| |  | | | | | SHUTTING DOWN Feed My Inbox will be shutting down on January 10, 2013. To find an alternative service for email updates, visit this page. | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Family's lawsuit target federal prosecutor and ATF managers who were responsible for failed guns operation on Mexico border The family of a murdered Border Patrol agent has sued federal officials over the botched Fast and Furious operation to track smuggled guns to Mexico. Agent Brian Terry was mortally wounded on December 14, 2010, in a firefight north of the Arizona-Mexico border between US agents and five men who had sneaked into the country to rob marijuana smugglers. Federal authorities conducting Fast and Furious have faced tough criticism for allowing suspected straw gun buyers for a smuggling ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest them and seize weapons. The lawsuit filed Thursday and made publicly available on Friday came from Terry's parents against six managers and investigators for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The family also sued a federal prosecutor who had previously handled the case but is no longer on it, and the owner of the gun store where two rifles found in the firefight's aftermath were bought. The family alleges that the ATF officials and federal prosecutor created a risk to law enforcement officers such as Terry and that the firearms agents should have known their actions would lead to injuries and deaths to civilians and police officers in America and Mexico. The family also alleged that firearms agents and the prosecutor sought to cover up the link between Terry's death and the botched gun smuggling investigation. The "Fast and Furious" operation was launched in 2009 to catch trafficking kingpins, but agents lost track of about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons involved. Authorities say the ring was believed to have supplied the Sinaloa cartel with guns. Mexico's drug cartels often seek out guns in the U.S. because gun laws in Mexico are more restrictive than in the U.S. Some guns purchased by the ring were later found at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. The probe's failures were revealed and later examined in congressional inquiries. So far, 15 of the 20 people charged in the gun smuggling case have pleaded guilty to charges. Authorities have a separate case pending in federal court in Tucson against five men charged with murder in Terry's death. So far, one man has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Of the five men accused in Terry's killing, two are in custody, and three others remain fugitives.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Police are holding a news conference in Newtown, Connecticut, after a shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Anglo-Dutch oil group's boss says a takeover was considered in past two years and refuses to deny it has dropped the idea Shell has reignited speculation about a potential takeover of BP after its chief executive spoke publicly about the Anglo-Dutch group's recent interest in buying its fiercest rival, whose share price is still recovering from the Gulf of Mexico blowout. Peter Voser, the Shell boss, told a German newspaper that Shell had considered a move on BP in the past two years and answered "no comment" to the question of whether that ambition remained. "I can't imagine that there was anyone in our industry that didn't have a look at it. At the end of the day we're all business people," Voser is quoted as saying. Former BP chief executive John Browne revealed in his memoirs that discussions had taken place between the two companies in 2004 when Shell was smaller by market capitalisation. But Voser's comments that Shell considered making a bid for BP in the past two years, according to an advance copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, will inevitably rekindle excitement in the City that a mega-merger could still be on the cards. Voser noted that following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, BP's share price fell sharply, and still had not completely recovered. Equity analysts have speculated over the past 18 months that a BP wounded by the Deepwater Horizon accident was dangerously vulnerable to a foreign predator. But big state-owned groups from China and Russia were seen as the most likely potential buyers, with all the political ramifications that would come with those kinds of approaches. BP has recently agreed a multibillion-pound share swap and exploration deal with Russia's state-controlled oil company, Rosneft, but there would be nothing to stop a Shell bid for BP's wider share capital. The London-based BP is still suffering from a near $40bn (£24.7bn) sell-off of global assets needed to pay for the claims and liabilities from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. At their lowest point in early June 2011, BP shares were trading at just 296p, valuing the group at £55.6bn compared to a high of more than double that before the oil spill - worst such incident in the US. They have since moved up to 426p but the oil group is still dogged by the US department of justice, which is pressing on with a criminal case and reiterating its belief that it may have been grossly negligent. Legal specialists have indicated that a successful gross negligence charge would leave BP facing penalties of more than $20bn under the local Clean Water Act. In the same interview, Voser warned that Europe shouldn't reject fracking as a means of extracting natural gas from shale. "Europe should know that it's about the competitiveness of its industry," he said, after Britain this week decided to allow the controversial shale drilling technique to restart. The US has gained immense industrial benefits from lower natural gas prices over the past few years, Voser added. The gas price there has fallen hugely after the US allowed its shale gas reserves to be exploited using the process, but the practice is still banned in France due to environmental concerns.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Connecticut state police say unidentified gunman killed 27 people in one of the worst mass shootings in American history America was confronted with one of its worst ever mass shootings on Friday when 20 children and six adults were shot dead by a gunman at an elementary school in Connecticut. The massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, about 65 miles north-east of New York, is understood to have been carried out by a lone gunman, who was also found dead at the scene. State police lieutenant Paul Vance said 18 children died at the scene, and two more died in hospital. In addition to the six adults found dead at the school, another individual who lived with the gunman was also killed at a second location, Vance said. By 6.30pm Friday night, nine hours after the killing began, the bodies of the victims and the gunman remained inside the school building. Sandy Hook, which had recently updated its security procedures, teaches children from kindergarten to fourth grade, ages five to 10. The scale of the tragedy and the age of the victims shocked a country that has seen many mass shootings, and prompted immediate calls for tougher gun controls. But Barack Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, refused to engage with the issue, telling reporters at a White House briefing that "today was not the day". But later, in an emotional press conference at the White House, Barack Obama suggested that he may take action. Fighting back tears, he said: "We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news I react not as a president, but as anybody else would – as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do." Citing a number of major shootings this year alone, Obama continued: "Whether it's an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago – these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics." Police said they had made a "tentative identification" of the gunman but would not confirm the name. The Associated Press and other news organisations quoted law enforcement sources naming Adam Lanza, 20. His mother, Nancy, reported to be a teacher at the school, was presumed dead, law enforcement officials told AP. Lanza's elder brother Ryan, 24, was questioned by police but is not believed to have any connection to the shooting. He had earlier been wrongly identified as the gunman, apparently because officials transposed the names when briefing journalists. As darkness fell on Friday evening, police were still refusing to confirm many of the details. Police said the first 911 call came just after 9.30am. As all schools were put on lockdown as a precaution, state and local officers responded to the scene and immediately entered the building to begin a thorough search of all classrooms. "Our main objective was to evacuate … any and all students and faculty," Vance told reporters. Teachers had locked their classrooms, and were cowering under desks and in closets while the shooting went on. Some witnesses said they heard at least 100 shots. The gunman was armed with two handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer. A third weapon, a .223 calibre rifle, was later found in the back of his car. Pictures of the immediate aftermath of the shooting showed surviving children, many of them visibly upset, being led by police away from the building in a crocodile line with hands on each other's shoulders. Some told their parents they had been told by the police officers evacuating the school to hold hands and close their eyes when passing certain rooms. The shootings took place in two rooms in one section of the school, police said. As news of the shooting began to circulate, parents were seen running toward the building to find out if their children were amongst those shot. Young children at Sandy Hook gave chilling accounts of the shooting to their parents. "They just told us how heroic their teachers were," said Howie Ziperstein, whose sons aged seven and nine were among the survivors. "One of my children was in the gym and was told to go in the corner and hide. When they saw a police officer coming who told them go run as fast as you can to the fire house. Ziperstein's wife met the boys at the fire house and brought them home. "My younger son said he heard gunshots," he said. "He said they locked doors and put desks in front of certain doors and just waited." Ziperstein said the seven-year-old was finally able to leave the classroom when a police officer came to the door. "There was a person with a gun laying on the ground; they had to walk around him," Ziperstein said. "They were told to keep their eyes closed, but what kid if you tell them to do that actually keeps their eyes closed." Ziperstein was eventually reunited with his children at the family home. "It was just relief. They came running in the house and we hugged each other. It was almost like a miracle." Richard Wilford's seven-year-old son, Richie, told of hearing a noise that sounded like cans falling at the time of the attack. "I could try to explain it, but I'm sure I would fail," said Wilford. "There's no words that I could come up with that would even come close to describing the sheer terror of hearing that your son is in a place, or your child's in a place, where there's been violence. "You don't know the details of that violence, you don't know the condition of your child and you can't do anything to immediately help them or protect them. It is a powerless and terrifying experience." Robert Licata said his six-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher. "That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he told the AP. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends." Licata said the shooter didn't say a word. Stephen Delgiadice said his eight-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine. "It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said. The shooting comes towards the end of a year that has seen a number of mass shootings including an assault at a movie theatre in Colorado that killed 12 people and an attack at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that took the lives of six worshipers. On Monday, two people were killed by a gunman at a shopping mall in Portland, Oregon.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | King Edward VII hospital says it 'made it clear there was no criticism' of nurse over Duchess of Cambridge prank call The King Edward VII hospital defended its treatment of nurse Jacintha Saldanha and her family as it held a memorial in her honour on Friday. Staff gathered at the London hospital to pay their respects to Saldanha, 46, a mother of two, who was found hanged last Friday, three days after taking a hoax call from an Australian radio station about the Duchess of Cambridge's condition. A spokeswoman dismissed as "inaccurate" reports questioning the hospital's contact with Saldanha's family in Bristol. "We have been in regular contact with them since shortly after Jacintha's death a week ago, offering them whatever support we could and the opportunity to meet at any time," she said. The hospital met the family "earlier in the week, and answered all of their questions in full". On claims that Saldanha had criticised hospital staff in one of three suicide notes, she said: "No one at the hospital has seen these notes, and so we cannot comment on the reports or their accuracy." She said, following the prank call, "hospital management offered her their support, and told her that they considered her the victim of a cruel hoax. They stood by her actions, and made it clear there was no criticism of her, and that there would be no disciplinary action of any kind." Labour MP Keith Vaz, representing the family, has written to the hospital's chief executive, John Lofthouse, calling for him to release the "full facts" of what happened. Lord Glenarthur, hospital chairman, said on Friday: "We have been co-operating fully with the police and the coroner's investigation ever since Jacintha's death. We are determined to understand the full facts of what happened, and hope that everyone will join with us in assisting the coroner in the best way to achieve this." Lofthouse said: "We will continue to do all we can for Jacintha's family. But we understand completely that whatever we do for them, it will never be enough to bring back their beloved wife and mother." Saldanha, who was found in her nurse's quarters, had transferred the call from two DJ's posing as the Queen and Prince Charles to a colleague, who gave details of the duchess's condition hours after her admission with a very acute form of morning sickness. Sydney police are investigating death threats against the 2Day FM DJs. A police spokesman said that they had seized a letter that contained "a number of threats". Police would not confirm the nature of the latest threat but it is thought it was directed against Michael Christian, who along with Mel Greig made the prank call. Sydney media reported that a number of staff and senior management at the radio station had been moved into secure accommodation and given 24-hour security protection. A spokesperson for the station's owners said: "The safety of our employees is an absolute priority. We have sensible measures in place, as we always do, to ensure our people are safe. This is now a matter for the police and we trust they will investigate any specific threats that emerge."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Two-day summit was supposed to lay out a grand plan and timetable for reforming and stabilising the euro regime European leaders wound up their final summit of 2012 on Friday in much the same manner as they started the year – kicking the euro crisis can down the road, playing for time, crossing their fingers, hoping the worst is behind them. In almost three years since the Greek drama erupted in February 2010 and spread quickly around the fringes of the eurozone, the leaders have never quite managed to get ahead of the curve despite 22 summits and countless meetings of eurozone finance ministers. This week's two-day summit in Brussels repeated the pattern. It was supposed to lay out a grand plan and timetable for reforming and stabilising the euro regime through a battery of federalising political and fiscal moves. In the event, the documents from the EU council president, Herman Van Rompuy, were shredded amid more clashes over fundamentals between Berlin and Paris, while an even more ambitious blueprint from the Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, was simply ignored. "One wonders how these two gentlemen will enjoy Christmas," quipped Andrew Duff, the Liberal Democrat MEP and ardent European federalist. Van Rompuy, who has had a very bad month, was told to come back in the middle of next year with a better, more modest plan. The mood was darkened further by German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissing claims that the worst was over for the eurozone and stressing that the bloc faced two years of painful reforms, slow growth and high unemployment. "The changes we are going through are very difficult and painful," she said. "We have tough times ahead of us that cannot be solved with one big step." Despite the stalemate and the seeming complacency, leaders concluded their summit keen to list the year's achievements. And they do have things to brag about. A year ago Greece's days in the euro looked numbered. This week it got €34.4bn (£28bn) in bailout funds, albeit six months late. There will be no departure from the euro soon. "Grexit is dead," crowed the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras. The bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, an embryo European monetary fund, is up and running. There is agreement it can be used to rescue failing banks without adding to government debt – though there is no deal on whether, and when, to do that. Despite Bank of Italy figures showing Italian public debt had risen above €2tn for the first time in October, borrowing costs for Italy and Spain have fallen sharply from highs in the late spring, taking the edge off the crisis. The big shift this week was the deal on the start of a single supervisor for the eurozone banking sector, with authority vested in the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. This looks like a euro glass that is half full and gives the leaders reasons to cheer. But a half-full glass is also half empty. The real fights over the banking supervisor, involving money and who pays to shore-up or wind-up failing banks and guarantee depositors, are still to come and will be vicious. The Germans – mainly, but not only – are not interested in having their banks taxed to create a fund that could then be spent, say, to mitigate the impact of a bad Portuguese bank, which is how the so-called common resolution regime is supposed to work. "The Germans are fighting a brilliant delaying campaign to hollow out the banking union," said a senior diplomat. "They want to avoid all mutualisation. All common pots of money are off the table until after the German election." The election is next September when Merkel will run for a third term. All action on the euro crisis will be minimised pending that outcome. It is, by some margin, Europe's biggest political event next year. The biggest event this year was the French election and the victory of President François Hollande. At every EU summit since May, including early on Friday morning, Hollande and Merkel have clashed over policy framed broadly as German austerity and rigour versus French expansionism and pooled spending. The result has been stalemate and lowest common denominator policy-making. "When France and Germany don't get along, things are very bad," said a senior EU official. "When they come to a summit without a deal, very little can happen." The other newcomer who has arguably had the biggest impact has been Mario Draghi, the ECB president. Within weeks of taking office at the start of the year he was flooding Europe's banks with €1tn in cheap, short-term credit. That bought a little time, did not really work, but by the summer in London he pledged to do "whatever it takes" to save the euro, amplifying that promise in September with new policy of unlimited bond-buying in the financial markets, albeit tied to stringent conditions. It was a gamechanger, the single biggest shift that relieved pressure on Spain and Italy and took the heat off the eurozone's leaders, even though the bond-buying has not yet been tried. But Draghi, said the senior EU official, is worried his actions have encouraged the politicians to relax, triggering the current complacency and time-wasting. He is also worried that the ECB's new role as eurozone banking supervisor could hurt the bank's reputation and credibility if the new regime is rendered toothless by German resistance. The contrast in fortunes between the two key leaders, Merkel and Hollande, is striking at year's end. More than four out of five Germans, in a poll on Friday, were satisfied with Merkel's conduct, while Hollande's popularity has slipped every month since he was elected to 41% last month, a level half that of the German leader's. Merkel's electoral calculations could still be upset by the need for a Spanish bailout in the spring, predicted by senior people in Brussels, or by political and market turbulence around the same time in Italy. With unemployment soaring across Europe – albeit not in Germany – and years of austerity impacting on European societies, the sense among senior policy-makers and diplomats in Brussels is that something will have to give, that economic shrinkage rather than deficits and debt is the bigger problem, that German rigour will need to be relaxed, that it is time for French expansionary policy. There is little sign the Germans are listening.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Police are holding a news conference in Newtown, Connecticut, after a shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow how the day unfolded after Russia's foreign ministry played down an admission that rebels could topple the Assad regime
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Much of draft is unexceptionable, but there is bitter disagreement over role of Islam after Morsi's adoption of sweeping powers Smiley faces in bright orange and yellow adorn the barrier of huge concrete blocks outside the Ettihadiyeh Palace in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, though there is tension on the faces of the Republican Guards manning its entrances and the sand-coloured tanks lined up in the winter sunshine. Looking out from its elegant latticed windows, President Mohamed Morsi can easily see the crude images of him outside. Posters portray the Muslim Brotherhood leader as a sinister black octopus, giving a stubby finger to the Egyptian people, in pharaonic headdress, and with a diagonal red stripe slashed across his bearded face. "No to dictatorship," declares a giant banner strung across the road. "No to the constitution," says another. Others denounce the rule of the Murshid – the Brotherhood's powerful "supreme guide". Demonstrators from both camps were out in force on Friday for a final push before Saturday's referendum on a new basic law amid angry controversy and manoeuvring that has left the Arab world's most populous country deeply divided and uncertain about the future. Violence, physical and verbal, is in the air. Last week 49 opposition supporters were beaten and tortured outside the presidential palace by a seemingly well-organised team of thugs – an incident as bad as the notorious "battle of the camels" in Tahrir Square last year. The Brotherhood has been blamed but insists any aggression was "only a reaction" to attacks on its camp. Nine people died. "If Morsi doesn't back down there will be bloodshed," warned Saeed Ahmad, a grizzled mechanic who came to Ettihadiyeh prepared to become a martyr to defend the freedoms won since Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011. "The Ikhwan (Arabic for the Brotherhood) are traitors to the revolution." Protests began late last month after Morsi granted himself sweeping powers to push the charter through a drafting body that was dominated by Islamists and boycotted by the opposition. Brotherhood premises have been attacked across the country. The city of Mahalla al-Kubra in the Nile delta has even declared itself an autonomous republic. Many of the draft constitution's 236 articles are bland and unexceptionable, but there is bitter disagreement about the role of Islam and clerical scholars, the definition of family values and the position of the military – all key issues in the messy transition to the post-Mubarak era. Mohamed ElBaradei, co-ordinator of the newly-formed opposition National Salvation Front, initially demanded the referendum be postponed and the text redrafted, warning that "civil war" could erupt, but now backs a "no" vote. "It is a constitution for the 18th century, not the 21st," protests Mounir Fakhry Abdel-Nour a liberal grandee. "It means Iran on the banks of the Nile." It could, some admit, have been worse if Salafi fundamentalists had got their way in the constituent assembly before its Christian, secular and liberal members walked out. "For the sake of a slightly better constitution the opposition are risking everything," warns one western observer. "Most people haven't even read it," says another. Still, vital issues are at stake. The biggest fear is that, having abandoned their initial caution to take control of both legislature and the executive under a president who commanded just 51% of the vote in June, the Ikhwan will be able to use the new constitution to run the courts as well as lower levels of government. The judiciary – still dominated by Mubarak-era appointees – is especially anxious. "This is the worst period in Egypt's history," said Judge Abdel-Azim al-Ashri after facing intimidation by Morsi supporters. Most judges have refused to supervise the referendum. "It's not just that the Brotherhood are trying to ram through their own Islamist agendas," argues the commentator Issandr El Amrani, "it is that they are behaving in a high-handed and non-consensual way. Their actions seem to speak to a fear that at this long-awaited moment power is going to be snatched away from them." Mohamed el-Beltagy, the influential secretary general of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, appears to confirm this analysis. "Unfortunately the counter-revolution has succeeded in creating this sense of polarisation," he said. "It's not just made up of those who disagree with the Islamist viewpoint but the felool (remnants of the old regime) and their paid thugs. I do not believe that the problem is the contents of the constitution or presidential decrees. This is an attempt to overturn the table." Beltagy – flatteringly profiled in western media last year as the acceptable face of moderate Islamism – made waves this week when he said the security services had reported that 60% of the Ettihadiyeh demonstrators were Coptic Christians. "I am just stating a fact," he told the Guardian impassively, refusing to be drawn further on the implications of identifying political opponents by their religious affiliation. Talk of conspiracies is rife on both sides. The anti-Morsi camp warns of the danger of assassinations and hints that the army, now back in its barracks, might need to intervene. The president's chief of staff signalled that if the security forces did not do their job, the Brotherhood would protect itself. Prosecutors are reportedly investigating claims that the UAE government – a fierce opponent of Islamists everywhere – is financing death squads targeting Brotherhood leaders. Mohamed Badie, the supreme guide of the Brotherhood, used language taken straight from the Mubarak era when he warned in his weekly message of "hidden hands" working to undo the stability achieved by Egypt's post-revolutionary institutions. On Thursday, Salafi vigilantes burned the car of a critical TV producer. "Private media is the chief impediment to the conclusion of the Islamist project as it intentionally smears our image," explained Gamal Saber, a supporter of the Salafi preacher Hazem Abu Ismail. Other groups have said they will call for jihad if the constitution is defeated. Morsi's critics call him indecisive, issuing his decree only to rescind most of it in the face of outrage and then announcing and quickly cancelling unpopular tax increases that were seen as vital for a £3bn IMF loan to go ahead. Opinions are divided on his core beliefs. "Morsi is an arch-pragmatist who makes terrible misjudgments, but he should not be demonised," says a western diplomat. Egyptians retort that they are still suspicious of the Brotherhood – a long suppressed and famously disciplined organisation whose Islamist ideology is not in doubt, and which has a bad habit of being frank and assertive in Arabic and less so in English. "For many years I used to believe that we could not have a proper democracy without Islamists taking part," admits Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. "But judging from the last few months I realise that I was wrong. Now there is a very clear line between Islamists and others." The risk is that the current polarisation could make things worse. "I don't believe Morsi set out to be a dictator but he might accidentally wind up becoming one," suggests Elijah Zarwan of the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. "The opposition might help him down that road by trying to press their perceived advantage too far. The more confrontational this is the higher the stakes – and the more dangerous it becomes." The hope in the secular revolutionary camp is that the Brotherhood will suffer in the next parliamentary elections because of its poor performance so far. "I am surprised at how fast people are linking the Brotherhood to their bread and butter issues," said activist Amr Gharbeia. "These are the real problems in Egypt. But if they are not settled by votes they will be settled in the streets." Egyptians are being urged to vote yes to the constitution in order to "move the country forward" – a reference to worries about the economy, jobs and services. The deaths of 50 kindergarten children in a bus crash near Assiut last month – just as Morsi was being hailed for brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza – was a terrible reminder of rickety infrastructure in a country where trains routinely crash, ferries sink and buildings collapse. "The government failed to accomplish anything that would make us proud of it as a post-revolution administration," the April 6 youth movement said at the time. Yet for all their divisions, Egyptians' yearning for stability may be enough to get the constitution passed. "Morsi hasn't betrayed the revolution but he's on the way," said Abdel-Aziz, a Cairo telecoms engineer who moonlights as a taxi driver. "He has already crossed one red line so he'd better not cross any more." Many believe the Brotherhood will pull it off. "Liberal friends of mine voted for Morsi because they said anyone was better than that bastard Mubarak," recalled Ahmed el-Gohary, a businessman and the son of a general who describes himself unapologetically as a felool. "They said that if we don't like the Brotherhood we could have another revolution and get rid of them. Now they regret it and I keep saying, 'I told you so.' So I am going to vote no to the constitution but I am afraid that it will pass. They have the power of Allah, and that can get anything through."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Newtown public school district on lockdown following 'unconfirmed reports' of a shooting at Sandy Hook elementary Police are on the scene at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, following reports of a shooting, which has prompted the lockdown of all pupils and teachers across the district. A spokeswoman for the Newtown public school district said they were aware of "unconfirmed reports" of an incident at Sandy Hook elementary school, but could not say if there were any casualties. State police were on the scene Friday assisting officers from the town. Meanwhile, the school superintendent ordered a lockdown of the school and others nearby as a precautionary measure. But neither the superintendent's office or the local police were able to comment on the details of the shooting, amid conflicting reports of injuries. "There will be a statement later but we are taking care of our children first," a woman at Newtown public school district said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | DEA says it seized two planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management in February and September this year The US Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating the company which owns a luxury jet that crashed, killing the Mexican pop superstar Jenni Rivera. The DEA confirmed on Thursday that earlier this year it seized two planes belonging to Starwood Management in Texas and Arizona. The agency declined to say why. Rivera, who was born in the US, died at the peak of her career, when her plane nose-dived while flying from the northern-Mexican city of Monterrey early on Sunday. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television. What caused the crash and why Rivera was on the plane remains unclear. The pilot and five other people were also killed. A DEA spokeswoman, Lisa Webb Johnson, confirmed on Thursday that planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who US law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime. The Mexican man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who was not on the plane that crashed. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company's only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm's planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is in charge. Esquino pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that related to a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s, serving about five months of a five-year prison sentence, and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. He was deported upon release. Esquino and various companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records. Jenni Rivera's brother, Pedro Rivera Jr, said that he didn't know anything about Esquino or why or how his sister had ended up in his plane. Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he was merely the company's operations manager "with the expertise". In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane valued at $1.5m was seized by the US Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA, after it landed in Arizona on a flight that originated in Mexico. Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating to 13 December 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales and the entity's relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. US law enforcement officials have long suspected that Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement. The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper. A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined to provide details. "We don't comment on matters involving clients," he said. In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane – a 1977 Hawker 700 worth $1m, after it landed in Texas from a flight from Mexico. Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful. Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Overnight, EU leaders agreed to plot a route towards closer economic and monetary union. Talks continue this morning
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as Russia's foreign ministry plays down an admission that rebels could topple the Assad regime
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Overnight, EU leaders agreed to plot a route towards closer economic and monetary union. Talks continue this morning
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Rightwing politician announces resignation to focus on clearing his name following fraud and breach of trust charges The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has said he is resigning after being charged with fraud and breach of trust, in a move that could have repercussions on the upcoming general election. "Though I know I committed no crime ... I have decided to resign my post as foreign minister and deputy prime minister," Lieberman said in an emailed statement on Friday, adding that he hoped to clear his name "without delay". Opinion polls have predicted that the rightwing party of Lieberman and the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, would win the election on 22 January. It remains unclear if his resignation would hurt their chances.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Foreign minister announces resignation to focus on clearing his name following fraud and breach of trust charges The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has said he is resigning after being charged with fraud and breach of trust, in a move that could have repercussions on the upcoming general election. "Though I know I committed no crime ... I have decided to resign my post as foreign minister and deputy prime minister," Lieberman said in an emailed statement on Friday, adding that he hoped to clear his name "without delay". Opinion polls have predicted that the rightwing party of Lieberman and the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, would win the election on 22 January. It remains unclear if his resignation would hurt their chances.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Draft of IPCC's fifth assessment, due to be published in September 2013, leaked online by climate sceptic Alex Rawls The draft of a major global warming report by the UN's climate science panel has been leaked online. The fifth assessment report (AR5) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is not due to be published in full until September 2013, was uploaded onto a website called Stop Green Suicide on Thursday and has since been mirrored elsewhere on the internet. Several scientists who helped to write the report have confirmed that the draft is genuine. The IPCC said in a statement: "The IPCC regrets this unauthorized posting which interferes with the process of assessment and review. We will continue not to comment on the contents of draft reports, as they are works in progress." A little-known US-based climate sceptic called Alex Rawls, who had been accepted by the IPCC to be one of the report's 800 expert reviewers, admitted to leaking the document. In a statement posted online, he sought to justify the leak: "The addition of one single sentence [discussing the influence of cosmic rays on the earth's climate] demands the release of the whole. That sentence is an astounding bit of honesty, a killing admission that completely undercuts the main premise and the main conclusion of the full report, revealing the fundamental dishonesty of the whole." Climate sceptics have heralded the sentence – which they interpret as meaning that cosmic rays could have a greater warming influence on the planet than mankind's emissions – as "game-changing". The isolation by climate sceptics of one sentence in the 14-chapter draft report was described as "completely ridiculous" by one of the report's lead authors. Prof Steve Sherwood, a director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, told ABC Radio in Australia: "You could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite, that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible … It's a pretty severe case of [cherry-picking], because even the sentence doesn't say what [climate sceptics] say and certainly if you look at the context, we're really saying the opposite." The leaked draft "summary for policymakers" contains a statement that appears to contradict the climate sceptics' interpretation. It says: "There is consistent evidence from observations of a net energy uptake of the earth system due to an imbalance in the energy budget. It is virtually certain that this is caused by human activities, primarily by the increase in CO2 concentrations. There is very high confidence that natural forcing contributes only a small fraction to this imbalance." By "virtually certain", the scientists say they mean they are now 99% sure that man's emissions are responsible. By comparison, in the IPCC's last report, published in 2007, the scientists said they had a "very high confidence" – 90% sure – humans were principally responsible for causing the planet to warm. Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre and an AR5 lead author, tweeted that the report is still a draft and could well change: "Worth pointing out that the wording in the leaked IPCC WG1 [working group 1, which examines the "physical science basis" of climate change] draft chapters may still change in the final versions, following review comments." Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, said that Rawls appeared to have broken the confidentiality agreement signed by reviewers: "As a registered reviewer of the IPCC report, I condemn the decision by a climate change sceptic to violate the confidentiality of the review process. The review of the IPCC report is being carried out in line with the principles of peer review which operate throughout academic science, including an expectation of high standards of ethical behaviour by reviewers. It is disappointing, if not surprising, that climate change sceptics have been unable to meet these high standards of ethical behaviour." The IPCC, which publishes a detailed synthesis of the latest climate science every seven years to help guide policy makers, has experienced leaks before. In 2000, the third assessment report was leaked to the New York Times. Prof Bill McGuire, Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London and contributing author on the recent IPCC report on climate change and extreme events, said that sceptics' reading of the draft was incorrect: "Alex Rawls' interpretation of what IPCC5 says is quite simply wrong. In fact, while temperatures have been ramping up in recent decades, solar activity has been pretty subdued, so any interaction with cosmic rays is clearly having minimal – if any – effects. IPCC AR5 reiterates what we can be absolutely certain of: that contemporary climate change is not a natural process, but the consequence of human activities." Prof Piers Forster, Professor of Climate Change at the University of Leeds, said: "Although this may seem like a 'leak', the draft IPCC reports are not kept secret and the review process is open. The rationale in not disseminating the findings until the final version is complete, is to try and iron out all the errors and inconsistencies which might be inadvertently included. Personally, I would be happy if the whole IPCC process were even more open and public, and I think we as scientists need to explore how we can best match the development of measured critical arguments with those of the Twitter generation." The IPCC, which was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore in 2007, has yet to comment on the latest leak, other than confirming it will release a statement later today.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President accused of failing to take a strong stand to force full equality on to the statute book David Cameron is not the only European leader to be unsettled by the gay marriage debate. The French president, François Hollande, is under fire for his proposals to legalise gay marriage, as street demonstrations illustrate the deep divisions in society. Religious groups and the right have led thousands in protest rallies, while equality campaigners and several leftwing MPs have warned that the law will be shamefully inadequate in not allowing equal gay parenting rights or medically assisted procreation. The Socialist president had hoped that the gay marriage bill, to be debated in parliament in January, would be a milestone in social progress: a key reform with his name on it, to detract from the negative headlines about the financial crisis. But French society is tearing itself apart over the issue with an intensity that was not anticipated by the government, and Hollande has been accused of not taking a strong enough stand to force full equality on to the French statute book. While the UK law aims to legalise gay marriage in line with existing rights for British gay couples – such as adoption, assisted procreation and automatic joint parenting rights – in France the scenario is very different. Hollande's law is not just about gay marriage but also adoption for gay couples, which is still illegal in France and remains controversial. The proposed law would only allow gay couples the right to adopt if they were married, not in a civil partnership – a distinction that has rung alarm bells among equality groups. The law would not give automatic joint parenting rights to gay couples who had a child together, nor would it allow medically assisted procreation or IVF. This would give French gay people far fewer rights than those in the UK, and leave a stark inequality between gay and straight couples which has infuriated many on the left. Socialists and gay campaigners will take to the streets on Sunday for a demonstration which they hope will counter the outpouring of opposition to gay marriage and adoption from the right and certain key figures in the Roman Catholic church. Last month, French activists from the Ukraine-based feminist group Femen were attacked with pepper-spray, and hit and kicked by anti-gay-marriage protesters when they tried to disrupt a rightwing march in Paris. Hollande was forced to calm furious gay rights groups after he told mayors they could have a "freedom of conscience" clause allowing them to opt out of performing same-sex marriage ceremonies at town halls. After an outcry within his own leftwing ranks, Hollande backtracked and said his comments had been "inappropriate". Elisabeth Ronzier, president of the group SOS Homophobie, said: "This is a historic moment because it's the first time a French government is moving towards more equal rights for gay couples and families. But we're not celebrating yet because the proposed law still doesn't give complete equality. We want equal rights to medically assisted procreation. We want legal rights for co-parents – that means full parental responsibility for people raising a child with their partner. We have urged the government not to bow to the pressure of the opposition against this law. We expected some to oppose it, but we've been shocked by the violence of the opposition – and the retrograde, cliche-ridden arguments bordering on insults." Amantine Revol, deputy president of the association Les Enfants d'Arc en Ciel, for families with gay parents, said: "We're not talking about virtual kids, we're talking about perhaps hundreds of thousands of children currently being raised in gay families in France who need legal rights. What is being proposed is not enough – couples would have to marry before applying to adopt their own children, which could take years. Gay co-parents need immediate legal recognition and the automatic right to be named on a child's birth certificate." Séverine Humbert, 30, an environmentalist, and Klervi le Mestre, 30, a teacher, are in a lesbian civil partnership. They have a daughter, Garance, aged three months, carried by Le Mestre. Because assisted conception by sperm donor is illegal for homosexual couples in France, they had to travel to Spain from their home in Perpignan to use anonymous sperm donation. Humbert said: "It's stressful having to do things on the sly, to go for ultrasounds and checks before conceiving when you can't give the full reason. The financial and psychological cost is high. "We're accepted as a family everywhere in everyday life; now I just want to be automatically legally recognised as Garance's parent. Under the new law we would be forced to marry before a long adoption process that could take years. If a heterosexual married couple used an anonymous sperm donor, the husband could simply declare himself the father at the town hall and be put on the birth certificate, regardless of having no biological link. As the co-mother of a child, I just want that same right. It's a simple question of equality for all." The history of gay marriageEleven countries have legalised gay marriage. In 2001, the Netherlands became the first, quickly followed by Belgium. In 2005, Canada and Spain followed, despite strong protest by the Roman Catholic church in Spain. In November this year, Spain's highest court upheld the country's gay marriage law and rejected a long-running appeal by the rightwing People's party, which had argued that the constitution defined marriage as between a man and a woman. More than 21,000 same-sex couples have married in Spain since gay marriage became legal. South Africa, determined to bury all forms of discrimination, had enshrined gay rights in its post-apartheid constitution in 1994. This led to it becoming the only African country to allow same-sex marriage in 2006, despite opposition from some religious and traditional leaders in a society that remains conservative on issues of sexuality. Norway, Sweden, Iceland and, mostly recently, Denmark have also legalised gay marriage. Significantly, in what the Danish government called a "historic" vote, the parliament in Copenhagen made it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages. In 2010, Portugal followed Spain in legalising gay marriage. The same year, Argentina became the first Latin American country to allow same-sex marriage. In Mexico, a same-sex marriage law was enacted in 2010 but only in the capital, Mexico City. This month, the Mexican supreme court ruled that Oaxaca state had acted unconstitutionally in defining marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman. This could open the way for the eventual legalisation of gay marriage across Mexico, but it remains a lengthy legal process in each state. This month, Uruguay moved closer to legalising gay marriage after the low house of congress approved a law that would make all marriages equal, regardless of the couple's genders. The bill must now pass through the senate. In the US, marriage rights are defined on a state-by-state basis. In November, voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine became the first to approve gay marriage at the ballot box. They joined an list of states recognising same-sex unions, including New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia. But 31 states have amended their constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage, North Carolina most recently, in May. This month the US supreme court announced it would take up the issue of same-sex marriage for the first time, agreeing to hear two cases that could decide whether gay and lesbian Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Navigation has become treacherous as the worst US drought in half a century brings water levels close to record lows The Mississippi as seen from Ed Drager's tug boat is a river in retreat: a giant beached barge is stranded where the water dropped, with sand bars springing into view. The floating barge office where the tug boat captain reports for duty is tilted like a funhouse. One side now rests on the exposed shore. "I've never seen the river this low," Drager said. "It's weird." The worst drought in half a century has brought water levels in the Mississippi close to historic lows and could shut down all shipping in a matter of weeks – unless Barack Obama takes extraordinary measures. It's the second extreme event on the river in 18 months, after flooding in the spring of 2011 forced thousands to flee their homes. Without rain, water levels on the Mississippi are projected to reach historic lows this month, the national weather service said in its latest four-week forecast. "All the ingredients for us getting to an all-time record low are certainly in place," said Mark Fuchs, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in St Louis. "I would be very surprised if we didn't set a record this winter." The drought has already created a low-water choke point south of St Louis, near the town of Thebes, where pinnacles of rock extend upwards from the river bottom making passage treacherous. Shipping companies are hauling 15 barges at a time instead of a typical string of 25, because the bigger runs are too big for current operating conditions. Barges are being sent off with lighter loads, making for more traffic, with more delays and back-ups. Stretches of the river are now reduced to one-way traffic. A long cold spell could make navigation even trickier: shallow, slow-moving water is more likely to get clogged up with ice. Current projections suggest water levels could drop too low to send barges through Thebes before the new year – unless there is heavy rainfall. Local television in St Louis is already dispensing doom-laden warnings about rusting metal and hazardous materials exposed by the receding waters. Shipping companies say the economic consequences of a shut-down on the Mississippi would be devastating. About $7bn in vital commodities typically moves on the river at this time of year – including grain, coal, heating oil, and cement. Cutting off the transport route would be a disaster that would resonate across the mid-west and beyond. "There are so many issues at stake here," said George Foster, owner of JB Marine Services. "There is so much that moves on the river, not just coal and grain products, but you've got cement, steel for construction, chemicals for manufacturing plants, petroleum plants, heating oil. All those things move on the waterways, so if it shuts down you've got a huge stop of commerce." Local companies which depend on the river to ship their goods are already talking about lay-offs, if the Mississippi closes to navigation. Those were just the first casualties, Foster said. "It is going to affect the people at the grocery store, at the gas pump, with home construction and so forth." And it's going to fall especially hard on farmers, who took a heavy hit during the drought and who rely on the Mississippi to ship their grain to export markets. Farmers in the area typically lost up to three-quarters of their corn and soy bean crops to this year's drought. Old-timers say it was the worst year they can remember. "We have been through some dry times. In 1954 when my dad and grandfather farmed here they pretty much had nothing because it was so dry," said Paul McCormick who farms with his son, Jack, in Ellis Grove, Illinois, south of St Louis. "But I think this was a topper for me this year." Now, however, farmers are facing the prospect of not being able to sell their grain at all because they can't get it to market. The farmers may also struggle to find other bulk items, such as fertiliser, that are typically shipped by barge. "Most of the grain produced on our farm ends up bound for export," said Jack McCormick, who raises beef cattle and grain with his father. "It ends up going down the river. That is a very good market for us, and if you can't move it that means a lower price, or you have to figure out a different way to move it. It all ends up as a lower price for the farmers." The shipping industry in St Louis wants the White House to order the release of more water from the Missouri river, which flows into the Mississippi, to keep waters high enough for the long barges that float down the river to New Orleans. Foster said the extra water would be for 60 days or so – time for the Army Corps of Engineers to blast and clear the series of rock pinnacles down river, near the town of Thebes, that threaten barges during this time of low water. But sending out more water from the Missouri would doom states upstream, such as Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, which depend on water from the Missouri and are also caught in the drought. "There are farmers and ranchers up there with livestock that don't have water to stay alive. They don't have enough fodder. They don't have enough irrigation water," said Robert Criss, a hydrologist at Washington University in St Louis who has spent his career studying the Mississippi. "What a dumb way to use water during a drought." Elected officials from South Dakota and elsewhere have pushed back strenuously at the idea of sending their water downstream. Foster reckons there is at best a 50-50 chance Obama will agree to open the gates. But such short-term measures ignore an even bigger problem. Climate scientists believe the Mississippi and other rivers are headed for an era of extremes, because of climate change. This time last year, the Mississippi around St Louis was 20ft deeper because of heavy rain. In the spring of 2011, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up two miles of levees to save the town of Cairo, Illinois and Missouri farmland, and deliberately flood parts of rural Louisiana to make sure Baton Rouge and New Orleans stayed dry. "It has kind of switched on us, and it switched pretty quick," said the coastguard chief Ryan Christiansen. "It wasn't that long ago that you had pretty high flooding, and now we are heading towards record lows." Others argue that the Mississippi is already over-engineered, after a century and a half of tampering with the river's natural flow. Over the decades, Congress funded a number of projects to deepen the shipping channel, doubling it in depth to 9ft, and building an elaborate system of locks and dams to keep the river in a confined space. The Army Corps of Engineers is constantly dredging the river's sandy bottom or building new levees to keep barges moving. Those efforts to confine the river to a deep and narrow channel are believed to have made surrounding areas more vulnerable to extreme floods – like in 2011, when thousands were forced to flee their homes. They may also not make sense in the long-term use of the river. Criss argues the long barge trains floating on the Mississippi are just too big for the upper reaches of the river anyway, and that the industry is unfairly subsidised compared with other transport providers such as rail. "The whole system around here has been entirely reconfigured to accommodate these monstrous barges," he said. "This is the whole problem. We want to run boats on the river with 9ft drafts that are almost a quarter of a mile long. They are too big for the size of the river up here." The Mississippi, Criss said, needs smaller boats.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Navigation has become treacherous as the worst US drought in half a century brings water levels close to record lows The Mississippi as seen from Ed Drager's tug boat is a river in retreat: a giant beached barge is stranded where the water dropped, with sand bars springing into view. The floating barge office where the tug boat captain reports for duty is tilted like a funhouse. One side now rests on the exposed shore. "I've never seen the river this low," Drager said. "It's weird." The worst drought in half a century has brought water levels in the Mississippi close to historic lows and could shut down all shipping in a matter of weeks – unless Barack Obama takes extraordinary measures. It's the second extreme event on the river in 18 months, after flooding in the spring of 2011 forced thousands to flee their homes. Without rain, water levels on the Mississippi are projected to reach historic lows this month, the national weather service said in its latest four-week forecast. "All the ingredients for us getting to an all-time record low are certainly in place," said Mark Fuchs, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in St Louis. "I would be very surprised if we didn't set a record this winter." The drought has already created a low-water choke point south of St Louis, near the town of Thebes, where pinnacles of rock extend upwards from the river bottom making passage treacherous. Shipping companies are hauling 15 barges at a time instead of a typical string of 25, because the bigger runs are too big for current operating conditions. Barges are being sent off with lighter loads, making for more traffic, with more delays and back-ups. Stretches of the river are now reduced to one-way traffic. A long cold spell could make navigation even trickier: shallow, slow-moving water is more likely to get clogged up with ice. Current projections suggest water levels could drop too low to send barges through Thebes before the new year – unless there is heavy rainfall. Local television in St Louis is already dispensing doom-laden warnings about rusting metal and hazardous materials exposed by the receding waters. Shipping companies say the economic consequences of a shut-down on the Mississippi would be devastating. About $7bn in vital commodities typically moves on the river at this time of year – including grain, coal, heating oil, and cement. Cutting off the transport route would be a disaster that would resonate across the mid-west and beyond. "There are so many issues at stake here," said George Foster, owner of JB Marine Services. "There is so much that moves on the river, not just coal and grain products, but you've got cement, steel for construction, chemicals for manufacturing plants, petroleum plants, heating oil. All those things move on the waterways, so if it shuts down you've got a huge stop of commerce." Local companies which depend on the river to ship their goods are already talking about lay-offs, if the Mississippi closes to navigation. Those were just the first casualties, Foster said. "It is going to affect the people at the grocery store, at the gas pump, with home construction and so forth." And it's going to fall especially hard on farmers, who took a heavy hit during the drought and who rely on the Mississippi to ship their grain to export markets. Farmers in the area typically lost up to three-quarters of their corn and soy bean crops to this year's drought. Old-timers say it was the worst year they can remember. "We have been through some dry times. In 1954 when my dad and grandfather farmed here they pretty much had nothing because it was so dry," said Paul McCormick who farms with his son, Jack, in Ellis Grove, Illinois, south of St Louis. "But I think this was a topper for me this year." Now, however, farmers are facing the prospect of not being able to sell their grain at all because they can't get it to market. The farmers may also struggle to find other bulk items, such as fertiliser, that are typically shipped by barge. "Most of the grain produced on our farm ends up bound for export," said Jack McCormick, who raises beef cattle and grain with his father. "It ends up going down the river. That is a very good market for us, and if you can't move it that means a lower price, or you have to figure out a different way to move it. It all ends up as a lower price for the farmers." The shipping industry in St Louis wants the White House to order the release of more water from the Missouri river, which flows into the Mississippi, to keep waters high enough for the long barges that float down the river to New Orleans. Foster said the extra water would be for 60 days or so – time for the Army Corps of Engineers to blast and clear the series of rock pinnacles down river, near the town of Thebes, that threaten barges during this time of low water. But sending out more water from the Missouri would doom states upstream, such as Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, which depend on water from the Missouri and are also caught in the drought. "There are farmers and ranchers up there with livestock that don't have water to stay alive. They don't have enough fodder. They don't have enough irrigation water," said Robert Criss, a hydrologist at Washington University in St Louis who has spent his career studying the Mississippi. "What a dumb way to use water during a drought." Elected officials from South Dakota and elsewhere have pushed back strenuously at the idea of sending their water downstream. Foster reckons there is at best a 50-50 chance Obama will agree to open the gates. But such short-term measures ignore an even bigger problem. Climate scientists believe the Mississippi and other rivers are headed for an era of extremes, because of climate change. This time last year, the Mississippi around St Louis was 20ft deeper because of heavy rain. In the spring of 2011, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up two miles of levees to save the town of Cairo, Illinois and Missouri farmland, and deliberately flood parts of rural Louisiana to make sure Baton Rouge and New Orleans stayed dry. "It has kind of switched on us, and it switched pretty quick," said the coastguard chief Ryan Christiansen. "It wasn't that long ago that you had pretty high flooding, and now we are heading towards record lows." Others argue that the Mississippi is already over-engineered, after a century and a half of tampering with the river's natural flow. Over the decades, Congress funded a number of projects to deepen the shipping channel, doubling it in depth to 9ft, and building an elaborate system of locks and dams to keep the river in a confined space. The Army Corps of Engineers is constantly dredging the river's sandy bottom or building new levees to keep barges moving. Those efforts to confine the river to a deep and narrow channel are believed to have made surrounding areas more vulnerable to extreme floods – like in 2011, when thousands were forced to flee their homes. They may also not make sense in the long-term use of the river. Criss argues the long barge trains floating on the Mississippi are just too big for the upper reaches of the river anyway, and that the industry is unfairly subsidised compared with other transport providers such as rail. "The whole system around here has been entirely reconfigured to accommodate these monstrous barges," he said. "This is the whole problem. We want to run boats on the river with 9ft drafts that are almost a quarter of a mile long. They are too big for the size of the river up here."
The Mississippi, Criss said, needs smaller boats.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Alexey Navalny accused of stealing £1.1m from trading company hours before he was due to lead Moscow rally Russia has opened a second criminal investigation into the opposition leader Alexey Navalny, one day before he was due to lead thousands in an anti-Kremlin rally. Investigators accuse Navalny, and his brother Oleg, of stealing 55m roubles (£1.1m) from a trading company. "So am I to understand, that I'm no longer enough and now they're going after my family?" Navalny wrote on Twitter. He later called the accusations "total nonsense". Navalny, an anti-corruption crusader and blogger (video), has spearheaded the growing opposition to Vladimir Putin, exposing corrupt practices inside the government and attacking officials with venomous wit via his popular social media accounts. He has already been accused of embezzlement in a case dating back to his work as an adviser to a regional governor in 2009. He and his supporters believe the charges, which carry a jail sentence of up to 10 years, are an attempt to pressure the activist to give up his opposition activities. Instead, Navalny has redoubled his efforts to reveal corruption at the heart of the Russian state. He has accused Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia's FBI-style Investigative Committee and a close Putin ally, of owning secret property abroad. Bastrykin's agency has opened both investigations into Navalny. Bastrykin met Putin on Thursday evening, hours before announcing the new criminal case. The case came the day before Navalny was due to take to the streets in the opposition's latest attempt to channel urban middle class anger at the alleged corruption of the Putin regime and its crackdown on human rights and freedom of expression. For the first time, the opposition has vowed to march despite the fact it was denied permission for a legal rally by the mayor's office. Thousands are expected to gather to march on Lubyanka, the imposing headquarters of the Soviet-era KGB and its successor, the FSB, on Saturday. Navalny's mother, Lyudmila, spoke out for the first time on Friday after both her sons were targeted, telling the liberal radio station Echo Moskvy: "There can be no coincidence. The Investigative Committee's statement on the eve of the Freedom March shows they want to blackmail my son via his family, so he won't go to the march, so Alexey will stop his political activity. "But I want to say that they won't get what they want – because the whole family supports Alexey," she said. Opposition to Putin persists despite a widespread crackdown launched after the longtime leader officially returned to the presidency in May. Dozens have been arrested, including protesters who took part in a rally that turned violent on the eve of Putin's inauguration. The country's parliament has also rushed through a host of new laws designed to curtail protest. Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the 85-year-old doyenne of Russia's human rights community, warned against attending Saturday's protests, anticipating violence. "When the authorities behave aggressively, we must behave otherwise," she wrote. "As long as our actions are peaceful, we have the moral high ground over the authorities – in the eyes of our fellow citizens and in the eyes of the world. We cannot lose this advantage."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tens of thousands of soldiers join rally in Pyongyang days before first anniversary of Kim Jong-un's accession When North Korea's Kim Jong-un commemorates a year of his rule next week, he will be able to declare he has fulfilled the country's long-held dream of becoming a "space powerhouse". In a mass parade in Pyongyang on Friday, tens of thousands of soldiers dressed in olive green and standing in serried ranks, as well as bareheaded civilians, celebrated this week's successful rocket launch, hailing Kim's "victory". "Under the great leadership of Kim Jong-un, we are carrying out a sacred task towards our last victory so as to build a strong and prosperous nation," Kim Ki-nam, a politburo member from the Workers' party of Korea, told the applauding and cheering crowds that turned out in freezing temperatures. Sharing the kudos with the 29-year-old leader will be three civilians who have grown stronger in the past year and have helped Kim exert control over the country's powerful military, which may edge the country closer to an attempt to reopen dialogue with the United States. Wednesday's launch, in which North Korea put a satellite in space for the first time, may have helped cement the position of Kim's uncle Jang Song-thaek and Choe Ryong-hae, the military's top political strategist, as well as Ju Kyu-chang, the 84-year-old head of the country's missile and nuclear programme. "The rocket launch is a boost politically to the standing of Jang Song-thaek and Choe Ryong-hae, who have been around Kim Jong-un," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute of Defence Analyses, a government-affiliated thinktank in South Korea. While Washington has condemned the rocket launch and called for tougher sanctions on North Korea it was, as recently as February, willing to offer food aid to Pyongyang. At that time it was just over a year since the North shelled a South Korean island, killing civilians, and sank a South Korean warship. The rise of Jang and Chae especially, once ridiculed as "fake" military men by army veterans, together with the country's aging chief missile bureaucrat, could also mean the renegade state will try its hand at using what is now stronger leverage in negotiations to extract aid and concessions. Jang is the brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il and was the chief promoter of his son Kim Jong-un when the elder Kim died on 17 December last year. Jang has further increased his prominence in recent weeks with high-level public appearances, at times in unprecedented proximity to the leader of a country where appearance and formality are rigidly controlled. Jang accompanied Kim to the rocket command centre to watch the successful launch on Wednesday, North Korea's state news agency KCNA said. He is officially a vice-chairman of the ruling National Defence Commission and an army general in name only, but is widely believed to be North Korea's second-in-command in reality. Jang is considered a pragmatist who is willing to engage both allies and enemies abroad, but also one who understands the challenge of cementing the position of the young and relatively untested grandson of the state's founder. Baek noted that comments by North Korea's foreign ministry, customarily the channel used by the leadership to wage wars of words with the United States, had been tempered recently, indicating Pyongyang may seek a way back into negotiations. "The North may start to send active indications to the United States and China that it is willing to talk, even to go back to the six-party talks, and to say that its pledge for a missile test moratorium still stands," Baek said. The six-party talks are aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear programme and involve the North, the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. They have been held since 2003 but have stalled since 2008. Choe is another Workers' party faithful now donning army uniform. He is head of the general political department of North Korea's 1.2-million-strong army, and is seen as the other major beneficiary of this week's rocket launch. Jang and Choe are anomalies in a country that claims its roots in the armed struggle against Japan, in that they have not risen through the army's ranks but have received military titles that are said to be a source of ridicule among their opponents. "Choe and Jang will benefit from the launch because they are the ones who will have undermined the military's influence and strengthened the party's status," said Moon Hong-sik of South Korea's Institute for National Security Strategy, a government-linked thinktank. The surprise success of Wednesday's launch after a failure in April will be credited to Jang and Choe while Kim will boost his credibility as a leader who gets the job done, said Suh Choo-suk, who was chief national security adviser to the former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun. "I think Kim Jong-un's overall control is already solid. His control will be even stronger through the rocket launch." The technical aspects of North Korea's longstanding missile programme and possibly its nuclear project are led by a quiet and elderly engineer, Ju Kyu-chang, another civilian in army garb. Ju has been around since North Korea first tested its long-range missile technology in the summer of 1998 and is still believed to be in charge of the day-to-day running of the project to develop missiles and possibly nuclear weapons. Recognition appears to have come relatively late in life for the silver-haired technocrat Ju, who is believed to have trained as a metal alloy specialist, as he started to appear in public with the country's top leader only when he turned 70. Officially, Ju is the head of the ruling Workers' party of North Korea's oddly named machine-building industry department. He was also appointed to the National Defence Commission, the country's top military body, after the North's 2009 long-range missile test. Ju is among North Korea's most heavily sanctioned individuals, personally named in several government blacklists. "His rise coincided with the escalation of pace in the North's missile and nuclear programmes," said an expert with a South Korean state-run thinktank who did not want to be named. "It could very well have been as a reward for his contribution."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Japanese nuclear plant accepts lack of safety culture and bad habits contributed to world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years The operator of a Japanese nuclear power plant that blew up after a tsunami last year has admitted its lack of a safety culture and bad habits were behind the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years, its most forthright admission yet of culpability. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said it accepted the findings of a parliamentary inquiry into the Fukushima nuclear disaster that accused the company of "collusion" with industry regulators. An earthquake on 11 March last year generated a tsunami that smashed into the nuclear plant on Japan's north-east coast and triggered equipment failures that led to meltdowns and the spewing of large amounts of radiation into the air and sea. Takefumi Anegawa, the head of Tepco's company reform taskforce, told a news conference the report by a parliamentary committee contained "so many descriptions about the lack of a safety culture and our bad habits". "We admit, we completely admit, that part of the parliamentary report," Anegawa told a news conference in Tokyo at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. He was responding to a question on whether the company accepted the parliamentary committee's findings that the disaster was preventable and the result of "collusion" between the company and regulators. The Tepco president, Naomi Hirose, said several months ago he was baffled by criticism of the company, which until recently had denied it could have foreseen the scale of the tsunami and earthquake that knocked out cooling and power at the plant, despite warnings from scientists. The once well-respected utility, now under government control, has been widely castigated for its failure to prepare for the disaster, and lampooned for its inept response as the crisis unfolded. In October, 18 months after the disaster, the company admitted for the first time it could have been avoided. Anegawa, who has worked at the Fukushima plant, said there were some misunderstandings in the "technological part" of the report. "But [for] most of the investigation of our organisation culture, we admit that, and we will try to change," he said. Anegawa was speaking at the news conference with outside monitors Tepco appointed two months ago to oversee its reforms. Asked to give an example of a step Tepco had taken to improve since he was appointed, Dale Klein, a former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, would say only that the company had carried out a critical self-assessment and was sharing information. Those comments were similar to those he made in a Reuters interview in October. Three reactors melted down at the plant, causing the worst radiological release since Chernobyl in 1986, contaminating wide areas of land and forcing about 160,000 people from their homes. Many of those people are unlikely to ever return home. All of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors were shut down for safety checks after the disaster and only two have resumed operating. The government's decision this year to restart the two units to avoid possible summer power cuts galvanised the country's anti-nuclear movement, prompting regular mass demonstrations. The government, led by the Democratic party of Japan, is aiming to phase out nuclear energy by the end of the 2030s. But the business-friendly Liberal Democratic party (LDP), which is expected to return to power in an election on Sunday, has said only that it will take 10 years to figure out Japan's "best energy mix". But even the LDP, which promoted atomic energy during its nearly six decades in power, is not expected to revive a plan to increase nuclear power's share of Japan's electricity supply to more than half by 2030 from nearly 30% before the Fukushima disaster.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Rice asks Obama to no longer consider her for the job and says she would face 'lengthy, disruptive and costly' nomination battle Susan Rice, the embattled US ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew herself from consideration to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in the face of sustained Republican attacks over her handling of the Benghazi consulate attack. Although Rice insisted the decision had been hers alone and that she was not pushed by the Obama administration, it provides the Republicans with an early victory barely a month after the presidential election. The danger for Barack Obama, even though the White House insists it did not push her, is that it will be interpreted as weakness by a president reluctant to face a fractious nomination battle. Her withdrawal means that John Kerry, Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate, is almost certain to be nominated to be America's top diplomat. Rice wrote to Obama asking him to no longer consider her for the job because, she said, she would face "a lengthy, disruptive and costly" nomination battle with the Senate. "The position of secretary of state should never be politicised," Rice wrote. "As someone who grew up in an era of comparative bipartisanship … I am saddened that we have reached this point, even before you have decided whom to nominate. We cannot afford such an irresponsible distraction from the most pressing issues facing the American people." In a statement released by the White House, Obama expressed regret and described the attacks as "unfair and misleading". She is to stay in her position as UN ambassador, Obama said. The president is in the process of putting together his cabinet for a second term after many of the present team expressed a desire to leave. It emerged on Thursday that Obama is lining up a former Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, to replace Leon Panetta as defence secretary, an effort to present his administration as being broad-based. Normally by this stage a president would have announced some appointments, but Obama's plans have been disrupted by the consistent Republican sniping against Rice, led by senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and, lately, Kelly Ayotte. "Senator McCain thanks ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well," said McCain's spokesman Brian Rogers. "He will continue to seek all the facts surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four brave Americans." Graham, in a statement, said: "I respect ambassador Rice's decision. President Obama has many talented people to choose from to serve as our next secretary of state." Her withdrawal, revealed by NBC News, appears to be on mainly personal grounds, with the attacks expanding beyond just her comments on Benghazi to prying into her private life, including such things as her investments. In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, broadcast on Thursday night, Rice said she took the decision to avoid distracting from the main priorities Obama's second term. "We're talking about comprehensive immigration reform, balanced deficit reduction, job creation, that's what matters, and to the extent that my nomination could have delayed or distracted or deflected or maybe even some of these priorities impossible to achieve, I didn't want that and I'd much prefer to continue doing what I'm doing, which is a job I love at the United Nations." Her insistence that she volunteered to step aside was given credence by Bill Burton, a former White House spokesman and now a strategic adviser at the main Democratic political action committee, Priorities USA. In a tweet, he wrote: "You don't see a lot of people take one for the team in Washington - what ambassador Rice did was selfless and truly extraordinary." Rice is a big prize for the Republicans. She was championed by both Michelle Obama and senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, in spite of having a reputation for being abrasive. It was that combative, highly political approach that first got her into trouble with McCain when, during the 2008 presidential election, she mocked him for wearing a flak-jacket on a visit to Baghdad at a time when he was surrounded by dozens of security staff and soldiers. McCain, a Vietnam veteran, took the criticism badly. The assault on Rice followed a series of television interviews she gave on Sunday talk shows after the attack on Benghazi that left four Americans, including the ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. Rice suggested that the attack had been launched by demonstrators upset about anti-Muslim video made in the US. She later acknowledged she had been wrong and that the attack had been mounted by an al-Qaida-linked group. Attempts last month in Washington to win over critical senators failed, enraging them further. In her letter, she told Obama: "If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly – to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. "That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country … Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time." Obama, in his statement, said: "For two decades, Susan has proven to be an extraordinarily capable, patriotic, and passionate public servant … I am grateful that Susan will continue to serve as our ambassador at the United Nations and a key member of my cabinet and national security team, carrying her work forward on all of these and other issues." Kerry is well-placed to sail through the nominating process. The Senate foreign relations committee is responsible for screening the secretary of state and Kerry, as head of it, knows well all the members. McCain has applied to join the committee from January and could have used that position to throw up obstacle after obstacle for Rice. But he is on relatively good terms with Kerry. Kerry, in a statement, said of Rice: "As someone who has weathered my share of political attacks and understands on a personal level just how difficult politics can be, I've felt for her throughout these last difficult weeks, but I also know that she will continue to serve with great passion and distinction."
  | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire