Losing points in Yemen



Alas, that’s about to end, our colleague Ernesto Londoño reports. The hotel chain is expected to yank the Sheraton logo from the heavily fortified property — home to the diplos since political unrest broke out in Sanaa last year — by Jan. 1.

Read More..

Dollar dips as investors expect new Fed stimulus






NEW YORK: The dollar dipped against other major currencies Monday as investors bet the Federal Reserve would provide more stimulus to the lackluster US economy at its rate-setting meeting this week.

The euro was buying $1.2939 at 2200 GMT, up from $1.2928 at the same time Friday.

Against the Japanese currency, the European currency weakened to 106.53 yen from 106.64 yen late Friday, while the dollar edged down to 82.33 yen from 82.46 yen.

"We believe the weakness in the greenback reflects the market's expectations for easier monetary policy from the Fed," said Kathy Lien of BK Asset Management.

The US central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee opens a two-day meeting Tuesday. Stubborn high unemployment and the looming fiscal cliff challenge give the Fed every reason to expand its stimulus efforts, analysts said.

Gathering just before its "Twist" asset-swap operation expires at year-end, there are signs the FOMC will replace it with more outright bond purchases, or "quantitative easing," aimed at lowering interest rates to encourage businesses to invest and hire.

"Given the increasing uncertainty about America's looming fiscal crisis, the Fed is likely to signal that it will continue its outright purchases of mortgage and agency bonds worth $85 billion and maintain lending rates near zero until mid-2015," said Omer Esiner of Commonwealth Foreign Exchange.

"If the Fed signals that further easing next year is likely, the dollar could suffer."

Against the Swiss currency, the dollar fell to 0.9335 francs from 0.9343 francs late Friday.

The British pound fetched $1.6075, up from $1.6039.

-AFP/ac



Read More..

SC refers Zakia Jafri's plea to larger bench

NEW DELHI: A Supreme Court bench on Monday referred to a larger bench the plea of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri's widow seeking documents on the probe by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) into the Gulberg Housing Society riot case in Ahmedabad in 2002.

A two-judge bench of Justices D K Jain and Madan B Lokur said it cannot go into the issue as the SIT probe and related issues concerning the Godhra and other riot cases of 2002 in Gujarat was dealt by a three-member special bench, which on September 12, 2011 had passed the order relating to supply of documents to Jafri's widow, Zakia Jafri.

"We are of the view that the said order was passed by another bench and so it would be appropriate that the matter be heard by the same bench. Let the matter be placed before that larger bench as expeditiously as possible," it said.

The bench said that it would not be proper for it to pass the order and propriety also demands that the matter be referred to the larger bench which had passed the order. The SC on September 12, 2011 had directed the SIT to forward its final report regarding the Gulberg Society riots to the local court. The SIT had probed the riot cases including the Ahmedabad Gulberg Society massacre case.

An Ahmedabad trial court had on November 27 accepted the SIT closure report filed on March 13, 2012 in the case. Zakia Jafri has filed the SLP challenging the trial court's order rejecting her plea for supply of some documents relating to the investigation in the case.

Read More..

U.K. Dash for Shale Gas a Test for Global Fracking

Thomas K. Grose in London


The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.

As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.

In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")

A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.

Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."

The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")

Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."

A Big Role for Gas

If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")

The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.

As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.

Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.

The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")

A Tougher Road

But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.

A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.

Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.

Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."

In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.

Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:

  • In France, the EIA's estimate is that shale gas reserves total 5 trillion cubic meters, or enough to fuel the country for 90 years. But in September, President Francois Hollande pledged to continue a ban on fracking imposed last year by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.
  • Poland was also thought to have rich shale gas resources, but initial explorations have determined that original estimates of the country's reserves were overstated by 80 percent to 90 percent. After drilling two exploratory wells there, Exxon Mobil stopped operations. But because of its dependence on Russian gas, Poland is still keen to begin shale gas production.
  • South Africa removed a ban on fracking earlier this year. Developers are eyeing large shale gas reserves believed to underlie the semidesert Karoo between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
  • Canada's Quebec Province has had a moratorium on shale gas exploration and production, but a U.S. drilling company last month filed a notice of intent to sue to overturn the ban as a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
  • Germany's Environment Ministry has backed a call to ban fracking near drinking water reservoirs.
  • China drilled its initial shale gas wells this year; by 2020, the nation's goal is for shale gas to provide 6 percent of its massive energy needs. The U.S. government's preliminary assessment is that China has the world's largest "technically recoverable" shale resources, about 50 percent larger than stores in the United States. (Related: "China Drills Into Shale Gas, Targeting Huge Reserves")

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.


Read More..

Syrian Ex-General: Assad Will Use Chemical Weapons












A former top general in Syria's chemical weapons program says he doesn't doubt for a moment that President Bashar al-Assad will deploy his chemical weapons arsenal as he tries to hold onto power and crush the uprising that started almost two years ago.


"The regime started to fall and deteriorate. It's coming to its end," said retired Major General Adnan Sillou in an interview in a hotel near Antakya, on Turkey's southern border with Syria. "It's highly possible that he'll start using [chemical weapons] to kill his own people because this regime is a killer."


Sillou told ABC News that until September 2008, he was chief of staff on the defensive side of the chemical weapons program. He said he was in charge of training soldiers against attacks and contact with the weapons, as well as procuring safety equipment to guard against them.






Courtesy Major-General Adnan Sillou







He listed mustard gas along with the sarin, VX and tabun nerve agents as the main elements in Syria's chemical arsenal, whose existence Syria doesn't even acknowledge. Foreign intelligence officials and analysts have focused on the first three as the main threats, and last week U.S. officials said there was evidence sarin had not only been moved, but its binary components, usually stored separately, had been combined and placed into bombs for use.


Sillou accuses Assad's forces of already spraying pesticides and dropping white phosphorous, claims also made by opposition activists.


"They're idiots, crazy. Simply they are killers," he said.


Sillou believes the regime could step it up to more serious chemical weapons if Aleppo, Syria's most populous city where fighting has raged for months, falls to the rebels.


In July, Sillou left Syria for Turkey almost four years after he said he retired from the military. Sillou told ABC News that in his last post, which he held for six years, he was second in command behind a man named Said Ali Khalil, a member of Assad's ruling Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.


After defecting, Sillou said he was debriefed by an Arabic-speaking agent from the Central Intelligence Agency in Turkey's capital, Ankara. The meeting lasted three hours and was the last contact he said he had with them or any other intelligence agency.


Fighting is raging around the capital, Damascus, notably on the airport road where rebels are trying to take the airport to hamper outside support and deal a highly symbolic blow to the regime. The uptick in violence near the seat of Assad's power has raised American fears that he could resort to using his chemical weapons.






Read More..

Case reviews could test Obama’s ‘evolution’ on same-sex marriage



But the court may have made it more difficult for President Obama to avoid taking a stand on whether it is unconstitutional to exclude same-sex couples from the fundamental right to marry no matter where they live.

Read More..

Obama meets with top Republican on fiscal cliff






WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama and House of Representatives speaker John Boehner met Sunday to discuss the so-called impending fiscal cliff of steep tax hikes and spending cuts.

No details of the talks were given, but a statement from Boehner's office said "the lines of communication remain open."

That sounded relatively upbeat compared to Boehner's statement on Friday, when he reported "no progress" in deficit talks. He accused the White House of recklessly pushing the country to the fiscal brink over tax hikes.

The last time the two leaders had spoken was Wednesday, by telephone.

The so-called fiscal cliff refers to a combination of severe tax increases and spending cuts due to kick in automatically in January if the president and Congress don't find a compromise plan to cut the deficit first.

Economists warn that careening over the fiscal cliff would throw the country back into a recession.

Obama sent Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to Capitol Hill last week with an opening gambit, proposing $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues over the next decade, mainly from higher tax rates on the wealthiest two percent of Americans.

A Republican counter-offer included a plan for $800 billion in tax revenue raised through closing loopholes and ending some deductions. Both plans have been rejected.

In his weekly address Saturday, Obama said he was willing to find ways to reduce health costs and make more entitlement spending cuts as sought by the Republicans.

But he said asking "the wealthiest Americans to pay higher tax rates -- that's one principle I won't compromise on."

-AFP/ac



Read More..

India misguided, paranoid over China: Guha

Shreya Roy Chowdhury, TNN Dec 8, 2012, 06.12AM IST

MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.

"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.

But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.

Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."

But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."

Read More..

Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity


When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.


Read More..

Remains of Banda Superstar Jenni Rivera's Jet Reported Found












UPDATED: Multiple reports, including one from Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, Mexico's Secretary of Communications and Transports, claim that the remains of the private jet carrying Jenni Rivera have been found, with no survivors. Rivera, 43, was one of 7 passengers.


Rivera's parents are believed to be en route to Mexico. Her brother, fellow singer Lupillo Rivera, and eldest daughter Chiquis have still not made any statements.


Celebrity reactions on Twitter have poured in since news of the disappearance of Rivera's jet, including Paulina Rubio (who was set to co-host the Mexican edition of The Voice with Rivera) William Levy, Joan Sebastian, Ricky Martin, and others.


Mexican officials have confirmed the disappearance of a private jet carrying regional Mexican music superstar Jenni Rivera that took off from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey at 3:15 a.m. local time on Sunday and fell off the radar 10 minutes (or 62 miles) after take-off.




The Learjet 25 jet is believed to have been carrying seven people – five passengers and two pilots. It was headed for Toluca International Aiport, located outside of Mexico City, where it was meant to arrive at 4:40 a.m. An official search for the jet was initiated at sunrise.


Rivera's publicist Arturo Rivera and her make-up artist Jacob Yebale are believed to have been on that flight. Their most recent tweets are of photos from Rivera's concert in Monterrey on Saturday night.


The Mexican American singer's most recent tweet is a re-tweet of what appears to be a fan's message.


Rivera was due in Toluca this evening for the taping of a Mexican TV show, La Voz. Televisa has canceled tonight's show given Rivera's disappearance.


Known as La Diva de la Banda and beloved by fans on both sides of the border, Rivera, 43, has had a groundbreaking career in regional Mexican music, selling some 15 million records. Among her many feats in a male-dominated genre, she made history in September 2011 when she sold out the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the first female regional Mexican artist to do so. Her reality show on mun2, I Love Jenni, is one of the network's highest rated shows. Rivera made her film debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the indie family drama Filly Brown, due in theaters in January 2013.


See Also: 'Filly Brown Gives Jenni Rivera a Chance to Grow and Gina Rodriguez a Chance to Shine


The Long Beach, Calif.-born singer's personal life has often called for as much attention as her career. A mother of five, Rivera had filed for divorce from baseball player Esteban Loaiza in October after two years of marriage, citing "irreconcilable differences." Soon after, rumors of an affair between Loaiza and Rivera's own daughter Chiquis surfaced, which Chiquis addressed on Twitter in October by saying, "I would NEVER do that, Ever! That's a horrible accusation."


The search for Rivera's jet continues. This is a developing story.



Read More..