Iran may hire others to finish Russian nuclear plant: report

AFP
Friday, August 31, 2007

Iran is considering alternative builders to finish its first nuclear power plant amid disputes with Russia, which now heads the project, a Russian daily quoted an Iranian official as saying Friday.

"Iran is interested in the atomic power station at Bushehr being finished on time and specifically by Russia," daily Gazeta quoted Iranian presidential spokesman Ali Akbar Javanfekr as saying.

"However, we are already considering other candidates to finish construction of the Bushehr plant in the event that problems arise again," he said, the newspaper reported.

Tehran says the much-delayed power station is the key to its plans for a civilian nuclear programme. Washington accuses the Islamic republic of using its energy programme to hide nuclear weapons development.

Moscow has repeatedly pushed back the target date for the plant's opening in recent months, saying in July that the project was in "crisis" because Iran was falling behind on payments for the 1.2-billion-dollar (870-million-euro) plant.

Russian officials have said Bushehr may not be completed until late 2008 -- a year later than Iranian officials had planned.

Bank warns emergency borrowers

Chris Giles and Peter Thal Larsen
Financial Times
Friday Aug 31, 2007

The Bank of England has warned financial institutions authorised to use its emergency lending facility that they are not supposed to discuss it publicly.

The warning came after it announced on Thursday that the facility had been tapped for a second time since turmoil gripped global money and credit markets.

On Wednesday, one or more banks borrowed £1.55bn ($3.13bn) overnight from the central bank, reigniting fears that UK banks faced severe liquidity difficulties and sending sterling and money markets sharply lower.

The overnight rate in the interbank market spiked higher to 6.13 per cent, almost 0.4 percentage points higher than the Bank of England’s official 5.75 per cent rate. The pound initially fell 0.5 per cent to $2.0046 against the dollar before recovering ground to close slightly up in London at $2.0160.

But the fears in the market appeared to be groundless last night. It is understood that the lending facility was used for operational reasons and not because a UK-based bank faced a sudden shortage of sterling.

The amount borrowed was large but the circumstances were understood to be of a technical nature. At the end of June other technical problems led to nearly £4bn being borrowed using the same facility.

The Bank of England stands ready to lend unlimited amounts at a rate of 6.75 per cent, one point above its official rate, in a facility that has been used 14 times already this year.

On Wednesday afternoon, the link between Crest, the UK ­settlements house, and the Bank of England’s electronic settlements system, broke down for an hour, potentially interfering with banks’ transactions. Crest said that it had extended the deadline for settlements by an hour in order to clear any backlog, and had not received any complaints.

Use of the Bank of England’s reserve facility, which goes largely unnoticed in calm markets, has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent weeks as investors search for signs of financial distress. Last week, Barclays was drawn into an embarrassing dispute with HSBC, its UK rival, after being forced to borrow £314m from the reserve facility.

After the central bank’s ­warnings to users not to ­comment publicly, all the UK banks contacted by the Financial Times yesterday declined to ­comment.

Documents Show FBI Spied on King's Widow

ERRIN HAINES
AP
Friday Aug 31, 2007

Federal agents spied on the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon.

In memos that reveal Coretta Scott King being closely followed by the government, the FBI noted concern that she might attempt "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement."

Four years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, the FBI closed its file on Coretta Scott King, saying, "No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements," according to a memorandum dated Nov. 30, 1972.

The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU in a story published Thursday. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 at the age of 78.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - which King co-founded in 1957 - said the documents illustrate the FBI's pattern of "despicable and devious" civil-rights-era behavior against the organization and those affiliated with it.

"The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned," said Lowery, who said the agency had a member of the SCLC's staff on its payroll.

"Since we had nothing to hide, it was no great problem for us. But we don't put it past the FBI; (then-FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for."

Andrew Young, a lieutenant of King's during the civil rights movement, agreed. But he said he was surprised that the government would focus on Coretta Scott King.

"I didn't know it and I don't think she knew it," Young said. "If ever there was a woman that had the makings of a saint, it was Coretta. I don't know what they were looking for, I don't know what they were expecting to find. I don't know why they wasted the government's money."

Also included in the documents:

_ The FBI suggested that Ralph Abernathy, a close aide to Martin Luther King, be made aware of death threats against his life for the benefit of "the disruptive effect of confusing and worrying him."

_ An intercepted letter written by Coretta Scott King in 1971 to the National Peace Action Coalition, in which she said the Vietnam War has "ravaged our domestic programs."

_ One memo shows that the FBI even read and reviewed King's 1969 book about her late husband, "My Life with Martin Luther King Jr." The agent made a point to say that her "selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by ... (her) actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities."

There is also evidence that the Nixon administration and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were kept informed of the FBI's nearly constant surveillance.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s activities were known to have been monitored by the federal government as he led the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Intelligence gathering on famous Americans and war critics became so infamous that rules to curtail domestic spying were put in place in the 1970s.

King's nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., said on Thursday that the surveillance of his aunt comes as no surprise.

"We knew she was surveilled," said Farris, who is also chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. "The only surprise is the intensity of the surveillance after his death. It appears it was as intense as the surveillance on my uncle."

Farris said there was no reason to monitor either one of them, since they were law-abiding citizens who were standing up for their constitutional rights.

"This is a woman who basically was trying to raise four kids and honor her deceased husband," Farris said. "I don't know how that was a threat to anybody's national security."

Rewritten surveillance law passed by Congress could give Bush more power for domestic wiretaps

Jason Rhyne
Raw Story
Thursday, August 30, 2007

The recently passed law which allows President Bush to continue wiretapping Americans' telephone calls overseas may allow for domestic spying as well, according to a new report commissioned by Congress.

A recently-acquired Congressional Research Service report of the controversial Protect America Act, which formally legalized communications surveillance where one party is overseas, offers nebulous language which is broadly open for interpretation, according to Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News.

The new legislation seems to provide legal latitude that could smooth the way for domestic spying initiatives involving US citizens. Given the Administration's penchant for signing statements, such an open door may be irresistible.

“The new CRS report offers a careful reading of each provision of the Act,” writes Aftergood, who obtained a copy of the CRS review Wednesday. “But instead of fully clarifying its impact, the report serves to highlight just how unclear and indeterminate the new law actually is.”

Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told RAW STORY by email that she would familiarize herself with the report.

Steven Aftergood points out instances where the CRS summary can’t definitively say what the Act calls for.

Quoting the report, he says, “One provision ‘could conceivably be interpreted’ to apply to parties within the United States. Another provision ‘might be seen to be susceptible of two possible interpretations.’ Still others ‘appear to’ or ‘would seem to’ or ‘may also’ have one uncertain consequence or another.”

“In other words,” he says, “the new law bears the hallmarks of its hasty, poorly-considered origins.”

In an email to RAW STORY Thursday, Aftergood characterized what he thought was a fundamental flaw in the new provisions.

“I would say the most basic problem is that the new law redefines basic legal terms such as 'electronic surveillance,' he wrote. "It adopts new terms such as '[surveillance] directed at' without a clear definition at all. The upshot is that the practical meaning of the law is uncertain in many cases."

On the report's summary page, CRS states that the legislation was enacted "with regard to past abuses of electronic surveillance for national security purposes and to the somewhat uncertain state of the law on the subject," adding that the Act "also creates a mechanism for acquisition, without a court order under a certification by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Attorney General, of foreign intelligence information concerning a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States." Powers conferred by the amendments are set to expire in six months, although they can extended if Congress so chooses.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who voted against the measure, said in a statement after its passage that the bill "does violence to the Constitution of the United States," and "also could produce convictions that may well be overturned because the bill does not heed the instructions from the Supreme Court."

President Bush, meanwhile, commended the bill for giving intelligence professionals "the legal tools to gather information about the intentions of our enemies," and said that, because of the amendments, "America is safer."

If anything, Aftergood writes, the new CRS report may help identify questions Congress may have when it revisits FISA legislation next month.

FOREX-Dollar down vs yen, up vs euro after Bernanke

NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The dollar gained against the euro but fell against the yen on Friday as investors debated whether the credit crisis would drag on global growth despite initial enthusiasm for a White House plan to help U.S. homeowners cope with tough lending conditions.

President George W. Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in separate speeches on Friday that there would be no bailout of speculators and gave no indication an end to mortgage market turmoil is near, sparking a small safe-haven bid in the dollar.

But most gains eroded as investors came to realize that Bernanke offered little new guidance on the outcome of a Fed policy meeting in September, and Bush's plan was viewed as vague and perhaps too limited to contain market turbulence.

"People are keying in to the fact there is risk and that there is more in the pipeline," said Joseph Trevisani, chief market analyst at FX Solutions in Saddle River, New Jersey.

The dollar fell 0.1 percent to 115.78 yen after earlier touching session lows around 115.50 yen .

Against the yen, the euro was down 0.2 percent to 157.74 yen .

The euro traded around session lows against the dollar at $1.3623 , down 0.1 percent, largely pressured by the decline in the euro/yen and other crosses, Trevisani said.

The dollar index <.DXY>, a gauge of the greenback's performance against a basket of six major currencies, was flat at 80.824.

Dealers said volume thinned out as the New York session progressed as people prepared to leave early for the long holiday weekend in the United States, with markets closed on Monday for Labor Day.

CARRY TRADE SUFFERS IN AUGUST

High-yielding currencies such as the Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar initially gained on news reports about the White House plan, which was mostly aimed at enabling troubled homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages with their lenders to avoid default.

However, by late afternoon in New York, only the Australian dollar was up, about 0.4 percent at $0.8184 .

Investors have been reducing their exposure to risky assets as the crisis that began in the U.S. subprime mortgage market spread to other markets. The main beneficiary has been the yen, as investors unwind carry trades, in which a low-yielding currency such as the yen is used to finance purchases of higher-yielding, riskier assets.

The New Zealand dollar was on course for the largest monthly drop against the yen since October 1998, and the Australian dollar was set for the biggest monthly loss against the yen since September 2001.

This week, financial markets have stabilized, and the yen's rapid ascent earlier in the month slowed.

The market's attention will likely focus on whether economic data from now until the next Fed policy meeting on Sept. 18 would reflect enough weakness to cause policy-makers to cut the benchmark fed funds rate. The central bank has kept its target for fed funds, the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans, steady at 5.25 percent since late June 2006.

"The Fed has not decided today whether it will cut rates in September, and the question is whether ongoing credit strains until September 18th would qualify as sustained," said Nick Bennenbroek, head of currency strategy with Wells Fargo in New York.

Snow to Leave White House Post on Sept. 14

NPR.org, August 31, 2007 · President Bush announced Friday that Tony Snow will leave his post as press secretary on Sept. 14.

Snow, 52, had said previously that he would leave for financial reasons before Mr. Bush's presidential term ended.

Snow, who makes $168,000 a year, has been battling cancer.

Before coming to the White House in April 2006, Snow was a conservative pundit and syndicated talk show host on Fox News Radio.

He is the latest in a string of White House officials who have announced they are leaving their posts, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House political strategist Karl Rove. Rove's last day was today, and Gonzales is scheduled to step down on Sept. 17.

Snow will be replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino.

From NPR reports and The Associated Press