news20091229jt1

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009
High court hits Aug. 30 vote disparity
Poll 'unconstitutional' but stands
OSAKA (Kyodo) The Aug. 30 general election that brought the Democratic Party of Japan to power was "unconstitutional" because the disparity in the value of a vote reached as high as 2.30, the Osaka High Court declared Monday.

While rejecting a demand by an Osaka voter that the election returns in the Osaka No. 9 district be nullified, presiding Judge Kitaru Narita said, "The House of Representatives election, in which the disparity in vote value exceeded 2, is against the spirit of the Constitution."

It is the first judgment of unconstitutionality since the combination of single-seat districts and proportional representation voting was introduced for Lower House elections in 1996.

In the August race, a vote in the Kochi No. 3 district, which has the fewest eligible voters in the nation, was worth 2.30 times as much as a vote in the Chiba No. 4 district, which has the most registered voters, according to government data.

The vote value disparity between the Kochi No. 3 district and the Osaka No. 9 district was 2.05.

"It is not acceptable constitutionally for the legislative body to leave the current situation, in which the disparity exceeds 2, as it is," Narita said.

But the judge added that the election itself is valid because "it would go against the public interest if its outcome is nullified."

It was the first ruling out of eight similar suits filed by voters. During the Osaka High Court litigation, the plaintiff argued that the election failed to provide equal voting rights to the electorate.


[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009
HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Reconciliatory value of a visit to Nanjing
By BRIAN A. VICTORIA
Yellow Springs, Ohio

Dear Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,

You have repeatedly emphasized the need for the creation of an East Asian community. You wrote in the New York Times in August: "The East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality, must be recognized as Japan's basic sphere of being. So we must continue to build frameworks for stable economic cooperation and security across the region."

While I could not agree more with your sentiments, all of us who are acquainted with Japan's modern history are well aware of this country's troubled past with its Asian neighbors, most especially China and Korea. You, of course, are well aware of this legacy, for you wrote: "Due to historical and cultural conflicts as well as conflicting national security interests, we must recognize that there are numerous difficult political issues." However, you then added: "The more these problems are discussed bilaterally, the greater the risk that emotions become inflamed and nationalism intensified."

Although intractable problems like territorial disputes may best be settled in a multinational framework, I suggest that some events in a nation's history are so traumatic that they need to be addressed directly by the parties involved.

In Japan's case, for example, the atomic bombings of two predominantly civilian-populated cities remain, 60 years later, seared in the nation's memory. Those events were behind the widespread hope that U.S. President Barack Obama would visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his recent visit to Japan.

In China's case there is one incident that, more than any other, symbolizes its unhappy relationship with Japan in the 20th century: That which the world knows as the December 1937 Rape of Nanjing.

Needless to say, the exact nature and scale of what occurred at Nanjing remains a matter of acrimonious debate, especially in Japan. Yet, when one reads the words of Commanding Gen.Iwane Matsui, spoken shortly before his execution as a war criminal, there can be no doubt that something horrific occurred. "I am deeply ashamed of the Nanjing Incident," Iwane said. "I told (my staff) that the enhancement of Imperial prestige we had accomplished had been debased in a single stroke by the riotous conduct of the troops."

No doubt some in Japan would claim there is no need to further address the past, pointing to the numerous statements of war apology made by Japan's various postwar leaders, most especially that of former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on Aug. 15, 1995. Yet, only two years later, on Aug. 28, 1997, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto acknowledged: "We must continue our persistent efforts so that China and the other nations of Asia have no reason to doubt us."

It is in this spirit that I ask you to consider making a personal trip to Nanjing to pay your respects, on behalf of the Japanese people, to those many Chinese who were so brutally and needlessly killed. The power of your physical presence will make a far more powerful statement than mere words can ever convey. Should there be any doubt, one only has to recall the impact made by then German Chancellor Willy Brandt when, during a 1970 visit to Poland, he silently knelt in front of the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943.

Finally, should you wonder why I, an American, make this proposal, the reason is that as a convert to the Soto Zen school of Buddhism, my spiritual life has been deeply enriched by a tradition that was born and nurtured in both China and Japan. Hence, acknowledging the debt of gratitude I owe both peoples, I cannot but wish for their mutual happiness and welfare. Questions of economic benefit notwithstanding, this cannot be accomplished in the absence of a heartfelt reconciliation between these two great peoples.

Commenting on the ruling, Takemitsu Kadono, the Osaka Prefecture election board chief, said: "It is a very tough decision. We will decide what to do through discussions with the central government."

Ruling on the general election of September 2005, in which the disparity reached as high as 2.17, the grand bench of the Supreme Court determined it was constitutional. But of the 15 justices, six offered a dissenting opinion.

On Monday's high court ruling, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said an unconstitutional state of affairs is not desirable and it is necessary to eliminate it as soon as possible, although he did not elaborate.

Tokuji Izumi, a former Supreme Court justice, said, "Voters in overpopulated areas like Osaka exercise only one-half the voting right compared with those in sparsely populated districts, and it is obvious such a situation is against the Constitution.

"The Diet needs to revise the zoning of the single-seat electoral districts by the next general election," he said.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009
Tokyo homeless shelter opens
Holiday substitute for '08 Hibiya Park tent city
By MARIKO KATO
Staff writer

A holiday-season shelter set up by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government opened Monday in Shibuya Ward to take in hundreds of laid-off workers.

Funded by the central government, the shelter is a substitute for the tent village set up last year by antipoverty groups in Hibiya Park.

The shelter at the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center will be open through Jan. 4. The complex is the renovated athletes' village for the 1964 Summer Games.

"It is a more difficult situation than last year and the problem has become long-term," Naoto Kan, deputy prime minister and state strategy minister, said while viewing the complex in the afternoon.

Labor and welfare minister Akira Nagatsuma and Mizuho Fukushima, another Cabinet member and leader of the Social Democratic Party, also visited the shelter.

At this time last year, daily reports from the Hibiya Park tent village dominated the holiday news, and about 500 workers received free food, shelter and consultations from nongovernmental organizations and other volunteers.

This year, the government decided to take the initiative and will provide similar support, opening up 500 rooms at the shelter.

"We have already received 350 applications and it looks like it may reach 500," a staff member said.

The complex is open to homeless people who have signed up at government-run Hello Work job centers to look for employment, or registered beforehand by telephone. By early afternoon, more than 100 people had settled in.

The shelter reflects the government's concern that employment conditions have not improved since last year.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose for the first time in four months to 5.2 percent in November. In the same month, the ratio of job offers to job seekers was a seasonally adjusted 0.45, roughly half the figure at the same time last year.

"There was a man in his 60s who was too ill to work, and had been living in a capsule hotel until yesterday, and three young people who had been living in a park," Nagatsuma said after he spoke to some of the job seekers inside the complex.

Makoto Yuasa, an antipoverty activist and leader of last year's tent village, also visited the shelter as an adviser to the Cabinet and applauded the government's actions.

news20091229jt2

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

[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009
Piecemeal temp jobs at agencies face ban
Kyodo News

An advisory panel to the labor minister issued a report Monday recommending that staffing agencies be prohibited from registering workers on individual contracts for specific jobs that pay only when work is available.

The report, which also proposes banning the practice of sending workers for short-term manufacturing jobs, comes in line with a government plan to submit a bill to the Diet to improve the working conditions of temporary staff by tightening the law regulating their dispatch.

About 2.02 million people worked as temp staff as of June 2008, and some 440,000 of them would likely be subject to the proposed regulations, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

The move, aimed at stabilizing employment, signifies a policy shift to tighten control on the temporary worker system, which has experienced gradual deregulation in staffing services since the law took effect in 1986.

The subcommittee's report recommends prohibiting the dispatch of temp workers on a registration basis, except for 26 types of jobs that require professional skills and expertise, including secretarial work and translation, and jobs involving the dispatch of elderly workers.

It also seeks a ban on dispatching temporary workers for manufacturing jobs, except in cases where staffing agencies conclude long-term job contracts with workers.

For clarification, the regulations will be put into practice on a date set by ordinance within three years after the revised law is promulgated.

Among registration-basis temp jobs, those that match the needs of workers and face few problems, including clerical jobs, will be prohibited after five years at the latest.

Conditions of so-called registered temp workers — those who register with staffing companies and get an employment contract only for the duration of a job — are particularly poor, critics say.


[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009
THE ZEIT GIST
Stray observations on booming pet culture
There are more pets than children in Japan, but troubling attitudes about treatment of animals are also widespread
By IAN PRIESTLEY

Pets are big business these days. Cat and dog cafes, animal accessory shops, dog hotels and even aesthetic salons for animals are easy to find. On weekends, in the large park near my house, I see people walking what appear to be entrants in a pedigree dog competition: dachshunds in mini-sweaters promenade alongside beribboned King Charles spaniels. Many a pet's lifestyle would be the envy of most salarymen.

However, the park — like many others in Japan — is also home to a legion of animals who live a life far removed from those of the coddled pets. After they have gone home with their owners, dozens of stray cats remain.

The number of animals abandoned every year in Japan is high. An investigation conducted by the Environment Ministry estimated that each year around 350,000 animals are put down at government-managed control centers. Some owners see dumping unwanted pets in a park as a better alternative to taking them to a control center — it is certainly less troublesome, given that no money needs to be paid, nor reasons given.

Recently in the local park I came across one cat that was covered in sores, scratching to get at the fleas that seemed to have eaten away half of an ear. A young boy approached the animal but his mother quickly pulled him away. "Kitanai (dirty)," she warned.

The cat was clearly in distress, and I decided to see if there was something I could do. A Web search and a phone call later, I was talking to the ARK (Animal Refuge Kansai) representative in Tokyo, Briar Simpson.

ARK takes in abandoned animals and tries to find them new homes, but it also focuses on activism for proper treatment of animals. On this front, the organization believes widespread change is needed in Japan, all the way from government through to animal breeders, sellers and pet owners.

ARK's Tokyo branch, which started up in the spring of 2005, responded swiftly to my call. They contacted the park keeper and arranged a meeting to discuss the welfare of the strays. Also in attendance at the meeting was an elderly woman who was introduced as the park's "unofficial cat minder." She agreed to buy medicine for the cat (using donated money), and promised to keep a close eye on "Shiro-chan" — it turned out that the woman calls many of the strays by name.

Her position is a tricky one, but increasingly common. Feeding cats in parks is generally discouraged, as the authorities don't want to make the dumping of pets seem like a viable option. The sheer number of strays in some parks, though, has led to volunteers being allowed to at least ensure that cats are fed and neutered.

After Shiro-chan's case was settled, Simpson spoke with me about the challenges ARK faces in its work. As she sees it, many problems come down to a lack of education.

"Last week, we had a woman in Yokohama who called to say that there were two stray cats who had just had kittens that had come into her garden," she said. "In this case, we'll spay the mother cats and put them back, and the (volunteer) will feed them . . . The kittens, we will re-home."

But the cats were lucky that the caller had not followed the advice offered by an acquaintance: "Put them in a plastic bag and put them in the rubbish," she was counselled.

Much of ARK's work focuses on enlightening people, especially children, about the responsibilities of animal care. Staff members go to schools and give talks about what animals require to remain healthy and stress-free.

"It's what people are used to," Simpson says. "I went to a pet expo recently, and there were animals there in cages that did not look healthy to me and were not displaying natural animal behavior. They were either asleep because they were so tired, or just stressed. But if that was all you had seen from a young age, these kind of pet shops, you may not be able to see that there's something wrong."

ARK was founded by a British woman, Elizabeth Oliver, in Kansai in 1990. The Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 was a major challenge for the group early on, with around 600 animals rescued in the wake of the disaster, but it also jump-started the scale of their operations. The group's volunteer and staff numbers continued to grow in the years following and it became a certified nonprofit organization in 1999.

Although ARK relies heavily on the desire and dedication of its Japanese volunteers and staff, I wondered whether its operations might seem a little "colonial" — Westerners teaching Japanese about animal rights.

"It's no longer a question of culture," in Simpson's view. "I don't really like to use the word 'rights,' " she says. "It's just a question of humane treatment of animals. It's a feature of a good society. I wouldn't want to live in a society that didn't have that idea . . . I think a country with the second-largest economy in the world can do better than it does."

Japanese photojournalist Shigemichi Oishi's work has done a lot to raise awareness and encourage institutional change. Photographs he took at a government-run animal control center, first published in Days magazine, include disturbing shots of dogs and cats prior to and after their visit to the so-called "dream box," where they are gassed with carbon dioxide.

Animals that end up in the control centers are either picked up from the street or taken there by owners who no longer want to look after them. From then, animals have approximately a week for someone to adopt them before they are killed.

"Now that the number of pets (in Japan) has surpassed the number of children, perhaps we should question the overheated state of pet culture," Oishi argues in the essay that accompanies his photographs.

Criticism of the number of animals being killed is growing, and the government is feeling the pressure. The Environment Ministry has set a goal of reducing the number of animals killed in control centers by half.

In June 2006, the government announced changes to the Animal Protection Act, tightening regulations on breeders and pet shop owners and increasing penalties for violations. They now must meet certain criteria for the treatment of animals before they can be registered to operate. The maximum fine for failing to provide animals with food and water has been increased from ¥300,000 to ¥500,000. The penalty for killing an animal can be as stiff as a fine of ¥1 million or one year in prison.

By and large, though, laws are still fairly lax. Breeders, owners and sellers are legally required to provide animals with only the basic requirements for survival: food, water and a cage big enough "to make regular movement such as getting up, lying down or flapping their wings in a normal position" possible.

Some breeders and sellers treat animals as nothing more than a commodity. Sales campaigns and special offers on certain pets are common, and breeders often aggressively tap trends and fads, as Oishi noted in his research.

"When I began my investigation, there were many golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers (in pet shops). At one time, there were many Siberian huskies. After the popularity boom of a certain breed has faded, the same phenomenon (large-scale abandonment) has always followed."

CONTINUED ON newsjt3

news20091229jt3

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

[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009
THE ZEIT GIST
Stray observations on booming pet culture
There are more pets than children in Japan, but troubling attitudes about treatment of animals are also widespread
By IAN PRIESTLEY

CONTINUED FROM newsjt2

ARK has been involved in a number of cases against breeders. In 2007, the organization investigated a breeder in Saga Prefecture, who kept Shiba dogs in cages covered in feces, stacked on top of each other, with dead animals caged together with the living. ARK contacted the governor of Saga and the police, and collected a petition. Media coverage amped up the pressure until the local government finally prosecuted.

Pet owners also have important responsibilities to live up to, of course, and local governments are working to make them do so. It is getting harder to simply dump a pet at a control center, wave goodbye and not have to think about the consequences. Employees at some centers now try and persuade owners not to abandon their animals, and make them fully aware of what will happen if they do.

In particular, the city of Kumamoto has taken a hard line, in some cases requiring owners to watch the animal being killed as a condition of abandonment. This does seem to be having an effect. The number of animals killed at the Kumamoto control center was 78 in 2007, down from 946 a decade earlier.

Once accepted by control centers, however, animals face almost certain death due to people's lack of willingness to adopt. Around 98 percent of cats brought in are killed.

Cuteness is a major criterion for pet choice (hence the over-representation of puppies and kittens in pet shop windows), and on this front animals in shelters tend to score low — many are disabled, blind, old or bear clear evidence of the kind of life they have led. The cuteness factor, or loss of it over time, also has a lot to do with animals being abandoned in the first place.

A too-common example is a call recently received by an ARK shelter in Tokyo, from a woman who had two miniature dachshunds that she simply didn't want anymore. In this case ARK asked for a ¥30,000 surrender fee, which will go to the animals' upkeep, guaranteeing their safety and care. Simpson describes her as "someone who made a poor choice . . . If she had thought more, she may not have got them in the first place." Simpson wishes pet buyers would "smarten up."

The scene in my local park, where the cat population seems to be flourishing, suggests there remain many people with some learning to do.

Shiro-chan has disappeared, but the patch she once lurked in is now frequented by a younger tortoise-shell. Its fur was suspiciously well-kept the first time I saw it — recently abandoned, it seemed. The last time, its fur had lost its sheen, and it was scratching the sores that were beginning to develop around its ears.

news20091229lat1

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

[Environment]
COLUMN ONE
There's a lot at our disposal
Society's garbage doesn't just disappear. At the Puente Hills Landfill, a third of Los Angeles County's trash adds to a huge mountain of muck every year.
By Mike Anton
December 29, 2009

There's an unexpected beauty to this pile of junk as a troupe of heavy equipment performs its daily dance. Dump trucks cough up their contents and glide away. Bulldozers swoop in from behind, and piles of lumber, cardboard, plastic and half-eaten food roll off their blades like sets of ocean waves.

The noise at the Puente Hills Landfill, one of the nation's largest garbage heaps, is unrelenting. The air is slightly sweet with decay. The ground pulses like an earthquake.

Big Mike wades into the mess.

Mike Speiser is 6 feet 2, 400 pounds and sports a shaved head that resembles a dinosaur egg, with devil's horns dangling from each earlobe. Big Mike's job is to compact the garbage. He is a craftsman, among the best in his trade, and his tool is a 60-ton bulldozer with steel-spiked wheels that looks as intimidating as he does and purees everything it touches.

"It's kind of like laying concrete. You've got to work it to get the proper grade," said Speiser, 45, a genial man who has been squeezing himself into the cab of this machine for nearly 20 years. "For some people, it's like they're born to do it. To have the blade at just the right angle. . . . Piles of trash don't have wheels on it, you know?"

This graveyard of our wants and needs sits hidden in plain sight along a truck-choked stretch of the 60 Freeway in the San Gabriel Valley. Here, the verdant Puente Hills, the result of eons of seismic uplift and erosion, have been reshaped by half a century of consumption and waste. Nearly 4 million tons of junk and muck, one-third of Los Angeles County's trash, is added to this man-made mountain each year.

Beginning before dawn, a parade of trucks bounces up a sinuous roller coaster of a road that's constantly burping from the digestion below. They deposit their loads on the day's "cell" -- an acre that will rise 20 feet in the next few hours before it's entombed beneath a layer of dirt.

Rest in pieces.

We've become programmed to separate our trash into the properly colored bins. But once the garbage man hauls our detritus away, most people don't give much thought to its next stop. We come home from work and -- abracadabra!abracadabra! -- the bins are empty and ready to be filled again.

The week after Christmas is a good time to consider where the stuff goes. These are the days when our bingeing and purging of consumer goods reaches a crescendo and workers at the Puente Hills Landfill are as busy as Santa's elves were last week. Mounds of wrapping paper and packaging. The remnants of holiday hams and untouched fruitcakes. More than 380,000 Christmas trees.

"People drive right by it and fly over it all the time without giving it much thought. It's only when you get on the ground that you fully appreciate the enormity and scope of the place," said Matthew Coolidge, director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, a Culver City-based think tank that combines art with conventional research.

"Seen up close, there's a sense of awe, a percussive awakening to the scale of the waste material that most people think just magically goes away," he said.

The center sponsored a tour of Puente Hills last year as part of an exhibit titled "Post Consumed: The Landscape of Waste in Los Angeles." Tickets sold out in minutes.

Participants rode in a white luxury motor coach and got an introduction to solid waste engineering, as well as a lesson in the philosophy and behavioral psychology of garbage.

"We wanted people to reconnect with their things . . . and follow their trajectory to the landfill," Coolidge said. "The world is composed of two equal forces, construction and destruction. That's the full cycle of life. For everything that is created, there's an end."

After lunch, the motor coach lumbered over a ridgeline and finished the tour in Rose Hills Memorial Park & Mortuary.

The cherished and the forgotten buried side by side for eternity.

In the way that layers of sedimentary rock in the Grand Canyon tell the Earth's story, a core sample of the Puente Hills Landfill, 500 feet deep in places, would reveal a post-World War II cultural history of Los Angeles.

Shards of Thighmasters and unused bread makers stacked upon scraps of Members Only jackets and pink Princess telephones. A stratum of compressed eight-track tapes, disco records and avocado-colored dishware. A layer of tie-dyed shirts and shattered black-and-white console televisions resting upon a foundation of steel beer cans, remains of Swanson TV dinners and ashtrays the size of dinner plates.

"Underneath our feet, there's a snapshot of our society at any given point," said Bob Asgian, chief engineer for the landfill, which is run by the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County. "We get everything that you can imagine dumped here -- and some you can't."

Police occasionally visit Puente Hills in search of missing people. Bodies have been found rolled up in a carpet. A skull was discovered in a carry-on flight bag.

Even the most prosaic of garbage has a back story. When Bill Rathje was a young archaeology professor, he hit upon the idea that the best way for students to learn the science was by sifting through trash.

In 1973, the Harvard-trained archaeologist started the Garbage Project, an endeavor that sought to place a 15-year-old steak excavated from an Illinois landfill in the same company as corn cobs unearthed in a Mayan midden.

"Everyone thought I was nuts," he said.

Rathje is known today as "The Indiana Jones of Solid Waste," a scientist and author who helped popularize the field of "garbology." His love affair with litter has led him to landfills around the world and to some conclusions about human nature.

We waste a lot of food; 10% of fresh garbage by weight is edible food, with little variation between rich and poor folks, Rathje says. People understate the amount of alcohol they drink by as much as 40%. People also lie about what they eat. Unhealthy food is under-reported; food that's good for you is over-reported.

Though many believe that fast-food packaging, polystyrene foam and disposable diapers make up the majority of the garbage in landfills, the fact is they do not, Rathje found. Puente Hills, like most modern landfills, receives roughly equal amounts of household garbage, construction debris and industrial and commercial waste.

"Archaeologists are always looking for tombs and riches, but 98% of what they study in the field is old garbage," said Rathje, 64, who has taught at the University of Arizona and Stanford. "The best time capsule in the world is a landfill."

A century ago, what is now the Puente Hills Landfill was part of a sprawling dairy operation run by Frank Pellissier, who arrived from France in 1888 and followed in the footsteps of his brother Germain, one of early Los Angeles' biggest land barons.

In the 1950s, this part of the San Gabriel Valley turned from agriculture to industry as well as a place to accommodate the region's burgeoning garbage. The Valley of the Dumps, some called it. The Puente Hills facility was acquired by the sanitation districts in 1970.

Just don't call it a dump.

"That would be both rude and incorrect," Asgian said.

Garbage isn't simply dumpeddumped here. Dirt is excavated from hillsides that are then sealed with liners and barriers. The trash is graded with precision using laser-equipped surveying devices to mimic the surrounding terrain. Green waste is recycled and used as cover. Recycled asphalt is used to build roads. Trees grown from seed at the facility's nursery are planted on finished slopes and nurtured by sprinklers shooting treated wastewater. Methane from below is collected in 30 miles of pipe and converted to electricity on-site. The battle against sea gulls is won through superior air power -- tiny screeching rockets and, on occasion, a remote-controlled airplane.

Like any large construction site, the landfill is a dangerous place. The unguarded have been buried alive under tons of trash, the unlucky crushed to death by trucks that toppled over.

"This thing isn't easy to stop. There's lots of blind spots. You don't want to tag somebody with it," said Steve Utley, who drops dirt onto finished cells using a 50-foot-long vehicle that pivots near its midsection and weighs some 250,000 pounds. "But I can control it. I can make this thing talk. How many people get to go to work on toys? It's like a big Tonka toy to me."

It's also a good-paying blue-collar job. Many of the landfill's heavy-equipment operators are veterans who earn $6,700 a month, and more than a few sons have followed in their fathers' smelly footsteps.

"Once you get in, you don't walk away because this is a killer job," said Utley, 52, who has worked here half his life. "We've got good benefits, good retirement, deferred comp, longevity -- which is like a bonus they give you the longer you stay."

CONTINUED ON newslat2

news20091229lat2

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

[Environment]
COLUMN ONE
There's a lot at our disposal
Society's garbage doesn't just disappear. At the Puente Hills Landfill, a third of Los Angeles County's trash adds to a huge mountain of muck every year.
By Mike Anton
December 29, 2009

CONTINUED FROM newslat1

Utley will be among the last of his breed. The Puente Hills Landfill is scheduled to reach capacity in 2013. Large parts of it will be managed by the county Parks and Recreation Department as open space.

A new "megafill" 200 miles away in Imperial County will take its place. Up to 20,000 tons of garbage a day will be hauled by train to the desert. Over the next 100 years, a mountain of L.A. County's trash three miles long and 500 feet high will rise on the horizon. Meantime, jobs here will be lost.

"We're telling some of the younger guys working here that they should be looking at the sewage side of things," said Randy Gudmundson, the landfill's superintendent. "There's more job security there. We'll always have sewage."


[Environment]
Controversial roundup of wild horses underway
Mustangs are herded into corrals as Bureau of Land Management begins a two-month operation to capture 2,500 of Nevada's wild horses. Equine activists say the action is unnecessary.
By Kate Linthicum
December 29, 2009

A controversial roundup of 2,500 wild horses from public and private lands in Nevada began on Monday amid protests from activists who call it needless and inhumane.

Contractors in helicopters and on horseback herded some of the mustangs into corrals in the Black Rock Range, a chain of mountains 100 miles north of Reno, according to a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management. Heather Emmons said she did not know how many horses were captured on the first day of the roundup, which will take two months and stretch across 1,750 square miles in the Calico Mountains Complex.

The BLM said the capture is necessary because the area cannot support its estimated 3,000 horses. The population must be reduced to protect the horses and the environment, the agency said.

Animal activists dispute that assessment, saying that the horses are healthy and that cattle and other grazing livestock do more damage.

The roundup, they say, will frighten the horses and could injure or even kill many of them.

"It's a brutal process no matter how they do it," activist Elyse Gardner said. "Legs get broken, horses get sick, foals can't keep up and get separated from their mothers."

Horses with broken legs typically are euthanized.

Gardner, who monitored a BLM roundup on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range in Montana last summer, said she was alarmed that Monday's capture was held on private land, where the public could not watch.

The BLM's Emmons said the agency began the roundup there because it offered the best access to the animals. She said she expected the agency to work on private land for the next two weeks, or until it had captured about 250 mustangs, then move west.

Once the horses are captured, they will be trucked to Fallon, Nev., for veterinary care, Emmons said. Some horses will be offered for adoption. The rest will be transferred to pastures in the Midwest.

By law, they cannot be sent to slaughter.

More than 30,000 wild mustangs are already in captivity, and adopting them out has not been easy. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said the U.S. has spent $50 million on its wild horse program this year.

An animal rights group, In Defense of Animals, sued to try to prevent the roundup, contending that the mustangs are vital to the ecosystem. A federal judge rejected its request for an injunction last week.

A group of celebrities, including singer Sheryl Crow and actor Viggo Mortensen, objected to the roundup in an open letter to President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last week.

Obama has had no comment, but a spokesman for Reid said Monday that the senator was disappointed with the BLM's handling of the horses.

"The BLM has failed to properly manage these herds for many years, requiring the large gather," said Jon Summers, Reid's spokesman.

In 1971, Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, granting federal protection to wild horses and burros as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." The horses were introduced to North America by the Spanish conquistadors. Some of today's wild mustangs are descendants of escaped Spanish horses.

The BLM estimates that half of the nation's more than 36,000 wild horses live in Nevada, where the state quarter features galloping wild stallions.

news20091229gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News >UK news > Food safety]
Sheep farmers still stuck under a Chernobyl cloud
Ever since radiation from Chernobyl rained down on the UK 23 years ago, sales of sheep in affected areas have been restricted. But frustrated farmers now claim the meat is safe – and that testing should stop
Leo Hickman
The Guardian, Tuesday 29 December 2009 Article history

Lakeland sheep farmers, like the rare-breed Herdwicks many still rear today, are of hardy stock and refuse to be moved by a forecast of rain. It was no different during the first few days of May 1986, when an unseasonably intense downpour lashed down on the Cumbrian fells, topping its tarns and lakes, and driving walkers and day-trippers towards the sanctuary of the tea rooms.

David Ellwood – then a 30-year-old sheep farmer who had just taken on a National Trust tenant farm above the hamlet of Ulpha in the Duddon valley – remembers that week well. "It was lambing time," he recalls. "It was really, really wet. And then we got the message from the ministry. All the sheep farmers in the area were told there was to be a fortnight-long restriction on the sale and movement of our sheep."

A week earlier, on 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in what was then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine exploded, sending a plume of radio- active particles – equivalent in toxicity to 400 Hiroshima bombs – more than seven kilometres up into the atmosphere and due east in the breeze. In the days that followed, as a fire raged unchecked inside the twisted, white-hot remains of the reactor, the wind direction reversed and the plume, now a kilometre tall, headed west towards north-western Europe. It wasn't until workers at a nuclear reactor in Finland detected abnormally high doses of radioactivity on their clothes - up to 100 times normal background levels – that anyone outside the Soviet Union realised the true severity of the accident.

On 2 May 1986, the plume finally passed over parts of the UK and, with fateful timing, so too did a column of cloud carrying heavy rain. The rain fell hardest where it always falls hardest – on the uplands. As the droplets of water fell from the sky, they carried with them the radionuclides – in particular, caesium-137, iodine-131 and strontium-90 – that had been dispersed from Chernobyl. It is estimated that 1% of the radiation released from the reactor fell on the UK. In an effort to prevent these radionuclides entering the food chain once they had settled on the upland soil, the ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food, as it was then known, ordered an immediate restriction on the movement and sale of sheep within the most affected areas – particularly north Wales, south-west Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Lake District, where the landscape is predominantly suited to grazing sheep. In total, almost 9,000 farms, and four million sheep, were placed under restriction.

"We couldn't believe it at first," says Ellwood today, leaning on his crook and looking up from his farmhouse towards the smooth dome of Hesk Fell – an ascent that Alfred Wainwright, the fellwalker's guidebook guru, said would lead nobody to "drop dead with excitement or suffer spasms of emotion" – where the majority of his 600 sheep still roam. "The radiation had come from 3,000 miles away and you couldn't see it. For many farmers around here, it brought back memories of the Windscale nuclear accident in 1957. My father, who was a sheep farmer at that time up near Eskdale, reassured me by saying he didn't have any problems with Windscale, but we didn't know anything about these sorts of things back then."

In fact, Ellwood still lives under the cloud of Chernobyl's legacy today. Baskell Farm, the 1,000-acre tenant farm he operates with his wife Heather, is one of the farms still under government restriction due to the risks of any remaining radionuclides passing into the human food chain via sheep meat. The vast majority of affected sheep farms – 355, to be precise – are located in and around Snowdonia in Wales, whereas nine, including Baskell Farm, are still being monitored in England and seven in Scotland. (All the farms in Northern Ireland were "derestricted" in 2000.)

Ellwood says the annoyance among many of the restricted farmers has grown steadily over the years because of a combination of poor communication from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the government body responsible for overseeing the monitoring scheme, and woeful levels of compensation. For every sheep that has to be separately penned and cleared for sale by a government inspector, a farmer receives £1.30 in compensation – exactly the same amount as in 1986.

"It's bloody ridiculous," spits Ellwood, as with his splayed knees he guides the first of 30 five-month-old lambs into a pen in preparation for the imminent arrival of an inspector from the Rural Payment Agency (RPA), the body charged by the FSA with monitoring the restricted farms in England. "I have to go through all this hassle every time I want to move sheep off the fell for sale. We get 8-10 visits a year from RPA inspectors. They keep saying it's going to last one more year. Nothing seems to ever get derestricted round here, though." Ellwood shrugs his shoulders in resignation.

As the clouds thicken overhead, Steve Pottinger, the local RPA inspector, drives up the claggy lane leading to Baskell Farm. Six-feet-high dry-stone walls flank the car. Once parked, Pottinger throws a familiar wave to Ellwood in the holding pen before lifting a large Geiger counter out of his boot. He then heaves himself over the fence into the pen with Ellwood and switches on the machine to measure the background radiation levels.

"We call this the 'Chernobyl monitor' and we first take six background readings to work out the average," explains Pottinger, as the digital display shows "17" and then "18" before returning to "17". "If a reading on a sheep is 13 above the background reading, we classify that as a failure."

The machine costs about £3,000 and it can detect levels of caesium-137 – the only remaining radionuclide from Chernobyl to give concern to the FSA – both in the atmosphere and in the body tissue of an animal. Ellwood says it's been two to three years since any of his animals tested positive.

Pottinger directs Ellwood to hold tightly on to one of his lambs and then the counter is pressed hard into the animal's rump muscle. Three readings are taken over about a minute, and range from 18 up to 22 for each animal, well within the safety level.

But what exactly is "safe"? The FSA's official maximum limit of caesium-137 in meat is 1,000 becquerels per kilo. This limit echoes the internationally recognised standard established in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl – but for extra precaution, the FSA works to a 600 becquerels per kilo limit. Caesium-137 has a radiological half-life of 30 years, so the point will soon be reached where the radioactive dose in the soil of the affected uplands will be half the levels immediately after Chernobyl.

The reason why certain uplands remain affected is largely down to their soil type. Unlike clay soils, which can retain radionuclides permanently, the peaty soil found on the slopes of many upland fells and mountains allow the radionuclides to transfer to the grass and hence into the grazing sheep. Once ingested into an animal, though, the so-called "biological half-life" of caesium-137 is about 10 days, meaning it is excreted from the body relatively fast. As a result, once a sheep has been moved off the affected uplands and received a negative test result within 24 hours of being moved, it can be released for sale. Any animal that tests positive is – as Ellwood describes it – "butched" and the farmer receives compensation equal to the animal's market value.

One of the questions Ellwood, and other affected farmers, want answered is whether the FSA is being overly cautious. Just how much risk does this meat now pose to the health of a consumer? The Health Protection Agency has calculated that if someone were to eat 8kg of sheep meat a year – the average consumption in the UK – that contained the maximum limit of caesium-137 it would give the consumer a dose of 0.1 millisieverts. This is just one tenth of a person's accepted annual limit.

But in the UK, we are, on average, exposed to a "natural" annual dose of 2.23 millisieverts from sources such as radon gas and cosmic rays, which in total account for about 85% of our total radiological exposure. The average annual dose from artificial radiation is 0.42 millisieverts and is mainly derived from medical procedures such as dental x-rays. (The recommended annual dose limit for anyone working with radiation is 20 millisieverts, and 1,000 millisieverts, or one sievert, is the level when radiation sickness would be expected. Death is predicted at a dose of eight sieverts and above.)

As with anything to do with our exposure to radioactivity, the question of "safe levels" provokes a range of passionate views. Paul Johnston, a toxicologist based at the Greenpeace research laboratory at the University of Exeter, is "deeply sceptical" about what constitutes a safe dose of radiation.

CONTINUED ON newsgdn2

news20091229gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News >UK news > Food safety]
Sheep farmers still stuck under a Chernobyl cloud
Ever since radiation from Chernobyl rained down on the UK 23 years ago, sales of sheep in affected areas have been restricted. But frustrated farmers now claim the meat is safe – and that testing should stop
Leo Hickman
The Guardian, Tuesday 29 December 2009 Article history

CONTINUED FROM newsgdn1

"We have no detailed knowledge of low-level impacts," he says. "For example, we have been surprised that technetium from Sellafield has been found in sea shells and seaweed off the Norwegian coast and has accumulated in lobsters. On a personal level, I'm not happy that this sheep meat is in the human food chain at all. So much is still unknown. Given what has happened before with various food scares, I have a healthy dose of caution."

Others take a less hardline approach, but still believe there are enough gaps in our knowledge for the testing regime to continue. Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment who has advised various environmental NGOs and UK government agencies, as well as the European Parliament. He believes the FSA is not being too cautious.

"The caesium burden in the affected meat is too high for children to eat at the moment," he says. "Adults would be OK, but children are more sensitive to the ingestion of nuclides such as caesium. There is no published figure about what is an acceptable level of safety – 1,000 becquerels per kilo is just a guide. Working out safe doses is very complicated. They could be testing these sheep for decades yet."

Just a short journey south from the Lake District along the M6, Brenda Howard works as a radioecologist at Lancaster University's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. She has spent the last two decades studying the transfer of radionuclides to agricultural and wild animals, particularly the transfer of caesium-137 into Lakeland sheep. Rather than letting these sheep farmers continue to drift into an uncertain future, Howard believes it's time to look again at the methodology of the current testing regime.

"I think it's time for a re-evaluation," she says. "The actual dose on the plate for any consumer is going to be very small in the most part. The main issue is making sure the farmers who rear these sheep are not eating lots of contaminated meat themselves." (Ironically, Ellwood says he doesn't even like the taste of lamb and prefers beef.)

The FSA admits that caesium-137 will "remain biologically available for many years to come" in the affected uplands. But it says it will continue with its testing regime to assess if and when any farmer can qualify for derestriction.

"Our remit is food safety," says Terry Donohoe, head of strategy and policy at the FSA's food safety contaminants division. "On the evidence we have available to us at the moment, we feel we can't reduce the testing. We can understand the frustration farmers feel about compensation levels, but this is a decision for the agricultural departments of each regional government."

Since 1986, the government has paid out a total of £14.3m in compensation to the affected farmers. The total cost last year – both the compensation payments and the monitoring – came to £725,000, according to FSA estimates.

Once Pottinger has packed up his Geiger counter and handed over a certificate that allows Ellwood to sell his lambs, the farmer whistles for one of his five sheepdogs and sets off on foot towards a walled enclosure on the lower flank of Hesk Fell. As he steps through the grassy tufts and boggy peat, he shouts throaty commands to his dog. "Feeetch! Coomeerroound!"

Ellwood explains how his sheep "heft" to Hesk Fell, that they instinctively know which flock they were born into and never stray from the fell. As a result, Herdwicks can stay out largely untended throughout the winter months. It helps to keep the costs down, he says. Which is good, because the economics of sheep farming make little sense to any outsider. For example, last year Ellwood says he was getting just £9 an animal at auction, whereas this year it's up to nearer £30. Ellwood admits that he just about survives economically on government subsidy and compensation. He says other affected farmers are unhappy about the frozen levels of compensation, but are often reluctant to speak out about the subject for fear of driving down consumer demand for sheep meat.

Beatrix Potter, the children's author, was an expert Herdwick breeder and, on her death in 1943, she left the 14 sheep farms she owned to the National Trust. Her only stipulation was that Herdwicks must continue to be bred on them. Ellwood says the only real value of his sheep today is not what price they get at auction, but keeping the grass short on the fells so that the landscape is kept "looking a picture".

So, would he recommend sheep farming to any of his four children, who all grew up on the farm and are now aged between 17 and 23? "I would like them to do it, yes. But one's a joiner, one's an electrician and one's a chef. None of them wants to be a sheep farmer. When I retire – I'm 53 now – I expect the National Trust will have to rent it out again to someone new."

news20091229bbc

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

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 17:20 GMT, Sunday, 27 December 2009
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News
Acacia plant controls ants with chemical
{Plants have systems for keeping their six-legged inhabitants in check}
In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes.

Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests protected by its thick bark.

This is the world of "ant guards".

The acacias might appear overrun by them, but the plants have the ants wrapped around their little stems.

{{ Acacias... have very open flowers, but still, the ants don't seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why}
Nigel Raine, Royal Holloway}

These same plants that provide shelter and produce nourishing nectar to feed the insects also make chemicals that send them into a defensive frenzy, forcing them into retreat.

Nigel Raine, a scientist working at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK has studied this plant-ant relationship.

Dr Raine and his colleagues from the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and Reading in the UK and Lund University in Sweden have been trying to work out some of the ways in which the insects and the acacias might have co-evolved.
He explains how the ants provide a useful service for the acacias.

"They guard the plants they live on," said Dr Raine. "If other animals try to come and feed on the rich, sugary nectar, they will attack them."

In Africa, one type of ant-guard, known as Crematogaster , will even attack large herbivores that attempt to eat the plant.

{Ants will fiercely guard their acacia homes}

"If a giraffe starts to eat the leaves of an acacia that is inhabited by ants, the ants will come out and swarm on to its face, biting and stinging," says Dr Raine.

"Eventually, the giraffe will get fed up and move off."

In the New World tropics, the Pseudomyrmex genus of ants fulfil a very similar guarding role.

For both species, the acacias provide little, reinforced structures that the ants hollow out and nest within, as well as sugar-rich nectar for them to eat.

"In return, both groups of ants protect their host plants from herbivores - both hungry insects and larger [animals]," explains Dr Raine.

Give and take

That is the plus side for the plants. But being inhabited by aggressive insects could make one important aspect of a plant's life difficult - flowering.

Flowers need to be pollinated so the plant can reproduce. So what stops the ants from attacking the helpful little pollinators or stealing all the tasty nectar that attracts them?

"Some plants do this structurally, with physical barriers to stop ants getting on to the flower, or sticky or slippery surfaces that the insects can't walk on," said Dr Raine.

"Acacias don't have these barriers. They have very open flowers, but still, the ants don't seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why."

One clever approach by the plant is a food "bribe". "Extrafloral nectaries" are small stores of nectar on stems, from which the inhabitants can feed without going on to the flowers.

Acacias also produce structures called beltian bodies on the leaf tips.

{Ants protect the leaves from large herbivores}

These, Dr Raine explains, are nutritious structures produced by the plant to feed its resident colony of ant-guards.

But when this isn't enough, it is a case of chemical warfare.

Flowers can produce a variety of chemicals. We can smell some of the volatile organic compounds they release when we sniff our favourite summer bloom.

But there is a more manipulative side to these scents.

Floral volatile compounds can act as signals - drawing in pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds in with their irresistible aromas.

To the ants, however, they are far from irresistible.

"The flowers seem to produce chemicals that are repellent to the ants," said Dr Raine. "They release these particularly during the time when they're producing lots of pollen, so the ants are kept off the flowers."

In recent studies, described in the journal Functional Ecology, Dr Raine and his colleagues found that the plants with the closest relationships with ants - those that provided homes for their miniature guard army - produced the chemicals that were most effective at keeping the ants at bay.

"And that was associated with the flower being open," he says. "So the chemicals are probably in the pollen."

When the pollen has all been taken away - by being brushed on to the bodies of hungry pollinators and helpfully delivered to other plants - the flowers become less repellent.

"So at this point, the ants can come on to the flowers and can protect them from other insects that might eat them, so that the developing seeds aren't lost," he explains.

Dr Raines' team was able to test this using young flowers that had just opened and that contained lots of pollen.

The scientists wiped them on older flowers and on the acacia's stems.

This showed them that the effect was "transferrable" - the stems and older flowers that had been wiped became more repellent.

"It gives this really neat feedback system - the plant is protected when it needs to be protected, but not when it doesn't."

Selective deterrents

The repellent chemicals are specific to the ants. In fact, they attract and repel different groups of insects.

"[The chemicals] don't repel bees, even though they are quite closely related to ants. And in some cases, the chemicals actually seem to attract the bees," says Dr Raine.

The researchers think that some of the repellents that acacias produce are chemical "mimics" of signalling pheromones that the ants use to communicate.

"We put flowers into syringes and puffed the scent over the ant to see how they would respond, and they became quite agitated and aggressive" he explained.

"The ants use a pheromone to signal danger; if they're being attacked by a bird they will release that chemical that will quickly tell the other ants to retreat."

Dr Raine says this clever evolutionary system shows how the ants and their plants have evolved to protect, control and manipulate each other.

The ants may be quick to swarm, bite and sting, but the harmless-looking acacias have remained one step ahead.

news20091229cnn

[Top stories] from [CNN.com]

[World]
December 29, 2009 -- Updated 0913 GMT (1713 HKT)
China executes British citizen for drug smuggling
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> NEW: China defended the execution in a statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London
> Akmal Shaikh's supporters said he was mentally ill and officials did not take that into account when trying him
> British government had asked China not to execute Shaikh but China says it has followed law

(CNN) -- The British government condemned China's execution of a British national Tuesday on drug smuggling charges.

"I ... am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said. "I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken."

Akmal Shaikh was convicted of carrying up to 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds) of heroin at the Urumqi Airport in September 2007. According to Chinese law, 50 grams (1.76 ounces) is the threshold for the death penalty.

China defended the execution in a statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London.

"Drug trafficking is a grave crime worldwide," the statement said. "The concerns of the British side have been duly noted and taken into consideration by the Chinese judicial authorities in the legal process, and Mr. Shaikh's rights and interests under Chinese law are properly respected and guaranteed."

The 53-year-old is the first European executed in China in 50 years, according to the British legal group Reprieve.

"The family express their grief at the Chinese decision to refuse mercy," a statement released by Reprieve said, thanking "all those who tried hard to bring about a different result."

His family and the British government had asked Chinese leaders for clemency. His supporters argued that Shaikh was mentally ill, and that Chinese officials did not take his mental condition into account when trying him. Shaikh's advocates say he suffered from a bipolar disorder and that he was tricked into carrying heroin into China with promises of a career as a pop singer.

Brown raised Shaikh's case with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during the international climate summit in Denmark earlier this month.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband echoed Gordon's concerns about the execution.

"The UK is completely opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances," Miliband said. "However, I also deeply regret the fact that our specific concerns about the individual in this case were not taken into consideration. ... These included mental health issues, and inadequate professional interpretation during the trial."

Sally Rowen, legal director with Reprieve, condemned the execution.

"The death of Akmal Shaikh is a sad indictment of today's world, and particularly of China's legal system," she said. "Akmal was a gentle man who suffered from a tormenting illness ... and was betrayed and deliberately killed by one of the most powerful nations on Earth."

Before the execution, Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said it would be a "major step backwards for China" to execute a mentally ill man.

"Both Chinese and international law clearly indicate that a person who committed a crime while suffering from significant mental illness should not be subjected to the death penalty," Alston said in a statement released by Reprieve.


[Business]
By James Blitz and Ben Hall, FT.com
December 29, 2009 -- Updated 0830 GMT (1630 HKT)
French most downbeat on economic future
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> The French are markedly more pessimistic about their prospects for the coming decade
> Poll asked people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US
> More Americans than Europeans also felt their economic prospects better today than in 2000

(FT) -- The French are markedly more pessimistic about their prospects for the coming decade than their counterparts in Europe or the US, fearing they will have progressively lower living standards and get less state help, according to a new opinion poll.

A Harris poll for the Financial Times asked people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US whether they felt they were better off than 10 years ago, and to assess how they will have fared by 2020.

The poll found that, in spite of the US recession, Americans were more optimistic than Europeans about the prospects ahead.

A higher percentage of Americans than Europeans also felt their personal standard of living was better today than it was in 2000.

Some 44 per cent of French people -- a higher percentage than in any other country -- said they felt pessimistic about the decade to come. The same number also said their standard of living was worse today than it was in 2000, again a figure higher than in any other nation polled.

France also emerged as the gloomiest of the nations surveyed on nearly every other question posed by Harris.

Asked whether they thought their national government was keeping more information about them now than was the case 10 years ago, some 72 per cent of French respondents agreed. Some 75 per cent said they expected the government to offer them less state help over the next decade.

Both numbers were far higher than those of either the US or other European states.

Only once in the poll was the gloom of the French trumped by another state.

Asked whether they felt more or less safe than they did 10 years ago, some 46 per cent of Italians said they felt less safe, narrowly beating the French on 44 per cent.

Britain, meanwhile, emerged in the poll as the second gloomiest country of those surveyed, after France.

Some 36 per cent of Britons say they are "pessimistic" about the coming decade. Nearly seven out of 10 Britons also believe the state will be doing less for them and their families by 2020 -- a figure that is higher than any other country except France.

The election in France of President Nicolas Sarkozy in May 2007 was greeted with a burst of optimism, but that has proved short-lived as public opinion has turned against him.

One reason for the pessimism is that many French people fear Mr Sarkozy's reform drive, and future efforts to restore order to the public finances, will mean cuts to France's generous welfare and health systems.

Ironically, France has suffered a less severe recession than other large developed economies in 2009.


[World]
December 29, 2009 -- Updated 0823 GMT (1623 HKT)
NATO acknowledges deaths in Afghanistan
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> NATO says it has launched a joint investigation with the Afghan government
> The U.S.-led operation took place in the Narang district of Kunar province on Saturday
> U.S. military's goal is to protect population centers, Commander McChrystal says

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- NATO officials on Tuesday admitted that a weekend operation in northeastern Afghanistan's Kunar province killed nine people but would not say whether they were civilians or militants.

The governor of the province told CNN on Monday that 10 people were killed and that all of them were civilians.

NATO said it has launched a joint investigation with the Afghan government to determine who died in the U.S.-led operation in the Narang district of the province on Saturday.

Said Fazelayallah, Kunar's governor, said the operation was launched without the knowledge of officials in the province.

Civilian casualties during U.S. airstrikes against Taliban targets have strained the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States.

The numbers have fallen off in recent months since Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal took over as U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

The military's goal is to protect population centers to enable the government to improve security and governance., McChrystal told CNN's Christiane Amanpour earlier this month. Civilian casualties, he said, make it less likely that the Afghans will support the coalition.

"It is better to miss a target than to cause civilian casualties," he said. "We can always target enemy leaders later. We can't make up for the fact that we killed civilians."

news20091229reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Lucy Hornby
BEIJING
Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:46am EST
China introduces law to boost renewable energy
BEIJING (Reuters) - A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.

The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.

The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to "determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period."

Many other countries also have requirements that grid operators priorities the dispatch of power from renewable sources, even if it is more expensive than coal-fired baseload plants.

In China, a boom in wind-power plants thanks to government subsidies has resulted in a large amount of wind capacity that is not always properly connected to the grid. In some cases, the wind farms are not located at the optimal spot for wind.

One-third of China's installed wind power capacity is not well connected to the grid, Xinhua said, citing industry experts.

Much of China's wind power is installed in remote, wind-swept regions like Inner Mongolia and Gansu, where power demand is low. But some of the country's cheapest coal generators are also in Inner Mongolia, pricing the wind farms out of the power market.

"Renewable energy power in the country's resource-rich, underdeveloped northwestern region must be sent to the resource-scarce, prosperous coastal area," said Wang Zhongyong, renewable energy director at the National Development and Reform Commission's Energy Research Institute, according to Xinhua.

The relative independence of regional grids made such transmission difficult, Wang said.

China must develop more efficient "smart grids" as part of the solution, said Xiao Liye, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The new requirement will also benefit China's massive new nuclear power plants, although nuclear power is usually cheap enough to be competitive on its own.

Grid operators refusing to buy power produced by renewable energy generators could be fined up to double the loss suffered by the renewable energy generator, the amendment said.

China's target is for renewable energy sources to make up 15 percent of its power generation by 2020, up from about 9 percent currently. It also targets a reduction in carbon intensity, or the amount of carbon produced per unit of GDP, of between 40 and 45 percent by 2020 compared with 2005.

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)


[Green Business]
Maha El Dahan
CAIRO
Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:42am EST
Egypt plants new wheat strains to fight fungus
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt, the world's top wheat importer, is introducing new wheat varieties resistant to a mutant form of stem rust, an airborne fungus with the ability to annihilate entire crops.

"We have already started using these seeds and 40 tonnes are now being planted in the Nile Delta," Ayman Abouhadid, president of the country's Agricultural Research Center, told Reuters in an interview.

The fungus, which has plagued wheat since biblical times, was largely controlled in the 1950s when scientists passed out seeds with a gene to block the disease.

But a destructive new strain reappeared in Uganda in the late 1990s, once more posing a potentially serious threat to 80 percent of the world's wheat supplies.

Experts have said the only way to overcome the new fungus would be to replace the bulk of the world's commercial wheat with new seeds bred to fight it.

Egypt, which cultivates around 3 million feddans (1.26 million hectares) of wheat per year, has reacted fast in developing the new strains.

"We have two wheat varieties, Misr 1 and Misr 2, which we developed and are resistant to this new form of stem rust," Abouhadid said.

The new stem rust, termed Ug99, has travelled from Uganda to Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Yemen and subsequently went on to affect crops as far away as Iran and Afghanistan in less than a decade.

Abouhadid said if the Ug99 strain becomes widespread in Central Asia it will almost certainly reach Egypt.

WINDS FROM THE NORTH

"Since Egypt gets winds from the North it is now very likely it will spread to Egypt," Abouhadid said.

The fungus spreads in mostly hot and humid weather, according to Abouhadid, and so it will potentially stay within the realm of the Mediterranean basin and not travel higher up into colder areas of Europe.

Egypt has been working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico to stop the spread of Ug99 into its borders.

But the most populous Arab country, which depends heavily on subsidized bread to feed its poor, is not waiting until the disease affects its own crop to take action.

Around 1.5 tonnes of the Misr 1 variety were exported earlier this year to Afghanistan to prevent the rust from spreading further into the region.

"We are protecting the region from the spread of the fungus and so we are protecting ourselves from outside our borders," Abouhadid said.

Egypt has one of the highest rates of wheat consumption per capita in the world at around 120 kg per person per year.

The North African country consumes around 14 million tonnes of wheat annually, and imports around 6 million tonnes of that from abroad.

(Reporting by Maha El Dahan, editing by Anthony Barker)


[Green Business]
Michael Hirtzer
CHICAGO
Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:21pm EST
Yield loss eyed as snow covers U.S. corn crop
CHICAGO (Reuters) - As much as 100 million bushels of U.S. corn could be lost after heavy snowstorms in recent days likely delayed until spring the final stages of an already historically slow harvest, analysts and meteorologists said on Monday.

The harvest delays helped to push up corn futures more than 1 percent to a six-month high on Monday at the Chicago Board of Trade.

"There are 620 million bushels left in the field and we could lose 10 percent of that," said Joe Victor, analyst for Illinois-based research and consulting firm Allendale Inc.

The U.S. Agriculture Department last week in its final harvest update of the year said 5 percent of the corn crop was still in the fields.

And after much of the U.S. Midwest and Plains regions were pounded by heavy winter storms in past several days, it's likely to stay there until next year.

As much as 25 inches of snow fell in parts of the Dakotas -- two states where the corn harvest was furthest behind.

Heavy snowstorms also plagued other states where the corn harvest was far from done: Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska and Wisconsin.

"(The corn) is sitting in the field with snow cover due to all this severe weather in the last month," said Mike Palmerino, forecaster with DTN Meteorlogix.

Analyst estimates for the yield loss ranged from 50-100 million bushels. Still, the corn crop is still expected to be the second-largest on record, behind only 2007's record crop of 13.038 billion bushels.

"We see the total corn crop down 100 million bushels from the current USDA estimate because of a combination of problems from the late harvest and the winter storms," said Terry Reilly, analyst for Citigroup.

"We may see some of the corn fall over and that will just make it harder to harvest," Reilly said.

Yield loss occurs when corn plants are knocked down and when the ear falls off the stem of the plant. Both are caused by harsh winds and snowfall, and result in a loss when the crop-cutting combines fail to gather the grain.

Some farmers were still hoping to complete in the next few weeks one of the slowest harvest in decades. But if temperatures warm up enough for the snow to melt, it might also leave the ground too wet to combine.

"(Farmers) are hoping the ground will freeze so they can get out there, but (also hoping) the corn won't freeze to the ground," said a grain buyer at a processor in Cincinnati, Ohio.


[Green Business]
COPENHAGEN
Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:16am EST
Vestas says wins 40 MW turbine order from China
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark's Vestas, the world's biggest maker of wind turbines, said on Monday it had won an order for 20 turbines with total capacity of 40 megawatts from China Datang Renewable Power Co Ltd.

The V90-2.0 MW turbines will be installed in Zhaolitouzi, Liaoning Province, Vestas said in a statement.

It did not disclose the value of the order.

Vestas cited figures from consultants Azure International showing that China had total installed wind power capacity of about 15.5 gigawatts as of June 2009 and said China was the world's fastest-growing wind energy market in 2009.

news20091229reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Ayesha Rascoe
WASHINGTON
Mon Dec 28, 2009 3:55pm EST
U.S. loans to boost nuclear industry seen soon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is poised to announce loan guarantees to help kick-start the country's nuclear power industry, which hasn't built a new plant in more than three decades.

Congress authorized $18.5 billion for nuclear loan guarantees in 2005, hoping to revive development of the carbon-free source of energy. Investments in nuclear power has dried up on soaring costs following the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.

But earlier this year, the U.S. Energy Department signaled it was keen to aid the industry and narrowed the list of those likely to receive loan guarantees to four: Southern Co, Constellation Energy, NRG Energy and SCANA Corp.

"When DOE issues their first loan guarantee, that's going to send an important signal to private-sector financing, and Wall Street in particular," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Southern, which wants to build two reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, is expected to be awarded the first loan guarantee.

Energy Department officials would not give a specific date on when the details will be announced but said they were committed to restarting the nuclear industry.

"We are on track to announce the first loan guarantee soon," said Stephanie Mueller, a department spokeswoman.

The money allotted would probably support construction of about two to three plants. A nuclear power plant can cost $6 billion to $7 billion to build, according to industry estimates.

Even after receiving a guarantee, the companies would still have to complete the licensing process and secure private financing before construction begins.

Barring major delays, actual construction of a plant would not start before 2011, with the first new plant coming on line around 2017 or 2018, according to the nuclear institute.

The nuclear trade group has called for $100 billion in additional loan guarantees for low carbon energy sources to help support replacing aging reactors and to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S. utilities that hope to build new reactors will have to overcome rising construction costs, uncertain cost recovery from customers and lower power demand caused by the recession.

Critics of nuclear power say the projects are too expensive and too risky to receive billions of taxpayer dollars. Environmentalists also raise concerns about the disposal of nuclear waste.

(Additional reporting by Eileen O'Grady in Houston and Tim Gardner in Washington; Editing by Christian Wiessner)


[Green Business]
BRASILIA
Mon Dec 28, 2009 3:48pm EST
Brazil keeps climate targets despite failed summit
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil will make its ambitious 2020 greenhouse gas emissions targets legally binding even though global climate talks failed this month, the country's environment minister said on Monday.

"We will fully comply with the targets. It doesn't matter that Copenhagen didn't go as well as we had hoped," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told reporters after meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula will veto three items from a climate bill approved by Congress last month but would maintain the emissions targets, Minc said.

"The targets were maintained, which is the most important. Brazil will have a strong climate change policy," he said.

Brazil aims to reduce its projected 2020 greenhouse gas emissions by as much 39 percent. That amounts roughly to a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels.

According to the bill Lula is expected to sign into law later on Monday, those targets will be quantifiable and verifiable.

Latin America's largest country had tried to prod other developing and industrialized countries into adopting bold targets at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen earlier this month. But the meeting failed to produce a new framework agreement on climate to follow the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

Brazil is one of the largest carbon emitters, largely due to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. Deforestation, which has fallen sharply in recent years, releases carbon as trees burn or decompose.

Among the items Lula will veto were proposals to limit the construction of small hydroelectric plants and reduce the use of fossil fuels.

(Reporting by Fernando Exman; Writing by Raymond Colitt; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)


[Green Business]
FRANKFURT
Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:14am EST
German solar industry wants faster subsidy cuts
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German solar companies in industry association BSW are proposing to cut subsidies faster than planned, Solarworld Chief Executive Frank Asbeck told a German magazine.

So far, plans had called for a 10 percent reduction of feed-in tariffs -- incentives utilities are obliged to pay for power generated from renewable sources -- in early 2010 and another 10 percent a year later. BSW is now proposing to add a cut in mid-2010.

"Some 10 percent on January 1, 5 percent at mid-year and then another 10 percent at the move into 2011," Asbeck said, according to an excerpt of an interview to be published in weekly Focus-Money magazine on Wednesday.

Utilities are obliged to pay 43 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity produced for 20 years for systems installed in 2009. Companies including Solarworld have called for a faster reduction of subsidies in exchange for international environmental and quality standards in regulation.

According to Handelsblatt newspaper, the BSW association is set to make its proposal to policymakers at a January 13 meeting.

Germany is a world leader in green energy with a 15 percent share of all electricity produced and wants to double that to 30 percent by 2020.


[Green Business]
ANKARA
Mon Dec 28, 2009 11:34am EST
Turkey secures $294 mln from Japan for water project
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's Treasury said on Monday a loan of 26.826 billion yen ($294 million) was secured from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the financing of an Ankara water supply project.

The loan has a fixed annual interest rate of 1.5 percent and 25 years maturity including a 7-year grace period.

(Reporting by Selcuk Gokoluk)


[Green Business]
COPENHAGEN
Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:12am EST
Copenhagen's Tivoli says climate talks hurt profits
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Park operator Tivoli, set in Denmark's capital, cut its guidance for 2009 profits on Monday after thousands of visitors stayed away when governments met in Copenhagen this month for U.N. climate talks.

One of Europe's oldest amusement parks, Tivoli A/S lowered its full-year pretax estimate by 10 million Danish crowns ($2 million) to 20-30 million because of the loss of business during the December 7-18 climate conference.

"We have lost 100,000 visitors during the climate conference since many Danes chose to stay away from the Copenhagen city area for fear of demonstrations and traffic chaos," it said.

Nor did conference participants visit Tivoli "in any large numbers," the company said in a statement.

The Christmas season from late November to the end of December usually brings brisk trade to 166-year-old Tivoli.

(Reporting by John Acher; Editing by Louise Ireland)