Libyan Times

Positive Change Team declares goals in Libya

2011-11-23T12:21:00.001+02:00

As an approach of management and organizational restructuring in the post-war Libya, a group of engineers, management and planning specialists initiated a project to provide reference and guidance for restructuring and process re-engineering in organizations suffering from systematic corruption.

The group is called: Positive Change Team, as an indication of their intentions, and they have executed a successful workshop to gather ideas, and make allies in their upcoming war against corruption in the wounded state.

We will be following and covering their activities, as they were interviewed by Saut Libya Alhurra radio in Benghazi, and their host will be chatting with them next Thursday to complement what they have started.

Jim Madi

Gaddafi is sending mercenaries and African workers to Italy

2011-03-08T12:30:00.002+02:00

Lieutenant Gaddafi's battalions started gathering African workers by collecting those from the Libyan-Tunisian border in Ras Ajdir, and also mercenaries within his forces, and his battalions are working on sending them in boats to the Italian islands in the Mediterranean via a small port in the city of Misurata. The intention behind this act is very clear, Gaddafi is trying to prove to the world that its him or chaos, it is also meant to convert the international support to the upraise in Libya against Gaddafi's rule, which started on Feb 17th 2011.

Massacres and asks for a safe bail out ticket

2011-03-08T12:27:00.001+02:00

That’s what lieutenant Gaddafi asked for after his battalions and mercenary groups committed in Beida and Benghazi on February 20^th and 21^st at the beginning of the Libyan uprising in 2011, and then they went on with the massacres that even Adolf Hitler, or Benito Mussolini would be ashamed of, attacking Misurata and Tripoli neighborhood towns of Janzour and Tajura.

But Gaddafi’s major hit was the city of Azzawiyah, which was targeted on a wide scale by Gaddafi, since the very first up-rise, and on Friday March 4^th the military action was raised, Azzawiyah was attacked 3 days on a row, and on the 3^rd day Azzawiyah was targeted with an annihilation plan by Gaddafi’s hard armored highly equipped troops, with deaths reaching more then 1500, and casualties up to 3000.

Gaddafi went on a further step by planting land mine around the Azzawiyah Refinery Plan in the north of the city, and also around Sirt, an act that was committed by the Fascist Italian and Nazi German invaders back in World War 2, and now repeated by this lieutenant so called leader of the revolution.

What makes it even worse is that Gaddafi is negotiating stepping down with outrageous conditions, worst of which is him not being prosecuted.

I can’t close this article until all the crazy acts of this madman are over; who knows what is he going to do next.

Nasa's 2013 solar flare warning: how much do we need to worry?

2010-06-17T20:11:00.001+03:00

By Tom Chivers Last updated: June 16th, 2010

So, do we really need to worry about a huge solar storm burning out the electrical systems of half the world in 2013? Masochists that we are here at the Telegraph, we love to shoot down our own stories, and I was cracking my knuckles for this one. It’s got all the ingredients – white-coated authority, grave warnings of impending doom, exciting sciencey nuclear nemesis in space. NASA! Solar flares! Planes falling out of the sky! Etc.

But I read the piece, and spoke to the reporter, and – while always remembering that I am no more an astrophysicist than I am a black belt in tae kwon do – it sounded pretty solid. Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa’s Heliophysics division, is very clear in the quotes, and our reporter, Andrew Hough, was very careful to check his facts with Dr Fisher before publishing. It sounds like a lot of serious people think that this is a real danger.

Apparently the concern is in 2013, the sun will reach a stage of its cycle when these large events are more likely. This might strike you as a bit strange, as you’ve probably heard (as have I) that the sun has been especially active for the last half-century or so and is expected to die down in the next couple of years – I spoke to Marcus Chown, the physicist and author of We Need to Talk about Kelvin, who said “Solar activity has been abnormally high for the past 50 years, but the extremely feeble start to the latest 11-year cycle suggests this activity is coming to an end and things are going to be quiet on the Sun for quite a few years.” Dr Ruth Bamford, a plasma physicist at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, agrees: “The sun has been particularly quiet for the last few years in a protracted solar minimum. It has just woken up, as it were, and started its usual 11-year cycle a bit later than most.”

So what’s going on? Well, something similar has happened before. In 1859 a huge solar storm burned out telegraph wires across Europe and the United States. Dr Stuart Clark has written a book, The Sun Kings, about when that happened. He says that the “Carrington flare”, as it was known, “smothered two-thirds of the Earth’s skies in a blood-red aurora a night later, and crippled all of global navigation and global communication, such as it was at that time. Compasses span uselessly and the telegraph network went down as phantom electricity surged through the wire.”

The sun had indeed been running at a record high for the latter half of the 20th century, and has now died down to its lowest level for a century. But Dr Clark warns that “average levels of solar activity has fallen does not mean that the Sun is immune from large flares or even giant ones. Low average levels of activity may even promote the giant flares.

“Perhaps like earthquakes, when there are constant flares/tremors the energy is dissipated evenly over long periods of time. But in periods of quiet, that energy can build up and then suddenly be released in a giant event. This remains speculation, however.”

2013 is when the next peak in the sun’s cycle of activity is expected, and while we cannot predict individual flares, Dr Clark says that the largest flares are often shortly after the peak.

Of course, if a proper “Carrington event” happens again, it has the potential to be far more problematic now than in 1859 when electric communication was barely in its infancy. Dr Clark says “There is absolutely no reason to believe that we are heading for solar armageddon in 2013, but sooner or later we should expect there to be another Carrington event and that is what these scientists [at NASA] are trying to prevent. Legislation in the US has just passed Congress to help harden the grid against solar flares.”

So – it’s a real thing, and we should be concerned. But preventive measures can be taken – satellites can be sent offline during big flares, power grids and communication networks can be shielded against electromagnetic radiation and so on. As Dr Bamford says: “The extreme events like the 1859 Carrington Event are 1-in-100-year probabilities, about the same probability as a storm of the level of Katrina hitting New Orleans – and New Orleans did not build their defences to withstand the extreme-but-unlikely magnitude. 100 years isn’t that long.

“But the end of the world it is not. Maybe as disruptive as an ash cloud, but not as protracted I’m sure.” She gives examples of precautions, like a GPS backup system called eLoran, or active mini-magnetosphere shielding for astronauts and satellites that her team have designed.

Of course, if those precautions are taken, and actually work, and no damage is done, then everyone will cry that it was all a big fuss over nothing, like they always do. So the scientists can’t win, really. But that’s just how it is.

Edit: Dr Ruth Bamford got in touch, with a few extended quotes and clarifying her thoughts and her job description. Have changed accordingly.

2010-05-12T22:12:00.001+03:00

Associated Press was the first to announce the incident, and Libyan Times has been following the story since it has evolved at 7:32am on Wed 12 May 2010

News Bulletin - 14:05 GMT update - Libya plane crash

2010-05-12T22:06:00.001+03:00

Libyan Times has been following the story since it has evolved at 7:32am on Wed 12 May 2010

Aljazeera English: Dutch boy survives Libya crash

2010-05-12T21:56:00.002+03:00

Libyan Times has been following the story since it has evolved at 7:32am on Wed 12 May 2010

Raw video: Libyan plane crash survivor, aftermath footage

2010-05-12T21:49:00.001+03:00

Libya plane crash kills 103, Dutch child survives

2010-05-12T13:41:00.005+03:00

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A Libyan Airbus crashed when trying to land at Tripoli airport early on Wednesday, killing 103 passengers and crew aboard, but a Dutch child survived, Libyan officials said.

Libya's Afriqiyah airline said it operated the plane, which was flying from Johannesburg in South Africa to Tripoli. Planemaker Airbus said the jet was an A330-200 and the firm would help authorities with their investigation.

"All of the passengers and crew died except for one child," a Libyan security source told Reuters at Tripoli airport. "There were 93 passengers and 11 crew on board."

Libya's Transport Minister Mohamed Zidan said the 10-year-old child, who holds a Dutch passport, was in hospital.

The child did not have life-threatening injuries, the minister told a news conference near the crash site.

The casualties included 22 Libyans, including passengers and crew, and the rest were of various nationalities, a Libyan official at the airport said.

In a statement posted on its website, Afriqiyah Airways said its flight 8U771 had an accident during landing at Tripoli International airport. An airport official said the plane crashed at 6.10 a.m. local time (0410 GMT).

Airbus issued a statement confirming it had manufactured the plane involved in the crash. "Airbus will provide full technical assistance to the authorities responsible for the investigation into the accident," it said.

A South African foreign ministry spokeswoman said the plane had left Johannesburg en route to Libya the previous evening.

(Reporting by Ali Shuaib in Tripoli, Raissa Kasolosky in Dubai, Peroshni Govender in Johannesburg and Rome bureau; Writing by Cynthia Johnston and Christian Lowe; Editing by Charles Dick)

Afriqiyah Airways Official Statement - May 12th 2010 9:00AM UTC

2010-05-12T13:09:00.002+03:00

Statement No.2

We are very sorry to announce the tragic loss of Afriqiyah airways flight 8u 771 from Johannesburg in an accident during landing at Tripoli international airport at 04:00 UTC. (06:00 am Tripoli time) today Wednesday 12 may. We extend our deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the victims the search and rescue mission has now been completed and casualties have been moved to various hospitals. the secretariat of health will issue a statement on the condition of those casualties.

Our prime objective is to prevent accidents from happening and every effort is being done address any failure in our safety management system. at this moment we cannot speculate further and will relay to you all factual information as we receive them.

Parties seeking information on passengers should contact.

From Libya:0213341181

Intrnational:+442033552737

Latest update: 103 dead in Libya plane crash

2010-05-12T13:03:00.001+03:00

UPDATED ON: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 12:57 Mecca time, 09:57 GMT

Up to 103 people have been killed in a plane crash at the airport in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The Libyan transport minister said an eight-year-old Dutch national was the sole survivor after Afriqiyah Airways' Airbus-330 arriving from South Africa crashed on Wednesday morning.

Mohamed Zidan said the boy was being treated in hospital but did not have life-threatening injuries.

Zidan said Libyans, Africans and Europeans had been on board.

"We have definitely ruled out the theory that the crash was the result of an act of terrorism," Zidan told a media conference.

Libya's Afriqiyah Airways said the aircraft, carrying 93 passengers and 11 crew, was coming in to land when it crashed.

Plane wreckage

Libyan state television showed footage of a large field scattered with small and large pieces of plane debris and dozens of police and rescue workers with surgical masks and gloves, some of them carrying at least one body away.

"All of the passengers and crew died except one child, " a Libyan security official at the airport said.

Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Johannesburg, where the aircraft departed from, said the plane was a "fairly new" Airbus.

"Right now there's no information as to what happened and what could have gone wrong," she said.

"The airport authority is struggling to get a call centre in place but right now information is sketchy."

French investigators would travel to Tripoli on Wednesday to take part in the probe of the accident, the BEA air accident investigation agency said.

European plane-maker Airbus, which built the aircraft, also said it would dispatch experts as part of the French investigating team, the French-based firm said.

"Airbus will provide full technical assistance to the authorities responsible for the investigation into the accident through the BEA," the company said in a statement.

BBC - Libyan plane flying from Johansberg to London through Tripoli crashes in Tripoli

2010-05-12T12:44:00.003+03:00

Libyan official television published rescue operations footage of the incident

2010-05-12T12:30:00.002+03:00

Libyan television showed rescue workers going through the rubble

Up to 104 people have been killed in a plane crash in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Libya's Afriqiyah Airways said its Airbus-330 arriving from South Africa was coming in to land when it crashed on Wednesday morning.

"I can confirm the crash but not the number of the dead," Bongani Sithole, an official of the airline at Johannesburg airport, said.

"We hear that it happened one metre away from the runway."

The airline said 93 passengers and 11 crew were on board the plane.

"All of the passengers and crew died except one child, " a Libyan security official at the airport said.

The survivor was said to be an eight-year-old boy with Dutch nationality.

There was no immediate indication of why the aircraft arriving from Johannesburg crashed.

Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Johannesburg, said the plane was a "fairly new" Airbus.

"The airport in South Africa has not yet released details about the nationalities of the passengers," she said.

"People are still struggling to find out what actually happened."

Libya plane crash killed 103: airport source

2010-05-12T12:21:00.002+03:00

Ali Shuaib

TRIPOLI

Wed May 12, 2010 4:33am EDT

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - All but one of the 104 passengers and crew of a Libyan plane that crashed at Tripoli airport on Wednesday were killed, a Libyan security source at Tripoli airport told Reuters.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - A Libyan Airbus crashed when trying to land at Tripoli airport early on Wednesday, killing 103 passengers and crew aboard, but a Dutch child survived, Libyan officials said.

"All of the passengers and crew died except for one child," a Libyan security source told Reuters at Tripoli airport. "There were 93 passengers and 11 crew on board."

Libya's Transport Minister Mohamed Zidan said the 10-year-old child, who holds a Dutch passport, was in hospital.

The child did not have life-threatening injuries, the minister told a news conference near the crash site.

The casualties included 22 Libyans, including passengers and crew, and the rest were of various nationalities, a Libyan official at the airport said.

A South African foreign ministry spokeswoman said the plane had left Johannesburg en route to Libya the previous evening.

(Reporting by Ali Shuaib in Tripoli, Raissa Kasolosky in Dubai, Peroshni Govender in Johannesburg and Rome bureau; Writing by Cynthia Johnston and Christian Lowe; Editing by Charles Dick)

Scores dead in Libya plane crash

2010-05-12T10:50:00.005+03:00

Up to 104 people have been killed in a plane crash in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Libya's Afriqiyah Airways said its Airbus-330 arriving from South Africa was coming in to land when it crashed on Wednesday morning.

"Afriqiyah Airways announce that our flight 8U771 had an accident during landing at Tripoli International airport," the airline said on its website.

"At this moment we have no information concerning possible casualties or survivors. Our information is that there were 93 passengers and 11 crew aboard."

Afriqiyah said "competent authorities are conducting the search and rescue mission".

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said all passengers and crew members had been killed in the accident.

A source told Al Jazeera that an eight-year-old passenger had survived the crash.

There was no immediate indication of why the aircraft arriving from Johannesburg crashed.

Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Johannesburg, said the plane was a "fairly new" Airbus.

"The airport in South Africa has not yet released details about the nationalities of the passengers," she said.

"People are still struggling to find out what actually happened."

Follow the event in Arabic on Quryna.com

Gadhafi: 'Switzerland Should be Dissolved as a State'

2010-05-04T10:39:00.004+03:00

03.05.2010

SPIEGEL Interview with Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi talked to the SPIEGEL about his friendship with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the 'youthful exuberance' of his sons, and why he thinks Switzerland is a mafia.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Gadhafi, for years you repeatedly got into shouting matches with the Western world before making your peace with arch-enemy America four years ago. Now you have declared a holy war on tiny Switzerland, of all countries. Why?

Gadhafi: Switzerland is one country among many; sometimes you have trouble with one country, sometimes with another. We never had difficulties with Switzerland before. We used to appreciate it as a holiday destination. We used to appreciate its companies and its watches. But then Switzerland began to treat us badly. For example, the minaret issue and the publishing of nasty portrayals of the Prophet. It was necessary to draw a line with the Swiss. That is what I did in my speech in Benghazi to mark the Prophet's birthday.

SPIEGEL: And now Swiss national Max Göldi, who has absolutely nothing to do with this, has to pay for your anger against Switzerland? A man whose visa allegedly expired, who has not been able to leave Libya for nearly two years and has been in prison for months. Why are you doing nothing for him?

Gadhafi: Only the courts can decide on this.

SPIEGEL: Do you mean to tell us that you don't have the power to pardon him?

Gadhafi: This is a matter for the legal system. But I'm talking now about Switzerland. Switzerland is a state that stands outside the international community. It is not bound by any EU regulations. It is good that it joined the United Nations in 2002, but the whole time before that it was not a member. Why? It wanted to stand above international law. And that has made Switzerland into a mafia.

SPIEGEL: Whatever you may now say about Switzerland, previously it didn't bother you in the least. You did business with the country -- your company Tamoil Suisse has dozens of filling stations in Switzerland.

Gadhafi: Money is laundered on a grand scale in Switzerland. Anyone who robs a bank later invests the money in Switzerland. Anyone who evades taxes goes to Switzerland. Anyone who wants to deposit money in secret accounts goes to Switzerland. And a large number of owners of such secret accounts have died under mysterious circumstances.

SPIEGEL: Excuse me?

Gadhafi: Yes, Switzerland is behind it all.

SPIEGEL: Don't Libyans also have secret accounts in Switzerland?

Gadhafi: Yes, there are also Libyans who have such accounts, and many of them have also died in unexplained ways. All around the world, the families of these people are going to sue Switzerland. And one more thing: Switzerland is the only country that allows euthanasia. Why does only Switzerland do that?

SPIEGEL: Medical euthanasia is also legal in the Netherlands. And, it cannot go unmentioned that Libya has previously had citizens killed abroad who were said to be disloyal.

Gadhafi: But we are talking now about Switzerland. It is possible that among the Libyans who you are asking about -- and who died abroad -- there were also some who died because they had secret accounts in Switzerland.

SPIEGEL: And you are seriously maintaining that Switzerland as a state ordered the killing of these people?

Gadhafi: The investigations will show this. And this brings me back once again to the phenomenon of assisted suicide. A large number of people have been deliberately eliminated under this pretext. Switzerland maintains that these individuals expressed the desire to take their lives. But in reality it was done to get at their money. More than 7,000 people have died like this. I am thus calling for Switzerland to be dissolved as a state. The French part should go to France, the Italian part to Italy and the German part to Germany. Even Ayman al-Zawahiri …

SPIEGEL: … Osama bin Laden's deputy …

Gadhafi: … took al-Qaida's money to Switzerland, where it is still located. Switzerland finances terrorism.

SPIEGEL: Once again: Even if all of this were as you say -- why did this never bother you before?

Gadhafi: We had already noticed that money is laundered in Switzerland and people die in unexplained ways. But recently Switzerland has given itself away.

'Switzerland Respects no Laws'

SPIEGEL: Doesn't your anger with Switzerland in reality stem from the fact that your son Hannibal was arrested by police in Geneva in July 2008 and accused of beating up two people in his employment?

Gadhafi: The thing with Hannibal has been nothing but a source of enjoyment for Switzerland. This is a gang that doesn't care about law and order. The way they treated Hannibal proves that Switzerland respects no laws. A man employed by my son brought accusations against him so that he could remain in Switzerland. They can lock him up -- but please do so within the law. The police acted like a gang. They were dressed in plain clothes and they broke down the door, put my son in chains and brought his wife to a hospital. They left his daughter, who is one or two years old, alone back at the hotel. Then they put him handcuffed in a cold storage room, and at times in a bathroom -- exactly the way al-Qaida treats its victims. An act of terrorism.

SPIEGEL: According to the Swiss authorities, something entirely different happened in Geneva. They say that your son beat up two people there.

Gadhafi: No, no. Nothing like that happened. Switzerland has not said that to me nor to anyone else. I'm hearing this now for the first time.

SPIEGEL: But similar things have also happened elsewhere. Your sons have also run into trouble with the police in London, Paris and Germany. What do you say to them when something like this happens?

Gadhafi: These are cases of youthful exuberance. In France, for example, my son allegedly drove through a red light. That is normal and nothing out of the ordinary.

SPIEGEL: Allow us to ask once again: Are you really hearing today for the first time that your son allegedly severely beat two people?

Gadhafi: Yes, I'm hearing this now for the first time. All I heard was that the employee complained that Hannibal and his family had mistreated him. I oppose such behavior, whether it is in Switzerland, in Libya or elsewhere. What I am protesting against is the way action is being taken against him.

SPIEGEL: While we are talking about your sons -- which of the seven is closest to you?

Gadhafi: I love all of my sons equally. The question of which of them I prefer doesn't even arise.

SPIEGEL: In Europe it was presumed for a long time that your second-born, Saif al-Islam, would be your successor.

Gadhafi: I am not a king; I don't need a successor to the throne. (Laughs.) In Libya the people rule.

SPIEGEL: Your son told us that, as a matter of principle, the office of revolutionary leader cannot be inherited.

Gadhafi: That is correct.

SPIEGEL: Saif al-Islam has negotiated in a number of hostage-taking situations and is respected abroad. Even if he doesn't become your successor, what plans do you have for him?

Gadhafi: He has studied and is well-read; he is a man of the world and has reached an age where he requires no more help from me.

SPIEGEL: He has criticized you on occasion, for example, in the case of the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who spent eight years in prison because they allegedly deliberately infected Libyan children with HIV. Saif al-Islam admitted that the women had been tortured.

Gadhafi: The investigations have produced other results. I still believe that there was a conspiracy to kill the Libyan children.

SPIEGEL: You have recently been to Europe on a number of occasions. Who do you see as your closest friend among the European heads of state and government?

Gadhafi: My closest friend in Europe is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, but a few others are also close to me.

SPIEGEL: What do you think of German Chancellor Angela Merkel?

Gadhafi: She is a strong personality. More like a man than a woman. But I have never had a conversation with her.

SPIEGEL: Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schröder visited you in Libya. Would you accept an invitation to Germany?

Gadhafi: Of course I would accept such an invitation.

'No One is Talking about Throwing Jews into the Sea'

SPIEGEL: In recent years, thousands of people have drowned as they tried to flee from Africa across the Mediterranean to Europe. What can you do to help end this tragedy?

Gadhafi: The European Union should annually pay Libya €5 billion ($6.6 billion) via a special fund to combat illegal immigration. We have a precisely calculated plan to solve this problem.

SPIEGEL: What kind of plan is this?

Gadhafi: We will organize housing and employment projects in the refugees' African countries of origin so they remain there. We will do the same for those who are already in Libya, give them a place to live and create jobs for them. Furthermore, we are bolstering our border security on land and water with modern radar equipment and vehicles.

SPIEGEL: Thanks to its oil revenues, Libya is currently more financially sound than some EU countries. How much does your country actually earn every year from oil?

Gadhafi: I don't know exactly. (Turns to an aide.) But it could be around $50 billion.

SPIEGEL: Why don't you raise this amount yourself?

Gadhafi: We are not going to pay for Europe! After all, these are things that benefit Europe.

SPIEGEL: How are your relations with the US?

Gadhafi: Outstanding.

SPIEGEL: What exactly prompted you to make your surprising turnaround with the Americans?

Gadhafi: The big problem between us was Lockerbie …

SPIEGEL: The bomb attack on an American Boeing 747, which a former agent of the Libyan intelligence service was found guilty of carrying out.

Gadhafi: … but we have solved this.

SPIEGEL: That was back under former US President George W. Bush.

Gadhafi: And then came President Obama.

SPIEGEL: What do you think of Obama? Many Arabs say that he has already failed with his Middle East policies.

Gadhafi: When we speak here of 'failure,' it is not Obama's failure, but rather due to internal American crises. Obama has made no mistakes. In fact, he has achieved a great victory with his health reform, he is sticking to the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and he opposes weapons of mass destruction.

SPIEGEL: If you were to advise Obama: How should he proceed with Iran?

Gadhafi: He is taking a very reasonable approach. He is using diplomacy, is not threatening to use violence, military nor terror, as the others did -- Reagan, for instance.

SPIEGEL: And how do you view Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Gadhafi: He is cooperative, a revolutionary, but not aggressive. And he believes that he is right. Why are the Israelis not kept in check by the West? Why do these campaigns always only focus on Syria, Iraq and Iran? Why is Israel omitted when everyone of course knows that Israel has nuclear weapons? If Obama wants to be successful, he has to start by controlling the Israelis and eliminating Israeli weapons of mass destruction, and then he will also be successful in Iran and throughout the entire region.

SPIEGEL: Ahmadinejad says that Israel should be wiped off the map. You on the other hand have spoken for years in favor of a state in which Israelis and Palestinians would live together.

Gadhafi: I don't think that Ahmadinejad means the violent destruction of Israel when he says this. I think he is thinking of a new democratic state structure to replace the current state of Israel -- on the territory of what is geographically Palestine. No one is talking about throwing Jews into the sea.

SPIEGEL: You always supported German unity, even at the height of the Cold War, and in the end you proved to be correct. But you have been proved wrong in some of your other predictions, for example, that there will never be "an Islamic nuclear bomb." What gives you such a sense of confidence in your frequent predictions?

Gadhafi: I look at the facts and calculate the consequences -- and when it came to Germany, it was the same as everywhere in the world: Two and two make four. There is no other answer.

SPIEGEL: Where do you get your facts? Do you watch television? Do you read books?

Gadhafi: I get most of them from the Internet. I constantly sit at my computer. I read in Arabic, but now it is of course also possible to immediately get translations from English.

SPIEGEL: And, based on these facts, what do you predict for the Middle East?

Gadhafi: Either the Dimona nuclear facility in Israel will be removed, and a democratic state for everyone will emerge with no differences between Palestinians and Israelis, or war and strife will continue. Then Israel will be the loser and will disappear like a grain of sand in the sea.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Gadhafi, thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Volkhard Windfuhr and Bernhard Zand

Click here to read the interview on Spiegel Online

Benefits Of Doing Business In Libya

2010-05-01T11:35:00.001+03:00

International Benefits Of Doing Business In Libya Oxford Analytica, 02.02.10, 6:00 AM ET

The number of foreign businesses working in Libya has grown during the past five years, because of good opportunities and Libya's international political rehabilitation. However, doing business in Libya remains subject to the risk of arbitrary political interference, including from the family of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi.

Switzerland spat. The dispute between Libya and Switzerland that erupted in mid-2008 when Libya retaliated against an incident involving one of Qadhafi's sons, has not yet entirely subsided. In July 2008, one of Qadhafi's sons, Hannibal, was briefly arrested in Geneva along with his wife, on charges of assaulting and threatening two of their staff. Libya took a range of retaliatory measures, for example temporarily canceling deliveries of oil to Switzerland and withdrawing money from Swiss banks.

The authorities also arrested two Swiss businessmen--Max Goeldi, a manager in the Swedish-Swiss company ABB, and Rashid Hamdani, who works for a small construction firm:

--In early December, the Supreme Court found the two men guilty of overstaying their visas and sentenced them to prison sentences of 16 months.

--Hamdani's sentence was overturned, and Goeldi's appeal will be adjudicated on Feb. 4.

--However, both men are also accused of tax offenses and are due to face a second trial soon, with the verdicts expected on Feb. 6 and Feb. 7.

As Switzerland is not a major economic partner, the Libyan authorities feel no urgency to end the dispute but are inclined to use it as a bargaining chip. In due course, however, the dispute will fade.

Hazards. The main political hazards of doing business in Libya are resistance, unpredictability and disagreement. All the same, the Libyan authorities know that they cannot afford to drive away foreign investors and foreign businesses. They thus tend eventually to resolve disputes (such as with Switzerland), though often only once they have extracted some additional benefits:

--Resistance. The Revolutionary Committees Movement (in effect the ruling party) and other beneficiaries of the system of government status quo tend to be suspicious of reforms.

--Unpredictability. Qadhafi's character and unchallenged authority, and Libyan officials' deference to him, mean that there is always a risk that a particular policy will be reversed at short notice or temporarily, and without public explanation. Also, official approval on a matter does not rule out subsequent disagreements.

Risk management. The authorities are careful not to alienate key economic and strategic partners such as Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Smaller countries such as Switzerland have little diplomatic clout or strategic importance for Tripoli. However, foreign businesses are always at risk of political or arbitrary interference, though these risks can be managed:

1. Precautions. Foreign companies can minimize the risks by ensuring they comply fully with legal and bureaucratic requirements, employing good local staff and fixers, and being careful about the conduct of foreign staff in Libya and the impact of business operations. Libya does not have the outward strictness of Saudi Arabia, but it is socially conservative and checks and balances on the exercise of power are very weak.

2. Visas. On Jan. 20, an official announced that Libya would tighten conditions for granting visas to businessmen from Europe and certain other countries, because an increasing number of Libyan applications for visas to the Schengen E.U. states were being turned down. The authorities have often temporarily tightened or arbitrarily changed conditions in the past, with the result that foreigners arriving in the country are sometimes refused entry. It is therefore always important for foreign businesses to comply as fully as possible with requirements.

3. Libyan partners. Foreign businesses need to manage relations with Libyan partners tactfully and know what protections they have under Libyan law and measures promoted by the Libyan Foreign Investment Board. The authorities are also trying to develop the Libyan Stock Exchange, which should in due course help to improve the environment for local and foreign businesses.

Foreign businesses operating in Libya need to manage carefully any political risks to their operations. However, the risks are manageable and are mostly outweighed by the business opportunities.

Doctor: Al-Megrahi nearing death

2010-04-05T11:15:00.001+02:00

TRIPOLI, Libya, April 4 (UPI) -- Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is "within four weeks" of dying of cancer in Libya, a British doctor says.

Dr. Karol Sikora told The Sunday Times of London al-Megrahi is bed-ridden and on morphine.

The convicted terrorist had been freed from a Scottish prison last August and deported to Libya after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Sikora is receiving updates from a doctor in Tripoli. Megrahi's cancer, he said, has reached his prostate to his kidneys, liver, pelvis and lymph nodes.

"I say he will be dead within four weeks," Sikora predicted. "My understanding is that he's bed-bound, at home, not going to the hospital, receiving palliative care and no active treatment at all."

Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent who turned 58 last week, is the only person to be convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which

270 people died.

Upon being sent back to Libya despite heated criticism from many quarters in Britain and the United States, Megrahi was treated as a hero in that country.

Indonesia's Medco says to operate Libya oil block

2010-04-05T11:12:00.001+02:00

JAKARTA, April 5 - Indonesian energy firm PT Medco Energi International Tbk has become the operator of the Area 47 oil block in Libya, replacing Canadian energy firm Verenex [VNX.TO], it said on Monday.

Medco has said previously it plans to invest $1.7 billion between 2010-2014 in several major projects, including oil developments in Libya.

Medco Energi's Area 47 project in Libya is expected to produce between 50,000-100,000 barrels per day of crude oil and is due to start production in 2014.

In December last year, shareholders of Verenex Energy Inc overwhelming approved the C$317 million sale of the small Canadian oil explorer to a Libyan sovereign wealth fund, ending an international takeover battle that saw Libya block a richer offer from China.

The statement said Medco was in the final stages of seeking a declaration of commerciality from the Libyan government for numerous discoveries made in Area 47.

"Currently, we are also in the process of mobilising a drilling rig to complete the drilling of two further appraisal wells and three exploration wells as part of the work programme in 2010," Medco said in a statement.

Medco said drilling this year would also include the completion and testing of three previously drilled wells, which had been suspended.

Medco booked a net profit of $19.2 million in 2009, down 93.1 percent from $280.2 million in 2008. It said the drop was due to lower oil prices while crude oil production fell to 35,000 barrels per day in 2009, from 45,000 bpd in 2008.

7.2 earthquake strikes Baja California

2010-04-05T11:02:00.004+02:00

By MARIANA MARTINEZ and CHRISTOPHER WEBER, Associated Press Writers Mariana Martinez And Christopher Weber, Associated Press Writers

TIJUANA, Mexico – A powerful earthquake swayed buildings from Los Angeles to Tijuana, killing two people in Mexico, blacking out cities and forcing the evacuation of hospitals and nursing homes. One California city closed off its downtown due to unstable buildings.

The 7.2-magnitude quake centered just south of the U.S. border near Mexicali was one of the strongest earthquakes to hit region in decades.

"It sounds like it's felt by at least 20 million people," USGS seismologist Lucy Jones said. "Most of Southern California felt this earthquake."

Sunday afternoon's earthquake hit hardest in Mexicali, a bustling commerce center along Mexico's border with California, where authorities said the quake was followed by at least 20 smaller aftershocks, including ones of magnitudes 5.1, 4.5 and 4.3. The initial quake had a shallow depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers).

"It has not stopped trembling in Mexicali," said Baja California state Civil Protection Director Alfredo Escobedo.

Escobedo said one man was killed when his home collapsed just outside of Mexicali and another died when he into the street in panic and was struck by a car.

At least 100 people were injured in the city, most of them struck by falling objects. Power was out in virtually the entire city and the blackout was expected to last well into Monday, Escobedo said.

All 300 patients were evacuated from the Mexicali General Hospital to private clinics because the building had no electricity or water. But it was unclear how long the emergency generators powering the private clinics could last, and the patients might have to be moved again to hospitals outside the city, he said.

The parking garage at Mexicali's city hall also collapsed but no one was injured, Escobedo said.

Scientists said the main earthquake probably occurred on a fault that hadn't produced a major temblor in over a century. Preliminary data suggest the quake occurred on the Laguna Salada fault, which last unleashed a similar-sized quake was in 1892. Since then, it has sparked some magnitude-5 temblors.

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Erik Pounders described the area as a "chaotic" system of faults that needed more research.

In Calexico, California, a city of 27,000 right across the border from Mexicali, the city council declared a state of emergency amid growing reports of damage. Law enforcement vehicles guarded downtown streets, where windows were shattered and bricks and plaster had fallen from some buildings.

Calexico police Lt. Gonzalo Gerardo said most of the damage occurred downtown, where buildings constructed in the 1930s and '40s were not retrofitted for an earthquake of this magnitude.

"Downtown is going to remain closed until further notice. I honestly doubt that it will reopen soon," he said. "You've got a lot of cracks. You've got a lot of broken glass. It's unsafe for people to go there."

Rosendo Garcia, 44, was driving his daughter home from work when the quake struck.

"It felt like I was in a canoe in the middle of the ocean," he said, adding that homes in his trailer park were seriously damaged, including one knocked off its foundation

A home for seniors in Calexico built in the early 1900s was evacuated and its residents moved to a Red Cross shelter. The Fire Department also brought some sick and elderly people to hospitals because of power outages and gas problems.

Lights shattered, ceiling tiles fell and shelves collapsed at a Subway restaurant in Calexico, said manager Rosie Arellano.

"Everything is shut down, the whole town," Arellano said. "All the stop lights and the street lights are out. We have no power."

Strong shaking was reported across much of Southern California. The earthquake rattled buildings on the west side of Los Angeles and in the San Fernando Valley, interrupting Easter dinners. Some stalled elevators were reported and water sloshed out of swimming pools.

More than 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the epicenter, San Diego's Sheraton Hotel and Marina was briefly evacuated after minor cracks were discovered in its floors, said Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque. All guests were later allowed to return.

Susan Warmbier was putting away groceries in the San Diego suburb of Chula Vista when her husband asked, "Is the house moving?"

"We turned and we looked at the house, and it was actually moving. You could see it slightly moving left to right," she said.

Elsewhere in San Diego, there were reports of shattered windows, broken pipes and water main breaks in private buildings, but no reports of injuries, San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque said. Coronado Bridge over San Diego Bay was briefly closed as a precaution.

Across the border in Tijuana, Mexico, the quake caused buildings to sway and knocked out power in some areas. Families celebrating Easter ran out of their homes with children screaming and crying.

"I grabbed my children and said, 'Let's go outside, hurry, hurry!'" said Elizabeth Alvarez, 54.

No tsunami warning was issued, but hundreds of people on Tijuana's crowded beach feared the worst and fled when they felt the ground shake, said Capt. Juan Manuel Hernandez, the fire department's chief of aquatic rescue. The beach filled up again shortly.

If the preliminary magnitude holds it would be California's largest temblor since the 7.3-magnitude Landers quake hit in 1992, Jones said. There were at least two other 7.2-magnitude quakes in the last 20 years.

The main quake was even felt hundreds of miles away in Phoenix, a rarity for residents there. Jacqueline Land said the king-sized bed in her second-floor apartment felt like a boat gently swaying on the ocean.

"I thought to myself, 'That can't be an earthquake. I'm in Arizona,'" the Northern California native said.

The quake was felt in the fire and medical dispatch center in downtown Las Vegas, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.

Most of the 3,000 customers who lost power in southwestern Arizona and the more than 5,000 who went dark in Southern California regained power within minutes, utility officials said.

___

Christopher Weber reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press Writers Andrew Dalton, John Antczak and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles, John S. Marshall in San Francisco, and Matt Reed and Katie Oyan in Phoenix contributed, Elliot Spagat in Calexico and Sue Major Holmes in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report.

Libya and Russia agree €1.8bn arms deal

2010-02-04T12:51:00.002+02:00

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Libya has signed an arms deal with Russia worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion), Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying on Saturday.

"Only yesterday we signed a contract worth 1.3 billion euros," Putin said, according to RIA Novosti.

"And it's not only small arms," he added, without specifying which weapons Libya intended to purchase.

Interfax news agency quoted a military-diplomatic source as saying Libya was prepared to buy around 20 fighter planes and S-300PMU2 air defense systems.

The agency said on Tuesday that Libya also may acquire T-90S tanks, and modernize more than 140 T-72 tanks and other weapons.

The deal was signed after talks with Libyan defense minister, Major General Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, earlier this week in Moscow.

It comes days after the Libyan Investment Authority bought into the Hong Kong IPO of UC RUSAL, the world's biggest aluminum producer.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T21:43:00.000+02:00

Astronauts Get Two Christmases in Space

2009-12-28T22:42:00.000+02:00

Clara Moskowitz Staff Writer SPACE.com clara Moskowitz staff Writer space.com – Thu Dec 24, 10:46 am ET

Christmas comes twice to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station this year as the multi-nation crew celebrates the traditional Dec. 25 holiday as well as Russian Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7.

Current station commander Jeff Williams of NASA is leading a crew of five, including Russian cosmonauts Maxim Suraev and Oleg Kotov, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, and American spaceflyer Timothy "T.J." Creamer.

Kotov, Noguchi and Creamer arrived just recently, docking at the station aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft on Tuesday.

"We're privileged this time of year to be in this unique place looking back at our planet," Williams said in a video beamed down from the orbiting outpost. "It's a time for us to be thinking about our family and friends... It's also a time to look forward to the future year, finishing the assembly of the International Space Station."

Each year, the crew gets to choose when to hold their official holiday feast, during which they gather to share special delicacies beyond the scope of their normal daily rations.

This year, the spaceflyers have all elected to take American Christmas and American New Year's as their official holidays, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said.

Nonetheless, there will likely be some festivities on all the upcoming occasions, including the Russian Christmas.

"They'll probably celebrate a little on both," NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said.

Space feast

The special treats for Dec. 25 include smoked turkey, candied yams, green beans with mushrooms, and cornbread dressing.

"There's the traditional food, and also I think that Soichi is bringing up some Japanese food, and of course they have the Russian food," Byerly said.

That day will be a particularly light one, with minimal duties scheduled for the astronauts. They will have a chance to make phone calls and send e-mails back home, and of course, enjoy their meals.

"They gather around the table and kind of break out all the food," Byerly told SPACE.com. "They probably barter with one another and trade different foods. It's a big feast."

Christmases past

Christmas has a storied history in space that began with Apollo 8, when astronauts read Genesis from the moon. That year, in 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders sent a Christmas Eve broadcast back to Earth showing the now-famous view of Earth rising over the lunar surface.

In 1973, the crew aboard the U.S. Skylab space station constructed a homemade Christmas tree out of empty food cans.

Later, on Russia's Space Station Mir, NASA astronauts John Blaha and David Wolf celebrated American Christmas in 1996 and 1997, respectively.

The crew of space shuttle Discovery's STS-103 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope celebrated the holiday by releasing the rejuvenated observatory back into space.

Since 2000, astronauts have lived continuously on the International Space Station and have celebrated the holidays each year.

Wall Street prepares to coast to end of 2009

2009-12-28T22:40:00.000+02:00

NEW YORK (AFP) – Wall Street prepares to close out 2009 on an upbeat note with the market holding hefty gains from a stunning comeback following a disastrous start to the year.

The stock market enters the final week of trading at its highs for the year on the heels of a stunning nine-month rally that lifted the main indexes from their lowest levels in over a decade.

The final four trading days of the year in the upcoming holiday-shortened week are expected to see light activity and a favorable mood, with the market enjoying a so-called Santa Claus rally.

In the holiday week ending Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.85 percent to 10,520.10, its best level in nearly 15 months.

The tech-rich Nasdaq composite meanwhile rallied 3.35 percent to 2285.69 and the broad Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 2.18 percent to 1,126.48.

Fred Dickson, market strategist at DA Davidson & Co., said the mood on Wall Street should remain positive through the coming week.

"Trading activity should pick up next week as investors make last minute portfolio changes like tax-loss sales and portfolio rebalancing," he said.

"We still expect to see the minor Santa Claus rally continue through New Year's Eve."

Some said the upbeat mood was helped by a steepening of the yield curve -- or a rise in the difference between short-term and long-term bond rates. Analysts say this is a positive sign because it encourages lending and risk taking.

The opposite phenomenon, an inverted yield curve, suggested recession was coming in 2007.

The yield curve is "a good barometer of the health of the US economy," said Chris Gaffney at EverBank World Markets, who noted that the difference between the short and long bonds rose to a record high in the past week.

With the year almost over, the Dow blue-chip index is sitting on 2009 gains of 19.87 percent, with the Nasdaq up 44.94 percent and S&P index ahead by 24.71 percent.

Although the market remains well below highs hit in 2007 and is stuck near levels from a decade ago, many traders are satisfied with a positive year.

"The year now ending will be remembered more for what didn't happen, than what did," said Peter Buchanan, economist at CIBC World Markets.

Buchanan said the year opened "with talk of financial and economic Armageddon," but that a recovery came with surprising speed.

"Few developments have been more striking than the turnaround in equity markets," he said.

Many analysts say that following the stomach-turning ups and downs over the past months, the stock market may be fairly valued, leaving the possibility of an extension of gains into 2010.

"We have made a lot of progress during 2009 and we have a lot more to make," said John Wilson, equity strategist at Morgan Keegan.

"This has been a difficult decade for investors. If history is any example, the next decade should provide a more favorable environment."

Bonds fell amid a shift to equities in the past week. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond increased to 3.807 percent from 3.546 percent a week earlier while that on the 30-year bond rose to 4.687 percent from 4.458 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.

Airport Security: Why It Failed

2009-12-28T22:36:00.001+02:00

Airport screening procedures failed for many reasons to catch the Nigerian man who aimed to blow up flight 253 as it approached Detroit. Scanners that might have spotted the explosives are not fully deployed, and even at airports where they exist, the scanners aren't used on all passengers.

Bottom line: No system will likely prove foolproof, experts say.

Investigators say 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab hid an explosive device and the chemical explosive PETN on his body while traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit aboard the Delta flight on Christmas day.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano admitted the security system didn't suffice.

"Our system did not work in this instance," Napolitano told NBC's "Today" on Monday. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."

Well-known explosive

PETN is a white powder that resembles a less-shiny version of sugar and is used by the military and commercial mining outfits.

"So anywhere people are allowed to handle explosives, it's there, and it's usually there in quite a bit of abundance because it's present in detonating cords and sheet explosives," said Jimmie Oxley, an explosives expert at the University of Rhode Island.

PETN was widely used in terrorist plots in the 1970s and 1980s, and as a result was among the first detectable explosives when tests were developed. PETN can be easily detected with today's airport screening technology, but it usually requires that a passenger or their luggage be singled out for screening, Oxley said.

According to investigators, Mutallab was not screened for explosives in Amsterdam.

Experts have also speculated that a new full-body screening method employing millimeter waves, or MMW, could have also detected the explosives, or at least the packaging affixed to Mutallab's body.

But unlike currently employed screening machines, which can identify banned chemicals directly, MMW scanners are only "anomaly detectors," said Oxley, who is a co-author of the book "Aspects of Explosive Detection."

MMW scanners can see through clothing to reveal metallic and non-metallic objects or other suspicious things on a passenger's body, but they cannot identify explosives by their chemical signatures.

Nothing is foolproof

Another weakness of MMW scanners is they cannot see inside a person's body, so a determined terrorist could conceivably hide explosives inside their body cavities.

"I doubt there's any foolproof [screening] method that we can instigate," Oxley told LiveScience.

Early this year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began implementing MMW as a primary screening technology next to metal detectors at airports in San Francisco, Miami, Albuquerque, Tulsa, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.

Airports in 20 U.S. cities, such as JFK in New York City and LAX in Los Angeles, have used or plan to use MMW tech this year. Other countries have also begun using or evaluating MMW for airport screening, including the UK, Netherlands, Japan and Thailand.

Not every passenger is put through the new scanners, however. And some privacy advocates have complained that the technology is too invasive. TSA has said that it will blur the facial features of passengers going through MMW scanners and that the scans will not be saved.

Meanwhile, passengers can expect longer delays at airports as additional security measures are employed in response to the recent bombing attempt, Department of Homeland Security's Napolitano said in a statement over the weekend.

"These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere," she said. "Due to the busy holiday travel season, both domestic and international travelers should allot extra time for check-in."

Shanda and Kingsoft in expanded partnership

2009-12-28T22:35:00.000+02:00

NEW YORK – Shanda Games Ltd., a Chinese video game company, said Monday it is partnering with Kingsoft Corp. in a joint venture aimed at developing new online games.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal, which expands an existing partnership in which they both operate Kingsoft's "JX" martial arts game franchise.

Under the new agreement, the companies plan to cooperate on improving other games published by Kingsoft, which is based in Beijing, and distributing them both in China and internationally.

Shares of Shanda, based in Shanghai, slipped 2 cents to $10.23 in midday trading.

Google sharpens aim on mobile marketing with AdMob

2009-12-28T22:32:00.000+02:00

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – Fri Dec 25, 11:11 am ET

SAN MATEO, Calif. – Four years ago, Omar Hamoui was just another ineffectual entrepreneur trying to spruce up his resume in graduate school.

Now, he's poised to become Google Inc.'s newest weapon as the company aims to extend its dominance of online advertising from computers to mobile devices.

Google is buying Hamoui's expertise in a $750 million acquisition of AdMob, a network for ads on iPhones and similar gadgets. He launched the business while struggling to support his wife and children as a student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Hamoui, 32, changed his life by setting up a system for advertising on mobile devices. Though that sounds simple, it was a breakthrough because Hamoui's network got around stifling controls that wireless carriers had imposed on the content their customers could see on their phones. The crack that AdMob opened in the carriers' "walled gardens" made it easier for independent programmers to profit from applications planted on mobile phones.

"It took a lot of guts because (the carriers) were the gatekeepers of the industry," says Rich Wong, an AdMob investor and board member who is with Accel Partners. "Back then, it was sort of like if you said no to the Godfather. Bad things could happen."

More than a year after Hamoui ignited the fuse, Apple Inc. blew up the status quo with the June 2007 introduction of the iPhone — which created a platform for applications chosen by users.

That has spawned more than 100,000 mobile "apps" for doing everything from bird watching to cooking poultry. The revenue from AdMob's ad network is one of the main reasons application developers can give the programs away or just charge a few bucks.

"Omar was absolutely the tip of the spear in this mobile media revolution," says Jason Spero, general manager of AdMob's North America operations.

If Google's proposed acquisition is approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Hamoui thinks he and AdMob's 150 employees will be in an even better position to turn mobile phones into moneymaking magnets.

Google is banking on it.

Drawing upon the more than $20 billion in revenue that it generates from Internet ads, Google has been investing aggressively in mobile technology. The Internet search leader has developed a free software system, Android, that runs mobile devices and is experimenting with its own phone, called Nexus One, that could be sold directly to consumers.

Google believes explosive growth in mobile advertising will justify its spending. For now, the market remains relatively small, with U.S. mobile advertising revenue expected to reach $416 million this year, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc.

AdMob has delivered nearly 140 billion ads on mobile Web sites and applications since its inception. That has helped AdMob double its revenue this year after tripling it last year. Hamoui won't be more specific, leaving it to analysts to estimate that AdMob's revenue this year will range between $45 million and $60 million.

That's less revenue than Google generates in a day. Nevertheless, AdMob's early lead in mobile advertising could trouble antitrust regulators already concerned about Google's growing power. The Federal Trade Commission has asked for more information about the deal — a sign that regulators want to take a closer look at how it will affect competition in the mobile ad market, which is expected to quadruple in size during the next four years.

Only two of Google's acquisitions have been bigger than the proposed AdMob deal. Regulators quickly approved Google's $1.76 billion acquisition of the Internet's top video channel, YouTube, in 2006 but took a year before signing off on the $3.2 billion purchase of another Internet ad service, DoubleClick Inc., in 2008. (By coincidence, AdMob is headquartered across the street from where YouTube started in San Mateo, Calif.)

Google contends its AdMob acquisition won't hurt competition. Among other things, Google points to other mobile ad networks from rivals such as Jumptap, Mojiva and AOL and argues that mobile ads still don't generate attract enough spending to be considered a distinct market.

Hamoui started AdMob out of frustration a few months after he enrolled in graduate school. He was building a phone-friendly Web site to make it easier for people to share photos with their family and friends, but he couldn't seem to attract much traffic.

To get the word out, Hamoui bought ads that would appear alongside certain search results at Google, Yahoo and other engines. That ended up costing him about $30 per referral, which he couldn't afford. So Hamoui decided to try advertising his site on other mobile Web sites, which are specially designed to work with the small screens and technological restraints of mobile phones.

Hamoui found a mobile Web site willing to run his ad for dramatically less money and wound up paying just 10 cents per referral. The experience resonated with Hamoui's studies on efficient markets, and inspired him to build a network that would make it easier to advertise on mobile devices.

If nothing else, he thought he might be able to turn the ad network into a project that would let him get out of having a conventional internship during his summer break in 2006. As it happened, AdMob created enough buzz that Hamoui dropped out of Wharton in the spring.

One key element of his system is that it lets programmers specify when and where ads can show up while their apps are running on a phone. Advertisers, which range from mass merchants to other app makers, can aim their messages widely — for instance, to everyone with an iPhone. Or ads can be aimed at a particular demographic. An ad for the movie "Fast and Furious" might show up on a mobile game such as "Tap Tap Revenge" that's popular among young men. The targeting frequently hits the mark: Users tend to click on mobile ads five to eight times more often than they do on PC ads, Hamoui says.

Jim Goetz, who joined AdMob's board after his firm, Sequoia Capital, put up the first $4 million of the $47 million in venture capital raised by AdMob, likens Hamoui to some of the other successful entrepreneurs that Sequoia has backed. That group includes Apple's Steve Jobs, Yahoo co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

"Omar is a lot like them," Goetz says. "He has the ambition, the intelligence and that special sparkle."

By selling his startup to a larger company, Hamoui is doing something those other entrepreneurs didn't. His investors say he didn't do it for the money — AdMob still had plenty in the bank, and Hamoui doesn't seem to be driven by striking it rich. He still drives a lime-green Toyota Camry that elicits good-natured gibes around AdMob's offices. When he splurges, he does so frugally. AdMob's holiday party is being held next month when the prices are cheaper.

"It just seemed like we would be able to do the things we want a lot faster and a lot better with the resources we will have at Google," Hamoui says. "We already have achieved a big part of what we wanted to do — getting mobile advertising going and making it possible for people to start a mobile company without having to do a deal with a carrier first."

Russian YouTube cop charged with fraud

2009-12-28T22:30:00.000+02:00

MOSCOW – Russian prosecutors are filing fraud charges against a police officer who had complained on YouTube of abuse and corruption in the law enforcement system.

The prosecutor's office in the southern Krasnodar region said in a statement Monday that former Maj. Alexey Dymovsky embezzled about $800 while working as a narcotics investigator.

In November, Dymovsky posted three videos on Google's YouTube site in which he said he was promised a promotion in return for jailing an innocent person. He also accused his superiors of forcing officers to fake reports on unsolved crimes.

Within days, the videos were seen by 700,000 people, provoking a public outcry and prompting several similar YouTube postings.

Dymovsky was fired and founded a rights defense group.

Consumer groups try to block Google purchase of AdMob

2009-12-28T22:22:00.002+02:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Two consumer groups urged the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday to block Internet search and advertising giant Google's proposed purchase of mobile advertising company AdMob.

In a joint letter, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) asked the FTC to oppose Google's acquisition of AdMob on anti-trust grounds and said the deal also raises privacy concerns.

The move comes after Google said last week that the FTC was seeking more information about its proposed 750-million-dollar acquisition of AdMob.

"The proposed deal would substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile advertising market," Consumer Watchdog and the CDD said in their letter to FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz.

"Instead of acquiring dominance in this increasingly important market through legitimate competition and innovation, Google is buying its way to a preeminent position," the non-profit groups said.

They urged the FTC to use its"statutory and regulatory authority to oppose the merger."

"In addition to the antitrust issues, the specter of a combined Google/AdMob raises substantial privacy concerns that must be addressed by the commission," the groups said.

"Permitting the expansion of mobile advertising through the combination of these two market leaders without requiring privacy guarantees poses a serious threat to consumers," they said.

"The mobile sector is the next frontier of the digital revolution," Consumer Watchdog and the CDD said. "Without vigorous competition and strong privacy guarantees this vital and growing segment of the online economy will be stifled."

Paul Feng, a group product manager at Google, said in a blog post last week that Google had received a "second request" for information from the FTC about the acquisition of AdMob.

"While this means we won't be closing right away, we're confident that the FTC will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive after this deal closes," Feng said.

"We'll be working closely and cooperatively with (the FTC) as they continue their review," he added.

Google, which previously has drawn scrutiny from US antitrust regulators, hopes AdMob will help it more effectively extend its lucrative Internet advertising domain into the booming world of mobile devices.

Earlier this year, Google was forced to revise its legal settlement with authors and publishers over its digital book-scanning project amid objections from the US Justice Department.

Last year, Google was forced to abandon a proposed advertising agreement with Yahoo! amid Justice Department anti-trust concerns.

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High-tech vehicles pose trouble for some mechanics

2009-12-28T22:09:00.003+02:00

By DAISY NGUYEN, Associated Press Writer Daisy Nguyen, Associated Press Writer – Sat Dec 26, 12:48 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – A sign inside the Humming Motors auto repair shop says, "We do the worrying so you don't have to."

These days, owner David Baur spends a lot of time worrying in his full-service garage near downtown Los Angeles.

As cars become vastly more complicated than models made just a few years ago, Baur is often turning down jobs and referring customers to auto dealer shops. Like many other independent mechanics, he does not have the thousands of dollars to purchase the online manuals and specialized tools needed to fix the computer-controlled machines.

Baur says the dilemma has left customers with fewer options for repair work and given automakers an unfair advantage.

"When I was younger, I kept going until I solved the problem," the weary mechanic said as he wiped grease from his hands while taking a break. "Lately I find myself backing out. I'm more reluctant to take complex jobs on."

Access to repair information is at the heart of a debate over a congressional bill called the Right to Repair Act. Supporters of the proposal say automakers are trying to monopolize the parts and repair industry by only sharing crucial tools and data with their dealership shops. The bill, which has been sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, would require automakers to provide all information to diagnose and service vehicles.

Automakers say they spend millions in research and development and aren't willing to give away their intellectual property. They say the auto parts and repair industry wants the bill passed so it can get patented information to make its own parts and sell them for less.

"Coke doesn't give away the recipe for Coke," said Charlie Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. "What this bill seeks to get is the recipe for Coke."

Many new vehicles come equipped with multiple computers controlling everything from the brakes to steering wheel, and automakers hold the key to diagnosing a vehicle's problem. In many instances, replacing a part requires reprogramming the computers — a difficult task without the software codes or diagrams of the vehicle's electrical wires.

Mechanics say repair information gets constantly updated so they must know how to find answers amid the sometimes overwhelming amount of data. Keeping up with technology has become almost a part-time job and requires thousands of dollars to get the right tools and online manuals for each model.

"Doctors have it easy because the human body doesn't change model every year," said Paul Brow, owner of All-Car Specialists, a 30-year-old shop in suburban San Gabriel.

The technology wave has made even the simplest tasks difficult for some ill-equipped mechanics. Baur, for instance, said he couldn't turn off the "check tire pressure" light after fixing a 2008 Mercury Grand Marquis because he lacked the roughly $1,000 tool to reset the tire pressure monitor.

The customer said he has to visit the dealer shop to complete the job.

"The tires are fine, for some reason the light just stays on," Louis Ontiveros, 42, said. "I haven't had the time to deal with it."

Dealership shops may be reaping profits from the technological advancements. A study released in March by the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association found vehicle repairs cost an average of 34 percent more at new car dealerships than at independent repair shops, resulting in $11.7 billion in additional costs for consumers annually.

The association, whose members include Autozone, Jiffy Lube and other companies that provide replacement parts and accessories, contend automakers want the bill rejected so they can continue charging consumers more money.

"You pay all this money for your car, you should be able to decide where to get it repaired," said Aaron Lowe, the association's vice president of government affairs.

Opponents of the bill counter that the information and tools to repair the vehicles are available to those willing to buy them. They say any mechanic who can't get what they're looking for can file a complaint with the National Automotive Service Task Force. The nonprofit takes the complaints to carmakers and tries to resolve them through a voluntary arbitration process. Of the 44 complaints filed last year, all were resolved, according to the organization.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., has been stalled in the House committee since April but has attracted 51 co-sponsors. It's unclear when or if the committee will vote on the matter.

Not all independent mechanics want to see the proposal approved.

Donny Seyfer, owner of a repair shop in Wheat Ridge, Colo., said the bill gives the impression that mechanics are unable to fix cars unless Congress steps in.

"I am so upset they're out there telling my customers that I can't do my job," said Seyfer, who leads training classes for mechanics. He said the modern mechanic must take regular training classes and spend hours reading and networking with other mechanics to share the latest repair information.

Seyfer said mechanics can't afford to work on all types of cars because vehicles are increasingly built with unique specifications and require their own set of tools. Mechanics must specialize in a select number of models to stay competitive, he said.

Baur said specialization is a luxury he can't afford. He said he bought the garage 20 years ago from a former boss who serviced all kinds of cars.

"What are you going to do? Refuse service to the people who've been coming here all these years?" he said.

Carolyn Coquillette, owner of a 2-year-old shop in downtown San Francisco that specializes in hybrid vehicles, said she spends about $11,000 a year on diagnostic tools and subscriptions to online databases. She said she passes the cost down to the customer but can compete with dealer shops by offering better deals.

She said her shop offers another advantage: Her team of mechanics can modify technical features and convert the hybrids — which are powered by battery and gasoline — into plug-ins.

"Cars present a challenge to me," Coquillette said. "I can think it's a pain in my butt, or I can think this is why I'm paid to do this job."

EBay: holiday cell phone shopping up threefold

2009-12-28T22:06:00.002+02:00

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz, Ap Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO – EBay shoppers used cell phones to make more purchases this holiday season than in past years. And it was not just to buy the hot toy du jour, Zhu Zhu Pets.

The online marketplace operator said Monday that people used cell phones to buy 1.5 million products in the past several weeks — three times the number for the same period last year, which ran from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.

EBay said holiday mobile purchases include a 1966 Chevrolet Corvette that sold for $75,000 and a 23-foot boat that sold for $19,108. Other items bought through mobile applications included watches, cell phones and video games.

Counting both mobile and traditional online purchases, eBay users bought more than 500,000 Zhu Zhu Pets robotic hamsters.

EBay, which is based in San Jose, Calif., said nearly 6 million people have eBay's applications on iPhones and people use mobile apps to visit its site more than 2 million times each day. EBay released its mobile Web site in 2007 and its iPhone application in 2008.

For the full year, eBay users completed more than $500 million worth of transactions on cell phones.

Cell phone mania forces scramble for more airwaves

2009-12-28T22:02:00.001+02:00

By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writer – Sun Dec 27, 1:27 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Wireless devices such as Apple's iPhone are transforming the way we go online, making it possible to look up driving directions, find the nearest coffee shop and update Facebook on the go. All this has a price — in airwaves.

As mobile phones become more sophisticated, they transmit and receive more data over the airwaves. But the spectrum of wireless frequencies is finite — and devices like the iPhone are allowed to use only so much of it. TV and radio broadcasts, Wi-Fi networks and other communications services also use the airwaves. Each transmits on certain frequencies to avoid interference with others.

Now wireless phone companies fear they're in danger of running out of room, leaving congested networks that frustrate users and slow innovation. So the wireless companies want the government to give them bigger slices of airwaves — even if other users have to give up rights to theirs.

"Spectrum is the equivalent of our highways," says Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group. "That's how we move our traffic. And the volume of that traffic is increasing so dramatically that we need more lanes. We need more highways."

That won't happen without a fight. Wireless companies are eyeing some frequencies used by TV broadcasters, satellite-communications companies and federal agencies such as the Pentagon. Already, some of those groups are pushing back.

That means tough choices are ahead. But one way or another, Washington will keep up with the exploding growth of the wireless market, insists Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va. He is sponsoring a bill that would mandate a government inventory of the airwaves to identify unused or underused bands that could be reallocated.

"It's not a question of whether we can find more spectrum," says Boucher, chairman of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. "We have to find more spectrum."

CTIA, the industry group, is asking the government to make an additional 800 megahertz of the airwaves available for wireless companies to license over the next six years. That would be a huge expansion from the industry's current slice of roughly 500 megahertz. The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to make more frequencies available for commercial use, but has just 50 megahertz in the pipeline.

Two trends are driving the demand.

First, advanced new wireless applications — such as mobile video and online games — devour far more bandwidth than voice calls or basic text messages, says Neville Ray, senior vice president for engineering operations for T-Mobile USA Inc.

Second, consumers are flocking to wireless Internet connections, in some cases dropping landline accounts altogether. ABI Research projects U.S. mobile broadband subscriptions will climb to 150 million by 2014, up from 48 million this year and 5 million in 2007.

The predicament, says Jamie Hedlund, vice president of regulatory affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association, is that many users "assume the wireless experience should be the same as the wired experience, but the capacity is just not there for that."

The industry's concerns are finding a sympathetic ear in Washington.

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, says finding more room for the wireless industry will be an important part of his agency's broadband plan. That plan, mandated by the 2009 stimulus bill, is due in February and will propose using wireless systems to bring high-speed Internet connections to corners of the country that are too remote for landline networks.

"If we are going to have a world-leading broadband infrastructure for the nation, wireless is an indispensable ingredient," says Genachowski aide Colin Crowell.

Lawrence Strickling, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the arm of the Commerce Department that manages the federal government's use of the airwaves, says the agency is also hunting for more frequencies the wireless industry can use.

Some of the crunch can be addressed with technologies that make more efficient use of airwaves and new equipment that lets users share bands. The FCC also wants to promote greater use of frequencies that aren't licensed to anyone, such as the "white spaces" between the bands used by TV channels.

But such solutions alone won't solve the crisis, the wireless industry warns.

The FCC's attention for now is on TV broadcasters, which hold nearly 300 megahertz of airwaves that are mainly used to serve just 10 percent of American homes — those that still rely solely on over-the-air TV signals.

The FCC is exploring multiple options, most of which would leave broadcasters with enough capacity to deliver a high-definition signal over the air. One possibility, which might require congressional approval, is a voluntary program that would let broadcasters sell excess bandwidth through an auction, to either the government or directly to wireless companies. Although the FCC awarded spectrum licenses to broadcasters for free many years ago, those licenses are worth millions today.

"Fewer people are getting over-the-air TV and at the same time, more and more people are using mobile broadband," says Blair Levin, the official overseeing the FCC broadband plan. "So it only makes sense ... to get that asset into the hands of whomever can realize its greatest value."

The idea faces opposition from the powerful broadcast lobby. Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of the National Association of Broadcasters, says the proposal would stunt the industry's plans to make innovative use of the airwaves that became free when it turned off analog broadcasts and went entirely digital in June. Broadcasters have already returned more than 100 megahertz of those airwaves to the government and plan to use the rest to transmit high-definition signals, "multicast" multiple channels and deliver mobile TV to phones, laptops and cars.

"The FCC proposal would kill many of our future business plans in the cradle," Wharton says.

Wireless carriers are also setting their sights on frequencies held by companies that deliver voice and data services through satellites.

Hedlund, of the Consumer Electronics Association, notes that some of these companies have a lot of bandwidth but not a lot of customers. TerreStar Corp., for one, launched its satellite in July and is just building a subscriber base. And ICO Global Communications, which is running tests on a satellite launched last year, has not announced when it will begin commercial service.

But TerreStar General Counsel Doug Brandon believes the company has a strong argument for keeping its airwaves: Satellites can provide a critical lifeline in emergencies when other communications links go down and in rural areas where other carriers don't offer service.

If anything, added ICO Vice President Christopher Doherty, satellite phone companies are ideal partners for cell phone companies that want to expand coverage. TerreStar, for one, has a deal for AT&T Inc. to resell the satellite service.

More potential sources of frequencies are federal agencies that handle everything from emergency communications to surveillance operations. The Defense Department, for instance, needs the airwaves for such critical equipment as radars, precision-guided weapons and drone planes.

The Pentagon has vacated some frequencies and is developing technology that can make more efficient use of airwaves. It also says it is committed to finding compromises that work for the government and commercial sector, so long as those don't jeopardize military capabilities.

Karl Nebbia, head of the NTIA's Office of Spectrum Management, points out that federal agencies may be open to moving to different bands because the government is "a huge user of commercial broadband services." But one challenge will be to ensure federal users get the resources to relocate — including new equipment, potentially paid for with spectrum auction proceeds.

For now, one thing everyone agrees is that there are no easy pickings in the airwaves.

"There is no open space anywhere," says Kathleen Ham, vice president of regulatory affairs for T-Mobile.

AT&T resumes online sales of iPhones in NYC

2009-12-28T21:57:00.000+02:00

NEW YORK – AT&T is resuming online sales of iPhones to New Yorkers after suspending them over the weekend for unclear reasons.

A spokesman said only that the phone company periodically "modifies" its distribution channels.

On AT&T Inc.'s Web site, buyers who supply New York City ZIP codes were told on Monday morning to "Please shop for another phone."

AT&T has acknowledged that its data network is overburdened with iPhone users in New York and San Francisco, sparking online speculation that the sales suspension is a means of managing traffic.

However, because the phones are still available in New York retail stores and from Apple Inc.'s Web site, the ban could instead be a way to curb fraudsters who buy phones and sell them on, reneging on the service contracts.

China unveils 'world's fastest train link'

2009-12-27T14:35:00.001+02:00

Chinese workers put the final touch on the interior of a new railway station in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province. China has unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world -- a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour.

(AFP/Str) Sat Dec 26, 7:54 am ET

BEIJING (AFP) – China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world -- a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour.

The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometre journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, Xinhua added.

"The train can go 394.2 kilometres per hour, it's the fastest train in operation in the world," Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told Xinhua.

Test runs for the service began earlier in December and the link officially went into service when the first scheduled train left the eastern metropolis of Wuhan on Saturday.

By comparison, the average for high-speed trains in Japan was 243 kilometres per hour while in France it was 277 kilometres per hour, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge of designing the link, according to Xinhua.

Beijing has an ambitious rail development programme aimed at increasing the national network from the current 86,000 kilometres to 120,000 kilometres, making it the most extensive rail system outside the United States.

China unveiled its first high-speed line at the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 -- a service linking the capital with the port city of Tianjin.

In September, officials said they planned to build 42 high-speed lines by 2012 in a massive system overhaul as part of efforts to spur economic growth amid the global downturn.

The network uses technology developed in co-operation with foreign firms such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom.

Libya: No Restrictions on Visas to Canadians

2009-11-01T22:06:00.002+02:00

31/10/2009 20:32:00

The Libyan embassy in Ottawa on Tuesday denied reports that it has stopped issuing visas to Canadians.

The embassy in Ottawa said in a statement it "asserts that there are no obstacles or restrictions on the issuance of visas for Canadian citizens to enter Libya."

"All types of visas are issued for Canadian applicants in accordance with the procedure applicable to citizens of all countries," it said.

"Many holders of Canadian nationality live in Libya, and they exit and return to it with ease and in an ordinary manner."

CBC television and the online journal Cyberpresse had reported Sunday that Libya had stopped issuing visas to Canadians.

China to Renew Libyan Oil Deal

2009-11-01T22:04:00.001+02:00

31/10/2009 20:16:00

China Sinopec Corp is set to renew a crude supply deal with Libya for 2010 to lift close to 6 million barrels of crude each month, trading and refinery sources said, a volume sharply up from early this year. Sinopec started to raise crude imports from Libya in recent months to 5-6 million barrels a month to make up for supply cuts from key exporters such as Saudi Arabia, as the top Asian refiner opened new refining units this year to meet recovering Chinese fuel demand, said one trader. The volume would be three times the average import rate recorded in the first quarter of this year and also in 2008 at some 64,000 barrels per day, as reported by official Chinese customs data. "OPEC is cutting back on supplies, some of which are exactly the grades we want to have...And the narrowing Dubai-Brent spread provides a good window to take more sweeter grades," said a source close to Sinopec's crude trading operations. Under OPEC production cuts, top supplier Saudi Arabia has scaled back mostly heavy grades that Chinese refiners deemed more economic to process, forcing firms to hunt for alternative grades, Chinese traders have said. China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, has been importing a record amount of crude in recent months to feed record refinery runs, leading its implied oil demand to quicken to 12.5 percent last month in its fastest growth in over 3 years. "As China's refinery throughput is rising overall, it's necessary to broaden out the supply sources and increase the volumes," said a refining official. A second trader said Unipec, Sinopec's trading vehicle, has a term contract with National Oil Corp of Libya from at least six years ago. Now a regular lifter, Sinopec has been taking sweet grades such as Es Sider and Sarir, grades in middle distillates such as diesel. Chinese customs data last Monday showed China's Libyan crude buys surged to a rare high of 806,632 tonnes in September, or close to 200,000 bpd, bringing the total imports from Libya by more than a third to 3.95 million tonnes in the first nine months.

BP to Start Libya Drilling in 2010

2009-11-01T22:01:00.002+02:00

31/10/2009 20:13:00

BP will begin exploratory drilling next year on both its onshore and offshore concessions in Libya, the head of the company's operations in the North African country said on Thursday.

"By the end of this year we will have the first of several prospects in the pipeline for (exploratory) drilling starting next year," Hugh McDowell, General Manager of BP Exploration Libya, told the Energy Exchange North Africa Oil and Gas Summit in Tunisia.

"Preparations to start drilling, both onshore and offshore, next year are very well underway," he told Reuters

Foreign Oil Companies Want More Concessions from Libya and Algeria

2009-11-01T21:56:00.003+02:00

31/10/2009 20:12:00

As if they are not constantly increasing their daily and yearly profits from their operation in these two countries, executives from foreign oil companies demanded on Wednesday that Libya and Algeria "must" improve the terms they offer international energy companies or risk them taking their capital and expertise elsewhere.

Algeria and Libya tightened the terms on production and exploration contracts they offer to foreign majors when oil prices were high, but these look less attractive now that world prices are half the level they were at their peak last year.

"In the next two or three years we are going to see companies moving away to other areas," if the terms on offer in North Africa are not improved, said Felix Castaneda, Libya General Manager for Spain's Respol, as quoted by Reuters.

"If the oil price goes up to $140 that is a different matter. We are talking about the current market conditions," he told an Energy Exchange North Africa Oil and Gas summit in the Tunisian capital.

In Algeria, the world's fourth biggest gas exporter, a 2006 law gave state energy firm Sonatrach a minimum 51 percent in every oil and gas exploration contract awarded to foreign companies. Taxes levied on foreign firms have also gone up.

Libya, home to Africa's biggest proven oil reserves, has negotiated tough terms with foreign oil majors, including large bonuses.

"We will certainly complete and fulfill what we have on our plate," said Arno Dettlinger, vice president for North-West Europe, North Africa and Latin America with the Exploration and Production arm of OMV, which has projects in Libya.

"But ... on new ventures everything has to be evaluated on its merits," he told the conference.

"Very certainly no more kind of gold rush sentiment in our company and these days I think we would be very critically looking at any new opportunity under those circumstances."

Italy's ENI, which has major projects in both Algeria and Libya, was slightly more bullish.

"This situation has to be evaluated, each and every agreement on its own merit," said Abdurahman Benyezza, the company's vice president for Algeria, Tunisia, Mali and Moroco.

"For the time being we are maintaining our business plans and we are not planning to do anything drastic," he said.

Algeria faces particular challenges because it is committed to increasing gas production to supply new pipeline capacity to Europe in the next few years.

European Union states are looking to Algeria as one way of reducing reliance on gas supplies from Russia following this year's dispute between Moscow and Kiev which disrupted supplies.

In Algeria's last licensing round in December only four out of 11 contract areas were awarded because of slack interest from international companies. A fresh round has been been launched, but would-be bidders say the fiscal terms are unchanged.

"We see little reason that this round will be any more successful than the previous," said Craig McMahon, Middle East and North Africa lead analyst with consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

"The current strategy is not promoting exploration, and without a change is likely to lead to a shortfall in new projects by 2015," he said.

Mitsubishi Inaugurates Solar Power Generation System for Al-Fateh University

2009-10-27T21:17:00.004+02:00

Al Fateh University in Tripoli, recently hosted the Mitsubishi Corporation inauguration and handover ceremony of a solar power generation demonstration system in the Libyan capital.

The system, a donation from Mitsubishi, was installed on the campus of Al Fateh, established in 1957 and the largest university in Libya.

The donation comprises a part of the program being carried out by the University together with Mitsubishi Corporation, to stimulate applied field study of new energy.

The System consists of solar power generation device, simulation, monitoring and data processing equipment.

It enables field analysis on the relations between power generation and climate conditions to be conducted under Libya's favorable insulation condition.

Studies such as optimal utilization of generated power can also be carried out by means of this system.

Although Libya is currently a major oil/gas producing country, it is seeking to diversify its energy source by introducing new energy technologies, among which solar energy is regarded as one of the most promising sources.

Mitsubishi Corporation said this joint program with Al Fateh University aims to contribute to the promotion of the use of renewable energy in Libya and the neighboring regions.

Spanish Builder Signs Deals in Libya

2009-10-27T21:15:00.000+02:00

24/10/2009 21:40:00 Spanish construction and services firm Sacyr Vallehermoso said it has signed two contracts worth 300 million euros to build homes and public works in Libya through its subisidiary Svlidco. The deals involve the construction of homes, as well as public services such as drinking water, gas, electricity, telephones and roads, in the city of Benghazi on Libya's northern Mediterranean coast, it said in a statement. In December 2008 the company signed a contract through Svlidco worth around 400 million euros (600 million dollars) to carry out similar works in the Libyan town of El Beida. Sacyr holds 60 percent of Svlidco while the remaining 40 percent belongs to the Libyan Company for Development and Investment, a firm owned by the Libyan government. The joint venture was established in December of last year. Sacyr posted revenues of 3.3 billion euros during the first half of 2009, a 24.1 percent increase over the same time last year.

Libyan Official Condemns Sanctions Against Zimbabwe

2009-10-27T21:12:00.000+02:00

A special envoy from Libya, Dr Saed Arabi Hifyanah, said this after paying a courtesy call on President Robert Mugabe at his Munhumutapa Office on Monday. "Sanctions ' economic sanctions, political and other forms of pressure ' cannot realise their target . . . Dialogue is important rather than domination and intimidation," he said. His remarks come in the wake of similar observations by Southern African Development Community which recently called on the West to lift the embargo and proposed an economic rescue package for the country which has been facing economic challenges for the past seven years. Western countries, led by former colonial master Britain, have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe for alleged human rights abuses and lack of rule of law. However, this is seen as a way of punishing the government for embarking on the land redistribution exercise which saw it take land from white former farmers to redistribute to landless backs. Before the exercise, more than 70 percent of prime land was in the hands of about 4 000 white farmers while blacks were squashed on unproductive land. Hifyanah urged superpowers to change their policies and language towards other countries, citing the United States' interference in Iraq that has resulted in turmoil and instability in the oil-rich country since 2003. Hifyanah said he also discussed with President Mugabe the forthcoming African Union summit to be held in Accra, Ghana, in July. Other issues discussed were to do with the need for constant exchange of views at regional and international level between the two countries. Relations between the two countries date back to the liberation struggle when Libya rallied behind Zimbabwe as it fought off colonial domination. ' New Ziana.

Mig-23 Fighter Jet Crashes in Tripoli Suburb, Two Pilots Killed

2009-10-27T21:10:00.003+02:00

Photo: The Libyan Mig-23 that crashed on Wednesday 7 October 2009, is similar to the one in this photo. A Libyan fighter jet crashed this morning in Tripoli killing two pilot officers at the rank of colonel. The jet was taking part at an air show, Third Libyan Aviation Exhibition, LAVEX 2009, at Ma’atiqa International Airport. A source told The Tripoli Post that the incident occurred Wednesday morning at 11:06 a.m. in Tripoli suburb of Souq Al-Jumaa. The fighter jet is of the MIG-23 type carrying two seats. The jet was flying a low level as it was taking part in the air show. It went down when its nose dived hitting a one storey house. Two women were lightly injured as a result one of them was hospitalized for a check up and then released from hospital, the source added.

Ghanem Reinstated as Chairman of National Oil Corporation

2009-10-27T21:06:00.005+02:00

Photo: Shukri Ghanem, the head of the National Oil Corporation, inspecting the work at the new NOC headquarters in downtown Tripoli, Tuesday 27 October 2009.

After two months since he submitted his resignation, Libya has reinstated Dr. Shukri Ghanem as head of the National Oil Corporation (NOC). A source told The Tripoli Post on Tuesday that Ghanem “is back and with strength”. The process of bringing back Ghanem to the Libyan oil sector occurred when Dr. Saif Al-Islami Gaddaif, visited the NOC headquarters on Sunday 25 October and held a meeting attended by both Ghanem and Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi the Secretary of the General People’s Committee, the highest executive authority in Libya. It has been reported earlier that Ghanem submitted on 25 August his resignation to the Leader of the Revolution Muammar Al-Qathafi as a result of a dispute over policies with Al-Mahmoudi. The NOC web site reported on 27 October that Saif Al-Islam urged Ghanem and Al-Mahmoudi to work hard as to accomplish the objectives set out by NOC in the energy sector. On his part, Ghanem visited on Tuesday morning the new NOC headquarters where he met the contractors and urged them to finish the work on the new building according to schedule. On Monday, Ghanem held talks with the head of a Polish oil company where they discussed the activities of the company in Libya and the means to improve them.

Benghazi welcomes winter by drowning in its first showers of rain

2009-10-27T20:51:00.002+02:00

Libyan Times Special

Abdel Eljaroshi Project Management Specialist

With the drops from heaven that struck the locals on October 25^th Sunday morning (2009), the piling of rain water in ponds, and low grounds all over the city's main streets, the 5 rings roads, and the drives connecting the western entrance with the eastern exit, this proved the Benghazi is far away from ready to receive any amount of falling rain.

The showers that started early Sunday morning, went down all day in an irregular fall, causing waters in most of the city's round-abouts, and the heavy rain caused serious traffic jams in Ahmad Rafik Almahdawi Dr., 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th ring roads, with emphasis on the 3^rd ring road, on which the water ponds caused its cross sections with Lebanon Street, and Palestine Street to collapse due to lack of proper road courses compaction, and wearing due to lack of asphalt on a very busy road.

As for residential areas, and neighborhoods, such as Alwehishi, Shebna, Assalam, Zwawa, Assirti, Assherif, Assalak, Greish, Sidi Younis, Allithey, where accumulations of rain water resulted in the appearance of huge water ponds, causing difficulty in the movement of people on foot, especially school students who were faced with the fact of walking to school and back-home in the lakes that rain water produced for them, with water over their heads, and under their feet.

The fact is that Benghazi drowned, and that was just a day of rain, a solid proof that the city is not ready yet to deal with mother nature, even the routes that were known to be get-aways for the locals were jammed with traffic, where water rose to a level cars could not pass.

A recurring episode that we expect every year, will the time come to resolve this mysterious puzzle, or will the episode of drowning homes and neighborhoods, crashing cars, and ones failing in water, will this become the way we welcome winter to our homes?

The War Against Islam

2009-10-20T15:54:00.000+02:00

Islam is misinterpreted everywhere, most young Europeans or Americans think that Islam is some kind of terrorist cult to annihilate Westerners, a clan of mad killers fighting everyone who is not a Muslim. What I would like to ask is to read about the history of Islam, where it began, and the true leaders and heroes in Islamic history. Read how prophet Muhammad PBUH dealt with the torture of first Muslims from his own people, how he asked them to go to Aksum (Ethiopia) where it was governed by a Christian king at that time Aṣḥama ibn Abjar, and they did not attack the kingdom of Aksum, but peacefully asked to stay away from the torture, and hostility in Mecca. Islam is not just a religion, it is a way of life, peaceful and harmonious. Islam drives the followers of this life method to be forgiving, and non-hostile, and rather cool when thinking or taking decisions. Other then that: Islam is not reflected by the deeds of those who say they are Muslims, it is the truthful, meaningful, clear, and caring acts of a person that make him/her a Muslim. Racism is totally rejected in Islam, there is no BLACK, WHITE, or any kind of discrimination at all, people are all equal. A person is not judged for what he/she looks, talks, or walks, they are judged for doing good, or bad, Quran proves this, so does Sun'na. The last point is: the guides to Islam are Quran and Sun'na, and they are not to be read apart whether from each other, or in their entities, Quran is to be read as whole, so does Sun'na, so does the both of them.

Electronic Banking, in Libya!

2009-10-15T17:20:00.000+02:00

The first privately operated Libyan banking service provider, Bank of Commerce and Development, launched an e-banking service, an Online Bank they called it, but my question is: Is it secure?

Banks deal with very sensitive data, its sensitivity comes from having to deal directly with bank accounts, and those have MONEY in them. So is the quality of services that high? Did Libyan banks, private or government owned, become that capable of providing such service, and running it without the risk of an info leak, or a security breach?

I guess not, my answer will be... But what might you think? My advice: Do not use such services, or any other kind of service that might make you the victim of online banking theft crimes, and believe me, there are a lot of those who can hack into banking systems and rob them clean.

Eljaroshi: Libyana goes a long way the other way!

2009-10-15T17:17:00.000+02:00

Not a long time ago, I was installing some games on a friend's portable computer, and I was amazed to find on his computer a copy of Libyana Mobile Phone Company's client's database, containing all kinds of very important information, to name a few: names, phone numbers, and addresses, I asked him: Where did you get this? He said: Everyone has it.

I found some people I know, and this just disturbed me, if they have to have it, they have to take care of it.

The other issue is the use of this database goes against all ethics, Islamic teachings, and it just disgusted me.

Please be aware that Libyana's database contains more then 2 million users, that just make the concept of Information Security trash material in Libya. And they get paid 150 Dirhams per minute, what a waste of time, money, and what a risk we take giving our REAL information for those people.

Libya Launches the 2009 Libyan Rocket

2009-09-11T04:58:00.003+02:00

ANIThu, Sep 3 11:05 AM

Tripoli (Libya), Sep.3 (ANI): Libyan leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi, has designed a 'rocket car' to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1969 Alfateh Revolution in Libya.

The "Libyan Rocket", as the prototype is called, is described as an "elegant sedan" 17 feet long, more than six feet wide, with a 3-liter, V-6 gasoline engine.

According to the BBC and Fox News, it also has airbags, an unspecified 'electronic defense system', and a collapsible bumper.

The car can go hundreds of miles on a flat tire, a feature that could come in handy while driving in the vast Libyan desert. Other safety features include a device to cut off the fuel supply to avoid a fire in case of accident.

Domenico Morali, CEO of Tesco TS SpA, an automotive design company based in Turin, Italy, said Qaddafi joined in discussions about the car's styling and asked for an original car using Libyan materials including marble, leather and fabric.

The car was unveiled earlier this week in Tripoli at the end of an African Union summit. According to the BBC, construction of a factory to produce the car will begin next month in Tripoli. (ANI)

Read the bullet-in on: TechnoLibya Yahoo! News India

N. Korea Reports Advances in Enriching Uranium

2009-09-04T21:06:00.002+02:00

September 4, 2009

By DAVID E. SANGE

WASHINGTON — North Korea declared Friday that it was in the “concluding stage” of tests to enrich uranium. Its statement would appear to end a decade-long debate within American intelligence agencies about whether the country was working on a second pathway to building nuclear weapons.

The statement came in a brief announcement by the official North Korean news agency, quoting what it said was a letter from the North Korean government to the United Nations. No details were offered, and the use of the word “tests” suggests that the country may only be experimenting and has not yet undertaken the huge expense required to install the thousands of centrifuges necessary to produce enough uranium for a nuclear weapon.

For the North, the new nuclear program would amount to an insurance policy. For decades it pursued another pathway to a bomb, taking the spent fuel from one of its nuclear reactors and producing plutonium. To prove its capacity, the North has conducted two nuclear tests, one that fizzled in 2006 and a more successful detonation in May.

In February 2007, the North agreed to dismantle its reactors and stop producing bomb fuel. But it reversed that commitment this year, and on Friday it said it had harvested the remaining spent fuel, which could provide it with enough plutonium for one or two additional weapons. North Korea was believed to already have enough plutonium for about six to eight nuclear weapons.

But the existence of a second program to build bomb fuel would give the country something else to negotiate over with the West, and it would create the possibility that the government of Kim Jong-il could try to sell the technology, just as it has sold some of its reactor technology. North Korean officials announced in April that they intended to start a uranium enrichment program.

In its brief statement on Friday, the country also hinted at resuming negotiations, saying, “We are prepared for both sanctions and dialogue.”

In Beijing on Friday, the United States’ special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, commented on the North’s claim, Reuters reported. Speaking to reporters, he said: “Obviously, anything that the North is doing in the area of nuclear development is of concern to us.”

In the fall of 2002, aides to President George W. Bush accused the North of seeking to enrich uranium. North Korean officials first seemed to admit proudly to a covert enrichment program, but they later denied it. Mr. Bush used the episode to refuse to negotiate with North Korea and terminated a 1994 agreement on freezing nuclear operations.

But in the aftermath of the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq, American intelligence agencies began to lose confidence in their assessment of North Korea’s nuclear capacity. During a Congressional hearing in 2007, Joseph DeTrani, one of the government’s senior North Korea intelligence experts, said that the intelligence community was assured only at “midconfidence level” that the North Koreans were involved in a uranium enrichment program.

If the North Koreans have only recently conducted tests in uranium enrichment, as their letter stated, it may suggest that the program has been in abeyance and has been resumed for negotiating purposes. The North may also now see enrichment as a cheaper alternative to restarting decrepit nuclear reactors to produce plutonium.

Choe Sang-hun contributed reporting from Seoul.

Read on NY Times

Editor Resigns Over Berlusconi-Tied Accusations

2009-09-04T20:58:00.004+02:00

Max Rossi: Reuters

September 4, 2009

By RACHEL DONADIO

ROME — For months, the staid newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Avvenire, steered largely clear of the major topic of conversation here: the spicy personal life of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

But when readers complained that maybe a Roman Catholic newspaper had a moral duty to denounce divorce, consorting with teenage girls, naked poolside parties and being caught on tape telling a prostitute to wait for him in “Putin’s bed” while he showers, the newspaper’s editor began to weigh in.

“People have understood the unease, the mortification, the suffering that this arrogant neglect of sobriety has caused the Catholic Church,” the editor, Dino Boffo, wrote last month.

On Thursday, Mr. Boffo was out of a job.

Late last week, Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by Mr. Berlusconi’s brother, called Mr. Boffo “a homosexual known to the Italian secret services” and the culprit in a sexual harassment suit. Il Giornale’s attack expanded on Thursday, with another editorial aimed at the Catholic Church itself, mocking not just the “hypocrisy” of sexually active priests with “weak flesh,” but even the “Mitteleuropean” accent of Pope Benedict XVI, a German.

The lesson: No one can mess with Silvio Berlusconi, not even the church.

The other reality is that Mr. Berlusconi’s personal travails and his efforts to clear his name have come to dominate Italian public life to the exclusion of most everything else, including governing the country, even amid a still serious financial crisis.

“He has an ego, not a plan,” said Giuliano Ferrara, a sometime adviser to Mr. Berlusconi and the editor of Il Foglio, a conservative daily newspaper partly owned by Mr. Berlusconi’s wife. “No one thinks that Berlusconi will go to heaven, but he’s decided to join his enemies in hell.”

Mr. Berlusconi has repeatedly joked about the allegations, which have trickled out during the summer, saying at one point, “I’m no saint.” He still enjoys wide support and governs largely unopposed because the left is fragmented and ineffective.

But his popularity, as reflected in polls, is dropping, and Mr. Berlusconi appears deeply worried about further damage, especially from moderate Catholic voters. This week he announced million-dollar defamation lawsuits against several publications that have been critical of him, part of what his critics and allies alike worry is a dangerous trend toward treating any criticism as disloyal and possibly illegal.

Even his friends say he is wading into dangerous waters with the church in a way that could harm him politically. Despite declining Mass attendance, the Catholic Church remains the essential institution here, and many Italians care which candidates have its normally implicit support. The church generally supports candidates on the right, like Mr. Berlusconi, making the current confrontation that much more unusual and significant.

Judging by the tone taken by a Berlusconi-owned newspaper and a church-owned newspaper, and whispering among officials on both sides, mutual affection is not high at the moment.

“Gossip isn’t enough to crucify someone,” Vittorio Feltri, the editor of Il Giornale, wrote last Friday, defending Mr. Berlusconi from gossip about his sex life while attacking Mr. Boffo with allegations that he is gay and that he had made harassing phone calls to the girlfriend of a man with whom the paper said Mr. Boffo was romantically involved.

“Or rather it was enough, it has been enough, only in the cases of two people: Jesus Christ for some of his miracles, and more recently Silvio Berlusconi for some of his dances with women who in truth were very available,” Mr. Feltri wrote.

Mr. Boffo wrote simply that Mr. Feltri’s attack, which he likened to stepping on dog droppings, had debased journalism. “Congratulations,” he added.

This week, a judge made public that Mr. Boffo had been issued a fine in a sexual harassment case settled in 2004. In Avvenire on Thursday, Mr. Boffo denied that he had made harassing phone calls. He said a third party had made the calls using a cellphone also available to him.

He added that no legal proceedings had ever claimed homosexual leanings, and that the interior minister had called to assure him that the Italian police had never kept tabs on him.

In tendering his resignation on Thursday, Mr. Boffo said the scandal had become a distraction for the church.

“My life, the life of my family and that of my newsroom have been violated in an act of sacrilege I would have never thought imaginable,” he wrote. He predicted “a long storm ahead” and said he had been caught up in “a war between editorial groups, fossilized powers and growing presumptuous ambitions.”

“If he does this with independent journalists,” Mr. Boffo said of Mr. Berlusconi, “what will the future be for free and responsible information?”

On Wednesday, Mr. Feltri, a longtime associate of Mr. Berlusconi, said he had published news of Mr. Boffo’s judicial proceedings “to interest public opinion and to sell newspapers.” Both he and Mr. Berlusconi said they had not discussed the coverage. Mr. Feltri called the question “insulting if not injurious.”

Mr. Boffo did not respond to requests for comment.

Worsening the church-state tensions is the fact that Avvenire has been a vocal defender of immigrants, advocating that Italians express solidarity with them, not hostility toward them. This has flown in the face of the Berlusconi government’s security agenda. A new bill sponsored by the powerful Northern League criminalizes illegal immigrants, whom many Italians see as a threat.

Yet while Mr. Berlusconi and his defenders are tending to the facade, Italy’s foundations are not entirely sound.

By 2010, Italy’s national debt is expected to reach 116 percent of gross domestic product, nearly four times the target set by the European Monetary Union. Tax evasion is rampant; employment levels are low; pensions take up a full 30 percent of public spending.

Business leaders say that without structural changes, including pension reform and more flexible contracts, Italy will lose its edge to competition in Asia and other countries in the European Union.

Such news rarely makes the evening news. As with his personal life, Mr. Berlusconi seldom admits anything is wrong. Many Italians find that increasingly at odds with the facts.

Beppe Grillo, a comedian and left-wing provocateur, compares the situation to that of Wile E. Coyote, the lovable if ever-scheming cartoon character who runs off a cliff and never falls until he looks down.

“They’re suspended in the air and aren’t looking down,” he said, referring to Mr. Berlusconi and the nation’s center-right leadership. “And there’s nothing underneath.” Read on NY Times

Scores Feared Killed in Blast After Afghan Airstrike

2009-09-04T20:54:00.003+02:00

September 4, 2009

By REUTERS

Filed at 12:32 p.m. ET

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A U.S. warplane summoned by German troops fired on hijacked fuel trucks in Afghanistan before dawn Friday, killing as many as 90 people in an incident that could trigger a backlash against NATO.

NATO initially said it believed the casualties were all Taliban fighters, but later acknowledged that large numbers of wounded civilians were being treated in hospitals in the area.

Villagers said their relatives were siphoning fuel from the hijacked trucks and were burned alive in a giant fireball. Patients arrived in hospitals completely covered with burns.

President Hamid Karzai's office gave a death toll of 90. It said he was deeply saddened and had sent investigators.

"No civilians must be harmed during military operations," Karzai said in a statement. "Targeting civilians under no circumstances is acceptable."

The incident, which took place in the northern province of Kunduz, could reignite outrage against foreign troops two months after the new U.S. and NATO commander in the country announced measures to stop civilian deaths he says undermine the war.

Provincial officials, who themselves could face a backlash over civilian deaths, said Taliban fighters were killed as well as civilians. Provincial Governor Mohammad Omar said he believed half of those killed were militants, while provincial police chief Abdul Razzaq Yaqubi said 55 of the 90 dead were fighters.

Mohammad Sarwar, a tribal elder in the province, said Taliban fighters had hijacked the tankers and were offering fuel to a crowd of villagers when the tankers were bombed.

"We blame both the Taliban and the government," he said.

Reuters reporters saw several young men with severe burns arrive at the hospital by ambulance, where doctors said 13 people were being treated including three children.

Lieutenant-Commander Christine Sidenstricker, press officer for the U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said Afghan authorities had reported two fuel trucks hijacked. NATO aircraft spotted them on a river bank.

"After observing that only insurgents were in the area, the local ISAF commander ordered air strikes which destroyed the fuel trucks and killed a large number of insurgents," she said.

ISAF spokesman Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay later said: "It would appear that many civilian casualties are being evacuated and treated in the local hospitals."

A U.S. defense official said the strike was carried out by an American F-15 jet. Germany's Defense Ministry said permission to fire had been granted by a German commander on the ground.

The strike took place near the border with Tajikistan, in a part of the country once seen as safe but where Taliban attacks have become increasingly frequent and fighters have asserted control of remote areas. The Taliban consider fuel shipments a strategic target because NATO forces depend on them.

The Kunduz area is patrolled mainly by NATO's 4,000-strong German contingent which is barred by Berlin from operating in combat areas further south. Germany holds a general election in three weeks and the incident will add fuel to a raging domestic debate about a war that is deeply unpopular there.

NEW ORDERS

Preventing civilian deaths has been one of the main themes of the new ISAF commander, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who took command in June and says the main goal of the war is to defend Afghan civilians, not hunt down insurgents.

Under orders he issued in July, aircraft are not supposed to fire unless they are sure there is no chance civilians can be hurt, or they are responding to an immediate threat.

The United Nations deputy envoy in Kabul, Peter Galbraith, said an investigation must answer "why an air strike was employed in circumstances where it was hard to determine with certainty that civilians were not present."

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said fighters had captured the two fuel tankers. One had become stuck in mud by a village, and the fighters went to try to tow it when residents gathered to siphon off the fuel and the crowd was struck.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made stabilizing Afghanistan a foreign policy priority although public support for the war has eroded as U.S. combat deaths have risen to record levels.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi and Peter Graff in KABUL, Hans-Edzard Busemann in Berlin, Avril Ormsby in London and Adnrew Gray in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Matthew Jones) Read on NY Times

Advisers to Obama Divided on Size of Afghan Force

2009-09-04T20:48:00.003+02:00

September 4, 2009 By PETER BAKER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON — The military’s anticipated request for more troops to combat the insurgency in Afghanistan has divided senior advisers to President Obama as they try to determine the proper size and mission of the American effort there, officials said Thursday.
Even before the top commander in Afghanistan submits his proposal for additional forces, administration officials have begun what one called a “healthy debate” about what the priorities should be and whether more American soldiers and Marines would help achieve them. Leading those with doubts is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has expressed deep reservations about an expanded presence in Afghanistan on the grounds that it may distract from what he considers the more urgent goal of stabilizing Pakistan, officials said. Among those on the other side are Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to the region, who shares the concern about Pakistan but sees more troops as vital to protecting Afghan civilians and undermining the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been vocal in favor of more troops, and while some officials said she had not shown her hand during the current deliberations, they expected her to be an advocate for a more robust force. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has voiced concern that putting so many troops in Afghanistan would make the United States look like an occupier, but during a news conference on Thursday he sounded more supportive of the prospect. “There is a unanimity of opinion about what our objective is, and the objective is to disable and destroy Al Qaeda and remove that threat to our national security,” said David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser. “Obviously, there are a variety of opinions about how best to achieve that objective, and it’s valuable and important to hear those views.” The emerging debate follows the delivery Monday of a new strategic assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over all American and NATO forces in Afghanistan in June. Mr. Gates has now forwarded the general’s report of about 25 pages to Mr. Obama. Although General McChrystal included no specific force proposals in his review, officials expect him to send a separate request in the coming weeks. Military strategists, including one who has advised General McChrystal, said he might offer three options. The smallest proposed reinforcement, from 10,000 to 15,000 troops, would be described as the high-risk option. A medium-risk option would involve sending about 25,000 more troops, and a low-risk option would call for sending about 45,000 troops. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, cautioned that talk about troop levels was speculation. “Anyone who tells you that they know how many troops the commander is going to ask for and the options he may or may not present doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because that has not been determined yet,” Mr. Morrell said. He said that Mr. Gates had not made up his mind about what he would recommend to the president. Mr. Gates could be the key adviser on this decision, and some military analysts predicted that he might recommend what Pentagon officials call the “Goldilocks option” — the medium-risk one in the middle. Because he was first appointed by President George W. Bush, Mr. Gates could provide political cover for Mr. Obama should the president reject the biggest possible buildup. Mr. Gates has long been worried that a large number of American forces would alienate the Afghan population. But at a news conference with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Gates said Thursday that his concerns about the American “footprint” had been mitigated by General McChrystal, who has indicated that the size of the force is less important than what it does. “Where foreign forces have had a large footprint and failed, in no small part it has been because the Afghans concluded they were there for their own imperial interests and not there for the interests of the Afghan people,” Mr. Gates said. But he said that General McChrystal’s emphasis on reducing civilian casualties and interacting more with Afghans “has given us a greater margin of error in that respect.” Mr. Obama has already ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan this year for a total American force of 68,000, on top of 40,000 NATO troops. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Holbrooke pushed for those reinforcements, while Mr. Biden resisted. “It is true that Hillary was very forceful; I had some disagreement in degree with her,” Mr. Biden later told USA Today. “The president ended up landing on a spot that was where she was.” Mr. Biden has argued that a sizable increase in resources for Afghanistan invariably means less for Pakistan, a concern born out of his frustration as a senator during the Bush administration pushing for more aid to Islamabad. In some ways, he has told colleagues, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan because extremism is on the rise there, Al Qaeda has operating room and the government of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, remains vulnerable. Other American officials said they worried that General McChrystal simply did not have enough forces to turn around Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke just returned from Afghanistan, where he heard from military officers who said they needed more help to execute General McChrystal’s strategy of protecting the population from the Taliban, rather than just hunting militants. As the president’s senior uniformed adviser, Admiral Mullen has said he worries about the impact of a buildup on the nation’s already stretched armed forces. In July, Mr. Gates announced a temporary increase of 22,000 troops in the size of the Army. Mediating the debate will be Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser. “My job is to make sure the process works the way the president wants and everybody is at the table,” he said. “I try to be open-minded and not prejudice anything.” He said he would ensure that dissidents got to voice their views to Mr. Obama. “He encourages vigorous debate,” General Jones said. “The thing not to do in a meeting with the president is to sit on your hands and hope you don’t get called on, because that’s a guarantee that you’re going to get called on.” Read on NY Times.

Pakistan to send up to 50,000 workers to Libya

2009-07-20T14:29:00.003+03:00

International - The News

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 By Salman Siddiqui KARACHI: Ambassador of Pakistan to Libya, Jamil Ahmed Khan, has said that around 30-50 thousand skilled and semi-skilled labourers would be sent from Pakistan to Libya by the end of the current calendar year. He was briefing a group of journalists here the other day in the backdrop of President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent visit to Libya. “This was the first official visit from any president to Libya since Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government ended,” he said. At present, some 12,000 Pakistani employees are working in Libya, out of which 25 are rendering their services at top managerial posts, Khan said in reply to a question. In 1974, around 0.15 million Pakistanis were working in Libya. However, relationship between the two countries cooled, as the Libyan head of state Colonel Moammar Gaddafi did not support the “governments of two dictators in Pakistan after the end of Bhutto’s government.” Since President Zardari was a symbol of democracy the relationship between Pakistan and Libya was moving fast on the path of normalisation, he said. In reply to a query, Khan said that cross-investment between the two counties would amount to $2 billion in the next two years, while Libya has shown interest to invest in the windmill sector. The Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) of the two countries would meet at the end of July this year. It would also discuss the feasibility study of the windmill project. “This study would probably be conducted between July and September,” he said. Some 300 companies from across the world, mostly from China, India and the West, have arrived in Libya and are exploiting investment opportunities, he said, adding that most of these companies were investing in energy and infrastructure development. “Libya (also) has great potential in sectors like textile, agriculture (dairy), construction, and plastic goods,” he explained. He told that Pak-Libya Holding Company would open a bank in Libya very soon, adding that Pakistan can greatly help Libya in the development of its banking system, as the Libyan banking system was still passing though its infantry period. Libya has allocated about $100 billion to be invested in various projects during the next five years. Moreover, it holds sovereign liquidity of $200 billion, he disclosed. Ambassador of Pakistan to Libya further said that Pakistan International Airline (PIA) would review its decision of resuming its flights to Libya, and in case it does not find flights profitable, then the government of Pakistan would ask private airlines to exploit the available opportunity. “Therefore, hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Philippines working in Libya would use our airline services if PIA or any other airline resume flights, as I have already talked to concerned officials in China in this regard,” he added. Pakistan would also hold a single country exhibition in Libya in September and would participate in its Revolutionary Day and cultural shows, he further told the media. During President Zardari’s visit, the two countries signed six MoUs and one agreement, ie, Extradition Treaty.

Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global

2009-07-20T14:04:00.002+03:00

July 20, 2009 By HIROKO TABUCHI

TOKYO — At first glance, Japanese cellphones are a gadget lover’s dream: ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators.

But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan’s handset makers have little presence beyond the country’s shores.

“Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn’t been able to get business out of it,” said Gerhard Fasol, president of the Tokyo-based IT consulting firm, Eurotechnology Japan.

The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galápagos syndrome.

Japan’s cellphones are like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galápagos Islands — fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins — explains Takeshi Natsuno, who teaches at Tokyo’s Keio University.

This year, Mr. Natsuno, who developed a popular wireless Internet service called i-Mode, assembled some of the best minds in the field to debate how Japanese cellphones can go global.

“The most amazing thing about Japan is that even the average person out there will have a superadvanced phone,” said Mr. Natsuno. “So we’re asking, can’t Japan build on that advantage?”

The only Japanese handset maker with any meaningful global share is Sony Ericsson, and that company is a London-based joint venture between a Japanese electronics maker and a Swedish telecommunications firm.

And Sony Ericsson has been hit by big losses. Its market share was just 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009, behind Nokia of Finland, Samsung Electronics and LG of South Korea, and Motorola of Illinois.

Yet Japan’s lack of global clout is all the more surprising because its cellphones set the pace in almost every industry innovation: e-mail capabilities in 1999, camera phones in 2000, third-generation networks in 2001, full music downloads in 2002, electronic payments in 2004 and digital TV in 2005.

Japan has 100 million users of advanced third-generation smartphones, twice the number used in the United States, a much larger market. Many Japanese rely on their phones, not a PC, for Internet access.

Indeed, Japanese makers thought they had positioned themselves to dominate the age of digital data. But Japanese cellphone makers were a little too clever. The industry turned increasingly inward. In the 1990s, they set a standard for the second-generation network that was rejected everywhere else. Carriers created fenced-in Web services, like i-Mode. Those mobile Web universes fostered huge e-commerce and content markets within Japan, but they have also increased the country’s isolation from the global market.

Then Japan quickly adopted a third-generation standard in 2001. The rest of the world dallied, essentially making Japanese phones too advanced for most markets.

At the same time, the rapid growth of Japan’s cellphone market in the late 1990s and early 2000s gave Japanese companies little incentive to market overseas. But now the market is shrinking significantly, hit by a recession and a graying economy; makers shipped 19 percent fewer handsets in 2008 and expect to ship even fewer in 2009. The industry remains fragmented, with eight cellphone makers vying for part of a market that will be less than 30 million units this year.

Several Japanese companies are now considering a push into overseas markets, including NEC, which pulled the plug on its money-losing international cellphone efforts in 2006. Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba and Fujitsu are said to be planning similar moves.

“Japanese cellphone makers need to either look overseas, or exit the business,” said Kenshi Tazaki, a managing vice president at the consulting firm Gartner Japan.

At a recent meeting of Mr. Natsuno’s group, 20 men and one woman crowded around a big conference table in a skyscraper in central Tokyo, examining market data, delivering diatribes and frequently shaking their heads.

The discussion then turned to the cellphones themselves. Despite their advanced hardware, handsets here often have primitive, clunky interfaces, some participants said. Most handsets have no way to easily synchronize data with PCs as the iPhone and other smartphones do.

Because each handset model is designed with a customized user interface, development is time-consuming and expensive, said Tetsuzo Matsumoto, senior executive vice president at Softbank Mobile, a leading carrier. “Japan’s phones are all ‘handmade’ from scratch,” he said. “That’s reaching the limit.”

Then there are the peculiarities of the Japanese market, like the almost universal clamshell design, which is not as popular overseas. Recent hardware innovations, like solar-powered batteries or waterproofing, have been incremental rather than groundbreaking.

The emphasis on hardware makes even the newest phones here surprisingly bulky. Some analysts say cellphone carriers stifle innovation by demanding so many peripheral hardware functions for phones.

The Sharp 912SH for Softbank, for example, comes with an LCD screen that swivels 90 degrees, GPS tracking, a bar-code reader, digital TV, credit card functions, video conferencing and a camera and is unlocked by face recognition.

Meanwhile, Japanese developers are jealous of the runaway global popularity of the Apple iPhone and App Store, which have pushed the American and European cellphone industry away from its obsession with hardware specifications to software. “This is the kind of phone I wanted to make,” Mr. Natsuno said, playing with his own iPhone 3G.

The conflict between Japan’s advanced hardware and its primitive software has contributed to some confusion over whether the Japanese find the iPhone cutting edge or boring. One analyst said they just aren’t used to handsets that connect to a computer.

The forum Mr. Natsuno convened to address Galápagos syndrome has come up with a series of recommendations: Japan’s handset makers must focus more on software and must be more aggressive in hiring foreign talent, and the country’s cellphone carriers must also set their sights overseas.

“It’s not too late for Japan’s cellphone industry to look overseas,” said Tetsuro Tsusaka, a telecom analyst at Barclays Capital Japan. “Besides, most phones outside the Galápagos are just so basic.”

CIT Is Said to Obtain Urgent Loan to Prevent Bankruptcy

2009-07-20T14:02:00.001+03:00

July 20, 2009

By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED

Directors of the CIT Group, one of the nation’s leading lenders to small and midsize businesses, approved a deal Sunday evening with some of the bank’s major bondholders to help it avert a bankruptcy filing through a $3 billion emergency loan, according to people briefed on the matter.

The deal will buy CIT some time to restructure its business model and reduce its voluminous debt load, after the company failed to win crucial concessions from Washington regulators. The company had planned to file for bankruptcy protection as soon as Monday afternoon if it could not attract enough capital from private investors, including big bondholders and its banks.

Under the terms of the deal, CIT would receive $3 billion from some of its main bondholders, though at an initial rate of about 10.5 percent. The money, arranged by Barclays Capital, is meant to give the company several weeks to set up an exchange of bondholders’ debt for equity, alleviating some of the pressure from billions of dollars in obligations.

CIT’s board approved the deal around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, these people said.

For more than a week, CIT, which is 101 years old, posed a difficult question for regulators: Should they step in to save yet another foundered financial institution?

Regulators felt some political pressure to intervene, because of CIT’s big presence in lending to small businesses across the country and because the government had already invested $2.33 billion in the company.

But officials eventually concluded that CIT, unlike the banks that were bailed out last year, posed no risk to the global financial system, leaving its fate in the hands of the private market.

The plan was formed after days of round-the-clock negotiations between CIT and its financial and legal advisers, and a group of large bondholders represented by the investment bank Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin and the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. The two firms previously represented the biggest group of large bondholders in General Motors.

Jeffrey M. Peek, CIT’s chief executive and the architect of the lender’s ill-timed aggressive push into subprime mortgages and student loans, was active in the financing talks, according to people briefed on the matter. Mr. Peek, a longtime banker who lost a race to become Merrill Lynch’s chief executive, called upon many of his acquaintances on Wall Street to provide some form of aid.

Even as CIT negotiated with its bondholders, it also had teams from the investment bank Evercore Partners and the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom prepare for a potential Chapter 11 filing. Several advisers, including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, had begun preliminary discussions about raising $2 billion to $3 billion in debtor-in-possession financing, money needed to get a company through bankruptcy.

It remains unclear whether CIT’s long-sought lifeline will be enough to give it the room to make crucial changes to its business at a time when it is unable to obtain financing from the capital markets. While it maintains a bank subsidiary in Utah, the company has traditionally relied on money that it borrows in the capital markets to make loans to its customers.

Once the credit markets froze and investors became leery of CIT’s loan portfolio, the company was in peril.

Were CIT to fail, the company — with $75 billion in assets — would become the largest casualty in the finance sector since Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall. Since then, federal regulators have been pumping billions of dollars into numerous banks across the country to prop them up and create some stability in the financial system.

A failure of CIT could have sent ripple effects through the nation’s small and midsize businesses. While most of its portfolio consisted of term loans, the company dominated the market for factoring, a type of lending common within the manufacturing and retail sectors.

Many analysts and federal regulators have questioned why CIT did not try to change its risky business model sooner. Last December, amid the market turmoil, the Bush administration rushed through the company’s application to become a bank holding company and gave it $2.33 billion through the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Yet the company made no move to build a sturdier business model. Instead, it applied for access to a program through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that has allowed Goldman Sachs and other banks to issue their debt cheaply with the backing of the agency.

Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the F.D.I.C., does not view the program as a bailout solution for banks and financial institutions, a government official briefed on the situation said.

When that door closed last week, CIT executives still held out hope that they would receive approval from regulators to transfer $10 billion in assets to the company’s Utah bank, a move that would have given it access to loans from the Federal Reserve. But regulators demanded that such a move be accompanied by CIT’s raising a significant amount of private capital, which at the time seemed nearly impossible.

A third front of the debate was whether, after throwing large sums of money to some of the nation’s largest banks, the Obama administration was doing enough to brace up institutions that lend money to smaller businesses. Many of those large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America, reported either record or substantially improved results last week.

Julie Creswell contributed reporting.

Across U.S., ESPN Aims to Be the Home Team

2009-07-20T13:55:00.002+03:00

July 20, 2009

By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — Not content with being a sports colossus with broadcasts in 200 countries, ESPN is taking aim at hometown sports coverage, threatening one of the last strongholds of local newspapers and television stations.

ESPN has long dominated the coverage of national athletics, pumping out news and commentary on every major sport (and some not-so-major ones) via an expanding network of cable channels, Web sites and mobile services.

Now, after a promising test run in Chicago, ESPN is adding local offshoots to three more cities. On Monday, ESPN, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, plans to announce local Web sites in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas — in what executives say is only the “first inning” of their effort to provide hyperlocal sports coverage in cities across the country.

“We look at this as a perfect example of offering a better product,” said George W. Bodenheimer, co-chairman of Disney Media Networks.

Chicago news outlets, which have some experience competing directly with ESPN, acknowledge that the threat is real.

“We are taking ESPN’s marketing push seriously, and we are looking forward to the local sports turf battle in the weeks and months ahead,” said Bill Adee, The Chicago Tribune’s editor for digital media.

In less than three months, ESPN Chicago has become the city’s top sports site, attracting about 590,000 unique visitors in June, according to data from comScore, an Internet measurement company. Second place went to The Tribune’s online sports section with 455,000 unique visitors.

ESPN Chicago does not seem to have cut into The Tribune’s online sports audience as much as it has slowed its growth, according to a review of the traffic data.

At The Los Angeles Times, which is about to face ESPN head-on, the associate editor, Randy Harvey, said: “It would be foolish to underestimate ESPN, but it comes down to resources. I don’t see them being able to replicate what we do.”

Once ESPN establishes itself in local markets, it plans to move deeper into local sports — down to the high school level and perhaps beyond — by using social networking and other technology to inform its journalism.

Just as CNN offers news from everyday people through its iReport service, ESPN could augment its local coverage by tapping sports fans. Picture fathers uploading scores from their daughters’ soccer games.

“This initiative is perfect for exploring that opportunity,” said Mr. Bodenheimer, who also serves as president of ESPN and ABC Sports.

The company would say only that its costs are “minimal,” using existing resources to expand; in fact, ESPN says it is hiring only about 15 new people for the sites in Dallas, Los Angeles and New York. The Dallas site will start in the fall, the other two early next year.

These moves have challenges, even for a company with pockets as deep as ESPN. Sports fans, loyal to their local newspaper columnists, could balk at the continued march of ESPN across the sports news landscape, and the media giant could easily run afoul of local quirks. Costs also may be difficult to control, and maintaining editorial standards with content supplied by fans might be difficult.

Also, Fox Sports has successful cable networks in several regional markets, but its Web presence is minimal and for the most part does not focus on high schools.

Still, ESPN’s offshoots may hurt native news operations, possibly speeding the flow of fans from print to the Web. Local papers’ sports sections generally do not generate much advertising revenue, but sports news helps keep subscribers loyal.

The New York Daily News and The Dallas Morning News had no comment over the weekend on ESPN’s plans.

Sports also bring a global audience to the Web sites of local papers. ESPN wants those people, who are probably also checking ESPN.com, to stay entirely within its arms.

ESPNChicago.com, introduced on April 13, is the model. The site covers the city’s seven professional teams and sports at nine area colleges, much of it already offered on ESPN’s other platforms. Plans are afoot to expand coverage to area high schools.

There is also a focus on pickup leisure sports. Organizing a neighborhood softball league? ESPN Chicago has a tool to help. The site’s coverage, from news wires and ESPN staff, is augmented by original reporting from a local team of editors, columnists and bloggers — some of them familiar to sports fans from their previous work at The Chicago Sun-Times and the local NBC affiliate.

The site also offers a daily Chicago edition, three to six minutes long, of its flagship “SportsCenter” program.

“Huge” is how Stacey Woelfel, chairman of the Radio Television News Directors Association, described the potential threat to TV stations, in part because their Web presence in sports “tends to be fairly weak.”

ESPN, of course, is going after local ad dollars, as well as readers. Chicago Lincoln-Mercury dealers, Hilton Hotels of Chicago, MillerCoors and Hawthorne Race Course have been among ESPN Chicago’s advertisers.

“A national sports brand that’s dedicated to your local market? It hasn’t really been seen before,” said Ray Elias, marketing director for StubHub, the ticket resale marketplace and an early partner with ESPN Chicago.

Although local advertising in print, radio and television has plunged in recent years — led by a drop in spending from car dealerships — online advertising is growing. The Kelsey Group, which studies local media, values the local online ad market at about $16 billion and expects it to double by 2013.

John Kosner, ESPN’s digital media chief, played down the competitive threat posed by his company’s plan. “You’ve got outstanding newspapers and television stations that have been in these markets forever and have strong followings,” he said. “Our presence will be additive.”

Mr. Kosner even hinted at collaboration. “It’s not a foregone conclusion that we will be independent” in every market, he said. ESPN already has some content-sharing partnerships with local newspapers.

ESPN, which broadcasts “Monday Night Football,” has looked for a way to go local for years, but the growth potential was always outweighed by the costs of deploying local reporters and ad staffs. Sites that simply aggregated what ESPN was already doing would be quickly dismissed by fans, Mr. Kosner said.

To address the costs, ESPN is building off its radio stations’ Web sites. The company owns five stations — in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Pittsburgh — and counts more than 350 others as affiliates.

“We decided to take those sites, set up to service the station, and turn them on their ear to service the consumer,” said Jim Pastor, senior vice president of the ESPN Radio Station Group.

Localization will not pad ESPN’s bottom line anytime soon. But it could turn into a significant growth engine over time.

“Efforts like this might not sound so meaningful,” said Michael Morris of UBS. “But if this area takes off, and ESPN’s success record is astounding, it could really add up in a hurry.”

Better Vision, With a Telescope Inside the Eye

2009-07-19T14:13:00.002+03:00

Left, VisionCare; Right, James Gilman A tiny telescope, already approved for use in Europe, can be implanted in one eye to help people with an advanced form of macular degeneration. The device takes the place of the natural lens. July 19, 2009 Novelties By ANNE EISENBERG

A TINY glass telescope, the size of a pea, has been successfully implanted in the eyes of people with severely damaged retinas, helping them to read, watch television and better see familiar faces.

The new device is for people with an irreversible, advanced form of macular degeneration in which a blind spot develops in the central vision of both eyes.

In a brief, outpatient procedure, a corneal specialist implants the mini-telescope in one eye in place of its natural lens. The telescope magnifies images on the retina, extending them so they fall on healthy cells outside the damaged macula, said Allen W. Hill, chief executive of VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies in Saratoga, Calif., the implant’s maker.

In March, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended approval of the device. VisionCare says it expects the F.D.A. to give its O.K. later this year. The device has already been approved for use in Europe.

The implanted telescope holds much promise for patients, typically elderly, who suffer from end-stage, age-related macular degeneration, or A.M.D., said Janet P. Szlyk, a member of the advisory panel. Dr. Szlyk is executive director of the Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired, a social services agency.

The device does not cure the disease, but it does improve visual acuity, she said. For example, a person who might usually see a blur when looking at a friend’s face might, with the help of the magnified image, see a blur only in the area of the person’s nose or mouth.

“People can use it to recognize faces in a social setting,” she said. ‘That’s a huge advance.”

The telescope is implanted in one eye for jobs like reading and facial recognition. The other eye, unaltered, is used for peripheral vision during other activities like walking. After implantation, extensive therapy is crucial, she said, to learn to deal with the different abilities of the eyes.

Ruth A. Boocks, 86, of Alpharetta, Ga., who received an implant of the device in March 2003 during clinical trials, said her brain learned to adapt quickly. Mrs. Boocks uses her new visual abilities in various ways — for instance, to read e-mail and the messages that scroll across the bottom of the screen when she’s watching television. “My goal was to read to the bottom of the eye charts,” she said. “But I didn’t quite make it.” (She has gotten to the third line from the bottom.)

“I feel like a young woman,” she added. “It’s opened a lot of opportunities for me.”

Henry L. Hudson, a retina specialist in Tucson, Ariz., and lead author of two papers on the telescope published in peer-reviewed journals, said the device was not for everyone with A.M.D. “Maybe only 20 out of every 100 candidates will get the telescope,” he said. “They may not be eligible because of the shape of their eyes,” or they may have another problem, like maintaining balance, that precludes their selection, he added.

After F.D.A. approval, VisionCare will apply to Medicare to cover the device, Mr. Hill said. “We anticipate that it will be seen as a covered benefit for the improvement of visual acuity,” he said.

The price of the device has not been set. Current tools for ameliorating low-vision problems, like glasses fitted with telescopes or reading machines, are typically not covered by insurance.

Dr. Bruce P. Rosenthal is chief of low-vision programs at Lighthouse International in New York City, where telescopes mounted on eyeglass frames, for instance, might be prescribed for people with A.M.D. to help them watch a sports event. He said that patients might be as well served by these glasses as by the new implants, and that he hoped long-term studies would compare the benefits of the two approaches.

“Even though studies on the implants have reported minimal complications, there can be complications when you are inserting anything in the eye,” he said. “Even routine cataract surgery can lead to loss of vision.”

Dr. Rosenthal said the implanted telescope might be beneficial for some patients, “especially if they don’t want other people to know they are visually impaired.” Telescopes mounted on eyeglasses bulge outward, often extending an inch or so beyond the frames.

But he is concerned that people using implants might have trouble with balance. “There is a potential for falling when a person has a big image from one eye and a normal-sized image from the other,” he said.

DURING trials of the device, there was no increase in the incidence of falls among participants, Dr. Hudson said. More than 200 patients received implants in the study, and the effects have been tracked in the group for the past five years.

“The vast majority of the patients have been able to adapt to the new state,” using one eye for ambulating and the other for reading, facial recognition and similar chores, he said. “The average patient goes from legally blind to being able to read large-print books.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Dozens Hurt in San Francisco Train Crash

2009-07-19T14:05:00.003+03:00

Lance Iversen/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press Rescue workers transport one of several dozen people who were injured when two San Francisco light-rail trains collided Saturday afternoon at the West Portal Station.

July 19, 2009

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Several dozen people were injured on Saturday in a crash involving two San Francisco light-rail trains at the West Portal Station, the authorities said.

Forty-eight people were taken to hospitals — four with what appeared to be severe injuries — when a San Francisco Municipal Railway L train rear-ended a K train at the boarding platform at about 2:30 p.m., officials said.

Deputy Chief Pat Gardner of the San Francisco Fire Department said that about half of those wounded suffered moderate injuries and that everyone who was injured remained conscious.

Witnesses said the westbound L train barreled into the K train as it emerged from a tunnel connecting downtown San Francisco to the western neighborhoods of the city.

The front of the L train was smashed, while the K train sustained less damage. The operator of the L train was among the seriously injured.

Witnesses said more than a dozen people sat on benches along the boarding platform after the crash, some of them bleeding from their heads. Most of the passengers were adults.

The cause of the crash was under investigation. Judson True, a railway spokesman, said investigators would look at “mechanical and human issues.”

The crash was at least the third major transit accident in the United States since May.

Nine people were killed and more than 70 injured on June 22 when a Metro train slammed into another train stopped on the tracks in Washington. On May 8, more than 50 people were injured when a Boston subway trolley plowed into another train. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Moon Walkers

2009-07-16T12:59:00.006+03:00

Portrait by David Burnett / Contact

Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009 By Jeffrey Kluger

Metaphor had its way with Buzz Aldrin long before the moon did. There were always signs that the second man to set foot on the lunar surface would be stalked by demons. His grandfather fought depression for much of his life and ended his suffering only through suicide. His mother, too, struggled with melancholy and, after Aldrin's first spaceflight, in 1966, began wearing dark glasses in public to help her cope with the family's fame. In May 1968, just 14 months before Aldrin left for his lunar trip, she also took her own life. Aldrin bore the loss quietly and flew Apollo 11 flawlessly, but in case he needed his journey to carry any more portent, there was this: his mother's maiden name was Marion Moon.

I first met Buzz in 1990, years after his landmark mission and years, too, after he had overcome his own depression and alcoholism. I had not yet begun collaborating with astronaut Jim Lovell on the book Apollo 13, so Aldrin was the first lunar vet I'd ever met. We attended a dinner on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, moored on Manhattan's West Side, and I maneuvered myself so that we wound up sharing a cab east. That night, a big white platter of a moon hung over 46th Street, which seemed deeply meaningful to me but which Buzz did not seem to notice. Instead, we discussed the future of rocket propulsion and space travel, a topic that continues to fascinate him. (See pictures of Apollo 11's Liftoff.)

That future, as always, is uncertain, but as the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing arrives on July 20, the past remains familiar. Nine Apollo missions were launched moonward, and six of them landed. The cultural memories of these missions remain penny-bright — and the aging men who flew the ships retain a status that goes beyond iconic. Baseball players are icons; movie stars are icons. But those kinds of folks, we breed as we need. The lunar fraternity stopped taking members in 1972, when there were only 24 of them — and six have since died. History has produced far more American Presidents than it has lunar astronauts.

There are giants among the giants: Lovell, Shepard, Armstrong, Aldrin — figures who, like Gehrig and Lindbergh and Edison, need but one name. Others are harder for people to place: Stu Roosa, Ron Evans, Dick Gordon. But bring any one of the surviving moonmen into a room and he will be approached in the same way: with a wonder and a deference accorded to only those few who have sailed past the part of the map where dragons be and come back home to tell the rest of us what they saw.

"I'm amazed at the interest folks give to a moon walker," says Apollo 16's Charlie Duke, whose bootprints are still pressed into the moon's Descartes highlands and who, after 37 years, ought to be used to the attention. Aldrin still marvels at the seemingly universal need people have to tell him where they were on the night they watched him walk on the moon. (See pictures of the astronauts then and now.)

But what about the men themselves? What about the 39-year-old pilot who returns from the moon and knows with a mortal certainty that he has already done the most noteworthy thing he'll ever do and now must keep himself busy for the next half-century? What about the existential whiplash that comes from being on the moon one week and in your living room the next — and having to find your own way to process the vast gulf between those two worlds? "I remember coming back to Houston after the moon, and my neighbors had a barbecue for me," Dave Scott, commander of Apollo 15, told me. "I thought, 'What am I doing here?' "

And what happens when the press pack moves on, when the interviews stop and the faces of the flyers once limned with light become lined with age? "Remember where you're standing when the spotlight goes off," Lovell warned me once, when our book was a best seller and the movie it spawned was in theaters. "You'll have to find your own way off the stage."

Watch TIME's video "How Apollo 11 Got to the Moon."

See pictures of Buzz Aldrin.

The Rightest Stuff In many ways, then men chosen to go to the moon were uniquely equipped to deal with such complex emotional questions — if only because they weren't wired to give them much thought. Jack Swigert, whose sole trip into space was aboard the aborted Apollo 13, once observed that the odd banality of the air-to-ground communications from the Apollo missions, in which astronauts getting their first glimpse of the moon rarely uttered anything more poetic than "amazing" or "fantastic," was no accident. The very things that qualified the men to go to the moon, he believed, disqualified them to describe their journey with any lyricism. Think too deeply about what you're doing and the enormity of the thing can stop you from getting it done. And when one crewman violated that unwritten code of sangfroid, others, often as not, would stop him cold.

"Hey, let me ask you this," Apollo 10's Gene Cernan can be heard saying to his crewmates on a once classified closed-loop recording as the three men peered out the window at the moon below them. "Where do you suppose a planet like this comes from? Do you suppose it broke away from the Earth like a lot of people say?" (See picture of five nations' race to the moon.)

"I ain't no cosmologist," astronaut John Young answers with deliberate bluntness. "I don't care nothing about that."

NASA officials carefully screened for pilots who were made of tough physical stuff, and they chose well. In 1930, about the time most of the lunar astronauts were born, the life expectancy for a white American male was 59.1 years. In 2009, three-quarters of the former moonmen are still alive, and all of them are near or past 80 — not a likely result of chance. The doctors weren't looking equally hard for men who were free of poetry or fancy, but it was no surprise that they got that too. "They were all fighter pilots," says Dr. J.D. Polk, NASA's current chief of medical operations. "Psychologically speaking, they were a pretty self-selecting group."

But if the pilots weren't wired for wonder, they were wired for fun. After the successful mission of Apollo 11 — a serious, almost grimly flown affair — things loosened up, and the astronauts took advantage of the high adventure of their jobs. When the late Pete Conrad, commander of Apollo 12, hopped down from his lunar module, he eschewed any resonant words about small steps and giant leaps and went instead for a simple "whoopee!" Years later, I asked him if he had found it hard to enjoy himself on the surface, knowing that if the lunar-module engine didn't relight, he was never going home again.

"Nah," he said. "I was a happy guy on the moon." He got over his fear the first time he orbited Earth, when a failed retro-rocket would leave him just as stranded — and just as dead — as if he were stuck on the moon. (Read the flight plan of Apollo 11.)

Conrad wasn't alone in enjoying his lunar mission. Most of the flights after Apollo 11 run together in the public mind, but all are recalled as a procession of bunny-hopping, buggy-driving American men, frequently joking, sometimes singing and generally having a grand time. "Man, this is a fun ride!" Duke exclaimed as he drove about the terrain in his collapsible moon car. Ken Mattingly, Duke's Apollo 16 crewmate, was reluctant even to look out the window of the orbiter too much, for fear that the next transcendent view would wipe out the previous one. "My mind was an erasable memory," he says. "It just deleted the last experience."

Even Apollo 14's Alan Shepard, known as the "ice commander" for the severe approach he sometimes took to his work, melted with delight at what he was doing. "You're ready to go out and play in the snow," he said to Edgar Mitchell as he helped the rookie astronaut climb into his suit before they left the lunar module.

Hard Landing The fun ended fast, however. The longest of the lunar missions lasted just 12 days; the shortest, about a week. When the first three flights that landed on the moon — Apollo 11, 12 and 14 — came home, the astronauts were swaddled in biocontainment suits and hustled into quarantine, where they spent three weeks under observation in case they had picked up any lunar pathogens. The first good look the world got of Apollo 11's Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins after their return was thus through the window of a trailer on the deck of the recovery ship U.S.S. Hornet, where they waved to President Richard Nixon and the crowd outside — a tableau Aldrin describes as a "circus spectacle." Later they were transferred to roomier quarters in Houston. Most people reckoned that the astronauts loathed the indignity of the nickel-a-peek display and the 21-day lockup, but the truth was that they rather needed it.

See an interactive graphic of the moon's landing sites.

See pictures of Earth from space.

"The fact that we were in quarantine kept us connected to NASA," says Apollo 12's Alan Bean. "It was business, and that was good. It also gave us the chance to get the report written that we needed to write." Aldrin, who always had a powerful thirst, availed himself happily of the scotch the astronauts were provided during isolation and, when that ran out, took to filching some from the stash overseen by the lead doctor, who slept in the bedroom next to his.

The Apollo 15, 16 and 17 crews got no such slow re-entry time, and their return to the quotidian world was much more sudden. All of the men, however, had some hard adjusting to do. "The transition from 'astronaut preparing to accomplish the next big thing' to 'astronaut telling about the last big thing' did not come easily to me," Aldrin writes in his new book, Magnificent Desolation. The title is taken from the exquisite oxymoron he uttered when he first looked around himself on the lunar surface, but it aptly describes his early postmoon life as well. "What does a man do for an encore?" he asks. (See the top 50 space moments since Sputnik.)

For some, the encore was more of the same. Dick Gordon, who waited in orbit on Apollo 12 while his crewmates walked on the surface, wanted to return to the moon and get his boots dirty. Fred Haise, who was denied his chance to land when Apollo 13 was crippled, felt the same way. Haise was eventually tapped to command Apollo 18, and Gordon got 19 — but both missions were scrapped because of budget cuts. "On the way back, Pete, Dick and I talked about what we wanted to do," says Bean. "We all wanted to fly again."

Some did fly, others didn't, but nearly all felt at least some sense of drift. "People in wars have the same experience," says Mattingly. "They're in one world with one set of rules, and they step off an airplane and they're in another." NASA didn't help much. The agency exhaustively screened its candidate moonmen for emotional stability before clearing them for flight but kept a much more casual eye on them afterward. "I guess they figured we were big boys," says Lovell, a veteran of Apollo 8 and 13. Duke insists he didn't need a NASA nanny worrying over him anyway. "I was never a woe-is-me guy," he says.

But in failing to accept that woe sometimes was them, the space agency did its pilots a disservice, says psychologist and cultural anthropologist Lawrence Palinkas of the University of Southern California. Palinkas studies how people adapt to extreme environments and isolation, working with both NASA and groups planning polar expeditions. "What can make it hard for people like this is that they're so highly motivated and they wait so long for a mission," Palinkas says. "There can be a deep sense of loss once the goals have been accomplished, and there may be no adequate substitute." (See pictures of animals in space.)

Desk jobs in the shuttle program were available to many of the astronauts, but the new ship was a pickup truck compared with the glamorous Apollos. "Coming down from that Apollo high was hard," Duke concedes. Lovell had a more sudden moment of clarity. "I was looking at the design of the shuttle cockpit," he says, "and suddenly realized I was in the same room I was in years before when we were working on the F-4 [fighter]. I'd made a full circle." Not long after, he squared that circle and walked out the door.

For some, the next-best choice lay in politics, another high-stakes game, with the thrill of an election replacing the thrill of a liftoff — even if it was followed by the comparative drudgery of governing. Swigert ran successfully for Congress but died of cancer before he could be sworn in. Apollo 17's Harrison (Jack) Schmitt served a term as Senator from New Mexico, then lost his 1982 re-election bid to a candidate whose ads cheekily asked, "What on Earth has he done for you lately?"

Watch TIME's video "The Final Shuttle to Hubble."

See pictures of women in space.

Lovell was the target of tag-team pressure from the stars of the Republican Party — including Vice President Spiro Agnew — all of whom wanted him to run for the Senate from Wisconsin and all of whom he turned down. Finally, the phone rang in his Houston home with a call from the White House. This time it was the Commander in Chief calling to ask an active naval officer to step forward and serve his party. Lovell might have succumbed — but Nixon overplayed his hand. When Lovell mentioned that he'd had no time to raise campaign funds and that the primary was just weeks away, Nixon dismissed the problem. "Son," he said in a tone that was meant to be reassuring but was something else entirely, "money is no problem." Lovell, now well spooked, gave his final no.

The astronauts found their ways into postmoon careers, and some thrived. Apollo 8's Frank Borman became chairman of Eastern Airlines. Crewmate William Anders became chairman of General Dynamics, an aerospace, marine and defense contractor, earning a tip of the hat from the other astronauts as the richest of the former moonmen — though no one has ever done the comparative accounting that would confirm the rep. (See pictures of Apollo 8's historic flight.)

Others went in less predictable directions. Bean, who has always had a deft way with a paintbrush and palette, turned to the easel full time, painting the subjects he knew best: the moon and the people who trod it. He has a new exhibition opening at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington this month. Duke, who insists he found no philosophical meaning in his time on the moon, nonetheless came home to find a deep well of Christian spirituality within himself and fills his time with secular and religious speaking. Apollo 15's James Irwin similarly found his faith and established a nonprofit religious group.

Apollo 14's Mitchell was the biggest surprise of all. He stunned most people upon his return when he revealed that during the mission he had quietly conducted experiments in extrasensory perception with two friends back home — trying to send them mental images from space. He later founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, Calif., to study what some refer to as the paranormal — and what he insists is nothing of the kind. "Nothing is para once you know what's going on," he counters. "For some people, it's normal." Mitchell says it was his lunar journey that opened his eyes to something larger in the universe — what he refers to as his "ah-ha experience." (Watch TIME's video "First Broadcast From the Moon.")

The challenging re-entry so many astronauts endured has prodded the modern NASA to pay closer mind to its pilots after they come home. "I'm not sure of what we did then, but it's nothing like what we do now," says Polk. "We do much more to lend assistance to astronauts and their families." Some of that assistance involves helping crews deal not with massive fame followed by indifference but with indifference from the start, as a public that has long since wearied of the space shuttle stops paying attention altogether.

Whether such anonymity might have benefited the Apollo veterans depends mostly on each man. Aldrin eventually found stability and sobriety and has since pursued a high-profile public-speaking and consulting career that in many ways cashes in on his lunar backstory. Armstrong, on the other hand, has retreated from public view, shunning interviews and appearances, with the exception of a visit to the White House every fifth year on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. I once asked Scott — who survived a near death experience with Armstrong when their Gemini 8 spacecraft spun out of control in Earth orbit in 1966 — if perhaps his old crewmate's Salinger act was inappropriate for a man who in some ways had been selected to make history rather than make it on his own. "Absolutely not," the ordinarily affable Scott said — almost snapped. "Neil did everything that was ever asked of him. He flew his missions, he did his p.r. tours. His life is his own."

It's that comradeship — forged in the fires of liftoff and set in the deep freeze of space — that may be the pilots' most enduring lunar legacy. Early in my work on the Apollo 13 book, I asked Lovell a question he'd been asked many times before: Did any member of his crew panic during the emergency return they made to Earth — particularly in the first few hours, when there was no reason to believe they'd even survive the night? Lovell answered that the three men had agreed never to discuss that matter with anyone else and never would. The obvious inference was that of course someone had come unhinged — why else wouldn't he say otherwise? — but that conclusion, I came to understand, was wrong. The confidentiality of the lunar cockpit was an absolute thing, whether breaching the secrecy would cast the crew in a good light or a bad one. In the long history of the human species, there are only 24 men who have come to understand that bond. The rest of us can still only guess at it.

Kluger is a senior editor and writer for TIME and co-author of Apollo 13

See pictures of Apollo 11's Liftoff.

Watch TIME's video "How Apollo 11 Got to the Moon."

Despite Jewish Concerns, Obama Keeps Up Pressure on Israel

2009-07-15T13:58:00.010+03:00

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in the Oval Office - Pete Souza / White House / Getty

Tuesday, Jul. 14, 2009

By Tony Karon

President Barack Obama has concluded that Israel and the Palestinians are unlikely to achieve peace unless they're under external pressure to make the requisite compromises. Believing that a two-state solution is in the best interests of both parties and that time is running out for such a solution, the President is stepping up the pressure on both sides. That was Obama's message at a White House meeting on July 13 with representatives of leading Jewish-American organizations, some of whom have lately complained that the President is unfairly pressuring Israel to make concessions on West Bank settlements, while going easy on the Palestinians.

According to various accounts of the White House meeting, Obama was gentle but firm in rejecting requests to refrain from publicly expressing his differences with Israel's leaders. When it was suggested by one participant in the meeting that the past eight years had demonstrated that the best chance for peace came when there was no daylight between the U.S. and Israeli positions, Obama pushed back, noting that the close ties between the Bush Administration and the governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert had in fact produced no significant progress toward peace. (See pictures of 60 years of Israel.)

"He said, 'The United States and Israel were very, very close for eight years, and it produced very little,' " Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman told the Los Angeles Times. In order to generate momentum toward a solution, Obama explained, the U.S. was pressuring Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states to make concessions.

Foxman was reportedly not convinced, and some others at the meeting expressed reservations afterward. Some, however, were reportedly more inclined to give Obama's approach a chance to work, and the President's approach was enthusiastically backed by J-Street, a new Jewish-American lobby group that ties support for Israel to the pursuit of peace. The presence of J-Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami at the White House meeting was one more change to digest for such stalwarts of the Jewish-American establishment as Foxman and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Following the President's Cairo outreach speech in June, Hoenlein had said publicly that "President Obama's strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes."

Whether or not Obama suffers any domestic political cost for putting pressure on Israel remains to be seen — he won three-quarters of the Jewish vote in last year's election, and he has good reason to believe he can retain most of that support even if he prods Israel on issues like settlements. After all, the settlements are not fundamental to Israel's security, to which Obama constantly reiterates his rock-solid commitment. (Watch a video about Israel's lonesome doves.)

But Obama may be understating the extent of pressure that will be required to bring about a two-state solution to the conflict. The settlement freeze that he has demanded of Israel, for example, is simply a confidence-building mechanism aimed at securing new gestures from Israel's Arab neighbors and helping restart negotiations. But Israel's government has pushed back hard, rejecting the principle of a total settlement freeze and insisting on completing some 2,500 housing units currently under construction, excluding East Jerusalem from the freeze, and making it conditional. And Arab governments are reluctant to be seen to offer new "rewards" — such as allowing the opening of diplomatic facilities or overflight rights for commercial aircraft — in return for Israel's simply complying with its obligations under the 2003 "road map" for peace. Each side seems to doubt the seriousness of the other, and each will cite the other's reluctance to move forward as a reason to hold back themselves.

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The intentions of Israel's leaders came under further question last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's father, the historian Ben-Zion Netanyahu, told an Israeli TV interviewer that he had been told by his son that he did not support the creation of a Palestinian state. Despite Benjamin Netanyahu's having accepted the goal in principle under pressure from Washington, his father said the Prime Minister had done so only on the basis of conditions that were impossible for the Palestinians to ever accept.

Then, in an interview published on July 10, Netanyahu's national security chief and key adviser, Uzi Arad, said the Palestinians, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, were not committed to living in peace with Israel. "Even the moderates among them do not really want a settlement," Arad said. "At most, they are striving toward a settlement in order to renew the confrontation from a better position." As a result of U.S. pressure, a Palestinian state of "stamps, parades, carnival [...] That could happen," Arad said. "A fragile structure, yes; an arrangement resting wholly on wobbly foundations."

Plainly, there are key voices in the Israeli leadership that are deeply skeptical of Obama's effort to move quickly to implement a two-state peace. And, of course, as the President himself constantly reminds, the window of opportunity for such an outcome is closing after two decades of fruitless negotiation.

In a little-noted speech in London on July 11, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana — a key figure in the "Quartet" of the U.S., E.U., U.N. and Russia that is overseeing the peace process — said that if the parties were unable to bring the conflict to an end in the very near future, the international community would have to impose a solution. "The mediator has to set the timetable too," Solana said. "If the parties are not able to stick to it, then a solution backed by the international community should be put on the table."

Solana called for a U.N. Security Council resolution outlining in detail the parameters of a two-state solution, fixing borders, prescribing arrangements for sharing Jerusalem, security and the fate of refugees. Of course, Obama is saying nothing of the sort, still hoping to drag the two sides, however reluctantly, to the negotiating table to hash out an agreement. But Solana — who has been involved in trying to do just that for a decade longer than Obama has — may simply have recognized that the U.S. pressure that has been required to get both sides simply to make confidence-building gestures is nothing compared with what will be required to get them to accept a final peace agreement.

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Libya's Number One Engineering Consultancy Allotted

2009-07-14T22:54:00.002+03:00

Exclusive for Times - 14-7-2009 After a long time of delaying this indispensable process, the Libyan government finally decided to execute the regulation to allot the most successful of its engineering organizations. Alemara Engineering Consultations Office which was founded in 1984 by the Libyan government at that time will be converted into the private sector to compete in a market that has been nourished in the last few years. Alemara which designed, supervised, and managed humongous construction, infrastructure, housing, and multidisciplinary entities since the commencement of its operations in 1986, leading the industry directing it and shaping its interface for the last 2 decades. The decision is being executed after the so-called struggle, and status evaluation of the company that started early this year. Alemara is still supervising and working on important projects for the Libyan government, and it is kept not declared yet what will happen in case of allottment regarding the previously mentioned projects.

Exxon to Invest Millions to Make Fuel From Algae

2009-07-14T12:46:00.003+03:00

July 14, 2009

By JAD MOUAWAD

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world’s largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.

Despite the widely publicized “moonshine” remark a few years ago by Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, the company has spent several years exploring various fuel alternatives, according to one of its top research officials.

“We literally looked at every option we could think of, with several key parameters in mind,” said Emil Jacobs, vice president for research and development at Exxon’s research and engineering unit. “Scale was the first. For transportation fuels, if you can’t see whether you can scale a technology up, then you have to question whether you need to be involved at all.”

He added, “I am not going to sugarcoat this — this is not going to be easy.” Any large-scale commercial plants to produce algae-based fuels are at least 5 to 10 years away, Dr. Jacobs said.

Exxon’s sincerity and commitment will almost certainly be questioned by its most galvanized environmentalist critics, especially when compared with the company’s extraordinary profits from petroleum in recent years.

“Research is great, but we need to see new products in the market,” Kert Davies, the research director at Greenpeace, said. “We’ve always said that major oil companies have to be involved. But the question is whether companies are simply paying lip service to something or whether they are putting their weight and power behind it.”

But if it proves a bona fide effort, Exxon’s move into biofuels, long the preserve of venture capital firms and biotech start-ups, could provide a big push to the Obama administration’s policy of encouraging more renewable energy.

Currently, about 9 percent of the nation’s liquid fuel supply comes from biofuels — most of it corn-based ethanol. And by 2022, Congress has mandated that biofuel levels reach 36 billion gallons.

But developing biofuels has been tricky, and Mr. Tillerson has not been alone in his skepticism. Many environmental groups and energy experts have been critical of corn-derived ethanol, because of its lower energy content and questionable environmental record.

According to Exxon, algae could yield more than 2,000 gallons of fuel per acre of production each year, compared with 650 gallons for palm trees and 450 gallons for sugar canes. Corn yields just 250 gallons per acre a year.

Exxon’s partnership with Synthetic Genomics is also a vote of confidence in the work of Dr. Venter, a maverick scientist best known for decoding the human genome in the 1990s. In recent years, he has focused his attention on a search for micro-organisms that could be turned into fuel.

“Algae is the ultimate biological system using sunlight to capture and convert carbon dioxide into fuel,” Dr. Venter said.

Algal biofuel, sometimes nicknamed oilgae by environmentalists, is a promising technology. Fuels derived from algae have molecular structures that are similar to petroleum products, including gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, and would be compatible with the existing transportation infrastructure, according to Exxon.

Continental Airlines, for example, has demonstrated the fuel’s viability in a test flight of an airplane powered in part by algae-based fuel.

The Pentagon has also been looking at alternative fuels, including algae, to reduce the military’s dependence on oil.

And while cost-effective mass production of algae has eluded researchers so far, it holds potential advantages over other sources of biofuels. Algae can be grown in areas not suited for food crops, using pools of brackish water or even farming them in seawater.

Algae also has another benefit, which could eventually help cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Like any plant, it needs carbon dioxide to grow. But Exxon and Synthetic Genomics hope to genetically engineer new strains of algae that can absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide — like that emitted by power plants, for example.

Exxon’s investment includes $300 million for in-house studies and “potentially more” than $300 million to Synthetic Genomics “if research and development milestones are successfully met,” Exxon said.

Those are relatively small numbers for Exxon, which last year earned $45.22 billion on the strength of record-high oil prices. But the companies referred to their partnership as a long-term research and development effort, saying future investments could amount to billions of dollars.

Photosynthetic algae are very efficient at using sunlight energy to convert carbon dioxide into cellular oils, or lipids. These can be processed into fuels and industrial chemicals using existing refining techniques.

Synthetic Genomics said its scientists have been working for years to develop an efficient way to harvest these oils.

“Traditionally algae have been treated like a crop to be grown and harvested in a process that can be expensive and time-consuming,” Dr. Venter said.

His company has engineered algae that produce oils in a continuous process. “I came up with a notion to trick algae into pumping more lipids out,” he said.

Both companies said they still had a range of problems to solve that include determining what types of algae to use and whether it is more efficient to grow them in open ponds or in closed containers called bioreactors.

They also emphasized the vast scale required for making a meaningful biofuels contribution in the United States market, which consumes nine million barrels of gasoline each day — or roughly 138 billion gallons each year.

“For most scientists, scalability means going from a test tube to a beaker,” Dr. Venter said. “We have to go from a test tube to millions of gallons.”

The rest of the petroleum industry has been slowly shedding its reluctance toward biofuels, under pressure from government mandates that require increasing use of ethanol in the country’s energy supplies over the next decades.

So far, many of the pioneering partnerships between big oil and biotech companies have involved European oil companies, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell.

American companies have only slowly been following suit. The Valero Energy Corporation, the country’s largest refiner, has acquired seven corn ethanol plants from VeraSun Energy, which went bankrupt last year. Chevron has formed a joint venture with Weyerhaeuser to develop biofuels from wood waste.

Dr. Venter said Exxon’s involvement in developing biofuels was a critical component to bringing large-scale alternative fuels. “These changes can’t take place without the leader in the fuel industry,” he said.

Drawing Critics, China Seeks to Dominate in Renewable Energy

2009-07-14T12:30:00.005+03:00

The Daliang Wind Station located outside of Anxi in Gansu Province. China is now building six wind farms with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts apiece.

July 14, 2009

By KEITH BRADSHER

BEIJING — When the United States’ top energy and commerce officials arrive in China on Tuesday, they will land in the middle of a building storm over China’s protectionist tactics to become the world’s leader in renewable energy.

Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries — giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets — China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.

Steven Chu, the American energy secretary, and Gary Locke, the commerce secretary, are coming here to discuss clean energy and global warming with Chinese leaders, and to see if progress can be made toward getting China to agree to specific targets for reductions in greenhouse gases. Agreement proved elusive during the Group of 8 summit meeting last week in Italy.

But Mr. Chu and Mr. Locke arrive as Western companies, especially Europeans, are complaining increasingly about Beijing’s green protectionism.

China has built the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing industry by exporting over 95 percent of its output to the United States and Europe. But when China authorized its first solar power plant this spring, it required that at least 80 percent of the equipment be made in China.

When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data.

This spring, the Chinese government banned virtually any installation of wind turbines with a capacity of less than 1,000 kilowatts — excluding 850-kilowatt designs, a popular size for European manufacturers.

Lu Hong, the program officer for renewable energy in the Beijing office of the Energy Foundation, a nonprofit group seeking to support sustainable energy, said that China was willing to invest heavily in renewable energy industries precisely because it helps the Chinese economy.

“The Chinese government won’t consider such a big solar industry without considering the building up of the domestic industry,” she said, adding that China’s policies will also help address global warming.

Zhou Heliang, the president of the China Electrotechnical Society, a government entity that plays a broad role in national and provincial technology policy, predicted at the Wind Power Asia conference here on Friday that Chinese-owned companies would increase their share of the Chinese market by an additional 10 or 20 percentage points this year.

That would give them almost three-quarters of the domestic market, compared with a quarter for European and American companies — the reverse of the ratio four years ago.

This year, China passed the United States as the world’s largest market for wind energy. It is now building six wind farms with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts apiece, using extensive low-interest loans from state-owned banks.

By comparison, T. Boone Pickens delayed his plans to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Texas, once promoted as the world’s largest.

Some foreign companies, particularly European businesses, are starting to express misgivings about China’s promotion of the local manufacturers.

European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jörg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

European turbine manufacturers are especially disappointed because they built factories in China in order to comply with the country’s requirement that turbines contain 70 percent local content, Mr. Wuttke said. Yet all the multinational manufacturers were disqualified on technical grounds within three days of bidding for wind farm contracts this spring, even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved, he said.

European solar power companies are also unhappy. “This is not a level playing field,” said Boris Klebensberger, the chief operating officer of SolarWorld AG, which is based in Bonn.

Mr. Wuttke said he was encouraged that Premier Wen Jiabao of China told Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in a telephone call on June 25 that China would not discriminate against foreign enterprises, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

But no new Chinese renewable energy regulations have been issued since then on local content requirements or other rules.

American companies play a smaller role in the global renewable energy industry, but some of them are also growing exasperated with the Chinese market. “That has been a tough market for non-Chinese manufacturers,” said Victor Abate, General Electric’s vice president for wind energy.

Kevin Griffis, a Commerce Department spokesman, said that the agency had not heard from American companies about difficulties in the Chinese market for renewable energy.

“Generally speaking,” Mr. Griffis said, “we support a business environment that is open, transparent, and fair so that all companies are able to compete based on product performance, not country of origin.”

World Trade Organization rules ban countries from using local content requirements to force companies like the wind turbine manufacturers to set up factories in a country instead of exporting to it. But much of China’s power industry, although publicly traded, is majority owned by the government.

While China promised to sign the W.T.O. side agreement on government procurement “as soon as possible” when it joined the free trade group in 2001 and won low-tariff access to foreign markets, it has never actually signed the side agreement. So its huge state sector remains largely exempt from international trade rules.

Other rules are also making it hard for foreign manufacturers and investors to compete in China.

China’s renewable energy standard requires that renewable energy account for at least 3 percent of the generating capacity of each large power company, excluding hydroelectric power, by the end of next year. But the rules do not dictate how much electricity must actually be generated from that capacity.

So power companies have an incentive to buy the cheapest wind turbines available, so as to increase their renewable energy capacity — even if the turbines break down frequently and do not produce that much electricity.

Turbines from Chinese-owned companies tend to have slightly lower purchase prices than foreign-brand turbines, but have higher repair costs, so the life cycle costs are similar, according to Chinese experts. United Nations data from the trading of carbon credits shows that the Chinese-brand turbines produce less electricity because they are more frequently out of action.

Financial regulations for wind farms also make it harder for foreign-owned farms than domestic-owned farms to borrow money or to sell carbon credits. Even well-connected international funds like Nature Elements Capital have to look hard for projects, while less-connected funds have struggled to find any at all.

Mr. Zhou said that China was also working hard to develop its own capability to manufacture high-tech materials that can withstand the torque, humidity and other stresses that affect wind turbines.

Two American companies are leading suppliers of materials: PPG Industries of Pittsburgh, the leading maker of fiberglass and protective coatings for the wind turbine housings and blades, and the Zoltek Corporation of Bridgeton, Mo., the world’s dominant supplier of carbon fiber for the support struts inside the most high-tech blades.

A report last month by IHS, a global data company, concluded that Chinese wind turbine makers would soon start exporting. That is because Chinese wind farm installations could level off temporarily as the power grid struggles to install enough high-power lines to use all the electricity wind produces.

Asked whether European turbine manufacturers risked sharing Detroit’s overconfidence in the 1970s in the face of challenges from Japan, Mr. Wuttke said that European makers believed that their reputations for quality and reliability would protect them.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the terms of a government requirement affecting a solar power plant in China. The government required that at least 80 percent of the equipment for the plant be made in China, not 80 percent of the panels.