news20100105jt1

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010
Jobless ranks exit shelter, are relocated
Tokyo official: Helping just 800 insufficient
By MARIKO KATO
Staff writer

The holiday-season shelter run by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government closed Monday, and some 800 lodgers were taken to different accommodations to continue their hunt for homes and jobs.

Of the 833 idled workers who stayed at the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center in Shibuya Ward, about 800 have not secured a job or place to live, according to the metropolitan government, which opened the temporary shelter Dec. 28 using central government money.

The lodgers were bused to capsule hotels and other facilities Monday afternoon after being briefed in the morning.

They can stay at the accommodations for up to two weeks while receiving consultations, according to Takeo Hayakawa, head of planning at the metropolitan government's Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health.

"Two weeks is about the time needed to secure somewhere to live, a crucial step in ultimately finding a job," Hayakawa said.

The fate of the 800 beyond the next two weeks, however, remains unclear.

The few who opted out of the extended support turned to families or friends, Hayakawa said.

As of Sunday, the shelter had taken in 833 people. When it opened, around 500 were anticipated. Only people hunting for jobs through Hello Work agencies were qualified to stay at the lodging.

According to the metropolitan government, 814 of the lodgers received consultations about living support, while 92 asked for help about finding a home and 72 inquired about jobs. More than 160 received advice on health concerns and 50 on emotional problems, while 56 sought legal help.

A former construction worker in his 50s said the shelter was comfortable, but he is still worried about not finding employment.

"I'm grateful for the support I was given, but I'm dreading the life I'll be going back to soon," said the lodger, who declined to give his name.

"I haven't been able to find any jobs since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power, so I don't have much hope about the future," he added.

A year ago, amid the economic crisis that started in fall 2008, antipoverty campaigners set up a tent village in Hibiya Park for around 500 unemployed people and offered food and consultations.

The central government, then run by the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito coalition, was criticized for failing to take action.

With this in mind, the DPJ-led administration took the initiative this time round to avoid another tent city and set up the Shibuya Ward shelter.

However, the unemployment rate has remained high despite the change of government.

There have been mounting calls for the central government to do more to help the unemployed.

Tokyo official Hayakawa, who was in charge of organizing the shelter, said the central government should not call on local governments to run such facilities.

"The (metropolitan) government ended up setting up everything from accommodations to consultations, but the effort wasn't spread nationwide, which means people from other prefectures may have concentrated in Tokyo," he said.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010
Budget to be government's top priority
Hatoyama: Too early to worry about election
By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

Passing the fiscal 2010 budget and averting a double-dip recession will be the government's top priority heading into the new year, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Monday.

Speaking at his first news conference of 2010, Hatoyama said it is critical for the Cabinet to show the public that power has been put in its hands by making good on the government's pledges.

"2009 saw a once-in-a-century change of regime. We believe we are now at the starting line," Hatoyama said, adding he will work quickly to get high-priority projects up and running, including distribution of monthly child care allowances and scrapping tuition at high schools.

The Hatoyama government approved on Dec. 25 the country's largest-ever budget of 2.30 trillion for fiscal 2010, and the 150-day ordinary Diet session is expected to open around Jan. 18.

Hatoyama emphasized that the nation should have a forward-looking attitude despite the global economic downturn.

"Japan can play a leading role in the environment business," he said, also expressing optimism that something generally seen as a drag on the economy — the aging population — can serve as the foundation of a strong health care industry.

Hatoyama said the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-U.S. security treaty should be viewed as an occasion to expand bilateral ties.

A decision on the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma will be wrapped up "in some months" and will attempt to alleviate the burden of Okinawa while not making light of the 2006 accord reached between Tokyo and Washington, he said.

"The two sides should strengthen their bond by being able to express their opinions freely to one another," Hatoyama said, stressing that ties between Japan and the U.S. remain the cornerstone of the government's foreign policy.

Meanwhile, Hatoyama remained tight-lipped on the Democratic Party of Japan's prospects for the Upper House poll in July, saying he will instead focus on passing the annual and supplementary budgets in the ordinary Diet session.

The prime minister said he has no intention of reshuffling the Cabinet ahead of the election, saying the current team will operate together for as long as possible.

The DPJ is aiming for a majority in the Upper House, which would free it from having to maintain its awkward three-way coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Japan and Kokumin Shinto (People's New Party).

Hatoyama said the government "will do its best" until July, adding it "is not yet the time" to discuss specifics about the crucial election.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010
Climber found dead; pair missing

GIFU (Kyodo) A helicopter retrieved a body Monday from a mountain in Gifu Prefecture where three climbers were reported missing, while seven alpinists were rescued from another Gifu mountain, police said.

The deceased was identified as Mitsuru Honjo, 58, one of three climbers from Kobe who according to their alpine club were unaccounted for on Mount Okuhotakadate on Saturday. The two others are Mikio Zenitai, 52 and nurse Aiko Irie, 58, the police said.

Meanwhile, five men and two women were rescued by chopper from Mount Terachi. They had requested a rescue Sunday after they became unable to move due to heavy snow.

Tetsuo Yamada, 55, one of the rescued climbers and a guide for the party, said there was more snow than forecast.

They started up the mountain Dec. 29, but the weather got worse Thursday, stopping them from making their way down. They survived on one-week's worth of food they took with them, the police said.

Couple rescued
SHIZUOKA (Kyodo) A couple were rescued by helicopter from a mountain in Shizuoka Prefecture on Monday, police said.

Yoshitaka Kakegawa, 44, and his wife, Hiroyo, 45, from the city of Shizuoka, were rescued from Mount Hijiri.

The couple started up the mountain Dec. 29 with a 34-year-old male friend, but when Hiroyo Kakegawa became unable to walk Saturday, the male friend went down the mountain to seek help.


[LIFE IN JAPAN]
Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010
JUST BE CAUSE
Human rights in Japan: a top 10 for '09
By DEBITO ARUDOU

They say that human rights advances come in threes: two steps forward and one back.

2009, however, had good news and bad on balance. For me, the top 10 human rights events of the year that affected non-Japanese (NJ) were, in ascending order:

CONTINUED ON newsjt2

news20100105jt2

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

[LIFE IN JAPAN]

CONTINUED FROM newsjt1

10) Mr. James

Between August and November, McDonald's Japan had this geeky Caucasian shill portraying foreigners to Japanese consumers (especially children, one of McDonald's target markets) as dumb enough to come to Japan, home of a world cuisine, just for the burgers.

Pedantry aside, McDonald's showed its true colors — not as a multinational promoting multiculturalism (its image in other countries), but instead as a ruthless corporation willing to undermine activists promoting "foreigner as resident of Japan" just to push product.

McD's unapologetically pandered to latent prejudices in Japan by promoting the gaijin as hapless tourist, speaking Japanese in katakana and never fitting in no matter how hard he shucks or jives.

The firm wouldn't even fight fair, refusing to debate in Japanese for the domestic media.

"Mr. James' " katakana blog has since disappeared, but his legacy will live on in a generation of kids spoon-fed cultural pap with their fast food.

9) 'The Cove'

Although not a movie about "human" rights (the subjects are sentient mammals), this documentary (www.thecovemovie.com) about annual dolphin slaughters in southern Wakayama Prefecture shows the hard slog activists face in this society.

When a handful of local fishermen cull dolphins and call it "Japanese tradition," the government (both local and national), police and our media machines instinctively encircle to cover it up. Just to get hard evidence to enable public scrutiny, activists had to go as far as to get George Lucas' studios to create airborne recording devices and fit cameras into rocks.

The film showed the world what we persevering activists all know: how advanced an art form public unaccountability is in Japan.

8) Pocket knife/pee dragnets

The Japanese police's discretionary powers of NJ racial profiling, search and seizure were in full bloom this year, exemplified by two events that beggared belief.

The first occurred in July, when a 74-year-old American tourist who asked for directions at a Shinjuku police box was incarcerated for 10 days just for carrying a pocket knife (yes, the koban cops asked him specifically whether he was carrying one).

The second involved confirmed reports of police apprehending NJ outside Roppongi bars and demanding they take urine tests for drugs. Inconceivable treatment for Japanese (sure, sometimes they get hit for bag searches, but not bladder searches), but the lack of domestic press attention — even to stuff as egregious as this — shows that Japanese cops can zap NJ at whim with impunity.

7) 'Itchy and Scratchy' (tied)

Accused murderer Tatsuya Ichihashi and convicted embezzler Nozomu Sahashi also got zapped this year. Well, kinda.

Ichihashi spent close to three years on the lam after police in 2007 bungled his capture at his apartment, where the strangled body of English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker was found. He was finally nabbed in November, but only after intense police and media lobbying by her family (lessons here for the families of fellow murdered NJs Scott Tucker, Matthew Lacey and Honiefaith Kamiosawa) and on the back of a crucial tip from a plastic surgery clinic.

Meanwhile Sahashi, former boss of eikaiwa empire Nova (bankrupted in 2007), was finally sentenced Aug. 27 to a mere 3 1/2 years, despite bilking thousands of customers, staff and NJ teachers.

For Sahashi it's case closed (pending appeal), but in Ichihashi's case, his high-powered defense team is already claiming police abuse in jail, and is no doubt preparing to scream "miscarriage of justice" should he get sentenced. Still, given the leniency shown to accused NJ killers Joji Obara and Hiroshi Nozaki, let's see what the Japanese judiciary comes up with on this coin toss.

6) 'Newbies' top 'oldcomers'

This happened by the end of 2007, but statistics take time to tabulate.

Last March, the press announced that "regular permanent residents" (as in NJ who were born overseas and have stayed long enough to qualify for permanent residency) outnumber "special permanent residents" (the zainichi Japan-born Koreans, Chinese etc. "foreigners" who once comprised the majority of NJ) by 440,000 to 430,000. That's a total of nearly a million NJ who cannot legally be forced to leave. This, along with Chinese residents now outnumbering Koreans, denotes a sea change in the NJ population, indicating that immigration from outside Japan is proceeding apace.

5) 'Immigration nation' ideas

Hidenori Sakanaka, head of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute (www.jipi.gr.jp), is a retired Immigration Bureau mandarin who actually advocates a multicultural Japan — under a proper immigration policy run by an actual immigration ministry.

In 2007, he offered a new framework for deciding between a "Big Japan" (with a vibrant, growing economy thanks to inflows of NJ) and a "Small Japan" (a parsimonious Asian backwater with a relatively monocultural, elderly population).

In 2009, he offered a clearer vision in a bilingual handbook (available free from JIPI) of policies on assimilating NJ and educating Japanese to accept a multiethnic society. I cribbed from it in my last JBC column (Dec 1) and consider it, in a country where government- sponsored think tanks can't even use the word "immigration" when talking about Japan's future, long-overdue advice.

4) Chipped cards, juminhyo

Again, 2009 was a year of give and take.

On July 8, the Diet adopted policy for (probably remotely trackable) chips to be placed in new "gaijin cards" (which all NJ must carry 24-7 or risk arrest) for better policing. Then, within the same policy, NJ will be listed on Japan's residency certificates (juminhyo).

The latter is good news, since it is a long-standing insult to NJ taxpayers that they are not legally "residents," i.e. not listed with their families (or at all) on a household juminhyo.

However, in a society where citizens are not required to carry any universal ID at all, the policy still feels like one step forward, two steps back.

3) The Savoie abduction case

Huge news on both sides of the pond was Christopher Savoie's Sept. 28 attempt to retrieve his kids from Japan after his ex-wife abducted them from the United States. Things didn't go as planned: The American Consulate in Fukuoka wouldn't let them in, and he was arrested by Japanese police for two weeks until he agreed to get out of Dodge.

Whatever you think about this messy case, the Savoie incident raised necessary attention worldwide about Japan's status as a safe haven for international child abductors, and shone a light on the harsh truth that after a divorce, in both domestic and international cases, there is no enforced visitation or joint custody in Japan — even for Japanese. It also provoked this stark conclusion from your columnist: Until fundamental reforms are made to Japan's family law (which encourages nothing less than parental alienation syndrome), nobody should risk getting married and having kids in Japan.

2) The election of the DPJ

Nothing has occasioned more hope for change in the activist community than the end of five decades of Liberal Democratic Party rule.

Although we are still in wait-and-see mode after 100 days in power, there is a perceptible struggle between the major proponents of the status quo (the bureaucrats) and the Hatoyama Cabinet (which itself is understandably fractious, given the width of its ideological tent).

We have one step forward with permanent residents probably getting the vote in local elections, and another with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama saying at the APEC Summit on Nov. 14 that Japan should "create an environment that is friendly to (NJ) so they voluntarily live in Japan."

But then we have the no-steps- anywhere: The Democratic Party of Japan currently has no plans to consider fundamental issues such as dual nationality, a racial discrimination law, an immigration ministry, or even an immigration policy.

Again, wait and see.

1) The 'repatriation bribe'

This, more than anything, demonstrated how the agents of the status quo (again, the bureaucrats) keep public policy xenophobic.

Twenty years ago they drafted policy that brought in cheap NJ labor as "trainees" and "researchers," then excluded them from labor law protections by not classifying them as "workers." They also brought in nikkei workers (foreigners of Japanese descent) to "explore their Japanese heritage" (but really to install them, again, as cheap labor to stop Japan's factories moving overseas).

Then, after the economic tailspin of 2008, on April Fool's Day of last year the bureaucrats offered the nikkei (not the trainees or researchers, since they didn't have Japanese blood) a bribe to board a plane home, give up their visas and years of pension contributions, and become some other country's problem.

This move, above all the others, showed the true intentions of Japanese government policy: Non-Japanese workers, no matter what investments they make here, are by design tethered to temporary, disposable, revolving-door labor conditions, with no acceptable stake or entitlement in Japan's society.

Bubbling under:

Noriko Calderon (victim of the same xenophobic government policies mentioned above, which even split families apart), Noriko Sakai (who tried to pin her drug issues on foreign dealers), sumo potheads (who showed that toking and nationality were unrelated) and swine flu (which was once again portrayed as an "outsiders' disease" until Japanese caught it too after Golden Week).

2009 was a pretty mixed year. Let's hope 2010 is more progressive.

news20100105lat

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

[U.S. & World > Science > Health]
By Thomas H. Maugh II
January 5, 2010
Weight gain from quitting smoking linked to diabetes
Former smokers have a greater risk of developing diabetes than smokers or nonsmokers. But researchers say that's due to the pounds people tend to gain after quitting.

Smoking raises the risk of diabetes, but new research indicates that -- at least in the short term -- kicking the habit increases the risk even more.

The problem is not really quitting smoking. It's the pounds most people pack on when they give up cigarettes, researchers reported Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Smokers who plan to quit should be very careful not to start eating more and thus gain weight, said epidemiologist Hsin-Chieh "Jessica" Yeh of Johns Hopkins University, the lead author of the study. But the most important message, she said, is "don't begin to smoke in the first place."

Yeh and her colleagues studied 10,892 middle-aged adults who were enrolled in a study to determine their risk of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. None had diabetes when they enrolled between 1987 and 1989. Most were followed for an average of nine years, and 1,254 developed Type 2 diabetes, usually associated with obesity and characterized by the body's reduced ability to use insulin.

The study found that smokers had about a 40% higher risk of contracting diabetes than those who had never smoked.

Surprisingly, however, the risk increased when smokers quit, peaking at about a 70% increased risk in the first three years after quitting, then declining to normal risk after 10 years. On average, those who quit smoking gained about 8.4 pounds during the three-year period and had a waist size increase of 1 1/4 inches. The more weight they gained, and the longer they had been smoking, the higher their risk of developing diabetes.

The team is not sure why the risk eventually fell back to normal after 10 years, Yeh said. Researchers did not measure the patients' weights at that time, so they don't know whether they lost weight or if some other factor was involved.

She emphasized that smokers should not use the findings as an excuse to keep smoking because the risks of increased heart disease, strokes and cancer linked to smoking far outweigh the small increase in risk for diabetes.

But physicians who encourage their patients to quit smoking should also work with them to prevent weight gain, she said.


[U.S. & World > Science > Health]
By Thomas H. Maugh II
January 5, 2010
Refusing chickenpox vaccine puts children at risk
Youths who are not inoculated are nine times more likely to develop a serious enough form of the disease to require medical attention, researchers find.

Children whose parents refuse to let them be vaccinated for chickenpox are nine times as likely as vaccinated children to develop chickenpox that requires medical attention, researchers reported Monday.

Although the conclusion may seem self-evident, it reflects a growing problem with childhood immunizations, said epidemiologist Jason M. Glanz of Kaiser Permanente's Institute for Health Research in Denver, the lead author of the report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Immunizations have been so successful, he said, that some parents are becoming more concerned about the risks of vaccines than they are about the illness.

"Vaccines are becoming victims of their own success," he said.

The results "are in line with what is known about vaccine refusal for other diseases," said Dr. Tracy Lieu of Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study. "It's clear that if you don't vaccinate your kid, the risk of getting a disease is a lot higher."

The vaccine for chickenpox, formally known as varicella, is one parents are most likely to skip because they believe the disease is the least serious preventable childhood illness. But before the varicella vaccine was introduced in 1995, about 4 million U.S. children contracted chickenpox every year, with 10,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths. Those figures have subsequently been reduced by more than 80%.

Chickenpox is characterized by a high fever, an itchy rash, red spots or blisters all over the body, and malaise. It also renders children more susceptible to other infections and can leave permanent scarring.

Complications can be especially severe in children with compromised immune systems due to AIDS, certain other diseases and those who are undergoing anti-rejection treatments after transplants. Such children frequently can't be immunized, and the best way to prevent them from falling ill is to inoculate other children in the community, blocking the spread of the disease.

Glanz and his colleagues studied the electronic health records of 86,993 ages 1 through 8 who were members of the managed-care group Kaiser Permanente Colorado, identifying 133 physician-confirmed cases of varicella. They then compared these children to 493 others, matched for age and gender, who were not infected.

Many of the varicella cases occurred in children too young to be vaccinated, in children who had recently been vaccinated or when it could not be confirmed whether the parents refused vaccination.

The researchers concluded, however, that seven of the cases, about 5%, were in children whose parents refused vaccination, and that those children were nine times more likely to contract the disease than those in the age- and gender-matched control group. One of them had a severe complication, a streptococcal infection that led to hospitalization.

Although the numbers were small, the results were statistically significant.

"The common perception among parents is that they don't believe chickenpox is a serious illness, and they don't believe their children are at risk," Glanz concluded. "This study shows that they are wrong on both counts."

news20100105gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Pollution]
New EU regulations for battery disposal
Rules that require battery retailers to provide disposal facilities come into force this month to divert heavy metals from landfill
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 January 2010 16.26 GMT Article history

New regulations come into force this month that require retailers selling batteries to provide collection and recycling facilities for their eventual disposal.

The rules, part of the EU's batteries directive, are meant to deal with the thousands of tonnes of harmful metals that pollute the environment when used batteries are burned or put into landfill.

According to the Environment Agency, which will be among the organisations to enforce the new rules, the directive will "affect any business that uses, produces, supplies, or disposes of batteries, as well as any business that manufactures or designs battery-powered products".

For consumers, everything from AAA cells to mobile phone batteries and button cells used in hearing aids and watches, must be separated from household rubbish and placed into designated recycling bins in shops or other recycling points. Though the details are yet to be worked out, among the schemes expected to become available to consumers are in-store recycling points, kerbside collection and post-back to manufacturers or vendors.

"The primary intention is to divert batteries away from landfill, to avoid metals such as cadmium and mercury in those batteries from getting into the environment," said Bob Mead, the Environment Agency's project manager. "For portable batteries, the current rate of collection and recycling are pretty low, the government estimates it at around 3%. The directive requires us to get that up to a minimum of 25% by 2012 and 45% by 2016."

Anyone selling more than a tonne of portable batteries a year will have to arrange for the collection, recycling and disposal of waste batteries in proportion to their market share. But Mead said this did not mean retailers would be burdened with layers of extra responsibility. "The retailers themselves are required to do nothing more than provide a point where one of these collection bins can be placed," he said. "They have no responsibilities themselves in treating or recycling the batteries they collect. They merely have to phone up one of the compliance schemes and say: 'I've got some batteries so come and take them away from me.'"

The directive was created to deal with the approximately 800,000 tonnes of automotive batteries, 190,000 tonnes of industrial batteries and 160,000 tonnes of consumer batteries that are placed on the EU market every year. The metals used range from lead and mercury to nickel, cadmium, zinc, lithium and manganese.

According to the European commission, mercury, lead and cadmium are the most problematic substances in the battery waste stream and batteries made with these metals are classified as hazardous waste. When these waste batteries are burned, they contribute to air pollution and, when they end up in landfill, the metals leach into the surrounding land. In additioon, thousands of tonnes of valuable metals, such as nickel, cobalt and silver, could be recovered if batteries did not go to landfills or incinerators.


[News > UK news > Weather]
More travel disruption as heavy snow moves south
Fears over gas and grit stocks with up to 25cm of snowfall expected in parts of UK today
Matthew Weaver, Martin Wainwright and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 January 2010 08.03 GMT Article history

A band of heavy snow moving south from Scotland and northern England is causing widespread travel problems and is likely to cause more disruption as the continuing cold snap prompts concerns over grit and gas supplies.

The National Grid has issued a rare warning to power suppliers to use less gas after a 30% rise on normal seasonal demand. It has urged power companies to switch to coal and order more gas supplies from Belgium and Norway.

Meanwhile councils stock piles of gritting salt for roads are running thin. Emergency deliveries of grit was made to Fife council in Scotland and Pemborkshire in Wales warned that gritting lorries were struggling to cope with the "extraordinary" conditions.

Forecasters are expecting heavy snow for most of the UK today, with up to 25cm (9.8 inches) predicted in some parts prompting the warning of a 60% chance of disruption in most areas.

Manchester airport closed this morning due to heavy snow, and there are problems on roads and railways.

Ten train services between London and Leeds on the East Coast Main Line were cancelled today. Several London to Glasgow services on the line were also stopping at Edinburgh, with a number of others affected.

Budget airline easyJet cancelled a number of flights on its European network, including two between Luton and Milan.

The Highways Agency said the A66 in Cumbria was closed both ways between the junctions with A1 and A685. The closure is expected to last for several hours.

Stephen Davenport, senior meteorologist at MeteoGroup, warned that the cold snap is set in. "So entrenched is this cold-weather pattern that it seems only a major upheaval in the atmosphere will bring a return to something milder.

"Should conditions continue in a similar vein then by March we might just be looking back at one of the coldest winters of the last 100 years."

He warned of "very snowy" conditions from tonight in the south.

"And the highly populated south is likely to see snow that will at times be widespread, persistent and severe enough to bring significant or even major difficulties to infrastructures, particularly transport."

"By Friday or even sooner there will be several centimetres of snow lying over wide areas, to depths of five to 10, or even 15cms. In a few ill-favoured areas the persistence and heaviness of the snow could bring accumulations well in excess of 20 centimetres."

Yesterday the AA reported its busiest ever day, with more than 25,000 breakdowns over the 24 hours.

The AA also warned that the roads were likely to be even busier today when worsening weather conditions combined with the return to school in many areas. Thousands of children are expected to be given more time off school today.

Grit stocks in England are holding up according to the Highways Agency, but Fife council in Scotland had to have several hundred tonnes of salt and grit delivered by the Scottish government after supplies ran low.

Bookmaker Paddy Power cut the odds on this being the coldest January on record from 5/1 to 7/4.

Police in North Yorkshire yesterday brought in mountain rescue teams to search for a man missing in the freezing temperatures. Ian Simpkin, 36, of Wath, near Ripon, North Yorks, left home on foot on Sunday at 10am, but has not been seen since. His parents raised the alarm on Sunday evening. Simpkin, who works at a local scrap yard and is a part-time gamekeeper, had a hospital appointment yesterday, but failed to show up.

Despite an intense search involving police, the Swaledale mountain rescue team, RAF mountain rescue and an RAF helicopter, he remains unaccounted for.

news20100105gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Climate change scepticism will increase hardship for world's poor: IPCC chief
Rajendra Pachauri predicts lobbying will intensify to impede progress to agreement on binding treaty in Mexico City
Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 January 2010 16.42 GMT Article history

Climate change scepticism is likely to surge in 2010 and could exacerbate "hardship" for the planet's poorest people, one of the world's leading authorities on climate change has told the Guardian.

Writing on environmentguardian.co.uk today, Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also dismisses suggestions that he is personally profiting from policies to tackle global warming.

Climate sceptics gained media attention in the run up to the Copenhagen climate summit after alleging that hacked emails between senior climate scientists showed that an important temperature record was flawed — a charge rejected by governments and scientific bodies. In Australia, sceptics within the party led to the ousting of the leader of the opposition over new climate laws.

Pachauri predicted this year would see further scepticism. "Powerful vested interests are perhaps likely to get overactive in the coming months, and would perhaps do everything in their power to impede progress towards a binding agreement that is hoped for by the end of 2010 in Mexico City," he said. "Those opposed to action on climate change are working overtime to see that they can stall action for as long as possible."

After a weak deal in Copenhagen, Pachauri warned that allowing scepticism to delay international action on global warming would endanger the lives of the world's poorest people. "In the end, knowledge and science will undoubtedly triumph, but delay in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases would only lead to worse impacts of climate change and growing hardship for the most vulnerable regions in the world, which are also unfortunately some of the poorest communities on Earth."

Pachauri, a vegetarian, has previously described western lifestyles as unsustainable and advocated a diet including one meat-free day a week. He singled out lobbyists in the US for attempting to delay America's climate legislation, which is crucial for a global deal but is currently stalled in the Senate. Last year the Centre for Public Integrity found that 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence US policies on climate change, while America's oil, gas and coal industry increased its lobbying budget by 50%.

Pachauri said action from President Obama would be needed on top of Senate legislation. "The passage of legislation in that country [the US] will have to be supplemented with several initiatives to be put in place by the executive branch of the government," Pachauri said.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said Pachauri was right on the level of sceptical activity. "We are already witnessing extraordinary efforts by powerful lobbies, in the US and Australia in particular, which are opposed to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. There is a strong alliance of ideologically driven right-wingers, who reject environmental legislation on principle, and lobbyists for some hydrocarbon companies, who place the short-term commercial interests of their clients ahead of the wider public interest. Both have the common goal of delaying restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, and both use the tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry, hiding their true motivations behind inaccurate and misleading claims about uncertainties in the science."

But Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defence Fund, which has been following US climate legislation, said the number of climate sceptic lobbyists was now being matched by companies supporting legislation to cap carbon emissions. However, he added: "Opponents of action and the old sceptics will of course ramp up their lobbying this year as well, as they do anytime the Congress is on the verge of making law. We already have a bill through the House of Representatives and a bipartisan effort underway in the Senate. The President made his commitment clear in Copenhagen to legislation because it's in our national interest. This year is not a dress rehearsal, and everyone on both sides gets that."

On the stolen emails, Pachauri said the contents did not impact on climate science, adding that "the allegations made on the basis of the stolen emails have proved incorrect."

The University of East Anglia is currently undertaking an independent review of the hacking incident, led by senior civil servant Sir Muir Russell. The review is expected to be published in the spring, but a university spokesman said today that Sir Russell will "determine his final timescale after completing his initial scoping exercise". He added that the university had also responded to a letter from the science and technology committee of MPs asking for an explanation of the incident. The IPCC is conducting its own review into the stolen emails.

Pachauri also rebutted claims in The Sunday Telegraph that, through advisory roles for Deutsche Bank, Toyota, Yale University, the Asian Development Bank and others, he was reaping personal financial gain from climate change policies that could be influenced by the reports of the IPCC he chairs. The article claimed Pachauri had been silent on the "highly lucrative commercial jobs", the rewards from which "must run into millions".

In response, he said: "The same group of climate deniers who have been active across the Atlantic have now joined hands to attack me personally. As for pecuniary benefits from advice that I may be rendering to profit-making organisations, these payments are all made directly to my institute, without a single penny being received by me."

The Nobel Peace-prize winning Pachauri called for greater activism and more campaigning to press governments into taking strong action on carbon emissions this year. "Society and grassroots action would have to come into their own, not only to ensure that human society takes responsibility for action at the most basic level, but also to create upward pressure on governments to act decisively. If such grassroots efforts do not spread and intensify, nation states may not be able to resolve the differences that exist between them."


[News > World news > Peru]
Peru's mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter
Climate change is bringing freezing temperatures to poor villages where families have long existed on the margins of survival. Now some must choose whether to save the animals that give them a living, or their children
Annie Kelly in Pichccahuasi
The Observer, Sunday 3 January 2010 Article history

For alpaca farmer Ignacio Beneto Huamani and his young family, life in the Peruvian Andes, at almost 4,700m above sea level, has always been a struggle against the elements. His village of Pichccahuasi, in Peru's Huancavelica region, is little more than a collection of small thatched shelters and herds of alpaca surrounded by beautiful, yet bleakly inhospitable, mountain terrain.

CONTINUED ON newsgdn3

news20100105gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > World news > Peru]

CONTINUED FROM newsgdn2

The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end.

In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

A consequence is that Quechua-speaking farmers and their families, who have managed to subsist for centuries at high altitude, believe they may not make it through the next southern winter.

There have been warnings from meteorologists in Peru that this month will see the Huancavelica region hit by the worst weather conditions in years with plunging temperatures, floods and high winds. The weather is already claiming lives; last month seven people died and scores were treated in hospital after torrential rain caused flash flooding in Ayacucho, the capital of the neighbouring region.

The cold is tipping Pichccahuasi into a spiralling decline brought on by pneumonia, bronchitis and hunger.

Although designed to withstand the cold, Huamani's house is crumbling and his roof, half-collapsed from the snowstorms that battered the village last June and July, offers scant protection from the freezing wind and rain.

His family, including four young children, sleep on wet ground night after night. His children have not yet recovered from illnesses from this year's winter and he is terrified that they won't be resilient enough to endure further freezing weather.

He points to his youngest son, aged two, who trails after him, soaking wet and racked with bouts of coughing, as he goes about his work

"All the children here are sick, they all have breathing problems," he says. "The problem is there is too much cold, too much rain. We have had no time to recover from last winter before it has begun again. There is nothing I can do."

Climate change campaigners and development NGOs say that the failure of Copenhagen has signed the death warrant for hundreds of thousands of the world's poorest and that a quarter of a million children will die before world leaders meet again to try to thrash out another deal at the United Nations next climate change conference in Mexico in December. Among them may be these children of the high mountains.

Enduring prolonged sub-zero temperatures is a matter of course for Peru's indigenous mountain people, many of whom live at more than 3,000m above sea level. Scores die every year from the cold, but in recent years the number of people succumbing to the freezing temperatures has triggered talk of a national crisis.

This year the neighbouring district of Puno saw a severe spike in child mortality as the winter brought months of high winds and relentless ice storms. Government figures record that more than 300 children died in Puno in May last year from the cold; NGOs say that the figure was probably much higher.

Local government officers in Huancavelica could not provide figures for how many children died here last year, but admit that child mortality is rising in the region.

"There have been many dead children. I don't know how many, but there are more and more and mainly the deaths have been from pneumonia," says Rafael Rojas Huanqui, regional director for the Defensa Civil, the national disaster protection agency. "They have no resilience of any kind to deal with the weather getting colder."

Huancavelica has always been one of Peru's most deprived regions, with 80% of families, largely indigenous farmers living at heights of up to 5,000m, subsisting below the poverty line.

The changing weather has come on top of a lack of basic health services, animal diseases, rising food prices and a declining availability of water.

Since 2007, children's acute respiratory infections have increased by 30% and staple food production has fallen by 44%. Latest figures show that one in 10 children do not live to see their first birthday.

Ignacio Huamani says that the main problem his village faces is a lack of water, as more extreme temperatures mean there is no grass or drinking water for the alpaca that people breed for wool and meat. "If the alpaca die, then we all die," he says. He works with his neighbours to build shelters for the alpaca to give some protection from the elements, but he is fighting a losing battle.

Since 2007, alpaca mortality in Huancavelica has more than doubled, with pregnant animals aborting their calves, a huge psychological as well as economic blow to people who rely on their ability to keep their herds alive.

Any money the village has is spent on trying to keep their animals from dying. NGOs and children's groups working in the area warn that in such desperate situations, the lives of alpaca become more valuable than those of children.

"The welfare of children is sidelined because the situation is so bad that everything has become about the survival of the animals, both for the families themselves and the agencies who are trying to support them," says Teresa Carpio, director of Save the Children Peru. She expects to see child mortality in the region rise this year.

"In the west we tend to think that children take priority above all else, but when there is this level of desperation, children can be the last to get the attention they so badly need – until it is too late."

Four hours' drive away in the larger community of Incahuasi, a health clinic is full of women and children waiting to see a visiting nurse. Helen dos Santos trained in nearby Ayacucho, but unlike most other locally trained health workers has stayed to work in the region. Now she spends her week travelling on foot between villages, walking for up to five hours a day.

"It's always been poor here, but now the situation is getting critical," she says. She points to the 20 or so children lined up in the waiting room. "All of these children are malnourished, some very dangerously so, and winter is still five months away.

"I don't have any strong antibiotics to give them, only aspirin. I can't even refer them to the hospital in Huancavelica because nobody has enough money to pay for transport there and the men here are reluctant to spend on anything but the animals."

Rojas Huanqui says the regional government is working hard to strengthen health systems with more doctors and nurses in "most" of the villages, but admits that the state has been unable to deliver the basic services required.

"I'm not going to deny that it's really hard to supply the great amount of villages there are, and they are used to getting everything for free, so the progress that the government makes is limited, but we do need to implement stronger medicines up in the villages that need it most," he says.

There is anger among Huancavelica's mountain people at what they see as the inaction of regional and central government. Although aid packages and clothing bundles arrive with the onset of winter, it does not compensate for what these people believe is the ambivalence of the authorities to their fate.

"We can only put ourselves in God's hands, because nobody else is helping us," says Carolina Flores, a mother of six whose six-month-old daughter is dangerously ill with pneumonia. "Our men have gone and talked to people in the government and told them what is happening to us, but they do nothing. We are not important to them, so we die up here and nobody helps us."

For how long the mountain people are prepared to wait for action remains to be seen. After hundreds of years of systematic discrimination, there are signs that indigenous people across Peru are prepared to fight what they consider to be threats to their survival.

Last July, dozens of indigenous protesters were killed and scores injured when riots broke out in Bagua Grande in the Amazonas region over claims that the government was giving away land to oil and gas drilling. The relationship between Peru's indigenous people and the government of the president, Alan García remains tense.

Those working with indigenous populations in Huancavelica are warning that governments cannot expect people in threatened villages to accept their fate lying down.

"The conduct of the authorities in relation to Peru's Quechua mountain communities is similar to the one they take to indigenous communities throughout the country, which is to ignore their problems because they don't believe that they are a priority," says Dr Enrique Moya, the former dean of Huamanga University, who now works with local NGOs which are running support programmes in the region.

"Religion is still a strong sedative in these communities, but although the first reaction to what they are facing might be fatalism – the feeling that they are in God's hands – we are starting to see a change.

"The difficulty is that the government only reacts when things turn violent, so I think what we have here is potentially an area of great conflict, because no matter how used to poverty they are, these people won't be left to die."

news20100105nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 4 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.0
News
India's nuclear future
Srikumar Banerjee, head of India's Atomic Energy Commission, outlines plans for the country's energy supply.
K. S. Jayaraman

{{Srikumar Banerjee (left) takes over from the outgoing head of India's Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar.}
AEC/DAE}

With India's energy needs growing rapidly, the country is planning a major expansion of its nuclear-power capacity.

To do so, it will need to greatly increase international collaboration, including negotiating contracts for the purchase of reactor technology and nuclear fuel. But critics say that such deals would weaken the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the international agreement that aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, which India has not signed.

Srikumar Banerjee took over as head of the country's Atomic Energy Commission and the government's Department of Atomic Energy on 30 November. He also continues to lead the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), which focuses on military applications.

Banerjee speaks to Nature about India's nuclear ambitions, and the balance between its civilian and military programmes.

How do you plan to increase India's nuclear-power capacity?

Presently we generate 4.7 gigawatts of nuclear power from 18 reactors — about 3% of the total electricity generation in India. We would like to increase that to 60 gigawatts by about 2035, which will be roughly 10% of expected total installed capacity.

{{“We have always emphasized that we should have the right to reprocess imported nuclear fuel to separate plutonium.”}
Srikumar Banerjee
Atomic Energy Commission}

India's established reserve of uranium will allow us to raise our installed capacity only to 10 gigawatts. We are intensifying our efforts to search for uranium in the country, but that takes time. But now that the Nuclear Suppliers Group [the international group that oversees nuclear exports] has relaxed its guidelines, we can access international markets.

Agreements with the United States, France and Russia on civilian nuclear cooperation have been signed. Negotiations between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India and companies in France and Russia are under way for finalizing the import of nuclear reactors, and we have already placed a purchase order for uranium with Kazakhstan.

What reactors will you build, and where will they be located?

We will add eight to ten 700-megawatt pressurized heavy-water reactors, several fast-breeder reactors and an advanced heavy-water reactor, all of indigenous design. Concurrently, we will set up light-water reactors in technical cooperation with foreign vendors. These imported reactors, each with a capacity of 1,000–1,650 megawatts, will be set up on energy parks at coastal sites including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.

We are also in the process of identifying stable underground geological sites for long-term storage of nuclear waste.

India has said it will reprocess imported nuclear fuel to extract plutonium, which can be used to build weapons. Has this made it difficult to strike deals with international partners?

India has committed to adopting the closed fuel cycle option, in which the plutonium recovered from spent fuel is utilized for energy production using fast-breeder reactors.

We have always emphasized that we should have the right to reprocess imported nuclear fuel to separate plutonium, under the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, of course. This provision is already available in the Indo–US deal.

India has relatively little uranium, but it owns about a quarter of the world's thorium deposits. What are your plans to develop reactors fuelled by thorium?

Large-scale utilization of thorium for power generation can start only when we have accumulated enough uranium-233 [produced when neutrons collide with thorium].

To gain sufficient experience with the thorium fuel cycle, we are also planning to set up an advanced heavy-water reactor, in which nearly two-thirds of the energy output will come from fission of uranium-233.

Is India's civilian nuclear programme completely separate from its weapons programme?

Indian strategic programme is 100% indigenous and has no relation whatsoever to the proposed international civilian nuclear cooperation. We do not see any difficulty in continuing our strategic programme without any hindrance to the civilian power-generation programme.

news20100105bbc

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

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 22:32 GMT, Monday, 4 January 2010
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
Nasa's Kepler planet-hunter detects five worlds
Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope has detected its first five exoplanets, or planets beyond our Solar System.

The observatory, which was launched last year to find other Earths, made the discoveries in its first few weeks of science operations.

Although the new worlds are all bigger than our Neptune, the US space agency says the haul shows the telescope is working well and is very sensitive.

The exoplanets have been given the names Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b.

They were announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC.

The planets range in size from an object that has a radius four times that of Earth, to worlds much bigger than even our Jupiter.

And they all circle very close to their parent stars, following orbits that range from about 3.2 to 4.9 days.

This proximity and the fact that the host stars are themselves much hotter than our Sun means Kepler's new exoplanets experience an intense roasting.

Intriguing density

Estimated temperatures go from about 1,200C to 1,650C (2,200F to 3,000F).

"The planets we found are all hotter than molten lava; they all simply glow with their temperatures," said Bill Borucki, Kepler's lead scientist from Nasa's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

{{THE KEPLER SPACE TELESCOPE}
> Will study more than 100,000 suns
> Continuously for 4 to 6+ years
> Tuned to see Earth-size planets
> Will target the habitable zone
> Will also see Mars to Jupiter sizes}

"In fact the upper two are hotter than molten iron and looking at them might be like looking at a blast furnace. They are very bright in their own right and certainly no place to look for life."

Kepler 7b will intrigue many scientists. It is one of the lowest-density exoplanets (about 0.17 grams per cubic centimetre) yet discovered.

"The average density of this planet with its core is about the same as Styrofoam," explained Dr Borucki. "So it's an amazingly light planet, something I'm sure theoreticians will be delighted to look at in terms of trying to understand [its] structure."

Kepler blasted into space atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 6 March, 2009.

It is equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space. The telescope's mission is to continuously and simultaneously observe more than 100,000 stars.

It senses the presence of planets by looking for a tiny "shadowing" effect when one of them passes in front of its parent star.

'Water worlds'

Kepler's detectors, built by UK firm e2v, have extraordinary sensitivity.

Nasa says that if the observatory were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front of it.

The space agency hopes this sensitivity will lead it to planets that are not only Earth-size but which orbit their stars at distances more favourable to life, where liquid water might potentially reside on their surfaces.

The mission's scientists told the AAS meeting that Kepler had measured hundreds of possible planet signatures but that these needed further investigation to establish their true nature.

To confirm the existence of the most ideal Earth-like planets would take a few years, they warned.

In the meantime, all detections will help scientists improve their statistics on the distributions of planet size and orbital period.

The follow-up observations needed to confirm the new exoplanets' existence used a suite of ground-based facilities including the Keck I telescope in Hawaii.


[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 18:30 GMT, Monday, 4 January 2010
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
Copenhagen climate deal 'satisfies' Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia says it is "satisfied" with the conclusion of last month's UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

However, the country's lead negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban told BBC News that the UN climate process may be heading for stalemate, like world trade talks.

Meanwhile, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has become the latest world leader to admit that last month's summit made little progress.

The status of the agreement made in Copenhagen remains unclear.

The summit concluded without adoption of the "Copenhagen Accord" instigated by Brazil, China, India and South Africa (the BASIC group) and the US.

Most countries endorsed it, but not all; and governments could only agree to recognise the accord's existence.

A number of governments and leaders, including US President Barack Obama, have since admitted that this conclusion fell short of many peoples' expectations.

{{There is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low-greenhouse-gas-emissions and energy-efficient-development path}
Manmohan Singh}

But Mr Al-Sabban said Saudi Arabia was content.

"I would like to express our satisfaction with the outcome," he wrote in an e-mail to BBC News.

"We were among the 25 or so countries who positively negotiated the accord along with the world leaders, and we had succeeded in including the interest of OPEC countries in the Copenhagen Accord."

However, a number of politicians from industrialised nations have since blamed the developing world for blocking progress; and this, he said, would exacerbate mistrust between rich and poor.

"If so, we may be heading to the same future of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round, which is facing a total stalemate."

Talks on the Doha Round began in 2001, but remain stalled over disputes between developed and developing world, largely over agricultural subsidies.

Environment groups have regularly accused Saudi Arabia of trying to block progress within the UN climate process to safeguard its fossil fuel industry.

The world's biggest oil producer has consistently argued that it should be compensated for any loss of revenue caused by international restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

Basic issues

Because of the unique circumstances of its conception, the status of the Copenhagen Accord remains unclear.

Governments have until the end of January to submit "actions" that they are prepared to take under the accord.

{Mr Brown said Copenhagen may yet yield a way forward}

It is expected that those deciding to do so will merely re-state existing commitments on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and on funding climate protection in the poorest parts of the world.

As one of the Copenhagen Accord's architects, India has not escaped criticism about the agreement's lack of ambition.

Speaking at the Indian Science Congress, Mr Singh said India "must not lag behind" in the adoption of low-carbon technologies.

"We were able to make only limited progress at the Copenhagen summit, and no-one was satisfied with the outcome," he said.

"And yet there is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low-greenhouse-gas-emissions and energy-efficient-development path."

Reports indicate that the BASIC group is to meet later this month to plot a course forward.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, told the BBC that progress based on the Copenhagen Accord was possible.

"I think it's not impossible that the groundwork that was done at Copenhagen could lead to what you might call a global agreement that everybody is happy to stand by," he said.

news20100105cnn1

[Top stories] from [CNN.com]

[World > U.S.]
By Barbara Starr, CNN
January 5, 2010 -- Updated 1215 GMT (2015 HKT)
Source: Jordanian double-agent killed 7 CIA officers in suicide blast
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> U.S. official: Man had been used by U.S., Jordan for intelligence services
> Source says man had given "very detailed good information that was of high interest"
> Former official: Bomber was met off-base by U.S. officials who failed to search him
> Man killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian military officer last week in Afghanistan

Washington (CNN) -- The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian military officer last week in Afghanistan was a Jordanian double-agent, a former U.S. intelligence official told CNN Monday.

The bomber was a source who came to the base camp in Khost near the Pakistan border for a meeting on December 30, a senior U.S. official also confirmed.

The man had been used by both countries' intelligence services in the past, and had provided information about high-value targets, the senior U.S. official said.

"Yes, it was a joint U.S.-Jordanian source who had provided over the period of his cooperation a lot of very detailed good information that was of high interest at the most senior levels of the U.S government," the former U.S. intelligence official said.

The security breach occurred because the bomber was met off-base by U.S. intelligence officials who failed to search him before they put him in a car and drove him onto Forward Operating Base Chapman, the former intelligence official said.

Both the Jordanian and U.S. intelligence services believed the man was loyal, according to the former intelligence official.

"Clearly there is a lot of soul searching" at CIA headquarters in Virginia, according to the former intelligence official.

The bomber was identified as Human Khalil Abu-Mulal al Balawi, from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, also home to the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the one-time leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the former intelligence official said.

Both the Jordanian and U.S. intelligence agencies apparently believed al Balawi had been rehabilitated from extremist views and were using him to hunt Ayman al Zawahiri, the second-ranking al Qaeda official to Osama bin Laden, the former intelligence official said.

Jordanian intelligence services have long covertly cooperated with the United States, specifically in the hunt for al Zawahiri and bin Laden, because of the ability of Jordanian agents to blend into the al Qaeda organization, noted the former intelligence official.

Also killed in last week's attack in Afghanistan was Jordanian Army Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a cousin of King Abdullah of Jordan. The Jordanian government has not publicly commented on the specific circumstances of bin Zeid's death, but U.S. sources confirmed bin Zeid was present and was the Jordanian operative working closely with al Balawi.

The CIA refused to comment Monday, saying the matter was under investigation. The bodies of the seven CIA employees were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to a private ceremony attended by CIA Director Leon Panetta, other agency and national security officials, and friends and family.

A Jordanian official who did not want to be identified said bin Zeid "was killed on Wednesday in the line of duty as he was taking part in a humanitarian mission carried out by the Jordan Armed Forces in Afghanistan."

The Jordanian official added: "Jordan's position in the war on terror is clear; we are fully committed to fighting al Qaeda, which is a threat to Jordan as it is a threat to the United States. We are also committed to continuing our cooperation with the United States and the international community in the fight against terror and in defeating al Qaeda."

In a posting on its Web site last week, the Taliban in Afghanistan claimed the bomber was an Afghan National Army soldier.

On Sunday, however, Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud said in an e-mail that "we claim the responsibility for the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan."

"The suicide bomber was a Jordanian national. This will be admitted by the CIA and the Jordanian government" the message said.

The attack occurred at a forward operating base, which a U.S. intelligence official acknowledged was a crucial CIA post and a "hub of activity." The main purpose of CIA forward operating bases in Afghanistan, officials have noted, is to recruit informants and to plan and coordinate covert operations, including drone surveillance and targeting.

The attack was "a huge blow, symbolically and tactically," because it eliminated such a large number of CIA officers, who can require years to become ingrained in the region, said Reva Bhalla, director of analysis for STRATFOR -- an international intelligence company. In addition, the attack showed the ability of the Taliban to penetrate perhaps the most difficult of targets -- a CIA base, she said.

Former CIA official Robert Richer called it "the greatest loss of life for the Central Intelligence Agency since the Beirut Embassy bombing" in 1983, which killed eight agents.

An American intelligence official vowed last week that the United States would avenge the attack. Two of those killed were contractors with private security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, a former intelligence official told CNN. The CIA considers contractors to be officers.

On Sunday, a local administration official and an intelligence official told CNN that two guided missiles struck a compound in the Pakistani village of Musaki in North Waziristan suspected of being a gathering place for local and foreign militants.

The attack killed Sadiq Noor, a teacher; his 9-year-old son; and three people from outside the country, according to the sources, who said the missiles were believed to have been fired by an unmanned drone. There was no immediate U.S. confirmation of the missile attack.


[World]
January 5, 2010 -- Updated 1241 GMT (2041 HKT)
U.S. reopens embassy in Yemen
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> U.S. Embassy in Yemen reopens after being closed due to threats by al Qaeda
> U.S. Secretary of State calls Yemen situation a possible threat to regional, global security
> Great Britain closed its embassy in Yemen
> France, Spain, Japan and Germany made changes to enhance embassy security

(CNN) -- The U.S. Embassy in Yemen, which was closed over the weekend due to security concerns, reopened Tuesday.

A statement posted on the embassy's Web site said that "successful counter-terrorism operations" conducted by Yemeni security forces had addressed specific concerns.

"Nevertheless, the threat of terrorist attacks against American interests remains high and the Embassy continues to urge its citizens in Yemen to be vigilant and take prudent security measures," the statement said.

A senior State Department official, who did not want to speak on the record due to the sensitive nature of the information, said Yemeni authorities have helped the United States with additional security precautions at the embassy site.

Yemen fertile ground for terror groups

The United States' decision to close its embassy in Yemen came after intelligence suggested that four al Qaeda operatives may be planning an attack on the compound, a senior administration official said Monday.

The United States had information that a group of eight terrorists had been planning an attack, the official said. Three were killed by Yemeni forces in recent days and another was captured wearing a suicide vest, but the other four were believed to be at large, the official said.

Earlier Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the situation in Yemen a possible threat to regional and global security. However, Clinton commended Yemen for taking action against al Qaeda networks and added: "We are reiterating our commitment to assist in those efforts."

The United States and Britain closed their embassies Sunday. Britain's Foreign Office also cited security concerns and remained closed on Tuesday.

"The British Embassy in Yemen will remain closed to the public today," a statement from the embassy said. "Some embassy personnel will be in and whoever needs to contact the embassy can do it via the phone or email but people won't be able to walk into the embassy."

Several other nations also made changes at their embassies Monday, including Japan, France, Spain and Germany. Each country cited the need for increased security measures.

France closed its embassy to the public. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Tuesday that embassy employees will continue their work, but without any visits from the public.

Valero said the embassy will reopen once work to secure the site, already in progress before the latest threat, has been finished.

Japan halted service at the consulate section of its embassy in Sanaa. The Japanese Foreign Ministry said the decision was based on the threat of terror, though not a specific threat. The embassy continued functioning.

Spain restricted public access to its embassy, the Spanish Foreign Ministry said, adding that the embassy continued to function "normally."

Germany said that while its embassy remained fully operational, security measures were increased. A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said fewer visitors were allowed into the embassy compound. The embassy had not received any terror threats, the spokesman said.

CONTINUED ON newscnn2

news20100105cnn2

[Top stories] from [CNN.com]

[World]

CONTINUED FROM newscnn1

The wave of concerns was triggered by last month's attempted terrorist attack on a U.S.-bound airliner. Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility. On Saturday, U.S. President Barack Obama linked the Nigerian suspect, 23-year-old Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, to the group, which is a combination of al Qaeda networks in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The U.S. Embassy in Yemen has come under attack numerous times in recent years. In September 2008, 10 people were killed -- among them police and civilians, but no embassy employees -- when insurgents opened fire and set off explosions outside the compound.

The U.S. Embassy last week, on December 31, notified Americans in Yemen to remain on alert for the possibility of terrorist violence.

"I think what we've seen over the past several years in Yemen is an increasing strengthening of al Qaeda forces in Yemen," John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, told CNN. "There are several hundred al Qaeda members there."

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said the attempted Christmas Day attack onboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan was in retaliation for airstrikes against it on December 17 and 24.


[U.S.]
By Barbara Starr, CNN
January 5, 2010 -- Updated 1215 GMT (2015 HKT)
Source: Jordanian double-agent killed 7 CIA officers in suicide blast
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> U.S. official: Man had been used by U.S., Jordan for intelligence services
> Source says man had given "very detailed good information that was of high interest"
> Former official: Bomber was met off-base by U.S. officials who failed to search him
> Man killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian military officer last week in Afghanistan

Washington (CNN) -- The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA officials and a Jordanian military officer last week in Afghanistan was a Jordanian double-agent, a former U.S. intelligence official told CNN Monday.

The bomber was a source who came to the base camp in Khost near the Pakistan border for a meeting on December 30, a senior U.S. official also confirmed.

The man had been used by both countries' intelligence services in the past, and had provided information about high-value targets, the senior U.S. official said.

"Yes, it was a joint U.S.-Jordanian source who had provided over the period of his cooperation a lot of very detailed good information that was of high interest at the most senior levels of the U.S government," the former U.S. intelligence official said.

The security breach occurred because the bomber was met off-base by U.S. intelligence officials who failed to search him before they put him in a car and drove him onto Forward Operating Base Chapman, the former intelligence official said.

Both the Jordanian and U.S. intelligence services believed the man was loyal, according to the former intelligence official.

"Clearly there is a lot of soul searching" at CIA headquarters in Virginia, according to the former intelligence official.

The bomber was identified as Human Khalil Abu-Mulal al Balawi, from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, also home to the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the one-time leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the former intelligence official said.

Both the Jordanian and U.S. intelligence agencies apparently believed al Balawi had been rehabilitated from extremist views and were using him to hunt Ayman al Zawahiri, the second-ranking al Qaeda official to Osama bin Laden, the former intelligence official said.

Jordanian intelligence services have long covertly cooperated with the United States, specifically in the hunt for al Zawahiri and bin Laden, because of the ability of Jordanian agents to blend into the al Qaeda organization, noted the former intelligence official.

Also killed in last week's attack in Afghanistan was Jordanian Army Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a cousin of King Abdullah of Jordan. The Jordanian government has not publicly commented on the specific circumstances of bin Zeid's death, but U.S. sources confirmed bin Zeid was present and was the Jordanian operative working closely with al Balawi.

The CIA refused to comment Monday, saying the matter was under investigation. The bodies of the seven CIA employees were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to a private ceremony attended by CIA Director Leon Panetta, other agency and national security officials, and friends and family.

A Jordanian official who did not want to be identified said bin Zeid "was killed on Wednesday in the line of duty as he was taking part in a humanitarian mission carried out by the Jordan Armed Forces in Afghanistan."

The Jordanian official added: "Jordan's position in the war on terror is clear; we are fully committed to fighting al Qaeda, which is a threat to Jordan as it is a threat to the United States. We are also committed to continuing our cooperation with the United States and the international community in the fight against terror and in defeating al Qaeda."

In a posting on its Web site last week, the Taliban in Afghanistan claimed the bomber was an Afghan National Army soldier.

On Sunday, however, Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud said in an e-mail that "we claim the responsibility for the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan."

"The suicide bomber was a Jordanian national. This will be admitted by the CIA and the Jordanian government" the message said.

The attack occurred at a forward operating base, which a U.S. intelligence official acknowledged was a crucial CIA post and a "hub of activity." The main purpose of CIA forward operating bases in Afghanistan, officials have noted, is to recruit informants and to plan and coordinate covert operations, including drone surveillance and targeting.

The attack was "a huge blow, symbolically and tactically," because it eliminated such a large number of CIA officers, who can require years to become ingrained in the region, said Reva Bhalla, director of analysis for STRATFOR -- an international intelligence company. In addition, the attack showed the ability of the Taliban to penetrate perhaps the most difficult of targets -- a CIA base, she said.

Former CIA official Robert Richer called it "the greatest loss of life for the Central Intelligence Agency since the Beirut Embassy bombing" in 1983, which killed eight agents.

An American intelligence official vowed last week that the United States would avenge the attack. Two of those killed were contractors with private security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, a former intelligence official told CNN. The CIA considers contractors to be officers.

On Sunday, a local administration official and an intelligence official told CNN that two guided missiles struck a compound in the Pakistani village of Musaki in North Waziristan suspected of being a gathering place for local and foreign militants.

The attack killed Sadiq Noor, a teacher; his 9-year-old son; and three people from outside the country, according to the sources, who said the missiles were believed to have been fired by an unmanned drone. There was no immediate U.S. confirmation of the missile attack.


[World]
January 5, 2010 -- Updated 1332 GMT (2132 HKT)
More than 1 million in Somalia going hungry, aid agency says
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
> Recent attacks make it near impossible for aid agencies to deliver food in southern Somalia
> The United Nations say more than 1 million people going hungry
>The World Food Program says it is under threat from Islamist militants

(CNN) -- Recent threats and attacks from militant groups have made it almost impossible for the World Food Program to get food to hungry people in southern Somaila, the aid agency said Tuesday.

The actions by militant groups have led to a partial suspension food distribution in much of southern Somalia, the agency said in a statement.

This has left more than 1 million people in the area in peril, the United Nations food agency said.

"WFP is deeply concerned about rising hunger and suffering among the most vulnerable due to these unprecedented and inhumane attacks on purely humanitarian operations," the agency said in a statement.

One of the recent threats to the food agency occurred in late November when Islamist militants in Somalia warned the agency to buy food from Somali farmers or stop sending aid to the impoverished African country.

That threat came from al-Shabaab, a group that has waged a bloody insurgency against the U.N.-backed government of transitional President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Four of the agency's staff members were killed in Somalia between August 2008 and January 2009.

Despite difficulties in southern Somalia, the agency says it is still dispensing food in the capital city Mogadishu and several other areas.

The agency says it is still able to reach more than 60 percent of those in need or about 1.8 million people.

news20100105reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
LONDON
Sun Jan 3, 2010 2:17pm EST
UK's Brown says climate change agreement possible
LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday he believed a global agreement to combat climate change might still be possible despite the limited results of last month's Copenhagen meeting.

"I've got an idea about how we can actually move this forward over the next few months and I'll be working on this," Brown told the BBC, when asked what came next after the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen.

"I think it's not impossible that the groundwork that was done at Copenhagen could lead to what you might call a global agreement that everybody is happy to stand by," Brown said.

"I'll be working on that in the next few months and I can see a way forward because what prevented an agreement was suspicion and fear and forms of protectionism that I think we've got to get over," he said, without giving details of his plan.

The Copenhagen talks ended with a bare-minimum agreement when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers that fell far short of the conference's original goals.

Environmentalists and many policymakers voiced disappointment at the outcome.

The accord set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, seen as a threshold for dangerous changes such as more floods, droughts and rising seas, but failed to say how this would be achieved.

Another round of climate talks is scheduled for November 2010 in Mexico. Negotiators are hoping to nail down then what they failed to achieve in Copenhagen -- a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

(Reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Janet Lawrence)


[Green Business]
BEIJING
Mon Jan 4, 2010 8:57am EST
PetroChina says oil pipeline supply unaffected by spill
BEIJING (Reuters) - PetroChina's newly launched oil pipeline running from northwest to central China is running normally after the company shut off a branch line that spilled diesel into a river last week, company officials said on Monday.

PetroChina switched off the Weinan branch line in northern Shaanxi province last Wednesday, following a leak of 150,000 liters of diesel into a river that has been largely contained.

The new branch line is part of the 1,188 km pipeline that pumps fuel from PetroChina's refining center in Lanzhou, northwestern Gansu province, to Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province, which started operations last March.

"There has been no impact on supplies. Volumes being pumped through the trunk line have been very sporadic anyway because of weak demand and competing train transport," said an official familiar with the pipeline's operations.

PetroChina plans to extend the trunk line to Changsha, Hunan province, with an annual supply capacity of 300,000 barrels per day, one of the country's largest by capacity.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Chris Lewis)


[Green Business]
SANTIAGO
Mon Jan 4, 2010 11:20am EST
Bolivia demands access to Pacific Ocean: Arica tunnel
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Three Chilean architects proposed a plan on Friday to expand sea access for Bolivia, which has been landlocked for more than a century, by constructing a tunnel that will run through Chile's first region in Arica.

Sea access has been a major issue for Bolivia since the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific that allowed Chile to annex a vast northern expanse of land from both Peru and Bolivia.

The proposed tunnel would stretch from the Bolivian border through Chile's Arica to an artificial island built in the Pacific Ocean.

However, Peru is disputing maritime border issues with Chile as they believe the artificial island, built in the Pacific Ocean, will be within Peruvian waters and not Chilean waters.

"Neither Chile or Peru will lose not one centimeter of land and at the same time its a solution to Bolivia's problem (...) to communicate with the great Pacific ocean with all its economic characteristics," said architect Carlos Martner, who's idea it was to construct the tunnel.

Chile says its maritime border with Peru is a horizontal line in the Pacific that was established in agreements signed in 1952 and 1954.

But Peru claims that those are not border demarcation pacts, but rather fishing agreements between both countries, and says the border should be considered as a diagonal line equidistant between both countries.

The conflict between Bolivia and Chile these days is squarely at the center of Bolivia's refusal to export any of its abundant natural gas supplies to energy-poor Chile, which last year was at the brink of an electric rationing.

"I don't want to think that this demand (...) of water access between Peru and Chile will affect and delay one of the possible historical solutions for sovereign access to the sea," said Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Bolivian Consulate, Magali Zegarra, who is located in Arica, said Chile will obviously invest in the project as construction will be on Chilean territory and therefore under Chilean jurisdiction.

But all three countries, Peru, Chile and Bolivia will need to come to a mutual agreement before construction can begin.

SANTIAGO, June 5 (Reuters) - Landlocked Bolivia could have its coveted sea access with the construction of a tunnel that will run through Chile's northern region of Arica, according to a plan proposed by three Chilean architects.

Sea access has been a major issue for La Paz since the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific that allowed Chile to annex a vast northern expanse of land from both Peru and Bolivia and leave South America's poorest nation without a maritime outlet to export its natural gas richness.

The proposed tunnel would stretch from the Bolivian border through Chile's Arica to an artificial island built in the Pacific Ocean.

"Neither Chile or Peru will lose not one centimeter of land and at the same time its a solution to Bolivia's problem (...) to communicate with the great Pacific ocean with all its economic characteristics," said to Reuters ? Architect Carlos Martner, who's idea it was to construct the tunnel.

But the plan won't be that simple.

The artificial island would be located in waters that are in the middle of a maritime spat between Peru and Chile that escalated to the International Court of Justice.

Santiago says its maritime border with Peru is a horizontal line in the Pacific that was established in agreements signed in 1952 and 1954.

But Lima claims that those are not border demarcation pacts, but rather fishing agreements between both countries, and says the border should be considered as a diagonal line equidistant between both countries.

In other hand, recent diplomatic friction between Peru and Bolivia could hurt the proposed plan.

Bolivian president, Evo Morales, said this week that his Peruvian counterpart, Alan Garcia, is using the maritime demand at The Hague to "harm Chile and Bolivia in their negotiations" about Bolivian access to the Pacific Ocean.

Morales has also criticized Peru for giving asylum to three former Bolivian ministers accused in their country of genocide.

La Paz and Santiago, which don't have diplomatic relations, recently agree an agenda that includes Bolivian demand for a sovereign access to the Pacific.

Bolivia has the second biggest natural gas reserve of South America, after Venezuela.

(Reporting by Alexia Vlahos)

news20100105reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
BEIJING
Mon Jan 4, 2010 11:30am EST
China eyes LNG import deals, private oil stockpiles
BEIJING (Reuters) - China hopes to clinch more deals on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and speed up construction of LNG receiving terminals, gas pipeline and storage facilities this year, the country's energy head said.

The country will take advantage of excess supply in the international LNG market now to speed up negotiations of overseas gas purchases, Zhang Guobao said in remarks published on Monday in the China Energy News, a newspaper run by the official People's Daily.

Zhang, head of the National Energy Administration, said construction of LNG receiving terminals including Zhuhai, Shenzhen and Shandong will be pushed forward this year.

China will further develop major gas fields in central and western China as well as offshore gas resources to maintain fast increases in domestic gas output, Zhang said in a national energy conference last week.

China will approve a third gas pipeline linking Shaanxi and Beijing and a new pipe connecting Qinghuangdao city in Hebei province to Shenyang, capital of northeastern Liaoning province, he said.

Zhang also said China would expand oil reserves by developing private storage capacity, in addition to the second phase of state oil stockpiles.

China will push ahead with planned joint oil refining projects including the 400,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Jieyang refinery between China and Venezuela, the 300,000-bpd Guangdong refinery between China and Kuwait and the 200,000-bpd Tianjin refinery between China and Russia, he said.

Zhang said one of the government's major tasks this year were to work on an energy development plan for the five years through 2015 and on scientific forecasts for energy demand by 2020.

To realize the goal of boosting non-fossil fuels to 15 percent of energy consumption by 2020, China needs to have more than 300 gigawatts of hydropower generating capacity, 70 GW of nuclear power capacity, and output from renewable sources including wind and solar power topping 150 million tonnes of coal equivalent by then.

"The development of hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and solar energy have to be increased further if energy demand grows too fast, or the goal will not be achieved."

Zhang said China will not allow coal production and consumption to grow without any restraints as it will result in serious environmental pollution and coal mine accidents.

"Fast increases in coal output and demand also pose intense pressure and difficulty to cope with climate change."

He also said his administration would insist on a cautious approach in approving coal-to-gas and coal-to-oil projects.

The approval of the coal to gas project in Inner Mongolia by Huineng Group and the Fuxin project in Liaoning by Datang should be considered only after the successful start-up of Datang's coal-to-gas project in Inner Mongolia.

"It is time to summarize the experience of the direct coal-to-oil project by Shenhua Group and indirect coal-to-oil projects by Yitai and Lu'an to perfect coal to oil technologies," he said.


[Green Business]
Marcel Michelson and Tom Bergin
Mon Jan 4, 2010 3:40pm EST
Total in $2 billion shale gas tie-up with Chesapeake
PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) - France's Total signed a $2.25 billion tie-up with Chesapeake Energy, becoming the latest international oil company to take advantage of low gas prices to snap up shale gas assets.

Total said it would take a 25 percent stake in Chesapeake's Barnett Shale gas fields in north Texas, paying $800 million in cash and providing $1.45 billion toward the fields' development over up to six years.

Analysts said the deal made strategic sense for France's largest company by market value and that the price was in line with recent transactions.

"The deal highlights a disciplined approach to capital allocation and that M&A focus at Total remains more toward smaller 'bolt-on' asset acquisitions, as opposed to larger corporate deals," Morgan Stanley said in a research note.

Chesapeake shares were up $1.94 or 7.5 percent at $27.82 on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday. Total's shares closed 1.8 percent higher at 45.795 euros.

The deal follows similar investments by U.S. and European rivals in North American shale gas, which is harder and more expensive to extract than gas from traditional reservoirs.

The drilling techniques needed to produce natural gas from shale were pioneered in the Barnett Shale in the early 1980s.

The Barnett Shale is the largest producing field in North America, but because of its development and age, some believe it is nearing peak production. This contrasts with newer formations like the Marcellus Shale in the Eastern United States, which is still in the early stages of development.

Chesapeake has made similar tie-ups with BP and Statoil in the past 18 months, while in December, the United States' largest oil and gas company, Exxon Mobil, agreed to buy shale gas producer XTO Energy Inc for about $30 billion.

The investments are spurred by confidence that growing demand for energy will boost gas prices from their current depressed levels, ensuring fat margins.

While U.S. natural gas prices have recovered somewhat from 7-1/2 year lows, heavy supplies and weak demand are still a burden. In 2009, the average price for gas at the benchmark Henry Hub delivery point tumbled 55 percent to $3.99 per million British thermal units.

Western companies are also looking closer to home for investments, as barriers to investment in resource-rich countries such as Russia, Saudi Arabia limit their options.

The latest deal also puts Chesapeake -- which has suffered liquidity issues in the past -- on firmer financial footing, allowing the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, company to lower its net debt to capital ratio and capital commitments, analysts said.

NEW RESERVES

The deal will give Total additional production of 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of gas, and reserves of 130 million barrels of oil equivalent, with the possibility that additional drilling could prove up reserves twice this size.

Total is paying about $3 per thousand cubic feet equivalent (Mcfe) for proved reserves in its deal with Chesapeake, up from the $2.84 per Mcfe that Exxon paid for proved reserves in its deal to buy XTO, according to data from energy research firm Simmons & Co International.

Total said entry into the shale gas business would help Total develop expertise, which could be used in developing unconventional gas reserves internationally and help it expand its position more broadly in the U.S. natural gas market.

However, shale gas production is facing growing scrutiny from regulators and tougher opposition from environmentalists, who say the fluids used to crack open gas-rich rocks can contaminate ground water.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it had "serious reservations" about allowing gas drilling in New York City's watershed, warning of a threat to drinking water.

About 60 environmentalists and elected officials rallied on the steps of New York's City Hall on Monday, demanding the state withdraw its plan to allow shale drilling in the city's watershed until more studies are completed.

Total said it was conscious of the environmental risks but that it had confidence in Chesapeake's capacity to manage these.

Under the terms of the deal, Total will fund 60 percent of Chesapeake's share of drilling and completion expenditures until the end of 2012, Chesapeake said in a statement.

In a conference call, Chesapeake Chief Executive Officer Aubrey McClendon said he may strike a similar deal with Total in the Eagle Ford Shale in south Texas, but he cautioned that play is still in the early stages of development.

(Reporting by Marcel Michelson, with additional reporting by Anna Driver in Houston and Dan Trotta in New York; Editing by James Regan, John Stonestreet and Matthew Lewis)


[Green Business]
NAIROBI
Mon Jan 4, 2010 11:57pm EST
Kenya plans to put up 10 MW wind energy project
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya invited on Tuesday tenders for the construction of a 10 megawatt wind power project on the outskirts of the capital, after receiving a 20-million-euro ($28.60 million) loan from Spain.

"The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) invites sealed tenders from eligible candidates for the design, manufacture, supply, delivery, erection, testing and commissioning of 10 MW Ngong II Wind Power Project," an advertisement in the local Daily Nation said.

Kenya's energy ministry delegated the responsibility of picking a contractor to KenGen.

The company, which generates some 77 percent of Kenya's electricity output, commissioned a 5.1 MW wind-sourced project in 2009. ($1=.6992 Euro)

(Reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

news20100105reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
LONDON
Mon Jan 4, 2010 1:36pm EST
EU carbon climbs 5 percent at start of 2010 trade
LONDON (Reuters) - European Union carbon emissions futures climbed five percent at the start of 2010 trade on Monday, after closing 21 percent lower at the end of 2009 versus the previous year.

EU Allowances for December delivery gained 60 cents or 4.79 percent to 13.13 euros ($18.78) a tonne at 1120 GMT, with light volume at 1,500 lots traded.

EUAs rose to a high of 13.19 euros in morning trade -- levels not seen since December 21.

"Crude oil is above $80 a barrel and natural gas is up," an emissions trader said, explaining why EUA prices had risen.

British gas prices jumped on Monday as cold weather raised heating demand and Norwegian supply was slow following a leak. [nLDE6030P6] Gas for Tuesday rose 4 percent to 39.50 pence per therm.

U.S. crude oil rose to $81 a barrel on Monday, the highest in more than two months, on news that Russia has halted oil supplies to Belarus and on cold weather in the United States.

German Calendar 2011 baseload power on the EEX rose 2.35 percent to 52.75 euros per megawatt hour.

However, traders and analysts widely expect EUAs to fall in early 2010 due to industrial selling, adding to losses made in December after a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen failed to agree a legally binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

"We expect an average price in the Jan-March quarter of 12.50 euros with a low of around 10.80," said Jean-Francois Cauvet at Paris-based COER2.

Industrial firms should now have calculated their emissions output for 2009 and will have a better idea now of how many surplus EUAs they can dispose of this year, traders said.

For an updated price forecast poll, click on

If heavy selling materializes, it could weigh on prices.

U.N.-backed certified emissions reductions rose 46 cents or 4.19 percent to 11.44 euros a tonne. The EUA-CER spread was at 1.69 euros.


[Green Business]
Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON
Mon Jan 4, 2010 7:17pm EST
U.S. government seeks agreement on Cape Wind power project
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department said on Monday it hopes to reach an agreement by March 1 over the controversial and long-delayed Cape Wind power project that would be located in federal waters off Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Approval of the offshore wind farm would be a big boost to the Obama administration's plan to increase U.S. renewable energy production and create advance-technology jobs, while a defeat of the project could undermine White House efforts to develop a clean energy economy.

The Interior Department wants to meet with representatives of the Massachusetts historic preservation office, which is siding with the native American Indian tribes who want to block the project, along with Cape Wind's operators and the National Park Service's historic listing director.

A department spokesman said it was still unclear if representatives of the native tribes that sued to block the project would be invited to next week's meeting. Their status may be affected by the lawsuit, he said.

"I am hopeful that an agreement among the parties can be reached by March 1," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "If an agreement among the parties can't be reached, I will be prepared to take the steps necessary to bring the permit process to conclusion."

The Cape Wind project in 2001 became the country's first major proposed offshore wind farm. Its developers, Cape Wind Associates LLC, aim to construct 130 towers, which will soar 440 feet above the surface of the Nantucket Sound.

The proposed $1 billion wind farm would provide electricity to about 400,000 homes, but would be within view of popular Cape Cod resorts and homes, prompting serious opposition from business leaders and politicians.

The tall turbines would be arranged in a grid pattern in 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound, just offshore of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island.

Salazar had said the department would make a decision on the project by end of last year. But the decision on the wind farm was held up by local native tribes who requested that the area where the project would be located be designated a "traditional cultural property."

The National Park Service determined on Monday that Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, requiring the Interior Department to consider any related significant archeological, historic and cultural values when reviewing the permit for Cape Wind.

In its ruling, the Park Service said the area now under water in Nantucket Sound is culturally important to the native tribes who sued because the land was exposed thousands of years of ago and their ancestors walked on it to Martha's Vineyard.

Salazar then said he would meet with the affected parties in the project next week to find "a common-sense agreement on actions that could be taken to minimize and mitigate Cape Wind's potential impacts on historic and cultural resources."

If there is a not a deal by March 1, a department spokesman said Salazar would consult with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an independent group created by Congress that on which the Interior Department has a seat. Salazar would then make a final decision on the project based on the panel's recommendation.

Cape Wind officials could not be reached for comment.

(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Christian Wiessner)


[Green Business]
PARIS
Mon Jan 4, 2010 12:10pm EST
France tries to thrash out new carbon tax formula
PARIS (Reuters) - France's government is trying to piece together new carbon tax legislation that would cover big polluters without double-charging them, after a previous attempt to tax emissions was scrapped at the last minute.

French ministers have been scrambling to come up with a workable system for compensating companies that are already part of a European Union emissions trading scheme, while closing the many loopholes that led to the failure of the first proposal.

"There should be no complete exemption (from the tax)," Chantal Jouanno, junior minister for ecology, said on French radio on Monday. "However, there could be compensation for sectors already subject to certain charges corresponding to the carbon tax."

Set at 17 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide and promoted by President Nicolas Sarkozy as a crucial weapon in the fight against climate change, the tax has been criticized by some as hurting big emitters and by others as giving them an easy ride.

Budget Minister Eric Woerth said on Sunday the government would keep in place exemptions for participants in the EU scheme, as it was not the aim of the tax to hurt French competitiveness.

Others suggested making factories and power plants pay the tax, then deducting it from the price of future carbon emissions permits.

Such permits are free for now. Under the EU's emissions trading scheme, however, power plants will pay for all carbon permits from 2013, and factories will pay for some.

"Let's find a way of making it neutral for big businesses," Gilles Carrez, an influential legislator from Sarkozy's UMP party, told La Tribune newspaper on Monday.

"I suggest the tax be deducted from the price of permits once they have to be paid for."

France's constitutional council annulled the original carbon tax two days before it was due to come into force on January 1, arguing that its many exemptions violated the principle of equality among taxpayers.

The loopholes were meant to pacify people whose livelihoods depend on cars or lorries, as well as polluters who feared they would pay the tax on top of paying for permits.

Sarkozy has said he will revisit the tax legislation, and the government is due to present a revised version on January 20. However, he could find it difficult to persuade lawmakers to back the disputed project so close to regional elections in March.

(Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou and Sophie Hardach; editing by Andrew Roche)

news20100105reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Ed Stoddard
DALLAS
Mon Jan 4, 2010 10:35pm EST
Exclusive: New rules to limit wind power in Wyoming
DALLAS (Reuters) - Wind energy development is "functionally precluded" in about 20 percent of Wyoming under new Bureau of Land Management guidelines laid out on Monday to protect a threatened bird, the governor's office said.

"It functionally precludes it (wind power development) in about 20 percent of Wyoming," Ryan Lance, deputy chief of staff to Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, told Reuters in a phone interview.

He said the new rules -- which have been lauded by environmental groups such as Audubon which lobbied for them -- also meant that in key areas future developments by the oil and gas industry would be restricted to one pad per square mile.

But Lance said the rules, which came into affect on Monday, should not apply "to existing development. But the reality going forward will be that new developments will have to be relegated to the one oil pad per square mile."

Audubon in a statement on Monday said: "Current rules, which will remain in effect for the 80 percent of Wyoming land outside the core areas, permit as many as 60 well pads per square mile."

The bird that has created all the flap is the sage grouse, an iconic bird of the U.S. west which is threatened by habitat destruction. Lance said about 23 percent of Wyoming is regarded as "core habitat" vital to the bird's survival in the state and that 70 percent of those lands are under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Concerns about such regulations had already shrouded some wind projects in uncertainty, such as a 198-turbine $600 million wind farm proposed by Horizon Wind Energy among others.

Environmentalists say that the wind turbines and the development that goes with them, including roads and transmission lines, fragment and disrupt critical sage habitat and disturb the grouse and other wildlife.

Lance said in these key areas wind power projects could come onstream down the road but added that: "The bar is going to be extremely high and you will have to address mortality such that there is no net loss of sage grouse population."

Lance said bringing in such protections for the bird were a way to head off a federal listing under the Endangered Species Act which could see more restrictions slapped on development.

"Ultimately, we are taking the actions that we are taking because we have to find a way to preclude the need to list the species under the Endangered Species Act which would put severe restraints on Wyoming's economy," he said.

(Reporting by Ed Stoddard, Editing by Phil Berlowitz)


[Green Business]
Steve James
Mon Jan 4, 2010 1:10pm EST
Beauty of waterbirds captured in new book
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - For the first 45 years of his life, Ted Cross was oblivious to the birds around him.

Then, for unknown reasons, he became obsessed with them.

For the past four decades, Cross has pursued his passion for photographing waterbirds across four continents -- from Snowy Egrets, which were close to extinction because their plumes fetched high prices from hat makers, to Red Knots that fly 8,000 miles from Patagonia to northern Canada to nest, to that symbol of America, the bald eagle.

His photo safaris have taken him to the Arctic Circle, Far East Siberia, isolated south Pacific islands and, nearer to home, Green Island, Texas.

The results are included in a coffee-table book called "Waterbirds."

Cross, 85, ex-editor of the Harvard Law Review, adviser to the Johnson and Nixon administrations on anti-poverty programs, a governor of the American Stock Exchange and author of books on the economics of blacks in America, talked to Reuters about the one thing that truly took over his life.

Q: Were you interested in birds growing up?

A: "I went all those years and I'm just amazed looking back because now it's almost a disease with me. It's so important in my life. Back then I had no interest whatsoever so it's one of those mysterious things of why things happen.

"Anyway it descended on me like a bad cold and it became very important for me for 40 years. I can't explain it but here I am in eastern Siberia, 15 time zones from New York, going to see a bird!"

Q: All species of birds?

A: "My concentration is on waterbirds who have a special quality of courage, beauty and a capacity for remarkable acrobatics. It's unbelievable what they can do in the air, especially in courtship."

Q: Where was the most difficult place to shoot?

A: "Koloma, Siberia in the former USSR. The trouble with Koloma, the site where they (birds) are, is that it was the site of the gulags. It's hard as hell to get in there and you get permission if you're lucky but they don't like someone with a camera. I am trustee of a scientific organization in Philadelphia so I had connections with the scientific people in Russia. But it was tough because they were very sensitive about what was going on there.

"So these birds are right on top of the gulags. It's where they nest and that's where you have to go."

Q: Were you interested in photography before?

A: "I used a camera in the (U.S.) Navy to take pictures, but the bird thing was unrelated. I could never afford a Leica, so I used a knockoff, but always a 35mm."

Q: What are the ideal conditions for bird photography?

A: "Up on Ellesmere island, part of Canada on the North Pole, it's warm in the summer and the sun never sets and when you take a picture with the sun just above the horizon, the light is perfect. You know the rules of photography, I never take a picture after 10 o'clock in the morning and I always take it in late afternoon."

Q: How do you ensure that you get the picture you want?

A: "You have to know a lot. You've got to know where they are, you've got to be patient, the light has to be right, the wind has to be right. Birds are creatures of habit. You go into a situation where they are and you see the bird you like and you watch him for 20 minutes or so and you wait for them to go back, because that's how they are, how they behave.

"I often take a book to read. Patience is probably the principal trait."

Q: How has digital photography changed the technique?

A: "It's done wonders. The color is terrific. What it really does is you can take a burst of shots when they're flying and the odds favor you. It was too expensive with Kodachrome. Digital is free. You can shoot 1,000 pictures in one day.

"You take 20 pictures and you've probably got it. In the old days, the cameras were not designed to take that many shots. The burst with the Nikon I use now is 10 frames per second.

"My wife is a photographer and she goes and takes pictures of people in the Middle East. She sees a picture, takes it and that's it.

(Reporting by Steve James; Editing by Patricia Reaney)

news20100105reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Michael Perry
SYDNEY
Mon Jan 4, 2010 10:59pm EST
Australia baked under hottest decade on record
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia experienced its hottest decade on record from 2000 to 2009 due to global warming, the nation's bureau of meteorology said on Tuesday, as annual summer bushfires again burn drought lands and destroy homes.

The average temperature in Australia over the past 10 years was 0.48 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, said the Bureau of Meteorology said in its annual climate statement.

And 2010 is forecast to be even hotter, with temperatures likely to be between 0.5 and 1 degrees above average.

"We're getting these increasingly warm temperatures, not just for Australia but globally. Climate change, global warming is clearly continuing," said bureau climatologist David Jones.

"We're in the latter stages of an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean and what that means for Australian and global temperatures is that 2010 is likely to be another very warm year -- perhaps even the warmest on record."

Environment Minister Peter Garrett used the report to attack opposition politicians for blocking the government's key climate policy, a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) aimed at reducing greenhouses gases causing global warming.

"Australia is one of the hottest and driest inhabited places on earth and our environment and economy will be one of the hardest and fastest hit by climate change," said Garrett.

"Today's statement finds that the patterns of the last year and the decade are consistent with global warming. It (passing the ETS) is in the national interest and it is in the interest of the world," he said in a statement.

The government has promised to reintroduce its ETS legislation to parliament in February, a move which may trigger an early election in 2010 if the legislation is again defeated.

An election is due in late 2010.

EXTREME BUSHFIRES, HEATWAVES

The year 2009 will be remembered for "extreme bushfires, dust-storms, lingering rainfall deficiencies, areas of flooding and record-breaking heatwaves", said the bureau.

In fact, 2009 was Australia's second warmest year on record, with the annual mean temperature 0.90 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, driven by three record-breaking heatwaves that caused Australia's most deadly bushfires, killing 173 people.

"To get one of them in a year would have been unusual. To get three is just really quite remarkable," said Jones.

Outback Australia was warming more quickly than other parts of the country, with some inland areas warming at twice the rate of coastal regions, said the bureau.

But as Australia warmed, with large tracts of the country battling a decade-long drought, the northern part of the country was becoming wetter, said the bureau.

Floods now cover large parts of northern New South Wales state and the tropical state of Queensland.

"Australia as a whole has been getting warmer for about 50-60 years and it's actually been tending to get wetter," said Jones. "You see this paradox -- the country, particularly in the north, it's getting wetter but is also warming up." (Source: Bureau of Meterology here)

To read in-depth articles on Australasian carbon risks and opportunities, visit Carbon Central - Australia's Climate Change Hub (here), which brings together several of Australia's leading climate-change advisers and solution-providers in one place.

(Editing by Alex Richardson)


[Green Business]
Patrick Rucker
VALLE DE BRAVO, Mexico
Mon Jan 4, 2010 9:44pm EST
Mexico City battles water crisis with taxes, pleas
VALLE DE BRAVO, Mexico (Reuters) - Lake Avandaro has long been the emblem of leisure in this wealthy, colonial town west of Mexico City, but the capital sucked it half-dry last spring.

Ever thirstier, Mexico City diverted tonnes of water from the lake to the capital, putting the quaint village of Valle de Bravo in jeopardy as a popular weekend vacation spot for the rich.

Water skiers and boaters had to dodge emerging rocks as the lake level dropped to half its normal volume.

"I was born here and I have never seen it at that level," said Carlos Gonzalez, 33, manager of the floating Los Pericos restaurant that was in danger of resting on the lakebed just a few months ago.

Mexico City, one of the world's biggest cities at 20 million people, has long struggled with a lack of water but the crisis worsened last year due to drought that has left reservoirs at record lows.

Water authorities increasingly turned to Lake Avandaro, nestled in a picturesque wooded area, to satisfy demand. Outrage from wealthy residents halted the worst of the draining and a deal was eventually reached to keep the lake level at 75 percent.

Mexico City lawmakers in December agreed to increase water tariffs for all users in 2010 and cut generous subsidies, but that hard-fought change may not be enough.

Sudden cuts in the water supply are frequent and many residents know their water by the color it leaves the spout.

"It comes out like tamarind juice and then yellow, yellow, yellow," said Maricela Martinez who shares a small house with her extended family in the poor Iztapalapa neighborhood.

"At times it comes out worse - putrid like dead flowers thrown away," she said.

The Martinez family have long made allowances for poor service by having drinking water delivered in 20-liter (5.28 gallon) jugs while the liquid that comes from the pipes is only fit for houseplants, they said.

Mexico City's wealthiest residents will pay more than three times as much for their water service as the city's poorest under the new tax structure. Annual water costs for a wealthy family still should not top 515 pesos ($40) a year, local media reports.

The new tax structure will eliminate "ridiculously low" levies and represents a first step to creating a self-sustaining system, said Ramon Aguirre, director of Mexico City's water department.

"The clear path to resolving this problem is in higher tariffs," Aguirre said.

Yet despite the higher levies, water is still relatively cheap compared to other capital cities around the world. Wealthier Mexico City residents use as much as 300 liters of water per day, half again the rate set by residents in European capitals, said Gustavo Saltiel, a World Bank development expert based in Mexico.

WASTED WATER

Leaks and theft mean nearly 40 percent of Mexico City water is lost before it reaches the tap and only half of what is left is metered. Officials are in a desperate battle to serve the 20 million residents and the business community at a time of declining rainfall.

"Business as usual is not sustainable," said Saltiel, who is advising the Mexican government on its water crisis. "Can you bring water from far away? Yes, but how much? And how much of this scarce resource is available?"

A huge lake system that once covered Mexico City's vast urban plain and nurtured a vibrant Aztec civilization has long vanished due to explosive population growth and inordinate water use.

The nearest aquifers are depleted, prompting buildings downtown to sink slowly. Meanwhile, engineers are trying to tap distant waterways.

Officials limited water service to many Mexico City neighborhoods last spring in the face of a dry spell not seen in nearly 70 years. New tariffs and a public awareness campaign should help curtail demand so that such drastic steps are not needed this year, said Aguirre.

Ironically, the capital often suffers from a deluge of water. In the summer rainy season, downpours hit the city almost nightly for several months. But much of the rain is not captured and inadequate drainage means that the city often chokes.

A busted sewer pipe in the outskirts of the city created a river of flood water that smashed cars, closed subway stations and killed an elderly couple in September. A later downpour blocked access to the city's main refuse dump, backing up garbage for days.

(Reporting by Patrick Rucker; research by David Cutler, editing by Philip Barbara)


[Green Business]
NEW YORK
Mon Jan 4, 2010 1:06pm EST
U.S. December weather coldest since 2000: Planalytics
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States experienced its coldest winter in nine years in December as snow storms swept across the country, private weather forecaster Planalytics said on Monday.

Every region in the United States trended colder than normal, Planalytics said, which helped boost energy prices as consumers nationwide turned up their heating.

"Following the warmest November since 2001, the month of December 2009 ended the coldest since 2000," Planalytics said on Monday.

The highly populated northeast saw its coldest December since 2005, as did the southeast, Planalytics said. According to the National Weather Service, heating degree days in December for the whole United States were 867, 50 above the norm and 43 more than last year.

Degree days, a measure of departure in the mean daily temperature from 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius), are used to reflect demand for energy to heat or cool homes and businesses.

Heating oil prices rose nearly 10 percent in December, to $2.14 per gallon and natural gas prices rose 15 percent to above $5.50 per mmBtu, as consumers turned up the heat in their homes.