news/notes20090504a

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]

El Cordobés

El Cordobés (“The Córdovan”), believed to have been born this day in 1936 in Spain, became the highest-paid bullfighter of his day, thrilling crowds with his reflexes and stunts, such as kissing the bull between the horns.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]

1996: José María Aznar approved as prime minister of Spain

José María Aznar of the conservative Popular Party became prime minister of Spain this day in 1996 and served until 2004, overseeing an improving economy while facing growing terrorism by ETA and Islamic extremists.


[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Monday, May 4, 2009
Experts say Japan can handle flu

By SETSUKO KAMIYA and NATSUKO FUKUE
Staff writers

While Japan has yet to see a confirmed case of swine flu, experts believe it won't be long before someone will be infected.

They say that although caution over the new H1N1 virus is necessary, the nation should remain calm and assess new information carefully.

"Some people seem to have the impression that a killer virus is coming, but it's not a killer virus. It's true however that it could spread" once someone catches the new flu, said Nobuhiko Okabe, director of the Infectious Disease Surveillance Center in Tokyo, part of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

"So we should not be carefree and must take necessary measures, but I believe we are not in a situation where people must hastily stock up on things from the market (to stay inside)," he said.

On Sunday afternoon, a woman in her 40s who returned to Tokyo from San Francisco tested positive for influenza in a preliminary exam held in Yokohama, where she was visiting a friend and developed a fever and cough. Further testing determined she was not infected with swine flu, the Yokohama Municipal Government said.

Earlier, four cases of influenza had been found in Japan. These involved a 25-year-old Japanese woman who flew into Narita International Airport from Los Angeles on Thursday, a 17-year-old male high school student who returned from Canada on April 25, and a Toyota Motor Corp. employee in Nagoya who had recently been in the U.S. as well as an American baby at Yokota Air Base who came to Japan on Friday.

All have tested negative for swine flu.

The initial response to news of the flu cases was fast and intense. Health minister Yoichi Masuzoe conducted a hasty press conference at around 1 a.m. Friday to report on the Yokohama high school boy, who was later found to have a case of seasonal flu.

The government is acting according to the basic guideline for dealing with a pandemic. But because the guideline was compiled with the lethal avian influenza in mind, high bars are set for the measures it is to take.

Okabe said that although the new virus is not the H5N1 avian flu that was the hypothetical enemy, caution is still necessary.

"This is not a situation where we have prepared for a major fire with many fire engines and it turned out to be a small fire. The fire is blazing up," Okabe said.

However, he added that information from around the world is showing that the new virus is milder than bird flu and Japan can deal with it should it enter the country with the preparations that have been made so far.

Because the plan was very rigid, leaders in both the public and private sectors should gather information carefully and decide what needs to be done flexibly, he said.

To prepare for an outbreak, the government has begun to consider asking pharmaceutical companies to start producing a vaccine to fight the new flu. But Okabe said making that decision is not a simple matter. Manufacturing a new vaccine could affect the production of seasonal flu vaccines, because the capacity for manufacturers to make vaccines is limited.

Every year, between 10 million and 20 million people are affected by the seasonal influenza in Japan, which can claim 10,000 to 20,000 lives.

"Right now when only a few hundred people in the world are infected, it is still difficult to tell at this stage whether the new virus will develop into an epidemic that thousands of people catch," Okabe said. "If not, then it is questionable to risk reducing the manufacture of vaccines for regular influenza.

"At some point, a decision has to be made, but we haven't reached that time yet," he said.


[NATIONAL NEWS]

Monday, May 4, 2009
10 trillion set for Asia liquidity

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Kyodo) Japan will be ready to offer support worth 10 trillion to Asian countries if they suffer serious problems stemming from the global economic crisis, Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said Sunday.

Yosano said about 6 trillion of the total would be provided from Japan's foreign reserves using a currency swap deal. Under the framework, a crisis-hit Asian country could change the Japanese currency into dollars or other major currencies if necessary.

Yosano, in Indonesia to attend an annual gathering of the Asian Development Bank, said Japan will also commit $38.4 billion (about 3.8 trillion) to the Chiang Mai Initiative, a regional currency swap framework formed by China, Japan, South Korea and 10 Southeast Asian countries.

In addition, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation will start providing a guarantee of up to 500 billion when a country in the region issues yen-denominated samurai bonds, Yosano said.

Yosano unveiled the new steps to support Asia's liquidity at a news conference after holding talks with his counterparts from China and South Korea on Indonesia's Bali Island.

The 13 countries agreed in February to expand the pool of the multilateral currency swap arrangement to $120 billion from $80 billion, with China, Japan and South Korea promising to contribute 80 percent of the total.

China, which has the world's largest foreign reserves, will provide the same amount as Japan to the enlarged swap arrangement and South Korea will offer $ 19.2 billion, according to Japanese officials.

Yosano, meanwhile, touched on fears of the swine flu outbreak turning into a global pandemic.

It "could turn into another global crisis," he said. "Countries should work together to prevent the spread of the flu, or the situation could be too late."

The World Health Organization is monitoring the global situation and could raise its six-notch alert level to its highest level.


[NATIONAL NEWS]

Monday, May 4, 2009
Both sides on constitutional change hold rallies

By KAZUAKI NAGATA
Staff writer

The pros and cons of changing the Constitution were on full display Sunday — the 62nd Constitution Day — with both opponents and proponents holding rallies to push their causes.

With a national referendum law taking effect next year to set the procedures for constitutional amendments, several groups in favor of change underlined the need to revise the Constitution.

"There is a huge gap between reality and the Constitution that remains the same since it took effect 62 years ago," Junpei Kiyohara, a representative of a Tokyo-based revisionist group founded by the late former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, told a forum in the capital.

Kiyohara said other countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, have amended their constitutions more than 50 times and adapted to the times. He urged Japan to follow in their footsteps.

Groups against revising the Constitution said the pacifist charter should best be untouched.

At a gathering in Hibiya Park in Tokyo, Toshihide Maskawa, who won the Nobel Prize for physics last year, told a crowd of 4,200 people, "The Constitution is in peril."

"The government interpreted the Constitution in a way to authorize the MSDF dispatch to Somali waters," he said. "Revisionists want even more — the right to engage in warfare."

Article 96 of the Constitution says any revision must be approved by a two-thirds majority in both Diet chambers, followed by a simple majority in a national referendum. But no law setting a procedure for such a referendum existed until 2007, when former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instituted the national referendum law.

Former Defense Minister Yuriko Koike, attending the pro-change forum as a guest speaker, said Japan is handcuffed by constitutional constraints whenever it tries to contribute to world peace.

Citing the Maritime Self-Defense Force and its antipiracy mission in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, Koike said the current law allows them to protect only Japan-related ships. A new law to expand the scope of the MSDF's Somali mission is now being deliberated in the Diet.

"Is it really acceptable that our nation will protect our own ships from the pirates but say 'we are sorry we cannot protect other countries' ships due to the Constitution?' "

news/notes20090504b

[Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine]

When The Deal Goes Down

By Barron YoungSmith
Posted Sunday, May 3, 2009, at 6:36 AM ET

The New York Times leads with a look at how the Obama administration took a hard line on Chrysler's bankruptcy proceedings in order to strengthen its hand in upcoming negotiations with GM—a much bigger company with many more stakeholders. The Los Angeles Times leads with an investigative feature called "Failure Gets a Pass," about the near-impossibility of firing nonperforming teachers in California, and it goes up top with analysis that says Obama can no longer blame his problems on Bush. The Washington Post leads with a look at Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe's "hucksterish" business ties, and its top national story is a scenic profile of Justice David Souter's quiet New Hampshire hometown.

When President Obama allowed Chrysler to go bankrupt last Wednesday and blasted "a small group of speculators" for scotching a negotiated deal, he was sending a message to GM's creditors. The White House wanted to show that a Detroit-friendly Democratic president "really [is] willing to let a company dissolve, and there's not going to be an open checkbook"—toughness that will give Obama leverage as he prepares to take a majority stake in GM and fundamentally restructure the company. (That task will be far more fraught than reorganizing Chrysler, because GM is much larger and Obama will be in direct control of the company, forcing job cuts in the middle of a recession.)

The LAT investigation goes into depressing detail about "firing a teacher is almost too hard to try" in L.A. schools—citing, as an example, a teacher who was reinstated even though he made fun of a suicidal student and told him to cut his wrists deeper. Poor teaching is almost never grounds for dismissal, according to the study, and serious misconduct—such as a teacher keeping marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school—is only punished about half the time.

McAuliffe, the Democratic fundraiser-turned-gubernatorial candidate, is selling himself to Virginians as a potential dealmaker-in-chief, able to rope in jobs the way he has often used his political contacts to rope in lucrative real-estate and banking deals. (As the piece makes clear, this often involves really whacky schemes.) But the WP thinks his image could be a liability in the age of populist anti-business rage.

The NYT off-leads an informative look at Obama's judicial philosophy and how it will likely shape his judicial appointments. Interviews with past law students and colleagues reveal that he is: a "minimalist" who is skeptical of courts' ability to restructure society and believes that decisions should be left with legislatures, a "pragmatist" who is concerned with the law's impact on real life and disdains overly theoretical decisions, a "structuralist" who is concerned about the way law affects society's distribution of power, and something of a centrist who values public opinion and often disappoints doctrinaire liberals.

The LAT's off-lead recaps this week's political events, arguing that Obama has accomplished enough that he now has ownership over the country's problems and he can no longer blame George Bush.

After 19 years, Justice David Souter will leave the Washington social scene he hates—he still hasn't unpacked the boxes he moved in with—and return to the quiet New Hampshire town of Weare. Take-away from the WP piece: Boy is Weare, N.H., quaint.

The WP fronts news that wage growth is stagnating throughout the country—an unusual and menacing development since wages are usually "sticky" and businesses rarely resort to pay cuts. According to a WP poll, the number of Americans whose households have experienced wage or hour cuts is up by 9 percent since February. And because wages are stagnating, the NYT says, Social Security will not increase its cost-of-living adjusted payouts in 2010 or 2011.

The NYT and LAT both front the death of former quarterback and congressman Jack Kemp, who was largely responsible for convincing the Republican Party to adopt the doctrine of supply-side economics. As both papers note, Kemp considered himself a "bleeding-heart conservative" who developed an affinity for racial minorities during his football days and strove to open the Republican Party to them: "I can't help but care about the rights of the people I used to shower with."

The WP fronts a Dan Brown-ish look at the CDC's "disease detectives" on their race to piece together the mysteries of the H1N1 virus, as cases started appearing in Southern California and then Mexico, Texas, and Canada. The LAT stuffs a nearly identical piece.

The WP and LAT both front looks at victims of China's Sichuan earthquakes, one year after the disaster. The WP focuses on official repression—the parents of schoolchildren killed in the quakes have been tailed and harassed by local authorities, even as the government hurries to construct new schools—while the LAT says the quakes have prompted a "baby boom," as the grieving parents rush to have new children who can support them as they age.

The NYT fronts a ground-level look at improving race relations in America, following a new poll that shows dramatic shifts in racial attitudes since last summer. Dozens of interviewees say that President Obama's election has altered their everyday interactions, creating a sense of unity and trust.

And the NYT and WP go inside with the collapse of credible political opposition to Hamid Karzai's re-election in Afghanistan. Gul Agha Shirzai, the only candidate popular enough to challenge Karzai and win, abruptly terminated his candidacy after a four-hour meeting with Karzai on Friday night. But even though he has cleared the way for another term, Karzai still has to deal with deep popular dissatisfaction at home and in Washington, where he's scheduled to meet with Obama this coming week.

news/notes20090504c

[Today's Paper] from [Los Angeles Times]

Obama calls for crackdown on overseas tax havens

Associated Press
8:54 AM PDT, May 4, 2009

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is proposing to close tax loopholes for companies and individuals with operations or bank accounts overseas.

Obama said today he wants to prevent U.S. companies from deferring tax payments by keeping profits in foreign companies rather than recording them at home. He also called for more transparency in bank accounts held by Americans in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.

Obama said that his plan would generate $210 billion in new taxes over 10 years and "make it easier" for companies to create jobs at home. Congress may resist portions of the plan.

He said this would be "savings we can use to reduce the deficit. ... We're putting a middle class tax cut in the pockets of 95 percent of working families."

White House officials acknowledged the political challenges facing the plan. The administration won't seek a complete repeal of overseas tax benefits and, although the rule changes are narrower than some anticipated, business leaders still oppose them as a tax hike. Obama aides countered that the plan is a step toward the massive overhaul of international financial regulations that the president has promised.

In exchange, Obama said he was willing to make permanent a research tax credit that was to expire at the end of the year and is popular with business. Officials estimate that making the tax credits permanent would cost taxpayers $74.5 billion over the next decade.

But administration aides said that 75 percent of those tax credits pay workers' wages; given the struggling economy, aides were reluctant to do anything that could add more Americans to the unemployment rolls.

It was small comfort. Companies which shelter profits in international accounts stand to lose billions if Obama's plan becomes law. Under the existing regulation, those companies pay taxes only if they bring the profits back to the U.S. If they keep the profits offshore, they can defer paying taxes indefinitely -- and many do.

Obama's plan wouldn't go into effect until 2011; Obama has said he does not want to tinker with tax revenues until his $787 billion stimulus plan has run its course. The proposals, however, were far from complete, and aides said this was just one piece of the administration's plan for a sweeping overhaul.

First up: Companies won't be able to write-off domestic expenses for generating profits abroad. For instance, administrative tasks performed in New York for a London office would not be tax deductible in the United States.

Administration officials depicted the move as a way to close unfair tax loopholes that encouraged companies to send jobs overseas. They argued that if it costs the same amount to do business in, say, Ireland as in Iowa, why not do it entirely in Des Moines? Officials said Obama would characterize the move as a way to keep jobs in the United States and fight a system that is rigged against U.S. companies who keep their entire business operation domestic.

Obama also planned to ask Congress to crack down on tax havens and implement a major shift in the way courts view guilt. Under Obama's proposal, Americans would have to prove they were not breaking U.S. tax laws when they send money to banks that don't cooperate with tax officials. It essentially would reverse a long-held assumption of innocence in U.S. courts.

If financial institutions cooperate with Washington and disclose details when asked, Americans could invest anywhere they like.

Obama officials also said they would close a Clinton-era provision that would cost $87 billion over the next decade by letting U.S. companies "check the box" and treat international subsidiaries as mere branch offices. Officials said it was meant as a paperwork shortcut that is now a widely used and perfectly legal way to avoid paying billions in taxes on international operations.

news/notes20090504d

[Today's Paper] from [The New York Times]

Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 3, 2009

WASHINGTON — As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.

Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said.

Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites. But they said the most senior American and Pakistani officials had not yet engaged on the issue, a process that may begin this week, with President Asif Ali Zardari scheduled to visit Mr. Obama in Washington on Wednesday.

“We are largely relying on assurances, the same assurances we have been hearing for years,” said one senior official who was involved in the dialogue with Pakistan during the Bush years, and remains involved today. “The worse things get, the more strongly they hew to the line, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.’ ”

In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army.

“I’m confident that we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday, “primarily, initially, because the Pakistani Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.” He added: “We’ve got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation.”

But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure. The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security.

But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.

Administration officials would not say if the subject would be raised during Mr. Zardari’s first meeting with Mr. Obama. But even if Mr. Obama raises the subject, it is not clear how fruitful the conversation might be.

Mr. Zardari heads the country’s National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. But in reality, his command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence agency.

For years the Pakistanis have waved away the recurring American concerns, with the head of nuclear security for the country, Gen. Khalid Kidwai, dismissing them as “overblown rhetoric.”

Americans who are experts on the Pakistani system worry about what they do not know. “For years I was concerned about the weapons materials in Pakistan, the materials in the laboratories,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who ran the Energy Department’s intelligence unit until January, and before that was a senior C.I.A. officer sent to Pakistan to determine whether nuclear technology had been passed to Osama bin Laden.

“I’m still worried about that, but with what we’re seeing, I’m growing more concerned about something going missing in transport,” said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who is now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan’s weapons, she noted, “are widely dispersed in the country.”

“There’s not a central location, as you know,” she added. “They’ve adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities.” She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India — which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.

David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a recent report documenting the progress of those facilities, “In the current climate, with Pakistan’s leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question.” The Pakistanis, not surprisingly, dismiss those fears as American and Indian paranoia, intended to dissuade them from nuclear modernization. But the government’s credibility is still colored by the fact that it used equal vehemence to denounce as fabrications the reports that Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the architects of Pakistan’s race for the nuclear bomb, had sold nuclear technology on the black market.

In the end, those reports turned out to be true.

news/notes20090504e

[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

U.S. Options in Pakistan Limited
Nation Rife With Security Issues, Infighting, Anti-American Sentiment

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 4, 2009

As Taliban forces edged to within 60 miles of Islamabad late last month, the Obama administration urgently asked for new intelligence assessments of whether Pakistan's government would survive. In briefings last week, senior officials said, President Obama and his National Security Council were told that neither a Taliban takeover nor a military coup was imminent and that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal was safe.

Beyond the immediate future, however, the intelligence was far from reassuring. Security was deteriorating rapidly, particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland.

The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight.

But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence.

The tools most readily at hand are money, weapons, and a mentoring relationship with Pakistan's government and military that alternates between earnest advice and anxious criticism. As criticism has dominated in recent weeks -- along with reports that the administration is wooing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's principal political opponent, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif -- the partnership has grown strained.

"What are the Americans trying to do, micromanage our politics?" a senior Pakistani official said testily. "This is not South Vietnam."

As Zardari arrives this week for his first official visit with Obama -- part of a tripartite summit with Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- the administration has asked Congress to quickly approve hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency military aid for Pakistan. That money, and billions more over the next several years, is to come with new authority for the Defense Department to decide what to spend it on.

Obama has also backed a five-year $7.5 billion economic assistance package and is resisting congressional efforts to impose strict conditions on any aid to Pakistan. Last month, the administration orchestrated an international donors' conference in Tokyo that netted $5.5 billion in pledges for Pakistan.

When he sits down with Zardari on Wednesday at the White House, Obama will urge him to put more effort into building domestic support by meeting critical public needs and to resolve his differences with Sharif and others so that he can concentrate on governing, according to officials who discussed sensitive and fluid Pakistan issues on the condition of anonymity.

Of particular concern are hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis who have been displaced by fighting in the North-West Frontier Province, U.S. officials said.

Security proposals up for discussion with Zardari and other members of his high-level delegation include counterinsurgency training for Pakistani army troops at U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, the United States or elsewhere. The administration wants to expand a small, in-country training force -- now limited to about 70 Americans -- that is working with the Frontier Corps, the local, poorly armed force in the border regions.

As 17,000 additional U.S. troops deploying to southern Afghanistan this spring and summer begin to push Taliban fighters toward the Pakistan border, there are hopes the extremists can be trapped in "hammer and anvil" operations with Pakistani forces in the southern province of Baluchistan. Right now, however, Pakistan fields only one army brigade and about 40,000 minimally trained and equipped Frontier Corps members in the vast region, according to U.S. officials.

In deference to Pakistani objections, the administration has not initiated covert ground attacks, approved by the Bush administration last year, in mountain villages farther to the north, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where it believes high-value al-Qaeda figures are located. But Obama authorized stepped-up attacks on the area by missiles launched from unmanned drone aircraft.

Although the missile attacks are privately approved by the Pakistani government, despite its public denunciations, they are highly unpopular among the public. As Zardari's domestic problems have grown, the Obama administration last month cut the frequency of the attacks. Some senior U.S. officials think they have reached the point of diminishing returns and the administration is debating the rate at which they should continue.

Always simmering, administration concern about Pakistani governance rose sharply last month when the Parliament approved an agreement between regional authorities and the Taliban to authorize sharia, or Islamic law, in the Swat Valley, located about 100 miles northwest of Islamabad. Rather than lay down their arms in exchange, Taliban forces began moving eastward. By the third week in April, they had established a presence in Buner district, 60 miles from the capital, with no apparent government resistance.

The day after the Buner reports surfaced, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton infuriated the Pakistani government by telling Congress it was "abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists" and that the situation posed a "mortal threat" to the world.

"Absolutely, they're getting irritated," a senior U.S. official said of the Pakistanis. Clinton, he said, "knows she went too far" in her unscripted testimony. "But on the other hand," he said, "it was that kind of statement that helped wake up the Pakistanis."

A Pakistani military offensive in the Buner region was underway Tuesday, even as Obama's national security team met at the White House, and continued through the weekend. Administration officials said they were watching to see whether the military followed through or would simply stop without finishing the job, as it has in the past.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's government says it is in no mood for criticism or conditions on aid. After "billions of dollars were poured into Pakistan under the dictatorship" of Gen. Pervez Musharraf by the Bush administration, Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani said yesterday, the Obama administration has produced little but promises and disapproval of the democratically elected government.

"It is unfair to blame the civilian leadership that is bravely mobilizing the nation against terrorism when it is our American partners who have also slowed us down in the war effort by slowing down the flow of assistance," Haqqani said. "We trust that President Obama's emphasis on Pakistan will also translate promises into deliverables."

"You can't spend more in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said, "and then wonder why the effort in Pakistan is lagging behind."

news/notes20090504f

[Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine]

Leaning on Pakistan

By Jesse Stanchak
Posted Monday, May 4, 2009, at 6:34 AM ET

The New York Times and the Washington Post each lead with American officials expressing doubts about the future of Pakistani security in the face of a Taliban uprising. The Los Angeles Times leads with a trend piece on how American car buyers are beginning to shop more like Europeans. USA Today leads with a look at President Barack Obama's search for a new U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace Justice David Souter. The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox with word that cases of H1N1/swine flu have appeared in 18 countries, even as officials note that the disease may not be that severe after all.

The NYT's Pakistan coverage is squarely focused on the nuclear threat, with U.S. officials saying they believe Pakistan's nuclear stockpile is secure for now while acknowledging that they don't know where all of Pakistan's weapons are. The WP focuses on the long-term logistical challenges Pakistan presents, like providing funding and training to an unreliable partner. Both pieces note that the Taliban uprising requires the United States to rely on the Pakistanis to handle their own security, a difficult prospect given the history of mistrust between the two countries.

USAT reiterates Obama's claim that he wants the next Supreme Court Justice to understand, "how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives." Many news sources, including USAT, take this as a sign that Obama may not choose a federal judge to fill the vacancy. Racial diversity may have a hand in the selection, the paper says, but political diversity probably won't be an issue. With the Democrats holding nearly 60 seats in the Senate, the paper argues that Obama won't need to nominate a moderate to appease Republicans but can, instead, find someone closer fitting to Souter's left-leaning mold.

After years of gorging on high-performance, low-mileage beasts, Americans are finally changing the way they buy cars. From 1999 to 2007, Americans bought an average of almost 5.9 new cars each year for every 100 people. This year, dealers will be lucky if we buy 3.5 cars per 100 people, and the cars we do buy will be smaller and more fuel efficient. Analysts say Americans are adopting the European mindset of buying very practical cars and keeping them for as long as possible.

The NYT off-leads with a big financial scoop, reporting bank stress tests will reveal that the nation's financial institutions are in better shape than expected. Reports on the strength of the nation's 19 largest banks are expected this week, and an anonymous insider says the results show all the banks are solvent. While some banks may need additional capital to make it through a long recession, the government will be able to meet those needs with the bailout money already appropriated, something that seemed impossible just two months ago.

A total of 30 states have reported cases of swine flu as on Sunday, up from 21 states the day before, writes USAT. While the disease may be spreading domestically, officials say the flu is milder than they first thought. Of course, the paper notes that the 1918 flu epidemic also appeared mild at first, and it went on to kill 50 million people worldwide.

Then again, all that panic over swine flu may be doing some good, says the NYT. According to a pair of competing computer models, it's likely that there will only be 2,000-2,500 cases of the disease in the United States over the next four weeks, in part because of school closings and other preventive measures.

Meanwhile, the WP wants you to know that lobbyists for the pork industry want you to know that you won't get swine flu (sorry, H1N1) from eating pigs. While TP isn't debating the science—influenza isn't a food-borne illness—it's uncomfortable to watch the paper parrot the lobby's message so neatly. Would it have been too difficult to talk to a public health official for this story? Or maybe a doctor? Or how about anyone who isn't being paid by the pork lobby to convince you that their product is safe?

Infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus package may help create jobs, but they're going to be terrible for traffic this summer, according to USAT.

The White House is looking to expand student aid, reports the WP, by expanding the Pell Grant program into an entitlement program not unlike Medicare. To pay for more generous grants, the administration wants to assume direct control of all student lending, effectively killing off the private student-loan industry and saving $94 billion over 10 years. Private lenders are lobbying hard against the plan, but that paper says congressional support for the change is high, even among some Republicans and members from states where student lending is big business.

A growing number of impoverished Pakistani children are turning to radical madrasas for schooling, writes the NYT, due to a lack of other options. Sources tell the paper they're worried that the rise of madrasas in Pakistan will be followed by a growing number of suicide bombers, as it was in Punjab.

Beneath the fold, the WP considers the plight of French winemakers who say they've been sold out by their own government. French officials voted in favor of an EU resolution that would allow European wineries to sell a mixture of red and white wines as "rosé." It turns out that a rosé's pinkish hue is traditionally produced by soaking grape skins in juice before fermentation. That delicate procedure tends to inflate costs, however, and officials say they need to keep European wines competitively priced. No word on what the new mixtures will taste like or how they'll compare with traditional rosés.

What's the correct term to describe the conflict in Sudan? The LAT explores why some international bodies have stopped short of calling the mass killing of tribesmen in the Darfur region "genocide." The paper argues that the difference is much more than petty semantics, since accusing the Sudanese of genocide makes it much easier to raise humanitarian aid but also makes it harder to force an end to the conflict. Once it's generally accepted that a government is guilty of genocide, writes the LAT, it becomes difficult for anyone to accept a compromise or broker a deal with the offending government.

The WSJ fronts a report that lenders are charging higher fees and instituting tighter limits on revolving lines of credit for businesses. The paper takes the news as a sign that credit is flowing again, but lenders are still worried about defaults.

From the paradox file: The NYT reports that after years of (mostly) fruitless negotiations, many Western media companies have all but given up on marketing their content in China and have begun to look at India instead. India has nearly as many people and far fewer government restrictions, making it a more attractive investment. As a result, some executives say, Chinese officials have begun to be more receptive to Western overtures, if only out of a need to compete with their Indian rivals.

The NYT fronts the outrage of a Pennsylvania Pontiac dealer coping with the news that GM is shuttering the storied brand.

It's no secret that late-night comedians like Jay Leno and David Letterman rely on writers to come up with fresh material each night, but according to the LAT, not all their writers are on staff. Freelancers typically get $75-$100 a pop for topical humor, which is a pittance by union standards, but many struggling comedians are happy to do it with hopes that the experience will help them land a better gig elsewhere.

news/notes20090504g

[Today's News] from [The Guardian]

PM seeks deal with rebel MPs over Royal Mail
Brown aides hold secret talks as another damaging backbench revolt looms

Patrick Wintour, political editor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 May 2009 23.39 BST
Article history

Gordon Brown's aides have been in private talks with leaders of the Labour rebellion over the future of Royal Mail in an effort to avert another Commons revolt which could fatally weaken the prime minister's authority.

The aides have been examining ­proposals to turn Royal Mail into a not-for-profit company on a similar model to Network Rail and the BBC Trust instead of pursuing a plan to sell a 49% stake to the private sector. Details of a possible change of heart came as ministers were told that up to 100 Labour rebels were determined to vote against Brown's original plan.

After a weekend of turbulence ­surrounding Brown's leadership, in which Harriet Harman and Alan Johnson faced close questioning about their ambitions for the top job, the prime minister will try to right himself tomorrow with a policy speech on education, promising parents fresh powers to drive school improvement.

But questions over Brown's ability to control his party continue to dominate after his first Commons defeat on the ­Gurkhas vote last week.

The future of Royal Mail is the next combustible problem he faces and Nick Brown, the chief whip, has warned the strength of backbench opposition means it may be impossible to pass legislation through the Commons next month without the support of the Conservatives.

The prospect of another defeat in the Commons weeks after what is expected to be a bad showing in the European elections triggered the search for a compromise.

The private talks have been held between No 10's policy unit and Neal Lawson, the author of a pamphlet published tomorrow by the left-leaning thinktank Compass, calling on all sides of the Labour party to "step back from the brink" and rally behind the idea of keeping Royal Mail in the public sector on the model of ­Network Rail.

Some of Brown's aides claim the scheme would achieve the government's ­objective of new management, private finance and modernisation, but without selling a minority stake.

The Blairite moderniser Stephen Byers said tonight: "With goodwill on both sides it should be possible for the ­government to meet its manifesto commitment [not to privatise the Royal Mail] and to modernise the service." He believes the Network Rail structure should be examined as a possible model. Dan Corry, the head of No 10's policy unit, was Byers's special adviser and helped design the ­Network Rail model, but there is concern in Downing Street that such a move may not be seen as enough of a fresh start for Royal Mail.

Lord Mandelson, the business ­secretary currently steering the bill through the Lords, is unimpressed by the Compass proposal. His aides are concerned by the risk-averse mood of the whips following last week's Gurkhas defeat and recognise the issue is now in the balance and a ­decision lies with the prime minister.

Mandelson is concerned that Royal Mail is losing its business at a rate of 8% a year and needs fresh management expertise to oversee modernisation.

In his Compass pamphlet, Lawson says his solution "would heal wounds and suspicions in the party". He writes: "The alternatives of defeat at the hands of Labour backbenchers, or privatisation, but only with the help of Tory frontbench, are both too awful to contemplate."

The pamphlet concedes that Royal Mail does need new ­investment, some job losses, and a change in industrial ­relations. The leadership of the Union of ­Communication Workers, the main Royal Mail union, recognises the need to change, the pamphlet says.

But it also criticises the government's review of Royal Mail, ­conducted by ­Richard Hooper, for considering only a solution involving the sale of a major minority stake to a private ­sector mail operator such as TNT, the Dutch postal company.

It is claimed there is no need to sell shares in Royal Mail, which would, in any case, have to be sold at a knockdown price. The ­investment ­necessary for the ­service to meet the ­pressures created largely by competition from the internet can be secured from within the public sector, the pamphlet states. It points to an adapted version of ­Network Rail – "a not for profit dividend company, operating under a licence, whose sole purpose is to provide a service and not a profit".

It goes on: "Network Rail's financing requirements are principally met by debt raised from the capital markets. In total the government has borrowed close to £20bn which does not count as government borrowing because technically it is deemed by the Office of National Statistics not to be in the public sector".

Network Rail's board's objectives are set by 110 members that act as shareholders, drawn from industry and public.

The Compass pamphlet also challenges the government's view that Royal Mail is a commercial basket case, noting it made a profit of £225m in the first three quarters of this year. "It could be making profit of £600m a year if it did not have to fund the pension deficit and in effect subsidise the private sector competitors through lower than cost access charges," the pamphlet says. Ministers have committed themselves to take on the deficit but only on the condition that shares are sold and private sector expertise introduced.

A Downing Street said: "The government has said its door is open to those with ideas on the future of the Royal Mail and Neal Lawson has taken advantage of the opportunity to present the proposal he is publishing this week to government officials.

"We do not believe his alternative is workable and it is not under consideration."