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Friday, January 20, 2012
Book claims Kim's eldest fears NKorea may collapse (AP)
TOKYO ? A new book claims that the eldest son of North Korea's late leader Kim Jong Il believes the impoverished regime is in danger of collapse and that his young half-brother, chosen to lead after Kim's death, is merely a figurehead.
The book by Tokyo-based journalist Yoji Gomi went on sale Wednesday. He says it is based primarily on email exchanges he had with Kim Jong Nam over many years.
The book, titled "My Father, Kim Jong Il, and Me," drew immediate attention as a rare view into the family that has led the secretive country for decades ? though Kim Jong Nam is thought to be estranged from his family and the workings of government. Since Kim Jong Il's death Dec. 17, North Korea has been led by his youngest son, Kim Jong Un.
"Jong Un will just be a figurehead," the book quotes Kim Jong Nam as saying. It claims he said the collapse of North Korea's economy is likely unless it initiates reforms, which could also bring it down.
"Without reforms and liberalization, the collapse of the economy is within sight," he quoted Kim as saying. "But reforms and opening up could also invite dangers for the regime."
Gomi, a Tokyo Shimbun journalist who had assignments in Seoul and Beijing, claims he exchanged 150 emails and has spent a total of seven hours interviewing Kim Jong Nam, who was seen as a possible successor until he fell out of favor with Kim Jong Il in 2001.
Gomi says he met Kim Jong Nam in person in 2004, in Beijing, and twice last year. Gomi was not immediately available for comment on the book.
Not long after Kim Jong Il's funeral, Jong Nam suggested in an interview with a Japanese TV network that he opposes a hereditary transfer of power to his young half-brother, who is believed to be in his late 20s.
That was a rare public sign of discord in the tightly choreographed succession process, but analysts said Jong Nam spends so much time outside his native land that his opinion carries little weight.
Kim Jong Nam, who did not attend the funeral, made similar comments in his communications with Gomi, the book claims.
"As a matter of common sense, a transfer to the third generation is unacceptable," Kim Jong Nam was quoted as saying in an email dated this month. "The power elite that have ruled the country will continue to be in control."
He added: "I have my doubts about whether a person with only two years of grooming as a leader can govern."
Party and military officials have moved quickly to install Kim Jong Un as "supreme leader" of the people, party and military.
But the new ruler's youth and quick ascension to power have raised questions in foreign capitals about how ready he is to inherit rule over this nation of 24 million with a nuclear program as well as chronic trouble feeding all its people.
A senior North Korean party official, however, told the AP in a recent interview that Kim Jong Un was ready to lead and had spent years working closely with his late father and helped him make key policy decisions on economic and military affairs.
Kim Jong Nam is widely believed to have dropped out of the succession race after embarrassing the government in 2001, when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport. He said he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
Jong Nam, the oldest of three brothers thought to be in the running, is the closest thing the country has to an international playboy and is the only one who speaks to the foreign media. He travels freely and spends much of his time in China or the country's special autonomous region of Macau ? the center of Asian gambling with its Las Vegas-style casinos.
Experts said he will most likely continue living abroad.
Kim Jong Il is known to have three sons ? one from his second wife and two from his third.
Kim often derided the middle son, Jong Chol, as "girlish," a former Kim Jong Il chef, who goes by the pen name Kenji Fujimoto, said in a 2003 memoir.
___
Associated Press writer Foster Klug contributed to this report from Seoul, South Korea.
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Thursday, January 19, 2012
Interpol chief says countries not using databases (AP)
LONDON ? Interpol's chief sounded an alarm Thursday that countries are still failing to check identity documents against its database ? a warning that comes just months ahead of the 2012 Olympics.
Ron Noble, secretary-general of the international police agency based in France, said out of the 1.1 billion travelers last year, ID documents of some 500 million people were not checked against Interpol's database, which is one of the world's most detailed.
"It will take a tragedy ? a specific kind of tragedy ? for behavior to change," Noble told The Associated Press after speaking to foreign correspondents in London.
Noble has said Britain is the only EU country to systematically check passports against those registered with Interpol as missing worldwide. Britain carried out 140 million checks last year against the database ? more than the rest of Europe combined.
Last year, he said more than 11,000 people were caught trying to enter the U.K. using lost or stolen passports.
France carried out the second-highest number of checks at 10 million.
"The only problem the U.K. appears to have is the number of people at immigration posts," Noble said. He was not voicing concerns over the Olympics.
A special Interpol team will be sent specifically for the Olympics, helping British authorities determine whether anyone trying to enter the U.K. is wanted, whether their documents have been listed as lost or stolen and whether they are considered a threat.
"We know terrorists use fraudulent ID documents," Noble said.
The U.K. Border Agency faced intense criticism last year after passport checks were relaxed during the height of the summer tourist season to lessen lines at London's Heathrow Airport, Europe's busiest. A government report on Thursday blamed poor communications, a lack of supervision and other shortcomings for the problems.
Olympics security has been a primary concern since 1972, when 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were killed at the Munich Games.
Noble said while there was no specific intelligence that the games would be targeted, such events provide an array of opportunities for criminals, including pickpocketing, forced prostitution, illegal Internet betting rings and hoaxes.
And then there is still the threat of terrorism. Noble said while al-Qaida's ranks had been depleted, affiliates were actively recruiting in places like Somalia.
Another fear that Noble said "keeps him up at night" is the threat of a nuclear or biological attack. Interpol has been alerted to some 2,715 instances where there were questions of whether there had been illicit trafficking of nuclear material.
Noble stressed, however, that didn't mean there were more 2,000 cases of trafficked nuclear material.
While most of the cases involved non-nuclear radioactive material cases ? 2,535 ? there were 200 cases involving nuclear material. Only four cases involved the attempted sale of highly enriched uranium, Noble said.
The United States, he said, had the most cases in the database ? mostly because of its reporting through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Council. After that, Eastern Europe has had the most and some of the most significant cases of concern in terms of criminality, Noble said.
As for whether terror groups were becoming more capable of unleashing biological attacks, Noble pointed to advances in both technology and biotechnology. He said the risk was increasing ? partially because technology can be misused ? but that did not mean there was an increased likelihood of a bio-terrorist attack.
"It's so easy to think about how an attack can be carried out because the screening of passengers doesn't focus on that at all," Noble said. "That's why it's important to identify people who are engaged in conduct that is suspicious or illegal."
Noble is American and a former head of the U.S. Secret Service. Interpol is based in Lyon, France.
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Wednesday, January 18, 2012
[OOC] The Ship of Dreams
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NJ mom gives birth to child on train to NYC (AP)
NEW YORK ? A New Jersey woman got the morning commute of her life when she gave birth to her first child on a PATH commuter train to New York.
The 31-year-old woman, Rabita Sarkar, of Harrison, N.J., said she had started feeling contraction-like pains but didn't think they were real because her baby wasn't due yet. She and her 30-year-old husband decided to travel into the city to have her checked out Monday.
They didn't want to drive and decided to take the train from Harrison into the city instead, thinking they could then take a taxi to Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital, where her doctors are.
"It's just that this guy had other plans, and he came out earlier," Sarkar said as she held her infant son in her arms in the hospital. The couple declined to reveal the boy's name or due date.
It was on the train ride that Sarkar started feeling her pains come more quickly, and she told her husband to check what was happening to her. He looked and saw that his son's head had already started to come out.
With guidance from another woman on the train, her husband, identified in published reports as Aditya Saurabh, was able to deliver the baby around 10 a.m. Fellow riders offered encouragement, and the couple said one little girl offered her jacket to keep the baby warm.
PATH officials turned the train into an express, bypassing most stops so that it would get to its final stop, 33rd Street in midtown Manhattan, as soon as possible. Emergency services personnel met the train and took the family to the hospital.
The responding police officers said it wasn't unusual for women to give birth in facilities run by the Port Authority.
The biggest issue was the winter temperature, around 30 degrees outside, and making sure the baby was warm, Sgt. Mike Barry said.
"That's our biggest concern," he said. "We know that baby's body temperature is going to drop like a rock."
For one of the responding officers, delivering a baby in these circumstances was something familiar ? because it happened to him.
Officer Atiba Joseph-Cumberbatch said his son didn't want to wait, either, and came out early ? so Dad had to deliver him.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Airbus takes record orders in 2011, beating Boeing
An Emirates A380 plane is mirrored at the entrance of Airbus in Hamburg, Germany, Tuesday Jan 17, 2012. Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best fierce U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. (AP Photo/dapdPhilipp Guelland)
An Emirates A380 plane is mirrored at the entrance of Airbus in Hamburg, Germany, Tuesday Jan 17, 2012. Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best fierce U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. (AP Photo/dapdPhilipp Guelland)
CEO of Airbus Tom Enders listens to a journalist's question during a news conference in Hamburg, northern Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best fierce U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. (AP Photo/dapd, Philipp Guelland)
CEO of EADS, the parent company of Airbus, Louis Gallois, left and CEO of Airbus Tom Enders, right, pose prior to a news conference in Hamburg, northern Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best fierce U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. (AP Photo/dapd, Philipp Guelland)
CEO of EADS, the parent company of Airbus, Louis Gallois gestures during a news conference in Hamburg, northern Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best fierce U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. (AP Photo/dapd, Philipp Guelland)
CEO of EADS, the parent company of Airbus, Louis Gallois, left, arrives for joint a news conference with CEO of Airbus Tom Enders, right, in Hamburg, northern Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best fierce U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. (AP Photo/dapd, Philipp Guelland)
HAMBURG, Germany (AP) ? Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running.
The European jet maker said Tuesday that it took in 1,419 net new orders in 2011, worth $140 billion, well above Boeing's total of 805 aircraft. That topped the previous record of 1,413 net orders recorded by Boeing in 2007.
Airbus also delivered 534 aircraft last year, up from 510 a year earlier and keeping the title of world's biggest jet maker that it has held since 2003. Boeing delivered 477 aircraft in 2011.
For this year, Airbus targets around 570 jet deliveries, including about 30 of its A380 super jumbo, the world's largest commercial jet.
Louis Gallois, the CEO of Airbus parent company EADS, said 2011 revenue will be "nicely above" the euro45.8 billion recorded in 2010. EADS reports its 2011 earnings in early March.
Gallois is due to retire in May but the EADS executive declined to comment on his succession plans. He spoke more freely about the ongoing European financial crisis, saying that the credit downgrades of nine European countries including France by rating agency Standard & Poor's last week "is only making things more complex."
"We need stronger and faster European coordination to solve the crisis," Gallois said. He offered up Airbus and EADS as an example for European leaders to draw on. "We are more than a symbol of European integration. We are the part of Europe that works," Gallois said.
That comment will possibly strike some observers as ironic, given the group's history of Franco-German management tensions and the difficult development of its A380 super jumbo, which was delayed by years and massively over budget due to engineering problems between the group's French and German work forces.
Airbus' recent success has been based on its revamped single aisle jet the A320neo.
It's a modified version of the existing workhorse jet, the A320, with improved engines and modified wingtips to make it allegedly 15 percent more fuel-efficient than Boeing's 737.
The plane will only start delivering in 2015 but Airbus is using it now to cash in on airlines' need to reduce sky-high fuel costs and cut carbon dioxide emissions.
The jet maker took in 1,226 net orders for the A320neo in 2011, including a single order for 200 of the aircraft worth $18.5 billion from Malaysian budget airline AirAsia.
Airbus' top salesman John Leahy said that the jet maker expects total orders to fall to between 600 and 650 aircraft this year, including the A320neo, after Boeing responded with a new version of its best-selling 737 model with a new engine, which it calls the 737 max.
Southwest Airlines Co. will be the first recipient of Boeing's new plane, representing the biggest firm order in the company's history by number of planes ? 208 ? and by list-price value, at nearly $19 billion.
Leahy cautioned that competition from Boeing's revamped 737 could unseat Airbus from its leadership in the orders race this year. After a market share of new orders of 64 percent last year, "in 2012 we will be down around 50 percent or probably lower than that," Leahy told reporters at the company's annual New Year's news conference.
Airbus is by far the largest part of EADS, which also encompasses the Astrium satellite builder and Cassidian defence electronics contractor. Troubles in developing and launching new aircraft programs like the A350 wide-body long-range jet and the A400M military transporter have squeezed the group's profitability for years, but Gallois promised improving results starting this year.
"We will see significantly better profitability as soon as 2012," Gallois said, thanks to Airbus efforts to get its troubled programs back on track. Higher deliveries, stronger pricing and cost savings across all of EADS' divisions will also help lift the group's profitability, Gallois said.
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