xNews® World News: BP puts containment cap on gushing Gulf well pipe

BP puts containment cap on gushing Gulf well pipe

BP puts containment cap on gushing Gulf well pipe
Afghan jirga to call for peace with Taliban
BP's battered brand draws U.S. consumer opposition
SCENARIOS - Is Thailand headed for peace or protests?
Mindful of North Korea, police boost G20 security
Not only goalies bamboozled by the World Cup ball
Japan's new PM takes power
Bangladesh fire death toll at 114, set to rise
EU and U.S. eye human rights in terrorism prevention
Japan's new PM Kan takes power
Muslim business expo opens in KL
Indonesian tycoon-politician denies tax bribes
Anwar's sodomy trial postponed to July 14
Japan's new PM takes power
Japan ruling party picks Kan for PM before election
BP lowers containment cap onto crippled wellhead
N.Korea warns of retaliation if referred to UN
S.Korea enforces tight security for G20 meeting
The cost of cutting cost
South Korea urges world to rein in reclusive North

BP puts containment cap on gushing Gulf well pipe

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 01:13 AM PDT

VENICE, La. (Reuters) - BP made promising strides in its latest bid to capture some of the oil spewing from its ruptured deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico, while President Barack Obama called off an overseas trip and prepared for another visit on Friday to the spill-stricken U.S. Gulf Coast.

Afghan jirga to call for peace with Taliban

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 01:13 AM PDT

KABUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of Afghan tribal elders and notables were set to make a formal call for peace with the Taliban on Friday, the final day of a traditional assembly that they said was a last chance to end a nine-year war.

BP's battered brand draws U.S. consumer opposition

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 01:13 AM PDT

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. consumers are venting frustration over the BP oil spill, demonstrating at gas stations and corporate offices, drumming up support on Facebook and waging a mock public relations campaign on Twitter.

SCENARIOS - Is Thailand headed for peace or protests?

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 01:13 AM PDT

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva won some breathing space in parliament this week and can now focus on addressing a yawning social divide that erupted into the bloodiest chapter in Thailand's recent history.

Mindful of North Korea, police boost G20 security

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 01:13 AM PDT

BUSAN, South Korea (Reuters) - South Korean police have stepped up security as the world's top finance officials fly to the divided peninsula where the two Koreas have been exchanging their most war-like rhetoric in years.

Not only goalies bamboozled by the World Cup ball

Posted: 03 Jun 2010 04:21 PM PDT

SYDNEY: Goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer is not alone in spending an inordinate amount of time with the controversial Jabulani World Cup football.

Australian coach Pim Verbeek said Friday that the flighty sphere had forced all the 23-man squad back into basic training to make sure passes are centimetre-perfect for the tournament, which begins June 11.

"We've started with a simple passing drill so every ball must be 100-per-cent good," the Dutchman told Australia's AAP news agency from the team's training grounds in South Africa.

"In this climate, it's impossible to play a ball half a metre not in the right place because the ball never stops. The ball keeps on going. We have to adjust to it."

Brazilian Julio Cesar, England's David James and Spain's Iker Casillas have led a goalkeeper backlash against the ball, which maker Adidas AG claims "offers maximum control and perfect grip."

Because it is welded together, the Jabulani has fewer seams and is closer to a perfect sphere than earlier World Cup offerings.

Verbeek said it was the combination of the Jabulani and the high altitude at the team's training grounds outside Johannesburg, which sits 1,750 metres above sea level, that had prompted him to go back to basic training techniques.

Goalies aghast, strikers in delirium.

"It's difficult to explain if you're not on the field, if you don't touch the ball yourself," he said. "A normal curling ball is impossible in altitude. The ball is not making the normal curl - that's very strange. To play a curling ball, you need air resistance, (but) there is no air resistance here."

Oddly enough, the coach said veterans were having more trouble with the Jabulani than younger players.

"Older players who've played already a long time the same way, they will probably have more problems with it than younger players, who don't have that already in their minds," Verbeek said.

For neighbours and eternal rivals New Zealand, there is the same divide, with goalies aghast at the ball and strikers in delirium.

Striker Rory Fallon said he hit a shot straight at reserve goalkeeper James Bannatyne and it moved and went around, leaving him gobsmacked.

He reckoned Shane Smeltz's winning goal in the warm-up against Serbia had a lot to do with the mercurial Jabulani - a view endorsed by Serbian goalkeeper Vladimir Stojkovic.

"It's a catastrophe," Stojkovic was reported as saying. "I played with many different balls, some of which wiggled or changed directions, but this one is the worst of them all."

- dpa

Japan's new PM takes power

Posted: 03 Jun 2010 04:13 PM PDT

By Hiroshi Hiyama

TOKYO: Former finance minister Naoto Kan became Japan's new leader today, pledging economic recovery and close ties with Washington after his predecessor quit over a festering dispute about a US air base.

A parliamentary vote confirmed Kan as the successor to Yukio Hatoyama, who tearfully resigned as prime minister on Wednesday, citing the row over the base on Okinawa island and money scandals that sullied his government.

Kan, a 63-year-old former civic activist, was also deputy prime minister in Hatoyama's centre-left government that came to power last year in a landslide election, ending half a century of almost non-stop conservative rule.

"My first job is to rebuild the country, and to create a party in which all members can stand up together and say with confidence, 'we can do it!'" a smiling Kan said after his party earlier installed him as its new leader.

Kan vowed to revitalise Asia's biggest economy, which has been in the doldrums since an investment bubble collapsed in the early 1990s.

"For the past 20 years, the Japanese economy has been at a standstill," said Kan. "Growth has stopped. Young people can't find jobs. This is not a natural phenomenon. It resulted from policy mistakes.

"I believe we can achieve a strong economy, strong finances and strong social welfare all at the same time," he said, pledging to reduce Japan's huge public debt which is nearing 200%of gross domestic product.

On foreign policy, Kan pointed at the threat posed by communist North Korea, the isolated and nuclear-armed regime that has been blamed for the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

"Japan has a lot of problems, including the North Korean issue," said Kan, stressing that US-Japanese ties remain the "cornerstone" of foreign policy.

He also said he would maintain Japan's goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020 from 1990 levels, one of the most ambitious targets of any country, and to seek an EU-style Asian community in future.

Uphill battle

It was not immediately clear whether Kan would stick with the expected July 11 date of upper house elections or delay the vote, in which his coalition will fight to keep its majority to avoid policy gridlock.

In one of his first meetings after the party vote, Kan met Shizuka Kamei, head of the tiny People's New Party, and agreed to maintain their coalition, which together gives them a paper-thin majority in the upper house.

But Kan faces an uphill battle to win back voters after the government's approval ratings under Hatoyama slumped below 20% this week.

Hatoyama's support plummeted after he backtracked on an election promise to move the unpopular US base off the island of Okinawa, enraging locals as well as the pacifist Social Democrats, who quit the ruling coalition.

The row badly damaged Tokyo's relations with Washington, which has been Japan's bedrock security ally since World War II and has almost 50,000 troops based in Japan, most of them in Okinawa.

Kan, the son of a factory manager and a graduate of applied sciences from a top university in Tokyo, campaigned in the 1970s for pacifist and environmental causes and entered Parliament with a leftist party in 1980.

He achieved popularity in the mid-1990s when as health minister he admitted government culpability in a scandal over HIV-tainted blood products.

When the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power last September he became deputy premier and headed a new National Strategy Bureau, tasked with wresting power from Japan's entrenched and secretive state bureaucracy.

In January Kan, although not a trained economist, took over as finance minister. In that post, he advocated a weaker yen and badgered the central bank to do more to help Japan recover from its worst post-war recession.

Sadakazu Tanigaki, leader of the conservative opposition Liberal Democratic Party, dismissed the DPJ's top-level reshuffle.

"It's an old-fashioned practice to change the cover page ahead of elections," he said.

- AFP

Bangladesh fire death toll at 114, set to rise

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 12:42 AM PDT

DHAKA (Reuters) - At least 114 people were killed in a fire that razed a crowded, centuries-old Dhaka neighbourhood overnight as rescue workers scrambled on Friday to pull bodies, many charred beyond recognition, from smouldering debris.

EU and U.S. eye human rights in terrorism prevention

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 12:42 AM PDT

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Human rights and respect for Islam and religious differences should play a vital role in efforts to combat terrorism, the European Union and the United States said in a joint declaration on Thursday.

Japan's new PM Kan takes power

Posted: 04 Jun 2010 12:07 AM PDT

TOKYO – Former finance minister Naoto Kan became Japan's new leader Friday, pledging economic recovery and close ties with Washington after his predecessor quit over a festering dispute about a US air base.

A parliamentary vote confirmed Kan as the successor to Yukio Hatoyama, who tearfully resigned as prime minister Wednesday,