Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: January 29, 2010
MIAMI – The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.
Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs.
USA
AIG employees agree to cuts in retention bonuses
By Brady Dennis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Employees in American International Group’s Financial Products division this week overwhelmingly agreed to accept reductions in an upcoming round of retention payments in exchange for receiving the money as early as Friday, people familiar with the matter said.
The bailed-out insurance giant, which has until March 15 to pay nearly $200 million in bonuses to those employees, started pursuing the deal after getting requests from U.S. compensation czar Kenneth R. Feinberg to scale back the pending payments and collect another $26 million in bonuses paid to the same employees last year.
Doubt cast on Toyota’s decision to blame sudden acceleration on gas pedal defect
The pedal maker denies that its products are at fault. Some independent safety experts also are skeptical of Toyota’s explanations. ‘We know this recall is a red herring,’ one says.
By Ralph Vartabedian and Ken Bensinger
January 30, 2010
Toyota Motor Corp.’s decision to blame its widening sudden-acceleration problem on a gas pedal defect came under attack Friday, with the pedal manufacturer flatly denying that its products were at fault.Federal vehicle safety records reviewed by The Times also cast doubt on Toyota’s claims that sticky gas pedals were a significant factor in the growing reports of runaway vehicles. Of more than 2,000 motorist complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles over the last decade, just 5% blamed a sticking gas pedal, the analysis found.
Middle East
In the West Bank’s stony hills, Palestine is slowly dying
In the richest of the Occupied lands, Israeli bureaucracy is driving Palestinians out of their homes. Robert Fisk reports from Jiftlik
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Area C doesn’t sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and soft green valleys, it’s part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.But look at the statistics and leaf through the pile of demolition orders lying on the table in front of Abed Kasab, head of the village council in Jiftlik, and it all looks like ethnic cleansing via bureaucracy. Perverse might be the word for the paperwork involved. Obscene appear to be the results.
Border breaches reveal Iran’s reach
Jan 30, 2010
By Neil Arun and Shorish Khalid
IRBIL and SULAIMANIYAH – An Iranian crackdown on smuggling along the Iraqi border has uncovered fissures and confusion in Baghdad’s policy towards perceived threats to its sovereignty.Iraqi officials contacted for an Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) investigation disagreed sharply over the significance of recent Iranian incursions that have targeted smugglers in a remote, rugged part of the northern Kurdistan region.
Divisions focused on whether Iran’s action should be regarded as a grave violation of the sanctity of Iraq’s borders, or a minor infringement along an ill-defined frontier.
Asia
French luxury tells a tale of China’s haves and have-nots
Communist nation’s new rich lavish millions on luxury homes inspired by Europe
By Clifford Coonan in Beijing Saturday, 30 January 2010
They made a serious amount of money in the booming China of the Noughties, and now it is time for their habitat to match. So why not a plush villa in French chateau style, a few minutes from Beijing airport?“Construct a legend of fortune, steer the world’s power” is what the glossy brochure tells you to do, and why not, the wealthy Chinese entrepreneur might say, passing through rows of mini-chateaux replete with balconies, gables, elaborately tiled roofs, all oozing conspicuous consumption.
As the rest of the world reels from the lingering effects of the credit crunch, China is undergoing a property boom.
Indian politician Mayawati wants new force to protect statues – of her
From The Times
January 30, 2010
Rhys Blakely in Mumbai
India’s most prominent politician from the “untouchable” lower caste is seeking to form a police force to guard dozens of statues she has had built using public money – many of which are of her.Mayawati, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister and leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) – known widely as the Dalit Queen – has met with fierce criticism for spending an estimated £266 million on scores of monuments of her, other untouchable leaders and the BSP since she took office.
Europe
Greece: Under a Byzantine shroud
Editorial
The Guardian, Saturday 30 January 2010
The great and the good in Davos yesterday all denied that Greece was about to default on its public debt, sell a chunk of it to China or leave the eurozone. The newly elected prime minister, George Papandreou, said his country was being targeted by speculators and was capable of raising money on the markets. Germany and France denied a report in Le Monde that they were considering giving Greece extra help, as the cost of insuring government debt leapt this week. Even billionaire George Soros, who has bet against countries in the past and won, was confident that Greece would make it.
This was more than just a rumour mill. Greece has to sell €53bn of debt this year to reduce its budget deficit, which is the largest in the EU, and the bond markets are not unnaturally sceptical about the government’s ability to do this.
Africa
Another unsung death on the Nile
Struggling to make ends meet, Samir Asar took his life, torn between his new wife and his parents. For them his loss is catastrophic. But it is just one of many in Egypt’s desperately poor delta area.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
January 30, 2010
Reporting from Abu Nasser, Egypt – He hanged himself in a room above a donkey stall. He lived there with his new wife; he will not know the child she carries inside her; never again will he work the summer fields, walk home along the canal at dusk with his brother.He didn’t leave a note. He could write no more than his name. Others were left to tell the short story of Samir Asar, a man of no consequence beyond this village, who sought a life he couldn’t find, a life the Nile Delta refused to grant him.
The End of the Embarrassment
After shaming the office, Libya’s Muammar Kaddafi is finally through as president of the African Union. Good riddance.
By Jason McLure | Newsweek Web Exclusive
It was always a risk for African nations to name Libya’s Muammar Kaddafi as chairman of the African Union last February. True, he’s no longer in the business of blowing up civilian airliners or attempting to build nuclear weapons, and the post was only for a year. How bad could it be? As his tenure as Brother Leader comes to a close, we finally have the answer: in his efforts to embarrass himself and the pan-African institution, he outdid even himself. This weekend probably marks the end of his term, as African heads of state gather in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. They’re likely to reject a last-ditch Kaddafi effort to stay on in the AU’s top post, for a very long list of reasons.
Latin America
Tourists fly out as Machu Picchu begins isolation
By MARTIN MEJIA and ANDREW WHALEN
The Associated Press
Friday, January 29, 2010; 8:59 PM
MACHU PICCHU PUEBLO, Peru — The last young backpackers flew away from Machu Picchu as clouds closed in again Friday, leaving Peru to grapple with flood damage that will close its top tourist site for weeks, or even months.Torrential rains caused mudslides and swelled the Urubamba River on Sunday, stripping away long sections of the railway that is the only transportation in and out of the area around the Inca citadel. The road to the ruins from this village at the end of the train line also washed away.
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