Calif. GOP convention to focus on gov. candidates


INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- California Republicans gathering this weekend for their state convention do so against a familiar backdrop: the picture of a party in decline and struggling to find its way in an increasingly diverse state.

How the party will address its predicament will play out all weekend in a desert resort near Palm Springs.

Insiders will try to craft more effective voter registration campaigns and a strategy to draw more women and minorities. But the main attraction will be the three candidates seeking to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he is termed out of office after next year.

Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former congressman Tom Campbell do not wear the social conservative label, putting them at odds with many GOP die-hards. Instead, they are expected to focus on the area where they can find common ground with this weekend's delegates - state fiscal policy.

With California mired in a perpetual cycle of budget deficits, the candidates are expected to position themselves as the most responsible stewards of taxpayer money.

Whitman, a billionaire, officially launched her gubernatorial campaign this week, promising to slash an additional $15 billion in state spending and fire 40,000 state workers, although she declined to detail how she would do that. She also sought to curry favor with the party by giving it $250,000 from her personal fortune for voter-registration efforts.

The donation became tinged with a sense of irony when, later in the week, The Sacramento Bee reported that Whitman had not been registered to vote before 2002 and that there was no evidence she had ever registered as a Republican before 2007. The embarrassing revelations prompted Whitman to apologize and take "responsibility for my mistake."

Poizner, meanwhile, released a plan to cut taxes then appeared on a conservative Los Angeles talk radio show, where he signed a pledge saying he would never raise taxes. The pledge has been promoted to lawmakers nationwide by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform in Washington, D.C.

Campbell released a plan he said would provide health insurance coverage to another 2 million Californians without any additional cost to taxpayers. He also has released his own detailed budget proposal, including a temporary 32-cent-a-gallon gas tax to help shore up the state budget during the recession.

Until this week, the soft-spoken Campbell has largely avoided taking part in the sharp exchanges between the campaigns of Whitman and Poizner, but he joined Poizner this week in blasting Whitman for her lack of specifics when she announced her plans to reduce state government.

In his speech to the convention Friday night, Campbell took a swipe at Whitman, without naming her. He challenged voters to question those who claim they will pay for government programs by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse," as Whitman said she will do.

"We should never accept that phrase as a substitute for actual numbers," he said.

In a dig to Poizner, he added, "The second candidate has not identified a single dollar of specific cuts. Not one dime!"

He also challenged his fellow Republicans to do some soul-searching about the party's future. Republican registration in California has slipped to 31 percent of voters, compared to nearly 45 percent for Democrats, and its lawmakers are in the minority in both houses of the Legislature.

The GOP also has had difficulty attracting the 20 percent of California voters registered as independents.

Campbell called on Republicans to carefully consider which of the candidates has the best chance against a likely Democratic nominee with years of government service. He noted his five terms in Congress, his years teaching economic policy at several universities, and his short tenure as Schwarzenegger's budget director.

"More than any other candidate running for this office, with the exception of Jerry Brown, who actually was governor, I can say that I know what it takes to pass a balanced budget in government," her said.

Brown, the current attorney general, has hinted that he may seek the Democratic nomination in 2010, but has yet to announce a run.

Campbell and Poizner have sought to contrast their deeper knowledge of complex policy issues with Whitman's lack of experience in government. Whitman, a political novice, has demonstrated her fundraising prowess and poured $19 million of her own money into her campaign.

Schwarzenegger also focused on economics when he addressed the crowd Friday night, praising Republican leaders for holding the line on tax increases during this year's budget stalemates, even when they were at odds with him.

"I want you to know that I was not at all offended by you getting this message out," Schwarzenegger said. "I am a public servant. I serve you; you elected me."

He said GOP opposition to spending helped the state trim an additional $15.5 billion in the budget he signed in July. He also joked that he is used to being under fire, particularly in political disagreements with his wife, Maria Shriver, a Democrat. He joked that she has made him sleep in the garage for months.

Schwarzenegger has often been at odds with his own party, particularly over tax increases, government spending and his promotion of initiatives to curb global warming. His speech was crafted to play to the partisan crowd by promoting a Vietnam veterans bill he signed earlier in the day and promising to investigate ACORN.

The activist community service group has come under fire in recent weeks after its employees were caught on a hidden camera telling people how to lie to get government assistance.

"I will investigate. I will follow this. I will follow through, and I will have answers for you. I promise you that," he said.

Earlier, Schwarzenegger asked the state attorney general to investigate ACORN's activities. The group receives federal money, but officials with the governor's Department of Finance told The Associated Press earlier this week that they were not aware of it receiving any direct state aid.

Whitman and Poizner will appear separately on Saturday.

U.S. Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, whose name has been floated as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, and Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the Weekly Standard, also will address the convention.

Bigger role for Asia, LatAm


PITTSBURGH - THE Group of 20 approved a greater voice for Asian and Latin American countries in a historic shift that recognises the rising influence of both regions.The leaders of the world's 20 largest economies were attending a two-day meeting dedicated to fostering a healthy global recovery, and European leaders were expected to secure a priority of their own: limits on bankers' bonuses.

But the economic developments were overshadowed Friday by the disclosure of a secret Iranian nuclear facility. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared together to demand that Iran fully disclose its nuclear ambitions and threatened new sanctions.

The decision to raise the profile of the G-20 represents a major change and underscores how the world's balance of power has shifted in the last 40 years.

The leaders decided the G-20 will serve as the board of directors on global economic cooperation, a function that for more than three decades had been performed by a smaller club: the US, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and later Russia. The G-20 includes such developing economies as China, Brazil and India.

The G-8 will, however, continue to meet on matters of common importance such as national security, the White House said late Thursday.

The Pittsburgh meeting marked the third G-20 leaders summit in less than a year as the countries continued to grapple with a debilitating downturn that has resulted in millions of unemployed around the world, the loss of trillions of dollars in wealth and massive amounts of government stimulus spending designed to jump-start economic growth.

The leaders trickled into Pittsburgh throughout Thursday - most of them in from New York, where they attended the opening of the UN General Assembly. Later, they gathered with their spouses for a welcoming reception at a botanical reserve, before parting for separate banquets Thursday night. -- AP

More tax cases vs wealthy, U.S. banks


CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. government is stepping up prosecutions of wealthy individuals dodging taxes through off-shore accounts, with new cases expected to be made public "every couple of weeks," a top government attorney said on Saturday.

U.S. officials have been sifting through about 250 client names obtained through a February settlement of a criminal probe against Swiss banking giant UBS AG, alleging the bank illegally helped U.S. taxpayers hide funds offshore.

That effort, along with an amnesty program encouraging tax evaders to turn themselves in, is speeding prosecutions, one of the top U.S. lawyers working on the cases at the U.S. Justice Department said.

"You can expect a few every couple of weeks," Kevin Downing, a senior attorney in the tax division of the Department of Justice told an American Bar Association tax conference.

On the sidelines of the conference, Downing also told Reuters that U.S. banks that helped U.S. clients hide money off-shore are a target.

"The folks in the United States that we get information on are obviously the easiest ones for us to pursue," he said.

"So anybody in the U.S. ... the U.S. banks helping U.S. clients set these offshore accounts up, we are doing the same thing," in going after them, he said.

In August, UBS AG agreed to disclose the names of 4,450 American holders of secret accounts at the bank, ending a related lawsuit that has begun to show cracks in Switzerland's prized banking secrecy.

"The UBS case has been a great success for the government," Downing said. "It is not an anomaly. It is the beginning of what is now a resource-intensive," process of going after other banks and countries.

The government has secured six guilty pleas so far in its effort, including one on Friday, where a New Jersey man pleaded guilty for failing to report about $6.1 million he had held in a UBS AG Swiss bank account.

On a parallel track to the UBS case, the government last Monday extended a temporary amnesty program by three weeks to October 15, to encourage wealthy Americans with undeclared assets abroad to come forward.

Those taking part in the amnesty program pay reduced penalties and generally avoid criminal prosecution.

Downing also said the government has "made a lot of headway" in dealing with foreign banks, Downing said. "Let your clients know if they think it's just UBS they are mistaken," he told the group of tax lawyers.

"NOT ABOUT UBS" OR IS IT?

The UBS case and its ramifications dominated many discussions and spiced up what would arguably be a dry conference on taxation.

One moderator began his presentation, noting "this is not going to be about UBS," though often the subject crept back in.

Another government lawyer working on the cases said the publicity of the UBS cases has engaged juries.

"In today's environment when we are seeing criminal tax cases and prosecutions on the front pages of the newspapers almost daily ... the message is getting out," Jeff Neiman, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida where much of the UBS cases are playing out, said.

Juries are paying attention and becoming more sympathetic, he said, "especially in these tough economic times."

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UN talks fail to set climate target


Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that Beijing would pledge to cut "carbon intensity", or the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each dollar of economic output, over the decade to 2020.

His promise is a landmark because China has previously rejected rich nations' demands for measurable curbs on its emissions, arguing that economic development must come first while millions of its citizens still live in poverty.

But the leader of the world's biggest emitter dashed hopes that he would unveil a hard target to kickstart stalled climate talks due to be reconvened in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December aimed at negotiating a broader climate pact to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Room to manoeuvre

Hu said only that carbon intensity would come down "by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 levels", which still leaves Beijing and other major emitters room to manoeuvre before the talks.

Rich nations are likely to come under further pressure at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this week to commit to dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Incidences of heat waves and droughts are on the increase and there has been an acceleration in the melting of glaciers and the recession of the Greenland ice sheet, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said earlier this week.

Tim Flannery, the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and professor at Sydney's Macquarie University, told Al Jazeera that there are "a large number of people who are disappointed" with the lack of substantive progress at Tuesday's climate summit.

"This day really should have been a day of triumph for climate diplomacy ... we would have hoped for great progress, but on the surface at least, I think, it appears that progress has been quite limited," he said from New York.

Commenting on China's pledge, he said "it is a positive step but a 'notable margin' is not something you can measure".

Todd Stern, the US special envoy on climate change and one of the most vocal critics of China's emissions policy, said he "didn't hear new initiatives so much" in Hu's speech.

"It depends on what the number is and he didn't indicate the extent to which those reductions would be made," he said.

New target pledged

But Xie Zhenhua, China's most senior environment official, later said China would soon unveil a target, based on projections that by 2020 it will double its use of renewable energy and dramatically cut energy use per dollar of GDP.

"After further study and discussion, we should be able to announce a target soon," he said in New York.

Flannery said Hu and Barack Obama, the US president, both "offered rhetoric, they offered promise, but not substantial, documented, commitment and that's what we need at this stage". While stressing that "we have a long way to go yet", Flannery said the UN climate summit "has been significant".

"One of the great things that's happened at this meeting I think, is the creation of a peer group of world leaders who have experienced that dialogue between each other in a frank and direct way and that, we hope, will pay off in Copenhagen."

Al Gore, the Nobel peace laureate and climate campaigner, praised China for "impressive leadership" and said Hu's goals pointed to more action.

"They are very important and we've had ... indications that in the event there is dramatic progress in this negotiation, that China will be prepared to do even more," he said.

However, Hu made clear that China had high expectations from the rest of the world, repeating a long-standing call for more support in moving away from dirty growth.

Backed by India and other developing nations, China argues that rich nations emit more per person and enjoyed an emissions-intensive industrialisation, so they have no right to demand others do differently - unless they are willing to pay for it.

"Developed countries should take up their responsibility and provide new, additional, adequate and predictable financial support to developing countries," Hu said.

Obama, in his address, urged the world to address climate change now or suffer an "irreversible catastrophe".

"Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it - boldly, swiftly, and together - we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe... The time we have to reverse this tide is running out," he said in his first speech at the UN.

'Morally inexcusable'

Echoing Obama's words, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said failure to reach a new treaty this year on fighting global warming would be "morally inexcusable".

He called on presidents, prime ministers and other leaders "to accelerate the pace of negotiations and to strengthen the ambition of what is on offer" for a deal at Copenhagen in December.

"Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise," Ban said.

"The science demands it. The world economy needs it."

Smaller island nations again warned that their livelihoods would vanish if the world's major polluters could not reach a deal that stopped global temperatures from rising.

Mohamed Nasheed, president of the small Indian Ocean country of Maldives that fears being submerged by rising sea levels, said: "Once the rhetoric has settled and the delegates have drifted away, the sympathy fades, the indignation cools and the world carries on as before.

"A few months later, we come back and repeat the charade."

Dozens dead as storm slams Philippines


More than a month’s worth of rain fell in just 12 hours as Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed ashore in the Philippines, killing at least 40 people and stranding thousands on rooftops in the capital’s worst flooding in more than 42 years.

The government declared a “state of calamity” in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces on Saturday, said Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, who heads the National Disaster Co-ordinating Council. That allows officials to withdraw emergency money for relief and rescue.

A landslide and flash flooding in nearby Rizal province killed 35 people, said provincial government spokesman Tony Mateo. Most of the fatalities in Rizal drowned, said Loel Malonzo, chairman of the Provincial Disaster Co-ordinating Council. Three people were also reported killed in Manila’s southern suburb of Muntinglupa and two others in Quezon city, said Anthony Golez, deputy presidential spokesman and acting head of the Office of Civil Defence.

Mr. Mateo said that 27 people were missing.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had to take an elevated commuter train to the disaster council office to preside over a meeting because roads were clogged by vehicles stuck in the floodwaters.

The mayor of Cainta, also in Rizal, who was stranded atop a dump truck on a road that was neck-deep in water, told ABS-CBN television by phone that many residents climbed onto roofs to escape.

“The whole town is almost 100 per cent underwater,” Mayor Mon Ilagan said.

More than 42 centimetres of rain fell on metropolitan Manila in just 12 hours on Saturday, exceeding the 39.2-centimetre average for September, said chief government weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz. The rainfall on Saturday also broke the previous record of 33.4 centimetres, which fell during a 24-hour period in June 1967, he said.

“However good your drainage system is, it will be overwhelmed by that amount of rainfall,” he told The Associated Press.

He said poor maintenance of drains and waterways clogged with garbage compounded the problem.

ABS-CBN television showed a dramatic video of more than a dozen people perched on roofs of damaged houses being swept away by the suburban Marikina River. They smashed against the pillars of a bridge and were separated from each other in the rampaging river. It was unclear whether they were rescued.

Mr. Cruz said seasonal monsoon rains were intensified by Ketsana, which packed winds of 85 km/h with gusts of up to 100 km/h when it hit land early Saturday. By the evening, the storm maintained its strength as it moved over the coast of western Zambales province and headed west toward the South China Sea.

Manila airport operations chief Octavio Lina said the runway had been flooded, delaying international flights for hours. Floodwaters also caused some electrical outages.

Hundreds of vehicles were stalled in flooded streets around the capital, and nearly 2,000 passengers were stranded in ports in several provinces south of Manila after the coast guard suspended ferry operations.

Family, friends say last farewell to slain Yale grad student Annie Le at Calif. funeral


In a somber funeral service attended by more than 600 people, Annie Le's relatives broke down as they remembered the Yale graduate student as a bubbly young woman whose dream in life was to heal the sick.

Tears flowed inside the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in El Dorado Hills, Calif., as Le's brother Christopher translated a heart-tugging poem read in Vietnamese by her mother, Vivian Van Le.

"Farewell, my child," the brother continued, choking back tears. "You are here lying in the cold coffin, leaving behind the wailing of loved ones. I sing you lullabies by your side so sweet like I did when you were a baby, wishing you a peaceful sleep."

The mom's poem continued: "They're now sung through my crying sobs to wish you an eternal, blessed sleep. ...You left life at too young of an age - all your dreams and hopes gone with you to your resting place."

Among the sea of mourners for the slain woman was Le's fiance Jonathan Widawsky, symbolically wearing a wedding ring.

In the roughly 90-minute service, Le, 24, was honored with prayers in English and a rousing rendition of "Amazing Grace" sung in Vietnamese.

Though she lived a life full of accomplishments - high school valedictorian, top Yale graduate student - relatives said it was Lee's boundless spirit that made her so special.

Her brother, Dan Nguyen, described his delight doing the simplest of things with his sister: watching cartoons and playing with stuffed animals.

"It was the silly girl she always was that made us all love her," Nguyen said. "It was through these little things, not her academic achievements, that made the most impression on us. Only now do I realize how important Annie was to me."

Le's murder and the weeklong hunt for her killer riveted the nation.

The pharmacology student vanished on Sept. 8 after she was spotted at her Yale research lab. Five days later, on what was supposed to be Le's wedding day, her body was found stuffed behind a basement wall in the lab building. She had been strangled.

Lab tech Raymond Clark 3rd, 24, was charged with killing Le in what authorities described as a case of "workplace violence."

As dozens of black-clad mourners poured into the church Saturday, Msgr. James Kidder described the service as a chance for Le's family to "come to reconciliation with what humanly is irreconcilable - not only the fact that Annie died but the way she died.

"There is a rare person that you will meet, not often, a person who is naturally good, whose tendencies are for the good," Kidder added. "She's one of those rare ones."

In his sermon, Kidder noted that Le, despite her brief life, touched countless lives.

"The worth of Annie's life was not its length," Kidder said. "It was the intensity of love, the intensity of passion, the intensity of care."

After the service, her wooden casket was taken to the nearby Green Valley Mortuary for a private burial service.

Before Le's brutal slaying, she was researching enzymes as part of her work that had implications for treating cancer, diabetes, and muscular dystrophy.

In her 2003 high school yearbook, Le wrote that her dream in life was to become a laboratory pathologist.

"I've got to go to school for about 12 years first, get my MD and be certified as a surgeon," Le wrote. "I just hope that all that hard work is going to pay off, and I'm really going to enjoy my job."

Inside the Zazi Takedown




"The ticking bomb" is a cliché in movies about cops and spies and terrorists, but sometimes in real life, with real terrorists, it's the real deal. And that's what the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York City Police Department saw themselves up against in the case of Najibullah Zazi, the 24-year-old Afghan immigrant indicted Thursday for “conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.” Did the cops make mistakes? Some. Did Zazi find out the Feds were on to him sooner than they wanted him to know? Yes. Did the bomb go off? No. Or not yet, anyway.

To understand the case, which may have been the most dangerous Al Qaeda-related plot to take place in the United States since 9/11, it helps to understand how fast everything played out, and how little time the Feds and the New York cops thought they had to begin with. And while there are many old feuds between the Feds and the cops about turf and priorities, with a historical reluctance to share information, that wasn't the problem this time. President Barack Obama was coming to town—and so was this Afghan immigrant believed to have been given explosives training by Qaeda-related groups in Pakistan. The clock really was ticking.

Knowledgeable law-enforcement officials who declined to be named talking about an extremely sensitive investigation tell me that David Cohen, the head of the NYPD Intelligence Division, made it clear he wanted Zazi off the streets sooner rather than later. Cohen spent more than 30 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and headed its clandestine services. He's all in favor of postponing arrests, or never making them at all, if that helps gather intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks. But not in this case. "I don't need to f--k around for two more weeks and learn one more fact," he is supposed to have told senior officials in New York and Washington. "Sometimes the search for intelligence can get you killed."

This, according to these same officials, is what the countdown looked like:

It is Wednesday, Sept. 9, two days before the anniversary of 9/11 and just five days before Obama is scheduled to make a major speech on Wall Street, only a few hundred yards from Ground Zero. A week after that, the U.N. General Assembly will be in full session, with some 150 heads of state gridlocking Manhattan. And now the FBI tells the NYPD it's concerned about the activities of this guy, Najibullah Zazi, whom agents have been watching for months in Colorado. The Feds have good reason to believe he's been trained in bombmaking in Pakistan. They say they know he's been stockpiling the same kind of chemical components—hydrogen peroxide and acetone—used to concoct the explosives used in the horrific London subway bombings in 2005. Over the past few days surveillance suggests he's not only been cooking them up, he's allegedly been calling friends to make sure he gets the mixture just right. The New York City connection? He was brought up in Queens in a neighborhood long known to be full of Taliban supporters. And at this moment he is in a rental car headed east. The FBI is watching him. The bureau normally works with more than 100 NYPD detectives in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, but on this one it wants Cohen's Intelligence Division working the case, too.

A couple of years ago, that kind of cooperation didn't exist. After Police Commissioner Ray Kelly reorganized the force in the wake of 9/11 and brought in Cohen, the Intelligence Division had an extremely rocky relationship with the FBI field office. Cohen's detectives focus on preventing new attacks, not pulling together cases for prosecution after the fact, which is what FBI agents traditionally have been tasked to do. The NYPD intelligence unit works undercover and gathers human intelligence in New York City, in the wider United States, and even overseas. FBI agents, used to believing they have a monopoly on that kind of work, wanted to keep it, and the infighting was legendary.

Despite all that, FBI Director Robert Mueller—who has tried to shift the FBI law-enforcement culture from after-the-fact prosecution toward more aggressive measures to prevent terrorism—has developed a good working relationship with Kelly. And since Joseph Demarest took over as the head of the FBI field office in New York late last year, according to law-enforcement officials, cooperation on the ground has improved dramatically. One of those officials says that the FBI has worked closely with the NYPD intel detectives on more than two dozen important cases in the past several months.

Iran and United States on collision course over nuclear plant


The US and Iran raised the stakes yesterday ahead of this week's nuclear showdown in Geneva, with threats of global strife if no resolution is found.

The sharpened rhetoric followed Friday's revelation that Iran had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant under a mountain near Qom, and it points towards a new wave of sanctions that go far beyond the targeted financial measures imposed on Iran so far.

Speaking at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama declared: "Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on 1 October they are going to have to come clean, and they will have to make a choice." The alternative to sticking to international rules on Iran's nuclear development, he said, would be "a path that is going to lead to confrontation".

At the meeting the US will demand access to the plant within the next few days and to all other sites within three months. It will tell Tehran to open all notebooks and computers to inspection and answer questions about its suspected efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

But the Iranian government showed no signs yesterday of being prepared to compromise. Instead, the chief of staff to the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, appeared to relish the prospect of confrontation. "This new plant, God willing, will soon become operational and will make the enemies blind," said Mohammad Mohammadi-Golpayegani, according to the semi-official news agency, Fars. He described the newly revealed enrichment plant as a sign that Iran was at the "summit of power".

The remarks reflected the degree to which the Tehran regime has made the nuclear programme a matter of pride and national identity. It insists that the programme, the existence of which was revealed in 2002, is for generating electricity and medical research and is entirely within Iran's sovereign rights.

Iran's nuclear chief said yesterday the UN nuclear agency would be allowed to inspect the facility at Qom. But Ali Akbar Salehi did not specify when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could visit the site.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dodged a question at the UN over whether Iran had succeeded in enriching enough uranium to make a bomb, but said nuclear weapons "are against humanity – they are inhumane". Anyone who pursued such goals, Ahmadinejad added, was "retarded politically".

Raising tensions further, Iranian media reported yesterday that revolutionary guards would hold missile defence exercises. Western officials say the Qom site is on a revolutionary guard missile base.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, is due to fly to Geneva for Thursday's meeting with senior diplomats of the six nations that handle talks on the Iranian nuclear programme – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The US will be taking a full role in the talks for the first time, reversing the stand-off policy pursued by the Bush administration.

A deal under which Iran would suspend uranium enrichment in return for a package of economic assistance and help with the construction of a civilian power industry has been on offer for more than a year and has so far been flatly rejected by Iran. Hopes of a breakthrough in Geneva are at a low ebb.

"When we find that diplomacy does not work, we will be in a much stronger position to, for example, apply sanctions that have bite," Obama said. "That's not the preferred course of action. I would love nothing more than to see Iran choose the responsible path."

The president did not rule out a military option, but added: "I will also re-emphasise that my preferred course of action is to resolve this in a diplomatic fashion."

Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, echoed that view. "No sane person looks at the military question of engagement with Iran with anything other than real concern," he said. "That's why we always say we are 100% committed to the diplomatic track."

Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, went further. "The reality is that there is no military option that does anything more than buy time," he said, adding that Iran could have nuclear weapons within one to three years.

Western officials believe that the revelation of the Qom enrichment plant has solidified international support for sanctions. The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, restated his conviction that sanctions could become inevitable. The US has suggested taking action against international companies that sell petrol to Iran. However, European states are sceptical. They point out that the experience of Iraq demonstrated the ease with which petrol can be smuggled across land borders. The regime might also use such sanctions as a pretext for cutting petrol subsidies, blaming the west.

Other options under consideration are an embargo on investment in Iran's oil and gas sector, an end to loan guarantees to all companies investing in Iran, a ban on Iranian businesses trading in euros, and a prohibition on foreign companies insuring Iranian shipping.

World leaders relaunch G20 as top economic forum


G20 leaders will today agree plans to reshape the world economy and give more say to developing nations such as China, India and Brazil when they conclude their summit in Pittsburgh.

The reforms will secure a seat at the top table of global economic policy for emerging nations, with world leaders agreeing that the G20 should become a board of directors on global economic co-operation, shifting the decades-old global balance of power away from Europe.

The G20 group, which includes Argentina, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, will replace the G7, which for more than three decades has dominated the world financial stage. The deal was thrashed out by Barack Obama, who is hosting his first major summit as US president.

The agreement, to be officially announced today at the conclusion of the Pittsburgh summit, will see the world's richest nations pledge to retain emergency economic supports until recovery is secured and work together to tackle climate change. They will agree to tighten banking regulation in an effort to avoid a repeat of the last two years' global economic turmoil. Governments across the world have pumped an estimated $5tn into their economies to deal with the greatest shock to the system since the 1930s.

"Today, leaders endorsed the G20 as the premier forum for their international economic co-operation," said a White House statement after a summit dinner last night. "This decision brings to the table the countries needed to build a stronger, more balanced global economy, reform the financial system and lift the lives of the poorest."

Divisions remain over the questions of bankers' pay. France and Germany are holding out for tougher restrictions on the highly paid executives blamed for bringing down the world financial system.

The US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, said there had been progress on pay and that G20 countries had reached a consensus on the "basic outline" of a proposal to limit bankers' compensation by the end of this year. He said it would involve setting separate standards in each of the countries and would be overseen by the Financial Stability Board, an international group of central bankers and regulators.

His comments came shortly after the European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, again pressed for the limits.

"Europeans are horrified by banks, some reliant on taxpayers' money, once again paying exorbitant bonuses," Barroso said. "It is important we take action."

Geithner offered the prospect of greater voting rights in the International Monetary Fund for Asian countries over the reservations of European nations, who would lose influence. Given the rise of China's economic power "it's the right thing" and Europe recognised this, Geithner said.

Neither the G7, which was created in the 1970s as the oil crisis struck western economies, nor the G8, which includes Russia, will be disbanded. The latter will instead focus on issues such as national security, while diplomats say the G7 will deal with geopolitical issues.

The new role for the G20 as the premier forum for international economic co-operation will begin with two summits next year, in Canada and South Korea, then annual summits.

Iran defiant amid new nuclear plant row


This facility, buried in a mountain outside the city of Qom, is designed to enrich uranium and could be used to produce the essential material for a nuclear weapon. Iran chose to admit its existence shortly before President Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France made a joint appearance at the start of the G20 summit in PittsburgThe three leaders chose to maximise the pressure on Mr Ahmadinejad’s regime. “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow,” said Mr Obama, adding that Iran was “endangering the global non-proliferation regime and threatening the stability and security of the region and the world”.

“The level of deception by the Iranian government and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments will shock and anger the entire international community,” said Mr Brown. He added there was “no choice but to draw a line in the sand”.

The secret facility, which Western intelligence agencies discovered some months ago, is due to become operational next year. The plant is large enough to hold 3,000 centrifuges, the machines used to enrich uranium. A clandestine facility of this kind, beyond the reach of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, would be enough to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear bomb in about a year.

Mr Obama pointed out that the “size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful programme”. Privately, Western officials pointed out the plant is too small to produce enriched uranium for a civil nuclear power station - but just large enough to make enough weapons-grade material for a bomb every year.

A US official said the facility was located 120 miles south-west of Tehran, in a network of underground tunnels found beneath a military base once used as a missile test site by the Revolutionary Guards.

Mr Obama said Iran “must come clean” about its nuclear ambitions at the meeting next week in Geneva. “I won’t speculate on what course of action we will take, we are going to give Oct 1 a chance,” he said, repeating his position that the use of force against Iran would not be ruled out.

Iran’s chief negotiator will meet an American official along with representatives of Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia in Geneva. Unless this meeting yields real progress, America and her allies are likely to table a new resolution before the Security Council imposing more economic sanctions on Iran.

Mr Sarkozy set a deadline of December for Iran to show a change of heart or incur more sanctions. He said Iran must “put everything on the table” at the meeting on Oct 1. “What has been revealed today is exceptional,” said Mr Sarkozy. “We can’t let the Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running.”

American officials said that Mr Obama had shared the intelligence about the nuclear facility’s existence with President Hu Jintao of China and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia on the margins of the General Assembly in New York. Iran then learned of the discovery of its plant and chose to come clean in a letter to Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA.

A spokesman for Mr Medvedev said that he was “alarmed” by the development. Earlier, Russia’s leader had publicly softened his country’s once implacable opposition to imposing more sanctions on Iran.

America and her allies united to demand that Iran allow IAEA inspectors to visit the new facility. Ma Zhaoxu, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said that Beijing supported this request.

The enrichment plant was uncovered by British, French and American intelligence agencies. One source credited MI6 with “a very big part” in establishing exactly what was going on beneath the mountain north-east of Qom.

The source stressed how the existence of the plant undermined Iran’s constant claim that its nuclear programme is solely for electricity generation. This formerly clandestine facility is of the right size to produce weapons-grade uranium for a bomb.

Iran has previously been caught with designs on how to build nuclear warheads and the existence of its declared enrichment facility in Natanz only emerged in 2002. Gordon Brown said this occasion marked the “third time they have been caught red handed not telling the truth”.

EU drug agency: License 2 swine flu vaccines


LONDON -- The European Union's drug regulator recommended Friday that two swine flu vaccines be licensed in the 27-nation bloc to ensure their availability before the start of the normal flu season.

The European Medicines Agency called for the vaccines made by Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline PLC to be granted a marketing authorization. The agency issues advice on whether to license for medicines across Europe, and their decisions are generally accepted by the European Commission and individual countries.

The decision to recommend the vaccines be licensed was made earlier than usual, because tests for both vaccines are ongoing. But authorities wanted to ensure the vaccines would be available before the usual flu season, when a spike in swine flu is expected.

Despite early data showing that one dose of both swine flu vaccines might work in most adults, the European Medicines Agency is recommending a two-dose regimen. Authorities expect further data from ongoing studies and said these recommendations might be updated later.

Other swine flu vaccines are being made by Sanofi-Aventis SA and Baxter International, but have not yet been approved by European authorities.

Novartis' Focetria and GlaxoSmithKline's Pandemrix vaccines both use adjuvants, chemical compounds used to boost the immune system and stretch the vaccine's active ingredient. The adjuvant used by Novartis has been used in flu vaccines since 1997 in more than 45 million doses, while GlaxoSmithKline's adjuvant has only been tested in clinical trials involving several thousand people.
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The European Medicines Agency also said pregnant women and children older than six months should get two doses. There is limited information on how safe vaccines with adjuvants are in both these groups, thought to be particularly vulnerable in a pandemic. Some countries, such as Canada, are buying vaccines without adjuvants for pregnant women.

Novartis said it had already begun shipping the first batches of swine flu vaccine to countries across Europe. It also expects its swine flu vaccine for the U.S., which does not contain an adjuvant, to be shipped to the U.S. by early October.

Glaxo had not yet begun shipping its vaccine. Dozens of countries worldwide have placed orders with the company for 291 million doses. Glaxo shares were up 0.2 percent in late-morning trading on the London stock exchange.

Many European countries, including Britain, Denmark, France, Spain and Italy, have planned massive swine flu immunization campaigns for the fall.

In a news conference Thursday, the World Health Organization predicted drug makers could produce 3 billion pandemic doses a year. Most of that will go to rich countries who have pre-ordered the vaccine, though nine countries have offered to donate 10 percent of their supplies for the developing world.

This week, China became the first country to begin using the swine flu vaccine: about 44,000 people have so far been vaccinated. WHO said they had received reports of 14 side effects possibly linked to the Chinese-made vaccine, including headaches and dizziness.

WHO officials said any rare and potentially dangerous side effects would likely not be spotted until millions of people start getting swine flu shots.

Review: 'Surrogates' is a robotic retread


NEW YORK -- "Surrogates" is itself a surrogate, a kind of stand-in for many of the sci-fi movies of the recent past: In it, you'll recognize the ideas of "Blade Runner," "Minority Report" and even "WALL-E."

The Bruce Willis action flick opens with two murders - the first in years in a quasi-present day Boston. Technology has advanced enough so that nearly everyone has a surrogate - or "surry" for short. While reclining at home and plugged into a machine, people control a robotic version of themselves that safely maneuvers through the world in all of its slings and arrows.

The surrogates are a fantasy version of one's self - cosmetically perfect, thinner, younger and sometimes of the opposite sex. (This means, most importantly, that we have a blond Bruce Willis on our hands.)

Yes, like James Bond, John McClane has gotten the Ken doll treatment. For an aging action star, the pseudo Willis is almost a pun, a wink at moviegoers' need for stars that never age.

Willis is an FBI agent named Greer who, along with his partner (Radha Mitchell), is trying to solve the murders which, though committed on surrogates, also "liquefied" the brains of their human operators.

The police, too, have surrogates. When Greer - himself, not his doppelganger - rolls out of his bedroom after a long night as himself, the attractive surrogate of his wife (Rosamund Pike) sighs at the sight of her bald and wrinkly husband.

The surrogates are a clear metaphor for the virtual reality that's already upon us. It's a subject popular in Hollywood these days, given the recent Gerard Butler film "Gamer" and James Cameron's upcoming "Avatar."

Having a robotic stand-in has some obvious perks: Sexuality is less inhibited. If you fall, you don't scrape your elbows. And if your helicopter crashes, you don't die.

But this crime-less utopia is also a superficial wasteland, devoid of meaningfulness. As the investigation into the murders goes deeper, a plot to destroy the network becomes unfurled.

It has something to do with VSI, the company that created surrogates. (Its slogan: "Life ... only better.") One of the founders of VSI (James Cromwell) is having inventor's remorse. Some also choose to live in human-only areas; the leader of these renegades is played by a dreadlocked Ving Rhames.

"We're not meant to experience the world through a machine," Rhames' character announces. It's an ironic sentiment coming from a film projector beamed into a state-of-the-art movie theater.

"Surrogates," directed by Jonathan Mostow ("Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines"), is adapted from a graphic novel by Robert Venditti. If anyone hasn't noticed yet, graphic novels are - for better or worse - the new pulp fiction.

Like those hard-boiled novels of the `40s that Hollywood couldn't get enough of, graphic novels are fueling what once would have been called B-movies. At its best, that's what "Surrogates" is: a quality B-movie, pulpy and very much reflective of its times. The film isn't shy about its feelings about technology - it's time to unplug. It laments a culture that medicates pain away and has its head in virtual realms.

It's hard to miss the message or the nihilistic glee the film takes in seeing a world of robot surrogates suddenly collapse - a Second Life apocalypse that effectively forces society to unplug and step outside.

The Internet, though, is here to stay. Dreams of a computer-less society are as much fantasy as a blond Bruce Willis.

"Surrogates," a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, disturbing images, language, sexuality and a drug-related scene. Two stars out of four.

Latest Data Show Volatile Economy Took a Few Steps Back


Orders for durable goods such as aircraft and electronics fell unexpectedly in August, while sales of new homes rose less than expected, renewing concerns about whether the economy can sustain a recovery with consumer spending held back by job losses, tight credit and falling home values.

Still, economists said the figures -- which follow weaker-than-expected data Thursday on existing home sales -- also reflect a volatile economy emerging from the worst recession since the 1930s. U.S. stock markets closed lower Friday, with the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index slipping 0.6 percent to 1044.38.

"No one said this would be a smooth recovery," Benjamin Reitzes, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients. "The data will likely continue to improve in fits and starts."

The Commerce Department said Friday that orders for durable goods dropped 2.4 percent in August, after rising a revised 4.8 percent in July. Economists had expected a 0.5 percent increase, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. It was the second drop in three months in orders for goods expected to last at least three years.

A category known as "non-defense capital goods, excluding aircraft," a gauge of business investment in machinery and other items, fell 0.4 percent, its second straight drop. It fell 1.3 percent in July. Some economists said they were concerned that the two straight declines show businesses aren't confident enough in the recovery to boost their investment in equipment.
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Orders for commercial aircraft and parts, an especially volatile category, sank 42.2 percent in August after nearly doubling in July. Excluding aircraft and other transportation goods, orders were flat in August -- below analysts' expectations of a 0.5 percent rise. Transportation goods orders dropped 9.3 percent.

Autos and auto parts orders posted a 0.4 percent gain in August, after rising 1.6 percent in July, according to the government data. The sector received a major boost last month from the Cash for Clunkers program, which gave consumers rebates of up to $4,500 for trading in older cars for newer, more fuel-efficient models. The program, which ended last month, boosted auto sales 30 percent in August.

Several other categories posted weak results. Orders for computers and electronic products dropped 0.7 percent, after rising for two straight months. Electrical equipment and appliance orders fell 0.5 percent, after jumping 4.2 percent in July.

The Commerce Department also said new U.S. home sales inched up 0.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 429,000 from a downwardly revised 426,000 in July. Economists had expected a pace of 440,000. Sales have risen 30 percent from the bottom in January, but are off about 70 percent from the peak of four years ago.

The report was the second disappointing sign this week for the housing market. The National Association of Realtors on Thursday said sales of previously occupied homes, which make up most of the market, dipped 2.7 percent last month.

Builders continue to make severe cuts in prices to attract buyers. The median sales price of $195,200 was 9.5 percent below July's $215,600. That was the largest monthly drop on records dating to 1963.

'National Parks': Camped Out, But Trailing Off


Ken Burns's "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" was six years in the making and it is 12 hours long, camped out every night this week on PBS, beginning Sunday. It is beautiful and erudite and contains all the underlined importance and swelling emotion that a major Ken Burns moment requires of its viewers, but at least four cumulative hours of it are goshawfully boring. Just like camping with people who love it more than you do.

It's as if Uncle Ken has gotten out his slide projector and is going to show us everything from his trips to Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, stopping frequently to make the same poetic points over and over and over, which are:

The parks belong to all Americans. The parks are transcendent. It's not about how you and I visit the parks, it's about the permanence and awe that the parks visit upon our collective psyche. You should go to the parks soon and often; you own them, after all. (It's a $25-per-car entrance fee at Yellowstone these days, just the beginning of what a trip to a big national park will cost you, but nevertheless, you own it.) The parks make us better people. Their beauty is beyond words and pictures.

Which of course doesn't stop any of the historians, writers, rangers and environmentalists featured in the documentary from describing, and describing some more.

"One of the things I think we witness when we go to the parks is the immensity and the intimacy of time," historian William Cronon explains at a point early in the slog. "On the one hand, we experience the immensity of time, which is the creation itself, it is the universe unfolding before us, and yet it also time shared with the people we visit these places with, so it's the experience we remember when our parents took us for the first time to these [places], and we as parents passing them onto our children . . . the love of place, the love of nation, that the national parks are meant to stand for."

And so on. Refreshingly, in what seems like hour 97, Burns at last quotes a funnyman from long ago, Irvin S. Cobb, who said this about the Grand Canyon:

"Nearly everybody, on taking a first look at the Grand Canyon, comes right out and admits its wonders are absolutely indescribable, and then proceeds to write anywhere from 2,000 to 50,000 words giving the full details. . . . When the Creator made it, He failed to make a word to cover it."
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God is also not a documentarian, but Burns is now regarded by some as the next best thing. Employing the meticulous research and trademark pomposity we have come to expect after his explorations of jazz, war, baseball (upper-middle-class white guy subjects all the way). In "The National Parks," after seeing in Part 3 what I would swear is the same bank of clouds roiling over the same glacier in time-elapsed wonder that I saw in Parts 1 and 2, I got a familiar, stultifying dread: Uncle Ken's slide show never ends.

Still, what a trip! I would think that with the right high-def TV and Barcalounger, millions of Americans can watch "The National Parks" all week and then cross the actual 58 national parks (and 333 national monuments, forests, etc.) off their bucket lists. This is the all-access pass with unlimited lingering, with so much acoustic guitar in the background that the musicians' fingers must have been bloodied by the end. Not a single frame of Burns's stunning, soaring aerials and up-close nature shots features any of the drawbacks to actual park tourism: Here there is no gridlock on switchback roads, no crowds of foreign tourists, no $7 chicken tenders, no asphalt parking lots and ticket lines at visitor centers.

Yellowstone is one of the most wondrous places in the world, and while I am fully aware of its splendor (my mother insisted I be aware), I was unfortunately 12 when I first saw it. I was that kid you don't want in your station wagon. In 1980, we were just more of the millions of visitors to America's national parks, and we were stuck in traffic, and within a few hours I'd figured out that all the grocery-and-curio shops in Yellowstone stocked comic books and Rolling Stone magazines that were at least a month old, which I'd already read.

I was an avid indoorsman in a family of ambitious mountaineers, game hunters and even a forester. Eventually, as a grown-up, at places like White Sands National Monument and the Los Padres National Forest at Big Sur, I pitched my own tent and found my own sense of peace and solitude in our mutual wilderness. You can't not, and still think of yourself as American.

Burns's project, and the people featured in it, are too dogmatic, like those brown Park Service signs pointing you in the "right" direction. They come across with the same scoutmaster zeal of enforced, hearty reverence that -- depending on your worldview -- will either make your heart soar or your eyes roll. Burns is relentless, walking us through the 19th-century emergence of the idea of national parkland, which he locates with the arrival of the Mariposa Battalion of soldiers in the Yosemite valley in 1851. Ostensibly there to eradicate native populations, the battalion members stopped, looked around, and thought gawrsh, it's pretty here.

Air Force restarts $35B tanker competition


WASHINGTON -- The Air Force on Friday launched its third attempt to award a $35 billion tanker contract to either Boeing Co. or Northrop Grumman Corp.

The Air Force said it will be "crystal clear" in its requirements for new tankers that refuel military planes in flight in order to avoid errors from previous selection processes. The service also now wants a plane that's war-ready on day one.

Los Angeles-based Northrop, and its partner Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. N.V., are offering a tanker based on the Airbus A330. Northrop said it will review the draft request for bids and provide comments to the Air Force soon.

Chicago-based Boeing said it will conduct a detailed review of the service's request to assess which plane it will offer - the 767-based tanker, the larger 777-based tanker, or perhaps both.

Both the companies and lawmakers have 60 days to comment on the Air Force's proposal before a final version is released.

The Air Force has failed twice to award a contract to replace its Eisenhower-era fleet of 179 tankers. The last award in early 2008 to the Northrop team was overturned on an appeal by Boeing after congressional investigators found the Air Force failed to evaluate both proposals on the same merits. That led Pentagon leaders to temporarily revoke the service's authority to award a contract.
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The 2004 award to Boeing was undone by an ethics scandal that resulted in prison terms for a former company executive and a former Air Force official.

Lawmakers already have started bickering over the exclusion of language that would have required the Air Force to consider the World Trade Organization's interim ruling earlier this month that European loans for Airbus were illegal subsidies. A separate ruling on a European Union counter-complaint against the U.S. is expected in about six months.

States like Washington, Kansas and others who stand to gain jobs if Boeing lands the award want the Air Force to consider the WTO ruling in its tanker selection. Northrop supporters in Alabama, where a new plant would be built in Mobile, disagree.

Some lawmakers also wanted the Air Force to ink deals with both companies, but the service still plans to make a single award next summer.

Pakistani Officials Cite Gains in Anti-Insurgency Effort


Pakistan army says that its ongoing operations have severely dented the Taliban-led insurgency in the country's northwest. Military officials say the campaign is being gradually extended to what they consider the rebel stronghold - the border region of Waziristan. Senior army officials believe the advances against militants and close anti-terror coordination have helped improve the level of trust between Pakistan and the United States.
Military authorities in Pakistan believe that the gains the anti-insurgency campaign has made in the past few months, in and around the Swat valley, have weakened the Taliban militants and set the stage for ridding the country of them. They say the killing of nearly 2,000 militants, including key commanders, and arrest of some of the top Taliban leaders in the Swat offensive have helped bring down terrorist attacks in the country, in recent months.

Pakistan is under international pressure to launch a long-awaited ground offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, that borders Afghanistan. American military commanders believe top al-Qaida leaders are hiding there and are using the territory for attacks on international troops on the Afghan side of the border.

The mountainous territory is considered a training ground for militants, under the leadership of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is an alliance of more than a dozen al-Qaida-linked groups. Fighters of the militant outfit are also believed to be involved in cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. However, the setbacks in Swat and the killing of the embattled groups' chief commander, Baitullah Mehsud, are believed to have dealt a major blows to the Taliban militants in Pakistan.

Army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas tells VOA the military is now concentrating on the South Waziristan tribal region, calling it "the center of gravity of terrorist forces" in the country. But General Abbas warns that the Mehsud terrorist network is still intact and a heightened ground offensive could annoy tribesman and provoke a widespread uprising.
"We can afford to fight the militants in the area, but we cannot afford an uprising by the tribes in the area because we are not fighting the tribes," he said. "Waziristan is a different ball game altogether, a different environment. The terrain is very different. The people and the fighters are different. There is a huge presence of foreigners in the area, the foreign militants. At present we have sealed the area. The area is under siege," continued Abbas. "As you know, in any military operations, the effects of siege appear after some time. Now, we see that there is a lack of will [among militants] to fight. There are reports of some shortage of provisions. We have been targeting their training centers, their arms and ammunition dumps, their hideouts their strongholds. So, therefore, we are looking for the right time [for a major offensive] and this time will come hopefully soon."

General Abbas says there is a complete understanding between the Pakistani military and the NATO military commanders on how to deal with the militants in the Waziristan region.

It is widely believed, in and outside Pakistan, that the country's prime intelligence agency created most of the militant groups, for the government's purposes. Until the Swat operation was launched, the common perception was that army establishment was reluctant to go after the militants because of the past ties with these outfits. But spokesman General Abbas says the skepticism is misplaced and ignores the major human losses Pakistani military has suffered since joining the U.S-led anti-terror war, eight years ago.

"How can somebody imagine that a military who has lost over 1,800 officers and men in these operations in these areas, fighting against these militants, would allow services intelligence organization to hobnob with certain assets or certain terrorist groups whom the military is fighting against and the army chief would allow this services intelligence to take these kind of initiatives," added Abbas. "It does not make sense. The military is fighting. There are constraints. There are problems and we are going against our people in our area. Many of them have been misguided. So, when you apply excessive force in your own area against your own people, there are constraints and over reliance or over use of force sometime bounces back [backfires]."

The general says that, until recently, the Pakistani military was being held responsible for the cross-border attacks in Afghanistan and the military's capabilities were being questioned. But he says those doubts resulted from a lack of understanding of Pakistan's constraints in operating in the tribal areas.

"So, now with more exchanges at various levels, with more talks and more sharing of information, I think the understanding has improved a lot," said Abbas. "So, therefore, I would say that successful military operation has created an environment of better trust, better understanding." General Abbas says the Pakistani military is determined to and is capable of defeating the insurgency. The spokesman says, although coordination and the level of trust between the Pakistani and U.S armies has considerable improved, Islamabad has yet to receive requisite tools from Washington to fight the anti-terror war.

"This is a very rugged terrain. It is a mountainous area, very treacherous. We require air mobility," he added. "We do require targeting through air like attack helicopters, which is very effective in mountainous terrain. We do require surveillance equipment, the night vision capabilities. All this would enhance the technical and the resource material capability of the military and that would allow us to be more efficient, more effective and that would save our own lives."

In their recent talks with American leaders, Pakistani officials have repeatedly urged Washington to give Islamabad the drone technology that the United States has used to take out several top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in the country's tribal areas.

Ken Burns' 'National Parks' pays tribute to the men behind the idea


For Californians, Ken Burns' gorgeous and exhaustive six-part documentary on the National Parks poses something of a dilemma. In the 12 hours it takes for "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" to unfold, an Angeleno could easily visit any of a half dozen national parks. Without traffic, you could conceivably get to Yosemite, where it all started, tour the valley floor and be back before narrator Peter Coyote stopped talking.

No doubt the various men behind the National Parks system, from mountain prophet John Muir to the touring-car-bound Franklin Delano Roosevelt would recommend you do just that. Indeed, the main goal of Burns and his co-creator Dayton Duncan appears to be launching people off their backsides and into the wilderness. In this they will most certainly succeed, possibly to the detriment of their own ratings.

Enlivened by astonishing camera work and a few dramatic adventures -- an early Yellowstone explorer becomes lost for more than a month, a tourist is later shot there during an Indian war, a young honeymoon couple vanishes from the Grand Canyon -- "The National Parks" is a slow and careful walk through a very specific branch of American history.

As much as one admires Burns' refusal to acknowledge the conventional wisdom that the American attention span has shrunk to a hair's breadth, there is no denying he could have picked up the pace a bit here. (Also, fiddle and banjo music should be banned from documentary usage for the next five years.)

The title is the first red flag. Yes, the "best idea" part comes from novelist and historian Wallace Stegner and one hates to argue with Stegner, but as historian Clay Jenkinson says within minutes of the film's opening, America's best idea is equal rights for every citizen. But "America's Second-Best Idea" doesn't have the same ring, does it?

So Burns and Duncan content themselves with hammering home the idea that the parks are living symbols of democracy. And if you don't believe them, well, here's a bunch more people who think so too.

Although descriptive chronicles of early visitors to Yosemite and Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon are fascinating to hear (and if you are an American actor who was not asked to give voice to one, consider yourself snubbed), the ongoing testimony to the beauty and importance of nature becomes more than a little repetitive and unnecessary. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words, and possibly two whole hours.

The history of the national park crisscrosses the history of America and is therefore a bittersweet narrative. America comes into being at the expense of its natives, from the Indian tribes forced out of their homelands, including Yosemite Valley, to the passenger pigeon hunted into extinction.

The real value of "National Parks" is not its reminder of how beautiful the Grand Canyon is but Burns' and Duncan's endless curiosity about how the parks shaped Americans as Americans shaped the parks.

Coming at a time when the role and size of the federal government is the subject of vitriolic debate, it's difficult not to see in the film a rousing vote of confidence for big government.

Here, the parks are presented not just as places of beauty and refuge but as the soul-saving antidote to the ruthless nature of capitalism and American ambition. Which is certainly true.

Yet, as we quickly discover, their existence is due almost entirely to the personal desires and relentless life's work of a handful of men, many of them major capitalists. Most of the parks owe at least some of their acreage to the checkbooks of wealthy men (making them monuments to noblesse oblige as much as anything else). Meanwhile, President Theodore Roosevelt, brandishing the new and vaguely worded Antiquities Act, created a slew of National Monuments, a process that didn't require Congressional approval.So like the U.S., the parks are more complicated than patriotic catch-phrases would have them.

It is the narrative of those extraordinary men that moves "The National Parks" forward. From the early days of nature-loving Transcendentalism to the modern Green movement, strong-minded individuals determined that preserving certain lands was best for the country and they spent their lives pursuing that goal.

Muir personally swayed presidents, early newspaper accounts brought thousands of people on difficult journeys to see Bridal Veil falls and the Yellowstone Valley, stories in Field and Stream brought about protective legislation, John D. Rockefeller gave us Jackson Hole and much of the Tetons.

So "The National Parks" does chronicle a loss: the ethos of rugged individualism, the influence of a single dedicated voice. Now it seems too easy for voices like Muir's or Park Service founder Stephen Mather's to be lost in the cacophony of information, opinion and invective. Burns stands with the zealous subjects of the film. Like Muir, he is unwilling to bend to public taste. Yes, here are those darn fiddles and the headshot interviews, here are the letters and journals read by Tom Hanks and John Lithgow, here are all those photographs and more information about the National Parks than you'll ever be able to retain.

But his message from one documentary to another remains the same: Pay attention, take notes, listen to the people who were there at the time, because despite what you may have been taught, history is a gorgeously complicated thing.

EU drug agency: License 2 swine flu vaccines




LONDON -- The European Union's drug regulator recommended Friday that two swine flu vaccines be licensed in the 27-nation bloc to ensure their availability before the start of the normal flu season.

The European Medicines Agency called for the vaccines made by Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline PLC to be granted a marketing authorization. The agency issues advice on whether to license for medicines across Europe, and their decisions are generally accepted by the European Commission and individual countries.

The decision to recommend the vaccines be licensed was made earlier than usual, because tests for both vaccines are ongoing. But authorities wanted to ensure the vaccines would be available before the usual flu season, when a spike in swine flu is expected.

Despite early data showing that one dose of both swine flu vaccines might work in most adults, the European Medicines Agency is recommending a two-dose regimen. Authorities expect further data from ongoing studies and said these recommendations might be updated later.

Other swine flu vaccines are being made by Sanofi-Aventis SA and Baxter International, but have not yet been approved by European authorities.

Novartis' Focetria and GlaxoSmithKline's Pandemrix vaccines both use adjuvants, chemical compounds used to boost the immune system and stretch the vaccine's active ingredient. The adjuvant used by Novartis has been used in flu vaccines since 1997 in more than 45 million doses, while GlaxoSmithKline's adjuvant has only been tested in clinical trials involving several thousand people.

The European Medicines Agency also said pregnant women and children older than six months should get two doses. There is limited information on how safe vaccines with adjuvants are in both these groups, thought to be particularly vulnerable in a pandemic. Some countries, such as Canada, are buying vaccines without adjuvants for pregnant women.

Novartis said it had already begun shipping the first batches of swine flu vaccine to countries across Europe. It also expects its swine flu vaccine for the U.S., which does not contain an adjuvant, to be shipped to the U.S. by early October.

Glaxo had not yet begun shipping its vaccine. Dozens of countries worldwide have placed orders with the company for 291 million doses. Glaxo shares were up 0.2 percent in late-morning trading on the London stock exchange.

Many European countries, including Britain, Denmark, France, Spain and Italy, have planned massive swine flu immunization campaigns for the fall.

In a news conference Thursday, the World Health Organization predicted drug makers could produce 3 billion pandemic doses a year. Most of that will go to rich countries who have pre-ordered the vaccine, though nine countries have offered to donate 10 percent of their supplies for the developing world.

This week, China became the first country to begin using the swine flu vaccine: about 44,000 people have so far been vaccinated. WHO said they had received reports of 14 side effects possibly linked to the Chinese-made vaccine, including headaches and dizziness.

WHO officials said any rare and potentially dangerous side effects would likely not be spotted until millions of people start getting swine flu shots.

Senate Plan Envisions $856 Billion Overhaul of Health Care


A version of health care reform legislation to be considered next week by a key Senate committee would spend $856 billion during the next decade to overhaul the U.S. health care system. Senator Max Baucus, who heads the Senate Finance Committee, spoke about the plan, which is the last of five legislative proposals to emerge from House and Senate committees.

Senator Baucus tried for several months to hammer out an agreement with key Republicans, and address concerns some Democrats on his committee had about aspects of the plan.

While he says he still hopes Senate Republicans such as Olympia Snowe of Maine will come onboard when the committee votes on the measure as early as next week, Baucus might have to proceed without minority support.

The senator addressed that prospect in remarks at a Capitol Hill news conference, calling his bill a balanced effort to deliver on President Barack Obama's goal of affordable and accessible health care for Americans.

"I worked very hard to try to get that bipartisan support." he said. "And I think that we will get it, that is I think that certainly by the time the Finance Committee in this room votes on final passage for health care reform, there will be Republican support."

At an estimated cost of $856 billion over 10 years, the plan would require all individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. Companies would be prohibited from denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions, or setting annual or lifetime medical spending limits.

The Baucus proposal does not contain a provision to create a government-managed health care plan that would give Americans an alternative to private insurance companies, which President Obama has said would be a preferred approach, but only one part of reform.

In one of several concessions aimed at winning Republican support, the plan would try to expand choices by creating a system of non-profit, consumer-owned insurance cooperatives and create a government-supervised insurance exchange to expand the availability of plans for Americans.

In his address to Congress last week on health care reform, President Obama said again that he would not sign any bill that adds to the federal government budget deficit.

Senator Baucus would pay for his plan by reducing expenditures in existing government health programs by more than half-a-trillion dollars, along with $349 billion in new taxes and fees as well as $6 billion in fees imposed on health insurance providers.

Senator Baucus said he recognized that his bill faces criticism from Democrats as well as Republicans. "There are some who think I have not gone far enough. There are some, on both sides of the aisle who think I have gone too far," he said.

It will now be up to Senate Democrats to put the Baucus plan together with one from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has said he hopes to get a bill to the Senate floor by the end of September, but that could be pushed into October.

Democrats in the House of Representatives, also facing united Republican opposition, will have to meld the work of three committees there into one piece of legislation that the House can consider.

Conservative Democrats, whose support will be important in any vote, welcomed the Senate Finance Committee bill, saying it addresses two of their central goals -- not adding to the federal deficit and bringing down the cost of health care over the long term.
However, two Democrats who have pushed for a government insurance option as part of any legislation - New York Representatives Anthony Weiner and Eliot Engel - declared the Baucus bill dead on arrival, if it arrives in the House for consideration.

"The Senate proposal simply will not pass muster in the U.S. House of Representatives and fails on very basic levels to satisfy the objectives of the president and the citizens of the United States of America," said Representative Weiner.

Representative Engel suggested that the House take the lead in passing a health care reform bill that contains exactly what President Obama has sought.

"What we will do here in the House is put together the three [House] bills and pass a bill with a public option, and a strong bill that Democrats believe is what the American people need and want," he said. "And then we will send the bill over to the Senate and the Senate will compromise with us as we will compromise with them."

It is unknown whether the House or Senate would act first on health care legislation. President Obama and Democrats have said they are determined to pass a reform bill before the end of this year.

Latest Data Show Volatile Economy Took a Few Steps Back


Orders for durable goods such as aircraft and electronics fell unexpectedly in August, while sales of new homes rose less than expected, renewing concerns about whether the economy can sustain a recovery with consumer spending held back by job losses, tight credit and falling home values.

Still, economists said the figures -- which follow weaker-than-expected data Thursday on existing home sales -- also reflect a volatile economy emerging from the worst recession since the 1930s. U.S. stock markets closed lower Friday, with the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index slipping 0.6 percent to 1044.38.

"No one said this would be a smooth recovery," Benjamin Reitzes, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients. "The data will likely continue to improve in fits and starts."

The Commerce Department said Friday that orders for durable goods dropped 2.4 percent in August, after rising a revised 4.8 percent in July. Economists had expected a 0.5 percent increase, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. It was the second drop in three months in orders for goods expected to last at least three years.

A category known as "non-defense capital goods, excluding aircraft," a gauge of business investment in machinery and other items, fell 0.4 percent, its second straight drop. It fell 1.3 percent in July. Some economists said they were concerned that the two straight declines show businesses aren't confident enough in the recovery to boost their investment in equipment.
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Orders for commercial aircraft and parts, an especially volatile category, sank 42.2 percent in August after nearly doubling in July. Excluding aircraft and other transportation goods, orders were flat in August -- below analysts' expectations of a 0.5 percent rise. Transportation goods orders dropped 9.3 percent.

Autos and auto parts orders posted a 0.4 percent gain in August, after rising 1.6 percent in July, according to the government data. The sector received a major boost last month from the Cash for Clunkers program, which gave consumers rebates of up to $4,500 for trading in older cars for newer, more fuel-efficient models. The program, which ended last month, boosted auto sales 30 percent in August.

Several other categories posted weak results. Orders for computers and electronic products dropped 0.7 percent, after rising for two straight months. Electrical equipment and appliance orders fell 0.5 percent, after jumping 4.2 percent in July.

The Commerce Department also said new U.S. home sales inched up 0.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 429,000 from a downwardly revised 426,000 in July. Economists had expected a pace of 440,000. Sales have risen 30 percent from the bottom in January, but are off about 70 percent from the peak of four years ago.

The report was the second disappointing sign this week for the housing market. The National Association of Realtors on Thursday said sales of previously occupied homes, which make up most of the market, dipped 2.7 percent last month.

Builders continue to make severe cuts in prices to attract buyers. The median sales price of $195,200 was 9.5 percent below July's $215,600. That was the largest monthly drop on records dating to 1963.

Police embroiled in violent battles with G20 protesters


Anti-G20 protesters rampaged through the city centre of Pittsburgh tonight, smashing up shops and throwing rocks at police, as officers used tear gas and baton-charges in an attempt to bring them under control.

In riots which continued through evening rush hour, about 300 protesters were reported to have remained from an initial crowd of 2,000 in Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s Little Italy.

Frustrated in their attempts to reach the venue where world leaders are meeting the crowd, many of whom wore face-masks and armed themselves with rocks, broke windows at fast-food restaurants, a BMW dealership and a bank in the area, about a mile from the fenced-off convention centre.

Police in body armour and armed with plastic shields threw pepper gas canisters to disperse the protesters, charging in to make some arrests. Some reports also suggested that rubber bullets had been used, but police tonight confirmed that they had fired pellet-filled “beanbags” to combat the rioters.

“In response to having sticks, bricks and rocks thrown at them in the Shady Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh, police responded with bean bag rounds and dispersed the crowd,” Bill Crowley, an FBI agent, told the AFP news agency.

So-called bean bags - or flexible baton rounds - are fired from an officer’s riot shotgun. Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard said they were “softer” than rubber bullets. “The police had sticks, rocks and other instruments thrown toward them so in defence of that, that was their way of dispersing the crowd. They had trash cans thrown at them, all kinds of different things,” she said.

Anti-capitalist protests have marked major gatherings of world leaders on the economy for years, sometimes turning violent and forcing summit organisers to use fortress-like security.

Earlier, police dispersed the 2,000 people who had gathered during lunchtime for a march. “You must leave the immediate vicinity regardless of your purpose,” officers said, and warned that gas and other “non-lethal force” would be used.

The main clashes took place in the Lawrenceville neighborhood. Protesters threw bottles and police responded by sending up to 10 canisters of tear gas into the crowd. The sharp smell of the gas irritated the eyes and throats of protesters, some of them vomiting as they ran.

“We have seen police use rubber bullets, batons and gas,” said Noah Williams, a spokesman for the anti-capitalist Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project.

Leaders of developed and developing economies are meeting in Pittsburgh for a gathering to discuss how to improve financial reforms to avoid another global economic crisis.

Mass swine flu vaccination could begin within weeks


Mass vaccination against swine flu could begin within weeks, following the approval of two vaccines by the European regulator today.

One of the two recommended for a licence by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) is Pandemrix, the vaccine made by British company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) which is under contract to supply the UK. The other is Focetria, made by the Swiss company Novartis.

The UK has also signed a contract with Baxter, but the EMEA said yesterday that it needed some information about its vaccine, called Celvapan. The agency hopes to be able to approve it next week.

The EMEA's recommendations go to the European Commission, which is expected to rubber-stamp them within days.

The approval follows an expedited procedure which was based mainly on mock-ups of how the vaccines were expected to behave if bird flu rather than swine flu had sparked a pandemic.

But the EMEA says it is satisfied that inserting the new strain into the vaccine "should not substantially affect the safety or level of protection offered".

It has asked manufacturers actively to investigate and monitor any side-effects from the vaccine "so that action can be taken as early as possible if a safety issue emerges". It points out that "as with all medicines, rare adverse reactions may only be detected once the vaccines are used in large numbers of people". The manufacturers have agreed to conduct post-licensing safety studies on 9,000 people for each vaccine.

GSK has said that volunteers suffered only very mild side-effects in trials, including headache, joint pain, muscle pain, pain and redness at the site of the injection, fever and fatigue.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said they planned to start vaccination in October, but were "still dependent on production and delivery of sufficient vaccine to start protecting people". Those most at risk because of their state of health will be prioritised.

Some countries, including China and Hungary, have already approved swine flu vaccines and begun vaccination, but these are variants of existing vaccines and will not protect to the same extent as a vaccine incorporating the pandemic virus strain.

The EMEA is recommending that people should be given two shots, at an interval of three weeks. It says it recognises there is evidence that one dose may be enough, and may change its advice later. The vaccines are approved for use in pregnant women and children over the age of six months.

The clinical trials on which approval was based involved more than 6,000 people for each vaccine, who received a version which was basically the same as the one to be rolled out, but originally contained an avian flu (H5N1) strain – which had been expected to cause a pandemic – instead of H1N1.

"Decades of experience with seasonal influenza vaccines indicate that insertion of a new strain in a vaccine should not substantially affect the safety or level of protection offered," said the EMEA in its statement.

Across the UK, 82 deaths have been linked to the virus, with 70 in England (up three in the last week), nine in Scotland, one in Wales and two in Northern Ireland.

Across England, the number of people being treated in hospital has risen by more than 50%, from 143 last week to 218 this week. Of these, 25 patients are in intensive care.