The Greeks Are on the Brink Once More

Not too long ago, the only people who would watch votes in the Greek Parliament were those paid to do so as part of their jobs. Over the last couple of years, though, ballots in the historic and often raucous Parliament House have become required viewing for audiences around the world. It seems that every few months Greece’s future hangs on the voting intentions of a handful of deputies that hardly anyone outside their constituencies knows. This week, the world is in for another tension-filled episode of this particular Greek drama.

Greece’s 300 MPs are being called upon to approve the structural reforms and fresh spending cuts demanded by the country’s lenders. If the bills pass, the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund will allow the disbursement of Greece’s next bailout installment of 31.5 billion euros ($ 40 billion). However, some coalition MPs have already said they will not approve the measures. If the three-party government fails to get the majority it needs, it will likely collapse and Greece’s relationship with the euro will enter a new realm of uncertainty.

In two divisive elections this summer, Greece’s traditionally dominant political forces, center-right New Democracy and center-left Pasok, just about fended off the rising anti-austerity leftist party Syriza and clung to power. They had to call on the support of the pro-European Democratic Left, though. This means the stakes are higher for the upcoming parliamentary votes than they have ever been before.

“The outcome of national elections led to a fragile coalition government, which for the first time in recent history had a main mandate to keep Greece in the euro zone, an issue that was never in question in the past,” says Manos Giakoumis, research director at Euroxx Securities, a financial-services firm in Athens. “International lenders as well as the leaders of New Democracy and Pasok view the upcoming votes in Parliament as an answer to this indirect question of whether Greece should remain part of the euro zone or not, something like a referendum.”

The government has heightened the intensity of these votes by piling all the structural reforms and austerity measures—worth 13.5 billion euros, or 4.5 percent of GDP—into one draft law. The legislation, which runs to more than 500 pages, was submitted to Parliament on Monday evening, giving MPs about 48 hours to read it before the ballot on Wednesday night. This vote will be followed by one on the 2013 budget at midnight on Sunday.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, is looking for a positive outcome in time for a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday, Nov. 12, when the release of the Greek bailout should be rubber-stamped. But unrest within the coalition could scupper the premier’s plans.

Some deputies are unhappy about certain reforms demanded by the so-called troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF, while others are loath to approve a new round of austerity knowing that it will guarantee a deepening of Greece’s five-year recession. The budget foresees a contraction of 4.5 percent of GDP next year and unemployment leveling out at almost 23 percent. Some analysts regard these predictions as optimistic and forecast the recession to be far deeper and the jobless rate, already at 25 percent, to rise further.

Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis has indicated his party will not back the structural reforms because he opposes further changes to labor legislation, which has already been deregulated substantially over the past two years. One of the party’s 17 lawmakers has already quit and there are several others who have suggested they might leave if Kouvelis gives in to pressure to change his stance. On Monday, a potential compromise emerged by which Democratic Left MPs would vote “present” on Wednesday but in favor of the budget on Sunday. This would prevent Kouvelis and his deputies having to leave the coalition and thereby weakening its legitimacy.

Pasok, which had 33 seats in Parliament, also lost an MP last week after the departing deputy told party chief Evangelos Venizelos that he would vote against the bill. Since then, two more of the party’s lawmakers have said they will not support the measures. Ex-minister Andreas Loverdos said he feels he is being blackmailed into supporting the package.

Samaras met with his 127 MPs on Sunday and urged them to back the measures, arguing that this would secure Greece’s place in the euro zone. As of Monday night, the maximum votes the coalition could secure were 173 out of 300. A decision by the Democratic Left not to back the reforms would leave the government with 157 votes, still a majority but one slim enough to be threatened by desertions from Pasok or New Democracy.

To add to the tension, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of leftist Syriza, which has placed first in all of the opinion polls carried out since last month, issued on Sunday a call for new elections and more popular resistance to the government’s plans. Labor unions begin a 48-hour strike on Tuesday.

However, Giakoumis, the financial analyst, argues that receiving the next loan tranche, of which 23 billion euros will go directly toward recapitalizing Greek banks, is “probably the last chance for a rebound of the Greek economy.”

“Although recapitalization will not lead to a direct liquidity boost in the economy, it will help restore some of the lost confidence in the markets,” he says. “But potentially the clearest message would be to eliminate Greek euro exit scenarios. The approval of the disbursement should be the first step of a wider process, which would involve clear commitment by international lenders and restoring growth and confidence domestically.”

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Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks

AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.

Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.

The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.

In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.

Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.

The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.

The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.

Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION

The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.

The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.

Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.

Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.

They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.

“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.

The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.

A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.

In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.

Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.

(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)

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U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for captain of replica HMS Bounty

Charleston, South Carolina (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday suspended a four-day, round-the-clock search for Robin Walbridge, 63, the missing captain of the replica tall ship HMS Bounty, which sank in heavy seas stirred up by Hurricane Sandy.

Fourteen crew members were rescued from life rafts by Coast Guard helicopters on Monday, but Walbridge and another crew member, Claudene Christian, were washed overboard before they could make it to the rafts.

Christian, 42, was pulled from the sea later and flown to hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Walbridge and Christian families,” Captain Doug Cameron, chief of incident response for the Coast Guard 5th District, said in a statement. “Suspending a search and rescue case is one of the hardest decisions we have to make.”

Crews searched more than 90 hours and covered some 12,000 square nautical miles in the Atlantic Ocean, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said earlier this week that all members of the crew wore survival suits, which had flotation capability, and that water temperatures were about 77 degrees F (25 C), raising hopes Walbridge might be found.

The three-masted, 180-foot (55-metre) ship, built for the 1962 movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty,” was on its way from New London, Connecticut, to its winter berth in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was about 160 miles from the eye of the hurricane when it foundered.

The original Bounty, a British transport ‘square rigger,’ is famed for a mutiny in 1789. Marlon Brando starred as lead mutineer Fletcher Christian in the movie for which the ship was built.

In a short video of Walbridge posted on the Bounty’s Facebook page this week, he described being captain of the Bounty as “probably one of the greatest jobs in the world.”

Walbridge worked on the Bounty for 17 years, said his wife, Claudia McCann, who spoke with Reuters by telephone earlier this week.

“That was his passion,” McCann said.

Growing up in Vermont, his mother “encouraged us to smell the sea air” on trips to visit relatives in Boston, recalled his sister, Lucille Jansen, 67.

“He always looked after his crew first,” she added. “That’s the last memory we’ll have of him because he did exactly what a captain should do. He made sure the crew was safe.”

(Editing by David Adams and Peter Cooney)

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California GMO measure may fail after food industry fights back

(Reuters) – Major food and seed companies appear to be on the verge of defeating a California ballot initiative that, if passed on Tuesday, would create the first labeling requirement for genetically modified foods in the United States.

In a campaign reminiscent of this summer’s successful fight against a proposed tobacco tax in California, opposition funded by Monsanto Co, DuPont, PepsiCo Inc and others unleashed waves of TV and radio advertisements against Proposition 37 and managed to turn the tide of public opinion.

Four weeks ago, the labeling initiative was supported by more than two-thirds of Californians who said they intended to vote on November 6, according to a poll from the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. On Tuesday, their latest poll showed support had plummeted to 39 percent, while opposition had surged to almost 51 percent.

The swing in sentiment in the final weeks was predicted by pollsters, based on the power of a $ 46 million “No on 37″ campaign, one of the best-funded for a California ballot measure fight. The ads claim the “badly written” initiative would increase the average family’s grocery bills by $ 400 annually and hobble California farmers. Opponents also take aim at what they call “special interest exemptions” for restaurant food and products from animals fed with grain containing genetically modified organisms, popularly known as GMOs.

Backers of the labeling initiative say consumers have the right to know what is in the food they eat. They dispute opponents’ cost projections and say labeling would not be burdensome to families or businesses.

They could still prevail on Tuesday if the polling turns out to be wrong, or if a last minute push by grassroots supporters takes root.

Many processed foods sold in the United States are made at least in part with corn, soybeans or other crops that have been genetically modified – crossed with DNA from other species to do things like make them resistant to insects or weed killer.

Each side accuses the other of resorting to desperate measures to mislead voters and using science that falls short of rigorous standards.

Such polarized debate is common in California, where ballot measures play a big role in governing. But labeling proponents say it also speaks to the research gap around GMOs, specifically a lack of mandated government studies that would show whether long-term consumption of GMOs causes health problems.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined labels are not needed for GM crops that are “substantially equivalent” to non-GM crops. The United States does not require labeling or mandatory independent pre-market safety testing for GMOs. At least three dozen countries require labeling and mandatory pre-market safety testing, said Michael Hansen, senior scientist from watchdog group Consumer Reports.

Some food and agriculture experts predict food companies would remove genetically modified ingredients rather than label them just for California – a move that would hit the multi-billion genetically modified seed business, where Monsanto and DuPont are market leaders.

Monsanto, the largest backer of the campaign with more than $ 8 million in funding, and DuPont say Proposition 37 would mislead consumers. PepsiCo referred reporters to the “No on 37″ campaign.

TARGETING FLAWS IN INITIATIVE

Consumer advocates say the “No on 37″ campaign has employed many of the same tactics the tobacco industry used this summer in California in a $ 47 million campaign that defeated Proposition 29, which would have raised cigarette taxes by $ 1 per pack to fund cancer research and other health efforts.

Opponents of the tobacco tax overcame early support approaching 70 percent by flooding airwaves with ads, including one featuring a doctor in a white coat warning that tobacco tax proceeds would not be spent on cancer treatment and could be shipped out of state. Outgunned supporters said those claims were false.

The food and tobacco industry campaigns both employed messages that weren’t “arguing with the premise of the initiatives, but rather making picky criticisms of the details of the initiatives,” said anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, a professor and researcher at the University of California-San Francisco.

“No on 37″ spokeswoman Kathy Fairbanks rejects the notion of copycat tactics and said the similarities between the two campaigns are limited to pointing out flaws in the initiatives and spending significant money on ads.

Backers of Proposition 37, including thousands of individual donors, organic food companies and natural health news provider Joseph Mercola, have been outspent roughly six to one, according to campaign reports filed with the California Secretary of State. In their final push, they are trying to trumpet cases where they say opponents have used misinformation to sway the public.

MISSTEPS ON BOTH SIDES

Both sides have made missteps.

Supporters of Proposition 37 got a boost when the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said “No on 37″ inaccurately stated in the California official voter information guide that the academy had concluded that GMOs were safe.

“We are concerned that California’s voters are being misled to believe the nation’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals is against Proposition 37, when in fact, the academy does not have a position on the issue,” its president said in a statement in early October.

“No on 37″ said it based its information on a policy statement on the academy’s website and that it was not aware the position had expired in 2010.

The FDA also set the record straight on a “No on 37″ mailer that put the FDA’s logo below a quote criticizing efforts like the California labeling measure as “inherently misleading.” The use of the quote next to the logo made it appear that FDA had weighed in on the fight.

FDA spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said the agency made no such statement and had no position on the initiative. “Yes on 37″ also asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the allegedly fraudulent misuse of FDA’s seal in that mailer – something that won’t be resolved until well after the election.

Then, just four days before the vote, supporters of Proposition 37 fumbled the facts about the status of its DOJ request, releasing a statement titled: “FBI opens investigation into No on 37 shenanigans.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California quickly responded: “Neither the FBI nor this office has a pending investigation related to this matter.”

“Yes on 37″ said it issued its statement after a field agent for the FBI called its attorney. It later revised its statement to say that the U.S. Attorney’s office had referred the matter to the FDA, which like other federal agencies has its own criminal investigations unit.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Stacey Joyce)

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HSBC profits to gain from cuts to bad debts, costs

LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC Holdings is expected to report a jump in quarterly profits on Monday as lower losses from bad debts and a cost-cutting plan outweigh mis-selling charges and the impact of tough economic conditions across the world.

Europe’s biggest bank will be the last of Britain’s major lenders to report and all are facing intense scrutiny on how far they are streamlining operations, the impact of tougher regulations, and their standards as they get hit with fines and compensation charges for past misconduct.

HSBC <0005.HK> Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver kicked off the bank’s restructuring in early 2011, before most rivals, and the benefit is starting to feed through to the bottom line.

The bank should report an underlying profit – after stripping out the impact of disposals and changes in the value of its own debt – in the July-September quarter of between $ 4.9 billion and $ 6.6 billion, according to a range of analysts’ forecasts, up from $ 3 billion a year earlier.

Profits will come in at $ 5.4 billion, according to Credit Suisse analysts.

HSBC, whose origins date back to 1865 as a financier of trade between Europe and Asia, operates in 84 countries and Gulliver is well into his plan for $ 3.5 billion in cuts, axe unprofitable areas and direct investment to Asia.

He has cut 27,000 jobs and sold or closed 26 businesses, including selling its U.S. credit card arm and half of its U.S. branches.

HSBC’s bad debts in the third quarter are predicted to drop to $ 2.2-2.5 billion from $ 3.9 billion a year ago. Operating costs should also drop by more than $ 1 billion.

But Gulliver faces scrutiny on whether he can get costs to below 52 percent of revenue from around 57.5 percent in the last year.

He also aims to lift return on equity, a key measure of profitability, to 12-15 percent in 2013. In H1 2012, it was 10.5 percent.

Other problems also continue to cast a shadow, including the size of a fine it faces for lax anti-money laundering controls in the United States.

On Sunday, Sky News reported that HSBC was about to raise its provision for fines from U.S. authorities by $ 800 million to $ 1.5 billion. HSBC declined to comment.

Analysts have said the bank may also have to set aside about 150 million pounds more to cover mis-selling of UK payment protection insurance.

HSBC is also one of more than a dozen banks under scrutiny in the Libor global interest rate-rigging scandal that has put the industry’s culture and standards under fire.

Chairman Douglas Flint on Monday will appear before UK lawmakers investigating standards. He will appear alongside new Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins and Santander UK boss Ana Botin at 1600 GMT.

HSBC benefits from its strong position in faster growing Asian markets, and analysts estimate its investment bank should deliver profits of more than $ 2 billion as revenues rise to $ 4.4-4.7 billion, mirroring the strong fixed income performance shown by rivals.

(Reporting by Steve Slater, additional reporting by Natalie Huet; editing by Jason Neely)

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As foreigners go, Afghan city is feeling abandoned

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — By switching from studying business management to training as a nurse, 19-year-old Anita Taraky has placed a bet on the future of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar — that once foreign troops are gone, private-sector jobs will be fewer but nursing will always be in demand.

Besides, if the Taliban militants recapture the southern Afghan city that was their movement’s birthplace and from which they were expelled by U.S.-led forces 11 years ago, nursing will likely be one of the few professions left open to women.

Taraky is one of thousands of Kandaharis who are weighing their options with the approaching departure of the U.S. and its coalition partners. But while she has opted to stay, businessman Esmatullah Khan is leaving.

Khan, 29, made his living in property dealing and supplying services to the Western contingents operating in the city. Property prices are down, and business with foreigners is already shrinking, so he is pulling out, as are many others, he said.

Many are driven by a certainty that the Taliban will return, and that there will be reprisals.   

“From our baker to our electrician to our plumber, everyone was engaged with the foreign troops and so they are all targets for the Taliban. And unless the government is much stronger, when the foreign troops leave, that is the end,” Khan said.

The stakes are high. Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, is the southern counterweight to Kabul, the capital. Keeping Kandahar under central government control is critical to preventing the country from breaking apart into warring fiefdoms as it did in the 1990s.

“Kandahar is the gate of Afghanistan,” said Asan Noorzai, director of the provincial council. “If Kandahar is secure, the whole country is secure. If it is insecure, the whole country will soon be fighting.”

Even though Kandahar city has traffic jams and street hawkers to give it an atmosphere of normality, there are dozens of shuttered stores on the main commercial street, it’s almost too easy to find a parking space these days, and shopkeepers are feeling the pinch.

Dost Mohammad Nikzad said his profits from selling sweets have dropped by a half or more in the past year, to about $ 30 a day, and he has had to cut back on luxuries.

He said that every month he would buy a new shalwar kameez, the tunic favored by Afghan men; now he buys one every other month.

“I only go out to eat at a restaurant once a week. Before I would have gone multiple times a week,” Nikzad said, as he stood behind his counter, waiting for customers to show.

The measurements of violence levels contradict each other. On the one hand, many Kandaharis say things are better this year. On the other hand, the types of violence have changed and, to some minds, gotten worse.

“Before, we were mostly worried about bomb blasts. Now … we are afraid of worse things like assassinations and suicide attacks,” said Gul Mohammad Stanakzai, 34, a bank cashier.

Prying open the Taliban grip on Kandahar and its surrounding province has cost the lives of more than 400 international troops since 2001, and many more Afghans, including hundreds of public officials who have been assassinated by the Taliban.

Kandahar province remains the most violent in the country, averaging more than five “security incidents” a day, according to independent monitors. In Kandahar city, suicide attacks have more than doubled so far this year compared with the same period of 2011, according to U.N. figures.

“They are not fighting in the open the way they were before. Instead they are planting bombs and trying to get at us through the police and the army,” said Qadim Patyal, the deputy provincial governor.

The Taliban have said in official statements that they are focusing more on infiltrating Afghan and international forces to attack them. In the Kandahar governor’s office, armed Afghan soldiers are barred from meetings with American officials lest they turn on them, Patyal said.

And many point out that the “better security” is only relative. By all measures — attacks, bombings and civilian casualties — Kandahar is a much more violent city now than in 2008, before U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a troop surge.

There are no statistics on how many people have left the city of 500,000, but people are fleeing the south more than any other part of the country, according to U.N. figures. About 32 percent of the approximately 397,000 people who were recorded as in-country refugees were fleeing violence in the south, according to U.N. figures from the end of May.

The provincial government, which is supposed to fill the void left by the departing international forces, has suffered heavily from assassinations. It suffered a double blow in July last year with the killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai who was seen as the man who made things work in Kandahar, and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of the city.

Now, Noorzai says, he can neither get the attention of ministers in Kabul nor trust city officials to do their jobs.

He remembers 2001, when he and others traveled to the capital flying the Afghan flag which had just been reinstated in place of that of the ousted Taliban. “People were throwing flowers and money on our car, they were so happy to have the Afghan flag flying again,” he said.

“When we got power, what did we give them in return? Poverty, corruption, abuse.”

Mohammad Omer, Kandahar’s current mayor, insists that if people are leaving the city, it is to return to villages they fled in previous years because now security has improved.

Zulmai Hafez disagrees. He has felt like a marked man since his father went to work for the government three years ago, and is too frightened to return to his home in the Panjwai district outside Kandahar city. He refused to have his picture taken or to have a reporter to his home, instead meeting at the city’s media center.

“It’s the Taliban who control the land, not the government,” Hafez said. He notes that the government administrator for his district sold off half his land, saying he would not be able to protect the entire farm from insurgents. Many believe the previous mayor was murdered because he went after powerful land barons.

Land reform is badly needed, and the mayor is angry about people who steal land, but he offers no solution. Kandahar only gets electricity about half the day. The mayor says it’s up to the Western allies to fix that. But the foreign aid is sharply down. Aid coming to Kandahar province through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the largest donor, has fallen to $ 63 million this year from $ 161 million in 2011, according to U.S. Embassy figures.

The mayor prefers to talk about investing in parks and planting trees. “I can’t resolve the electricity problem, but at least I can provide a place in the city for people to relax,” he said.

The only people thinking long-term appear to be the Taliban.

“The Americans are going and the Taliban need the people’s support, so they are trying to avoid attacks that result in civilian casualties,” said Noor Agha Mujahid, a member of the Taliban shadow government for Kandahar province, where he oversees operations in a rural district. “After 2014 … it will not take a month to take every place back.”

One of the biggest worries is the fate of women who have made strides in business and politics since the ouster of the Taliban.

“What will these women do?” asked Ehsanullah Ehsan, director of a center that trains more than 800 women a year in computers, English and business. It was at his center where Anita Taraky studied before switching to nursing.

“Even if the Taliban don’t come back, even if the international community just leaves, there will be fewer opportunities for women,” he said.

On the outskirts of the city stands one of the grandest projects of post-Taliban Kandahar — the gated community of Ayno Maina with tree-lined cement homes, wi-fi and rooftop satellite dishes.

Khan, the departing businessman, says he bought bought 10 lots for $ 66,000 in Ayno Maina and has yet to sell any of them despite slashing the price,

He recalled that when he first went to the project office it was packed with buyers. “Now it is full of empty houses. No one goes there,” Khan said.

Only about 15,000 of the 40,000 lots have been sold, and 2,400 homes built and occupied, according to Mahmood Karzai, one of the development’s main backers and a brother of President Karzai. He argues, however, that prices are down all over Afghanistan, and that Ayno Maina is still viable, provided his brother gets serious about reform that will attract investors.

“Afghanistan became a game,” he said over lunch at the Ayno Maina office. “The game is to make money and get the hell out of here. That goes for politicians. That goes for contractors.”

He shrugged off allegations that he skimmed money from Ayno Maina, saying the claims were started by competitors in Kabul who assume everyone who is building something in Afghanistan is also stealing money.

He said the money went where it was needed: to Western-style building standards and security.

In downtown Kandahar, a deserted park and Ferris wheel serve as another reminder of thwarted hopes. Built in the mid-2000s, the wheel has been idle for two years according to a guard, Abdullah Jan Samad. It isn’t broken, he said, it just needs electricity. A major U.S.-funded project to get reliable electricity to the city has floundered and generators that were supposed to provide a temporary solution only operate part-time because of fuel shortages.

“The government should be paying for maintenance for the Ferris wheel,” the guard said. “When you build something you should also make sure to maintain it.”

____

Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.

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Food Trucks Heed the Call of Twitter in NYC’s Post-Sandy ‘Dead Zone’

New York City’s mobile food trucks may have shifted from simply trendy to necessity as they heed the call from neighborhoods that remain without power from post-Sandy tweets like these:

David Weber, president of the NYC Food Truck Association, tells TakePart that they’ve been coordinating directly with Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Emergency Management to get hot food into the neighborhoods most in need.

“The primary strategy is to send food trucks to neighborhoods that lost power and secondly to the shelters within those neighborhoods,” he says. “It’s a good Band-Aid for the short term, and at the moment, they have the food, propane, and wherewithal to be someplace where they could be of use.”

Some, like Wafels & Dinges, which have two trucks in the blackout zones, are keeping hard-working responders warm:

But as of Thursday morning, securing ingredients may be more difficult.  

“There are still logistical challenges in getting staff in to prep food and having enough food supplies. People who had food are starting to run out because a large portion of the [food delivery] trucks haven’t been getting into [Manhattan],” says Weber.

A few trucks that don’t have food available are heading to neighborhoods anyway, offering power strips so residents in neighborhoods without power can charge mobile devices and stay connected.

Unfortunately, access to fuel is an emerging problem:

“Right now, gas is my major concern,” says Thomas DeGeest, owner of six Wafels & Dinges trucks. “If I don’t find gas today, we have to shut down tomorrow. The gas situation caught me off-guard. I didn’t see that coming at all.”

Branded food trucks aren’t the only meals on wheels. Melanie Pipkin, Red Cross spokesperson, tells TakePart that of their 322 response vehicles, 200 of them are currently working on Sandy response.

Independent mobile food trucks are not part of the Red Cross’ national policy for disaster response, but perhaps they should be. In San Diego, for instance, local restaurateur David Cohn, who operates a number of restaurants and food trucks, has registered as a food vendor with the local Red Cross chapter should an earthquake or other disaster strike.

Courtney Pendleton, the San Diego Red Cross spokesperson, said a specific food truck partnerhsip is not in place right now, but it is something her office is working on.

“These would be agreements for local disasters, and most likely on a smaller scale,” she says.

Webber thinks it’s a good idea and says it’s something he’ll look into after New York City returns to normal.

 “I think the self-sufficiency of food trucks lends itself to this,” he said.

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Clare Leschin-Hoar covers seafood, sustainability and food politics. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, Grist, Eating Well and many more. @c_leschin | TakePart.com

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kate Moss opens up about modeling misery

NEW YORK (Reuters) – If you hate having your picture taken, you’re in good company – British supermodel Kate Moss does as well.

“I’m terrible at a snapshot. Terrible. I blink all the time. I’ve got facial Tourette’s,” she told Vanity Fair in the December issue, out on Wednesday.

Moss, who has graced countless magazine covers and was emblematic of the waif look popular in the 1990s, added “Unless I’m working and in that zone, I’m not very good at pictures.”

Moss, 38, opened up about her years spent before the camera, including now-legendary shoots that left her anxious, demoralized, and hungry.

Among her regrets is a 1992 Calvin Klein session that helped launched Moss’ career.

She recalled the shoot, at age 17 or 18, with Mark Wahlberg (then going by his rapper name, Marky Mark) and photographer Herb Ritts.

“I had a nervous breakdown,” she said. “It (the job) didn’t feel like me at all. I felt really bad about straddling this buff guy. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die.”

“It was just anxiety,” she added. “Nobody takes care of you mentally. There’s a massive pressure to do what you have to do (and) I was really little … I didn’t like it. But it was work, and I had to do it.”

When she was even younger, she posed nude for The Face – another regret.

“I see a 16-year-old now, and to ask her to take her clothes off would feel really weird. But they were like, ‘If you don’t do it, then we’re not going to book you again.’ So I’d lock myself in the toilet and cry and then come out and do it.”

Moss, who became associated with the “heroin chic” look after her early shoots, said “I had never even taken heroin – it was nothing to do with me at all.”

“I was thin,” she conceded. “But that’s because I was doing shows, working really hard … You’d get home from work and there was no food. You’d get to work in the morning, there was no food … You don’t get fed.”

Moss has kind words for her time with Johnny Depp in the mid-1990s, when she said she felt taken care of. After their break-up in 1998, “I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust. Nightmare. Years and years of crying.”

Now, she says, her years of partying and high living have ebbed. She married guitarist Jamie Hince in 2011 after a four-year romance. “I don’t real­ly go to clubs anymore. I’m actually quite settled.”

“Living in Highgate (in London) with my dog and my husband and my daughter! I’m not a hell-raiser.”

Still, she added, “Don’t burst the bubble. Behind closed doors, for sure I’m a hell-raiser.”

(Reporting by Chris Michaud, editing by Jill Serjeant and Sandra Maler)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nurses Who Saved NICU Babies Remember Harrowing Hurricane Night

Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.

On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses’ jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital’s patients, including the NICU nurses’ tiny charges, to evacuate.

“20/20″ recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.

On Monday night, as Sandy’s wind and rain buffeted the hospital’s windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.

For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn’t clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital’s generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.

Vanishing America: Jersey Shore Boardwalks Washed Away Watch Video

“Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine,” Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. “If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby.”

For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn’t breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.

Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby — he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.

“[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure,” Irache said, “and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go.”

One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.

The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies’ lungs.

“We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights,” Zanzotto-Tagle said. “I would say ‘Step, step, step.”

With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.

“We’re not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell … n the dark,” said Claudia Roman. “I was most worried about, ‘Let me not trip on this staircase as I’m carrying someone’s precious child, because that would be unforgivable.”

When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.

“I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink,” she said. “I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube.”

Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Anglogold strikers return to work

2 November 2012 Last updated at 10:31 ET

Striking miners at two South African Anglogold Ashanti pits have agreed to return to work as tensions across the country’s mineral sector ease.

Hundreds of miners have been holding underground sit-ins this week at the Anglogold Ashanti site at TauTona and Mponeng 40 miles west of Johannesburg.

The strikers demanded early payment of a bonus, an Anglogold spokesman said.

South Africa’s mining industry has been wracked since the summer by widespread strikes and sporadic violence.

“In both these cases these people, who represent less than 2% and 5% of the respective workforces, returned safely to surface after holding talks with the mines’ management,” said Anglogold Ashanti in a statement.

Employees had been promised a 1,500-rand ($ 173, £108) bonus, a company spokesman said, but this would only be paid out “at a later stage, based on safety and attendance outcomes”.

Work at the mines, which employ 10,000 people, is expected to resume with the night shift on Sunday.

A series of strikes across the mining industry has crippled output and had a major effect on the economy since August.

Mass dismissals

Many other mining companies besides Anglogold have been affected by the industrial unrest, in which over 80,000 workers have downed tools.

Striking workers have been involved in several fatal clashes.

In the worst incident, more than 40 people died in August in clashes between police and striking workers at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine near Rustenburg, 120km (70 miles) north-west of Johannesburg.

Miners have primarily been demanding higher wages, while the owners have variously responded with offers of conditional bonus payments, or mass dismissals.

Anglo American Platinum has sacked and subsequently reinstated 12,000 workers at its site in Rustenburg, but the miners have so far refused to return to work.

One mine belonging to Gold Fields remains shut after 8,500 workers were fired for striking, while on Thursday Xstrata sacked 400 workers for an illegal strike at its Kroondal chrome mine.

South Africa is one of the world’s biggest producers of precious metals and has a huge coal-mining industry.

Also on Friday, striking coal miners at the Mooiplaats mine returned to work.

The colliery’s owner, Coal of Africa, has agreed to increase their wages by 26% retroactively from July this year, including medical care and allowances for housing, shift and underground work.

BBC News – Business

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