Arizona Law Reveals Split Within G.O.P.
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/politics/22immig.html?th&emc=th
LOS ANGELES — Republican lawmakers and candidates are increasingly divided over illegal immigration — torn between the need to attract Latino support, especially at the ballot box, and rallying party members who support tougher action.
Arizona’s new measure, which requires that the police check the documents of anyone they stop or detain whom they suspect of being in the country illegally, has forced politicians far and wide to take a stance. But unlike in Washington, where a consensus exists among establishment Republicans, the fault lines in the states — where the issue is even more visceral and immediate — are not predictable.
Conservative Republican governors like Jim Gibbons of Nevada, Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia and Rick Perry of Texas have criticized the Arizona law. But some more moderate Republicans, like Tom Campbell, who is running in the party’s Senate primary in California, have supported it.
The decision on whether to support or oppose the law can have almost immediate political consequences. The latest evidence may be Meg Whitman’s declining fortunes.
For months, Ms. Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, enjoyed a substantial lead over her principal rival for the Republican nomination for governor of California, Steve Poizner. But in recent weeks, she has seen her advantage slip significantly, in no small part because Mr. Poizner has hammered her on her opposition to the Arizona law.
Finding herself increasingly on the defensive on the issue, Ms. Whitman even proclaims in a new advertisement: “I’m 100 percent against amnesty for illegal immigrants. Period.”
Nonetheless, a poll released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California showed her advantage falling 23 percentage points since March, down to 38 percent versus 29 for Mr. Poizner.
In states with hotly contested elections, several Republican candidates are finding their positions mobile, reflecting the delicacy of the issue and a growing body of polls that suggest many voters support the Arizona law.
In Florida, for instance, Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is running for governor, now says he approves of the law, though he called it “far out” two weeks ago; Marco Rubio, the state’s Republican Senate nominee, has also shifted his stance.
State Republicans now find themselves in a balancing act, trying to seize a moment of Congressional stalemate to demonstrate leadership while not repelling voters on either side of the debate, a challenge that is particularly daunting for those in a primary fight.
“I think we need to be very careful about immigration,” said Karl Rove, the former adviser to President George W. Bush. “I applaud Arizona for taking action, but I think the rhetoric on all sides ought to be lowered.”
Mr. Rove and other strategists who worked for Mr. Bush were proponents of an immigration overhaul that included a path to legal status.
At the same time, state legislatures are racing to create their own laws, making it more likely than ever that the nation will end up with a patchwork of state legislation instead of a comprehensive national approach in the next year or two.
In the first three months of this year, legislators in 45 states introduced 1,180 bills and resolutions relating to immigration; 107 laws have passed, compared with 222 in all of 2009, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.
“The kindling has been lit in the states,” said Matthew Dowd, a political consultant from Texas who was the chief strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.
“With immigration, the choices you have to make are hard, and most people in Washington don’t really like to make hard choices,” he added. “Hard choices are much more often made in the states.”
Democrats have their own problems with the issue. Some more left-leaning factions prefer a path to legal status for illegal immigrants without the tough enforcement measures that Democrats in Congress have proposed.
But the divisions appear more acute among Republicans, some of whom fear that the party will become identified with punitive immigration laws at a time when Hispanics are a growing part of the electorate — particularly in emergent battleground states like Colorado and Nevada.
“I am a grandson of an Irish immigrant,” Mr. McDonnell of Virginia said in an e-mail message. “The Hispanic population in this country contributes to our culture, economic prosperity and quality of life.”
Republicans who are not facing primary challenges are far more likely to take a more moderate view of immigration, and many, particularly in border states, are aware that business groups that depend on illegal immigrants for labor support a comprehensive immigration overhaul.
“If I am running in a primary without opposition, I have the luxury of not having to worry about what I say on this issue,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politicsat the University of Southern California.
The dynamics of immigration politics vary vastly by state, even among those with heavy immigrant populations, and can reflect local concerns. In Texas, for instance, Latinos have a lot of political influence and have elected candidates for many years. The population there is often closely aligned with the political leadership of some cities and even with state government.
In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, who faces a Republican primary challenge, was under extreme pressure from her own party for advocating a tax increase, something now seen as largely mitigated by her signing of the immigration bill.
But it is also true that a spate of new polls show support, although tempered, for the state’s tough new immigration law, which is clearly weighing on the minds of candidates.
In a recent New York Times/CBS poll, 57 percent of the 1,079 adults queried said the federal government should determine the laws on illegal immigration, and 51 percent said the Arizona law was “about right” in its approach to the problem.
In a poll released by the Pew Research Center this month, 59 percent of 994 respondents said they approved of the Arizona law, while 32 percent disapproved. An Associated Press/Univision poll found that 42 percent of those asked favored the Arizona law and 24 percent opposed it.
“It is really how you ask the question,” said Sarah Taylor, who was Mr. Bush’s political affairs director. “And it is tied up in people’s feelings about their own family’s immigration experience, and then you have elements of race.”
While the federal government ponders, numerous states have already moved to emulate Arizona’s law, while others have moved forward with other measures, from laws that prohibit driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants to those that improve classes for immigrant children in public schools.
The issue is likely to be a problem for both parties throughout this election year.
“People like Perry and McDonnell and others realize this is a very divisive issue for our party,” said Linda Chavez, the Republican chairwoman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative research organization, referring to the governors of Texas and Virginia. “The fact is, you can’t secure the borders if you don’t fix immigration, because the two go hand in hand.”
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Facebook caught sending user info to advertisers
Facebook caught sending user info to advertisers
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
Published on May 21, 2010 5:40 AM
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/05/facebook-myspace-send-user-info-to-advertisers.html
Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal | Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent.
The practice, which most of the companies defended, sent user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users clicked on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code.
Advertising companies were given information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person's real name, age, hometown and occupation.
Several large advertising companies identified by the Journal as receiving the data, including Google Inc.'s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.'s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it.
Across the Web, it's common for advertisers to receive the address of the page from which a user clicked on an ad. Usually, they receive nothing more about the user than an unintelligible string of letters and numbers that can't be traced back to an individual. With social networking sites, however, those addresses typically include user names that could direct advertisers back to a profile page full of personal information.
Most social networks haven't bothered to obscure user names or ID numbers from their Web addresses, said Craig Wills, a professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who has studied the issue.
The sites may have been breaching their own privacy policies as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn't share and advertisers shouldn't collect personally identifiable information without users' permission. Those policies have been put forward by advertising and Internet companies in arguments against the need for government regulation.
The problem comes as social networking sites--and in particular Facebook--face increasing scrutiny over their privacy practices from consumers, privacy advocates and lawmakers.
At the same time, lawmakers are preparing legislation to govern websites' tactics for collecting information about consumers, and the way that information is used to target ads.
In addition to Facebook and MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg also sent advertising companies the user name or ID number of the page being visited when a user clicked on an ad. Twitter also was found to pass Web addresses including user names of a profile being visited on Twitter.com.
Facebook went further than other sites, in some cases sending data on the person clicking on the ad as well as information on the page being viewed.
In the case of sites other than Facebook, the data identified the profile page being viewed, not necessarily the person who clicked on the ad or the link.
Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies Internet advertising, reviewed the code on the seven sites at the request of the Journal.
"If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are," he said of how Facebook operated before the fix. Mr. Edelman said he had sent a letter on Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission asking them to investigate Facebook's practices specifically.
The sharing of users' personally identifiable data was first flagged in a paper by researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute last August. The paper, which drew little attention at the time, evaluated practices at 12 social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and found multiple ways that outside companies could access user data.
The researchers said in an interview they had contacted the sites, which some sites confirmed. But nine months later, the issue still exists.
The issue is particularly significant for Facebook on two fronts: the company has been pushing users to make more of their personal information public and the site requires users to use their actual names when registering on the site.
A Facebook spokesman acknowledged it has been passing data to ad companies that could allow them to tell if a particular user was clicking an ad. After being contacted by the Journal, Facebook said it changed its software to eliminate the identifying code tied to the user from being transmitted.
"We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad," a Facebook spokesman said. "We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it."
The company said it also has been testing changing the formatting for the text it shares with advertisers so that it doesn't pass through any user names or IDs.
"As is common with advertising across the web, the data that is sent in a referrer URL includes information about the web page the click came from," the Facebook spokesman said. "This may include the user ID of the page but not the person who clicked on the ad. We don't consider this personally identifiable information and our policy does not allow advertisers to collect user information without the user's consent."
MySpace, Hi5, Digg, Xanga and Live Journal said they don't consider their user names or ID numbers to be personally identifiable, because unlike Facebook, consumers are not required to submit their real names when signing up for an account. They also said since they are passing along the user name of the page the ad is on, not for the person clicking on the ad, there is nothing advertisers can do with the data beyond seeing on what page their ad appeared.
MySpace said in a statement it is only sharing the ID name users create for the site, which permits access only to the information that a user makes publicly available on the site.
Nevertheless, a MySpace spokeswoman said the site is "currently implementing a methodology that will obfuscate the 'FriendID' in any URL that is passed along to advertisers."
A Twitter spokeswoman said passing along the Web address happens when people click a link from any Web page. "This is just how the Internet and browsers work," she said.
Although Digg said it masks a user's name when they click on an ad and scrambles data before sharing with outside advertising companies, the site does pass along user names to ad companies when a user visits a profile page. "It's the information about the page that you are visiting, not you as a visitor," said Chas Edwards, Digg's chief revenue officer.
The advertising companies say they don't control the information a website chooses to send them. "Google doesn't seek in any way to make any use of any user names or IDs that their URLs may contain," a Google spokesman said in a statement.
"We prohibit clients from sending personally identifiably information to us," said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president of global policy and head of privacy. "We have told them. .. We don't want it. You shouldn't be sending it to us. If it happens to be there, we are not looking for it."
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
Published on May 21, 2010 5:40 AM
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/05/facebook-myspace-send-user-info-to-advertisers.html
Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal | Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent.
The practice, which most of the companies defended, sent user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users clicked on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code.
Advertising companies were given information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person's real name, age, hometown and occupation.
Several large advertising companies identified by the Journal as receiving the data, including Google Inc.'s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.'s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it.
Across the Web, it's common for advertisers to receive the address of the page from which a user clicked on an ad. Usually, they receive nothing more about the user than an unintelligible string of letters and numbers that can't be traced back to an individual. With social networking sites, however, those addresses typically include user names that could direct advertisers back to a profile page full of personal information.
Most social networks haven't bothered to obscure user names or ID numbers from their Web addresses, said Craig Wills, a professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who has studied the issue.
The sites may have been breaching their own privacy policies as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn't share and advertisers shouldn't collect personally identifiable information without users' permission. Those policies have been put forward by advertising and Internet companies in arguments against the need for government regulation.
The problem comes as social networking sites--and in particular Facebook--face increasing scrutiny over their privacy practices from consumers, privacy advocates and lawmakers.
At the same time, lawmakers are preparing legislation to govern websites' tactics for collecting information about consumers, and the way that information is used to target ads.
In addition to Facebook and MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg also sent advertising companies the user name or ID number of the page being visited when a user clicked on an ad. Twitter also was found to pass Web addresses including user names of a profile being visited on Twitter.com.
Facebook went further than other sites, in some cases sending data on the person clicking on the ad as well as information on the page being viewed.
In the case of sites other than Facebook, the data identified the profile page being viewed, not necessarily the person who clicked on the ad or the link.
Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies Internet advertising, reviewed the code on the seven sites at the request of the Journal.
"If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are," he said of how Facebook operated before the fix. Mr. Edelman said he had sent a letter on Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission asking them to investigate Facebook's practices specifically.
The sharing of users' personally identifiable data was first flagged in a paper by researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute last August. The paper, which drew little attention at the time, evaluated practices at 12 social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and found multiple ways that outside companies could access user data.
The researchers said in an interview they had contacted the sites, which some sites confirmed. But nine months later, the issue still exists.
The issue is particularly significant for Facebook on two fronts: the company has been pushing users to make more of their personal information public and the site requires users to use their actual names when registering on the site.
A Facebook spokesman acknowledged it has been passing data to ad companies that could allow them to tell if a particular user was clicking an ad. After being contacted by the Journal, Facebook said it changed its software to eliminate the identifying code tied to the user from being transmitted.
"We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad," a Facebook spokesman said. "We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it."
The company said it also has been testing changing the formatting for the text it shares with advertisers so that it doesn't pass through any user names or IDs.
"As is common with advertising across the web, the data that is sent in a referrer URL includes information about the web page the click came from," the Facebook spokesman said. "This may include the user ID of the page but not the person who clicked on the ad. We don't consider this personally identifiable information and our policy does not allow advertisers to collect user information without the user's consent."
MySpace, Hi5, Digg, Xanga and Live Journal said they don't consider their user names or ID numbers to be personally identifiable, because unlike Facebook, consumers are not required to submit their real names when signing up for an account. They also said since they are passing along the user name of the page the ad is on, not for the person clicking on the ad, there is nothing advertisers can do with the data beyond seeing on what page their ad appeared.
MySpace said in a statement it is only sharing the ID name users create for the site, which permits access only to the information that a user makes publicly available on the site.
Nevertheless, a MySpace spokeswoman said the site is "currently implementing a methodology that will obfuscate the 'FriendID' in any URL that is passed along to advertisers."
A Twitter spokeswoman said passing along the Web address happens when people click a link from any Web page. "This is just how the Internet and browsers work," she said.
Although Digg said it masks a user's name when they click on an ad and scrambles data before sharing with outside advertising companies, the site does pass along user names to ad companies when a user visits a profile page. "It's the information about the page that you are visiting, not you as a visitor," said Chas Edwards, Digg's chief revenue officer.
The advertising companies say they don't control the information a website chooses to send them. "Google doesn't seek in any way to make any use of any user names or IDs that their URLs may contain," a Google spokesman said in a statement.
"We prohibit clients from sending personally identifiably information to us," said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president of global policy and head of privacy. "We have told them. .. We don't want it. You shouldn't be sending it to us. If it happens to be there, we are not looking for it."
New York Times Editorial: The Being of Being
New York Times Editorial: The Being of Being
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fri4.html?ref=opinion
Why is there something instead of nothing? That is a child’s question, but it also haunts the imaginations of physicists and mathematicians. What they know is that the matter and antimatter created in the Big Bang should have canceled each other out, leaving nothing instead of the something we call the universe. Why that didn’t happen may have been partially revealed in a recent experiment in the Tevatron — a particle accelerator — at Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill.
We proceed gingerly when interpreting the results of high-energy physics experiments. The way it has been explained is that it all comes down to a very slight bias, an asymmetry, in the behavior of a subatomic particle, the neutral B-meson. As it oscillates between its matter and antimatter states, it shows a slight predilection for matter, a result predicted by Andrei Sakharov.
That preference for one state over another — becoming matter more readily than it becomes antimatter — is small, about 1 percent. But that may be enough to explain the preponderance of matter. We expect more news on this front from the Tevatron and its larger European cousin, the Large Hadron Collider.
What these physicists are searching for is a model of the universe and its origins. We are, as we know, made of stardust, of elements formed in the Big Bang and in the subsequent creation and destruction of stars. The very existence of this universal stuff called matter may depend on a slight bias in the frenetic variation of a particle we can only momentarily detect, in the hottest kilns humanity has so far created.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fri4.html?ref=opinion
Why is there something instead of nothing? That is a child’s question, but it also haunts the imaginations of physicists and mathematicians. What they know is that the matter and antimatter created in the Big Bang should have canceled each other out, leaving nothing instead of the something we call the universe. Why that didn’t happen may have been partially revealed in a recent experiment in the Tevatron — a particle accelerator — at Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill.
We proceed gingerly when interpreting the results of high-energy physics experiments. The way it has been explained is that it all comes down to a very slight bias, an asymmetry, in the behavior of a subatomic particle, the neutral B-meson. As it oscillates between its matter and antimatter states, it shows a slight predilection for matter, a result predicted by Andrei Sakharov.
That preference for one state over another — becoming matter more readily than it becomes antimatter — is small, about 1 percent. But that may be enough to explain the preponderance of matter. We expect more news on this front from the Tevatron and its larger European cousin, the Large Hadron Collider.
What these physicists are searching for is a model of the universe and its origins. We are, as we know, made of stardust, of elements formed in the Big Bang and in the subsequent creation and destruction of stars. The very existence of this universal stuff called matter may depend on a slight bias in the frenetic variation of a particle we can only momentarily detect, in the hottest kilns humanity has so far created.
New York Times Editorial: Murky Waters
New York Times Editorial: Murky Waters
Copyright by The New York Times Editorial: Murky Waters
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fri1.html?th&emc=th
Just about everything we know about the disastrous gulf oil spill we could have learned from Google Earth: thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico covered in oil slick or sheen, some of it headed for the Florida coast; almost 46,000 square miles, an area about the size of Pennsylvania, closed to fishing; miles of Louisiana marshland under siege from heavy oil.
But there is far more that we don’t know, either because the government has not extracted the information from BP or is not sharing it with the public.
Either way, this is a disservice to a nation with a strong public interest in knowing how bad this spill is. Each day seems to bring some alarming new disclosure. Even BP seems willing to concede that its 5,000-barrel-a-day estimate of the leak is much too small. Giant oil plumes mixed with seawater are reported to exist beneath the surface, but nobody in government seems to know how deep and broad they are and what fish species they may be damaging. If they know, they aren’t saying.
Here’s one thing we do know: Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat of Massachusetts, managed by the simple expedient of writing a letter to pry from BP a live feed of the oil gushing from the leak 5,000 feet below the surface. He showed it on Thursday, and scientists said the leak appeared much larger than advertised by BP. Mr. Markey’s staff said that independent scientists had asked for the same footage but BP had denied it.
As for the administration, The Times reported on Thursday that while the Environmental Protection Agency has taken water samples near the shoreline, which so far show minimal damage, it has yet to release findings from deeper waters. Some scientists have complained that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in those waters.
Sylvia Earle, the noted oceanographer and a former senior official at NOAA, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill that “it seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled” and where it is in the water column. Jane Lubchenco, an equally distinguished oceanographer who now runs the agency, said she was devoting “all possible” resources to finding out. One would have expected more by now — one month and counting since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
At issue here are two things we want from the Obama administration: transparency and toughness. The public needs to know everything the administration knows, in real time. If the administration is being kept in the dark by BP, the answer is to get tough with BP.
The administration was a bit slow off the mark, but deserves great credit for its response to the spill. It also is dealing with a big and defensive company whose financial interest lies in minimizing the damage.
But the credibility of the federal government is on the line. Each day brings not only depressing environmental news but fresh evidence of past regulatory failures by one government agency or another. The Minerals Management Service, in particular, ignored basic environmental laws like the Marine Mammals Protection Act and its own rules to fast-track applications by BP and other companies to drill in the deepwater gulf.
President Obama is expected to appoint a commission to investigate the spill, including its causes and the regulatory lapses that preceded it. Right now, the Minerals Management Service and the Coast Guard are basically investigating themselves — an untenable situation. The new commission should include experts who do not work for either government or industry, whose cozy relationship over the years is partly responsible for this mess we are in.
Copyright by The New York Times Editorial: Murky Waters
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fri1.html?th&emc=th
Just about everything we know about the disastrous gulf oil spill we could have learned from Google Earth: thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico covered in oil slick or sheen, some of it headed for the Florida coast; almost 46,000 square miles, an area about the size of Pennsylvania, closed to fishing; miles of Louisiana marshland under siege from heavy oil.
But there is far more that we don’t know, either because the government has not extracted the information from BP or is not sharing it with the public.
Either way, this is a disservice to a nation with a strong public interest in knowing how bad this spill is. Each day seems to bring some alarming new disclosure. Even BP seems willing to concede that its 5,000-barrel-a-day estimate of the leak is much too small. Giant oil plumes mixed with seawater are reported to exist beneath the surface, but nobody in government seems to know how deep and broad they are and what fish species they may be damaging. If they know, they aren’t saying.
Here’s one thing we do know: Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat of Massachusetts, managed by the simple expedient of writing a letter to pry from BP a live feed of the oil gushing from the leak 5,000 feet below the surface. He showed it on Thursday, and scientists said the leak appeared much larger than advertised by BP. Mr. Markey’s staff said that independent scientists had asked for the same footage but BP had denied it.
As for the administration, The Times reported on Thursday that while the Environmental Protection Agency has taken water samples near the shoreline, which so far show minimal damage, it has yet to release findings from deeper waters. Some scientists have complained that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in those waters.
Sylvia Earle, the noted oceanographer and a former senior official at NOAA, said Wednesday on Capitol Hill that “it seems baffling that we don’t know how much oil is being spilled” and where it is in the water column. Jane Lubchenco, an equally distinguished oceanographer who now runs the agency, said she was devoting “all possible” resources to finding out. One would have expected more by now — one month and counting since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
At issue here are two things we want from the Obama administration: transparency and toughness. The public needs to know everything the administration knows, in real time. If the administration is being kept in the dark by BP, the answer is to get tough with BP.
The administration was a bit slow off the mark, but deserves great credit for its response to the spill. It also is dealing with a big and defensive company whose financial interest lies in minimizing the damage.
But the credibility of the federal government is on the line. Each day brings not only depressing environmental news but fresh evidence of past regulatory failures by one government agency or another. The Minerals Management Service, in particular, ignored basic environmental laws like the Marine Mammals Protection Act and its own rules to fast-track applications by BP and other companies to drill in the deepwater gulf.
President Obama is expected to appoint a commission to investigate the spill, including its causes and the regulatory lapses that preceded it. Right now, the Minerals Management Service and the Coast Guard are basically investigating themselves — an untenable situation. The new commission should include experts who do not work for either government or industry, whose cozy relationship over the years is partly responsible for this mess we are in.
Facing a Rift, U.S. Spy Chief to Step Down
Facing a Rift, U.S. Spy Chief to Step Down
By MARK MAZZETTI
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/politics/21intel.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — Dennis C. Blair, whose often tumultuous tenure as director of national intelligence was marked by frequent clashes with White House officials and other spy chiefs in America’s still fractured intelligence apparatus, announced Thursday that he was resigning.
His exit after little more than a year comes as the White House is facing thorny decisions about Iran’s nuclear program, the future of Afghanistan and the spread of militancy from Pakistan’s tribal areas. It also fuels new doubts about the success, and wisdom, of the major intelligence overhaul in 2004 that created the spymaster position.
The White House did not announce Thursday who would succeed Mr. Blair, but a senior administration official said the likely candidate was James R. Clapper Jr., a retired Air Force lieutenant general and the Pentagon’s top intelligence official. Mr. Blair’s replacement will be the fourth intelligence director in five years.
The departure of Mr. Blair, a retired admiral, had been rumored for months, but was made official when President Obama called him Thursday and asked him to step down.
Mr. Blair’s relationship with the White House was rocky since the start of the Obama administration, and he fought a rear-guard action against efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency to cut down the size and power of the national intelligence director’s staff. He is the first high-ranking member of the Obama national security team to depart.
Mr. Blair’s departure could strengthen the hand of the C.I.A operatives, who have bristled at directives from Mr. Blair’s office. In recent months, Mr. Blair has been outspoken about reining in the C.I.A.’s covert activities, citing their propensity to backfire and tarnish America’s image.
The administration has largely embraced the C.I.A. operations, especially the agency’s campaign to kill militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas with drone aircraft.
Born out of the intelligence debacle before the Iraq war, the intelligence director’s post was intended to force greater cooperation within a hidebound intelligence bureaucracy, and to ensure that America’s spies were better equipped to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Yet most intelligence experts agree that the job has been troubled from the start, having little actual power over the operations and budget of a sprawling intelligence infrastructure that the Pentagon and C.I.A. still dominate. The vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget, nearly $50 billion, is spent on spy satellites and high-tech listening devices under Pentagon control.
In a statement released Thursday evening, Mr. Blair praised intelligence operatives for working “tirelessly to provide intelligence support for two wars and to prevent an attack on our homeland.”
In a statement Thursday, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Blair for “a remarkable record of service to the United States,” and said he had “served with great integrity, intellect, and commitment to our country and the values that we hold dear.”
Officials said that Mr. Obama called Mr. Blair on Thursday to ask for his resignation, but that the two men had several discussions in person about the subject this week. Their relationship has been characterized as professional but not close, and some administration officials said Mr. Blair often felt cut out of discussions about important security matters.
Tensions among the White House, the intelligence director and Congressional oversight committees escalated after a young Nigerian man nearly detonated a bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight on Dec. 25. White House officials openly criticized Mr. Blair and his staff for a litany of missed signals that could have prevented the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding the plane.
They laid particular blame on the National Counterterrorism Center, one agency that Mr. Blair supervises. A report released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee was particularly critical of the NCTC’s failures to piece together the information that could have put Mr. Abdulmutallab on a “no-fly” list.
American officials said that Mr. Blair had also angered the White House in recent months by pushing for closer intelligence ties to France, an arrangement opposed by Mr. Obama.
Some intelligence experts and Republican lawmakers say they believe that the White House has tried to micromanage America’s spy agencies, and there was a particularly tense relationship between Mr. Blair and John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism director.
But Mr. Blair also fought battles inside the intelligence ranks. Last summer, he clashed with Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, over the appointment of the senior American spies overseas. Mr. Panetta went so far as to issue a memorandum to C.I.A. operatives telling them to disregard a directive that Mr. Blair had sent a day earlier.
Mr. Blair, a Navy officer for decades, considered Mr. Panetta’s move an act of insubordination, intelligence officials said.
Peter Baker contributed reporting.
By MARK MAZZETTI
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/politics/21intel.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — Dennis C. Blair, whose often tumultuous tenure as director of national intelligence was marked by frequent clashes with White House officials and other spy chiefs in America’s still fractured intelligence apparatus, announced Thursday that he was resigning.
His exit after little more than a year comes as the White House is facing thorny decisions about Iran’s nuclear program, the future of Afghanistan and the spread of militancy from Pakistan’s tribal areas. It also fuels new doubts about the success, and wisdom, of the major intelligence overhaul in 2004 that created the spymaster position.
The White House did not announce Thursday who would succeed Mr. Blair, but a senior administration official said the likely candidate was James R. Clapper Jr., a retired Air Force lieutenant general and the Pentagon’s top intelligence official. Mr. Blair’s replacement will be the fourth intelligence director in five years.
The departure of Mr. Blair, a retired admiral, had been rumored for months, but was made official when President Obama called him Thursday and asked him to step down.
Mr. Blair’s relationship with the White House was rocky since the start of the Obama administration, and he fought a rear-guard action against efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency to cut down the size and power of the national intelligence director’s staff. He is the first high-ranking member of the Obama national security team to depart.
Mr. Blair’s departure could strengthen the hand of the C.I.A operatives, who have bristled at directives from Mr. Blair’s office. In recent months, Mr. Blair has been outspoken about reining in the C.I.A.’s covert activities, citing their propensity to backfire and tarnish America’s image.
The administration has largely embraced the C.I.A. operations, especially the agency’s campaign to kill militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas with drone aircraft.
Born out of the intelligence debacle before the Iraq war, the intelligence director’s post was intended to force greater cooperation within a hidebound intelligence bureaucracy, and to ensure that America’s spies were better equipped to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Yet most intelligence experts agree that the job has been troubled from the start, having little actual power over the operations and budget of a sprawling intelligence infrastructure that the Pentagon and C.I.A. still dominate. The vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget, nearly $50 billion, is spent on spy satellites and high-tech listening devices under Pentagon control.
In a statement released Thursday evening, Mr. Blair praised intelligence operatives for working “tirelessly to provide intelligence support for two wars and to prevent an attack on our homeland.”
In a statement Thursday, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Blair for “a remarkable record of service to the United States,” and said he had “served with great integrity, intellect, and commitment to our country and the values that we hold dear.”
Officials said that Mr. Obama called Mr. Blair on Thursday to ask for his resignation, but that the two men had several discussions in person about the subject this week. Their relationship has been characterized as professional but not close, and some administration officials said Mr. Blair often felt cut out of discussions about important security matters.
Tensions among the White House, the intelligence director and Congressional oversight committees escalated after a young Nigerian man nearly detonated a bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight on Dec. 25. White House officials openly criticized Mr. Blair and his staff for a litany of missed signals that could have prevented the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding the plane.
They laid particular blame on the National Counterterrorism Center, one agency that Mr. Blair supervises. A report released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee was particularly critical of the NCTC’s failures to piece together the information that could have put Mr. Abdulmutallab on a “no-fly” list.
American officials said that Mr. Blair had also angered the White House in recent months by pushing for closer intelligence ties to France, an arrangement opposed by Mr. Obama.
Some intelligence experts and Republican lawmakers say they believe that the White House has tried to micromanage America’s spy agencies, and there was a particularly tense relationship between Mr. Blair and John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism director.
But Mr. Blair also fought battles inside the intelligence ranks. Last summer, he clashed with Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, over the appointment of the senior American spies overseas. Mr. Panetta went so far as to issue a memorandum to C.I.A. operatives telling them to disregard a directive that Mr. Blair had sent a day earlier.
Mr. Blair, a Navy officer for decades, considered Mr. Panetta’s move an act of insubordination, intelligence officials said.
Peter Baker contributed reporting.
Dell Posts a 52% Increase in Profit, but Still Awaits a Wave of Corporate PC Buying
Dell Posts a 52% Increase in Profit, but Still Awaits a Wave of Corporate PC Buying
By ASHLEE VANCE
Copyright by Bloomberg News
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/technology/21dell.html?hpw
Dell presented Wall Street with tidy first-quarter results on Thursday, but the numbers lacked some of the luster presented by other technology bellwethers in recent weeks.
Like the others, Dell has depended on improving demand for computing equipment to climb out of the recession. Its first-quarter results showed rising sales across its major product lines and a much higher profit than at the same time last year.
Dell, however, continues to rely on large companies to buy new PCs, more than do other PC makers, and large companies still seem content with their old machines.
“Until corporate spending really comes back, Dell will remain in the penalty box,” said Ashok Kumar, a technology analyst with Rodman & Renshaw.
This familiar refrain has haunted Michael S. Dell, the company’s founder, since he returned more than three years ago as chief executive in a bid to turn Dell into a more diverse company.
In its first quarter, Dell based in Round Rock, Tex., posted a profit of $441 million, or 22 cents a share, a 52 percent rise from the same period last year. The hardware maker’s revenue increased 21 percent, to $14.87 billion from $12.34 billion. Excluding charges, Dell earned 30 cents a share.
Both the sales and earnings figures eclipsed the forecasts of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who had predicted earnings, excluding charges, of 27 cents and revenue of $14.27 billion.
Sales in most of Dell’s businesses surged when compared with the same quarter last year. Desktop PC sales, for example, rose 13 percent, while laptop sales rose 18 percent. Dell’s data center equipment business did particularly well with computer server and switch sales jumping 39 percent.
“We had a solid first quarter,” said Brian T. Gladden, the chief financial officer at Dell, in a telephone interview. “Demand has picked up, especially with our commercial customers.”
But the $14.87 billion in revenue remained well off the $16.07 billion in first-quarter revenue that Dell had reported two years ago before the recession hit hard. Other companies tied to the PC industry, like Microsoft and Intel, have recently posted record all-time sales figures, and Dell’s rival Hewlett-Packard also just reported results well above prerecession levels.
Analysts also noted that Dell’s profit margins fell from last year, and company executives said that higher component prices hurt it during the quarter.
During a down day for the market, shares of Dell fell 4.4 percent during regular trading on Thursday to $14.32, and dropped another 3 percent in after-hours trading to $13.93. Dell traded at $23.50 a share when Mr. Dell took back the chief executive position in early 2007.
According to Mr. Kumar, Dell has benefited from rising interest in the sales of things like servers, switches and storage systems to corporate customers but needs the PC refresh cycle to begin in earnest for Dell to post banner figures.
Dell boomed during the years in which companies refreshed their computers at a regular pace to keep up with faster chips and quickly evolving hardware. These days, though, many large organizations view the PC and its complementary software as static. Their updates of equipment have little to do with the latest release of Windows or a similar product.
“We used to churn our PCs every three years, but now we are out to four,” said Gerry McCartney, the chief information officer at Purdue University. “Frankly, the hardware isn’t changing as rapidly in performance as it was 10 years go.”
In addition, Dell was caught off guard by the rising interest in preconfigured laptops. Such machines could be made more cheaply at factories in China than at Dell’s factories, which specialized in customizing PCs on the fly. Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Asustek and others took advantage of the Chinese factories, and Dell has since been playing catch-up by shifting more of its business to contract manufacturers.
Mr. Dell has methodically been shifting Dell’s focus away from corporate PCs by increasing the company’s presence in retail outlets, buying storage and software companies and getting back into the mobile device market with phones and forthcoming tablet computers. Dell’s biggest diversity move came last year when it spent $3.9 billion to acquire Perot Systems, a services company.
Dell’s services revenue rose 32 percent to $2.79 billion, while its product revenue rose 18 percent to $12.09 billion, during the quarter.
Analysts have long said that Dell should benefit far more than most technology companies when companies finally start upgrading their four- and five-year-old computers. Mr. Gladden said that less than 5 percent of the commercial customers surveyed by Dell have upgraded to Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, which is thought to be the major PC refresh catalyst.
“I think it is still very early,” Mr. Gladden said. “There are a lot of good signs, and we are beginning to see the first stages of that refresh process.”
By ASHLEE VANCE
Copyright by Bloomberg News
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/technology/21dell.html?hpw
Dell presented Wall Street with tidy first-quarter results on Thursday, but the numbers lacked some of the luster presented by other technology bellwethers in recent weeks.
Like the others, Dell has depended on improving demand for computing equipment to climb out of the recession. Its first-quarter results showed rising sales across its major product lines and a much higher profit than at the same time last year.
Dell, however, continues to rely on large companies to buy new PCs, more than do other PC makers, and large companies still seem content with their old machines.
“Until corporate spending really comes back, Dell will remain in the penalty box,” said Ashok Kumar, a technology analyst with Rodman & Renshaw.
This familiar refrain has haunted Michael S. Dell, the company’s founder, since he returned more than three years ago as chief executive in a bid to turn Dell into a more diverse company.
In its first quarter, Dell based in Round Rock, Tex., posted a profit of $441 million, or 22 cents a share, a 52 percent rise from the same period last year. The hardware maker’s revenue increased 21 percent, to $14.87 billion from $12.34 billion. Excluding charges, Dell earned 30 cents a share.
Both the sales and earnings figures eclipsed the forecasts of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who had predicted earnings, excluding charges, of 27 cents and revenue of $14.27 billion.
Sales in most of Dell’s businesses surged when compared with the same quarter last year. Desktop PC sales, for example, rose 13 percent, while laptop sales rose 18 percent. Dell’s data center equipment business did particularly well with computer server and switch sales jumping 39 percent.
“We had a solid first quarter,” said Brian T. Gladden, the chief financial officer at Dell, in a telephone interview. “Demand has picked up, especially with our commercial customers.”
But the $14.87 billion in revenue remained well off the $16.07 billion in first-quarter revenue that Dell had reported two years ago before the recession hit hard. Other companies tied to the PC industry, like Microsoft and Intel, have recently posted record all-time sales figures, and Dell’s rival Hewlett-Packard also just reported results well above prerecession levels.
Analysts also noted that Dell’s profit margins fell from last year, and company executives said that higher component prices hurt it during the quarter.
During a down day for the market, shares of Dell fell 4.4 percent during regular trading on Thursday to $14.32, and dropped another 3 percent in after-hours trading to $13.93. Dell traded at $23.50 a share when Mr. Dell took back the chief executive position in early 2007.
According to Mr. Kumar, Dell has benefited from rising interest in the sales of things like servers, switches and storage systems to corporate customers but needs the PC refresh cycle to begin in earnest for Dell to post banner figures.
Dell boomed during the years in which companies refreshed their computers at a regular pace to keep up with faster chips and quickly evolving hardware. These days, though, many large organizations view the PC and its complementary software as static. Their updates of equipment have little to do with the latest release of Windows or a similar product.
“We used to churn our PCs every three years, but now we are out to four,” said Gerry McCartney, the chief information officer at Purdue University. “Frankly, the hardware isn’t changing as rapidly in performance as it was 10 years go.”
In addition, Dell was caught off guard by the rising interest in preconfigured laptops. Such machines could be made more cheaply at factories in China than at Dell’s factories, which specialized in customizing PCs on the fly. Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Asustek and others took advantage of the Chinese factories, and Dell has since been playing catch-up by shifting more of its business to contract manufacturers.
Mr. Dell has methodically been shifting Dell’s focus away from corporate PCs by increasing the company’s presence in retail outlets, buying storage and software companies and getting back into the mobile device market with phones and forthcoming tablet computers. Dell’s biggest diversity move came last year when it spent $3.9 billion to acquire Perot Systems, a services company.
Dell’s services revenue rose 32 percent to $2.79 billion, while its product revenue rose 18 percent to $12.09 billion, during the quarter.
Analysts have long said that Dell should benefit far more than most technology companies when companies finally start upgrading their four- and five-year-old computers. Mr. Gladden said that less than 5 percent of the commercial customers surveyed by Dell have upgraded to Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system, which is thought to be the major PC refresh catalyst.
“I think it is still very early,” Mr. Gladden said. “There are a lot of good signs, and we are beginning to see the first stages of that refresh process.”
Researchers Say They Created a ‘Synthetic Cell’
Researchers Say They Created a ‘Synthetic Cell’
By NICHOLAS WADE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html?hpw
The genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has taken another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.
Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
“This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance,” he said, suggesting that the “synthetic cell” raised new questions about the nature of life
Other scientists agree that he has achieved a technical feat in synthesizing the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA.
But some regard this approach as unpromising because it will take years to design new organisms, and meanwhile progress toward making biofuels is already being achieved with conventional genetic engineering approaches in which existing organisms are modified a few genes at a time.
Dr. Venter’s aim is to achieve total control over a bacterium’s genome, first by synthesizing its DNA in a laboratory and then by designing a new genome stripped of many natural functions and equipped with new genes that govern production of useful chemicals.
“It’s very powerful to be able to reconstruct and own every letter in a genome because that means you can put in different genes,” said Gerald Joyce, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
In response to the scientific report, President Obama asked the White House bioethics commission on Thursday to complete a study of the issues raised by synthetic biology within six months and report back to him on its findings. He said the new development raised “genuine concerns,” though he did not specify them further.
Dr. Venter took a first step toward this goal three years ago, showing that the natural DNA from one bacterium could be inserted into another and that it would take over the host cell’s operation. Last year, his team synthesized a piece of DNA with 1,080,000 bases, the chemical units of which DNA is composed.
In a final step, a team led by Daniel G. Gibson, Hamilton O. Smith and Dr. Venter report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science that the synthetic DNA takes over a bacterial cell just as the natural DNA did, making the cell generate the proteins specified by the new DNA’s genetic information in preference to those of its own genome.
The team ordered pieces of DNA 1,000 units in length from Blue Heron, a company that specializes in synthesizing DNA, and developed a technique for assembling the shorter lengths into a complete genome. The cost of the project was $40 million, most of it paid for by Synthetic Genomics, a company Dr. Venter founded.
But the bacterium used by the Venter group is unsuitable for biofuel production, and Dr. Venter said he would move to different organisms. Synthetic Genomics has a contract from Exxon to generate biofuels from algae. Exxon is prepared to spend up to $600 million if all its milestones are met. Dr. Venter said he would try to build “an entire algae genome so we can vary the 50 to 60 different parameters for algae growth to make superproductive organisms.”
On his yacht trips round the world, Dr. Venter has analyzed the DNA of the many microbes in seawater and now has a library of about 40 million genes, mostly from algae. These genes will be a resource to make captive algae produce useful chemicals, he said.
Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.
“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.
Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.
In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, denounced the synthetic genome as “dangerous new technology,” saying that “Mr. Venter should stop all further research until sufficient regulations are in place.”
The genome Dr. Venter synthesized is copied from a natural bacterium that infects goats. He said that before copying the DNA, he excised 14 genes likely to be pathogenic, so the new bacterium, even if it escaped, would be unlikely to cause goats harm.
Dr. Venter’s assertion that he has created a “synthetic cell” has alarmed people who think that means he has created a new life form or an artificial cell. “Of course that’s not right — its ancestor is a biological life form,” said Dr. Joyce of Scripps.
Dr. Venter copied the DNA from one species of bacteria and inserted it into another. The second bacteria made all the proteins and organelles in the so-called “synthetic cell,” by following the specifications implicit in the structure of the inserted DNA.
“My worry is that some people are going to draw the conclusion that they have created a new life form,” said Jim Collins, a bioengineer at Boston University. “What they have created is an organism with a synthesized natural genome. But it doesn’t represent the creation of life from scratch or the creation of a new life form,” he said.
By NICHOLAS WADE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html?hpw
The genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has taken another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.
Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
“This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance,” he said, suggesting that the “synthetic cell” raised new questions about the nature of life
Other scientists agree that he has achieved a technical feat in synthesizing the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA.
But some regard this approach as unpromising because it will take years to design new organisms, and meanwhile progress toward making biofuels is already being achieved with conventional genetic engineering approaches in which existing organisms are modified a few genes at a time.
Dr. Venter’s aim is to achieve total control over a bacterium’s genome, first by synthesizing its DNA in a laboratory and then by designing a new genome stripped of many natural functions and equipped with new genes that govern production of useful chemicals.
“It’s very powerful to be able to reconstruct and own every letter in a genome because that means you can put in different genes,” said Gerald Joyce, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
In response to the scientific report, President Obama asked the White House bioethics commission on Thursday to complete a study of the issues raised by synthetic biology within six months and report back to him on its findings. He said the new development raised “genuine concerns,” though he did not specify them further.
Dr. Venter took a first step toward this goal three years ago, showing that the natural DNA from one bacterium could be inserted into another and that it would take over the host cell’s operation. Last year, his team synthesized a piece of DNA with 1,080,000 bases, the chemical units of which DNA is composed.
In a final step, a team led by Daniel G. Gibson, Hamilton O. Smith and Dr. Venter report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science that the synthetic DNA takes over a bacterial cell just as the natural DNA did, making the cell generate the proteins specified by the new DNA’s genetic information in preference to those of its own genome.
The team ordered pieces of DNA 1,000 units in length from Blue Heron, a company that specializes in synthesizing DNA, and developed a technique for assembling the shorter lengths into a complete genome. The cost of the project was $40 million, most of it paid for by Synthetic Genomics, a company Dr. Venter founded.
But the bacterium used by the Venter group is unsuitable for biofuel production, and Dr. Venter said he would move to different organisms. Synthetic Genomics has a contract from Exxon to generate biofuels from algae. Exxon is prepared to spend up to $600 million if all its milestones are met. Dr. Venter said he would try to build “an entire algae genome so we can vary the 50 to 60 different parameters for algae growth to make superproductive organisms.”
On his yacht trips round the world, Dr. Venter has analyzed the DNA of the many microbes in seawater and now has a library of about 40 million genes, mostly from algae. These genes will be a resource to make captive algae produce useful chemicals, he said.
Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.
“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.
Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.
In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, denounced the synthetic genome as “dangerous new technology,” saying that “Mr. Venter should stop all further research until sufficient regulations are in place.”
The genome Dr. Venter synthesized is copied from a natural bacterium that infects goats. He said that before copying the DNA, he excised 14 genes likely to be pathogenic, so the new bacterium, even if it escaped, would be unlikely to cause goats harm.
Dr. Venter’s assertion that he has created a “synthetic cell” has alarmed people who think that means he has created a new life form or an artificial cell. “Of course that’s not right — its ancestor is a biological life form,” said Dr. Joyce of Scripps.
Dr. Venter copied the DNA from one species of bacteria and inserted it into another. The second bacteria made all the proteins and organelles in the so-called “synthetic cell,” by following the specifications implicit in the structure of the inserted DNA.
“My worry is that some people are going to draw the conclusion that they have created a new life form,” said Jim Collins, a bioengineer at Boston University. “What they have created is an organism with a synthesized natural genome. But it doesn’t represent the creation of life from scratch or the creation of a new life form,” he said.
Clinton Condemns Attack on South Korean Ship
Clinton Condemns Attack on South Korean Ship
By MARK LANDLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/asia/22diplo.html?hp
TOKYO — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton harshly condemned North Korea on Friday for a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean Navy warship last March, and promised to marshal an international response in the coming week with Japan, China and other countries.
“I think it is important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions have consequences,” she said after meeting here with the Japanese foreign minister, Katsuya Okada. “We cannot allow this attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to lay out the potential options for a response, saying that would be premature. But she left little doubt that the United States would undertake an intensive diplomatic effort to craft a response to the sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors and was one of the biggest military provocations on the Korean Peninsula since the Korean War.
Among the options being considered by South Korean and American officials is a United Nations Security Council resolution, and joint naval exercises with South Korea that could include anti-submarine warfare operations. South Korea may also cut off its remaining trade with the North.
“Let me be clear: this will not, and cannot be, business as usual,” Mrs. Clinton said, speaking in solemn tones. “There must be an international, not just a regional, but an international response.”
The mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula have roiled what had been planned as three days of economic and security talks between China and the United States next week in Beijing.
Now, those discussions are likely to be dominated by how far the United States can push China to support an international move against North Korea. The Chinese government reacted to the reports of Pyongyang’s involvement with extreme skepticism, angering many people in South Korea.
But Mrs. Clinton said South Korea’s investigation, which was aided by the United States and other countries, was thorough, scientific, and found the evidence “overwhelming and condemning.”
Both she and Mr. Okada said the tension underlined the importance of the American-Japanese alliance, and the presence of American troops on Japanese soil. But the two governments have not yet resolved a lengthy dispute over the relocation of a Marine base on the island of Okinawa.
Negotiations were continuing, Mr. Okada said, and the Japanese government was sticking to its timetable of resolving the matter by the end of the month. Mrs. Clinton said the United States sought a solution that was “operationally viable and politically sustainable.”
On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner are jointly leading a delegation which will number nearly 200 policy makers and advisers, one of the largest groups of American officials ever to travel to a foreign capital for a single set of meetings.
On the agenda: trying to balance the economic relationship between China and the United States, breaking down trade and investment barriers, and moving China toward a market-driven exchange rate.
But despite rising political pressure at home, administration officials said that at these meetings, the United States does not plan to push Beijing strenuously to loosen its policy of pegging its currency to the dollar. And it does not expect China to take any action on the currency until at least next month, because Beijing is loath at appearing to yield to outside pressure.
The administration sought to put a good face on Europe’s troubles, suggesting they played into one of the main American themes for the meeting: encouraging the Chinese to ramp up domestic consumption, so that they did not rely so heavily on exports to either Europe or the United States.
“The Greek crisis underlines the U.S. argument about the need for more balanced global growth,” Mr. Geithner said in an interview. “It makes the case very strongly because it is about Europe as well as China. It makes our interests in balanced growth even more aligned.”
The Greek crisis has dragged down the euro, which complicates a related American priority: prodding China to loosen its peg, which economists say keeps its currency, the renminbi, at an artificially depressed level. The United States wants China to allow the currency to rise closer to market levels, calculating that this would make American goods more competitive.
The renminbi has already risen sharply against the beleaguered euro, however, making Chinese goods more costly in Europe. And this, analysts say, could make Chinese officials more resistant to taking any steps that would allow it to rise against the dollar.
Moreover, if the Greek crisis spreads to Spain, Portugal, or other European countries, it could slow Europe’s overall economic growth and further dampen demand for Chinese exports.
The Obama administration delayed filing a report with Congress, scheduled for mid-April, which could have labeled China as a country that manipulates its currency. The administration’s policy, officials said, is to give Beijing the space it needs to make the decision by itself.
Beijing has signaled privately to Washington that it may begin loosen its currency policy in the weeks to a meeting in June of the Group of 20 industrialized and major emerging economies, officials said.
“While we don’t know when China is going to move, we remain confident that they’re going to determine that it’s in their interest to move to a more market-determined exchange rate,” said David Loevinger, the senior coordinator for China affairs at the Treasury Department.
By MARK LANDLER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/asia/22diplo.html?hp
TOKYO — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton harshly condemned North Korea on Friday for a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean Navy warship last March, and promised to marshal an international response in the coming week with Japan, China and other countries.
“I think it is important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions have consequences,” she said after meeting here with the Japanese foreign minister, Katsuya Okada. “We cannot allow this attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to lay out the potential options for a response, saying that would be premature. But she left little doubt that the United States would undertake an intensive diplomatic effort to craft a response to the sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors and was one of the biggest military provocations on the Korean Peninsula since the Korean War.
Among the options being considered by South Korean and American officials is a United Nations Security Council resolution, and joint naval exercises with South Korea that could include anti-submarine warfare operations. South Korea may also cut off its remaining trade with the North.
“Let me be clear: this will not, and cannot be, business as usual,” Mrs. Clinton said, speaking in solemn tones. “There must be an international, not just a regional, but an international response.”
The mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula have roiled what had been planned as three days of economic and security talks between China and the United States next week in Beijing.
Now, those discussions are likely to be dominated by how far the United States can push China to support an international move against North Korea. The Chinese government reacted to the reports of Pyongyang’s involvement with extreme skepticism, angering many people in South Korea.
But Mrs. Clinton said South Korea’s investigation, which was aided by the United States and other countries, was thorough, scientific, and found the evidence “overwhelming and condemning.”
Both she and Mr. Okada said the tension underlined the importance of the American-Japanese alliance, and the presence of American troops on Japanese soil. But the two governments have not yet resolved a lengthy dispute over the relocation of a Marine base on the island of Okinawa.
Negotiations were continuing, Mr. Okada said, and the Japanese government was sticking to its timetable of resolving the matter by the end of the month. Mrs. Clinton said the United States sought a solution that was “operationally viable and politically sustainable.”
On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner are jointly leading a delegation which will number nearly 200 policy makers and advisers, one of the largest groups of American officials ever to travel to a foreign capital for a single set of meetings.
On the agenda: trying to balance the economic relationship between China and the United States, breaking down trade and investment barriers, and moving China toward a market-driven exchange rate.
But despite rising political pressure at home, administration officials said that at these meetings, the United States does not plan to push Beijing strenuously to loosen its policy of pegging its currency to the dollar. And it does not expect China to take any action on the currency until at least next month, because Beijing is loath at appearing to yield to outside pressure.
The administration sought to put a good face on Europe’s troubles, suggesting they played into one of the main American themes for the meeting: encouraging the Chinese to ramp up domestic consumption, so that they did not rely so heavily on exports to either Europe or the United States.
“The Greek crisis underlines the U.S. argument about the need for more balanced global growth,” Mr. Geithner said in an interview. “It makes the case very strongly because it is about Europe as well as China. It makes our interests in balanced growth even more aligned.”
The Greek crisis has dragged down the euro, which complicates a related American priority: prodding China to loosen its peg, which economists say keeps its currency, the renminbi, at an artificially depressed level. The United States wants China to allow the currency to rise closer to market levels, calculating that this would make American goods more competitive.
The renminbi has already risen sharply against the beleaguered euro, however, making Chinese goods more costly in Europe. And this, analysts say, could make Chinese officials more resistant to taking any steps that would allow it to rise against the dollar.
Moreover, if the Greek crisis spreads to Spain, Portugal, or other European countries, it could slow Europe’s overall economic growth and further dampen demand for Chinese exports.
The Obama administration delayed filing a report with Congress, scheduled for mid-April, which could have labeled China as a country that manipulates its currency. The administration’s policy, officials said, is to give Beijing the space it needs to make the decision by itself.
Beijing has signaled privately to Washington that it may begin loosen its currency policy in the weeks to a meeting in June of the Group of 20 industrialized and major emerging economies, officials said.
“While we don’t know when China is going to move, we remain confident that they’re going to determine that it’s in their interest to move to a more market-determined exchange rate,” said David Loevinger, the senior coordinator for China affairs at the Treasury Department.
Judges Rule Against Detainees Held at Afghan Air Base
Judges Rule Against Detainees Held at Afghan Air Base
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/asia/22detain.html?hp
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that prisoners being held without trial in Afghanistan by the military have no right to challenge their imprisonment in American civilian courts. The decision, overturning a lower court ruling in the detainees’ favor, was a victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for extended periods without judicial oversight.
In a unanimous 26-page ruling, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that detainees who were captured outside of Afghanistan and brought to a military prison at the Bagram air base have no right to a hearing in which a judge would review the evidence against them and could potentially order their release.
Such habeas corpus rights do “not extend to aliens held in executive detention in the Afghan theater of war,” wrote David B. Sentelle, the chief judge of the appeals court, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan. His opinion was joined by Judges Harry T. Edwards, a Carter appointee, and David S. Tatel, a Clinton appointee.
The panel’s ruling reversed an April 2009 decision by a district court judge, John D. Bates, who had found that such detainees had the same constitutional rights that the Supreme Court has granted to similar prisoners who were flown to the military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, instead of Bagram.
The ruling by Judge Bates, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, had dealt a blow to government efforts to find a prison for holding terrorism suspects who are captured outside of the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.
When the Bush administration set up the Guantánamo military prison in early 2002, it argued that civilian courts had no jurisdiction to interfere with executive-branch decisions about the detainees it brought there. But in a series of rulings, culminating in a 2008 case, the Supreme Court declared that such detainees could challenge the basis for their imprisonment in federal court, in part because the naval base there is, in effect, United States soil.
That ruling increased the importance of other overseas prisons, including the one at the Bagram air base. The Bush administration stopped bringing new detainees to Guantánamo, while arguing that Bagram remained outside court jurisdiction.
After taking office last year, the Obama administration continued that approach. President Obama also prohibited the Central Intelligence Agency from operating secret prisons for long-term detention, further elevating the importance of military prisons like Bagram.
Judge Bates’s ruling was narrow. It applied only to non-Afghans captured outside of Afghanistan — a status that applied to only about a dozen of the roughly 600 detainees being held at Bagram. He had reasoned that for such prisoners, concerns about court interference with a battlefield prison made no sense because the executive branch had chosen to transport them to the combat zone.
In overturning Judge Bates yesterday, the appeals court panel rejected arguments by lawyers for the detainees that the government would be able “to evade judicial review of executive detention decisions by transferring detainees into active combat zones, thereby granting the executive the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.”
Judge Sentelle argued that there had been no such intent by the government with regard to the three detainees in the case, because each been brought to Afghanistan years before the Supreme Court extended constitutional rights to detainees at Guantánamo.
Still, he left the door open to approving habeas corpus rights for prisoners taken to prisons other than Guantánamo in the future.
“We need make no determination on the importance of this possibility, given that it remains only a possibility; its resolution can await a case in which the claim is a reality rather than speculation,” he wrote.
The case involves a Yemeni and a Tunisian who say they were captured in Pakistan, and another Yemeni who says he was captured in Thailand. They have been held for seven to eight years. All three deny they are terrorists.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/asia/22detain.html?hp
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that prisoners being held without trial in Afghanistan by the military have no right to challenge their imprisonment in American civilian courts. The decision, overturning a lower court ruling in the detainees’ favor, was a victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for extended periods without judicial oversight.
In a unanimous 26-page ruling, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that detainees who were captured outside of Afghanistan and brought to a military prison at the Bagram air base have no right to a hearing in which a judge would review the evidence against them and could potentially order their release.
Such habeas corpus rights do “not extend to aliens held in executive detention in the Afghan theater of war,” wrote David B. Sentelle, the chief judge of the appeals court, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan. His opinion was joined by Judges Harry T. Edwards, a Carter appointee, and David S. Tatel, a Clinton appointee.
The panel’s ruling reversed an April 2009 decision by a district court judge, John D. Bates, who had found that such detainees had the same constitutional rights that the Supreme Court has granted to similar prisoners who were flown to the military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, instead of Bagram.
The ruling by Judge Bates, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, had dealt a blow to government efforts to find a prison for holding terrorism suspects who are captured outside of the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones.
When the Bush administration set up the Guantánamo military prison in early 2002, it argued that civilian courts had no jurisdiction to interfere with executive-branch decisions about the detainees it brought there. But in a series of rulings, culminating in a 2008 case, the Supreme Court declared that such detainees could challenge the basis for their imprisonment in federal court, in part because the naval base there is, in effect, United States soil.
That ruling increased the importance of other overseas prisons, including the one at the Bagram air base. The Bush administration stopped bringing new detainees to Guantánamo, while arguing that Bagram remained outside court jurisdiction.
After taking office last year, the Obama administration continued that approach. President Obama also prohibited the Central Intelligence Agency from operating secret prisons for long-term detention, further elevating the importance of military prisons like Bagram.
Judge Bates’s ruling was narrow. It applied only to non-Afghans captured outside of Afghanistan — a status that applied to only about a dozen of the roughly 600 detainees being held at Bagram. He had reasoned that for such prisoners, concerns about court interference with a battlefield prison made no sense because the executive branch had chosen to transport them to the combat zone.
In overturning Judge Bates yesterday, the appeals court panel rejected arguments by lawyers for the detainees that the government would be able “to evade judicial review of executive detention decisions by transferring detainees into active combat zones, thereby granting the executive the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.”
Judge Sentelle argued that there had been no such intent by the government with regard to the three detainees in the case, because each been brought to Afghanistan years before the Supreme Court extended constitutional rights to detainees at Guantánamo.
Still, he left the door open to approving habeas corpus rights for prisoners taken to prisons other than Guantánamo in the future.
“We need make no determination on the importance of this possibility, given that it remains only a possibility; its resolution can await a case in which the claim is a reality rather than speculation,” he wrote.
The case involves a Yemeni and a Tunisian who say they were captured in Pakistan, and another Yemeni who says he was captured in Thailand. They have been held for seven to eight years. All three deny they are terrorists.
Lawmakers in Germany Back Rescue for European Debt
Lawmakers in Germany Back Rescue for European Debt
By JUDY DEMPSEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/europe/22germany.html?hp
BERLIN — Germany’s two houses of Parliament approved a package of measures on Friday allowing the country to contribute to a nearly $1 trillion bailout package aimed at stabilizing the euro and propping up European nations that are swimming in debt.
By approving legislation that provides for loan guarantees of up to $184 billion, Germany offered a sign to jittery investors that Europe’s largest economy was committed to trying to solve the Continent’s debt crisis. Indeed, financial markets seemed to stabilize after the vote.
But divisions in the lower house of Parliament and days of acrimonious debate before the vote highlighted the unpopularity of the bailout among Germans. Germany has proposed financial sanctions against European nations that fail to put their budgets in order, a move that gained some support on Friday at a meeting of European Union finance officials. The lower house of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, approved the European bailout measure by a vote of 319 to 73, but 195 lawmakers abstained, signaling their displeasure with how Chancellor Angela Merkel has handled a crisis that has tested the credibility of the euro. Even though Mrs. Merkel’s coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats hold a majority in the Bundestag, she could not muster all the 332 votes from her own bloc, and the bill passed with a narrow majority.
The package must now be signed by President Horst Köhler, a step that is considered largely a formality.
The Bundesrat, the upper house that is represented by the 16 German states, approved the package even though Mrs. Merkel’s coalition lost its majority in that body earlier this month after being dealt an electoral defeat in the important state of North-Rhine Westphalia. There, her coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats were ousted, reflecting voters’ disappointment with how the federal government in Berlin has performed since taking office last October.
Mrs. Merkel had earlier this week sought to win wider support for the loan guarantees, telling the Bundestag that it was vital to underpin the euro, otherwise the European Union itself could be threatened.
But she failed to persuade not only her entire coalition but the opposition as well. To the anger and disappointment of the coalition, the opposition Greens, which had last month voted for an earlier rescue package for Greece, abstained. The opposition Social Democrats also abstained, and another opposition grouping, the Left Party, voted against the guarantees.
Opposition leaders said they could not vote for the package because Mrs. Merkel had shown no leadership and had no long-term strategy on how to instill public confidence in the euro.
“She has no vision, no aim,” said Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats. “She has no idea where this country and Europe is going.”
Lawmakers from the Green Party said they supported the package in principle. Despite that, they could not vote for it because Mrs. Merkel, they argued, had failed to inform them in any detail about how the guarantee would work.
“It was a big mistake not to inform Parliament properly,” said Fritz Kuhn, deputy parliamentary leader of the Green faction.
Guido Westerwelle, foreign minister and leader of the Free Democrats accused the opposition of putting domestic issues before the interests of Europe and the stability of the euro.
Mr. Merkel and the finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble have argued that the package was needed to defend the European common currency.
“We’re doing this in our best national interests,” said Mr. Schäuble during an impassioned speech before the vote. “The common European currency has been a huge benefit to Germany .”
He continued: “Almost two-thirds of exports go to members of the euro zone. Without the euro, we would have a much weaker economy, a much weaker Germany and a much weaker social security system.”
Friday’s vote coincided with more poor opinion polls for Mrs. Merkel’s coalition. Support for her coalition has fallen to 42 percent compared with over 50 percent a few months ago.
At the same time, over 59 percent of those asked said they were very worried about the crisis affecting the euro.
As German lawmakers voted, European Union finance ministers gathered in Brussels for the first meeting of a so-called task force established to resolve the crisis in the euro-zone. The group is led by the president of the European Union, Herman van Rompuy.
Among the issues that appeared to receive early support was a push by Germany to impose punitive measures on countries that fail to balance their books.
“The question of sanctions must take priority,” the Austrian finance minister, Joseph Proell, told reporters. “We must do everything we can so that countries that are lax with their budgets can be rapped on the knuckles.”
The French economy minister, Christine Lagarde, also appeared to be in favor of taking a harder line against laggard nations, describing the German proposals as “very interesting and really going in the right direction.”
German leaders have suggested making deficit limits legally binding and adding additional sanctions to deter countries from running up debt — such as losing European Union funding and taking away a government’s voting rights at European Union meetings for up to one year.
But no breakthroughs on long-term reforms to the way European economies will be stabilized are expected on Friday. Instead, the finance ministers are expected to meet regularly ahead of October, when Mr. van Rompuy is expected to present final recommendations.
Even so, other aspects of the tough stance taken by could highlight splits among European governments on Friday, and ministers seem unlikely to reach any definitive agreements on new rules.
Germany already aroused the ire of other governments this week by unilaterally announcing a ban on a form of market speculation called naked short selling. Britain also could offer resistance to some proposals that may be put forward by the Task Force.
George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, warned against the imposition of any new rules that would impinge on the power of the British Parliament to determine the nation’s budget.
Other thorny areas ministers could debate on Friday is whether to create a permanent fund, modeled on the International Monetary Fund, to take swifter action to bail out troubled member states in the future, and whether to explore ways that governments could pool debt under certain circumstances.
James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels.
By JUDY DEMPSEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/europe/22germany.html?hp
BERLIN — Germany’s two houses of Parliament approved a package of measures on Friday allowing the country to contribute to a nearly $1 trillion bailout package aimed at stabilizing the euro and propping up European nations that are swimming in debt.
By approving legislation that provides for loan guarantees of up to $184 billion, Germany offered a sign to jittery investors that Europe’s largest economy was committed to trying to solve the Continent’s debt crisis. Indeed, financial markets seemed to stabilize after the vote.
But divisions in the lower house of Parliament and days of acrimonious debate before the vote highlighted the unpopularity of the bailout among Germans. Germany has proposed financial sanctions against European nations that fail to put their budgets in order, a move that gained some support on Friday at a meeting of European Union finance officials. The lower house of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, approved the European bailout measure by a vote of 319 to 73, but 195 lawmakers abstained, signaling their displeasure with how Chancellor Angela Merkel has handled a crisis that has tested the credibility of the euro. Even though Mrs. Merkel’s coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats hold a majority in the Bundestag, she could not muster all the 332 votes from her own bloc, and the bill passed with a narrow majority.
The package must now be signed by President Horst Köhler, a step that is considered largely a formality.
The Bundesrat, the upper house that is represented by the 16 German states, approved the package even though Mrs. Merkel’s coalition lost its majority in that body earlier this month after being dealt an electoral defeat in the important state of North-Rhine Westphalia. There, her coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats were ousted, reflecting voters’ disappointment with how the federal government in Berlin has performed since taking office last October.
Mrs. Merkel had earlier this week sought to win wider support for the loan guarantees, telling the Bundestag that it was vital to underpin the euro, otherwise the European Union itself could be threatened.
But she failed to persuade not only her entire coalition but the opposition as well. To the anger and disappointment of the coalition, the opposition Greens, which had last month voted for an earlier rescue package for Greece, abstained. The opposition Social Democrats also abstained, and another opposition grouping, the Left Party, voted against the guarantees.
Opposition leaders said they could not vote for the package because Mrs. Merkel had shown no leadership and had no long-term strategy on how to instill public confidence in the euro.
“She has no vision, no aim,” said Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats. “She has no idea where this country and Europe is going.”
Lawmakers from the Green Party said they supported the package in principle. Despite that, they could not vote for it because Mrs. Merkel, they argued, had failed to inform them in any detail about how the guarantee would work.
“It was a big mistake not to inform Parliament properly,” said Fritz Kuhn, deputy parliamentary leader of the Green faction.
Guido Westerwelle, foreign minister and leader of the Free Democrats accused the opposition of putting domestic issues before the interests of Europe and the stability of the euro.
Mr. Merkel and the finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble have argued that the package was needed to defend the European common currency.
“We’re doing this in our best national interests,” said Mr. Schäuble during an impassioned speech before the vote. “The common European currency has been a huge benefit to Germany .”
He continued: “Almost two-thirds of exports go to members of the euro zone. Without the euro, we would have a much weaker economy, a much weaker Germany and a much weaker social security system.”
Friday’s vote coincided with more poor opinion polls for Mrs. Merkel’s coalition. Support for her coalition has fallen to 42 percent compared with over 50 percent a few months ago.
At the same time, over 59 percent of those asked said they were very worried about the crisis affecting the euro.
As German lawmakers voted, European Union finance ministers gathered in Brussels for the first meeting of a so-called task force established to resolve the crisis in the euro-zone. The group is led by the president of the European Union, Herman van Rompuy.
Among the issues that appeared to receive early support was a push by Germany to impose punitive measures on countries that fail to balance their books.
“The question of sanctions must take priority,” the Austrian finance minister, Joseph Proell, told reporters. “We must do everything we can so that countries that are lax with their budgets can be rapped on the knuckles.”
The French economy minister, Christine Lagarde, also appeared to be in favor of taking a harder line against laggard nations, describing the German proposals as “very interesting and really going in the right direction.”
German leaders have suggested making deficit limits legally binding and adding additional sanctions to deter countries from running up debt — such as losing European Union funding and taking away a government’s voting rights at European Union meetings for up to one year.
But no breakthroughs on long-term reforms to the way European economies will be stabilized are expected on Friday. Instead, the finance ministers are expected to meet regularly ahead of October, when Mr. van Rompuy is expected to present final recommendations.
Even so, other aspects of the tough stance taken by could highlight splits among European governments on Friday, and ministers seem unlikely to reach any definitive agreements on new rules.
Germany already aroused the ire of other governments this week by unilaterally announcing a ban on a form of market speculation called naked short selling. Britain also could offer resistance to some proposals that may be put forward by the Task Force.
George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, warned against the imposition of any new rules that would impinge on the power of the British Parliament to determine the nation’s budget.
Other thorny areas ministers could debate on Friday is whether to create a permanent fund, modeled on the International Monetary Fund, to take swifter action to bail out troubled member states in the future, and whether to explore ways that governments could pool debt under certain circumstances.
James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels.
Agency Orders Use of a Less Toxic Chemical in Gulf
Agency Orders Use of a Less Toxic Chemical in Gulf
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/earth/21disperse.html?th&emc=th
GRAND ISLE, La. — Local and state officials here voiced desperation on Thursday as their fears became far more tangible, with oil from the BP spill showing up on shore as tar balls, sheens and gooey slicks.
In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency said it had told the oil company to immediately select a less toxic dispersant than the one it is now using to break up crude oil gushing from a ruined well in the Gulf of Mexico. Once the agency has signed off on a different product, it said, the company would then have 72 hours to start using it.
In a letter to BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, the agency’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also warned the company that it had “fallen short” in keeping the public informed. It demanded that BP release and post all data related to the month-old spill and monitoring efforts on a public Web site.
But here in Grand Isle, the focus was on the grim spectacle of what one official referred to as creeping “brownie mix.” At a news conference attended by visibly furious officials who had just taken a helicopter tour of the coast, Gov. Bobby Jindal said he was particularly worried that the heavy patches of oil appeared to have moved to shore under the surface of the gulf.
“This oil has traveled 110 miles to land on our coast, and we’re concerned that this is just the beginning,” Mr. Jindal said. “You didn’t see oil that close to our coast a day or two ago.”
Mr. Jindal said officials from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continue to tell him that heavy oil is not traveling underwater before it shows up on the coast, which he said would not explain its presence.
According to NOAA’s estimates, Mr. Jindal said, the spill has already affected nearly 50 miles of Louisiana’s coastline, which is full of breaks and inlets into fragile marshlands that are far more difficult to protect than sandy beaches. “No shoreline has been fully cleaned,” he said.
On Elmer’s Island, one of the few sandy beaches in Louisiana that is accessible by road, a thick brown frosting of oil was smeared on the shore. But inland marshes have so far been spared by a four-day project by the Louisiana National Guard that filled a 785-foot gap in the shore with sand. The guard is working to fill other such gaps along parts of the state’s coastline.
Near the mouth of the Mississippi, reddish-brown emulsified oil was pooled three inches deep in some places on Thursday and had killed off cane for at least a mile along the shore. The thick black oil seen there Wednesday appeared to have been washed out by the tide, but the air was heavy with scent of petroleum.
Several officials at the news conference in Grand Isle called on President Obama to order the federal government to take over where BP has failed. “We need some action, and we need it now,” said Michel Claudet, the president of Terrebonne Parish.
In directing BP to select a less toxic dispersant, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was exercising caution because so little is known about the chemicals’ potential impact.
BP has sprayed nearly 700,000 gallons of Corexit dispersants on the surface of the gulf and directly onto the leaking well head a mile underwater. It is by far the largest use of chemicals to break up an oil spill in United States waters to date.
Scientists and politicians have questioned why the E.P.A. is allowing use of the Corexit products when less toxic alternatives are available.
On Monday, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter to Ms. Jackson at the E.P.A. demanding details of the formula for Corexit products and information about any testing that had been carried out on the chemicals.
In a statement on Thursday, the E.P.A. said, “Because of its use in unprecedented volumes and because much is unknown about the underwater use of dispersants, E.P.A. wants to ensure BP is using the least toxic product authorized for use.”
BP said it was reviewing its options and did not detail which or how many dispersants it might propose for use.
But U.S. Polychemical of Spring Valley, N.Y., which makes a dispersant called Dispersit SPC 1000, said Thursday morning that it had received an order from BP and would increase its production to 20,000 gallons a day in the next few days, and eventually to as much as 60,000 gallons a day.
BP defended the use of the Corexit products, mainstays of oil spill control that were developed in the 1980s and ’90s.
“Corexit was an E.P.A.-approved dispersant that had been widely used in the gulf and was available in the quantities we required,” said Toby Odone, a company spokesman in Houston.
Indeed, some experts, like Merv Fingas, who served as the lead oil spill expert at Environment Canada, the Canadian counterpart of the E.P.A., said Corexit was not that much more toxic than other dispersants and had a long track record of use.
Mr. Fingas said the more important question was why dispersants were being used at all in the gulf.
Dispersants are conventionally applied to move oil off the surface of the ocean to protect marine life there and to prevent large amounts of oil from moving onshore. Yet the oil is emerging from a leak 50 miles offshore and a mile underwater. Oil in such a location emulsifies and separates as it comes to the surface, so “dispersant use isn’t really effective,” Mr. Fingas said.
“But they are in a desperate situation where they have to try everything possible, hoping something will work,” he said.
With reports of oil moving into areas as far west as Timbalier Bay, La., the patience of state and local officials had worn thin.
“It seems like BP doesn’t care,” said Euris DuBois, the police chief of Grand Isle, a scenic coastal community popular with tourists in the summer.
Chief DuBois said that he met with BP officials daily and had reported to them that oil was coming closer and closer to shore, but that he had seen no concrete action. “Nobody went and cleaned nothing,” he said, “and now it’s on our beaches.”
Campbell Robertson reported from Grand Isle, La., and Elisabeth Rosenthal from New York. James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting from Venice, La.
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/earth/21disperse.html?th&emc=th
GRAND ISLE, La. — Local and state officials here voiced desperation on Thursday as their fears became far more tangible, with oil from the BP spill showing up on shore as tar balls, sheens and gooey slicks.
In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency said it had told the oil company to immediately select a less toxic dispersant than the one it is now using to break up crude oil gushing from a ruined well in the Gulf of Mexico. Once the agency has signed off on a different product, it said, the company would then have 72 hours to start using it.
In a letter to BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, the agency’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also warned the company that it had “fallen short” in keeping the public informed. It demanded that BP release and post all data related to the month-old spill and monitoring efforts on a public Web site.
But here in Grand Isle, the focus was on the grim spectacle of what one official referred to as creeping “brownie mix.” At a news conference attended by visibly furious officials who had just taken a helicopter tour of the coast, Gov. Bobby Jindal said he was particularly worried that the heavy patches of oil appeared to have moved to shore under the surface of the gulf.
“This oil has traveled 110 miles to land on our coast, and we’re concerned that this is just the beginning,” Mr. Jindal said. “You didn’t see oil that close to our coast a day or two ago.”
Mr. Jindal said officials from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continue to tell him that heavy oil is not traveling underwater before it shows up on the coast, which he said would not explain its presence.
According to NOAA’s estimates, Mr. Jindal said, the spill has already affected nearly 50 miles of Louisiana’s coastline, which is full of breaks and inlets into fragile marshlands that are far more difficult to protect than sandy beaches. “No shoreline has been fully cleaned,” he said.
On Elmer’s Island, one of the few sandy beaches in Louisiana that is accessible by road, a thick brown frosting of oil was smeared on the shore. But inland marshes have so far been spared by a four-day project by the Louisiana National Guard that filled a 785-foot gap in the shore with sand. The guard is working to fill other such gaps along parts of the state’s coastline.
Near the mouth of the Mississippi, reddish-brown emulsified oil was pooled three inches deep in some places on Thursday and had killed off cane for at least a mile along the shore. The thick black oil seen there Wednesday appeared to have been washed out by the tide, but the air was heavy with scent of petroleum.
Several officials at the news conference in Grand Isle called on President Obama to order the federal government to take over where BP has failed. “We need some action, and we need it now,” said Michel Claudet, the president of Terrebonne Parish.
In directing BP to select a less toxic dispersant, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was exercising caution because so little is known about the chemicals’ potential impact.
BP has sprayed nearly 700,000 gallons of Corexit dispersants on the surface of the gulf and directly onto the leaking well head a mile underwater. It is by far the largest use of chemicals to break up an oil spill in United States waters to date.
Scientists and politicians have questioned why the E.P.A. is allowing use of the Corexit products when less toxic alternatives are available.
On Monday, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter to Ms. Jackson at the E.P.A. demanding details of the formula for Corexit products and information about any testing that had been carried out on the chemicals.
In a statement on Thursday, the E.P.A. said, “Because of its use in unprecedented volumes and because much is unknown about the underwater use of dispersants, E.P.A. wants to ensure BP is using the least toxic product authorized for use.”
BP said it was reviewing its options and did not detail which or how many dispersants it might propose for use.
But U.S. Polychemical of Spring Valley, N.Y., which makes a dispersant called Dispersit SPC 1000, said Thursday morning that it had received an order from BP and would increase its production to 20,000 gallons a day in the next few days, and eventually to as much as 60,000 gallons a day.
BP defended the use of the Corexit products, mainstays of oil spill control that were developed in the 1980s and ’90s.
“Corexit was an E.P.A.-approved dispersant that had been widely used in the gulf and was available in the quantities we required,” said Toby Odone, a company spokesman in Houston.
Indeed, some experts, like Merv Fingas, who served as the lead oil spill expert at Environment Canada, the Canadian counterpart of the E.P.A., said Corexit was not that much more toxic than other dispersants and had a long track record of use.
Mr. Fingas said the more important question was why dispersants were being used at all in the gulf.
Dispersants are conventionally applied to move oil off the surface of the ocean to protect marine life there and to prevent large amounts of oil from moving onshore. Yet the oil is emerging from a leak 50 miles offshore and a mile underwater. Oil in such a location emulsifies and separates as it comes to the surface, so “dispersant use isn’t really effective,” Mr. Fingas said.
“But they are in a desperate situation where they have to try everything possible, hoping something will work,” he said.
With reports of oil moving into areas as far west as Timbalier Bay, La., the patience of state and local officials had worn thin.
“It seems like BP doesn’t care,” said Euris DuBois, the police chief of Grand Isle, a scenic coastal community popular with tourists in the summer.
Chief DuBois said that he met with BP officials daily and had reported to them that oil was coming closer and closer to shore, but that he had seen no concrete action. “Nobody went and cleaned nothing,” he said, “and now it’s on our beaches.”
Campbell Robertson reported from Grand Isle, La., and Elisabeth Rosenthal from New York. James C. McKinley Jr. contributed reporting from Venice, La.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Tea Party Pick Causes Uproar on Civil Rights/After Explaining a Provocative Remark, Paul Makes Another
Tea Party Pick Causes Uproar on Civil Rights
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and CARL HULSE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/politics/21paul.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, the Tea Party candidate who challenged the Republican establishment to win the party’s Senate nomination in Kentucky two days ago, criticized a landmark civil rights law on Thursday, landing himself in a potentially damaging dispute over civil rights and race.
In doing so, he provided Democrats an opportunity to portray him as extreme and renewed concern among Republicans that his views made him vulnerable in a general election.
Mr. Paul, in a series of television and radio interviews, suggested that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was too broad and should not apply to private businesses, such as luncheonettes. As his statements drew a swarm of attacks from his opponents, Mr. Paul issued a statement declaring that he would not support repealing the landmark 1964 statute and blaming political opponents for trying to distort his views by saying he favored repeal.
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws,” he said. Later, in an interview on CNN, he said that if he had been in the Senate in 1964, he would have supported the act.
Still, it was not clear that he had quelled rising concerns among Republicans about his ability to win in the general election, especially given his libertarian views in favor of limiting the role of government. “I hope he can separate the theoretical and the interesting and the hypothetical questions that college students debate until 2 a.m. from the actual votes we have to cast based on real legislation here,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican.
Democrats quickly mobilized to draw attention to what they cast as out-of-the-mainstream positions espoused by Mr. Paul — from raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 to questioning the legality of the Americans with Disabilities Act — as they sought to discredit what Jack Conway, the Democratic Senate candidate in Kentucky, described in an interview as Mr. Paul’s “narrow and rigid philosophy.”
The Tea Party phenomenon has provided a bolt of energy for the Republican Party. But the case of Mr. Paul also shows the risks that have emerged as new figures move to the forefront of conservative politics, as candidates with little experience and sometimes unorthodox policy positions face the kind of scrutiny and pressure that could trip up even the most experienced politicians.
Mr. Paul said in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on Wednesday night that he supported the sections of the Civil Rights Act that applied to public accommodations but had concerns when it came to its applicability to private business; he raised similar concerns earlier in the day about the Americans with Disabilities Act in an interview on National Public Radio.
Asked by Ms. Maddow if a private business had the right to refuse to serve black people, Mr. Paul replied, “Yes.”
“I’m not in favor of any discrimination of any form,” Mr. Paul continued. “I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what’s important about this debate is not written into any specific ‘gotcha’ on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking?”
“I don’t want to be associated with those people,” he said, “but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it.”
While those views reflect the libertarian philosophy that Mr. Paul and many Tea Party members have embraced, they are politically treacherous for someone making an appeal to the electorate at large, as Mr. Paul learned as he struggled with questions about whether he thought the government had a role in regulating food safety and working conditions.
Congressional Republicans were peppered with questions about Mr. Paul’s position on civil rights. “I just want to be on the record that I believe the Interstate Commerce Clause was properly used by the courts and the Congress to make sure that when you travel in this country you can’t be denied food and lodging based on your race,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said. “That is not a big heavy lift for me.”
Mr. Paul’s father, Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who ran for president in 2008, angrily defended his son, saying he was being treated unfairly. “I think there’s a lot of resentment because he became a star,” said Mr. Paul, who ran for president in 2008.
Democratic leaders have long said that they viewed Mr. Paul as the weaker of the two major candidates in the Republican primary — the other was Trey Grayson, the secretary of state — because, they said, his views would not be embraced by the general electorate as they were by primary voters. That view was shared by many establishment Republicans, as reflected by the fact that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, did not support him in the primary.
Mr. Paul also found himself on the defensive on Thursday when he sought to justify his decision to hold his election night celebration at a country club in Bowling Green, arguing that was not in any way at variance with the grass-roots movement he has come to epitomize.
“I think at one time, people used to think of golf and golf clubs and golf courses as being exclusive,” Mr. Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” adding, “Tiger Woods has helped to broaden that, in the sense that he’s brought golf to a lot of the cities and to city youth.”
Representative James E. Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip, who was active in the civil rights movement during the 1960s, described Mr. Paul as “extreme” in an interview. Mr. Clyburn said Mr. Paul’s decision to hold his victory rally at a country club was a slap at his own supporters. “Who would have a victory party in a place where the minions who just voted for you ain’t welcome?” he said.
More broadly, Mr. Clyburn said that he viewed Mr. Paul, should he get elected, as a threat to gains made by the civil rights movement over the past 50 years, given his views on the Civil Rights Act. “If we see someone like this get elected to the United States Senate, that will be the first step in my opinion to turning back the gains that we started making way back in the 1860s,” he said.
Representative Al Green, a Texas Democrat, demanded on the House floor on Thursday afternoon that Mr. Paul explain his views, which Mr. Green said were painful to those who experienced segregation. Mr. McConnell said through a spokesman that he was a fervent backer of the civil rights law and welcomed Mr. Paul’s statement that he would not seek to repeal it.
After Explaining a Provocative Remark, Paul Makes Another
By KATE PHILLIPS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/politics/22paul.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, the newly nominated Republican candidate for Senate from Kentucky, touched off more controversy on Friday by calling the Obama administration “un-American” for taking a tough stance with BP over the company’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
A day after he was forced to explain remarks he had made suggesting he was not fully supportive of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mr. Paul set off yet another round of Twitter, cable television and e-mail chatter by lambasting President Obama and his aides for insisting that BP be held accountable — and pay — for the oil spill cleanup and damage.
“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Mr. Paul said, referring to a remark by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the oil company. “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”
His Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, the state attorney general, has begun soliciting campaign donations by citing Mr. Paul’s recent statements. On the BP remarks, Mr. Conway said on Friday: “Rand Paul apparently has a deeply held conviction that corporations should be allowed to do what they see fit without oversight or accountability.”
Also in the Friday interview, on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Paul extended his belief that too much blame was being laid at the feet of business, by alluding to the deaths of 29 workers at a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia last month. “We had a mining accident that was very tragic,” he said. “Then we come in, and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.”
By Friday afternoon, Mr. Paul’s campaign had canceled his scheduled appearance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and CARL HULSE
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/politics/21paul.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, the Tea Party candidate who challenged the Republican establishment to win the party’s Senate nomination in Kentucky two days ago, criticized a landmark civil rights law on Thursday, landing himself in a potentially damaging dispute over civil rights and race.
In doing so, he provided Democrats an opportunity to portray him as extreme and renewed concern among Republicans that his views made him vulnerable in a general election.
Mr. Paul, in a series of television and radio interviews, suggested that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was too broad and should not apply to private businesses, such as luncheonettes. As his statements drew a swarm of attacks from his opponents, Mr. Paul issued a statement declaring that he would not support repealing the landmark 1964 statute and blaming political opponents for trying to distort his views by saying he favored repeal.
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws,” he said. Later, in an interview on CNN, he said that if he had been in the Senate in 1964, he would have supported the act.
Still, it was not clear that he had quelled rising concerns among Republicans about his ability to win in the general election, especially given his libertarian views in favor of limiting the role of government. “I hope he can separate the theoretical and the interesting and the hypothetical questions that college students debate until 2 a.m. from the actual votes we have to cast based on real legislation here,” said Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican.
Democrats quickly mobilized to draw attention to what they cast as out-of-the-mainstream positions espoused by Mr. Paul — from raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 to questioning the legality of the Americans with Disabilities Act — as they sought to discredit what Jack Conway, the Democratic Senate candidate in Kentucky, described in an interview as Mr. Paul’s “narrow and rigid philosophy.”
The Tea Party phenomenon has provided a bolt of energy for the Republican Party. But the case of Mr. Paul also shows the risks that have emerged as new figures move to the forefront of conservative politics, as candidates with little experience and sometimes unorthodox policy positions face the kind of scrutiny and pressure that could trip up even the most experienced politicians.
Mr. Paul said in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC on Wednesday night that he supported the sections of the Civil Rights Act that applied to public accommodations but had concerns when it came to its applicability to private business; he raised similar concerns earlier in the day about the Americans with Disabilities Act in an interview on National Public Radio.
Asked by Ms. Maddow if a private business had the right to refuse to serve black people, Mr. Paul replied, “Yes.”
“I’m not in favor of any discrimination of any form,” Mr. Paul continued. “I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what’s important about this debate is not written into any specific ‘gotcha’ on this, but asking the question: what about freedom of speech? Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking?”
“I don’t want to be associated with those people,” he said, “but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it.”
While those views reflect the libertarian philosophy that Mr. Paul and many Tea Party members have embraced, they are politically treacherous for someone making an appeal to the electorate at large, as Mr. Paul learned as he struggled with questions about whether he thought the government had a role in regulating food safety and working conditions.
Congressional Republicans were peppered with questions about Mr. Paul’s position on civil rights. “I just want to be on the record that I believe the Interstate Commerce Clause was properly used by the courts and the Congress to make sure that when you travel in this country you can’t be denied food and lodging based on your race,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said. “That is not a big heavy lift for me.”
Mr. Paul’s father, Representative Ron Paul, a Texas Republican who ran for president in 2008, angrily defended his son, saying he was being treated unfairly. “I think there’s a lot of resentment because he became a star,” said Mr. Paul, who ran for president in 2008.
Democratic leaders have long said that they viewed Mr. Paul as the weaker of the two major candidates in the Republican primary — the other was Trey Grayson, the secretary of state — because, they said, his views would not be embraced by the general electorate as they were by primary voters. That view was shared by many establishment Republicans, as reflected by the fact that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, did not support him in the primary.
Mr. Paul also found himself on the defensive on Thursday when he sought to justify his decision to hold his election night celebration at a country club in Bowling Green, arguing that was not in any way at variance with the grass-roots movement he has come to epitomize.
“I think at one time, people used to think of golf and golf clubs and golf courses as being exclusive,” Mr. Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” adding, “Tiger Woods has helped to broaden that, in the sense that he’s brought golf to a lot of the cities and to city youth.”
Representative James E. Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip, who was active in the civil rights movement during the 1960s, described Mr. Paul as “extreme” in an interview. Mr. Clyburn said Mr. Paul’s decision to hold his victory rally at a country club was a slap at his own supporters. “Who would have a victory party in a place where the minions who just voted for you ain’t welcome?” he said.
More broadly, Mr. Clyburn said that he viewed Mr. Paul, should he get elected, as a threat to gains made by the civil rights movement over the past 50 years, given his views on the Civil Rights Act. “If we see someone like this get elected to the United States Senate, that will be the first step in my opinion to turning back the gains that we started making way back in the 1860s,” he said.
Representative Al Green, a Texas Democrat, demanded on the House floor on Thursday afternoon that Mr. Paul explain his views, which Mr. Green said were painful to those who experienced segregation. Mr. McConnell said through a spokesman that he was a fervent backer of the civil rights law and welcomed Mr. Paul’s statement that he would not seek to repeal it.
After Explaining a Provocative Remark, Paul Makes Another
By KATE PHILLIPS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/politics/22paul.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — Rand Paul, the newly nominated Republican candidate for Senate from Kentucky, touched off more controversy on Friday by calling the Obama administration “un-American” for taking a tough stance with BP over the company’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
A day after he was forced to explain remarks he had made suggesting he was not fully supportive of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mr. Paul set off yet another round of Twitter, cable television and e-mail chatter by lambasting President Obama and his aides for insisting that BP be held accountable — and pay — for the oil spill cleanup and damage.
“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Mr. Paul said, referring to a remark by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the oil company. “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”
His Democratic opponent, Jack Conway, the state attorney general, has begun soliciting campaign donations by citing Mr. Paul’s recent statements. On the BP remarks, Mr. Conway said on Friday: “Rand Paul apparently has a deeply held conviction that corporations should be allowed to do what they see fit without oversight or accountability.”
Also in the Friday interview, on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Paul extended his belief that too much blame was being laid at the feet of business, by alluding to the deaths of 29 workers at a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia last month. “We had a mining accident that was very tragic,” he said. “Then we come in, and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.”
By Friday afternoon, Mr. Paul’s campaign had canceled his scheduled appearance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program.
Chicago Sun Times Editorial: Why not release tax returns?
Chicago Sun Times Editorial: Why not release tax returns?
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
May 20, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2294580,CST-EDT-edit20b.article
Jason Plummer, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Illinois, is not legally required to release his income tax returns. So he was perfectly within his rights Tuesday when he said he won't do so.
But voters aren't required to accept his explanation that releasing tax data is just a "political distraction."
Presumably, it wouldn't be much of a distraction if there is little of interest in those tax records. So voters can fairly wonder if Plummer has decided it is better to risk the criticism he'll receive for not releasing his returns than the stream of news stories if he does.
Plummer's running mate, gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, was in a similar situation last month after saying he wouldn't release his returns. After criticism from several quarters, including Gov. Quinn, Brady relented. The result was the revelation that Brady, who is wealthy, did not owe federal income taxes for the past two years because of business losses.
Plummer, who also is wealthy, might well wish to keep the details of his family's extensive businesses private. But this is Illinois, where three of the last seven men elected governor have gone to prison and a fourth is scheduled to go on trial next month.
If Plummer doesn't change his mind, he shouldn't be surprised if voters turn out to be a bit skeptical.
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
May 20, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/2294580,CST-EDT-edit20b.article
Jason Plummer, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Illinois, is not legally required to release his income tax returns. So he was perfectly within his rights Tuesday when he said he won't do so.
But voters aren't required to accept his explanation that releasing tax data is just a "political distraction."
Presumably, it wouldn't be much of a distraction if there is little of interest in those tax records. So voters can fairly wonder if Plummer has decided it is better to risk the criticism he'll receive for not releasing his returns than the stream of news stories if he does.
Plummer's running mate, gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady, was in a similar situation last month after saying he wouldn't release his returns. After criticism from several quarters, including Gov. Quinn, Brady relented. The result was the revelation that Brady, who is wealthy, did not owe federal income taxes for the past two years because of business losses.
Plummer, who also is wealthy, might well wish to keep the details of his family's extensive businesses private. But this is Illinois, where three of the last seven men elected governor have gone to prison and a fourth is scheduled to go on trial next month.
If Plummer doesn't change his mind, he shouldn't be surprised if voters turn out to be a bit skeptical.
Sears profit falls 38% amid higher costs
Sears profit falls 38% amid higher costs
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published on May 20, 2010 5:32 AM
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/05/sears-profit-falls-38-amid-higher-costs.html
Sears Holdings Corp.'s first-quarter net income fell 38 percent on thinner profit margins at its Sears chain, squeezed by discounts on appliances.
The discounts offset a turnaround in revenue at the retailers' Sears and Kmart stores, breaking a long string of declines at Sears stores. It was Kmart's third consecutive quarter of rising revenue at stores open at least a year.
Sears Holdings Corp., which is led by financier Chairman Edward Lampert, said Thursday its net income fell to $16 million, or 14 cents per share, in the quarter ending May 1, down from $26 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.
The thinner profit margins are a blow to a company that has posted rising net income in recent quarters, a result of closing stores and slashing expenses.
Revenue fell slightly to $10.046 billion from $10.055 billion a year ago because the company has 63 fewer stores than in last year's first quarter.
Analysts expected the company, based in Hoffman Estates, Ill. to report profit of 14 cents per share on revenue of $10.21 billion.
Sears stores' 1.2 percent gain in revenue at stores open at least a year was fueled by appliance purchases under the government's cash for appliances program, which offers rebates on energy-efficient items.
The appliance program could fuel Sears' second quarter as well, because the company said much of the revenue for appliance sales in April won't be booked until the items are delivered in that quarter.
Kmart's revenue at stores open at least a year rose 1.7 percent, driven by increases in clothing, home items and toys. That figure is considered an important measure of a retailers' health because it excludes the effects of new stores and closings.
Based in Hoffman Estates, the retailer's portfolio also includes mail-order and online retailer Lands' End and popular brands like Craftsman, Diehard and Kenmore.
Sears plans to focus on its long-struggling clothing business in hopes of attracting new and younger shoppers, officials told investors at the shareholders' meeting. Executives say clothing has been an "Achilles heel" for Sears.
The company will add a line of trendier clothing to Lands' End, which also has its own stores and is an increasing presence inside Sears stores, to draw younger customers as well as a line of store-brand products at Kmart.
It also plans to reinvent much of its Kenmore line of appliances, expand layaway at both Sears and Kmart and even add more high-end fitness equipment at Sears.
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published on May 20, 2010 5:32 AM
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/05/sears-profit-falls-38-amid-higher-costs.html
Sears Holdings Corp.'s first-quarter net income fell 38 percent on thinner profit margins at its Sears chain, squeezed by discounts on appliances.
The discounts offset a turnaround in revenue at the retailers' Sears and Kmart stores, breaking a long string of declines at Sears stores. It was Kmart's third consecutive quarter of rising revenue at stores open at least a year.
Sears Holdings Corp., which is led by financier Chairman Edward Lampert, said Thursday its net income fell to $16 million, or 14 cents per share, in the quarter ending May 1, down from $26 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.
The thinner profit margins are a blow to a company that has posted rising net income in recent quarters, a result of closing stores and slashing expenses.
Revenue fell slightly to $10.046 billion from $10.055 billion a year ago because the company has 63 fewer stores than in last year's first quarter.
Analysts expected the company, based in Hoffman Estates, Ill. to report profit of 14 cents per share on revenue of $10.21 billion.
Sears stores' 1.2 percent gain in revenue at stores open at least a year was fueled by appliance purchases under the government's cash for appliances program, which offers rebates on energy-efficient items.
The appliance program could fuel Sears' second quarter as well, because the company said much of the revenue for appliance sales in April won't be booked until the items are delivered in that quarter.
Kmart's revenue at stores open at least a year rose 1.7 percent, driven by increases in clothing, home items and toys. That figure is considered an important measure of a retailers' health because it excludes the effects of new stores and closings.
Based in Hoffman Estates, the retailer's portfolio also includes mail-order and online retailer Lands' End and popular brands like Craftsman, Diehard and Kenmore.
Sears plans to focus on its long-struggling clothing business in hopes of attracting new and younger shoppers, officials told investors at the shareholders' meeting. Executives say clothing has been an "Achilles heel" for Sears.
The company will add a line of trendier clothing to Lands' End, which also has its own stores and is an increasing presence inside Sears stores, to draw younger customers as well as a line of store-brand products at Kmart.
It also plans to reinvent much of its Kenmore line of appliances, expand layaway at both Sears and Kmart and even add more high-end fitness equipment at Sears.
Pakistan expands Internet clampdown on 'Everybody draw Mohammad Day!'
Pakistan expands Internet clampdown on 'Everybody draw Mohammad Day!'
By Karin Brulliard
Copyright by The Washington Post
Thursday, May 20, 2010; 10:02 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052002023.html
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- An Internet clampdown in Pakistan widened Thursday as the government blocked access to the YouTube Web site, citing its "growing sacrilegious content."
The move came one day after the civilian government ordered Internet service providers to restrict access to the Facebook social networking site, which drew fire in Pakistan over a page encouraging people to post caricatures Thursday of the Prophet Muhammad. That order followed an injunction by a Pakistani court, which agreed Wednesday with a petition by an Islamic lawyers' group that the page violated Islamic laws banning the prophet's image.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said the decision to block YouTube came after government monitors found that references to the Facebook page -- called "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" -- were growing on the video-sharing site, as were other "derogatory" references to Islam, the majority religion in Pakistan.
"We are an Islamic republic, so we are monitoring the Muslim content," said Khurran Mehran, the spokesman. "We had to shut it down."
The Facebook page sparked protests by religious student organizations across the country on Wednesday, and they continued sporadically Thursday. In Islamabad, about 100 young men belonging to the Islami Jamiat Talba, the student wing of a religious political party, carried signs bearing slogans such as, "Death to Those Responsible for Blasphemy." They called Facebook a tool for spreading anti-Islamic sentiments.
"If Facebook and other such tools continue to be used for blasphemy by the Western nations, then we will target their embassies," said Faisal Javed, 21.
Although only a small percentage of Pakistan's 180 million people have Internet access, Facebook and other sites have exploded in popularity as the middle class and media outlets have grown. Critics, many of whom voiced opinions in vigorous online debates Thursday -- called the crackdown an impingement of the free speech and that has blossomed under two years of civilian government.
Five years ago, cartoons of Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper triggered violent demonstrations in Pakistan and across the Muslim world. The issue has occasionally resurfaced, including in 2008, when a bombing outside the Danish Embassy in Islamabad killed eight people.
Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, also appeared to be blocked in Pakistan on Thursday, but it was not clear whether the government had restricted access or there was a glitch in the system. Access from smartphones to Facebook, YouTube and other sites with "blasphemous content" was also blocked, according to one major cellphone company, Mobilink.
At least 450 links to Web sites had been shut down by midday Thursday, according to a government statement.
Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.
By Karin Brulliard
Copyright by The Washington Post
Thursday, May 20, 2010; 10:02 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052002023.html
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- An Internet clampdown in Pakistan widened Thursday as the government blocked access to the YouTube Web site, citing its "growing sacrilegious content."
The move came one day after the civilian government ordered Internet service providers to restrict access to the Facebook social networking site, which drew fire in Pakistan over a page encouraging people to post caricatures Thursday of the Prophet Muhammad. That order followed an injunction by a Pakistani court, which agreed Wednesday with a petition by an Islamic lawyers' group that the page violated Islamic laws banning the prophet's image.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said the decision to block YouTube came after government monitors found that references to the Facebook page -- called "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" -- were growing on the video-sharing site, as were other "derogatory" references to Islam, the majority religion in Pakistan.
"We are an Islamic republic, so we are monitoring the Muslim content," said Khurran Mehran, the spokesman. "We had to shut it down."
The Facebook page sparked protests by religious student organizations across the country on Wednesday, and they continued sporadically Thursday. In Islamabad, about 100 young men belonging to the Islami Jamiat Talba, the student wing of a religious political party, carried signs bearing slogans such as, "Death to Those Responsible for Blasphemy." They called Facebook a tool for spreading anti-Islamic sentiments.
"If Facebook and other such tools continue to be used for blasphemy by the Western nations, then we will target their embassies," said Faisal Javed, 21.
Although only a small percentage of Pakistan's 180 million people have Internet access, Facebook and other sites have exploded in popularity as the middle class and media outlets have grown. Critics, many of whom voiced opinions in vigorous online debates Thursday -- called the crackdown an impingement of the free speech and that has blossomed under two years of civilian government.
Five years ago, cartoons of Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper triggered violent demonstrations in Pakistan and across the Muslim world. The issue has occasionally resurfaced, including in 2008, when a bombing outside the Danish Embassy in Islamabad killed eight people.
Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, also appeared to be blocked in Pakistan on Thursday, but it was not clear whether the government had restricted access or there was a glitch in the system. Access from smartphones to Facebook, YouTube and other sites with "blasphemous content" was also blocked, according to one major cellphone company, Mobilink.
At least 450 links to Web sites had been shut down by midday Thursday, according to a government statement.
Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.
Stocks plunge: There's just too much going on
Stocks plunge: There's just too much going on
By Frank Ahrens
Copyright by The Washington Post
May 20, 2010
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2010/05/stocks_plunge_theres_just_too.html?hpid=topnews
More than anything, stock markets hate uncertainty, and there's plenty going on right now, driving markets lower.
In the first 45 minutes of trading, the Dow is down 2.5 percent.
The broader S&P 500 is down 2.9 percent.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 2.9
Let us enumerate all the uncertainty, in no particular order:
At first, we only thought we had to deal with a sovereign debt contagion in Europe. Now, it looks like we're facing real fractures not only in the euro but in the eurozone bond. Germany bans naked short-selling on its own, France gets upset, the European Central Bank says, "Can't we all just get along?" Sovereign debt continues to be a problem in Greece, Portugal and Spain; national deficits are a problem in the U.K. and elsewhere. Big problem: Europe is the biggest buyer of U.S. exports. If they can't buy what we're selling, we're in trouble. Thomson Reuters says that all of the S&P 500 companies have an average 25 percent exposure to Europe; i.e., 25 percent of their business comes from Europe. Again: Five Reasons Why Europe Is Sick.
Financial regulatory reform on Capitol Hill, even though it appears to be moving toward passage, is doing so with all the consistency and predictability of an old pickup with a busted clutch. Lurch forward, with Sen. Blanche Lincoln's (D-Ark.) punitive proposal on derivatives; stall, with Sen. Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) compromise amendment on for Lincoln's proposal; lurch sideways, as Dodd removes his amendment. It looks like chaos on the Hill to Wall Street, which is saying: Give us new rules. Tough ones or lax ones, but let us know what the new rules are.
Speaking of new rules, the SEC is imposing new rules on stock trading, in an attempt to prevent another 900-point flash-crash plunge -- even though the agency doesn't know for sure what cause the first flash crash.
A wobbly recovery at home. This morning, we learned that last week's new jobless claims took a surprise jump upward. Moments ago, the Conference Board's monthly index of leading economic indicators retreated slightly, and last month's number was revised downward.
Technical triggers in the stock market. Some traders are called "technicians." That means they follow trends closely in the markets and buy or sell based on those. For instance, when one of the market's "moving averages" -- a longer-term look at stocks, designed to smooth out day-to-day volatility -- rises or drops through certain levels (say, when the S&P 500 drops below 1100, as it just did), traders will just begin selling, regardless of how the stock is doing recently. Selling drives the markets down.
Germany's parliament votes tomorrow on whether to fund its portion of the European bailout.
So, the takeaway is: Until at least a couple of these variables start to simmer down and show some stability, it could be a bad summer for stocks.
By Frank Ahrens
Copyright by The Washington Post
May 20, 2010
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2010/05/stocks_plunge_theres_just_too.html?hpid=topnews
More than anything, stock markets hate uncertainty, and there's plenty going on right now, driving markets lower.
In the first 45 minutes of trading, the Dow is down 2.5 percent.
The broader S&P 500 is down 2.9 percent.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 2.9
Let us enumerate all the uncertainty, in no particular order:
At first, we only thought we had to deal with a sovereign debt contagion in Europe. Now, it looks like we're facing real fractures not only in the euro but in the eurozone bond. Germany bans naked short-selling on its own, France gets upset, the European Central Bank says, "Can't we all just get along?" Sovereign debt continues to be a problem in Greece, Portugal and Spain; national deficits are a problem in the U.K. and elsewhere. Big problem: Europe is the biggest buyer of U.S. exports. If they can't buy what we're selling, we're in trouble. Thomson Reuters says that all of the S&P 500 companies have an average 25 percent exposure to Europe; i.e., 25 percent of their business comes from Europe. Again: Five Reasons Why Europe Is Sick.
Financial regulatory reform on Capitol Hill, even though it appears to be moving toward passage, is doing so with all the consistency and predictability of an old pickup with a busted clutch. Lurch forward, with Sen. Blanche Lincoln's (D-Ark.) punitive proposal on derivatives; stall, with Sen. Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) compromise amendment on for Lincoln's proposal; lurch sideways, as Dodd removes his amendment. It looks like chaos on the Hill to Wall Street, which is saying: Give us new rules. Tough ones or lax ones, but let us know what the new rules are.
Speaking of new rules, the SEC is imposing new rules on stock trading, in an attempt to prevent another 900-point flash-crash plunge -- even though the agency doesn't know for sure what cause the first flash crash.
A wobbly recovery at home. This morning, we learned that last week's new jobless claims took a surprise jump upward. Moments ago, the Conference Board's monthly index of leading economic indicators retreated slightly, and last month's number was revised downward.
Technical triggers in the stock market. Some traders are called "technicians." That means they follow trends closely in the markets and buy or sell based on those. For instance, when one of the market's "moving averages" -- a longer-term look at stocks, designed to smooth out day-to-day volatility -- rises or drops through certain levels (say, when the S&P 500 drops below 1100, as it just did), traders will just begin selling, regardless of how the stock is doing recently. Selling drives the markets down.
Germany's parliament votes tomorrow on whether to fund its portion of the European bailout.
So, the takeaway is: Until at least a couple of these variables start to simmer down and show some stability, it could be a bad summer for stocks.
UK Government looks at splitting up banks
UK Government looks at splitting up banks
By Kiran Stacey
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: May 20 2010 11:54 | Last updated: May 20 2010 11:54
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/906848be-63e8-11df-ad7c-00144feab49a.html
The government will set up a commission to look at splitting up retail and investment banking, ministers announced on Thursday, as they published the full details of the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
The body is part of a new push to reform the banking sector, and will be implemented alongside a new bank levy, curbs on bonuses, measures to free up lending and a free national financial advice service.
Meanwhile ministers will work with the Bank of England to speed up the inclusion of house prices into the official measure of inflation.
But the agreement leaves unanswered many of the crucial questions on banking reform and other policy areas. The government remains undecided, for example, on whether a loan guarantee scheme, net lending targets, or both, will be the best way to encourage banks to lend.
The banking regulation commission, which will report within a year, but the findings of which will not be binding, is one of several such bodies promised by the new agreement – published in full on Thursday.
The government will also set up reviews to look at the replacement of the Human Rights Act, public sector pensions and long-term social care. On other sensitive subjects, such as the replacement of Trident missiles and nuclear power, Liberal Democrat MPs will be allowed to abstain.
It also remains unclear whether a “pupil premium” to encourage schools to take disadvantaged children, which was supported by both parties, will receive funding, as the Liberal Democrats have demanded.
But David Cameron insisted the parties had not avoided tackling the areas most likely to create disagreement. He referred to “the amount of sentences that start ‘we will’” and said the surprising element was “the shortage of commissions, not the amount of them”.
In one of its bolder policy steps, the government will freeze council tax for a year and seek to freeze it for another 12 months if it gains the agreement of local authorities. It will also hold elections for local NHS health boards.
The document further promises “changes to our political system to make it far more transparent and accountable”. These include funding 200 primary elections by postal vote for seats which have not changed hands for many years.
On the sensitive area of reform of the House of Lords, a committee will bring a draft motion by the end of the year. But there has been some compromise on whether the new House of Lords will be fully elected, as proposed by the Lib Dems, with the document promising a “wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation”.
The coalition will push ahead with plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail. But Vince Cable told the Financial Times earlier this week: “There are no imminent proposals for legislation ... We need to take a long, hard look at this and not rush into it.”
In spite of the questions left unanswered by the new document, both Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, insisted it was “an historic document in British politics”. Mr Cameron called it “a full programme of reform for a full parliament by a partnership government”.
Coalition document: key points
● A commission will be established to examine splitting banks into retail and investment operations, to report within a year.
● Banks will be encouraged to lend to small and medium companies through a loan guarantee scheme, net lending targets, or both.
● Corporation tax rates and reliefs will be simplified.
● The government will try to inject private money into the Royal Mail, but will keep the Post Office in public hands. It will look at creating a Post Office Bank.
● ID cards will be scrapped.
● CCTV will be more carefully regulated.
● A commission will review replacing the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights.
● Council tax will be frozen for a year.
● Trident will be renewed, although the Lib Dems will search for alternatives.
● Deficit reduction will be accelerated, with most coming from spending cuts rather than tax rises. Cuts of £6bn will be made this year, the details of which will be announced on Monday.
● The third runway at Heathrow will be scrapped, and additional runways at Stansted and Gatwick will be refused.
● A cap on immigration from non-EU countries will be imposed, but the details have yet to be decided.
● This parliament will last for five years, with a 55 per cent majority needed to dissolve it.
● There will be a whipped vote on a referendum for the alternative vote system, but the parties will be allowed to campaign for either side
● A committee will bring a draft resolution on making the House of Lords wholly or mainly elected by the end of the year.
● Schools will be offered a premium to take on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, funded by cuts from outside the schools budget.
● Communities will be allowed to set up “free schools”, funded by the taxpayer but run independently.
● The personal income tax allowance will be increased to £10,000.
● Capital gains tax will be increased to levels that are close to income tax.
By Kiran Stacey
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: May 20 2010 11:54 | Last updated: May 20 2010 11:54
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/906848be-63e8-11df-ad7c-00144feab49a.html
The government will set up a commission to look at splitting up retail and investment banking, ministers announced on Thursday, as they published the full details of the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
The body is part of a new push to reform the banking sector, and will be implemented alongside a new bank levy, curbs on bonuses, measures to free up lending and a free national financial advice service.
Meanwhile ministers will work with the Bank of England to speed up the inclusion of house prices into the official measure of inflation.
But the agreement leaves unanswered many of the crucial questions on banking reform and other policy areas. The government remains undecided, for example, on whether a loan guarantee scheme, net lending targets, or both, will be the best way to encourage banks to lend.
The banking regulation commission, which will report within a year, but the findings of which will not be binding, is one of several such bodies promised by the new agreement – published in full on Thursday.
The government will also set up reviews to look at the replacement of the Human Rights Act, public sector pensions and long-term social care. On other sensitive subjects, such as the replacement of Trident missiles and nuclear power, Liberal Democrat MPs will be allowed to abstain.
It also remains unclear whether a “pupil premium” to encourage schools to take disadvantaged children, which was supported by both parties, will receive funding, as the Liberal Democrats have demanded.
But David Cameron insisted the parties had not avoided tackling the areas most likely to create disagreement. He referred to “the amount of sentences that start ‘we will’” and said the surprising element was “the shortage of commissions, not the amount of them”.
In one of its bolder policy steps, the government will freeze council tax for a year and seek to freeze it for another 12 months if it gains the agreement of local authorities. It will also hold elections for local NHS health boards.
The document further promises “changes to our political system to make it far more transparent and accountable”. These include funding 200 primary elections by postal vote for seats which have not changed hands for many years.
On the sensitive area of reform of the House of Lords, a committee will bring a draft motion by the end of the year. But there has been some compromise on whether the new House of Lords will be fully elected, as proposed by the Lib Dems, with the document promising a “wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation”.
The coalition will push ahead with plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail. But Vince Cable told the Financial Times earlier this week: “There are no imminent proposals for legislation ... We need to take a long, hard look at this and not rush into it.”
In spite of the questions left unanswered by the new document, both Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, insisted it was “an historic document in British politics”. Mr Cameron called it “a full programme of reform for a full parliament by a partnership government”.
Coalition document: key points
● A commission will be established to examine splitting banks into retail and investment operations, to report within a year.
● Banks will be encouraged to lend to small and medium companies through a loan guarantee scheme, net lending targets, or both.
● Corporation tax rates and reliefs will be simplified.
● The government will try to inject private money into the Royal Mail, but will keep the Post Office in public hands. It will look at creating a Post Office Bank.
● ID cards will be scrapped.
● CCTV will be more carefully regulated.
● A commission will review replacing the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights.
● Council tax will be frozen for a year.
● Trident will be renewed, although the Lib Dems will search for alternatives.
● Deficit reduction will be accelerated, with most coming from spending cuts rather than tax rises. Cuts of £6bn will be made this year, the details of which will be announced on Monday.
● The third runway at Heathrow will be scrapped, and additional runways at Stansted and Gatwick will be refused.
● A cap on immigration from non-EU countries will be imposed, but the details have yet to be decided.
● This parliament will last for five years, with a 55 per cent majority needed to dissolve it.
● There will be a whipped vote on a referendum for the alternative vote system, but the parties will be allowed to campaign for either side
● A committee will bring a draft resolution on making the House of Lords wholly or mainly elected by the end of the year.
● Schools will be offered a premium to take on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, funded by cuts from outside the schools budget.
● Communities will be allowed to set up “free schools”, funded by the taxpayer but run independently.
● The personal income tax allowance will be increased to £10,000.
● Capital gains tax will be increased to levels that are close to income tax.
S.E.C. Enforcement Unit Investigating May 6 Crash
S.E.C. Enforcement Unit Investigating May 6 Crash
By EDWARD WYATT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/business/21crash.html?hpw
WASHINGTON — The enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun looking into the sharp stock market drop of May 6, the chairwoman of the agency said Thursday.
In written testimony to a Senate subcommittee about the May 6 market activity, the chairwoman, Mary L. Schapiro, said that the S.E.C. is “looking at a wide variety of actions on May 6 involving the full range of market participants.”
“We will examine such things as whether market professionals fully met their obligations, including, where applicable, their best execution obligations, and whether the decision to bust trades was made and applied fairly and consistently among investors,” Mrs. Schapiro said. “If we identify any activity that violates the securities laws, we will take appropriate action.”
Mrs. Schapiro said the enforcement investigations were prompted in part by complaints from individual investors “who used stop loss orders to protect them from rapidly declining markets.”
“It appears that some investors’ accounts were liquidated as share prices plummeted only to have stock prices close significantly above their sale prices,” she added.
In response to questions from the Senate panel, Mrs. Schapiro said that the enforcement division also was looking at whether any market participants that had “affirmative liquidity obligations,” or a legal obligation to continue making markets and offering to buy and sell individual stocks, had stepped away from the market during the volatility.
The S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been examining the market drop of May 6 for two weeks. Earlier this week, the S.E.C. said that circuit breakers would be initiated on individual stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index on a six-month test basis.
By EDWARD WYATT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 20, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/business/21crash.html?hpw
WASHINGTON — The enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun looking into the sharp stock market drop of May 6, the chairwoman of the agency said Thursday.
In written testimony to a Senate subcommittee about the May 6 market activity, the chairwoman, Mary L. Schapiro, said that the S.E.C. is “looking at a wide variety of actions on May 6 involving the full range of market participants.”
“We will examine such things as whether market professionals fully met their obligations, including, where applicable, their best execution obligations, and whether the decision to bust trades was made and applied fairly and consistently among investors,” Mrs. Schapiro said. “If we identify any activity that violates the securities laws, we will take appropriate action.”
Mrs. Schapiro said the enforcement investigations were prompted in part by complaints from individual investors “who used stop loss orders to protect them from rapidly declining markets.”
“It appears that some investors’ accounts were liquidated as share prices plummeted only to have stock prices close significantly above their sale prices,” she added.
In response to questions from the Senate panel, Mrs. Schapiro said that the enforcement division also was looking at whether any market participants that had “affirmative liquidity obligations,” or a legal obligation to continue making markets and offering to buy and sell individual stocks, had stepped away from the market during the volatility.
The S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been examining the market drop of May 6 for two weeks. Earlier this week, the S.E.C. said that circuit breakers would be initiated on individual stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index on a six-month test basis.
Diplomatic Storm Brewing Over Korean Peninsula
Diplomatic Storm Brewing Over Korean Peninsula
By MARK LANDLER
Copyright by Reuters
Published: May 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/world/asia/20diplo.html?hp
WASHINGTON — South Korea’s formal accusation that a North Korean torpedo sank one of its warships, killing 46 sailors, will set off a diplomatic drumbeat to punish North Korea, backed by the United States and other nations, which could end up in the United Nations Security Council.
On Thursday morning in Seoul, the South Korean government presented forensic evidence, including part of a torpedo propeller with what investigators believe is a North Korean serial number.
They said it proved that the underwater explosion that shattered the 1,200-ton corvette, the Cheonan, in March near a disputed sea border with the North was caused by the detonation of a torpedo.
On Monday, South Korea is expected to push for the case to be referred to the United Nations, and the United States plans to back Seoul “strongly and unequivocally,” according to Obama administration officials.
The investigation “points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that North Korea was responsible for this attack,” the White House said in a statement after the report was released in Seoul. “This act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea’s unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law.”
The big question, the officials said, is whether China, North Korea’s neighbor and a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, will go along with yet another international condemnation of the North. China backed sanctions against North Korea last year after the North tested a nuclear device, but it has reacted with extreme caution since the ship sank on March 26.
North Korea dismissed the findings as a fabrication and warned that it would wage “all-out war” if it were punished, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.
The sharp escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula complicates a trip to China by a delegation of senior American officials, led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, to hold a so-called Strategy and Economic Dialogue.
Nearly 200 American officials will travel to Beijing this weekend to consult with their Chinese counterparts on an array of issues, including sanctions against Iran, China’s exchange rate, climate change policy and exchanges between the American and Chinese militaries.
The American delegation will include officials as diverse as Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and the commander of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard.
The South Korean report, which essentially accuses the North of the worst military provocation on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War, injects a potentially combustible element into these talks. Among other things, it raises the question of how hard the United States plans to push Beijing to support a new Security Council resolution.
For weeks after the sinking of the Cheonan, China urged caution in pointing fingers at North Korea, even though the evidence pointed strongly in that direction. On Wednesday, South Korea briefed Chinese diplomats, as well as those of other countries, about its findings.
“China has always tried to avoid making choices between North and South Korea, but an incident like this doesn’t allow that,” said Victor Cha, a former Bush administration official, responsible for North Korean policy, who now teaches at Georgetown University. “They have to choose.”
For the United States, the calculus is also complicated. The Obama administration just won China’s backing for a fourth round of United Nations sanctions against Iran related to its nuclear program. That, some analysts said, was the administration’s main strategic priority at this point.
Still, the United States has been deeply involved in the South’s investigation of the sinking. It sent a team from the Navy’s Pacific Command to take part in the search for clues, officials said, headed by an expert in submarine escape and rescue, Rear Adm. Thomas J. Eccles.
Australia, Canada, Britain and Sweden also took part in the investigation and will endorse its conclusions, officials said. South Korea, the officials said, wanted to have an international team so it would be harder for the North to dismiss the inquiry as politically motivated.
South Korea is weighing other measures against North Korea, which could include cutting imports of raw materials from the North. Those shipments have already been constricted since the North closed several North-South joint-venture companies north of the border.
South Korea could also undertake naval exercises in its coastal waters as a form of muscle-flexing, Mr. Cha said, perhaps in cooperation with the United States.
But the world’s leverage over North Korea is extremely limited, analysts said. The North has little trade with its neighbors, aside from China. It no longer admits United Nations inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities and announced in 2003 that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
On Thursday, Japan said that the report on the sinking would make it harder to resume six-party talks with North Korea over the fate of its nuclear program.
Add to the uncertainty are the motivations, health and even state of mind of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, remained cloaked in mystery. Mr. Kim recently met in Beijing with President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and other leaders.
Kurt M. Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said he discussed Mr. Kim’s visit with Chinese officials earlier this week. He predicted that it would be a prime topic for Mrs. Clinton when she meets with Dai Bingguo, a state councilor in charge of foreign affairs.
“A central issue of discussion for Secretary Clinton and her Chinese interlocutors, Dai Bingguo and also the Chinese leaders, will be on their assessments of developments in North Korea and their reaction to the report,” he said.
By MARK LANDLER
Copyright by Reuters
Published: May 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/world/asia/20diplo.html?hp
WASHINGTON — South Korea’s formal accusation that a North Korean torpedo sank one of its warships, killing 46 sailors, will set off a diplomatic drumbeat to punish North Korea, backed by the United States and other nations, which could end up in the United Nations Security Council.
On Thursday morning in Seoul, the South Korean government presented forensic evidence, including part of a torpedo propeller with what investigators believe is a North Korean serial number.
They said it proved that the underwater explosion that shattered the 1,200-ton corvette, the Cheonan, in March near a disputed sea border with the North was caused by the detonation of a torpedo.
On Monday, South Korea is expected to push for the case to be referred to the United Nations, and the United States plans to back Seoul “strongly and unequivocally,” according to Obama administration officials.
The investigation “points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that North Korea was responsible for this attack,” the White House said in a statement after the report was released in Seoul. “This act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea’s unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law.”
The big question, the officials said, is whether China, North Korea’s neighbor and a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, will go along with yet another international condemnation of the North. China backed sanctions against North Korea last year after the North tested a nuclear device, but it has reacted with extreme caution since the ship sank on March 26.
North Korea dismissed the findings as a fabrication and warned that it would wage “all-out war” if it were punished, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.
The sharp escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula complicates a trip to China by a delegation of senior American officials, led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, to hold a so-called Strategy and Economic Dialogue.
Nearly 200 American officials will travel to Beijing this weekend to consult with their Chinese counterparts on an array of issues, including sanctions against Iran, China’s exchange rate, climate change policy and exchanges between the American and Chinese militaries.
The American delegation will include officials as diverse as Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and the commander of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard.
The South Korean report, which essentially accuses the North of the worst military provocation on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War, injects a potentially combustible element into these talks. Among other things, it raises the question of how hard the United States plans to push Beijing to support a new Security Council resolution.
For weeks after the sinking of the Cheonan, China urged caution in pointing fingers at North Korea, even though the evidence pointed strongly in that direction. On Wednesday, South Korea briefed Chinese diplomats, as well as those of other countries, about its findings.
“China has always tried to avoid making choices between North and South Korea, but an incident like this doesn’t allow that,” said Victor Cha, a former Bush administration official, responsible for North Korean policy, who now teaches at Georgetown University. “They have to choose.”
For the United States, the calculus is also complicated. The Obama administration just won China’s backing for a fourth round of United Nations sanctions against Iran related to its nuclear program. That, some analysts said, was the administration’s main strategic priority at this point.
Still, the United States has been deeply involved in the South’s investigation of the sinking. It sent a team from the Navy’s Pacific Command to take part in the search for clues, officials said, headed by an expert in submarine escape and rescue, Rear Adm. Thomas J. Eccles.
Australia, Canada, Britain and Sweden also took part in the investigation and will endorse its conclusions, officials said. South Korea, the officials said, wanted to have an international team so it would be harder for the North to dismiss the inquiry as politically motivated.
South Korea is weighing other measures against North Korea, which could include cutting imports of raw materials from the North. Those shipments have already been constricted since the North closed several North-South joint-venture companies north of the border.
South Korea could also undertake naval exercises in its coastal waters as a form of muscle-flexing, Mr. Cha said, perhaps in cooperation with the United States.
But the world’s leverage over North Korea is extremely limited, analysts said. The North has little trade with its neighbors, aside from China. It no longer admits United Nations inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities and announced in 2003 that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
On Thursday, Japan said that the report on the sinking would make it harder to resume six-party talks with North Korea over the fate of its nuclear program.
Add to the uncertainty are the motivations, health and even state of mind of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, remained cloaked in mystery. Mr. Kim recently met in Beijing with President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and other leaders.
Kurt M. Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said he discussed Mr. Kim’s visit with Chinese officials earlier this week. He predicted that it would be a prime topic for Mrs. Clinton when she meets with Dai Bingguo, a state councilor in charge of foreign affairs.
“A central issue of discussion for Secretary Clinton and her Chinese interlocutors, Dai Bingguo and also the Chinese leaders, will be on their assessments of developments in North Korea and their reaction to the report,” he said.
New York Times Editorial: Courage in Arizona
New York Times Editorial: Courage in Arizona
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/opinion/20thu2.html?th&emc=th
Four young immigrant students risked everything on Monday when they sat down in Senator John McCain’s office in Tucson and refused to leave. They were urging passage of the Dream Act, a bill offering a citizenship path to illegal immigrants who, like them, were brought to the United States as children, too young to have willfully broken the law.
For the undocumented, any encounter with law enforcement is perilous — especially in Arizona, where a new law pushes the hunt for illegal immigrants beyond the limits of reason, proportion and the Constitution.
Three of the student protesters were arrested for misdemeanor trespassing. Though later freed, they faced the risk of prison and deportation to press for a bill.
Who else has shown such courage in the long struggle for immigration reform? Not Mr. McCain, who ditched his principled support of rational immigration legislation to better his odds in a close re-election campaign against a far-right-wing opponent. Not President Obama, who has retreated to lip service and vagueness in his calls for reform. Not his administration. The Justice Department has stood by as a civil-rights coalition — the American Civil Liberties Union, Maldef, the N.A.A.C.P., the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and others — has swiftly sued to block the Arizona law.
Other supposed defenders of immigrants, Democrats in Congress, have lost their voices. Senators Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez and Harry Reid, mindful of November elections and frustrated Latino voters, have unveiled a blueprint for immigration reform that parrots Republican talking points about clamping down the southern border and treating the undocumented as a swelling tide of criminals.
Good immigration reform needs a good bill, and the administration and the president and Democratic leaders haven’t yet offered or convincingly fought for one. The fight for reform is stalled. It could be simple acts of protest that ignite a fire. Half a century ago it was young people, at lunch counters and aboard buses across the South, who help galvanize the movement for civil rights, and to waken more powerful elders to injustice.
The disobedient students in Arizona, and four others who walked to Washington from Florida this spring to press for the Dream Act, want the opportunity that others take for granted: the chance to earn college degrees, to forge better lives, to fulfill their potential in their home country. These are dreams that to them are well worth the risk.
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/opinion/20thu2.html?th&emc=th
Four young immigrant students risked everything on Monday when they sat down in Senator John McCain’s office in Tucson and refused to leave. They were urging passage of the Dream Act, a bill offering a citizenship path to illegal immigrants who, like them, were brought to the United States as children, too young to have willfully broken the law.
For the undocumented, any encounter with law enforcement is perilous — especially in Arizona, where a new law pushes the hunt for illegal immigrants beyond the limits of reason, proportion and the Constitution.
Three of the student protesters were arrested for misdemeanor trespassing. Though later freed, they faced the risk of prison and deportation to press for a bill.
Who else has shown such courage in the long struggle for immigration reform? Not Mr. McCain, who ditched his principled support of rational immigration legislation to better his odds in a close re-election campaign against a far-right-wing opponent. Not President Obama, who has retreated to lip service and vagueness in his calls for reform. Not his administration. The Justice Department has stood by as a civil-rights coalition — the American Civil Liberties Union, Maldef, the N.A.A.C.P., the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and others — has swiftly sued to block the Arizona law.
Other supposed defenders of immigrants, Democrats in Congress, have lost their voices. Senators Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez and Harry Reid, mindful of November elections and frustrated Latino voters, have unveiled a blueprint for immigration reform that parrots Republican talking points about clamping down the southern border and treating the undocumented as a swelling tide of criminals.
Good immigration reform needs a good bill, and the administration and the president and Democratic leaders haven’t yet offered or convincingly fought for one. The fight for reform is stalled. It could be simple acts of protest that ignite a fire. Half a century ago it was young people, at lunch counters and aboard buses across the South, who help galvanize the movement for civil rights, and to waken more powerful elders to injustice.
The disobedient students in Arizona, and four others who walked to Washington from Florida this spring to press for the Dream Act, want the opportunity that others take for granted: the chance to earn college degrees, to forge better lives, to fulfill their potential in their home country. These are dreams that to them are well worth the risk.
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