Spice Girls reunion was highlight of decade

31/12/2009 - 08:30:59 Victoria Beckham has said the Spice Girls reunion was her highlight of the decade.

The former singer – who has sons Brooklyn, 10, Romeo, 7, and four-year-old Cruz with soccer star husband David Beckham - was delighted to get the chance to share a stage with Geri Halliwell, Emma Button, Mel B and Mel C again in 2008.

She told a magazine that it was such a big opportunity to celebrate the past and thank our fans.

“The boys were the main reason for doing it – so the could see what I used to do. Normally it’s all about David, but the boys were really proud.”

 

Despite reuniting for the tour, Victoria – who is now a successful fashion designer - was the only Spice Girl not to partake in a solo song, instead choosing to parody herself as a model.

Rumours have been circulating that there could be a second reunion of the girl band.

Speaking in a television interview earlier this year, Geri said: “Right now, we are gathering information and thinking about possibilities.”

Reports have suggested that the group will also come together to cast actresses to play them in a Spice Girls musical.

Somali pirates seize two ships for quick money from ransom

December 30, 2009 10:45 a.m. EST: Pirates seized a British-flagged chemical tanker and a Panamanian-flagged carrier off Somalia's coast and were holding 45 crew members on Tuesday, a maritime official said.

The two hijackings late on Monday showed that pirates were relentless in their pursuit of quick money from ransom and that ship owners need to take extra precaution when sailing in the Horn of Africa, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The waters off Somalia are teeming with pirates who have hijacked dozens of ships for multimillion-dollar ransoms in the past two years. An international naval force now patrols the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Choong said the UK-flagged tanker, St James Park, was the first merchant vessel to have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden in nearly six months.

He said the ship issued a distress message on Monday, seeking help after it was attacked.

The distress call was picked up by the Greek rescue and coordination centre in Piraeus, which in turn relayed the message to the International Maritime Bureau and other agencies, he said.

The maritime bureau could not establish communication with the vessel but was informed by the ship's owner early on Tuesday that the tanker has been hijacked, Choong said.

The spokesman for the European Union's anti-piracy force, Cmdr John Harbour, said the St James Park was seized while in the Internationally Recognised Transit Corridor in the Gulf of Aden that is patrolled by the international naval coalition.

The St James Park set sail from Tarragona, Spain, and was headed for Tha Phut, Thailand, he said. The tanker has 26 crew members from the Philippines, Russia, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland, India and Turkey, Harbour said.

The ship was last reported to be heading toward the northern coast of Somalia, and the E.U. Naval Force was monitoring the situation, he added.

Choong said pirates last hijacked a Yemeni fishing boat in the Gulf of Aden on December 18, but the St James Park was the first merchant vessel to have been taken in the busy waterway since July 8.

He said three hours after the St James Park was hijacked that a Panamanian-flagged carrier with 19 crew members was also seized by pirates off the southern coast of Somalia on Monday. The ship is managed in Greece, he said.

The International Maritime Bureau is still waiting for the official reports from both ship owners and couldn't give further details, Choong said.

In another development, pirates released the Singapore-flagged container ship Kota Wajar on Monday, the E.U. Naval Force said. The vessel was hijacked in mid-October in the Indian Ocean north of the Seychelles islands with a crew of 21 on board.

Choong said the latest incidents brought the number of attacks in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia to 214 this year, with 47 vessels hijacked and 12 still in the hands of pirates with 263 crew, he added.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991 as regional warlords vie for power, and impoverished young men have increasingly taken to piracy in recent years in hopes of a big ransom payoff.

Somali pirates attack Kuwaiti oil tanker but fail to capture it

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 NAIROBI, Kenya  - The spokesman for the European Union's anti-piracy force says Somali pirates have attacked a Kuwaiti-flagged oil tanker but failed to seize it.

Cmdr. John Harbour says the pirates attacked the 105,000 ton MV Album about 800 nautical miles east of the northern coast of Somalia.

Harbour says Wednesday's unsuccessful attack lasted for about 30 minutes and caused no damage to the ship.

Harbour could not provide further information.

Pirates have made tens of millions of dollars from ransoms. They now hold more than 200 crew members and about a dozen vessels. Piracy has remained at high levels this year despite a growing number of international warships and extra safety precautions taken by merchant vessels.

Stars we lost 2009

A film and television star whose career spanned seven  decades, Ricardo Montalban was perhaps best known for  his role as the mysterious Mr. Roarke on TV's "Fantasy  Island" from 1977 to 1984. He died January 14 from  congestive heart failure at the age of 88.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The daughter of actress Vanessa Redgrave and the wife of  actor Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson was a star both on  Broadway and in Hollywood, where she starred in such films  as "The Parent Trap" and "Maid in Manhattan." Richardson  suffered a head injury while skiing on March 16, seemed fine  at first, but hours later complained of a headache and  eventually died two days later from an epidural hematoma.  She was 45.


 

 

 

 

 

Husky-voiced Emmy winner Bea Arthur rose to fame as the  character Maude Findlay in the '70s sitcoms "All in the  Family" and "Maude," but made her most lasting impression  as Dorothy Zbornak on "The Golden Girls." Arthur died of  cancer on April 25, shortly before what would've been her  87th birthday.

 

 

 

 

 

Comic actor Dom DeLuise rose to fame starring in Mel  Brooks movies as well as Burt Reynolds vehicles such as  "The Cannonball Run" and "Smokey and the Bandit II." He  later hosted TV's "Candid Camera" and wrote several books  on cooking. He passed away from kidney failure and  respiratory complications from cancer on May 4 at the age of  75.

Whether he was serving as the straight man for Johnny  Carson's jokes on "The Tonight Show," introducing outtakes  on "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes," or finding the next  big thing on "Star Search," for decades Ed McMahon was a  warm, familiar presence on Americans' televisions.  McMahon died at age 86 on June 23.


 

One of the biggest sex symbols of the '70s, Farrah Fawcett  starred in the hit TV series "Charlie's Angels," and her iconic  poster extended her reach to the walls of dorm rooms and  garages around the world. Once married to actor Lee  Majors, she went on to have an on-again/off-again  relationship with Ryan O'Neal, who was by her side when  she died of cancer on June 25 at the age of 62.

 

Without a doubt one of the most influential and successful  artists in music history, Michael Jackson had 17 #1 hits, won  13 Grammys, and sold hundreds of millions of albums. Fans  around the world were shocked by news of his death on  June 25, when the "King of Pop" stopped breathing and  could not be resuscitated.

Actor and martial-arts expert David Carradine made a name  for himself in the '70s TV series "Kung Fu" and also  appeared in its '90s sequel, "Kung Fu: The Legend  Continues." The veteran of more than 100 films, including  "Kill Bill," was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on June  4.


 

A newsman for decades, and anchor of the "CBS Evening  News" for nearly 20 years, Walter Cronkite earned himself  the title of "the most trusted man in America," bringing  viewers definitive reports on the assassination of JFK, the  space program, and the Vietnam War. Cronkite died on July  17 at the age of 92.

 

 

Filmmaker John Hughes created some of the most iconic  teen movies of the '80s -- such as "Pretty in Pink," "Sixteen  Candles," "The Breakfast Club," and "Ferris Bueller's Day  Off" -- after getting his big break by writing the screenplay for  "National Lampoon's Vacation." Hughes, who retired from  show business in the early '90s and became a farmer, died  of cardiac arrest on August 6 at the age of 59.

 

Adam Michael Goldstein, aka DJ AM, emerged as a  member of the rap-rock band Crazy Town and later became  a frequent collaborator of Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.  The pair, dubbed TRV$DJAM, toured the country and were  injured in a deadly September 2008 plane crash. Goldstein  was found dead from an overdose in his New York  apartment on August 28. He was 36.

 

Actor Patrick Swayze first turned heads with roles in "The  Outsiders" and "Red Dawn" before establishing himself as a  romantic lead in flicks like "Ghost" and "Dirty Dancing."  Swayze proved he could also take on action roles, starring in  the movies "Point Break" and "Road House." After a tough  battle with pancreatic cancer, he died at the age of 57 on  September 14.

 

Brittany Murphy, who got her start in "Clueless" and rose to  stardom in "8 Mile," died unexpectedly on December 20 at  the age of 32. The actress will appear in Sylvester Stallone's  upcoming film, "The Expendables," set for release next  year.

Eerie similarities between Micheal Jackson and Egyptian limestone statue

This image shows an Egyptian limestone statue, depicting an unidentified woman, carved during the New Kingdom Period, dating from between 1550 BC to 1050 BC. 

The bust on display at the museum has been the focus of interest since the death of singer Michael Jackson as visitors double-take at the eerie similarities between the 3,000-year-old statue and the singer.

Courtesy: AFP/The Field Museum

Despite Opposition Climate Conference Approves Deal

19/12/2009 Copenhagen: The UN climate conference in Copenhagen today approved a deal to tackle global warming proposed by world leaders, despite opposition from a number of countries. After another all-night session of wrangling among negotiators and officials, the accord was finally gavelled through to wide applause in the main conference hall of the talks in Copenhagen.

Last night details of the “meaningful” deal agreed between the US and China, India, Brazil and South Africa emerged, which included references to keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C and provisions for finance to help poor countries fight global warming.
But it has no long-term global targets for emissions cuts or a timetable to turn the agreement into a legally-binding treaty – leading environmental campaigners and aid agencies to brand it toothless and a failure.

 

This morning the conference said it “takes note” of the accord – and said the document setting out the deal would specify a list of countries which agreed with it, as some nations were still adamant they would not accept it. The acknowledgment of the accord by the UN conference of more than 190 countries means that provisions for finance contained within it to help poor nations can become operational, officials said. Under the accord, countries will be able to set out their pledges for the action they plan to take to tackle climate change, in an appendix to the document, and will provide information to other nations on their progress.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and EU chiefs said the deal was a first step but acknowledged there was much further to go to get the ambitious and legally-binding treaty countries such as the UK have been pushing for. But Mr Brown attempted to brush off suggestions that his intense efforts to lead the case for a deal had ended in failure – insisting it was significant that all countries now backed the 2C target for the first time.

 

Overnight, however, the main conference of more than 190 countries struggled to endorse the accord – with the main plenary hearing from a number of countries including Sudan, Venezuela and Bolivia which opposed the deal. Sudan’s delegate, Lumumba Di-Aping, said the accord would condemn Africa to many deaths from global warming and compared it with the Holocaust – a statement which was roundly condemned by others including the UK’s Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband. The deal was brokered in a series of bilateral meetings and talks by a group of up to 30 countries – and appeared to have been sealed after US President Barack Obama turned up unannounced at a discussion between China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Many leaders flew out late last night as details of the deal emerged, leaving ministers and officials to return to the full conference in a bid to get it passed.

Speaking following the formal close of the talks in Copenhagen, a day after they were due to finish, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said: ``We have sealed the deal. This accord cannot be everything that everyone hoped for, but it is an essential beginning.''
The attendance of 119 world leaders made the Copenhagen talks the largest gathering of heads of state and government in the history of the UN, and Mr Ban urged them to remain engaged as “climate change is the permanent leadership challenge of our time”.

The UN’s chief climate official Yvo de Boer said: “We now have a package to work with and begin immediate action.

“However, we need to be clear that it is a letter of intent and is not precise about what needs to be done in legal terms. So the challenge is now to turn what we have agreed politically in Copenhagen into something real, measurable and verifiable.”

'We are running short on time' :President Barack Obama's speech at UN Climate Conference, Copenhagen

Good Morning.

It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you—like me—were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know.

So the question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge—the question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, our ability to take collective action hangs in the balance.

I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat. And that is why I have come here today.

As the world’s largest economy and the world’s second-largest emitter, America bears our share of responsibility in addressing climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility. That is why we have renewed our leadership within international climate negotiations, and worked with other nations to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies. And that is why we have taken bold action at home—by making historic investments in renewable energy; by putting our people to work increasing efficiency in our homes and buildings; and by pursuing comprehensive legislation to transform to a clean energy economy.

These actions are ambitious, and we are taking them not simply to meet our global responsibilities. We are convinced that changing the way that we produce and use energy is essential to America’s economic future—that it will create millions of new jobs, power new industry, keep us competitive, and spark new innovation. And we are convinced that changing the way we use energy is essential to America’s national security, because it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and help us deal with some of the dangers posed by climate change.

So America is going to continue on this course of action no matter what happens in Copenhagen. But we will all be stronger and safer and more secure if we act together. That is why it is in our mutual interest to achieve a global accord in which we agree to take certain steps, and to hold each other accountable for our commitments.

After months of talk, and two weeks of negotiations, I believe that the pieces of that accord are now clear. [Editor’s note: While the prepared remarks read, “I believe that the pieces of that accord are now clear,” in the delivered remarks, Obama said, “I believe that the pieces of that accord should now be clear.” Emphasis added.]

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change. I’m pleased that many of us have already done so, and I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

Second, we must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and to exchange this information in a transparent manner. These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty. They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we are living up to our obligations. For without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.

Third, we must have financing that helps developing countries adapt, particularly the least-developed and most vulnerable to climate change. America will be a part of fast-start funding that will ramp up to $10 billion in 2012. And, yesterday, Secretary Clinton made it clear that we will engage in a global effort to mobilize $100 billion in financing by 2020, if—and only if—it is part of the broader accord that I have just described.

Mitigation. Transparency. And financing. It is a clear formula—one that embraces the principle of common but differentiated responses and respective capabilities. And it adds up to a significant accord—one that takes us farther than we have ever gone before as an international community.

The question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. This is not a perfect agreement, and no country would get everything that it wants. There are those developing countries that want aid with no strings attached, and who think that the most advanced nations should pay a higher price. And there are those advanced nations who think that developing countries cannot absorb this assistance, or that the world’s fastest-growing emitters should bear a greater share of the burden.

We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years. But here is the bottom line: we can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation. We can do that, and everyone who is in this room will be a part of an historic endeavor—one that makes life better for our children and grandchildren.

Or we can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years. And we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year—all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.

There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say. Now, I believe that it’s time for the nations and people of the world to come together behind a common purpose.

We must choose action over inaction; the future over the past—with courage and faith, let us meet our responsibility to our people, and to the future of our planet.

Thank you,

Developing countries stall climate talks

14/12/2009 - 13:25:16    Copenhagen: UN climate talks were thrown into chaos today as developing countries blocked negotiations and demanded that rich nations increase their efforts for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Representatives from developing countries refused to participate in any working groups at the 192-nation summit until the issue was resolved.

The move was a setback for the Copenhagen talks, which are already faltering over long-running disputes between rich and poor nations over emissions cuts and financing for developing countries to deal with climate change.

Bangladeshi  delegate Zia Hoque Mukta said "Nothing is happening at this moment." He said developing countries demanded that conference president Connie Hedegaard bring the industrial nations’ emissions targets to the top of the agenda before talks can resume.

Developing countries today agreed to resume climate change negotiations in Copenhagen after a half-day suspension.

The G77 group, led by African countries, staged a walkout over accusations that richer countries were seeking to use the UN-sponsored conference to dodge their obligations to cut carbon emissions.

Poorer countries fear that the Copenhagen talks will kill off the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which committed industrialized states to reduce greenhouse gases, with financial penalties for failure.

Their call for an extension of Kyoto is opposed by some industrialised states because the US – the second-largest emitter after China – remains outside the process, having refused to ratify the protocol.

Today’s suspension of work came as Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband acknowledged that the 192-nation conference was “not yet on track for the kind of deal we need” and said “more urgency” was needed to solve problems. Speaking in Copenhagen, Mr Miliband urged delegates to make progress before national leaders arrived later this week. “I think that the very clear message for negotiators and ministers is we need to get our act together and take action to resolve some of the outstanding issues that we face,” he said.

Downing Street announced today that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would fly to the Copenhagen conference tomorrow – two days earlier than planned – to throw his weight behind efforts to reach a deal. Mr Brown has already identified the need to help developing countries mitigate carbon emissions and adapt to the impact of global warming as one of the key elements to any agreement. The PM’s spokesman today said Mr Brown remained “optimistic” that a political deal could be reached by Friday.

The G77’s chief negotiator Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, from Sudan, said that today’s walkout was prompted by the failure of the Danish presidency to put industrial nations’ emissions targets at the top of the agenda.

Mr Di-Aping told BBC Radio 4’s 'World at One': “We decided to stop and reflect on what is happening, because it had become clear that the Danish presidency - in the most undemocratic fashion – is advancing the interests of developed countries at the expense of the balance of obligations between developing and developed countries.

“What we want is a process that is democratic, that allows us full participation, that ensures the safety and lives of the developing countries in Africa and small island states.

“We want a deal that will save the Kyoto Protocol and we want finance and mitigation targets and commitment periods signed at this conference. If that doesn’t happen, I am afraid we can’t accept the idea that we are going to create a new legal instrument.”

He added: “The EU in particular is pursuing a strategy of killing the Kyoto Protocol, hiding behind the US. Their issue is that they don’t want to commit to ambitious targets commensurate to the risk.”

Campaigners said that the developing countries were right to focus attention on the issue of carbon cuts in rich-world industrialised states.

Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, said: “Africa has pulled the emergency cord to avoid a train crash at the end of the week. Poor countries want to see an outcome which guarantees sharp emissions reductions, yet rich countries are trying to delay discussions on the only mechanism we have to deliver this – the Kyoto Protocol.

“This not about blocking the talks – it is about whether rich countries are ready to guarantee action on climate change and the survival of people in Africa and across the world.”

Nelson Muffuh, Christian Aid’s senior climate change advocacy co-ordinator, said: “Africa has been driven to this by the lack of progress on key substantive issues such as strong mitigation targets, and the lack of offers of financial support from rich countries to poor to help them deal with climate change. “We need far more robust emission targets from wealthy countries and much more finance.”

Cuba’s President Raul Castro declared the global climate summit in Copenhagen a failure from the start and urged left-wing Latin American leaders to devise their own plan on how to cope with climate change. Addressing a two-day meeting of the leftist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade group, Mr Castro said that although Copenhagen should produce “concrete, verifiable steps to confront the effects of climate change, we already know there will be no agreement”. He said that instead, the world “can only wait for a political pronouncement”. Cuba has not sent any representatives to the global climate summit in Denmark, where world leaders hope this week to forge the framework of a plan to limit the causes of global warming. Instead, Mr Castro implored leaders from the nine-country group gathered in Havana to devise their own “firm position on this decisive matter for the future of the human species”.

The trade group was formed by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a self-described socialist, as an alternative to US-backed free-trade consortiums. Its members are Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, San Vincent and the Grenadines, and Dominica. Mr Chavez responded harshly to comments made earlier in the week by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who warned Latin American nations to “think twice” about building ties with Iran. Venezuela’s president, who has travelled to Iran, said “Mrs Clinton’s declarations (were) like a threat, more than anything against Venezuela and Bolivia but also against all” members of the trade bloc. “She says, ’They should think twice’. It’s an open threat.”

Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s President Evo Morales also attended the meetings at a sprawling Havana convention centre.

Honduras remains part of the bloc despite a military coup that toppled President Manuel Zelaya in June. Mr Zelaya’s deposed foreign minister attended the meetings in Havana, but Honduras’ interim government will almost certainly not abide by any agreements made.

Bangladesh seeks 15% of any UN climate fund

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 

Eldest Daughter of Father Of The Nation, 

Bangabondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

 Bangladesh says it will ask for at least 15% of any money which rich countries pledge to help developing nations cope with climate change.

Environment Minister Hasan Mahmud said Bangladesh was entitled to a big share of the money because it was the country most vulnerable to climate change.

He said 20 million Bangladeshis will be displaced if the sea rose by a metre.

Developed countries are discussing a so-called climate adaption fund at the UN summit in Copenhagen.

It is unclear how big any such fund would be, but UN officials have suggested a sum of about $30bn is needed in the short-term.

Technology transfer

Dhaka has said it hopes to receive about $5bn (£3bn) over five years to combat the effects of climate change.

"We are the most vulnerable country to climate change and the world has already recognised that we need assistance for adaptation," Mr Mahmud told a news conference in Dhaka.

The minister said that in addition to the millions who would be displaced by rising sea levels, many more would be affected if glaciers in the Himalayas melted due to global warming.

"The population of our one coastal district is bigger than the entire population of all island countries and in that consideration at least 15% of any climate fund should come to us."

Another demand of Bangladesh at the conference is easy transfer of technology from developed countries to those most vulnerable.

"We are not begging any mercy from anyone. Rather we want justice as the worst victim of climate change," Reuters news agency quoted Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, a leading economist who is also part of the Bangladesh negotiating team, as saying.

 

According to new research data made available in September this year, up to 20 million people in low-lying Bangladesh are at risk from rising sea levels in the coming decades.

Scientists predicted that salty water could reach far inland, making it hard to cultivate staple foods like rice.

Pearl Harbor Day 2009: three enduring mysteries

On Pearl Harbor Day 2009, here is a look at lingering questions such as: How did the Japanese fleet get so close to Hawaii without being spotted?

 

 

In this Dec. 7, 1941 file picture, the battleship USS Arizona belches smoke as it topples over into the sea during a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

 

 

Mon Dec 7, 4:00 am ET  Washington – How did the Japanese do it? That question remains 68 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that spawned some of the greatest unanswered questions of US military history.

The completeness of the surprise, as well as the enormity of the attack's destruction, have led conspiracy theorists to surmise that President Franklin D. Roosevelt must have known what was coming, and allowed it, to rouse the nation for World War II.

Most historians don't believe that. The conspiracy theorists generally premise their arguments on the notion that the United States had broken the codes of the Japanese navy and thus knew its carriers were steaming toward Hawaii. But that's not true, according to Robert J. Hanyok, a former historian with the US National Security Agency.

In 1941, US code breakers had made only minimal progress in understanding encrypted Japanese navy messages, Mr. Hanyok writes in a recent Naval History magazine article.

"No intelligence about Pearl Harbor could come from this source," he writes.

A better explanation for the enormity of the US defeat might be that the attack was a so-called black swan event: something so far outside the realm of expectations that Americans could not conceive of it occurring.

This was true even of American servicemen looking at hints of what was coming their way.

"It just wasn't in their frame of reference," says naval historian Lawrence H. Suid.

Today, a number of what-ifs, or enduring mysteries, about the Pearl Harbor attack continue to inspire debate. Among them:

Why didn't the US see Japanese planes coming on radar? Actually, US Army radar operators did spot the Japanese air assault on radar. They just did not know what they were seeing.

Radar technology was in its infancy, and an Army crew was training on a new radar installed at the northern point of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. On Dec. 7, 1941, this crew spotted a mass of incoming somethings larger than they had ever seen. They decided it was probably some expected US B-17s and reported it as such.

But the radar return looked much different from what they were used to seeing.

"Why didn't this stir up their curiosity?" Suid says.

Why did the US Navy ignore the sinking of a Japanese submarine prior to the attack? At 6:37 on the morning of Dec. 7, the USS Ward, an old four-stack destroyer, attacked and destroyed a Japanese mini-sub making its way toward Pearl Harbor.

Crew members of the Ward saw a submarine periscope, dropped depth charges, and saw an oil slick and debris indicating they had destroyed a target. They immediately sent a dispatch saying that they had destroyed "a submarine operating in defense sea areas," according to a copy of the ship's report of the attack.

This incident took place an hour prior to the arrival of the first wave of Japanese warplanes. But US military officials did not heed the warning provided by the Ward, or did not believe it, or simply were unable to react in time.

Three years later to the day, on Dec. 7, 1944, the Ward was sunk by a Japanese kamikaze air attack off the island of Leyte.

How did the Japanese fleet get so close to Hawaii without being spotted? The Japanese military's attempts to deceive its US counterparts as to where Japan's carriers were in early December 1941 succeeded to a remarkable degree.

A radio ruse contributed greatly to this success. Beginning in mid-November, the Japanese ships pretended to be continuing with a routine communications drill – knowing that all the while US eavesdroppers were listening in.

They then followed with a week of only occasional chatter, leading US analysts to believe that the carriers had entered home waters for rest. Instead, they were steaming toward Hawaii.

Japanese operational security prior to the fleet's departure had been so tight that at least one foreign ship approaching a Japanese navy training area had been boarded and seized. Fleet plans for the month of December had been printed without an annex detailing the destination of Hawaii. Even senior Japanese officers weren't told of the attack until the last possible moment.

In the end, the Japanese achieved almost complete tactical surprise. And in that might lie the key to understanding Pearl Harbor, writes Hanyok, the former NSA historian.

The key could be not the surprise per se, but the skill of the Japanese. Most US analyses of Pearl Harbor probe for American mistakes, or they at least see the attack in an American frame of reference.

"But the key to understanding why the surprise assault was so successful lies in realizing what the Japanese did right," according to Hanyok.

Courtesy: Peter Grier – Mon Dec 7, 4:00 am ET

The last best chance: UN climate conference opens

COPENHAGEN – The largest and most important U.N. climate change conference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the last best chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.

The two-week conference, the climax of two years of contentious negotiations, convened in an upbeat mood after a series of promises by rich and emerging economies to curb their greenhouse gases. Still, major issues have yet to be resolved.

At stake is a deal that aims to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy, and to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries every year over decades to help them adapt to climate change.

Scientists say without such an agreement, the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures, leading to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal cities, more extreme weather events, drought and the spread of diseases.

Conference president Connie Hedegaard said the key to an agreement is finding a way to raise and channel public and private financing to poor countries for years to come to help them fight the effects of climate change.

Hedegaard — Denmark's former climate minister — said if governments miss their chance at the Copenhagen summit, a better opportunity may never come.

"This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If we ever do," she said.

Negotiations have dragged on for two years, only recently showing signs of breakthroughs with new commitments from The United States, China and India to control greenhouse gas emissions.

But the commitments remained short of scientists' demands, and the pressure was on those major emitters for bigger cuts. Swedish Environment Minister Anders Carlgren, speaking for the European Union, said it would be "astonishing" if President Barack Obama came for the final negotiation session "to deliver just what was announced in last week's press release."

The conference opened with video clips of children from around the globe urging delegates to help them grow up without facing catastrophic warming. On the sidelines, climate activists competed for attention to their campaigns on deforestation, clean energy and low-carbon growth.

Mohamad Shinaz, an activist from the Maldives, plunged feet-first into a tank with nearly 200 gallons (750 liters) of frigid water to illustrate what rising sea levels were doing to his island nation.

"I want people to know that this is happening," Shinaz said as the water reached up to his chest. "We have to stop global warming."

Leah Wickham, a 24-year-old from Fiji, broke down in tears as she handed a petition from 10 million people asking the negotiators at Copenhagen to come up with a deal to save islands like hers.

"I'm on the front lines of climate change," she said.

Denmark's prime minister said 110 heads of state and government will attend the final days of the conference. Obama's decision to attend the end of the conference, not the middle, was taken as a signal that an agreement was getting closer.

"The evidence is now overwhelming" that the world needs early action to combat global warming, said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an U.N. expert panel.

He defended climate research in the face of a controversy over e-mails pilfered from a British university, which global warming skeptics say show scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence that doesn't fit their theories.

"The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC," he told the conference.

The first week of the conference will focus on refining the complex text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival next week of environment ministers and the heads of state in the final days of the conference, which ends Dec. 18.

"The time for formal statements is over. The time for restating well-known positions is past," said the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer. "Copenhagen will only be a success it delivers significant and immediate action."

Among those decisions is a proposed fund of $10 billion each year for the next three years to help poor countries create climate change strategies. After that, hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed every year to set the world on a new energy path and adapt to new climates.

"The deal that we invite leaders to sign up on will be one that affects all aspects of society, just as the changing climate does," said Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen. "Negotiators cannot do this alone, nor can politicians. The ultimate responsibility rests with the citizens of the world, who will ultimately bear the fatal consequences if we fail to act."

A study released by the U.N. Environment Program on Sunday indicated that pledges by industrial countries and major emerging nations fall just short of the reductions of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists have said are needed to keep average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F) by the end of the century.

In Vienna, another senior U.N. official warned that the fight against climate change must not "cannibalize" development financing.

Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the U.N Industrial Development Organization, said poor countries need "fresh money" to combat global warming, not funds diverted from efforts to improve maternal health or fight world hunger.

Courtesy: ARTHUR MAX, Karl Ritter, Charles J. Hanley &  Veronika Oleksyn

Meredith Kercher Murder Case: Knox And Sollecito Verdicts Guilty

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have been found guilty of killing British student Meredith Kercher in a drunken sex game.

Court President, Judge Giancarlo Massei reads the guilty verdicts in the trial in Perugia, Italy on Friday, Dec. 4, 2009 against American college student Amanda Knox and her one-time Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito in the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher. A jury convicted Knox of murder with a sentence of 26 years in prison while Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years.

As the judge read out the verdicts, 22-year-old Knox began shaking and then broke down in tears.

She murmured, "No, no," as she hugged one of her lawyers.

Knox was then led away from the courtroom wailing and screaming.

Sollecito, 25, remained stoic throughout the verdict reading.

The pair were soon whisked away in police vans, with sirens blaring, to begin their jail terms.

Meredith, from Coulsdon, Surrey, U. K., was found naked and with her throat slit in her room of the house she shared with Knox in Perugia, Italy, in November 2007.

The eight-member jury, which included two judges, agreed with the prosecution's case that the former lovers killed the 21-year-old student in a violent sex game. The Italian court also directed Knox and Sollecito to pay the Kercher family five million euros compensation (£4.5m) for the murder.

Knox was also told she must pay 40,000 euros (£36,000) to Patrick Lumumba, for defaming the local barman when she falsely accused him of the killing.

Outside court, the lawyer for Meredith's family said they had received justice, but added it was a tragedy for all involved.

"They got the justice they were expecting. We got what we were hoping for," he said.

It is understood the Kercher family will speak at a press conference in Perugia at 10am today.

The American's father, Curt Knox, was asked if he would fight on for                 Knox shared this house with Meredith

his daughter. "Hell, yes," he replied,   before adding the conviction was a massive miscarriage of justice. Talking to Sky News, Knox's aunt Janet Huff said: "Of course we're incredibly disappointed - that's not strong enough a phrase.

"Everything is just so sad tonight.

"We've got two innocent kids being put away for a crime they didn't commit."

Before the verdict, Knox's mother Edda Mellas vowed the family would continue to battle for her daughter's freedom if she was convicted.

  

Knox & Sollecito

A third person, Rudy Guede, 22, from the Ivory Coast, was earlier convicted of the murder and sexual violence.

He was sentenced to 30 years in jail, a conviction he is appealing.

The Ivory Coast national has admitted being in the house on the night of the murder, but denies killing the British student.

A kitchen knife was recovered at Sollecito's house and it allegedly held samples of Knox's DNA on the handle, and Meredith's DNA on the blade.

The evidence against Knox and Sollecito

 

Courtesy: Katie Cassidy & SKYN

Dutch navy arrests Somali pirates

The Dutch navy has arrested 13 Somali pirates who attempted to hijack a cargo ship south of Oman.

The EU anti-piracy task force Navfor says the cargo ship - called MV BBC Togo - had barbed wire defenses and held off an attack by two fast skiffs.

The Dutch warship Evertsen later found a dhow with two skiffs fitting the description in the area.

A boarding team arrested the pirates, seizing machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, ladders and grappling hooks.

The pirates may be handed over to Kenya or the Seychelles for prosecution, says the Dutch Defence Ministry.
 

Map of Oman

The attack on the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged cargo ship happened 150 nautical miles (275km) south of Salalah in Oman.

Pirate attacks have been common off the Somali coast and international navies have been deployed to counter them.

Navfor is one of several international naval forces patrolling the seas off Somalia to try to prevent the hijacking of ships using the vital sea routes. Nato and the US also lead task forces.

Courtesy: BBC

Who are Somalia's pirates?

 

 Today's pirates are mainly fighters for Somalia's many warlord factions, who have fought each other for control of the country since the collapse of the Siad Barre government in 1991.

Their motives? A mixture of entrepreneurialism and survival, says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, as Pretoria is now called.

"From the evidence so far, these primarily appear to be fighters looking for predatory opportunities," says Mr. Jhazbhay. They operated "roadblocks in the past, which were fleecing people as a form of taxation. Now they've seen the opportunities on the high seas."

Initially, one of the main motives for taking to the seas – working first with local fishermen, and later buying boats and weapons with the proceeds of every ship they captured – was "pure survival," says Jhazbhay, explaining that armed extortion is one of the few opportunities to make a living in lawless Somalia.

"It's spiked more recently because of a spike in food prices," he says.

Now it has become a highly profitable, sophisticated criminal enterprise hauling in millions of dollars in ransom payments.

Whom do they work for?          

The pirates mainly work for themselves.

Much of the piracy seems to be based out of the Puntland, a semiautonomous region on the northern shore of Somalia that broke away from Somalia soon after 1991.

Thousands of pirates now operate off Somalia's coast, although there are no accurate numbers on precisely how many there are.

United Nations monitoring reports on arms smuggling in the Horn of Africa have pointed to evidence that pirate gangs have established relations with corrupt officials of the Puntland government. They bribe port officials to allow the pirates to use Eyl and other ports as their bases of operation, and to bring some of their captured ships in for safekeeping while the pirates negotiate ransoms with the ships' owners.

There is also evidence that expatriate Somalis living in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and throughout the Persian Gulf may be feeding information to the pirates about ships that have docked in those regions and may be heading toward the Gulf of Aden and other pirate-infested areas.

Who benefits from this piracy?

The money seems to be distributed by warlords to their families and friends, and then further outward toward their fellow clan-members, says Jhazbhay.

There have been charges recently that local Islamist groups may be linked to the pirate gangs, and may have begun to use piracy as a source of funds to buy weapons.

Certainly, Islamist groups such as Al Shabab – an insurgent group formed after the Islamic Courts Union lost control of the country last year in the wake of a US-backed invasion by Somalia's neighbor, Ethiopia – have used pirate gangs to smuggle weapons into Somalia, which is currently under international weapons sanctions. But the evidence is thin, as yet, that Islamist groups are using piracy on the high seas as a funding mechanism.

"The last thing the Islamists want to do is give an unnecessary provocation to the major powers, who might come after them in a big way," says Richard Cornwell, a senior analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane. "What experience tells us is that if the Islamists did take control of Somalia, piracy would stop overnight. They don't want warlords gaining arms and money outside of their control."

Is there an Al Qaeda connection?

While the CIA's chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, suggested recently that Al Qaeda was beginning to expand its reach in the Horn of Africa, and possibly reaching out to radical local Islamist parties such as Al Shabab in Somalia, there appears to be little evidence of a connection between international Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda and piracy.

"There may be some loose elements among the Islamist groups that have tie-ups with the pirates, because the movement is fractured into six or seven different groups, and each may have its own problems getting funding," says Jhazbhay.

How did they get so good at taking ships?

Practice, practice, practice.

More than 90 ships have been attacked off the coast of Somalia this year. Seventeen ships remain in the hands of Somali pirates. The Saudi owners of the Sirius Star, the oil tanker taken Nov. 15, are reportedly in contact with the pirates, possibly to negotiate the release of the ship, its crew, and the estimated $110 million cargo of crude oil.

"What staggered the mind is that this capture was 400 nautical miles out to sea," says Mr. Cornwell. "That's far deeper water than anything we've seen before. But with a GPS they can hijack to order." Using a mother ship – often an old Russian trawler – to prowl deeper waters for their target, they can offload smaller boats to move in close and overtake the ship, and climb up with hooks and ladders, and submachine guns.

"With a fully laden tanker ship, you have a fairly low free board, so it is easy to get up on board from smaller boats," says Cornwell. "Tankers are an obvious target of opportunity."


How will it affect security and trade?

Somalia is under international weapons sanctions, and warlord groups continue to fight both against the Ethiopian peacekeeping mission and against each other. But an influx of money is likely to mean a further influx of weapons to an already wartorn land.

"Regionally, I think the major problem is that piracy has given some groups the chance to lay their hands on money," says Jhazbhay. "There may be $30 million in ransom money received in recent years. Once they [the various armed groups] get that kind of money, they can buy a ground-to-air missile. Getting [a hold of] arms can affect the struggle for freedom in Somalia, and that affects the whole region."


What's being done to stop them?

Currently, the NATO alliance, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, and a host of other countries have ships patrolling the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden – an area of approximately 1.1 million square miles – to prevent piracy.

On Nov. 18, an Indian warship sank a suspected pirate mother ship off the coast of Yemen, after the pirates fired on them.

But given the size of the territory, and the amount of shipping traffic that flows past Somalia from the Suez Canal, naval patrolling cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels.

"Unless you have a warship in the immediate area, and, crucially, with a helicopter, you've got no chance of stopping them," says Cornwell.

While individual ships can protect themselves with everything from barbed wire around the ship itself to high-pressure hoses, coalition forces can also do more to track and neutralize suspected pirate mother ships. "I can't see why more work isn't being done with satellites to find the mother ships," says Cornwell.

Egypt hosted a Nov. 20 emergency meeting with Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Jordan to try to forge a joint strategy against piracy, which threatens a crucial international trade route through the Suez Canal in the Red Sea – Egypt's key source of revenue.

Courtesy: Scott Baldauf