Guyana, the former British colony, sandwiched between Venezuela and Brazil, is home to fewer than a million people but it is also home to an intact rainforest larger than England. In a dramatic offer, the government of Guyana has said it is willing to place its entire standing forest under the control of a British-led, international body in return for a bilateral deal with the UK that would secure development aid and the technical assistance needed to make the change to a green economy.
The deal would represent potentially the largest carbon offset ever undertaken, securing the vast carbon sinks of Guyana's pristine forest in return for assisting the economic growth of South America's poorest economy.
Speaking in his office in the capital, Georgetown, on the Caribbean coast, Guyana's President, Bharrat Jagdeo, said the offer was a chance for Britain to make a "moral offset" and underline its leadership on the most important single issue facing the world – climate change.
WaPo - "Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime."
LA Times - "Justice John Paul Stevens, 87, last week became the second-oldest justice in the Supreme Court's history... Although Stevens has given no hint of retiring and shows no sign of slowing down -- in the courtroom, he looks and sounds much as he did 20 years ago -- the question of his tenure looms over the court and the 2008 presidential campaign... What kind of justice would replace him -- and how strong the court's slim conservative majority would be -- may well depend on who is elected president."
WaPo - "Former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and other nuclear experts are trying anew to get the United States and Russia to extend warning times and reduce the number of weapons on alert. For Nunn, a longtime chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the August episode in which a B-52 bomber crew unknowingly carried six cruise missiles with nuclear warheads over the country showed that accidents can happen, despite systems to prevent them... Fewer missiles are on alert since the Cold War era, and they carry fewer warheads. The ICBMs no longer target Russian missile sites and cities. Instead, they are aimed at what Maj. Gen. Roger W. Burg calls 'broad ocean area targeting'... However... many targets can be put into their guidance system within minutes".
NYT - "In health centers at hundreds of colleges and universities around the country, young women are paying sharply higher prices for prescription contraceptives because of a change in federal law. The increases have meant that some students using popular birth control pills and other products are paying three and four times as much as they did several months ago... Some Democratic lawmakers in Washington are pressing for new legislation by year’s end that would reverse the provision, which they say was inadvertently included in a law intended to reduce Medicaid abuse." 'Inadvertently'... yeah right.
Reuters - "U.S. Food and Drug Administration staffers are recommending new warnings about psychiatric events observed in some patients taking Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Relenza, according to documents released on Friday. An FDA advisory panel will review the recommendations for the anti-viral influenza drugs at a meeting next week."
LA Times - "The message reflected the president's campaign to calm fears about the economy with a sunny outlook as the nation heads into the election year that could prove troubling to a Republican Party burdened with his unpopular leadership. In the last six weeks, he has made at least five speeches in which he talked up the economy... Polls show that Americans are growing more pessimistic about the economy, with more saying it is doing poorly than at any other time in the last five years. And the projections of private economists and the Federal Reserve Board suggest that pessimism is well-founded... Allan H. Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business... said, rating the economy 'depends on whether you are looking forward or back... If you look back,' which he said Bush is doing, 'the economy has done very well.' But, he said, 'If you look forward, you see a lot of problems.'"
Oregonian - "A Bush administration effort to boost logging in Northwest national forests to its highest level in years has hit a snag: The U.S. Forest Service is running short of money to draw up new timber sales. The shortfall is related to the national housing slowdown, which has depressed lumber prices about as low as they have ever been, federal and industry officials say. That means the Forest Service -- like private timber owners across the Northwest -- is earning far less money for the timber it sells, so less money is flowing into accounts that help pay for future logging projects."
Denver Post - "When he turned 14, Santos Herrera set out from his Guatemalan mountain village for the United States — on his own... Joined along the way by other young Guatemalans of Mayan descent, Herrera said, he rode buses through Mexico. Then, during a four-day desert trek across the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. border agents nearly caught him, he said, and for two days he hid alone, lost and terrified. But he made it to Colorado, where he earned $5.50 an hour picking onions and up to $7 at other jobs — until June... Under a 2002 law, unaccompanied children must be sent to facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services. Some 8,212 unaccompanied children were held at these juvenile facilities this past year, up from 5,000 in 2003".
Arizona Daily Star - "A 9-year-old boy whose mother died Thursday night after their car fell off a cliff south of Arivaca was rescued by an illegal border crosser who stayed with him through the night. At about 5 p.m. Thanksgiving evening, a 45-year-old woman from Rimrock, Ariz... lost control [of her SUV], hit an embankment and went down a cliff... and probably died immediately... The boy got out of the car and was by himself until about 3 a.m. when a man, Jesus Manuel Cordova, 21, of Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, Mexico, encountered the boy... Cordova consoled the boy, gave him a jacket, built a bonfire and stayed with him until about 8 a.m., when he gave the boy over to a passerby, who alerted authorities... The boy is now an orphan". According to the AP, "Cordova was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents".
Star Tribune - "The proposed $350 million passenger rail line from Minneapolis to Duluth isn’t in danger of derailing, officials say. But the line hit a speed bump earlier this month when Duluth — the city likely to benefit most from the line — vetoed a critical study on the project."
Chicago Tribune - In Chicago, "the Daley administration has settled on an East Coast company to help find ways to turn naming rights and sponsorships into cash to help pay the bills... Octagon, under terms of the contract, will inventory city programs, events, buildings -- presumably from the Jardine Filtration Plant to the Cultural Center -- vehicles and other physical assets and determine which would be most attractive to companies that might want to affix their names in some way."
Miami Herald - "Herbert Saffir, co-creator of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale and a persistent advocate of strong building codes, has died. He was 90... Soft-spoken but determined and active almost to the end, Saffir began developing the five-category hurricane scale during the late 1960s... Now, it is mentioned so frequently that a sort of shorthand has taken hold. Category 1. Category 2. Category 5. The words 'Saffir-Simpson' rarely appear in the media".
Proposed Ban on Genetically Modified Corn in Europe
By James Kanter, The New York Times
European Union environmental officials have determined that two kinds of genetically modified corn could harm butterflies, affect food chains and disturb life in rivers and streams, and they have proposed a ban on the sale of the seeds, which are made by DuPont Pioneer, Dow Agrosciences and Syngenta.
The preliminary decisions are circulating within the European Commission, which has the final say. Some officials there are skeptical of a ban that would upset the powerful biotechnology industry and could exacerbate tensions with important trading partners like the United States. The seeds are not available on the European market for cultivation.
In the decisions, the environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, contends that the genetically modified corn, or maize could affect certain butterfly species, specifically the monarch, and other beneficial insects. For instance, research this year indicates that larvae of the monarch butterfly exposed to the genetically modified corn "behave differently than other larvae."
In the decision concerning the corn seeds produced by Dow and Pioneer, Mr. Dimas calls "potential damage on the environment irreversible."
AP - Donald Tusk, "Poland's new prime minister outlined ambitious plans for the next four years in his inaugural address Friday, saying he plans to withdraw troops from Iraq next year but also push for stronger relations with NATO... Tusk also said he will resume talks with the U.S. on accepting a U.S. missile defense base in Poland — but only after consulting with NATO and other neighboring countries — signaling a greater hesitancy over the plan than the previous government."
DW-World - "The Danish government is planning to hold a new referendum on whether or not to adopt the euro. This comes seven years after Danes firmly rejected the European single currency. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also wants voters to decide whether they are still in favor of opting out of EU policy in three other areas related to joint defense, justice and home affairs."
WaPo - "Most striking French transportation workers returned to work Friday, ending the most crippling public transit strike in a dozen years and restoring normalcy to the streets of Paris and other major cities. President Nicolas Sarkozy said the nine-day strike that frustrated the public and cost the French economy hundreds of millions of dollars a day did not diminish his determination to reduce expensive worker benefits and trim the French bureaucracy."
Spiegel - "Transportation strikes that crippled France for nine days ended Friday, but not before President Nicolas Sarkozy paid a price with the French public... A poll conducted by the OpinionWay institute and published in the daily Paris newspaper Metro showed that Sarkozy's approval rating fell to 58 percent from a pre-strike level of 63 percent."
AP - "A prosecutor demanded life in prison for five men charged with killing three Christians at a publishing house that produces Bibles in southern Turkey, the state run news agency reported. The trial of the five suspects opened Friday, providing another closely scrutinized test of Turkey's judiciary as it seeks membership in the European Union. Observers want to see how Turkey's courts handle signs of religious intolerance in the predominantly Muslim nation."
Independent - "Cocaine use is soaring in Europe, where at least 4.5 million people used the white powder last year compared to 3.5 million the year before. Twelve million European adults have used the drug at least once, and Spain, Italy and the UK are Europe's hot spots for use of the drug."
Reuters - "Dozens of Scandinavia's indigenous Sami people, and one reindeer, marched through the streets of Stockholm on Friday to demand protection of their rights to herd reindeer freely in the Scandinavian north. Around 70 Samis from northern Sweden delivered a petition to the Norwegian embassy complaining the country does not respect Swedish Samis' rights, as documented in an 18th-century treaty, to herd reindeer in the Norwegian highlands in the summer."
Reuters - "Millions of stinging baby jellyfish have been spotted off Scotland just days after another swarm wiped out Northern Ireland's only Salmon farm, the Marine Conservation Society said on Friday. The organization, which said the abnormal swarms of baby mauve stinger and compass jellyfish were due to wind and tidal factors, urged fish farmers and the public to report any sightings to help monitor their progress."
Telegraph - "The 1,800-year-old skeleton of one of Roman Britain's 'social elite' has been discovered by two men with metal detectors who had already unearthed a £1 million Viking treasure. The father and son team, David and Andrew Whelan discovered the skeleton buried in a six-foot lead-lined coffin near the Roman town of Aldborough in north Yorks. The find has excited archaeologists who believe the skeleton is probably that of a woman of British descent and that the style of coffin indicates that she was probably a wealthy landowner."
NYT - "The departing Lebanese president, Émile Lahoud, asked the military to take charge of the nation’s security on Friday, a few hours after the speaker of the Parliament prolonged the country’s political crisis by postponing for a week a vote to choose a new president. But experts on Lebanese law said that the president’s declaration did not affect the relationship of the military to the caretaker government, which took charge of day-to-day operations at midnight on Friday, when Mr. Lahoud stepped down."
AP - "A bomb exploded in a pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi police said. A short while later, police said a suicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint in northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least 13 people. The first blast occurred just before 9 a.m. at the al-Ghazl market, shattering the festive atmosphere as people strolled past the animal stalls. It was the first attack against the popular weekly bazaar since... mid-February... At least 13 people were killed and nearly 60 wounded".
NYT - "Men described by witnesses as Sunni insurgents dressed as Iraqi Army troops stormed a Sunni village on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad at dawn on Thursday, killing at least 11 people during a three-hour firefight before American and Iraqi soldiers drove them off. A hospital worker counted 11 dead, including three Iraqi soldiers, but a local sheik said 20 more bodies remained scattered throughout the village."
Guardian - In the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein ordered the largest wetlands in the Middle East drained. "By 2003, more than 90% of the Mesopotamian wetlands, dubbed the Garden of Eden, had been lost, and reduced to barren salt pans. Experts feared that the region, home to an ancient people considered the heirs of the Babylonians and Sumerians, would vanish by 2008. Now, with a huge multibillion dollar restoration underway, funded by the US, Canadian and Italian governments and the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) many Ma'dan (Marsh Arabs) are returning to a life that has changed little in 5,000 years."
McClatchy - "Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that his country could suspend uranium enrichment if the United States and Western Europe agreed to acknowledge that its nuclear program was peaceful. But Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said there was a 'serious confidence gap' between his country and the United States and Western Europe and that he saw little point in trying to 'build confidence' with an American administration that had none in his country. 'We don't trust the United States,'" he said.
WaPo - "The U.S.-sponsored gathering to launch a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations received a lift Friday when Arab countries, including politically influential Saudi Arabia, decided to send delegations led by their most senior diplomats. Meeting in Cairo, the 22-member Arab League gave what amounted to a cautious endorsement of the meeting scheduled to begin Monday in Annapolis."
Reuters - "The United States has agreed to put the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on the Annapolis talks agenda but Syria will await confirmation before deciding whether to go, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Friday... There was no immediate comment from Washington. Diplomats in the Syrian capital said Moualem's announcement signalled that Syria was going to attend."
NYT - "—Pakistan’s Supreme Court, stacked with appointees loyal to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, dismissed the last legal challenge to his re-election as president on Thursday, paving the way for his swearing-in to a second five-year term. Presidential aides said General Musharraf would now abide by his pledge to step down as head of the army and become a civilian president when he takes the oath of office, which is expected in the coming days."
Guardian - "Pakistan has hit out at the Commonwealth for suspending its membership, condemning the banishment as 'unreasonable and unjustified'. It said the 53-nation body, comprising Britain and former colonies, had failed to appreciate Pakistan's 'serious internal crisis' in demanding that it immediately restore democracy. A Foreign Ministry statement said Pakistan was reviewing its ties with the Commonwealth."
Reuters - "Nearly simultaneous explosions from homemade bombs planted outside courts in three northern Indian cities killed at least 13 people in what a senior government official said were terrorist strikes. Officials said 59 people were wounded in the blasts at Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow, all in Uttar Pradesh. Many of the dead were lawyers. At least nine people were killed in Varanasi, one of India's most sacred Hindu pilgrim centres".
Hindustan Times - "An email warning television news channels of the serial bomb blasts in three cities of Uttar Pradesh on Friday was sent from a cyber cafe in east Delhi’s Laxmi Nagar area," according to police and intelligence sources... "Intelligence agencies have tracked down the cyber café and were questioning the owner till late in the night."
Times of India - "Controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen reached Delhi late on Friday. Accompanied by a team of Rajasthan government officials, she went to Rajasthan House, where she was met by senior officials from the Union ministry of home affairs and IB. Taslima was exhausted but defiant, said sources. Asked if she planned to leave India before her visa expired next February, she said she would stay on. After leaving Jaipur, she had hoped to return to Kolkata, but changed her mind after learning that circumstances were unfavourable."
Independent - "India's Supreme Court has barred a British company from mining bauxite in forested hills in the east of the country that are home to some of the world's rarest animals, handing a victory to environmental activists and tribal people. Vedanta Resources Plc had planned a £470m open-cast mining project that would rip through the plateau of the Niyamgiri mountain range in Orissa to feed an aluminium plant it has already built in the area."
AP - "Taliban militants beheaded seven policemen Friday after overrunning their checkpoints in southern Afghanistan, officials said, while in a separate clash, an Australian soldier and three civilians were killed. Six other police officers were missing after the Taliban attacked police checkpoints in Arghandab district, in Kandahar province, said Abdul Hakim Jan, a police officer."
Guardian - "It has been a week since Cyclone Sidr struck and for some this is only the second time they have had outside help... It is becoming an urgent but familiar appeal after what was already one of the world's poorest nations was ravaged last Thursday by a cyclone that killed more than 3,100 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless and almost two million destitute. Jhalokati is by no means the worst-affected region. More than 30km (19 miles) from the coast, it suffered less than the poor fishing villages and shrimp farms living on the sand bar islands closer to the Bay of Bengal."
The Age - In Australia, "as final polling suggested today's federal election was tightening, John Howard claimed a late swing and Kevin Rudd predicted a 'very tight race'. After yesterday's Age/Nielsen poll showed Labor extending its big lead, Newspoll reported a much closer result, with Labor holding a two party-preferred lead of 52-48%."
CS Monitor - "Kevin Rudd, a bookish former diplomat who heads the opposition Labor Party, has pledged to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, a move which would leave the US as the only developed nation not to have ratified the treaty. Mr. Rudd, a fluent Chinese speaker, has also promised to withdraw Australia's small but politically significant contingent of 550 combat troops from Iraq... [Rudd] said he would personally represent Australia at a UN climate change meeting of environment ministers next month in Bali to discuss the next stage of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012."
NYT - "Chinese authorities on Friday confirmed the deaths of about 30 more people from a landslide that struck this week in the Three Gorges Dam region. The news comes as Chinese officials are facing growing questions about environmental and geological problems related to the dam project... It is not clear what caused this particular landslide, but scientists and critics have been warning for years that the reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam might further destabilize hillsides, causing landslides and possibly even earthquakes."
Xinhua - "A total of 31 people confirmed to have been aboard a bus buried by a landslide in central China's Hubei Province, are feared dead, local government said Friday... The first body was pulled out of the bus at 5:04 p.m. on Friday and has yet to be identified."
BBC News - "Indonesia has a 'culture of impunity' in the face of ill-treatment and torture, a senior UN official has said. Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture, has spent two weeks inspecting the country's prisons and police and military detention centres. Mr Nowak said he found evidence of detainees being electrocuted, suffering systematic beatings and even being shot in the legs at close range. He called on the government to make torture a separate crime under the law."
Reuters - "A powerful typhoon hovering off the coast of the central Philippines changed course overnight and was now headed for the northern part of the archipelago, weather officials said on Saturday. Typhoon Mitag, with winds of 175 km per hour (108 mph) at its centre, was almost stationary east of the central Bicol region, the Philippines' typhoon alley, late on Friday, triggering mass evacuations and flight cancellations."
The Press (NZ) - "Attempts to reintroduce a breed of endangered duck to the South Island are being hampered by Christchurch's cat population. Twenty indigenous brown teal - or pateke - were released at Travis Wetland Nature Heritage Park in the north east of the city in May. In the last six months 12 of the birds - which number under 1000 in the world - have been killed or have disappeared. At least five were killed by cats."
Globe and Mail - "Canada was accused Friday of acting as the major obstacle to a Commonwealth consensus on climate change as the Harper government resisted the wording of a proposed statement that would bind Canada to achieving substantive cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions."
Guardian - Canadian authorities have launched urgent reviews into the safety of Taser stun guns following two recent deaths. Yesterday, a 45-year-old man died while in police custody after being shocked by the 5,000-volt weapon... Canada's provincial Nova Scotia government today began an inquiry into Thursday's death... The man, whose identity has not yet been released, died 30 hours after being shocked."
WaPo - "Colombia has abruptly ended Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's role as a go-between with Marxist guerrillas, casting gloom on hopes of a possible prisoner swap that could have freed 45 hostages in hidden rebel camps. The Colombian government [ended] Chávez's role as mediator after [he] sidestepped diplomatic protocol and, in a phone call, spoke directly with the head of Colombia's army about rebel kidnappings of soldiers. President Álvaro Uribe had earlier asked Chávez to discuss issues relating to the rebels directly with him."
Miami Herald - "As Chávez accuses them of being the spoiled children of the 'oligarchy' and moves ahead with a controversial constitutional reform that's polarizing the country, the students have launched social projects in poor neighborhoods, known as barrios. Among their programs: a health education initiative started in August to stem the country's biggest killer --diabetes. They call it 'Healing Venezuela.'"
Guardian - "Authorities in the Brazilian Amazon have come under fire after reports that a 16-year-old girl was repeatedly raped and tortured while being held in a prison cell with at least 20 men. According to reports in the Brazilian press, the teenager was arrested last month after being caught stealing in Abaetetuba, a town on the outskirts of Belem, the capital of the Amazon state Para."
AP - "Scientists predict that all the glaciers in the tropical Andes will disappear by mid-century. The implications are dire not just for La Paz-El Alto, Bolivia but also for Quito, Ecuador, and Bogota, Colombia. More than 11 million people now live in the burgeoning cities, and El Alto alone is expanding at 5 percent a year. The melting of the glaciers threatens not just drinking water but also crops and the hydroelectric plants on which these cities rely."
AP - "Construction began Friday on an auto assembly plant in central Mexico that will create thousands of jobs and be the country's first to produce Chinese cars. Mexican President Felipe Calderon led groundbreaking ceremonies for the factory, which will be financed by an arm of Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas and China's state-owned FAW Group Corp., one of the nation's largest automakers."