Chilean miners braced for release as drill breakthrough due in hours
The 33 miners trapped 2,297ft (700m) below the Atacama Desert are being prepared for rescue as the drill boring the shaft to reach them is expected to breakthrough within hours.
By Fiona Govan at the San Jose mine
Published: 1:01AM BST 08 Oct 2010
The Schramm T-130 drill, known as plan B, has started drilling the final 330ft (100m) to widen a borehole for a metal rescue capsule that will raise the men from the deep chamber where they have been trapped since Aug 5.Laurence Golborne, Chile’s mining minster, announced on a visit to the San Jose mine yesterday that he expected the breakthrough to come overnight on Friday. The men could be lifted to the surface as early as Monday.
“We are advancing pretty well on plan B,” Mr Golborne said. “We are hoping to break through more or less by daybreak this Saturday but depending on whether we have to change the hammer or not it couldbe a little earlier.”
HIV infections could hit 3.2m a year by 2031 if funding is not increased
Just keeping pandemic under control will cost up to $733bn, report published in the Lancet warns
Sarah Boseley, health editor The Guardian, Friday 8 October 2010
Merely controlling HIV and Aids will cost between $397bn and $733bn over the next 20 years – and unless more money is spent the pandemic will continue to spread, experts warned today.If funding is not increased from 2009, infections could rise from 2.3 million a year to 3.2 million by 2031, claimed a report by the aids2031 financing group, headed by the Results for Development Institute in Washington DC.
In the Lancet medical journal, the group warns it is “increasingly improbable” in tough economic times that donors and governments will find enough money to fund a rapid increase in universal access to prevention and treatment services by 2015.
USA
Flawed Foreclosure Documents Thwart Home Sales
By ANDREW MARTIN and DAVID STREITFELD
Published: October 7, 2010
OCALA, Fla. – Amanda Ducksworth was supposed to move in to her new home this week, a three-bedroom steal here in central Florida with a horse farm across the road. Instead, she is camped out with her 7-year-old son at her boss’s house.
Like many buyers across the country, Ms. Ducksworth was about to complete the purchase of a foreclosed house when it suddenly went off the market. Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage holding company that buys loans from commercial lenders, is pulling back sales of homes that might have been foreclosed in bad faith.
History of telecom company illustrates lack of strategic trust between U.S., China
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
SHENZHEN, CHINA – Late last year, as AT&T was preparing to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment for its next-generation phone system, one of its senior executives received a call from the National Security Agency.
The subject was AT&T’s desire to give a burgeoning Chinese telecommunications firm a contract to supply some of the equipment. The message from the NSA – the nation’s electronic spying agency – was simple: If AT&T wanted to continue its lucrative business with the U.S. government, it had better select a supplier other than Huawei, said several people with knowledge of the call. In February, AT&T announced that it would buy the equipment it needed from Swedish-owned Ericsson and Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent.
Europe
France’s highest legal authority removes last obstacle to ban on burka
Unexpected ruling prompts fears of reprisals by Islamic fundamentalists
By John Lichfield in Paris Friday, 8 October 2010
A ban on the burka, and other full-face veils will take effect in France from next spring after an unexpected ruling by the country’s highest legal authority last night.In a decision that will divide the country, and may spark fears of Islamic fundamentalist reprisals, the Conseil Constitutionnel removed the final legal obstacle to the ban, by ruling that a so-called “anti-burka” law passed by both houses of the French parliament did not infringe fundamental liberties.
Dutch queen approves coalition backed by anti-Islam party
The Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix has given the go-ahead for Liberal party leader Mark Rutte to form a cabinet. The minority government, relying on an anti-Islam party for support, is not expected to last a full term.
Politics | 08.10.2010
The Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix has asked the leader of the liberal WD party, Mark Rutte, to form a government following months of coalition negotiations.Rutte is to lead a center-right coalition with the country’s Christian Democrat party (CDA), which will rely on the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) for parliamentary support.
“Her Majesty the Queen met Mr Rutte at her palace this evening,” the Dutch government’s communication service said early on Friday. “The Queen asked him … to form a cabinet as soon as possible.”
However, the party, which is led by controversial politician Geert Wilders, has agreed to back coalition legislation in exchange for a say in policy making.
Middle East
Gaza burns as Hamas declares war on drugs
Use of narcotics has soared among a people under siege. Now the authorities have vowed to clean up
By Donald Macintyre Friday, 8 October 2010
They made an incongruous sight, piled on to trestle tables in the car park outside a government office. Long bundles of dried marijuana branches – known as Bango here – the chocolate bar-shaped slabs of hashish, a few still half-covered with the blue Action cheese wrapping used to smuggle them in, and the smaller grubby blocks of off-white cocaine. Beside them were huge transparent plastic bags stuffed with packets containing nearly half a million painkillers, Gaza’s psychotropic pills of choice – Tramadol, and a smaller selection of drugs on display not because they were banned in themselves but because they had been smuggled illegally from Egypt and Israel: the nasal decongestant Clarinase, a so-called “traditional chinese medicine” named Tiger King, and the inevitable sexual-enhancement drugs: Cialis, Levitra and something unconvincingly called Marcin Sexual Gum.
TEL AVIV – Two years ago, Israeli journalist Bradley Burston wrote an article in the form of 10 pieces of advice to then newly elected United States president. He cautioned Barack Obama: ”Israelis and Palestinians both will greet your arrival with maddening moves, some of them designed specifically to derail your progress, some of them simply having this as a side effect.” [1] In light of the deadlock over the West Bank settlement moratorium, Burston appears prescient.Clearly, time is running out on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, even as a massive American-led effort is underway to save them.
Middle East squeeze on Obama
By Victor Kotsev
TEL AVIV – Two years ago, Israeli journalist Bradley Burston wrote an article in the form of 10 pieces of advice to then newly elected United States president. He cautioned Barack Obama: ”Israelis and Palestinians both will greet your arrival with maddening moves, some of them designed specifically to derail your progress, some of them simply having this as a side effect.” [1] In light of the deadlock over the West Bank settlement moratorium, Burston appears prescient.Clearly, time is running out on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, even as a massive American-led effort is underway to save them. Amid conflicting media reports, it is not easy to determine the exact parameters of ongoing bargaining, and the official sources are unusually tight-lipped. United States think-tank Stratfor writes: ”The Israelis have resumed settlement construction but do not want the peace talks with the Palestinians to end… This might either be an extraordinarily clever ploy of which the meaning is not yet evident, or just an incoherent policy. It would be nice to figure this out.”
Asia
Afghanistan’s Reservoir Dogs: security firms criticised over ‘warlord payments’
British private security company referred to Afghan warlords as ‘Mr White’ and ‘Mr Pink’, according to report by US Senate
Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 October 2010 00.47 BST
The two Afghan warlords were referred to as “Mr White” and “Mr Pink”, the characters from Quentin Tarantino’s movie Reservoir Dogs. They were well named, every bit as ruthless and bloody as their namesakes in the 1992 film.Their activities are documented at length in a US Senate committee report, published last night, that provides a rare glimpse into the world of private security companies operating in Afghanistan.
Hard turn for Khmer Rouge trial
By James O’Toole
PAILIN – Despite an awkwardly attached prosthetic leg, deputy governor Mey Meakk cut an authoritative figure as he strode into a recent community meeting in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin along the Thai-Cambodian border.The radical Maoist movement’s former members have maintained political influence here in the transition from war to peace, despite atrocities committed during their rule that resulted in the deaths of perhaps 2.2 million people.
Provincial governor Y Chhean was formerly the head of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s bodyguards; another deputy governor, Ieng Vuth, is the son of former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, social action minister Ieng Thirith
Africa
Zimbabwe’s prime minister attacks Mugabe’s ‘betrayal’
Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government was in fresh crisis yesterday after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai ended months of conciliation and co-operation to launch a stinging attack on Robert Mugabe
By Peta Thornycroft, Zimbabwe Correspondent
Mr Tsvangirai said that events over the past few months have left him “disappointed in Mugabe, and [a] betrayal of the confidence that I and many Zimbabweans have personally invested in him.”Mr Tsvangirai said he was “saddened” by violence by Mr Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) at public meetings to discuss a new constitution last month. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says a Tsvangirai supporter was killed in the violence.
World Cup cities want Fifa cash
South Africa’s nine Fifa World Cup host cities are demanding an estimated R500-million that they claim Fifa owes them.
By NIVASHNI NAIR, NASHIRA DAVIDS and ANDILE NDLOVU
Durban city manager Michael Sutcliffe told The Times yesterday that the host cities had been “engaging” with Fifa for at least three years but were still waiting to be paid for work done in the run-up to the tournament.Host city contracts with the world soccer body state that the cities are entitled to 10% of World Cup ticket sales.
“Fifa also has to pay a rehabilitation fee, which was used to rehabilitate different areas. In Durban’s case, it was the area outside the stadium known as People’s Park,” Sutcliffe said.