Relief bore reaches BP’s damaged well; endgame in sight
Five months after the start of the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, crews are set for the final ‘bottom kill.’
By Richard Fausset and Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
September 17, 2010
Reporting from Atlanta and Los Angeles – An emergency relief well has successfully intersected BP’s damaged Gulf of Mexico oil well, federal officials announced Thursday night.“Through a combination of sensors embedded in the drilling equipment and sophisticated instrumentation that is capable of sensing distance to the well casing, BP engineers and the federal science team have concluded that the Development Driller III relief well has intersected the Macondo well,” retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal spill commander, said in a statement.
USA
California Braces for Showdown on Emissions
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: September 16, 2010
LOS ANGELES – A ballot initiative to suspend a milestone California law curbing greenhouse gas emissions is drawing a wave of contributions from out-of-state oil companies, raising concerns among conservationists as it emerges as a test of public support for potentially costly environmental measures during tough economic times.
Charles and David Koch, the billionaires from Kansas who have played a prominent role in financing the Tea Party movement, donated $1 million to the campaign to suspend the Global Warming Solutions Act, which was passed four years ago, and signaled that they were prepared to invest more in the cause. With their contribution, proponents of the proposition have raised $8.2 million, with $7.9 million coming from energy companies, most of them out of state.
The ‘tea party’ gears up for 2012
By Karen Tumulty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 17, 2010; 2:23 AM
The playbook for winning the Republican presidential nomination begins with a set of inviolable rules: Start early, raise millions, build an organization, and trudge across the country seeking the blessing of mayors and money men.
But in a world where the most careful plans can be rendered obsolete by a Sarah Palin tweet (see: Primary, Delaware), many in the party have begun to question whether those old, pre-“tea party” rules still apply.
Europe
EU forced to apologise as Sarkozy goes on the attack over Nazi ‘insult’
French President denies blazing row with Barroso but threat of legal action over Roma crackdown remains
By John Lichfield in Paris
Friday, 17 September 2010
After a blazing row with the European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday insisted that France’s crackdown on Roma gypsies from eastern Europe was a “duty” and would continue.At an EU summit in Brussels, the French president demanded, and received, an apology from the European justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, who earlier this week had compared France’s anti-Roma campaign to Nazi persecutions during the Second World War. Still apparently shaking with rage at a press conference, Mr Sarkozy said that all leaders at a one-day EU summit in Brussels had agreed that her comments were “an insult, a humiliation, an outrage”.
The arrival of an exiled Chechen leader poses a problem for Poland
Russia and Poland had been getting along better this last year. But now Moscow is pushing Warsaw to extradite a visiting exiled Chechen leader in Poland for the World Chechen Congress.
International Relations | 17.09.2010
Exiled Chechen leader Ahmed Zakayev arrived in Poland on Thursday for the World Chechen Congress, a two-day meeting outside of Warsaw for exiles from the conflict-ridden region. Once a senior rebel commander during Russia’s two wars against separatists in Chechnya in the 1990s, Zakayev now lives in Britain, where he was granted political asylum in 2003.
Zakayev has traveled to Poland three times this year, but now Russia, who claims he is a terrorist, has formally asked Warsaw for his extradition.
Middle East
Iraq was ‘failure of strategic thinking’, chief of defence staff tells MPs
Sir Jock Stirrup tells select committee that politicians did not understand the consequences of invading Iraq
Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Friday 17 September 2010
British soldiers in Iraq were “dying for no strategic benefit” because Tony Blair’s government did not appreciate what it was taking on when it planned the invasion, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of defence staff, has told MPs.There was a “failure of strategic thinking” in southern Iraq, he told the Commons public administration committee. Stirrup, who retires next month, was asked if the politicians appreciated what they were taking on when British forces went into southern Iraq. He replied: “No.”
Can ignoring Hamas lead to Israeli-Palestinian peace?
Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, is being ignored in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Some think that’s a big mistake.
By Dan Murphy, Staff Writer / September 16, 2010
Boston
George Mitchell, President Obama’s Middle East peace envoy, rarely misses an opportunity to mention the crucial role he played in helping bring peace to Northern Ireland.
As he makes the rounds in Washington, Jerusalem, and Damascus, trying to shepherd Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, he speaks of the skepticism that plagued the talks in Belfast that ended in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. His point? That Northern Ireland proves that a comprehensive peace deal can be worked out between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas within the next two years, which is Obama’s timeline for the peace effort.
Asia
Mao’s Great Leap Forward ‘killed 45 million in four years’
By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Friday, 17 September 2010
Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing “one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known”.
Tensions between China and Japan rise over disputed gas field
China has moved what appears to be drilling equipment to a gas rig in waters claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo, further increasing tensions between the two countries.
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
Published: 7:00AM BST 17 Sep 2010
Images taken by Japan’s air force indicate the delivery of new equipment and workers preparing to begin drilling at the natural gas field in the East China Sea that Beijing knows as the Chunxiao field but Tokyo claims as the Shirakaba sector.Katsuya Okada, the Japanese foreign minister, said that Tokyo has made repeated inquiries through diplomatic channels about China’s intentions. Beijing claims the equipment is for repair work,he said.
China’s actions are an apparent escalation of the dispute triggered on October 8 by the arrest by the Japan Coast Guard of a Chinese fisherman close to the Senkaku Islands, off southern Japan.
Africa
S Africans charged in ‘organ trade’
Hospital and six doctors allegedly conducted illegal transplants in case that stretches to Israel and Brazil.
Last Modified: 17 Sep 2010
A prominent South African hospital chain and its chief executive have been charged in connection with trafficking human organs in a case that authorities say stretched to Israel and Brazil.Vish Naidoo, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press news agency on Thursday that 11 suspects were ordered to appear in court in November.
He declined to name them, but the board of directors of the Netcare hospital chain said in a statement that the parent company, its chief executive officer, Richard Friedland, and its subsidiary in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal received subpoenas on Wednesday.
Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan finally announces reelection campaign – on Facebook
By announcing his candidacy via Facebook on Wednesday, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is sending a message to Nigerian media that he doesn’t need them to get his message out.
By G. Pascal Zachary, Guest blogger / September 16, 2010Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has ended months of speculation and confirmed he will contest January’s elections. By announcing his decision via Facebook, Jonathan is sending a message to Nigeria’s media that he will go around them, if he thinks by speaking directly he can get a fairer deal.
Jonathan is the first Nigerian president from the country’s oil-rich Delta region. He took office because of the death of his predecessor. He’s been dismissed as a caretaker by Nigerian heavyweights. While he may lack the political machinery of such past presidents as Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan is perhaps in the right place at the right time. The unrest in the Delta might be reason enough for voters to elect Jonathan, a reform-minded native of the region.