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Monday, November 28, 2011
Sonakshi Sinha adorns the cover of FHM magazine
Sonakshi who swept the world with her innocent charm in ?Dabangg? has donned a dapper chic look for FHM?s new cover page. The actress will be seen radiating pride and confidence in the men?s magazine latest issue. Ms. Sinha is completely at ease changing over from a village belle to a fashion diva. ?I think [...]
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Sunday, November 27, 2011
Reader photos: Southern California Moments Day 331
Desert abode: Sand and sky meet in the metal of an airstream trailer at El Mirage in the High Desert in this photo by Toby Hancock.
Every day of 2011, we're featuring reader-submitted photos of Southern California Moments. Follow us on Twitter and visit the Southern California Moments homepage for more on this series.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobysx70/6397993717/in/pool-latimescommunity
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Dubai's City Hospital unveils new cancer treatment | Healthcare ...
StaffSaturday, November 26 - 2011 at 13:01 UAE local time (GMT+4)
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
Joe Paterno's cancer poses legal obstacle | PennLive.com
It is one of the saddest developments in the sad story enveloping Penn State.
A week after his firing as Penn State?s football coach amid the university?s child sex abuse scandal, Joe Paterno disclosed that he is battling lung cancer. His family says it is a ?treatable? form of cancer.
As heart-rending as the medical news is for Paterno?s loved ones and fans, his health diagnosis also poses challenges for the attorney general?s office in its case against Jerry Sandusky and two other former Penn State administrators.
At age 84, Paterno could face years of legal entanglements from the molestation cases alleged against Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator for the football team. Paterno would likely be a witness in criminal cases and possibly in civil suits.
While everyone wishes a full recovery for Paterno, legal experts say his diagnosis has probably already prompted lawyers to plan strategies if his health worsens.
Paterno looms as a key figure in any case stemming from the Penn State child sex abuse scandal.
This month, Sandusky was charged with molesting eight boys, with some cases allegedly happening while he was still an assistant coach. Former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz have been accused of perjury and failing to report alleged abuses. All three maintain their innocence.
There are short- and long-term consequences to consider, all of which hinge on the course of Paterno?s treatments.
Chemotherapy can cause a short-term condition in some people referred to as ?chemo brain.? Columbia University professor Paul Appelbaum described it as a mental fog that can cause patients to have trouble recalling names, words or details.
Appelbaum, an expert in mental health issues pertaining to the courts, said those effects are generally short-lived and can be handled as easily as scheduling testimony outside of chemotherapy sessions.
If cancer spreads into a patient?s brain, that can have more permanent effects on the patient?s mental clarity, he said.
For all these reasons, prosecutors, if they weren?t already, might opt to call Paterno as a witness in preliminary hearings scheduled for next month. It would allow prosecutors to start building a record of testimony that could be carried forward into any trials, with or without the coach.
Prosecutors or the defense might think about petitioning for an out-of-court videotaped deposition of the longtime coach, another way to get Paterno?s story on the record for potential jurors with an opportunity for cross-examination by the defense.
Much of Paterno?s health prognosis is unknown. Paterno and his family have asked for privacy as he battles his cancer.
Lung cancer is the most deadly kind. Doctors said that plenty of patients survive lung cancer, and Paterno?s age itself doesn?t substantially alter his chances for a full recovery. But doctors said the description of a ?treatable? form of cancer indicates little about his actual prognosis.
The attorney general?s office didn?t return a request for comment on how Paterno?s health could affect the case.
One way or another, the health trials of Paterno are likely to throw curveballs into the case. But legal experts said experienced attorneys have encountered these challenges before.
The need for many strategiesOne of the biggest political corruption cases ever fought in Pennsylvania moved forward despite the death of a key witness.
In 1990, an illegal-poker-machine vendor facing criminal charges told an FBI agent about an agreement to donate to then-Attorney General Ernie Preate?s campaign in exchange for lax enforcement of gambling laws.
Gabriel Horvath, who initially reported the arrangement, secretly tape-recorded his conversations about Preate with Joseph Kovach, the so-called bagman who collected the contributions from other operators.
When confronted with the tape, Kovach had a heart attack, but he recovered long enough to make videos and other recordings for nine months. Kovach died in 1991.
Former U.S. Attorney David Barasch, who prosecuted the Preate case, said the videotapes Kovach made proved to be a turning point in the investigation. Preate pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1995 and served a 14-month sentence in federal prison.
When the operators learned they had been recorded, they admitted to lying to the grand jury and apparently told prosecutors they gave about twice as much in cash than Preate had reported on his campaign expense reports.
Barasch said the case illustrates an important point: ?In complicated cases, an experienced prosecutor is always building second, third and fourth strategies.?
?I would never want to depend on any one person?s testimony,? added Barasch, who now runs a solo practice in Dauphin County. He said he knows of other cases in which crucial witnesses died, thus dooming the cases.
Some attorneys believe Paterno?s testimony will be important for any cases to come, especially if Curley and Schultz seek trials.
William Costopoulos, a well-known midstate defense attorney, said that he would not be surprised if prosecutors call Paterno to the stand at a preliminary hearing or seek a videotaped deposition ?sooner rather than later.?
Costopoulos said that Paterno?s testimony could be important to supplement the testimony of Mike McQueary, an assistant football coach who is on leave. McQueary told the grand jury he witnessed Sandusky sexually assault a boy in the football locker room shower in 2002.
According to the grand jury report, Paterno testified that McQueary told him something of a sexual nature occurred in the shower. Curley and Schultz told the grand jury they were never told about a sex act, but the grand jury did not find their testimony to be credible, the report states.
Some lawyers reached for this story said they see Paterno as a less significant player in the charges against Sandusky, which are more likely to hinge on the testimony of the alleged victims and eyewitnesses.
Attorney Shanin Specter of Philadelphia said the question of preserving Paterno?s testimony could hit the courts surprisingly quickly.
As Specter sees it, there will likely be civil complaints filed in the molestation cases before the end of the year.
Attorneys will almost certainly seek a deposition by Paterno, Specter said.
Specter said only fragments of Paterno?s knowledge of and actions regarding the Sandusky allegations have been revealed to date.
?What he has to say is going to be very important to find out for the victims, and potentially for the criminal prosecution,? Specter said.
A chance to make peace
Questions of age and health have been a long-running battle in the clergy sex abuse case in Philadelphia.
Attorneys for Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua have argued that he should not be required to testify in an upcoming trial because of his failing health. Bevilacqua?s attorneys said the 88-year-old cardinal is battling dementia and prostate cancer.
But Philadelphia Judge M. Teresa Sarmina ruled last week that Bevilacqua must submit to a videotaped deposition in sexual abuse cases against former priests and a former Catholic schoolteacher.
Bevilacqua?s deposition is to take place Monday. Bevilacqua has not been charged, but prosecutors have said his testimony could be vital to their case.
It?s unclear what Paterno?s legal team would do in the Penn State cases.
Paterno?s attorney, Sedgwick Sollers of the King & Spaulding law firm in Washington, D.C., did not return a phone message left for this story.
But so far, the ex-coach?s family has given no indication that Paterno would run from questioning.
Paterno has said he wishes ?he had done more? about the Sandusky allegations. He said his failure to follow up more forcefully on the abuse allegations is ?one of the great sorrows of my life.?
In a statement announcing the hiring of Sollers, Paterno?s son, Scott, said, ?My father?s desire is for the truth to be uncovered, and he will work with his lawyers to that end.?
Costopoulos said Paterno might view his testimony as his last best chance to make his peace with Pennsylvania.
?He may tell his lawyers that he welcomes this opportunity to try to salvage what [he] can about this most horrible event,? Costopoulos said.
Source: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/joe_paternos_cancer_poses_lega.html
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Communications and the Lab. Again | Living in the Modem World
So, Kimberly Salzer (Kim Linden), former VP of Marketing, has gone from Linden Research.
Reactions to the news have been mixed. Hamlet Au?s overall tone is one of regret, while Aeonix Aeon (aka Will Burns) is more forthright and views it as good news.
Kimberly Salzer
Both state that among other things, Kimberly Salzer was responsible for the most recent communications regime at Linden Lab which not only regimented internal communications, but also impacted how the Lab engages and communicates with the user community and the world at large.
If this is true, then I would tend to stand on Will?s side of the fence where her departure is concerned. It?s an inescapable fact that since late last year (Kim Salzer arrived at the Lab in September 2010), outward communications have not so much continued to decline as they have apparently tumbled headlong into a void.
The inability for the Lab to effectively and efficiently engage and communicate with its own user community is nothing new; it?s a fact of life, sadly. Regular readers of this blog will know it is something I?ve repeatedly banged on about over the course of the last couple of years. Indeed, such was the downturn during the first quarter of this year, that I wrote at some length on the need for, and value in, more constructive engagement from Linden Lab towards its user base.
Catherine Smith
The origins for the collapse can be traced back to early 2008, when after years of encouraging users to embrace and use the company?s trademark, it was announced that henceforth there would be a new Trademark Policy which would severely curtail people?s ability to use it. This initiative was spearheaded by Catherine Smith (Catherine Linden) who was at that time Linden Lab?s Director of Marketing. That the company had the right to define how and where its trademark could be used was never the issue; the problem was the way in which the company summarily went about setting up the new rules, which many saw as a betrayal of Lab / user trust.
It was the start of a long and steady decline in open communications between Lab and the user community which has, in many respects, now reached rock bottom. In the course of the last twelve months alone we?ve seen:
Amanda Van Nuys
Amanda Van Nuys (Amanda Linden, another now ex-Linden Lab Marketing executive ? spotting a trend here?) announcing the forthcoming arrival of the new Community Communications Platform (CCP) ? and then promptly championing its future use by telling users that actually, if they want to keep up with the news from LL, then really they should go elsewhere.
In a near total re-hash of the Jive platform roll-out two or so years previously, LL ignored all requests for a General Discussion forum to be included in the new CCP. Instead, on rolling it out, they instigated a heavy-handed moderation process, arbitrary shutting down threads and discouraging discourse. At the same time they introduced some kind of ?keep it clean? censorship policy that meant, as Ciaran Laval memorably blogged, the name ?Dick van Dyke? became ?bleep van bleep?. The result of these actions were to a) actively discourage the use of the new platform, driving many users elsewhere; b) turn the whole CCP into something of an item of derision.
Office Hours have, for a variety of reasons, have been replaced by User Group meetings. Some of these have thrived, but when reading the transcripts of others (when available), the information flow out of LL in these meetings often comes across as cautious and stilted ? almost as if staff have been told to mind what they say to the point of being unable / unwilling to say anything at all.
JIRA policy was arbitrarily changed. Rather than voting for issues, people were told that, henceforth, they?d have to watch issues. Given the fact the watching leads to people receiving an e-mail each and every time someone else comments on (or otherwise edits) an issue, and that for hot topics, this can lead to dozens of e-mails per day hitting one?s in-box, this could only be interpreted as an attempt by LL to actively discourage people from engaging in the JIRA.
Any attempt at structured communication seems to have ended. I?ve nothing against the company using Facebook, Twitter, Plurk and what have you, as long as they are consistent in the use of such channels. The problem is, LL isn?t. Rather, what seems to be in place is a ?heads-its-the-blog-tails-its-Twitter? approach. And while it is good to see the CEO engaging in discourse on third-party forums, even going so far as to provide information on upcoming changes to things like the Viewer, one has to ask why the hell such conversations aren?t being encouraged in LL?s own blogs and forums.
It?s fair to say that during the first four months of the year, communications from the Lab were close to non-existent to any meaningful degree. Tateru Nino summed it up beautifully by referring to it as ?The Silence of the Lab?. It?s something I?ve failed to understand, particularly as Kim Salzer came to Linden Lab from Blizzard, a company known for its willingness to engage with (and indeed listen to) its user community through its blogs and fora.
Come May, Rodvik was indicating (via Twitter) that we could expect a resumption in communications from the Lab. If only that were so. Other than totally vapid ?monthly updates?, we?ve seen very little improvement in the use of the channels at LL?s disposal, much less a more disciplined use of their own Community Communications Platform.
The other side of the coin is in the matter of the Lab?s outward communications to the world at large ? and here things are, in many respects, very much worse. Simply put, and as?Tateru comments on her blog, Linden Lab appears to have relinquished all control over the presentation of the Second Life brand to third-parties ? many of whom do not have the brand?s best interests at heart.
The most recent example of this is Dan and Chip Heath ? and forgive me fr bringing this up again; it?s been done to death a dozen times over, I know, but it does serve as a timely example.
In their latest book, they offer up Second Life as an example of a ?failed? venture. To them, Second Life is dead and done. That their viewpoint is largely incorrect isn?t actually the point in the context of this piece. Rather the issues of note here are that:
- They picked on Second Life as an example of a failed enterprise (note past tense);
- Of all the chapters in the book, it was the one on Second Life that media outlets chose to go to press about.
However you look at it and regardless of the inaccuracy of the Heath brother?s conclusions, both these points demonstrate that the prevalent view among pundits and the media alike is that Second Life has failed and should thus be referred to in the past tense. Not, I would venture to suggest, the kind of message most companies would want to have in the mainstream media regarding their sole product.
Nor do LL particularly help themselves. The last time LL issued a press release was December 2010. That?s an awfully long time ago; which is odd, because there is much going on in SL that is worth celebrating and promotion in the media. Indeed, LL actually do keep track of things that reflect positively on Second Life through the In The News page (although admittedly, you?d never know they actually had an In The News page given the distinct lack of obvious links to it ? great going on the communications front again, guys).
Again, one doesn?t expect LL to create a song-and-dance about absolutely everything that happens in SL and which gets a positive light shone upon it; but by the same token, it doesn?t mean all should be left with only passing mention.
Take the SL Relay For Life. This is a stunning annual event which this year smashed all records: $375,000 USD raised ? $100,000 more than the hoped-for target ? which took the total raised by the event in-world over the years to over the $1 million USD mark. However you look at it, this is a remarkable achievement, one deserving of being placed squarely in the public eye,? as indeed ACS did, yet Linden Lab gave it little more than passing mention.
Given the lack of this kind of pro-active management ? which any marketing executive should be able to handle ? is it any real wonder that the media at large refer to Second Life in the past tense?
Communications are the lifeblood of an organisation. Yes, they can? be difficult to manage where there is the added complication of a large and active user base ? but this doesn?t mean they should be pushed to one side and looked upon as anathema (which is only how one can view LL?s own reluctance to openly engage with its user community). Similarly, outward engagement with the press is a vital part of any organisation?s activities: you either control the message and respond to misleading and potentially damaging articles? ? or you allow others to define the message for you, and allow their perceptions control how others see you.
Tateru hopes that we?ve now hit rock bottom, and the only direction left is up. Frankly, and despite my enthusiasm for the platform and the overall technical direction LL are taking, I?m not so sure. In terms of communications over the last four years (2008-2011), LL have behaved like an existential elevator, demonstrating that whenever down isn?t an option, there?s always sideways until such time as entropy resumes its natural course.
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Source: http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/communications-and-the-lab-again/
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NFL Communications - 49ers-Ravens on Thursday Night Football ...
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AT&T braces for T-Mobile deal collapse (Reuters)
LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) ? AT&T said it would take a $4 billion charge in case its takeover of T-Mobile USA fails, a tacit recognition of the dwindling chances that the deal will get through U.S. regulators who say it would destroy jobs and curb competition.
The U.S. telecommunications group and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, said they would continue to pursue anti-trust approval for the $39 billion takeover from the U.S. Department of Justice, but withdrew applications to the industry regulator, for now at least.
"AT&T Inc and Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom's U.S. wireless assets to AT&T," they said in a statement on Thursday, the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the United States.
The $4 billion sum includes $3 billion in cash and a book value of $1 billion for spectrum access.
Both the DOJ and telecoms watchdog the U.S. Federal Communications Commission oppose the deal, which would reduce the number of national mobile carriers to three.
A senior FCC official said on Thursday afternoon, "The record clearly shows that - in no uncertain terms - this merger would result in a massive loss of U.S. jobs and investment."
Withdrawal of the application is subject to approval by the FCC, which has the right to determine whether and how the companies could resubmit an amended application in the future.
In any event, FCC approval would be meaningless if the DOJ blocked the transaction, and AT&T and Deutsche Telekom said they would return to the FCC process if they secured approval from the DOJ.
The collapse of the merger would be a blow to AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson who offered a massive break-up fee to Deutsche Telekom as a sign of confidence the deal, announced in March, would be approved.
Analysts said the merger, badly needed by sub-scale T-Mobile USA - the smallest of the four U.S. mobile operators - looked less likely than ever to succeed.
Espirito Santo analysts said AT&T's decision to take the $4 billion charge this quarter showed that the company's own assessment of the chances of success had fallen.
"It tells us something about timing too - suggesting that AT&T may decide to walk away at the first opportunity (March 20, 2012) rather than waiting for the ultimate September 20, 2012 deadline," they wrote in a note to clients.
Deutsche Telekom shares finished the day down 0.6 percent at 8.69 euros.
The companies' advisers stand to lose a total of $150 million in fees. T-Mobile's advisers Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, and AT&T's banks Greenhill & Co, Evercore Partners and JPMorgan Chase were on course to earn between $18 million and $36 million apiece, according to earlier estimates from Thomson Reuters/Freeman Consulting.
JOB SITUATION
Thursday's decision follows a blow earlier this week when the FCC said it would try to send the deal to an administrative law judge for review.
The DOJ has also said it would lead to higher wireless prices for consumers and businesses.
The DOJ has gone to court to block the deal and a trial in that case is due to begin on February 13. Any administrative hearing at the FCC, which is charged with evaluating the public-interest merits of the proposal, would begin after the anti-trust trial.
AllianceBernstein analysts said in a note that a pretrial settlement with the DOJ was not a "likely" prospect.
AT&T has 260,000 employees, mostly in the United States. Deutsche Telekom employs 36,000 at its U.S. unit.
AT&T argued that the T-Mobile merger could actually create tens of thousands of jobs during integration and network upgrades, and has pledged to bring back 5,000 jobs that it moved overseas -- but many observers are skeptical.
The break-up package includes $3 billion in cash as well as a commitment to give T-Mobile USA spectrum and let its customers roam on the AT&T network. Some sources have valued the total break-up package at $6 billion but AT&T has never confirmed this number.
NO 'PLAN B'
Acquiring T-Mobile would vault No. 2-ranked AT&T into the leading position in the U.S. wireless market, overtaking Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.
It would also solve a years-long problem for Deutsche Telekom, whose U.S. unit has long ceased being a source of growth and is in urgent need of investment.
At least one analyst suggested that AT&T might instead end up trying to restructure its agreement with T-Mobile USA in the hope of appeasing regulators.
It could limit its purchase to T-Mobile USA's spectrum licenses and its network so that the Deutsche Telekom unit could keep its customer base and rent space on the AT&T network, Citi analyst Michael Rollins said in a research note after the FCC announced its plan on Tuesday.
Credit rating agency Moody's said it believed Deutsche Telekom would rather exit the U.S. market than go it alone.
However, the ratings agency believes that Deutsche Telekom will fight aggressively alongside AT&T to salvage the sale process to improve its weak position in the United States.
A failure would throw Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann's strategy into disarray and may force him to throw money at a business he thought he was rid of.
Deutsche Telekom may be forced to sell assets closer to home and take a knife to its cost base, bankers told Reuters.
The company faces a long delay at best and may be driven back into the arms of No. 3 U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel -- a less suitable partner for whom T-Mobile USA would not be worth nearly as much now as it was to AT&T in March.
While according to sources, Sprint had also been courting T-Mobile USA before AT&T stole its thunder, there are huge questions about whether it could afford a T-Mobile USA purchase.
Sprint, which has been losing customers, recently tapped debt markets for $4 billion to help refinance maturing debts as it looks to pay for a $7 billion network upgrade of its own in the next two years and a $15.5 billion iPhone agreement with Apple Inc that spans four years.
(Additional reporting by Chris Steitz and Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt and Sinead Carew, Phil Wahba in New York and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by Chris Wickham, Maureen Bavdek and Bernard Orr)
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Friday, November 25, 2011
Doctors testing portable breast cancer detector - Popgadget
Doctors and researchers at Nihon University are currently working on the medical device, which uses what's known as the phase shift method. This means that light is emitted and then bounced back and measured accordingly. The darker an area then appears in the results, the more chance of complications in the future. So, it's a pretty good method for identifying problems without having to visit a hospital for an initial test.
Although those working on the device at Nihon University displayed it at a healthcare trade show in Germany a few weeks ago, it's unfortunately still in the very early stages of development and according to Gizmodo, it's still being tested on animals to see how reliable the results it provides us with really are. However, let's hope this kind of portable cancer detection system isn't too far off in the distant future as it'd be a ground-breaking way for those who can't get to medical facilities to check themselves, or just a new method of allowing everyone to detect any serious problems as early as possible.
[Via Gizmodo]
Source: http://www.popgadget.net/2011/11/doctors_testing.php
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Video: Travel alert: Packed planes on Thanksgiving
Mark Rightmire?/?AP
The rough economy and high fuel prices have forced airlines to cut back on the number of crews and planes in service at any given time, and that means packed flights for Thanksgiving travelers. NBC?s Tom Costello reports.
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Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/45414427/
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Sarkozy to press Merkel on ECB after bond fiasco (Reuters)
PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) ? French President Nicolas Sarkozy will press German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday to let the European Central Bank act decisively to rescue the euro zone from a deepening sovereign debt crisis now hitting Germany.
French officials hope Berlin will relent in its opposition to a greater crisis-fighting role for the ECB after Germany itself suffered a failed bond auction on Wednesday, highlighting how investors are now shunning even Europe's safest haven.
"There is urgency (for ECB intervention). We will talk about it today in Strasbourg," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on France Inter radio, hours before the French, German and Italian leaders were due to meet in the eastern French city.
"I think and hope that the thinking will evolve and that the ECB should play an essential role to re-establish confidence," Juppe said.
Sarkozy took a step toward Merkel this week by agreeing to amend the European Union's treaty to permit intrusive powers to change national budgets in euro area countries that go off the rails. But the German leader has so far maintained her line that the treaty forbids the ECB from acting as lender of last resort to buy euro zone bonds.
With contagion spreading fast, a majority of 20 leading economists polled by Reuters predicted that the euro zone was unlikely to survive the crisis in its current form, with some envisaging a "core" group that would exclude Greece.
In signs of public resistance to austerity in the currency area's troubled south, riot police clashed with workers at Greece's biggest power producer protesting against a new property tax, and Portuguese workers staged a one-day general strike.
Wednesday's auction, in which the German debt agency found no buyers for half of a 6 billion euro 10-year bond offering at a record low 2.0 percent interest rate, sent Bund futures down to their lowest level in nearly a month on Thursday as confidence in German debt continued to be shaken.
Bond investors are effectively on strike, interbank lending to euro area banks is freezing up, ever more banks are dependent on the ECB for funding, and depositors are withdrawing increasing amounts from southern European banks.
Investors are also unnerved by reports that Belgium is leaning on France to pay more into emergency support for failed lender Dexia under a 90-billion-euro ($120-billion) rescue deal that had appeared done and dusted.
A special report by Fitch Ratings suggested France had limited room left to absorb shocks to its finances, such as a new downturn in growth or support for banks, without endangering its triple-A credit status.
Merkel, Sarkozy and new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti were also expected to discuss the reforms planned by Italy's new government of technocrats marking Rome's return to grace in Europe after the era of scandal-plagued former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned this month.
The German bond auction pushed the cost of borrowing over 10 years for the bloc's paymaster above those for the United States for the first time since October.
"It is a complete and utter disaster," said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London.
GERMAN EXPOSURE
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's spokesman said the auction did not mean the government had refinancing problems and few on financial markets disagreed. Some analysts said Berlin just needed to offer a more attractive yield.
But it was a sign that, as the bloc's paymaster, Germany may face creeping pressure as the crisis continues to deepen. One senior ratings agency official said it could give Berlin cause to re-examine its refusal to embrace a broader solution.
"It's quite telling that there has been upward pressure on yields in Germany - it might begin to change perceptions," David Beers of Standard & Poor's told a conference in Dublin.
Merkel showed no sign on Wednesday of bending to calls, most notably from France, to allow the ECB to act more decisively.
In a forceful speech to the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, she warned against fiddling with the bank's strict inflation-fighting mandate. She also hit back at proposals from the European Commission on joint euro zone bond issuance, calling them "extraordinarily inappropriate."
Merkel has said the EU treaty bars the ECB from acting as a lender of last resort and printing money to buy government debt. She rejected joint "euro bonds," dismissed a proposal to mutualise the euro zone's debt stock, and rebuffed attempts to allow the bloc's rescue fund to borrow from the ECB or the IMF.
Yet at the same time, she has declared that the only answer to the crisis was "more Europe" and won endorsement from her party to press for a fully fledged European political union based around the euro zone.
The borrowing costs of almost all euro zone states, even those previously seen as safe such as France, Austria and the Netherlands, have spiked in the last two weeks as panicky investors dumped paper no longer seen as risk-free.
"Bunds are starting to lose their appeal because markets have to believe the euro bonds story and Germany is very close to starting, essentially, to guarantee the debt of other countries," said Achilleas Georgolopoulos, strategist at Lloyds Bank in London.
The crux of an acceleration of the crisis in the past month is Italian bond yields' jump to levels around 7 percent widely seen as unbearable in the long term, despite intervention by the European Central Bank to buy limited quantities.
STABILITY BOND
Bank of England policymaker David Miles said in an interview broadcast on ITV late on Wednesday there is a risk that one of the euro zone's 17 member states could leave the currency bloc.
"I don't think any of us can feel confident one way or another about whether all the countries that are currently in the euro zone will still be in it," he said.
In a Reuters poll conducted over the last 10 days, 14 out of 20 prominent academics, former policymakers and independent thinkers agreed the euro zone's make-up would change.
A new "core" euro zone with fewer members received qualified backing from 10 economists as a possible solution, with seven of them saying Greece should be excluded from it.
"The euro zone can and should survive, but it will not survive on the current trajectory," said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.
With time running out for politicians to forge a crisis plan that is seen as credible by the markets, the European Commission presented a study on Wednesday of joint euro zone bonds as a way to stabilize debt markets.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso unveiled proposals for much more intrusive oversight of euro zone countries' budgets and efforts to meet macroeconomic targets, and set out the options for introducing common euro zone bonds.
(Reporting by Stephen Brown, Noah Barkin, Natalia Drozdiak, Veronica Ek, Eva Kuehnen; Writing by Paul Taylor, editing by Mike Peacock)
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
Bush tax cut debate dooms deal to cut deficit (AP)
WASHINGTON ? A long-running war between Democrats and Republicans over Bush-era tax cuts doomed the debt supercommittee's chances of reaching a deal. Efforts to overhaul the tax code may await the same fate as both parties gear up to make taxes a central issue in the 2012 elections.
Republicans insisted during the supercommittee negotiations that curbing tax breaks to raise revenues be coupled with guarantees that all the Bush tax cuts would continue beyond 2012. The tax cuts, which affect families at every income level, were enacted under President George W. Bush and were extended through 2012 under President Barack Obama.
Republicans for years have bashed Democrats as eager to raise taxes ? a theme they will employ often in next year's elections ? so they weren't about to agree to a tax hike unless they also could take credit for preventing a huge tax increase scheduled to take effect in 2013.
Democrats countered that the supercommittee was created to reduce the budget deficit, not add to it by extending tax cuts. Most Democrats, including Obama, want to extend the Bush tax cuts only to individuals making less than $200,000 a year and married couples making less than $250,000.
"We simply could not overcome the Republican insistence on making tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans permanent," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a member of the supercommittee. "This was simply doctrine for some of our Republican colleagues, even as many worked very hard in good faith to find a better way forward."
Another member of the supercommittee, Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., said, "It is deeply regrettable that my Democrat colleagues could not see their way to addressing these much-needed reforms without at least $1 trillion in job-killing tax increases on families and employers."
Extending all the Bush tax cuts, including provisions to spare millions of middle-class families from paying the alternative minimum tax, would add $3.9 trillion to the budget deficit over the next decade, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Democratic plan would add about $3.1 trillion to the deficit over the same period and make the wealthiest Americans pay about $800 billion more in taxes.
The supercommittee was formed to come up with a package that reduces government borrowing by at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade. But with a Wednesday deadline approaching, the committee's co-chairs conceded failure Monday.
Democrats had said they would accept significant cuts to benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but only if Republicans would agree to tax increases. Despite Republicans' aversion to tax increases, a growing number of GOP lawmakers said they would consider higher taxes if they were coupled with significant spending cuts.
Other Republicans wanted even more political cover: a guarantee that all the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent.
"It's not easy during this hard economic time to go back and justify any kind of tax increase," Rep. Wally Herger of California, a senior Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said while talks were still ongoing. "But I think if it's going to be justified, this is the one exception that maybe you could use to justify it."
At one point, supercommittee member Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., proposed a tax overhaul package that Republicans said would raise about $290 billion in additional revenue over the next decade but lock in all of the Bush tax cuts.
Democrats, however, never seriously considered an agreement to continue the Bush tax cuts for high earners. Agreeing to extend them would make it harder for Democrats to accuse Republicans of supporting policies that favor the wealthy, a staple of Democratic political campaigns.
"If anybody in our party votes for that, they will have a real problem for themselves in the next election," said Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, a senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
The debate has played out even as lawmakers, presidential candidates and interest groups from across the political spectrum have called on Congress to simplify the tax code. The two tax-writing committees in Congress, the Ways and Means Committee in the House and the Finance Committee in the Senate, have held numerous hearings on tax reform. Their respective chairmen, Camp and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., both served on the supercommittee.
But tax reform won't happen until Congress resolves the dispute over the Bush tax cuts, said Howard Gleckman, a fellow at the Urban Institute and editor of the blog TaxVox.
"You can't do tax reform unless you agree in advance how much revenue you want to raise," Gleckman said. "The problem is, there is simply no consensus at all on what the revenue goal is."
Tax reform is already a hot topic among Republican presidential hopefuls. Businessman Herman Cain has gotten a lot of attention for his 9-9-9 plan, which would impose a 9 percent national sales tax, a 9 percent income tax and a 9 percent business tax.
The election could go a long way toward deciding the fate of tax reform, unless it results in more divided government, said Clint Stretch, a tax expert at Deloitte Tax LLP.
"The problem is, the 2012 election might not solve the issue," Stretch said.
Until then, don't look for any movement on the issue, said Dean Zerbe, former tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee and now national managing director of Alliantgroup, a tax consulting firm.
"'For this Congress, you might as well send the lilies for tax reform," Zerbe said. "We will not do anything significant on taxes until after the election, and even after that it may take a while."
__
Online:
TaxVox blog: http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/
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Khodorkovsky hopes to see documentary on his fate (AP)
MOSCOW ? Jailed Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has expressed hope of seeing a documentary about his conflict with the Kremlin that has premiered in Moscow.
Khodorkovsky said in a statement that he "hopes sooner or later" to see the film by German director Cyril Tuschi shown in Russia on Thursday, nine months after its European premiere.
The documentary describes the fate of Russia's richest man ? imprisoned since his arrest in 2003 on charges seen as punishment for challenging Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was then president. A second conviction last year will keep Khodorkovsky incarcerated until 2016.
Tuschi said Russian distributors have refused to distribute his film due to "self-sensorship" and that the documentary will open in a handful of small, independent theaters.
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Man arrested over $1M suitcase left in Aussie cafe (AP)
SYDNEY ? Police in Sydney may be close to unraveling the mystery of a man who left a lot of dough at an upscale pizzeria and cafe ? nearly 1 million Australian dollars ($1 million).
Police say a man wearing shorts and a tank top left a suitcase at Cafe Marco on Tuesday morning. Staff at first thought it might contain a bomb but it turned out to be stuffed with 50-dollar notes.
Officers arrested a man in connection with the incident Tuesday afternoon, said Senior Constable Chris Nash, a A New South Wales police spokesman. Nash said the man then suffered an unknown medical problem and was taken to a local hospital where he remained under police guard Wednesday.
Nash said detectives probably will have to wait until the man recovers before asking him more questions about the cash. Police wouldn't say whether they think the arrested man is the one who left the case in the cafe.
A worker at the cafe said Wednesday that the man who left the case was "a bit nervous. He was really nervous."
"It's crazy, it's scary. Now we can laugh about it, but yesterday I was scared. I called the police," she said. She ended a telephone call to serve a customer before a reporter could ask her name, and a subsequent phone message left at the cafe was not immediately returned.
Nash said that if the money legitimately belongs to the man it would be returned to him. If the cash is proceeds from a crime it will likely be forfeited to the government. If the owner of the cash is not found, whoever discovered it could make a claim on it after three months.
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Cops: No charges in suicide of bullied gay teen
By The Associated Press and msnbc.com
AMHERST, N.Y. -- Police officials?investigating the suicide of a bullied gay teenager announced Tuesday that they had decided the boy's death was not a crime.
Amherst investigators last month sent 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer's computer and cellphone to a forensics lab to help determine whether the bullying he often talked about before taking his own life on Sept. 18 rose to a criminal level. Investigators were looking for evidence that would have supported charges of aggravated harassment or a hate crime.
Jamey was a high school freshman who posted extensively online before hanging himself outside his family's home in a Buffalo suburb.? In videos and blogs, he talked about being bullied after identifying himself as gay.
On Tuesday, police said in a statement that an investigation revealed that Jamey was subjected to "insensitive" and "inappropriate" comments, but that there was no prosecutable offense.
Taunted since grade school for hanging out with girls, Jamey told his parents things were finally getting better in?high school. Meanwhile, on a blog his parents didn't know about, he posted increasingly desperate notes ruminating on suicide, bullying, homophobia and pop singer Lady Gaga.
A few days later, he hanged himself outside his home, quickly gaining a fame like that described in one of his idol's songs. Activists, journalists and Gaga herself seized on the suicide, decrying the loss of another promising life to bullying.
After his death, the bullying continued at a school assembly where students chanted insults about the dead teen, his parents said in September in an interview on TODAY.
?I can?t grasp it in my mind,?? said Tim Rodemeyer, Jamey?s father. ? I don?t know why anyone would do that. They have no heart, that?s basically what it comes down to."
TODAY's Ann Curry sits down with the parents of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, whose recent suicide has gained attention from around the world ? and from Lady Gaga.
Jamey's death?followed other prominent teenage deaths linked to bullying or intimidation ? notably Phoebe Prince, an Irish immigrant in Massachusetts taunted by classmates after she dated a popular boy, and Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University freshman whose roommate is accused of spying on his same-sex encounter via webcam.
Tracy Rodemeyer said her son was hurt deeply by words from the time he was very young. Boys started picking on him in elementary school, she said.
"People would say, 'Oh, my God, you're such a girl. What are you, gay?' That kind of stuff," she told The Associated Press in an interview in?September.?
Jamey's?parents monitored his Facebook posts but said they didn't know about a separate Tumblr blog, on which he identified himself as gay, filled with troubling posts like "Stop bullying people. Maybe they won't commit suicide" and "Ugh today makes me wanna kill myself."
His final blog and Twitter posts on Sept. 18, the day he died, thanked Gaga. He also wrote: "I pray the fame won't take my life," apparently?a reference to her song and album "The Fame."
Jamey's parents?told TODAY?they hoped to spread their son's anti-bullying message.
?(Jamey) will forever be in our hearts,?? Tracy said. ?We can?t do this on our own, but we are going to carry on Jamey's mission. Everyone across America, across the world, whatever anybody can to do to stand up for everybody else.??
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Colin Delany: As Obama's Online-Enabled Grassroots Operation Takes Shape, Do Republicans Have Anything to Match It?
This week's news that Obama's 2012 campaign has already assembled a powerful army of small online donors -- more than a million people have given him money so far, only half of whom did so in 2008 -- provided just one of many recent glimpses into the growth of what's shaping up to be a reelection juggernaut.
Other evidence? One million talks between current Obama volunteers and staff and people who volunteered for the candidate in 2008, which campaign manager Jim Messina characterized as actual conversations rather than just short fundraising calls. The goal: to persuade people who devoted time and money four years ago to put their training to work again, despite grumbling among some in the "professional Left" that their 2008 investment has yet to pay off substantively. Millions of people made real sacrifices to help Obama get elected the first time around, and his team is doing its best to make sure that the same thing happens over the next twelve months.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Dan Walters: California government reformers occupy two camps (Sacramento Bee)
Bahrain charges 20 with abuse of protesters (AP)
MANAMA, Bahrain ? Authorities in Bahrain say prosecutors have charged 20 members of the security forces for alleged abuse of protesters during a Shiite-led uprising against the Gulf kingdom's Sunni rulers.
Bahrain's Information Affairs Authority says a government probe has shown that there have been "instances of excessive force and mistreatment of detainees" during months of protests and crackdowns.
A statement by the IAA Monday said that 20 prosecutions had been filed.
At least 35 people have died since February when Bahrain's Shiite majority started campaigning for greater rights in the island nation, the home of U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.
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Video: Remembering JFK
HBT: Braun edges Kemp for NL MVP
HBT: Milwaukee's Ryan Braun has won the NL Most Valuable Player Award after helping lead the Brewers to their first division title in nearly 30 years. Braun earned the MVP on Tuesday, receiving 20 of 32 first-place votes and 388 points in voting announced by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Los Angeles center fielder Matt Kemp, who came close to winning the Triple Crown, received 10 first-place votes and finished with 332 points. Braun's teammate Prince Fielder finished third with 229 points, and Arizona's Justin Upton finished fourth with 214 points.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45394676#45394676
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Indonesia police arrest 2 in orangutan killings (AP)
JAKARTA, Indonesia ? Two Indonesian plantation workers have been arrested for allegedly killing at least 20 endangered orangutans and proboscis monkeys as a means of "pest control," police said Wednesday.
Col. Antonius Wisnu Sutirta, a police spokesman, said the suspects admitted to chasing down the primates with dogs, then shooting, stabbing or hacking them to death with machetes.
The men allegedly told authorities the owners of several palm oil plantations on Borneo island, eager to protect lucrative crops from being raided, offered $100 for every orangutan killed and $20 for every long-nosed proboscis monkey.
If found guilty of violating the Law on National Resources Conservation, they face up to five years in jail, Sutirta said.
Indonesia ? home to 90 percent of the orangutans left in the wild ? has lost half of its rain forests in the last half century in its rush to supply the world with timber, pulp, paper and, more recently, palm oil.
The remaining 50,000 to 60,000 apes live in scattered, degraded forests, putting them in frequent, and often deadly, conflict with humans.
A study published this month in the journal PLoSOne said villagers in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, admitted to slaughtering at least 750 orangutans over a yearlong period ? a figure much higher than previously thought.
Some were killed to protect crops, others because villagers thought the animals were dangerous. A much smaller number were hunted for their meat, the survey showed.
"The simple conclusion is that orangutans will be hunted to extinction unless someone stops the killings," said Erik Meijaard, main author of the study.
"It's a blatant infringement of Indonesia's conservation laws," he said. "I really hope that both the perpetrators and the plantation managers who ordered the killings will be punished accordingly."
The two men were arrested Sunday at their homes in Muara Kaman, a village in east Kalimantan, after the bones of several orangutans and proboscis monkeys were recovered.
Yaya Rayadin, a researcher from Mulawarman University in the Kalimantan town of Samarinda, said the bones were scattered in 15 different places and that tests in his lab indicated the deaths were violent.
Most had hack marks on their skulls, jaws and ribs, he said.
Rayadin said he believes many more people were involved in the killings.
He said he first told authorities in 2008 that palm oil plantations were offering rewards to locals who slaughtered orangutans or monkeys ? with pictures or video offered as proof ? but that until now no action had been taken.
"The fact police have arrested two people is a sign of remarkable progress," he said. "But the main thing now is to find a way to protect the orangutans that are still alive."
___
Associated Press writer Robin McDowell contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Deficit deal failure would pose crummy choice (AP)
WASHINGTON ? If the deficit-cutting supercommittee fails, Congress will face a crummy choice. Lawmakers can allow payroll tax cuts and jobless aid for millions to expire or they extend them and increase the nation's $15 trillion debt by at least $160 billion.
President Barack Obama and Democrats on the deficit panel want to use the committee's product to carry their jobs agenda. That includes cutting in half the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax and extending jobless benefits for people who have been unemployed for more than six months.
Also caught up in what promises to be a chaotic legislative dash for the exits next month is the need to pass legislation to prevent an almost 30 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. Several popular business tax breaks and relief from the alternative minimum tax also expire at year's end.
A debt plan from the supercommittee, it was hoped, would have served as a sturdy, filibuster-proof vehicle to tow all of these expiring provisions into law. But if the panel fails, as appears likely with Wednesday's deadline nearing, a dysfunctional Congress will have to sort it all out.
There's no guarantee it all can get done, especially given impact on those measures on the spiraling debt.
Instead of cutting the deficit with a tough, bipartisan budget deal, Congress could pivot to spending enormous sums on expiring big-ticket policies.
If lawmakers rebel against the cost, as is possible, they would bear responsibility for allowing policies such as the payroll tax cut, enacted a year ago to help prop up the economy, to lapse.
Last year's extensions of jobless benefits and first-ever cut in the payroll tax were accomplished with borrowed money.
The 2 percent payroll tax cut expiring in December gave 121 million families a tax cut averaging $934 last year at a total cost of about $120 billion, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Obama wants to cut the payroll tax by another percentage point for workers at a total cost of $179 billion and reduce the employer share of the tax in half as well for most companies, which carries a $69 billion price tag.
"The notion of imposing a new payroll tax on people after Jan. 1 in the midst of this recession on working families is totally counterproductive," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
Letting extended jobless assistance expire would mean that more than 6 million people would lose benefits averaging $296 a week next year, with 1.8 million cut off within a month.
Economist say those jobless benefits ? up to 99 weeks of them in high unemployment states ? are among the most effective way to stimulate the economy because unemployed people generally spend the money right away.
"We will have to address those issues," Durbin said.
Extending benefits to the long-term unemployed would cost almost $50 billion under Obama's plan. Preventing the Medicare payment cuts to doctors for an additional 18 months to two years would in all likelihood cost $26 billion to $32 billion more.
Lawmakers also had hoped to renew some tax breaks for business and prevent the alternative minimum tax from sticking more than 30 million taxpayers with higher tax bills. Those items could be addressed retroactively next year, but only increase the uncertainty among already nervous consumers and investors.
This time, Obama wants them to be paid for. But a move by Democrats to try to finance jobs measures with hundreds of billions of dollars in savings from drawing down troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has gotten a cold shoulder from top Republicans.
"I've made it pretty clear that those savings that are coming to us as a result of the wind-down of the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan should be banked, should not be used to offset other spending," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. He did not address whether war savings could be used to extend expiring tax cuts.
Those savings are the natural result of national security strategies unrelated to the federal budget. Deficit hawks say tapping into them is simply an accounting gimmick.
"It's just the worst of all worlds if that were to happen," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
But without the war money at their disposal, lawmakers simply can't pay for the payroll tax cut and jobless benefits. Liberals such as Durbin are fine with employing deficit financing, especially if the alternative is playing Scrooge just before the holidays.
"Many people will hate to go home for Christmas saying to the American people, `Merry Christmas, your payroll taxes go up 2 percent Jan. 1 and unemployment benefits are cut off.'"
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Fears of violence cast cloud on Congo election (AP)
KINSHASA, Congo ? One leading opposition candidate already has proclaimed himself president. Police have fired live bullets into the air at protests. And rebels in the country's violence-wracked east have been burning voter cards to keep people from going to the polls.
The outcome of Congo's Nov. 28 presidential election is almost certain to keep President Joseph Kabila in power, but so too is the likelihood it will bring more chaos to sub-Saharan Africa's largest nation.
How the elections unfold will be a likely indicator of whether Congo is consolidating its fledgling democracy or returning to a state of widespread instability after decades of dictatorship and civil war, according to the International Crisis Group.
Western nations have spent billions of dollars trying to stabilize this vast mineral-rich nation, where China also has massively invested in recent years.
But already human rights groups are expressing fears about an atmosphere of spiraling violence and hate speech ahead of the vote. New York-based Human Rights Watch said it has documented dozens of cases, including one targeting supporters from leading opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi's province.
"There are too many mosquitoes in the living room. Now is the time to apply insecticide," Gabriel Kyungu, a Kabila ally, was quoted as saying. Kyungu, who is president of the Katanga provincial assembly, has denied the accusation.
Next week's vote also comes as large-scale impunity continues to plague the Central African country. Among those running for legislative office is Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka, an eastern militia commander accused of ordering the rapes of hundreds of women last year.
"Congolese authorities should be arresting Sheka for mass rape whether he is running for office or not," Human Rights Watch said. "The failure to arrest someone who is out publicly campaigning for votes sends a message that even the most egregious crimes will go unpunished."
An estimated 5 million people died in back-to-back wars in Congo that began as a spillover from Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The fighting continued until 2003, and drew in the armies of a half dozen nations in what became a scramble for Congo's vast mineral resources.
Kabila became president after his father's 2001 assassination and won a landmark 2006 vote that was largely run by the United Nations, which still has some 19,000 peacekeepers here nearly a decade after civil war ended.
Since then, Kabila has pushed electoral reforms though parliament that include only one round of voting for the presidential ballot, instead of two. Opposition parties acknowledge that their only chance of beating the incumbent in this scenario is to field one common candidate, but egos and political ambitions have prevented them from agreement.
Eleven candidates are running for president, and opposition politicians charge the electoral commission is biased toward Kabila. Tshisekedi, the leading opponent, has resorted to inciting his supporters to stage jailbreaks to free detained supporters.
The elections are already taking place amid significant unrest in the country's east, where dozens of militia groups and rebels continue to terrorize people. Government soldiers and rebels have brutally raped women, men and children, and burned down villages. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes because of violence.
The fighting is fueled by the competition to control mines, many operated by soldiers, rebels and militiamen who use the minerals to fund their armed groups.
Kabila swept the vote in the east during the last elections, but his inability to bring peace to the region has cost him support as did his invitation for much-hated Rwandan troops to return there during 2009 in a failed attempt to stamp out Rwandan rebels wreaking havoc inside Congo.
On the development front, Kabila has negotiated a massive, $6-billion barter deal with China, trading some of Congo's minerals for infrastructure including roads, railways, hospitals and bridges in the country where most transport is by river or air. Congo sprawls across an area the size of Western Europe in the heart of Africa and neighbors nine other countries.
But Kabila has done little to fulfill promises to bring transparency and end the endemic corruption that riddles business in Congo. His is the only well-funded electoral campaign and some are pointing to a murky deal in which the state copper and cobalt miner Gecamines is said to have sold assets at billions less than they were worth. No one will say how much the mines' assets have been sold for, nor what has happened to the money.
A U.N. report on election violence blames most on a crackdown imposed by politically manipulated police, intelligence agents and justice officials. Information Minister Lambert Mende said the report was trying to make martyrs of the opposition.
"A trend seems to be emerging wherein parties are targeted more often in regions where they have significant numbers of followers and are predicted to be the biggest threat against the ruling majority and the president," the U.N. report said.
It warned that continued repression and rights abuses "may increase the likelihood of individuals and political parties resorting to violent means, endanger the democratic process and lead to post-electoral violence."
___
Faul reported from Johannesburg.
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