(Reuters) – Like a savvy Madison Avenue advertising team, senators pushing climate-control legislation have decided to scrap the name “cap and trade” and rebrand their product as “pollution reduction targets.”
A clunky and difficult term to define for laymen and some politicians, “cap and trade” had become dirty words on Capitol Hill in recent months. Republicans called the plan nothing more than “cap and tax” and one influential senator took great pains last week to declare cap and trade “dead.” Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent trying to draft a bipartisan bill, said, “We don’t use that term anymore.” Instead Lieberman said, laughing: “We will have pollution reduction targets.” Read Article
Daily Mail – Princess Diana died after attempts to frighten her into dumping Dodi al Fayed and ending her anti-establishment activities went horribly wrong, a leading lawyer has claimed. Michael Mansfield claimed he was sure Diana’s ‘killers’ had no intention of ending her life in a Paris tunnel in August 1997 and simply wanted to scare her. But he claimed the operation to torpedo her relationship with Dodi, and silence her planned criticism of the British government over foreign arms sales, backfired spectacularly. Read article
Reuters – The ground shook and buildings swayed as billionaire Sebastian Pinera took over as Chile’s president on Thursday, tasked with rebuilding after a massive earthquake killed hundreds just 12 days ago. A series of strong aftershocks rattled central Chile minutes before conservative Pinera was sworn in at Congress in the port city of Valparaiso, as Latin American presidents and other dignitaries looked nervously at the ceiling. Read article
Times Online – The threat of violent protests loomed over Iraq yesterday as the country’s leading opposition politician said that there was widespread fraud in last week’s elections. Ayad Allawi told Western officials that aides to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, had hidden ballot papers and falsified computer records in an effort to retain power. “They are stealing the votes of the Iraqi people,” his spokesman told a press conference called to set out the main claims. Read article
Telegraph – India took a big step on Tuesday towards approving legislation that would reserve one-third of seats in the country’s parliament for women. Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, described the 186-1 vote in the upper house of parliament as a “historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood”. The bill now goes to the lower house, where it is likely to pass. The vote came after socialist lawmakers blocked the parliamentary debate on Monday and forced the upper house to adjourn twice on Tuesday. The protesters later boycotted the voting. Read article
Associated Press – President Barack Obama made a renewed push for a long-stalled climate and energy bill Tuesday, urging lawmakers at a White House meeting to pass a comprehensive bill this year. Fourteen senators from both parties. Read Article
Guardian – All dogs are to be compulsorily microchipped so that their owners can be more easily traced under a crackdown on dangerous dogs to be unveiled today. The package will include extending the dangerous dogs law to cover attacks by dogs on private property to protect postmen, and making third-party insurance compulsory so that victims can be financially compensated. Read Article
Associated Press – WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama stood with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Tuesday and pledged that the United States would work with its ally, even as Greece’s enormous debts sparked frenzied trading. Papandreou said he outlined European proposals in his White House meeting and Obama reacted positively to European ideas about cracking down on currency speculation. He also said the issue would be discussed at the next meeting of the Group of 20 summit of leading and emerging economies in June. Read Article
The Times – Hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in Lhasa and armed paramilitaries are patrolling the streets in the run-up to the anniversary of a bloody riot in 2008. The authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of the anti-Chinese attacks that left about 20 people dead when Tibetans rampaged through the streets of the Himalayan city setting fire to shops, offices and banks. Read Articles
Telegraph – A far-Right candidate for Austria’s presidential election has brought the country’s dark past to the surface again, by denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional leader of the Freedom Party (FPOe), looks likely to be the only candidate to run against the incumbent, President Heinz Fischer, on April 25. But her comments supporting the scrapping of the tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a heritage with which the country, which was under Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, has never fully come to terms. Austrian leaders and the press already fear for the country’s image abroad. Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. Read article
Ed – is it democratic to suppress or ban political ideologies, no matter how repulsive they might be to the majority? Surely a healthy democracy will ensure good debate and the election of those fit to represent their constituents.
Guardian – The digital economy bill will become law before Parliament is dissolved at the beginning of April ahead of a likely general election in May, senior media industry figures believe. That will usher in controversial laws enabling rights owners to cut off or restrict internet access for users who download films and music illegally. The bill contains measures designed to combat piracy. If it becomes law it will compel internet service providers including Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media to pass on information about persistent offenders to rights holders. Read Article
Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed. Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking. The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it’s chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they smear with an ad hominem attack they are unwittingly helping giant finance houses. Read the full Op-Ed by Joanne Nova
Times Online – Burma’s military dictatorship has set out laws governing a general election promised later this year, reinforcing the predictions of its opponents that it will be a hollow exercise intended to consolidate military power under a democratic façade. The country’s state-run newspapers today published the election commission law, the first of five pieces of legislation which were formally passed on Monday. Under its terms, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military Government calls itself, will appoint the five-person commission responsible for supervising the election. Read article
Reuters – Turnout in Iraq’s parliamentary election was 62 percent, higher than in last year’s provincial ballot, despite attempts by Sunni Islamist insurgents to disrupt the vote with attacks that killed 39, officials said on Monday. Preliminary results were not expected for another day or two in a poll that Iraqis sickened by violence hope will help bring better governance and stability after years of sectarian slaughter, and as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw. Read article
Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign. British journalists and TV crews are to be banned from the Afghan front line once a date for the election has been set, while senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters. MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph. Read article
CNBC – The devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti threw the country into the international spotlight, and simultaneously highlighted its desperate need for help, even before the disaster. In the weeks and months after the quake, some have begun to question whether the event opens new opportunities for restructuring of Haiti’s government and economy, literally from the ground up. But what sort of role should the US or other international organizations play in Haiti? Among the spectrum of international responses—from indirect aid and development programs to a Puerto Rico-style annexation—the best answer is bound to lie somewhere in between. Read article
Ed – Echos of the Sudetenland 1938? The only difference being Haiti has oil.
Reuters – Vice President Joe Biden began a visit to Israel and the West Bank on Monday, assuring Israelis in a newspaper interview that Washington would close ranks with them against any threat from a nuclear-armed Iran. Biden, the most senior U.S. official to visit Israel since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, is widely expected to caution his hosts not to attack Iran pre-emptively while world powers pursue fresh sanctions against Tehran. Read article
Times Online – Bloody clashes between competing factions of Afghanistan’s insurgency left up to 79 people dead, officials said today, including 19 civilians in a lawless part of the country beyond the reach of government or Nato forces. Fighting in a remote stretch of Baghlan province, in northern Afghanistan, broke out on Saturday, local police said, and continued through the weekend — although it was not clear what triggered the violence. Read Article
Reuters – Bomb blasts and rocket and mortar fire killed 38 people as Iraqis voted on Sunday in an election they hoped would distance their nascent democracy from years of sectarian slaughter as U.S. troops pack up to leave. The explosions rumbled across Baghdad and other cities after Sunni Islamist insurgents vowed to wreck voting for Iraq’s second full-term parliament since the 2003 U.S. invasion, a vote watched closely by global oil companies planning to invest billions to develop the country’s dilapidated oilfields. Read Article
Times Online – COUNCIL bosses have goldplated themselves against the recession with more than 2,000 of them earning above £100,000 last year. As local authorities plead poverty and prepare to axe up to 180,000 workers, there has been a fivefold rise in the number of senior staff receiving six-figure packages since 2004. The highest earner last year was an official in Cornwall who received at least £400,000, including bonuses and a payoff. The sum is more than twice the prime minister’s salary. Read article
Telegraph – Prince Bernhard, the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party, a new book has claimed, contracting the German-born Dutch war hero’s life-long denials. “Bernhard, a secret history” has revealed that the prince was a member of the German Nazi party until 1934, three years before he married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands. Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, has found membership documents in Berlin’s Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung. Read article
BBC – Voters in Iceland have overwhelmingly rejected proposals to pay the UK and the Netherlands in the wake of collapse of the Icesave bank.With a third of results counted, 93% of voters said “No” in a referendum. Iceland’s prime minister says her government will remain in office and continue to seek a repayment deal. The British and Dutch governments want reimbursement for the 3.8bn euros (£3.4bn; $5.2bn) they paid out in compensation to customers in 2008. Read Article
The Independent – A car bomb exploded in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf on today, killing four Iranian pilgrims a day before a parliamentary election that Islamist insurgents have vowed to wreck with violence, officials said. The blast gutted two tour buses parked near the Imam Ali shrine, which draws millions of Shi’ite faithful from Iraq and Iran each year. Salim Nema, a Najaf health official, said the attack wounded 54 people, including 17 Iraqis and 37 Iranians. Read article
Reuters – The Obama administration on Friday sought to limit fallout from a resolution branding the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as “genocide,” and vowed to stop it from going further in Congress. Turkey was infuriated and recalled its ambassador after a House of Representatives committee on Thursday approved the nonbinding measure condemning killings that took place nearly 100 years ago, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Read article
Telegraph – Heydar Aliyev, the son of Ilham Aliyev, the oil-rich country’s president, allegedly spent almost £30 million (US$44 million) on nine waterfront mansions in the southern Gulf emirate earlier this year, reports said. The boy, who was 11 at the time, made the purchase in the Palm Jumeirah development over two weeks, the Washington Post reported on Friday. Heydar’s name and his date of birth appeared on Dubai Land Department records, which were obtained by the paper. The details listed on the property records were the same as those of the son of the former Soviet Republic’s president, whose annual salary is about £150,000 ($228,000). Read article
