Tornado Hit Bahamas

Police in the Bahamas say a tornado has apparently touched down in at least two places on the island of Grand Bahama.
Police spokeswoman Loretta Mackey says there are no immediate reports of fatalities. Mackey says authorities are still checking reports of damage at the island's container port and elsewhere.
Monday's storm uprooted trees in the tourist area of Lucaya.
There are also reports of damaged cars and businesses.
A forecaster with the Bahamas Meteorology Department says heavy thunderstorms are expected to last until at least late afternoon.









David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

Britain's Credit Risk

Britain's credit rating could be lowered if a new government fails to cut massive public debt, Standard & Poor's warned on Monday as rival parties traded barbs over strained public finances.
With polls widely expected in early May, S&P affirmed Britain's top-grade AAA rating but said it remained on "negative outlook," meaning the rating could be lowered -- a move that would cause shockwaves in the global economy.
"The outlook on the United Kingdom remains negative based on our view that ... the UK's net general government debt burden may approach a level incompatible with a 'AAA' rating," S&P warned in a statement.
S&P said "the rating could be lowered if we conclude that the incoming government's fiscal strategy is unlikely to put the UK debt burden on a secure downward trajectory over the medium term."
The ruling Labour Party and opposition Conservatives have made the public finances a key battle ground in the run-up to the general election, which is widely expected to be held on May 6.
The government says it has had to spend massively in order to keep the economy on track during the worst global slump in decades.
Any move now by the Conservatives to withdraw some of the spending so as to balance the state's books will only undermine what is a still tentative economic recovery, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his cabinet have argued.
The Conservatives in turn insist that a massive and growing budget deficit alongside soaring national debt endangers the longer-term future of the country and something must be done -- for example through budget cuts.
Analysts at Schroders, a London-based asset management company, said in a report that Britain was in for "a rocky ride" on financial markets in the coming months and that its bonds and the pound could become targets.
"Now that a solution has been announced for Greece, bond vigilantes will be taking stock and looking for their next target," Schroders said, referring to proposed EU-IMF loans to help Greece through a public finances crunch.
"As we approach the general election and the probability of a hung parliament rises, (bond market) vigilantes may find the allure of a vulnerable UK too tempting," it said.
"We expect increased volatility in Sterling and Gilt (bond) markets in the short-term," it added.
Michael Hewson, an analyst at online trading company CMC Markets, said that "the prospect of a hung parliament continues to be the over-riding concern for investors right now and this will continue to weigh."
A hung parliament is one in which no single party has a majority, meaning a coalition or minority government.
Earlier on Monday, the Conservatives pledged to scrap a planned extra levy on personal income, saying it was "a tax on jobs and the middle classes."
The planned rise in National Insurance contributions was "the economics of the madhouse," said George Osborne, shadow finance minister, pledging that the Conservatives would cover the cost by cutting six billion pounds of "waste" from the public sector.
S&P forecast that general government debt will rise to 77 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010 and approach 100 percent by 2014 -- far higher than official forecasts -- because of weak growth and a huge deficit.
The government forecasts debt to peak at 89.2 percent of GDP in 2013-2014.
"As a result of the sizeable structural general government deficit, together with our weaker economic outlook, we project the general government gross and net debt burdens to continue on an upward trend," it added.
The ratings agency also said that the budget announced last week did not make any clearer how the government planned to deal with the debt in the medium-term, adding that there was "substantial uncertainty" over policy.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

4 jailed in China

Unexpectedly harsh jail sentences of seven to 14 years for four Rio Tinto employees charged with taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets could augur tougher times for foreign companies and errant executives in China's unruly business world.
Seeking to protect its business ties from what it termed the men's "deplorable behavior," the mining giant promptly fired all four.
The court's rulings against Australian citizen Stern Hu, former manager of Rio Tinto's iron ore business in China, and three Chinese co-workers suggest authorities are taking a sterner stance toward foreign companies caught violating the country's often selectively enforced corruption code.
The 10-year sentence for Hu was "very harsh," Australia's Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said after the verdict was read out Monday by the lead judge at the Shanghai People's Intermediate Court. It was unclear whether Hu or his co-workers, who have been in custody in Shanghai since July, would appeal.
Rio Tinto, based in London and Melbourne, is a key industry negotiator in price talks with China's state-owned steel mills, and the arrests of its employees last August were initially thought linked to Beijing's anger over high prices it paid for iron ore — a key commodity for China's booming economy. That belief was shaken last week after the four pleaded guilty to taking bribes from steel mills trying to get preferential access to ore supplies.
Australia said Hu's sentence wouldn't affect ties with China, but some experts said the secrecy of parts of the trial underlined worries companies already have about doing business in a country where legal proceedings are often opaque.
The verdict also comes as other faultlines appear between Beijing and the global corporations eager to tap a fast-growing market of more than 1 billion. A recent survey showed a growing number of foreign businesses in China feel shut out under new government policies promoting homegrown technology. Internet search giant Google's high profile decision, meanwhile, to move its Chinese site to Hong Kong after a spat over censorship and hacking added to the unease.
China has chronic problems with corruption so the Rio case "is not as simple as China sending a warning message to a particular country or company" said Jin Linbo, a senior research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies. "It's time China should deal with this problem or more serious cases will emerge," Jin said.
Beijing is constantly staging anticorruption crackdowns as the ruling Communists strive to clean up an image tainted by graft scandal after graft scandal. But big foreign companies are rarely if ever targeted, making it difficult to know how widespread graft is among international business operating in China.
The stiff sentences were meant "to protect market order and the normal management of business," said the judge, Liu Xin, accusing the Rio employees of causing major losses to the Chinese steel industry.
The four defendants stood impassively as their sentences were read aloud in a hearing that foreign media were allowed to watch by closed-circuit television.
Rio Tinto, which is increasingly dependent on its business with China, issued a statement saying a probe it ordered found no wrongdoing by the company itself.
"I am determined that the unacceptable conduct of these four employees will not prevent Rio Tinto from continuing to build its important relationship with China," Chief Executive Tom Albanese said.
The court accused Hu and the others of using commercial secrets obtained by "improper means" as a bargaining chip in the ore price negotiations. As a result, more than 20 steel mills paid an extra 1.02 billion yuan ($150 million) for iron ore in 2009, the court said.
Hu was sentenced to seven years on the bribery charges and five years on the commercial secrets charges but will serve 10 years. He was fined 1 million yuan ($146,000).
The longest term of 14 years was given to Wang Yong, of which 13 years was for accepting bribes. The court's charges against Wang said he received $9 million from Du Shuanghua, a steel tycoon whose company, Rizhao, has chafed at the state-dominated pricing arrangements, setting his own agreements with overseas suppliers. Wang was fined 5.2 million yuan ($761,000).
The other two defendants, Ge Minqiang and Liu Caikui, were sentenced to jail terms of eight and seven years, respectively.
Australian officials who attended the bribery hearings believed there was substantial evidence bribery had occurred, said Smith.
Industry analysts say Chinese steel mills often seek to line up shipments from suppliers at preferential prices. The Rio Tinto case could herald a crackdown on that and other practices as the government seeks to reinforce a united front in price negotiations.
But Smith reiterated Australia's objections to the court's decision to hold closed hearings on the commercial secrets charges during the three-day trial last week, a move he said "leaves serious unanswered questions."
"Clearly the international business community has been watching and transparency and clarity on this point would have been of assistance," Smith said.
Professor Donald Rothwell of the Australian National University's College of Law said the secrecy of the trial would likely make international companies wary.
"It just reconfirms the fact that the Chinese legal system is very different to those which exist in other parts of the world," Rothwell said.
The Rio Tinto verdict mentioned several Chinese companies whose employees allegedly gave bribes to the defendants. But the choice to hold a high profile trial of the Rio Tinto employees without equally focusing on the Chinese businesses said to be involved in giving bribes undermines the authorities' message, said Alexandra Wrage, president of the nonprofit association TRACE International, which helps companies combat bribery.
"Add to this the suspicious timing of Hu's arrest, the secrecy around the trial and the limited access to the defendants and the whole thing is best characterized as a step backward for transparency, not a step forward," Wrage said.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

Mexico Drug War

When black SUVs trail school buses around here, no one dismisses it as routine traffic. And when three tough-looking Mexican men pace around the high school gym during a basketball game, no one assumes they're just fans.
Fear has settled over this border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican families fleeing the violence have moved here or just sent their children, and authorities and residents say gangsters have followed them across the Rio Grande to apply terrifying, though so far subtle, intimidation.
The message: We know where you are.
At schools in Fort Hancock and nearby Texas towns, new security measures and counseling for young children of murdered parents have become a troubling part of the day.
"I have friends with fathers who've been annihilated," said Israel Morales, a junior at Fort Hancock High School. "They just hug you and start crying. It just traumatizes you."
He said school doesn't always feel safe.
"I try to be stoic," Morales said. "But it still worries the heck out of me."
Mexican drug gangs have not fired a single shot in Fort Hancock, and no one has disappeared. But as drug violence continues unabated in and around Ciudad Juarez, residents of Texas border towns fear it will spread their way.
"There's been incidents of school buses followed, and threats to some of the students and threats to some of the staff," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "It's caused us to really go on high alert."
Three mysterious men walked into the Fort Hancock High School gymnasium last month during a basketball game, setting off worries that they were drug cartel members sent to deliver a message. Parent Maria Aguilar said "a panic" swept through the gym and only subsided when they left.
"They walked in and they were laughing," Aguilar said. "They were probably like, 'We'll just scare everybody.'"
Wilson said a suspicious car was noticed following a packed school bus earlier this year. Rumors that the car belonged to cartel members were never validated, but after other suspicious cars were spotted, the department began following buses as a precaution.
"We don't know if it was to find out where a student of a certain person he was looking for gets off, or to find out where he was living," Wilson said. "We're not sure what the motivation was. But the rumor and concern was great enough."
Schools have installed security cameras and hired an armed off-duty sheriff's deputy to patrol its three campuses for the first time.
Fort Hancock is an impoverished town of rundown homes and a single diner. Fathers of many students work as farmhands in the surrounding alfalfa and cotton fields, but most are jobless.
Aguilar said her fourth-grade daughter shares playground stories of "how so-and-so got killed in Mexico this weekend," and once asked whether a classmate's mother would be next.
One Fort Hancock High student picked up for truancy told a judge he was too scared to go to class after witnessing a murder in Mexico. Police say his mother and grandfather were tortured with ice picks last week in El Pornevir, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Fort Hancock. They were in critical condition in an El Paso, Texas, hospital.
The student has resumed attending classes. School administrators say dozens of fellow students also have relatives who were killed or tortured in drug violence.
"A lot of time your family is involved," said Modesta Morales, Israel's mother. "Some of the killings that happen, it's not because of the people that were killed, it's because they're trying to reach someone. If they can't find that someone, they're going to get their brothers, their sisters, their nephews, their fathers — whoever they can to try and bring that person out."
Ten miles down the road in Fabens, fliers in the teacher's lounges ask faculty to watch for a gunman wanted for four killings in Ciudad Juarez. He's the father of two boys at the middle school.
Paul Vranish, superintendent of the Tornillo school district outside El Paso, estimates that about 10 percent of his 300 students have lost a close family member in Mexico's drug war. One Tornillo High School student was gunned down in Mexico at the start of the school year while racing back to the border, Vranish said.
Tragedy becomes so routine that students shrug off counseling.
"This is like Iraq. This is part of the landscape," Vranish said. "I'm not in any way trying to put our kids down. It's not like they don't have feelings. But like a soldier, you have to develop a certain amount of callous to continue to function."
U.S. authorities say they have seen a recent uptick in asylum claims at the port of entry in Fort Hancock, and schools here are enrolling more students. At least seven new students enrolled in Fort Hancock schools in one week in March, an increase that would normally take a year or two. Texas public schools educate children regardless of immigration status.
"They told us themselves, there's more coming," said Hudspeth County Constable J.R. Sierra, who now doubles as Fort Hancock's school officer. "They're being threatened to either leave now or suffer the consequences."
Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed 17,900 lives since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug gangs in December 2006. In Ciudad Juarez, more than 2,300 were killed last year alone. Powerful drug cartels have been battling not only authorities but each other for turf and drug routes.
Schools in northern Mexico have long had to figure out how to educate their children amid daily shootouts that have traumatized students and endangered staff. But American schools close to the border have been relatively serene.
Schools in metropolitan border areas like El Paso and San Diego have their own police forces, backed up by local law enforcement, as well as counselors on hand to help students. Impoverished towns including Fort Hancock and Tornillo have similar problems but fewer resources.
No U.S. schools have reported any violence tied to the drug war, and the vast majority of border districts feel safe. Even in San Ysidro, Calif., — right across the border from Tijuana — superintendent Manuel Paul said security isn't an issue despite being able to see clear into the violent city from any San Ysidro school.
Paul said he thinks Tijuana families are running further north from the violence.
But back in Fort Hancock, Modesta Morales said the violence has already come to them.
"Sometimes you feel helpless. They saw their dad shot, in the head," Morales said. "What do you tell a 10-year-old that sees that?"

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More

"You hit ours" - NoKor

A naval mine dispatched from North Korea may have struck the South Korean warship that exploded and sank near the Koreas' disputed sea border, the defense minister told lawmakers Monday, laying out several scenarios for the maritime disaster.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said there was no sign of a direct attack from rival North Korea, but military authorities have not ruled out North Korean involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan late Friday night.
An explosion ripped the 1,200-ton ship apart during a routine patrol mission near Baengnyeong Island west of the peninsula. Fifty-eight crew members, including the captain, were plucked to safety; 46 remain missing.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the exact cause would remain unclear until the ship is salvaged after the rescue operation is over. On Monday, mothers beat their chests with grief as divers went down to search for survivors, returning to report hearing no sounds inside the underwater wreckage.
Kim, grilled by lawmakers on what happened Friday night, said the ship may have struck a mine left over from the war or deliberately dispatched from the North.
The two Koreas remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. North Korea disputes the sea border drawn by the United Nations in 1953, and the western waters near the spot where the Cheonan went down have been the site of three bloody skirmishes between North and South.
Many of the 3,000 Soviet-made naval mines North Korea planted in the waters off both coasts during the war were removed, but not all. Kim noted a North Korean mine was discovered as recently as 1984.
North Korea may also have sent a mine floating south with the current, he said.
"North Korea may have intentionally floated underwater mines to inflict damage on us," Kim told lawmakers.
He insisted there were no South Korean mines off the west coast, and ruled out a torpedo attack from North Korea, which would have been spotted by radar.
Officials have also said an internal malfunction may be to blame. The 1,200-ton Cheonan is designed to carry weapons, and was involved in a previous skirmish with North Korea.
U.S. and South Korea military officials said there was no outward indication that North Korea was involved in the sinking of the Cheonan.
However, "neither the government nor the defense ministry has ever said there was no possibility of North Korea's involvement," Kim said.
The North Korean military was keeping a close watch on the search operation, the Joint Chiefs of Staffs said in a defense committee report cited by the Yonhap news agency.
But Pyongyang's state media have made no mention of the ship.
Earlier Friday, North Korea's military warned of "unpredictable strikes" if the U.S. and South Korea attempted to topple the regime. On Monday, a military spokesman accused the countries of engaging in "psychological warfare" by letting journalists into the Demilitarized Zone.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged rescuers not to give up hope.
But the prospect of pulling anyone out alive seemed dim Monday. Any navy crewmen who managed to seal themselves inside their watertight cabins would have run out of air by Monday night since the supply of oxygen in the cabins was estimated to last up to 69 hours, military officials said.
Rough waves prevented divers from gaining access to the wreckage. Divers finally reached the ship's rear segment, where most of the missing were believed trapped, on Monday. They hammered on the hull but got no response, Rear Adm. Lee Ki-sik of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters.
The U.S. Navy sent four ships and a team of divers to join the search, said Lt. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet in Japan.
Anguished relatives waited for news at a naval base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, some pounding their chests with grief, others shouting their displeasure at the slow pace of the rescue.
"My baby, my baby," one mother murmured, briefly losing consciousness.
"The navy is rotten to the core!" a man yelled, lunging at soldiers standing arm in arm to block angry family members from barging into the command center.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

Read More