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Thursday, July 23, 2009
News
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Solar eclipse... From page 1
AFP PHOTO / AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
Stalls owners help clear the debris from damaged shops in a market following last night’s double blast in the northeastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Husseiniyah, on July 22, 2009. Two explosions detonated, one along a street selling medical equipment and housing medical clinics and the another in a nearby popular market killing five people and wounding 21 others.
Iraq bomb attacks kill 21 Agence France-Presse
BAGHDAD - Twenty-one people were killed in a spate of bomb attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, one of the deadliest days of violence in the country since US troops left its cities three weeks ago. More than 120 people were wounded in the attacks in Baghdad, Baquba to its north and Ramadi to its west, just a day after seven police officers and a soldier died. In the deadliest single attack, five people were killed and 21 wounded by a bomb attack in the northeast Baghdad neighbourhood of Husseiniyah, security officials said. The attack took place at around 8:15 pm (1715 GMT) in a popular market in the district. In nearby Sadr City, a one-yearold baby and a girl of eight were among four people who died when a bomb exploded in a market, police and the defence ministry said. Thirty-four people were wounded. Police defused another bomb in the same market. Another four people, all workers, were killed and 31 wounded in an earlier twin bomb attack in Sadr City, a sprawling, overwhelmingly Shiite neighbourhood. Two people lost their lives and six were wounded in a car bombing in the south Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, while a
company manager was killed by a sticky bomb in Taji, on the northern outskirts of the capital. Water Resources Minister Abdel Latif Jamal Rashid narrowly escaped a bombing as his convoy drove through the central commercial district of Karrada, security sources said. His ministry denied Rashid was the target. Six passers-by were wounded when the bombs exploded near a bridge. Twelve members of the same family were wounded when the minibus they were travelling in was struck by a roadside bomb in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Baab alMuadham. They were taking the body of a dead relative from the mortuary to his burial when the minibus was hit. In Baquba, a woman and her son were killed when the vegetable cart they were pushing struck a roadside bomb. And in a second day of deadly attacks in the western city of Ramadi, three people were killed and 10 wounded in a double car bombing outside a restaurant, hospital officials
and police said. On Monday, 10 people died, including seven policemen and a soldier, in attacks in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, once a bastion of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, and in the main northern city of Mosul. Anbar had seen a sharp dropoff in violence over the past 18 months as local tribes allied themselves with US-led forces against AlQaeda and it foreign fighters. But last week six people died in a suicide bombing near a mosque in Ramadi. The latest attacks come just three weeks after US troops withdrew from urban centres in line with a security pact between Baghdad and Washington that calls for American forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Violence has dropped markedly throughout the country in recent months, but attacks increased in the run-up to the US military pullback, with 437 Iraqis killed in June — the highest death toll in 11 months. Attacks remain common in Baghdad and Mosul.
A total solar eclipse usually occurs every 18 months or so, but Wednesday’s spectacle was special for its maximum period of “totality” — when the sun is wholly covered by the moon — of six minutes and 39 seconds. Such a lengthy duration will not be matched until the year 2132. State-run China Central Television provided minute-by-minute coverage of what it dubbed “The Great Yangtze River Solar Eclipse” as the phenomenon cut a path along the river’s drainage basin. Millions of people in areas of southwestern China enjoyed a clear line of sight, according to images broadcast on CCTV, but the view was obstructed along much of its path by cloudy weather. Shanghai viewers braved rain and overcast skies to witness the spectacle as darkness shrouded China’s commercial hub at 9:36 am (0136 GMT). “It’s like magic, the day turns into night in such a short period of time ... I have no idea where I am right now. It feels like a different world,” said Chen Hong, a biotech company chief executive. Despite the weather, hotels along Shanghai’s famed waterfront Bund packed in the customers with eclipse breakfast specials. Those who could afford it grabbed expensive seats on planes chartered by specialist travel agencies that promised extended views of the eclipse as they chased the shadow eastwards. The cone-shaped shadow, or umbra, created by the total eclipse first made landfall on the western Indian state of Gujarat shortly before 6:30 am (0100 GMT). It then raced across India and squeezed between Bangladesh and Nepal before engulfing most of Bhutan,
traversing the Chinese mainland and slipping back out to sea off Shanghai. From there it moved across the islands of southern Japan and veered into the western Pacific. In Mumbai, hundreds of people who trekked up to the Nehru planetarium clutching eclipse sunglasses found themselves reaching for umbrellas and rain jackets instead as heavy overnight rain turned torrential. “We didn’t want to watch it on television and we thought this would be the best place,” said 19-year-old student Dwayne Fernandes. “We could’ve stayed in bed.” Many did stay home, fearful of the effects of the lunar shadow which some believe can lead to birth defects in pregnant women. “I was advised not to leave the house as the eclipse brings bad luck to you and your family,” said Deepa Shrestha, a 25-year-old housemaid in Kathmandu. Superstition has always haunted the moment when Earth, moon and sun are perfectly aligned. The daytime extinction of the sun, the source of all life, is associated with war, famine, flood and the death or birth of rulers. The ancient Chinese blamed a sun-eating dragon. In Hindu mythology, the two demons Rahu and Ketu are said to “swallow” the sun during eclipses, snuffing out its light and causing food to become inedible and water undrinkable. Some Indian astrologers had issued predictions laden with gloom and foreboding, and a gynaecologist at a Delhi hospital said many expectant mothers scheduled for July 22 caesarian deliveries insisted on changing the date. The last total solar eclipse was on August 1 last year and also crossed China. The next will be on July 11, 2010, but will occur almost entirely over the South Pacific.
Indonesia police release... From page 1 The men had short hair and looked Asian in appearance. The Marriott bomber was described as being 16 to 17 years old, fairskinned and 180-190 centimetres (5’9"-6’3") tall. The Ritz-Carlton bomber was decribed as being 20 to 40 years old, with tanned skin and standing 165 centimetres tall. However as police struggled to identify the bombers, Soekarna said DNA tests on the families of two men suspected of carrying out the attacks, named as Ibrahim and Nur Hasbi, had returned negative results. “The DNA of the families have not matched the body parts that we have found,” Soekarna said. “Concerning Ibrahim, we’ve done a DNA test and it’s not identical. Also (this is the case) for Nur Hasbi,” he said. He said the sketches also did not match Ibrahim or Nur Hasbi, also known as Nur Said, who is a reported associate of alleged terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top. But police did not explicitly rule out either man as suspects in the
wider investigation into the attacks, which have rattled the foreign business and diplomatic community in Indonesia. “The bodies on the site are not of Nur Hasbi and not of Ibrahim. I’m not saying they’re not suspected. Anyone can be investigated,” he said. Senior counter-terrorism officials and police have said the attacks look very much like the work of Noordin, the Malaysian-born leader of a Jemaah Islamiyah splinter group. Police also confirmed that the Marriott bomber had stayed in room 1,808 of the hotel for two nights before launching his attack, which killed three Australians, an Indonesian and a New Zealander. The victims at the Marriott were attending a weekly meeting of some of Indonesia’s most prominent foreign business executives in a room to the side of the main lobby. Two people, believed to be a Dutch couple on vacation, were killed in the almost simultaneous attack at the Ritz-Carlton, adjacent to the Marriott.
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BUSINESS European stocks slip as investors take breather Associated Press Writer
AFP/File/Ted Aljibe
A farmer throws rice seedlings into a rice paddy in Nueva Ecija, north of Manila. Asia-Pacific trade ministers meeting in Singapore have said that the worldwide economic slump may be nearing its end but warned against protectionism.
APEC trade ministers protectionism warning
LONDON – Stock markets slipped in Europe on Wednesday and rose only modestly in Asia, as investors stepped back from a week-long rally fueled by upbeat earnings to assess the outlook for corporate profits amid a still-weak global economy. By midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX was down 29.96 points, or 0.6 percent, at 5,064.01, while Britain’s FTSE 100 slide 21.65 points, or 0.5 percent, to 4,459.52. France’s CAC 40 was down 28.81 points, or 0.9 percent, at 3,274.08. The indexes had rallied for the past week on strong U.S. corporate earnings reports, with the latest from Caterpillar Inc., Apple Inc. and Coca Cola Inc. suggesting that the worst of the economic crisis is past. That view was echoed by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who said Tuesday that the world’s largest economy was seeing some improvement. However, while the news has bolstered risk appetite — with many Asian indexes eking out gains at the close Wednesday — investors seemed to believe that the good news has been mostly priced into the share values. “We keep the view that the multiquarter outlook for developed economies does not look as bright as the
Yahoo to spend more after cost cuts lift 2Q profit
Agence France Presse
Associated Press Writer
SINGAPORE – Asia-Pacific trade ministers Wednesday said here that the worldwide economic slump may be nearing its end but warned against protectionism while pledging to work harder for a new WTO deal by 2010.
SAN FRANCISCO - Carol Bartz has already shown off her cost-cutting skills in her first six months as Yahoo Inc.’s chief executive. Now, she will try to prove she isn’t making a a bad bet by spending more money while the Internet company’s advertising sales are still sagging. The risky strategy caused investors to fret more about what might happen in Yahoo’s third quarter than to celebrate the 8 percent increase in second-quarter profit reported late Tuesday. It marked Yahoo’s first quarterly earnings improvement since the start of 2008, but Yahoo shares nevertheless slid 45 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $16.30 in Tuesday’s extended trading. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company wouldn’t have boosted its second-quarter profit if not for layoffs and other cost cutting that pared Yahoo’s operating expenses by nearly $150 million, or 15 per-
“The global economy appears to be bottoming out, but the outlook remains uncertain and significant risks remain,” the ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum said in a statement. “We will therefore persist with efforts to support growth and facilitate trade and investment flows, keep our markets open, and give a new push to concluding the Doha Round.” The World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of talks were launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001 to forge a new deal on goods and services. However, it has repeatedly foundered, notably over disputes between rich and developing nations on agricultural and industrial products. The APEC ministers, whose economies account for half the world’s economic output, said the “best insurance” against protectionism will be a “suc-
cessful and speedy conclusion” of the Doha Round. APEC ministers will “identify specific gaps” where more needs to be done and “accelerate efforts to reach consensus in the more contentious areas of agriculture and manufactured goods.” APEC members’ WTO negotiators in Geneva will be given “a stronger mandate to exercise maximum flexibility in the talks so that positions can converge further.” Singapore Trade Minister Lim Hng Kiang, who chaired the APEC meeting, said at a news conference “we acknowledge that there are growing protectionist pressures worldwide.” “We are very conscious that if protectionism is not controlled, this could be a severe setback to our growth prospects,” he said. APEC members will “avoid implementing any measures that have protectionist effects even if they are com-
patible with WTO rules,” Lim said. APEC was started 20 years ago to promote trade and strengthen economic cooperation in the Pacific rim. Its 21 members — including the United States, China, Japan and Russia — account for more than half of the world’s gross domestic product and almost 44 percent of international trade. The meeting in Singapore came two weeks after a Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy, where leaders of the world’s most powerful nations and emerging economies agreed to wrap up the Doha talks by 2010. “A lot of progress has been made over the past eight years since the Doha round was launched and we intend to build on this progress,” Lim said. “In this spirit, we agreed to instruct our officials to intensify their engagement in the process by exploring all avenues to get nearer to consensus,” the Singapore trade minister added.
current equity rally would suggest,” said Sebastien Barbe, analyst at Calyon. In fact, Bernanke accompanied his forecast for an economic recovery with the warning that it would be slow due to rising unemployment. The Fed chairman will be watched for more comments in his testimony to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee today. More and more investors are tiptoeing as they try to determine the actual shape of the rebound, said Thomas Lam, senior treasury economist at the United Overseas Bank in Singapore. “The U.S. economy either has stabilized or is stabilizing, there’s no doubt about that,” Lam said. “We have transitioned from thinking it’s the end of the world to trying to see what the new world will look like.” In the U.K., the Bank of England said was still considering whether to pump another 25 billion pounds into the financial system. In the minutes to its latest policy meeting, the bank’s rate-setters suggested they would wait until August to assess the need to create more money. Like Bernanke, the Bank of England said that while the economy has stabilized somewhat, a quick recovery was unlikely as balance sheet constraints within the banks would continue to limit demand growth.
cent, from last year. The savings enabled Yahoo to shake off the biggest drop in its ad revenue since the dot-com bust at the beginning of the decade. But Bartz raised questions about whether the earnings momentum will continue by vowing to spend at least $75 million more promoting Yahoo’s brand, hiring more engineers and improving some of its services during the third quarter. On top of that, Yahoo expects to surrender about $75 million in revenue by reducing the volume of ads that management has identified as being too obnoxious. Those plans will squeeze profits unless Yahoo can snap out of slump that deepened in the third quarter with a 13 percent decline in ad sales. Bartz said advertisers appear willing to spend a little bit more during the second half, although she stopped short of predicting better times ahead. “There’s just so much conflicting information in the market that it’s just too early to call,” she told analysts in a Tuesday conference call.