news20090609BRT

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
FPeter I (the Great)
Born this day in 1672 was Russian Tsar Peter the Great—for whom the city of St. Petersburg is named—who reigned jointly or alone from 1682 to 1725 and was one of his country's greatest statesmen, organizers, and reformers.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
11983: Landslide reelection victory for Margaret Thatcher
British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, buoyed by victory in the Falkland Islands War and by deep divisions within the opposition Labour Party, was easily reelected to a second term in office this day in 1983.

news20090609JT

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Sea-zone ban fuels speculation of missile launch

By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

North Korea has banned vessels from traveling in a designated area off its northeast shore between Wednesday and June 30, raising speculation that another missile launch is on the way, the Japan Coast Guard said Monday.

While the specified location does not pose a threat to Japan's territory, the coast guard has issued a navigation warning to all Japanese ships.

The designated area starts at the port of Wonsan, North Korea, and stretches approximately 263 km with a maximum width of 100 km. The coast guard said Pyongyang issued the radio warning Sunday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said Japan "cannot deny the possibility that (North Korea) will fire missiles, including ballistic missiles, in response to developments of the U.N. Security Council and other moves."

The broadcast by North Korea, which has reportedly been preparing an assortment of missiles following its nuclear test last month, said the restriction is effective from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day until the end of June. Similar warnings were intercepted last month just before Pyongyang tested several short-range missiles.

The May nuclear test took place after the U.N. Security Council condemned its April test of a long-range ballistic missile, part of which flew over Japan and fell in the Pacific.

Prior to the nuke test, North Korea reportedly pressed for the Security Council to issue an apology for infringing on its sovereignty with the sanctions.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Akihabara marks year since attack

(Kyodo News) Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district marked on Monday the first anniversary of a vehicular and stabbing rampage that left seven people dead and 10 injured.

Tomohiro Kato, a 26-year-old former temporary worker, has been charged with running down pedestrians with a truck in a vehicle-free shopping section last June 8, a Sunday, and fatally stabbing passersby with a dagger after getting out of the truck.

Bouquets, paper cranes and message cards were placed at the intersection where the rampage took place. "Please rest in peace," one message said.

Numerous passersby said prayers at the site of the rampage.

Hiroshi Yuasa, 55, a taxi driver who was seriously wounded in the attack, visited the intersection early Monday and laid flowers.

Yuasa said Kato should "tell all (about the rampage) honestly" so the souls of the dead can find repose. Yuasa said he still suffers from chest pains and headaches.

Kato, who was arrested at the scene, was charged with murder and attempted murder. The Tokyo District Court is scheduled to hold a session June 22 to decide the proceedings for his trial.

Kato, who worked as a temporary employee at an auto assembly factory in Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, posted a series of messages on a mobile phone bulletin board warning of the carnage in advance.

Naoya Sugino, a 30-year-old game maker who was in Akihabara on the day of the killing spree, said he feels he could easily have been a victim.

"Why did this happen? I still cannot figure it out," he said while offering a prayer.

The Akihabara stabbings took place on the seventh anniversary of the massacre at Osaka Kyoiku University Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture on June 8, 2001.

Intruder Mamoru Takuma, was hanged in 2004 for stabbing to death eight children and wounding 15 others, including teachers, in the school.

On Monday, about 700 people attended a memorial at the school.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Failures log first fall in 12 months

(Kyodo News) Corporate bankruptcies dropped by 6.7 percent in May from a year earlier to 1,203, posting the first year-on-year fall in 12 months, a private credit research agency said Monday.

The debts left by the failed firms contracted 1.8 percent to 539.88 billion, the second straight month of decline, Tokyo Shoko Research said.

The number of bankruptcies was also the smallest in the last 12 months, the agency said. The figures cover bankrupt firms with debts of 10 million or more.

Prefectures where failures saw a year-on-year fall numbered 25, compared with 15 where bankruptcies increased. It was the second straight month that prefectures where failures fell outnumbered those where they rose.

These positive developments "appear to have stemmed from the government's financial assistance program, including providing emergency credit guarantees" to credit-starved companies, the agency said.

The program, devised by the administration of Prime Minister Taro Aso to soften the domestic impact of the global economic downturn, is designed to help struggling firms take out commercial bank loans by offering official repayment guarantees using such venues as prefectural credit guarantee associations.

Failures of construction companies decreased 21.3 percent for the third consecutive month. But those of manufacturers jumped 13.4 percent.

The number of large-scale bankruptcies of firms with debts of 1 billion or more was limited to 63, the smallest seen so far this year. Among listed companies, Joint Corp. was the sole case of bankruptcy in May.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Current account surplus dips 55%; 14th straight fall

(Kyodo News) The nation's current account surplus shrank 54.5 percent in April from a year earlier, while signs are emerging that suggest the pace of decline in exports has become moderate, the Finance Ministry said Monday.

The surplus in the current account, the broadest gauge of Japan's trade with the rest of the world, totaled 630.5 billion, the ministry said in a preliminary report. The trade gauge fell for the 14th straight month.

The surplus in merchandise trade dropped 69.2 percent to 184.3 billion from a year before, although it narrowed at the slowest pace since last July.

The trade surplus continued for the third straight month as a decline in exports abated after dropping a record 50.4 percent in February and 46.5 percent in March.

In April, exports fell 40.6 percent to 3.92 trillion, while shipments of automobiles and steel products remained particularly slack. Imports decreased 37.8 percent, the same margin as in March, to 3.73 trillion, down for the sixth straight month.

"The tempo of decline in exports is expected to slow in the coming months as many Japanese manufacturers are benefiting from rising overseas demand, backed by stimulus measures," said Norio Miyagawa, senior economist at Shinko Research Institute.

He said exports may start expanding on a year-to-year basis around the end of this year.

But imports will probably not recover as quickly as exports, said Miyagawa, amid continued weak domestic demand exacerbated by sharp salary cuts at many firms.

The balance of trade in goods and services posted a deficit of 287.3 billion, the first red ink in three months due to an expansion of the deficit in the service account, including payments in transport and tourism.

The deficit in the service account grew 19.9 percent to 471.7 billion, partly because fewer overseas tourists visited Japan, while more Japanese were traveling abroad amid the strengthening of the yen's value versus other major currencies, ministry officials said.

The income surplus fell 18.5 percent to 1.057 trillion as money earned overseas through securities and bonds fell amid the economic downturn. The surplus narrowed for the seventh straight month.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Top Norinchukin job for ex-vice farm minister smacks of 'amakudari'

(Kyodo News) In an example that "amakudari" remains pervasive, Norinchukin Bank is planning to appoint Yoshio Kobayashi, a former vice agricultural minister, as head of its subsidiary, the Norinchukin Research Institute, sources said Monday.

The move is expected to provoke further criticism of amakudari, in which former government officials land high-ranking positions after retirement at entities related to the sectors they formerly supervised.

Norinchukin Bank, the de facto central bank for agricultural cooperatives, plans to make Kobayashi chairman of the institute, its top position, the sources said. Kobayashi is a former adviser of the institute.

Norinchukin Bank is struggling after falling into the red with a record net loss of \565.7 billion on an unconsolidated basis in fiscal 2008.

The sources said the move is aimed at preventing relations with the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry from worsening.

Although Kobayashi was once seen as a candidate to succeed Norinchukin Bank President Hirofumi Ueno, another former vice farm minister, Vice President Yoshio Kono, a career official at the bank, took office as president in April.

The farm ministry also attempted to have a former vice minister land the post of vice president of the bank, but the lender decided in May to instead appoint a senior managing director of the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives.

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

[World]
North Korean labor camps a ghastly prospect for U.S. journalists
If their sentence is carried out, Laura Ling and Euna Lee face possible torture and even death in North Korea's notorious gulag system, experts say.

By John M. Glionna and Paul Richter
June 9, 2009

Reporting from Seoul and Washington -- North Korea's sentencing of two American TV journalists to 12 years of hard labor Monday could imperil the Obama administration's already difficult goal of curtailing the authoritarian nation's nuclear weapons ambitions.

If no deal is reached, the two women face a grim future in a brutal prison system notorious for its lack of adequate food and medical supplies and its high death rate.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were convicted by the nation's top Central Court of an unspecified "grave crime" against the hard-line regime after they were arrested in March along the Chinese-North Korean border while reporting a story on human trafficking.

In a terse statement Monday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency did not say where the women are to serve the time. North Koreans who receive similar sentences of "reform through labor" often face starvation and torture in a penal system many consider among the world's most repressive, said David Hawk, author of the 2004 study "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps."

Amid an international outcry over the sentences, the White House said Monday that it was "engaged through all possible channels" in seeking the release of Ling, 32, and Lee, 36.

A top U.S. goal is to prevent the effort from being linked to the larger dispute over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But the outcome of that effort is anything but certain, experts said.

"I think it very unlikely that the North Koreans would let them go without some serious extortion," said L. Gordon Flake, a Korea expert and president of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, a Washington think tank. "But giving in to that extortion would fundamentally undermine broader U.S. national security interests."

The question of linkage may be the most important to the fate of the women. U.S. officials fear that the North Koreans may attempt to make any reduction in the journalists' sentences dependent on what kind of punishment is imposed by the United Nations or by individual countries in response to Pyongyang's recent nuclear detonation and missile tests.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that while the administration was "deeply concerned" about the length of the sentences, America's differences with North Korea over Pyongyang's arms program are "separate and apart from what's happening to the two journalists."

However, if the U.S. refuses to mingle the two issues, analysts said, the eventual release of the two women could be delayed.

If the pair are held for a lengthy period, analysts believe they may be sent to a kyo-hwa-so, or "reeducation" reformatory, "that is the equivalent of a felony penitentiary in the U.S., as opposed to a county jail or misdemeanor facility," Hawk said.

"It's extremely hard labor under extremely brutal conditions," he said. "These places have very high rates of deaths in detention. The casualties from forced labor and inadequate food supplies are very high."

Many North Korean reeducation camps, he said, are affiliated with mines or textile factories where the long work shifts are often followed by self-criticism sessions and the forced memorization of North Korean communist policy doctrine.

The literal meaning of kyo-hwa-so is "a place to make a good person through education," said Hawk, who interviewed a dozen survivors for his study for a group known as the U.S. Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea.

Hawk, like other experts, expects, though, that the pair will escape the worst of fates because of the glare of the international spotlight.

"If these women do get sent to the camps, they're probably going to make sure that they don't die in detention," he said. "They're probably going to be treated better."

U.S. officials acknowledged Monday that they have been discussing the idea of sending a high-level envoy to North Korea to seek the release of the women, following a pattern that was used to secure freedom for American prisoners in the 1990s. But they said no decision had been reached on the issue, and suggested that some diplomatic groundwork might be necessary before such a step could be taken.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who helped negotiate the release of U.S. prisoners in the 1990s and has been in discussions with the Obama administration, suggested in an interview on NBC's "Today" show that talk of an envoy was "premature because what first has to happen is a framework for negotiations on a potential humanitarian release. What we would try to seek would be some kind of a political pardon."

Richardson has been mentioned as a possible envoy, as has former Vice President Al Gore, who is co-founder of Current TV, the San Francisco media company that employs Ling and Lee. Gore has remained mum, possibly fearing that his visibility would politicize the issue and reduce the chances of the women being released, analysts said.

Charles L. Pritchard, a former U.S. official who was involved in similar negotiations to free a U.S. citizen from North Korea, predicted that release of the pair would probably require "intense behind-the-scenes negotiations" with Pyongyang.

He said the North Koreans may want to use this case to "punish the United States, as they are now being sanctioned and punished by the United States. . . . I don't think there is going to be an easy or a quick solution."

For his part, Richardson said there might be reason for hope in the fact that the North Koreans did not file espionage charges against the women. He noted also that North Korea had not yet explicitly linked discussions of the journalists to negotiations over the broader U.S.-North Korean dispute.

The families of the two prisoners expressed shock at the stiff sentences.

"We are very concerned about their mental state and well-being," they said in a statement. "Laura has a serious medical condition that is sure to be exacerbated by the drastic sentence. Euna has a 4-year-old daughter who is displaying signs of anguish over the absence of her mother. We believe that the three months they have already spent under arrest with little communication with their families is long enough."

As U.S. officials weigh options, experts with knowledge of impoverished North Korea's penitentiary system stress that time is of the essence.


"The first thing that passed through my mind when I heard about the verdict was that, from an American perspective, this is tantamount to a death sentence," said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.

"There aren't a lot of guarantees in that type of environment. It's different from any prison that exists in the modern-day United States. This is a very sobering challenge for a new administration."

North Korean defector Kim Hyuck, who spent a total of seven months between 1998 and 2000 in a kyo-hwa-so, said the percentage of prisoners who die from the harsh conditions would be unimaginable in the West.

"It is not an easy place," Kim, 28, who now studies math at a South Korean university, said of the camps. "Centers for men and women are separate. But even [the] women's place is not comfortable at all. . . . When I was in the center, roughly 600 to 700 out of a total 1,500 died."

Kim and Hawk said days at the camps begin before dawn, with workers fed "watery corn gruel" and then sent off to their assignments.

To become sick, Kim said, is often to die.

Many succumb from malnutrition and related symptoms such as diarrhea and fever, he said. "There is no medication. Officers gave us a powder made of pine tree leaves. That's what they gave us for every disease. It was just to give some sort of comfort."

Hawk said torture and punishment are often used as a tool to maintain control. "People are punished for violating labor camp regulations," he said.

The most common violation is trying to steal food. "If people eat food that's supposed to be for livestock, it's a violation."

Political prisoners face the toughest conditions, he said.

"They're taken care of separately by the spy agency of North Korea," Kim said. "They are beaten so harshly. There is no responsibility for their death."

news20090609NYT

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

[Business]
Supreme Court Delays Sale of Chrysler to Fiat

By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
Published: June 8, 2009

The Obama administration’s effort to hurry Chrysler through bankruptcy court ran into an unexpected last-minute delay on Monday, when the Supreme Court said it could consider whether to hear the objections of three Indiana state funds and consumer groups.

The implications of the court’s move — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a one-sentence order that amounted to a holding action — are unclear.

The delay could be resolved by Tuesday, freeing Chrysler to join forces with Fiat. But if the court decides to hear an appeal that lasts weeks or months, it could put Chrysler at risk of going out of business. Fiat, the only company to show an interest in acquiring most of the assets of Chrysler, can walk away from the deal if it is not concluded by June 15.

In a broader context, such a decision would also give the justices an early opportunity to consider the scope of the wide-ranging but not unlimited authority that Congress granted the president to address the economic crisis.

Indeed, the Indiana funds explicitly compared the Chrysler case with Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, the 1952 decision in which the Supreme Court rejected President Harry S. Truman’s assertion that he had the constitutional authority to seize steel mills during the Korean War.

“I think the points of law are so clear in this case that they need to be examined by this body,” said Richard Mourdock, the Indiana treasurer. “This is a step towards having that happen. I’m certainly not elated. There’s nothing in this story that would lead me to elation.”

Several legal experts noted that the action should not be interpreted as a signal of the full Supreme Court’s intentions. And it is not unusual for the court to issue a stay while it considers whether to hear a case, but it rarely grants the kind of expedited hearing on the merits that the Indiana funds are seeking.

“I’m astonished she even stayed the sale, but I find it quite encouraging, because I find it important that they take a close look at the issues,” said David A. Skeel Jr., a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “I think it’s a good move. My guess is in the end they will approve the sale.”

The order represents a surprising turn of events to what President Obama had promised in late April would be a “quick” and “efficient” bankruptcy.

His concern for speed reflected, in part, a desire to limit the damage of bankruptcy to Chrysler and its workers, as more consumers were likely to steer clear of the automaker as long as a cloud of uncertainty hung over its future.

It was also seen as a test run for General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy on June 1, with a similarly ambitious goal of emerging from bankruptcy quickly.

In the case of Chrysler, Mr. Obama promised its bankruptcy would be “controlled,” by reaching agreements with crucial players before the filing. A new agreement, for example, was struck with the United Automobile Workers before the filing.

But many creditors objected to the discount they were being asked to accept on their Chrysler debt. Mr. Obama singled them out for criticism, referring to them as “speculators” in his speech announcing Chrysler’s filing.

“They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none,” Mr. Obama said of the creditors at the time. “I don’t stand with them.”

Many relented, but other creditors dug in for a fight, including the three Indiana funds, which represent teachers and police officers and are seeking more compensation for their $42.5 million share of Chrysler’s $6.9 billion in secured debt.

Lawyers for the funds have questioned whether Chrysler could have received a better deal than the Fiat transaction or through a liquidation. They have also objected on constitutional grounds, saying that the Obama administration was not allowed to give bailout money meant for financial institutions to Chrysler.

“The negative economic consequences of permitting an unlawful sale to proceed may well over time dramatically outweigh Chrysler’s short-term harm,” the funds said in their brief.

But Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said he was more concerned about the risk of Chrysler being forced to liquidate. “By refusing to make the relatively small sacrifices that would avert a calamity, the pension funds will instead create a great catastrophe,” he said in a statement Monday.

Chrysler, Fiat and the government were prepared to close the deal as soon as Monday night if the court let the deal go forward, according to people briefed on the matter.

Chrysler and Fiat declined to comment. An administration official responded to the court’s action by saying, “We understand this to be an administrative extension designed to allow sufficient time for the court to make a determination on the merits of the request for a stay.”

Under the terms of the deal, Fiat can walk away as soon as June 15, a move that Chrysler executives warned would mean near certain liquidation. Executives testified in court that despite spending more than a year scouring the globe for someone to buy the company, none except for Fiat made an offer. And a lawyer for Chrysler argued in a recent court filing that the carmaker was losing $100 million a day while it was in bankruptcy.

Under the government-backed plan, Chrysler would emerge from bankruptcy with a union retiree trust owning 55 percent, Fiat owning a 20 percent share that could eventually grow to 35 percent, and the United States and Canadian governments holding minority stakes.

Justice Ginsburg, who handles emergency matters arising from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, issued an order Monday, saying that the rulings of the bankruptcy judge allowing the sale “are stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the court.”

For much of its court case, decisions had fallen Chrysler’s way. The carmaker won quick approval of its sale from two lower courts, and many legal experts said they did not expect the Supreme Court to stay the deal.

But lawyers for the objectors, which also included several groups with product liability claims, filed their appeal to Justice Ginsburg Saturday night, after the Second Circuit reaffirmed a lower court’s approval of the sale. The appeals court had delayed the closing of the deal until 4 p.m. Monday or until the Supreme Court declined to issue its own delay.

news20090609WP

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

[Nation]
CIA Urges Judge To Keep Bush-Era Documents Sealed
Al-Qaeda Could Use Contents, Agency Says

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Obama administration objected yesterday to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security and benefit al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts.

In an affidavit, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta defended the classification of records describing the contents of the 92 videotapes, their destruction by the CIA in 2005 and what he called "sensitive operational information" about the interrogations.

The forced disclosure of such material to the American Civil Liberties Union "could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed," Panetta argued.

Although Panetta's statement is in keeping with his previous opposition to the disclosure of other information about the CIA's interrogation policies and practices during George W. Bush's presidency, it represents a new assertion by the Obama administration that the CIA should be allowed to keep such information secret. Bush's critics have long hoped that disclosure would pinpoint responsibility for actions they contend were abusive or illegal.

Last month, President Obama said he would seek to bar the release of photographs being sought by other nonprofit groups that depict abusive interrogations at military prisons during the Bush administration.

Panetta argued that none of the 65 CIA documents immediately at issue, which the ACLU has sought for several years in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, should be released. He asked U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to draw a legal distinction between the administration's release in April of Justice Department memos authorizing the harsh interrogations and the CIA's desire to keep classified its own documents detailing the specific handling of detainees at its secret facilities overseas.

He said that while the Justice Department memos discussed harsh interrogation "in the abstract," the CIA information was "of a qualitatively different nature" because it described the interrogation techniques "as applied in actual operations."

The "disclosure of explicit details of specific interrogations" would provide al-Qaeda "with propaganda it could use to recruit and raise funds," Panetta said, describing the information at issue as "ready-made ammunition." He also submitted a classified statement to the court that he said explains why detainees could use the contents to evade questions in the future, even though Obama has promised that the United States will not use the harsh interrogation techniques again.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security program, said yesterday evening that it is "grim" and "troubling" for the Obama administration to say that information about purported abuses should be withheld because it might fuel anti-American propaganda. He said that amounts to an assertion that "the greater the abuse, the more important it is that it should remain secret." Jaffer said the ACLU is convinced that the public should have "access to the complete record of what took place in the CIA's prisons and on whose authority."

Although the ACLU first sought CIA documents related to harsh interrogations in 2004, it moved in 2007 to have the court hold the CIA in contempt following disclosures about the agency's destruction of the videotapes. The ACLU demanded as a remedy access to internal e-mails and other information that would reveal the contents of the videotapes and who participated, approved or endorsed their destruction.

Hellerstein has repeatedly denied CIA motions demanding that the case be dismissed, but has not declared the agency in contempt. Instead, he ordered the CIA to surrender some of the records and provide details of others it is withholding; the agency has responded mostly by giving the documents to the court under seal.

A federal prosecutor continues to investigate the destruction of the videotapes.

In total, the CIA has said that 580 documents are related to the ACLU's 2007 request; Panetta said that his statement applies to all of the 65 documents selected so far by the court for potential release and that the CIA will in the future consider releasing "non-operational documents" in the larger set.

In two exhibits given to the court along with Panetta's affidavit, the CIA said the material that must be withheld includes a photograph of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, known as Abu Zubaida, the first detainee that the CIA believed to be of high value; a lengthy handwritten summary of notes taken after reviewing the videotapes; a five-page account by a CIA lawyer detailing the agency's policy and legal guidance about the destruction of the videotapes; an e-mail to CIA managers summarizing the opinions of others about the tapes; a six-page account by an agency employee of a discussion with an agency lawyer about the tapes; and a series of e-mails discussing what the CIA should say publicly about the destruction.

It also said that one of the documents summarized "details of waterboard exposures from the destroyed videotapes," referring to a simulated-drowning technique that Obama and his appointees have said amounted to illegal torture.

Although the CIA frequently redacts sometimes extensive portions of the documents it releases, Panetta said he had "determined that no meaningful segregable information can be released from the operational documents at issue." Some, he said, were covered by attorney-client privilege, and nearly all contain personal information about CIA employees and others that would, if disclosed, "constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Panetta also said he wanted to emphasize that his request was "in no way driven by a desire to prevent embarrassment for the U.S. government or the CIA, or to suppress evidence of any unlawful conduct." He said his only purpose was to prevent harm to U.S. national security and to protect intelligence sources and methods.

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[News > Environment] from [The Guardian]

[Business > Airline Industry]
Airlines 'must take initiative' before climate-change talks, warns BA boss
UN's International Civil Aviation Organisation has failed to thrash out an emissions-trading scheme for airlines

Dan Milmo in Kuala Lumpur
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 June 2009 10.54 BST
Article history

Leading airlines have warned that they could be punished at the Copenhagen climate change talks this year because the industry has failed to influence environment ministers.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways, urged airlines to increase their lobbying efforts after delivering a warning about the efforts of the United Nations body charged with representing airlines, the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

ICAO, which is comprised of transport ministers from UN member governments, has failed to thrash out an emissions-trading scheme for airlines and is not due to meet again until October, by which point other groups could have proposed tougher measures for airlines.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association in Kuala Lumpur, Walsh said Iata should take the initiative before it is too late.

"I don't think ICAO has done enough and I don't think they will be able to influence decisions at Copenhagen. That is why it is important for Iata to reach a position," he said.

Walsh also echoed fears among airline executives that carriers will be singled out by politicians because they have not been included in official carbon dioxide reduction targets.

"Getting our voice heard and being represented is critical. We have got to ask ourselves who is representing the airline industry at Copenhagen. We have got to do something to get our voice heard."

Walsh admitted that airlines had made an error by focusing their lobbying efforts on transport ministers and not their colleagues at environment departments.

"We tend to spend more of our time talking to transport ministers than environment ministers," he said. "It's not going to be the transport ministers who will be at Copenhagen. We may have been talking to the wrong audience and we have to turn that around very quickly."

Tony Tyler, chief executive of Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, said airlines still had an opportunity to state their case. "We don't want to be faced after Copenhagen with that feeling of 'oh my goodness we should have done something'."

Iata has been pushing ICAO to agree an action plan that would include a global emissions-trading scheme for airlines. However, ICAO's efforts have been stymied by a failure to reach agreement with emerging superpowers such as Brazil, India and China.

Other countries are preparing to fill the policy gap at Copenhagen while Iata stands on the sidelines. The world's poorest countries are pushing for a long-haul flight tax that would contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) towards fighting global warming and could be agreed at Copenhagen, where governments will thrash out a sequel to the Kyoto climate change agreement.

International aviation and shipping were carved out from Kyoto on the proviso that ICAO and the International Maritime Organisation came up with their own climate-change schemes – which both groups have failed to do after a decade of talks.


[World News > Nigeria]
Shell pays out $15.5m over Saro-Wiwa killing

The oil giant Shell has agreed to pay $15.5m (£9.6m) in settlement of a legal action in which it was accused of having ­collaborated in the execution of the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni tribe of southern Nigeria.

The settlement, reached on the eve of the trial in a federal court in New York, was one of the largest payouts agreed by a ­multinational corporation charged with human rights violations.

The scale of the payment was being seen by experts in human rights law as a step towards international businesses being made accountable for their environmental and social actions.

Jennie Green, a lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights who initiated the lawsuit in 1996, said: "This was one of the first cases to charge a multinational corporation with human rights violations, and this settlement confirms that multinational corporations can no longer act with the impunity they once enjoyed."

The deal follows three weeks of ­intensive negotiation between the 10 plaintiffs, mainly drawn from relatives of the executed Ogoni nine, and Shell. The oil giant, and its Nigerian subsidiary Shell Petroleum Development Company, continue to dismiss all the claims made against them, saying they played no part in the violence that swept southern Nigeria in the 1990s.

The company said it was making the payment in recognition of the tragic turn of events in Ogoni land. "While we were prepared to go to court to clear our name, we believe the right way forward is to focus on the future for Ogoni people," Malcolm Brinded, a Shell director, said.

The settlement marks the end of a 14-year personal journey for Ken Wiwa Jr, son of the executed leader.

Among the other plaintiffs was Karalolo Kogbara, who lost an arm after she was shot by Nigerian troops when she protested against the bulldozing of her village in 1993 to make way for a Shell pipeline.

Out of the $15.5m settlement, $5m will be used to set up a trust called Kiisi – meaning "progress" in the Ogoni Gokana language – to support educational and other initiatives in the Niger delta.

In the lawsuit, the families of the Ogoni nine alleged Shell conspired with the military government to capture and hang the men. Shell was also accused of a series of other alleged human rights violations, including working with the army to bring about killings and torture of Ogoni ­protesters.

The company was alleged to have provided the Nigerian army with vehicles, patrol boats and ammunition, and to have helped plan raids and terror campaigns against villages.

Supporters of the legal action said the fact that Shell had walked away from the trial suggested the company had been anxious about the evidence that would have been presented had it gone ahead. Stephen Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, said Shell "knew the case was overwhelming against them, so they bought their way out of a trial".

Among the documents lodged with the New York court was a 1994 letter from Shell in which it agreed to pay a unit of the Nigerian army for services rendered. The unit had retrieved one of the company's fire trucks from the village of Korokoro – an action that according to reports at the time left one Ogoni man dead and two wounded. Shell wrote it was making the payment "as a show of gratitude and motivation for a sustained favourable disposition in future assignments".

Shell's involvement in the oil-rich Niger Delta extends back to 1958. It remains the largest oil business in Nigeria, owning some 90 oil fields across the country. The Ogoni people began non-violent agitation against Shell in the early 1990s under the leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his organisation Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Mosop complained that the oil giant was responsible for devastating the ecosystem of the delta.

Human rights experts believe the settlement will have a substantial impact on other multi-national corporations. Anthony DiCaprio, a lead lawyer representing the Ogoni side, predicted it would "encourage companies to seriously consider the social and environmental impact their operations may have on a community or face the possibility of a suit".Shell reiterated its view that the executions of the Ogoni nine had been "tragic events". It said that it had "attempted to persuade the government of the day to grant clemency".

news20090609GDN2

[News > Environment] from [The Guardian]

[Environment > Travel and Trasport]
And the greenest car of the year is … a diesel-powered Volvo
Family car trumps futuristic hybrids in What Car? competition

Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 June 2009 19.00 BST

It may not be a streamlined hybrid, a futuristic electric vehicle or a snazzy biofuel car, but a distinctly boxy diesel Volvo has won What Car? magazine's award for the year's greenest car.

A small family car with carbon emissions on a par with Toyota's Prius, the Volvo S40 DRIVe received the award today from London mayor Boris Johnson. Vauxhall's Ampera electric car and US electric car-maker Tesla also received awards.

Johnson said: "There are clear incentives for manufacturers to raise the bar higher and higher to design less gas guzzling cars that take hundreds of pounds off consumers' fuel bills. This is good for the planet, good for the economy and great for the driver."

What Car? editor Steve Fowler said of the winning Volvo: "It's not just about a low CO2 figure. The S40 is great to drive, safe, has enough space for the family and, crucially, is cheap to run, too."

Ford, the US motoring giant which owns Volvo, lost out to Toyota in the battle for trophies between major car manufacturers. Toyota's Avensis 2.0 D-4D (CO2 emissions of 135 grammes per kilometre) won the best family car award, while Toyota subsidary Lexus picked up the prize for the greenest 4x4 with a petrol hybrid SUV, the RX450h SE-L (148g/km).

The winner of the technical award, Vauxhall's electric Ampera, is expected to debut in its US model the GM Volt in 2010 and arrive in the UK by 2012. Vauxhall's parent company General Motors claims the Ampera will change the image of electric cars by combining a 100mph top speed with an electric motor capable of driving 40 miles and a petrol engine which can increase the car's range to several hundred miles. Most of today's production electric cars, such as the G-Wiz, have a range of less than 100 miles.

Two notable omissions from the winners' list were Honda's hybrid Insight — which is the same size as the Volvo S40 DRIVe but has lower emissions — and the next generation Prius, which is set to go on sale later this summer.

Fowler warned the recession had made cars' environmental credentials a low priority for consumers. "Green issues are still a hot topic, but it's fair to say that they are not right at the top of car buyers' priorities at the moment. It's just as well then, that green cars will save you plenty of cash at the fuel pumps and will likely be worth more than other cars when you come to sell."

The winners:

Supermini

Fiat 500 Start&Stop £9,700, 113g/km, 58.9mpg

Small family car

Volvo S40 1.6D DRIVe S £17,495, 104g/km, 72.4mpg

Family car

Toyota Avensis 2.0 D-4D T2 £17,545, 135g/km, 55.4mpg

Executive car

BMW 318d ES £24,235, 123g/km, 60.1mpg

MPV

Citroën Grand C4 Picasso 1.6 HDi £19,095, 140g/km, 53.3mpg

4X4

Lexus RX450h SE-L £50,460, 148g/km, 44.8mpg

Sports car

Mini Cooper S £16,575, 149g/km, 45.6 mpg

Luxury car

Audi A8 2.8 V6 FSI SE £49,970, 199g/km, 34.0mpg

Technology

Vauxhall Ampera

Editor's award

Tesla


[Environment]
French victories and Irish defeats mean mixed results for Greens
Green bloc takes up 10 more seats in European parliament after spectacular wins and disastrous defeats

John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 June 2009 14.08 BST
Article

European Green parties enjoyed wildly fluctuating fortunes in the European elections, ranging from winning a spectacular 16% in the French polls to being effectively wiped out in Ireland. In the UK, the party held its two English seats, and knocked Labour into fifth place in two regions.

While centre left and socialist parties were heavily hit by a general swing to the right, the Greens increased their overall share both of the European vote and the number of seats in the parliament. The party now has 54 seats compared with 44 in 2004, and, in alliance with Plaid Cymru and a Catalan group, is now now the fifth largest block in the European parliament.

Overall, the party gained seats in nine countries. The most spectacular results by far were in France where Europe Ecologie, led by the man who led the student riots in Paris in 1968, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and peasant leader José Bové, gained more than 16% of the vote and more than doubled its seats to 14. In Paris, the party took more than double the Socialist vote.

In England, the party won 8.7% of the overall vote, up from 6.2% in 2004, but did not increase its number of seats. It won nearly 100,000 extra votes in the south-east where it won more than 11% of the vote. There and in the south-west, the party beat Labour into fifth place.

"In the south-east we have increased our vote by 50% and we are disappointed it has not translated into a second seat," said Caroline Lucas, the Green party leader who was re-elected to Europe for the second time. "We have seen some spectacular results where we have targeted areas like Brighton and Hove and that bodes well for the next election."

The strong showing for green parties across Europe means legislation to fight climate change and promoting clean energy should remain high on the parliament's agenda. The success in France is certain to push the environment far higher up the French agenda but the wipe-out in Ireland, where the party shared power with Fianna Fáil, could prompt a general election.

"The rise of the Green party [in Europe] has been striking," said Thomas Klau, from the London-based thinktank Centre for European Reform. The Green party are the one political force in the EU that has (been) closest to creating a true European political party, a true European political movement ... with a political message that is strong and plausible, pro-European, that looks for European answers to the big problems the world and European society are facing, starting with climate change, of course."

Greens by country:

France

Europe's most spectacular and surprising success with the party winning 16.27%, of the vote, only just behind the Socialists on 16.48%. The French greens will now have the single biggest green block in the parliament with 14 MEPs.

Ireland

The Green party was the biggest loser of the election winning no European seats and losing all its councillors in Dublin. It appeared that voters punished the Greens with their cooperation with Fianna Fáil. If the Greens now withdraw from government, a general election could be called.

Scotland

The full Scottish result will not be known until later today but from votes now in it appears the party's vote has grown significantly.

Sweden

Along with the Pirate party, the Greens were Sweden's big winner, becoming the country's third largest party.

Greece

The party was polling 8% in pre-election polls but only secured 3.49% of the vote, giving it a European seat for the first time.

Germany

The Greens slightly improved on their 2004 result gaining one MEP, for a total of 14, representing 12.1%.

Finland

The Greens doubled their seats to two with 12.4% of the vote.

news20090609SAM

[Environment] from [Scientific American Magazine]

[Environment]
June 8, 2009
Of Telescopes and Ticks: How Mt. Wilson Observatory Became an Infectious Disease Study Site
An astronomer's mysterious malady became a golden opportunity for a medical entomologist

By Brendan Borrell

Larry Webster has been working at Mount Wilson Observatory outside Los Angeles for more than 30 years, doing everything from keeping toilets flushing and adjusting mirrors to mapping out sunspots. In September 2006, the 51-year-old solar observer came into work looking more like he was 90. He was dehydrated, jaundiced and had lost a lot of weight. Although he spent a month in and out of emergency rooms for symptoms of nausea and vomiting, doctors were uncertain what had caused his illness.

So Webster began his own investigations into the source of the ailment and his mysterious case would eventually pique the interest of California health officials and convince an entomologist named Tom Schwan to fly halfway across the country in order to catch ticks inside the historic observatory.

It all started in the fall of 2006 when Webster invited a few local astronomers out to the 24-inch (61-centimeter) Snow solar telescope to test out a few filters he was considering purchasing to look at the sun's chromosphere. Beforehand, he thought he should sweep away rodent feces that had accumulated and throw out some old cardboard boxes, because the telescope had only been used intermittently since astronomer George Ellery Hale first installed it in 1904. "Observatories are almost always in remote sites," Webster explains, "This particular building—being so old—was more accessible by mice and chipmunks."

About four days after the cleanup, his wife Elisa noticed two red circles on each of his shins just above the sock line, but he didn't think anything of it. The bites faded over the next week, but just after dinner on Saturday, September 17, Webster experienced a sudden fever, shaking chills, and joint and muscle pain. "I was laying down so sick that I didn't feel like I could get up," he says, "That progressed to nausea and vomiting."

Webster went to see his doctor the next Wednesday, who told him he'd contracted a nasty stomach flu and gave him some medication to reduce his vomiting. But he threw up again the next day and felt so bad he went into the emergency room. Doctors there put him on an IV to rehydrate him, gave him pain relievers, and analyzed his blood and urine, releasing him later that night with another flu diagnosis. Webster's illness would return two more times before he was finally hospitalized and given his first dose of antibiotics. The doctors said he was recovering from a case of mononucleosis. "I was let go from the hospital and I felt better," he says, "but the whole thing bothered me, and being a scientist by nature I tried to understand what I had."

He went to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control Web site, along with several others, reading about any disease that could be carried by a rodent. He read about rabbit fever and hantavirus, and finally came to a category called relapsing tick fever, caused by a spirochete bacteria present in wild rodents and transmitted by soft-bodied ticks. So, he called his doctor. "Oh, no," she told him, "that's a Third World disease. We don’t have that in this country."

Webster was unconvinced. Soft-bodied ticks are found in dark recesses like caves, which he says was a lot like the 150-foot- (45-meter-) long corrugated steel building that housed the old telescope. He decided to build himself a tick trap, and read that the pests are attracted by carbon dioxide. "I took a piece of dry ice [frozen CO2]," he says, "and wrapped it in pieces of terry cloth and then duct taped them to these long bamboo sticks I got at a garden supply store." The next day, he pulled the sticks from some recesses and discovered what looked to his untrained eye like a soft-bodied tick. He sent the period-sized insect to the University of California, Riverside, where a professional entomologist confirmed his diagnosis.

By now, Webster was a man obsessed. First, he convinced a new doctor to prescribe him tetracycline, the preferred treatment. Then, since he couldn't find much information on ticks transmitting relapsing fever in southern California, he tracked down Tom Schwan, the world's relapsing tick fever expert who works at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Schwan agreed to run a DNA test on the ticks and confirmed that they contained the spirochete Borrelia hermsii. "With the vector and spirochete found in the very room where Larry was exposed," Schwan says, "I was convinced he had contracted relapsing fever."

If it was true, Schwan realized, it would be the first new case of relapsing tick fever in Los Angeles County since the 1930s. Although the disease was known from other parts of California, he felt that the discovery warranted a collecting trip to the telescope to establish a causal relationship between the microbe and the disease and to raise awareness of the illness. In 2007, he and Webster caught live ticks and allowed them to feed on mice in the lab. Within a week, most of the animals had ruffed hair and tested positive for the disease. Then, in July and October 2008, the team set out rodent traps and found that wild animals in the region tested positive for antibodies to the disease.

Today, Webster has made a full recovery and now works as the site manager for Georgia State University's Chara Array. As it happens, Schwan is also something of a closet astronomer with an affinity for "optical scientific instruments." He's had a Unitron telescope since he was a kid, and after meeting Webster, he bought a new Spencer Browning & Co. telescope on eBay to go with his antique microscope collection. Just the other night, he had been gazing at the stars in Montana trying to find Neptune above Jupiter.

Schwan and his team describe their work in the July issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Notably, Webster is listed as a co-author, placing him in the pantheon of scientists who have studied their own infections. "This disease is underdiagnosed and underreported," Schwan says. "Larry was the guy [who] put this infection on the map."

news20090609SLT

[Today's Paper] from [Slate Magazine]

SCOTUS Pulls Hand Brake on Chrysler Bankruptcy

By Daniel Politi
Posted Tuesday, June 9, 2009, at 6:41 AM ET

USA Today (USAT) and the New York Times (NYT) lead with, while everyone else fronts, the surprising move by the Supreme Court to temporarily block the sale of Chrysler to Fiat while it considers whether to hear an appeal of the deal. In a 53-word order, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave no hints as to whether the court will hear an appeal by three Indiana pension funds that said they were being treated unfairly in the automaker's bankruptcy plan. By delaying the sale of Chrysler "pending further order," the court could just be saying it needs more time to consider documents filed over the weekend. A long delay could be catastrophic to Chrysler. Fiat has the right to walk away if no deal is reached by Monday, and that could mean Chrysler might be forced to liquidate. But Fiat's CEO said yesterday he "would never walk away" from the Chrysler deal, even if it's not completed by Monday.

The Los Angeles Times (LAT) and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) 's world-wide newsbox lead with the White House saying it was "engaged through all possible channels" to try to seek the release of the two American journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by North Korea's highest court. The sentencing of Laura Ling and Euna Lee complicates the already perilous relationship between North Korea and the United States. Some analysts have raised fears that the recent tensions could make it less likely that the Current TV reporters would be released quickly and they could become "the first Americans subjected to North Korea's gulag-style prisons," notes the WSJ. The Washington Post (WP) leads with the Obama administration's latest efforts to keep Bush-era CIA documents under lock and key.* CIA Director Leon Panetta told a federal judge that releasing the documents related to the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees, as well as ones that describe the rough interrogation methods, would hurt national security and help al-Qaida's recruiting efforts.

The Supreme Court's move to at the very least slow down the sale of Chrysler came as a bit of a shock to the White House, particularly since it came less than a week after Obama pretty much declared the automaker's reorganization a done deal. If the justices end up agreeing with some of the claims made by the pension funds, it could also put a damper on plans to rescue General Motors and generally "weaken the government's hand in stabilizing the troubled economy," notes the WP. Indeed, the WSJ reports that the lawyer for the Indiana pension funds is now in talks with GM bondholders who also think they were treated unfairly and want to raise a similar challenge. A professor of corporate law tells the LAT he was "stunned" by the court's move, even if he does think that Chrysler's bondholders have a legitimate complaint, particularly since the United Auto Worker union appears to have received favorable treatment.

The WP tries to read into Ginsburg's 53 words and says the language she "used in her order usually signals a delay of short duration." The WSJ specifies that while the court sometimes issues this type of delays in death-penalty cases, it's rare for the justices to order full emergency reviews as the creditors are requesting. But there's little question that it could also have broad implications particularly since the appeal by the Indiana funds "reads less like a standard business brief than a plea for the Supreme Court to stand up to the Obama administration," notes the LAT.

The LAT points out that the United States is trying to prevent the discussions over the release of the American journalists from being linked to the efforts to end North Korea's nuclear program. But the connection seems inevitable, and many speculate that the isolationist regime will use Ling and Lee as negotiating chips to make sure the United Nations and individual countries don't impose harsh sanctions for its recent nuclear and missile tests. "I think it very unlikely that the North Koreans would let them go without some serious extortion," one expert said. "But giving in to that extortion would fundamentally undermine broader U.S. national security interests." At the very least, that means their release could be delayed, and "the two women face a grim future in a brutal prison system notorious for its lack of adequate food and medical supplies and its high death rate," notes the LAT. The WSJ says that many analysts believe the current standoff "with North Korea is among the most dangerous since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War" and "raises the potential for a miscalculation or escalation."

The WSJ fronts word that the Obama administration appears to be backtracking from its efforts to cut down on the number of agencies that have oversight duties in the nation's financial markets. This suggests that "the current alphabet-soup of regulators will remain mostly intact," notes the paper. While officials have often talked about how the White House wants to streamline the oversight process, it now looks like existing agencies will be given more authority to make sure financial institutions aren't taking on a dangerous level of risk. Although officials caution that nothing has been set in stone yet, the White House seems to have concluded that trying for a large-scale overhaul would spark internal fights and inevitably delay the whole process.

The LAT fronts a look at how Obama is in the unenviable position of trying to convince a skeptical public that the stimulus package is working even as the unemployment rate continues to increase. The money has been slow in coming—only 6 percent of the $787 billion had been spent by May 29—and two top White House advisers had said early this year that if the stimulus package were approved the unemployment rate wouldn't exceed 8 percent. It is now 9.4 percent. While stating that the stimulus package has saved or created 150,000 jobs already, Obama also emphasized that he was "not satisfied" with the pace and said stimulus spending would accelerate in order to create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer.

In the WSJ's op-ed page, William McGurn writes that talking about jobs "saved or created" has "become the signature phrase" for the president, even though the number is utterly meaningless. The number "allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision," but no one actually measures "jobs saved." Even White House officials recognize that the numbers are, at best, an educated guess. "Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged," writes McGurn.

In the NYT, André Aciman writes that while Obama's speech in Cairo "was a groundbreaking event," no one seemed to notice that the president failed to say a word about the "800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century." Even though Obama took pains to mention Islam's "proud tradition of tolerance" for other religions, "he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst." For Obama to speak in Cairo about tolerance and respect without mentioning the Jews who used to live there "would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II."