Perry: Too soon to judge Obama’s handling of Hurricane Irene

posted at 3:30 pm on August 28, 2011 by Tina Korbe
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Maybe it’s because the state of Texas has weathered higher category hurricanes with far less fuss than that with which the East Coast is presently handling Hurricane Irene, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry refuses to allow the abundant meteorological moments of this week overshadow the economy. Political Ticker reports:

    The Texas governor appeared at a county GOP picnic in Des Moines on Saturday. During an exchange with reporters, Perry was asked if the president has been an effective leader during a week that saw two menacing natural disasters: an earthquake and currently the hurricane.

    Though Perry would not cast judgment, he did cast his answer in overtly political terms.

    “He has been an absolute disaster as a president from the standpoint of our economy. That’s what people are really focused on,” Perry said. “Taking a snapshot of whether or not he’s appropriately dealt with the hurricane – I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when the hurricane’s over.”

Frankly, the news media ought to take a leaf out of Perry’s book and remember the economy even in the midst of a rocky weather week. Irene has already caused significant inconvenience to coasters (as Ed reported this morning, 3 million are without power) and, even more tragically, has resulted in at least one death, but the media devoted so much time to the earthquake and pre-storm prep (probably because most of the media is on the East Coast) that the president essentially received a free pass on the dismal economic news that also emerged this week. Weekly jobless claims rose by 5,000. Home mortgage applications dropped to a new 15-year low. The CBO’s positive predictions of deficit reduction were based on measures that will never take effect.

Of course the media should have devoted a significant amount of attention to the earthquake and to Hurricane Irene. Natural disasters are without question newsworthy — and, if Hurricane Katrina taught us anything, it’s that it would always be better to have too much media coverage on the front end than a need for endless media coverage on the back end. But it did seem eventually to grow a little out of proportion. I’ll be eager to read any Pew-Project-for-Excellence-in-Journalism-type research that breaks down the exact distribution of the news this week.

At one point, I found myself so perplexed by the hype (The Weather Channel, for example, featured a reporter dramatically bemoaning roughly 25 mph winds — a relatively common day in states like Oklahoma and Kansas!) that I began to brainstorm conspiracy theories. Could it be, I wondered, that the media wants to concoct a more extreme disaster the president could then be demonstrated to have capably “solved,” to have adequately addressed? (Political Ticker’s headline for the story above helps this theory along, actually: “Perry not ready to praise Obama’s handling of Hurricane Irene,” the hed writer writes, as though it’s automatic and obvious that his handling of the storm should be praised. But, then, I tend to read too much into things.)

I don’t really think that, of course. I think it’s August and news is slow — and, anyway, as it turns out, Irene did hit North Carolina with 85 mph winds — winds well worthy of a bit of bemoaning. By the time it hit the Northeast, it was just a tropical storm, but still damaging. Still, throughout the week, I found Fox News’ Shepard Smith’s consistent talk-down of both weather-related events refreshing and I find Perry’s comments particularly apt now.

The Texas governor followed up his pseudo-criticism of the president with an important reminder: State-level leaders, even more so than the president or other national bureaucrats, will bear the brunt of responsibility of cleaning up after the storm.

“Those governors of those states along the Eastern Seaboard are the ones that are actually going to be making the decisions that save the lives, that prepare for this hurricane, that do the search and rescue, and then frankly – do the first part of the recovery,” Perry said.

Yep. Sure, federal-level disasters mandate a federal-level response, but, in America, folks pitch in and help their neighbors in an emergency. They don’t just wait for FEMA to inefficiently address their problems or for the president to glibly gloss over policy-created crises to wax eloquent about matters out of his control. Or, at least, in the America of my imagination, they don’t. Wish that were always the reality, as well.

Why is the media so ignorant about religion?

posted at 2:00 pm on August 28, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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A few days ago, the New York Times’ Bill Keller proposed asking “tougher questions” of presidential candidates about their faith, causing an uproar in both political and religious circles:

    This year’s Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.

“It was like walking into Hell”

“It was like walking into Hell”

posted at 11:25 am on August 29, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Greg Hengler captured this emotional moment from the National Geographic special last night that featured George Bush giving his recollection of 9/11 and the days immediately afterward. This clip gives the backstory to Bush’s famous declaration from Ground Zero that the people who destroyed the towers would soon hear from an enraged United States of America. Bush describes the scene as being something from Hell, and that he sensed a “palpable blood lust” to avenge the deaths of thousands of Americans:

I missed the show last night; I was distracted by some unexpected bad news in the family. I have it set to record this evening and will watch it later. If you missed it as well, it airs again tonight on the National Geographic Channel at 9 pm ET and again at midnight. The previews of the one-hour special are very intriguing. Apparently the only voice we will hear, other than from archival video of the events, is Bush’s, as the interviewer’s questions have been removed from the video.

Quotes of the day

posted at 9:00 pm on August 7, 2011 by Allahpundit
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“The S&P will monitor the U.S. for about six to 24 months to see whether its fiscal position deteriorates further or if political gridlock gets worse. John Chambers, the group’s managing director, said Sunday it would take stabilization of the debt as a share of the economy to determine the direction of S&P’s rating, and it’s no easy task to get it to rise.

“‘If history is a guide, it could take a while. We’ve had five governments that lost their AAA that got it back. The amount of time that it took for those five range from nine years to 18 years,’ he told ABC’s ‘This Week.’

***

“The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s showed ‘terrible judgment’ in lowering the U.S. government’s credit rating, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday.

“‘They’ve handled themselves very poorly. And they’ve shown a stunning lack of knowledge about the basic U.S. fiscal budget math,’ Geithner said in his first public comments about the credit rating decision.”

***

“‘Listen, Bob, what I’m saying is review the history of what happened here,’ Axelrod said.

“‘I think, first of all, people are less concerned about that than where we go moving forward. But let’s look at the history of this. The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a tea party downgrade. The tea party brought us to the brink of a default. By the way you said before, the president said … if we had defaulted on our debt the consequences would have been dramatic and lasting. So, you know, it was the right thing to do to avoid that default. It was the wrong thing to do to push the country to that point. It’s something that that should never have happened. That clearly is on the backs of those who were willing to see the country default. Those very strident voices in the tea party.’”

***

“‘The Tea Party hasn’t destroyed Washington — Washington was destroyed before the Tea Party got there,’ Mr. Graham said. ‘The hope is that the Tea Party and middle-of-the-road people can find common ground to turn this country around before we become Greece. I hope we can.’”

***

“‘The president has to put some muscle in his rhetoric and go after the Tea Party as home wreckers. I think the president in following his own precept in being a conciliator. It’s great and quite noble but he’s in a situation in which he really has to stand up for things in which he believes,’ Baker said…

“‘The American people need the Republicans to stop their reckless and irresponsible political games that led to this unfortunate downgrade,’ said House Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (S.C.). ‘They have repeatedly walked away from the negotiating table whenever the two sides got close to a balanced blend of both spending cuts and revenue raisers.’

“Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said: ‘The indisputable fact is that until this group of Roadblock Republicans forced Speaker Boehner to walk away from a deal, America never came to the brink of a default and we never experienced a downgrade. This downgrade is the direct result of Roadblock Republicans.’”

***

“Those (many) who are rubbishing the eminently rubbishable S&P tonight are generally not grappling with something we’ve been talking about for years around these parts: The current fiscal trajectory of the United States is not just deteriorating rapidly, it’s definitionally unsustainable. That’s not crazy libertarians talking, that’s Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke…

“I eagerly look forward to this being blamed on libertarians, but even more than that I truly look forward to the day when the political class in this doddering country recognizes that you can’t just wave away a spending spiral by pretending that it doesn’t exist.”

***

“For Republican leaders, there was pride in a hand well played. ‘I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,’ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. ‘Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.’…

“‘Would Democrats have ever agreed if they thought the new freshman class was going to roll over? No. The freshmen made our hand so much stronger,’ [Kevin McCarthy] said in an interview. ‘You had a fear of how far they would go. I’m sure the president looks back, too, and was fearful. But in negotiations, isn’t that the best thing?’

“Chaffetz, who voted against both Boehner’s first proposal and the final bill, said he was well aware of how the leadership had used his and others’ willingness to let a default happen as a negotiating chip, and said he didn’t mind at all. ‘We weren’t kidding around, either,’ he said. ‘We would have taken it down.’”

Ryan: Deficit committee unlikely to achieve anything remarkable

posted at 7:30 pm on August 7, 2011 by Tina Korbe
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Not that my hopes as to what the Super Committee would accomplish were ever that high, but it still hurts to hear one of my congressional heroes call out the improbability of any meaningful accomplishment emerging from the work of the joint committee. The Wall Street Journal reports:

    House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), a top choice among Republicans for a deficit-cutting super-committee formed last week, on Sunday sought to tamp down expectations for the panel.

    “I don’t think a grand bargain is going to come out of this,” Mr. Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. He said that any deal for more than the $1.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years that the committee is charged with finding would depend on whether Democrats were willing to agree to overhaul entitlement programs. “I don’t see any agreement from the other side getting anywhere close to doing that,” he said. …

    “People are overemphasizing what this committee is going to achieve,” Mr. Ryan said.

    “I want to make sure people understand that I don’t think this is going to be a committee that is going to fix all our fiscal problems,” he said.

Of course Ryan is right. So far, all that has ever proceeded from the painful and prolonged deliberations surrounding any budget debate — starting with the CR debates at the outset of this congressional session — is the absolute bare minimum to preserve the status quo. But that doesn’t mean whoever ends up on the Committee shouldn’t try — or that those of us watching and commenting shouldn’t encourage their attempt.

In the same Fox interview, the House Budget Committee Chairman was also cool about the credit downgrade. “We more or less saw this coming,” Ryan said. That’s certainly the reasonable position to take, even though everybody from George Will to David Axelrod seems determined to write off the downgrade as anything but what it was: An accurate (and should-have-been-expected!) reflection of the nation’s lack of perfect creditworthiness. Now is certainly the time to stop the blame game — whether whom the pols and pundits are blaming is S&P, the Tea Party, Democrats or Republicans — and focus on solutions. May I humbly recommend the plan put forward by my former employer, The Heritage Foundation? Or, for that matter, the original Ryan budget?

Newsweek keeping it classy in presidential coverage

posted at 8:45 am on August 8, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Memo to conservative women: When approached by Newsweek or Time for a cover story, always bring your own photographer.  Michelle Malkin knows a thing or two about the predilection at the news magazines for using unflattering photos on their covers, and this week’s cover of Michele Bachmann is no exception to that trend.  In this case, they’re not even being subtle, as Time did with its Ann Coulter cover a few years ago in which they distorted the perspective to give the firebrand author exaggerated length to her legs and a shrunken torso.  Newsweek perches a blank-looking Bachmann over block letters calling her “THE QUEEN OF RAGE”:

Rage?  I’ve certainly heard Bachmann talk tough about encroaching government and the avalanche of spending and debt, but in all the years I’ve known and covered Bachmann, I’ve never heard her rage at anyone.  It seems as though Newsweek has a double standard in effect for conservatives, women, and especially conservative women.  When Barack Obama told an audience in June 2008 that “if they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun,” did Newsweek crown him the King of Rage — or at any time in his class-warfare-based presidential campaign?  For that matter, when Debbie Wasserman-Schultz stated that Republicans wanted to reinstate Jim Crow laws, did anyone accuse her of being filled with rage?  Not exactly.

The Boss Emeritus notes that the signal has been sent and received by Newsweek/The Daily Beast to the sinistrophere:

    The once-mighty Newsweek magazine-turned-Beast is apparently so proud of its Democratic Underground-pandering Michele Bachmann cover and title that its editors are promoting the photo and pushing the hashtag #QueenofRage on Twitter.

    And the left-wing press is eating it up:

    Gawker, predictably: “Ha ha, just kidding—they don’t call her CrazyEyes for nothing.”

    The Village Voice rejoices after receiving a high-res image of the cover (and dutifully cropping Bachmann’s eyes).

They’re promoting this through a Twitter hashtag?  Yeah, that’s keeping it classy.

Conservative candidates have to learn that Newsweek, Time, and other mainstream publications won’t be their friends, or even be objective.  They plan on making news, not reporting it.  This is just one of the least subtle examples we’ll see in the next fifteen months.

Opening on October 12, 2012: The Obama Is Totally Awesome blockbuster movie

posted at 1:30 pm on August 7, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

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The way the economy has turned out since the launch of Obamanomics, some people speculate that the only argument Barack Obama might have in 2012 is, “I got Bin Laden.”  Apparently, Hollywood has the same worries.  That may be why a new film about the mission that killed al-Qaeda’s master has an opening date that comes three weeks before the election — a coincidence that even Maureen Dowd can’t buy:

    The White House clearly blessed the dramatic reconstruction of the mission by Nicholas Schmidle in The New Yorker — so vividly descriptive of the Seals’ looks, quotes and thoughts that Schmidle had to clarify after the piece was published that he had not actually talked to any of them.

    “I’ll just say that the 23 Seals on the mission that evening were not the only ones who were listening to their radio communications,” Schmidle said, answering readers’ questions in a live chat, after taking flak for leaving some with the impression that he had interviewed the heroes when he wrote in his account that it was based on “some of their recollections.”

    The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.

Well, the project is off to a great start.  The writer has already been caught fibbing about his sources.  The combination of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal worked well in The Hurt Locker (I interviewed Boal twice before the film opened) and gave a fair presentation of the military, in most estimations; this film will almost certainly be worth the price of the ticket.  That is, it will be if the film focuses on the bravery and accomplishment of the  SEALs (an acronym that the NYT manages to get wrong in Dowd’s column — it’s not “Seals”) and not on Obama.  Its opening date signals a different intent.

Dowd, however, notes that the “blessing” in this case is extraordinarily self-serving for this particular administration:

    The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

    It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.

The entertainment industry seems pretty worried about Obama’s prospects, and they should be.  This time, money won’t be enough.  They need to make a two-hour campaign ad, apparently.  For a President who rudely and ignorantly scolded the Supreme Court over its Citizens United decision, Obama sure seems happy to take advantage of it, doesn’t he?

Update: It’s stories like this that put Glenn Reynolds in the mood for some tax hikes:

    Were I a Republican senator or representative, I would be agitating to repeal the “Eisenhower tax cut” on the movie industry and restore the excise tax. I think I would also look at imposing similar taxes on sales of DVDs, pay-per-view movies, CDs, downloadable music, and related products.

    I’d also look at the tax and accounting treatment of these industries to see if they were taking advantage of any special “loopholes” that could be closed as a means of reducing “tax expenditures.” (Answer: Yes, they are.)

    America, after all, is facing the largest national debt in relation to GDP that it has faced since the end of World War II, so a return to the measures deemed necessary then is surely justifiable now.

    The president’s own rhetoric about revenues certainly suggests so. Perhaps the bill could be named the “Greatest Generation Tax Fairness Act” in recognition of its history.

    Should legislation of this sort be passed — or even credibly threatened — I think we can expect to see Hollywood rediscover the dangers posed by “job killing tax increases,” just as pro-tax-increase Warren Buffet changed his tune once his own corporate-jet business was threatened.

Doesn’t everyone have to “pitch in,” as our President demanded throughout this debate?  This puts me in mind of my review of Two Weeks Notice from December 2002 (pre-blogging!), a film which was overtly hostile to capitalism — and completely hypocritical:

    First, TWN continues the whole “bad capitalist — good socialist” thread that runs through Hollywood films. Bullock, being the daughter of 60′s radicals (“You were on the White House enemies list when you were five years old!” her parents tell her with glee), is the idealistic lawyer (LAWYER!) who wants to set the world right by stopping Grant’s company from redeveloping New York City. Grant seduces Bullock by tempting her with the millions of dollars she can direct into charitable efforts. But nowhere in the film does she ever do anything like that, nor is that given more than a passing mention by any character in the movie. And never is any hint that redevelopment (a) provides jobs, and (b) stimulates the economy by providing lease space for businesses — and therefore more jobs — rather than leaving buildings as museums for architecture. The whole thing is very one-sided. Fortunately, TWN doesn’t beat you over the head with it, but it definitely has to get in a couple of shots at President Bush. I guess you don’t get SAG sanction without that, these days.

    (Just a thought, but how exactly do they raise the money to shoot these anti-capitalist films, anyway? It takes at least $20 million to make a studio film these days. Wouldn’t THAT money be better spent on saving old buildings from destruction? Or is it only okay for Hollywood studios and stars to make profits? Dana Ivey says that a $50 million profit is “unconscionable”; I wonder what the writers think about Bullock’s and Grant’s salaries.)

Bullock’s salary for this film didn’t get released, but she made $15 million for Murder By Numbers that same year.  Grant made $12.5 million for this film.  I have no problem with Hollywood actors getting big bucks to star in films; they operate in a free market, and should earn as much as the market will bear.  It’s their money.  Too bad Hollywood doesn’t have that same attitude with everyone else.

McCain: This is Obama’s downgrade, not the Tea Party’s

posted at 3:00 pm on August 7, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

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John Kerry went on Meet the Press this morning and called S&P’s action on American credit a “Tea Party downgrade.” The longtime Senator from Massachusetts insisted that the dysfunction in the government was the fault of small-government conservatives who refused to add revenue increases to a package of spending cuts that would have achieved a “grand bargain” satisfactory to S&P, Moody’s, and other bond-rating agencies. David Gregory’s next guest was Kerry’s Senate colleague John McCain, last heard castigating Tea Party activists as “Hobbits” who should “return to Middle Earth.” McCain’s tune has changed in the interim, however, as he rejected Kerry’s characterization of the downgrade and instead put it on the man who never had a plan (via The Corner):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    “We could have reached an agreement a lot earlier, but the members of the House of Representatives had a mandate last November, and it was jobs and the economy and it was spending. And for them to then agree to tax increases and spending increases was obviously a repudiation of the mandate they felt they had from last November,” McCain said.

    He said that much of the “dysfunction” in the current political system could be attributed to “the failure of the president of the United States to lead.”

    “The fact is that the President never came forward with a plan,” McCain pointed out. “There was never a specific plan. There was always the so-called ‘leading from behind.’”

    McCain defended the S & P downgrade, saying it would be a mistake to “shoot the messenger.” He said he hoped the downgrade would lead to the congressional super committee looking seriously at entitlement reform.

At one point, John Boehner did have $800 billion in new revenues, achieved through tax reform that broadened the tax base, as a trade for bigger cuts in spending.  However, even that $4 trillion deal would have only dented the upward trajectory of debt, because it focused mainly on discretionary spending instead of serious entitlement reform.  Prior to the deal, we were on track to add $12 trillion in debt over the next ten years, and even a $4 trillion reduction would only mean bringing annual deficits down to $800 billion a year on average.  Take a look at this chart to guess what kind of impact this nibbling at the edges would have produced.

The White House is pushing the “Tea Party downgrade” message pretty heavily today.  Kerry carried Obama’s water on MTP with David Gregory, and David Axelrod did the same on CBS’ Face the Nation.  They even dragged Howard Dean out for CBS to claim that conservatives are “smoking tea” for wanting real reductions in spending and future entitlement liabilities rather than higher taxes.

McCain, however, gets this one right.  Voters sent a clear message in last year’s midterms, and it wasn’t “spend more and increase taxes.”  Democrats refused to listen in 2009 when voters revolted over the addition of another massive entitlement program; voters spent all of 2010 revolting over Obamanomics; and they punished Democrats in November for not listening to them.  Democrats still aren’t listening, and the way they are reacting now, 2012 may make 2010 look like a good year for the Democratic Party.

Officials close to suspect sketch as Mumbai death toll rises to 19

By Harmeet Shah Singh, CNN

July 17, 2011 -- Updated 0721 GMT (1521 HKT)

Mumbai, India (CNN) -- With the death toll at 19 and no one in custody, Indian authorities say they are close to preparing the sketch of a suspect in the three deadly blasts that rocked Mumbai last week.
Rakesh Maria, anti-terrorist squad chief of the state of Maharashtra, said a witness at one of the blast sites provided information that is helping authorities prepare the composite.
The sketch will not be made public, Maria added. Rather, it will be shared with officials investigation the attacks.
Meanwhile, two more people have succumbed to their wounds, bringing the fatality count from the Wednesday blasts to 20, the government said.
Earlier, Indian authorities said they received no warnings about the blasts -- the first major assault in India's largest city since the 2008 siege. So far, no group has been singled out for blame, nor has any claimed responsibility, officials said.
"All groups hostile to India are under radar," Home Minister P. Chidambaram said Thursday. "We are not ruling out anything. We're not ruling in anything. We're looking at everyone and we will find out who is behind these attacks."
He refused to accept a lack of intelligence about the attacks as failure despite widespread anger of Mumbaikars who have witnessed carnage in their city too many times.
"Whoever perpetrated these attacks has worked in a very, very clandestine manner," Chidambaram said. "It's not a failure of intelligence."
The three blasts Wednesday evening occurred within minutes of each other in the areas of Opera House, Zaveri Bazaar and Dadar, all busy commercial hubs teeming with people. Forensic evidence collected from the scenes suggested that the attackers used ammonium nitrate with a timing device for the detonations, Chidambaram said.

The bombings Wednesday brought back haunting memories in a city that has suffered from terrorism before, including the massive assault by Pakistani gunmen in November 2008 that left 164 dead

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/17/india.blasts/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

China official plays down yuan shift

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Chen Jian on Sunday played down talk of a shift in the central bank's currency policy as well as mounting expectations of a rise in the yuan's exchange rate. Speculation that China might let the yuan resume its climb after a 16-month pause swirled after a change last Wednesday in the long-standing wording used by the People's Bank of China to describe its currency stance.



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China official plays down yuan shift

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Chen Jian on Sunday played down talk of a shift in the central bank's currency policy as well as mounting expectations of a rise in the yuan's exchange rate.

Speculation that China might let the yuan resume its climb after a 16-month pause swirled after a change last Wednesday in the long-standing wording used by the People's Bank of China to describe its currency stance.

In its third quarter monetary policy report, the central bank failed to refer to keeping the yuan "basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level" when discussing the outlook for the exchange rate.

Asked whether the PBOC was heralding a return to the gradual appreciation of the yuan against the dollar seen from July 2005-July 2008, Chen told Reuters: "I don't think the central bank meant to say that."

Chen, however, said the yuan should reflect movements in major international currencies, which was also part of the PBOC's policy formulation.

China is coming under growing international pressure to let the yuan rise. Its manufacturers have been gaining market share at the expense of rivals in countries whose currencies have risen against the falling dollar, to which the yuan is pegged.

But, speaking on the sidelines of a forum, Chen said his ministry was not worried about rising appreciation expectations.

Turning to China's trade, Chen said there was only a small chance that exports would resume year-on-year growth by the end of 2009.

Many private economists, by contrast, expect positive growth in November or December because of the low base of comparison in 2008. Exports in October were 13.8 percent lower than a year earlier.

Chen also said a leap in China's trade surplus to $24 billion in October from $12.9 billion in September did not constitute a new trend.

(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Alex Richardson)

(c) Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

No double-dip US recession

The pace of the recovery in the US economy remains sluggish but Mr Strauss-Kahn does not believe there will be a double-dip recession. -- PHOTO: AFP

THE International Monetary Fund's managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said on Friday the pace of the recovery in the US economy remains sluggish but he does not believe there will be a double-dip recession.

He also said China's economic stimulus is helping to rebalance its economy towards relying more on domestic demand but it still needs to let its currency rise over time.

In October, the IMF raised its US growth outlook to 1.5 per cent in 2010 but Mr Strauss-Kahn said that forecast could be on the pessimistic side.

'Our forecast has that, not only in the United States but also for the rest of the world, 2010 will be a year of recovery,' Mr Strauss-Kahn told a news conference in Singapore where he was attending an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting.

'I must say, in some respects, we had been a little pessimistic because growth has resumed a little earlier than expected, by one quarter or so.'

He said the dollar had remained resilient throughout the global crisis but most Asian currencies were undervalued and reiterated calls for the Chinese yuan to be revalued. 'China's economy in the coming years will be focused on domestic growth and the value of renminbi will have to be increased,' he said. -- THOMSON REUTERS

Cambodians cheer Pacquiao victory

pacquiao-finalstats

By Leila Salaverria
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 15:55:00 11/15/2009

MANILA, Philippines -- It's not only Filipinos who are shouting in jubilation over Manny Pacquiao's victory.

Cambodians are also cheering for the Filipino boxer, who has gained a following in the Southeast Asian country, according to journalist Ung Chamroeun.

Chamroeun said in a live chat with this reporter, that the match between Pacquiao and Puerto Rican Manuel Cotto was broadcast live on free TV on the Cambodian Television Network (CTN). The airing was also uninterrupted by commercials. The match was also shown on two cable channels.

Chamroeun said Cambodians had gathered in coffee shops to watch the much-awaited match.

FDA to ban caffeine in alcoholic beverages

Alcoholic drinks
with a shot of caffeine have become more and more popular on college campuses and also among underage teen drinkers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet okayed caffeine for use in alcoholic drinks nor have they found it to be dangerous.

Some of the businesses targeted are Constellation Brands Inc (STZ.N), which makes the drink Wide Eye, and the North American unit of Diageo plc (DGE.L) (DEO.N), which makes Smirnoff Raw Tea
.

The companies have been given 30 days to show that their drinks are not dangerous to their customers, or the FDA will be obligated to take additional legal action. The beverages have been marketed using social media sites like Twitter, says The New York Times. These drinks have already been approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade bureau and will provide the beverage companies with a defense against the allegations.

“Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a substance added intentionally to food (such as caffeine in alcoholic beverages) is deemed “unsafe” and is unlawful unless its particular use has been approved by FDA regulation, the substance is subject to a prior sanction, or the substance is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS),” says the alert.

College drinkers are the primary demographic for marketing of highly caffeinated drinks like Red Bull. Caffeine has not been approved for use at any level in alcoholic beverages, the FDA noted. Caffeine has been approved for use in soft drinks in concentrations of no greater than 200 parts per million. The market for caffeinated alcoholic drinks is about 1 percent of the total beer industry

The FDA also noted that in the past year, Anheuser-Busch and Miller agreed to stop selling their popular caffeinated alcoholic beverages — Tilt, Bud Extra, and Sparks — and agreed not to produce any caffeinated alcoholic beverages in the future.

Helicopter Crash Leaves Three Dead Near Reno

Reno, NV (AHN) – A medical helicopter crashed early Saturday morning near the California-Nevada border, leaving three dead.

After dropping off a patient in Reno, the Mountain Lifeflight helicopter 3 was on its way back to Susanville when the crash occurred about 2 a.m., the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported that the crash and the resulting fire destroyed the helicopter, an Aerospatiale AS350. At the time of the accident, the pilot was not in communication with air traffic controllers.

In a statement, Mountain Lifeflight confirmed that the crewmembers aboard had died.

Nasa's LCROSS mission proves once and for all there is water on the Moon

A new chapter in space exploration has been opened up after Nasa confirmed that their mission to bomb the Moon had found "significant quantities" of frozen water.

Scientists said the "exciting" findings had gone "beyond expectations" as fully formed ice was found in a crater on the planet.

They said that the ice – thought to be in granules mixed with grains of Moon dust – heralded a major leap forward in space exploration and boosted hopes of a permanent lunar base.

The water was found in one mile high plume of debris that was kicked up by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) last month when it crashed into the Cabeus crater near the Moon's south pole.

"We are ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the £49 million space mission.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount."

He said in a "eureka moment" analysis of the plume of debris sprayed up by a 30 ft crater showed the equivalent of "a dozen two-gallon buckets" of water was thrown up by the impact.

"This is a great day for science and exploration," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of LCROSS. "The remarkable results have gone beyond our expectations. It is incredibly exciting."

The identification of water-ice in the impact plume is important for purely scientific reasons, but also because a supply of water on the Moon would be a vital resource for future human exploration.

The findings, which completely contradict previous beliefs that the Moon was a dry arid place, justify the controversial mission.

It also reignites mankind's dreams of colonising Earth's only satellite.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbour and, by extension, the Solar System," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at Nasa's headquarters in Washington DC.

The mission took place on 9th October and was watched by millions across the globe live on the internet.

One rocket slammed into the Cabeus crater, near the lunar southern pole, at around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometres) per hour.

The impact sent a plume of material billowing up from the bottom of the crater, which has not seen sunlight for billions of years.

The rocket was followed four minutes later by a spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact. At the time the crash seemed to be disappointing as the "plume of debris" was not visible to Earth based satellites.

However analysis of the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected and from satellite's spectrometers provided definitive evidence about the presence of water.

A spectrometer examines light reflected from a substance and is able to identify their composition.

Over the last decade, scientists have found some hints of underground ice on the moon's poles, mainly in the form of compounds of hydrogen but this is the best evidence yet.

The discovery is expected to have major implications for the future of lunar exploration, and a ready supply of water could help set up lunar bases or launch missions to Mars.

Mr Colaprete said that it should be possible to purify the water for drinking even though it appeared to mixed with poisonous methanol.

Only 12 men, all Americans, have ever walked on the Moon, and the last to set foot there were in 1972, at the end of the Apollo missions.

But Nasa's ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to establish manned lunar bases for further exploration to Mars under the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt.

Nasa's budget is currently too small to pay for Constellation's Orion capsule, a more advanced and spacious version of the Apollo lunar module, as well as the Ares I and Ares V launchers needed to put the craft in orbit.

A key review panel appointed by President Barack Obama said existing budgets are not large enough to fund a return mission before 2020.

As well as a possible site for a base, the permanently shadowed regions could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water, and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Apple outflanks Psystar in crushing legal victory

Apple has finally managed to outflank Psystar after fighting a bloody and protracted legal battle against the infamous Mac clone manufacturer.

Victory came in the form of a ruling by US (Northern California) District Judge William Alsup, who determined that Psystar had infringed Apple's "exclusive right" to create derivative works of Mac OS X by replacing original files with unauthorized software.

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According to Alsup, Psystar executed three primary unlawful modifications:

* Replacing the Mac OS X bootloader with an alternative to run unauthorized copies of Mac OS X to run on Psystar's computers.
* Disabling and removing Apple kernel extension files.
* Adding non-Apple kernel extensions.


"Psystar contends that this did not amount to creating a derivative work, because Apple's source code, object code, or kernel extensions were not modified. This argument is unavailing. Psystar admittedly replaced entire files within the software while copying other portions," opined Alsup. 



Apple OS X

"This resulted in a substantial variation from the underlying copyrighted work. In fact, if the bootloader and kernel extensions added by Psystar were removed, then the operating system would not work on Psystar's computers. The inclusion of the copyrighted Mac OS X with the above-described additions and modifications makes Psystar's product an infringing, derivative work."

Unsurprisingly, Alsup's ruling against Psystar was termed a "total massacre" by Internet legal site Groklaw.

"Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case. It's a total massacre. Psystar's first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple's motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted. Apple prevailed also on its motion to seal, [while] Psystar's motion for summary judgment on trademark infringement and trade dress is denied.

"So that means damages ahead for Psystar on the copyright issues just decided on summary judgment, at a minimum. In short, Psystar is toast, [their] only hope now is [the] Florida [legal system] and frankly I wouldn't bet the house on that one. The court's message is clear: EULAs mean what they say; if you don't want to abide by its license, leave Apple's stuff alone."

Painted ladies fly to ISS

In a project known as Butterflies in Space, the Atlantis space shuttle will next week carry a butterfly habitat containing monarch and painted lady adults and larvae to the International Space Station.

Painted ladies fly to International Space StationThe idea is that thousands of schoolkids across the US will be able to study the effects of space travel on the little astronauts, comparing them with examples reared in their own classroms. The children will be able to monitor their progress via still and video images.

"One of the most exciting things about this project is that we can use the International Space Station to bring spaceflight experiments into classrooms around the country," said BioServe Director Louis Stodieck, principal investigator on the project. "Our continuing goal is to inspire K-12 students around the country in science, technology, engineering and math."

The butterfly payload has been designed and built by BioServe Space Technologies in CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering department and will carry two butterfly habitats containing monarch and painted lady butterfly larvae and enough nectar and other food to support them as they develop.

Record Highs Far Outpace Record Lows Across U.S.

The ratio of record daily highs to lows from 1950-2009 at 1,800 U.S. weather stations. Courtesy of NCAR

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.

Results of the research, by authors at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, Climate Central, The Weather Channel, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have been accepted for publication in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Climate Central.

"This intriguing study provides new evidence of climate change," says Steve Nelson, NSF program director for NCAR. "And it's change that's affecting our daily lives."

If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves. A record daily high means that temperatures were warmer on a given day than on that same date throughout a weather station's history.

The authors used a quality control process to ensure the reliability of data from thousands of weather stations across the country, while looking at data over the past six decades to capture longer-term trends. This decade's warming was more pronounced in the western United States, where the ratio was more than two to one, than in the eastern United States, where the ratio was about one-and-a-half to one. The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs.

This indicates that much of the nation's warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.

In addition to surveying actual temperatures in recent decades, Meehl and his co-authors turned to a sophisticated computer model of global climate to determine how record high and low temperatures are likely to change during the course of this century. The modeling results indicate that, if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a "business as usual" scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100. The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.

The authors caution that such predictions are, by their nature, inexact. Climate models are not designed to capture record daily highs and lows with precision, and it remains impossible to know future human actions that will determine the level of future greenhouse gas emissions.

The model used for the study, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, correctly captured the trend toward warmer average temperatures and the greater warming in the West, but overstated the ratio of record highs to record lows in recent years. However, the model results are important because they show that, in all likely scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, record daily highs should increasingly outpace record lows over time.

"If the climate weren't changing, you would expect the number of temperature records to diminish significantly over time," says Claudia Tebaldi, a statistician with Climate Central who is one of the paper's co-authors. "As you measure the high and low daily temperatures each year, it normally becomes more difficult to break a record after a number of years. But, as the average temperatures continue to rise this century, we will keep setting more record highs."

The study team focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950. They found that the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures slightly exceeded one to one in the 1950s, dipped below that level in the 1960s and 1970s, and has risen since the 1980s. The results reflect changes in U.S. average temperatures, which rose in the 1950s, stabilized in the 1960s, and then began a warming trend in the late 1970s.

Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two. Despite the increasing number of record highs, there will still be occasional periods of record cold, Meehl notes.

"One of the messages of this study is, you still get cold days," Meehl says. "Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we're setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But, the odds are shifting, so there's a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows."

The study team analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country, thereby ensuring ample data for statistically significant results. The readings, collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, undergo a quality control process at the data center that looks for such potential problems as missing data, as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations or other factors.

Meehl and his colleagues then used temperature simulations from the Community Climate System Model to compute daily record highs and lows under current and future atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

To Play With Giants, App Devs Risk Getting Squashed

Hot-selling mobile apps have earned some independent programmers hundreds of thousands of dollars. But one of the greatest risks of developing apps for a platform controlled by a large corporation, such as Google or Apple, is that you can easily get crushed.

Take for example Mike Jacobs, a developer of software startup Hello, Chair. For nine months, his team of three has been working on an iPhone app called Appsaurus, which makes App Store recommendations based on the apps you already own. So it was very bad news for Hello, Chair when Apple in September introduced a free App Store recommendation tool called App Store Genius.

“That’s one of the scariest things: If Apple moves an inch, they crush a bunch of little developers,” Jacobs said in a phone interview.

With giants dominating Silicon Valley, start-ups and independent programmers are fitting in between the cracks by developing apps for corporations’ mobile platforms. Apple’s App Store, which launched July 2008, is the largest to date with 100,000 apps and counting. Google’s Android platform is second largest, serving roughly 14,000 apps. In the case of the App Store, a lucky bunch have struck it rich with soaring sales, while others have suffered at the mercy of the giant they’re developing for.

More often, Apple is scrutinized for its questionable approval policy. The company has rejected some developers’ apps for unclear reasons, which often puts them in financial hurt (in severe cases, a six-digit loss).

But stories like Hello, Chair’s — where the corporation inadvertently competes with its developers — are a bit rare. Jacobs said his company was striving to provide something the iPhone was missing in hopes to make the platform even better. However, Apple, too, is thinking of ways to improve its products — and with a considerably larger team of in-house programmers and billions of dollars in resources, the Cupertino, California company beat a small start-up to the idea of an App Store recommendation tool.

Hello, Chair submitted Appsaurus to Apple this week and nervously awaits Apple’s approval. The team is hoping it does not face the same outcome as Podcaster, an app Apple rejected in September 2008. The Podcaster app enabled the iPhone to download podcasts and listen to them on the fly. Apple rejected Podcaster, saying it “duplicates the functionality” of the iPod. However, the iPhone didn’t have this feature when Podcaster was submitted. Only after rejecting Podcaster did Apple introduce a podcast downloader through its iTunes app.

Alex Sokirynsky, who developed Podcaster, said he had spent four months learning the iPhone’s programming language, and he was “heartbroken” by Apple’s rejection of Podcaster.

“Apple has a very tight hold on everyone in the App Store,” Sokirynsky told Wired.com. “They could pull any app for any reason, and the developer has no say. This could ruin a new company.”

This Goliath-stomps-on-David scenario isn’t unique to Apple, either. Etienne Baratte, a software engineer, was developing an app for the Google Android platform called Jamdroid, which would provide real-time traffic information anywhere on the globe. Baratte entered Jamdroid in Google’s Android Developer Challenge, a contest inviting developers to submit app prototypes for a chance to win awards. Jamdroid received an honorable score in the competition — but Google in August 2009 announced it was working on almost the exact same traffic-analysis tool.

Baratte was dismayed: He’d been working on Jamdroid since November 2007 with a few partners. He killed his project when Google rolled out its traffic service in August.

“There’s no competition possible at all,” Baratte said in a phone interview. “I can’t say they stole my idea. They’re in their right to implement such a service, and in fact, in a way I am quite happy that they did so…. But I spent all my free time on this.”

Hello, Chair hasn’t given up on Appsaurus, however. When Apple introduced App Store Genius, Jacobs and his team proceeded to add more features to Appsaurus to make it better than Apple’s recommendation system. When making recommendations, App Store Genius only takes into account the apps currently installed on a user’s iPhone. Appsaurus, Jacobs said, will use an interactive algorithm that allows users to rate and modify suggestions in real-time. The app will also make app recommendations based on other apps people have purchased, similar to Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature.

Obama under fire on trade as Asia-Pacific leaders meet

US President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong before the gala dinner for APEC leaders in Singapore. Photo: AP

US President Barack Obama has come under fire from Asia-Pacific leaders for backsliding on free trade at a regional summit devoted to driving the world economy out of crisis.

"President Obama is facing severe political constraints that run counter to free trade," Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, complaining about US foot-dragging on full implementation of the NAFTA pact for North America.

"The cruel paradox is that within a global economy, what really kills companies is inefficiency and lack of competition. Therefore protectionism is killing North American companies," he said in a speech in Singapore on Saturday.

"So I think this has to do with the fact that the US government is under strong political pressure that really is not being counteracted from the political perspective" of the Obama administration.

The US Congress has turned even more sour on free trade after the worst economic crisis since World War II.

One landmark pact with South Korea is languishing and critics say the White House has done little to revive it.

The US economy is picking up but unemployment has breached 10 per cent and economic leaders, including the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, warned in Singapore that protectionism could choke off recovery.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said controversial tariffs enacted by his government to shore up ailing industries were temporary and urged his regional colleagues to "do anything we can to refrain from protectionism in any sphere".

The warnings came as a two-day summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum began on Saturday.

Obama arrived later in Singapore to join the 20 other leaders, after a visit to Tokyo.

In a speech in the Japanese capital, Obama reaffirmed a US commitment to finally concluding the World Trade Organisation's Doha round of talks - a long-running bid to tear down barriers to global commerce.

And he said the United States was interested in an obscure trade pact that leaders say could become the nucleus for a massive trans-Pacific free-trade zone covering 2.6 billion people.

"The United States will also be engaging with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries with the goal of shaping a regional agreement that will have broad-based membership and the high standards worthy of a 21st century trade agreement," he said.

The TPP now involves Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore.

Australia, Peru and Vietnam have expressed interest in joining, and Obama's remarks were the clearest so far about Washington's plans.

"The US announcement is a significant statement of its intent to the Asia-Pacific region," Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean said.

"Importantly, it provides the critical mass essential for this initiative to go forward."

Obama meanwhile called for "balanced and sustained" growth around the world in the post-crisis phase, pressing Asian exporters including China to wean themselves off US consumers and build up their own demand.

His comments underlined a central theme of the APEC summit - that the world economy must be rebalanced so that voracious US consumerism is no longer the sole cylinder firing global growth.

Officials said the realignment was a main item of summit discussion prior to an evening dinner, when the leaders continued an APEC tradition by donning specially designed shirts reflecting the host nation's culture.

AFP