Morning Shinbun Tuesday October 19

Flight delays cost passengers $16.7 billion

FAA-funded study factors in time lost, secondary travel arrangements

By JOAN LOWY

WASHINGTON – Airline flight delays cost passengers more than inconvenience – $16.7 billion more – according to a study delivered to the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday.

The FAA-funded study looks at the cost to passengers for flight delays in 2007, the latest year for which complete data was available when researchers began working on the study.

Unlike past studies of the impact of flight delays, researchers looked more broadly at the costs associated with flight delays, including passengers’ lost time waiting for flights and then scrambling to make other arrangements when flights are canceled.

Making the cut at sushi academy

Tokyo school serves up an English course

 By ERIKO ARITA

Staff writer

Ahmed Bishara clasps a vinegared rice ball in his hand and quickly pastes wasabi on a slice of raw salmon on the cutting board before him. He puts the rice ball on the salmon, turns it upside-down and presses it tightly into shape with his palm and fingers. The entire process takes about 10 seconds.

Bishara wets his hands and tackles his next piece of nigirizushi (hand-pressed sushi), this time using a slice of kanpachi (amberjack). After three minutes his time is up. He arranges the 18 nigirizushi on his cutting board and awaits his teacher’s verdict.

USA

U.S. Pushes to Ease Technical Obstacles to Wiretapping



By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: October 18, 2010

WASHINGTON – Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.

The officials say tougher legislation is needed because some telecommunications companies in recent years have begun new services and made system upgrades that create technical obstacles to surveillance. They want to increase legal incentives and penalties aimed at pushing carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to ensure that any network changes will not disrupt their ability toconduct wiretaps

Foreclosure freeze leads to uneasy politics for Democrats

 

By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer  

The details of the foreclosure mess are ugly and complicated. The politics of it are even worse.

The calculus is clear for most Democratic incumbents, especially those in tight races like Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid: Nothing could be worse on the eve of elections than images of people being booted out of their homes by big banks that have relied on sloppy, if notfraudulent, paperwork.

Europe

Germany’s neighbours from hell

The village of Jamel in east Germany was once a place of rural bliss. Then neo-Nazis started buying it up. Tony Paterson reports

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

It’s hard to escape the menacing ideology that prevails in Jamel – a tiny hamlet of 10 crumbling red brick Prussian-era farm houses set among the remote fields and beech woods of east German Mecklenburg. “Braunau am Inn 855 kilometres” proclaims a home-made signpost at the village entrance pointing in the direction of Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

At a sandy crossroads between the houses, a huge stone carries the slogan: “Jamel Village Community: Free, Social and National” – the choice of adjectives is as close to the term “National Socialist” as one can legally get in a country where the swastika and Nazi slogans remain outlawed.

Sarkozy defies French strikers on pension reform

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has insisted he will press ahead with pension reforms despite a gathering momentum of strike action.  

The BBC

Oil refineries have been shut for a week, hundreds of petrol stations have run dry and a further day of national strikes is under way.

Mr Sarkozy says reform is “essential” and “France is committed to it”.

But with the Senate due for a final vote this week, protests are planned in more than 200 towns and cities.

The French government wants to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67.

But the plans are widely unpopular with the public and left-wing senators have submitted hundreds amendments in an attempt to delay the vote.

Although the bill was initially expected to be passed on Wednesday, some reports say the debate could last until the weekend.

Middle East

Kurdish rebels tell Turkey: keep your promises or ceasefire is over



By Catrina Stewart in the Qandil mountains, northern Iraq Tuesday, 19 October 2010

Kurdish rebels will end their military ceasefire at the end of the month if Turkey hounds its supporters and prepares for an attempt to rout the group after 26 years of conflict, their leader told The Independent from his mountain hideout in northern Iraq.

Murat Karayilan said time was running out for the Turkish authorities to pursue a peaceful solution amid suspicions that Turkey was drumming up support from Syria and Iran to rout the guerrilla group, which has entrenched itself in the mountains along Iraq’s border with Turkey and Iran.

The Dangers of Being a Journalist in Iran

Tehran’s Press Offensive

By Dieter Bednarz, Markus Brauck and Antje Windmann

Mohammad Ghouchani, 34, is still a free man. But he may not be for much longer. The Iranian regime’s security forces have been following the journalist’s every move for weeks now. According to Ghouchani’s colleagues in Tehran, it was only a week ago that Iranian agents called him on the phone. Their message? Drop the project or we’ll arrest you.

Few would be surprised were Ghouchani soon to be served a subpoena from the state prosecutor and forced to answer charges before the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Jail time, experience shows, could also be in his future — all because he has taken on a tempting and delicate mission: He plans to resume publishing Ham-Mihan, a newspaper that was bannedthree years ago..

Asia

Pakistan intelligence services ‘aided Mumbai terror attacks’

Militant arrested last year described dozens of meetings between ISI officers and senior Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives

Jason Burke

guardian.co.uk

Pakistan’s powerful intelligence services were heavily involved in preparations for the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008, according to classified Indian government documents obtained by the Guardian.

A 109-page report into the interrogation of key suspect David Headley, a Pakistani-American militant arrested last year and detained in the US, makes detailed claims of ISI support for the bombings.

Under questioning, Headley described dozens of meetings between officers of the main Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, and senior militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

Xi Jinping on Track for Chinese Presidency  

 

Seoul October 19, 2010

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping has been appointed vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which oversees the two-million-strong People’s Liberation Army, virtually confirming his position as the country’s next leader. The Chinese Communist Party appointed Xi to the new position in a planning meeting, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.

The four-day session of the party’s Central Committee, which opened on Friday, also saw the announcement of a five-year economic development plan that puts more focus on the distribution of wealth rather than on economic expansion. The Chinese government is now expected to bolster social benefits, aid for senior citizens, state medical programsand other subsidies.

Africa

Corrupt east African nations ‘running global crime’  



Dylan Welch NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT

October 19, 2010

GLOBAL mafias are using corrupt nations in east Africa to run their syndicates and the area is now a ”hole in the wall” in the international fight against organised crime, says the former head of Britain’s top police unit.

William Hughes, the former director-general of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, made the comment in an address to an organised crime conference in Melbourne yesterday, in which he called for more international co-operation in tackling transnational crime.

Somali militants ban mobile money transfers

Ban comes after firms closed doors on al Shabaab – govt

   By Ibrahim Mohamed, Reuters  

The al Shabaab group, which professes loyalty to al Qaeda, said mobile money transfers (MMT) helped feed Western capitalism and were turning Somalia’s Muslims against Islamic banking practices.

“The use of the MMT service will be discontinued in all parts of Somalia – and the companies that offer these services, specifically Hormuud, Telesom and Golis, must stop dealing with this service,” al Shabaab said in a ststatement on Sunday..

Latin America

After Rescue, The Fight for Compensation Begins

Millions for Chilean Miners?  

By Juan Moreno

Edgardo Reinoso Lundstedt didn’t go to work today. It’s a good day to stay home, he thinks. It’s morning and Reinoso, a calm man, is standing on his large patio enjoying the Pacific breeze.

There is no evidence here of the drama unfolding 800 kilometers (500 miles) away.

Rain is in the forecast, so Reinoso won’t be firing up the grill today, not with this weather. He turns on the TV set and sees the same images he has been seeing for weeks. The whole of Chile is in the grips of a media frenzy. The 33 miners who had been trapped in a mine near Copiapó in northern Chile are being rescued today. Chilean President Sebastian Piñera is at the scene, together with about 2,000 international journalists, curious onlookers, the miners’ families, clowns, police officers and members of the clergy.

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