The White House environmental adviser Van Jones, a towering figure in the environmental movement, has resigned after weeks of controversy stemming from his past activism.

”On the eve of historic fights for health-care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Mr Jones, the special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight on Saturday. ”They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

He continued: ”I have been inundated with calls – from across the political spectrum – urging me to ’stay and fight’. But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.”

Mr Jones issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials ”may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war” and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the Administration.

A Republican Congressman, Mike Pence, called on Mr Jones to resign on Friday, saying in a statement: ”His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Senator Christopher Bond wrote in an open letter: ”Can the American people trust a senior White House official that is so cavalier in his association with such radical and repugnant sentiments?”

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said on Friday that Mr Jones ”continues to work for the Administration” – but he did not state that the adviser enjoyed the full support of President Barack Obama.

Mr Jones had worked for the White House Council on Environmental Quality since March. He was a civil-rights activist before turning his focus to environmental and energy issues.

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After eight years, US-led forces must show progress in Afghanistan by next year to avoid perceptions that the conflict has become unwinnable, the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, has said in a sharp critique of the war effort.

Mr Gates said victory was a “long-term prospect” under any scenario and the US would not win the war in a year’s time. But US forces must begin to turn the situation around in a year, he said, or face the likely loss of public support.

Mr Gates said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published yesterday:

“After the Iraq experience, nobody is prepared to have a long slog where it is not apparent we are making headway,”

“The troops are tired, the American people are pretty tired.”

Deep public unhappiness with the war in Iraq helped sink George Bush’s public approval ratings, making him the most unpopular president in recent history in some surveys.

While not predicting a parallel fate for the Obama Administration, Mr Gates stressed the need for progress in Afghanistan.

Mr Gates has spoken in the past about the public’s fatigue with war. In the interview, he went further by offering a more specific time-frame for needed progress as well as the consequences of failing to meet it. Mr Gates has overseen an overhaul in the Administration’s Afghanistan strategy in recent months, sending 21,000 additional troops and choosing a new commander to lead the international effort.

“This is where we are really getting back into the fight,”

The strategy switch came after rebel attacks rose dramatically last year and casualties suffered by US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops surpassed record levels.

President Barack Obama said last week that he hoped to “transition to a different phase” after the Afghan presidential election on August 20.

Mr Gates said Americans would have the patience to continue the war in Afghanistan only if the new military approach began to lift the conflict out of deadlock.

“If we can show progress, and we are headed in the right direction, and we are not in a stalemate where we are taking significant casualties, then you can put more time on the Washington clock,”

With a new strategy in place, General Stanley McChrystal, now the top commander in Afghanistan, and General David Petraeus, head of US forces in the Middle East, are due to provide their assessment of the effort in Afghanistan early next month.

Mr Gates said the commanders were free to provide an honest assessment, but also cautioned that additional troops might not be approved.

“I did not want either of them to feel constrained in making their recommendations,”

“That is not to say we will accept all of their recommendations.”

The war in Afghanistan is officially a NATO mission. Mr Gates said the alliance was facing the challenge of rising casualties just as the overall coalition war effort was beginning to function better. British forces have had 15 soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan this month, and Canada has lost five service members.

“There has been an extraordinary amount of political courage as some of our partners have taken some really devastating casualties,”

“The British have had a rough couple of weeks.”

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, george bush, pentagon, Robert Gates

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Post-election violence in Iran is “deeply shocking”, but G8 leaders nevertheless want to pursue talks to end the nuclear standoff with Tehran, French President Nicolas Sarkozy says, warning Iran that the international community was determined to make progress.

“We want to give negotiation every chance. If that works, then great. If that leads nowhere, then that won’t be without consequences,”

Speaking after a dinner with fellow Group of Eight leaders at which Iran was discussed, Sarkozy condemned what he called Tehran’s “blackmail” over its holding of Western prisoners arrested following a post-election crackdown.

Referring to international attempts to bring the Islamic republic to the negotiating table over its alleged plans to develop nuclear weapons, Sarkozy said :

“The statement of the G8 is unequivocal,”

“Between August and September it’s for them to decide how they want things to evolve. Pittsburgh is the date,”

Indicating Iran had been set an informal deadline to respond to Western overtures before the next G20 summit.

“The Iranian regime refuses all hands offered to them.”

Sarkozy also demanded Iran immediately release 23-year-old researcher Clotilde Reiss, a French citizen arrested in Tehran on July 1 and accused of “spying” over an email she sent to friends describing street protests.

Technorati Tags: French President, G8, iran, Nicolas Sarkozy

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The wife of the next head of Britain’s spy agency has posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on the social networking site Facebook, details which could compromise security, a newspaper said on Sunday.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service in November. The SIS, popularly known as MI6, is Britain’s global intelligence-gathering organisation.

In what the Mail on Sunday called an “extraordinary lapse“, the new spy chief’s wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and exposed details of where the couple live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are.

The paper said the Facebook page had “virtually no privacy protection” and could therefore be viewed by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world. They were swiftly removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper’s enquiries.

Though the Facebook profile for Sir John Sawyers has now been removed, this brings up an interesting question of whether we all have to officially declare what social networks we belong to.

Sir John Sawers, who will be known by the code-name “C” when he takes up his new post, currently serves as Britain’s Ambassador to the United Nations.
The newspaper said:

“There were fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder could have compromised the safety of Sir John’s family and friends,”

Publishing the story on its front page and the pictures on a double-page spread, the Mail on Sunday said the information

“could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists”.

It was the latest in a string of security blunders, lapses and leaks by British officials that have embarrassed the government of embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Technorati Tags: Ambassador to the United Nations, Facebook, Gordon Brown, Lady Shelley Sawers, MI6, Secret Intelligence Service, Sir John Sawers, SIS

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Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews just released. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as “a zealot” and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Saddam, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the “fanatic” leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a “security agreement with the United States to protect it [Iraq] from threats in the region”.

The then US president George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq six years ago on the grounds that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to international security. At the time Bush administration officials strongly suggested Iraq had significant links to al-Qaeda, which was responsible for the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001.

Saddam, who during the interviews was often defiant and boastful, at one point wistfully acknowledged he should have permitted the United Nations to witness the destruction of Iraq’s weapons stockpile after the 1990-91 Gulf War.

The director of the archive, Thomas Blanton, said he could conceive of no possible national security reason to keep Saddam’s conversations with the FBI secret. An FBI spokesman, Paul Bresson, said he could not immediately explain the reason for the redactions.

The 20 formal interviews took place in 2004, between February 7 and May 1, followed by the casual conversations between May 10 and June 28.

Saddam was later transferred to Iraqi custody, and hanged in December 2006.

Technorati Tags: george bush, Paul Bresson, saddam hussein, Thomas Blanton, WMD

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A lawyer for disgraced financier Bernard Madoff has sought a sentence of 12 years or less for his aging client, who he says “has an approximate life expectancy of 13 years”.

In a letter to the judge overseeing the case in New York, lawyer Ira Sorkin said any sentence longer than 12 years would constitute “an effective life sentence” for his client.

Madoff, 71, is due to be sentenced next week in a New York federal court. The former investor, who is accused of perpetrating a $US50 billion fraud, could face up to 150 years in prison.

Sorkin said the court should take into consideration Madoff’s surrender to police, acceptance of responsibility, cooperation with authorities, and the non-violent nature of his offence.

The letter said:

“A prison term of 12 years, just short of an effective sentence, will sufficiently address the goals of deterrence, protecting the public and promoting respect for the law, without being ‘greater than necessary’ to achieve them,”

Sorkin’s letter added that Madoff would describe his “pain” at the suffering his actions caused during an upcoming sentencing hearing.

“Both he and his counsel acknowledge the scope and magnitude of those losses and understand the victims’ calls for reprisal,”

But Sorkin urged the court to:

“set aside the emotion and hysteria attendant to this case and render a sentence that is just and proportionate to the conduct at issue.”

Technorati Tags: $50billion fraud, Bernard M, Bernard Madoff, fraud

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Air France has replaced the air speed sensors on its entire fleet of Airbus A330 and A340 long-haul aircraft, a pilots’ union official says. The company had been under pressure from pilots who feared the devices could be linked to the crash of Flight 447.

In the deep waters of the mid-Atlantic, a Dutch ship began trolling with a high-tech US Navy listening device on Monday in search of the flight data and voice recorders. Investigators say information from those black boxes may be key to determining what caused Flight 447 to crash into the ocean with 228 people on board.

Experts looking into the May 31 crash of the four-year-old Airbus A330 jet have so far focused on the possibility that external speed monitors – called pitot tubes – iced over and gave false readings to the plane’s computers.

Air France had begun replacing the tubes on its A330 and A340 jets before the accident, but had not yet changed them on the plane that crashed.

After pilot complaints, the airline pledged to speed up the switch and it has now equipped all planes with the new sensors, said Erick Derivry, a spokesman for the SNPL pilots’ union.

Derivry stressed it is still “not proven or established” that the old sensors caused the accident.

Airbus chief executive Tom Enders defended the A300 on Monday as his company sought to sell more of the planes at the Paris Air Show.

“Their record is very, very impressive,”

“(They have) more than 16 million flight hours, more than 3 million flights, and this is so far one of the safest commercial aircraft built.”

“We are supporting the investigation as much as we can and we very much hope that the recorders will be found soon, so that we find out what really happened,”

At sea, searchers began towing a US Navy Towed Pinger Locator in a grid pattern in hopes of detecting emergency beacons from Flight 447’s black boxes, which could be lying thousands of metres below the ocean surface. The sounds begin to quickly fade 30 days after a crash.

The initial search spans 5,200 sq km of the Atlantic, said US Air Force colonel Willie Berges, commander of the American military forces supporting the search.

French military officials also are using nuclear submarine to hunt for the black boxes and a second Dutch ship carrying another pinger locater was to arrive on Monday afternoon.

“We have a limited amount of time to cover the search area,”

Berges said, but added the hunt will go on even if no pings are detected beyond the 30-day timeframe.

In Geneva, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said French president Nicholas Sarkozy assured him the French government would compensate the families of crash victims. The two leaders were attending the International Labour Conference.

Silva told reporters, speaking through a translator:

“He (Sarkozy) said that they will take the responsibility to pay the indemnity for all the families that suffered with the crash, the Brazilian and French families and of other countries,”

An Air France spokesman, however, said the airline and its insurance company – not the government – are handling compensation. The official, who declined to name the insurance company, spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorised to discuss the matter.

A spokeswoman for the French transport ministry also denied the government would pay compensation, saying this would be handled by Air France’s insurance. She was speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with ministry policy.

The French presidential palace in Paris and the French mission in Geneva would not immediately comment.

Experts say the evidence uncovered up until now points to at least a partial midair break-up of the plane, with no evidence so far of an explosion or terrorist act.

French ambassador Pierre-Jean Vandoorne, a liaison between the victims’ families and authorities, said on Monday he met in Recife with leaders of Brazil’s search effort and was told they were keeping up their effort.

He said Brazilian and French aviators have spent 1,000 flight hours looking for victims and debris.

Brazilian authorities say they have recovered 43 bodies and another six have been found by French ships.

Vandoorne would not comment on the nationality or any other details of the bodies pulled from the ocean. Coroners say victims’ dental records and DNA samples from relatives will be needed to confirm the identities of the 16 bodies examined so far.

Technorati Tags: A330, a340, Air France, airbus, speed sensors

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The captain of the US Airways Flight 1549 jet that landed in the Hudson River in January asked his co-pilot less than 20 seconds before splashing into the river,

“Got any ideas?”

The first officer, Jeffrey Skiles, replied to the captain, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger:

“Actually not,”

The exchange, disclosed on a cockpit voice recorder transcript released in Washington, came after the crew unsuccessfully tried to restart engines and ruled out being able to bring the plane to a nearby airport.

The National Transportation Safety Board opened three days of hearings on the water landing, with Captain Sullenberger as the first witness. All 155 people on board made it out alive, scrambling onto the decks of ferries that came to the rescue as the jet drifted downstream.

Evidence in the January 15 incident indicates that a bird strike by migrating Canada geese robbed the Airbus SAS A320 engines of thrust after take-off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, North Carolina.

According to the transcript, Captain Sullenberger said:

“Birds,”

The first officer said:

“Whoa,”

“Oh f****”

The comments began a 3½-minute period during which the plane’s engines lost almost all thrust.

The transcript records the captain addressing the passengers.

“This is the captain,”

“Brace for impact.”

Just before the plane hit the water, he said:

“We’re gonna brace.”

Captain Sullenberger, who grabbed the controls from his younger co-pilot after the power loss, told the board that “big, dark brown birds” filled his windshield just before he heard “booms”. At least three Canada geese hit the engines – the remains of two were found in one engine and one in the other, the Smithsonian Institution said.

The safety board is examining issues such as crew training, bird detection and engine safety standards at the hearings. It is months away from determining a cause of the accident.

The pilots have drawn praise for their professional demeanour in the cockpit. The Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who awarded the crew the keys to his city, called Captain Sullenberger “Captain Cool.”

When a controller asked the captain if he wanted to land at LaGuardia, he replied: “We’re unable,” according to a transcript released in February. When asked about a different LaGuardia runway, he responded with one word: “Unable.” Finally he informed the controller:

“We’re gonna be in the Hudson.”

Technorati Tags: Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, Chesley Sullenberger, US Airways Flight 1549

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An Air France passenger jet with 215 people on board has gone missing after dropping off the radar over the Atlantic off the Brazilian coast Monday, a Paris airport official said.

“The plane disappeared from the screens several hours ago. It could be a transponder problem, but this kind of fault is very rare and the plane did not land when expected.”

“We are very worried,”

Air traffic control lost contact with the Airbus A330 at 0600 GMT after it took off from Rio de Janeiro bound for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, where it had been due to land at 0910 GMT.

Technorati Tags: A330, Air France, Jet

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US President Barack Obama says North Korea’s reported nuclear and missile tests today are “a threat to international peace” and warrant “action by the international community”.

“These actions, while not a surprise given its statements and actions to date, are a matter of grave concern to all nations,” Obama said in a written statement.

“North Korea’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons, as well as its ballistic missile program, constitute a threat to international peace and security.”

He said further that “the danger posed by North Korea’s threatening activities warrants action by the international community.’

North Korea said it carried out its second and more powerful nuclear test today, defying international pressure to rein in its nuclear programmes after years of six-nation disarmament talks.

The hardline communist state, which stunned the world by testing an atomic bomb for the first time in October 2006, had threatened another test after the UN Security Council censured it following a long-range rocket launch in April.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said:

“The North successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defence in every way,”

“The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology,”

The United States, Britain, the European Union and others expressed concern about the test, which was confirmed by Russia’s defence ministry, according to the ITAR-TASS news agency.

A US State Department official said:

“We are gravely concerned by North Korea’s claims,”

“We are consulting with our six-party and UN Security Council partners on next steps.”

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak convened an emergency National Security Council meeting and both South Korea and Japan announced the formation of government crisis teams.

Japan said it would seek an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, which imposed sanctions on the North for its first test.

Takeo Kawamura, the chief cabinet secretary said:

“It is absolutely unacceptable. Japan will take stern action against North Korea,”

The KCNA report did not say where the test was conducted. South Korean officials said a tremor was detected around the northeastern town of Kilju, near where the first was staged.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said the tremor measured 4.5 on the Richter Scale compared to 3.6 in October 2006.

Yonhap news agency said the North also appears to have test-fired a short-range missile Monday from its launch site at Musudan-ri near Kilju. There was no immediate confirmation of that report.

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have been negotiating since 2003 to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy and security guarantees.

The negotiations led to an agreement signed in 2007, under which the North said it would dismantle its nuclear facilities. The deal bogged down last December over ways to verify the North’s declared nuclear activities.

In April the North irked the international community with a long-range rocket launch, a move that many nations said was actually a ballistic missile test.

After the Security Council condemned the launch and tightened sanctions, the North vowed to conduct a second nuclear test as well as ballistic missile tests unless the world body apologised.

It also announced that it was quitting the six-way talks, which are hosted by its closest ally China, and would restart its plutonium-making program.

Analysts believe the North has stockpiled enough plutonium for six to 12 small nuclear bombs. Its first test was seen as only partially successful, with a yield of less than one kiloton.

KCNA said today’s test had resolved

“scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology.”

North Korea has frequently said it needs a nuclear deterrent to prevent any attack.

It said today’s test would “contribute to defending the sovereignty of the country and the nation and socialism and ensuring peace and security on the Korean peninsula and the region around it with the might of Songun (the army-first policy).”

The North has expressed disappointment at the new US administration of President Barack Obama, calling it no better than its predecessor.

Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul’s Dongguk University said:

“The second test was earlier than expected and reflects the North’s growing anger at Washington,”

“Or some internal problems may be forcing Pyongyang to take a strong attitude.”

Leader Kim Jong-Il, 67, was widely reported to have suffered a stroke last August, prompting speculation overseas about the succession. The North’s position has noticeably hardened since then.

Today’s test was staged while South Korea was in mourning for former president Roh Moo-Hyun, who leapt to his death Saturday after being questioned in a corruption probe.

Roh had always championed engagement with the North, and Kim Jong-Il sent condolences to his family.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, KCNA, Kim Jongil, Korean Central News Agency, North Korea, nuclear tests

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