U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: September 13, 2009
WASHINGTON – When President Obama travels to Wall Street on Monday to speak from Federal Hall, where the founders once argued bitterly over how much the government should control the national economy, he is likely to cast himself as a “reluctant shareholder” in America’s biggest industries and financial institutions.
But one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a series of federal interventions, the government is the nation’s biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor against risk for investors large and small.Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation’s economy – 26 percent – than at any time since World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent owned by the government.
Pakistani artists persevere amid increasing militancy
At a university in Punjab, the music department is off-campus, relegated to a dank basement. Singers and playwrights face the risk of attacks from militants who deem the activity un-Islamic.
By Mark Magnier
Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan – To find the music department of the University of the Punjab, travel several miles from the main campus to a red-brick building, down some dark stairs, left through a shadowy corridor and into a warren of small, windowless rooms.The dank basement befits a department exiled after a militant student group called it un-Islamic, un-Pakistani and unwanted. There were threats, protests, machine-gun-toting bodyguards. Then, the basement.
These are the front lines of Pakistan’s culture wars, a very real battlefield with bombs and bloodshed where musicians, filmmakers, painters and theater groups face off against the Taliban and other militants.
USA
Reform Opposition Is High but Easing
More Support if Public Option Dropped
By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 14, 2009
President Obama continues to face significant public resistance to his drive to initiate far-reaching changes to the country’s health-care system, with widespread skepticism about central tenets of his plan, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
But after a summer of angry debate and protests, opposition to the effort has eased somewhat, and there appears to be potential for further softening among critics if Congress abandons the idea of a government-sponsored health insurance option, a proposal that has become a flash point in the debate. The gap in passion, which had shown greater intensity among opponents of the plan, has also begun to close, with supporters increasingly energized and more now seeing reform as possible without people being forced to give up their current coverage.
Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme
The Republican establishment hopes cooler heads will prevail over strongly anti-Obama parts of the conservative base.
By Peter Wallsten
September 14, 2009
Reporting from Washington – Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP’s broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents.
Asia
Harrassed Tamils languish in prison-like camps in Sri Lanka
Randeep Ramesh in Trincomalee
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 September 2009 18.47 BST
Living by a palm-fringed golden beach on the edge of the Indian Ocean, Suganthinhi Thesamanikam considers herself lucky to be alive after living through the hell of war.Caught between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan army, she dodged bullets and shells for two years before ending up on the sandy littoral where the rebel leadership was routed in May, in a bloody ending to a 25-year-old civil war. Three of her cousins were killed during the last days of heavy aerial bombardment.
Herded by the army, the 22-year-old then lived for four months under a tin roof, surviving on dry rations and going days without clean water in a vast, overcrowded camp behind barbed wire and armed soldiers.
Maori legend of man-eating bird is true
Creature that features in New Zealand folklore really existed, scientists sayBy Paul Rodgers
Monday, 14 September 2009
A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said to be named after its cry and to have “raced the hawk to the heavens”. Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast’s eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago, shows their study in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.Haast’s eagle (Harpagornis moorei) was discovered in swamp deposits by Sir Julius von Haast in the 1870s. But it was at first thought to be a scavenger because its bill was similar to a vulture’s with hoods over its nostrils to stop flesh blocking its air passages as it rooted around inside carcasses.
Europe
It’s now or never in Cyprus
A negotiated settlement is back on the cards. If Turkish Cypriots are left out in the cold again, the world will be a less secure place
Suat Kinikliogu
guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 September 2009 09.00 BST
Cyprus is back on the international agenda, with leaders of the island’s rival Greek and Turkish communities engaged in intense negotiations to resolve the divided country’s status. But, although talks are under way, the international community is, not surprisingly, tired of dealing with the issue. After all, the Cyprus conflict has dragged on since 1974, wearing out UN secretary generals and special representatives of all sorts, as well as bringing down governments in both Greece and Cyprus.In 2004, the EU, the US, and a good part of the international community invested considerable energy in trying to resolve the conflict once and for all. Then UN secretary general Kofi Annan and his team drafted a plan, which Turkey’s government took very significant political risks in supporting. The government convinced the Turkish Cypriots to make a leap of faith and vote in favour of the Annan plan in order to reunite the island.
Cargo ships navigate Northeast Passage for the first time
From The Times
September 14, 2009
Tony Halpin in Moscow
It is both a symbol of global warming and a potentially lucrative new trade route between Europe and Asia.Two German container ships have successfully navigated the Russian Northeast Passage across Arctic waters from the Pacific for the first time in a voyage considered impossible until a few years ago.
The journey through formerly frozen seas promises to transform Russia’s neglected Siberian coast and reduce transport costs for goods taken from Asia to the European Union.
Africa
Safari operators enraged as Zanu-PF rewards the faithful with stolen share of lucrative trade
By Gift Phiri in Save Valley, Zimbabwe
Monday, 14 September 2009
Senior officials in Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party are forcing safari operators to give up the profits from lucrative ranches in a ruthless takeover of Zimbabwe’s foreign-owned properties reminiscent of the regime’s previous seizure of white farmers’ land.The officials include a provincial governor, Titus Maluleke, and the Environment Minister and UN appointee, Francis Nhema. They have compelled safari operators in the Save Valley Conservancy, a thriving wildlife reserve, to cede shareholdings from 50 to 80 per cent to allies in the police and military, as well as party apparatchiks. One investor described the confiscation as a “mafia-style takeover”. Mr Mugabe is thought to have been told of the matter last week, when it was also discussed in a cabinet meeting.
Middle East
George Mitchell tries to secure Israeli settlement freeze to revive peace talks
From The Times
September 14, 2009
Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem
President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East was last night locked in intense negotiations to secure agreement on a settlement freeze and revived peace talks before a possible summit in New York next week.George Mitchell met the Israeli President hours after Shimon Peres was discharged from hospital after fainting at a public engagement on Saturday. He will meet Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, tomorrow to discuss a peace plan whereby Israel would freeze construction of settlements on the West Bank and Arab countries take steps towards recognising Israel.
Negotiators said that the outline of a final peace deal for Palestinian statehood could be drawn up by the end of this month.
‘Mubarak asked PM for settlement halt’
Sep 14, 2009 0:43 |
By HERB KEINON AND KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to halt settlement construction during a Cairo meeting on Sunday, Israel Radio reported Monday morning. According to the report, the Egyptian president said that continued building was hindering efforts to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
The meeting took place as US Mideast envoy George Mitchell was holding high-level talks in Jerusalem, as part of efforts to together a package to enable the announcement of a renewal of peace talks.Netanyahu flew to Cairo for a meeting with Mubarak in the late afternoon and returned a few hours later. His Monday meeting with Mitchell in Jerusalem was postponed until Tuesday,so that the prime minister could attend the funeral of Assaf Ramon, who was killed Sunday when the F-16 jet he was piloting crashed south of Hebron.
Latin America
Grupo Televisa CEO Emilio Azcarraga Jean has a life like a telenovela
Described by some as a Latin American Rupert Murdoch, Azcarraga is among the most famous men in Mexico, and his company is by far the country’s dominant broadcaster.
By Reed Johnson and Yvonne Villarreal
September 14, 2009
Practically since the day he was born, in 1968, Emilio Azcarraga Jean has owned one of the most famous names in Mexico.That’s because his father, Emilio Azcarraga Milmo, also known as “El Tigre” (The Tiger), was among the hemisphere’s richest men and head of a sprawling media empire.
His empire’s cornerstone was Grupo Televisa, the giant Mexican television broadcaster that for decades operated as a monopoly. Although Mexico now has a second national network, TV Azteca, Televisa remains by far the country’s dominant broadcaster, with an unrivaled power to influence not only Mexicans’ entertainment preferences but also their ideas about politics, business and the rest of the world.