U.S. Forecasts Smaller Loss From Bailout of Banks
By JACKIE CALMES
Published: December 6, 2009
WASHINGTON – The Treasury Department expects to recover all but $42 billion of the $370 billion it has lent to ailing companies since the financial crisis began last year, with the portion lent to banks actually showing a slight profit, according to a new Treasury report.
The new assessment of the $700 billion bailout program, provided by two Treasury officials on Sunday ahead of a report to Congress on Monday, is vastly improved from the Obama administration’s estimates last summer of $341 billion in potential losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That figure anticipated more financial troubles requiring intervention.
Copenhagen emissions targets ‘not enough to avert catastrophic warming’
From The Times
December 7, 2009
Ben Webster, Environment Editor
Emissions cuts proposed by the world’s leading countries fall far short of what is needed to prevent catastrophic global warming, according to a study released on the eve of the Copenhagen climate change summit.Even if countries adopted the most ambitious targets that each has put forward, the global average temperature would still rise by 3.5C by the end of the century and make large parts of the world uninhabitable.
The UN’s top climate change official appealed to the 192 nations taking part in the summit to strengthen their targets during the two-week summit to help deliver a global deal.
USA
Millions’ worth of gear left in Iraq
Pentagon eases rules Officers air concerns, citing Afghan effort
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 7, 2009
BAGHDAD — Even as the U.S. military scrambles to support a troop surge in Afghanistan, it is donating passenger vehicles, generators and other equipment worth tens of millions of dollars to the Iraqi government.Under new authority granted by the Pentagon, U.S. commanders in Iraq may now donate to the Iraqis up to $30 million worth of equipment from each facility they leave, up from the $2 million cap established when the guidelines were first set in 2005. The new cap applies at scores of posts that the U.S. military is expected to leave in coming months as it scales back its presence from about 280 facilities to six large bases and a few small ones by the end of next summer.
U.S. sees homegrown Muslim extremism as rising threat
This may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11, anti-terrorism experts say.
By Sebastian Rotella
December 7, 2009
Reporting from Washington – The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters’ trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.
Europe
Was Russian secret service behind leak of climate-change emails?
FSB accused of paying hackers to discredit scientists after stolen correspondence traced to server in Siberia
By Shaun Walker Monday, 7 December 2009
The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.
Turkey’s moves towards Iran concerning United States
Turkey’s attempts to develop a strategic partnership with Iran are causing concern in America and are likely to dominate talks between its leader and President Barack Obama during a US visit that starts today.
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM GMT 07 Dec 2009
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has introduced a “good neighbours” foreign policy that has tilted the axis of Ankara’s diplomacy in the direction of Iran, Russia and bordering states.
Turkish frustration with a series of setbacks for its bid to join the European Union triggered a search for a foreign policy that reflect its historical interests in the Middle East, Caucasus and Islamic world.
Foreign intelligence officials sounded an alarm over Turkish manoeuvring closer to Iran, which has undermined the international campaign to isolate the Islamic regime. In particular it has allowed key members of the Islamic regime to move large sums of money – up to $10 million per day – into the global financial system.
Asia
New Tamil group People’s Liberation Army vows to start a fresh war
From The Times
December 7, 2009
Anthony Loyd in Colombo
A Marxist group of Tamil militants with connections to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Cuba is preparing to mount a new insurgency in Sri Lanka six months after the Government declared an end to the 26-year-old war there.The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was founded in eastern Sri Lanka four months ago and has vowed to launch attacks against government and military targets unless its demands for a separate Tamil homeland are met.
“This war isn’t over yet,” Commander Kones, head of the PLA’s Eastern District military command, told The Times during a night meeting in a safe house in the east of the country last week.
Ahead of Copenhagen climate talks, India softens its carbon stance
Just before Copenhagen climate talks open, major greenhouse-gas emitter India said Thursday it would aim to slow the growth of its carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade.
By Mian Ridge | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW DELHI – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose country is the world’s number four greenhouse gas emitter, ended days of speculation Saturday by saying that he would attend the landmark climate change talks that open Monday in Copenhagen, Denmark.The move follows his country’s announcement Thursday it would aim to slow the growth of its carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade and beyond – signaling a softening of its hard-line stance on climate change negotiations.
India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, told parliament Thursday evening India would reduce its “carbon intensity” – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of gross domestic product (GDP) – by up to 25 percent from 2005 to 2020.
He made clear this improvement would be made on a voluntary basis, and he reiterated that India, Asia’s third biggest consumer of energy, would not agree to any legally binding emissions targets. But environmentalists nonetheless welcomed it.
Middle East
Boy who survived 1988 Halabja chemical attack reunited with mother
A young Iraqi man has been reunited with his mother 20 years since being taken to Iran as an infant after surviving the notorious Halabja chemical attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces.
Published: 7:00AM GMT 07 Dec 2009
Found amid a mess of corpses after the massacre, Zimnaco Saleh was taken to Iran, where he grew up believing himself to be an orphan.
He was reunited with his mother at a ceremony in Halabja, the northeastern Kurdish village where they were separated in 1988.
“You are a gift from God,” Fatima Hama Saleh, his mother by birth, told him in Kurdish at her brother’s home in Koulkin, tender words that had to be translated for Farsi-speaking Zimnaco.
“I will not die in sorrow and grief, after all the miseries I have experienced,” she said, just a day after authorities confirmed that he was, in fact, her son.
Now 21 years old, Zimnaco, who Fatima says looks like his father, is the unlikeliest of survivors of the Halabja massacre.
New Iraqi election law approved
Iraq’s parliament has unanimously approved a new electoral law, paving the way for elections early next year.
The BBC Monday, 7 December 2009
Parliamentarians were called to vote in a special late-night session to try to end a political crisis, and they voted minutes before the midnight deadline.
The White House said the move was “a decisive moment for Iraq’s democracy”.
The deputy speaker of parliament said an election should take place on 27 February, but it was unclear whether this would be possible.
The new law is said to have been brokered by the UN and the US embassy.Polls originally scheduled for 16 January had been delayed due to problems with the election law.
Africa
The secrets of Tutankhamun’s decaying tomb
Scientists mount inquiry into how millions of visitors to Egyptian boy king’s chamber are destroying the wonder they came to see, reports Guy Adams
Monday, 7 December 2009
Given the peace and quiet Tutankhamun enjoyed for three millennia, it has been a rough 87 years for him since he was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922. He was immediately relieved of his treasures; his tomb became one of the world’s best-known tourist attractions, and finally, in 2005, his mummified corpse was hoiked out of its final resting-place to be studied by scientists.The “boy king’s” fame did not just cost him his privacy. His underground tomb, in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, is now suffering from the wear and tear caused by tens of thousands of sweaty visitors who each year make a pilgrimage to the underground chamber where he once lay sheathed in the solid gold death-mask that has become his trademark.
Southern Sudan politicians arrested in Khartoum
The authorities in Sudan have arrested several leaders of southern Sudan’s main political party, after they refused to cancel a banned rally.
The BBC Monday, 7 December 2009
The secretary general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Pagan Amum and minister Abbas Gumma were reportedly detained in Khartoum.
The SPLM joined a power-sharing government in 2005 to end 21 years of conflict between north and south Sudan.
Tension in the country is rising ahead of elections due in April 2010.
They are the first presidential, parliamentary and local elections in 24 years.
Latin America
Evo Morales routs rivals to win second term in Bolivian elections
Opinion polls agree the country’s first indigenous president has secured victory by a big margin
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent, and Andres Schipani in La Paz
The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009
Exit polls last night put President Evo Morales on course for a big victory in the Bolivian electionstomorrow, bolstering his empowerment of the indigenous majority under a socialist banner.An unofficial count of 60% of the vote by the Equipos-Mori polling firm said Bolivia’s first indigenous president had won 61% of the ballots. Polls by three private television channels, ATB, Uno and PAT, echoed the prediction.
Morales’ closest challenger in a field of nine, the centre-right former state governor and military officer Manfred Reyes, won 29 %, according to Equipos-Mori.