GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The United States is planning to spend $300-500 million on each of at least two firms that will design space taxis to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station, Nasa, the US space agency, announced Tuesday 8 February. Russia is currently the only country offering this service, reports Reuters: “Russia charges Nasa about $60 million per person for rides to the station, which flies about 240 miles above Earth and is staffed by rotating crews of six astronauts from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.”
The CS Monitor points out that safety and not just cost is also an issue. “The Soyuz has experienced unprecedented recent problems with both the Soyuz rocket and now a delay in the next two Soyuz flights to the ISS due to a leak of the capsule during testing.
Bids will be taken during the summer of 2012, and the taxis should be ready for runs by 2017. The new call to tender continues previous investments and deals for a taxi fleet, reports Space.com.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Thirteen people are reported to be dead from the most recent round of government forces bombarments of Syria’s third largest city, Homs, 9 February. City residents say the situation is “dire”, reports the BBC, with severe shortages of food and water. The UN’s Ban Ki-moon called anew on world leaders to come to an agreement on how to pressure Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his own people. The UN is currently considering adopting an Arab League plan to send in observers.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – This is a week for remembering in the UK, with 6 February recalled as the day Queen Elizabeth became Britain’s monarch 60 years ago in 1952 and 7 February the 200th anniversary of the birth of writer Charles Dickens. Elizabeth’s father, George VI, died 6 February and she was immediately named head of state, but her formal coronation took place in 1953. She is only the second monarch to celebrate 60 years on the throne, after Queen Victoria in 1897. A number of celebrations are planned for coming months, but one less cheerful note is that a group of trees planted in Wales in 1953 with her monogram, as seen from the air, may have to be cut down because they have grown too tall.
Dickens, the author of scores of books that etched clearly the lives of Britain’s poor and working class populations during the Victorian era, is being celebrated today throughout the world, from India to Iowa as well as throughout Britain, with tributes to such memorable works as Great Expectations, a Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House.
Links to other sites: BBC, CBC, Sydney Morning Herald
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The tiny island nation of the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, is in crisis, with President Mahomed Nasheed resigning in the face of a police mutiny. The island is famous for its luxury hotels and resorts, but ABC news in Australia reports that the crisis is largely “invisible” to most visitors, who are whisked away from the airport to holiday destinations where alcohol and bikinis are the norm. The island is otherwise an Islamic state, which strictly observes no alcohol laws and dress codes. Nasheed came to power in 2008 pledging reform, but ran into trouble with the police when he had a long-serving judge arrested for his ties to the president’s predecessor.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – American colleagues showing up for work or students at school can be expected to look a little tired Monday 6 February, if they stayed up for the Super Bowl football game that started at midnight Swiss time. The result: San Francisco Giants 21, New England Patriots 17 for the biggest game of the year, played in Indianapolis.
The sale of avocados and reclining chairs as well as beer jump significantly in the days before the game that broadcaster Fox is hoping will top the 2011 record-breaking audience of 111 million TV viewers (data to be released later Monday).
The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League, the highest level of professional American football in the United States, as Wikipedia puts it.
This year’s game is likely to go down in Super Bowl history as the one of the Reluctant Touchdown. SI wrote: “The New York Giants trailed New England by two with one minute, four seconds left. The Giants, however, were on the Patriots’ 6-yard line — ” and then things got strange and for football fans, exciting.
And then there are the ads, which keep America talking, from the 10 worst to the soon-to-be-voted 5 or 10 best, and the trivia (did you know they use 72 footballs in a Super Bowl game?).
Links to other sites: Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated, Kidzworld (trivia)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Rescuers were reporting 219 saved at 08:00 Swiss time but another 350 are missing after a boat disaster in Papua New Guinea. The MV Rabaul Queen, operated by Star Ships, which is one of the country’s largest ferry operators, sank between Lae and Kimbe West after being reported missing at about 08:30 local time Thursday 2 February, but the reason for the boat going down is not yet known. Australian News.com reports that six merchant vessels are in the area, helping search for survivors and that the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has “arranged ships in the area to conduct rescues and for aircraft to fly over the area”.
The owners issued a statement, according to Reuters, that the boat sank quickly, without sending a distress signal.
New Britain Island is a hugely popular diving area that pulls in international tourists.
Links to other sites: Herald Sun, Australia, Reuters
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GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Egyptian state television is reporting that at least 73 people have died, and numbers are being revised upwards late Wednesday 1 February, after two football teams’ fans clashed in Port Said. More than 150 people are reported to be injured. Fans of Masry and al-Ahly teams, both in the top group, poured onto the football field after a match between the two. Masry won 3-1, an upset that triggered the violence. The BBC reports that some fans appear to have carried knives into the stadium, with policy keeping a lower than usual profile after riots in 2011 that was often directed at police under former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
Links to other sites: BBC, Reuters
Aljazeera video
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Canadian couple and their 19-year-old son were found guilty Monday 30 January of murdering the youth’s three sisters and his father’s first wife from a polygamous marriage, but the story is far from over. The young man’s lawyer says he is appealing the judgement, and the other two may also appeal.
The trio was found guilty of murder in what the court agreed was an honour killing because the girls had become too Westernized. But the Afghan community in Montreal, according to The Globe & Mail, is not convinced a crime took place, with questions raised about whether the deaths by drowning in a car could have been an accident. “Some in Montreal’s small Afghan community of about 5,000 people condemn the crime, while others have trouble with the verdict”, reports the newspaper.
The deaths came as the wedding of the oldest daughter, Zainab Shafia, was called off in a dispute between two families. Her father, found guilty of her murder, had not approved the marriage, but was ready to let it go ahead. When the family of her fiance failed to show up, her father reportedly said it brought shame on the family’s honour.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US Department of Defense is trying to track down $2 billion in unaccounted spending in Iraq, new figures from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction show. The SIGIR was created in 2004 to oversee the country’s reconstruction programme. Last October some $6 billion was reported missing but it was eventually accounted for, US media reports at the time indicated.
The latest lost-funds case centres around documents that have gone missing despite internal checks and controls, reports CNN: “The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that.”
Links to other sites: CNBC, SIGIR 30 January quarterly report, pdf,
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The London Wapping offices of News Corp, owner of British tabloid The Sun, were raided by Scotland Yard police early Saturday 28 January and during the morning Saturday four journalists and a police officer were arrested. The journalists are all current or former Sun journalists. The Metropolitan Police issued a statement that “Today’s operation is the result of information provided to police by News Corporation’s Management and Standards Committee. It relates to suspected payments to police officers and is not about seeking journalists to reveal confidential sources in relation to information that has been obtained legitimately.”
The raid and arrests are part of an investigation dubbed Elveden into police corruption that involves The Sun possibly paying police for news information.
Links to other sites: Financial Times, Guardian, Reuters
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Hillary Clinton’s offhand announcement, at the tail end of a Town Hall meeting in Washington, Thursday 26 January, that she’ll leave her post as Secretary of State when the president has time to name a replacement came as a big surprise to many while others wondered why it is news, since it’s not the first time she’s said it. Media reaction was at first muted as startled journalists dealth Clinton’s abrupt cutoff of speculation about whether she would stay on if President Obama is re-elected. And then the kudos began to appear. Clinton says she would like to find out just how tired she is after 20 years in politics and government.
Links to other sites: Atlantic Newswire, CBS News, Chicago Sun-Times, Shriver in the Guardian, Politico, US State Department transcript of Town Hall meeting
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Japan has announced its first trade deficit since 1980, Y2.49tn ($32bn), with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda saying it will take until 2014 for a turn-around. Analysts, according to the financial press, are gloomier about Japan’s short- to mid-term prospects for avoiding a current account surplus. The savings rate in the country has been falling, fuel costs have risen sharply in the past year and the trade balance has been hurt as well by a combination of the broader impact of the major earthquake at the start of 2011, floods in Thailand which have pushed down exports, and a trade deficit with China that is five times higher than in 2010.
Japan has historically had large trade surpluses.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Financial Times, RTE
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Fairness was the big word in the annual State of the Union address delivered by US President Barack Obama, who focused on keeping the American Dream alive. The speech serves as a reply to Republican candidates campaigning for the November 2012 presidential election and it provides the Democrats’ agenda for the year ahead. “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules,” said the president in the speech widely viewed on television Tuesday night (ed. note: viewing figures are not yet available, but Bloomberg has analyzed trends for these speeches).
Links to other sites: CNN, Guardian, UK, LA Times, Miami Herald, Minnpost, White House
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Turkish government has reacted angrily to a vote by the French Senate Monday in favour of a proposal to punish those who don’t recognize genocide, including the killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915. Turkey has long opposed international and internal efforts to label the deaths genocide, although it admits half a million Armenians were killed, while Armenians, who use the term genocide for the events, claim there were 1.5 million deaths. France in 2001 recognized the Armenian claims but the new measure would put offenders at risk for a one-year prison sentence or fine of euros 45,000.
Both the government and its opposition in Ankara condemned the French move as an attack on Turkish honour. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested last week that if the Senate vote passed he might never visit France again.
Links to other sites: Hurriyet, Le Monde (Fr), TSR Swiss pubic television
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – And the race is on! The US presidential race, at least the Republican Party side of it, is now gearing up, with Mitt Romney’s early wins eclipsed this weekend by a powerful showing by Newt Gingrich in S Carolina. The Gingrich win comes on the heels of heavy media coverage of his ex-wife’s claim that he suggested they have a “modern” marriage, where he would have relations with other women. She said no and they divorced, she says, but the candidate, now re-married, says not so. He appears to have turned the S Carolina vote in his favour at the start of a televised debate when he snapped at the TV journalist for starting off a presidential debate with a question about his personal life.
Gingrich had 41 percent of the vote and Romney 27 percent in the S Carolina primary, with 95 percent of votes reported, according to agencies. All eyes are now on the Florida primary 31 January, but S Carolina was significant for a number of reasons. It means that each of the first three primaries had a different winner (Romney was thought to have won Iowa by a slim 8 votes, but the final tally, announced last week, showed him losing to Rick Santorum by 34 votes).
Bloomberg notes that “since the 1980 election, every Republican candidate who won the South Carolina primary has gone on to capture the party nomination. Nearly $9 million was spent on ads by the campaigns and their allies in South Carolina, according to data from New York- based Kantar Media’s CMAG.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The death toll has been steadily mounting with at least 140 people known to have died in Kano, Nigeria, after the city was shaken by a series of bomb explosions Friday night 20 January. The bombs were planted in security areas such as police stations. Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist group that operates mainly in the northern, Muslim-predominated part of the country has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The group killed 37 people and injured scores more in a Christmas Day attack on a church outside the capital, Abuja.
Nigeria has been under pressure from protests over oil prices in recent weeks: it produces nearly 3 percent of the world’s oil, with production in the southern part of the country, but the system is riddled with corruption and the country is dependent on subsidized imported fuel. The government’s efforts to reform the system were behind a 1 January end to the subsidies, but angry protests suddenly broke out when the result was a near doubling of the price of fuel. But Reuters, in a 31 December article, noted that “Its strikes are becoming deadlier and more sophisticated, and suggest that it is trying to ignite sectarian strife in a country historically prone to conflicts between a largely Muslim north and Christian south.”
Links to other sites: AllAfrica, Reuters, WSJ Market Watch
Aljazeera video
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sarah Burke, 29-year-old Canadian freestyle ski champion, died Thursday 19 January at the University of Utah hospital where she was taken following an accident during training near Salt Lake City a week earlier. Burke had won numerous gold medals in the past five years and CNN reports that she “is considered a pioneer of freestyle skiing and was a major force in getting the ski halfpipe event added to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi”.
The accident occurred as she was doing a superpipe training run. In a fall after making her jump, she tore one of the main arteries that supply blood to the brainstem and the rupture sent her into cardiac arrest. She was without a pulse and spontaneous breathing while the CPR emergency team worked on her at the site and after being taken to the hospital she had surgery 11 January. The surgery was successful in repairing the artery, but she sustained irreversible brain damage in the minutes following the accident and this ultimately caused her death Thursday, according to the skier’s publicist.
In accordance with Burke’s wishes, reports CBC, her organs were donated to others.
Burke married another freestyle skier, Rory , in October 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
Links to other sites: AP, CBC, CNN, Ski Channel, Vancouver Sun
News video, ABC
Wedding video, Sarah Burke and Rory Bushfield
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – It would have been unthinkable two decades ago, but the one-time world leader in photography, Eastman Kodak, which reigned for most of a century, has filed for chapter 11 in the US. Chapter 11 is the corporate reorganization option that allows a company to try to avoid closing due to bankruptcy. The company’s demise has come about as a result of consumers’ massive switch to digital photography.
The company’s filing in a New York court lists assets of $5.1 billion and debt of $6.8 billion, according to US media.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg/San Francisco Chronicle, FT/CNN, New York Times
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – China’s currency, the renminbi, moves significantly closer to being traded internationally with a new agreement between the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the British Treasury, announced Monday. China and Britain agreed in September 2011 to extend trading in the currency, also called the yuan, by developing London as a trading hub. The new agreement will extend Hong Kong renminbi payments hours to make it easier to settle payments in London. It also sets up a private sector forum that “will work on tightening cooperation between Hong Kong and London, particularly on settlement systems, market liquidity and the development of renminbi financial products”, reports ABC News Australia.
British media note that the agreement gives credence to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s argument that new, stiffer European Union regulations covering financial institutions will not harm The City’s position as a world centre.
Links to other sites: AP/Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times (free, registration required)
Courtesy of Randy Buckner and Bruce Rosen of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Visualization group, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND -Researchers in the US are seeing for the first time “and in stunning detail—how neural fibers crisscross the brain and connect its regions”, according Protomag, published Friday 13 January.
The new images show the connecting tissue, or white matter, of the brain and offer hope for tracking the fibers’ multiple pathways, which could in turn provide strong clues about the sources of mental illness and brain disorders.
Two major projects at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Superstruct Project and the Human Connectome Project with the University of California, Los Angeles, are collecting these images from thousands of people.
“Their goal is to understand what makes the human brain different from the brains of other animals and why some people are at risk for mental illness.
Courtesy of Randy Buckner and Bruce Rosen of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Visualization group, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
“Neuroscientists believe that diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease and autism may be caused by subtle disruptions to the brain’s wiring. In compiling and comparing brain images of so many healthy and mentally ill people, scientists hope to see how connections go awry in disease so that they can develop early interventions and therapy targets.”
The imaging technique “greatly increases the power of conventional scanners and uses mega-magnets to map the way water molecules move in the brain’s gray matter, delineating in real time which neurons are activated and in which direction they are sending impulses.”
The images show less than 1% of the white matter, notes Protomag: “capturing too much of the dense neural pathways would obscure the brain’s underlying structure.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Sunday 15 January announced an amnesty for protestors, state media are reporting, at least the second in the 10 months of civil unrest that has come perilously close to civil war. More than 3,000 prisoners have reportedly been freed by previous amnesties, while other amnesties appear to have resulted in little action and Assad has been criticized for using them to deflect attention from the protests.
The move comes as Assad’s isolation grows, with sharp criticism from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this weekend, calling on Assad to end the killings. The number of people who have died in the fighting is now estimated by the UN to be more than 5,000, and thousands of prisoners are presumed to be held, but there are no reliable numbers for this.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, CBC Canada, Guardian
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The cruise ship Costa Concordia, which crashed into rocks Friday 13 February off the Italian coast, remains the scene of painstaking searches for survivors, with Manrico Gianpetroni, chief purser, brought out alive and suffering from a broken leg, and a Korean couple on their honeymoon brought out dazed. Checks have now made it possible to ascertain that 17 people remain missing, fewer than earlier thought, but at least five people died, with two bodies found Sunday afternoon, and 70 were injured in the accident to the luxury liner that had 4,000 people on board.
Reuters cites Italian police as saying that “the captain of the luxury 114,500-tonne ship, Francesco Schettino, was under arrest and accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship.”
Links to other sites: BBC, CNN, La Stampa (It), Le Monde (Fr)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – NPR puts the issue in a nutshell when it says that the decision of the Academy Awards leaders to allow two journalists to prune down the films contending for Best Documentary is just the latest in an “old problem”: “It’s hard to find anyone to defend the Academy’s documentary record or to deny its apparent capriciousness.” The Academy decided to follow a suggestion that seems to have come from Michael Moore, to change its rules and reduce the number of candidate documentaries by allowing only movies that have theatre reviews, and those reviews must appear in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.
The other rule change is that the entire Academy, and not just the documentary group, will in future vote to select the winners, from the pruned-down group.
The change to the rules is causing a stir, not least because it puts decisions about award-winners in the hands of just two newspapers, both in large coastal cities.
Links to other sites: Indie Wire, Time, Telegraph (UK)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Former Massachussetts Governor Mitt Romney is now leading Republicans for the US presidential race after winning the New Hampshire primary. The state is one that the Obama campaign is studying carefully, reports ABC, a state with a large number of independents that could go either way but that is likely to provide clues to how voters perceive Romney.
His New Hampshire win was a solid one, with Romney coming in 16 points ahead of his closest contender, a far cry from the hairbreadth win in Iowa a week earlier. The race now moves on to South Carolina.
Links to other sites: ABC, CNN, San Francisco Chronicle
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – North Korea is reportedly planning an amnesty for prisoners, but no further details are available, say a number of media, citing the country’s official news agency. Birthdays of leaders are moveable feasts in North Korea, and those of its two previous leaders, Kim Jong-il, who died 17 December 2011 and his father Kim Il-sung, appear to be the excuse for the release of prisoners that could start 1 February.
Current leader, and former Bern schoolboy Kim Jong-un may have celebrated his own birthday 8 January, although the date is not certain, and his two predecessors’ birthdays are equally vague, although celebrated 16 February for his father and 15 April for his grandfather.
Kim Jong-un’s birth date was determined by Korean media by compiling information from a former Japanese sushi chef who worked for the family for 19 years, old Swiss schoolmates and N Korean defectors.
Links to other sites: Amnesty International, BBC, Korea Times
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Some 80,000 police are reported to be involved in the manhunt in China for a man from Sichuan named Zeng Kaigui for robbing and murdering at least seven people in as many years, in Chongqing and Changsha provinces.
The suspect, who always dresses in black for his crimes and who is a former armed police officer, according to Xinhua news agency, is accused stealing 200,000 yuan ($31,700) from a man who had just withdrawn it from a bank in Nanjing’s Dongmen Street 6 January 6. He shot his victim in the head and fled in a car.
Links to other sites: chinadaily_pdf, CNN, Guardian
Rolls Royce in Los Angeles (©2011 Rolls Royce, republished with permission)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Government sovereign credit may have been going down the drain in 2011, but enough wealthy individuals stayed afloat to give luxury car firm Rolls Royce its best sales year ever.
The 107-year-old British automaker sold 3,538 cars worldwide in 2011, a 31 percent increase over 2010 sales of 2,711 cars.
The previous record of 3,347 cars was set in 1978 “during the Silver Shadow II era”, says the company.
China and the US were the “most significant” markets, the company says. Growth in Asia was 47 percent and in North America 17 percent.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Public prosecutors in Egypt have completed their case against former President Hosni Mubarak and they have called for the death penalty, by hanging, for him and seven government officials, including his interior minister, Habib El-Adly. They have argued that he was personally implicated in the deaths of several protesters during the uprising in Egypt in early 2011.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, Ahram, CS Monitor
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 24-year-old German man arrested in Los Angeles has been charged with 37 counts of arson in relation to a spate of more than 50 fires, mostly cars, in the past week. Harry Burkhardt is also wanted in Germany on suspicion of arson in Neukirchen, near Frankfurt: the family home burned down in October 2011.
Burkhardt was evicted from a US courtroom after his mother was arrested for a traffic offense 28 December and appeared in court, where her son made a scene and shouted obscenities at Americans. Her arrest resulted in Germany being alerted; she is wanted on several counts of fraud in the pair’s home country.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – British satiric artist and cartoonist Ronald Searle died, age 91, in his sleep at the home in the south of France where he had lived since 1961. Searle was best known for his cartoon gothic girls’ school, St Trinians, where murder and mayhem reigned. His dark side is often attributed to his harrowing second world war experience as a prisoner of the Japanese, but his body of work was far-ranging. He illustrated for a number of major publications, including Punch, The New Yorker and Le Monde, and he had a significant influence on a number of other important illustrators and cartoonists, from Ralph Steadman to Walt Disney and Matt Groening.
Links to other sites: Independent, New York Times
