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2012-09-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

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2012-05-24T08:27:00.001-07:00

Astronomy picture

2012-05-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN BY ME WITH CANNON VIXIA HFR10 IN PUNJAB PAKISTAN.

my newsongs site

2012-05-17T09:28:00.001-07:00

Flash flood hits Afghanistan

2012-05-10T04:31:00.000-07:00

An Afghan girl walks through mud in front of a house destroyed by flood waters in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province on May 8, 2012. – Photo by AFP.
Afghan men rescue an old man from a mosque destroyed by flooding in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province on May 8, 2012. – Photo by AFP.
An Afghan man who lost three members of his family cries after a flood in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province on May 9, 2012. – Photo by AFP.
An Afghan boy shouts as he stands after a flood in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province on May 9, 2012. – Photo by AFP.
An Afghan woman displays a picture of her son who died in a flood in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province on May 9, 2012. – Photo by AFP.
In this photograph taken on May 8, 2012 Afghan men rescue an elderly man after a flood in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province. – Photo by AFP.
In this photograph taken on May 8, 2012 an Afghan boy stands next to the head of a sheep after a flood in Dah Mard village of Sangcharak district in Sar-e Pul province. – Photo by AFP.

Indian army kills 4 suspected rebels in Kashmir

2012-05-10T04:30:00.004-07:00

-Reuters Photo
SRINAGAR: The Indian army says soldiers have shot and killed four suspected rebels who allegedly intruded into the Indian portion of Kashmir from Pakistani territory to attack government forces and targets.
Army spokesman Lt Col J S Brar says the incident occurred Thursday in the Uri sector close to a cease-fire line dividing Kashmir between longtime rivals India and Pakistan.
There was no independent confirmation of the gunbattle.
Since 1989, a violent separatist insurgency seeking Kashmir’s independence or merger with Pakistan and the ensuing crackdown by Indian forces have killed nearly 68,000 people in Kashmir.
Indian authorities say the number of attacks by the insurgents has been reduced substantially following an improvement in ties with Pakistan.
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New Antarctic ice shelf threatened by warming

2012-05-10T04:30:00.003-07:00

Scientists are predicting the loss of another major ice sheet in Antarctic by the end of the century. – Image courtesy by www.ice2sea.eu
LONDON: Scientists are predicting the disappearance of another vast ice shelf in Antarctica by the end of the century that will accelerate rising sea levels.
The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf fringing the Weddell Sea on the eastern side of Antarctica has so far not seen ice loss from global warming and much of the observation of melting has focused on the western side of the continent around the Amundsen Sea. But new research from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany says the 450,000-sq-km ice shelf is under threat.
“According to our calculations, this protective barrier will disintegrate by the end of this century,” said Dr Harmut Hellmer, lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature this week.
The huge ice shelves that float on the seas fringing Antarctica provide a buffer against warming waters eating away at the base of the much larger glaciers behind them that sit on the land.
“Ice shelves are like corks in the bottles for the ice streams behind them,” said Hellmer. “They reduce the ice flow.
“If, however, the ice shelves melt from below, they become so thin that the dragging surfaces become smaller and the ice behind them starts to move.”
Hellmer and his team predict the melting of the Filchner-Ronne shelf could add up to 4.4 mm per year to rising global sea levels.
According to the latest estimates based on remote sensing data, global sea levels rose 1.5 mm a year between 2003 and 2010 due to melting glaciers and ice shelves, the scientists say.
This is on top of an estimated 1.7 mm annual rise due to the expansion of the oceans as the water warms.
Costly Sea defences
The research was funded by the European Union’s ‘Ice2sea’ programme, set up in the wake of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that highlighted ice-sheets as the most significant remaining uncertainty in projections of rising sea levels. Projections from the Ice2sea project will feed into the fifth IPCC report due in 2013/2014.
It will also inform plans for major capital spending on sea defences to protect Europe’s coastlines, particularly areas of economic importance like London, with its tidal barrier on the River Thames, and the port of Rotterdam. A large part of the Netherlands is below sea level and protected by an elaborate system of dykes.
Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey, who heads the Ice2sea programme, told Reuters the Alfred Wegener Institute’s findings add to evidence that warming oceans are having the greatest impact on the ice sheets, as opposed to atmospheric changes or the legacy of some long-term change decades or even hundreds of years ago.
“What people need to know with a sense of urgency is what is going to happen to sea levels over the next few decades,” said Vaughan. “In those terms, these results are very big news indeed.”
Vaughan is cautious about precise projections of the impact on sea levels. “For me, those numbers are about what might be plausible,” he said. “I think we need to do some more work with the ice sheet models to determine exactly what sea level rises we might expect, but those are plausible numbers.”
All other things being equal, the polar ice sheets reach a balance where the amount of snow going in each year is broadly matched by the number of icebergs coming out, but subtle changes like those associated with global warming, can affect that balance quite rapidly.
Vaughan said there was clear evidence that the widely-reported disintegration of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves in 1995 and 2002 respectively, had led to the ice sheets that fed them moving faster into the sea, some of them many times the rate seen before collapse.
The scientific focus on the melting ice in the Amundsen sea is down to the fact that this is where it is happening now, but Vaughan said although the Weddell Sea is not seeing ice loss at the moment, the German research supports the view that it will spread to other areas.
If there is a lesson for climate scientists, it’s “don’t behave like the infant school football team and follow the ball,” he said.

Pakistan, UK to intensify cooperation against terrorism: PM Gilani

2012-05-10T04:30:00.002-07:00

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza GIlani. — File photo
LONDON: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani Thursday said Pakistan and the United Kingdom were fighting together their common enemy of extremism and terrorism and would further enhance cooperation on this vital area.
Speaking to British Home Secretary Theresa May here at his hotel, the prime minister said the two countries were also cooperating to help eliminate the threat of the Improvised Explosive Devices. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and Interior Minister Rehman Malik were also present at the meeting.
Malik confirmed that talks between the two countries were a regular feature on the issue of IEDs.
The British home secretary later told APP that she had very “useful discussions” with Prime Minister Gilani, Foreign Minister Khar and the Interior Minister Malik.
She said the two countries had a strong relationship and could work together in countering extremism and terrorism.
During the talks, the Pakistani side also raised the issue of visas, particularly for students, and was informed that the visa procedure had been improved and urgent visas could also now be obtained. However, the Pakistani side said that despite improvements in some areas, there was still considerable delay and that students were facing problems that needed to be rectified.
Moreover, Home Secretary May recalled her recent visit to Pakistan where she met officials of the Nadra and Narcotics Control and appreciated their work. She was also appreciative of the Pakistani diaspora which she said was playing an important role in the British economy.
She said a number of British Pakistanis were also members of the UK parliament and were helping build bridges between the governments and the people of the two countries.
Prime Minister Gilani said the two countries had deep and lasting ties that have continued to grow.
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Sri Lanka announces new IPL-style league

2012-05-10T04:30:00.001-07:00

Sri Lankan cricketers at the Cricket World Cup semi-final match between Sri Lanka and New Zealand at the R. Premadasa Cricket Stadium in Colombo on March 29, 2011. — Photo by AFP
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka will host a Twenty20 tournament in August in an attempt to emulate the success of the highly popular Indian Premier League (IPL), the island’s cricket authorities announced on Thursday.
The Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL) will be played in Colombo and Pallekele from August 10 to 31 and will feature yet-to-be named world players, the board said in a statement.
“Twenty20's massive popularity and status as the most exciting and entertaining format of cricket will be further enhanced by this newest tournament to the world of cricket,” Sri Lanka Cricket said.
“International players will be playing in the SLPL alongside Sri Lankan national cricketers and young Sri Lankan hopefuls.” The 24-match tournament will take place a few weeks before the World Twenty20 opens in Sri Lanka on September 18.
The SLPC was scheduled to be held in July last year but was put off due to what the organisers said was the unavailability of India’s top players who were on a tour of England in that period.
The tournament will feature seven provincial teams, each having six overseas players in their squad but with a provision that only four can be fielded in a playing XI.
All matches will be telecast live, the SLC said, adding the names of the participating cricketers and how they will be allotted to the seven teams will be announced later.
The teams have been named Basnahira Bears, Kandurata Kites, Nagenahira Nagas, Ruhuna Rhinos, Uthura Oryxes, Uva Unicorns and the Wayamba Wolves, the SLC said.

Europe losing hope for Earth observation satellite

2012-05-10T04:29:00.001-07:00

An image take from ESA’s Envisate – the Earth observation satellite. – File image Reuters
BERLIN: The European Space Agency has all but lost hope of recovering its stricken Earth observation satellite Envisat.
The agency lost contact with the satellite April 8 and all efforts to restore communications have failed. ESA said Wednesday that it will continue trying to reconnect but that chances of doing so are now ”extremely low.”
Envisat is described as ”the world’s most complex Earth observation satellite” and has been used by scientists over the past decade to provide information on land, oceans, ice and the atmosphere. It has long exceeded its expected life span of five years.
ESA plans to begin launching a new generation of Earth observation satellites called Sentinel next year.

Merkel says Nato must stick to Afghanistan timetable

2012-05-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

German Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures during her speech at the German federal parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, May 10, 2012. – Photo by AP.
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that the timetable laid out by Nato for international troops to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 must be respected.
“The principle which applies for the German government is: we entered (Afghanistan) together, we will leave together,” she said after comments by French president-elect Francois Hollande that he wanted to pull French troops out this year.
Merkel was addressing lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house of parliament ahead of a summit by Nato allies in the US city of Chicago on May 20-21.
“It will be a question during the Nato summit in Chicago of confirming in a concrete way the timetable fixed in 2010 in Lisbon for a withdrawal by the end of 2014,” Merkel added.
“The good news is that the process of handing over responsibility (to the Afghan authorities) is progressing as we had planned,” Merkel said.
France’s 3,400 troops are the fifth largest contingent in the 130,000-strong US-led Nato force battling Taliban insurgents, but Kabul has downplayed the effect of their early departure.
Afghan forces are gradually taking over control of security in the country, with the goal of being in the lead nationwide next year and enabling most of the 130,000 foreign troops to leave by the end of 2014.
Germany is the third biggest troop supplier after the United States and Britain.

Red Cross stops work in Pakistani cities

2012-05-10T04:28:00.001-07:00

Pakistani hospital staff and rescue workers carry the coffin of British Red Cross worker Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, to an ambulance, from a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Monday, April 30, 2012. – Photo by AP
ISLAMABAD: The Red Cross says it has suspended operations in two of Pakistan’s largest cities following the killing of a British nurse working for the group in the country.
The body of Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, was dumped close to the southwestern city of Quetta on April 29. He was kidnapped in the city in January.
In a statement Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was suspending humanitarian activities in the northwestern city of Peshawar and port city of Karachi.
The organisation has already stopped work in Quetta and surrounding Balochistan province.
The ICRC has been performing humanitarian work in Pakistan since 1947.

Johnson, Cummins recalled to Australia one-day squad

2012-05-10T04:28:00.000-07:00

“Mitchell Johnson… is in contention for the ICC World Twenty20 (starting in September) and needs to be in the set-up and have some quality competitive cricket leading into this.” -File photo
Fast bowlers Mitchell Johnson and Patrick Cummins will return to Australia’s one-day international side following long-term injury breaks when they were named on Thursday for next month’s tour of Ireland and England.
The 30-year-old Johnson has not played for Australia since the tour of South Africa late last year and then had foot surgery, while teenage fast bowler Cummins has recovered from a heel injury that kept him out for about five months.
“Mitchell Johnson… is in contention for the ICC World Twenty20 (starting in September) and needs to be in the set-up and have some quality competitive cricket leading into this,” chairman of selectors John Inverarity said in a statement.
“We are also excited about the return of Pat Cummins and we are looking to ease him back into the team. He will not be expected to play in all of the eight scheduled games.”
Australia are rotating their one-day squad, with the 2015 World Cup they co-host with New Zealand in mind, with veteran wicketkeeper Brad Haddin excluded along with several internationals who played in the domestic season or on the recent West Indies tour.
Matthew Wade, who supplanted Haddin in Australia’s domestic season, is the only specialist wicketkeeper named for the tour, which includes a one-day international against Ireland, two matches against county sides and five against England.
Leg-spinning all rounder Steve Smith has also been included in the team, with Xavier Doherty the only specialist spinner.
“Steve Smith has been rewarded for his late season form,” Inverarity added.
“He has come into strong contention for the Australian ICC World Twenty20 squad to be named in August and the (selection panel) is keen to have him in the set-up in England as the reserve batsman, (while) his leg-spinners would provide good variation to our attack.”
Squad: Michael Clarke (captain), Shane Watson, George Bailey, Patrick Cummins, Xavier Doherty, Ben Hilfenhaus, Mike Hussey, David Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee, Clint McKay, James Pattinson, Steve Smith, Matthew Wade, David Warner.
Itinerary:
June 21   v Leicestershire, Leicester
June 23   v Ireland, Belfast
June 26   v Essex, Chelmsford
June 29   v England, London (Lords)
July 1   v England, London (The Oval)
July 4   v England, Birmingham
July 7   v England, Durham
July 10   v England, Manchester
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Merkel stresses need for austerity in Europe

2012-05-10T04:16:00.003-07:00

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses deputies on the upcoming G8 and Nato summits at the lower house of parliament Bundestag, May 10, 2012 in Berlin. — Photo by AFP
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave little ground to those hoping she would temper her demands for austerity, telling the country’s Parliament that the only way Europe can recover from its debt crisis is if it perseveres with structural reforms alongside tough measures to bring borrowing levels down.
In a speech Thursday, Merkel dismissed calls to abandon or scale back austerity measures, which involve lower government spending and higher taxes, within the European Union. She insisted that the combination of debt reduction and growth were the ”two pillars” of the strategy needed to bring the trade bloc out of the crisis.
”Growth through structural reform is important and necessary,” she told Parliament.
”Growth through debt would throw us back to the beginning of the crisis.”
Debate over the future of European austerity measures has flared up in recent days following elections in France and Greece.
Socialist candidate Francois Hollande won France’s presidential elections on Sunday after campaigning for a greater emphasis on growth in Europe’s crisis management.
Meanwhile, most people voted for anti-austerity parties in Sunday elections in Greece, stoking fears that the country would not meet the commitments it has made in return for bailout money.
Merkel said reducing debt and strengthening competitiveness needed to go hand in hand.
”They aren’t contradictory, they belong together,” she said.
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Chen says China authorities targeting relatives

2012-05-10T04:16:00.002-07:00

A YouTube screenshot shows blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng. — Photo AP
BEIJING: Blind activist Chen Guangcheng on Thursday accused authorities in his home province in eastern China of seeking revenge for his escape by detaining his nephew and threatening other relatives.
Chen, whose daring flight from house arrest to the US embassy in Beijing sparked a diplomatic crisis, said his nephew Chen Kegui was in police custody in Yinan county in Shandong province after attacking an intruder last month.
Local villagers and Internet reports have said the intruder was a local official angered by Chen’s escape.
Chen Kegui went on the run following the incident in late April and was later detained. His wife has been missing for the past few days, Chen said.
“The Shandong authorities are retaliating against me,” the self-taught blind lawyer told AFP in a phone interview from a Beijing hospital.
“Yesterday (Wednesday), the public security bureau called us and told the family that Chen Kegui has been formally locked up, and they wanted Chen Kegui’s wife to come in and sign a document.”Chen, 40, spent two years under house arrest after serving a four-year jail sentence on charges related to his work exposing forced sterilisations and abortions under China’s population control policy.
Since his release from jail in 2010, up to 100 security guards had surrounded Chen’s home in Dongshigu village 24 hours a day, preventing him and his wife from leaving their home and preventing outsiders from seeing him.
He is currently in Beijing receiving treatment for injuries sustained during his escape, but has said he does not feel safe in China and wants to leave with his wife and two children to study in the United States.
However, there are fears for his extended family — including his elderly mother and the parents of Chen Kegui — who were left behind in Dongshigu.
“Chen Kegui’s mother was detained several days ago, after she was detained she was released on bail, right now they are threatening to arrest again,” Chen said.
“Chen Kegui’s father is confined to the village and cannot leave. They have confiscated his telephone,” Chen said.
Phone calls to the Yinan police went unanswered Thursday.
But Liu Weiguo, whose law firm has agreed to represent Chen Kegui, told AFP another lawyer had his licence confiscated by local authorities when he tried to see him in Yinan.
“As lawyers we are seeking to defend Chen Kegui in accordance with the law, but the authorities are refusing to give us access to him, they are violating the law,” Liu told AFP.

Hafeez to lead Pakistan in T20s

2012-05-10T04:16:00.001-07:00

“The appointments are for the coming tour to Sri Lanka,” PCB Chairman Zaka Ashraf told a news conference on Thursday.
KARACHI: The Pakistan C ricket Board ( PCB)h as named Mohammad Hafeez as the new captain of the national Twenty20 team but retained Misbah-ul-Haq as the skipper for tests and one-day internationals.
“The appointments are for the coming tour to Sri Lanka,” PCB Chairman Zaka Ashraf told a news conference on Thursday.
Pakistan tours Sri Lanka from May 29 to play three tests, five ODIs and two Twenty20 matches.

Pacific plastic soup grew 100-fold

2012-05-10T04:15:00.002-07:00

If the microplastics in the ocean continued to grow it will be a major threat for marine life. – AP Photo
PARIS : The vast swirl of plastic waste floating in the North Pacific has grown 100-fold over the last 40 years, according to a research paper published Wednesday.
And scientists warned the killer soup of microplastic — particles smaller than five millimetres (one inch) — threatened to alter the open ocean’s natural environment.
In the period 1972 to 1987, no microplastic was found in the majority of samples taken for testing, said the paper in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Today, scientists estimate the swirling mass of waste known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is roughly the size of Texas.
“The abundance of small human-produced plastic particles in the NPSG has increased by 100 times over the last four decades,” said a statement on the findings of researchers from the University of California.
The United Nations Environment Programme says around 13,000 pieces of plastic litter are found in every square kilometre of sea, but the problem is worst in the North Pacific.
The plastic particles are being vacuumed up by marine life and birds, and the mix is heavy with toxic chemicals.
The study said the NPSG is providing a new habitat for ocean insects called “sea-skaters” which prey on plankton and fish eggs and are in turn fed on by seabirds, turtles and fish.
The insect, which spends its entire life at sea, needs a hard surface on which to lay its eggs — previously limited to relatively rare items like floating wood, pumice and sea shells.
If microplastic density continued to grow, insect numbers would increase as well, the scientists warned, “potentially at the expense of prey such as zooplankton or fish eggs”.

Red Cross stops work in Pakistani cities

2012-05-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

Protesters in Moscow Try New Tactics to Avoid Arrests

2012-05-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

Ringed by a small group of supporters, the man, Vadim Dergachyov, 29, argued that it was not illegal to sit down in Moscow. But the police officers — suspecting that he was protesting the inauguration of Vladimir V. Putin as president — ordered him to stand up. He refused, and the officers simply shrugged and walked away.
Since Monday, the police have been arresting any people they think even remotely resemble antigovernment demonstrators, sometimes just because they are wearing white ribbons or even white T-shirts.
In response, protesters in Moscow have adopted new tactics, “dilemma protests” and flash mobs, to avoid the mass arrests.

The evolving tactics in Moscow are not novel. In a primer on nonviolent protest, “Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle,” Gene Sharp, an American intellectual, described a “dilemma protest” as a performance of an action so inchoate and unorthodox that police are trapped. If they let it happen, they are encouraging it, but if they arrest people they risk looking either silly or arbitrary and unjust, which is the point.
“This type of activity enables resistance to continue against opponents who are applying extreme repression,” Mr. Sharp wrote. Acts of resistance in small groups, he wrote, are effective when larger “bases for resistance have been neutralized, controlled or destroyed by the opponents.”
The tactic has found wide appeal in Belarus, where activists gather to clap, eat ice cream cones, set their cellphone alarms to ring in chorus or simply stand silently.
In Moscow, protesters following Aleksei Navalny, the anticorruption activist, have sat in parks, sung in public or simply walked in groups. Typically, Mr. Navalny posts his location from an iPhone, and invariably hundreds of Muscovites show up to join him. When Mr. Navalny clambered onto the pedestal of a monument in a park as a makeshift podium, the topic was not politics.
He roused the crowd with this peculiar rallying cry: “We are just going for a walk!”
And the crowd cheered and yelled back: “We are just going for a walk! We are just going for a walk!”
Since Sunday, the day before the inauguration, when the authorities broke up a permitted protest for still unclear reasons, the police have arrested at least 600 activists in Moscow, including protest leaders on multiple occasions for several hours. On Wednesday, a court sentenced Mr. Navalny and another protest leader, Sergei Udaltsov, to 15 days in jail for disobeying a police order.
“This is a peaceful protest against Putin’s inauguration, but it shouldn’t look like a protest,” Oleg, a programmer out at a park called Kitai Gorod, about a mile from the Kremlin, said late Monday evening, a mat furled under one arm. “That’s why we say we’re just here to relax, and that’s why I brought this mat.”
On Monday, the authorities answered the new tactics by sending a street-sweeping machine with a water nozzle to sprinkle Oleg, who gave only his first name for fear of arrest, and others who sat down. It worked, at least temporarily, and there were no arrests.
Two days later, amid throngs of tourists eating ice cream and posing for pictures outside the Kremlin gates, a group of mostly young people wearing white ribbons and carrying flowers suddenly broke into song. First it was a perestroika-era protest tune and then a World War II-era army song in honor of the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.
Riot police officers in black helmets, jackboots and flak jackets moved in almost immediately, joined by a uniformed police officer with a megaphone, who began repeating in a steady monotone: “Dear citizens, your action is illegal. Disperse immediately.”
The group of singing youths simply walked away.
Also on Wednesday, a few hundred young people wearing white ribbons formed a flash mob in an unlikely spot: the middle of a Communist Party march to celebrate Victory Day. Because the Communists had a parade permit, they managed to walk nearly to the Kremlin walls while chanting “Down with Putin!”
Mr. Navalny, for his part, has asked Muscovites to simply meander and has given his idea a name: “The Protest Promenade.”
Over two days, his followers have strolled through the pleasant, leafy districts of central Moscow, something they might well be doing anyway over the Victory Day holidays — or maybe not.
At one point, in a sign of Mr. Navalny’s broad support among the affluent, a red convertible Lexus drove slowly beside those walking on the sidewalk. The driver half stood, raised his right hand and offered a crisp salute to the chief of this new ambulatory dissident movement.

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In Spain, Grupo A.C.S.’s High Debt Reflects Country’s Finances

2012-05-10T01:09:00.002-07:00

Saddled with a 9 billion euro ($11.7 billion) debt pile that is twice the size of the company’s shrinking market value, A.C.S. is in the midst of a frantic campaign to sell off assets, pay down debt and further distance itself from a Spanish economy caught in a spiral of austerity and deflation.
The Spanish government’s harsh budget cuts and their depressive effect on the economy have prompted foreign investors to sell Spanish stocks and bonds in droves. On Tuesday, Spanish stocks plunged 2.8 percent and the government’s 10-year bond yields spiked to 6 percent as Spain moved to bail out its ailing banks, and uncertainty over Greece loomed.

But economists now say that one of the greatest threats to Spain could well be the snarl of debt choking off the growth prospects of A.C.S. and other highly indebted Spanish corporations. And they warn that as these companies cut back on investments and shed assets as well as jobs, the result could be a Japan-style lost decade of stagnation.
An important metric in the euro zone debt crisis has been government debt as a percentage of the total economic output, and Spain has a relatively low ratio of 70 percent, compared with 165 percent for Greece and 120 percent for Italy.
But according to a recent report by McKinsey on global debt, Spain’s nonfinancial private sector debt is 134 percent of gross domestic product, higher than any major economy in the world with the exception of Ireland, where the figures are skewed by the outsize presence of foreign multinationals. Factoring in bank, household and government obligations, the total figure rises to 363 percent of G.D.P., trailing only Japan at 512 percent and Britain at 507 percent.
“The problem in Spain is not government debt, it’s private sector debt,” said Jonathan Tepper of Variant Perception, a London-based research boutique with a specialty in Spain. “A.C.S. perfectly captures this problem.”
Under the stewardship of its ambitious chairman, Florentino Pérez, A.C.S., like many other corporations in Spain during the recent boom, gorged on cheap debt, seeking to diversify by buying large equity stakes in companies in Spain and elsewhere.
In a bull market, this web of cross-holdings held in special-purpose vehicles and financed by bank loans can sustain a vast corporate appetite. But when the assets backing these debts plunge and the banks call in their loans, the opposite can occur.
“It is a really bad time for these companies,” said Mauro Guillen, an expert on Spanish multinational companies at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “The government is no longer investing in infrastructure, the municipalities are no longer paying their bills and the companies are in constant need of refinancing from their banks. So they have to unload their positions to raise cash.”
With 28 billion euros in revenue, A.C.S., or Actividades de Construcción y Servicios, is one of the largest building services companies in the world. Its projects range from building subway stations in Manhattan and managing toll roads in Florida, to collecting waste in France and building wind farms in Brazil.
But for the growing legion of investors who have been betting against the company by selling its shares short, A.C.S.’s still significant exposure to Spain’s ailing construction industry and austerity-hobbled municipalities feeds their bearish outlook.
Credit Suisse, in a recent report, warned that 48 percent of the company’s cash flow comes from various Spain-related infrastructure projects. Tellingly, the bank said, 70 percent of that income depends on austerity-bound government entities.
More than anything, though, it is the 6 billion euros in debt that A.C.S. has used to buy a controlling stake of the German construction company Hochtief, and a similar but now thwarted move to take over Iberdrola, the Spanish utilities giant, that is at the heart of investor concerns.
“The debt of this company has gone out of control,” said Javier Suarez, a utilities analysts at Nomura in Madrid.
The decline of its shares has accelerated in recent weeks — the price is down 40 percent for the year and fell 27 percent in April alone — as it became clear that the more Iberdrola fell, because of concerns about regulatory pressures and its own high debt, the worse A.C.S.’s financial position became.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 9, 2012
An earlier version of this article misspelled part of the name of Mr. Pérez’s company. It is Actividades de Construcción y Servicios, not Actividades de Construcction y Servicios.

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Olympics: Teenager Trying to Qualify for U.S. Show-Jumping Team

2012-05-10T01:09:00.001-07:00

“I was thinking, ‘O.K., Katie,’ ” Kessler recalled.
“And here we are,” Monahan-Prudent said.
After tying Margie Engle, then 53, for the victory at the Olympic selection trials in March, Kessler sits first and fifth on the Olympic long list for American show jumpers with her horses Cylana and Mika.
Kessler, a 17-year-old from Armonk, N.Y., now faces a series of competitions observed by the United States team’s Olympic selection committee. She could become the youngest rider in Olympic show-jumping history (the records are incomplete). The first event, the Hagyard Lexington Classic, is Friday in Lexington, Ky.
She will be riding for a spot on the team — four riders in addition to one traveling reserve — alongside international stars more than twice her age, like Beezie Madden, 48, who won consecutive team gold medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.

“If you asked somebody before the trials if she was going to do as well as she did, a majority would have said, ‘No way,’ ” said Madden, who is on the Olympic list with three horses. “But I think she proved in the trials that she’s definitely worth consideration.”
At the last Olympics, three of the four American show jumpers were in their 40s. Mclain Ward, who won gold in 2004 and 2008 with Madden, was 33. The minimum age requirement in show jumping is 18; Kessler’s birthday is 18 days before the London Games begin.
Kessler became eligible to jump at the Olympic height, just over five feet, this year. Her first competition at that level was with Mika in February, about a month before the trials.
She was not planning to do the trials on her new horse, Cylana, who had never competed at that height. But the mare jumped beyond expectations this winter.
“Even though she’s very green and I’m really green, we got to do one big class before the trials,” Kessler said of Cylana. Two weeks later, they won; Kessler also finished third with Mika.
Since completing her first Grand Prix in Switzerland at 13, Kessler has compiled plenty of wins, including young riders’ team victories in the United States and Europe and a Grand Prix win at the glamorous Gucci Masters in Paris two years ago. Last year, she won a Fiat in Italy, which she named Piccola before her parents had her sell it back to the dealer.
But the national team’s chef d’équipe, or manager, George Morris, pointed out Kessler has never ridden in senior-level competitions like the Nations Cup or the Pan American Games.
“She’s always been a very talented girl, very athletic, very gutsy,” he said. “It is a wonderful thing that she’s done what she’s done, but the jury is out.”
Morris said the selection committee for the Olympic team would take into account a horse and rider’s competitive history in addition to performances at events this spring.
“She has a very good body of work,” he said of Kessler. “But it hasn’t been at the level Beezie or Laura Kraut or Mclain have exhibited over the years.”
Ward, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who shattered his knee at a Grand Prix in January, received a bye from the trials that Kessler won and returns to competition this month. Madden also received a bye on her horse, Coral Reef Via Volo, as did Kraut and her 2008 gold medal partner, Cedric, because it was deemed in the best interest of the horses.
Engle, who tied with Kessler at the trials, is second on the Olympic list with Indigo, a horse Engle co-owns in a partnership that includes the former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese and his wife, Shay. Engle competed at the 2000 Sydney Games riding Perin.
Unlike many riders who depend on sponsors, Kessler has the advantage of significant financial backing from her parents, Teri and Murray Kessler, who also ride competitively. Murray Kessler is the chief executive of Lorillard, a tobacco company.
Monahan-Prudent said that Kessler had made sacrifices some wealthy young riders were unwilling to make. “They want everything, they want to go to college, they want to travel,” she said. “You don’t get to the Olympics with that attitude. You can’t have it all.”
A handful of riders under 30 also made the Olympic long list, including Charlie Jayne — who at 22 was the second alternate on the 2008 Olympic team — and Jessica Springsteen, 20, Bruce Springsteen’s daughter.
Now that she is atop the Olympic list, Kessler recognizes that “people will stop seeing me as the kid and start seeing me as someone they have to compete with.”
“My mind frame has changed from, ‘You know, I’m just going for experience,’ to now, ‘I want to be on the team and I have a chance.’ ” Kessler said. “I’m going to go in there like I’m Beezie and lay down the best performance that I can.”
Madden acknowledged: “She beat us all. We have to go on now. That was pretty cut and dry.”

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Jenin Loses Leader as West Bank Violence Returns

2012-05-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

Her husband, Qadoura Moussa, 60, the governor of this region in the northern part of the Palestinian territories, popped a blood-pressure tablet, then grabbed his rifle and headed into the night. He roamed the city for an hour or more before collapsing at a clinic. He suffered two heart attacks and was dead before dawn.

“This person is a coward,” Mrs. Moussa said of whoever fired the shots, between condolence calls Monday afternoon. “But those who sent him were trying to convey a message.”
In the week since his death, Mr. Moussa has been embraced here as a martyr to the Palestinian national struggle, his visage plastered on car windshields and building facades, behind candy kiosks and in front of protest tents. The Palestinian Authority and others close to the governor say he died battling gangs that threatened to bring chaos back to the streets of Jenin, a notorious hub of violent crime during the second intifada reborn in recent years as a model of Palestinian self-rule, cooperation with Israel and economic growth.
“It is a significant setback for the dovish wing of the Palestinian national movement as well as the American and the quartet’s attempt to keep hope afloat in these times when the ‘peace process’ is in tatters,” Prof. Mark Rosenblum, a left-leaning Queens College historian of the Middle East, said by e-mail, referring to the four Middle East peacemakers: the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. Professor Rosenblum described the “Jenin model” as an important “symbol of a secure and successful de-occupation.”
Brig. Gen. Radi Assidi, commander of the security forces in the region, said people throughout the West Bank “realize that law and order started in Jenin, so any lawlessness that starts in Jenin could spread throughout the West Bank.”
Scores of Palestinians have been detained for questioning in connection with the shooting at Mr. Moussa’s home, officials said, including a number of security officers. While Jenin’s downtown vegetable market bustled with life as usual Monday afternoon, as night fell convoys of heavily armed officers rolled onto the streets and out to a village connected to the leading suspects.
“You can feel the tension and instability,” said Louy Arkawi, owner of Ombashi, a restaurant on one of Jenin’s main thoroughfares. “As a businessman, I want law and order. If there is chaos, my priority will be not to invest more in the city, but to buy weapons to defend myself.”
General Assidi traced the resurging lawlessness back about a year, to the murder of the legendary director of the Freedom Theater, an oasis for decades of so-called cultural resistance. The violence picked up over the past seven or eight months, he said, and escalated in an April confrontation in the nearby village of Bir al Basha between police officers and a man wanted for killing his cousin. The wanted man’s brother fired on the police and ended up dead, General Assidi said, and many here believe that the attack on the governor’s home was retaliation.
“Unfortunately, our leadership in Ramallah heard the bell ringing late,” General Assidi said in an interview at his headquarters here, not yet entirely rebuilt after having been destroyed during the intifada. “We informed them that some members of the security establishment have no loyalty, but nobody paid attention to our request.”
On Monday, General Assidi said, nine of his counterparts from across the West Bank met here with the authority’s top security official, part of a crackdown in which the leadership has vowed to question, arrest and try anyone connected with the attack on Mr. Moussa’s house, the Bir al Basha affair and other recent flare-ups. A new governor, Talal Dwaikat, arrived Sunday, walking the streets for an hour to proclaim his commitment to safety.
“Jenin will not be a place for the gangs,” Mr. Dwaikat told a delegation of Israeli Arab women who came from Nazareth on Monday to express condolences and meet him. “Jenin will be a place of security so we can receive you warmly.”
In an interview afterward, Mr. Dwaikat said he would prosecute every criminal in the region. “There will be no exception,” he said. “Whatever his status in the community or history, law and order is above all of us.
“I want to continue the march of Qadoura Moussa.”
Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting.

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P.O.W. Is Focus of Talks on Taliban Prisoner Swap

2012-05-10T01:08:00.002-07:00

The negotiations, currently stalled, involved a trade of five Taliban prisoners held at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of the Army, who is believed to be held by the militant Haqqani network in the tribal area of Pakistan’s northwest frontier, on the Afghan border. Sergeant Bergdahl was captured in Paktika Province in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. His family has not heard from him in a year, since they saw him in a Taliban video, although they and the Pentagon believe that he is alive and well.

The family’s decision to end its silence could free up the Obama administration to discuss the case publicly and reframe the debate in Washington about releasing the Taliban prisoners, which is seen as a crucial confidence-building measure in efforts to strike a political settlement with the Taliban. American officials believe that a peace deal would help ensure Afghanistan’s stability after 2014, when most American and NATO forces will have left the country. In the absence of a prisoner exchange agreement, those talks are “moribund,” one Western official said.
Until now, the administration has said publicly only that the negotiations included talks about releasing the five prisoners from Guantánamo to the custody of the government in Qatar — which some Democrats and Republicans in Congress have opposed — and not that the five might be exchanged for Sergeant Bergdahl.
Sergeant Bergdahl’s father, Robert Bergdahl, said in interviews with The New York Times near the family’s home here on Tuesday and Wednesday that he was frustrated by the lack of progress on the talks, which he believes are stalled because the Obama administration is reacting to pressure from Congress in an election year not to negotiate with terrorists.
“We don’t have faith in the U.S. government being able to reconcile this,” Mr. Bergdahl said.
Although Sergeant Bergdahl’s captivity has long been publicly known, the family had kept the prisoner exchange negotiations secret at the urging of the Obama administration and out of fear that their son might be harmed. But the Taliban suspended talks in March in large part because of their frustration with what they see as Washington’s dragging its feet over the exchange.
American officials counter that the Taliban have not agreed to a major American demand: a travel ban intended to keep the transferred detainees from leaving Qatar and returning to the battlefields of Afghanistan or insurgent havens in Pakistan.
Mr. Bergdahl, who said he wanted to bring more attention to his son’s plight and pressure the administration to revive the negotiations, decided to go public after a P.O.W. group asked him to speak in Washington during the coming Memorial Day weekend. “The rhetoric is that ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists,’ ” Mr. Bergdahl said in the interview, describing political talk in Washington. “And therefore what do we do? Well, you push it hard with everything you have.”
The talks encompass not only the prisoner exchange but also broader issues aimed at bringing the war to an end. Pentagon officials said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, after Mr. Bergdahl’s comments became public, that they sympathized with the parents’ anguish and that they were working hard to gain Sergeant Bergdahl’s release, although they declined to offer details. “If they’re angry and/or frustrated, that’s certainly understandable,” said Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I would say our leaders are frustrated as well.”
The Times learned late last year that Sergeant Bergdahl was part of the negotiations, but agreed to withhold the information at the request of the administration and his family over concerns for his safety. On Wednesday, though, a newspaper in Hailey, The Idaho Mountain Express, published an interview with Sergeant Bergdahl’s father describing the situation.
Both Mr. Bergdahl and his wife, Jani, said they were upset that although they had had good relations with the State Department and the Pentagon during the three years that their son has been missing, they had never heard from President Obama. The two are Ron Paul supporters and have turned increasingly against the war in Afghanistan, although they support the president’s plan not to withdraw most American troops until 2014.
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Hailey, Idaho, and Matthew Rosenberg from Washington.

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Years of U.S.-Saudi Teamwork Led to Airline Plot’s Failure

2012-05-10T01:08:00.001-07:00

That gruesome clip was released by Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate in March, two months before the revelation this week that American and Saudi intelligence agencies had infiltrated Al Qaeda in Yemen and foiled an effort to smuggle a bomb onto a United States-bound jetliner. But it offers a glimpse of the clandestine battle going on in the remote mountains and deserts of Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the United States have worked closely together against a militant network that remains determined to strike American targets.

That collaboration appears to have intensified over the past two years, despite a long history of mistrust rooted in the role of Saudi hijackers in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The relationship was tested again last year when Saudi leaders responded furiously to American endorsement of the revolt that ousted a Saudi ally, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. American diplomats were surprised and angered in turn soon afterward when Saudi Arabia sent troops to help put down unrest in neighboring Bahrain.
But when it comes to counterterrorism, the Saudis have been crucial partners, not only for the United States but also for an array of other Western powers. The crucial testing ground for that partnership is now Yemen, where the local affiliate of Al Qaeda continues to plan attacks against Western targets even after the killing of its chief ideologue, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric, in a drone strike in the Yemeni desert last September.
“The Saudis have a special position in Yemen — they can do what the Americans cannot do,” said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “They understand the culture, and they provide the human intelligence, which is the crucial and dangerous part. The Americans provide the electronic surveillance.”
The Saudi authorities have said very little about the foiled plot, which was to involve a suicide bomber sewing an explosive into his underwear and detonating it in midair — much like the bombing attempt in late 2009 by a young Nigerian who was also recruited and trained in Yemen. The agent who foiled the plot — apparently by volunteering for the suicide mission himself — is now safely in Saudi Arabia, officials there say. But analysts have speculated that the disclosure may already have damaged Saudi Arabia’s carefully cultivated network of informants.
Saudi intelligence officials have been deploying agents in Yemen for years, analysts say, in what has become a game of mutual subversion. In 2009 a Saudi member of Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate suddenly returned home and surrendered to the authorities, delivering a blow to the militant network. A few months later, another militant — the brother of the man who American authorities believe designed the underwear device in the recently foiled plot — intended to do the same thing, but instead detonated a bomb concealed inside his body on his arrival. His target, the kingdom’s top counterterrorism official, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, narrowly escaped death.
“Your success last time becomes your failure the next time,” said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen scholar at Princeton University. “Both sides are constantly adapting and learning from each other.”
Most of this struggle takes place in the shadows, but occasional glimpses emerge in the frequent bulletins released by Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch and its allied group, Ansar al-Shariah. The accused Saudi spy executed in March was one in a batch of three, and his execution video was accompanied by footage of all three men confessing to being paid by Yemeni or Saudi authorities. The confessions — which cannot be verified and could well have been produced under duress — include claims that the men provided information that helped American drones target and kill Yemeni militants. A number of similar videos were released last year.
The espionage has grown even more dangerous since last year, when political turmoil in the Yemeni capital of Sana allowed the militants to carve out a much broader swath of territory in south Yemen and even to build training camps, according to American officials. The American campaign of drone strikes has also stepped up, and on Sunday yielded a significant victory: the killing of Fahd al-Quso, a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch who was wanted by the F.B.I. for his role in the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse

2012-05-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

James Estrin/The New York TimesMordechai Jungreis, right, walks his mentally disabled son, 16, home from school in Brooklyn. More Photos »
The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested.
Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted Mr. Jungreis’s mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she “did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?”
By cooperating with the police, and speaking out about his son’s abuse, Mr. Jungreis, 38, found himself at the painful forefront of an issue roiling his insular Hasidic community. There have been glimmers of change as a small number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, taking on longstanding religious and cultural norms, have begun to report child sexual abuse accusations against members of their own communities. But those who come forward often encounter intense intimidation from their neighbors and from rabbinical authorities, aimed at pressuring them to drop their cases.
Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.
“Try living for one day with all the pain I am living with,” Mr. Jungreis, spent and distraught, said recently outside his new apartment on Williamsburg’s outskirts. “Did anybody in the Hasidic community in these two years, in Borough Park, in Flatbush, ever come up and look my son in the eye and tell him a good word? Did anybody take the courage to show him mercy in the street?”
A few blocks away, Pearl Engelman, a 64-year-old great-grandmother, said her community had failed her too. In 2008, her son, Joel, told rabbinical authorities that he had been repeatedly groped as a child by a school official at the United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg. The school briefly removed the official but denied the accusation. And when Joel turned 23, too old to file charges under the state’s statute of limitations, they returned the man to teaching.
“There is no nice way of saying it,” Mrs. Engelman said. “Our community protects molesters. Other than that, we are wonderful.”
Keeping to Themselves
The New York City area is home to an estimated 250,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews — the largest such community outside of Israel, and one that is growing rapidly because of its high birthrate. The community is concentrated in Brooklyn, where many of the ultra-Orthodox are Hasidim, followers of a fervent spiritual movement that began in 18th-century Europe and applies Jewish law to every aspect of life.
Their communities, headed by dynastic leaders called rebbes, strive to preserve their centuries-old customs by resisting the contaminating influences of the outside world. While some ultra-Orthodox rabbis now argue that a child molester should be reported to the police, others strictly adhere to an ancient prohibition against mesirah, the turning in of a Jew to non-Jewish authorities, and consider publicly airing allegations against fellow Jews to be chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.
There are more mundane factors, too. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews want to keep abuse allegations quiet to protect the reputation of the community, and the family of the accused. And rabbinical authorities, eager to maintain control, worry that inviting outside scrutiny could erode their power, said Samuel Heilman, a professor of Jewish studies at Queens College.
Friday: The Brooklyn district attorney is criticized for his handling of ultra-Orthodox Jewish child sex-abuse cases.

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