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Monday, December 5, 2011
Dan Walters: Tangled political web could trap California cities on redevelopment (Sacramento Bee)
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Iran says oil would go over $250 if exports banned (Reuters)
TEHRAN (Reuters) ? Iran warned the West on Sunday any move to block its oil exports would more than double crude prices with devastating consequences on a fragile global economy.
"As soon as such an issue is raised seriously the oil price would soar to above $250 a barrel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in a newspaper interview.
The comments come as Iran strives to contain international reaction to the storming of the British embassy last week, a move which drew immediate condemnation from around the world and may galvanize support for tougher action against Tehran.
Washington and EU countries were already discussing measures to restrict oil exports after the United Nations nuclear watchdog issued a report in November with what it said was evidence that Tehran had worked on designing an atom bomb.
Iran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.
The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank
-- which takes payment for the 2.6 million barrels Iran exports a day. The European Union is considering a ban -- already in place in the United States -- on Iranian oil imports.
So far neither Washington nor Brussels has finalized its move against the oil trade or the central bank amid fears of the possible impact on the global economy of restricting oil flows from the world's fifth biggest exporter.
But the British embassy attack dragged relations with Europe to a long-time low and Iran is now facing rising rhetoric about a direct hit on its main source of foreign earnings.
Until recently, Iran had dismissed as ineffective mounting sanctions aimed at forcing it to halt its nuclear activities. Mehmanparast's comments show a more defensive stance.
"No one welcomes the sanctions, we know that sanctions create obstacles, but we want to say we will overcome these obstacles," Mehmanparast told Sharq daily.
"Imposing sanctions on oil and gas is among the sanctions that, if one wants to do that, the consequences should be fully considered before taking any action," Mehmanparast said.
"I do not think the situation in the world and especially in the West today is prepared enough to raise such discussions."
Britain's embassy in Tehran was ransacked on Tuesday after London announced unilateral sanctions on Iran's central bank. London evacuated staff, closed the embassy and the biggest EU states withdrew their ambassadors in protests.
Rising tensions were enough to push up crude prices with ICE Brent January crude up 95 cents on Friday to settle at $109.94 a barrel.
Mehmanparast warned the EU on Saturday to avoid tying itself to British interests.
(Reporting by Ramin Mostafavi; Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Maria Golovnina)
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Romney faces 2 big rivals: Gingrich and Obama (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Suddenly Mitt Romney is fighting a two-front political war.
The Republican presidential contender has skated along for much of the year as GOP challengers surged and faded. But now he faces an unexpected, more serious threat from Newt Gingrich ? just as Barack Obama's team is sharpening its criticism of Romney, whom the president's aides view as his likeliest foe next fall.
With only a month before the Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating fight, Gingrich's rise has forced Romney's campaign to evaluate a new reality: He no longer has the luxury of staying above the Republican primary fray, avoiding tough questions about his own record and hammering Obama at will while essentially ignoring his GOP rivals.
Well aware of the new challenge, Romney has started fighting back against two opponents from opposite ends of the political spectrum ? no easy feat ? while also defending himself from continuing criticism of reversals, equivocations and shifts on a range of issues.
What does he have to say now about Gingrich?
"He's a lifelong politician," Romney declared this week, signaling his intention to go after the former House speaker and long-time Washington insider in hopes of knocking him off course. Romney also is set to air his first television commercials on Friday in Iowa, where polls show Gingrich and Romney locked in a tight race. It's another indication of how seriously Romney is taking the Georgian's rise.
Gingrich sought Thursday to stay above board, telling The Associated Press while campaigning in Iowa, "I'm not going to focus on Romney or anybody else." He made the comment just days after saying in South Carolina that he was "a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney" and added: "It's wrong to go around and adopt radically different positions based on your need of any one election."
Romney also has started subtly contrasting his character with Gingrich's once rocky private life. He said on Fox News that he's a person "who has devoted his life to his family, to his faith, to his country."
At the same time, Romney intends to keep the heat on Obama, convinced that his best chance at clinching the GOP nomination is to persuade Republican primary voters that he's the strongest candidate to take on the Democratic incumbent on their biggest issue, the economy, next fall.
Romney's response was swift when the Democratic National Committee rolled out TV ads this week attacking Romney for flip-flopping on a series of issues, including abortion and health care.
The Republican's team quickly organized conference calls with top supporters in about a dozen states ? a demonstration of organizing power meant to serve as a warning to both Gingrich and Obama.
"They don't want to see me as the nominee, that's for sure," Romney chided in response to the ads. "It shows that they're awfully afraid of facing me in the general election. They want to throw the primary process to anybody but me, but bring it on. We're ready for them."
Obama's aides privately say they see Romney as the Republican most likely to win the party's nomination and they have been flummoxed that no GOP rival has gone after him aggressively. By stepping up the heat, the president's aides hope to bloody Romney so he emerges from the GOP fight as a damaged nominee. Or, in what many Democrats view as a less-likely scenario, the Republicans would pick a candidate who would be weaker in the general election.
Gingrich has advantages of his own, in the primary fight or a general election. He's universally known within the GOP with broad grassroots support, and he has a deep grasp of policy issues.
"Conservatives now have a credible, nationally known alternative in Gingrich," said longtime GOP consultant Rick Wilson, who works in Florida. "That's more of a problem for Romney than some other candidates have posed."
But Gingrich lacks any significant campaign organization after his staff resigned en masse in June. His fundraising dried up, and his campaign is still paying off debts from earlier this year. He also carries personal baggage ? including two divorces and acknowledged infidelity ? that could turn off conservative Republicans in Iowa, where voters will first choose among Romney, Gingrich and their rivals. And he has some political problems, having backed proposals now considered conservative apostasy such as an individual mandate for Americans to buy health insurance.
All that opens the way for Romney to employ a strategy he used as other, more conservative alternatives to him have risen and fallen over the past six months. As in those cases, Romney's campaign expects the media to shine a light on Gingrich's long record. The campaign also has spent much of the year compiling research to criticize rivals who rise to challenge him ? and never stopped plotting for Gingrich despite the former speaker's summer problems.
Romney allies say his campaign started picking up early on Gingrich's surge by noting he was frequently the second choice among Republicans who preferred a different conservative candidate to the former Massachusetts governor.
Either by coincidence or by design, other candidates also have started helping Romney.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning candidate with a big bank account, rolled out a blistering online video this week ? that may eventually end up on TV ? accusing Gingrich of "serial hypocrisy." The spot showed Gingrich alongside former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democratic boogeyman to Republicans.
But time is not on Romney's side as it was when other rivals ? Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain among them ? enjoyed bursts of momentum only to fall after missteps.
Until now, Romney's biggest challenge this year had come from Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He entered the race in August, months after signaling he probably would run. That gave Romney's campaign plenty of time to prepare. When Perry immediately rose to the top of polls, Romney castigated him as a career politician, much as he's doing with Gingrich now. If that didn't work, Romney still had four months before the Iowa caucuses to try to take Perry down. It helped that Perry was unknown to much of the primary electorate, so Romney could help define him in voters' minds.
Perry ended up fading without Romney having to seriously engage for much more than week.
But only four weeks remain before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, and Gingrich, who has risen steadily in polls nationally and in early voting states, already is known nationally. That will make it much more difficult for Romney to define him.
Still, Romney is counting on his superior campaign organization, which is designed to keep him in the race for the long haul by winning significant numbers of key convention delegates even if he loses in a particular state.
As Romney faces more scrutiny in the coming weeks, one of his main challenges will be to keep his well-known defensiveness in check.
For the better part of a year, his campaign has executed a steady strategy vastly different from his reactive, aggressive and unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid. So far, Romney has been able to watch his rivals cut each other down on the debate stage and elsewhere, while he has barely been forced to defend himself. He kept his cool as one conservative rival after another rose to potentially challenge his long-held position as the GOP field's most plausible nominee.
But there are signs that Romney's temper may be rising along with the pressure of waging two political fights.
In a Fox News interview this week, anchor Bret Baier pressed Romney on being on both sides of issues, including climate change, immigration, abortion and gay rights. And Romney appeared irritated, telling Baier: "Your list is just not accurate. So, one, we're going to have to be better informed about my views on issues."
The coming weeks will tell whether Romney can withstand the scrutiny ? and wage two fights at once.
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Saturday, December 3, 2011
UK media inquiry a lesson in tabloid skullduggery
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, arrives at the High Court in London to give evidence to judge Brian Leveson's inquiry, which was established to examine media ethics and practices and recommend changes to Britain's system of media self-regulation, Wednesday Nov. 30, 2011. Campbell told Britain's media ethics inquiry Wednesday that a minority of journalists have turned the country's press "putrid" and tarnished the whole industry. (AP Photo/Stefan Rousseau, PA) UNITED KINGDOM OUT
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, arrives at the High Court in London to give evidence to judge Brian Leveson's inquiry, which was established to examine media ethics and practices and recommend changes to Britain's system of media self-regulation, Wednesday Nov. 30, 2011. Campbell told Britain's media ethics inquiry Wednesday that a minority of journalists have turned the country's press "putrid" and tarnished the whole industry. (AP Photo/Stefan Rousseau, PA) UNITED KINGDOM OUT
Former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan arrives to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry, Britain's media ethics inquiry, in central London, Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011. McMullan made a rare, robust defense of phone hacking, saying that eavesdropping on voicemails was a "perfectly acceptable tool" to help journalists uncover stories. (AP Photo/PA, John Stillwell) UNITED KINGDOM OUT, NO SALES, NO ARCHIVE
British reporter Nick Davies of the Guardian newspaper arrives at the High Court, to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry in central London Tuesday Nov. 29, 2011. Top journalists involved with the phone hacking scandal are expected to expose some secrets of the trade at the Leveson inquiry. Three are set to testify, including ex-News of the World reporter Paul McMullan and the Guardian's Nick Davies, who has exposed much of the press wrongdoing. The committee has heard about rampant abuse in its search for a new way to regulate the press. (AP Photo/John Stillwell/PA Wire) UNITED KINGDOM OUT
LONDON (AP) ? Hacking into celebrity phones was just the sleazy tip of the iceberg.
Britain's media ethics inquiry, set up in response to illegal eavesdropping by a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, has turned out to be a masterclass in skullduggery that has exposed the murky practices of the U.K.'s muckraking press.
This week, witnesses described how Murdoch's company had destroyed their lives and that of their families, with reporters targeting critics for spying and negative coverage, and sullying the name of an innocent man.
"We have a press that has just become frankly putrid in many of its elements," Alastair Campbell, former tabloid journalist and longtime communications aide to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, told the tribunal this week.
Few would disagree after listening to the nationally televised testimony describing the excesses of a callous, sometimes criminal, press.
The judge-led inquiry was set up after it emerged that Murdoch's News of the World had for years illegally eavesdropped on the voicemail messages of celebrities, public figures and crime victims. The scandal forced Murdoch to shut down the 168-year-old tabloid. A dozen Murdoch employees have been arrested in the case, which also cost the jobs of several of his top executives, two senior police officers and Prime Minister David Cameron's communications chief.
The inquiry has put Murdoch's empire on trial, as witnesses described their treatment at the hands of an organization they viewed as unassailably powerful, ruthless and feared.
Former child singing sensation Charlotte Church described how she was invited to perform at Murdoch's wedding on a yacht in New York when she was 13. She said she was offered a 100,000 pound (roughly $160,000) payment, but was told if she waived the fee that Murdoch's papers would look favorably on her.
Church, now 25, told the inquiry that she really wanted to take the money, but was told by her managers it would be worthwhile to give up the fee ? which would have been her highest payment ever then ? to cultivate Murdoch's support.
She said she was told "that he was a very, very powerful man" who could do her career a world of good ? if he wanted to.
But any tabloid goodwill she earned was short-lived. Church said media scrutiny increased to unbearable levels as she entered her teens. As she approached her 16th birthday, she said Murdoch's The Sun tabloid featured on its website a "countdown clock" timed to the day when she would be able to legally have sex ? an allegation the newspaper denies.
Later, a tabloid reported that Church was pregnant before she had even told her parents, news she felt had to come from reporters hacking into her phone. On another occasion the News of the World reported on her father's extramarital affair under the headline "Church's three in a bed cocaine shock." Church said her mother had attempted suicide partly as a result of this invasion of privacy.
Murdoch's News International has denied Church's version of events surrounding her performance at Murdoch's wedding, and her agent at the time, Jonathan Shalit, said she was not offered a choice between a fee and good press.
He said Church was not offered a fee and performed for free, as she had done for Prince Charles and President Bill Clinton. But he said publicity from these appearances helped launch her career in the United States, which was his plan.
"When you sing for these people you get added benefits for your career," he said.
Church was one of a slew of celebrities, including actor Hugh Grant, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and actress Sienna Miller, who have sat in the witness box at London's Royal Courts of Justice and described stakeouts and snatched photos, leaked medical details and midnight pursuits ? all justified, in the tabloids' eyes, because the people they were pursuing were famous.
Ian Hargreaves, professor of digital economy and former director of the journalism school at the University of Cardiff, said the hearings have had a profound impact on the public psyche ? and on Britain's political class ? by revealing so much about how part of British press works.
"It's been a process of revelation, based on firsthand testimony," he said. "A lot of journalists feel it has been one-sided, but processes that have been known about and talked about in private are suddenly being talked about on a big public stage."
Hearings continue into the new year, and justice Brian Leveson and his panel hope to issue a report by late 2012 that could recommend major changes to Britain's system of media self-regulation.
So far, the most strident defense of tabloids ? and the week's most jaw-dropping testimony ? came from unrepentant former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan. He described chasing celebrities' cars as "good fun," called phone hacking "a perfectly acceptable tool" of the trade and dismissed privacy as "the space bad people need to do bad things in."
He also said celebrities should stop complaining and be grateful for the attention of paparazzi.
The inquiry has also shown that it's not just celebrities who find themselves in the tabloids' sights. The parents of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was abducted and murdered in 2002, described how the News of the World's hacking of Milly's phone, and the deletion of voicemail messages, had given them false hope that their daughter was still alive.
This week Christopher Jefferies, a retired teacher arrested on suspicion of murder in a high-profile case a year ago, described how his life had been wrecked by "smears, innuendo and complete fiction" in articles that painted him as a voyeuristic eccentric, or worse.
Jefferies was released without charge, and another man has been convicted of the killing. Jefferies successfully sued eight newspapers ? including Murdoch's The Sun tabloid ? for libel, but said he would "never fully recover from the events of the last year."
"There will always be people who don't know me who will retain the impression that I'm some sort of weird character who is probably best avoided," he said.
The inquiry has also heard claims the Murdoch empire used negative articles and even espionage against its critics. Former TV host Anne Diamond recounted how she had asked Murdoch during a 1980s interview "how could he sleep at night" knowing his newspapers ruined people's lives.
She said after that "there were consistent negative stories about me in Mr. Murdoch's newspapers."
One glaring example was a story in The Sun headlined "Anne Diamond killed my father," about a fatal road accident she had been involved in years before. The same newspaper took pictures of Diamond carrying the coffin of her infant son at his funeral, despite her plea for the press to stay away out of respect for the family's grief.
Mark Lewis, a lawyer who has represented high-profile hacking victims, testified that he was put under surveillance by a private investigator working for Murdoch's News International. The surveillance, apparently in search of material to discredit him, included following and filming his 14-year-old daughter.
"That was truly horrific, that my daughter was videoed, was followed by a detective with a camera," Lewis said. "That shouldn't happen to anybody's child."
___
Associated Press writer Robert Barr contributed to this report.
Online: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk
Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless
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Thawing permafrost vents gases to worsen warming (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Massive amounts of greenhouse gases trapped below thawing permafrost will likely seep into the air over the next several decades, accelerating and amplifying global warming, scientists warn.
Those heat-trapping gases under the frozen Arctic ground may be a bigger factor in global warming than the cutting down of forests, and a scenario that climate scientists hadn't quite accounted for, according to a group of permafrost experts. The gases won't contribute as much as pollution from power plants, cars, trucks and planes, though.
The permafrost scientists predict that over the next three decades a total of about 45 billion metric tons of carbon from methane and carbon dioxide will seep into the atmosphere when permafrost thaws during summers. That's about the same amount of heat-trapping gas the world spews during five years of burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels
And the picture is even more alarming for the end of the century. The scientists calculate that about than 300 billion metric tons of carbon will belch from the thawing Earth from now until 2100.
Adding in that gas means that warming would happen "20 to 30 percent faster than from fossil fuel emissions alone," said Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "You are significantly speeding things up by releasing this carbon."
Usually the first few to several inches of permafrost thaw in the summer, but scientists are now looking at up to 10 feet of soft unfrozen ground because of warmer temperatures, he said. The gases come from decaying plants that have been stuck below frozen ground for millennia.
Schuur and 40 other scientists in the Permafrost Carbon Research Network met this summer and jointly wrote up their findings, which were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
"The survey provides an important warning that global climate warming is likely to be worse than expected," said Jay Zwally, a NASA polar scientist who wasn't part of the study. "Arctic permafrost has been like a wild card."
When the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists issued its last full report in 2007, it didn't even factor in trapped methane and carbon dioxide from beneath the permafrost. Diplomats are meeting this week in South Africa to find ways of curbing human-made climate change.
Schuur and others said increasing amounts of greenhouse gas are seeping out of permafrost each year. Some is methane, which is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.
In a recent video, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Katey Walter Anthony, a study co-author, is shown setting leaking methane gas on fire with flames shooting far above her head.
"Places like that are all around," Anthony said in a phone interview. "We're tapping into old carbon that has been locked up in the ground for 30,000 to 40,000 years."
That triggers what Anthony and other scientists call a feedback cycle. The world warms, mostly because of human-made greenhouse gases. That thaws permafrost, releasing more natural greenhouse gas, augmenting the warming.
There are lots of unknowns and a large margin of error because this is a relatively new issue with limited data available, the scientists acknowledge.
"It's very much a seat-of-the-pants expert assessment," said Stanford University's Chris Field, who wasn't involved in the new report.
The World Meteorological Organization this week said the worst of the warming in 2011 was in the northern areas ? where there is permafrost ? and especially Russia. Since 1970, the Arctic has warmed at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
The thawing permafrost also causes trees to lean ? scientists call them "drunken trees" ? and roads to buckle. Study co-author F. Stuart Chapin III said when he first moved to Fairbanks the road from his house to the University of Alaska had to be resurfaced once a decade.
"Now it gets resurfaced every year due to thawing permafrost," Chapin said.
___
Online:
Nature: www.nature.com/nature
Permafrost network: http://bit.ly/uSOvLR
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Friday, December 2, 2011
Brew the perfect Cup o? Joe with Coffee Timer! for iPhone
Coffee Timer! for iPhone is here to assist you in brewing the perfect cup of coffee. If you know how much coffee or water you plan to use, Coffee Timer will give you the correct measurement of the other ingredient and tell you exactly how long it takes to...
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