Friday, July 4, 2008
WARSAW, July 4 (Reuters) - Poland rejected as insufficient on Friday a U.S. offer to boost its air defences in return for basing a "missile shield" on its territory but said it remained open to further talks with Washington.
The decision by Poland, a staunchly pro-American NATO ally, is a setback for the Bush administration's plans for global missile defence, which is intended to counter possible threats from what Washington calls "rogue states", particularly Iran.
"We have not reached a satisfactory result on the issue of increasing the level of Polish security," Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference after studying the final U.S. proposal.
"The aim of the negotiations, in my view, is to enhance the security of our country. We still agree that it is fundamental for us to maintain our alignment with the United States, which has been, is and will continue to be our strategic ally."
In Washington, a White House spokesman said the United States would continue its talks with Poland.
"Discussions will continue," Gordon Johndroe told Reuters in an e-mail message.
The details of the U.S. offer have not been made public, though Tusk said it included a proposal to site Patriot ground-to-air missiles on Polish soil for one year.
In the months-long negotiations, Tusk's centre-right government had sought billions of dollars worth of U.S. investment to upgrade Polish air defences in return for hosting 10 missile interceptors.
"We are ready to accept proposals or corrections from the American side which would include our proposal to increase (our) security. We can do this in a day, a week, a month," Tusk said.
The Czech Republic has agreed to host a tracking radar under the project. Its parliament has still to ratify the deal.
Russia has condemned the missile defence plan as a threat to its own security and has said it will target missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic -- its communist-era satellite states -- if the deployment goes ahead.
THREAT
"If the threat related to the shield indeed increases, then we need elements such as Patriots on Polish territory, and not just for one year," Tusk said, adding that the problem was not a question of money.
Political analysts said Tusk's rebuff to Washington demonstrated a new Polish self-confidence on the global stage. Warsaw is one of Washington's firmest allies in the region and has troops serving alongside its ally in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"This is the first time that Poland has said 'no' to the U.S. ... It certainly sends a signal to Washington that Poland's support should not be taken for granted in any circumstances," said Pawel Swieboda, head of demosEuropa, a Warsaw think-tank.
"But it is also the case that the government greatly raised expectations and that these were never very realistic. Poland does need some compensation (for hosting the interceptors) but they went too far in demanding Patriots."
Polish President Lech Kaczynski, a right-wing opponent of the Tusk government and a strong supporter of the shield plan, is now likely to step up his attacks on the government.
But analysts said the domestic political fallout would be limited as Polish voters are largely hostile to the project.
Washington has said it wants Poland to host the interceptors but that it would look elsewhere if Warsaw declines to take part. The Baltic republic of Lithuania, northeast of Poland, has been mooted as an alternative site for the interceptors. (Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Stephen Weeks)
By Patryk Wasilewski and Gareth Jones
A Restaurant That Floats in Thin Air, at Rarified Prices
Diners in Belgium eat suspended over 130 feet in the air by a large crane.
Imagine dining on tuna sashimi overlooking Belgium, or indulging in fresh lobster dangling next to a French cathedral.
Dinner in the Sky, a new restaurant venture developed by two Belgian entrepreneurs, takes the idea of going out to eat to a whole new level.
The table, which can fit up to 22 diners and three servers, is suspended from a crane hundreds of feet in the air. There are no walls, no doors, or floor or any markings of a traditional restaurant for that matter.
Dinners normally last one hour and clients can set the menu themselves, choosing anything from lobster to french fries, depending on the budget. They can even bring in infra red heating for an added cost.
David Ghysels and Stephan Kerkhofs came up with the idea of a floating restaurant that you could bring to any location you desired. But Dinner in the Sky brings sky-high dinning for a minimum cost of $6,500, which doesn't make it available to the average diner.
The event is very successful among corporate entertainers, who enjoy the combination of amusement park thrills, a bite to eat and the view. Kerkhofs wants to expand into other venues, such as weddings.
ABC News' Nick Watt went to Barcelona to dine in the sky. During the March visit, Barcelona was blustery and the windy conditions prevented cooking at altitude. Flambé is not on the menu. The wind made it almost impossible to drink, but champagne and canapés were plentiful.
hile the idea is exciting in theory, it does create a few practical concerns, such as what if you have to use the restroom?
"That's the same problem if you step into a helicopter. Go before," Kerkhofs said.
Another problem -- dropping things.
"So far, the only thing we've lost over the side is one champagne cork," Kerhofs said.
Also, safety is a concern. Though the chair is equipped with a six-strap seat belt to secure diners, Kerkhofs, too, worries.
"I'm not going to lie. This isn't a massively pleasurable experience for me," said Kerkhofs. "I have a real urge to hang on for dear life. Because when you look down, you see the ground."
Unlike in a conventional restaurant where the chef moves around the kitchen, here, the chef wears a harness and works in the center of the table, reminiscent of a Japanese hibachi setup.
The 7-ton table is suspended from eight cables, and no one has fallen off -- at least not yet.
The company operates all around the world, from Barcelona to Cape Town, London, Istanbul, Las Vegas, the United Arab Emirates and more. Now they're building more tables to keep up with a global demand.
Related
New Vacation Trend: Cooking School
Lunch at the Eiffel Tower? Oui, Oui
The only thing left to do is conquer the vertigo.
For more information, check out its Web site and watch a video explaining the experience.
An ice climber based in the Highlands has warned warming temperatures threaten the future of the winter pursuit in Scotland.
Neil Smith, of Kyle of Lochalsh, is one of a number of a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) climate change witnesses.
The conservation charity has published new research showing the UK is leading the G8 nations in meeting targets aimed at protecting the environment.
But Mr Smith said winter conditions have changed because of milder weather.
He said: "I would hate to see Scottish ice climbing becoming confined to the history books.
"It would be such a shame, but it looks like a real possibility and within a relatively short time period."
Other witnesses in the WWF monitoring scheme have been drawn from Japan, Russia, France and Germany.
Source bbcworld.com
A BOMB attached to a motorcycle exploded at a crowded market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, killing a girl and injuring 11 others, police said.
The blast at the busy Mannan Chowk also injured four policemen, one of them seriously, as well as seven other people, police official Raja Ishtiaq told AFP.
"The blast killed an eight-year-old girl and injured her beggar mother who were sitting near the motorcycle parked by some unknown man," another police official Abdul Ghafoor said, adding that no group had claimed responsibility for the attack.
The impoverished province of Baluchistan, of which Quetta is the capital and which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been wracked by an insurgency waged by ethnic Baluch tribes seeking more political rights and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.
Hundreds of people have died in violence in the province since the insurgency flared in late 2004.
The province has also been hit by attacks blamed on Taliban militants.
LONDON (AFP) — The Metropolitan Police were on Friday investigating a "frenzied, brutal and horrific attack" on two French students found stabbed to death in a charred London flat.
The bound and battered bodies of Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were found in the ground-floor flat in New Cross, southeast London, on Sunday when emergency services were called to the fire.
Bonomo had been stabbed nearly 200 times while Ferez suffered around 50 wounds in a prolonged ordeal, unidentified police sources quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency said.
The detective leading the investigation said they were dead before the fire took hold, adding that they were knifed in the head, neck, torso and back.
"The extent of the injuries are horrific," Detective Chief Inspector Mick Duthie said, adding that all the officers working on the case had been shocked by the extent of the violence.
"I have never seen injuries like this throughout my career. We are here today because I don't know why these boys were killed or who killed them."
Duthie appealed for witnesses to come forward to help explain "a frenzied, brutal and horrific attack."
As a forensic search of the scene continued, Duthie said the two students -- both biochemists from a university in Clermont-Ferrand, central France -- were on a short exchange programme at London's prestigious Imperial College.
They were due to return home at the end of July.
At the scene, police guarded the front door of the 1980s flat in a leafy cul-de-sac and tarpaulin covered a broken window. When the wind blew the tarpaulin up, it revealed several broken windows and a blackened sofa inside.
"A Spanish woman who lives in the block told me she had seen two men banging on their window" from the outside, said Christina Ramires, 32, a Brazilian journalist who lives on the same floor as the flat but had not been at home at the time of the attack.
"The Spanish woman said they were wearing hats... then she heard a very strong sound, a bomb."
Another resident in the road, Farzana Akbary, 27, from Afghanistan, said she had seen the force of the blast from the block of flats opposite.
"I just saw the fire as I was washing dishes in my kitchen. It blew out the windows of their flat," she told AFP.
Police said they were searching for a white man seen running away from the scene at the time of the explosion.
They also revealed that the flat had been burgled in the days leading up to the men's deaths, and a computer was stolen.
The university the men attended in Clermont-Ferrand, central France said they were "brilliant students." Bonomo, who was renting the flat where the attack took place, was head of the university's student union.
The deaths coincided with growing concern about knife crime and gang culture in London, which newly-elected Conservative mayor Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police chief Ian Blair have vowed to tackle.
Three teenagers were set to appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on Friday, charged with the murder of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella who was stabbed outside a London bar over the weekend.
Police and the Home Office say overall knife crime in London is falling. But 17 teenagers have been knifed to death so far this year -- already more than half the total number for the last 12 months.
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is locked in an internal debate over whether to present Congress with proposed legislation that would allow suspected terrorists to be held in the United States -- a possible first step toward closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- according to current and former officials.
The officials said the administration was not on the verge of shutting down Guantanamo. But the legislation under debate could make it easier to move some suspects to the United States by lessening the risk that federal courts would set them free in Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., or Charleston, S.C.
Last month's Supreme Court decision granting federal courts the power to review the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo has thrown the administration's detainee policy into doubt. Administration officials have been debating how best to react to the ruling, which restored habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees. This was the third time the high court had rejected the administration's attempts to hold detainees indefinitely without allowing them full access to civilian courts.
The administration would like to keep at Guantanamo the 80 prisoners it intends to try under military commissions and wants to jump-start those tribunals. Uncertain, though, is the fate of an additional 120 prisoners; the military believes they are too dangerous to release but lacks the evidence to try them.
One of the proposals under consideration, according to officials, would allow regular judicial review of those prisoners' detention. The proposal would include legislation ensuring that if a court finds that they should no longer be considered "enemy combatants," they would not be released but could be held while deportation procedures are begun.
Top Bush administration officials met this week to discuss the fate of Guantanamo and to debate various approaches.
On one side are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who believe that the United States should move to close Guantanamo. On the other side are Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey and Vice President Dick Cheney, who believe that closing the facility is impractical.
Getting any legislation through Congress is likely to be difficult. Republicans may be reluctant to pass anything that moves toward closing Guantanamo, especially if it means moving suspected terrorists to the United States. Liberal Democrats may be reluctant to sanction any sort of long-term detention without trial, arguing that it is an unnecessary infringement of civil liberties.
But Charles Stimson, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, said Thursday that Congress had an obligation to pass legislation.
"Congress' silence on this is no longer an option," he said.
Stimson, a former deputy assistant Defense secretary for detainee affairs, said that Congress needed to draft legislation to cover detainees who federal courts decide are not enemy combatants as well as those whose enemy-combatant status is upheld.
The measure, Stimson said, will have to determine how often enemy combatants' status is reviewed by the courts and what standards are used to assess the evidence.
As the administration ratchets up deliberations over its detainee policy, the Pentagon is pushing to move forward with the military commissions, which have been delayed for years by successful court challenges.
The Pentagon has ordered each of the military services to make dozens of lawyers available to assist with the trials.
Top lawyers are skeptical of the move, unsure if the commission trials are really ready to start. They also are concerned that dozens of lawyers could be sent to Guantanamo only to sit on their hands.
"We have a lot of demand for legal talent, and our resources are finite," said a Pentagon lawyer. "But the word is they want to move forward energetically, and they need prosecutors, defense counsel and support personnel. So we are saluting smartly."
The attorney, like other officials interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because no decisions about Guantanamo had been made.
The Guantanamo facility houses about 265 prisoners, but the administration has announced that it intends to release about 65 of them when it can arrange for transfers to their home countries.
Some officials within the administration favor a comprehensive approach to overhauling the detainee policy, possibly including asking Congress to set up a national security court to oversee the detention of terrorism suspects. They argue that, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling last month, the administration should create a detention policy that can withstand judicial and congressional scrutiny.
Others favor looking for ways to roll back the Supreme Court decision and keep Guantanamo functioning much as it has been.
But officials believe the administration is most likely to put forward the more modest proposal, which would ensure that any detainees found not to be enemy combatants would be deported rather than released in the United States.
In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, President Bush said his administration was still wresting with the Supreme Court decision.
"We're analyzing the decision and how to move forward, and there's no decision that is imminent on Guantanamo," Bush said. "But, nevertheless, we have an obligation to live under the law, so we are fully analyzing the impact of the law. . . . We'll get it done as quickly as possible."
In remarks to reporters Thursday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino highlighted the concern that federal courts could release some detainees, setting them free inside the United States.
They could then be held under immigration laws, she said, but under current law such detention could not exceed six months.
Administration officials said that deporting former enemy combatants could take much longer than six months and that additional legislation is needed to prevent such releases.
"There is considered judgment from many federal government lawyers, all the way up to the attorney general of the United States, that it is a very real possibility that a dangerous detainee could be released into the United States as a result of this Supreme Court decision," Perino said.
Taipei/Beijing - For the first time in five decades, China and Taiwan launched regular direct flights on Friday, signaling a new direction in relations between the long-time rivals.
A China Southern Airlines plane departed from Guangzhou at 6:31 am with 100 tourists among the 258 passengers on board bound for Taipei where it landed at 8:10 am after a 1,124-kilometre flight.
China Southern Chairman Liu Shaoyong flew the Airbus A330 and said he was excited because Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family.
'It feels like coming home. But I still hope we can launch regular flights and I believe that will happen soon,' he told reporters at the Taoyuan International Airport outside Taipei.
Four other weekend chartered flights also took off Friday morning from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Xiamen. Altogether, approximately 760 Chinese tourists are on their way for one-week visits in Taiwan.
Taiwan also launched nine charter flights bound for China, carrying tourists, businessmen and an 'inaugural delegation' consisting of local officials to China.
In Beijing, a ceremony was held prior to the departure of the cross-Strait weekend charter flights and China's CCTV aired a special cross-strait charter flight programme to give live coverage of the launch of the charter flights and invited scholars to discuss Taipei-Beijing ties.
In Taiwan, the Tourism Bureau welcomed Chinese tourists at various airports with flowers, lion dances and firecrackers. The newly-renovated Taipei Songshan Airport greeted Chinese tourists with a photo showing Chinese President Hu Jintao shaking hands with Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of Taiwan's ruling party KMT, in Beijing on May 28.
Wang Yi, director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said that Friday marked a new beginning in the history of cross-Strait exchanges.
Many of the Chinese tourists arriving in Taiwan said they were overwhelmed by the welcome they received and hoped the restriction that Chinese tourists must visit Taiwan with as groups, not as individual travelers, will soon be scrapped.
The opening of weekend charter flights is part of President Ma Ying-jeou's package to seek economic cooperation with China and reduce the risk of war.
Ma, inaugurated on May 20, hopes that the weekend charter flights can be expanded to daily flights and eventually to regular flights across the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan, seat of the exiled Republic of China since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, has banned direct sea, air and trade links with China since 1949, and has banned Chinese mainlanders from entering Taiwan.
The ban has forced people travelling across the Taiwan Strait to transit through a third place, usually Hong Kong.
China has repeatedly called on Taiwan to drop the bans to pave the way for Taiwan's unification with the motherland.
But Ma, while supporting economic integration with China, has rejected China's call for unification, saying conditions are not ripe for discussing unification yet.
NEW YORK, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Crude futures surged and settled above 145 U.S. dollars a barrel for the first time Thursday after a rising dollar did not ease much of the investors' concern about supplies.
Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose 1.72 dollars to settle at a new record of 145.29 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In the early morning electronic trading the contract hit an all-time peak of 145.85 dollars a barrel.
Oil's Thursday rally was believed to have been driven by Wednesday's report of a bigger-than-expected drop in the U.S. crude stockpiles and the lingering concerns about the tension in the Middle East.
But the price hike eased after the dollar gained strongly against the euro. The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rate by a quarter point on Thursday. As the decision was long expected by the market, and the ECB played down prospect of further rate increase, the euro fell sharply against the dollar.
In London, Brent crude for August delivery hit a record of 146.69 dollars a barrel before settling up 1.82 dollars at 146.08 dollars a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange.
CALIFORNIA: Whipped by high winds and burning through drought-ridden wilderness areas, only about 5 percent of the Basin Complex Fire has been contained.
According to officials, evacuation order was extended to cover the 25 miles of coastline after the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning over higher winds and lower humidity.
Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency in 11 counties in central and Northern California where more than 1,000 fires have been burning for days, blackening more than 425,000 acres
California firefighters made a desperate stand as darkness fell on Thursday to save more than 4,000 homes and other structures from a pair of out-of-control wildfires burning about 170 miles apart along the California coast.
Israeli border police outside the house of Hussam Dwikat, who plowed a bulldozer into a busy street, killing three people
(JERUSALEM) — Israel should cut off outlying Arab neighborhoods from Jerusalem, Israel's vice premier proposed Thursday, the day after a Palestinian construction worker from one of these districts went on a deadly rampage in the city's center.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon proposed changing the route of Israel's separation barrier to exclude the Arab districts, saying it would improve security. The barrier already rings much of the city.
In Wednesday's attack, the assailant, Hussam Dwayat, 30, drove a massive construction vehicle in a bloody rampage — ramming buses, crushing cars and targeting pedestrians. Three people were killed before Israeli security personnel shot and killed him. Police said they believe Dwayat acted alone and was not connected to any Palestinian militant group.
No possible motive was provided though city officials confirmed that an order to demolish Dwayat's home was issued in 2005 on grounds that it was built illegally.
Dwayat won a stay in court, but was ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Many Palestinians in Jerusalem build illegally, saying it's very difficult for them to obtain permits from the Israeli authorities.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack saying Thursday, "We want peaceful solutions through negotiations."
Abbas, on an official visit to Slovenia, said President Bush phoned him just hours after the deadly rampage to "support" peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. He also said that Palestinian and Israeli delegations will have a meeting in Washington "in the coming days," but provided no details.
Still, Wednesday's attack raised new questions about the future of the city and the government's policy toward Jerusalem's estimated 250,000 Palestinian residents, who make up about one-third of the total population.
Dwayat, the assailant, was a resident of Sur Baher, one of those areas that became part of Jerusalem in 1967. Speaking to Israel's Army Radio station, Ramon said that Sur Baher and other outlying Palestinian neighborhoods "were never in Jerusalem." "They were annexed in 1967 and we call them Jerusalem, even though there is not one Jerusalemite there. No Israeli goes near them," he said.
He said these neighborhoods should be treated as if they are part of the West Bank "because that's what they were originally."
He added that Israel should consider moving the route of its West Bank separation barrier to put these villages outside Jerusalem's boundaries, and strip people there of their Israeli residency rights. "It would be much more difficult to carry out attacks like these and 50,000 Palestinians who live in those two neighborhoods would not be able to reach Jerusalem so easily if they didn't have blue (Israeli) identity cards," he said.
TOKYO: Israel was ready to use military action in Gaza as part of its preemptive measures, an Israeli minister said after the al-Quds attack.
"Terror and smuggling are the two grounds for Israeli military action in Gaza," Israel’s Environment Minister Gideon Ezra said during a visit to Tokyo.
"If there will be no terror or smuggling we will not need to act. But if we do have to resort to military action, we'll do it without any hesitation," he said.
A Palestinian on Wednesday killed 4 people and wounded 45 more as he rammed a bulldozer into buses and cars before being shot dead by Israeli police, who branded it a "terrorist attack".
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama insisted Thursday he had not changed his plan for immediate troop withdrawals from Iraq, despite earlier saying he might refine his policies.
Obama spoke to reporters for a second time Thursday in North Dakota, four hours after his remarks sparked reports, ahead of a planned visit to Iraq, that he was softening his plan to get all combat troops home within 16 months.
"I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades per month," Obama said.
"This is the same position that I had four months ago, it's the same position that I had eight months ago. It's the same position that I had 12 months ago."
"My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war. "Responsibly, deliberately, but decisively."
In an earlier meeting with reporters, Obama said he may "refine" his policies after consultations with generals on a trip to Iraq this month, details of which have not been announced for security reasons.
Obama, who based his primary campaign on vehement opposition to the Iraq war, said he would conduct a "thorough assessment" of his policies after the trip, his first to Iraq for two years.
The Illinois senator has faced fierce pressure from Republican foe John McCain over Iraq, who has said Obama should change his plans to take account of apparent security gains wrought by the recent US troop-surge strategy.
"When I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I am sure I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies," Obama was quoted as saying earlier by foreign media.
"I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability, that assessment has not changed."
