Move to Repay Aid Helps Bank of America Shed Stigma
By LOUISE STORY
Published: December 2, 2009
Less than a year after grasping two multibillion-dollar bailouts from Washington, a resurgent Bank of America announced on Wednesday that it would repay all of its federal aid, underscoring the banking industry’s swift recovery from the gravest financial crisis since the Depression.Despite continuing problems with its loans to struggling homeowners and consumers, Bank of America plans to return the $45 billion in aid that it received at the height of the financial panic – a step that, only months ago, would have been almost unimaginable.But like many other big banks, Bank of America is once again making money, in large part through Wall Street businesses like trading stocks and bonds, rather than by making loans.
Warning: Do not take this picture
Police warned over misuse of terror laws to stop innocent photographers
By Mark Hughes and Jerome Taylor Thursday, 3 December 2009
Police have been accused of misusing powers granted under anti-terror legislation after a series of incidents, ranging from the innocuous to the bizarre, in which photographers were questioned by officers for taking innocent pictures of tourist destinations, landmarks and even a fish and chip shop.Police are allowed to stop and search anyone in a designated “Section 44 authorisation” zone without having to give a reason. But amateur and professional photographers have complained that they are frequently being stopped and treated as potential terrorists on a reconnaissance mission.
USA
An energy answer in the shale below?
New technology opens vast stores of natural gas, and the land rush is on
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 3, 2009
The first time Chesapeake Energy tried to buy mineral rights from Diana Whitmore, a 74-year-old retired real estate broker in southern New York, it offered her $125 for every acre of land plus a 12 percent royalty on whatever natural gas it extracts.
Nearly two years later, she’s still holding out. Along with hundreds of other landowners, she has joined a coalition that is negotiating with nine oil and gas companies. The latest offers in the area are running as high as $5,500 an acre with 20 percent royalties.“It’s what’s really going to turn this whole place around,” said her son Daniel Fitzsimmons, who has since helped form the Binghamton Conklin Gas Lease Coalition.
Is Denver ready for a close encounter?
Voters will be asked to approve a welcoming panel for extraterrestrials, thanks to a self-described entrepreneur.
By Ashley Powers and DeeDee Correll
December 3, 2009
Reporting from Denver and Las Vegas – Forget sky-high unemployment and those two wars overseas. Jeff Peckman has more earthly concerns:For one thing, if extraterrestrials were to descend on Denver, what’s the best way to welcome them?
Thanks to Peckman’s tireless efforts and taste for the limelight, Denver voters will be asked in 2010 to boldly approve what no electorate has approved before: an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission.
This week, Denver officials announced that Peckman had gathered about 4,000 valid signatures needed to place the issue before the 350,000 registered voters of the Colorado state capital.
Europe
Pablo Picasso etchings found in Spanish library
• Aquatints in book given to lover and muse Dora Maar
• Chance discovery by Spanish literary academic
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
The Guardian, Thursday 3 December 2009
Thirteen etchings by Pablo Picasso have come to light after a Spanish professor discovered them jammed into the pages of a book owned by the Spanish artist’s lover and muse, Dora Maar.The aquatints were found by chance earlier this year when Professor Andrés Soria began leafing through the pages of an illustrated edition of a book of poems by the Spanish poet Luis de Góngora, which was bought by Spain’s National Library a decade ago.
The book, which was a homage to one of Picasso’s favourite poets, was meant to have been illustrated by another artist – Ignacio González de la Serna.
Sobibor families vent anger after John Demjanjuk fever delays trial
From The Times
December 3, 2009
Roger Boyes in Munich
Jewish plaintiffs could barely conceal their anger yesterday after the trial of the suspected war criminal John Demjanjuk was delayed for almost three weeks because he was suffering from a slight fever.“At 8am, the accused registered a temperature of 37.5C,” Judge Ralph Alt told the Munich courtroom. “This was despite taking fever-lowering medication an hour earlier, when his temperature read 38C.” Normal body temperature is regarded as 37C (about 98F).
Mr Demjanjuk’s doctor said that the 89-year-old retired car worker from Ohio had a “general infection” and he had advised the judge that the accused should not be transferred from his cell in Stadelheim prison, Munich, to the courtroom.
Asia
North Koreans dare to protest as devaluation wipes out savings
Rush for dollars and Chinese yuan after Kim Jong-il’s surprise move to reassert control over economy
By David McNeill in Tokyo Thursday, 3 December 2009
The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is trying to smother his country’s fragile free market with a shock currency devaluation that has reportedly sparked panic, chaos and protests inside the isolated Stalinist state.Monday’s devaluation of Pyongyang’s nearly worthless currency from 100 to a single won has wiped out the savings of impoverished North Koreans and generated a scramble for dollars and Chinese yuan, say sources behind the bamboo curtain.
Pakistan at odds with Obama’s vision
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD – While United States President Barack Obama, after months of deliberation, has finally laid out his strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Washington’s most important ally in the region, is charting a new course that will place it at odds with the United States.Obama on Tuesday announced the dispatch of 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan over the next seven months, while also saying he would begin a draw-down of the US’s presence in 18 months. The new inflow will see about 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan. In addition, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other members of the International Security Assistance Force currently have about 40,000 troops.
Middle East
Drug-laced salad killed doctor who exposed torture
From The Times
December 3, 2009
Martin FletcherA doctor who witnessed the torture of opposition detainees in Iran died after eating a drug-laced salad, Tehran’s public prosecutor said yesterday.
The announcement raises the number of official explanations of Ramin Pourandarjani’s death to at least four.
Opposition activists have only one: that he was killed because he knew too much.
Dr Pourandarjani, 26, was doing his national service at the Kahrizak detention centre near Tehran, where hundreds of opposition demonstrators were locked up and beaten after the disputed election in June.
Iran nuclear program: Can it produce its own fuel?
Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that the Iran nuclear program could produce its own higher enriched nuclear fuel. But some analysts cast doubt on Iran’s capacity to do so.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran will make its own higher enriched nuclear fuel, effectively rejecting a UN-backed exchange proposal that would have eased Western fears about Iran’s nuclear program.A defiant Mr. Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran was tired of the continued sparring over a swap offer, in which it would ship out its own low-enriched uranium, purified to less than 5 percent, for the 20-percent enriched fuel it needs.
“I declare that by the grace of God, the Iranian nation will produce 20 percent enriched uranium and anything it needs itself,” Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in the central city of Isfahan. It was Iran’s latest volley in a nuclear back-and-forth with the UN nuclear watchdog agency and the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany.
Yet analysts cast doubt on Iran’s technical and industrial capacity to fulfill either that pledge, or the dramatic expansion of Iran’s nuclear enrichment effort announced last Sunday.
Africa
World Cup 2010: South Africa ready to provide continental lift
World Cup hosts have proclaimed ‘death of doubt’ for a nation ready to inspire the troubled African landmass
Paul Hayward
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 December 2009
As the Fifa World Cup trophy arrived in Cape Town on Tuesday night, Danny Jordaan, the architect of next summer’s tournament, declared “the death of doubt”. The waterfront location was symbolic. Football’s greatest prize had landed on the southern tip of the continent, and its magic would flow north, turning all Africans into players in a show they may think of as the playground of the old colonial powers.Here in the host country everyone is looking for the moment that turns the first African World Cup into reality. For many it will arrive tomorrow when South Africa find themselves at the head of one of eight groups for the tournament that kicks off on 11 June, and fixtures and locations assume vivid new life. But Jordaan and the country’s president, Jacob Zuma, must be deferred to when they say the arrival of the trophy bestowed authenticity on all the feelings of excitement and liberation that have grown since the Rainbow Nation beat Morocco and Egypt in the bidding race back in 2004.
Inside the world’s most hostile city
Mogadishu has known only civil war for 18 years. Matteo Fagotto reports from a place bloated with arms and young men with nothing to do but kill
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Cooking pots and pans stained with blood were still scattered around the courtyard of the Martini Hospital. A mortar bomb had landed in the garden of this war veterans’ retirement home in the Somali capital the day before, killing nine people and injuring 23. In the kitchen, weeping relatives and angry civilians had gathered to mourn the victims. Corpses covered with sheets were being prepared for burial and the air was heavy with incense burned to cover the stench of death. Sunlight filtered in through cracks in the roof, lending the scene a hellish air. “These two were 13 and 14,” said a Red Crescent volunteer, pointing to the bodies of two victims. “Nobody knows who did it.”