news20090817bil

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]
August 17
Sir V.S. Naipaul
Trinidadian writer Sir V.S. Naipaul, who was born this day in 1932, became known for his pessimistic novels set in Third World countries—such as A Bend in the River (1979)—and won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
August 17
1945: Indonesia's declaration of independence
On this day in 1945, Sukarno declared Indonesia's independence from The Netherlands, and, after the Dutch transferred sovereignty four years later, he served as the country's first president (1949–67).

1978: Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in Double Eagle II.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, a rock festival near Bethel, New York, that attracted 450,000 fans, ended.

1896: George Washington Carmack unearthed gold in Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River in the Yukon Territory, Canada, setting off a gold rush into the Klondike valley.

1887: Marcus Garvey—a charismatic black leader who helped found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a black-governed nation—was born in Jamaica.

1590: John White returned to Roanoke Island, Virginia, from England and found no trace of the colony (now called the Lost Colony) that he had left there three years earlier.


[Today's Word] from [Dr. Kazuo Iwata]
(英語・一日一言:　岩田 一男　元一橋大学教授)
August 17
You rogues,
do you want to live for ever?
German singer!
I should as soon expect to get pleasure from the neighing of my horse.
    Friedrich the Great of Prussia (died this day in 1786)

この悪党どもめ、
Kono akuto-domo-me,
永遠に生きたいというのか？
Eien-ni ikitai-to iu-noka?
ドイツの歌手だと！
Doitsu-no kashu-dato!
そんなものを聞くひまがあるなら、
Sonna-mono-wo kiku-hima-ga aru-nara,
むしろ馬のいななくのでも聞いて楽しんだほうがましじゃ！
Mushiro uma-no ianaku-no-demo kite tanoshinda-ho-ga mashija!


[日英混文稿]

news20090817jt1

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
66% of major Japan firms expect recovery by early 2010: poll
Kyodo News

Sixty-six percent of 108 major Japanese companies surveyed expect Japan's economy to recover by the first half of 2010, indicating the view is spreading among businesses that the economy is hitting bottom, according to the results of the survey compiled by Kyodo News on Saturday.

The questionnaire survey, conducted between July 23 and 31, found that 71 of the 108 firms hold such a view as their performance is improving with production increasing after progress in inventory adjustments and cost-cutting efforts.

Of the 71 firms, 12 said the economy is already recovering, while 15 expect to see a recovery by the latter half of 2009 and 44 by the first half of 2010.

The survey requested answers from the top managers of the companies.

On the current situation, 20 firms, or 19 percent of the total, said the economy is "recovering slowly" and 51 firms, or 47 percent, said the economy is "leveling off although there are signs of recovery."

The figures represent an improvement from a similar survey conducted between late November and mid-December 2008 in which 98 percent said the economy was deteriorating.

As for concerns about the Japanese economy in the latter half of the current fiscal 2009, 88 firms cited the slumping U.S. and European economies, 64 sluggish personal consumption and 29 the deteriorating employment situation, on a multiple-answer basis.

Regarding policies they want the next government after the Aug. 30 general election to carry out, 51 firms cited stronger pump-priming measures, followed by 45 hoping for reforms to medical services and pension systems, and 34 wanting drastic reforms to tax systems, also on a multiple-answer basis.

On which party they hope will form the next government, 16 firms favored the current coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito party, while only eight firms favored a government led by the Democratic Party of Japan. Twelve firms favored a coalition of the rival LDP and DPJ, and 10 others favored a government under a new framework.

Asked about employment, 45 firms said they have dismissed regular and nonregular employees since fiscal 2008 amid the deteriorating economic downturn.

Of the total, 65 companies think their current workforces are appropriate while 36 others said they still have surplus workforces.

On their recruitments of new graduates next spring, 56 firms, or 52 percent of the total, said they plan to reduce the number of recruits from this spring.

The survey also showed 80 firms plan to increase investment in environment-related businesses such as development of environmental technology and goods.

This is apparently attributable to consumers' growing interest in hybrid and other eco-friendly vehicles and solar power generation systems on the back of recent government tax breaks and subsidies.

On the government's midterm goal of curbing greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, 45 firms said the goal is too strict for cost and other reasons, while 39 others said it is proper. Eleven firms said the goal is too lax.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
Traffic jams, packed trains mark end of midsummer vacation
Kyodo News

The rush of travelers returning home after spending Japan's Bon summer holidays out of town peaked Sunday, with expressways, railways and airports congested across the country.

Traffic was backed up about 21 km on the Tokyo-bound lanes of the Tomei Expressway in Shizuoka Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, in the afternoon after the inbound lanes reopened at midnight Saturday following the completion of repair work on an earthquake-hit section.

Part of the expressway's shoulder in Shizuoka collapsed due to a strong quake that hit the prefecture and surrounding areas Tuesday. The outbound lanes reopened midnight Wednesday but repair work on the inbound lanes was delayed.

Traffic was also jammed for 37 km on the Tohoku Expressway in Miyagi Prefecture and 26 km on the Chugoku Expressway in Osaka Prefecture.

Reserved seats on Tokyo-bound shinkansen bullet trains were almost full and the occupancy rate reached 160 percent for cars with unreserved seats on one of the Tohoku lines in the evening.

Domestic flights to Tokyo's Haneda airport were also packed. All Tokyo-bound flights of Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways were fully booked in the afternoon, according to the two airlines.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
3 file for candidacy in Yokohama mayoral election

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) Official campaigning for the Yokohama mayoral election commenced Sunday with two former corporate executives running as independents and a local Japanese Communist Party chapter official filing for candidacy.

The three candidates are former Daiei Inc. Chairwoman Fumiko Hayashi, 63, Kenji Nakanishi, 45, former deputy president of JPMorgan Securities Japan Co., and Masahiko Okada, 43, executive member of the JCP's Kanagawa prefectural chapter and a former reporter for the party's organ Shimbun Akahata.

Hayashi is supported by the major opposition Democratic Party of Japan and the small opposition People's New Party. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, are not officially supporting any of the candidates but are effectively backing Nakanishi.

The election to select a successor to outgoing Yokohama Mayor Hiroshi Nakada will be held Aug. 30 alongside the House of Representatives election.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
DPJ's Okada maps out a 4-year term for Hatoyama
Kyodo News

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Katsuya Okada indicated Sunday that party leader Yukio Hatoyama should serve as prime minister for four years if the opposition party takes power in the Aug. 30 general election.

"We have presented a four-year road map in our manifesto. If we win the House of Representatives election, keeping Hatoyama as premier during this period will be a consensus among the people," Okada told reporters in the city of Chiba.

Okada also suggested that if the DPJ wins power the lower chamber should not be dissolved before its four-year term is due to end.

The DPJ, the largest opposition party, is seen as having a good chance of wresting power from the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party in the upcoming general election.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
Happiness Realization Party leader to run in general election
Kyodo News

A political group backed by the Happy Science religious corporation, the Happiness Realization Party, said Sunday its head will run in the Aug. 30 general election, reversing an announcement the previous day.

Ryuho Okawa will run in the Kinki block of the proportional representation section in the forthcoming House of Representatives election, the group said.

The group also said it will field Zuishou Motochikawa for the Tokyo block under the proportional representation system, in which parliamentary seats are allocated according to the share of the vote secured by a political party.

Okawa had been planning to run in the Tokyo block but the group said Saturday he had withdrawn his bid to run in the general election.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
Alico Japan hit for ¥17.8 billion in back taxes
Kyodo News

Tokyo tax authorities are expected to impose back taxes of about 17.8 billion yen on life insurer Alico Japan for its failure to declare corporate taxes when valuing foreign currency-denominated assets, sources familiar with the matter said Sunday.

The Tokyo-based insurer affiliated with American International Group Inc. said the company and the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau have different views on the application of relevant laws and it will consider countermeasures including objecting to the additional taxes.

According to Alico Japan, around half of the premiums paid by policyholders were managed in foreign currency-denominated securities and the value of the premiums sharply decreased amid the yen's rapid appreciation after the subprime loan crisis in the United States in the summer of 2007.

Alico Japan, therefore, booked the latent losses as actual losses by applying "the 15 percent rule" of the tax code, under which valuation losses in terms of the exchange rate at the end of a fiscal year that exceed book values by more than 15 percent can be counted as actual losses.

But as the assets made use of derivatives trading, which can hedge foreign exchange risks, the tax bureau said the 15 percent rule was not applicable to foreign currency-denominated assets using derivatives trading and valuation losses could not be booked, according to Alico Japan.

news20090817jt2

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
Complex devoted to Japanese pop culture opens in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (Kyodo) New People, possibly the first commercial complex dedicated to J-pop in the United States, opened Saturday in Japan Town, San Francisco, drawing a long line of young people crazy about Japanese music, fashion and animation.

A three-story facility houses a store selling books, toys, DVDs and other merchandise related to Japanese pop culture, clothing stores including the first U.S. flagship store of Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (the ultimate "Lolita" fashion brand as it is known among J-pop fans), a movie theater and an art gallery.

Jennifer Filo, 22, and Saru Bell, 18, said they started to line up at 4 a.m. Saturday to enter the building ahead of its grand opening at 11 a.m.

Clad in black Gothic and Lolita fashion, the two said they had been looking forward to the opening of New People, taking pictures together every Friday since spring in front of the facility while it was under construction.

"We are so happy," Filo said. "We can come any day now."

The day's opening featured commemorative event J-pop Summit, showcasing Tokyo's latest Gothic and Lolita wear at an outdoor fashion show, drawing more than 1,000 spectators including "cosplayers" wearing costumes of Japanese manga and anime characters.

Seiji Horibuchi, president of VIZ Pictures Inc., who is among the key individuals who worked to realize the New People project, said during the event, "Let's make the 15th of August a J-pop Day around the world," and was cheered by the spectators.

Horibuchi has been involved with the distribution of Japanese films and DVDs as well as the English translated versions of Japanese comics in North America.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
Ex-gov. Tanaka challenges a New Komeito stronghold
By SAYO SASAKI
Kyodo News

AMAGASAKI — While the Japanese public's attention is intensely fixed on which party takes the lower house in the upcoming election, the race had seemed more like a done deal to voters in an industrial city in western Japan.

The Hyogo city of Amagasaki, halfway between Osaka and Kobe, where some 460,000 people live, has continuously fielded a single candidate, Tetsuzo Fuyushiba, to the House of Representatives in the past seven elections. This has allowed the New Komeito party heavyweight to serve 23 years at the center of Japan's political arena.

That was before Yasuo Tanaka came along. The House of Councillors member who heads the minor opposition New Party Nippon announced his candidacy in the same Hyogo No. 8 district in late July with the full backing of the increasingly popular major opposition Democratic Party of Japan, instantly changing the political landscape in the static electoral district.

Better known as a former Nagano Governor who called for drastic changes in the prefecture and a Bungei Award-winning writer, Tanaka enjoys widespread recognition in Japan, making him a tough rival for Fuyushiba in the district where several other candidates have declared bids.

"I want Mr. Tanaka to change Amagasaki a bit," said Hiroaki Yoshida, 69, a probation officer who attended a gathering hosted for the public to attend and question Tanaka directly. "Until now I felt useless voting because the outcome would stay the same, but now we have a real option."

Although the 53-year-old has no large support organizations after the local labor union association that usually backs the DPJ decided to support another minor opposition candidate instead of Tanaka due to discord over an airport's construction, he is widely expected to garner support from swing voters and those tired of a consecutive win by a single candidate.

But backlash is fierce in a city some residents call "the Land of Soka Gakkai," a religious group that has been the main body of support for New Komeito.

"Why is he running in the election from Amagasaki? At first, I thought maybe he was born here or something, and he's not," said a 34-year-old female employee at a clothing shop in Amagasaki's main shopping arcade, who declined to be named.

Tanaka has been repeatedly confronted with the same question when touring the city during his election campaign.

Fuyushiba, who moved into the city before his first election, was also critical of Tanaka, saying he is asking for support while staying at a hotel and not moving into the city.

"I cannot hand over Amagasaki to a stranger who has no ties to the city. Please help me win," exclaimed Fuyushiba during a stump speech in front of a station, and some 300 supporters gathered there roared in agreement.

For weeks until mid-August, Tanaka was without a campaign office in Amagasaki. He said at a gathering that it was due to being declined "six or seven times" by real estate owners who all seemed willing at first but suddenly change their minds a few days later.

But he was still hopeful, saying during an interview with Kyodo News that the people will understand and accept him eventually. He explained his reason for picking the Hyogo electoral district as being moved by how its people always go help others during disasters like the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 and a large fatal derailment accident in 2005.

"I want to reform this state that is sitting on bureaucracy through the land of Amagasaki, where people hold courage and kindness in the face of great adversity," he said.

The race has attracted much attention for the differences in the two candidates' campaign styles and also for appearing like a scaled down version of the overall election, in which the DPJ threats to throw the Liberal Democratic Party from power, breaking its rule that has continued almost unbroken for more than 50 years.

As Tanaka has said he was asked by former DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa to move into the lower house from the upper house when he declared his candidacy and Fuyushiba is with New Komeito, the LDP's junior coalition partner, some have even dubbed the race a "proxy war."

Added to this were the political careers of the two — Fuyushiba has served as the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister, while Tanaka as a governor called for stopping the construction of dams, a task the ministry deals with.

Tanaka has been hopping between Tokyo and Amagasaki for media appearances. When he is in the electoral district, he travels around the city in campaign vehicles to attract voters, handing out pamphlets that call for a change in bureaucratic government and carry his photograph together with those of well-known figures of reform, Ryoma Sakamoto, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and U.S. president Barack Obama.

Fuyushiba, in contrast, has vigorously campaigned through the city, sometimes on a bicycle, so far meeting some 30,000 supporters by visiting their houses or attending small meetings with them since late September, when rumors began that the general election would soon be held, his office said.

Supporters for the 73-year-old veteran come into the city from other prefectures, soliciting local voters to cast their ballots for Fuyushiba as well. Shop owners in Amagasaki's main shopping arcade said every day they have five or six customers who ask them for support.

But even with such strong backing, uneasiness is evident in Fuyushiba's office. Shigeyuki Hirata, Fuyushiba's longtime secretary who has overseen his election campaigns, said he has "never experienced an election like this before."

"If a candidate is going to go in full throttle, he has to make preparations for it," he said. "But we just don't see those preparations. We don't know what (Tanaka) is doing."

"How this wind will turn, whether it becomes a large rainstorm or tornado, we do not know."

Tanaka smiled as he spoke inside his office in Tokyo during an interview with Kyodo News.

"Those fixated with old-style elections must wonder why I am leading such an air-fairy election campaign," he said and added all the backlashes were expected as he went through the same problems when he decided to run in the 2000 Nagano gubernatorial election.

"It's what comes with doing something unprecedented. I'd say things without obstacles are not worth trying."

news20090817jt3

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

[BUSINESS NEWS]
Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009
Former AIG manager cooks up new career as chef
Financial meltdown prompts insurance expert to act on his passion for pastries
By HIROKO NAKATA
Staff writer

The collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and other U.S. financial giants changed people's lives around the world, and David Cisan, a former manager at American International Group in Japan, is one of them.

In the global financial meltdown last year, Washington bailed out AIG and a small number of other institutions, but Lehman and some others went under.

Amid the financial turmoil, the 40-year-old Hawaii-born insurance expert decided to leave the industry after almost 20 years and take his life in a different direction by becoming a professional pastry chef.

Now he runs classes in English teaching how to bake muffins and brownies at Notting Hill Cakes & Gifts, a British-style cafe in Nishi-Azabu in Tokyo's Minato Ward owned by British baker Mark Peterson.

"The whole financial crisis made this decision much easier," Cisan told The Japan Times in a recent interview.

"The timing was good to make a change," he continued. "It was a difficult decision to make, after long years in the financial industry. But then, looking at the whole industry and the way things are going, I thought maybe now is the right time."

Cisan is one of thousands who left foreign financial institutions in Japan in recent months.

Many got new jobs in the same financial services industry, according to job consulting experts. But others have opted for entirely different career paths.

"After a while in any industry, people get tired — people want to change. And that's what happened to me," Cisan said. "It's very common in the U.S. that people do that kind of thing. That's a midlife career change."

But such changes may not be so familiar in this country, where the job market generally lacks flexibility.

"There were two big trends in their job hunting," said Yuichi Misato, a career consultant at Intelligence Ltd., which helps people find new jobs, referring to businessmen who left foreign financial firms in Japan during the financial crisis in 2008.

One trend is to work for small consulting companies specializing in certain areas, such as mergers and acquisitions. Another trend is to get jobs as financial experts at corporations, Misato said.

Others sought jobs as bureaucrats.

Many applied for several openings at the Financial Services Agency, a financial watchdog. When the agency posted job listings on March 13, the first such advertisement after the financial industry's meltdown last year, 120 people, including many who had worked for foreign financial firms, applied. Only four were hired, the agency said.

Amid such job-hunting, Cisan's drastic career change may be unique. But he said he had been preparing for it for a long time.

Passionate about baking sweets since he was a teenager in Hawaii, Cisan attended a professional pastry program on weekends at Le Cordon Bleu in Tokyo while he was working as a manager at AIG. A year and a half later he received his diploma in pastry-making from the famed French cooking school.

Before he resigned from AIG in November, he had already offered baking classes at home to friends and colleagues on weekends.

Later, he relocated classes to his community center's kitchen in Tokyo's Ota Ward, which was larger and better equipped for classes. After he met Peterson earlier this year, he started to teach at Notting Hill.

The classes at the cafe have so far proved increasingly popular.

In July, Cisan and a couple of other instructors had six classes, each with eight students. In August, they expanded to 16 to 20 classes, and hope to have 26 to 30 classes by September, Cisan said.

But business in Japan is not always so easy, he said.

"Japanese consumers are very brand-conscious, quality-conscious and price sensitive," he said, adding that presentation, packaging and wrapping are also very important to customers.

"Japan is one of the most difficult consumer markets in the world. But if you can crack it, it's the most lucrative," he said.

Cisan said he is happy he has a challenge.

"Because if I don't try now, and I do something else or get involved in something else, and then, 20 to 30 years from now and in the back of my mind, like 'Oh, you never did try baking and now I'm too old.' I don't want to have these regrets later," he said.

"If I do this and fail, so what? At least I know I tried," Cisan said.


[BASEBALL]
Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
Astros' Matsui reaches 2,000th hit milestone

MILWAUKEE, Wis. (Kyodo) Houston Astros second baseman Kazuo Matsui collected the 2,000th hit of his professional career in the major leagues and Japan on Saturday in a 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

Matsui reached the milestone with a third-inning infield single at Miller Park, becoming the third Japanese player to accomplish the feat after Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki and New York Yankees outfielder-designated hitter Hideki Matsui. Thirty-seven players have 2,000 hits in Japanese pro baseball.

Kazuo Matsui, who got 1,433 of his hits playing in the Japanese Pacific League with the Seibu Lions, flied out and grounded out in his other at-bats.

"It was my kind of hit and a good one I think. It sunk in that it was my 2,000th hit as I got a standing ovation even though we are on the road," said Matsui.

"I'm grateful that I have been able to play baseball this long," he said.

Elsewhere, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Hiroki Kuroda was rushed to hospital after being hit in the head by a line drive in the Los Angeles Dodgers' game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Kuroda dropped to the mound clutching his head after being caught in the right temple by Rusty Ryal's shot in the sixth inning at Chase Field.

According to the Dodgers, Kuroda, who was placed on a stretcher and put on a cart, never lost consciousness and there was no bleeding.

The 34-year-old gave up one run and three hits in five-plus innings. The Dodgers lost 4-3 in 10 innings.

Atlanta Braves starter Kenshin Kawakami gave up three runs on seven hits in 6-1/3 innings in a 4-3 walk-off win over the Philadelphia Phillies. He was not involved in the decision.

Ichiro Suzuki had two singles in five at-bats in the Seattle Mariners' 5-2 loss to the Yankees. Mariners catcher Kenji Jojima and Yankees designated hitter Hideki Matsui did not play.

news20090817lat

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

[World News]
Pakistan Taliban leader's purported death opens window of opportunity
Baitullah Mahsud's absence leaves the group, which provides Al Qaeda sanctuary, in turmoil. Analysts say Pakistan and the U.S. need to act during this vulnerable time.
By Alex Rodriguez
August 17, 2009

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan - For years, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban have nurtured a symbiotic relationship that has paid off for both militant groups. The Taliban provided Al Qaeda and its leaders sanctuary within the rugged wasteland of Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border. In turn, Al Qaeda trained and helped finance its host.

Now, with the purported death of Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud and his organization temporarily rudderless, Al Qaeda finds itself made vulnerable by the disarray plaguing its patron, experts and Pakistani intelligence sources say. It's a window of opportunity that neither Pakistan nor the United States can afford to neglect.

"It's a bad patch for Al Qaeda, because of the infighting and the fight for top leadership going on right now within the Taliban," said a Pakistani intelligence source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "So, for the time being, Al Qaeda will be disturbed. But I stress, for the time being."

Mahsud's death has yet to be verified, but both Pakistani and U.S. officials are confident that an American drone strike Aug. 5 did kill the Taliban leader, long regarded by Pakistanis as their most-wanted militant. Since his death, Taliban commanders have been feuding over the right to succeed him, and rifts within the ranks have threatened to undo the unity Mahsud had carefully forged.

With the Taliban mired in disarray, experts say Pakistan and the U.S. need to ratchet up their bid to track down and eliminate other top Taliban commanders. The aim, they say, is not just to dismantle the Taliban, but to cut off Al Qaeda from the entity that keeps it insulated and secure deep within the badlands of Waziristan.

Officials in Washington have repeatedly pushed Islamabad to aggressively pursue militants throughout northwestern Pakistan. However, the Obama administration has taken care to not be perceived as dictating Pakistan's military strategizing.

At a joint news conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Sunday, Obama's special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, said the U.S. would not intervene in Pakistan's handling of the effort to root out militants from South Waziristan.

"It's a decision for the Pakistan government to make, and to make alone," said Holbrooke, who was on the second day of a 12-day regional tour.

Qureshi promised in turn that the Pakistani army would carry out a long-anticipated drive against militants in South Waziristan. "We will go to every area to clear our territory of terrorists," he said.

But some analysts fear that Pakistan will not move aggressively against the South Waziristan strongholds. Lisa Curtis, a former U.S. government South Asia analyst now at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said that Pakistan's follow-up is one of the key issues between the two governments.

In some areas, the U.S. government "still hasn't gotten cooperation on counter-terrorism," she said. With Pakistan, "the glass is half full and half empty."

Al Qaeda fighters streamed over the Afghan border into Pakistan's tribal areas after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Seeking protection from Pakistani tribal warlords, Al Qaeda's militants, many of them Arabs and Uzbeks, found an ideal partnership with Mahsud, who had fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s. By 2007 he had set his sights on the Pakistani state as his prime target.

Under attack from unmanned U.S. aircraft, Al Qaeda militants in Waziristan needed a tribal ally who would not only provide safe haven, but would also pressure Pakistan's security establishment with suicide bombings and ambushes so that support for cooperation with the U.S. would eventually erode, said Pakistani security analyst Imtiaz Gul.

Gul and other experts believe the best strategy against Al Qaeda is to forge ahead with the dismantling of the Taliban in the tribal areas. The hope is that Al Qaeda would eventually become unprotected and vulnerable.

"They must keep the pressure up, and take out as many people in the Taliban's top tier leadership as possible," Gul said. "That would be the effective way of dealing with Al Qaeda, by taking the carpet from under their feet. And with the Taliban in disarray right now, this is the right time."

Whether the Pakistani military adopts that strategy remains unclear, despite Qureshi's reassuring words Sunday. An all-out offensive against the Taliban in Swat during the spring succeeded in flushing militants out of the volatile region's urban centers and towns. However, the military has held off on unleashing a second offensive against the Taliban in Waziristan, arguing that the best tack there is to blockade militants' supply routes and use airstrikes against hide-outs and camps.

"In Waziristan, we will wear them out, and whatever intelligence we get, we will use to go and hit them," said Pakistani army Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed. "There won't be a major ground action. There will be small ground operations, but nothing like we saw in Swat."

Under that plan, some experts say, wearing down the Taliban could take years. "I would say time is running out, even now," said Masood Sharif Khattak, a security analyst and former top Pakistani intelligence official. "It has to be faster. If they let the Taliban regroup, they will win. If we don't let them regroup, then probably it will be the beginning of the end of militancy."

Whether Pakistan succeeds in rooting out militants in the tribal areas will depend largely on the quality of intelligence it gets from informants and operatives in the region. Pakistani intelligence officials found out Mahsud was staying at his father-in-law's house in South Waziristan and relayed the militant leader's whereabouts to the U.S., leading to the drone strike that killed him.

However, Pakistan acknowledges that it has far more intelligence on Pakistani Taliban militants and their leaders than it has on Al Qaeda.

"As far as the Taliban is concerned, we have data on their people and their areas, and that's why they are an easier target for us," said the Pakistani intelligence source. "But the Al Qaeda members are fewer in number, and they come, interact, and then leave."

U.S. officials believe airstrikes nonetheless have killed nine of Al Qaeda's leading 20 commanders.

A major test of Pakistan's commitment to fighting militancy within its borders will be its willingness to help capture or eliminate other major militant leaders with strong links to Al Qaeda, such as Jalaluddin Haqqani in North Waziristan and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who is believed to be hiding out in Pakistan's remote Baluchistan province. Both leaders have directed their efforts at Afghanistan rather than Pakistan, and up until now neither has been regarded by Islamabad as a major target.

Pakistani intelligence sources say that, if asked, they would be willing to cooperate in helping track down both Omar and Haqqani.

"Why wouldn't Pakistan help?" the Pakistani intelligence source said. "There's no reason why we would say no. We want to stand by the world community, and we will."

news20090817nyt

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

[Money & Policy]
‘Public Option’ in Health Plan May Be Dropped
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: August 16, 2009

PHOENIX — The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.

The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.

After strongly defending the public plan, the president suggested that he, too, viewed it as only a small piece of a broader initiative intended to control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient.

“The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” the president said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”

For Mr. Obama, giving up on the public plan would have risks and rewards. The reward is that he could punch a hole in Republican arguments that he wants a “government takeover” of health care and possibly win some Republican votes. The risk is that he could alienate liberal Democrats, whose support he will also need to pass a bill.

On Sunday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, affirmed his support for the public option. “I believe the inclusion of a strong public plan option in health reform legislation is a must,” Mr. Rockefeller said in a statement. “It is the only proven way to guarantee that all consumers have affordable, meaningful and accountable options available in the health insurance marketplace.”

White House officials say the president has not abandoned the idea of a pure government plan, a central feature of the legislation moving through the House. But Ms. Sebelius’s comments did seem to open the door, and at least one Democrat close to the White House said the administration was well aware that, with moderate Senate Democrats opposed to the idea of a public plan, Mr. Obama might have to give up on the notion to get a bill through.

“The president is going to continue to try to persuade everyone of the great value of having a true public plan,” said this Democrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid discussing strategy publicly. ”But at the end of the day, I believe he recognizes that there are other, arguably less effective, ways to achieve greater coverage, more choice, better quality and lower cost in our system.”

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, said the president remained convinced that a public plan was “the best way to go.” But Mr. Axelrod said the nuances of how to develop a nonprofit competitor to private industry had never been “carved in stone.”

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to produce a bill that features a nonprofit co-op. The author of the idea, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, predicted Sunday that Mr. Obama would have no choice but to drop the public option.

“The fact of the matter is, there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” Mr. Conrad said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”

The co-op, modeled after rural electric and agricultural cooperatives in Mr. Conrad’s home state, would offer insurance through a nonprofit, nongovernmental consumer entity run by its members. Mr. Axelrod said one downside of a co-op, from Mr. Obama’s point of view, was that it might be unable to “scale up in such a way that would create a robust” competitor to private insurers.

And whether a co-operative would actually bring Republicans on board with Mr. Obama is unclear. Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who appeared alongside Mr. Conrad on “Fox News Sunday,” called the co-op idea “a step in the right direction,” adding: “I don’t know if it will do everything people want, but we ought to look at it. I think it’s a far cry from the original proposals.”

As Mr. Obama envisions it, the public option would be a government-backed plan available to consumers through a health exchange where people could buy insurance, public or private, that best fits their needs. While a public plan might require some government financing to start up, the idea is for it to be financially self-sustaining and require no subsidies, Mr. Axelrod said.

Republicans argue that a public plan would invariably drive private insurers out of business and prompt employers to drop private coverage, pushing people who are already insured onto a plan run by the government. Mr. Obama counters that a public option would keep insurers “honest” by forcing them to compete in the marketplace, although he has said all along he would be open to other ideas.

In her interview Sunday on CNN, Ms. Sebelius was asked if it was time to come up with an alternative to the public option. She replied that the president’s main concern was to promote competition with the private sector.

“What’s important is choice and competition,” she said. “And I’m convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those.”

Here in Phoenix, where Mr. Obama is to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday, conservative groups including Americans for Prosperity are planning to protest the health plan. The same groups have turned up around the country at Congressional town-hall-style meetings, which have sometimes turned into shouting matches as opponents denounce him for promoting “socialized medicine.”

Mr. Obama is pushing back. As the nation heads into the last two weeks of August, a time when the White House believes many Americans will tune out of the health care debate to take their vacations, he has been waging an intense public relations offensive to convince Americans that the health care system should be overhauled. (He, too, is planning a vacation, to Martha’s Vineyard the last week of August.)

In the past week alone, Mr. Obama has held three town-hall-style meetings — in addition to the session on Saturday in Grand Junction, he traveled to Portsmouth, N.H., and Belgrade, Mont. — and devoted his weekly radio and Internet address to health care. On Sunday, he published an opinion article in The New York Times arguing, as he has in recent days, that overhauling the system would result in protections for consumers.

“This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance,” Mr. Obama wrote. “I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.”

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

[Health-Care Reform 2009]
Key Feature Of Obama Health Plan May Be Out
Administration Hints That Public Option Isn't Only Way to Go
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 17, 2009

Racing to regain control of the health-care debate, two top administration officials signaled Sunday that the White House may be willing to jettison a controversial government-run insurance plan favored by liberals.

As President Obama finishes a western swing intended to bolster support for his signature policy initiative, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius opened the door to a compromise on a public option, saying it is "not the essential element" of comprehensive reform. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that Obama "will be satisfied" if the private insurance market has "choice and competition."

Yet even as the Obama team hinted it could accept concessions that moderate Democrats are seeking, one of the leaders of that faction raised another hurdle for the administration. He warned that Senate Finance Committee negotiators may not meet the president's Sept. 15 deadline for producing a bill.

"We will be ready when we are ready," Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.) said on "Fox News Sunday." "We will not be bound by any deadline."

The on-air deliberations played out against the backdrop of an intense and expensive battle on the ground, with an array of activists using this month to lobby lawmakers in their home states and districts.

"Everybody on the left and the right is very frustrated with the health debate," said Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). He said he has heard anxious stories from constituents who have lost jobs, seen a relative receive poor treatment in a hospital, watched retirement accounts evaporate and fretted about gun rights.

"I have heard every possible reason for anger," he said in an interview. "The common target is Congress."

Declining poll numbers, testy town hall meetings and mounting frustration among his allies sent Obama into campaign mode over the weekend. He staged his own forums and wrote an opinion piece published Sunday in the New York Times.

"In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain," he wrote. "But for all the scare tactics out there, what's truly scary -- truly risky -- is the prospect of doing nothing."

Andrew Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, said that "Obama's gaining ground" after several sluggish weeks. But he disputed Conrad's contention that Senate negotiators need additional time to draft a bill.

"Deliberation is fine, but at some point it's just delaying," he said in an interview. "A longer wait to make the hard choices on health care is not increasing the odds of success."

Obama has staked much of his first year in office on a health-care initiative aimed at extending coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and at controlling medical costs.

The president has said that creating a nonprofit, government-sponsored insurance plan -- competing alongside private insurers -- would provide a lower-cost alternative for consumers and keep the industry "honest." In Colorado on Saturday, the tone was more conciliatory.

"The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health-care reform," Obama said. "This is just one sliver of it."

The proposal has become a lightning rod, particularly in the Senate, where Finance Committee members are seeking bipartisan consensus.

"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option," said Conrad, one of six panel members involved in the talks. "There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort."

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said Democrats are moving toward a European-style, single-payer system. "And this public plan, this public government plan, don't think for a minute that that will not destroy the current insurance system," he said on ABC's "This Week."

Sebelius and other administration aides have said Obama is open to a nonprofit cooperative model as an alternative to the public option and the existing private plans. Finance Committee members have been studying utility co-ops as a possible model.

Liberal leaders reacted strongly to the idea that Obama would walk away from what they consider a central element of reform.

"I don't think this bill is worth passing without a public option," said Howard Dean, head of the grass-roots group Democracy for America.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) said it would be difficult to pass a bill in the House without a robust government alternative.

"The private insurance companies have been in charge for so long that I think they feel that nobody else ought to be able to do it," she said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Said Sebelius earlier on the same program: "What's important is choice and competition. And I'm convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those."

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[Today's Paper: A summary of what's in the major U.S. newspapers] from [Slate Magazine]

Bye-Bye Public Option
By Daniel Politi
Posted Monday, Aug. 17, 2009, at 6:40 AM ET

The New York Times (NYT), Washington Post (WP), and the Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with the Obama administration giving its strongest signal yet that it may be ready to drop the idea of a government-run insurance option to compete with private companies as part of health care reform. On the Sunday talk show circuit, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that the so-called public option is "not the essential element" of the overhaul efforts, while White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Obama "will be satisfied" if there is "choice and competition" in the private insurance market.

The Los Angeles Times (LAT) fronts the latest developments in the health care debate but leads with a look at how the purported death of Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud has opened up a "window of opportunity that neither Pakistan nor the United States can afford to neglect." With the Taliban's structure in disarray as commanders fight to take Mahsud's place, there is a great temporary opportunity to track down and kill other top Taliban leaders. That would not only help weaken the Taliban, but also make al-Qaida more vulnerable. USA Today leads with a new poll that shows 57 percent of Americans think the $787 billion stimulus package hasn't had any impact on the economy or has made it worse. The poll shows how the White House is fighting an uphill battle in trying to convince Americans that things would have been worse without the stimulus package.

White House officials continued to insist that Obama isn't abandoning a government-run health insurance plan. But the fact that two top administration officials hinted that it isn't considered essential to the overall efforts should hardly be considered surprising considering that Obama himself said as much at a town-hall meeting in Colorado. The public option "is not the entirety of health care reform," Obama said after defending the idea. "This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it." This openness to other options, including insurance exchanges and cooperatives, is a big win for the insurance industry and could remove one of the biggest objections to health care overhaul since many had seized on it to claim that government wants to take over health care. "The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option," said Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad, one of the key health care negotiators who has been a champion of the co-op idea.

Although this willingness to drop the public option could win the administration some Republican support, it also risks angering liberal Democrats. Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia said that a public option "is the only proven way to guarantee that all consumers have affordable, meaningful and accountable options available in the health insurance marketplace." Indeed, the WSJ states that while the competition that co-ops would bring to the market might help bring down prices, it's unlikely that they "would bring prices down as significantly as the government could." The LAT says that if Obama ends up dropping the public option it would mark "at least the second time he's made major concessions to powerful stakeholders in the healthcare debate." Earlier, the White Hosue made a deal with the nation's main drug lobby to cap the cost savings it expects from the industry at $80 billion in exchange for supporting the reform efforts.

The Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida have built up a strong, mutually beneficial relationship over the years. Al-Qaida helped train Taliban militants, and, in exchange the Taliban gave al-Qaida a safe place to operate. Experts now contend that if more Taliban commanders are killed, it would leave al-Qaida exposed and vulnerable. Analysts insist these operations have to take place quickly since it's only a matter of time before the Taliban regroup. But it's unclear whether the Pakistani military is ready to adopt such an aggressive strategy.

In a front-page dispatch from Afghanistan, the NYT notes that while President Hamid Karzai is largely expected to win re-election this week that could change if Taliban intimidation keeps many of his fellow Pashtuns from casting a ballot. Support from Pashtuns was crucial to Karzai's victory five years ago, when the Taliban largely stayed away and allowed voting to continue. Making matters worse for Karzai, many villagers have to walk far if they decide to ignore threats and cast a ballot. Afghan officials said many places across Helmand Province are simply not safe enough to set up polling places.

The WP's Rajiv Chandrasekaran writes an extensive piece looking into the "humiliating" firing of Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, earlier this year, and what it says about the Obama administration's approach to the war, as well as the changing culture in the Pentagon. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tried to persuade McKiernan to resign, but he refused. A mere two weeks later, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told him to pack his bags, marking the first time that a wartime theater commander was fired since 1951. McKiernan had a distinguished 37-year career, but spent little time at the Pentagon and wasn't really well-versed in the intricate Washington parlor games. At the same time, he never built good relationships with Afghan leaders. Officials say that his shortcomings became even more evident with the rise of Gen. David Petraeus, who was particularly adept not only at directing troops but also at talking to lawmakers and Pentagon leaders. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to just be a good military leader, a commander also "had to be adroit at international politics," and know how to deal with the media, an official explained. For his part, McKiernan contends he never got the support he needed from Washington.

The LAT fronts news that the La Brea fire that has burned more than 87,000 acres in Santa Barbara County was apparently "the first major wildfire in the state caused by drug traffickers." Authorities say the fire was sparked by flames from a cooking fire in an illegal marijuana farm, one of many that are increasingly cropping up in California's vast forests. Officials believe the farm was operated by a Mexican drug organization.

In the WP's op-ed page, two former Baltimore City police officers urge the federal government to step away from the drug war to allow cities and states to set their own drug policies. Right now, "prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing," which claims the lives of too many cops. Street-corner drug dealers can single-handedly turn a peaceful neighborhood into a violent one, but their threat could be eliminated if drug manufacturing and distribution were regulated. "Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and—most important to us—more police officers wouldn't have to die."

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[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[United Nations]
Asia facing unprecedented food shortage, UN report says
Major investment in irrigation systems needed to feed population expected to grow by 1.5 billion over next 40 years
John Vidal
The Guardian, Monday 17 August 2009 Article history

Asia faces an unprecedented food crisis and huge social unrest unless hundreds of billions of dollars are invested in better irrigation systems to grow crops for its burgeoning population, according to a UN report published today.

India, China, Pakistan and other large countries avoided famines in the 1970s and 1980s only because they built giant state-sponsored irrigation systems and introduced better seeds and fertilisers. But the extra 1.5 billion people expected to live on the continent by 2050 will double Asia's demand for food, says the report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Bank-funded International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

A combination of very little new land left for cultivation, an increasingly unpredictable climate and water supplies stretched to the limit means the only realistic option to feed people in the future will be better management of existing water supplies, according to the report.

"There is no new land or water to develop so we have to make more use of what we have. Existing irrigation systems are often 50 to 70 years old. They are leaking and water is evaporating. We urgently need a new generation of irrigation. That is the only way we are going to feed everyone," said Colin Chartres, who is the director general of IWMI.

"If we don't [invest] we will see food crises like the one in 2007 repeated over and again. That was an early warning. If nothing is done, you are going to get an increase in social unrest, migration and a fertile ground for terrorism," he said.

Since the demise of communism and the rise of the free market, farmers have increasingly opted to take irrigation into their own hands, mainly using cheap Chinese-made pumps.

Tens of millions of smallholders have invested in their own pumps so that they can extract water from shallow aquifers whenever they choose. Governments have been unable to regulate this practice, which has led to major exploitation of water resources.

Water tables in parts of India and China have dropped catastrophically in the last few years. "It's a trend that will become more common. The consequence will be more farmer suicides, hardship and collapsing enterprises," said Chartres.

The food crisis is compounded by millions of wealthier people in developing countries turning away from traditional rice and cereal-based diets to western dairy and meat-based foods that require more water, says the report.

"The agriculture of tomorrow will need a lot more water. Given that one litre of water is used to produce one calorie of food, the world will need up to 6,000 cubic kilometres of additional water every year to feed another 2.5 billion people 2,500 calories per day.

"This is almost twice what we use today and is not sustainable," said Chartres.

The report urges countries to repair and modernise irrigation systems and use better drip-fed farming. The UN expects the world to have an extra 2.5 billion mouths to feed within 40 years, most of them in developing countries. Africa's population could double, Asia's could grow by nearly 30% and Pakistan's by 85%.


[Business]
High-speed rail strategy not so green, report says
Study argues that building and operating London-Manchester rail network will generate more CO2 than air route
Dan Milmo, transport correspondent
The Guardian, Monday 17 August 2009 Article history

A government-commissioned report has raised doubts over the green credentials of high-speed rail by warning that a new 300kph (185mph) London to Manchester line could be less environmentally friendly than the same air route.

A study by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consultancy, argues that building and operating a new north-south rail network in England will generate more CO2 than taking the same route by air over a 60-year period.

The environment is an important factor in the case for high-speed rail and the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, has made the demise of domestic air travel an explicit target of the policy. The report, Estimated Carbon Impact of a New North-South Line, argues that travelling on a domestic air service could be the greener option if you are travelling from the capital to Manchester.

"There is no potential carbon benefit in building a new line on the London to Manchester route over the 60-year appraisal period. In essence, the additional carbon emitted by building and operating a new rail route is larger than the entire quantity of carbon emitted by the air services," said the report.

However, the report adds that a high-speed route from London to Glasgow or Edinburgh will achieve a net carbon saving, and therefore justify itself in environmental terms, if it wins a 62% market share against airlines. Currently, rail controls 15% of the rail/air market between London and Scotland and has greater potential to win passengers from airlines, as opposed to London to Manchester where rail already controls about half of the rail/air market according to Booz Allen Hamilton.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said the report, completed in 2007 but only published this year, admitted to using a "simplistic model" and had not factored in the possibility of winning market share from car drivers. High Speed Two, the company established by Lord Adonis to draw up plans for a north-south link, will submit its own report, including an environmental study, at the end of the year.

The Booz Hamilton Allen study adds that the case for high-speed rail becomes harder to justify if the number of trains operated between London and Scotland doubles from four to eight an hour. Under that scenario, rail would need a market share of between 73% and 85% in order to achieve a net carbon saving because running high-speed trains so frequently uses up more energy and generates more CO2. Instead, the report says, the government could concentrate on increasing capacity on existing lines through the removal of bottlenecks and installing more advanced signalling systems.

Another Booz Hamilton Allen report for the DfT, produced with consultancies First Class Partnerships and Temple, highlights the potential cost of a high-speed route amid pressure on the public finances. The study envisages a 1,240km London to Scotland "hybrid line", comprising new and upgraded lines, built in four sections: from London Euston to Birmingham, including Heathrow; then onwards to Manchester and Scotland; a cross-Pennine link from Manchester to Leeds and Sheffield; and an east coast branch from south east Birmingham to York.

The capital cost of a hybrid line with new high-speed tracks is priced at £39bn, plus £20bn in operating costs over 30 years, including the acquisition of trains and carriages.

The core route of London to Glasgow via Birmingham and Manchester is priced at £29bn, with London to Manchester costing £15bn.

Meanwhile, Heathrow's owner, BAA, is arguing that a north-south link will boost the case for a third runway, even if it replaces domestic air travel. BAA believes that a high-speed route joining with Heathrow will funnel more of those passengers to Heathrow, putting further pressure on capacity and boosting the case for a new landing strip.

The RAC Foundation, the roads thinktank, said the environmental analysis, contained in a series of government-commissioned reports that also outlined high construction and maintenance costs, exposed potential flaws in the government's high speed rail strategy.

Stephen Glaister, a leading transport academic and director of the RAC Foundation, said: "It is unwise for the government to have committed so heavily to high-speed rail in advance of the completion of the High Speed Two review, when they already have available their own comprehensive studies calling into question the environmental benefits and suggesting much higher costs for the taxpayer."

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[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Farming]
Early farming methods caused climate change, say researchers
Farmers thousands of years ago cleared land by burning forests and moved to a new area once the yields declined, say scientists
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 12.08 BST Article history

Farmers who used "slash and burn" methods of clearing forests to grow crops thousands of years ago could have increased carbon dioxide levels enough to change the climate, researchers claimed today.

The US scientists believe that small populations released carbon emissions as they cleared large tracts of land to produce relatively meagre amounts of food.

They were much less efficient than farmers using today's agricultural practices because there were no constraints on land.

A study published online in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews by researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) said that early farmers could have cleared five or more times as much land as they used at any one time.

According to the researchers, today's population of six billion people uses about 90% less land per person for growing food than the early farming societies.

William Ruddiman, the paper's lead author and emeritus professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, said the early farmers were likely to have cleared land by burning forests, planted crop seeds among the dead stumps and moved on to a new area once the yields declined.

"They used more land for farming because they had little incentive to maximise yield from less land, and because there was plenty of forest to burn. They may have inadvertently altered the climate," he said.

Ruddiman first published a hypothesis five years ago suggesting people began altering the global climate thousands of years ago, with human activity accounting for rises in carbon dioxide that began about 7,000 years ago.

His theory was criticised by scientists who believe the human impact on the climate began with the industrial revolution because earlier populations were too small to influence the level of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

But Ruddiman said that early farming methods, with around 10 times the amount of land per person than is used today, could have created an impact on the climate despite the small number of people in early civilisations.

He suggests it was only as populations grew larger that farming technologies improved to increase yields using less land.

His co-author, Erle Ellis, of UMBC, said: "Many climate models assume that land use in the past was similar to land use today and that the great population explosion of the past 150 years has increased land use proportionally.

"We are proposing that much smaller earlier populations used much more land per person and may have more greatly affected climate than current models reflect."


[Environment > Biofuels]
Developed countries' demand for biofuels has been 'disastrous'
Production of crops such as maize and palm oil fuelling poverty and environmental damage in poor countries, says Christian Aid
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 11.29 BST Article history

The production of biofuels is fuelling poverty, human rights abuses and damage to the environment, Christian Aid warned today.

The charity said huge subsidies and targets in developed countries for boosting the production of fuels from plants such as maize and palm oil are exacerbating environmental and social problems in poor nations.

And rather than being a "silver bullet" to tackle climate change, the carbon emissions of some of the fuels are higher than fossil fuels because of deforestation driven by the need for land for them to grow.

According to a report, Growing Pains, by Christian Aid, industrial scale production of biofuels is worsening problems such as food price hikes in central America, forced displacement of small farmers for plantations and pollution of local water sources.

But with 2.4 billion people worldwide currently without secure sources of energy for cooking and heating, Christian Aid believes the renewable fuels do have the potential to help the poor.

The charity highlights schemes such as the growing of jatropha in Mali, where the plant is raised between food crops and the oil from the seeds is used to run village generators which can power appliances such as stoves and lights.

The report argues that talking about "good" or "bad" biofuels is oversimplifying the situation, and the problem is not with the crop or fuel – but the policies surrounding them.

Developed countries have poured subsidies into biofuel production – for example in the US where between 9.2 billion dollars and 11 billion dollars went to supporting maize-based ethanol in 2008 – when there are cheaper and more effective ways to cut emissions from transport, the report said.

The charity said biofuels production needed a "new vision" – a switch from supplying significant quantities of transport fuel for industrial markets to helping poor people have access to clean energy.

The report's author Eliot Whittington, climate advocacy specialist for Christian Aid, said: "Vast sums of European and American taxpayers' money are being used to prop up industries which are fuelling hunger, severe human rights abuses and environmental destruction — and failing to deliver the benefits claimed for them."

He said the current approach to biofuels had been "disastrous".

He added: "Christian Aid believes that the best approach to biofuels is to grow them on a small scale and process them locally to provide energy for people in the surrounding countryside. This can also increase rural people's incomes and has the potential to actually increase soil fertility and moisture retention, without compromising people's food security."

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[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Climate Change]
Britain's ice man ready for a second space shot with rebuilt CryoSat probe
High hopes for global warming satellite after first probe plunged into the Arctic Ocean
Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer, Sunday 16 August 2009 Article history

It was rated one of the most damaging setbacks to hit the study of global warming: on 8 October, 2005, a £100m probe designed to measure ice thickness at the poles plunged into the Arctic ocean minutes after launch on an old Soviet SS-19 missile from Plesetsk, northern Russia.

The blow seemed irreparable but, as a result of a remarkable technological comeback, the satellite's UK creator, Duncan Wingham, will soon watch as a rebuilt version of his CryoSat probe, funded by the European Space Agency (Esa), makes its attempt to reach orbit.

"It is one thing to get the chance to build a satellite, but to get a second chance when things have gone wrong is remarkable," said Wingham, professor of Climate Physics at University College London.

Dignitaries and scientists, including Wingham, gathered at Europe's Esrin space centre in Frascati, Italy, to watch the original launch and cheered as television monitors showed the rocket rising into the atmosphere. Minutes after lift-off, however, transmissions from the probe stopped. A celebratory cocktail party was halted and anxious scientists huddled round monitors.

Then the truth emerged. The SS-19's second stage had failed to separate from the third stage, because of a computer programming error, and the whole assembly, including the satellite, had plunged into the Arctic ocean, the sea whose icy secrets CryoSat had been designed to study.

"This is a tragedy for all the scientists who have spent years putting together this mission," said an Esa official.

Wingham was the worst affected: he had worked on CryoSat since 1999 and his grey, shoulder-length hair and increasingly dejected demeanour made him the most distinctive figure at the launch gathering.

"I was stunned," he admitted last week. "Statistically there is an 8% chance things will go pop, that you will lose a satellite at launch – I hadn't worried about that. But it soon became clear that something had gone very wrong. I remember texting a friend, 'I think we've lost her'."

The main problem for Wingham was that, in order to keep down construction costs, Esa had not built a back-up probe. The project looked dead and buried, or – more precisely – drowned. But only a couple of hours after the failed launch, Wingham had started lobbying senior Esa executives to build a replacement.

"I told them, this satellite is too important to lose." Remarkably they agreed within 24 hours, and a few weeks later this decision was backed by Esa.

It was a testament to Wingham's persuasive powers and the design and importance of his satellite that this replacement was supported by the agency – though he is also quick to praise "scientific committees, delegates and organisations across Europe" for their campaigning as well. Thanks to them, CryoSat 2 will now rise like a phoenix, it is hoped, when it is launched in November, this time from Kazakhstan on a Dnieper rocket.

Like its predecessor, CryoSat 2 will be fitted with a device known as an interferometric radar altimeter. This will be used to measure the height of ice as it floats on the sea, which in turn will reveal the overall thickness of ice covering the Arctic ocean.

This latter measurement is crucial for scientists. Satellites have already shown that the geographical area of the Arctic covered by ice is dwindling significantly. However, other research suggests that this ice may also have been thinning markedly. If so, polar caps could shrink far more quickly than is predicted at present. Less solar radiation would then be reflected back into space from Earth's white ice caps, and the rate of global warming would jump. In addition, land ice sheets would no longer be propped by sea ice and would crumble into the oceans, raising sea levels round the planet.

"We are altering the Arctic climate far faster than anywhere else on Earth," said Wingham. "We're changing the whole structure of the Arctic ocean, but we still don't know what the consequences will be. We have to find out what is going on up there. CryoSat will do that."

However, it will take some time to achieve this goal. Once CryoSat2 is in orbit, it will take at least a year to return enough data to make reasonable estimates of the rate of ice thinning.

After three years, the satellite's expected lifetime, that data should be compelling, said Wingham. "And after that, you never know – we might even get CryoSat 3 and a whole series of follow-up satellites."


[Business > Gas]
Energy experts call for carbon capture scheme for gas fired power stations
Executives from leading energy firms argue that new gas plants should fit carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology
Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 August 2009 20.06 BST Article history


New gas plants should be subject to the same rules that force new coal plants to fit carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, according to leading energy bosses.

Experts fear that the government's new policy on CCS for coal power will lead to a boom in the construction of gas plants which do not have to bury their carbon emissions.

Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, said there was no point forcing only new coal plants to fit the expensive and largely untried technology. "We have to have a consistent rule applying to everyone. If you want to decarbonise electricity we need to do it [fit CCS to gas plants].'

Joan MacNaughton, senior vice-president at Alstom, the power generation firm, formerly one of the government's most senior energy advisers, said that CCS should be fitted to new gas plants soon. "We can't do everything at once," she said. "That means fitting CCS technology to new coal plants is the priority as they produce more emissions. But we do have to do new gas plants pretty soon. Building more 'unabated' fossil fuel plants for years to come would just mean we have a much bigger problem to tackle later on."

In April, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband announced that new coal plants built in Britain would have to capture about a quarter of their carbon emissions from the outset. Once CCS technology has been technically and commercially proved, which could take at least a decade, all the plants' emissions will have to be captured. The government launched a consultation on its new CCS policy, which closes early next month.

The policy appeased some campaigners concerned about the environmental impact of new coal plants planned for the UK because coal power is one of the most carbon-intensive ways to generate electricity. As a result of the policy, only the handful of coal plants which qualify for government financial support to fit the technology will be built, prompting concern that unabated gas plants could fill the generation gap.

Power generation firms expect they will have to fit CCS technology to their gas plants at some point. EDF Energy's gas plant under construction at West Burton has been designed as "carbon capture ready" so equipment can be fitted later.

The government has set a target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. To have any chance of meeting this, all electricity generation would have to come from renewables and low carbon technologies such as nuclear power and fossil fuel plants which have CCS fitted.

news20090817gc4

[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Guardian Environment Network]
Q-Cells to lay off 500 staff as solar price slumps
From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network
From BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 11.29 BST Article history

Fears that the solar industry will prove less resilient to the global recession than other renewable energy sectors appear increasingly well founded this week after three leading solar firms posted sizable losses.

However, experts maintain that there are already signs of recovery on the horizon, while some solar outfits continue to record impressive growth despite a slump in the price of solar panels.

The bad news was led by German manufacturer Q-Cells, the world's second-largest producer of solar panels, which announced yesterday that it is to lay off 500 jobs after recording an operating loss of €47.6m (£41m) during the first half of the year.

The company reported that sales for the first six months of the year fell more than 36 per cent year on year to €366.2m, while overall losses soared to almost €700m after the company undertook a write-down of more than €600m from the sale of its shares in solar firm Renewable Energy Corporation.

Q-Cells said it was embarking on a major restructuring exercise designed to cut production costs by 25 per cent and increase its focus on emerging thin-film solar cells. Under the plan, about 500 staff are to be made redundant while the company will also shut down its older production lines at its factory in Thalheim.

The company's management said it would also increase its focus on its thin-film subsidiaries Solibro and Calyxo, adding that it had requested that Calyxo proves its technological potential in mass production by the end of this year.

Several of Q-Cells' main rivals fared only a little better this week, with China-based ReneSola and JA Solar both posting second-quarter losses of $3.6m and $28.5m respectively.

After scaling up rapidly in response to strong demand during 2007 and early 2008, falling demand has seen the solar market hit by a glut of silicon, the raw material used in most panels, and solar panels themselves. As a result, silicon prices have dropped by as much as 40 per cent in the past year, while panel prices have fallen by about 20 per cent, making many older production lines unviable.

A report earlier this week from analyst iSuppli warned that the glut is now so severe that it could take until 2012 for stockpiles to be run down.

However, while analysts have been warning for more than a year that the solar sector has become overheated, the bleak picture is far from universal, with several leading players bucking the trend and posting solid financial results.

For example, US-based First Solar, the world's largest solar manufacturer, recently reported that it saw second-quarter profits more than double year on year to more than $180m, while SunPower posted net profits of more than $24m during the same period, reversing the loss it recorded during the first three months of the year.

Moroever, optimism remains that demand for solar panels will rebound strongly as the global economy recovers.

Many manufacturers anticipate growth during the second half of the year, and the sector received an encouraging long-term endorsement from the boss of German energy giant E.ON this week, when he informed shareholders that he intended to establish the company as a major player in the solar market.

In a letter to shareholders, chief executive Dr Wulf Bernotat underlined the company's commitment to the Destertec consortium, which was launched earlier this year with the ambitious goal of developing solar farms in North Africa to provide energy for Europe.

"Our objective is to develop solar energy into a strong second pillar of our renewables business along with wind energy," he wrote. "A visionary project called Desertec shows the potential of solar energy when it is operated on a global scale."

The letter came as the company posted half-yearly results showing that while overall gross earnings slipped one per cent to €5.7bn, the importance of the firm's Renewables division continued to grow, with renewable energy power sales worldwide rising 17 per cent and gross earnings almost doubling year on year to €122m.

news20090817nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 16 August 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.823
News
World's smallest laser unveiled
The spaser promises ultrafast nanocircuits.
Matthew Chalmers

The world's smallest laser, contained in a silica sphere just 44 nanometres across, has been unveiled. At about 10 times smaller than the wavelength of light, however, this is no ordinary laser, it is the first ever 'spaser'.

Whereas a laser amplifies light, using a mirrored cavity to intensify it, a spaser amplifies surface plasmons — tiny oscillations in the density of free electrons on the surface of metals, which, in turn, produce light waves.

The spaser could be used as a light source for scanning near-field optical microscopes, which can resolve details beyond the reach of standard light microscopy, and in nanolithography, to etch patterns much smaller than the width of a human hair. The device also opens the door to nanoscale circuits that could process information thousands of times faster than the microelectronic chips inside today's computers.

"This work has utmost significance," says Mark Stockman of Georgia State University in Atlanta, who with David Bergman of Tel Aviv University in Israel proposed the spaser concept in 2003¹. "The spaser is the smallest possible quantum amplifier and generator of optical fields on the nanoscale — without it, nanoplasmonics is like microelectronics would have been without a transistor."

Beating the limit

Shining light on to metal nanoparticles produces surface plasmons with the same frequency as the light. But unlike light, which can't be focused down to spot that is less than around half a wavelength wide by conventional means, plasmons are spread over much shorter distances and so can beat this 'diffraction limit'.

The problem has been that surface plasmon oscillations ebb away too quickly to be of practical use.

Now, Mikhail Noginov, a material scientist at Norfolk State University in Virginia and his colleagues have been able to stimulate the emission of surface plasmons on a gold nanoparticle and amplify them so that laser-like light is produced².

The gold nanoparticles are encased in silica shells containing Oregon Green 488, an organic dye. Shining light on the nanoparticles excites or 'pumps' the dye molecules and they transfer energy to the surrounding electrons to produce surface plasmon oscillations. The electromagnetic waves that result from these oscillating electrical charges produce greenish laser light with a wavelength of 531 nanonmetres.

The nanoparticles, however, radiate light in all directions, rather than producing a tight laser beam. Co-author Vladimir Shalaev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, adds that although the peaks and troughs of the light waves from the spaser should be in step or 'coherent' — a key property of laser light — the team has not yet verified this.

Organic step

Nikolay Zheludev, a physicist at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University, UK, who, together with his colleagues has recently demonstrated a tunable nanoscale light source pumped by free electrons³, says the work is exciting. "I can think of applications in tagging large biochemical assays and in security marking, where the spaser's narrow spectral output gives better tagging capacity than existing semiconductor quantum dot emitters."

Such applications are not far off, says the US team. But Noginov thinks the spaser's ability to generate coherent surface plasmons may be even more important than its uses as a nanolaser, and could herald a new generation of ultrafast nanoelectronics. Researchers have made plasmonic circuit elements that serve as wires but the spaser should now enable the development of amplifiers and generators.

For the spaser to have realistic applications in computing, however, researchers need to find a way to make it work electrically using a semiconductor, rather than using light to pump an organic dye. That would allow the spaser to be integrated with photonic nanocircuitry. Stockman thinks that such devices are about a year away. "There is already a nanolaser with electrical pumping⁴, and its extension to the spaser is very realistic," he says.

References
1. Bergman, D. & Stockman, M. I. Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 027402 (2003). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |
2. Noginov, M. et al. Nature advance online publication doi:10.1038/nature08318 (2009).
3. Adamo, G. et al. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.2143 (2009).
4. Hill, M. T. et al. Nature Photon. 1, 589-594 (2007). | Article | ChemPort |

news20090817bbc1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

Page last updated at 00:54 GMT, Monday, 17 August 2009 01:54 UK
Japan's economy leaves recession
Japan has exited recession after recording growth of 0.9% in the April-June quarter, compared with the first.

The economy had shown four consecutive quarter-on-quarter contractions.

Recent figures have shown other nations coming out of recession, including Germany, France and Hong Kong, a sign the global slowdown is easing.
If Japan's latest quarterly rate were maintained for a full year, the economy would grow 3.7%, figures from the Cabinet Office revealed.

'Positive contribution'

Japan - the world's second-largest economy - officially fell into recession last year.

The second quarter expansion this year came after a dramatic fall in January-March as the world economic slowdown hit Japanese exports hard.

The second quarter expansion was aided by a key government stimulus package, analysts say.

{Japan has been cautious in its economic outlook}

But the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo says Japan could still face a long road to sustainable recovery.

Junko Nishioka, chief economist at RBS securities, told Reuters the latest figure was "very good".

"The positive contribution of public spending is likely to continue, so I don't think there will be a return to [contraction], as feared by some," the economist added.

Japan is heavily reliant on its exports.

The slowdown in the US has hit it hard as American consumers have limited their spending.

In a recent Bank of Japan report, the central bank underlined its cautious view of the economy.

While it said conditions in the Japanese economy had stopped worsening, it warned that unemployment would stay high and consumer spending low.

Last month, the bank forecast that Japan's economy would shrink by 3.4% in the 12 months to 31 March 2010.

The French and German economies both grew by 0.3% between April and June, bringing to an end recessions in Europe's largest economies that have lasted a year.

Analysts had not expected the data, suggesting recovery could be faster than previously expected.

And Hong Kong recorded growth of 3.3% in the three months from April to June.

That data was also better than had been expected, with the government subsequently increasing its forecast for growth in the whole year.


Page last updated at 00:33 GMT, Monday, 17 August 2009 01:33 UK
Iraq abandons nationwide census
Iraq has postponed indefinitely plans to hold its first nationwide census in 22 years over fears it could stoke ethnic and political tensions.

The population count in October would have settled arguments over the relative size of Iraq's religious and ethnic communities.

But the planning minister said it could also stir up tensions in northern areas disputed between Arabs and Kurds.

The survey would also have implications for the disputed oil-rich Kirkuk area.

Iraq's last nationwide census was held in 1987. The count in 1997 - which excluded the Kurdish region - put Iraq's population at more than 26 million.

US warning

Planning Minister Ali Baban said Iraq was "technically ready for the census" - the country's first since 1987.

"But hearing the fears, concerns and reservations of political groups in Kirkuk and [the northern province of] Nineveh, we decided to slow down the process and the census has been postponed indefinitely," Mr Baban said.

It was to be the first poll to include self-ruled Kurdish areas in Iraq's north since the count in 1997.

Ethnic Kurds claim the northern city of Kirkuk and its resource-rich surrounds as their ancestral capital and want them to be incorporated into their enclave.

The move is fiercely opposed by the city's Turkmen and Arab population.

Kurds have also claimed some areas in the Nineveh province.

After decades of repression under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's majority Shias rose to power in 2003 after the US-led invasion.

Much of the insurgency in the following years was led by the once-dominant Sunnis.

But the feud has ebbed in recent months, and US officials now warn that the disagreements between Arabs and Kurds over territory and oil resources are today the biggest threat to security in Iraq.


Page last updated at 19:48 GMT, Sunday, 16 August 2009 20:48 UK
Bolt sets record to win 100m gold
Triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt set a new world record as he stormed to a stunning victory in the 100m at the World Championships in Berlin.

The 22-year-old Jamaican recorded a time of 9.58 seconds to shave 0.11 off the mark he set last year when winning gold at the Beijing Olympics.

American Tyson Gay was second in a time of 9.71, with Jamaica's Asafa Powell claiming bronze in 9.84.

Britain's Dwain Chambers came sixth in a season's best time of 10.00.

Bolt, who set three world records when winning his Olympic golds in Beijing last summer, served up another superlative display to enhance his reputation as the best sprinter of all time.

In the final, he powered out of the blocks at the first time of asking and took control of the race within the first 30m, the crowd going wild as he streaked across the line.

Bolt's time represents the biggest increase in the record since electronic timing was introduced in 1968.

"I was ready, I was feeling good after the semi-finals," Bolt told BBC Sport.

"I knew it was going to be a great race and I came out and executed it. It's a great time. I did well and I feel good in myself."

Former world record holder Powell paid tribute to his compatriot, saying: "When I saw the time I had to try and catch him, but I couldn't."

Gay, who went into the final as the reigning world champion, has been troubled by a nagging groin pain and had to cut practice on his start.

"I ran the best I could but it was not enough," he said. "I believe I put in a championship performance and I am very pleased with the national record.

"I'm happy he ran 9.5 because I knew he could do it. I'm happy for him."

Chambers, back competing at the top level after serving a two-year ban for taking the designer steroid THG in 2003, said the final was a "great experience".

"It is hard to explain what it is like to go out there and stand on the line to compete with the best in the world," said the 31-year-old. "It does not get easier as you get older but it is worth it."

Earlier, there was controversy as Britain's Tyrone Edgar was disqualified from the semi-finals.

After Bolt made the opening false start, Edgar was ruled to have transgressed the second time, although initial reaction times seemed to suggest that decision was harsh.

"I don't think it was a false start," said the 27-year-old Edgar, who was also disqualified at the London Grand Prix last month.

"To me it looked pretty good but there is nothing I can do. I am not going to argue the point. I am disappointed right now because I reckon I would have made the final."

news20090817bbc2

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

Page last updated at 23:23 GMT, Sunday, 16 August 2009 00:23 UK
Yang catches Woods for USPGA win
South Korea's Yang Yong-Eun became the first Asian-born winner of a major championship when he beat Tiger Woods to clinch the USPGA title at Hazeltine.

The 37-year-old was two shots adrift of overnight leader Woods but held his nerve to card 70 to the American's 75 to win by three on the final green.

Yang's victory ended Woods's run of winning all 14 of his major titles when leading going into the final round.

England's Lee Westwood and Northern Ireland's Rory McIlroy tied for third.

The pair were five strokes adrift on three under after rounds of 70, with US Open champion Lucas Glover (74) a shot further back.

Woods was chasing a 15th major title and a record-equalling fifth USPGA title but unlike in previous majors he failed to hole putts when they really mattered and was unable to pull clear.

Yang, who was ranked 110th in the world before the event, claimed his single PGA Tour victory at the Honda Classic at Riviera earlier this year, but he was best known for holding off Woods at the HSBC Champions event in China three years ago.

"It will be a crazy party tonight for my friends," said Yang, speaking through a translator. "I knew the odds were against me. I tried to be the least nervous I have ever been and went for broke."

Woods, who has won 70 career titles including five this season and two in the last two weeks, said: "It was a fun battle. He played beautifully. He did everything he needed to do.

"I played well enough the entire week to win the championship. I hit the ball great off the tee, hit my irons well. I did everything I needed to do except for getting the ball in the hole. You have to make putts, I didn't do that."

This is the first year Woods has not won at least one major since 2004 and the second time he has finished as runner-up to a surprise winner at Hazeltine. Despite ending with four birdies he lost out to Rich Beem when the USPGA was last held there in 2002.

Woods led at eight under from Yang and defending champion Padraig Harrington at the start of the day, but dropped back to join the improving Yang at seven under after the 4th.

On the next hole, Yang was back alongside Harrington at six under but the Irishman collapsed with an eight after twice finding the water on the short 8th.

Woods dropped back alongside Yang at six under after a bogey on the 8th, though the pair still had a two-shot lead over Soren Kjeldsen. But the Dane soon fell back, and entering the back nine Woods and Yang were in a virtual two-horse race at the front.

The world number one pulled ahead again with a birdie on the 11th, only to rejoin his playing partner at six under again after 12.

But Yang, known as "YE", charged into the lead when he chipped in from short of the green for an eagle two on the 14th.

Woods's birdie at the same hole restricted the deficit to one stroke but the swing changed the complexion of the round and the American was unable to get back in front.

Still one ahead going up the 18th, Yang fired to six feet while Woods found the thick fringe grass and took three to get down. Yang stroked in his putt for birdie to clinch the giant Wanamaker Trophy and celebrated by hoisting his golf bag aloft.

Harrington ended at level par after a round of 78, reminiscent of the way he finished the final day of the WGC event last week when leading Woods late on before finding water and running up a triple bogey.

Glover got to six under and within one of the lead after the 5th, while Sweden's Henrik Stenson was the only other player alongside Kjeldsen to reach four under on the final day.

The pair ended with rounds of 75 and 74 respectively to finish on one under alongside Germany's Martin Kaymer and South Africa's three-time major champion Ernie Els.

Yang joins Angel Cabrera (Masters), Glover (US Open) and Stewart Cink (Open Championship) as the 2009 major winners.

The previous best performance by a South Korean in a major was KJ Choi's third in the 2004 Masters tournament.

Formerly, the best Asian results in a major were Taiwan's Huan Lu-Liang, who finished runner-up in the 1971 Open, Japan's Isao Aoki, who placed second in the 1980 US Open and Taiwan's Chen Tze-Chung (TC Chen) who also tied for second at the 1985 US Open.


Page last updated at 20:07 GMT, Sunday, 16 August 2009 21:07 UK
Three UK soldiers die in Helmand
Five soldiers have died this weekend
Three British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, taking the number of UK fatalities to 204.

The Ministry of Defence said the soldiers were from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

They died following an explosion while on patrol near Sangin in Helmand province on Sunday morning. Next of kin have been informed.

Earlier, Gordon Brown admitted it had been "a very difficult summer", but said progress was being made.

Speaking about the most recent deaths, Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said "each and every death is a tragedy".

"Words mean very little in such an extremely sad situation but our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of these brave soldiers, " he said.

"We share their pain and mourn the loss of these true British heroes."

'Vital' mission

Five soldiers have died over the weekend - four from the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

The grim milestone of 200 was reached on Saturday when a soldier, from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh, died of his injuries at a hospital in Britain.

Another soldier, from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, died after an explosion on Saturday while on foot patrol in Sangin.

Three soldiers were killed by blasts in Helmand on Thursday. They have been named as Lance Bombardier Matthew Hatton of 40 Regiment Royal Artillery, and Captain Mark Hale and Rifleman Daniel Wild of the 2nd Battalion The Rifles.

Mr Brown admitted that more than 30 deaths during July and August, as British troops went on the offensive to shore up security in time for Afghan elections, had made it "one of the most difficult summers yet".

The prime minister said the whole country mourned the loss of its soldiers in Afghanistan.

But he said they were engaged in a "vital" mission to protect Britain from terrorism and maintain a stable Afghanistan.

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth told the BBC it was essential to maintain support for the mission.

"The spirit of our armed forces is absolutely indomitable, but everybody in the military knows you have to have the military themselves, you have to have the government, and you have to have the nation as a whole if you're going to succeed.

"That trinity has to be maintained. And I just want to urge people: this is difficult; it isn't going to be a short engagement. It needs not only bravery, but patience as well."

The BBC's defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt in Helmand said flags were still flying at half mast for the two soldiers who died on Saturday but UK troops would not be deterred from their work.