U.S., South Korea begin military exercises

Amid heightened tensions with North Korea, the United States and South Korea on Sunday began joint military exercises.
The military exercises, dubbed Invincible Spirit, are scheduled to run through Wednesday in waters off South Korea to demonstrate the alliance's resolve. In addition to the 8,000 personnel involved, military officials say, the exercises will include 20 ships and submarines and about 200 aircraft.
The U.S. Defense Department said the drills are in response to the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan and are intended to send a strong message to Pyongyang to stop "provocative and warlike acts."
The drills will include anti-sub infiltration exercises, said Cmdr. Jeff Davis of the U.S. 7th Fleet.
"The anti-sub-infiltration exercise works like this: if a sub is coming in to attack a ship, the military finds it and prosecutes it," he said.
Davis said there was a "renewed desire" and urgency to focus on the exercise after the Cheonan sinking.
North Korea criticized the exercises, which began at 6:30 a.m. (5:30 p.m. ET).
"The U.S. provocations amount to trespassing on the off-limits fixed by the DPRK and it, therefore, feels no need to remain bounded to the off-limits drawn by the U.S.," the state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
It continued, "It is the mode of the DPRK's counteraction to react to sword brandishing in kind. The DPRK is prepared for both dialogue and war. It will remain unfazed by military threat and sanctions."
North Korea on Saturday heightened its threats against the military exercises after talks over the sinking of the Cheonan.
North Korea "will legitimately counter with [its] powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces," KCNA reported.
Two U.S. military officials told CNN there was no sign of significant troop movement in North Korea.
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, answered "no" when asked if there was a real threat of a North Korean military attack over the U.S.-South Korean exercises.
"I think North Korea is just too interested in their own survival to do anything that could end that regime," Levin said in an interview broadcast Sunday on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program.
Meanwhile, Friday, in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, officers from the North sat down for talks about the Cheonan incident with their counterparts in the U.S.-led United Nations Command.
During the almost two-hour meeting in the international truce town of Panmunjom, the U.N. Command reminded the North Koreans of the Security Council's condemnation this month of the Cheonan attack.
The Security Council did not mention North Korea by name but condemned the attack strongly, called for "full adherence" to the armistice agreement that halted fighting in the Korean War in 1953 and encouraged "the settlement of outstanding issues on the Korean peninsula by peaceful means."
An international inquiry found North Korea culpable for the March attack that killed 46 South Korean sailors. But North Korea denies a role in the incident, which elevated tension between the two enemies.
North Korea demanded again Friday that it be allowed to conduct its own investigation of the Cheonan's sinking and said the upcoming war games are being conducted under false pretext.
"The U.S. forces side would be seriously mistaken if it calculates it can browbeat [North Korea] through large-scale war exercises," KCNA said. "It should immediately stop the [anti-North Korean] nuclear war racket."
At an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting last week, nation after nation expressed deep regrets and offered condolences to the South Koreans. The United States has accused North Korea of aggressive behavior and imposed new sanctions Wednesday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated U.S. support for South Korea on Friday.
"Here in Asia, an isolated and belligerent North Korea has embarked on a campaign of provocative, dangerous behavior," she said in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Later, after a repatriation ceremony for the remains of three soldiers who died in the Vietnam War, Clinton said the door remains open for dialogue if North Korea commits to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.

"We would love for them to have the same opportunities that the people of South Korea have been able to enjoy for the last 60 years," Clinton said. "So, it is distressing when North Korea continues its threats and causes so much anxiety among its neighbors and the larger region."

Source: CNN

Number of dead, injured at German music festival rises

The organizer of a German music festival announced Sunday that the Love Parade has been disbanded after more than 19 people were killed in a stampede.
Rainer Schaller said the festival, which began in 1989, has been canceled "out of respect for the victims, their families and friends ... The Love Parade has always been a peaceful event and a joyous celebration, which will now forever be overshadowed by the tragic deaths yesterday."
The death toll from the stampede at the festival is at 19, police in Duisburg, Germany, said Sunday. Duisburg's Senior Mayor Adolf Sauerland said 340 festival goers were injured Saturday when chaos broke out at the "Love Parade 2010." Police have said as many as 400 were injured.
The deadly crush happened in an underpass between the main event site and the expansion area. Witnesses told CNN affiliate NTV that people pushed into the tunnel from both sides until it was dangerously overcrowded. The panic began as festival-goers began to lose consciousness as they were crushed against the walls and each other.
Detlef von Schmeling, police president of Duisburg, said 16 of the dead did not die in the tunnel, but at the entrance ramp.
Authorities have identified the victims as 11 women and eight men. Eleven of the victims are from Germany and the remaining eight hail from Australia, the Netherlands, China, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Spain.
The senior mayor said the city had put in place a "solid security plan" and must now begin an investigation into why the incident occurred.
"The Love Parade was supposed to be a peaceful and joyful festival for young people from the region and beyond," Sauerland said. "Now this event must unfortunately be considered to be one of the great tragedies in the contemporary history of the city. I am deeply shaken."
Carsten Lueb of NTV said some 1.4 million people showed up at the popular festival, which features dozens of DJs spinning techno music for hours. Organizers expected only 700,000 to 800,000 attendees, so they opened an additional event site to accommodate more people. The numbers are disputed by police who say the area can hold between 250,000 and 350,000 and at no time was filled to capacity.
After the panic, a line of emergency vehicles, including helicopters, could be seen parked on the highway leading to the festival site, carrying away people injured in the crush. The festival itself, however, went on. Police were afraid that ending the music altogether could cause further unrest among the massive crowd.
Witnesses also told NTV that police were warned at least an hour before the incident that the underpass was becoming dangerously crowded. NTV reported that there were 1,400 police officers on hand to monitor the event.
Detlef von Schmeling, Police President Duisburg, said more than 4,000 police officers provided security for the event. Police are investigating how it came to a back-up in the underpass. One additional entrance way had been opened before the accident to relieve some of the pressure.

The festival was supposed to take place from 2 p.m. to midnight (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET). By the evening, the entrance and adjacent roadway remained closed. Thousands inside the venue continued dancing, but many could be seen leaving the area.

Source: CNN

Tens of thousands of alleged Afghan war documents go online

A whistle-blower website has published what it says are more than 90,000 United States military and diplomatic reports about Afghanistan filed between 2004 and January of this year.
The first-hand accounts are the military's own raw data on the war, including numbers killed, casualties, threat reports and the like, according to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, which published the material Sunday.
"It is the total history of the Afghan war from 2004 to 2010, with some important exceptions -- U.S. Special Forces, CIA activity and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups," Assange said.
CNN has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents. The Department of Defense will not comment on them until the Pentagon has had a chance to look at them, a Defense official told CNN.
Assange declined to tell CNN where he got the documents. He claims the documents reveal the "squalor" of war, uncovering how many relatively small incidents have added up to huge numbers of dead civilians.
Just In blog: What is WikiLeaks?
The significance lies in "all of these people being killed in the small events that we haven't heard about that numerically eclipse the big casualty events. It's the boy killed by a shell that missed a target," he told CNN.
"What we haven't seen previously is all those individual deaths," he said. "We've seen just the number and like Stalin said, 'One man's death is a tragedy, a million dead is a statistic.' So, we've seen the statistic."
The New York Times reported Sunday that military field documents included in the release suggest that Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war against terror, has been running something of a "double game," allowing "representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, issued a statement Sunday saying the reports "do not reflect the current onground realities."
Rather, they "reflect nothing more than single source comments and rumors, which abound on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are often proved wrong after deeper examination," Haqqani's statement said.
"Pakistan's government under the democratically elected leadership of President (Asif Ali) Zardari and Prime Minister (Yousuf Raza) Gilani is following a clearly laid out strategy of fighting and marginalizing terrorists and our military and intelligence services are effectively executing that policy," the statement said.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said in a statement Sunday that the documents -- regardless of how they came to light -- "raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan.
CNN iReport: Help crowdsource the documents
WikiLeaks publishes anonymously submitted documents, video and other sensitive materials after vetting them, it says. It claims never to have fallen for a forgery.
It has made headlines for posting controversial videos of combat in Iraq.
The site gained international attention in April when it posted a 2007 video said to show a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq killing a dozen civilians, including two unarmed Reuters journalists.
At the time, Maj. Shawn Turner, a U.S. military spokesman, said that "all evidence available supported the conclusion by those forces that they were engaging armed insurgents and not civilians."
Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, suspected of leaking a classified 2007 video, has been charged by the U.S. military with eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for transferring classified data, according to a charge sheet released by the military earlier this month.
Attempts to reach Manning's military defense attorney, Capt. Paul Bouchard, were unsuccessful Sunday. However, U.S. Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins has said Bouchard would not speak to the media about the charges.
Assange says WikiLeaks has attempted to put together a legal team to defend Manning, something it will do for any "alleged" whistle-blower that runs into legal trouble because of WikiLeaks.
Assange, a former teen hacker who launched the site in 2007, denies that WikiLeaks has put troops in danger.
"There certainly have been people who have lost elections as a result of material being on WikiLeaks," he said.
"There have been prosecutions because of material being on WikiLeaks. There have been legislative reforms because of material being on WikiLeaks," he said. "What has not happened is anyone being physically harmed as a result."
The website held back about 15,000 documents from Afghanistan to protect individuals who informed on the Taliban, he said.
But he said he hoped his website would be "very dangerous" to "people who want to conduct wars in an abusive way."
"This material doesn't just reveal occasional abuse by the U.S. military," he said. "Of course it has U.S. military reporting on all sort of abuses by the Taliban. ... So it does describe the abuses by both sides in this war, and that's how people can understand what's really going on and if they choose to support it or not."
Assange said the organization gets material from whistle-blowers in a variety of ways -- including postal mail. He said WikiLeaks vets it, releases it to the public and then defends itself against "the regular political or legal attack."
He said the organization rarely knows the identity of the source of the leak. "If we find out at some stage, we destroy that information as soon as possible," he said.

Source: CNN

Nara: The two time capital of Japan shines again in 2010 Read more: Nara: The two time capital of Japan shines again in 2010 | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/play/nara-millenial-onetime-capital-japan-shines-again-2010-128799?hpt=C2#ixzz0ulPW5O00

Tokyo may today be the famous neon-lit capital of Japan, but it hasn't always been. Japan’s capital has been something of a moving target. It moved 14 times in the two centuries between 592 and 794 alone. Talk about heavy lifting. The city of Nara, in Nara prefecture, 550 km from Tokyo and 3.5 hours by bullet train, served as Japan’s capital from 710 to 740 and again from 745 to 784. The actual site of political power in Nara was known as Heijo-kyo. In its heyday, it was the jewel of Japan.
While its status as the country's power point may have been lost, and its tourist appeal eclipsed by that of nearby Kyoto, Nara continues to thrive. This year marks the 1,300th anniversary of the birth of Heijo-kyo, and Nara is sparing no expense in the effort to refocus the spotlight. The 1,300th Anniversary of Nara Heijo-kyo Capital, as it is officially known, cost some ¥30 billion to produce. Officially launched in April, the festivities center on the 120 hectare Heijo Palace Site. Featuring numerous museums, gardens, and a live archaeological excavation site, the area will host a series of exhibitions and events throughout the rest of the year.
The centerpiece of the festivities is a magnificent replica of the Daigokuden (Imperial Audience Hall), erected at the site of the original. Some 44 meters wide and 27 meters high, it is a sight that hasn’t been seen in the former capital city for well over a millennium. It also features a reproduction of the Nara emperor’s throne, which you aren’t allowed to sit on but can stand in front of to get a sense of what the view must have been like if you were a ruler of Japan 1,300 years ago. (For the best results, change into one of the period outfits of clothing the organizers are offering to visitors who want to “cosplay” their Nara experience.)
Many of the celebration’s special events deal with traditional sports such as kemari (a ball game), umayumi (archery on horseback) and sumo wrestling. The fundamental etiquette and rules of the modern sumo sport were established back in the Nara period. Prior to that, sumo matches were more like gladiatorial contests. By comparison, the description of the nation’s first sumo match in Chronicles of Japan ended with the victor physically stomping his fallen opponent to death.
Other events include exhibitions at local museums, hands-on craft experiences such as making magatama beads or creating Buddhist paintings, and parades. Tip for foreign residents of Japan: flash your passport for free admission to most of the special exhibitions and events.
No discussion of the Nara festivities would be complete without touching on Sento-kun, the goofy mascot character the city unveiled to promote the event. Originally quite polarizing, controversy seems to have given way to acceptance: portrayals of the rotund, antlered little guy now appear on everything from signposts to brochures to souvenir sweets.
What would the original inhabitants of the Nara capital have made of all of the pomp and circumstance, the kawaii characters and cosplaying tourists? It’s hard to say. But one thing is for sure: Nara’s return to the spotlight has been a long time coming.

Source: CNN

Plastiki, boat made of plastic bottles, nears end of Pacific voyage

Call it a "message in a bottle" or an epic eco-adventure -- but now after 8,000 nautical miles and nearly four months at sea, you can finally call it over.
After sailing through brutal southern storms and battling numerous technical challenges, the crew of "Plastiki" -- a ship made out of thousands of plastic bottles -- is now on its final leg of a trip across the Pacific Ocean.
"It feels amazing," Plastiki's expedition leader, David de Rothschild, told CNN Sunday. "I think what's happened with the Plastiki has really captured the world's imagination... the impact has really surpassed my expectations."
The Plastiki will reach Sydney, its final destination, Monday morning -- ending a 125-day journey, but also completing years of planning and dedication for the team.
De Rothschild said that a 2006 United Nations report on plastic littering the world's oceans was his personal catalyst for action.
Made of approximately 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and engineered using the most sustainable methods possible, the Plastiki is meant to be used as a platform upon which solutions to the myriad of environmental problems can be found.
"I was inspired to go out and really build Plastiki to showcase waste as a resource," said de Rothschild. "And here we are nearly four years to the day just pulling in to a little harbor just north of Sydney, ready to sail in tomorrow [Monday]."
The Plastiki's arrival in Sydney will not, however, be the 60-foot catamaran's first time to reach Australian soil.
Winter storms producing near-hurricane strength winds forced the vessel and its crew to take refuge in Mooloolaba, Queensland, on July 19.
Brutal winter storms in the Tasman Sea made the leg from New Caledonia the most challenging.
One night, winds gusting over 60 knots surprised the crew, leaving them battling to prevent the mast buckling and losing the sail for eight hours.
Co-skipper of the boat, Dave Thomson, called the waves some of "the biggest you're likely to see."
Once in Sydney, the Plastiki will be harbored at the Australian National Maritime Museum.
It will remain on display for a month as crew members hold special events aimed at raising awareness of plastic waste in the ocean. The general public will also have the opportunity to visit the vessel during an open day.
But de Rothschild said that although the boat is made of recyclable material, he's not planning to toss it in the chipper just yet.
"I really feel the Plastiki is entering its next chapter," said de Rothschild, outlining hopes to put the boat on display around the world.

"The plan is to create a global oceans exhibit that can showcase not only the issue of throw-away plastics but really about nurturing and re-evaluating our oceans... our most precious of ecosystems," he added. "The Plastiki is definitely not coming to a halt."

Source: CNN

'Star Wars' creator says laser too much like lightsaber

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas wants to force a laser company to stop making a new, high-powered product he says looks too much like the famous lightsaber from his classic sci-fi series.
Lucasfilm Ltd. has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Hong Kong-based Wicked Lasers, threatening legal action if it doesn't change its Pro Arctic Laser series or stop selling it altogether.
"It is apparent from the design of the Pro Arctic Laser that it was intended to resemble the hilts of our lightsaber swords, which are protected by copyright ... ," said the letter, dated last month and provided to CNN by Wicked Lasers.
The letter calls the company's newest laser "a highly dangerous product with the potential to cause blindness, burns and other damage to people and/or property."
Steve Liu, CEO of Wicked Lasers, said his 7-year-old company has been selling similar lasers for years and has never compared the product to the Jedi weapon wielded by Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and others in the "Star Wars" franchise.
"Most people feel it's kind of ridiculous ...," he said. "We would never use any comparison like that to 'Star Wars' or a lightsaber or anything like that."
He called the $199 gadget's design fairly typical for a handheld laser and said it isn't a copy of the lightsaber.
"Lucasfilm shouldn't be saying something like that," he said. "They're a big company that needs to protect their trademarks. Maybe they're having to look like they're protecting their trademark in case they need to [protect it again] later."
The cease-and-desist letter doesn't accuse Wicked of using the term "lightsaber" in its marketing -- which Liu said is primarily aimed at industrial, military and research customers.
But it notes coverage from technology blogs that have frequently made that comparison.
A headline from tech blog Gizmodo called the device "a real life lightsaber." The Daily Tech blog called it "perhaps the first consumer laser weapon" and said it "comes in sleek packaging that looks, unsurprisingly like a lightsaber."
"These references make it clear that the public is being led to believe that the Pro Arctic Laser is an official lightsaber device and/or copied from our design," the Lucasfilm letter said.
A Lucasfilm spokesman did not immediately respond to an e-mail request from CNN for additional comment.
It's not the first time the company has sought help from the courts over perceived copyright threats to its lightsaber laser swords. In 2006, Lucasfilm filed suit against a Maryland-based company that produced lightsaber replicas, saying the products violated "Star Wars" trademarks.
Liu acknowledged that his company's new Spyder III laser is dramatically stronger than lasers from the past. Wicked Lasers advertises it as "the world's most powerful portable laser."
When coverage in the blogosphere increased orders, he said, Wicked altered the laser to add safety features. A safety lock feature prevents accidentally turning on the laser, and an extra lens reduces its power by 80 percent until it's removed.
Every laser is shipped with safety goggles, he said.
"You've got a lot of people who think this is kind of a cool toy, so we've decided not to ship the laser as it was originally advertised," he said.
More than two weeks after receiving the letter from Lucasfilm, Wicked has not stopped selling or changed the laser. The letter asked for written assurance of changes within five business days or threatened "the initiation of legal proceedings without further notice to you."
Liu said he hopes it doesn't come to that.

"Personally, they're some of my favorite movies," he said.

Source: CNN

The website that reveals state secrets

In the early 1970s, when Daniel Ellsberg wanted to get top-secret information about the Vietnam War to the public, he leaked the bombshell Pentagon Papers to elected officials and national newspapers.
But if Ellsberg, a former U.S. military analyst, wanted to leak secret documents today, he probably would send them to a powerful and controversial new venue for whistle-blowing: a website called WikiLeaks.org.
"People should definitely think of WikiLeaks as the way to go" when other methods of leaking information fail, he said recently.
WikiLeaks, a nonprofit site run by a loose band of tech-savvy volunteers, is quickly becoming one of the internet's go-to locations for government whistle-blowers, replacing, or at least supplementing, older methods of making sensitive government information public.
Some have praised the site as a beacon of free speech, while others have criticized it as a threat to national security.
The site gained international attention in April when it posted a 2007 video said to show a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq killing a dozen civilians, including two unarmed Reuters journalists.
At the time, Maj. Shawn Turner, a U.S. military spokesman, said that "all evidence available supported the conclusion by those forces that they were engaging armed insurgents and not civilians."
Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, has been charged by the U.S. military with eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for transferring classified data, according to a charge sheet released by the military this week.
Manning's military defense attorney, Capt. Paul Bouchard, is not speaking with the media about the charges, said U.S. Army Col. Tom Collins. Bouchard did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment. WikiLeaks may also offer an attorney for Manning, according to Wired.com.
The high-profile video has led some observers to say that WikiLeaks is forcing a new era of government transparency.
"It's a whole new world of how stories get out," Columbia University journalism professor Sree Sreenivasan told British newspaper The Independent in April.
Others have said the website may be a threat to society and the rule of law.
A 2008 U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center report (PDF), which was classified until it was uploaded to WikiLeaks in March, says that information posted to WikiLeaks.org could "aid enemy forces in planning terrorist attacks."
The report "is authentic, and it speaks for itself," Collins said.
What is WikiLeaks?
The premise of the WikiLeaks, which has been operating largely out of the public spotlight since 2007, is simple: Anyone can leak documents, videos or photographs, and they can do so while remaining anonymous.
The site says that none of its whistle-blowers has been outed because of WikiLeaks.
Visitors to the site will notice a large link that simply says "submit documents." Reports, photographs and videos given to the site are reviewed by a global network of editors and then, if deemed to be important and real, are posted online.
"Every submitted article and change is reviewed by our editorial team of professional journalists and anti-corruption analysts," WikiLeaks says on its website. "Articles that are not of high standard are rejected and non-editorial articles are fully attributed."
But the site does differ from traditional media outlets..
In The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian wrote that WikiLeaks is "not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency."
In part, this is because of the technology employed by the site.
The site's documents and other leaks are backed up on computer servers in several countries. WikiLeaks also maintains several Web addresses to make it difficult -- the site claims impossible -- to remove the secret documents from the internet once they are posted on WikiLeaks.
The website is run by an organization called Sunshine Press, which takes public donations. Time.com reported that WikiLeaks has a $600,000 annual budget.
Who manages the site?
WikiLeaks' elusive editor and co-founder is an Australian named Julian Assange. In profiles, writers describe him as an eccentric who wanders the globe, carries all of his belongings and keeps semi-residences in Kenya, Iceland and Sweden, where the site's Web servers are reportedly located.
"In my role as WikiLeaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks," Assange told BBC News. "To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions."
Lately, Assange is reported to be living in Iceland, which recently passed laws to protect anonymous speech like that promoted by WikiLeaks.
Assange -- who has stark white hair and a deep voice, and appears only occasionally in YouTube videos and in media interviews -- tells reporters that the aim of WikiLeaks is to promote a more open democracy, where government officials and bureaucrats can't keep dark secrets from the public.
"We have a mission to promote political reforms by releasing suppressed information," he said in April .
Assange did not respond to an e-mail about this story.
Site causes controversy
In its attempts to unearth and publicize this hidden information, however, the site has stirred a number of controversies.
WikiLeaks has published information as varied as former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mails; manuals from the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; e-mails that spawned the "Climategate" global-warming controversy late last year; and documents that Assange reportedly says altered the outcome of the 2007 presidential election in Kenya.
'Climategate' review clears scientists of dishonesty
Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief executive officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said it's unclear what WikiLeaks' lasting impact will be. If the site publishes state secrets without cause, a public backlash could quickly kill the following the site is trying to build.
"If they're publishing just to publish ... the public reaction against that information is going to be so negative," he said.
Schwartz said his group has benefited from WikiLeaks, which was able to obtain some congressional public records his organization could not.
"They are effective in terms of getting to documents that people have trouble accessing in other ways," he said.
Ellsberg , the former U.S. Department of Defense official who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the '70s and who now donates to WikiLeaks, said the site has the potential to change the way the world's governments operate.
He says the site will make leaders more accountable to the public.
The recently released military videos are "a very small door, so far, into the huge library of broadly withheld information," he said.

He called Assange a hero for trying to shed light on those hidden catalogues.

Source: CNN

Spain's semifinal win matches octopus' World Cup prediction

German football fans' agony over Wednesday's loss to Spain in the World Cup semifinal was perhaps worsened by the knowledge that the result was predicted by an octopus.
Paul the octopus, a psychic cephalopod at Sea Life in Oberhausen, western Germany, has become a World Cup phenomenon after correctly predicting the victors in all six of Germany's matches. Tuesday's ceremony was carried live on German television.
Sea Life staff help Paul make his prediction by lowering two boxes of food into his tank, on e witha German flag and the other bearing that of their opponents. The case he opens first is adjudged to be his predicted winner.
The octopus correctly picked that coach Joachim Low's side would beat Ghana and Australia in the group stages -- but also outwitted most professional pundits by predicting Germany's shock 1-0 defeat by Serbia.

In the knockout stages, Paul tipped Germany to beat both England and Argentina.
But the cephalopod drew cries of despair from assembled watchers Tuesday when, after initially lingering over the box for the German flag, he plumped for the Spanish flag instead.
But the octopus only managed an 80 percent success rate in predicting Germany's results at the 2008 European Championships.
He also failed to foresee Spain's 1-0 win over Germany in the final.

Spain will face the Netherlands Sunday in the World Cup Final.

Source: CNN

Biometric ATM gives cash via 'finger vein' scan

Poland's cooperative BPS bank says it's the first in Europe to install a biometric ATM -- allowing customers to withdraw cash simply with the touch of a fingertip.
The digit-scanning ATM, introduced in the Polish capital of Warsaw, runs on the latest in "finger vein" technology -- an authentication system developed by Japanese tech giant Hitachi.
The company says that an infrared light is passed through the finger to detect a unique pattern of micro-veins beneath the surface - which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify an individual's identity.
"This is a substantially more reliable technique than using fingerprints," Peter Jones, Hitachi's head of security and solutions in Europe, told CNN.
"Our tests indicate there is a one in a million false acceptance rate -- that's as good as iris scanning, which is generally regarded as the most secure method."
Unlike fingerprints, which leave a trace and can be potentially reproduced, finger veins are impossible to replicate, according to Jones, because they are beneath the surface of the skin.
"And before you ask, no -- it doesn't work with fingers that have been chopped off," he added.
While the technology represents a step forward in reducing cases of identity fraud, Jones said that this is just one of many factors that have encouraged the Polish bank to adopt it.
"Here, banks have a responsibility to perform various social functions like dispensing welfare checks and pensions. These cause long queues at the cashier and many people find it inconvenient and even debilitating."
BPS plans to install a biometric ATM at every one of its branches by the end of the year, where, says Jones -- who has worked with the bank for over three years -- they will also function as a collection terminal for state benefits.
Although it is a first for Europe, biometric cash points have been embraced in other parts of the world for some years.
According to business data analysts Bloomberg, the technology became particularly popular in Japan after the passing of legislation in 2006 that made banks liable for withdrawals by criminals using stolen or counterfeit bank cards.
Jones says that there are now over 80,000 biometric ATMs in Japan, currently used by more than 15 million customers.
The machines are also dotted around parts of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and even parts of Africa -- where, according to banking analyst Stessa Cohen, they are preferred by rural workers living in remote areas, who are not accustomed to carrying bank cards.
So far though, the technology has failed to penetrate banking markets in the West. Cohen, who works for industry analysts Gartner, believes there are a number of data privacy issues that commercial banks have failed to address.
"If these banks are going to make biometrics an attractive proposition, they're going to have to start being much more transparent about what they do with their customer's personal data. They have to show that this type of sensitive information does not belong to them, but to us."
For Jones, however, a driving force behind the lackluster uptake in most western countries is due to a dearth of commercial incentives.
"It's generally the customer who foots the bill for fraud, and the banks have already factored that into their business model. Add to that the fact that it costs thousands of dollars to install a new ATM -- and it's just not worth it from their point of view."
The security and solutions expert believes that Poland's early adoption of biometric ATMs reflects the country's forward-thinking attitude to the role of information technology in society.
"It's no surprise that Poland is the first in Europe. They are one of the most proactive at addressing the challenges of the information age. When they host the EU presidency in 2012, they want to say to the world: 'Look at what we've achieved.'"
The 30 million-strong nation in the heart of Europe boasts one of the fastest growing IT sectors in the region and has placed information technologies at the center of its plan for economic growth over the coming years.
As Kenechi Okelke, IT and telecom analyst for Business Monitor International, told CNN: "Poland's IT sector has performed really well in recent times. IT is a major focus for the government at the moment and they have adopted an IT Infrastructure Plan with money from the government and the European Union."
Dariusz Piotrowski, development director at Microsoft Poland, says that the key to the country's success in technology is a thriving student body focused on technological innovation.
In July this year Poland will host the Imagine Cup -- a highly competitive global tech competition for students, which regularly enjoys upwards of 300,000 entrants from over 100 countries.
Poland's track-record in the competition has been exemplary.
"They stood on the podium 13 times, taking the first prize five times, second five times and third three times." Piotrowski told CNN. "Polish students have succeeded in the categories such as Algorithm, Short Movie, Game Development, Photography, Embedded Development and Software Design."

And as far as human-computer interaction goes, biometric ATMs are just the tip of the iceberg for students in Poland. Their entry for this year's Software Design category is a project titled "InterPeter" -- a breakthrough system that translates sign language into natural language and vice-versa. 

Source: CNN

Vuvuzela: South African symbol made in China

China's football team did not make it to the World Cup this year, but that does not mean the country's presence has not been felt: The Asian giant has cornered the market on perhaps the most unforgettable off-field aspect of the World Cup -- the vuvuzela.
Ninety percent of the vuvuzelas, the plastic South African trumpet whose loud rasp has become synonymous with the 2010 World Cup, are made in China, according to the China Daily.
The Chinese did it the same way they have done for so many other products: low costs and quick production at factories like the one run by Wu Yuye just outside the southern Chinese city of Ningbo. With a few dozen staff, they make more than 20,000 bugles a day. So far this year, they have churned out more than 1 million of them.
"I'm very proud that our vuvuzelas made it to World Cup in South Africa, especially since we have such a small family factory," Wu said.

And she is not alone. A recent poll in the state media found that more than 60 percent of respondents were proud the "made in China" vuvuzelas were so popular in South Africa.
Making the trumpets is simple: plastic is melted into a mold and then it sets. A small group of women take off the sharp edges to finish off the process.
Wu said it costs about US$0.40 to make each vuvuzela. But outside the stadiums in Johannesburg, the vuvuzelas can sell for up to $8. Despite the markup, not much is coming back to the Chinese manufacturers. Wu said she makes just a few cents on each one.
"Although we don't make a lot of money, I'm sure we'll have a good future making these," she said.
That's because Wu and all the vuvuzela makers in China are looking beyond the World Cup. Domestic orders are starting to come in, including for the Asian Games in Guangzhou later this year. Wu is hoping that the vuvuzela will be the next must have accessory for all sports fans -- maybe the next giant foam finger -- at events like baseball, basketball or rugby.
While a lot of debate has centered on the loud and droning noise of the vuvuzela, Wu has the tact of a business person who knows where the sales are.

"The vuvuzela is a tradition in South Africa, it makes a happy sound," she said.

Study: Too many video games may sap attention span

Parents who believe that playing video games is less harmful to their kids' attention spans than watching TV may want to reconsider -- and unplug the Xbox. Video games can sap a child's attention just as much as the tube, a new study suggests.
Elementary school children who play video games more than two hours a day are 67 percent more likely than their peers who play less to have greater-than-average attention problems, according to the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics.
Playing video games and watching TV appear to have roughly the same link to attention problems, even though video games are considered a less passive activity, the researchers say.
"Video games aren't less likely than television to be related to attention problems," says the lead author of the study, Edward Swing, a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology at Iowa State University, in Ames. "They were at least as strong as television at predicting attention problems."
However, the study doesn't prove that video games directly cause attention problems. It could be that kids who have short attention spans to begin with might be more likely to pick up a joystick than a book, for instance.
Health.com: Quiz: Do you have adult ADHD?
The relationship between video games and attention is probably a two-way street, Swing says. "It wouldn't surprise me if children who have attention problems are attracted to these media, and that these media increase the attention problems," he says.
Swing and his colleagues followed more than 1,300 children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades for a little over a year. The researchers asked both the kids and their parents to estimate how many hours per week the kids spent watching TV and playing video games, and they assessed the children's attention spans by surveying their schoolteachers.
Previous studies have examined the effect of TV or video games on attention problems, but not both. By looking at video-game use as well as TV watching, Swing and his colleagues were able to show for the first time that the two activities have a similar relationship to attention problems.
Health.com: Attention sappers: 5 reasons you can't concentrate
C. Shawn Green, Ph.D, a postdoctoral associate in the department of psychology at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, points out that the study doesn't distinguish between the type of attention required to excel at a video game and that required to excel in school.
"A child who is capable of playing a video game for hours on end obviously does not have a global problem with paying attention," says Green, who has researched video games but was not involved in the current study. "The question, then, is why are they able to pay attention to a game but not in school? What expectancies have the games set up that aren't being delivered in a school setting?"
Experts have suggested that modern TV shows are so exciting and fast paced that they make reading and schoolwork seem dull by comparison, and the same may be true for video games, the study notes.
Health.com: 10 kid-targeted junk foods
It's unclear from this study whether that's the case, however, because Swing and his colleagues didn't look at the specific games the kids were playing.
"We weren't able to break [the games] down by educational versus non-educational or nonviolent versus violent," says Swing, adding that the impact different types of games may have on attention is a ripe area for future research.
The study also suggests that young kids aren't the only ones whose attention spans may be affected by video games.
Health.com: Too much TV linked to earlier death
In addition to surveying the elementary school kids, the researchers asked 210 college students about their TV and video-game use and how they felt it affected their attention. The students who logged more than two hours of TV and video games a day were about twice as likely to have attention problems, the researchers found.
These attention problems later in life may be the result of "something cumulative that builds up over a lifetime" or "something that happens early in life at some critical period and then stays with you," Swing says. "Either way, there are implications that would lead us to want to reduce television and video games in childhood."
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the leading professional organization for pediatricians and the publisher of Pediatrics, recommends that parents limit all "screen time" (including video and computer games) to less than two hours per day.
Health.com: The 10 habits of healthy families
For his part, Green says that how much time kids spend playing video games should be a matter of common sense and parental judgment.

"A hard boundary, such as two hours, is completely arbitrary," he says. "Children are individuals, and what makes sense for one won't necessarily work for another."

Source:CNN

US affirms Russia ties amid spy row

The US secretary of state has indicated that allegations of a Russian spy ring operating in the US will not harm relations between the two countries.
Speaking in Ukraine on Friday, Hillary Clinton declined to comment directly on the investigation into the alleged spy ring but said: "We're committed to building a new and positive relation with Russia. We're looking toward the future."
Her comments came as US prosecutors claimed that two more suspects in the alleged spy ring have admitted to being Russian citizens living in the US under false identities.
The defendants known as Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills told the authorities after their arrest that their real names were Mikhail Kutzik and Natalia Pereverzeva, prosecutors said in a court filing on Friday.
The two were arrested in Arlington, Virginia, where they had been living as a married couple with two young children.
According to court documents, Zottoli had claimed to be a US citizen, married to Mills, a purported Canadian citizen.

The two were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, and along with a third defendant, Mikhail Semenko, were charged with being foreign agents.
All three remained jailed after waiving their right to a detention or bail hearing during brief appearances in federal court on Friday.
They were among 10 people arrested and charged this week. Six other defendants had already appeared in US courts, and one was granted bail that will include electronic monitoring and home detention.
In Friday's court filing, prosecutors said Zottoli and Mills had $100,000 in cash and phony passports and other identity documents stashed in safe deposit boxes.
Semenko, who was in the US on a work visa, is not alleged to have used a false identity. But prosecutors said the FBI found computer equipment "of the type capable of being used for ... clandestine communications" in his home and a second apartment that he recently leased.
Cyprus disappearance
Meanwhile in the Cypriot capital of Nicosia, Loucas Louca, the justice minister, said it was unlikely that Christopher Metsos – the alleged 11th member of the spy ring – would be apprehended on the Mediterranean island because he was believed to have fled.

Metsos, 54, is wanted in the US on charges that he supplied money to the spy ring. He disappeared on Wednesday after a court in Cyprus – an island with close ties to Russia - freed him on bail.
Louca strongly defended Cypriot authorities' handling of the case, which left the government stung by rumours that it was complicit in Metsos' disappearance.
"If we wanted him [Metsos] to evade, as we have been accused, we wouldn't have tried as hard to arrest him in the first place," he said.
Russia's foreign ministry said that it had no reason to believe Metsos was in Russia.
"I do not have such information. You're knocking on the wrong door," Igor Lyakin-Frolov, a spokesman for the ministry, said

Source: WN

Otunbayeva sworn in as Kyrgyz leader in historic first

Interim leader Rosa Otunbayeva has been sworn in as president of the troubled republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Mrs Otunbayeva took power after bloody street riots in April which ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
The former foreign minister becomes the first female president of an ex-communist Central Asian country.
The inaguration comes days after a referendum on a new constitution which will create the region's first parliamentary democracy.
She took the oath of office at a Soviet-era concert hall in the capital Bishkek.
Constitution Kyrgyzstan's Central Election Commission said that more than 90% of ballots cast in Sunday's referendum were in favour of the constitution.
In April thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed and an estimated 400,000 people - many of them from the minority ethnic Uzbek community - were displaced.
The official death toll from the violence that tore through Osh and Jalal-Abad currently stands at around 300, according to the AP news agency.
But Mrs Otunbayeva has said as many as 2,000 people died in the rioting. Most of the unrest was said to involve mobs of ethnic Kyrgyz attacking and setting fire to ethnic Uzbek districts.
The violence has abated but the country's Uzbek and Kyrgyz populations remain deeply divided. But ethnic Uzbeks have largely supported the interim government.
On Friday, acting Deputy Prime Minister Omurbek Tekebayev, who played a crucial part in drawing up the new constitution, said he would step down from the Cabinet later this month to prepare for October elections.
His resignation came after Mrs Otunbayeva appealed for prospective candidates in her interim Cabinet to resign.
She said that was the only way to ensure a level playing field in the parliamentary vote, AP reports.
So severe was the violence last month the Kyrgyz government appealed to Russia to send in peacekeeping troops. But Moscow rejected the request, offering instead technical assistance to track those committing the violence.
The Red Cross (ICRC) described the situation as an "immense crisis"

Source: WN

Brazil's Lula pays tribute to Africa's historic role

Brazil is committed to help Africa build a future of stability and development, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said.

On his last African tour as president, he said Brazil could never repay its historic debt to the continent.
His successor would have a moral duty to increase trade and investment, he told West African leaders in Cape Verde
Brazilian trade with Africa has quadrupled since Lula became president in 2002.
The Brazilian leader has made improving links with Africa a vital part of his foreign policy, which emphasises "South-South" relations.
He has toured the continent at least ten times, visiting 25 different countries.
Despite high popularity ratings at home, he is barred by the Brazilian constitution from a third consecutive term as president and must step down after elections in October.
'Historic debt' "Today we are united for the future," President Lula told a summit of the West African regional grouping Ecowas in Santa Maria, Cape Verde.
"Brazil - not just me - took a political decision to make a re-encounter with the African continent."
He said Brazil could never repay its "historic debt" to Africa - a reference to the millions of Brazilians who are descended from African slaves.
"Brazil would not be what it is today without the participation of millions of Africans who helped build our country."
He said Brazil was determined to help eliminate hunger and poverty in Africa through trade, investment and the transfer of technology.
"Whoever comes after me has the moral, political and ethical obligation to do much more."
'Defender of Africa' President Pedro Pires of Cape Verde paid homage to Lula on behalf of Ecowas.
"Brazil is a country that is respected and listened to, and its president is a great defender of Africa's interests. It should have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council," he said.
Trade between Brazil and Africa has grown from $6bn (£4bn) to $24bn (£16bn) under President Lula.
Brazilian companies have invested heavily in oil and mining, and have taken on big infrastructure projects.
Lula has also promoted cooperation on agricultural development and bio fuels, and launched an international television station - TV Brasil Internacional - that broadcasts to African nations.
Lula's final tour also takes in Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa.
He will attend the Fifa World Cup final as leader of the host country for the 2014 tournament.
He said he hoped Brazil would face an African team in the final in 2014.

Source: WN

Guinea election to go to second round

Electoral officials in junta-ruled Guinea announced late Friday that a runoff vote would be needed to determine who wins the mineral-rich West African nation's first free election since independence.
Former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo garnered about nearly 40 percent of vote in last Sunday's historic poll, well short of the simple majority needed to avoid a runoff, electoral Commission chief Ben Sekou Sylla told reporters in the capital, Conakry.
Longtime opposition politician Alpha Conde won just over 20 percent, while another ex-premier, Sidya Toure, came in third with close to 16 percent of the vote, Sylla said.
If confirmed by the Supreme Court, the result would mean Diallo faces Conde in a second round.
The electoral commission has said the runoff would be held July 18, but late Friday, several electoral officials said it would likely be pushed back until later in the month because of delays in counting ballots from the first round.
The June 27 poll has been praised as the first free vote since independence from France in 1958 and comes after decades of dictatorship that culminated in the yearlong rule of Moussa "Dadis" Camara.
Camara was shot in the head last December by his presidential guard and exiled to Burkina Faso where he remains as part of a peace deal.
On Wednesday, 17 of the 24 candidates — including the top three finishers — complained of ballot-box stuffing and irregularities. But the U.S. Embassy and international observers said they had found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Guinea's people are among the poorest in Africa, despite the fact the country hosts one of the world's largest reserves of bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and billions of dollars worth of iron ore, diamonds and gold.
Interim leader Gen. Sekouba Konate, along with all members of his junta and a transitional governing council comprised of civilians were barred from running in the vote.
---
Associated Press Writer Todd Pitman contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.

Source: WN

Mexico polls test political support

The elections for 12 governors, 14 state legislatures and mayors in 15 states in Mexico are the biggest political challenge yet for the government of Felipe Calderon.
The Mexican president has deployed troops and federal police to wrest back territory from drug traffickers.
But drug-related violence, which is widespread in the country, has prevented many Mexicans from participating in the vote.
Many see the elections as a major test of public support for Calderon and his economic and security policies.
Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman reports.

Source: WN

Former hot dog eating champ arrested

He didn't compete for the hot dog eating title this year, but he did cause a scene at the contest.
Takeru Kobayashi was arrested at Coney Island after his rival, Joey Chestnut, won the annual Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest.
The six-time champion of the contest was trying to make his way on stage after this year's event, according to a representative for Kobayashi and a New York police officer at the Brooklyn precinct booking desk.
This year's competition had already caused a stir after word that Kobayashi -- who took home the title every year from 2001 to 2006 -- would not be participating because of a contract dispute with Major League Eating. He watched from the stands.
Kobayashi was trying to prove he was better than other competitors, said Yuki James, one of Kobayashi's handlers.
Chestnut won by consuming 54 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. The win -- Chestnut's fourth straight -- was short of his 68-hot dog record set last year.
A statement from the New York Police Department's public affairs office following the arrest said Kobayashi was charged with two misdemeanors and one violation, with the violation considered a low-level charge similar to a traffic violation. The two misdemeanors were resisting arrest and obstructing government administration (specifically, interfering with police). The violation was trespassing.
Kobayashi was being held at a police precinct in Brooklyn, and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer or when he might have bail set.
In the days leading up to the event, Kobayashi said he loves the contest and he wanted to participate, but that the contract was too restrictive. Speaking through a Japanese interpreter, he said that all his income is earned through competitive eating. He said the new contract required by the competition would bar him from competing elsewhere in the United States or Canada for a year.
Both sides said contract negotiations went on until Saturday morning.
MLE chairman George Shea called Kobayashi's arrest "unfortunate."
"It makes you wonder what his thinking was," Shea said.
"Major League Eating made an enormous effort to get him into the contest," he added. "We wanted him there. Nathan's wanted him there. The fans wanted him there."
Hailing from Japan and weighing in at 160 pounds, Kobayashi, 31, rose to frank-feasting stardom in 2001 when he devoured 50 dogs, shattering the previously held record of 25 1/8.
But in 2007, having entered the challenge with a jaw injury, Kobayashi met his match in Chestnut.
Chestnut, the 230-pound contender from San Jose, California, downed 66 dogs to Kobayashi's 63 that year. Kobayashi has not won the competition since, and Chestnut is currently ranked No. 1 in competitive eating by the MLE.
For a hot dog to be counted as finished, competitors must consume both the hot dog and the bun.
Currently ranked third, Kobayashi still holds world records for eating cow brains (17.7 pounds in 15 minutes), lobster rolls (41 in 15 minutes) and rice balls (20 pounds in 30 minutes).

"This guy did great things for our sport," Shea said. "He's a fearsome competitor."

Source: CNN

Horses stampede at parade, injuring 24

An Independence Day parade in Iowa descended into chaos when when two horses went out of control and took their wagon with them, running into crowds of celebrants and leaving more than 20 people injured, according to authorities.
It happened at the Bellevue Heritage Day Celebration Parade in Bellevue, Iowa, on the state's eastern border with Illinois.
Fire Chief Chris Rowling told CNN that emergency officials responded to a call that came in just before noon, about a "mass casualty incident" at the annual Fourth of July parade.
Rowling said two horses pulling a wagon went out of control along the parade route. They ran with the wagon for about six blocks, hitting numerous children and adults.
A total of 24 people were taken to hospitals in the area. The injuries ranged from abrasions to fractures to collapsed lungs. Five people were in critical condition and five were in severe condition, while 14 people had injuries considered minor, Rowling said.
He added that the injured ranged in age from 2 to 62, with more than half being under the age of 12.
Rowling said one of the horses hitched to the wagon dislodged the bridle of the other horse, compromising the driver's ability to control them both.
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver issued a statement on the incident, saying his "thoughts and prayers" were with the injured and the town.

"I am especially saddened because the accident occurred during the events celebrating Independence Day, which is a day that should be filled with pride and joy for all Iowans and Americans," Culber said, adding that he thanked the spectators who aided the injured, and the emergency responders at the scene.

Source: CNN

Mortars hit Green Zone during Biden visit

Three mortar rounds struck harmlessly inside Baghdad's Green Zone on Sunday night during a weekend visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
No damage or injuries were reported from the bombardment, which occurred about 10:30 p.m. Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET).
The district, formally known as the International Zone, houses Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy. But there were no injuries or damage reported from the shelling, Iraqi Interior Ministry and U.S. officials told CNN.
The district was a frequent target of rocket and mortar attacks during the worst of the war that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003. A similar attack struck during a Biden visit in September.
Biden landed in Iraq on Saturday to celebrate the U.S. Independence Day holiday with American troops, the White House said.
He also met with Iraqi political leaders, including Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and with former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose political coalition narrowly won an election in March.
Iraqi political factions are still negotiating who will lead the new government following that vote. Biden told them after their meeting that "you must have all voices represented in this government for it to be successful," and noted later that a country's second election -- not its first -- is "the most important election in a country's history."
"Now there's a new parliament that's been seated, and when the new government is formed, it will mark something absolutely extraordinary -- a peaceful transition of power encompassing all the people of Iraq, maybe for the first time in their history," Biden said during remarks Sunday at Camp Victory, the U.S. base near Baghdad's airport.

And Biden said the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq will continue as scheduled, with the pullout expected to be complete by the end of August. But he said 50,000 Americans will remain to train and support Iraqi forces, and the United States will remain engaged with Iraq "diplomatically, politically, economically, culturally (and) scientifically."

Source: CNN

Blame game could 'boomerang' on Obama, strategist says

When signs of a severe economic downfall emerged more than two years ago, then-candidate Barack Obama was quick to point a finger at the man he hoped to replace.
Seventeen months into his administration, the message is often the same, and Republicans say it's time for him to drop the Bush bashing and take ownership of the problem.
"Nothing makes a president look weaker than pointing the finger at past administrations," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean. "By blaming somebody, it looks like you are playing politics and people just want jobs. They don't care about whose fault it is. Playing the blame game only boomerangs on yourself."
Obama repeated that message this week when talking about the still-sputtering economy, twice reminding those at a town-hall meeting in Wisconsin that he "inherited" the economic mess.
It's a familiar message from his days on the campaign trail when criticisms of President Bush were as common as policy proposals.
"History will not judge President Bush kindly for his failure to act in a way that could have prevented or alleviated this economic crisis," Obama said in March 2008 shortly after Bear Sterns' collapse, slamming Bush for failing to instill confidence in the American people.
Recent surveys suggest Obama isn't the only one holding the Bush administration and Republicans culpable.
Though the Democrats controlled Congress in the last two years of the Bush administration and have controlled both the White House and Congress for a year and a half -- 41 percent of people surveyed in a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll said Republicans are responsible for the current economic problems. Twenty-eight percent blamed Democrats, and 26 percent said both parties share responsibility.
According to a Washington Post/ABC poll conducted in April, 59 percent blamed Bush for the economy, compared with 25 percent who said Obama is at fault.
Job numbers released Friday got mixed reviews. The Labor Department reported the U.S. economy lost jobs for the first time this year, as modest hiring by businesses only partly offset the end of temporary Census Bureau jobs.
The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent in May. Economists had forecast it would climb to 9.8 percent, but the improvement was due mostly to discouraged job seekers not bothering to look for work and no longer being counted in the labor force.
Obama on Friday vowed to do everything in his power to create jobs, but the problem, according to economist Barry Bosworth, is there's not much more he can do.
"What can he do on the jobs other than sit around and wring his hands in agony?" he asked. "What could he do? That's the fundamental problem that we now face because it's a global problem."
Coming out of the Group of 20 conference, it was clear Obama's plans to continue stimulus spending weren't in step with other nations'.
"The whole world is going to turn toward fiscal restraint now, and he can either join it or he'll be an outlier," said Bosworth, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former adviser to President Carter.
After the numbers came out, Obama said the country is headed in the right direction but added, "The recession dug us a hole of about 8 million jobs deep."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, echoed the positive indicators, noting that they followed "nearly a decade of failed Republican policies."
But Bosworth said it's not fair to put all of the blame on the past administration.
"They didn't cause that crisis. Lots of people contributed to it. I really do not think that you can blame administrative authorities for what happened. You can blame a lot of economists because we didn't see it coming in the exact way it did, but there were many dimensions," he said, pointing out that in retrospect it's easy to recognize there was an unbalanced economy.
Bosworth said Obama now needs to move away from blaming Bush because the worst of what happened wasn't Bush's fault.
"I don't see that we are looking at a crisis that was caused by the Bush administration, and I don't think we are looking at a crisis where the Obama administration has a fundamentally different response to the crisis," Bosworth added, noting that the Troubled Assets Relief Program was passed under the Bush administration.
Economic recovery has been slow, but there are signs of improvement. The stock market, while wobbly, has risen since the lows reached shortly after Obama took office, and the economy is growing again.
Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said Obama needs to make the argument that the economy is on the climb and the stimulus has worked.
"The message has got to be optimistic and positive. It can't simply be, 'I inherited a mess and I'm doing the best I can.' It's got to be, 'I inherited a mess, but we've turned the corner and things are getting a lot better,' " he said.
The White House needs to go on a confidence campaign and perhaps take a page from President Reagan's playbook, Epstein said.

"He really needs to spell out how we are coming back and it's morning in America again," he said. 

Source: CNN

India hails $3 billion showpiece airport terminal

A massive new terminal at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport is being touted as a testament to India's economic prowess.

The sprawling five million square foot building was officially opened Saturday by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.

Complete with imported granite floors, huge white columns fitted with expensive speakers, 63 elevators, 95 immigration counters and a state of the art security and baggage system, Terminal 3 is also home to India's first transit hotel.

Officials say the new nine-level hub will be able to handle 34 million passengers per year, making it one of the biggest in the world.

"This is a confirmation that India has truly arrived on the world stage," India's Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told the crowd of invited guests.

Terminal 3 is a far cry from the cramped, low tech international terminal that existed before.

In addition to its architectural grandeur, the $3 billion building is attempting to be green with high ceilings featuring skylights to save on energy consumption during the day.

It was built in just 37 months in anticipation of the Commonwealth Games, which are coming to Delhi in October this year.

But the terminal is not without its critics. Some question the amount of money spent on the project, pointing out less than one percent of the population travels by air.

Source: CNN

Economic stirrings in Iraq with new multi-million building scheme

Work will soon begin on one of the biggest real-estate projects in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, which some say is a sign things are looking up for the country's economy.
Iraqi-Jordanian real estate company Amwaj International is behind the ambitious Baghdad development, called Baghdad Gates.
The scheme will cost $238 million and will include 3,500 residential apartments, a five-star hotel, an office tower and an upscale shopping mall. Work is due to begin in a couple of months and could be completed in four years.
Namir el Akabi, CEO of Amwaj parent company Almco, told CNN, "We are targeting the educated, the doctors, the professors, the lawyers. We are targeting the middle class really."
He said Iraq has had no major construction developments for the last 30 to 40 years, leaving it with a chronic housing shortage. He added that as Iraq's security situation improves and refugees are returning home, the demand for housing is increasing.
"In Baghdad, and in Iraq generally, families are living with their father and mother in the same house, even after they get married," Akabi said.
"There is no space available and prices are very high. There is a major shortage and no major development."
That shortage, coupled with an increasing standard of living, makes Iraq's real estate a growth area, according to Akabi. And he's not the only one who thinks so -- in 2008 UAE real-estate company Al-Maabar announced plans for a $10-billion residential and commercial development in Baghdad.
What's more, Akabi is confident the country's oil resources will soon fuel a powerhouse economy.
"To be honest, I expect Iraq to overtake the Gulf in seven years, because international oil companies are committed by contract to make oil production in Iraq reach 12 billion barrels a day within seven years," he said.
"Production today is under two million barrels, so our budget will be six times what it is today. Today it's $60 billion, so you're talking about $360 billion income for the Iraqi government per year."
But some small businesses feel left out as Iraq is flooded with cheap goods from Asia and Iran. Thabit Al-Baldawi owns a small aluminum factory and says the government has done nothing to protect businesses.
"There is moral support but no financial support," he told CNN. "There is understanding for the role of private sector and calls to support the private sectors but so far it is just words."
Even the minister in charge of economic policy agrees. Iraqi Minister of Planning Ali Baban told CNN, "The concept of the free market and free economy was misunderstood by economic policy makers.
"The result is a situation of mayhem and the price is being paid by owners of small and big businesses."
Akabi conceded that Iraq has had trouble adjusting to a free-market economy. "To go from socialism to free market is difficult and it's still not complete," he said.
"There are a lot of difficulties, not only in changing the system, but also in the mentality of people. People are still depending on the government to provide them with everything, rather than taking their own initiative."
Kendall Roth is professor of international business at the University of South Carolina. He has been working with Tikrit University to help develop its business research facility, and he told CNN the real problem was not in the mind set of Iraqis, but in the country's infrastructure.
"Iraqi people are very industrious and can adapt very quickly with respect to understanding the principles of commerce," he said. "But their infrastructure is still struggling and until that's in place it's hard to get to higher-level issues.
"You need to have a constant power supply and distribution capability. There's just a lot of challenges that have to be brought to a different level of capability."
Baban recognized those same problems could deter foreign investors.
He said, "Investors are looking for security, political stability, legislative structure and appropriate legislation and guarantees, infrastructure that includes communication, transportation and other services -- and a lot of these issues are not available in Iraq."
"Doing Business 2010," a report compiled by the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, identified Iraq as being among the worst countries in the world for starting a business, getting credit and enforcing contracts.
But entrepreneurs like Akabi will be hoping that as Iraq's oil revenue grows, those issues will be ironed out.

He told CNN, "I believe everything will grow proportionally upward once major investors come to Iraq. it will help the local market a lot and it will move the economy. It will trickle all the way down."

Source: CNN