Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday November 24 2007 - (813)

Saturday November 24 2007 edition
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Rich Nations Fail To Honor Climate Pledge 2007-11-24 03:28:51 Poor nations receive little of promised $1.2 billion intended to tackle the effect of global warming. A group of rich countries including Britain has broken a promise to pay more than a billion dollars to help the developing world cope with the effects of climate change. The group agreed in 2001 to pay $1.2 billion (£600 million) to help poor and vulnerable countries predict and plan for the effects of global warming, as well as fund flood defenses, conservation and thousands of other projects. Yet new figures show less than $180 million (£90 million) of the promised money has been delivered. Britain has so far paid just $20 million (£10 million). The disclosure comes after Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week that industrialized countries must do more to help the developing world adapt to a changed climate, and two weeks before countries meet in Bali to begin negotiations on a new global deal to regulate emissions which is expected to stress the need for all countries to adapt. Andrew Pendleton, climate change policy analyst at Christian Aid, said: "This represents a broken promise on a massive scale and on quite a cynical scale as well. Promising funds for adaptation is exactly the kind of incentive the rich countries will offer at Bali to bring the developing world on board a new climate deal. This is the signal we are seeing on all fronts, that the developed countries are unwilling to fulfil their moral and legal commitments." Under the terms of the climate adaptation agreement, made at a United Nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, in 2001, the European Union, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and New Zealand said they would jointly pay developing countries $410 million (£200 million) each year from 2005 to 2008. They called on other countries to donate as well. The money was supposed to compensate developing countries for the severe effects over the coming decades of global warming, which is largely caused by carbon emissions from the developed world. Read The Full Story Analysts: Freddie Mac May Report Larger Loss 2007-11-24 03:28:27 Freddie Mac, the second-largest U.S. mortgage-finance company, may report wider losses than it forecast as the slump in credit markets worsens, said Moody's Investors Service. Freddie Mac, which reported a record loss of $2.03 billion in the third quarter this week, may have underestimated when it projected that 0.11 percent of the debt it guarantees will go bad in the next two years, Moody's analysts Brian Harris and Craig Emrick in New York said in a report Wednesday. "Continued deterioration in the mortgage market, resulting in further decline in these books, may lead to credit losses in excess of their 11 basis point loss forecast," Harris and Emrick wrote. Freddie Mac, based in McLean, Virginia, said it expected credit losses to continue to increase into next year. The company and its larger sibling, Fannie Mae, based in Washington, D.C., guarantee 40 percent of the $11.5 trillion U.S. home-loan market. The government-chartered companies have lost $57 billion in market value because of write-downs caused by record U.S. mortgage foreclosures. Read The Full Story Lebanese President Hands Power To Army 2007-11-24 03:27:34 Lebanon was again plunged into uncertainty Friday after its legislature failed in a fifth attempt to elect a president, and the former Syrian backed-president Emile Lahoud, whose term ended at midnight, passed control of the security services over to the army, declaring a state of emergency. The U.S.-backed government of Fouad Siniora rejected the declaration. "It is as if the statement was never issued," said Siniora. The constitution says a president cannot call a state of emergency without government approval, but Lahoud and the Hezbollah-led opposition view the cabinet as unconstitutional following the walk out of its Shia ministers last year. The country is now in a presidential vacuum, with thousands of troops deployed across Beirut, and is likely to stay that way until the elections, postponed until next Friday, are attempted again. Neither side seems clear on what the army's mandate will be, with some expecting it to play a noticeably greater role in managing the state and others anticipating a continuation of the status quo. Few Lebanese have expressed surprise at the move. It is generally seen as a stalling measure to give the two camps more time to find a way out of the impasse. Read The Full Story 154 Flee Sinking Cruise Ship In The Antarctic 2007-11-23 17:02:59 A small cruise ship with an imperfect security record was listing dangerously after it struck ice in Antarctic waters today, with 154 passengers and crew members evacuated by lifeboat, said the cruise operator and coast guard. Pictures from a Web cam on a rescue ship showed the small red and white ship - named the Explorer but known affectionately as “the little red ship” - listing dangerously to starboard in steely gray waters below a low sky, with clumps of ice looming in the distant background. Another photograph taken by a passenger on the rescue ship showed a flotilla of small lifeboats floating on the vast sea. The vessel - which was taking tourist passengers on the route of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton - sent out a distress signal at 5:24 a.m. GMT after it began to take in water through “a fist-sized hole,” said Dan Brown, a spokesman for G.A.P. Adventures, the Toronto-based tour operator that owns and operates the ship. He said the “running assumption” is that it hit an iceberg. Water began to trickle into a cabin and eventually flooded the engine room, causing the ship to lose power. The accident occurred well north of the Antarctic Circle in an island chain that is part of the Antarctic peninsula, which juts close to South America and has seen sharp warming of temperatures in recent years. Read The Full Story	Commentary - $100 Oil: The Terrible Truth 2007-11-24 03:28:39 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by David Strahan and appears in the Guardian edition for Saturday, November 24, 2007. Mr. Strahan is the author of "The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man". In his commentary he writes:  "Nearing the price barrier is a pointer to the peak of output, and the crisis the powerful want to ignore. Mr. Strahan's commentary follows: As the price of crude oil sets records almost daily, the British government remains stunningly complacent. With the $100 barrel a real and constant threat, the [British] prime minister's website blithely proclaims "the world's oil and gas resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future". Officials refuse to define what is meant by "foreseeable", but it is clear they suffer from extreme myopia, or worse. All the evidence suggests we are rapidly approaching "peak oil", the point when global production goes into terminal decline for geological reasons. The industry consensus is that world output, excluding that from the OPEC producers, will peak in about 2010. It is also widely agreed that OPEC has grossly exaggerated the size of its reserves, meaning that global output must also peak soon. Since oil provides 95% of all transport energy, as well as vital inputs to modern agriculture, this is likely to provoke a crisis. Oil executives have traditionally avoided talk of geological constraints - no doubt mindful of the value of their share options - but now even they admit the industry is in difficulty. A growing number believe output will never exceed 100 million barrels per day, compared with 86 million today. At present rates of growth, demand will hit that ceiling within about a decade. Read The Full Story In Russia, Putin's Abiding Popularity Gives Him High Ratings 2007-11-24 03:28:01 The 1990s are fresh in Vadim Ignatiyev's memory - pathetic wages delayed for weeks, kopeks scraped together to buy food, and a fear of the future blended of helplessness and rage. The lean, balding 35-year-old, who has spent his adult life working on the line at a glass factory in the suburbs of Nizhnyh Novgorod, now sits at a laden table with his wife and 13-year-old son. Behind him is a brand-new television beside a matching CD player, also new. His Lada car, bought recently with a bank loan, is parked outside the family's second-story walk-up apartment. "I feel much safer now," said Ignatiyev, whose family recently took its first vacation abroad, a package tour to a Turkish resort. "I have a good job, not a prestigious job, but a good living." In just the past two years, his salary has more than doubled, to $700 a month, reflecting his factory's growing sales. For the first time in post-Soviet history, a majority of Russians feel optimistic about their own and their country's future, according to the Levada Center, an independent polling agency. The sense of personal and national resurgence, clearly visible in long-depressed Nizhny Novgorod, with its now-plentiful factory jobs, foreign stores and construction cranes, is a key factor in the consistently high approval ratings enjoyed by President Vladimir Putin. Read The Full Story Embattled Oral Roberts University President Resigns 2007-11-24 03:27:12 The president of Oral Roberts University, facing accusations he misspent school funds to support a lavish lifestyle, resigned  Friday, said officials. Richard Roberts' resignation is effective immediately, according to a statement e-mailed from George Pearsons, chairman of the school's Board of Regents. Roberts and the evangelical university have come under fire since three former professors sued last month, alleging wrongful termination. The lawsuit includes allegations of a $39,000 shopping tab at one store for Richard Roberts' wife, Lindsay, a $29,411 Bahamas senior trip on the university jet for one of Roberts' daughters, and a stable of horses for the Roberts children. Roberts, son of school founder and televangelist Oral Roberts, had been on temporary leave from the university, fighting the accusations against him. The Board of Regents had ordered an outside probe of the school's finances. In a recent interview, Roberts and his wife denied wrongdoing. He has said the lawsuit amounted to "intimidation, blackmail and extortion". Read The Full Story
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