Holder Says Sequester Makes America Less Safe












The looming budget sequestration will make Americans less safe, Eric Holder says—and anyone who says otherwise isn't telling the truth.


"This is something that is going to have an impact on the safety of this country," the U.S. attorney general told ABC's Pierre Thomas on Wednesday in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview.


"And anybody that says otherwise is either lying or saying something that runs contrary to the facts," Holder said.


In his interview with ABC News, Holder reiterated warnings that if automatic spending cuts are triggered on Friday, the Justice Department will be handicapped in some of its most vital missions to prevent terrorist attacks and crime.


"The Justice Department is going to lose nine percent of its budget between now and September 30th. We're going to lose $1.6 billion. There are not going to be as many FBI agents, ATF agents, DEA agents, prosecutors who are going to be able to do their jobs," Holder said. "They're going to be furloughed. They're going to spend time out of their offices, not doing their jobs."


Portions of the interview will air Wednesday, February 27 on "ABC World News"






Patrick Semansky/AP Photo











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President Obama's Cabinet members have been warning for weeks that budget sequestration, which will begin Friday unless Obama and Republicans reach a deficit-reduction deal to avoid it, will leave their agencies shorthanded and could bring about disastrous consequences. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood have both appeared at the White House press briefing room to warn that furloughs for border-patrol agents, TSA agents and air-traffic controllers will mean weakened border and port security, longer waits in airport security lines, and logjammed air travel.


Holder, for his part, warned in a Feb. 1 letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee that cuts to the FBI, the ATF, the U.S. Marshals Service, and U.S. Attorneys would limit the department's capacity to investigate crimes. Cuts at the Bureau of Prisons, Holder wrote, would mean lockdowns and potential violence, with fewer staff members on hand. In a separate letter, FBI Director Robert Mueller warned that counterterrorism operations would be affected, with the possible elimination of some joint terrorism task forces with state and local police. Limited surveillance and slower response times would mean unwatched targets and the possibility that individuals on terrorism watch lists could gain entry to the U.S.


"FBI's ability to proactively penetrate and disrupt terrorist plans and groups prior to an attack would be impacted," Mueller wrote.


To Holder, the problem is simple.


"If you don't have prosecutors and agents doing what we expect them to do, and we won't if this thing actually takes place, we are going to be a nation that is going to be less safe. And that is simple fact," Holder said.


Some Republicans have claimed the Obama administration is exaggerating the sequester's purported consequences as a ploy to campaign for tax hikes. On "Fox News Sunday" this week, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., posited that federal agencies enjoy enough flexibility to avoid the worst consequences of the cuts.


On Wednesday, Holder acknowledged that the Justice Department will do what it can to avoid compromised security, while maintaining that furloughs can't be avoided.






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Powers wait to hear Iran response to nuclear offer


ALMATY (Reuters) - World powers hope Iran will respond positively on Wednesday to their new offer to lift some sanctions if Tehran scales back nuclear activity the West fears could be used to build bombs.


The United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia presented the offer when their first meeting with Iran in eight months began in Almaty on Tuesday and the Islamic state was considering it, the powers' spokesman said.


Western officials described the first day of talks as "useful". One said Iran discussed specific aspects of the powers' ideas in bilateral talks with three of them - Russia, Germany and Britain - but gave no indication how Tehran viewed them.


Iranian state television described the atmosphere in the discussions as "very serious".


The outcome of the two-day meeting in the Kazakh city will be closely watched in Israel, which has strongly hinted that it could attack Iran's nuclear sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop the uranium enrichment program.


Iran says Israel's assumed nuclear arsenal is the main threat to peace and denies Western allegations it is seeking to develop the capability to make atomic bombs. It says it is only aiming to produce nuclear energy so that it can export more oil.


In their latest attempt to break years of deadlock in the dispute, the powers are offering Iran a relaxation of some of the sanctions that are taking a heavy toll on its economy.


"Hopefully the Iranians will be able to reflect overnight and will come back and view our proposal positively," the spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the powers in the talks, said.


"The ball is in their court," Michael Mann added after the first day of discussions on Tuesday.


He did not give details of the offer, but other Western officials have confirmed it includes some limited sanctions easing if Iran closes a underground site where it carries out its most controversial uranium enrichment work.


Diplomats and analysts see scant chances of a conclusive deal with Iran before a June presidential election, with the political elite preoccupied with domestic issues.


Wednesday's talks are due to start at around 11 a.m. (0500 GMT).


IRANIAN COUNTERPROPOSAL


Iran would put forward its own proposal "of the same weight" as that of the other side, a source close to the Iranian negotiating team said on Tuesday, but Western officials said it had not done so during the first day of negotiations.


Iran, whose chief negotiator Saeed Jalili is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and is a veteran of Iran's 1980s war against Iraq and the Western powers that backed it, has shown no sign of willingness to scale back its nuclear work.


It argues that has a sovereign right to carry out nuclear enrichment for peaceful energy purposes, and in particular refuses to close its underground Fordow enrichment plant, a condition the powers have set for any sanctions relief.


Tightening Western sanctions on Iran over the last 14 months are hurting Iran's economy and slashing oil revenue. Its currency has more than halved in value, which in turn has pushed up inflation.


But analysts say the sanctions are not close to having the crippling effect envisaged by Washington and - so far at least - they have not prompted a change in Iran's nuclear course.


Western officials said the powers' offer would include an easing of restrictions on trade in gold and other precious metals if Tehran closes Fordow.


The facility is used for enriching uranium to 20 percent fissile purity, a short technical step from weapons grade.


Western officials acknowledge an easing of U.S. and EU sanctions on trade in gold represents a relatively modest step. But gold could be used as part of barter transactions that might allow Iran to circumvent financial sanctions.


Iran's foreign ministry spokesman last week dismissed the reported incentive as insufficient and a senior Iranian lawmaker has ruled out closing Fordow, close to the holy city of Qom.


(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Almaty and Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)



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Dollar edges higher as Bernanke confirms stimulus






NEW YORK: The dollar edged higher Tuesday against the euro after Ben Bernanke confirmed the US Fed's stimulus program would continue, while the yen traded flat ahead of the nomination of a new Bank of Japan chief.

At 2200 GMT the euro was at $1.3061, compared to $1.3065 late Monday. The euro remained under pressure after Italy's inconclusive election, which some fear could lead to more political trouble and policy stalemate in the country.

"Political uncertainty has increased in Italy following the election results weighing upon the euro and risk assets," said Lee Hardman, currency analyst at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in London.

In Washington, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke quelled speculation of an early end to quantitative easing when he told a Senate panel that the Fed's stimulus program was having an impact and was still needed.

He said inflation remained subdued and the Fed was keeping its eye on any potentially risky behavior in the market due to low-interest rates.

The Fed policy board "remains confident that it has the tools necessary to tighten monetary policy when the time comes to do so," he added.

The yen was barely changed against the dollar at 91.93, and the euro was at 120.08 yen compared to 120.12 yen late Monday.

Markets were waiting for confirmation of who would be named to head the bank of Japan, after newspapers reported Monday that Asian Development Bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda, an advocate of a lower yen, would be named.

The British pound fell further, to $1.5126 from $1.5166 late Monday. The dollar was little changed on the Swiss franc, at 0.9315 francs.

-AFP/ac



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Rail Budget 2013: Raising funds an uphill journey

When he hiked passenger fares in late January, railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had argued that the extent to which freight earnings had been used to subsidise passenger operations was unsustainable. On Tuesday, however, he said he would not affect any changes in passenger fares while imposing an across-the-board 5.8% increase in freight rates.

According to Bansal, losses on passenger operations are estimated to have risen from Rs 4,955 crore in 2001-02 to about Rs 24,600 crore in 2012-13. Considering that the earnings from passengers were Rs 32,500 crore in 2012-13, that suggests that the railways recover only about 55% of their costs on carrying passengers, the rest coming from the surplus generated in freight operations.

That explains why Bansal has bucked the trend of over a decade in recent weeks and announced measures that will yield him an estimated Rs 7,000 crore plus from passengers. Despite such a sizeable mop-up, Railway finances as projected for 2013-14 look only somewhat better than in the last couple of years.

The operating ratio - a measure of what percentage of revenues is used up in running expenses - is pegged at 88.8% for the current year and 87.8% for the coming year. In other words barely 12% of what the Railways earn will be available for investing in building future assets. While this is significantly better than the situation in the last couple of years when the OR had touched 95%, it is still a far cry from the 2007-08 scenario in which nearly 25% of earnings were available for investment.

The squeeze on resources was evident in the minister's lament that the 12th Plan target of investing Rs 5.19 lakh crore on the Railways with Rs 1.05 lakh crore coming from internal resources was beginning to look like an increasingly tall order. He pointed out that only Rs 10,000 crore had been contributed by internal resources in the first year. Yet, the budget for 2013-14 does not do very much better with Rs 14,260 crore of internal accruals contributing to an annual Plan size of Rs 63,363 crore.

Put together, therefore, the first two years of the Plan are now estimated to add up to investments of Rs 1.16 lakh crore with internal resources contributing just over Rs 24,000 crore. That means the Railways will have to invest over Rs 4 lakh crore in the remaining three years of the Plan and find nearly Rs 81,000 crore of that internally, clearly a tall order.

Budget 2013 > Rail Budget 2013 > Economic Survey 2013

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C. Everett Koop, 'rock star' surgeon general, dies


NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. C. Everett Koop has long been regarded as the nation's doctor— even though it has been nearly a quarter-century since he was surgeon general.


Koop, who died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96, was by far the best known and most influential person to carry that title. Koop, a 6-foot-1 evangelical Presbyterian with a biblical prophet's beard, donned a public health uniform in the early 1980s and became an enduring, science-based national spokesman on health issues.


He served for eight years during the Reagan administration and was a breed apart from his political bosses. He thundered about the evils of tobacco companies during a multiyear campaign to drive down smoking rates, and he became the government's spokesman on AIDS when it was still considered a "gay disease" by much of the public.


"He really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," said Chris Collins, a vice president of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.


Even before that, he had been a leading figure in medicine. He was one of the first U.S. doctors to specialize in pediatric surgery at a time when children with complicated conditions were often simply written off as untreatable. In the 1950s, he drew national headlines for innovative surgeries such as separating conjoined twins.


His medical heroics are well noted, but he may be better remembered for transforming from a pariah in the eyes of the public health community into a remarkable servant who elevated the influence of the surgeon general — if only temporarily.


"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," said Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade later under President George W. Bush.


Koop's religious beliefs grew after the 1968 death of his son David in a mountain-climbing accident, and he became an outspoken opponent of abortion. His activism is what brought him to the attention of the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who decided to nominate him for surgeon general in 1981. Though once a position with real power, surgeon generals had been stripped of most of their responsibilities in the 1960s.


By the time Koop got the job, the position was kind of a glorified health educator.


But Koop ran with it. One of his early steps involved the admiral's uniform that is bestowed to the surgeon general but that Koop's predecessors had worn only on ceremonial occasions. In his first year in the post, Koop stopped wearing his trademark bowties and suit jackets and instead began wearing the uniform, seeing it as a way to raise the visual prestige of the office.


In those military suits, he surprised the officials who had appointed him by setting aside his religious beliefs and feelings about abortion and instead waging a series of science-based public health crusades.


He was arguably most effective on smoking. He issued a series of reports that detailed the dangers of tobacco smoke, and in speeches began calling for a smoke-free society by the year 2000. He didn't get his wish, but smoking rates did drop from 38 percent to 27 percent while he was in office — a huge decline.


Koop led other groundbreaking initiatives, but perhaps none is better remembered than his work on AIDS.


The disease was first identified in 1981, before Koop was officially in office, and it changed U.S. society. It destroyed the body's immune system and led to ghastly death, but initially was identified in gay men, and many people thought of it as something most heterosexuals didn't have to worry about.


U.S. scientists worked hard to identify the virus and work on ways to fight it, but the government's health education and policy efforts moved far more slowly. Reagan for years was silent on the issue. Following mounting criticism, Reagan in 1986 asked Koop to prepare a report on AIDS for the American public.


His report, released later that year, stressed that AIDS was a threat to all Americans and called for wider use of condoms and more comprehensive sex education, as early as the third grade. He went on to speak frankly about AIDS in an HBO special and engineered the mailing of an educational pamphlet on AIDS to more than 100 million U.S. households in 1988.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop's speeches and empathetic approach made him a hero to a wide swath of America, including public health workers, gay activists and journalists. Some called him a "scientific Bruce Springsteen." AIDS activists chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances and booed other officials.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


Koop angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


He got static from some staff at the White House for his actions, but Reagan himself never tried to silence Koop. At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day.


After his death was reported Monday, the tributes poured forth, including a statement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has made smoking restrictions a hallmark of his tenure.


"The nation has lost a visionary public health leader today with the passing of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who was born and raised in Brooklyn," Bloomberg said. "Outspoken on the dangers of smoking, his leadership led to stronger warning labels on cigarettes and increased awareness about second-hand smoke, creating an environment that helped millions of Americans to stop smoking — and setting the stage for the dramatic changes in smoking laws that have occurred over the past decade."


Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health taught Koop what was known about AIDS during quiet after-hours talks in the early 1980s and became a close friend.


"A less strong person would have bent under the pressure," Fauci said. "He was driven by what's the right thing to do."


Carmona, a surgeon general years later, said Koop was a mentor who preached the importance of staying true to the science in speeches and reports — even when it made certain politicians uncomfortable.


"We remember him for the example he set for all of us," Carmona said.


Koop's nomination originally was met with staunch opposition. Women's groups and liberal politicians complained Reagan had selected him only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed as surgeon general after he told a Senate panel he would not use the post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word and eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy.


Koop was modest about his accomplishments, saying before leaving office in 1989, "My only influence was through moral suasion."


The office declined after that. Few of his successors had his speaking ability or stage presence. Fewer still were able to secure the support of key political bosses and overcome the meddling of everyone else. The office gradually lost prestige and visibility, and now has come to a point where most people can't name the current surgeon general. (It's Dr. Regina Benjamin.)


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


He maintained his personal opposition to abortion. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


Worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, Koop opened an institute at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats. He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


He received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it. In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children. Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


___


Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt.; Jeff McMillan in Philadelphia; and AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington.


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Senate Votes to Confirm Hagel as Defense Secretary












After a tough two-month battle characterized by tough interrogation and a partisan divide, the Senate voted 58-41 to confirm Chuck Hagel -- President Obama's nominee -- as secretary of defense this afternoon.


Only four Republicans broke party lines to vote in Hagel's favor. They included Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Mike Johanns of Nebraska and Rand Paul of Kentucky, though Paul had voted against moving forward with the vote earlier today.


Before that cloture vote to close the debate and bring Hagel's nomination to a vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., warned Republicans against continuing their partisan fight against the nominee.


"Senate Republicans have delayed for the better part of two weeks for one reason: partisanship," Reid said. "Politically motivated delays send a terrible signal to allies around the world, and they send a terrible signal to tens of thousands of Americans serving in Afghanistan, other parts of world and those valiant people who are serving here in the United States. For the sake of national security, it's time to set aside this partisanship."


The measure to move forward passed by a vote of 71-27. It needed at least 60 votes to pass.


Some Republican senators took the time before the vote to take a last stab at Hagel.


John Cornyn, R-Texas, who was one of 15 senators who sent a letter to Obama last week calling for him to withdraw his nomination of Hagel, said Hagel had proved that he's ill-prepared to assume the defense secretary post.








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"There's simply no way to sugar coat it," Cornyn said. "Sen. Hagel's performance before the Senate Armed Services Committee was remarkably inept, and we should not be installing a defense secretary who is obviously not qualified for the job and who holds dangerously misguided views on some of the most important issues facing national security policy for our country. Sen. Hagel is clearly the wrong man for the job."


The Senate returned today after a week off from debating Hagel's pros and cons.


Today's was not the first attempt to bring Hagel's nomination to the floor.


Republicans blocked a cloture vote to confirm Hagel on Valentine's Day, pushing the decision back until after their President's Day recess.


Democrats framed that rejection as a filibuster, while Republicans said they needed another week to discuss the candidate's record.


"This is a very controversial nominee. There is a desire to not end debate now," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that Thursday. "We feel like come back next week, after the break, unless there is some bombshell I'd be ready to move on to vote."


Ten days later, GOP Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona predicted the Senate would go through with a vote today.


A group of 15 Republicans sent a letter to Obama last week asking him to withdraw Hagel's nomination. Coburn, one of the senators who signed that letter, said the fight among lawmakers over Hagel's qualifications would weaken him should he become secretary.


"I like Chuck Hagel as an individual, but the fact is, in modern times, we haven't had one defense secretary that's had more than three votes against him," Coburn said on "Fox News Sunday" this weekend. "And you're going to have 40 votes against him, or 35 votes. And that sends a signal to our allies as well as our foes that he does not have broad support in the U.S. Congress, which limits his ability to carry out his job."


McCain did not sign that letter.






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Huge protest vote pushes Italy towards deadlock


ROME (Reuters) - A huge protest vote by Italians enraged by economic hardship and political corruption pushed the country towards deadlock after an election on Monday, with voting projections showing no coalition strong enough to form a government.


With more than two thirds of the vote counted, the projections suggested the center left could have a slim lead in the race for the lower house of parliament.


But no party or likely coalition appeared likely to be able to form a majority in the upper house or Senate, creating a deadlocked parliament - the opposite of the stable result that Italy desperately needs to tackle a deep recession, rising unemployment and a massive public debt.


Such an outcome has the potential to revive fears over the euro zone debt crisis, with prospects of a long period of uncertainty in the zone's third largest economy.


Italian financial markets took fright after rising earlier on hopes for a stable and strong center-left led government, probably backed by outgoing technocrat premier Mario Monti.


The projected result was a stunning success for Genoese comic Beppe Grillo, leader of the populist 5-Star Movement, who toured the country in his first national election campaign hurling obscenity-laced insults against a discredited political class.


With vague election promises and a team of almost totally unknown candidates, the shaggy haired comedian channeled pure public anger against what many see as a sclerotic and useless political system.


The likely result was also a humiliating slap in the face for colorless center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who appeared to have thrown away a 10-point opinion poll lead less than two months ago against Silvio Berlusconi's center right.


Berlusconi, 76, who staged an extraordinary comeback from sex and corruption scandals since diving into the campaign in December, appeared to be leading in the Senate race, but Grillo's projected bloc of Senators would leave him well short of a majority.


Projections gave Bersani's center-left alliance a lead of less than one percentage point in the lower house. If confirmed, that would be enough to control the chamber because of election laws that guarantee a 54 percent majority to the party with the largest share of the vote.


In the Senate the picture was different. The latest projection from RAI state television showed Berlusconi's bloc winning 112 Senate seats, the center-left 105 and Grillo 64, with Monti languishing on only 20 after a failed campaign which never took off. The Senate majority is 158.


Berlusconi, a master politician and communicator, wooed voters with a blitz of television appearances and promises to refund a hated housing tax despite accusations from opponents that this was an impossible vote buying trick.


Grillo has attacked all sides in the campaign and ruled out a formal alliance with any group although it was not immediately known how he would react to his stunning success or how his supporters would behave in parliament.


DANGER OF NEW ELECTION


A bitter campaign, fought largely over economic issues, made some investors fear a return of the kind of debt crisis that took the euro zone close to disaster and brought the technocrat Monti to office, replacing Berlusconi, in 2011.


The projected results showed more than half of Italians had voted for the anti-euro platforms of Berlusconi and Grillo.


Officials from both center and left warned that the looming deadlock could make Italy ungovernable and force new elections.


A center-left government either alone or ruling with Monti had been seen by investors as the best guarantee of measures to combat a deep recession and stagnant growth in Italy, which is pivotal to stability in the currency union.


The benchmark spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their German equivalent widened from below 260 basis points to above 300 and the Italian share index lost all its previous gains after projections of the Senate result.


"These projections suggest that we are heading for an ungovernable situation", said Mario Secchi, a candidate for Monti's centrist movement.


Stefano Fassina, chief economic official for Bersani's center-left, said: "The scenario from the projections we have seen so far suggests there will be no stable government and we would need to return to the polls."


If the results are confirmed the only possibility looks like a "grand coalition" combining right and left, like the one Monti led for a year. But politicians said before the vote this could not work for long and would struggle to work decisively.


Monti helped save Italy from a debt crisis when Rome's borrowing costs were spiraling out of control, but few Italians now see him as the savior of the country, in its longest recession for 20 years.


Grillo's movement rode a huge wave of voter anger about both the pain of Monti's austerity program and a string of political and corporate scandals. It had particular appeal for a frustrated younger generation shut out of full-time jobs.


"I'm sick of the scandals and the stealing," said Paolo Gentile, a 49-year-old Rome lawyer who voted for 5-Star.


"We need some young, new people in parliament, not the old parties that are totally discredited."


Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, exploited anger against Monti's austerity program, accusing him of being a puppet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but in many areas Grillo was a bigger beneficiary of public discontent.


Italy desperately needs a strong, reform-minded government to revive growth after two decades of stagnation and address problems ranging from record youth unemployment to a dysfunctional justice system and a bloated public sector.


Italians wrung their hands at prospects of an inconclusive result that will mean more delays to these reforms.


"It's a classic result. Typically Italian. It means the country is not united. It is an expression of a country that does not work. I knew this would happen," said 36-year-old Rome office worker Roberta Federica.


Another office worker, Elisabetta Carlotta, 46, shook her head in disbelief. "We can't go on like this," she said.


(Additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei, Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones, Naomi O'Leary and Giuseppe Fonte in Rome and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Peter Graff)



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NY Times to rebrand Herald Tribune in its own image






NEW YORK: For a decade the International Herald Tribune has been the global edition of the New York Times in all but name. On Monday, the parent company made it official.

In a statement, the New York Times Company said the 125-year-old offshoot of the defunct New York Herald Tribune will be rechristened sometime this fall as the International New York Times.

"The digital revolution has turned the New York Times from being a great American newspaper to becoming one of the world's best-known news providers," said New York Times Company chief executive Mark Thompson.

"We want to exploit that opportunity," said the former BBC boss, adding that a new website for international readers is also in the pipeline.

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) was co-owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post from 1967 until 2003, when the Times became its sole proprietor and restyled it as "the global edition of the New York Times."

It almost exclusively showcased New York Times content in a bid to appeal to high-earning anglophone globe-trotters in competition with global editions of the Wall Street Journal and Britain's Financial Times.

Sold in more than 160 countries and territories, it has a daily circulation of more than 226,000, an IHT spokeswoman told AFP by email.

Prior to 1967 the IHT was known as the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune -- immortalized in Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave classic "Breathless" by Jean Seberg in a tight yellow T-shirt hawking copies on the Champs-Elysees.

The New York Times published an international edition under its own name from 1946 until it bought into "the Trib" and helped oversee its development as a global media brand through the use of satellite printing plants.

"I have to say I'm sorry to see the Herald Tribune go," said Charles Robertson, author of "The International Herald Tribune: The First 100 Years" and an IHT reader since his childhood in Switzerland.

"I suppose, once the Times pushed out the Washington Post, it was probably inevitable," Robertson, a professor emeritus at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, told AFP.

News of the rebranding came less than three weeks after the New York Times Company posted a 2012 group profit of $133 million, compared with a loss of $39.7 million in 2011.

It gave no breakdown of profit or loss figures for its newspapers, but earlier this month it said it was putting the Boston Globe and other New England assets up for sale to focus on its eponymous core product.

"The New York Times is a very strong brand in the United States (and) there are enough people globally who still read it," said Joscelyn MacKay, senior securities analyst at Morningstar in Chicago.

"The content itself will have to become a bit more global ... but I think it is a definite feasible target for them," she told AFP.

"Whether or not it's going to move the needle over the long run remains to be seen, given the challenges that print media faces."

The International New York Times "will be edited from Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York," according to Monday's statement, and new investments will be made "in print, web and mobile platforms."

IHT spokeswoman Vicky Taylor, in an email from London, said there are "currently no plans to cut staff numbers or offer buyouts."

Half of those on the IHT payroll are in France, where labor costs are higher than the United States or Britain.

"In many ways it will be business as usual at the IHT because as an organization we've already taken significant steps to align with the New York Times to the benefit of readers and advertisers," Taylor said.

"Making the full transition to a multi-platform International New York Times is the next logical step."

-AFP/ac



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94% women feel unsafe travelling alone in India, survey finds

NEW DELHI: The Delhi gang-rape incident has not just bruised the image of the national Capital, but the country as well. A travel survey has found that 94% women feel unsafe traveling alone, while 84% voted for Delhi as the most unsafe metro. The findings come at a time when an increasing number of women admitted that they preferred to travel alone both for work and leisure.

TripAdvisor, a leading travel site, surveyed 500 women to find that 84% women claimed to have travelled alone for leisure, business or both. The respondents were a mix of working women, including a number of self employed, as well as homemakers.

The survey also brings to light the disturbing fact that 94% women worry about their safety — always or at least sometimes — when they travel alone within India. Among women who said they travel alone on work, 37% agreed that they don't mind travelling alone but worry about their safety.

Even more dismal is the fact that more women travelers have a better sense of safety overseas than in India. Around 24% respondents said they worry when they travel within India but not when they travel to international destinations, while only 6% suggested otherwise.

Despite the fear and worry, only 33% women said they carry any item for self defense when travelling to a new or unfamiliar city.

Due to the recent spate of crime against women, Delhi has gained notoriety with 84% women claiming it to be the most unsafe metro in the country. Mumbai came out on top as the city considered safest by 34% women. Ahmedabad and Bangalore were tied at a distant second with 12% each.

Among the states, Delhi NCR again topped the hall of shame with 60% women voting it as the most unsafe. At a distant second is Bihar (18%), followed by Uttar Pradesh (8%). A majority of 27% respondents said they considered Maharashtra to be the safest state, followed by Gujarat (15%) and Karnataka (10%).

According to TripAdvisor country manager Nikhil Ganju, "The rise in women travelling alone on business is understandable fallout of the increase in the number of working women. The real surprise is the significant number of Indian women who are choosing to travel solo on vacation. Another interesting insight that highlights a latent opportunity for the hospitality sector is that 78% respondents said they would prefer to stay in an all women's hotel or on a women exclusive floor in a hotel, when travelling alone."

In a break from tradition, Indian women enjoy traveling alone for leisure. Among women who travel alone, 41% respondents said they actually enjoyed travelling alone for work. In addition, 76% said they enjoy going solo on holidays.

And lack of company is definitely not a complaint. In fact, majority (58%) said their biggest incentive for solo vacations was that they could do all the things they want without having to worry about what someone else wants. Around 34% women indicated they loved travelling alone as it was adventurous and exciting. Another 32% claimed the thrill of managing everything by themselves was a motivator as well.

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Koop, who transformed surgeon general post, dies


With his long silver beard and uniform with braided trim, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop became one of the most recognizable figures of the Reagan era — and one of the most unexpectedly enduring.


His nomination in 1981 met a wall of opposition from women's groups and liberal politicians, who complained President Ronald Reagan selected Koop, a pediatric surgeon and evangelical Christian from Philadelphia, only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Soon, though, he was a hero to AIDS activists, who chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances but booed other officials. And when he left his post in 1989, he left behind a landscape where AIDS was a top research and educational priority, smoking was considered a public health hazard, and access to abortion remained largely intact.


Koop, who turned his once-obscure post into a bully pulpit for seven years during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and who surprised both ends of the political spectrum by setting aside his conservative personal views on issues such as homosexuality and abortion to keep his focus sharply medical, died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.


An assistant at Koop's Dartmouth College institute, Susan Wills, confirmed his death but didn't disclose its cause.


Although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy, Koop described himself as "the health conscience of the country" and said modestly just before leaving his post that "my only influence was through moral suasion."


A former pipe smoker, Koop carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States; his goal had been to do so by 2000. He said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine. And he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.


"A lot of people don't realize what an important role he played in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. At the time, he really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," said Chris Collins, a vice president of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


Although Koop eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy, his nomination met staunch opposition.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed after he told a Senate panel he would not use the surgeon general's post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word.


In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for "safe sex" and advocating sex education as early as third grade.


He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households, the largest public health mailing ever.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop further angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


Koop maintained his personal opposition to abortion, however. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day, but Reagan would not interfere.


Koop, worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, opened his institute at Dartmouth to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats.


He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


Koop received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it.


In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children — Allen, Norman, David and Elizabeth. David, their youngest son, was killed in a mountain climbing accident when he was 20.


Koop was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.


He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was by far the best-known surgeon general, and for decades afterward was still a recognized personality.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


___


Ring reported from Montpelier, Vt. Cass reported from Washington. AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.


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