his own party, the Union for a Popular Movement, say Sunday should be a day for people to spend time with their families. They also say that if consumers are reluctant to spend on weekdays, they are unlikely to spend on Sundays.<br />Sarkozy summoned rebel legislators from his party to the Élysée Palace several times to try and persuade them to support the bill. A compromise was found on Monday that substantially waters down the bill. It would extend authorized Sunday opening hours for food stores by one hour and allow all shops to open in designated tourist centers, rather than just some stores.<br />The legislation would allow mayors to choose eight Sundays per year when all shops in their towns can open, up from five Sundays now. But the bill got bogged down late Wednesday by amendments from the leftist opposition. Debate got so heated that two legislators came to blows while others yelled abuse.<br />"We will resume the debate calmly in January, when people have cooled off," Fillon said on Europe 1 radio.<br />They were very far from cooling off on Thursday morning.<br />"I solemnly tell the prime minister that if the government maintains this bill it will have to trample over our bodies," Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist legislator, said on Europe 1 radio.</div><div> </div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3TSzGcnWwVCTJ7RvC36rqcSanNX8b6rF8ilJyVh8BAGRRefbHbJZ-nG49uLBFpfpKsL5_exn2boZGYrLQBSirMM0Hq8K8sK4ruhE9zE7pJHKZum9OlMXyQ9VEE3DUxMDENy0LctKMfCc/s1600-h/DSC03563.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429547723643666" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3TSzGcnWwVCTJ7RvC36rqcSanNX8b6rF8ilJyVh8BAGRRefbHbJZ-nG49uLBFpfpKsL5_exn2boZGYrLQBSirMM0Hq8K8sK4ruhE9zE7pJHKZum9OlMXyQ9VEE3DUxMDENy0LctKMfCc/s320/DSC03563.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>At a Mumbai hospital, the faces of trauma<br /></strong>By Thomas Fuller<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />MUMBAI: Three weeks after the Mumbai terrorist attacks the public's attention here is slowly drifting back to the less weighty topics of cricket and Bollywood.<br />But the grief has hardly dissipated from the wards of Mumbai's largest public hospital. To travel down the spit-stained corridors of the immense facility is to witness physical wounds healing but mental ones that may linger for years.<br />The stitches have been removed from Harish Chandra's neck, and the 56-year-old civil servant has little trouble telling the story of how one of the terrorists held his forehead and slit his throat - and how he saved himself by kneeing the attacker in the groin.<br />But in a nearby ward, Malati Devi Gupta, a metal brace keeping her badly fractured left leg in place, cries out for her son - and doesn't believe he is not coming back. "If you can arrange it, I just want to meet Vinod," she tells a Western reporter. Vinod, relatives say, died in her lap from wounds inflicted by an exploding grenade at Mumbai's main train station on Nov. 26, blood gurgling from his mouth.<br />A social worker at the hospital says Gupta, who lay in a ward teeming with so many patients and family members it resembled a refugee camp, has been delirious with sorrow ever since being admitted and treated for her own bullet and shrapnel wounds.<br />Sir J.J. Hospital, named after the philanthropist in British colonial times who financed its construction, is 163 years old and feels like it. Patients and their families jostle past one another amid a confused sea of gurneys and medical staff. The red spit stains are from paan, the popular mild stimulant made from betel nuts.<br />Wealthier survivors of the attacks were able to convalesce in more plush surroundings and have better access to trauma counseling.<br />But Hemangee Dhavale, head of the psychiatry department at the K.J. Somaiya Medical College who has treated victims of previous attacks, says the poor are often more resilient.<br />"Their tolerance level may be higher," Dhavale said. "They undergo stress more frequently."<br />The families of the wealthier victims, many of whom were eating in the restaurants of the five-star hotels besieged in the attacks, do not have monetary concerns. But pain is pain.<br />Kanish Chhabria, 11, found out that his parents had been killed at the Oberoi Hotel when a friend sent him a condolence message on his Facebook page, said the boy's uncle, Ajay Chhabria.<br />Three weeks later, the boy remains "inconsolable," said Chhabria, who owns the Sea Palace Hotel, which overlooks the Arabian Sea. "We have lost something that you can't replace with money."<br />Better-educated victims are likely to be more traumatized, Dhavale said. "They think more," she said. But overall, the susceptibility to sustained psychological trauma "depends on the personality more than the economic status," Dhavale said.<br />Now that physical wounds have been treated, doctors expect that many more patients will seek treatment for flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia.<br />Chandra, whose throat was slit, was also shot three times in the back. The last bullet, lodged in the kidney, was to be extracted this week. But more than the pain from his injuries, he will have a hard time forgetting the words that the attacker yelled out as he was slitting his neck. The polite version is "Kill this bloody Indian." The more exact version contained unprintable expletives.<br />Chandra recounted this from a ward filled with a dozen patients, many of them afflicted with terminal cancer. With his son at his bedside, they were surrounded by patients with obvious tumors of various sizes jutting out from their bodies.<br />Several times in the past two decades doctors here have rushed to treat victims of terrorist bombings and communal riots.<br />As the attacks last month got under way, doctors heard an explosion and braced for an influx of patients, said Chitra Upsani, the head of the critical care unit, one of the few air-conditioned wards.<br />The hospital then took in what Upsani described as entire families of wounded people, most of them from the nearby Chhatrapati Shivaji train terminus, also known as the Victoria Terminus, where two attackers spent at least half an hour throwing grenades and shooting at travelers, shopkeepers, passers-by and the police.<br />During the terrorists' three-day siege of central Mumbai, dozens of bodies were sent to the Sir J.J. Hospital morgue. They were joined by the remains of the nine attackers killed by the police, which remain there.<br />Most of the victims' bodies have been reclaimed. Well over half of the 126 wounded victims brought here died or were discharged. As they returned home the grief of the attacks dispersed into the slums and mansions across this massive metropolitan area of 19 million people.<br />Kalpana Pawar, 24 and shy, was initially told that her husband, a police officer, sustained a foot injury in the attacks. Then the police showed up at her house with his body.<br />"My mother-in-law is very old, and they didn't want to alarm her," said Pawar, fidgeting nervously as she explained the police's initial explanation. Her husband, Ambadas, was off-duty and traveling through the train station when the attackers struck. A photographer saw him pick up an old rifle from a fellow officer and fire in vain at the two gunmen. The attackers were better armed. They tracked down and killed her husband, who was the family's only breadwinner.<br />Various government agencies have promised compensation, but Kalpana Pawar has yet to receive any checks. She is applying for a job at a bank to help support her 19-month-old son.<br />Also worried about her future is Betty Alphonso, 58, a homeless woman who was preparing to sleep in the train station at the time of the attacks. She says she will have nowhere to go after she is discharged from Sir J.J. Hospital. An orphan who once worked as a stenographer in a law firm, she can't get a job, she said, because "everywhere they are specifying young girls." Recently she has worked as an informal guide for foreign tourists she approached on the street. Now she has trouble walking from the bullet wound in her leg. "I have nobody," she said.<br />Menal Thakore, a social worker at Sir J.J. Hospital, has spent the past three weeks visiting Alphonso and other victims, gently stroking their foreheads and holding their hands. Some victims appear clear-eyed. Others have a far-off gaze.<br />Jayram Chouhan, a 28-year-old plumber, fits into the latter category. He suffered blast injuries and a bullet in his left leg. He was at the train station to see off a friend when the attacks began. "We didn't have any chance to escape," he said.<br />In the days immediately after the attacks, Thakore helped establish a list of the dead and wounded and sat behind an inquiry table in the hospital's bustling lobby.<br />When patients are stricken with terminal diseases, Thakore said, families have time to accept the inevitability of death. But the suddenness and the brutality of the attacks last month, she said, meant that "nobody was mentally prepared to accept it."<br />When family members of someone killed came forward she recited prepared phrases in Hindi. "He is no longer in this world," she told families. "This is God's wish."</div><br /><div></div><br /><div> </div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>India seeks to soothe public with new terror law</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />By Bappa Majumdar<br />The Indian government will rush a new law through parliament on Thursday that will allow police to hold suspects for up to 180 days, a move legal officials said is an attempt to allay public anger over the Mumbai attacks.<br />But the Congress Party-led government, facing an election by May, could also be courting trouble by making the bill similar to an old law which it had repealed earlier.<br />The law was proposed amid barely contained public anger over last month's attacks in Mumbai which killed at least 179 people, exposing glaring holes in India's security and intelligence network and which led to the security minister's resignation.<br />India's lower house of parliament unanimously passed two bills on Wednesday, one allowing the police to hold suspects for 180 days without charge and the other to create a national police agency similar to the FBI in the United States.<br />The two laws need approval from members of India's upper house of parliament later on Thursday, but lawmakers said it appeared that vote would be a formality.<br />Experts say India's main political parties ignored concerns that the law could be misused in the absence of an independent supervisory body to monitor the new police force.<br />They said the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, similar to an anti-terror law repealed by the Congress party-led government when it came to power in 2004, could cause serious human rights violations and could be abused by politicians.<br />"What we have is old wine in a new bottle, they brought back the old law without addressing the concerns of the people," prominent Indian lawyer Colin Gonsalves told Reuters.<br />"After the Mumbai attacks, people wanted the police to protect people not politicians, their demand was for professionalism of the police force, doing away with torture and corruption," he said.<br />India blames Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai attack and wants Islamabad to do more to stamp out militants on its soil. But experts say that is not enough and that India needs to find ways to stop attacks rather than reacting after them.<br />"Basically the government is saying terrorism will continue and they have a law that deals with offenders after the event has taken place," said Claude Alvares, senior member of a Supreme Court of India committee which acts for minority communities.<br />But Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told parliament late on Wednesday that the new laws would act as a deterrent.<br />"What these laws do is, one, give a sense of confidence to the people that criminals will be punished and two, give a sense of confidence to the police forces that they are armed with sufficient legal powers to take actions," Chidambaram said.<br />The Hindustan Times newspaper said in an editorial that, by incorporating a few safeguards and ensuring that the law is not abused, India could have a strong anti-terror capability.<br />"It will act as a deterrent, but how it is implemented will be more important," said Farhana Shah, a lawyer in an earlier bombing case in Mumbai in 1993.<br />(Editing by Paul Tait and Sugita Katyal)</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>India calls off Pakistan cricket tour</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEW DELHI: Cricket is one of the few things India and Pakistan agree on. But with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of not curbing Pakistani-based terrorists blamed for the Mumbai attack, India on Thursday canceled a cricket tour to Pakistan a clear sign of a freeze in relations.<br />In the decades since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought three wars and teetered on the brink several more times. Yet cricket is a national obsession for both countries and has helped thaw tensions.<br />India's national cricket team went to Pakistan in 2004 for the national teams' first full series of matches in 14 years, a trip hailed as an optimistic sign as the nuclear-armed rivals got a fledgling peace process going.<br />That has been undone by last month's Mumbai assault, which left 164 people and nine of the 10 attackers dead. Relations are strained again and the peace process is on ice.<br />India alleges a Pakistan-based Islamic group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, sponsored the attacks on hotels, a train station and markets in the country's financial capital and has demanded that Islamabad move against the militants.<br />Pakistan has arrested some suspects and clamped down on a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, purportedly linked to the previously outlawed Lashkar. But officials say that to do more, they need evidence of the group's complicity a demand India says it cannot fulfill until the investigation is over.<br />In another sign of worsening tensions, Pakistan summoned an Indian envoy Thursday to formally complain about violations of its airspace over the weekend an abrupt about-face after earlier playing down the alleged breaches by Indian aircraft as not deliberate.<br />India's deputy ambassador, Manpreet Vohra, said he would pass along the complaint. But, Vohra told The Associated Press, "our government, after holding an inquiry, has already said that there was no airspace violation from our side, and I reiterated this stance today."<br />India, meanwhile, test-fired its Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, saying it wanted to check a new ship-borne launch system.<br />Amid the ill feelings, cricket became the first diplomatic casualty.<br />"This is the Indian government saying (to Pakistan) that 'We're severely displeased and you must to do something if you want to continue normal relations,'" said analyst Prem Shankar Jha. "It's showing displeasure in a manner that people really will notice."<br />He said India's leaders are under public pressure to get tough. "No one in India trusts Pakistan right now, and to send a cricket team would be seen as complete trust in the Pakistan government," he said.<br />The Board of Control for Cricket in India called the tour "not feasible in the prevailing circumstances."<br />India cricket player Anil Kumble called it a good decision. "We had known that we won't be traveling to Pakistan under the present situation," he told the Press Trust of India news agency.<br />Pakistan's cricket authority said it bore no ill will toward its Indian counterpart.<br />"We are still on normal terms with BCCI because it was a decision neither in their nor in our hands. They have also said that if the situation gets normal in the future, it would send its team to Pakistan," said Salim Altaf, head of the Pakistan Cricket Board.<br />But Pakistanis expressed disappointment.<br />"It's a big disappointment and a setback to Asian cricket," former player Sarfraz Nawaz told the AP in Islamabad. "The terrorism acts could happen anywhere in the world, but that does not mean that sports activities should come to a halt."<br />In the upper house of India's Parliament, lawmakers debated legislation to overhaul the country's legal and security apparatus in light of glaring gaps in security and intelligence revealed by the Mumbai attack.<br />One bill passed unanimously Wednesday by the lower house would give police sweeping powers to detain terrorism suspects and carry out searches, while a second measure would create an FBI-style national investigation agency.<br />"It will only have a modest impact," said C. Uday Bhaskar, former director of India's Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses. "India needs many structural changes. ... It is only after a terrorist activity occurs that these measures take effect."<br />In Mumbai, a judge ordered two Indian citizens suspected of aiding the attackers kept in police custody until Dec. 31.<br />Prosecutors say one man, Faheem Ansari, had maps of the sites attacked in Mumbai, and police say the other, Sabauddin Ahmed, guided gunmen across India's porous borders. They were jailed last February after an attack on a police station in northern India.<br />"How they helped, what kind of help they gave the terrorists this is what we have to investigate," prosecutor Eknath Dhamal told the court. "Police need more time."<br />The alleged involvement of its own citizens has been a blow to India, which has tried to portray the attack as being entirely orchestrated from Pakistan.<br />___<br />Associated Press writers Muneeza Naqvi, Gavin Rabinowitz and Sandeep Nakai in New Delhi and Rizwan Ali in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Pakistan protests over airspace intrusion by India<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday summoned a senior Indian diplomat in Islamabad to protest against recent alleged airspace violations by Indian warplanes, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.<br />The violations, denied by India, occurred at a time when relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals have been severely strained by last month's attacks on Mumbai by militants India says came from Pakistan.<br />The Indian fighter jets crossed into Pakistani airspace over Kashmir and Punjab province, the government said last Saturday.<br />Pakistan said its own fighter jets were scrambled to chase off the intruders, but it also played down the incident by describing the violations as "technical" and "inadvertent."<br />India's deputy high commissioner, Manpreet Vohra, was given a written protest against the intrusions, saying they contravened a 1991 agreement aimed at preventing such incidents, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.<br />Indian air force spokesman insisted on Thursday that no Pakistani airspace violation had taken place.<br />"We stand by what we said earlier, that we have not violated their airspace. This is not true," said the spokesman, Wing Commander Mahesh Upasani.<br />Two Indian air force planes were shot down in a 1999 conflict in the Kargil region of divided Kashmir, after which there have been few reported violations.<br />(Reporting by Kamran Haider in Islamabad and Bappa Majumdar in New Dehli; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Sugita Katyal)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><strong>Pakistani protesters demand closing of U.S. supply route<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD: Thousands of anti-government protesters on Thursday demanded that Pakistan shut the route along which supplies are trucked to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, adding to pressure on the new government in Islamabad.<br />The demonstration by more than 10,000 people in the northwestern city of Peshawar also focused on a recent series of U.S. missile strikes against suspected Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border and Pakistani military offensives against Islamic insurgents in the area.<br />Leaders of the demonstration drew links between the missile attacks and the supply line, saying the equipment was being used for attacks on Pakistani soil and vowing to shut down the convoys.<br />"We will no longer let arms and ammunition pass through," Sirajul Haq, provincial chief of the hard-line Jamaat-e-Islami party, told the crowd. He added, "They are using the same against our innocent brothers, sisters and children."<br />The supply line, along which equipment passes from the Pakistani port city of Karachi through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, has increasingly come under assault, leading U.S. and NATO forces to scout possible alternative routes.<br />Hundreds of vehicles, including Humvees allocated for the Afghan Army, have been burned in recent weeks in arson attacks on Pakistani terminals, leaving several security guards dead. The convoys also are targets in Afghanistan, despite armed escorts.<br />The rally Thursday appeared to be the largest against Western use of the route since Pakistan's civilian government took office in March.<br />Protesters chanted, "Down with America!" and "Jihad is the only solution of America!" as they marched along a key road in Peshawar, led by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of Jamaat-e-Islami.<br />"If America continues atrocities against Muslims, it will also not be able to live in peace," Ahmed said on Express television.<br />The protest increased pressure on the new government at a time when it is also dealing with a declining economy and the fallout over the Mumbai terror attacks that killed more than 160 people.<br />India says the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group was behind the attacks. Pakistan has arrested some suspects and clamped down on a charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, allegedly linked to the outlawed group, but it insists it needs evidence from India. The crackdown on the charity also has stirred anti-government sentiment, with a series of recent demonstrations on behalf of Jamaat-ud-Dawa.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Pakistan says militant leader Azhar not in custody</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani militant leader who is one of the men most wanted by India is not in the custody of Pakistani authorities and is at large, Pakistan's foreign minister said on Thursday.<br />Maulana Masood Azhar is leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group that for years has battled Indian security forces in its part of the divided Kashmir region.<br />India blamed the group, along with another militant organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba, for a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.<br />A Pakistani intelligence official told Reuters this month that Azhar had been detained as part of a crackdown that Pakistani authorities launched after the militant attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai last month.<br />India has blamed "elements" in Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Taiba for the attack.<br />But Pakistan's top diplomat in New Delhi was reported as saying Azhar was not being held in Pakistan. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi sowed confusion when he told Pakistan's Dawn Television late on Wednesday that Azhar was in custody.<br />However, Qureshi said on Thursday he had been mistaken when he had told Dawn Azhar was in custody.<br />"That's not right. Other people have been detained but Mr Masood Azhar is at large. We have no knowledge of his whereabouts," Qureshi told Reuters.<br />Tension has been simmering between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan since the Mumbai attacks, in which 179 people were killed, and India has imposed a "pause" on their nearly five-year-old peace process.<br />(Reporting by Kamran Haider; Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Robert Birsel and Sugita Katyal)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Disputed U.S. house raid in Afghanistan elevates tension</strong><br />By Adam B. Ellick<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />KABUL, Afghanistan: A deadly United States military raid on a house near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan became a new source of tension on Thursday, with the Americans calling it a successful counterterrorism strike and the Afghans saying it left three innocent civilians dead and two wounded, including a 4-year-old boy bitten by an attack dog.<br />The raid took place on Wednesday in the village of Kundi in Khost Province. American military leaders and Afghan officials said they were investigating the conflicting accounts of what happened.<br />But President Hamid Karzai, who has grown increasingly impatient with the American-led war effort against the Taliban insurgency here, condemned the raid publicly in front of government leaders and foreign diplomats, saying that "entering by force to our people's houses is against the government of Afghanistan."<br />Karzai, who will face an election next year, is under enormous pressure from Afghans who say the 7-year-old war against the Taliban has devastated the country and led to many civilian casualties at the hands of American-led forces.<br />The raid took place on the same day that diplomats in Kabul called on foreign forces to increase their sensitivity in order to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghans.<br />In Khost, the raid occurred when American-led forces blasted the gate of a house early Wednesday, then fatally shot the family's father and mother and a male relative, according to Tahir Khan Sabry, deputy governor of the province. Their relationship with the wounded boy was unclear, but Sabry described all the victims as noncombatant civilians.<br />The American military said the raid led to the detention of an Al Qaeda operative, and that those killed were armed and showing "hostile intent." Multiple AK-47s, grenades, pistols and one shotgun were confiscated, American officials said.<br />The dispute over the Khost raid coincided with a visit to Afghanistan by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who said the United States needs to win over local support for the war.<br />In recent months, the governor of Khost, Arsala Jamal, has frequently complained about the actions of United States Special Forces that operate here. He said incidents that harm civilians undermine the progress of reconstruction efforts by permanently based American military forces and their Afghan allies in the provinces.<br />In Khost, public outrage over the house raid was visible at the funerals for the killed Afghans. The use of dogs in military actions is especially sensitive for Afghans after the release of images showing canine intimidation of detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.<br />"I saw the 4-year-old boy, and he had an injury under his knee that was definitely the mark of a dog bite," said Rasoul Adel, a local television reporter who arrived at the scene immediately after the incident.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>*******************</div><br /><div></div><a href="http://www.iht.com/"></a><br /><div><br /><strong>Iraq arrests extend beyond key ministry</strong><br />By Campbell Robertson and Tareq Maher<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials on Thursday confirmed a wave of arrests in what appeared to be a major internal crackdown inside the nation's security apparatus. But in an atmosphere of secrecy and political rivalry, the officials could agree on few other facts, from the number detained to the seriousness of the allegations.<br />At a news conference on Thursday, Major General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, repeated some of the more serious allegations that had leaked out the night before. He told reporters that 23 officials from the Interior Ministry had been arrested in recent days, many for being affiliated with Al Awda, a descendant of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which is now banned.<br />In a possible indication of the breadth of the investigation, the Interior Ministry said that the investigation involved not only the ministry itself, as had been reported, but also the Defense and National Security Ministries. Others said that the investigation was not over and that more arrests could be expected.<br />But Khalaf sought to discredit the most serious of the allegations made earlier by Iraqi officials, saying there was no evidence that the suspects were in the early stages of planning a coup against Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.<br />The conflicting accounts of the operation prompted an urgent question from Maliki's critics: Were the arrests politically motivated, carried out as a way for Maliki to weaken his rivals before the nationwide provincial elections planned for next month?<br />Suspicions were fueled by reports that a counterterrorism force overseen directly by Maliki was part of the operation, though several officials denied it.<br />Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said questions had been raised by the shifting accusations he and other Iraqi political leaders had heard in the past several days: that the detainees were planning a coup; that they belonged to Al Awda; and that they planned to burn down the ministry.<br />Also, the officials arrested seem to have come disproportionately from the Interior Ministry, an agency dominated by members of Maliki's rival parties.<br />"These conflicting stories and the lack of transparency has led some people to think that this is all politically motivated and has to do with the election," Othman said.<br />The arrests came about as part of the work of a committee set up two weeks ago by Maliki, said General Ahmed Abu Raqeef, the director of internal affairs for the Interior Ministry.<br />Initial accounts provided by Iraqi security officials, and published by The New York Times on Thursday, said that Raqeef was among those arrested. But on Thursday he said that account was wrong. In fact, he said, he was part of the committee overseeing the investigation of Iraqi security officials on a number of charges.<br />The committee is made up of a judge and five senior security officials, Raqeef said, including representatives from the three security ministries the Interior, Defense and National Security Ministries.<br />The group has been investigating officials suspected of making fake security badges, enabling terrorist activities or having inappropriate ties with foreign countries or political parties, including Al Awda.<br />Raqeef said that so far there was no solid proof implicating the security officials, at least the ones from the Interior Ministry. But he said that he had ordered the detention of 16 officials from the ministry as part of the investigation, which is continuing. He said he did not know how many were held from the other security ministries.<br />A senior adviser to Jawad al-Bulani, the interior minister, who did not want to give his name because he was not authorized to speak publicly, provided a list of names and ranks of 24 Interior Ministry officials he said were arrested, which includes lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant colonels and generals.<br />Abas al-Bayati, a member of the security and defense committee in the Parliament, said that more than 30 Interior Ministry officials had been detained.<br />It is just as uncertain how many were detained at other ministries. Brigadier General Qassim Atta, a military spokesman, said one official from the Defense Ministry had been arrested. Ayad al-Taei, the public relations director at the Interior Ministry, said seven Defense Ministry officials had been detained.<br />The minister of defense himself, Abdul Qadir al-Ubaidi, said he had not received information about any arrests.<br />A senior security official in Baghdad, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the operation, said there had been at least 39 arrests among all the ministries and that 4 had occurred on Thursday.<br />Many Iraqi officials reacted to the news of detentions and secret investigations with anger.<br />"This is not the first time and it will be not the last one that the Iraqi government carried out such an operation without the knowledge of the Council of Representatives, which is a legislative and monitoring entity on the government's activities," said Waleed Sherka, a Turkmen member of Parliament who is also on the security and defense committee. "We certainly didn't know about it."<br />The adviser to Bulani said that the prime minister had been privately pushing for the arrest of a number of Interior officials for two months, but that Bulani had pushed back, insisting that the officials were innocent.<br />Bulani's hand was forced, however, when the other ministries agreed to form the committee and so he gave his assent, the adviser said, attributing the episode to the political rivalry between Bulani, who is building his own Iraqi Constitutional Party, and Maliki.<br />However, both Raqeef and Taei, the public relations director for the Interior Ministry, said the interior minister fully supported the formation of the committee.<br />Bulani has been traveling but is expected to return to Iraq on Friday.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>********************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>EDITORIAL</strong></div><br /><div><strong>The Pentagon and the torture report<br /></strong>Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President George W. Bush's most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.<br />Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.<br />The report shows how actions by these men "led directly" to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret CIA prisons.<br />It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America's standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy.<br />The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the "war on terror" - the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.<br />That order set the stage for the infamous redefinition of torture at the Justice Department, and then Rumsfeld's authorization of "aggressive" interrogation methods. Some of those methods were torture by any rational definition and many of them violate laws against abusive and degrading treatment.<br />These top officials ignored warnings from lawyers in every branch of the armed forces that they were breaking the law, subjecting soldiers to possible criminal charges and authorizing abuses that were not only considered by experts to be ineffective, but were actually counterproductive.<br />One page of the report lists the repeated objections that President Bush and his aides so arrogantly ignored: The air force had "serious concerns regarding the legality of many of the proposed techniques"; the chief legal adviser to the military's criminal investigative task force said they were of dubious value and may subject soldiers to prosecution; one of the army's top lawyers said some techniques that stopped well short of waterboarding "may violate the torture statute." The Marines said they "arguably violate federal law." The navy pleaded for a real review.<br />The legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time started that review but told the Senate committee that her boss, General Richard Myers, ordered her to stop on the instructions of Rumsfeld's legal counsel, Haynes.<br />The report indicates that Haynes was an early proponent of the idea of using the agency that trains soldiers to withstand torture to devise plans for the interrogation of prisoners held by the American military. These trainers - who are not interrogators but experts only on how physical and mental pain is inflicted and may be endured - were sent to work with interrogators in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo and in Iraq.<br />On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld authorized interrogators at Guantánamo to use a range of abusive techniques that were already widespread in Afghanistan, enshrining them as official policy.<br />Rumsfeld rescinded his order a month later, and narrowed the number of "aggressive techniques" that could be used. But he did so only after the navy's chief lawyer threatened to formally protest the illegal treatment of prisoners.<br />The abuse and torture of prisoners continued at prisons run by the CIA and specialists from the torture-resistance program remained involved in the military detention system until 2004. Some of the practices Rumsfeld left in place seem illegal, like prolonged sleep deprivation.<br />A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse.<br />Given Barack Obama's other problems - and how far he has moved from the powerful stands he took on these issues early in the campaign - we do not hold out real hope that as president he will take such a politically fraught step.<br />At the least, Obama should order his attorney general to review more than two dozen prisoner-abuse cases that reportedly were referred to the Justice Department by the Pentagon and the CIA - and declined by Bush's lawyers.<br />Obama should consider proposals from groups like Human Rights Watch to appoint an independent panel to look into these egregious violations of the law. Unless America and its leaders know precisely what went wrong in the last seven years, it will be impossible to make sure those terrible mistakes are not repeated.<br />We expect Obama to keep the promise he made repeatedly in the campaign. He said one of his first acts as president would be to order a review of all of Bush's executive orders and reverse those that eroded civil liberties and the rule of law. That job will fall to Eric Holder, a veteran prosecutor who has been chosen as attorney general, and Gregory Craig, a lawyer with extensive national security experience who has been selected as Obama's White House counsel.<br />A good place for them to start would be to reverse Bush's disastrous order of Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the United States was no longer legally committed to comply with the Geneva Conventions.</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Iraqi journalist who threw shoes at Bush said to ask for pardon<br /></strong>By Timothy Williams and Atheer Kakan<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BAGHDAD: The Iraqi television journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush at a news conference this week has asked the prime minister for a pardon, an Iraqi government official said Thursday.<br />In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, apologized for the incident, calling it an "ugly action," Maliki's spokesman said.<br />"He sent a letter to the prime minister, apologizing for his ugly action and he asked the prime minister to pardon him as a son asks his father for forgiveness," said the spokesman, Yassin Majid.<br />The tone of the comments by the prime minister's office suggested Maliki might be considering lenient treatment of the journalist, who is still in custody. But the reporter's lawyer and his family could not be reached immediately to confirm that he had even sent such a letter to Maliki.<br />At a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday held by Bush and Maliki, Zaidi rose abruptly as Bush was speaking, cocked his right arm and fired a shoe at the president's head while shouting in Arabic: "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!"<br />Bush deftly ducked and the shoe narrowly missed him. Zaidi threw his other shoe, again with great force, this time shouting, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" The second shoe also sailed over Bush's head.<br />Zaidi was subdued by a fellow journalist and then beaten by members of the prime minister's security detail.</div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Pentagon looks at plan for Guantanamo closure</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />By David Morgan<br />The Pentagon is working on a plan to shut the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that would be available to President-elect Barack Obama when he takes office on January 20, a defence official said on Thursday.<br />U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has asked his staff to come up with an assessment of what it would take to shutter the prison camp that has become a blemish on the international reputation of the United States.<br />"If this is one of the president-elect's first orders of business, the secretary wants to be prepared to help him as soon as possible," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.<br />"(Gates) has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down -- what would be required specifically to close it, and move the detainees from that facility, while at the same time, of course, ensuring that we protect the American people from some dangerous characters."<br />Obama has pledged to close the prison located at the U.S. naval station in southeastern Cuba, which has come to symbolize aggressive detention practices that opened the United States to allegations of torture.<br />There was no immediate word on how soon Obama might address the Guantanamo question. But the president-elect, who has repeatedly called its closure a top foreign policy priority, said in the current issue of Time magazine that he hoped to have the jail shut during the first two years of his term.<br />Gates, who was appointed by Bush, but has agree to stay on under Obama, also wants Guantanamo shut.<br />The jail currently holds about 250 detainees apprehended as part of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks.<br />LENGTHY, COMPLEX PROCESS<br />Defence officials said the task of closing Guantanamo is likely to be a lengthy, complex process that would involve all three branches of the government.<br />"You look at this sort of thing early because that's when you have momentum for bringing about change. With a new administration coming in, you've got people who are willing to do what's necessary," said one defence official.<br />Officials said members of the Office of the Secretary of Defence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will provide Obama with a set of options for tackling the complex issues raised by Guantanamo. It was not clear whether the Pentagon would recommend a specific course of action to the new president.<br />The Obama administration would need to decide where to hold current detainees, particularly about 110 prisoners who the Pentagon believes are too dangerous to be released from U.S. custody. Options might include military installations on U.S. soil and civilian federal prisons.<br />The United States would also need to decide what kind of court system should handle trials for roughly 80 detainees. There are now charges against 20.<br />"The request has been made, his team is working on it so that he can be prepared to assist the president-elect should he wish to address this very early in his tenure," the press secretary said.<br />Addressing these issues could require input from a number of other government entities including the Justice Department, judicial officers and Congress, officials said. In fact, Gates has said that Congress should pass legislation to protect the American public by preventing any former Guantanamo detainee from living in the United States.<br />The Guantanamo tribunals are scheduled to reconvene on January 19 for pretrial hearings for Canadian captive Omar Khadr, who is set for trial the following week on charges of murdering a U.S. soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan.<br />(Additional reporting Caren Bohan in Chicago and Jane Sutton in Miami, Editing by Howard Goller)</div><div> </div><div>**************</div><div><br /><strong>FBI assailed for overtime pay</strong><br />FBI agents on temporary assignment in Iraq billed an average of $45,000 in overtime and extra pay for eating, watching movies and going to cocktail parties in some cases, the Justice Department said Thursday, The Associated Press reported from Washington.<br />The audit by the Justice Department inspector general, Glenn Fine, concluded that the FBI improperly paid overtime and other premium allowances to employees sent to war zones.<br />From 2003 to 2007, the FBI spent $63 million in overtime and extra pay for employees in Iraq, the report found. Of that, $7.8 million was improperly billed.<br />"Several FBI employees noted that they periodically spent time during the work day washing clothes," the report noted. "Questioned whether he should have been paid for the time spent in this activity, one employee defended the practice, saying, 'When you're in that environment, anything you do to survive is work for the FBI."'<br />Other agents defended being paid to go to a regular Saturday night cocktail party, calling it an important "liaison" meeting.<br />"We found that, on the whole, few if any employees worked exactly 16 hours a day, every day, for 90 days straight, within the meaning of the term 'work' as it is used in applicable regulations and policies," the report concludes.<br />The assistant director of the FBI, John Miller, said the overtime policy was no longer in use. He said it was only supposed to be a short-time pay solution in the early days of the war.<br />Similarly, FBI agents in Afghanistan also misused overtime and extra pay, but to a lesser extent, the report asserts.<br />Also misusing extra pay and attendance policies in Iraq and Afghanistan - but in a more limited way - were agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; The Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>U.S. should be ready if Iraq bars Blackwater</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: A U.S. government report raises the possibility that private security firm Blackwater could lose its licence to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq and advises making contingency plans, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.<br />Five Blackwater guards were charged on December 8 with killing 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others in a 2007 Baghdad shooting that outraged Iraqis and raised questions about the firm's ability to keep working in Iraq.<br />The State Department relies heavily on North Carolina-based Blackwater and other private security companies, many of which are staffed by former U.S. soldiers, to protect its diplomats in Iraq, the West Bank and other dangerous places.<br />The two sources described the draft report prepared by the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) on condition that they not be named because it has yet to be made public.<br />"The department faces the real possibility that one of its primary worldwide personal protective services contractors in Iraq -- Blackwater USA -- will not receive a licence to continue operating in Iraq," said the report, referring to a licence issued by the Iraqi authorities, the sources said.<br />The OIG is a quasi-independent office whose mission includes preventing fraud, abuse and mismanagement as well identifying vulnerabilities and recommending solutions.<br />The sources stressed that the report did not recommend dropping Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq. One source said that inspector general reports typically recommend that agencies prepare for "worst-case" scenarios.<br />A State Department spokesman said the department will not make a decision whether to retain the company's services in Iraq until a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into the 2007 incident is completed.<br />The shooting occurred as Blackwater guards escorted a convoy of U.S. diplomats through Baghdad on September 16, 2007. The guards, U.S. military veterans, were responding to a car bombing when shooting erupted in a crowded intersection.<br />In a 35-count indictment, the U.S. Justice Department charged the guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempt to commit manslaughter and a weapons violation count.<br />When the charges were unveiled, Blackwater said it believed the guards acted "acted within the rules set forth for them by the government and that no criminal violations occurred."<br />Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, who led the State Department's original investigation into the 2007 shooting, said the department is always ready to protect its diplomats.<br />"The State Department takes very seriously its obligation to provide security for its personnel around the world in an appropriate manner," he said. "We are always prepared to deal with changing circumstances."<br />(Editing by Eric Walsh)</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama briefed on Iraq withdrawal plans</strong><br />By Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: A new military plan for troop withdrawals from Iraq that was described in broad terms this week to President-elect Barack Obama falls short of the 16-month timetable Obama outlined during his election campaign, U.S. military officials said.<br />The plan was proposed by the top American commanders responsible for Iraq, General David Petraeus and General Ray Odierno, and it represents their first recommendation on troop withdrawals under an Obama presidency. While Obama has said he will seek advice from his commanders, their resistance to a faster drawdown could present the new president with a tough political choice between overruling his generals or backing away from his goal.<br />The plan, completed last week, envisions withdrawing two more brigades, or some 7,000 to 8,000 troops, from Iraq in the first six months of 2009, the military officials said. But that would leave 12 combat brigades in Iraq by June 2009, and while declining to be more specific, the officials made clear that the withdrawal of all combat forces under the generals' recommendations would not come until some time after May 2010, Obama's target.<br />Transition officials said the plan was described in only general terms to Obama by Robert Gates, who is staying on as defense secretary, and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when Obama met for five and a half hours with his national security team Monday in Chicago. They said all participants had sidestepped the details of how to reconcile Obama's timetable for withdrawing combat forces with the more extended one recommended by the generals. A transition official said that in future meetings, "the military will get a chance to articulate their preferences."<br />In the campaign, Obama said he would not hesitate to overrule his commanders. By early December, however, he signaled some flexibility when he said that he still wanted combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months but that he would also listen to the recommendations of his generals. Gates has expressed confidence that he and Obama might reach common ground. But in discussing the new plan, senior military officials nonetheless made clear that they were not comfortable with the time frame Obama articulated in the campaign.<br />"Sixteen months is going to be tough," said one senior military officer who was briefed on the plan. "We are not quite there yet."<br />Those at the Chicago meeting included Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's choice for secretary of state; Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr.; General James Jones, who is to be Obama's national security adviser; Susan Rice, who is to be ambassador to the United Nations; Rahm Emanuel, who will be White House chief of staff; Gregory Craig, who will be White House counsel; James Steinberg, who is expected to be deputy secretary of state; Thomas Donilon, who is expected to be Jones's deputy; and Anthony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser to Biden.<br />Obama apparently did not ask Gates or Mullen for specifics on withdrawals, according to people briefed on the discussions. "There was not challenging or questioning of any particular timetable," a transition official said. "There wasn't a point on which there was any pushback from either side."<br />For his part, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said that Gates had left the Chicago meeting feeling that "they had an excellent discussion, and excellent chemistry as well."<br />The plan drafted by Odierno and Petraeus was drawn up to meet the so-called status of forces agreement between the United States and Iraqi governments that calls for all American forces to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011 and all combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June. The agreement sets forth both a shorter and longer timetable than Obama's campaign pledge, with some combat forces out sooner but all forces out later.<br />One way commanders say they will try to meet that first deadline is by effectively reassigning combat troops to training and support of the Iraqis, even though the difference would be in some cases semantic because armed American troops would still go on combat patrols with their Iraqi counterparts.<br />The participants at the Chicago meeting did discuss the deadline for all American combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by June, as outlined in the agreement with the Iraqi government. A person familiar with the talks said those at the meeting discussed whether the Iraqis would allow "re-missioned" combat forces to remain in Iraqi cities after June. Gates and Mullen did not rule out the idea that Iraqis might permit such troops, the person said.<br />In a briefing to reporters last week in Balad, Iraq, Odierno said that some American forces would remain in a support role in Iraqi cities beyond the June deadline. He said that the troops would be deployed at numerous security outposts in urban areas to help support and train Iraqi forces. "We'll maintain our very close partnership with the Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq even after the summer," he said.<br />Odierno said that it was particularly important for American troops to support Iraqis in 2009, when three elections, at the provincial, district and national levels, are scheduled. "It's important that we maintain enough presence here that we can help them through this year of transition," he said.<br />Odierno also said that he was planning for all American forces to be out of Iraq by 2011, as called for in the agreement with the Iraqi government, but he said the agreement could be renegotiated. "Three years is a long time," Odierno said.<br />The new military plan also calls for American troops in Iraq after 2011, but it does not put a number on that force, a person familiar with its details said.<br />Other topics discussed at the meeting in Chicago included Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, the detainees at Guantánamo Bay and how the national security policy-making process in the Obama administration would work.<br />Helene Cooper contributed reporting.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>*********************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Minister under fire for Germany's role in Iraq<br /></strong>By Judy Dempsey<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BERLIN: The credibility of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrat who will challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in national elections in the autumn, came under sharp attack Thursday over continuing allegations that - under his tutelage - Germany in fact aided the United States both in its "war on terror" and in the Iraq invasion that Berlin opposed.<br />In a foretaste of the national election campaign next year, conservatives aligned with Merkel and opposition deputies both sharply attacked Steinmeier's credibility when he appeared - for the fifth time in two years - before a parliamentary committee investigating allegations that German intelligence services were aware of CIA kidnappings, and of prisoner renditions to third countries where torture was permitted, and were involved in preparing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.<br />As chief of staff for the former Social Democrat chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, Steinmeier was politically responsible for intelligence services and their activities.<br />As in previous appearances, Steinmeier denied that German intelligence agents based in Baghdad had passed on information to the United States during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or that he was aware of any renditions that involved the kidnapping of alleged terror suspects for U.S. interrogation.<br />"There is no reason for me to believe that the wishes of the government were either knowingly or unknowingly violated," Steinmeier said.<br />But the allegations continue to embarrass the Social Democrats. Schröder firmly opposed the Iraq invasion, joined France and Russia in a coalition against it and won re-election in 2002 on the strength of a strong campaign against U.S. policy.<br />Deputies who support Merkel sharpened their attacks Thursday, capitalizing on a furor stirred this week by a report in Der Spiegel magazine that the German BND intelligence agency played a role in planning some parts of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.<br />The magazine cited former U.S. military officers, including General Tommy Franks, who commanded the Iraq invasion. Franks was quoted as telling Der Spiegel: "It would be a huge mistake to underestimate the value of information provided by the Germans. These guys were invaluable," referring to two agents in Iraq.<br />The affair "hangs like a millstone around Steinmeier's neck," said Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, leader of the Christian Social Union, a Bavarian party that is allied with Merkel's Christian Democratic Union. Norbert Röttgen, a senior figure in Merkel's party, said Steinmeier's credibility was now at stake.<br />Previously, the conservatives - who now govern in awkward tandem with the Social Democrats - had spared Steinmeier such criticism. But the atmosphere is heating up ahead of the campaign next year.<br />Opposition members were also sharply critical. It was now increasingly clear that Germany under Schröder "played an active role in the Iraq war," said Max Stadler of the Free Democrats. A Green deputy on the committee, Hans-Christian Ströbele, dismissed Steinmeier's claim that the agents were on a humanitarian mission as "absolute nonsense."<br />Steinmeier insisted that the two German intelligence agents in Baghdad in spring 2003 did not provide "active support of combat operations."<br />He said they worked "to avoid an embassy or hospital from being bombed, which has nothing to do with double standards but with saving innocent people's lives."<br />The agents, based at the French Embassy, were gathering their own information and were not forced to rely on outside sources, he said.<br />Steinmeier has also denied knowing anything about the kidnapping of Khaled el-Masri, a German-Lebanese who has said that he was imprisoned by U.S. agents in December 2003 in Macedonia and then tortured in Afghanistan before being released five months later.<br />Masri has said that while he was in Afghanistan he was questioned by a man who spoke perfect German.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>******************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>NEWS ANALYSIS</strong></div><br /><div><strong>Uphill battle to repair Gaza truce</strong><br />By Ethan Bronner<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />JERUSALEM: Rockets are flying from Gaza into southern Israeli communities again. Israeli warplanes are firing missiles back, and Israel is shutting the crossings through which food and fuel are supplied. The United Nations agency that feeds Palestinian refugees in Gaza says its stocks of flour are exhausted.<br />In other words, the six-month truce that Israel and Hamas, the militant Palestinian rulers of Gaza, agreed on last June 19 is over, although it officially expires Friday. Officials and analysts on both sides say that things are likely to deteriorate further in the short term, but that since both sides need the truce they will probably grope their way back to it. The question is how soon and after how much suffering.<br />Both Israel and Hamas accuse the other of bad faith and of violations of the Egyptian-mediated accord, and each side has a point. Rockets from Gaza never stopped entirely during the truce, and Israel never allowed a major renewed flow of goods into Gaza, crippling its economy. This is at least partly because the agreement had no mutually agreed text or enforcement mechanism, since neither side wanted to grant the legitimacy to the other that such a document would imply.<br />"I think it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better," said Robert Pastor, who has been traveling in the region with former President Jimmy Carter, meeting with Hamas and other officials. "It did lead to a significant reduction in the number of rockets fired at Israel until November, but the truce had less impact on the goods going in. One hopes both sides learn lessons and agree on a text and publicize it."<br />There seems little likelihood of that happening soon. Hamas considers Israel an illegitimate state and is doctrinally committed to its destruction, while Israel views Hamas as a terrorist group that must be dismantled. Yet each needs the other to hold its fire. That is why negotiations over another truce have started, again through Egypt.<br />Hamas officials say it was their understanding at the time that two weeks after the June 19 accord went into effect, Israel would open the crossings and allow the transfer of goods that had been banned or restricted after June 2007, when Hamas waged a violent takeover of Gaza.<br />Its job, the Hamas officials said, was to stop the rockets going into Israel not only from its own armed groups but also from others based in Gaza, including Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.<br />It took some days, but they were largely successful. Hamas imposed its will and even imprisoned some rocket shooters. Israeli and UN figures show that whereas in May 2008 there were more than 300 rockets fired into Israel, in July there were 10 to 20, depending on who is counting and whether mortars are included. In August there were 10 to 30; in September, 5 to 10.<br />But the goods shipments, while up some 25 percent to 30 percent and with a mix of more items, never began to approach what Hamas thought it was going to get - a return of the 500 to 600 truckloads daily from before the closure, including appliances, construction material and other goods vital to life beyond survival. Instead, the number of trucks went up to about 90 from about 70.<br />Israeli officials acknowledge that transferring previously banned goods had been the plan but said that there was no specific date for the increase and that it was to happen in steps. But the rockets never fully stopped.<br />"The Palestinians wanted to have one or two rockets a week to keep our people in tension and still tell people inside Gaza, 'See, we continue to fight and we continue to bring in goods,"' said Shlomo Dror, chief spokesman for the Israeli Defense Ministry. "The moment we fail to react to one rocket, we encourage them. Our only choice was to close the crossings when rockets came in."<br />In addition, Israeli forces continued to attack Hamas and other militants in the West Bank, prompting Palestinian militants in Gaza to fire rockets. The Israeli Army also found several dozen improvised explosive devices used against their vehicles on the Gaza border and about a dozen cases of sniper fire from Gaza directed at them.<br />While this back-and-forth did not topple the agreement, Israel's decision in early November to destroy a tunnel that Hamas was digging near the border drove the cycle of violence to a much higher level.<br />Israel says the tunnel could have been dug only for the purpose of trying to seize a soldier, like Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli held by Hamas for the past two and a half years. The attack on the tunnel killed six Hamas militants, and each side has stepped up attacks since.<br />Israel had been hoping that the agreement would lead to progress on Shalit's release, or at least to increased information on his condition or negotiations over an exchange for him.<br />But Hamas said the Shalit case was entirely separate from the accord, just as Israel has rejected Hamas's request for an extension of the agreement to the West Bank. There, too, Hamas had hopes that the accord would create some changes that did not take place.<br />Taghreed el-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Taking the long view<br /></strong>By Rami G. Khouri<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BEIRUT: The coming days will reveal much about the mettle and intentions of the Palestinian group Hamas, which now effectively runs a mini-state in the Gaza Strip after defeating its rival Fatah in a few street skirmishes last year.<br />The six-month-old cease-fire with Israel ends this week and talks are going on now between Israeli and Egyptian officials about renewing it. Hamas leaders in Damascus and Gaza have given slightly different versions of their positions, some leaning toward a cease-fire extension and others toward a resumption of fighting.<br />Hamas has stated that it will extend the cease-fire - and indeed for many years has offered Israel a long-term truce - if the Israelis in turn meet their side of the deal, which is to stop killing and arresting Palestinians, colonizing their land and strangling them economically.<br />The fact that Hamas would consider letting the cease-fire lapse speaks much about its mind-set and the options that it is willing to pursue. This moment allows us to accurately gauge what Hamas is all about, rather than see it through the lens of exaggerated misperceptions.<br />Reasonable people would expect that Israelis and Palestinians alike prefer a cease-fire to warfare, especially since mutual attacks have never resolved the core conflict. Hamas' decision to extend the cease-fire is not going to be made on the basis of what makes its people more or less comfortable, or what entices Israelis into opening the gates a little bit wider to allow more consumer goods to enter Gaza.<br />The basis on which Hamas makes such decisions reflects its wider worldview of the character and aims of Israel, and the nature of its confrontation with Israel.<br />Like other Islamist groups, Hamas calculates on the basis of a longer time frame rather than the next election, shifting public opinion or whether or not it will get invited to tea in the White House. The most important factor in the mind of Islamist leaders who decide such things is whether the agreement to renew the cease-fire reflects mutual respect and an acceptance of the principle of equal rights for Israel and Hamas.<br />If the deal proposed is seen to have forced Israel to change its position and respect the terms of the agreement, Hamas will extend. If it merely comprises vague Israeli promises in return for Hamas and other militant groups stopping their rocket attacks against Israel, the deal will collapse. Hamas' view is that mutual needs, rather than Israeli security, must be assured for a cease-fire to happen.<br />The driving force for such a posture is the Islamist sense that the battle to defend and reclaim the land will be a long one, and it will require a heavy price in lives and suffering before Israel negotiates sincerely and sees the Palestinians as humans worthy of the same rights as Israelis.<br />Hamas showed its strength a few days ago, when some 200,000 supporters rallied in Gaza to mark the group's 21st anniversary. It has generated strong support as well as deep opposition among Palestinians and other Arabs, but more important for it is whether or not it has generated respect in Israel. If the Israelis feel Hamas can fight a long-term battle, then Hamas will feel it has achieved an important goal: the respect of its enemy.<br />Hamas is well entrenched in Gaza and is prepared for an Israeli military attack, if such an attack takes place. These Palestinian Islamists clearly have learned from their colleagues in Hezbollah and other such groups, who have shown themselves to be the most adept Arabs at fighting Israel militarily. They have obviously used the past year to prepare for an Israeli attack on their little statelet - making the cost to Israel likely to be similar to the price Israel paid when it went into south Lebanon years ago.<br />Israeli leaders have warned that they will have to take drastic measures if the rockets from Gaza do not stop falling on southern Israel. Hamas ignores such threats because it knows that Israel has reached the limit of what it can do with conventional military force. Israel directly occupied Gaza for decades and used brutal force in trying to pacify it, which only succeeded in giving birth to Hamas. More Israeli tanks in the streets of Gaza would only reflect Israeli renewed perplexity about how to deal with the group, rather than a coherent plan to resolve the conflict.<br />The main criteria for a renewal of the Hamas-Israel cease-fire are not fear of the other or the ability to inflict military pain, but respect for the other and the willingness to deal as equals.<br />Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of The Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Distributed by Agence Global.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>*********************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>OPINION - FAITH AND GLOBALIZATION</strong></div><br /><div><strong>An alliance of values</strong><br />By Tony Blair<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEW HAVEN, Connecticut: The pressures of globalization are pushing people together, obliterating boundaries through trade, travel, telecommunications and mass migration. If religious faith in such an interdependent world acts to push people apart, it becomes a force for division and conflict.<br />That is bad for everybody. But for people of religious faith, that is a particularly bad outcome. It means that faith becomes synonymous not with reconciliation, compassion and justice - what true religious faith should stand for - but with hatred and sectarianism.<br />I am so convinced of the importance of this issue that, over the past few months, I undertook to conduct a seminar at Yale University to explore the subject. I did so not as an intellectual exercise, but because I believe this is a severely practical matter. Unless we find a way of reconciling faith and globalization, the world will be not only a dangerous place, but globalization itself will be far less successful in spreading prosperity.<br />There are 10 lessons I've learned from this undertaking:<br />- Religious faith matters. Whether one likes it or not, billions of people are motivated by religious faith.<br />- Faith is not in decline. It may be in decline in some places, but not worldwide. In some parts of the world, it is growing.<br />- Religious faith can operate positively in support, for example, of the UN Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty and advance development. Wonderful work has been done on this by churches, mosques and Hindu and Jewish interfaith organizations. Or, religion can operate negatively, through fundamentalism or extremism.<br />- Globalization is forging multi-faith societies. The London my little boy is growing up in is completely different than the London he would have grown up in 30 years ago. The same is true across Europe and the United States as well.<br />- To work effectively, globalization needs values like trust, confidence, openness and justice.<br />- Faith is not the only means, but is an important means, of providing those values if faith is itself open and not closed; if it is based on compassion and help for others and not on the basis of exclusionary identity.<br />- For globalization to flourish, we need social capital - trust in one another, so we can have confidence in the future. Spiritual capital, so to speak, is an important part of social capital.<br />- In an era, however, of globalization and multi-faith societies, creating such spiritual capital requires not only tolerance of, but respect for, people of other faiths.<br />- The key to respect is understanding, and hence the need to learn and to educate ourselves about each other's faith and traditions.<br />- Organized religion should be supporting this process, and allowing through it the evolution of faith so that faith can be a positive, constructive and progressive force.<br />So, faith matters. Values matter. How those combine will critically define the prospects of success, prosperity and peaceful co-existence of the global society in which we live. The alternative is tension, conflict and violence.<br />What does this mean practically? I once thought that globalization was a value-free process. Certainly, I thought, one should seek justice in an era of globalization for its own sake, but not for the reasons of efficiency. I have now come to change my view. This current global economic crisis illustrates why.<br />The crisis is first and foremost a crisis brought about in part by behavior - irresponsibility - that we wish hadn't taken place. And it has been prolonged by the absence of confidence because people can't trust the system.<br />Values such as trust - being able to rely on the other person's word, or long-term perspective instead of short-term profit maximization - are exactly what will create the confidence required to put our economy back on a sound footing for the future. In other words, confidence and the stability that flows from it cannot be restored by technical, regulatory means alone, but by a restoration of values.<br />This is but one case that illustrates the idea that an interdependent world cannot function without values that create the bonds of trust. In foreign policy, this can be seen even more clearly. The violent attacks we saw in Mumbai are representative of the type of security threat we face in many places globally, from Iraq to Afghanistan, Iran to Pakistan to our own cities in the West.<br />Of course, we must be prepared for a military response as part of the answer to violence. But it is also true that it will be the force of ideas rather than the force of arms that will allow globalization to succeed and not break apart in strife.<br />Securing peace between Israel and Palestine would obviously be of enormous importance, a huge symbolic expression that would militate against the divisiveness and hatred that inspires people to commit acts of terrorism in the name of God.<br />If we were able to create a space where people of different faiths could live and work together peacefully, it would be a powerful demonstration of a different set of values at work than those which, for decades, have only generated never-ending violence.<br />To defeat the forces of exclusion and division that lead to terrorism, which now has an enormous reach across all areas of the world, we must turn to education as a major component - not a minor effort - of foreign policy. We need to become literate about other faiths and ways of life.<br />Therefore, in both economic policy and foreign policy, it is clear than we can't make the world safe for interdependence unless we have strong values that guide us. Peaceful co-existence cannot take root unless we have strong alliances not only across nations but across faiths, through values we hold in common.<br />Whether the issue is the global economic crisis, African poverty or global warming, faith communities can provide a solid foundation for values and allied endeavors based on those values. But this is only true if faith is not about our traditions or our identity, but about values - not just the values of democracy and freedom, but of the common good, compassion and justice.<br />Above all, we need an alliance of values that acknowledges - despite differences in creed or color - the equal dignity and equal worth of every individual before God.<br />This article is adapted from a talk by Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, given last week at Yale University. Distributed by Tribune Media Services.</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Trapped maids face life of abuse in Lebanon</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />By Yara Bayoumy<br />An Ethiopian housemaid lies bandaged in a government hospital after falling from a 12th floor balcony. She says her Lebanese employer pushed her off.<br />"Madam asked me to hang the clothes. Then she came and pushed me from behind," the 25-year-old woman told Reuters. Too frightened to let her name be published, she said her employer had frequently threatened and abused her.<br />"Madam would tell me, 'I will spill hot oil on you', so I hid the oil. She would take a knife and threaten to kill me. She would beat me with shoes, pull my hair to the floor," the injured woman said, her face still bruised a month later.<br />According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), nearly every week one of an estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon dies. Suicide, falling while trying to escape their employer and untreated illness are the main causes of death. The employers are rarely prosecuted.<br />HRW says maids in Lebanon, as elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia, are vulnerable to beatings, rape and even murder for lack of national laws to protect them from abusive employers.<br />Live-in housemaids have been a fixture among well-off Lebanese families for years. They often do everything from heavy housework to nannying and helping with children's homework.<br />Many get no days off, work for up to 18 hours and are locked indoors. Others leave the house only to shop or walk a dog.<br />Employers, who routinely confiscate their passports to deter them from running away, promise to pay maids $150 (96 pounds) to $250 (161 pounds) a month depending on their nationalities. But many employers don't pay as agreed. Some verbally and physically abuse their workers.<br />They often deduct the first three month's wages to pay a fee to the agencies that import the maids.<br />"We've definitely seen a lot of cases where the employer would beat, slap (a worker) when she makes a "mistake" - that could be breaking a plate, badly ironing a shirt or burning some food on the stove," added HRW senior researcher Nadim Houry.<br />EMBASSIES OVERWHELMED<br />When domestic workers get into distress, they may ask their embassies to help, but staff are often overwhelmed. The Sri Lankan embassy, for example, has two people to handle some 80,000 Sri Lankan workers in Lebanon.<br />The issues are laid bare in a recent documentary, "Maid in Lebanon II: Voices from Home," directed by Carol Mansour in coordination with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).<br />The 40-minute film, narrated by a Lebanese woman awaiting the arrival of a maid from the Philippines, provides information about the rights and obligations of employers and workers, the full costs of hiring maids and how they should be treated.<br />"It's so obvious that there is a problem here," Mansour told Reuters at her office in Beirut's Hamra district.<br />"The concept of having somebody at home whose language you don't speak, whom you don't trust, you don't know, who comes from a different culture ... It's a bit weird."<br />The ILO and other groups have helped set up a committee at the Labour Ministry to try to improve conditions for domestic workers.<br />One proposal is to approve a standard contract stipulating the rights and obligations of employers and workers, and to add specific legal provisions to guarantee workers' rights.<br />Abdallah Razzouk, the head of the committee, told Reuters that he expected the contract to be approved and the draft law sent to parliament "in the immediate future," provisionally in early 2009.<br />Now workers have little recourse if they are not paid. They come to Lebanon under a sponsorship system that ties them to employers. They forfeit any legal status if they run away from abusive employers.<br />Maids often go unpaid because their employers miscalculate the true expense of employing them. They often think a maid will cost only her $150 monthly wage, but fail to factor in agency fees, food, clothes, medicine and return tickets.<br />"That's the biggest problem, people who cannot afford these workers are bringing them in," says Simel Esim, an ILO official specializing in gender equality and women workers.<br />NEW SLAVERY<br />Indrani, a 27-year-old Sri Lankan, lived for 18 months in a shelter run by the Christian charity group Caritas after running away from an abusive employer.<br />"I was paid the first year and a half. But then I wasn't paid for the next eight years. When I asked for money, Madam would swear at me, break glasses against the wall. She spoke to me like a donkey," she told Reuters recently at the shelter in Beirut.<br />"I was only given some bread and rice to eat. Fruit was forbidden. I woke up at 9 a.m. and slept at 4:30 or 5 a.m. I was not allowed to speak to my parents. They thought I had died," she said, tears welling up.<br />Indrani has since returned home. But every day countless other maids are physically and emotionally abused by employers across the Middle East and in Asia, where laws protecting their rights are flimsy and abusive employers are rarely punished for their crimes.<br />Even if rights groups persuade the Lebanese government to improve the legal framework for domestic workers, they face a tougher task in changing attitudes among many Lebanese who refer to their maids openly in conversation as "slaves" or "liars and thieves."<br />"The way a large number of Lebanese deal with them is like a new slavery," said HRW's Houry.<br />(Editing by Alistair Lyon and Megan Goldin)</div><div> </div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4A2PXGFwNE2UcvN0oQV-TjrHSbr4ukEGYTsbhYG11o5fKtm0oPVfsqvApkKv_-fhqeAzRjEZ3lSTzu6oFd6zt3Z3bygYhnbfYM0wztl1zY_M5Umvm-JPF8zrL0DEpCnPkQGnqPt7G_-o/s1600-h/DSC03564.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429544675882962" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4A2PXGFwNE2UcvN0oQV-TjrHSbr4ukEGYTsbhYG11o5fKtm0oPVfsqvApkKv_-fhqeAzRjEZ3lSTzu6oFd6zt3Z3bygYhnbfYM0wztl1zY_M5Umvm-JPF8zrL0DEpCnPkQGnqPt7G_-o/s320/DSC03564.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Software that opens worlds to the disabled</strong><br />By James Flanigan<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />One computer program would allow vision-impaired shoppers to point their cellphones at supermarket shelves and hear descriptions of products and prices. Another would allow a physically disabled person to guide a computer mouse using brain waves and eye movements.<br />The two programs were among those created by eight groups of volunteers at a two-day software-writing competition this fall. The goal of the competition, sponsored by a nonprofit corporation, is to encourage new computer programs that help disabled people expand their capabilities.<br />The corporation, set up by computer science students and graduates at the University of Southern California, is named Project:Possibility. It grew out of an idea two years ago by Christopher Leung, then a master's degree candidate in computer science and engineering at the university, who was working on a project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.<br />As Leung explained in a recent interview, "The project manager came to me and said: 'Chris, we have several blind students coming to work with us this summer. If you can think of anything we can do for them, let me know.' "<br />At the time, Leung said, he was working on a solar system visualization program. "I came up with a project called 'touch the sky' where a blind person would use a forced feedback device to feel three-dimensional reconstructions of terrain on other planets," he said.<br />The experience inspired him to think beyond just one group of students and one project. "It was apparent that there was a need for a larger organized effort, a community of developers and disabled persons to conceptualize projects that can help people," Leung said. "So I gathered colleagues into a room at JPL, pitched the idea and asked for their help. Several of them and dozens of others since then have taken on the challenge and brought Project: Possibility to where it is today."<br />The effort is centered at the University of Southern California and led by volunteers, including Ely Lerner, an information systems developer at Amgen Inc.; Elias Sayfi, a senior software engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Stanley Lam, an undergraduate business student at the university.<br />In 2007, they organized a competition called "Code for a Cause" in which 25 students in five teams engaged in a weekend of intense computer code-writing. The event attracted assistance from executives at Google, Amgen and the propulsion laboratory. This year, in October, the competition expanded to 50 students in eight teams with mentors from Google, Amgen and the laboratory, as well as judges from Lockheed Martin and Amgen and encouraging words from a Microsoft executive.<br />The competition was won by Bar Code Reader, the program to help the visually impaired read information on grocery items. Second place went to Mind Control, which allows the physically disabled to guide a computer mouse by neural impulses. All the code, written in 12-hour sessions on a single weekend, made progress, but also left room for further development.<br />The Bar Code Reader team "didn't hook up a cellphone, so we used a Motorola simulator," said Michael Crowley, an associate professor of engineering practice who was the mentor for the team.<br />James Han, founder of ProsForPros, an Internet hosting and consulting firm for small businesses, was the mentor of the Mind Control team. "We were able to leverage open-source codes for mouse control and link to the neural actuator in the first 12 hours," Han said. "In the second 12, we created the user interface. I believe implementation of the program is currently in development with similar devices."<br />Project:Possibility directors have plans for more ambitious projects. First, there will be a competition in February with teams of computer science students at the University of California, Los Angeles, in hopes of multiplying the number of programs to help the disabled. The project also plans to create a worldwide open-source Web site on which disabled persons and software developers can collaborate on new ideas and add to existing programs.<br />"Imagine a specialist Facebook or MySpace-type social network in which users would be involved in designing the tools they want and need," said Stephen Lee, a British software developer who operates Fullmeasure.co.UK and is a director of Project:Possibility. "Students would talk to users and work on projects that meet needs as well as be exciting."<br />He estimated that "an active online community may well take six or more months to organize, as there is inertia and shyness to overcome." There will also be costs to create such an online community, he said, "for Web hosting, associated technology costs and set-up labor."<br />To date, Project:Possibility has operated without revenue and without pay for participants. Its programs belong to the nonprofit project and to the University of Southern California. Its sole source of financing was a $15,000 grant in early 2008 from the Mozilla Foundation, an organization that promotes the concept of the Internet as a public resource open to everyone.<br />Nor does Project:Possibility intend to be a commercial venture, Leung said. "We do not plan to earn revenue through a spread of our programs. In fact," he said, "we plan to be completely open-source our programs can be downloaded, modified and used by anyone at no cost in hopes that similar programs will spread to other universities and around the world with or without our involvement."<br />But, at a project meeting early this month, the directors decided to establish a paid position. "We are looking to grow and that will require people to dedicate even more of their time to this project," Leung said. So it will be necessary to "compensate for our core positions and perhaps one day to have a full-time staff."<br />Leung lives and works these days in Beijing. "I'm a Chinese-American who grew up in Northern California and never spoke Chinese," he said. "So I'm learning Chinese and working here, but keeping in touch online with Project:Possibility."<br />To pay for staff, the project will continue to depend on grants from companies and charitable groups. At some point, it hopes to establish regular fund-raising efforts for its nonprofit operations.<br />"What's great is that companies like Google and Mozilla support our projects," Leung said. The companies gain by getting ideas on technological breakthroughs and seeing ways to adapt them to everyday products. One Project:Possibility program, for example, called Community Captioner, integrates subtitles with YouTube "so the hearing-impaired can have sound with their videos."</div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8T5-cGO0IduzwfLZ01z3thYamEkpiORouDKcSLZdVY6ZpWnROgiGtw00UUoe1mU1bg-iSSYi673MIRdbjXh2GwzVrcFuydVPLuDNsxql3gWmuO_loJW7EVbVAgQti1slWegcHWNPOWfM/s1600-h/DSC03565.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429544901562258" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8T5-cGO0IduzwfLZ01z3thYamEkpiORouDKcSLZdVY6ZpWnROgiGtw00UUoe1mU1bg-iSSYi673MIRdbjXh2GwzVrcFuydVPLuDNsxql3gWmuO_loJW7EVbVAgQti1slWegcHWNPOWfM/s320/DSC03565.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div></div></div><div><strong>'Purpose Driven' pastor to give inaugural invocation</strong><br />By Katharine Q. Seelye<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />Barack Obama has selected the Reverend Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor and author of "The Purpose Driven Life," to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, a role that positions Warren to succeed Billy Graham as the nation's pre-eminent minister and reflects the generational changes in the evangelical Christian movement.<br />In a departure from past inaugurations, which usually featured operatic soloists, Aretha Franklin will perform. A quartet that includes Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma will play a piece composed for the inauguration by John Williams, whose "Patriot" resounded during Obama's election-night celebration in Grant Park in Chicago.<br />The program for Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20 was announced Wednesday by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Celebrations.<br />Inauguration programs follow a traditional outline but also allow a president-elect to put his stamp on the proceedings and set the tone for his administration.<br />The choice of Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, California, is an olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals. He is an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage - litmus-test issues for Christian conservatives. In fact, his selection set off a round of criticism by gay rights groups angered by his support for California's ban on same-sex marriages.<br />But Warren has also been one of the most prominent evangelical leaders calling for Christians to expand their agenda and confront global problems like poverty, AIDS, climate change and genocide in Darfur. He has sometimes angered the older generation of conservative evangelical leaders aligned with the Republican Party, as when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at an earlier event at his church.<br />Obama was asked at a news conference Thursday about the furious reaction from some gay-rights groups to his decision to ask Warren to play a prominent role in his Inauguration.<br />He defended the decision as part of his effort to involve a broad range of Americans in the nation's business and discourse without sacrificing civility. "I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans," Obama said.<br />He noted that he had been invited by Warren to speak at his church a few years ago - despite their obvious differences - and added that "that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about; that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable."<br />"That's part of the magic of this country," said Obama, "is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated."<br />Warren showed his clout this year when he managed to draw both John McCain and Barack Obama to his Saddleback Church for a forum in which he interviewed them on stage about faith issues.<br />Following Warren on the inaugural program will be Franklin, who grew up singing gospel music before turning to soul and pop. She sang at Bill Clinton's inauguration concert in 1993 but not at the inauguration ceremony itself.<br />Next, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. will be sworn in by Justice John Paul Stevens.<br />Then the new work by Williams will be played by a classical devotee's fantasy quartet: Perlman on violin, Ma on cello, Gabriela Montero on piano and Anthony McGill on clarinet.<br />Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. will administer the oath of office to Obama, who will then deliver his inaugural address.<br />A poetry reading will follow by Elizabeth Alexander, who teaches African-American studies at Yale and is only the fourth poet to read at an inauguration. (The others were Robert Frost in 1961, Maya Angelou in 1993, and Miller Williams in 1997.)<br />Obama has asked the Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to deliver the benediction.<br />The ceremony will close with the Sea Chanters of the U.S. Navy Band singing the national anthem.<br />Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting for this article.</div><div> </div><div>*****************</div><div><br /><div><strong>Bill Clinton lifts veil from foundation's donor list<br /></strong>By Peter Baker and Charlie Savage<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The governments of Saudi Arabia and Norway, the Dubai Foundation and the businessmen Bill Gates, Stephen Bing, Haim Saban and Robert Johnson are among the biggest financial backers of former President Bill Clinton's foundation over the last decade, according to a complete donor list published Thursday for the first time.<br />Lifting a longstanding cloak of secrecy, Clinton disclosed the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of an agreement negotiated with President-elect Barack Obama to douse concerns about potential conflicts of interest if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state.<br />The donor list, posted on the Web site of the William J. Clinton Foundation, www.clintonfoundation.org, indicates that his organization accepted multimillion-dollar gifts from a variety of foreign governments, companies and individuals who might have an interest in U.S. foreign policy.<br />Many of these were known, and it was not immediately clear whether the disclosure of others might pose a diplomatic or political problem to any foreign donors.<br />The foundation raised $500 million over the last decade to pay for Clinton's presidential library and his philanthropic activities.<br />Federal law does not require a former president to reveal his foundation's financial benefactors and Clinton had previously declined to do so, arguing that many who gave expected confidentiality. But when Obama asked Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet, the former president agreed to release his list as part of an agreement intended to keep his multifaceted activities from compromising his wife's prospective work.<br />Bill Clinton's advocates said the publication of the list showed that he had nothing to hide. The foundation said that its median gift since its inception came to $45.<br />The list does not detail the precise amounts of the donations, nor the dates they were given, instead breaking down contributors by general dollar ranges. Clinton's aides said they have been laboring to track down and notify the 208,000 donors - people, companies and governments - that their identities would be made public.<br />The potential for foreign donors to create the appearance of conflicts of interest for Hillary Clinton as she handles foreign policy matters was illustrated by Amar Singh, listed as giving between $1 million and $5 million. The donor is apparently the prominent Indian politician of that name.<br />In September, Amar Singh visited Washington to lobby Congress to support a deal allowing India to obtain civilian nuclear fuel and technology from the United States. The deal was controversial because India has developed nuclear weapons but is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.<br />Singh met with Senator Clinton, afterward telling Indian reporters that she had assured him that Democrats would not block the deal. Congress approved the nuclear cooperation deal a few days later.<br />Several other donors have connections to India, a potential foreign policy flashpoint due to tensions with Pakistan.<br />One was Lakshmi Mittal, the businessman who made billions in the steel industry and is one of the richest men in the world. A London resident, Mittal, who donated between $1 million and $5 million, is a director of India's second largest bank. In 2002, Mittal was involved in a British scandal when, shortly after making a large donation to the Labour Party, he gained help from Tony Blair, who then was prime minister, in his attempt to convince Romania to sell him its state steel company.<br />The two largest contributors, listed as giving more than $25 million apiece, were the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a grant-making charity that focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and India, and Unitaid, an international alliance formed two years ago to fight HIV/AIDS. An additional 11 donors gave from $10 million to $25 million, including Bing, Gates's foundation and the Saudi government.<br />Also in this category is Frank Giustra, the Canadian mining financier whose dealings with Clinton have drawn questions in the past. Clinton traveled with Giustra in 2005 to Kazakhstan, where Giustra was seeking uranium contracts. Clinton lavished praise on Kazakhstan's authoritarian leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Giustra's company soon afterward signed preliminary agreements to buy into state-controlled uranium projects.<br />Months later, The New York Times reported earlier this year, Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton foundation. On the list posted Thursday, Giustra is reported as having given from $10 million to $25 million personally and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative-Canada is reported as having given from $1 million to $5 million.<br />Another donor listed as giving between $1 million and $5 million is Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman who is the son-in-law of that nation's former authoritarian president, Leonid Kuchma, whose handpicked successor was prevented from taking power during the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004.<br />Among governments - or entities funded by them - that contributed, Saudi Arabia was the largest donor, giving between $10 million and $25 million. Norway gave between $5 million and $10 million. Kuwait, Qatar, the Dubai Foundation, Brunei Darussalam, and Oman donated between $1 million and $5 million each.<br />Irish Aid and China Overseas Real Estate Development Corp. donated several hundred thousand dollars each. Italy and Jamaica each donated between $50,000 and $100,000.<br />Some of the more notable donors were previously known. For example, Denise Rich, the former wife of onetime fugitive financier Marc Rich, to whom Bill Clinton gave a pardon in his final hours as president, is listed as giving between $250,001 and $500,000.<br />Other donations seemed noteworthy more for their celebrity value than anything else. Thus, one of the larger donors was Michael Schumacher, listed as giving $5 million to $10 million. The Formula One race car driver of that name has been associated with many charities over the years.<br />Since leaving the White House, Bill Clinton has traveled the world collecting six-figure fees for speeches and even larger checks for his charitable activities. He pulled in $10.1 million for 54 speeches last year alone and in recent weeks has spoken at a symposium sponsored by the National Bank of Kuwait and an event organized at the behest of a Malaysian businessman who has been under fire from his own investors.<br />At the same time, Clinton's foundation and its various offshoots have promoted programs to fight malaria, AIDS, malnutrition and other maladies around the world, sometimes in tandem with foreign governments. The foundation said it has provided medicine to 1.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS, helped dozens of cities reduce greenhouse gases and worked to spread economic opportunity.<br />With Hillary Clinton scheduled to take over the State Department, Obama's team wanted to find a way to prevent the former president's numerous business and philanthropic affiliations from creating awkward situations of apparent conflict with administration policy. But Obama's aides said they also wanted to find a balance that would allow the charitable programs to continue their work.<br />Bill Clinton accepted a variety of limitations on his personal business activities and involvement in his global philanthropic organizations that go beyond federal law. He agreed to submit future personal speeches and consulting contracts for review by State Department ethics officials and, if necessary, by the White House counsel's office.<br />If his wife is confirmed, Clinton also agreed to incorporate the Clinton Global Initiative, which promotes efforts to fight disease, poverty and climate change, separately from his foundation so that he will have less direct involvement.</div></div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>COLUMNIST</strong></div><div><strong>Gail Collins: Send in the celebrities<br /></strong>Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />Caroline Kennedy wants Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. And New York is taking her seriously. We are talking about this matter a lot when we aren't otherwise engaged in attempting to string up rogue investment advisers.<br />A free U.S. Senate seat is a very fine thing, especially since Governor David Paterson does not seem to be expecting a holiday envelope from the lucky winner, unlike some governors we could mention.<br />However, Paterson does want someone who could come up with around $50 million for a statewide campaign in 2010, and Kennedy has been super-successful at raising money for New York City's public schools and other good causes. Although it's important to note that asking for money to buy books for poor children is not quite the same thing as asking for money to buy 60-second TV commercials about how great you are.<br />It is a tribute to the raging mediocrity of New York politics that while many people have expressed reservations about giving the Senate job to an untested, hitherto publicity-shy political novice, their protests often wind up with: "Why pick Caroline Kennedy when we could have - um ..."<br />In New York, two kinds of homegrown politicians tend to rise to the top of the heap. The smart, hard-working ones have sharp elbows and impossible egos. (I'm remembering Ed Koch on a long-ago visit to Berlin, waving at the East German guards at the checkpoint and yelling: "I'm here! It's me! It's me!") The charming, easy-going ones tend to have the IQ of a cucumber.<br />As Adam Nagourney and Nicholas Confessore wrote in The New York Times, Kennedy has a reputation for "quiet competence and dignity." If nothing else, that would be a novelty.<br />My biggest concern about the Kennedy-for-Senate boom is that the whole idea sounds as if it had been inspired by telephone conversations between Caroline and her Uncle Ted, followed by encouraging calls from her cousin Robert. We should always be leery of plans that develop during excited phone calls among family members. I remember a time when my sisters and I got extremely enthusiastic about renting a stretch limo at Christmastime and taking everybody on a tour of the holiday lights of Cincinnati. It turned out that unlike fireworks, Christmas lights work best in small doses, unless you have an unlimited appetite for viewing blowup replicas of the Nativity.<br />People keep asking if Kennedy has the stomach for long campaigns in upstate New York - if she is, in the words of Representative Gary Ackerman of Queens, prepared to "do Utica."<br />Really, that's the least of it. The people of Utica are lovely, as long as you don't have to come up with any specific ideas for resurrecting their city from its century-long swoon. And it's easy to imagine Kennedy doing a Hillary-like "listening tour," having roundtable discussions about the dairy compact or broadband access while the press corps gently naps in the rear row.<br />But how much of her life does she really want to spend at fund-raisers for people she suspects will be indicted before they have a chance to cash the checks? How does she feel about admiring butter sculptures at state fairs?<br />I remember watching Hillary tour the fair in Syracuse, New York, with her family in tow, stopping at a booth that featured a teeny table with teeny teacups and a sign: "Reserved for the Clintons." Bill and Hillary, instantly perceiving their duty, pulled up two teeny chairs and plopped right down. Chelsea, who was normally an absolute rock during these events, looked as if she wanted the earth to swallow her up.<br />It is admittedly not fair that a person with a famous name could get this Senate opportunity instead of some worthy if irritating member of Congress who's put in the time and paid the dues. But if there's anything we've learned over the last few months it's that waiting for life to be fair is a losing proposition. (By the way, we're approaching the one-month-to-go mark on the George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown calendar. The presidential quote of the week was: "Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.")<br />Hillary Clinton came out of First Ladyhood and Arkansas and scooped her job away from other more deserving New Yorkers. But she turned out to be terrific at it and a useful reminder that in America there are not only second chances, but thirds and fourths as well. Maybe this will become known as New York's Mid-Life Career Change Senate Seat.<br />If Kennedy wants to succeed Clinton, she's got every right to give it a shot. If she makes her case successfully, maybe she'll turn out to like spending her weekends at many variations on the theme of testimonial dinner, and sitting at teeny-tiny tables at the state fair. Or she might discover that she has signed up for one long limo tour of the Christmas lights. In which case, it's only a two-year ride.</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Request to remove Blagojevich denied</strong><br />By Monica Davey and Catrin Einhorn<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />SPRINGFIELD, Illinois: Any prospect that the saga over Governor Rod Blagojevich's contested hold on power might end swiftly evaporated on Wednesday when the State Supreme Court refused to hear a request to remove him, and Blagojevich's lawyer made it clear at an impeachment inquiry here that the governor had no intention of going quietly.<br />Without comment, the court denied an emergency request from Lisa Madigan, the state's attorney general, to consider removing Blagojevich from office as well as a motion for a temporary restraining order that would have immediately stripped Blagojevich of many of his powers, including the authority to appoint someone to fill the United States Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.<br />The ruling stirred consternation among some lawmakers here, many of whom had seen the request to the court as the fastest, straightest route to Blagojevich's departure, even if a bit of a long shot.<br />The court's decision drew new questions about how and when the Senate seat might now be filled, as Republican lawmakers called, once again, for a special election. It also increased pressure on the House committee here that is trying to conduct an impeachment investigation with impeachment now apparently the only alternative left, short of Blagojevich stepping down.<br />Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat who was arrested last week on federal charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes and accused, among other things, of trying to sell the Senate seat, did not appear before the impeachment inquiry committee.<br />But his team of lawyers, including Edward Genson, a fiery criminal defense lawyer well-known in Illinois after more than four decades in Chicago courtrooms, made its first appearance here, describing the lawmakers' efforts as a "real witch hunt" and offering a series of pointed objections about the state's vague standards for impeachment, the lawmakers' use of the federal criminal complaint against the governor as evidence in their inquiry, and at least three lawmakers he said could not be fair.<br />"This is Alice in Wonderland," Genson announced at one point, in a series of contentious, snippy exchanges in the public hearings at the Capitol. "I think it's unfair to put in hearsay," he said at another point, referring to the 78-page criminal complaint against Blagojevich, which lawmakers heard read aloud much of the day. "I think it's unfair to put in anonymous people. I think it's unfair to deprive him of confrontation. I think it's unfair to do all those things."<br />The day's events seemed to mark the first upbeat developments for Blagojevich in what has been an avalanche of accusations and criticisms against him for more than a week. It was enough, it seemed, that a lighthearted Blagojevich, who had until now been avoiding reporters and the public, invited a Chicago Tribune photographer to join him on his jog (offering his commentary on the head-clearing benefits of running), and suggested that he will soon tell his story as early, Genson said, as Friday. Already, Genson provided one insight into Blagojevich's thinking: the governor will not now, he said, try to appoint someone to fill Obama's Senate seat. "Harry Reid said they're not going to accept anybody he picks," Genson said of Blagojevich. "Why would he do that?"<br />Lawmakers seemed unfazed by all of Genson's critiques of the impeachment process and said they would move forward.<br />"The governor's lawyer did a pretty good job of throwing up dust, but I don't know that he did a good enough job to make either the members of the committee, nor the people of Illinois watching him on their television screens, decide that the governor is as innocent as a newborn lamb," Representative Barbara Flynn Currie, the chairwoman of the impeachment committee, said after the hearing ended for the day. "The standards that govern what we are about are very different from those that govern in a criminal trial."<br />Genson, who is also serving as Blagojevich's lawyer in his criminal case, has asked the state to pay for his work on the impeachment case. Genson filed a request with Madigan, arguing that the attorney general would, under normal circumstances, represent him on official business.<br />Because Madigan, also seen as a political rival of Blagojevich, a fellow Democrat, sought to remove him in the State Supreme Court, Genson argued that she had a conflict and could not represent him before the impeachment committee. He said she was now obligated to appoint others Genson and two other lawyers, Genson suggested to carry out that duty.<br />Madigan, her office said, has yet to respond.<br />Last week, Madigan had argued in a complaint filed with the court that "the pervasive nature and severity" of the federal corruption case against Blagojevich had rendered him "incapable of legitimately exercising his ability as governor."<br />On Wednesday, she said she was disappointed that the court had rejected her argument, and said the state found itself in an "unsustainable situation." Like many here, Madigan said she was now hopeful that lawmakers would move "with deliberate speed" in the impeachment inquiry that began on Tuesday and is expected to run through weekends until it is done days or weeks from now.<br />Lawmakers here acknowledged that they were still sorting through the parameters of such an inquiry, barely tested in Illinois and never completed in the case of a governor.<br />They have yet to work out potential conflicts with federal prosecutors in Chicago, though conversations were continuing, Currie told reporters. "I think they would be a little fearful if we had full access to their whole range of witnesses, that Genson would basically run this as his criminal trial before he gets to the real one," she said.<br />Genson said the evidence he had seen in the hearing in a single day including the reading of snippets of prosecutors' recorded conversations in which Blagojevich, the prosecutors say, seems to demand a high-paying job, donations and a cabinet post in exchange for the Senate seat was insufficient.<br />"The fact of the matter is, what we have seen so far isn't something that should be used as evidence in a courtroom, in a hearing, in a committee meeting," Genson said. "It's just not right."</div><div><br /> </div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*******************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Obama picks experienced hands for financial posts<br /></strong>By Sharon Otterman<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />Pledging to create "a 21st century regulatory framework" to protect against future financial crises, President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday nominated three veteran financial regulators to top economic positions in his administration.<br />"We will crack down on this culture of greed and scheming that has led us to this day of reckoning," Obama said in announcing the appointments at a news conference in Chicago. "We have been asleep at the switch."<br />Obama named Mary Schapiro, 53, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has come under sharp criticism for its failure to detect signs that major Wall Street banks were in trouble before the financial crisis, as well as lax oversight of the New York financier Bernard Madoff, who the authorities say has confessed to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.<br />The Madoff scandal, Obama said, "reminds us yet again how badly reform is needed when it comes to regulations that govern our markets."<br />Schapiro has headed the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-regulator, since 1996.<br />Schapiro has also served as a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Republican and Democratic administrations alike.<br />Obama also announced the selection of two former Clinton administration economic officials, Gary Gensler and Daniel Tarullo, to leading economic posts. Gensler, who will head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was a Treasury official in the Clinton administration. He also worked as a senior adviser to former Senator Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, who wrote the legislation to increase oversight of the accounting industry and reform corporate governance.<br />Tarullo, a law professor at Georgetown University and who was also an economic adviser to President Clinton, will fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve board in Washington. He is leading Obama's transition team at the Treasury Department, and is considered an expert in international economic regulation.<br />In announcing the appointments, Obama was harshly critical of the "disdain for regulation" shown by regulatory agencies in recent years and said the country needed "regulatory agencies ready and willing to enforce the law."<br />He pledged to remake the financial regulatory system to adapt to the challenges of a new century. "We will be releasing a very detailed plan on how that regulatory upgrade will take place," he said.<br />Obama also called for a shift in ethics on Wall Street. "We can have the best regulators in the world, but everyone is going to have to ask themselves, not only is this profitable, not only will it lead to a big bonus, but is it right?" he said. "Does it conform to higher standards in terms of how we operate?"<br />In addition to serving at the SEC, Schapiro was chairwoman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission during the Clinton administration, an independent agency created by Congress to regulate trading in commodity futures and the option markets. Her service at both agencies could suggest that Obama is considering combining the two regulators, a structure long supported by many experts to streamline market oversight.<br />Shapiro, who would be the first woman nominated to head the SEC for a full term, said that the current crisis on Wall Street "requires an aggressive, systemic response" to restore trust and protect investors. She pledged forceful enforcement of current law and "thoughtful reform of our regulatory structures" would be her top priority.<br />The selection of Tarullo to fill one of two vacant seats on the Fed's board, which is also subject to approval by the Senate, will allow Obama to begin making his mark on the nation's bank.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>COLUMNIST: Flloyd Norris</strong></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>The year the financial system stopped working<br /></strong>Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Long-term interest rates are at their lowest levels in half a century. Long-term interest rates are at their highest levels in nearly 20 years.<br />This is shaping up as the worst year in seven decades for the stock market. Of the 10 best days the stock market experienced during those 70 years, six came in 2008.<br />A Wall Street legend who became a hero for forcing Wall Street to treat investors better now admits to defrauding a later generation of investors of $50 billion. A prominent lawyer is said to have embezzled hundreds of millions by selling phony securities to hedge funds.<br />The economists are worried about deflation. They are also fearful of inflation.<br />The U.S. government is lending money to businesses that never could have borrowed from it before. People fear a wave of corporate bankruptcies as companies find they cannot borrow money to repay loans that are due.<br />This was the year the financial system stopped working. Nearly all the contradictory but accurate statements above can be traced to that fact.<br />In 2007, the people who ran Wall Street, and the ones who regulated it, did not understand how serious the financial crisis was becoming. They saw the primary problem as one of a housing slowdown caused by a subprime mortgage crisis, and assumed the securitization machine - which had come to finance everything from corporate loans to credit cards to student loans - would keep on ticking even if its mortgage factory could keep operating only with the government guaranteeing almost everything.<br />In 2008, Washington effectively nationalized Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American International Group, and it bailed out those who had lent to Bear Stearns. It let Lehman Brothers fail, briefly reassuring market ideologues but terrifying many market participants, and the rout was on.<br />The securitization machine ground to a halt, and the banking industry was in no position to assume its historical role as a lender that patiently waited for loans to be repaid. To the contrary, banks trusted neither their own balance sheets nor those of other banks. For a significant part of the economy, the government became the lender of first and only resort.<br />For most of 2008, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury failed to realize that the banking system faced a solvency crisis rather than a liquidity crisis. Efforts to provide liquidity proved ineffectual because no one had confidence in the values of enormous amounts of derivatives and securitizations that the banks owned.<br />"No financial market can function normally when basic information about the solvency of market participants is lacking," wrote Michael Bordo, an economist who teaches at Rutgers University.<br />A year ago, China and India were supposed to be the engines that kept the world economy moving forward even if the United States was applying the brakes. Now people worry that rising unemployment could lead to political instability in the Asian giants.<br />A year ago, most economists - including the people setting Fed policy - thought the U.S. economy could avoid a recession. Now they have concluded that one was already starting as 2007 ended, and the optimists think it will last for six more months.<br />With commodity prices collapsing, and consumers feeling poor and expecting jobs to vanish, the inflation rate went from alarming to negative and the Fed cut the short-term rate it controls almost to zero.<br />The rate on 10-year Treasury notes fell to a little over 2 percent, something not seen since Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House. An index of junk-bond yields soared to more than 17 percent, just a little below the record level set during 1990, the last time the banking system appeared to be ready to collapse. Money is cheap for the government and unavailable to those who need it most.<br />The multiple ways being used by the Fed and the Treasury to push out cash mean the government will end up with a lot of assets of questionable value. That amounts to printing money, and economists worry that if the Fed is unwilling or unable to tighten when things turn up, that could lead to rampant inflation.<br />There could be a significant political constituency for inflation by then; if the problem is that your house is not worth what you owe on it, a good dose of inflation could produce a solution by raising the nominal value while not changing the amount you owe.<br />In normal times, after a recession has ended and inflationary pressures are building, the Fed tightens by selling Treasury bills for cash, a process that sucks cash out of the economy.<br />After this recession, its balance sheet may be heavy with mortgage securities and perhaps even corporate debt, and the Fed may have to sell them, rather than nice, safe T-bills, to tighten credit. That could work out fine if economic recovery has by then made those mortgage securities appear to be safe and reliable. That is one bet the Fed is making by taking on assets it never would have considered in the past.<br />It is in booms that the seeds of busts are created, and the heroes of one era can be the villains of the next. The securitization machine that is so vilified today played a major role in greasing the boom that preceded it.<br />That can even be true of people. One reason for the development of the great bull markets of the 1980s and 1990s was the freeing of investors from high fixed trading costs. To many - a group that included some regulators - much of the credit for that went to a feisty trader who found ways to maneuver around the system and let investors and speculators trade for less. His name was Bernard Madoff.<br />Four decades after he started that fight, which made him rich as his firm became the largest player in the Nasdaq stock market, Madoff admitted that his later success as a money manager was all a fraud. He estimated the losses in his Ponzi scheme at $50 billion.<br />The disclosure of that fraud came on the heels of the arrest of Marc Dreier, a well-known New York corporate lawyer who had gotten hedge funds to lend many millions to real companies that they believed to be Dreier's clients. The cash actually went to him.<br />The falls of both men may be due in part to the sudden need for hedge funds to come up with cash to pay nervous investors. It is during bear markets that the follies of the previous bull markets become starkly apparent.<br />This is my last column of 2008, as I head off to vacation. Given how badly the forecasts for 2008 worked out, it would seem to be foolhardy to offer any for 2009. But one seems clear to me: One of the most important tasks for Barack Obama's new economic team is to put together a financial system that will be able to grant credit and pay for investments when the recession nears an end.<br />If the team fails to accomplish that, and is unable to couple it with a regulatory system that will neither smother innovation nor let it run wild, then the commentaries a year from now will be even more downcast than those appearing as this year draws to its sad conclusion.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Parmalat founder sentenced to 10 years in prison<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />MILAN: Calisto Tanzi, the founder of the Italian dairy company Parmalat, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison, judges said.<br />Tanzi was convicted of market-rigging in a trial over the company's collapse in 2003, while all other defendants were acquitted, the judges said.<br />Tanzi, who was also the company's chief executive, was among eight former executives and bankers, including some former employees of Bank of America, on trial in Milan over charges of market-rigging or obstructing market oversight.<br />Italian prosecutors had sought a 13-year prison term for Tanzi. The trial, one of several seeking to assign blame in the collapse of the company, was the first to be concluded.<br />Parmalat's collapse was one of Europe's biggest financial scandals, and Tanzi was described by a prosecutor as the "hub, who covered up for everyone."<br />Prosecutors sought sentences ranging from three years and six months to six years for the other defendants.<br />Parmalat buckled under a debt of 14 billion, or $20 billion, about eight times what it had reported. The company's failure wiped out the savings of more than 100,000 small investors. More than 40,000 bondholders are seeking compensation.<br />Prosecutors have said the defendants misled markets by masking Parmalat's dire finances.<br />Eight others accused in the case settled out of court in September.<br />Parmalat was restructured and relisted on the Milan stock exchange in 2005.<br />It is the biggest publicly listed food company in Italy. It has recouped money from banks in settlements.</div><div> </div><div>******************************</div><div> </div><div><strong>University of California begins Enron payments<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEW YORK: The University of California on Thursday said it has begun distributing almost $5 billion (3.3 billion pounds) of the $7 billion recovered from the record Enron class action settlement to about 200,000 investors, seven years after the fraudulent energy firm collapsed into bankruptcy.<br />The university -- lead plaintiff for Enron investors against the company's accountants, lawyers, bankers and senior executives -- said the largest settlement in securities class-action history will be distributed in stages.<br />The settlement covers numerous securities types and was calculated based on an allocation plan approved in September by U.S. District Court in Houston.<br />Payments will be made to eligible investors who bought Enron or Enron-related securities between September 9, 1997 and December 2, 2001, when the company filed for bankruptcy.<br />This initial distribution is a partial payment to most eligible claimants, though follow-on payments will be paid at a date still to be determined. Enron common-stock purchasers will receive reimbursement of about 20 percent of their allowed loss -- or $22 million to University of California (UC) pension and endowment funds.<br />The university also said litigation continues against several defendants in the federal class action lawsuit, including <strong>Barclays , Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch .</strong><br />Claims are also pending against three former Enron officers -- Chief Executive Jeff Skilling, chief accounting officer Richard Causey and Mark Koenig, head of investor relations -- the university said in a statement.<br />Cases against Royal Bank of Canada , Royal Bank of Scotland and Toronto Dominion Bank have not been set for trial, UC said.<br />(Reporting by Joseph A. Giannone; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*******************************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Barroso tells Bulgaria to speed up reform</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BRUSSELS: The president of the European Commission called on Bulgaria on Thursday to speed up reforms, particularly in the area of the judiciary, after it was stripped of EU funds last month for failing to deal with fraud.<br />"The reform process must speed up rather than slow down," José Manuel Barroso said at a news conference with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev of Bulgaria.<br />"We need a consensus in Bulgaria that treats the fight against high-level corruption and organized crime as issues of national importance."<br />Brussels stripped Sofia of 220 million, about $285 million, of EU financing and said it could lose an additional 340 million if it failed to curb corrupt practices and political interference in the budget process by the end of 2009.<br />Barroso said the commission would issue a technical report on Bulgaria's progress in February and a more comprehensive assessment in the summer, but added: "We don't see yet the level of results we would like to see."<br />Stanishev said the government would do all it could to address the deficiencies and argued that its efforts so far "should be assessed fairly."<br />Bulgaria has opened several investigations into government officials and businessmen who are suspected of fraud. But it has jailed only one crime boss and has failed to convict a single senior official of graft.<br />Analysts said Bulgaria may lose more EU cash because deeper reforms are unlikely under today's government, which has struggled to cut links between some officials and organized crime gangs.<br />Bulgaria's opposition has demanded early elections because of the government's failure to fight rampant graft and stop fraud with EU aid.<br />But that move is unlikely to topple the government, which has a large majority in Parliament.<br />It does, however, underline the challenges the coalition parties will face in an election next year.<br />Parliament, meanwhile, added to the glum Christmas spirit.<br />A decision by Bulgarian lawmakers to pay themselves a total of more than $500,000 in Christmas bonuses - during an economic slowdown and job losses - drew heavy criticism Thursday and even calls from a variety of groups to besiege Parliament.<br />Several environmental and nongovernment groups called for mass protests Friday to blockade the 240-seat Parliament building in central Sofia to demonstrate against graft, crime and the bonuses.<br />"We've had enough," the environmental group For the Nature said in a statement. "We want a state without corruption, lawlessness and damage of natural, human and intellectual resources.<br />"Meanwhile, the parliamentarians voted to receive Christmas bonuses at a time of a financial crisis."<br />Many companies and organizations in the country have decided to cut end-year bonuses and thousands in the mining and chemical sectors have lost their jobs due the global downturn.<br />The deputies voted Wednesday to receive 690,000 levs, more than $507,000, in bonuses.<br />The subject of parliamentary and ministerial salaries touches a raw nerve in Bulgaria - the poorest member of the European Union, where the average salary is 600 to 700 levs a month.<br />Student groups have also called for rallies on Friday, and police officers and farmers have threatened to hold nation-wide protests over low subsidies and pay.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>On Wall Street, bonuses, not profits, were real</strong><br />By Louise Story<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />"As a result of the extraordinary growth at Merrill during my tenure as CEO, the board saw fit to increase my compensation each year."<br /> E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, March 2008<br />For Dow Kim, 2006 was a very good year. While his salary at Merrill Lynch was $350,000, his total compensation was 100 times that $35 million.<br />The difference between the two amounts was his bonus, a rich reward for the robust earnings made by the traders he oversaw in Merrill's mortgage business.<br />Kim's colleagues, not only at his level, but far down the ranks, also pocketed large paychecks. In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million.<br />But Merrill's record earnings in 2006 $7.5 billion turned out to be a mirage. The company has since lost three times that amount, largely because the mortgage investments that supposedly had powered some of those profits plunged in value.<br />Unlike the earnings, however, the bonuses have not been reversed.<br />As regulators and shareholders sift through the rubble of the financial crisis, questions are being asked about what role lavish bonuses played in the debacle. Scrutiny over pay is intensifying as banks like Merrill prepare to dole out bonuses even after they have had to be propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. While bonuses are expected to be half of what they were a year ago, some bankers could still collect millions of dollars.<br />Critics say bonuses never should have been so big in the first place, because they were based on ephemeral earnings. These people contend that Wall Street's pay structure, in which bonuses are based on short-term profits, encouraged employees to act like gamblers at a casino and let them collect their winnings while the roulette wheel was still spinning.<br />"Compensation was flawed top to bottom," said Lucian Bebchuk, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on compensation. "The whole organization was responding to distorted incentives."<br />Even Wall Streeters concede they were dazzled by the money. To earn bigger bonuses, many traders ignored or played down the risks they took until their bonuses were paid. Their bosses often turned a blind eye because it was in their interest as well.<br />"That's a call that senior management or risk management should question, but of course their pay was tied to it too," said Brian Lin, a former mortgage trader at Merrill Lynch.<br />The highest-ranking executives at four firms have agreed under pressure to go without their bonuses, including John Thain, who initially wanted a bonus this year since he joined Merrill Lynch as chief executive after its ill-fated mortgage bets were made. And four former executives at one hard-hit bank, UBS of Switzerland, recently volunteered to return some of the bonuses they were paid before the financial crisis. But few think others on Wall Street will follow that lead.<br />For now, most banks are looking forward rather than backward. Morgan Stanley and UBS are attaching new strings to bonuses, allowing them to pull back part of workers' payouts if they turn out to have been based on illusory profits. Those policies, had they been in place in recent years, might have clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation paid out in 2006 to employees at all levels, including senior executives who are still at those banks.<br />A Bonus Bonanza<br />For Wall Street, much of this decade represented a new Gilded Age. Salaries were merely play money a pittance compared to bonuses. Bonus season became an annual celebration of the riches to be had in the markets. That was especially so in the New York area, where nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Bankers celebrated with five-figure dinners, vied to outspend each other at charity auctions and spent their newfound fortunes on new homes, cars and art.<br />The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching. Wall Street worked its rookies hard, but it held out the promise of rich rewards. In college dorms, tales of 30-year-olds pulling down $5 million a year were legion.<br />While top executives received the biggest bonuses, what is striking is how many employees throughout the ranks took home large paychecks. On Wall Street, the first goal was to make "a buck" a million dollars. More than 100 people in Merrill's bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006. Goldman Sachs paid more than $20 million apiece to more than 50 people that year, according to a person familiar with the matter. Goldman declined to comment.<br />Pay was tied to profit, and profit to the easy, borrowed money that could be invested in markets like mortgage securities. As the financial industry's role in the economy grew, workers' pay ballooned, leaping sixfold since 1975, nearly twice as much as the increase in pay for the average American worker.<br />"The financial services industry was in a bubble," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "The industry got a bigger share of the economic pie."<br />A Money Machine<br />Dow Kim stepped into this milieu in the mid-1980s, fresh from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in Seoul and raised there and in Singapore, Kim moved to the United States at 16 to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts A quiet workaholic in an industry of workaholics, he seemed to rise through the ranks by sheer will. After a stint trading bonds in Tokyo, he moved to New York to oversee Merrill's fixed-income business in 2001. Two years later, he became co-president.<br />Even as tremors began to reverberate through the housing market and his own company, Kim exuded optimism.<br />After several of his key deputies left the firm in the summer of 2006, he appointed a former colleague from Asia, Osman Semerci, as his deputy, and beneath Semerci he installed Dale Lattanzio and Douglas Mallach. Lattanzio promptly purchased a $5 million home, as well as oceanfront property in Mantoloking, a wealthy enclave in New Jersey, according to county records.<br />Merrill and the executives in this article declined to comment or say whether they would return past bonuses. Mallach did not return telephone calls.<br />Semerci, Lattanzio and Mallach joined Kim as Merrill entered a new phase in its mortgage buildup. That September, the bank spent $1.3 billion to buy the First Franklin Financial Corporation, a mortgage lender in California, in part so it could bundle its mortgages into lucrative bonds.<br />Yet Kim was growing restless. That same month, he told E. Stanley O'Neal, Merrill's chief executive, that he was considering starting his own hedge fund. His traders were stunned. But O'Neal persuaded Kim to stay, assuring him that the future was bright for Merrill's mortgage business, and, by extension, for Kim.<br />Kim stepped to the lectern on the bond trading floor and told his anxious traders that he was not going anywhere, and that business was looking up, according to four former employees who were there. The traders erupted in applause.<br />"No one wanted to stop this thing," said a former mortgage analyst at Merrill. "It was a machine, and we all knew it was going to be a very, very good year."<br />Merrill Lynch celebrated its success even before the year was over. In November, the company hosted a three-day golf tournament at Pebble Beach, California<br />Kim, an avid golfer, played alongside William Gross, a founder of Pimco, the big bond house; and Ralph Cioffi, who oversaw two Bear Stearns hedge funds whose subsequent collapse in 2007 would send shock waves through the financial world.<br />"There didn't seem to be an end in sight," said a person who attended the tournament.<br />Back in New York, Kim's team was eagerly bundling risky home mortgages into bonds. One of the last deals they put together that year was called "Costa Bella," or beautiful coast a name that recalls Pebble Beach. The $500 million bundle of loans, a type of investment known as a collateralized debt obligation, was managed by Gross's Pimco.<br />Merrill Lynch collected about $5 million in fees for concocting Costa Bella, which included mortgages originated by First Franklin.<br />But Costa Bella, like so many other CDO's, was filled with loans that borrowers could not repay. Initially part of it was rated AAA, but Costa Bella is now deeply troubled. The losses on the investment far exceed the money Merrill collected for putting the deal together.<br />So Much for So Few<br />By the time Costa Bella ran into trouble, the Merrill bankers who had devised it had collected their bonuses for 2006. Kim's fixed-income unit generated more than half of Merrill's revenue that year, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. As a reward, O'Neal and Kim paid nearly a third of Merrill's $5 billion to $6 billion bonus pool to the 2,000 professionals in the division.<br />O'Neal himself was paid $46 million, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm and data provider in California. Kim received $35 million. About 57 percent of their pay was in stock, which would lose much of its value over the next two years, but even the cash portions of their bonus were generous: $18.5 million for O'Neal, and $14.5 million for Kim, according to Equilar.<br />Kim and his deputies were given wide discretion about how to dole out their pot of money. Semerci was among the highest earners in 2006, at more than $20 million. Below him, Mallach and Lattanzio each earned more than $10 million. They were among just over 100 people who accounted for some $500 million of the pool, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.<br />After that blowout, Merrill pushed even deeper into the mortgage business, despite growing signs that the housing bubble was starting to burst. That decision proved disastrous. As the problems in the subprime mortgage market exploded into a full-blown crisis, the value of Merrill's investments plummeted. The firm has since written down its investments by more than $54 billion, selling some of them for pennies on the dollar.<br />Lin, the former Merrill trader, arrived late to the party. He was one of the last people hired onto Merrill's mortgage desk, in the summer of 2007. Even then, Merrill guaranteed Lin a bonus if he joined the firm. Lin would not disclose his bonus, but such payouts were often in the seven figures.<br />Lin said he quickly noticed that traders across Wall Street were reluctant to admit what now seems so obvious: Their mortgage investments were worth far less than they had thought.<br />"It's always human nature," said Lin, who lost his job at Merrill last summer and now works at RRMS Advisors, a consulting firm that advises investors in troubled mortgage investments. "You want to pull for the market to do well because you're vested."<br />But critics question why Wall Street embraced the risky deals even as the housing and mortgage markets began to weaken.<br />"What happened to their investments was of no interest to them, because they would already be paid," said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at the Corporate Library, a shareholder activist group. Some Wall Street executives argue that paying a larger portion of bonuses in the form of stock, rather than in cash, might keep employees from making short-sighted decision. But Hodgson contended that would not go far enough, in part because the cash rewards alone were so high. Kim, for example, was paid a total of $116.6 million in cash and stock from 2001 to 2007. Of that, $55 million was in cash, according to Equilar.<br />Leaving the Scene<br />As the damage at Merrill became clear in 2007, Kim, his deputies and finally O'Neal left the firm. Kim opened a hedge fund, but it quickly closed. Semerci and Lattanzio landed at a hedge fund in London.<br />All three departed without collecting bonuses in 2007. O'Neal, however, got even richer by leaving Merrill Lynch. He was awarded an exit package worth $161 million.<br />Clawing back the 2006 bonuses at Merrill would not come close to making up for the company's losses, which exceed all the profits that the firm earned over the previous 20 years. This fall, the once-proud firm was sold to Bank of America, ending its 94-year history as an independent firm.<br />Bebchuk of Harvard Law School said investment banks like Merrill were brought to their knees because their employees chased after the rich rewards that executives promised them.<br />"They were trying to get as much of this or that paper, they were doing it with excitement and vigor, and that was because they knew they would be making huge amounts of money by the end of the year," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>***********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Credit Suisse bankers are getting toxic bonuses</strong><br />By Louise Story and Julia Werdigier<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEW YORK: As Wall Street banks face public outrage over the large bonuses they plan to pay workers this year, Credit Suisse's investment banking unit told senior bankers on Thursday that they would have to eat their own cooking.<br />Credit Suisse will pay a portion of bonuses for thousands of its senior investment bankers using shares of troubled assets left over from before the financial crisis.<br />These assets - mostly leveraged loans and commercial mortgage bonds - are selling at distressed levels, if at all, and continue to cause devastating losses across Wall Street.<br />"In an industry where many competitors have gone out of business, people have lost their jobs, where regulators are ratcheting up their requirements, the public at large doesn't believe investment bankers should be paid much, if anything," Paul Calello, the head of the investment bank, said in a telephone call with senior bankers, according to two people who were on the call.<br />Banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch are completing their bonus pools and will begin announcing awards to their employees in coming weeks. Bank executives have said that bonuses will be lower this year, and that the top executives will not receive bonuses at all.<br />But even scaling back pay drastically would still add up to significant bonuses for rank-and-file traders and bankers. Banks say they need to pay these employees something above and beyond their salaries to keep them coming to work. But critics say bonuses should be reconsidered, given the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that has been injected into many of the banks.<br />"This should be a year of no bonuses for any firm that took bailout money," said Peter Singer, a philosophy professor at Princeton University and a pre-eminent ethicist. "The assumption of having to take public money is that your firm is in an emergency situation, and you put out your hand for public help."<br />Credit Suisse also said it would introduce "claw-back" provisions on the cash portion of bonuses, allowing it to take back part of workers' pay in the future if their bets turn out to have been flawed. That follows similar announcements by Morgan Stanley and UBS.<br />But Credit Suisse is the first bank to weight its bonuses this year with toxic assets left over from its past. The bank said that $5 billion of the assets it has had trouble selling would be put into a new investment vehicle that it was calling the Partner Asset Facility. Shares of the vehicle will be given to its managing directors and directors as part of their bonuses, replacing some of the cash and stock that would have been paid in bonus money.<br />Of course, the bank's shareholders already felt the pain from much of the assets that will be put in the vehicle. Credit Suisse has been among the most aggressive in its write-downs. The assets in the new vehicle are already marked at 65 cents on the dollar, on average. That means if the assets recover, the bank's employees - not shareholders - will be the ones to benefit.<br />The asset plan, however, allows the bank to save money on compensation this year, which benefits shareholders, according to a spokeswoman. And many banks have sold toxic assets to outsiders at steep discounts, passing on the opportunity to reap any future gains.<br />Credit Suisse's asset plan does not include provisions for troubled assets it might create in the future, and some experts on compensation said the industry should focus more on broader reforms of employee pay. Financial workers often play a role in valuing the investments they make, and they have incentives to be optimistic in the short-term.<br />"Wall Street disproportionally focuses on short-term results compared to other industries," said Richard Cellini, a senior vice president at Integrity Interactive, a consulting firm in Waltham, Massachusetts. "In the short run, we all look like geniuses. It's the middle run that counts in most businesses."<br />Credit Suisse said this month that it would cut 5,300 jobs, or 11 percent of its work force, and that its top executives would not receive any bonuses for this year. For the third quarter, the bank posted a loss of 1.26 billion Swiss francs, worth $1 billion at the time, with the securities unit reporting a pretax loss of 3.23 billion francs after 2.43 billion francs of write-downs</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Signs of hope, at last, for ex-Lehman bankers in Asia</strong><br />By Rafael NamReuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />HONG KONG: For former bankers of Lehman Brothers, landing their first major role in an Asian bond deal under their new Nomura ownership was a welcome step toward establishing a global footprint, but progress will be tough amid the harshest market conditions in years.<br />After a few months of what some Lehman employees in Asia have privately called a tough and emotional transition, Nomura was picked as one of the advisers to the Indonesian government's fund-raising plan for 2009, which has a goal of up to $4 billion, according to two people familiar with the plan, who did not want to be identified because of the confidential nature of the appointments.<br />The position will not necessarily lead to an underwriting role in any bond sale. In fact, Indonesia appointed Barclays Capital and UBS for a global medium-term note sale plan, and Nomura will have to continue to compete against other advisers to win other underwriting roles for deals.<br />But at least it's a foot in the door for Nomura, the largest Japanese brokerage firm, which as early as a few months ago would probably not even have been considered.<br />Long dominant in its home market, Nomura had a limited presence in bond underwriting in the rest of Asia before its purchase in September of Lehman's operations outside the United States.<br />The goal now is to leverage its strong roots in Japan and combine them with Lehman's more established relationships in the region in the hope of creating a regional bond powerhouse, said Anthony Arnaudy, head of Asia-Pacific debt capital markets at Nomura.<br />"I don't think there are many firms that can attest to that kind of firepower and access to investor capital that we can now bring to bear," he said. "When you add what we can do in the Japanese market and look at the whole region, we should completely dominate finance for our clients in these parts of the world."<br />Arnaudy, who was previously at Lehman's fixed-income team, declined to comment on whether Lehman had been appointed as an adviser on Indonesia.<br />Still, the road ahead will be challenging. For starters, Nomura does not have the established presence in the U.S. market that some of its global rivals enjoy. That could be a handicap when selling Asian bonds to investors based in the United States.<br />Though it earned its global reputation as a bond house, Lehman in Asia had also been a midranked player, lagging larger banks like Deutsche Bank and HSBC in underwriting dollar- and euro-denominated bond sales.<br />What Lehman brings to the table is longstanding relationships with countries including Indonesia. Lehman underwrote both of Indonesia's sovereign bond deals, worth $4.2 billion, this year.<br />It had also made inroads in South Korea. The U.S. lender was appointed as one of the six underwriters for a highly anticipated South Korea sovereign bond sale in September that was postponed, ironically, just days before Lehman's own collapse.<br />Combining Nomura and Lehman deals in dollar- and euro-denominated bonds, the new entity would rank ninth this year, according to Thomson Reuters data. But throwing in yen-currency bond sales, the new Nomura jumps to third, a vast leap from its 19th ranking last year.<br />Nomura's ambition for a bigger imprint in Asian debt capital markets, unfortunately, comes just as the volume of G-3 currency deals, those in dollars, euros and yen, have been cut in half this year to $25.4 billion, the lowest level since 2001.<br />A recovery appears uncertain at the start of the new year. Credit default swaps in Asia, which measure the cost of protection for bonds and serve as a gauge for pricing new issuance, have surged this year even for higher-rated debt.<br />For example, the iTraxx investment-grade index for Asia excluding Japan, which serves as a benchmark index for certificates of deposit, has increased fivefold this year, signaling how costly it could be for issuers to sell new debt.<br />Japanese investors are also notoriously cautious in embracing offshore debt, preferring instead to buy into the waves of foreign issuers selling yen-denominated debt, also known as Samurai bonds.<br />Arnaudy acknowledges the challenges ahead, but is confident about the long-term potential.<br />"It's going to take a little bit of time to get our clients around," he said. "We recognize that. We are building on the Nomura Asia franchise to create a new organization."</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>For tips on frugality, look to India<br /></strong>By Anand Giridharadas<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />VERLA, India: Watching Americans try to make themselves frugal is like watching Mongolians try to make Bordeaux wine.<br />Thrift does not come naturally to a country that turned layaway, zero-interest home loans and pre-approved credit cards into a mode of living. And so as they trudge through a cruel holiday season, Americans are cutting back, but hesitatingly and maladroitly.<br />They are standing in line by the thousands at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, pushing and pulling, and on one occasion trampling an obstructive employee to death with their frantic, frugal feet.<br />They are embracing the alien idea of sacrifice. Mothers are forgoing personal shopping to spend on the family, and, according to Consumer Reports, pet owners are depriving themselves before shortchanging their pets.<br />Fourteen percent of Americans are making gifts, not buying them, that magazine reported. Twelve percent are plotting to pass on to others the gifts others give them. Many plan to tip less, scale back charity and go shopping accompanied by that leafy commodity so foreign to Americans: cash.<br />And then it hit me. The jostling in line, the stampeding, the motherly sacrifice, the homemade presents, the regifting, the thick wads of rubber-banded cash: America is becoming India!<br />India is to frugality as Bethlehem is to Jesus. But in recent years, the megacorporations of the West, not content to foment irresponsibility at home, sent pinstriped missionaries here to nudge genetically predisposed savers to spend.<br />Citibank sprinkled a borrowing-wary nation with small loans for motorcycles: Live a little! Visa peddled plastic to lovers of gold: Let your hair down!<br />Millions of Indians converted, but millions of others ignored them - and, for the West, luckily so. As rich countries enter a new era of scarcity, the best practices of the gurus of frugality can serve as a textbook for frugality's new pupils.<br />The first tip of the Indian frugalist is to wear your money. One rarely misplaces funds when they are kept in gold and hooked through your nose or strung around your neck. Some Indian women wear saris woven with gold thread. The danger of nudity discourages whimsical spending.<br />The truly frugal segment friends and associates into two camps: those who merit their money and those who don't.<br />Cellphone calls may cost a cent a minute in India, but why call people who only rate a text? Why text when you can make a "missed call"? Millions of Indians dial and quickly hang up, hoping for the other person to call back and foot the bill.<br />Your upholstery is not for everyone. Sofas fray and stain; there is, in the final analysis, a cost per posterior. So cover your sofa with bed sheets and remove them for only the best behinds.<br />So, too, with crockery: Buy a set of expensive plates and keep it in a case where your friends can see them while they eat from the cheap plates you actually set before them.<br />When eating out, order soups fractionally: a certain number of soups split by a certain number of people. Start with "one into two," the realm of Indian beginners, then graduate in time to "three into five" and "six into seven."<br />For entrees, count the diners at the table, subtract one and order that many dishes - which, for a table of four, saves 25 percent over the one-person-one-dish norm.<br />Of course, if you can, avoid restaurants altogether. Weddings are big here, and Indians who keep an ear to the ground can eat free every night. Wedding crashers are not a movie in India; they are a way of life, and I'm told it takes three successful blend-ins before guests begin to take your presence for granted and invite you to their own weddings.<br />In India, nothing cannot be recycled. Wedding gifts, birthday gifts, anniversary gifts, gifts for Hindu festival of Diwali: forwardable are they all. Presents are opened carefully so that the wrapping paper can wrap again. Plastic shopping sacks are reincarnated as garbage bags. Used, licked stamps are enlisted for further tours when the post office fails to mark them.<br />And what cannot be reused whole can often be recycled for parts. In Dharavi, the Mumbai slum, workers in dingy rooms sort the jettisoned - plastic spoons, watches, mobile phones.<br />Every shard of every ware has a value. Each piece is disassembled, then the pieces are melted, reassembled and sold - all for a profit, not as a tax-guzzling government program.<br />Within the household, Indian frugalists think strategically, like MBA's. They do not let their children study art history. Children are equities, and good investors build a diverse portfolio by rearing one police officer, one software coder, one retail clerk. They sequence their educations such that the eventual profits from each child subsidize the schooling of the next one.<br />Every MBA graduate knows about "value investing." But only Indian homemakers apply the principle to peas. That's right: Buy peas in winter, when they are plentiful and cheap. Freeze. Defrost and cook in the summer, when prices spike.<br />Indian companies think like Indian consumers. On business trips, men must sometimes share beds with other men, and women with other women.<br />I know of a drug company whose managers could fly to meetings in another city but were mandated to take the cheaper, sputtering train back home.<br />With all their thrifty proclivities, it was inevitable that Indians would one day make the world's cheapest car. But Tata Motors, based in Mumbai, did not revolutionize the car so much as squeeze $10 savings hundreds of times over.<br />It took out one of the windshield wipers, used glue instead of nuts and bolts in places and stripped out air-conditioning despite the blazing 120-degree Fahrenheit (49 Celsius) summer heat.<br />And yet my favorite choice was the analog, rather than more accurate digital, speedometer. It was not a huge savings, and a speedometer's accuracy can determine life and death. So I put it to Ashok Taneja, a Tata supplier, some months ago: Why scrimp on something so vital?<br />"So what if I'm going at 65 or 75?" he said.<br />I assumed, and hoped, he was speaking of kilometers per hour, not of the duration of a frugally lived life.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>****************************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/18/business/19marketsCLOSE.php">Wall Street slides as oil falls below $40 a barrel</a> </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>****************************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>U.S. stimulus gets riskier from here</strong><br />By James SaftReuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />LONDON: The Federal Reserve faces two considerable risks now that quantitative easing is at hand: keeping the dollar from a disorderly decline and figuring out how to dismount from the tiger.<br />The Fed has cut interest rates to a range of zero to 0.25 percent and said it would use "all available tools" to get the U.S. economy growing again, including buying mortgage debt as well as exploring direct purchases of Treasury bonds.<br />While the central bank was at pains to distance its policy from Japan's during its extended downturn in the 1990s, there can be no doubt that the dollar printing presses are and have been running and will pump out as much currency as is needed to avoid deflation and make credit available at a stimulative rate.<br />There is no question of the Fed not being able to reignite inflation in the U.S. economy; if they print money fast enough, prices will go up. The issue is more about the collateral damage possible when a major debtor nation takes these steps, even if it is doing it for all the right reasons, in support of the best possible cause.<br />In the short term, the risk is that foreign holders of the dollar and Treasuries are spooked by the whirring of the presses, and, reasoning that the Fed cannot fail in its quest to reignite inflation, decide to hold something less, well, risky.<br />In the current circumstances, for better or worse, there may not be that much of a dollar alternative for global reserve managers and investors and, seeing as how a rapid decline for the dollar would hurt creditors, they may stick it out. But the risk is higher now than last week, and much higher than earlier this year.<br />The value of a dollar against a trade-weighted basket of currencies fell sharply after the Fed's announcement and is down about 10 percent in the past month.<br />Two factors that had been supporting the dollar through the recent months of the crisis, a tendency by U.S. investors to repatriate dollars during periods of stress, and the need to purchase dollars as part of the process of unwinding leveraged financial trades, will not continue forever.<br />"The risks for the dollar are pretty clear," said Michael Hart, a foreign exchange strategist at Citigroup in London. "It is going one way and the only question is how unidirectional it is going to be and how many starts and stops we are going to see."<br />U.S. policy appears to be aimed at helping to recapitalize banks and cutting the cost of finance to consumers by buying up assets and is distinct from that of the Bank of Japan, which increased bank reserves.<br />There are some stark differences between the United States and Japan, which didn't have the same need to attract external finance, and for that matter between the United States now and the United States during the Great Depression. When the Depression struck, the United States was the world's biggest creditor, rather than its principle debtor.<br />The U.S. economy is both distended and hollowed out; it needs to redirect itself more toward savings and producing goods and services that can be sold overseas. The problem is that doing that quickly will be both very painful and produce a lot of collateral damage. Fed policy can only succeed if it softens the very terrible effect of that reallocation but does not prevent it.<br />But what happens if, or rather once, the Fed and the U.S. government's combined stimulus succeeds? How exactly do you unwind a program of Treasury and mortgage asset purchases and near zero rates without bringing on too much inflation, perhaps much too much?<br />If foreign holders of the dollar stick with it during the next crucial months, there is little to prevent them from bailing out later, if they judge the Fed to have kicked the ball too far down field. There is no way of knowing how this can be undone or what to expect.<br />There is also another set of actors who can cause problems; foreign central banks and their government bosses. If the dollar weakens much during a time of global recession many will have a hard time resisting the urge to devalue their own currencies in an effort to capture a bigger share of what little demand remains.<br />The plan to buy assets to cut the knot of finance is sound but raises the question of how and when the banking system will be brought back to life. I'm not sure that buying time and hoping it can outlive its debts will work.<br />The new U.S. administration needs to quickly enunciate a clear and comprehensive policy on how recapitalizations will work, so that private capital and taxpayers can know where they stand.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>****************************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>White House considers 'orderly' bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler<br /></strong>By David Stout and Micheline Maynard<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The White House said Thursday that an "orderly" bankruptcy was one option being considered to try to rescue General Motors and Chrysler, which are seeking billions of dollars to avoid a shutdown.<br />President George W. Bush's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, confirmed growing speculation within legal circles that the president and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. were considering the step as part of a rescue package for the automobile industry.<br />The action would be unusual and would require concessions by the United Automobile Workers, suppliers, investment banks, the federal pension board, bondholders and other stakeholders in the two auto companies.<br />Ford Motor, which does not face an urgent need for capital, is not likely to be part of any rescue package.<br />Under one possibility that has been discussed, the government would give GM and Chrysler enough financing to operate for several months. Then a government-selected overseer would bring together company executives and other representatives to map out steps that would be taken once the two companies file for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.<br />"It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be pleasant, or palatable, but it's the only solution that makes the least bit of sense," said Hugh Ray, head of the bankruptcy practice at Andrews and Kurth, a Houston law firm, who has taken part in many major bankruptcy cases.<br />Major banks would provide debtor-in-possession financing for the companies to operate while under bankruptcy, with U.S. government funds as security.<br />"Disorderly collapse would be something very chaotic that is a shock to a system," Perino said Thursday at a news briefing. "There's an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that's what we would be talking about. That would be one of the options."<br />Perino quickly added that no final decision had been made. She said she could not be definite about the timing of a White House announcement, but that administration officials wrestling with the crisis were "nearing conclusion" of their deliberations.<br />"Any scenario that comes forward after this decision-making process, all the stakeholders are going to have to make tough decisions," Perino said.<br />Bush said Thursday that he was "worried about a disorderly bankruptcy" and the psychological implications it would have for an economy already staggering under the weight of a severe recession.<br />He said he also felt an obligation not to saddle President-elect Barack Obama with "a major catastrophe" on his first day in office.<br />But Bush, at a question and answer session at the American Enterprise Institute, said he was concerned about "putting good money after bad."<br />Perino said Chrysler's announcement Wednesday that it would shut down production for at least a month was one factor driving the White House deliberations. The car companies typically close for a couple of weeks over the year-end holidays, but Chrysler's decision to close for a month or more because of plunging sales was seen as ominous.<br />Negotiations involving the White House, Treasury Department, General Motors and Chrysler on an emergency loan package of more than $14 billion have been going on for days. Legislation on a rescue plan for Detroit stalled last week in the Senate, essentially leaving it up to the administration to decide what to do.<br />Some analysts have warned that Americans might be leery of buying cars from any company that was operating in bankruptcy. But other studies have shown that consumers would be assured if the companies received federal assistance, even if they end up in bankruptcy protection.<br />Perino took issue with arguments advanced by some conservatives that the car companies, which have been widely criticized for poor management decisions over several decades, should be allowed to collapse.<br />"Just to step back for a minute, if you thought that our economy today could handle the collapse of the American auto industry, then you might come to the conclusion that doing nothing was an option," Perino said.<br />"In a strong economy, we would probably come to that conclusion as well. But we don't have a strong economy today. We're in the middle of a recession, and we have continued credit and financial-market issues that we're trying to work through."</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*********************</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/18/business/fedex.php">FedEx cutting expenses as economy worsens</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/18/business/ecb.php">ECB takes new step to free bank lending</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/18/business/won.php">South Korea earmarks $15 billion to encourage bank lending</a><br /><a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/18/business/hot.php">In 2nd try, Australian bank raises $1.4 billion</a> </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>*********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Madoff scandal shaking real estate industry</strong><br />By Christine Haughney<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />Almost no segment of New York City's real estate industry was spared in the Madoff scandal, which may be history's largest Ponzi scheme: commercial brokers large and small, little-known developers and prominent families all lost money to Bernard Madoff, industry executives say.<br />The outsize impact on the industry may have resulted largely because Madoff (pronounced MAY-doff) managed his funds much the way that real estate leaders have operated successfully for decades: He provided little information and demanded a lot of trust.<br />"You have a lot of wealthy people who made a lot of money on handshakes," said Mark Weiss, a commercial real estate broker at Newmark Knight Frank, where several brokers had invested heavily with Madoff. There was "something about this person, pedigree and reputation that inspired trust," he said.<br />Across the city, industry executives said deals had been scuttled or jeopardized because of the scandal. Residential brokers are taking calls from Madoff investors who have had to put their apartments on the market. Many developers had pledged their investments with Madoff as collateral for projects, and are now worried that their banks will call in their loans.<br />"The level of devastation, both financial and on a human level, is astounding," said Robert Ivanhoe, a lawyer who is representing 10 developers and investors who lost $5 million to $50 million each with Madoff.<br />Indeed, at an industry fund-raiser at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Manhattan last weekend, much of the chatter over sushi and crudités was about money feared lost with Madoff, according to people who attended. And a Manhattan psychotherapist who counsels real estate leaders and bankers said most of the patients he has seen this week have close friends and relatives who lost money with Madoff.<br />The victims include executives at the global commercial brokerage CB Richard Ellis, most prominently Stephen Siegel, a major Bronx landlord who is chairman of worldwide operations at the brokerage and whose wife, Wendy, helped organize the fund-raising dinner on Saturday.<br />Brian Waterman, a principal at Newmark, also invested with Madoff. So did the Rechler family, which has been a major owner of office buildings in the region. Scott Rechler, the head of RexCorp, one of the family's largest firms, called the family's exposure "limited."<br />Jerry Reisman, a lawyer based in Garden City, New York, said he was representing six commercial real estate investors and developers in the area who lost a total of $150 million to Madoff. They met Madoff through contacts at country clubs in the tristate area, he said.<br />"They knew him from golfing in the Hamptons. They knew him from the locker rooms," Reisman said. "He was considered a wizard."<br />Reisman said his clients were especially concerned because they counted on Madoff investments to complete some of their real estate projects, pledging their investments as collateral for projects. Those developers fear that when their banks realize that their investments with Madoff have disappeared, they will demand new collateral from other sources, Reisman said.<br />Finding those alternative lenders will be difficult given the financial crisis and given that many other real estate investors have been hurt by the Madoff case.<br />"Many of these developers, their resources are all with Madoff," Reisman said.<br />There are widespread concerns that some developers will have trouble completing projects currently under construction. Edward Blumenfeld, who runs Blumenfeld Development Group, had invested heavily with Madoff and considered him a friend. Gary Lewi, a spokesman for Blumenfeld, said he still planned to complete a shopping complex that is to include a Target and a Costco, as well as several other projects where construction is "in the ground."<br />Beyond that, though, Blumenfeld is uncertain of what his development plans hold. His friendship with Madoff is even more uncertain, Lewi said.<br />"Any long-term plans are being reviewed as we conduct a far larger analysis of this scandal and the impact it could have on us and the development community as a whole," Lewi said. "Mr. Blumenfeld was friend to a man who apparently didn't exist."<br />The Wilpon family, the major owners of the Mets, has acknowledged investing millions with Madoff. The family controls a real estate firm, Sterling Equities, whose Web site says it owns 3,000 residential units and 600,000 square feet of office space. It is unclear whether the firm's real estate holdings are affected by the Madoff investments.<br />"We are shocked by recent events and, like all investors, will continue to monitor the situation," said Richard Auletta, a spokesman for Sterling.<br />Other real estate developers are finding that their charitable giving has been wiped out by Madoff. Leonard Litwin, one of the city's largest apartment landlords and head of Glenwood Management, had nearly all of his charitable foundation's investments managed by Madoff.<br />Gary Jacob, executive vice president of Glenwood, said Litwin had never met Madoff but had invested with him on the advice of a friend. The Litwin Foundation had donated money to research for cancer and Alzheimer's disease and charities, many of them supported by the real estate industry.<br />"It would have no impact to us as a real estate company," Jacob said. "But it affects the charitable giving."<br />Some members of the real estate industry are receiving the news with a mix of schadenfreude and sadness for their peers. Jeffrey Gural, chairman of Newmark Knight Frank, the brokerage firm, said Madoff had turned his family down as investors about eight years ago because they would not invest at least $20 million. For years, he said, colleagues introduced to Madoff through relatives or country club friends had sung his praises.<br />"People used to brag how they were getting these great returns when everybody else was struggling," he said. "They thought Bernie Madoff was a genius, and anybody who didn't give them their money was a fool."<br />The impact is already spreading to the residential real estate business. Brad Friedman, a lawyer representing about 100 investors primarily in New York and Florida, said several clients have already said they plan to put their apartments on the market. They depended on their Madoff investments to pay their mortgages and co-op fees.<br />"With that source of money frozen, they've got no cash," Friedman said. "They can't pay the electric bill. They can't pay the mortgage."<br />Other buyers have already backed out of deals because they had invested with Madoff and can no longer finance their purchases. Michele Kleier, a prominent Upper East Side broker, had buyers pull out of purchases on two $2 million apartments because they had lost money to Madoff. The first buyer put in an offer at 3 p.m. last Thursday, the day of Madoff's arrest, only to withdraw it by 5:30 p.m.<br />The second set of buyers had visited an apartment three times, requested the financial information about the co-op and had the broker notify Kleier that they would be making an offer on Monday morning. On Monday, she learned that the buyers had backed out because their money was tied up with Madoff funds.<br />"It's now two deals in the last four days," Kleier said. "It's amazing."<br />Kenneth Mueller, a Manhattan psychotherapist who counsels many real estate and financial executives, said those who lost money to Madoff called his indictment "the nail in the coffin for the commercial real estate industry," which had already been hurt by the recession.<br />Mueller said many patients were re-evaluating whether they can trust their business partners after Madoff's betrayal.<br />"Madoff was considered a member of the family," he said.</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div>********************</div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>Madoff's bail conditions are eased</strong><br />By Alex Berenson<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEW YORK: Bernard Madoff, the New York financier who the authorities say has confessed to a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, will not be going to jail even though he failed to meet the original terms of his $10 million bail agreement.<br />U.S. government prosecutors said they had modified the terms of Madoff's agreement so that he would not need to find four people to co-sign his bond. Madoff was unable to meet that condition, prosecutors said. Even his sons, Andrew and Mark, were apparently unwilling to help. A lawyer for the sons said they were unaware of the scheme and were cooperating with the authorities.<br />Instead, Madoff has agreed to a nightly curfew, and his wife, Ruth, will surrender her passport, according to a filing in U.S. District Court on Wednesday. Madoff has already given up his passport. He must remain at his apartment in Manhattan from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m.<br />During the day, he will still be allowed to travel throughout Connecticut and southern New York. Previously, he had had no restrictions on his travel in those areas, allowing him to sleep at his oceanfront estate in Montauk, on Long Island, if he chose.<br />When he was arrested last week, Madoff estimated that investors had lost as much as $50 billion in the fraud. He has said the business was a Ponzi scheme, a type of fraud in which early investors are paid off with money from later victims, until no more money can be raised and the scheme collapses.<br />Even as Madoff's sphere of liberty shrank slightly, new details about his wealth emerged Wednesday. Besides a boat in Florida, he owned a yacht that he kept in the south of France and was a regular at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, near Nice, where suites rent for as much as 5,000, or more than $7,000, a night, according to a person who had invested with him and had seen him at the hotel; the person asked to remain anonymous because he had lost money.<br />BLM Air Charter, a company registered to the same address as Madoff's securities firm, owned a share of a Cessna business jet, according to U.S. Federal Aviation Administration records. The plane, a Citation X, is a high-performance business jet, capable of flying across the Atlantic at 700 miles, or 1,100 kilometers, an hour. BLM is also listed as the co-owner of a second, smaller jet, which regularly traveled to Florida, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.<br />Prosecutors have been criticized for allowing Madoff relatively lenient bail terms, given his lifestyle, the scope of his alleged fraud and the fact that some of his victims say they have lost everything and face destitution.<br />Charities, individual investors, universities, hedge funds and banks have already reported losses of more than $20 billion in the case.<br />Marc Litt, the assistant U.S. attorney who is overseeing the case, did not return a call for comment on the bail agreement. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment.<br />Ira Lee Sorkin, a lawyer for Madoff, said he could not comment on the new agreement. He said Ruth Madoff's surrender of her passport was "standard operating procedure."<br />The authorities stepped up their search Wednesday for other assets belonging to Madoff. FBI agents and investigators from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission combed through the offices of his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.<br />Late in the day, officials were seen removing boxes of files from the offices. In a statement Tuesday, the SEC said Madoff had kept multiple sets of books, so reconstructing the flow of money might require substantial effort.<br />Experts on the brokerage industry and money management have said it would be nearly impossible for Madoff to have carried out the fraud, which encompassed thousands of clients and lasted for many years, without substantial help.<br />They have also questioned why auditors and regulators at the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority did not notice that Madoff's firm had far fewer assets in 2007 than the $17 billion he claimed to be managing.<br />The authorities also would like to determine Madoff's motivation for the fraud, when it began and how much of the stolen money he had spent on himself. The case may spur the FBI's New York office to add more investigators and support staff to handle securities fraud and other white-collar crime.<br />Government authorities have served a subpoena on the small Rockland County, New York, accounting firm that served as the auditor for Madoff's company, according to a person briefed on the matter. Andrew Lankler, a lawyer for David Friehling, the principal of the firm Friehling & Horowitz, declined to discuss details of the case.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Mafia suspect found hanged in prison</strong><br />By Elisabetta Povoledo<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />ROME: A suspect arrested in a series of high-profile raids on leading Mafia families was found hanged in Palermo's Pagliarelli prison hours after his arrest, Italian officials said Wednesday.<br />The raids in Palermo on Tuesday were staged in an attempt to stop the city's crime bosses from reorganizing after several years in which they appeared to lack leadership, according to the police.<br />Armed with nearly 100 arrest warrants, more than 1,200 military police officers fanned out through the city and surrounding areas, arresting 89 members of several Mafia families, officials said. The operation called Perseus, after the mythological hero who beheaded Medusa was one of the largest against the Mafia in recent years and included the use of helicopters and dog teams.<br />Dozens of handcuffed suspects were shown in televised news reports being escorted to prison. The police said some suspects remained at large.<br />Officials on Wednesday identified the dead suspect as Gaetano Lo Presti, 52, and said he hanged himself. Prosecutors had accused Lo Presti of controlling the Mafia families in a Palermo neighborhood, and a spokesman said he was "very important."<br />The arrests were the culmination of a nine-month investigation by anti-Mafia prosecutors in Palermo. The charges included association with the Mafia, extortion and arms and drug trafficking.<br />Pietro Grasso, Italy's chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, said evidence from wiretaps and leads from informers in recent months suggested that top organized crime figures from the Palermo area were planning to recreate a council of leaders from the city's crime families that would better coordinate their activities.<br />The operation on Tuesday "decapitated a ruling organization that wanted to give strategic direction to the Mafia," he said.<br />A previous council, known as the cupola, was led by Salvatore Riina, known as Toto, who was considered the "boss of bosses" until his arrest in 1993. The group, which covered all of Sicily, had adopted a strategy of attacking the authorities, the investigators said, leading to the killings, in quick succession, of the top anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.<br />"We don't know what they were planning" this time around, Grasso said. But investigators suspected it would be big.<br />The crackdown was the most important anti-Mafia operation since 2006, when several top bosses, including Bernardo Provenzano, who took over from Riina, were arrested in Sicily over a period of several months. "If that operation brought the Mafia to its knees, Operation Perseus has ensured that it won't get up again," Grasso said.<br />The action was applauded by Giuseppe Lumia, an opposition senator who is a member of the parliamentary anti-Mafia commission. "For once, we acted before Cosa Nostra could put their devastating plans into effect," he said.<br />But Lumia said Italy still needed to do more to shut down businesses operated by the Mafia and to cut the criminals' ties with politicians who protect them.<br />"That's where the real battle is," he said.</div><div> </div><div><br /></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281444570142702146" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 190px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQqURRU32pylLmH7iGMO_aIvGdGZpb7E993BVj6p1CW8e6ekOe8cIP_-QLo_UJeg2nxKmEumvU4vpE86woklpCEArINP9-xa708MtR00I1PzFbv7LTTmQYIWL_JSG1CQp2kSI4sn48_hc/s320/18brokers550.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>IW: In a year of following the news, I haven't posted one news picture. Until now. If you have read the above and looked at the face of Mr. Madoff - who's not in jail for stealing $50 BILLION - and can explain to me why the entire goddam world isn't rioting, please let me know.</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>********************</strong></div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong></strong> </div><div><strong>EU investigates Hitachi<br /></strong>Bloomberg News<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BRUSSELS: Hitachi, a Japanese maker of nuclear reactors, household appliances and hard-disk drives, said Thursday that it was being investigated by the European Union for possible price fixing of power transformers.<br />The company, based in Tokyo, has received notice of the charges, known as a statement of objection, a spokesman, Takeshi Kawakami, said by telephone. He declined to comment further.<br />European Union regulators this month accused ABB, Areva, Toshiba and other companies of possible price fixing in the market for power transformers. Under European Union law, companies can be fined as much as 10 percent of annual sales for breaking antitrust rules.<br />Hitachi gets about 32 percent of its revenue from the power and industrial systems business, which includes transformers, high-speed trains and construction equipment.<br />Transformers are important components in electricity transmission, reducing or increasing the voltage in an electrical circuit.</div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>Greek rioters go on holiday season spree in Athens</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />ATHENS: Riot police clashed with rock-throwing demonstrators Thursday in central Athens, sending Christmas shoppers and customers in cafés running for cover. Frightened parents scooped up their children from a Christmas carousel in the city's main square and fled.<br />Some protesters broke away from a peaceful rally and threw rocks and firebombs at police and buildings near Parliament, overturned a car and set fire to trash cans. They also splashed the police with red paint. The police responded with tear gas and flash grenades.<br />Firefighters and the police also rushed to stop protesters from burning down the city's main Christmas tree, which was replaced this week after the first was torched in riots. Families abandoned the carousel in central Syntagma Square after happily going on rides all morning.<br />The clashes Thursday were the latest outbreak of violence after the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Dec. 6. Protests over the boy's death at police hands and the increasing economic hardship in Greece have led to the worst rioting the country has seen in decades.<br />Hundreds of businesses have been smashed, burned or looted and gangs of youths fought running battles with riot police firing tear gas every night for a week. The riots have been fed by dissatisfaction with Greece's increasingly unpopular conservative government.<br />More than 200 youths took part in running battles with the police Thursday in Athens. They also set fire to a private security van and set up a burning barricade after smashing a café storefront, and dragging out and setting fire to its furniture. Downtown streets were littered with smashed paving stones and marble blocks.<br />Shop owners who saw their businesses smashed and looted during the riots last week now say they are having trouble making ends meet because many customers are staying away from the city center.<br />"Who's going to pay all these bills? I'm taking in 200 a day," asked Spyros Papaspyrou, the owner of a shoe shop in central Athens. "Do they want me to stand outside my shop with a shotgun? I can't understand why they can't arrest 80 people in the center of Athens."<br />The Greek prime minister, Costas Karamanlis, under fire for his hands off reaction to the riots, announced measures to save tourism, one of the main reasons for a slowing economy.<br />"We are determined to do everything possible so that all we have achieved through sacrifices is not wasted," he said, announcing tax breaks and incentives for the tourism sector.<br />Before the violence broke out, about 7,000 students and other protesters marched in a rally, chanting, "We are the law, we'll stay on the streets."<br />As they passed, fearful shop owners shuttered their store fronts. Some demonstrators painted white crime-scene-style body outlines on the streets.<br />Earlier Thursday, some 1,000 demonstrators joined a peaceful march, backed by the Communist Party, through the city. About 300 people also marched in Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki.<br />While sporadic rallies have been held in Europe in support of the Greek protesters, none were reported Thursday.<br />Major labor union staged work stoppages Thursday to protest the teenager's shooting and the conservative government's economic policies.<br />Air traffic controllers walked off the job for three hours. State hospitals were operating with skeleton staff in a 24-hour strike.<br />The government appealed for calm after another teenager was shot in the hand late Wednesday near his school. It was unclear who shot him.<br />A police spokesman, Panayiotis Stathis, said no officers were in the area at the time of the attack, and Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos promised a thorough investigation. The boy underwent surgery Thursday.<br />The policeman who shot Grigoropoulos has been charged with murder and jailed pending trial, while his partner has been charged as an accomplice. The officer said he fired a warning shot in self-defense against a group of youths. A ballistic report said Thursday that the bullet ricocheted before killing the teenager but further investigation was needed to decide whether the policeman aimed or fired in the air.</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Myanmar blames "extravagant" Americans for crisis<br /></strong>Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />YANGON: Military-ruled Myanmar, one of the most isolated countries in the world, has largely escaped the global financial upheaval triggered by "extravagant" Americans, state media said on Thursday.<br />The former Burma relied on few imports and its main trading partners, India and China, were suffering less than others in the current economic downturn, a commentary in several state-owned newspapers said.<br />"I dare say that our country does not need to worry about the global financial crisis," the article said.<br />Newspapers are tightly controlled by the military, which has reduced a once-promising economy and country to an impoverished international pariah after more than four decades of rule.<br />Noting that the financial crisis had been spawned in the United States, the article said: "Americans are a people who are extravagant and do not hesitate to buy an elephant if it is available on credit."<br />Some independent observers were less optimistic about Myanmar's ability to sail through the crisis.<br />Despite abundant natural gas, minerals and timber coveted by China, India and other regional neighbours, Myanmar is among the world's poorest countries due mainly to the failed policies of a reclusive regime.<br />"Our economy is already in very bad shape. So it couldn't be worse," said a retired professor, noting that the main city, Yangon, experienced 20-hour blackouts each day.<br />Returning migrant workers had little hope of finding work after losing their jobs in neighbouring countries such as Thailand, where factories are closing or cutting production due to the global economic slowdown.<br />A member of the Federation of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry said export industries were already feeling the pain of slowing demand.<br />"There has been a steep drop in orders for some major export items such as garments and rubber," the businessman said.<br />The global economic downturn is a further blow to a tourism industry struggling to recover in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis in May, and the junta's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2007.<br />In the ancient capital of Bagan, home to 1,000 year-old temples on the banks of the Irrawaddy River, the lack of tourists in the traditional peak season is threatening many with ruin.<br />"The lacquerware industry depends on tourists, but it is now facing a critical condition," one hotel operator said, adding that many artists were abandoning the centuries-old industry.<br />(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun; Writing by Alan Raybould; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Dean Yates)</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Banker's spat with author reveals Russia's rifts</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />By Gleb Bryanski<br />A billionaire banker has locked horns with a poverty-stricken left-wing writer in a rare public debate over social division in crisis-hit Russia, revealing growing antagonism in its ostensibly well-controlled society.<br />The debate, which quickly spread over the internet but has not been reported on state-controlled mainstream television, has evoked memories of pre-1917 Russia where hatred between the ruling class and the poor sparked a Communist revolution.<br />The row started when Pyotr Aven, the wealthy and well connected CEO of the country's largest privately owned bank Alfa, wrote a damning review of "Sankya," a novel by Zakhar Prilepin, a member of a banned radical political party.<br />It tells how Sasha Tishin, a disillusioned young Russian from a provincial town, joins a radical party hoping to change the political system by force, and leads an attack on a local administration headquarters.<br />"Most of what one needs to hate in life, from my point of view, can be found in writer Prilepin's book," Aven wrote in the Russian Pioneer glossy magazine, which targets wealthy educated Russians and has a circulation of 20,000.<br />The revolutionary views of the book's protagonist, he added, made him "reach for a pistol."<br />Tishin takes part in violent protests, fights with police, plots killings of officials in neighbouring Latvia, and is subjected to brutal torture by security agents.<br />"Why, instead of bringing order -- planting a tree, building a house, washing socks or reading a fairytale to a child -- does one need to engage in doing nothing, then after a good booze, taking up a club and smashing everything?" Aven wrote.<br />After eight years of economic boom, Russia is plunging into economic crisis which is threatening to crush the fragile stability fostered by Vladimir Putin's government with the help of buoyant oil revenues, compliant state media and heavy-handed police.<br />Little-noticed when it was first published in paperback by niche publisher Ad Marginem two years ago, the book's sales jumped to 35,000 this year. Publication rights have been sold to Poland, France, Serbia, China and Turkey.<br />GHOST OF POVERTY<br />Prilepin opposes what he terms the "social Darwinism" which has split Russian society. Despite Russia's oil wealth, about 21 million Russians or 15 percent of the population live below the poverty line of $158 (101 pounds) income per month.<br />He responded to Aven's comments by saying he had been working hard, selling over 100,000 copies of his books, while raising three children and paying taxes.<br />"I do not understand what else I should do to be able to buy a flat because we do not fit in the one we have," Prolepin wrote in Ogonyok magazin, which has a circulation of 70,000 and a wider readership than Russian Pioneer.<br />He said he had been living with his family in a tiny two-room apartment in the industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod, which was the hometown of Maxim Gorky, an early 20th-century writer.<br />"The ghost of poverty is still lurking in front of me, it has not gone so far away that I cannot sense its sickening smell," wrote Prilepin. He said he and his family had sometimes been forced to eat fried cabbage for months to survive.<br />Some book reviewers have likened Prilepin to Gorky, who was often called "a thunderbird of the Revolution" for books like "The Mother," written in 1907, about a young factory worker who becomes a revolutionary.<br />Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga river was renamed after Gorky in Soviet times, but regained its original name after the collapse of the Soviet Union.<br />"Russia is on the brink of the social revolution and such a revolution is badly needed," a skinny, clean-shaven Prilepin told Reuters in a Moscow cafe. "Russia is now in a turbulent state, now it is all going to start."<br />LETTER "FROM AN UNKNOWN WORLD"<br />With Russia's rich-poor divide brought into sharp focus by the oil bonanza, there is widespread hatred of billionaires such as Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, or market reform ideologists like Aven.<br />Aven worked in Russia's first reformist government in 1991-92, which used "shock therapy" to reform the economy, wiping out the lifetime savings of millions of Russians. He was 29th in Forbes magazine's list of richest Russians this year.<br />Aven's former colleague in the government Anatoly Chubais, an architect of privatisation, survived an assassination attempt in 2005.<br />Prilepin served in police special forces, fought in Chechnya, and then worked as a crime reporter before becoming a writer.<br />"The difference between me and Aven is basic -- in case of a crisis, he and his family can leave this country and watch developments from the outside," Prilepin wrote in the Russian Life magazine, referring to Aven's properties abroad.<br />Aven, bespectacled and fast-talking, told Reuters the reaction to his book review took him by surprise, but he could understand the resentment.<br />"It was like a letter from a world which is totally unknown," he said by telephone. "I can understand that reaction perfectly well -- the outrageous behaviour of the rich showing off their wealth."<br />Putin, first president, then prime minister, and his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev have portrayed Russia as a stable country where the authorities enjoy the full backing of the population. Prilepin's book evokes a different world, which is missing from the mainstream media.<br />In reality, Putin disbanded or marginalized opposition parties like the banned National Bolshevik Party, which counts Prilepin among its members, or their allies from chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov's Civil Front.<br />"Despite the financial crisis, there are people able to defend the future," said Aven, justifying his attack on the book. "Moreover, today's rich came from the same slums as Tishin and had to go through you know what," he added, recalling the often violent birth of Russian capitalism.<br />Political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said Aven's views were "an ideological manifesto of Russia's ruling elite" and were in line with the general thinking in the Kremlin. "As long as Aven sits in his office, the regime will not change," he said.<br />(Editing by Michael Stott and Sara Ledwith)</div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJOo1_u86p_gQF-4UqFKvjVJnLr6HckTJU8zPZv3DGFqxhNDyohJiT-310J09ryvf7bfbvLDZo_lDPgMtoTFFqKxvQorETGFQMImUPpAFk2Z_onciSAodDUJtbsC0yhG5dK3OoitdNfPo/s1600-h/DSC03566.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429535699204978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJOo1_u86p_gQF-4UqFKvjVJnLr6HckTJU8zPZv3DGFqxhNDyohJiT-310J09ryvf7bfbvLDZo_lDPgMtoTFFqKxvQorETGFQMImUPpAFk2Z_onciSAodDUJtbsC0yhG5dK3OoitdNfPo/s320/DSC03566.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><br /><div><strong></strong></div><br /><div><strong>UN court convicts officers over Rwandan genocide</strong><br />By Meg Bortin<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />PARIS: A senior Rwandan military officer charged with being one of the masterminds of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which bands of Hutus massacred hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, was convicted Thursday by a United Nations court in Tanzania of genocide and sentenced to life in prison.<br />In a statement, the UN tribunal said that it had sentenced the officer, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, and his accomplices, two other Rwandan military officers who were also on trial, Major Aloys Ntabakuze and Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva, to life imprisonment for "genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes." A fourth co-defendant, General Gratien Kabiligi, was acquitted of all charges against him and the court ordered his release.<br />Bagosora, 67, was the cabinet director for the Rwandan Defense Ministry at the start of the slaughter by Hutus of 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus in 1994. The three other senior army officers had been on trial with him since 2002 at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania.<br />The court said that Bagosora had been "the highest authority in the Rwandan Defense Ministry with authority over the military" in the days after the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994.<br />The president, a Hutu, died when his plane was shot down over the airport in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The death sparked the three-month wave of grisly massacres.<br />The speed and violence of the genocide was evident in the court's findings.<br />On April 7, 1994 - the day after the plane attack - Bagosora was responsible for the killing of the Rwandan prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana; the president of the Constitutional Court, Joseph Kavaruganda; and three top opposition figures: Frédéric Nzamurambaho, Landoald Ndasingwa and Faustin Rucogoza, the court ruled.<br />But the court cleared Bagosora and the others on trial of conspiring to commit genocide before April 7, 1994.<br />The court said that the prosecution had alleged that Kabiligi, who led the military operations bureau of the army general staff, "participated in the distribution of weapons, meetings to plan the genocide as well as a number of specific crimes, many of which were related to roadblocks in the Kigali area." But the charges were dismissed after he advanced a successful alibi, and "it was also not proven that he had operational authority or that he targeted civilians," the court said.</div><div> </div><div>***************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Argentine court orders release of jailed officers</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />BUENOS AIRES: An Argentine court on Thursday ordered the release of 12 jailed former naval officers facing charges of murder, torture and other human rights abuses during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship.<br />The decision came under an Argentine law that says accused people in custody for two years without being convicted and sentenced must be released pending trial, judicial sources told Reuters.<br />Among those ordered freed until trial was Alfredo Astiz, one of the most notorious figures of Argentina's military rule, who is charged with the murder of two French nuns in 1977.<br />Known as the "blond angel of death," Astiz is accused of infiltrating human rights groups during the dictatorship and identifying some victims to be kidnapped and murdered by kissing them during a church service.<br />He was convicted in France in absentia for the killing of the nuns.<br />"This is an insult, a slap in the face," said Taty Almeida, a leader of the human rights group, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.<br />A government report says more than 11,000 people died or disappeared during the "Dirty War," a crackdown on leftists and other opponents of the military government at the time. Human rights groups say the number is closer to 30,000.<br />In 2005, Argentina's Supreme Court, at the urging of then-President Nestor Kirchner, struck down two amnesty laws that shielded hundreds of former officers from charges of human rights abuses during the dictatorship.<br />Many of the junta's top leaders are under house arrest on charges of kidnapping babies born to mothers held in captivity during military rule.<br />(Reporting by Damian Wroclavsky; Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Peter Cooney)</div><div> </div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ngyRnRyptnWCkKzZI1Y5-wNvPqXDTlkl77yoIlNw4QziwOK_-GFejWXrqgXp3OI50Q3XOeHGYungUw6qU9CCrCvfTCGRTp-gfcg8LKAl12L_-jdYjn194okZ0GQRg_iSww_aRBLYx4M/s1600-h/DSC03570.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429531243120610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ngyRnRyptnWCkKzZI1Y5-wNvPqXDTlkl77yoIlNw4QziwOK_-GFejWXrqgXp3OI50Q3XOeHGYungUw6qU9CCrCvfTCGRTp-gfcg8LKAl12L_-jdYjn194okZ0GQRg_iSww_aRBLYx4M/s320/DSC03570.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAyCuYfkuOhJBspIJOfDdaPYD5i8vEARDqXN4hV5ZEJRSOdyGLNWmsH4zCe-fcyRQv8Enf5GS-npJGlFyIhoSQId4JBviF1YWLJmyGWBTPMWgNon-isKEo4mBTpbejHOAKZoMnAkMCttc/s1600-h/DSC03571.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281429168536455394" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFGlg5BLmkzUp2ae4AZXLsx0dFVGkpsncjxXOYaPm6QLMfLmdF79fAUJ5uWruP8bhUghd88E4jsuO6vJ_xY3UVlEog2Dp2w-bGHl_qbjdLJ8Ko5TTgV1JBIYWWR4PzvutxABazMtJtNm4/s320/DSC03576.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiTwKYpbDj-R0YcW3g06BsK0b50Lb8Np5HgDc_lkbFe3up037XPSnUgWRu-7IT0QagcLEZL5bdtIdmUBoNKM5V-RsGjzEy4SXzXtdswYG0KipV_tht3YpEomt-raOvdnuVZcxWlu_jah4/s1600-h/DSC03577.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428824495245554" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiTwKYpbDj-R0YcW3g06BsK0b50Lb8Np5HgDc_lkbFe3up037XPSnUgWRu-7IT0QagcLEZL5bdtIdmUBoNKM5V-RsGjzEy4SXzXtdswYG0KipV_tht3YpEomt-raOvdnuVZcxWlu_jah4/s320/DSC03577.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHcYT6NshgGZIGzRavzp3K73BvRc4mgYbg8sj5o72BdjkYna2RDuKZ0jW7hyphenhyphenBfR4DAtk-A1Ra-8-T40NULrfqxqnTxzCmUzvHIMX7orlHdShN8IvOiL-JfnE-py3u9-oqOE_mS12mNBmo/s1600-h/DSC03578.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428825670965170" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHcYT6NshgGZIGzRavzp3K73BvRc4mgYbg8sj5o72BdjkYna2RDuKZ0jW7hyphenhyphenBfR4DAtk-A1Ra-8-T40NULrfqxqnTxzCmUzvHIMX7orlHdShN8IvOiL-JfnE-py3u9-oqOE_mS12mNBmo/s320/DSC03578.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK-umBy7TqedMXh3TZvw87v3A0vQZZfAAoaR2_g-xFxfUKlKInlwtI-L01oBaGmfzcXXAGN6if3PBnBkYbBsZSdiye-uK1nSfYrhketTC1Ib4BV1kOnL7xNdwXxoYRFhZrgblc9i84skQ/s1600-h/DSC03579.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428824967150914" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK-umBy7TqedMXh3TZvw87v3A0vQZZfAAoaR2_g-xFxfUKlKInlwtI-L01oBaGmfzcXXAGN6if3PBnBkYbBsZSdiye-uK1nSfYrhketTC1Ib4BV1kOnL7xNdwXxoYRFhZrgblc9i84skQ/s320/DSC03579.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEnRzByMl1bg30MIcUOlowXCOYB_AF2WWlTNE6p7V98-qmzZuTAcle_Jru_ki7lZKbtNWU9aBlMhBBc8SXB21MvskQx_T59GXs1yqvOkBiLyx6xA2E60pwVGKzEC5-F5oZZ-k5IGFsRHU/s1600-h/DSC03580.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428818209385826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEnRzByMl1bg30MIcUOlowXCOYB_AF2WWlTNE6p7V98-qmzZuTAcle_Jru_ki7lZKbtNWU9aBlMhBBc8SXB21MvskQx_T59GXs1yqvOkBiLyx6xA2E60pwVGKzEC5-F5oZZ-k5IGFsRHU/s320/DSC03580.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>OPINION</strong></div><div><strong>A Narnia Christmas</strong><br />By Laura Miller<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />Every Christmas, I re-read C.S. Lewis' novel "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."<br />The holiday seems like the ideal time for an excursion into my imaginative past, so I return to the paperback boxed set of "The Chronicles of Narnia" that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 10.<br />For me, Narnia is intimately linked with the season. I'm not alone. In Britain, stage productions of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" are a holiday staple, for good reason. The book rests on a foundation of Christian imagery; its most famous scene is of a little girl standing under a lamppost in a snowy wood, and Father Christmas himself makes an appearance, after the lion god Aslan frees Narnia from an evil witch who decreed that it be "always winter, and never Christmas."<br />That I'm not a Christian doesn't much hinder my enjoyment of either the holiday or the book, but the presence of Father Christmas bothered many of Lewis's friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien, whose Middle-earth was free of the legends and religions of our world, objected to Narnia's hodgepodge of motifs: the fauns and dryads lifted from classic mythology, the Germanic dwarfs and contemporary schoolboy slang lumped in with the obvious Christian symbolism.<br />But Lewis embraced the Middle Ages' indiscriminate mixing of stories and motifs from seemingly incompatible sources. The medievals, he once wrote, enthusiastically adopted a habit from late antiquity of "gathering together and harmonizing views of very different origin: building a syncretistic model not only out of Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoical, but out of pagan and Christian elements."<br />Christmas as we now know it is much the same sort of conglomeration, and when people call for a return to its pure, authentic roots, they're missing an essential quality of the holiday. Narnia is a mongrel thing, and so is Christmas. As is often the case, this mongrelizing is the source of its strength.<br />Complaints about the corruption, dilution or fundamental impiety of Christmas have been made for centuries. The Puritans so mistrusted the holiday that its celebration was outlawed in 17th-century Boston. Around the same time, the German theologian Paul Ernst Jablonski asserted that Christmas amounted to a paganization of the authentic faith because the date, Dec. 25, had been appropriated from a festival for a Roman solar god. (Some Christian scholars, including the current pope, have actually argued that the appropriation went the other way around, and the solar festival was in fact a heathen bid to co-opt the feast day of an increasingly popular monotheistic cult.)<br />On the other side, non-Christians who relish the holiday like to point out that many Christmas icons - the decorated tree, the Yule log, mistletoe - were originally sacred to Celtic and Northern European pagans.<br />Yet even the Yuletide customs that are supposedly pagan holdovers must be taken with a grain of salt. We have no written records of the cultures from which they supposedly derive; everything we know about them comes second- and third-hand from Roman or Christian writers pursuing their own agendas and relying, for the most part, on oral sources.<br />For decades, historians and folklorists have understood that oral traditions are not very reliable when they refer to anything reputed to have happened more than 100 years ago. What's presented as hoary legend is in fact more likely a justification of present conditions than an accurate account of the past.<br />Druids, for example, have over the years been refashioned as the descendants of Noah, as bardic romantics, even as sexual egalitarians; in fact, much of what people think they know about the ancient beliefs and rites of Northern Europeans was concocted by early 20th-century occultist outfits like the Ancient Druid Order and Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.<br />The British historian Ronald Hutton describes this sort of thing as indicative of "the power of literary fiction over fact." We believe what we choose to believe, and Christmas is no exception.<br />In recent years, popular histories like "The Battle for Christmas" and "Inventing Christmas," have shown that many of the holiday's most hallowed rites, traditions we think of as extending back at least as far as C.S. Lewis's beloved Middle Ages, were invented less than 200 years ago by such 19th-century literary figures as Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore and, of course, Charles Dickens. More than Christian or pagan, Christmas is a Victorian fabrication.<br />Is this, though, such a bad thing? The unifying principle of Narnia, unlike the vast complex of invented history behind Middle-earth, isn't an illusion of authenticity or purity. Rather, what binds all the elements of Lewis's fantasy together is something more like love. Narnia consists of every story, legend, myth or image - pagan or Christian - that moved the author over the course of his life.<br />Our contemporary, semi-secular Christmas is similarly a collection of everything yearned for: warmth, plenty, peace, family, conviviality. Like Narnia, the holiday is a fantasy, but there are times when a fantasy is exactly what you need.<br />Laura Miller, a staff writer at Salon.com, is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia."<br /><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29ZvUeynRqY6LQBZr6bmR3Cz0nVZzwRi8xxq8cDkr_syu42yR3blomTEu2klkot0MyZsQ4k3w6vEaTpN-w407BvtgGRFb03EFEORb80F9MhqMn2pFeoQ8jI9UMbCpnStOHEjOmXw3ZXM/s1600-h/DSC03581.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428813500239474" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg29ZvUeynRqY6LQBZr6bmR3Cz0nVZzwRi8xxq8cDkr_syu42yR3blomTEu2klkot0MyZsQ4k3w6vEaTpN-w407BvtgGRFb03EFEORb80F9MhqMn2pFeoQ8jI9UMbCpnStOHEjOmXw3ZXM/s320/DSC03581.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT7i7FUiMhD5HcTY5M5090NdE53Bwhl359mXkXKUeN8su9Idhox_K9DuohSFml-VPd6dSzy3oo4eoLNIzqVfcc3XIiUkxEBTotqxaSMAjLxb4T-FgtzqZL0rbgdXtV2L2hqIOvwG_wyN8/s1600-h/DSC03582.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428513432825506" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT7i7FUiMhD5HcTY5M5090NdE53Bwhl359mXkXKUeN8su9Idhox_K9DuohSFml-VPd6dSzy3oo4eoLNIzqVfcc3XIiUkxEBTotqxaSMAjLxb4T-FgtzqZL0rbgdXtV2L2hqIOvwG_wyN8/s320/DSC03582.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisli8OeySBolbfMqVrEGW2L3d__p6n2ERMVS7vu6iSCsBfwmaPxEOJArZF98quIJXvfJafb3-Ugs0upM_-Px06CwpR0ifvTNwyXBkpzpe7Bkj0XJgLW8ZppZoA5sOReYvtQxyaJP9R7i8/s1600-h/DSC03583.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428510822980322" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 313px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisli8OeySBolbfMqVrEGW2L3d__p6n2ERMVS7vu6iSCsBfwmaPxEOJArZF98quIJXvfJafb3-Ugs0upM_-Px06CwpR0ifvTNwyXBkpzpe7Bkj0XJgLW8ZppZoA5sOReYvtQxyaJP9R7i8/s320/DSC03583.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvndct5Go-NZWnA8R_p1G9O9r9NVQ2h-8aWZvyk9JIBOLf6JoGpJafbwk2dseyOxRQHqmD2nfHBUBcA97egONzdIHvJFGB5A3xxScwenipSnAOAanIHtlwpcJsbOoS4PfIb-aY5A4p8ag/s1600-h/DSC03584.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428497044622674" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvndct5Go-NZWnA8R_p1G9O9r9NVQ2h-8aWZvyk9JIBOLf6JoGpJafbwk2dseyOxRQHqmD2nfHBUBcA97egONzdIHvJFGB5A3xxScwenipSnAOAanIHtlwpcJsbOoS4PfIb-aY5A4p8ag/s320/DSC03584.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAxzdmRk7MY5_Z2_jvTrjibc19DUpQYe-MN9IYHLAaCxbfaV5swjdJ1phfBiFReIgmdIFb8-akAt9EW6JwI95oDGbY0qUktVze56euQ8RxJzV-hFZIhU0e6E7qiEzhBDj09g9XRqZl7AM/s1600-h/DSC03585.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428497412115186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 223px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAxzdmRk7MY5_Z2_jvTrjibc19DUpQYe-MN9IYHLAaCxbfaV5swjdJ1phfBiFReIgmdIFb8-akAt9EW6JwI95oDGbY0qUktVze56euQ8RxJzV-hFZIhU0e6E7qiEzhBDj09g9XRqZl7AM/s320/DSC03585.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgJHCLSMrDVd0TSqPdDDZ8FVDAwI-5GT9XsjN7gfZvySZjoVx1QU9WtnODw0VLjs5-QEgb7xyoo1honZ9Ul0CKH2GwFs-RhfDCiVU4GhgwagHiyje2qjm8tndo-_6XBMUh0kJL_tN8RTA/s1600-h/DSC03586.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281428487901227826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgJHCLSMrDVd0TSqPdDDZ8FVDAwI-5GT9XsjN7gfZvySZjoVx1QU9WtnODw0VLjs5-QEgb7xyoo1honZ9Ul0CKH2GwFs-RhfDCiVU4GhgwagHiyje2qjm8tndo-_6XBMUh0kJL_tN8RTA/s320/DSC03586.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div> </div><div><strong>U.S. official sees 'test' looming from Russia</strong><br />The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The Russian government will probably "test the mettle" of Barack Obama when his administration assumes power by taking a tougher stance against the U.S. missile defense project in Europe, a senior State Department official says.<br />John Rood, the department's top arms control official, said Wednesday that he believed the Russians were waiting to size up the Obama administration before Moscow advanced its position on disputed weapons issues.<br />In discussing the state of Russian opposition to U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, Rood said it appeared that Moscow has "paused" in anticipation of a new national security approach in Washington.<br />"My assessment is that the Russians intend to test the mettle of the new administration and the new president," he said. "The future will show how the new administration chooses to answer that challenge."<br />Asked to elaborate, he said, "I think missile defense and other subjects will be among those that the Russians intend to determine what the new administration's posture will be."<br />In a related development, a NATO official said Thursday that the alliance and Russia will hold a conference Friday, the first high-level contact since NATO suspended such ties after Moscow's war with Georgia in August. The alliance's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, will meet Dmitri Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to NATO, in a move toward repairing disrupted ties, a NATO official said. "It will be an informal lunch in Brussels," the official said.<br />The 26-member NATO agreed this month to gradually resume contacts with Russia, with European allies arguing that the freeze in ties was counter to NATO's security interests.<br />Rood said he reached his conclusion on Russia during talks in Moscow on Monday, not from explicit Russian statements. He also said the Russians had been less flexible lately in talks on missile defense. He cited in particular their stance on U.S. proposals to give Moscow more assurance that a missile interceptor site in Poland and a missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic would pose no security threat to Russia.<br />The United States, with the support of the Polish and Czech governments, has proposed that Russian officials be given regular access to the interceptor and radar sites and that they be allowed to monitor activity at both sites through undisclosed technical means. Rood did not elaborate on the details in dispute.<br />"I don't want to spell out all the details because I think this is a high-priority dialogue for us in the United States, and I don't think that putting all the details out will facilitate a resolution to it," he said.<br />Rood led a U.S. delegation in talks with senior Russian officials on a range of subjects, including efforts by both governments to negotiate a treaty to replace the 1991 strategic arms reduction treaty, Start, which expires next December. Rood said the talks were useful but did not achieve any breakthroughs.<br />In Moscow on Tuesday, Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying that Moscow hoped the Obama administration would agree that the weapons limitations under Start "should be preserved and strengthened, rather than weakened."<br />Rood said the Russians wanted to expand the scope of a follow-on to Start to include limitations on nonnuclear strategic weapons such as long-range conventional bombers and possibly submarines. The Bush administration has resisted that, saying the restrictions should be on nuclear warheads only.<br />Rood said he consulted with members of Obama's transition team before traveling to Moscow and will brief them on the substance of the talks.<br />He also said he expected there would be additional talks with the Russians on those subjects before President George W. Bush leaves office Jan. 20.<br />Brooke Anderson, the Obama transition office's chief spokeswoman on national security affairs, declined to comment on Rood's remark about the Russians seeking to test the new president.<br />The missile defense issue has been one of the most divisive between Washington and Moscow in the past few years.<br />The Bush administration has argued that extending its U.S.-based defense system to Europe is important in defending Europe and the United States from a possible long-range missile strike from Iran, while the Russians dispute the immediacy of an Iranian threat and worry about U.S. military expansion near Russian borders.<br />On Nov. 5, the day after Obama's election, President Dmitri Medvedev warned that Russia would move short-range missiles to NATO's borders to "neutralize" any U.S. missile system in Eastern Europe if necessary.<br />Medvedev has since backed off slightly. He stressed on Nov. 15 that Moscow would not act unless the United States took the first step and expressed hope that the new U.S. administration would be open to negotiations.<br />Obama has not been explicit, at least in public, about whether he would proceed with the missile plan in Poland and the Czech Republic. More broadly he has said he supports missile defense but wants to ensure that it is proved to be a reliable system that does not detract from other security priorities.</div><div> </div><div>**********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Georgia lags in its bid to fix army</strong><br />By Thom Shanker and C. J. Chivers<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: The Georgian military, which was routed in August during a brief war with Russia, suffers from widespread mismanagement and unqualified leadership, and is in need of extensive reforms to become a modern fighting force, according to a classified Pentagon assessment conducted this fall.<br />The assessment, by a team of American military officers that worked quietly in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, in October and November, offers a clinical view of a politicized military culture and substandard practices in a country lobbying to join NATO while embroiled in two bloody territorial disputes with Russia.<br />The assessment underscores the difficult choices to be faced by President-elect Barack Obama, whose foreign policy team will be balancing decisions on how to engage Georgia against concerns that commitments to assist its military will further inflame Russia.<br />The report, portions of which were shown to The New York Times by a person concerned about the poor readiness of Georgia's military, made implicitly clear that after more than a decade of American training and nearly five years of heavy investment by President Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's military remains immature and ill prepared.<br />Georgia's armed forces, the report said, are highly centralized, prone to impulsive rather than deliberative decision making, undermined by unclear lines of command and led by senior officials who were selected for personal relationships rather than professional qualifications.<br />Moreover, according to the report, Georgia's military lacks basic elements of a modern military bureaucracy, ranging from a sound national security doctrine to clear policies for handling classified material to a personnel-management system to guide soldiers through their careers.<br />In recent years, Georgia has presented itself as an eager if lightly qualified partner in NATO and American-led military missions abroad. Its soldiers have participated in deployments to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, where its troop contingent became the third largest national contribution.<br />This month in Brussels, the 26 member nations of NATO reaffirmed their intention of eventually allowing Georgia and its armed forces of about 30,000 troops to join. But they did not offer a detailed set of programs, known as a Membership Action Plan, for Georgia's accession a sign regarded as a setback for swift membership.<br />The decision to decelerate Georgia's NATO ambitions was largely political. Several countries expressed worries that backing Georgia would harm relations with Russia, which has cast Saakashvili's government as erratic and has objected to further NATO expansion in the former Soviet sphere.<br />Many Western diplomats and military officers have also voiced misgivings about the behavior and judgment of the Georgian government. After years of provocations by Georgia and Russia alike, Georgia launched an attack in August against the separatist enclave of South Ossetia. The attack was stymied by a large-scale Russian invasion and the defeat of the Georgian Army on its home soil.<br />American and Georgian officials have said the postwar military assessment, which was conducted by the United States European Command, was not a factor in the NATO decision.<br />"We did not do our assessment with the guidance to determine if Georgia is ready for NATO membership," General John Craddock, the American officer who leads the European Command, said in an interview. "Our assessment was: As a result of the August conflict, give me the state of the Georgian armed forces."<br />The assessment showed, however, the degree to which Georgia's military would have to improve, in practical terms, to be ready for NATO membership should political objections recede.<br />It also served as a stark message that the readiness of Georgia's military was not as Georgia has portrayed it.<br />Georgia has framed its military revival since Saakashvili came to power in early 2004 as a grand achievement and an indicator of the country's progress.<br />The military Saakashvili inherited was a Red Army orphan: small, decrepit, badly trained and poorly equipped. In the early 1990s the Georgian Army lost two wars against Russian-backed separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Some of its troops were accused of committing war crimes. (Abkhaz and Ossetian forces have also been accused of ugly battlefield excesses.)<br />Saakashvili purchased new arms and vehicles, raised salaries, built new bases, increased the country's collaboration with the Pentagon and urged the armed forces to emulate Western practices, in part by encouraging volunteer soldiers.<br />The Georgian military appeared to be transforming. American officers praised a few of their Georgian counterparts in Iraq. And Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, said the Georgian military was much more prepared and capable in its initial attack in August than it had been in the past.<br />But as the war drew into a second day and Russian forces flowed into South Ossetia, the Georgian military quickly broke down. Many commanders were reduced to communicating by cellphone. The army fired cluster munitions on its own villages. Many units fled, abandoning equipment, ammunition and their own dead.<br />According to the assessment's report, some of the problems should have been unsurprising. Georgia's armed forces, the assessment found, lack "the doctrine, institutional training and the experience needed to effectively command and control organizations throughout the chain of command."<br />In another section, the report added: "Collaborative planning and sharing of information does not take place due to culture and organizational stove-pipes. As a result, coordinated efforts are essentially non-existent."<br />An American officer who has worked alongside the Georgian military and was familiar with the assessment said that the American team also found Georgia had a poor grasp of military intelligence, and did not collect or share its intelligence in an organized fashion. This, in the officer's view, contributed to failures in August.<br />"One of the reasons they got into the war is that their command and control is a mess," the officer said. "They have no ability to process and analyze strategic information and provide it to decision makers in a systematic way." The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the assessment.<br />The report also took a dim view of Georgia's senior military leaders, noting that the process for choosing defense officials "is based on personal relationships and not tied to education, training or any system of performance evaluation."<br />Since the report was shared with Georgia, Saakashvili has shuffled the Defense Ministry's leadership, although it is not clear that military experience has been given primacy in the choices.<br />Early this month he dismissed an ally, Davit Kezerashvili, the 30-year-old defense minister who held the post during the war, and replaced him with Vasil Sikharulidze. The new minister is a trained psychiatrist and another Saakashvili ally who had served as the ambassador to the United States.<br />Both American and Georgian officials said the assessment was not complete. The United States military, along with NATO officials, plans to provide recommendations to the Defense Ministry intended to improve Georgia's readiness.<br />It was not immediately clear when the recommendations might be provided. Georgia has been reluctant to discuss the assessment or its findings.<br />In October, Batu Kutelia, Georgia's first deputy minister of defense, declined to comment on the assessment. This month, after The New York Times had read portions of the assessment, he spoke about it without addressing its main findings, saying they were classified.<br />Kutelia insisted, however, that NATO's assessment of Georgia's military for the past two or three years, including an assessment this fall, was "very positive and underlined significant achievement." The claim could not be confirmed because NATO's assessments have not been made public.<br />In an e-mail message Kutelia said that the Pentagon assessment had been performed at Georgia's request as part of a "very responsible" postwar review.<br />"We have asked our strategic partners, as it is usually the case after every war, to help us in identifying the shortfalls in our defense system and for that purpose to conduct the comprehensive diagnostics," he wrote.<br />A senior official in Washington said that the assessment had found significant shortcomings, and that Georgia and its Western supporters would have to decide how to proceed.<br />"We did an honest job," the officials said. "And we said to them, 'You should know you need to make some changes if you want to have a professional military force.' 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVoqw6bMK7nzN9rD7-aDtwG96YoD7TUYo_5MgfvEn-LOgqCYW2HjY1Oglbk9TwJhjslEIwH3VoVcnc2MD9WeUxgo_UAJx7BlYMCe4SVKYxuocMlmdAKZ2CJ0bjEylE8n3Ycpe_-tdN5Yc/s320/DSC03623.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX7IqmuQr5wArvm7Xmkx25tsp1PdmfexNVV1rVND80wc0Lolj9TL_CQ8mEPjejS1ZH58CDEwj2lMir2f-aQ8WGdaX9T-bWKoeNaQDI7vOuAuoIqkZp71GBPHgJrtI4f8FxAslROtkcclo/s1600-h/DSC03624.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281426315037196978" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 254px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX7IqmuQr5wArvm7Xmkx25tsp1PdmfexNVV1rVND80wc0Lolj9TL_CQ8mEPjejS1ZH58CDEwj2lMir2f-aQ8WGdaX9T-bWKoeNaQDI7vOuAuoIqkZp71GBPHgJrtI4f8FxAslROtkcclo/s320/DSC03624.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Italian cultural paradox: Love it, live in it, leave it to the creaky bureaucracy</strong><br />By Michael Kimmelman<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />ROME: "We are very, very, very old," said Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums, when asked one recent morning whether Italy, rather than moving around the deck chairs of its cultural policy, as it has done for ages, might someday actually consider real reform.<br />The question came up after a ruckus ensued when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's culture minister, Sandro Bondi, floated the idea some days ago of putting much of the management of the country's 4,000 museums and their cultural heritage into the hands of one person. The person proposed to fill the post was Mario Resca, a businessman who used to run the McDonald's subsidiary in Italy, a pal, as everybody instantly remarked, of Berlusconi.<br />That plan was then drastically amended in light of fierce opposition from the Italian arts establishment, which includes Paolucci, who made clear he was a friend of Resca. It was nothing personal, he said. But when Pope Leo X, in 1515, wanted someone to look after collections at the Vatican he picked an artist, Raphael.<br />Paolucci gazed out the large, open picture window in his office, which perfectly framed the ancient dome of St. Peter's.<br />"É tutto," he said. (Roughly translated, "That says it all.")<br />Triumphant, as if there really were nothing more anyone could add, he fell silent.<br />This is Italy, after all. Everyone here believes change is necessary. But then sighs, because it's impossible too. Wholesale change anyway. It's Raphael or bust.<br />A half-dozen structural revamps of the culture ministry during the last decade haven't really done much except to shuffle around the burden of a creaky and defensive bureaucracy. The country is paralyzed by contradictions. Italians say they identify deeply with their cultural patrimony, but they actually don't visit their museums much. They talk about collective Italian artistic heritage but remain, at heart, profoundly divided by ancient regional differences never quite bridged by unification a century and a half ago, differences that fracture cultural policies.<br />And so the Berlusconi administration's proposal for a supermanager was ostensibly to cut through decades of red tape, inject an outsider's fresh views and, in straitened times, find new ways to earn more revenue from the country's unparalleled bounty of art and antiquities, especially considering that the ministry's budget is about to be slashed by more than 30 percent over the next three years.<br />But opponents, not altogether irrationally, stressed that culture demands expertise, not somebody who sold hamburgers, never mind if Resca is admired and successful. The ridiculous choice that presented itself between maintaining the status quo or enlisting the guy who ran McDonald's was somehow typically Italian. In a country where every bid for change is believed to hide some ulterior political motive, detractors suspected the supermanager idea was in fact merely a ploy to ransack national storerooms and grease the path for the prime minister's rich friends who want to hawk precious Italian art abroad<br />To Americanize the system, in other words. And perhaps in part it was. But Italians, whose cultural heritage policies have roots in the 1500s, still maintain a very different philosophy toward their belongings. They declare not just precious Roman artifacts and Caravaggios to be national patrimony but also every single Italian building, artwork and piece of furniture more than 50 years old.<br />That's right. Everything over 50 (with art, the artists at least have to be dead) is regulated by patrimony laws requiring Italians to declare what they own if they wish to export it. This means many people prefer to remain secretive about what they have, and if it's art, it therefore doesn't circulate. Whatever's buried in the ground automatically belongs to the state, even if the ground happens to be your backyard.<br />Beautiful concepts, in principle: collective values, shared heritage, cultural integrity over economy.<br />In practice, in a country where uncollected taxes are now estimated to top 280 billion euros (about $401 billion) a reflection, among other things, of Italian doubts about, and lack of identification with, a centralized government the system relies upon an increasingly aging and perennially underpaid ministry. It is practically unmanageable. It encourages dishonesty and illicit trade; it discourages innovation and outreach. It also stresses conservation sometimes to a fault.<br />Only 15 years ago Italian museums agreed to keep their doors open past 2 p.m. A Roman friend was shocked last week to receive a flyer from the Palazzo Massimo, part of the National Museum of Rome, inviting her to "Discover the Massimo." American museums send out these sorts of promotions all the time. Not Italian ones.<br />In France or Britain, where people feel just as strongly about their cultural heritage, there are incentives for openly declaring one's art and property, including the right to sell outside the country, with the state preserving an option to buy what it deems national patrimony by matching the price at fair market value. At the same time the Louvre will soon start renting parts of its collection to Abu Dhabi, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has done to Japan. This is a dubious business that can easily lead to conflict, and has in the case of Boston, but also, if properly managed, a way to earn money and share a country's cultural riches. In turn it can be a boon to tourism and a diplomatic tool.<br />In America tax breaks encourage private contributions to public institutions. Italy is only just beginning to set up a limited system for tax breaks but under complicated circumstances that most Italians don't know about or find mysterious. Smuggling art and antiquities out of the country is a constant problem.<br />Italians seem almost to relish their own intransigence. Salvatore Settis heads the top advisory board at the culture ministry. "We walk on the streets of cities like Rome, and we may live and work in a palace with historical importance, so we interact with our cultural heritage all the time and therefore we may go into a museum or we may not," he said by way of explaining how it is that Italians prize their cultural past but don't bother to go to their museums to see it. "But another explanation," he added, "is that Italian museums are not attractive."<br />That's not altogether true. Some are glorious of course. But among the Top 10 most visited in the world, Italy has only the Vatican Museums, and the Vatican isn't even technically part of Italy. As Marisa Dalai Emiliani put it, "We don't think in those terms," meaning in terms of promotion and accessibility. She is president of the Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli Association, a cultural research institution.<br />"When Clement XII opened the Capitoline Museum in 1734, he had two aims," she said the other evening. "The goal was to teach scholars and artists on the one hand, and public enjoyment on the other. Over time even with all the changes we've had in recent years, there has been less of a sense of our museums as places for public enjoyment."<br />Michele Trimarchi, an economist here, shook his head in disgust. "We have a small but noisy cultural establishment, and there is a kind of religion of self-protection on its part," he said. "The large majority of Italians don't actually care about culture. Absolutely not.<br />"In the United States you have museums and opera companies that arrange for young people to come for free to encourage new audiences. Here that sort of promotion is blasphemous. Italian museums have no incentive to promote themselves. They are not centers of financial autonomy, because everything they make goes to the central government, so whatever they make will not be reflected in their own financial fortunes."<br />This is not altogether true either. But it is part of the problem. "And yes," Trimarchi added "we fail to realize that conservation and promotion are two sides of the same coin."<br />Which they are. In the end it's an odd failure in a country so dependent on culture for tourist dollars and, in commercial areas like design and fashion, so cutting-edge and adroit at salesmanship.<br />Back at the Vatican, Paolucci shrugged: "Culture is like our family. Every once in a while a politician comes along and suggests selling off what's in our storage rooms. But it's against our DNA to manage cultural patrimony from an economic perspective. Yes, Italy looks after its patrimony badly because we don't have the resources. So we wait for better times."<br />When asked whether he had any idea when they might come, he glanced at St. Peter's again and laughed. "I'm optimistic," he said. "Being here, it's my duty to be."</div><div> </div><div>*******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Spain takes jackhammers to another Franco statue<br /></strong>The Associated Press<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />SANTANDER, Spain: Crews using jackhammers and blowtorches took down one of Spain's last statues of the late Gen. Francisco Franco on Thursday, eliminating a symbol of decades of right-wing dictatorship.<br />Workers in the northern city of Santander spent five hours drilling at a concrete base under a 44-year-old copper statue of Franco riding a horse and waving a baton in his right hand, then cut metal pins that anchored the statue to its foundation.<br />Later, the statue was hoisted with heavy-duty harnesses onto a flatbed truck and hauled off to a city warehouse. Including the base, it had stood about 20 feet (7 meters) tall.<br />Several hundred people watched from behind barricades.<br />Many such symbols of Franco, who ruled from 1939 until his death in 1975, have been taken down over the years since democracy was formally restored in Spain in 1978.<br />With the removal of this Franco statue, now only one remains in public view in Melilla, a Spanish city on the coast of North Africa. Officials there have said they will take it down as well, although there is no timetable.<br />Over the course of the Franco regime around 20 statues of him were erected, of the general either standing or on horseback.<br />A law passed by the Spanish Parliament last year obliges municipal officials to remove public symbols of the Franco era, such as statues or plaques, and to rename streets named after Franco or generals who fought with him in the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.<br />But in the case of Santander, city hall approved the statue's removal several years ago so the plaza could be refurbished.<br />The law last December pays symbolic tribute to victims of the Franco regime and of the Republican government side he defeated after staging a military uprising against it, the act that started the war.<br />But very little has been done to implement the order on removing Franco-era symbols, mainly because the government did not give cities a deadline or money to carry out the ruling, said Jesus de Andres Sanz, a political science professor at the National Open University.<br />"Not much has changed at all," he said.</div><div> </div><div><br /><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHe0pgnBaWJ59IpNypUYGtrzDV-hqF4bwLzOxlLDABh8mhLIh1WZq9Jemld_zehf2rDi5xE3a0_GSDoAJmpsJHEldAuJg39ujx0iPA5HFO_p7Jr45SgDdT07oVDp_lnSDR7JsGlDpBUVE/s1600-h/DSC03625.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281426310683925426" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIcbqc3ODjCF1Oeu7S41cPI6i-ukR232VjyN0QUadZGO3d35mmy81tavx11ikeXZzOtAW6YTbcpH6w-8lc2Jdzapvdktigl-38gQueyW2BbIC002AY1BytWofOMDxm-yvygTClsQLh7vc/s320/DSC03637.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSAHq6tgciqIADbR9Egiwo7HIZE2sCCRQsyAzcxxGcU6upELbYFymTTxsabmJgWUqs4TRl0Jhxt5xAdk09HbMNQaB92Y7nWdy3sUNBHR1A63GNb01VHgYjEY91UwEhTa7tuzwGgG_WfvA/s1600-h/DSC03638.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281425556201326690" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSAHq6tgciqIADbR9Egiwo7HIZE2sCCRQsyAzcxxGcU6upELbYFymTTxsabmJgWUqs4TRl0Jhxt5xAdk09HbMNQaB92Y7nWdy3sUNBHR1A63GNb01VHgYjEY91UwEhTa7tuzwGgG_WfvA/s320/DSC03638.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgun6i3pJ4zbXC46H19Gc_BYiU4msUJo3kjeot_s5SKv2LGJS8jJXHIvMCmF33Q0J4dNrq2HuYaOUQe-wVptt27apwJ0X-1IRAz2GoVdPDUveZ3u79r2sfwRJRT79vFJ7SmLbXFimhW6P0/s1600-h/DSC03639.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281425550672770610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgun6i3pJ4zbXC46H19Gc_BYiU4msUJo3kjeot_s5SKv2LGJS8jJXHIvMCmF33Q0J4dNrq2HuYaOUQe-wVptt27apwJ0X-1IRAz2GoVdPDUveZ3u79r2sfwRJRT79vFJ7SmLbXFimhW6P0/s320/DSC03639.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><strong>Big news in Washington, but far fewer cover it</strong><br />By Richard Pérez-Peña<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: A new president arrived from a new party. The balance of power shifted in Congress. Legions of fresh new faces showed up in the nation's capital with new ideas, eager to upend the way the country does business.<br />The year was 2000, and Cox Newspapers had about 30 people in Washington to cover the new Bush administration.<br />Eight years later, a similar transformation is under way, the stakes heightened by two foreign wars and the worst economic collapse in decades, but Cox will not be there to cover it. Cox, the publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Austin American-Statesman and 15 other papers, announced this month that its Washington bureau would simply close its doors on April 1.<br />Cox is not alone. Another major chain, Advance Publications, owner of The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland and other papers, just closed a Washington bureau that had more than 20 people.<br />Like a number of smaller papers, The San Diego Union-Tribune recently shuttered its bureau, which had four people at the end. Three years ago, the parent company, Copley Press, had an 11-person bureau in Washington, but it has since sold most of its papers.<br />Those that remain have cut back drastically on Washington coverage, eliminating hundreds of journalists' jobs at a time when the U.S. government and journalistic oversight of it matters more than ever. Television and radio operations in Washington are shrinking, too, although not as sharply.<br />The times may be news-rich, but newspapers are cash-poor, facing their direst financial straits since the Depression. Racing to cut costs as they lose revenue, most have decided that their future lies in local news, not national or international events. That has put a bull's-eye on expensive Washington bureaus.<br />Albert Hunt, Washington executive editor at Bloomberg News, said he was taken aback by the mood Saturday night at a dinner of the Washington press corps' Gridiron Club. "It was like being at a wake," he said. "Every time you turned around, someone was talking about their bureau being closed or downsized."<br />A few years ago, after much debate, the club began to admit magazine and television reporters. Now, without them, "there couldn't be a Gridiron Club," Hunt said. "You couldn't get enough newspaper people."<br />The Tribune Company, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week, recently merged the once-formidable bureaus of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and other papers. The combined bureau has about 32 people, compared with the more than 70 the papers had there a year ago.<br />"I think the cop is leaving the beat here, and I think it's a terrible loss for citizens," said Andy Alexander, the Cox bureau chief, who is retiring. "But I can't argue with the business decision that Cox has made, at a time when papers can't even find the resources to cover the local zoning board."<br />Cox's decision was tied to its plan to sell most of its papers, but even without that impetus, the bureau would have become much smaller, said Sandy Schwartz, president of Cox Newspapers. "There are tremendous economic pressures," he said. "We are in a crisis situation. All newspapers are."<br />As large chains leave, some of their papers including two of Cox's dip into their own budgets to keep a few reporters in Washington, but they are the exceptions.<br />"From an informed public standpoint, it's alarming," said Representative Kevin Brady, a Republican from the Houston area, who has seen The Houston Chronicle's team in Washington drop to three people, from nine, in two years. "They're letting go those with the most institutional knowledge, which helps reporters hold elected officials accountable."<br />A few organizations have bucked the trend, including The Wall Street Journal, which has put more reporters in Washington in the last year, and The New York Times, whose bureau has not changed much in size for years. Each paper has almost 50 people in Washington.<br />To compensate somewhat for the retreat by its clients, The Associated Press bureau recently shuffled reporters to provide state-specific reports from Washington on all 50 states. The Bloomberg News bureau has expanded in recent years, and a few Internet sources, like Politico, are still expanding, but the number of journalists added is a fraction of the number lost.<br />The real growth has been among narrowly focused news organizations, especially those that report on finance, said Joe Keenan, superintendent of the Senate press gallery. "It seems like, for every newspaper that leaves, a niche publication comes in," he said.<br />Newspaper executives say it makes no economic sense to have hundreds of reporters writing about the same set of events each day. Even the affected journalists concede that on breaking news, news agency articles are often fine for their papers.<br />The much greater loss, the journalists say, is the decline of Washington reporting on local matters the foibles of a hometown congressman or a public works project in the paper's backyard. One after another, they cited the example of the San Diego paper's Washington bureau for exposing the corruption of Representative Randall Cunningham, who is known as Duke.<br />In accepting a Pulitzer Prize for that work in 2006, "we were bold enough to hope that it would be the first of many, but it turned out to be the high point," said George E. Condon Jr., the last bureau chief. "No matter how much great journalism is done by national organizations, they're simply not geared to monitor closely a member of Congress from, say, San Diego, who's not a national leader."<br />Several newspapers are locked into leases for more Washington office space than they now need, and have become landlords to others. This year, the Hearst newspapers bureau became a tenant of the McClatchy bureau, and The Union-Tribune had been leasing space to several small papers that now must find new offices.<br />As bureaus shrink, they cut back on in-depth and investigative projects and from having reporters assigned to cover specific U.S. government agencies.<br />"We used to cover the Pentagon, combing through defense contracts, and we're covering some of that out of Dallas now, but basically we don't do it anymore," said Carl Leubsdorf, chief of The Dallas Morning News bureau, which had 11 people four years ago, and now has four. "We had someone at the Justice Department, but no longer. We can't free someone up for a long time to do a major project."<br />Few newspapers travel with the president now only three or four on some trips where a dozen would have been the bare minimum a few years ago. For those that still participate, the shared cost of travel and the rotating burden of providing pool reports has soared. The Senate press gallery was recently remodeled in a way that left room for fewer reporters' carrels, and no one complained.<br />There are no definitive figures on the number of newspaper reporters covering Washington, but the decline has been clear, and it runs counter to history, said Donald Ritchie, associate Senate historian and author of the book "Reporting From Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps."<br />"In times of great change and crisis, usually the press corps grows," he said. Despite the strain of the Depression, he said, "When FDR took office, newspapers sent far more people to Washington."<br />Newspapers in recent years have cut every kind of worker, from drivers to press operators. But the newsroom expense they have deemed particularly expendable is reporting far from home work that means office rents, heavy travel expenses and some of their biggest salaries. The few papers that had foreign bureaus have closed most of them, but in sheer numbers, the withdrawal from Washington has been much greater.<br />Industry consolidation, like Tribune absorbing the Times Mirror Company in 2000, has fueled the trend, but it goes far beyond just eliminating duplication.<br />Most papers, even those in big cities, have wagered their survival on local news, printing far fewer reports from Washington, Beijing or Baghdad, and relying more on news agencies for those articles. A survey of newspaper editors released in July by the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent said they published less national news than they did three years earlier, while 62 percent said they printed more community-level news.<br />"About four years ago, we became intensely local," said Alexander, the Cox bureau chief. "We provide a very high percentage of copy out of Washington that our papers can't get from other sources, because it's on local people and local issues. And the 17 Cox papers have used an average of 4,500 of our stories a year."<br />"Of course," he added, "it turns out that didn't mean we were protected."</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Obama takes the direct approach to informing the public</strong><br />By Helene Cooper<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama says that he wants to make his administration more responsive to the American people. To that end, his aides are introducing a host of YouTube and other efforts aimed at bypassing the media and communicating directly with voters.<br />It remains to be seen whether this effort will yield satisfaction on either end of the spectrum John Q. Public may have as difficult a time getting answers out of government officials as representatives of the mainstream media do. But to get a glimpse of how bypass-the-press might work, look no further than the Bush administration.<br />As it turns out, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, is ahead of the game on the whole skip-the-press maneuver. McCormack started filing posts from far-flung regions more than a year ago during trips with his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.<br />That was bad enough, as far as reporters covering the State Department were concerned. But reporters got even more ticked off when McCormack gave readers of the State Department blog, Dipnote, a firsthand account in September of the historic meeting between Rice and the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in Tripoli even before he filled in reporters traveling with him on what had happened.<br />And finally, on Oct. 31, came the icing on the cake, when McCormack unveiled "Briefing 2.0" in the press briefing room of the State Department. Standing before flat screen television monitors and high-tech looking computer screens McCormack didn't take questions from the press, but gasp! from the public. And then he put it on YouTube.<br />It's not clear yet if Obama will ever take to YouTube to take questions on his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But that issue, interestingly, did come up on Tuesday when Obama met and held a sort-of press conference with a bunch of grade-school students at Dodge Renaissance Academy in Chicago. (Obama took more questions from the pint-sized group than he had done from reporters in a press conference just a few minutes earlier.)<br />One student asked Obama about Iraq, and Obama replied that he plans to have troops home in a year and a half. (Obama also was asked whether he was moving to the White House in 2009, to which he replied yes, and then volunteered that he's getting a dog for his daughters, and that they better clean up after it. "I want to make sure my daughters take care of this dog, and if they do their business, and you've got some poop, you don't just leave it there.")<br />Obama's aides do say that they intend to make full use of the millions of email address that they have collected over the course of the campaign. The Obama-Biden Web site, has an "open for questions" spot that was supposed to be a "two-way dialogue between the transition team and the change.gov community," according to the Web site.<br />Some of the questions on the "open for questions" site on Wednesday:<br />Q: "Will you lift the ban on Stem Cell research in your first 100 days in office?"--James M., Nashville, TN.<br />A: "President-elect Obama is a strong supporter of Federal funding for responsible stem cell research and he has pledged to reverse President Bush's restrictions.<br />Q: "What will you do to establish transparency and safeguards against waste with the rest of the Wall Street bailout money?" Diane, New Jersey.<br />Abbreviated answer: "President-elect Barack Obama does not believe an economic crisis is an excuse for wasteful and unnecessary spending. We will put in place reforms to ensure that your money is invested well. All appointees who lead the executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies will be required to conduct the significant business of the agency in public so that every citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet these debates."<br />YouTube, watch out. Your government is headed your way. </div><div><br /><br /> </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2z-FU6vkxIx3kZsLfZNH_ttrnGSK8e_ETRHKNmM8vtg7vbDTeaFfJmiuRbaQxtgLzSGAPfBAqWrkk_rgebgPtNtdiDESHENSywINOj92NOrVZcL8k7xmtSrDvLQ2MldW8C0bwsEHC28/s1600-h/DSC03640.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281425547251078018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2z-FU6vkxIx3kZsLfZNH_ttrnGSK8e_ETRHKNmM8vtg7vbDTeaFfJmiuRbaQxtgLzSGAPfBAqWrkk_rgebgPtNtdiDESHENSywINOj92NOrVZcL8k7xmtSrDvLQ2MldW8C0bwsEHC28/s320/DSC03640.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFnFsLgNCC1LtaoigygOhaPV039yq99Jv2yXjMMziRnOXrPu4tRM63RgwfL3wxh2DGRBLcyMfhhkS3X1Cn8mMRxGrNnrGsi1bBFYr30vmVdvizEAj0UzDMzpxNQ2_rmSQXwh91uGTbgHA/s1600-h/DSC03641.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281425546735201394" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFnFsLgNCC1LtaoigygOhaPV039yq99Jv2yXjMMziRnOXrPu4tRM63RgwfL3wxh2DGRBLcyMfhhkS3X1Cn8mMRxGrNnrGsi1bBFYr30vmVdvizEAj0UzDMzpxNQ2_rmSQXwh91uGTbgHA/s320/DSC03641.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigumd-zbDCBAZoeDUAlJrszHFvdGZdhcniDaNLKjos3n0BN5uJmPRDvvyXr7bpFlp8xhV-JOpgnqGl1HPrwFK70NxCQQx9s_xSXYfUuJrXdhK-zrmdevliF8Y26xIDsxT21Jn_KJUpw3A/s1600-h/DSC03644.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281425545964681202" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigumd-zbDCBAZoeDUAlJrszHFvdGZdhcniDaNLKjos3n0BN5uJmPRDvvyXr7bpFlp8xhV-JOpgnqGl1HPrwFK70NxCQQx9s_xSXYfUuJrXdhK-zrmdevliF8Y26xIDsxT21Jn_KJUpw3A/s320/DSC03644.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div><strong>A Northern Ireland town is a shoppers' paradise<br /></strong>By Eamon Quinn<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />NEWRY, Northern Ireland: During the decades of the "Troubles" here, long lines of traffic at the Irish border usually were a sign that the British military was searching vehicles on the road ahead. But these days the lines of traffic leading off the main highway north to this city just inside Northern Ireland are not about guns as much as butter: shoppers from the south are heading north to spend their euros in the malls and supermarkets here.<br />Since the onset of the financial crisis, the euro has surged in value against the British pound, which circulates in Northern Ireland, making prices in northern stores so irresistible that southerners are flocking over the border in record numbers. So popular has this picturesque city 65 miles north of Dublin become that it has lent its name to the phenomenon, the Newry effect.<br />Newry has always been a commercial center, but since the Good Friday peace accords of 1998, which ended most of the violence, the city has cashed in on its location, building a bevy of shopping malls. And as sterling has slid, Newry has become the hottest shopping spot within the European Union's open borders, a place where consumers armed with euros enjoy a currency discount averaging 30 percent or more.<br />It seems the only ones complaining about the cross-border trade are senior political officials in the economically strapped south, who are bemoaning the loss of sales tax revenues and questioning the "patriotism" of the bargain hunters. Ireland's finance minister, Brian Lenihan, said in a recent interview on Irish television that by shopping in Northern Ireland, southerners were "paying Her Majesty's taxes" and not "paying the taxes to the state that you live in."<br />The paradox of questions of patriotism from senior Irish ministers from the main governing political party, Fianna Fail, which espouses Irish political and economic unity, has not been lost on many in the south or the north. On a recent busy Sunday, patriotism and shopping were hot political topics in the parking lots around Newry.<br />"It's still Ireland, that's the way I look at it," said Cerrie Byrne, 24, a teacher from north Dublin who was parking beside the crowded Newry malls. Political considerations aside, Byrne expected to save more than $140 on the $700 she and her mother had budgeted to spend in Newry.<br />Unpacking a shopping cart of liquor, cat food and a single bag of potatoes, Denis Connaughton, 59, a postman who lives near the Dublin airport, about an hour's drive away, dismissed the talk of patriotism, saying his major concern was the crowds. "They were saying there was a four-mile tail-back yesterday," he said, speaking of the traffic backup. He added, though, that the bargains were worth the irritation.<br />Some weekends the traffic jams stretch up the hill from the sprawling parking lots around Newry's malls southward onto the main Dublin-Belfast highway to the scenic border crossing at Ravensdale Glen. It was once marked by a huge British Army base, which has since been dismantled to allow for a widening of the highway.<br />Newry, like many border towns, fell on hard times during the Troubles. The small city lies at the end of the beautiful Carlingford Lough waterway, dominated on one side by the Mournes, mountains that in a famed ballad "sweep down to the sea." On the other side rise the Cooley Mountains, central to Celtic legends.<br />But scenery is not on the minds of drivers, who circle the two big malls searching for places to park. An overwhelming majority of the cars are from the south: the large four-wheel-drive vehicle from 30 miles away is parked alongside family cars from Dublin and the surrounding counties, while the big white van and the excursion bus registered in Monaghan, used by American tourists in the summer, had evidently found profitable work out of season.<br />In the main large supermarket this month, shelves were being emptied. The buckets of charity workers, who were collecting for an accordion marching band from a nearby town, were filling mostly with euros, not British pounds. Southern shoppers were doing pleasing calculations of the euro equivalents of prices marked in sterling.<br />A recent retail industry survey suggests that one in four households in counties as far west as Galway on the Atlantic coastline, about four hours away shop for groceries in Northern Ireland. Making the trip even more profitable for hundreds of thousands of southern shoppers, sales taxes on some goods have been cut in recent weeks in the north, while the government in Dublin has increased taxes on goods in the south.<br />Alan Trainor, 49, a Newry local who works in O'Neill's, a sporting goods store that sells merchandise of the Gaelic Athletic Association, said some of its best-selling jerseys were from counties like Kerry and Cork, far to the south, not those nearby, like Armagh or Tyrone.<br />"A lady was telling me last week that she bought a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream that was 9.95 euros in Newry," the equivalent of $14.24, he said. "She showed me a bottle she had bought in Cork, and it was 35 euros. That speaks for itself. She would have a round trip of 400 to 500 miles. It must be worth her while."</div><div> </div><div>****************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Parity for sterling vs euro in sight</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />By Jessica Mortimer<br />Sterling hit a record low against a basket of currencies on Thursday and closed in on parity versus the euro, as expectations for further hefty cuts in interest rates underlined the fragile state of the economy.<br />Heavy selling of the pound accelerated after Bank of England deputy governor Charles Bean said rates could fall "all the way to near zero" from 2 percent now and that further capital injections into banks may be required.<br />With the euro rallying broadly on the world's foreign exchanges on improving yield and rate spreads, Bean's comments helped push the single currency up over 2.5 percent at one point to a record high against sterling of 95.56 pence.<br />The sharp losses against the currency of its main trading partner also sent the pound tumbling to 76.6 on a trade-weighted basis, its lowest on daily records kept by the BoE going back to 1990.<br />"There may be some technical resistance to get to parity, but chasing yield is all the market is interested in," Bank of New York Mellon currency strategist Neil Mellor said.<br />"UK interest rates are going to the floor but euro zone rates are not going to be matching those kind of falls," he said.<br />Interest rates are currently half a percentage point lower than rates in the euro zone and with European Central Bank policymakers failing to give any hint of near-zero rates in the single currency bloc, the pound is seen hurtling towards parity.<br />By 3:12 p.m. British time, the euro was up 1.7 percent against the pound at 94.35 pence, while the pound lost 1.3 percent against the dollar to $1.5300.<br />The euro is heading for its strongest weekly and monthly performance against the pound since its introduction in 1999.<br />"The groundswell is for sterling to weaken," Citigroup currency strategist Michael Hart said.<br />Speaking in a regular parliamentary session, Chancellor Alistair Darling gave no suggestion that the government is concerned by sterling weakness, saying that a weaker pound could help exports.<br />UNCONVENTIONAL BOE MEASURES SEEN<br />The Bank of England has already slashed borrowing rates by 300 basis points, with further cuts widely expected in the new year.<br />As interest rates fall closer to zero, the BoE may have to look to unconventional ways of injecting monetary stimulus into the economy, possibly by buying up government debt.<br />The BoE's Charles Bean openly suggested in the FT interview that quantitative easing -- action to increase money supply by buying assets -- is already under discussion.<br />"The substantive questions in relation to so-called quantity easing relates to what assets you want to purchase," he said.<br />Meanwhile, better-than-expected retail sales data failed to lift sterling sentiment as they were offset by news of record high government borrowing and shrinking mortgage lending, underlining the scale of the country's economic downturn.<br />(Reporting by Jessica Mortimer; Editing by Victoria Main)</div><div> </div><div>******************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Mandelson says retailers must adapt to survive</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />LONDON: Well-established retail businesses will have to adapt to an increasingly competitive market and cannot rely on direct government aid in tough times, business minister Peter Mandelson said on Thursday.<br />The minister was speaking after Woolworths, a bastion of the high street for the past 99 years, was set to close by January 5 with the loss of 27,000 jobs unless a last-minute buyer can be found.<br />Mandelson said companies like Woolworths needed to change with the times to survive.<br />"Of course with the emergence of very many more, very productive, competitive retail outlets, older established names are going to come under pressure," he told SKY television.<br />"Now they have got to change, restructure, and keep up and match that competitive pressure if they are going to survive.<br />"And that is a tough lesson I am afraid for all of us in the economy.<br />"And the government's job is to help that restructuring, to help companies, outlets, change with the times, so they can maintain their viability.<br />"But if at the end of the day that's not possible then we have and we will do everything we can to find alternative jobs for those who are directly affected by any business failure."<br />Woolworths would be the first big-name retailer in the UK to collapse totally as a result of the economic downturn.<br />Several banks have suffered but those have been rescued by the government or been bought out by rivals.<br />Mandelson has said the government is looking at whether the struggling car industry should be given support but he ruled out sweeping bailouts across the economy.<br />In a speech on Wednesday the minister said the economy would emerge from the downturn with a smaller financial sector, weaker consumer spending and fewer public sector jobs.<br />(Reporting by Avril Ormsby; Editing by Chris Wickham)</div><div> </div><div>*********************</div><div> </div><div><strong>Morgan Sindall sees "record" profit</strong><br />Reuters<br />Thursday, December 18, 2008<br />LONDON: Builder Morgan Sindall said on Thursday it is in line to hit its targets of "record" profits this year, bolstered by government-funded projects.<br />The construction and regeneration group said its order book is robust at 3.8 billion pounds with a development pipeline of 1.3 billion pounds in its urban regeneration division.<br />"The group is financially robust and remains on track to achieve a record result in 2008 with each of our divisions performing in line with our expectations," said the company in a trading statement.<br />Morgan Sindall added that the decline in activity in the construction sector is being offset by its range of activities, with 70 percent of its work in the construction sector being generated from the public sector and the government promising a ramp-up in affordable housing projects.<br />Nonetheless, Morgan Sindall's share price has lost over half its value this year and it is forecasting a fall in demand for its design and furniture supply unit, Fit Out, in 2009.<br />It added it is closely monitoring cash management and cost savings in each division in the current economic climate.<br />(Reporting by Lorraine Turner; Editing by Victoria Bryan)</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div><br /><br /> </div><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div><br /></div><div align="center"><strong><br /></strong>Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France<br /></div><strong></strong><div><br /><div align="center"><strong>ARCHIVES 01/01/08 - 15/12/08</strong><strong> </strong></div><strong><br /><div align="center"><br /></strong><em>Due to a techinical problem with uploading photos onto the original blog </em><a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/"><em>A Place in the Auvergne</em></a><em> I had to create </em><a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergnepart2.blogspot.com/"><em>A Place in the Auvergne (Part 2)</em></a></div><div align="center"> </div><div align="center"><a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/"><em>A Place in the Auvergne</em></a><em> is - and was always conceived as - a one year project and it will end on December 31st, 2008.</em></div><div align="center"><em></em> </div><div align="center"><em>For archives up to and including December 15th, 2008, please visit</em></div><div align="center"><em>A</em><a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/"><em> Place in the Auvergne</em></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-76348640318274028902008-12-18T09:21:00.009+01:002008-12-19T09:31:43.047+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Wednesday, 17th December 2008<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSNePrYUQ2QxlfYPqCeY2G87_0MeYkq4Awoc2tWrn1VaxvWNAvzjFJ6dtnEvMt_Rn4DFhc0lQzLqrx-unkkvKYAuYsPfsxbRhO1mpMB64UFtL9g-4h3hUDybTKizywO_lrKAdKhBCchMg/s1600-h/DSC03459.jpg"></a><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>0300</strong></div><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>IW:</strong></p><p><strong>A friend of a friend was an artist, a talented one. He killed himself. When I asked someone who knew him, they said that it was because he had become overwhelmed by fate of humanity.</strong></p><p><strong>This blog is not doing me any favours anymore. I can't wait until the end of the year. How paradoxical that I should also have problems with it, technically, in these last cold, short days of December.</strong></p><p><strong>Next year, I will not read a newspaper or a magazine or listen to the radio. </strong></p><p><strong>I will observe what I learn of news byond The Valley without making any effort to inform myself. I can't </strong><strong>wait. </strong></p><p><strong>And I'm not sure I'll ever pick up a newspaper - if they'll still exist by the time I might want to - or consult a news website again. </strong></p><p><strong>This year of paying close attention has exhausted me and I know and think about too much that serves me no apparent purpose.</strong></p><p><strong>I remember the old poster from my school days: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.</strong></p><p><strong>Just because I have these fears for the future, doesn't make me less likely of being correct.</strong></p><p><strong>However, my pessimism is affecting others and I have to keep my views to myself.</strong></p><p><strong>The lowest day of the year. </strong></p><p><strong>Pitch black. </strong></p><p><strong>Only the camera and a robotic reflex to record keeps me taking photos. </strong></p><p><strong>I hope I'm on the up before Christmas and the end of term on Friday.</strong></p><div align="center"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7p6r0Sd7ya6R10u_5rIswgRNeE4LdDDKOKqOR7I0J-9Yo1pJTouIHyzszjA2zJ-0LnCuzFguF9NNZ-5Ukp4ERGbenUcdy_D6DL4mOuE2XQXg5gck7N2pp-i6KiCjt1GGDpK9d8fD4CkQ/s1600-h/DSC03460.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281410830772372258" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfgitgBfoWhmjeOhHca7CGn3pUglsJX5M4B66RvNb5paAGNjQ5J-_g3yiJaHkY4RaNUhT6QnYE23ZcyUR2hr_Vjey7A18-P9nrg18xlraM4UB3LL3M-PI1FxoADPNzdyIJkqyR9dEa-zA/s320/DSC03557.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008</strong> </div><div align="center"><br />Auvergne<br />Auvergnate<br />Auvergnat<br />Auvergnats<br />France<br />Rural France<br />Living in France<br />Blogs about France </div><div align="center"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5505031660651167700.post-10114321280217722702008-12-17T23:52:00.003+01:002008-12-19T09:45:52.842+01:00A Place in the Auvergne, Tuesday, 16th December 2008<div align="left"><strong>The reasons for A Place in the Auvergne (Part 2) - as a continuation of <a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/">A Place in the Auvergne</a> - can be found <a href="http://aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/2008/12/place-in-auvergne-tuesday-16th-december.html">here.</a> </strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"><a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/"><strong>A Place in the Auvergne</strong></a><strong> started o1/01/08 and ran until 15/12/08 at that URL.</strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"><strong>The layout of A Place in the Auvergne (Part 2) is an incomplete version of the same layout as <a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/">A Place in the Auvergne.</a> </strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong>For full archives, dating from 01/01/08 - 15/12/08 visit <a href="http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/">A Place in the Auvergne.</a></strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong>The news information ebru of Tuesday, 16th December 2008 <a href="http://aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/2008/12/place-in-auvergne-tuesday-16th-december.html">can be found here.</a></strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"><strong></strong> </div><div align="left"></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong></strong></div><div align="center"><strong>0710</strong></div><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNKF3WgXGHdeg6uD0MJH0fM-Tj8CE5_2Jnwxgys2icsoQ79r1mn9cC3Bwi3Y8-5YXG2gvzKlHvs0SC5sVljr6rrv8gvzpG6iavGMA3DKA5KhY2govrdX0ZpheRFX2yJ7TJB9NEnMEIUec/s1600-h/DSC03409.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281037759194981106" style="DISPLAY: block; 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MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 213px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LwcwbzZy8O7NJVHhsG0OM_pSG6WrTNYV-i1EKsBXyEgmE-XeJbSKt3gvIjXuCJOB7guhGFGGMNmKKa9cx_HZEZn_QS6GpJZuTNvd9bvD6aVHcyPrFXppBGA_2N8udMeIaqek2RlzHAE/s320/DSC03457.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008 </strong></div><div align="center"><br /><strong>Auvergne</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Auvergnate</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Auvergnat</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Auvergnats</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>France</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Rural France</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Living in France</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Blogs about France </strong></div><div align="center"><br /><a href="http://www.montmartreabbesses.com/"><strong>Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / Vacation apartment </strong></a><br /><br /></div><div><strong></strong></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Ianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10887338417383723950noreply@blogger.com0