NEW YORK
Doubts about China’s breakneck plans to expand high-speed rail across the country have been underscored by a bullet train wreck that killed at least 36 people.
Railways Minister Sheng Guangzu has already apologized to the victims of Saturday’s crash, and their families. A train rammed into the back of another one that stalled after being hit by lightning in China’s deadliest rail accident since 2008. Six carriages derailed and four fell about 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) from a viaduct.
The Railway Ministry and government officials haven’t explained why the second train was not warned there was a stalled train in its path.
The accident is the latest blow to China’s bullet train ambitions. Designed to show off the country’s rising wealth and technological prowess, the national prestige attached to the high-speed rail project is on a par with China’s space program.
Beijing plans to expand the high-speed rail network _ already the world’s biggest _ to link far-flung regions and is also trying to sell its trains to Latin America and the Middle East.
Last month, it launched to great fanfare the Beijing to Shanghai high-speed line, whose trains can travel at a top speed of 186 miles (300 kilometers) per hour. The speed was cut from the originally planned 217 mph (350 kph) after questions were raised about safety.
In less than four weeks of operation, power outages and other malfunctions have plagued the showcase 820-mile (1,318-kilometer) line. The Railways Ministry previously apologized for the problems and said that summer thunderstorms and winds were the cause in some cases.
Official plans call for China’s bullet train network to expand to 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) of track this year and 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) by 2020.
China’s trains are based on Japanese, French and German technology, but the manufacturers are trying to sell to Latin America and the Middle East. That has prompted complaints that Beijing is violating the spirit of licenses with foreign providers by reselling technology that was meant to be used only in China.
Saturday’s accident involved the first-generation bullet trains, which were launched in 2007 and have a top speed of 155 miles (250 kilometers) per hour _ slower than the new Beijing to Shanghai trains.
The Ministry of Railways said in a statement on its website Monday that the accident had killed 36 people and injured 192 direct payday lenders.
The crash happened when a bullet train traveling south from the Zhejiang provincial capital of Hangzhou lost power in a lightning strike, stalled and was hit from behind by a second train in Wenzhou city.
Three top officials at the Shanghai Railway Bureau were sacked after the accident, and state-controlled media have raised questions, especially as rail travel moves hundreds of millions of people a year.
In an editorial entitled ‘Train crash lesson for railway progress,’ the Global Times said the accident should be “a bloody lesson for the entire railway industry in China.”
The newspaper said the collision casts doubt on China’s high-speed railway expansion plans because the country “lacks experience” as it seeks to join the top ranks of railway engineering.
It said China’s high-speed railway has become “the newest target of public criticism,” adding the accident should lead to “safer, not slower, railway transportation.”
China’s transportation authority ordered local departments at an emergency meeting Sunday to launch thorough safety overhauls to “resolutely curb” severe traffic accidents, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The order follows a number of recent accidents, including a fire on a long-distance bus on Friday that killed 41 people.
The China Daily said in an editorial that the rapid development of China’s high-speed network has eased travel for passengers, but safety worries could keep them off high-speed trains.
This is because “the higher the speed of the trains, the more sophisticated the technology will be and the greater the risk if there is a failure of any link in the safety chain,” it said.
The paper called for better training of railway employees and efforts to make sure the railways are not vulnerable to extreme weather conditions.
State broadcaster CCTV reported Monday that a 2-year-old girl pulled from one of the derailed carriages 21 hours after the crash had undergone a three-hour operation. It said she had suffered lung, kidney and leg injuries and is now in intensive care. Her parents died in the crash.
In April 2008,a regular-speed train traveling from Beijing to the eastern coastal city of Qingdao derailed and crashed into another train, killing 72 people and injuring 416.
Some airline customers won’t see savings this weekend even though several federal taxes on tickets have expired.
US Airways and American Airlines raised fares to offset the tax savings.
That means instead of passing along the savings from expired taxes, the carriers are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.
But other airlines left their prices unchanged on Saturday. Consumers could save money by shopping around.
The expired taxes can total $25 or more on a typical $300 round-trip ticket. For a September trip between Dallas and San Francisco, the cheapest American flight on Travelocity.com was $24 higher than offerings from United, Continental, Delta and Virgin America, which did not raise fares.
The taxes expired after midnight Friday night when Congress failed to pass legislation to keep the Federal Aviation Administration running.
That gave airlines a choice: They could do nothing _ and pass the savings to customers _ or they could grab some of the money themselves.
“We adjusted prices so the bottom-line price of a ticket remains the same as it was before … expiration of federal excise taxes,” said American spokesman Tim Smith. US Airways spokesman John McDonald said much the same thing _ passengers will pay the same amount for a ticket as they did before the taxes expired.
Smith declined to say whether the increase would be rescinded if Congress revives the travel taxes.
Tom Parsons, who runs the Bestfares.com travel website, said consumers should get a break.
“Why would the airlines deserve it?” he said. “They already hit us with enough fees. Now they’re keeping the government fees too.”
The Transportation Department says it will lose $200 million a week. J.P. Morgan analyst Jamie Baker said airlines could take in an extra $25 million a day by raising fares during the tax holiday.
Parsons said competitive pressure eventually will force the airlines to match _ either they’ll all pass the tax savings on to passengers, or they’ll all raise fares and keep the money themselves.
Southwest Airlines and its AirTran subsidiary raised prices by $8 per round trip, said spokeswoman Marilee McInnis.
Southwest’s support could be crucial if the airlines decide to keep the tax money. Southwest carries more U.S. passengers than anyone, and it effectively sets rates on many routes. Southwest torpedoed attempts by other airlines to raise prices in the last two weeks. CEO Gary Kelly has publicly worried that airlines could frighten away passengers by raising prices too high.
That may be less of a fear this time, however, since consumers wouldn’t be shelling out more money for tickets _ they just wouldn’t get an unexpected discount, courtesy of Congress.
Several federal travel taxes expired when Congress adjourned for the weekend without passing FAA legislation. Lawmakers couldn’t break a stalemate over a Republican proposal to make it harder for airline and railroad workers to unionize.
Air traffic controllers stayed on the job, but thousands of other FAA employees were likely to be furloughed.
Airlines stopped collecting a 7.5 percent ticket tax, a separate excise tax of $3.70 per takeoff and landing, and other fees. Those add up to about $32 on a round-trip itinerary with base fare of $240 and one stop in each direction.
Other government fees for security and local airport projects are still being collected. They boost the final cost of that $240 base-fare ticket to $300.
Passengers who bought tickets before this weekend but travel during the FAA shutdown could be entitled to a refund of the taxes that they paid, said Treasury Department spokeswoman Sandra Salstrom. She said it’s unclear whether the government can keep taxes for travel at a time when it doesn’t have authority to collect the money.
When the temperature went up close to record-breaking levels Thursday, production lines at Italpasta Ltd. in Brampton went down.
But plant manager Riccardo Bordignon wasn
London’s departing police chief revealed Tuesday that 10 of the 45 press officers in his department used to work for News International, but he denied there are any improper links between the force and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Paul Stephenson was giving evidence to a committee of lawmakers investigating wrongdoing at the now-shuttered tabloid News of the World, and allegations of bribery and collusion between Murdoch employees and the police.
“I understand that there are 10 members of the (Department of Public Affairs) staff who have worked in News International in the past, in some cases journalists, in some cases undertaking work experience with the organization,” he said.
News International is the British newspaper division of Murdoch’s global News Corp.
Stephenson denied wrongdoing, or knowing the News of the World was engaged in phone hacking _ but acknowledged that in retrospect he was embarrassed the force had hired Neil Wallis, a former executive of the paper, as a PR consultant,
After being asked about his relationship with Wallis, who was arrested last week, Stephenson said he had “no reason to connect Wallis with phone hacking” when he was hired for the part-time job in 2009.
He said now that the scale of phone hacking at the paper has emerged, it’s “embarrassing” that Wallis worked for the police.
Stephenson announced his resignation Sunday, saying allegations about his contacts with Murdoch’s News International were a distraction from his job.
He was followed out the door by assistant commissioner John Yates, who gave evidence before a hotly anticipated appearance by Rupert Murdoch, his son James and the media mogul’s former U.K. newspaper chief, Rebekah Brooks.
Yates said that with the benefit of hindsight he would have re-opened an inquiry into electronic eavesdropping of voicemail messages.
Yates said if he “knew now” how the phone hacking scandal would enfold, he would have done something different.
He has denied wrongdoing in the scandal.
Rupert Murdoch’s car was mobbed by photographers as he arrived for a grilling from U.K. lawmakers about the phone hacking scandal that has swept from his media empire through the London police and even to the prime minister’s office.
The elder Murdoch’s Range Rover was surrounded as he arrived at the Houses of Parliament three hours early, and it quickly drove off. The vehicle returned to Parliament about half an hour before the hearing was due to start.
Politicians will be seeking more details about the scale of criminality at the News of the World, while the Murdochs will try to avoid incriminating themselves or doing more harm to their business without misleading Parliament, which is a crime.
Lawmakers are also holding a separate hearing to question London police about reports that officers took bribes from journalists to provide inside information for tabloid scoops and to ask why the force decided to shut down an earlier phone hacking probe after charging only two people.
Detectives reopened the case earlier this year and are looking at a potential 3,700 victims.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said Tuesday it had asked watchdog to investigate its head of public affairs over the scandal _ the fifth senior police official being investigated. The Independent Police Complaints Commission will look at Dick Fedorcio’s role in hiring a former News of the World executive as an adviser to the police.
Fedorcio also was questioned by lawmakers Tuesday, along with Stephenson and Yates.
It was the appearance by the Murdochs and Brooks that was drawing huge public interest.
Members of the public and journalists lined up hours ahead of time in hope of a spot in the small committee room, which holds about 40 people. More will be able to watch in an overspill room, and Britain’s TV news channels are anticipating high ratings for the appearance.
Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a visit to Africa and is expected to return to Britain for an emergency session Wednesday of Parliament on the scandal.
A former News of the World reporter, Sean Hoare, who helped blow the whistle on the scandal, was found dead Monday in his home quick pay day loan. Police said the death was “unexplained” but is not being treated as suspicious. A post-mortem was being conducted Tuesday. Hoare was in his late forties.
Brooks’ spokesman, David Wilson, said police had been handed a bag containing a laptop and papers that belong to her husband, former racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks. Wilson said the bag did not contain anything related to the phone hacking scandal and he expected police to return it soon.
The bag was found dumped in an underground parking lot near the couple’s home on Monday, but it was unclear how exactly it got there. Wilson said Tuesday that a friend of Charlie Brooks had meant to drop the bag off, but he would say only he left it in the “wrong place.”
Murdoch shut down the News of the World tabloid that Brooks once edited after it was accused of hacking into the voice mail of celebrities, politicians, other journalists and even murder victims. Still, the closure has done little to end a string of revelations about the murky ties between British politics and the country’s tabloid media.
The scandal has prompted the resignation and subsequent arrest of Brooks and the resignation of Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, sunk Murdoch’s dream of taking full control of lucrative satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting and raised questions about his ability to keep control of his global media empire.
Rupert Murdoch is eager to stop the crisis from spreading to the United States, where many of his most lucrative assets _ including the Fox TV network, 20th Century Fox film studio, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post _ are based.
In New York, News Corp. appointed commercial lawyer Anthony Grabiner to run its Management and Standards Committee, which will deal with the scandal. But News Corp. board member Thomas Perkins told The Associated Press that the 80-year-old Murdoch has the full support of the company’s board of directors, and it was not considering elevating Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey to replace Murdoch as CEO of News Corp.
News Corp.’s widely traded Class A shares fell 68 cents to $14.97 Monday _ down 17 percent since the scandal reignited on July 4.
Britain’s Independent Police Complaints Commission also is looking into the phone hacking and police bribery claims, including one that Yates inappropriately helped get a job for the daughter of Wallis. Wallis has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.
London police also confirmed that they once employed a second former News of the World employee besides Wallis. Alex Marunchak had been employed as a Ukrainian language interpreter with access to highly sensitive police information between 1980 and 2000, the Metropolitan Police said.
The police force said it recognized “that this may cause concern and that some professions may be incompatible with the role of an interpreter,” adding that the matter will be looked into.
Meanwhile, Internet hackers took aim at Murdoch late Monday, defacing the sites of his other U.K. tabloid, The Sun, and shutting down website of The Times of London. Visitors to The Sun website were redirected to a page featuring a story saying Murdoch’s dead body had been found in his garden.
Internet hacking collective Lulz Security took responsibility for that hacking attack via Twitter, calling it a successful part of “Murdoch Meltdown Monday.”
Lulz Security, which has previously claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organizations and the CIA, hinted that more was yet to come, saying “This is only the beginning.”
It later took credit for shutting down News International’s corporate website. Another hacking collective known as Anonymous claimed the cyberattack on The Times’ website.
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Danica Kirka and Bob Barr contributed to this report.
Meera Selva can be reached at http://twitter.com/Meera_Selva.
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://twitter.com/JillLawless
LONDON—James Murdoch scaled the rungs of the global media empire that his father built. Now scandal taints the heir apparent, threatening to derail the expected succession and shaking the assumption that the Murdoch dynasty would preserve its tight grip over the multibillion-dollar business.
Founder Rupert Murdoch, 80, has long expressed a wish to hand his publicly traded News Corp. to his offspring, and he retains the voting power to make key decisions. But shareholders and board members are said to be troubled by revelations of wrongdoing on Murdoch’s watch, and feel the U.S.-based company needs fresh leadership.
Bloomberg News is reporting that two anonymous sources within News Corp. “have begun questioning the company’s response to the crisis and whether a leadership change is needed.”
Shares in News Corp. tumbled Monday to $14.98, down 13 per cent since July 4 — the day the Guardian newspaper reported that News of the World journalists had hacked into the voicemail belonging to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
A pivotal moment for the Murdoch family comes Tuesday when the media mogul and his son testify before British lawmakers investigating the hacking and alleged police bribery at a now-shuttered tabloid, News of the World.
“The future is looking increasingly grey” for James Murdoch, said Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism at City University London. “There are now investors, particularly in the United States, who are suggesting that the time has come to end the Murdochs’ dynastic hold on News Corp.”
Some analysts believe Murdoch is positioning 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth as a successor in the event that 38-year-old James, chief executive of his father’s European and Asian operations, is forced to step aside or faces arrest.
“At the end of the day, that’s what made it a success. It’s ‘Brand Murdoch,’” said Richard Hillgrove, a London-based public relations consultant and former commentator for Murdoch-owned newspapers in New Zealand. “He’s going to do anything in his power to make sure it stays that way.”
Hillgrove described Elisabeth Murdoch, who is expected to join the board of News Corp. in October, as the “likely contender” for leadership of the company and noted that she appears “untainted and pretty clean” in comparison to the pressure bearing down on her brother, James.
There have been unconfirmed reports in the British media of family tension and dissatisfaction on the part of Elisabeth with how the company has been run; some observers speculate people close to the family have leaked information to elevate her stature.
However, a suit in the United States has questioned News Corp.’s move in February to buy Shine Group., the television production company founded in Britain by Elisabeth, in a $670 million deal viewed by some shareholders as overpriced and fueled by nepotism. And while the company is successful, Elisabeth lacks experience at the highest levels of international management.
Another Murdoch son, 39-year-old Lachlan, is on the board of News Corp., but he quit a high-level position in the company in 2005 and does not have a management role. He is saddled in part by the legacy of a failed investment in an Australian telecoms company a decade ago.
Chase Carey, the American deputy chairman and president of News Corp., could step in to head the group as an option from outside the family. He previously worked with Fox television, a company holding.
Murdoch crafted a behemoth over the decades, acquiring newspaper, television, publishing and entertainment interests in Asia, Europe, the United States and Latin America. New York-based News Corp., which employs more than 50,000 people, said it had total assets as of March of $60 billion, and total annual revenues of $33 billion, though the scandal has pushed down share prices.
In 2001, a former wife of Rupert Murdoch predicted that there would be heartache among her children — James, Lachlan and Elisabeth — when the time came to choose his successor. At the time, Anna Murdoch Mann told the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine that she would prefer that none of her children took the reins.
“I think they’re all so good that they could do whatever they wanted, really,” she said. “But I think there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak and hardship with this. There’s been such a lot of pressure that they needn’t have had at their age.”
The accusations of phone hacking and police bribery by journalists at the News of the World reached into the elder Murdoch’s inner circle with the arrest Sunday of Rebekah Brooks, former head of his British newspaper unit.
James Murdoch did not directly oversee News of the World, where the phone hacking of celebrities and others allegedly occurred, but he approved payments to some of the paper’s most prominent hacking victims, including 700,000 pounds ($1.1 million) to Professional Footballers’ Association chief Gordon Taylor.
He said he “did not have a complete picture” when he approved the payouts. Still, commentators view his position as fragile because of questions about whether the criminal investigation will go higher up the chain of command at News Corp. Additionally, the company could be liable under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American companies from bribing foreign officials for business.
Journalists at the News of the World hacked the voice mail of mobile telephones in an attempt to get information for stories that would help sell newspapers, and allegedly paid police for information that could also be used in the production of news reports.
Louise Cooper, an analyst in the London office of the brokerage BGC Partners, described years of speculation about who would take control after Rupert Murdoch as a perpetual process of “one’s up, another one’s down” that focuses on the tycoon’s children. In the end, she said, it is the patriarch’s decision.
“He still has absolute control over that company,” Cooper said. She said that barring further revelations about the involvement of James Murdoch in the scandal, “it’s difficult to write him off completely.”
Rupert Murdoch controls News Corp. through a family trust that holds 40 per cent of the company’s Class B voting shares. The succession question has centred on James, Elisabeth and Lachlan, children by Murdoch’s second marriage to Anna Torv, later Anna Murdoch Mann after she remarried.
Elisabeth is married to prominent British public relations executive Matthew Freud. She resigned as managing director of British Sky Broadcasting, a lucrative satellite broadcaster in which News Corp. is the biggest shareholder, in 2000 to go her own way. This month, Murdoch dropped a bid to take full control of BSkyB in response to the uproar over phone hacking.
Lachlan Murdoch, once seen as the heir apparent, had been elevated to deputy chief operating officer of News Corp. by the time he quit in 2005 to go back to Australia.
That left James as the expected heir. He has been chairman and CEO of the company’s European and Asian operations since 2007, and later became deputy chief operating officer of News Corp.
Rupert Murdoch has another daughter, Prudence, from his first marriage to Patricia Booker; she is married to Alasdair MacLeod, who stepped down last year after 20 years as a News Corp. executive, most recently as managing director of the Australian newspapers.
Murdoch also has two daughters, 9-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Chloe, with his third wife, Wendi Deng. She was a junior News Corp. executive in Hong Kong before marrying Murdoch in 1999 at the age of 32. Her name has occasionally cropped up in succession speculation in the past.
Struggling to avert an unprecedented national default, congressional leaders jettisoned negotiations on a sweeping deficit-reduction package Friday despite a plea from President Barack Obama to “do something big” to stabilize America’s finances.
Instead, lawmakers embarked on rival fallback plans as a critical Aug. 2 deadline neared, a House version given little chance of success, even by some supporters, and a bipartisan Senate approach holding out more promise.
At the behest of conservatives, House Republicans announced plans to vote next week on legislation to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit automatically if Congress approves a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. Senate approval of that amendment seemed extremely unlikely in a vote set for the next few days.
Senate leaders from both parties worked on their own measure that would allow Obama to raise the debt limit without a prior vote by lawmakers. That plan was likely to include limits on spending across thousands of government programs, and possibly a down payment on cuts, as well.
As part of that proposal, a panel of lawmakers would recommend cuts in benefits programs by the end of the year, with the House and Senate required to vote yes-or-no on the package without possibility of changes.
“If they show me a serious plan I’m ready to move,” declared Obama at his second news conference of the week, even though he said he wanted a far more sweeping deal that might even have raised the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67 if Republicans would increase selected taxes.
“We are obviously running out of time,” he said.
Numerous officials have cautioned that a default will occur if the debt limit is not increased by Aug. 2, warning also of a calamitous effect on an economy struggling to recover from the worst recession in decades.
“Now the debate will move from a room in the White House to the House and Senate floors,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, indicating that the daily closed-door negotiations at the White House were a thing of the past.
The House Republican rank and file were advised in a GOP meeting that, barring action by Congress, the government would be able to pay only about half its bills after Aug. 2, and separately that a default could cost the government trillions of dollars in the form of higher interest rates on the debt.
“No matter what 50 percent you choose to pay, there are things in that 50 percent you don’t pay that would have really severe consequences,” Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., said afterward.
“There are people out there who keep saying we don’t need to increase the debt limit at all. I think this was a way of saying, the people who are saying that need to look at the practical consequences of what they are saying.”
Rep. Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters after the meeting he had discussed the additional costs generated by a default _ an event that would be likely to raise interest rates no fax cash advance.
At his news conference, Obama said that would mean “effectively a tax increase on everybody” by affecting car purchasers, students and businesses.
The second White House news conference in a week was a testament to the overriding political and economic significance of the issue that has convulsed Congress as well as the administration.
Urging lawmakers to cut trillions from deficits at the same time they raise the debt limit, the president said he favored a balanced approach that included spending cuts, changes to huge government benefit programs and higher taxes on wealthy individuals and certain industries.
It was an offer Republicans could _ and did _ refuse.
“There are going to be no tax hikes because tax hikes destroy jobs,” said House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.
While Boehner had earlier shown some flexibility on closing tax loopholes as part of an unprecedented deal with Obama, many Republican lawmakers are adamant that deficit reductions be limited to spending cuts.
To underscore their conservative priorities, GOP leaders scheduled a vote for next week on legislation they said would cut $111 billion in the budget year that begins Oct. 1. It would also require a steady decline in spending as a percentage of the overall economy over the next decade.
Even some supporters conceded it was a symbolic gesture given the realities of divided government.
“I think everybody knows the president won’t sign this,” Campbell said after the closed-door Republican meeting.
“But we’re putting a marker down, and that’s an important step that begins the process of resolving this,” he added.
If so, it was in a style that only congressional insiders might recognize as the beginning of the endgame to an unprecedented problem.
McConnell issued a statement announcing the Senate would vote on both a balanced budget amendment and the House’s “Cut, Cap and Balance Plan.”
His statement didn’t say so, but neither measure has much, if any, chance of passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Still, the votes themselves would clear the way for debate on the fallback plan the two Senate leaders have been working on for the past several days.
Senate aides said the measure was not yet fully drafted, but likely to come up for debate by the end of next week.
A two-thirds vote of each house is required for passage of a constitutional amendment. Approval would send the issue to the states, where ratification by three quarters of the legislatures is needed to make it part of the Constitution.
Presidents play no official role in amending the Constitution, but Obama expressed his opposition to the GOP-backed measure anyway.
“We don’t need a constitutional amendment to do that. What we need to do is do our jobs,” he said.
A bomb hidden under a parked car exploded near Muslim pilgrims Friday, killing at least two and wounding four as they made their way to an annual Shiite religious festival in a holy city south of Iraq’s capital.
Pilgrims are an easy target for insurgents looking to stoke sectarian violence as U.S. troops prepare to depart Iraq by the end of the year.
Friday’s bomb exploded in a parking lot about 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the holy city of Karbala, where thousands of pilgrims are flocking this weekend for the annual Shiite festival of Shabaniyah.
The blast ignited five nearby cars, causing a second explosion when a gas tank caught fire, said Maj. Gen. Othman al-Ghanimy, commander of Karbala military operations. Two pilgrims were killed and four wounded, he said.
Karbala provincial councilman Hussein Shadhan al-Aboudi put the toll at three dead and 28 injured.
The weekend’s religious festival celebrates the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the twelfth and so-called hidden imam, who disappeared in the ninth century. It is always held in the Islamic month before the Muslim fasting month Ramadan which this year falls in August.
Also Friday, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Baghdad’s southern Dora neighborhood, killing one passer-by and wounding three instant credit reports.
With Iraq still plagued by widespread violence, Washington and Baghdad are considering keeping as many as 10,000 U.S. forces in Iraq beyond a year-end departure deadline. In excepts from an interview to air Friday night, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki repeated his long-standing offer for a small number of American military trainers to stay and help Iraq’s fledgling security forces.
Both nations are moving toward a troops withdrawal.
On Friday, officials said the last 10 Iraqi detainees in U.S. military custody are about to be turned over to Iraqi authorities.
Justice Ministry spokesman Haider al-Saadi said nearly 200 inmates were transferred to Iraq’s custody earlier this week. They were among the last inmates to be held by the U.S. and included some top allies and relatives of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The handover of the prisoners is the final step by the U.S. to relinquish control of Camp Cropper on Baghdad’s western outskirts.
The process began a year ago, but since has been marred by high-profile escapes by some of its inmates.
WATERLOO, ONT.
Shares in British Sky Broadcasting PLC are falling for the sixth straight session Tuesday, a day after News Corp.’s bid for the satellite broadcaster was referred to the competition regulator.
With the review likely to take many months, there’s little incentive for short-term investors, such as hedge funds, to keep hold of the stock. BSkyB shares were 2.1 percent lower early Tuesday at 700 pence ($11.07). The decline means that the stock is underperforming in the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares. Shares around the world have been hit Tuesday by mounting fears over the financial health of Spain and Italy.
BSkyB shares have taken a battering over the past week, falling from 850 pence, as a phone-hacking at the Sunday tabloid News of the World escalated.
The paper, which closed Sunday after 168 years, was owned by News Corp.’s British subsidiary News International. News Corp. shares have also taken a pounding, as investors doubt whether it will get the 61 percent of BSkyB it doesn’t already own.
On Monday, News Corp. withdrew its promise to spin off Sky News, which had been a condition for buying the remaining shares in BSkyB, triggering a referral to the Competition Commission from Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Britain’s Competition Commission now must hold a full-scale inquiry into whether the takeover would break anti-monopoly laws. These inquiries usually take six months and Murdoch must be hoping that the current febrile atmosphere surrounding the bid cools down.
“News Corp. now has a decent time for the crescendo of allegations to peak and be dealt with and relevant actions to be taken, assuming these are containable,” Investec Securities analyst Steve Liechti said.
However, with police apparently still in the early stages of a criminal investigation of the News of the World, Liechti said there is a danger that News Corp. could be forced to reduce its stake in BSkyB if Britain’s communication regulator decides it is not “fit and proper” to control a broadcasting license.
On Tuesday, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined the criticism of News International, repeatedly accusing the company of employing criminals to obtain confidential information about his bank account, taxes and other issues.
“If I, with all the protection and all the defenses and all the security that a chancellor of the exchequer or a prime minister, am so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?” Brown said in an interview with the BBC.
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