news20090613BRT

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Christo
Environmental sculptor Christo, born this day in 1935 in Bulgaria, is noted for his controversial outdoor sculptures and displays, which have included the wrapping of Berlin's Reichstag in metallic silver fabric in 1995.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
Saturday, June 13, 2009
2000: Historic meeting between North and South Korean leaders
On this day in 2000, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung met North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in a summit that marked the first meeting between heads of the two countries, helping earn Kim Dae Jung the Nobel Peace Prize.

news20090613JT

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Hatoyama quits Aso Cabinet
（鳩山総務相が辞任）
Refusal to let Japan Post boss stay spurs exit
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer

Internal affairs minister Kunio Hatoyama resigned Friday after rejecting Prime Minister Taro Aso's request to approve Yoshifumi Nishikawa's reappointment as president of Japan Post Holdings Co.

Aso, who wants Nishikawa to stay at the helm of the financial, insurance and mail delivery behemoth, immediately accepted Hatoyama's resignation from the Cabinet.

"It was deeply regrettable that (Hatoyama's stance) gave the impression that the government and Japan Post were in confusion over the postal business," Aso said. "This incident had to be resolved immediately."

Although Nishikawa's reappointment now seems firm, Aso refused to confirm this.

"I think the government should avoid directly interfering with a private company, even if it is a special case" in which the government fully owns it, Aso said.

The departure of Hatoyama, one of Aso's closest allies, is expected to deliver a severe blow to the prime minister and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party ahead of the Lower House general election that must be held by autumn.

Hatoyama heads Aso's main support group in the party and played a key role in September in garnering support for Aso's ascent to the LDP presidency, and hence the prime ministership.

Speculation is rife that Hatoyama may soon leave the LDP in a bid to initiate a broad realignment of the political parties. Hatoyama's older brother, Yukio, is president of the Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition force.

Hatoyama denied the possibility of joining his brother's party but didn't rule out an exit from the LDP. He said he would discuss it with his comrades.

"It is about principles," Hatoyama told reporters. "What I thought was correct was not accepted — so I decided to manfully leave the government."

As internal affairs minister, Hatoyama had the power to reject candidates appointed to head Japan Post. His adamant opposition to Nishikawa was rooted in a perceived conflict of interest involving Japan Post's attempt to sell off Kampo no Yado, its nationwide network of resort inns, at a fire-sale price to Orix Corp., the powerful leasing conglomerate.

Orix chief Yoshihiko Miyauchi was involved in the effort to privatize the postal system.

After Hatoyama's resignation, Aso immediately decided to appoint Tsutomu Sato, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, to concurrently serve as internal affairs and communications minister.

Meanwhile, one of Hatoyama's closest allies also decided to resign from the Cabinet on Friday. Toru Toida, an LDP member, said he will resign as parliamentary secretary to the health minister to follow Hatoyama.

Although Yoshihisa Furukawa, parliamentary secretary to the environment minister, was initially quoted as telling his fellow LDP lawmakers he would follow suit, he later reversed his position, telling reporters, "I have no intention to resign." The reason for his retraction wasn't clear.

According to Hatoyama, Aso told him at a meeting Friday that he wants Nishikawa to stay on at Japan Post and asked him to accept the decision on condition that Nishikawa apologizes to him.

"There is nothing as stupid as that compromise proposal," Hatoyama said. "Nishikawa owes an apology not to me but to the public. He was involved in trying to steal the people's money.

"I am someone who trusted the politician Taro Aso and had insisted on getting him to become the prime minister," Hatoyama said. "I think the prime minister's decision this time is wrong, but I believe he will make the right political decisions from now on."

Last year, Japan Post decided to sell 70 inns and nine housing facilities to Orix for a mere \10.9 billion, but the deal fell through after Hatoyama denounced the deal, calling it opaque.

Nishikawa's term expires this month, but the Japan Post nominating committee agreed in May to seek his return.

Japan Post, however, is wholly owned by the state, and the internal affairs minister has the ultimate authority to approve its board members.

Hatoyama's dogged insistence on axing Nishikawa has drawn fire from the LDP-New Komeito ruling bloc. Some in the LDP said they were concerned the heavily publicized spat would hurt Aso ahead of the Lower House election.

Some LDP executives also feared that removing Nishikawa would somehow be perceived as a retreat from the postal privatization initiative spearheaded by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who led the LDP to a landslide victory in the 2005 Lower House general election.

It is not the first time Aso's Cabinet has flubbed. Ex-Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, another close friend and reputed heavy drinker, resigned after appearing to be drunk at a televised news conference for the Rome Group of Seven finance meeting.

And last September, only five days after his Cabinet debuted, then transport minister Nariaki Nakayama bowed out after making several verbal gaffes that insulted schoolteachers and foreigners.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, June 13, 2009
New Yasukuni chief priest picked
（靖国神社宮司に京極氏）

(Compiled from Kyodo, Staff report) Ex-peer and businessman Takaharu Kyogoku on Monday will become chief priest at Yasukuni Shrine, the war-linked Shinto shrine said Friday.

Kyogoku, 71, former president of Kantoueisen Co., succeeds Toshiaki Nambu, who died in January. Kyogoku has never served as a Shinto priest, and neither did Nambu before his appointment.

Kyogoku's nomination was officially decided Friday at a meeting of representatives of shrine attendees.

According to sources close to Yasukuni, the shrine had considered asking a relative of late chief priest Fujimaro Tsukuba to become head of the shrine. However, the proposal was rejected, the sources said.

Tsukuba, who died in 1978, refused to enshrine class-A war criminals at the shrine despite strong requests from Japanese veterans.

Soon after his death, new chief priest Nagayoshi Matsudaira, known for his rightwing views on history, enshrined them at Yasukuni, an act that has sparked a number of diplomatic gripes in Asia and domestic criticism.

Kyogoku's view on Japan's militarism and Imperial army campaigns in the 1930s and '40s are not immediately known. After serving at Nippon Yusen K.K., known as NYK Line, Kyogoku headed Kantoueisen, a port transport and shipping firm based in Yokohama.

Both Kyogoku and Nambu were members of the "kazoku" peerage that was abolished in 1947.

Kyogoku is the 15th head of the Kyogoku family that ruled the former Tajima Toyooka clan, now part of Hyogo Prefecture, during the Edo Period (1603-1867) under the Tokugawa shogunate. Nambu was the 45th head of the Nambu family that governed the Morioka clan, currently part of Iwate Prefecture.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Mystery tadpoles again turn up to stump Ishikawa
（怪奇 またオタマジャクシ７０匹 石川県首捻る）

KANAZAWA, Ishikawa Pref. (Kyodo) About 70 more dead tadpoles have been found in Ishikawa Prefecture, local officials said Friday, as the mystery over how they came to be in areas with no paddy fields or other habitats continues.

The latest findings, Thursday afternoon, were in the cities of Nanao and Wajima. More than 100 dead tadpoles were found in Nanao and Hakusan last week and tiny dead fish were found Tuesday in the town of Nakanoto.

Two dead tadpoles were found shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday by Mayumi Tsuiki, 38, a Nanao city official, on the roof and door of a car in her home's parking lot.

She thought they might have been dropped by birds as there were also bird droppings in the area.

In Wajima, two piles of about 70 dead tadpoles were found around 3 p.m. Thursday by liquor shop owner Nobutake Takada, 67, on a bridge walkway.

Masafumi Matsui, a professor at Kyoto University's graduate school of human and environmental studies who specializes in amphibians, said: "It is hard to comment without actually seeing these tadpoles . . . but considering the circumstances reported by the media, someone could be pulling a prank."

People have speculated the tadpoles might have fallen from the sky after being sucked up by waterspouts or carried by birds. But there have been no reports of strong winds, and ornithologists dispute the bird theory.

news20090613LAT

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

[World]
Ahmadinejad poised to win reelection in Iran
The Iranian president has two-thirds of the votes with 75% of ballots counted. His rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi alleges irregularities, saying he has won the election.
By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim
June 13, 2009

Reporting from Tehran -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holds a decisive lead in his reelection bid, Iran's Interior Ministry said this morning, while his main rival claimed victory and alleged election irregularities.

Ministry officials said that with more than 75% of ballots counted, the incumbent had received nearly two-thirds of the vote. More than 46 million people were eligible to vote, officials said.

Official results are expected today, but news outlets loyal to the president claimed that he had scored a decisive victory over moderate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who had received about a third of the votes counted. This morning, security forces shut down Mousavi's offices, his campaign said.

The election is expected to have broad domestic and international repercussions, as the Islamic Republic and the West remain at odds over Tehran's nuclear program and support for militant groups that oppose Israel. The results were being closely watched by officials in capitals around the world.

President Obama said the "robust debate" during the campaign suggests change may come to Iran.

"You're seeing people looking at new possibilities," Obama said. "And whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there's been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways."

Ahmadinejad had not made any public statements about the initial election results by early today.

However, Mousavi said at a news conference late Friday in north Tehran that he had won the majority of votes but the election was marred by irregularities that tilted the table in favor of Ahmadinejad. Mousavi also questioned the impartiality of the Interior Ministry, which oversees the counting.

"We have definitely won this election," he said, and called on Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to ensure a fair vote and address alleged abuses.

An insider in the Mousavi campaign angrily complained afterward that a still-unexplained decision to shut down the nation's cellphone networks' text messaging service just before the vote had cut off their ability to systematically monitor the ballot boxes for irregularities.

The normally soft-spoken Mousavi suggested that he would not accept the results of an election he considered flawed. He said there were ballot shortages at polling stations in districts that leaned toward his camp, and that sites were closed early. Thousands of his campaign workers were barred from monitoring polling stations, he said. He also mentioned attacks on his campaign offices.

"We cannot let these things go," Mousavi said of the alleged abuses. "This is not something we can step back from."

Beyond bread-and-butter concerns, the election hinged on basic questions of national identity: whether Iran should serve as a base of Islamic resistance to the West or whether it should moderate its social and foreign policies 30 years after its revolution.

Droves of voters endured long lines in stifling heat and a rare June rain shower to cast ballots in the showdown. Ahmadinejad appeared to fare well in the countryside, which accounts for a third of the electorate, as well as among millions of government supporters and members of the Basiji militia, a hard-line organization that answers to the Revolutionary Guard.

Mousavi drew huge and unprecedented crowds of middle-class voters to polling stations in urban centers, where his green-clad supporters had taken to the streets in a display of public politicking in the weeks before the election. He also drew strong support among fellow Azeris in northwestern Iran, home to the large and powerful ethnic minority.

Though both camps appeared to be girding themselves for a drawn-out fight over the election results, they could also be engaged in game of brinkmanship intended to intimidate the other side.

The Mousavi camp alleges that Ahmadinejad will try to use his hold on the government to steal the election.

Ahmadinejad's backers fear Mousavi will refuse to recognize a victory for the president no matter what.

Both sides were trying to pre-empt the other -- Mousavi by threatening to question the election's legitimacy and Ahmadinejad by making his victory a foregone conclusion.

Other Iranian elections have been disputed. In 2005, former parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, who also was a candidate in this race, publicly alleged that Ahmadinejad had cheated in the first round of the election, but quickly backed down.

There are signs that any prolonged impasse this time could escalate. One of Mousavi's high-powered supporters, a former president and influential ayatollah, Hashemi Rafsanjani, sent a letter to supreme leader Khamenei this week warning of the dire consequences of an unfair vote.

"A part of the public, parties and groups can no longer tolerate the present situation," he wrote. "The volcanoes inside their burning chests will erupt in society."

Trying to beat the crowds, and recognizing the high stakes of the election, voters began lining up as early as 90 minutes before polls opened at 8 a.m.

In upscale neighborhoods of north Tehran such as Niavaran and Farmanieh, lines of voters snaked around corners outside schools and mosques being used as polling places. Some polling stations stayed open until midnight.

Some reported waiting as long as 2 1/2 hours to cast ballots, in what many described as a vote of protest against the Ahmadinejad era, characterized by increased Islamic morality patrols and a confrontational stance toward the West.

"We're voting with confidence," said Fatemeh Rashid-Mahmoudi, a 62-year-old retired nurse who said she was voting for Mousavi. She said it was the first time she had voted in a presidential election since 1997, when reformist President Mohammad Khatami won.

Rashid-Mahmoudi came to vote with daughters Mahsa, 24, and Mitra, 31, both professionals chafing under the restrictions of the Islamic Republic. They arrived at the polls wearing makeup and sporting elegant handbags.

"We're hoping that the issue of pressure on women will be remedied," Rashid-Mahmoudi said. "And we hope that our relations with the rest of the world will improve."

But among poorer voters, plenty supported Ahmadinejad, who is widely perceived as a scrappy and pious nationalist who stands up to fat cats at home and bullies abroad.

"The level of social and individual freedom as it is now is enough for us," said Omulnabi Khatibi, a 40-year-old homemaker wearing a black chador. "More than this level, things go out of control," she said.

Voters dutifully showed up at the polls in the countryside, where Ahmadinejad has earned wide support and trust with giveaways, low-interest loans and flashy construction projects as well as his tirades against the rich and elite.

Ahmadinejad lavished funds on rural voters during the last six months of the campaign. Supporters of Mousavi allege that the president's campaign distributed food coupons to the poor and envelopes of cash to clerics, asking them to call worshipers to support him.

In the sleepy farming town of Varamin, 40 miles southeast of Tehran, trickles of voters showed up at polling stations.

"I didn't vote for 10 years," said Hassan Hatami, a 27-year-old wholesale clothing distributor, a tall, clean-shaven man who proudly showed off the blue ink on his index finger.

"But I'm voting now to show my support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I see he's done good things for the people."

news20090613NYT

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

[Middle East]
Ahmadinejad Is Declared Victor in Iran
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: June 13, 2009

TEHRAN —President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s presidential election in a landslide, officials of Iran’s election commission said Saturday morning. But his main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, had already announced defiantly just two hours after the polls closed on Friday night that he had won and charged that there had been voting “irregularities.”

“I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin,” Mr. Moussavi said during a news conference with reporters just after 11 p.m. Friday, adding: “It is our duty to defend people’s votes. There is no turning back.”

A statement posted on Mr. Moussavi’s Web site on Saturday morning urged his supporters to resist a "governance of lie and dictatorship," according to The Associated Press.

"I’m warning that I won’t surrender to this manipulation," the statement said, adding that the election outcome “is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran sacred system and governance of lie and dictatorship."

He warned "people won’t respect those who take power through fraud" and said the decision to declare Mr. Ahmadinejad the winner was a "treason to the votes of the people."

The conflicting claims, coming after an extraordinary campaign that saw vast street demonstrations and vitriolic televised debates, seemed to undermine the public legitimacy of the vote and to threaten unrest.

In recent days, Mr. Moussavi’s supporters were predicting a wide victory, citing voter surveys. And Mr. Ahmadinejad, the hard-line incumbent, had appeared on the defensive, hurling extraordinary accusations at some of the Islamic republic’s founding figures.

Iran’s Interior Ministry said Saturday that final results gave Mr. Ahmadinejad 62.6 percent of the vote, with Mr. Moussavi receiving 33.7 percent. The ministry says turnout was a record 85 percent of eligible voters, with more than 46 million people casting a ballot.

The election commission is part of the Interior Ministry, which Mr. Ahmadinejad controls.

Some analysts warned that Mr. Moussavi’s supporters might take to the streets to protest on Saturday, despite a firm warning against any demonstrations by the deputy commander of the Iranian national police, Ahmadreza Radan. Early on Saturday morning the Tehran police began a “maneuver” to maintain security, the news agency said.

The emotional campaign was widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s divisive policies. It pitted Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister who has pledged to move Iran away from confrontation with the West, combat economic stagnation and expand women’s rights, against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic populism, social conservatism, and hard-line foreign policy.

Many women, young people, intellectuals and members of the moderate clerical establishment backed Mr. Moussavi. Mr. Ahmadinejad drew passionate support from poor rural Iranians as well as conservatives.

At his news conference, Mr. Moussavi cited irregularities that included a shortage of ballots. He accused the government of shutting down Web sites, newspapers and text messaging services throughout the country, crippling the opposition’s ability to communicate during the voting.

Fraud has been a prominent concern for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, with many of his allies warning that Mr. Ahmadinejad could use the levers of state — the military, the Revolutionary Guard, and the Basij militia — to cajole or intimidate voters, or even engage in outright fraud. In 2005, Mr. Karroubi, who is also a candidate in this election, accused the Basij of rigging the vote in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s favor.

At his news conference, Mr. Moussavi called on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to help the country reach a “favorable conclusion.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, who has final authority over affairs of state, appears to be the only figure who could mediate between the two camps in the event of an open confrontation over the legitimacy of the vote. But it is not clear how much he knows about the crisis, or what role he might play.

Mr. Khamenei met on Friday with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a cleric, former president and backer of Mr. Moussavi’s who had warned the supreme leader in an unusual open letter on Tuesday about the possibility of election fraud, according to a political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the gravity of the situation.

While casting his ballot earlier in the day Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei had said that people were using texting to spread rumors, but it is unclear if that is why the services were shut down.

Amid the confusion overnight, a reformist Web site called Fararu said Mr. Moussavi was talking with the two other candidates, Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Rezai, to discuss the situation. Mr. Karroubi is a reformist cleric and Mr. Rezai is a conservative and the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Tens of millions of Iranians crowded voting stations throughout the day, with long lines forming outside some polling stations well before they opened at 8 a.m.

Polls were originally due to close at 6 p.m., but voting was extended by four hours.

Amid the confusion overnight, a reformist Web site called Fararu said Mr. Moussavi was talking with the two other candidates, Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Rezai, to discuss the situation. Mr. Karroubi is a reformist cleric and Mr. Rezai is a conservative and the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Tens of millions of Iranians crowded voting stations throughout the day, with long lines forming outside some polling stations well before they opened at 8 a.m.

Polls were originally due to close at 6 p.m., but voting was extended by four hours.

The strong showing appeared to be driven in part by a broad movement against Mr. Ahmadinejad that has spurred vast opposition rallies in Iran’s major cities over the past few weeks. Many reform-oriented voters stayed away from the polls in 2005, and now say they are determined not to repeat the mistake.

According to Iran’s election rules, if none of the candidates won more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers would have competed in a runoff in a week. Most analysts had assumed that the election would go to a second round, but in recent days, the extraordinary public support for Mr. Moussavi had led to predictions that he could win the presidency in the first round on Friday.

Iran’s president is less powerful than Ayatollah Khamenei, who has final authority over affairs of state. But the president wields great power over domestic affairs, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has skillfully used the office as a bully pulpit both at home and abroad.

As voting began on Friday morning, journalists gathered to watch Ayatollah Khamenei cast his vote in a mosque near his home in southern Tehran. Just after 8 a.m., a set of brown curtains opened and the leader emerged, a gaunt 69-year-old with glasses and a long white beard, with a black turban on his head and a black clerical gown draped around him. The journalists, mostly Iranians, gasped and then chanted a religious blessing.

The supreme leader presented his identity papers to an official standing nearby, cast his ballots and then gave a brief speech in which he praised the vigor of the election campaign.

“I am hearing about a vast participation of people, and I hear there are even gatherings at night,” the ayatollah said. “This shows the people’s awareness.”

Ayatollah Khamenei’s position on the presidential elections has been a matter of intense speculation. He has not endorsed anyone, but offered a description of the ideal candidate that sounded very much like Mr. Ahmadinejad.

A number of voters seemed anxious about the possibility of vote-tampering.

“I put one name in, but maybe it will change when it comes out of the box,” said Adel Shoghi, 29, who works as a clerk at a car manufacturing company and voted at a mosque in southern Tehran.

Like some other supporters of Mr. Moussavi, Mr. Shoghi seemed uneasy about making his position too explicit in public. But he said he favored Mr. Moussavi because Iran needed more civic freedoms and because Mr. Ahmadinejad worsened Iran’s pariah status internationally, making life hard for Iranians who travel.

His brother Mansoor, 27, said he had just voted for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“He is more with the people, and he has a plain way of living,” he said, echoing comments made by many of his supporters.

Half an hour later, Mr. Moussavi arrived at the mosque to cast his vote, surrounded by a thick, shouting crowd of aides and photographers.

“This is a golden opportunity for us,” he said, as photographers jostled for position and voters struggled to hear. “All this unity and solidarity is the achievement of the revolution and the Islamic republic,” he said.

He left soon after, with his admirers in the courtyard still chanting, “Hail to Muhammad, the perfume of honesty and sincerity is coming.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad voted at another mosque, in southeast Tehran.

news20090613WP

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

[Iran]
Ahmadinejad Declared Winner of Iran Election
Clashes Break Out Among Voters as Challenger Mousavi Disputes Results
By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 13, 2009; 8:32 AM

TEHRAN, June 13 -- Iran's Interior Ministry declared Saturday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a decisive victory in Friday's presidential election, but the incumbent's leading challenger protested the results, and clashes broke out between the two candidates' supporters.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who waged a heated campaign against Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection, urged his supporters to reject a "governance of lie and dictatorship." He attributed the results to widespread vote fraud and vowed to resist a "dangerous manipulation" of the balloting.

Later, fighting broke out at Tehran's Vanak Square among hundreds of Iranians who backed the rival candidates, Reuters news agency reported. Up to 2,000 Mousavi supporters sat down in the street, chanting: "Mousavi take back our vote! What happened to our vote?"

Police wielding batons then moved to disperse the protesters, the news agency said.

Iran's Interior Ministry announced that Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 percent of the vote in the election. The ministry said Mousavi received less than 34 percent.

"I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," Mousavi said in a statement posted on his Web site Saturday. He said the announced results were "shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system" and represented "treason to the votes of the people." He warned that the public would not "respect those who take power through fraud."

Riot police cordoned off the Interior Ministry, which directed Friday's voting, and stood guard around key government buildings.

Plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside Mousavi's campaign headquarters after the pivotal presidential election ended in confusion, with both sides claiming victory.

Earlier, with votes still being counted in many cities, Ahmadinejad, 52, a hard-liner who has antagonized the West, was leading by a 2-to-1 ratio in early returns, according to Iranian Interior Ministry officials. But supporters of Mousavi, 67, a relative moderate, dismissed those numbers, saying the ministry was effectively under Ahmadinejad's control.

"I am the winner of these elections," Mousavi declared late Friday, after heavy turnout resulted in a two-hour extension of voting across the Islamic republic. "The people have voted for me."

When Mousavi's youthful supporters gathered after midnight outside his Tehran headquarters to celebrate his claim to victory, officers quickly dispersed them with tear gas, said Milad Afsarzadeh, a Mousavi campaign official inside the building.

He and other witnesses to the brief melee said it was unclear whether the officers were police or members of the baseej, a paramilitary force of volunteers organized by the Revolutionary Guard Corps and greatly feared by student demonstrators. The witnesses said it was also unclear whether the plainclothes officers were taking sides in the election or enforcing rules against street demonstrations to try to prevent clashes between impassioned backers of Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. No serious violence was reported.

The election has stirred deep political passions among Iran's 46 million eligible voters, pitting Ahmadinejad, a populist who promised to help the poor and to make Iran a world power, against three challengers. Under Iran's system, if no candidate wins a clear majority, a runoff is be held between the two top vote-getters.

Though the final say over Iran's foreign and domestic policies rests with its unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mousavi portrayed himself as the candidate for change, pledging to take a less confrontational tone in relations with the West and to provide more technocratic management of the economy. His campaign produced an outpouring of enthusiasm from youth, intellectuals and an older generation of Iranian leaders, while Ahmadinejad drew his core support from rural and working-class voters, plus elements of the military and conservative Islamic clergy.

Ahmadinejad, who has been president since 2005, did not make a statement immediately after the polls closed, but his supporters pointed to the Interior Ministry's official tally to claim victory. Mousavi's supporters charged that officials were trying to steal the election and cut off alternative sources of information. For several hours during the balloting Friday, they said, international telephone lines to Tehran were down and text messaging -- which Mousavi's supporters had used to organize street rallies -- was blocked. Members of the baseej reportedly seized a building in North Tehran that housed several Web sites supporting Mousavi, which were shut down.

A senior aide to another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, charged that the Interior Ministry was distorting the early vote count by providing results from the countryside and not Iran's cities. "We believe these results are void and not acceptable," said the aide, Morteza Alviri.

Mousavi, meanwhile, issued a written statement thanking the "dear people of Iran" for his victory.

"I would like to inform you that in spite of wide-ranging fraud and problem-making, according to the documents and reports we have received, the majority of your votes have been cast in favor of your servant," the statement said. It concluded with a veiled suggestion of a possible confrontation, calling his supporters into the streets to celebrate his victory Saturday night and warning that if the votes are not fairly counted, "I will use all legal facilities and methods to restore the rights of the Iranian people."

The Interior Ministry, which is overseeing the election and counting the votes, is headed by Sadegh Mahsouli, a staunch supporter of Ahmadinejad. But its results must be confirmed by the Guardian Council, a panel of senior Islamic clergymen led by Khamenei, the supreme leader. Khamenei and Mousavi, who was prime minister from 1981 to 1989, are members of an older generation of Iranian revolutionaries who overthrew the shah 30 years ago.

Mousavi's statement and late-night news conference claiming victory capped a day of long lines at polling places across the capital, from the affluent neighborhoods in the north of the city to the working-class areas in the south.

"We haven't voted in 10 years time," said Giti Ghioshfar, who was waiting with her husband to cast ballots for Mousavi near Tehran's Fatemi Square. "We are here because we want more freedom," she said.

In Shahr-e Rey, south of Tehran, voter Ali Badiri said that young women without head scarves had been dancing in the streets over Mousavi's candidacy. "I'll vote for Ahmadinejad, because if Mousavi wins, they will be dancing naked next week," he said.

"We don't want to change Iran," said Abdollah Khalili, another Ahmadinejad voter. "We want this system to remain the way it is."

news20090613GDN

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Climate Change]
US says it will not demand binding carbon cuts from China
Developing nations will be expected to commit to action on energy efficiency and renewables, says US delegation in Bonn
By David Adam in Bonn and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 June 2009 14.53 BST
Article history

Progress towards a global treaty to fight climate change took an important step forward today when the US said it would not demand that China commits to binding cuts of its greenhouse gas emissions.

The move came on the last day of the latest round of UN climate change talks involving 183 nations, which aim to produce a deal in Copenhagen in December.

Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation in Bonn, said developing nations – seeking to grow their economies and alleviate poverty – would instead be asked to commit to other actions. These include boosting energy efficiency standards and improving the take-up of renewable energy, but would not deliver specific reductions. He said: "We're saying that the actions of developing countries should be binding, not the outcomes of those actions."

Only developed nations, including the US, would be expected to guarantee cuts. The pledge was included in a US blueprint for a climate change deal submitted to the Bonn meeting, which Pershing said was based on the need for the rich nations to cut greenhouse gases 80% by 2050.

The US plan, if approved, could replace the existing Kyoto protocol. The lack of any carbon targets for developing nations in the Kyoto protocol was the reason the US never ratified that treaty. While such cuts were believed to be unrealistic even in the new treaty, the first clear acceptance of that at the UN talks by the US is being seen as significant. EU officials said they were studying the US proposal.

China and the US are the two biggest polluters in the world, making their positions on the deal critical. In a separate submission to the talks, China was among a group of developing nations that called on rich countries including Britain and the US to cut emissions by 2020 by 40% on 1990 levels. According to environmental group WWF, commitments made by developing countries so far add up only to about a 10% cut — Japan this week proposed an effective 8% cut in its emissions.

Observers see the 40% demand as unrealistic, suggesting the US move amounts to blinking first in the negotiations. But back channel negotiations, revealed by the Guardian last month, showed the two nations are searching for a deal.

John Ashe, who chaired discussions at Bonn on how Kyoto targets could be extended, said many of the targets put forward could yet be revised as the Copenhagen deadline loomed. "There is always an initial move and then a final move. I don't believe we're in the final stage yet."

He said China should agree to take actions to control emissions that were measured and reported to the international community.

In Washington, Todd Stern, the state department's climate change envoy, said the US still expected China to take serious moves towards a cleaner economy. "We are expecting China to reduce their emissions very considerably compared to where they would otherwise be [with] a business as usual trajectory."

At the end of the talks, the UN's top climate official said significant progess had been made. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: "A big achievement of this meeting is that governments have made it clearer what they want to see in the Copenhagen agreed outcome."

But green campaigners criticised the failure to resolve any major issues, such as an overall target for 2020 emission reductions or concrete proposals on funding for poor nations to deal with global warming.

Antonio Hill of Oxfam said: "The countries that created the nightmare are refusing to lift a finger to prevent it becoming a reality. Rich country delegates have spent two weeks talking but have done nothing on the issues that really matter. They may be kidding themselves they are working towards a deal but they are not kidding anyone else."


[Travel and Transport]
New York declares war on geese to prevent airport bird strikes
Authorities will cull 2,000 Canada geese in public parks in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 June 2009 16.49 BST
Article history

Authorities in New York have declared war on the large flocks of Canada geese that congregate around the city's airports, and will cull 2,000 in an attempt to prevent a recurrence of the bird strike that forced a passenger plane to ditch in the Hudson river earlier this year.

The cull will target geese at open areas and more than 40 public parks in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx within five miles of regional airports.

The city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said the effort was justified by the dangers the geese pose to aircraft. In January, the pilot of a US Airways flight was forced to make an emergency water landing after a bird strike, with his passengers making a miraculous escape from the aircraft as it floated on the freezing waters of the Hudson.

"The serious dangers that Canada geese pose to aviation became all too clear when geese struck US Airways Flight 1549," he said in a statement on Thursday. "The incident served as a catalyst to strengthen our efforts in removing geese from, and discouraging them from nesting on, city property near our runways."

The authority managing New York's three airports, Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, had already had a programme to control bird populations through shooting and trapping birds, and removing their nests.

LaGuardia, which has a particularly bad history with birds, has had a programme of evicting geese for the last five years, and has removed 1,250 during that time. In the past, some of the offending geese were donated to food banks. That practice will not continue.

Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor, told reporters the geese would be herded to a collection point, and then taken off site where they would be put down using carbon dioxide in methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Conservation officials say there is a permanent population of about 20,000 Canada geese in the region. Another 25,000 are believed to pass through the area during the migration season. It is believed that the US Airways flight was brought down by migrating birds.

The cull is the first step in a major action plan to prevent birds strikes in the aftermath of the US Airways near-disaster, involving representatives from the city, airport authorities in New York and New Jersey, and the US agriculture department.

Bird strikes have been rising across the US, from 1,750 in 1990 to 7,666 in 2001 according to the federal aviation authority. Canada geese, whose population have risen to 5.5m last year, have emerged as a particular culprit. There have been 77 collisions between planes and geese in the New York area over the last decade, according to the federal aviation authority.

The city is planning to fill in a large hollow at Rikers Island, just north of LaGuardia, that had been popular among geese. At JFK airport, the authorities are also installing a new bird radar system, and have taken on an additional wildlife biologist to step up safety measures. The city will erect signs in parks warning people against feeding geese, and will teach wildlife supervisors in the field how to fire shotguns.

news20090613SAM

[Environment] from [Scientific American Magazine]

[Environment]
June 12, 2009
Watering Down the Fishery Gene Pool
Do hatcheries help or hinder efforts to sustain wild populations?
By Lynne Peeples

Plummeting numbers of several salmon and trout species have conservationists looking more and more to hatcheries—where fish are reared in comfortable captivity and then released into natural bodies of water. But this strategy may hurt wild populations, according to a paper published this week in Biology Letters.

Researchers at Oregon State University (O.S.U.) found that not only do hatchery-raised steelhead—a Pacific trout sharing the same genus, Oncorhynchus, as salmon—produce relatively fewer and weaker offspring once back in a natural environment, but so do their wild-born spawn.

"Captive breeding programs are a popular and efficient strategy to save declining populations, but the genetic impact must seriously be taken into account," says Hitoshi Araki, a co-author on the paper who recently moved from O.S.U. to the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. "Otherwise, wild populations can be at risk of extinction."

Araki and his colleagues looked at the Hood River steelhead supplementation program in Oregon and found that trout fry raised by two hatchery-reared parents had just 37 percent of the reproductive success of those with two wild-born parents, even though both sets of offspring were born in wild waters. If the fry had a mix of one wild and one hatchery-raised parent, then it had 87 percent of a pure-bred wild fry’s reproductive fitness.

And this effect may not be limited to fish. Araki speculates that it could be relevant for "any supplementation or captive-breeding program that ends up stocking and releasing [animals] in the wild for conservation efforts."

Dramatic drops in the reproduction rates of released hatchery fish were previously reported in a 2007 issue of the journal Science. The study noted the effects could be explained by a natural selection that favors characteristics useful in a sheltered, predator-free artificial environment over those necessary in the more hostile natural world. Of the large numbers of eggs laid by the released mothers during spawning, only a small fraction ever reached adulthood—the few that were best suited for survival in wild conditions.

The new study, which sampled from the same Hood River program as did the 2007 study, is the first to look at the survival and reproductive effects on the next generation: their wild-born offspring. "If fitness could drop that quickly in one generation, some expected that the reverse would be the same—that in the next generation of natural rearing, fitness could recover. Why not, right?" says Araki, who was also an author on the 2007 paper. "Unfortunately, we found that was not the case."

Their results leave many questions unanswered. "Something is changing," says Araki. "But we don't know what trait, what gene, is responsible for these changes." He adds that when and if they do find an answer, it might be possible to "mitigate those effects."

In the meantime, overfishing, water diversions and habitat destruction continue to impede restoration efforts for the 28 Pacific salmon and steelhead populations listed under the Endangered Species Act. Araki acknowledges that there may be instances where a hatchery program is necessary to save a local population from extinction.

Peter Moyle, a fish biologist at the University of California, Davis, agrees. "We can't just stop," he says. "We are dependent on hatcheries to maintain fisheries." But Moyle also understands the risks the strategy can pose on the fitness of wild fish in the long run: "Studies like this make us go, 'Hmmm, are we creating domestic animals here?' It's like putting cows from pastures into the mountains."

news20090613SLT

[Today's Paper] from [Slate Magazine]

Iran Better Than You Did!
By Lydia DePillis
Posted Saturday, June 13, 2009, at 6:38 AM ET

The New York Times (NYT) , Washington Post (WP), and Los Angeles Times (LAT) lead and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) tops its world-wide newsbox with the state of play in the Iranian elections, which—as of early Saturday morning, with votes still pouring in—appears inconclusive. Though state-run media claimed victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a 2-1 margin, his opponent Mir Hussein Mousavi alleges voting irregularities. "I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin," Mousavi said at a press conference in Tehran. The decision will ultimately come down to Ayatollah Khameini, who has been silent on the candidate he prefers. None of the papers had a clear picture of what might happen next; more will be known after official results become available.

Mousavi—who had been the candidate favored by Iran's Westernizing progressives, while Ahmadinejad dominated in the rural, traditional areas—claimed that there had been ballot shortages and polling places had closed earlier in areas where he was more popular. The opposition also noticed a scarcity of cell phone service, as well as blocked text messages, which Mousavi's supporters had been using to rally people to the polls. Early Saturday morning, the LAT reports, security forces shut down Mousavi's offices; things got dicey as police fired tear gas to disperse an angry crowd gathered for Mousavi's press conference. The good news: despite some long lines, and suspicion of ballot manipulation by the incumbent, the WSJ reports that turnout was high and the election went peacefully.

Over in the world's other hot spot, the U.N Security Council slapped heavier sanctions on North Korea and condemned the country "in the strongest terms" for its nuclear gamesmanship, in a bid to force the wayward nation back into six-party talks. The resolution bans all arms exports from North Korea, aimed at cutting off an important revenue stream, and allows any ship suspected of carrying arms to North Korea to be stopped and searched. However, the measure is weaker than the U.S. had initially hoped, the Journal emphasizes. It stops short of authorizing military force to back up the Council's demands and keeps open a few loopholes to keep fractious countries on board, as with China's exemption to keep selling North Korea small arms—to South Korea's chagrin. Analysts are not optimistic that even these stricter sanctions will be enough to stop a nation bent on causing trouble.

It's Mexican Drug War day at the Big Three—the Post, NYT, and WSJ all front extensive stories on narcs south of the border. The Journal has perhaps the most fantastical read, a profile of the legendary Joaquín Guzmán Loera—known simply as "El Chapo"—who runs an international smuggling cartel responsible for a goodly chunk of the crack, heroin, and meth on U.S. streets. He's a larger-than-life figure, who has the cops in his pocket and who dominated the prison where he was ostensibly being held, before breaking out. The Post focuses on La Familia Michoacan, a rival cartel known for killing its enemies by driving ice picks through their skulls and boiling them alive, but which also acts as a social service agency of sorts. Last month, several mayors were arrested by the national security police for their alleged roles in the gang, which opponents charge was politically motivated. In a more sunny scenario, the NYT takes us on a trip through Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican border town where once-brutal, drug-fueled gang violence has at least retreated behind the scenes, leaving a façade of calm that allows residents to lead somewhat-normal lives. Through the eyes of police officers, newspaper editors, an orphanage mother, and a shopkeeper, reporter Marc Lacey finds that while violence is still very much a force, prospects for peace seem more realistic every day.

North of the border, San Francisco is coming to terms with its own immigrant population, as a wave of crimes by undocumented immigrants prompted a new policy of deporting anyone accused of a crime and found to be living in the country unlawfully. Mayor Gavin Newsom—gearing up for a gubernatorial run—says his city is still immigrant-friendly, but no longer the sanctuary it once was.

The Post is still having fun with the latest raft of financial disclosures, which show a number of power players in the healthcare debate with hefty investments in the healthcare industry. There's Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), with between $254,000 and $560,000 worth of stock holdings in major health-care companies. And the family of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), which held at least $3.2 million in health-care companies at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, those companies aren't going to be happy about President Barack Obama's announcement of $300 billion in cost cuts—bringing the total projected savings to about $950 billion—to offset the projected $1 trillion price tag for a new healthcare system. But hey! All that stimulus money might have done some good earlier—the Journal reports that stocks are now surging thanks to the unprecedented amount of money sent sloshing through the system.

The NYT walks us through the scary implications of a cyberdefense plan, which is a difficult thing to reconcile with personal privacy, despite the administration's assurances. Because domestic and international networks are so intertwined, it's nearly impossible to avoid intercepting messages from civilians or noncombatant countries. As it stands, there are no "rules of engagement" for cyberspace—putting military planners in an even trickier situation, since they don't know what constitutes a violation. Also in the department of technological terror, the LAT fronts an account of the computer glitches that doomed Air France flight 447's 228 passengers to the depths. Airbus planes are more automated than most Boeing models, and the pilots struggled to manipulate the plane as a tropical storm rising from below fouled their instruments.

Gout is back, the NYT reports—the American middle class is eating enough meat and drinking enough beer and soda to contract what was once known as the disease of kings. The FDA just approved the first gout drug in four decades, meant to ease a condition caused by a buildup of uric acid in the joints that feels like "having a toothache so bad you can't stand it, all over your body," in the words of one sufferer.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have found a target in the fish-throwers at Seattle's Pike Place Market, who allegedly disrespect the dead animals by hurling them through the air, to tourists' delight. "Killing animals so you can toss their bodies around for amusement is just twisted," a PETA member said.

It was a wonderful night for residents of the 'Burgh as the Penguins swept to victory in hockey's Stanley Cup. According to the NYT's front-page article, this game might be a "watershed moment" for the team, ushering a new hockey dynasty--"The Penguins' biggest stars are so young their playoff bears look more like peach fuzz."

In more otherworldly news, TP thinks it's good to know that NASA is checking out the suitability of the moon for human habitation. At this rate, the world could end any day now.