NEWS,29. AND 30.05.2013

Empire State Building sell-off continues

New York's iconic Empire State Building is a step closer to being sold through an initial public offering, the owners said Wednesday, after a lengthy legal tussle with opposing investors.

The 102-story skyscraper, which is the second tallest in New York and a key fixture on the Manhattan skyline, can go ahead with the sell-off after the Malkin family, which controls the building, finally got enough support.
"More than the required supermajority has approved the consolidation and IPO," a regulatory filing at the SEC said.
At least 80% of Empire State Building Associates LLC holders had to approve the Malkins' plan for what would be one of the highest profile real estate stories in New York for years.
"We are pleased to deliver to our investors a proposal which has received such support," a Malkin spokesperson told AFP.
"The vote remains open and we urge all investors who have not yet voted in favor of the proposed consolidation and IPO to do so immediately. We look forward to delivering to our investors what we believe to be the many benefits of this transaction."

 

Opec in no mood for a fight

Opec oil exporters on Thursday were in no mood to fight over how much crude to produce and instead weighed the impact of rising supplies of US shale and a looming turf war in Asia.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has little room to pump more oil due to the US oil boom that has sparked competition for marketshare in Asia and set off a rivalry between its top two producers Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
At a meeting in Vienna on Friday, the 12-member group is expected to stick with its 30 million barrel a day (bpd) output target for the last six months of 2013.
"This will be a straightforward meeting leading to a rollover (of the existing output target)," a Gulf Opec delegate told . "Shale isn't an immediate threat or concern for Saudi Arabia."
Opec ministers are also comfortable with oil just above $100 a barrel, well below the $125 that rang alarms in major consumer countries last year.
But triple digit oil has also unlocked vast amounts of US shale oil in North Dakota and Texas which competes with Opec crude of similar, light quality from Nigeria and Algeria, rather than heavier Saudi output.
Gulf producers are of the view that Opec will still be able to pump at least 30 million bpd, provided US shale grows at a moderate pace.
"Shale oil is not a threat, but it changes the dynamics of where the oil is going. There will be more competition in Asia," said a Gulf Opec source.
Nigeria, along with Algeria, has already felt the heat from the US oil boom, losing ground in its most lucrative export market and diverting sales to Asia.
Fast-growing exporter Iraq is also fighting for more Asian market share, competing with regional rival Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates, also building up capacity, has the region in its sights, but downplayed the prospect for battle.
"I'm not of the view that competition in Asia is going to distort the price," UAE Oil Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui told .
Innovative use of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", has put the United States in line to become the world's largest oil producer by 2017, overtaking Saudi Arabia.
That is not worrisome for Riyadh, especially when it comes to charting policy for the second half of 2013.
And the kingdom - holder of most spare capacity in Opec - shows no sign of opening the taps to bring down prices and curtail that output by making it uneconomic.
By the end of last year, the United States had recorded the biggest annual rise in oil output since it first pumped oil in the early 1860s. The 850 000 bpd increment was more than each of Opec's two smallest producers, Qatar and Ecuador, pump in total.
Opec, which dismissed shale as of little concern a year ago, has a divided view on it. While Saudi's Naimi welcomes it, his Nigerian counterpart Diezani Alison-Madueke has said it will have a "major impact".
Price worry
Some within Opec are concerned about the potential for both slow global growth and a dramatic rise in US shale oil to send prices tumbling.
But the group that pumps a third of the world's oil is not known for contingency plans.
Opec delegates now say this meeting will not be electing a new secretary general - stuck in a logjam of competing candidates from Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia - but will merely approve the criteria for prospective candidates to come forward.
With change in the output ceiling unlikely, short-term market management will be guided by Opec's leading producer Saudi Arabia  the only member with significant unused capacity  supported by the UAE and Kuwait.
Saudi Arabia has cut back from a 30-year high reached in 2012 of 10 million bpd, pumping 9.3 million bpd in April. That has helped bring overall Opec production down to 30.46 million bpd, 460 000 bpd above the target.
While challenges loom in the medium term, the numbers for the rest of 2013 suggest some breathing space for Opec.
Demand for Opec crude is set to rise in the second half to average 30.47 million bpd, up from 29.14 million bpd in the current quarter, according to Opec forecasts. So if Opec holds output at April's rate, supply would match the average requirement in the second half of 2013.
Price hawks Iran, Algeria and Venezuela - among those with the highest budget break even oil prices in Opec - may still call for supply cuts.
Yet Venezuela, at least, looks set to keep the status quo. Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez has said he will propose that Opec keep oil production quotas unchanged.

Fewer people travel as austerity bites

Fewer Europeans are planning to go away for a summer holiday as economic austerity bites, a new study shows, with levels of foreign vacation travel at their lowest for eight years.

No more than 54% of Europeans were planning to get away for summer holiday this year, according to the Ipsos-Europ Assistance "holiday barometer" published on Thursday.

Europ Assistance Group CEO Martin Vial said there was "a clear correlation between the intensity of the slump and holiday intentions".

Unsurprisingly the countries with the highest unemployment rates were the worst hit.

"The scope of the crisis in Spain and Italy is particularly visible in departure plans," the report said, with fewer than one in two Spaniards planning to leave on holiday this summer and little more than half of Italians.

The  departure plans for Germans and Austrians had stabilised due to “less tense” economic and social situations, the study showed.

Vacation

For the first time since the economic crisis began, the French were particularly affected this year, it said.

While 62% of them say they want to leave on holiday this year, this is still eight points down on last year and the lowest rate since 2005.

At least the stay-at-home French can comfort themselves on remaining in the leading destination chosen by Europeans.

The country is set this year to welcome 18% of European tourists, the study says, followed closely by Italy with Spain in third place with 14%.

The internet and social networks are being used more than ever for vacation preparations, with the British holidaymakers most active on the internet, followed by the Belgians, French and Germans.

The British have also retained their enthusiasm for foreign travel, being the only country studied where the intentions to leave on a summer holiday are going up this year, from 51% to 56%.

Ipsos conducted the study talking to 4 048 people from Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Settlements plan raises Mideast tensions

Israeli plans for 1 000 new settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem are "destroying" efforts by Washington's top diplomat to revive the peace process, a Palestinian official charged on Thursday.

But Israel said the construction plans were not new and accused the Palestinians of seeking a pretext to avoid a resumption of direct talks which broke down in 2010 and which US Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to revive.

"We consider the recent decision of the Israeli government to build a thousand homes in east Jerusalem as effectively destroying the efforts of Kerry," top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

He accused Israel of having "a systematic plan for destroying Kerry's efforts which involves an escalation of settlement building, a displacement of the population of the Jordan Valley, an increase of settler attacks against our people and confiscation of our land".

Erakat's remarks came just hours after an NGO told AFP Israel was readying to build more than 1 000 settler homes in east Jerusalem despite a major push by Washington to revive dormant peace talks.

Danny Seidemann, director of Jerusalem settlement watchdog Terrestrial Jerusalem, said contracts had been signed for 300 homes in Ramot and another 797 plots were to be offered for sale in Gilo.

Excuses

Both are in mainly Arab areas of the Holy City which were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

The news emerged just days after Kerry's latest trip to the region, his fourth visit in as many months.

Settlement construction was the issue which brought about a collapse of peace talks in September 2010 and the Palestinians say they will not return to negotiations while Israel builds on land they want for a future state.

But Ofir Gendelman, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the plans were not new, and accused the Palestinians of looking for any excuse to avoid peace talks.

"The Palestinians keep making up excuses in order to run away from peace negotiations with Israel," he wrote on Twitter.

"The Palestinians recycle old claims which are based on false information. They run to the media to avoid discussing outstanding issues," he said, calling for them to "resume peace talks immediately".

He said the plan to build hundreds of new homes in Gilo and Ramot was "not new" and had been "reposted due to administrative requirements".

Violation of international law

According to public radio, tenders for the new homes were invited late last year and it was only the names of the winning bids which were released on Wednesday.

Housing ministry spokesperson Ariel Rosenberg also said there had been no tenders for new east Jerusalem housing invited this year.

"Since the start of this year, there have not been any tenders in east Jerusalem but last year there were more than a thousand," he said, refusing to say why.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu reportedly promised Kerry he would "rein in" settlement construction in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, to give US peace efforts a chance.

Settlement watchdog Peace Now also confirmed that not a single tender had been invited in months.

Israel does not view construction in east Jerusalem as illegal, but most of the world views all settlement activity on land seized in 1967 as a violation of international law.

The Palestinians want the eastern sector of the city as the capital of their future state.

Neo-Nazis march through Athens

Hundreds of Greek neo-Nazis marched with torches through the streets of Athens late on Wednesday to commemorate the 560th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The militants from the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party shouted "Blood, honour, Golden Dawn" and "Greece belongs to the Greeks".

After several fiery speeches against the Turks and communists in the square outside Athens cathedral, they marched on parliament, where the party has held 18 seats since June.

The annual march concluded without incident, unlike last year when a Pakistani man who found himself in their path was attacked by 15-20 neo-Nazis.

Nevertheless, this year's march caused concern among tourists in the Greek capital.

"When they arrived, all the tourists paid their bills and left," said Fotis, a waiter at the Meatropoleos restaurant in central Athens.

Ruling coalition split

As he watched the neo-Nazi demonstration unfold, Antonio Leiva, a tourist from Chile, said: "I'm shocked.

"I strongly believe in freedom of expression but there are limits when it comes to encouraging racial hatred," he said.

Greece's ruling coalition is split over a bid to toughen an anti-racism law aimed at curbing Golden Dawn, amid fears it could unwittingly alienate the influential Orthodox church.

The socialist and moderate leftist parties put forward the bill on their own on Thursday after the coalition's leading conservative party backtracked.

The proposed bill would impose prison sentences of up to three years - up from the current two years - and a fine of up to €20 000 for hate speech and the denial or praise of war crimes and genocide.

Rights groups believe Golden Dawn has instigated a recent wave of violence against migrants, which the party denies.

NEWS,05 AND 06.05.2013

Google zaps brain power

The Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr

IS THE internet a good thing or a harmful thing?

If that seems an odd question, it is probably because you are quite certain that the internet has been an enormous advantage to you in so many ways.

You came across my column as you quickly caught up on the latest news. You probably booked last night’s movie tickets online and searched for the critics' opinion of the movie before booking. You quickly found out everything you wanted to know about “existentialism” in a four-minute ‘Web search and skim’.

The title of the book, The Shallows, is Carr’s conclusion of what the Web is doing to how we think, read and remember. The book is an expansion of an essay he wrote for Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google making us stupid?”.

Think of how you would have had to find information about existentialism before access to the Web was available.

You probably would have gone to a library to read a book on general philosophy as an introduction to the background out of which existentialism grew. Then, perhaps, something more specifically on the existentialists before finally settling into Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.

Consider the difference between these two experiences. Carr suggests that the immediacy of the Web’s answers has turned him (and others) from “ a scuba diver in the sea of words” to someone who rides on the “surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”.

At a meeting at Duke University, Professor Katherine Hayles told Carr: “I cannot get my students to read whole books any more.” The students she is talking of are studying literature!

What makes this book so fascinating is not the observation that we have shorter attention spans but that our brains are being changed to have shorter attention spans. If this is correct, the question that follows is whether this means we are sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply.

My immediate response to this would have been a quick, of course not. I read and think about certain things deeply and others superficially.

Carr takes the reader through a tour of neuroscience and the question of how technologies can change the way your brain works.

Is your brain like your hand? Your hand is limited in the movements it can make. It can only get better at the proscribed movements through practice, or worse through disuse.

There is overwhelming evidence that our experiences and the technologies we use do reconfigure the brain.

In an experiment in the late 1990s, British researchers scanned the brains of 16 London cab drivers. Compared to the scans of the control group from the general public, the taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampus was much larger.

This part of the brain stores and manipulates spatial representations of the world. The longer a cab drivers had been on the job, the larger their posterior hippocampus.

They also discovered that the drivers’ anterior hippocampus was smaller than that of the general public, and that the shrinking of the anterior hippocampus could have reduced the cabbies’ aptitude for other memorisation tasks.

Throughout the ages, the latest technologies have changed both how we think about the world and how our brains process information. Carr demonstrates how “tools of the mind” from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer have all had their effects.

Words were the aural means of communication until we developed the technology of the alphabet and we turned the aural into the visual representing the aural.

The clock changed not only how we thought about time, but how we thought about the world. The change was so wide spread and profound that we even began describing the world in the same mechanical terms.

It changed how we thought about time. It was no longer slowly evolving changes over which we have no control; rather, it was something that could be measured in minutes and seconds, and controlled. With a clock in ever town square and on every church building, our concept of time changed.

We are constantly reminded of time used, time spent, time wasted, and time lost. Our concepts of everything from achievement to productivity changed.

If the printed book forces us to focus our attention and promotes deep and creative thought, what is the effect of Google? Are we becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming? Are we are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection?

Wired magazines Clive Thompson wrote: “The perfect recall of silicon memory can be an enormous boon to thinking.” What is the price of that boon? The result may be “the shallows” of the title, but that shallows is incredibly wide.

This is a must-read. It is a thought-provoking and fascinating book.

Readability:   Light ----+ Serious
Insights:       High -+--- Low
Practical:      High ----+ Low

Spies fuel China's fast military build-up

China is using state-sponsored industrial espionage to acquire the technology it needs to forge ahead with a fast-paced military modernisation programme and cut its reliance on foreign arms makers, the Pentagon said in a new report on Monday.
"China continues to leverage foreign investments, commercial joint ventures, academic exchanges, the experience of repatriated Chinese students and researchers, and state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development, and acquisition," the US Defence Department said.
The department, in its 83-page annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, said Beijing's publicly announced defence spending grew at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10% annually over the past decade, but its actual outlays could be much higher.
China announced a 10.7% increase in military spending to $114bn in March, the Pentagon report said. But it estimated that China's actual spending for 2012 could range between $135bn and $215bn. US defence spending is more than double that at over $500bn.
"China continues to engage in activities designed to support military procurement and modernisation," the report said. "These include economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, export control violations, and technology transfer."

Mystery shrouds 'most dangerous neo-Nazi'

The woman prosecutors call Germany's most dangerous neo-Nazi took her place in the dock on Monday at a landmark trial over a racist killing spree, but despite the high-profile proceedings remains an enigmatic presence.

Beate Zschaepe, known to a horrified Germany only from a dishevelled mugshot and a handful of holiday snaps, strode into the Munich courtroom looking smart and self-confident in a tailored black trouser suit and large hoop earrings.

It was just one more mysterious turn by the 38-year-old, the last surviving member of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) who since her surrender 18 months ago has hidden behind a wall of silence.

When she walked through the door of the police station of Zwickau, a sleepy town in former communist East Germany, on 8 November 2011 to turn herself in, she told officers simply: "I'm the one you're looking for."

Since then, she has refused to divulge any secrets from the previous 14 years which she, according to the authorities, spent underground and on the run as part of a militant trio blamed for 10 murders.

"Everyone in Germany knows her name but no one knows who she is," the daily Die Welt wrote about the woman who has shaken the country's self-image of having learned the lessons of its Nazi past.

Macabre love triangle

Four days before she gave herself up, her two fellow gang members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, died in an apparent murder-suicide after a bungled bank heist, finally bringing their lethal NSU to light.

Investigators say the three were locked in a macabre love triangle, robbing banks and living comfortably off the proceeds while they carried out their nationwide hunt for immigrant victims.

Zschaepe, the only surviving member of the group, is suspected of involvement in the killing of nine shopkeepers of Turkish or Greek origin across Germany between 2000 and 2006 and of a German policewoman in 2007, as well as 15 armed robberies, arson and attempted murder.

Dubbed "the Nazi moll" by the German tabloids, Zschaepe faces life in prison.

But those who knew her in Zwickau, where she shared a spacious rented flat with Mundlos and Boehnhardt, say she was a "gentle soul" who never revealed her far-right views.

"She was a kind of big sister, someone with a big heart," a shocked neighbour, who gave her name only as Heike K, told German television.

Dominant

She said her friend told her her name was Lisa, one of at least nine aliases Zschaepe used over the years.

Federal prosecutors say that although she likely never pulled the trigger, Zschaepe played a "dominant role" in the NSU, maintaining the delicate "emotional link" between herself and her lovers.

She fell first for Mundlos, the soft-spoken son of a university professor often seen taking care of his wheelchair-bound brother, at the age of 16, and later took up with Boehnhardt, a more volatile type with a weakness for weapons.

"Ms Zschaepe acted like a wife but for two men," one of their alleged accomplices told authorities.

Zschaepe held the purse strings, managing the windfalls from their bank hold-ups, prosecutors say.

She juggled several identities while she did the cooking and took care of their two pet cats, Lilly and Heidi.

Chaotic upbringing

On 4 November 2011, she allegedly blew up their apartment in a bid to destroy evidence after the deaths of the two Uwes - after dropping off the cats with a neighbour.

Zschaepe had a chaotic upbringing. Her mother, Annerose Apel, gave birth to her on 2 January 1975 in the East German city of Jena, purportedly after being unaware she was pregnant.

Her father was believed to be Romanian but refused to acknowledge her as his child.

During the first three years of her life, Beate's last name changed three times until she finally took the surname of her mother's second husband.

The girl spent much of her youth with her grandmother, to whom she has said she is still attached.

Zschaepe was 14 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, sending economic and ideological shockwaves through communities like hers and leading many to the political extremes.

When she finally gave herself up to police, Zschaepe had not seen her mother or grandmother in over a decade. Investigators say she saw Mundlos and Boehnhardt as her only real family.

Germany arrests alleged Auschwitz guard

German authorities arrested on Monday a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Prosecutors in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg said, the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.
Authorities declined to release the suspect's name, but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.
The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.
"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."
Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect, who had worked at Auschwitz.
A cook vs a guard
Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Württemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.
However, prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.
"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told AFP.
"We will try to determine concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."
She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".
Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".
Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis.
He moved to the US in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.
Nazi Germany
More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.
Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.
Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in about 28 000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.
Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff, who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.
Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.
"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.
"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."

Raid of US home stops 'terror attack'

The FBI says it believes "a terror attack was disrupted" when authorities raided a US mobile home.

The FBI arrested 24-year-old Buford Rogers on Friday, after a search of his home in Montevideo turned up Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms.
The FBI said in a Monday statement that it believes "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" by the search and arrest.
The agency says a terror plot was discovered through analysis of intelligence gathered by local, state and federal authorities.
The statement doesn't offer further details about the extent or manner of the alleged plot.
Rogers is in federal custody and is charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. It's not clear if he has an attorney.