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

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

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Rockefeller's revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a "cybersecurity workforce plan" from every federal agency, a "dashboard" pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a "comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy" in six months--even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "As soon as you're saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it's going to be a really big issue," he says.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government. ("Cyber" is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

"The language has changed but it doesn't contain any real additional limits," EFF's Tien says. "It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)...The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There's no provision for any administrative process or review. That's where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it."

Translation: If your company is deemed "critical," a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

The Internet Security Alliance's Clinton adds that his group is "supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective.

Source: cnet

Short power, gas supply dwarfs industrial growth

Kazi Zahidul Hasan

The concurrent power and gas crises have compelled the industries to cut down their output drastically, dwarfing the growth of the industrial sector.
“The present power and gas crises are not only causing huge operating loss to the industries but also hampering the sector’s growth… The industries are being compelled to make additional investment to procure and run generators to remain operative,” said an industry insider.
Industry owners said at present factories cannot utilise full production capacity, which is ultimately reducing the competitiveness of local products in the global market.
“Industrial growth will be severely affected as the ministry concerned has decided no to give any new gas connection in next two years,” Annisul Huq, president of FBCCI told The News Today on Wednesday.
Industrialists said textile, jute and garment sectors have been the worst suffers from the inadequate power supply.
Presently industries are contributing 28 per cent to the country’s total GDP (gross domestic products) and the government has projected 40 per cent contribution by 2013.
The FBCCI chief was sceptical about the government’s ability in generating additional energy in next 3-4 years.
“I think the government’s target for meeting the enhanced industrial output in the GDP by 2013 would very tough due to the power shortage,” Huq remarked.
The growth of industrial output declined in the fiscal year 2008-09 to 5.92 per cent whereas it was 7.21 per cent in fiscal year 2007-08, according to a survey.
“The downward trend of industrial out put is mainly responsible due to power shortage,” said experts.
The fast industrial expansion has taken place in the last two decades in the country, led by the RMG and textile sector has been creating 15-20 per cent additional demand to the industrial sector.
The massive expansion of industry has already led to an acute shortfall of gas in the country since late 2007, with the daily demand now hovering around 2200 million cubic feet (mmcf) against a supply of around 1900 mmcf, said a Petrobangla official.
Textile and garments industry, which are the main pillars of the country’s economy are the worst sufferers of the present energy crunch.
Industrial belts at Mirpur, Savar, Ashulia, Gazipur, Tangail, Joydevpur, Mouchak, Kaliakor, Tongi industrial belts and Naryangonj and Chittagong, Mukterpur of Munshiganj are suffering huge gas crisis at the moment as the government failed to supply uninterrupted power supply to the area.
These industrial belts are facing power cut and low gas pressure around 6-9 hours a day, said industry insiders.
“Factories and mills in the industrial belts are getting only 6.60-PSI gas on an average whereas it needs 15 PSI to run the production,” they added.
“Output of textile industry declined by almost 40-50 per cent due to the inadequate gas supply and low pressure of gas,” told Abdul Hye Sarker, president of president of Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA) to The News Today recently.
He said textile mills are witnessing power cuts around 9-10 hours a day, causing serious production loss as well as efficiency of manufacturing units.
“The industry is incurring around Tk 8.0 crore lose in daily basis and longevity and efficiency of the machineries are seriously hampered due to the country’s erratic power situation,” he added.
More than 80 per cent of Bangladesh factories and power plants are fired by locally produced gas, which is projected to diminish from 2011 and the entire reserve would run out by 2014-2015 at current consumption rate, told a senior official of energy ministry to The News Today on Wednesday. “The fast depletion of reserves is mainly responsible to face sudden halt of gas to the power plants and industrial units,” he added.
He also said the country’s mounting energy crunch fears that factories could face an abrupt closure if local gas supply runs dry.
“Our domestic reserve is drying fast. The government should go for massive exploration by investing huge money so that the gas-fired factories and power plants don’t face shutdown,” he added.
Many industrial units that could not go into operation or business expansion due to gas crisis would also be the targeted clients, he said.
Acute gas crisis has already forced Petrobangla to halt supplies to new industrial units. The state-owned energy giant also suspended operation of three gas-guzzling fertilizer factories in order to divert supply to power plants.
“Loss-making mills, whose management partly blame lack of power supply for un-profitability, have withheld wages for months at present, which could spark workers unrest in the days to come,” said experts.
“Industrialisation of the country has been facing serous setback as foreign and local investors are not showing their interest for industrial expansion as well as new investment due to erratic power situation,” told Wali Bhuiyan, president of Foreign Chamber and Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
“Besides, investors are shaky to expand their existing units for uncertain power situation,” he added.
He also said that the government have to take immediate decision leaving of paper work for the sake of the country.
Criticizing on the government the election manifesto he said it would be very tough to implement such programme if the country’s power situation could not be improved.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) said RMG industries are needed around 620 mw power in daily basis.
Against the demand it has been getting 375 MW power from the government sector having a supply shortage of 245 MW.
“Inadequate power supply has been pushing production cost of the export-oriented RMG sector by Tk 600 crore per year, cutting the competitive edge of the sector,” said BGMEA president Abdus Salam Murshedy.
He said to fight against the frequent power outages most of the garment units in the country have resorted to diesel generators and this has upped their cost of production.

Source: newstoday-bd