Underground Stories 03-20-14

NATO allies criticize U.S. for being caught off guard by Russia’s military buildup

Brushing aside President Obama’s threat of more sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimean region of Ukraine on Tuesday with the stroke of a pen, while NATO members criticized Washington for getting caught off guard by Russia’s military buildup.
As the Russian national anthem played and cheering lawmakers wept, Mr. Putin and Crimean leaders signed a treaty in Moscow to make Crimea part of the Russian Federation, only two days after the region held a disputed referendum enforced by Russian troops.

“In the hearts and minds of people, Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia,” Mr. Putin said in a passionate speech, adding that he had no further ambitions for Ukrainian territory.
The annexation prompted a howl of protest in Kiev, where Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called it “a robbery on an international scale” and warned that the crisis was careening toward war.
The shooting death of a Ukrainian soldier in Crimea by a masked gunman brought accusations that Russia was committing war crimes.
Mr. Obama kept a low profile a day after he imposed sanctions on 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials. Vice President Joseph R. Biden, in Poland on a mission to calm anxious European leaders, denounced Russia’s “land grab” and warned Mr. Putin that the U.S. would issue more sanctions and defend its NATO allies.

Ukrainian Warships In Crimea Seized By Pro-Russian Crowds

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Pro-Russian forces seized three Ukrainian warships Thursday and Ukraine said its troops were being threatened in Crimea as the U.S. announced a new round of sanctions against Russia for its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.
Tensions in the region remained high despite the release of a Ukrainian naval commander held by pro-Russian forces.
Shots were fired but there were no casualties as the Ukrainian corvette Khmelnitsky was seized in Sevastopol, according to an AP photographer at the scene. Another ship, the Lutsk, was also surrounded by pro-Russian forces. An AP photographer later saw Ukrainian servicemen disembarking a third ship, the Ternopil corvette.
The Defense Ministry had no immediate information on the incidents.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Leonid Polyakov accused Russian troops of constantly threatening to storm military bases where Ukrainian soldiers were located, according to the Interfax news agency.
In Geneva, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations warned of a sharp deterioration in relations between the two neighbors, saying that Russia appears to be preparing for a military "invasion" in more areas of his country.
Ambassador Yuri Klymenko said there were "indications that Russia is on its way to unleash a full-blown military invention in Ukraine's east and south" since its annexation of Crimea. He said his statement was based on information from non-governmental organizations.

Ticking Timebomb: Moscow Moves to Destabilize Eastern Ukraine

It's not only in Crimea where Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing with fire, but also in eastern Ukraine. The majority of the people in the economically powerful region speak Russian and reject the new government in Kiev.

The pensioner Oxana Kremenyuk limps as she passes by the House of Culture in a small village in eastern Ukraine. As a young woman, she used to dance here. Today the stucco is crumbling and the windows are broken. "The people in Kiev are driving our country into civil war," she says. "These good-for-nothings should be slaving away the way we do here." Kremenyuk receives a pension of about €90 ($125) a month. In order to ensure there is food on the table, she keeps 10 chickens and a pig. 
Kremenyuk's village of Maidan, with its three dozen homes, is a peaceful place in a gentle, hilly landscape. The village is 378 kilometers (235 miles) -- but also worlds apart -- from the Maidan in the capital city of Kiev, the Independence Square that has become known around the world since the start of the revolution. Most of the village's homes have fallen into a state of disrepair and young families moved away long ago. The people living here don't think much of the revolution taking place in the western part of the country.
Three-Quarters in East Reject Popular Revolt
In the eastern part of Ukraine, with several large cities including Donetsk, Kharkiv and Dnepropetrovsk, polls show three-quarters of those surveyed rejecting the popular revolt in Kiev. Between 70 and as many as 90 percent of the residents in this region say that Russian, and not Ukrainian, is their primary language. In Kharkiv, locals threw eggs at Vitali Klitchko, one of the protest leaders.
After the Crimean peninsula, eastern Ukraine has become the second powder keg in the conflict with Russia -- only it is a much larger one than the former. At the end of last week, the government in Moscow put the fuse on display.
After at least one person died and dozens were injured in clashes between friends and opponents of Russia in Donetsk, the foreign minister in Moscow warned: "Russia is aware of its responsibility for the life of compatriots and citizens in Ukraine and reserves the right to take these people under protection."
At the same time, the Kremlin again began mobilizing tank and artillery units. Some 4,000 men marched near the Ukrainian border and para-troopers also performed drills. It would be difficult to make a threat more clear.

Europe reaches deal to complete banking union 

European policymakers agreed on Thursday to complete a banking union with an agency to shut failing euro zone banks but there will be no euro zone backstop for the new fund to help cover the costs of such closures.
All-night talks ended a stand-off between the European Parliament and euro zone countries over the new scheme, completing the second leg of banking union that is due to start this year when the European Central Bank takes over as watchdog.
The banking union, and the clean-up of banks’ books that will accompany it, is intended to restore banks’ confidence in one another and boost lending across the currency bloc, helping foster growth in the 18 economies that use the euro.
It is also supposed to break the vicious circle of indebted states and the banks that buy their debt, treated in law as ‘risk-free’ despite Greece’s default in all but name.
The details of the compromise, which must still get rubber stamped by the whole European Parliament and European Union finance ministers, are outlined in a draft agreement and were confirmed by people involved in the talks.
Under the deal reached, a 55-billion-euro fund made up by levies on banks will be built up over eight years, rather than 10 as originally envisaged. Forty per cent of the fund will be shared among countries from the start and 70 per cent after 3 years.

Equatorial Guinea vice president charged as part of French money laundering investigation

French judicial authorities have filed preliminary charges of alleged money laundering against the son of Equatorial Guinea's president.

A lawyer for the son, Vice President Teodorin Obiang Nguema, insisted Thursday his client has diplomatic immunity.
French financial prosecutors said Obiang, the son of President Teodoro Obiang, was told by video conference of three counts of money laundering under a probe into the acquisition of properties in France by the leaders of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of Congo.
After Obiang made himself available, French authorities lifted an international arrest warrant they had issued for him.
Authorities are still working to calculate the total value of real estate, luxury cars, art and other property in France that Transparency International estimates at least in tens of millions of euros.

Caracas city worker killed amidst protests in Venezuela

A municipal worker was fatally shot while removing a street barricade in a middle-class Caracas neighbourhood, Venezuela's federal prosecutor's office said Wednesday, raising to 27 the official death toll from more than a month's worth of protests.

According to preliminary information, Francisco Alcides Madrid Rosendo, 32, was shot multiple times around 10 p.m. Tuesday while he and others were taking down a barricade in the Montalban neighbourhood in the city's western section, according to a statement from the federal prosecutor's office.
Pro-government Caracas Mayor Jorge Rodriguez through his Twitter account blamed unnamed "terrorists" for the killing, but provided no other details.
Caracas and other Venezuelan cities have been roiled by more than a month of anti-government demonstrations. Student-led protests that began in early February have drawn support from middle-class people frustrated by inflation that reached an annualized rate of 57 percent last month, soaring violent crime and shortages of basic items such as cooking oil and toilet paper.
Rosendo's killing takes the government's tally of dead in protests since Feb. 12 to 27. About 365 more people have been wounded in the demonstrations.
The prosecutor's office did not immediately comment on another death reported Wednesday in the western state of Tachira, where the circumstances were unclear.

Gunmen 'attack Kabul luxury hotel'

Gunmen have fired shots after breaking into a luxury hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul, witnesses say.

The building, which is popular with foreigners, is now surrounded by the security forces. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.
Witnesses told the BBC that Afghan special forces had now entered the five-star Serena hotel.
The hotel currently houses a number of UN staff who are expected to monitor next month's elections.
The gunmen are reportedly armed with pistols.
At least two gunshots were heard in the last hour, an officer from the elite Afghan Crisis Response Unit told the BBC.
One of the gunmen was reportedly hiding in a bathroom and shooting with a pistol.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the raid, but the Afghan authorities have blamed Taliban militants for similar attacks.
The Serena hotel lies less than one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the presidential palace and key government ministries.

Ypres: World War One weapon explodes, killing two

A shell or grenade buried in western Belgium since World War One, has exploded, killing two people.

At least two more were injured, one of whom is in critical condition.
The device was set off as workmen at a building site in Ypres were trying to dig it up.
A strategic city, Ypres was shelled by German forces for most of the war and unexploded weapons are often found there.
The area, where a factory is being built, has been sealed off and local explosives experts have been brought in.

It is thought that thousands of explosives from the 1914-1918 war still lie buried in and around Ypres, yet to be discovered.

Every year the former battlefields of western Belgium throw up hundreds of Great War armaments. Most are destroyed without incident by a special Belgian army bomb squad.
Despite that, several hundred people have been killed in similar explosions since the end of the war.
The Flanders battlefields cover dozens of cities where Allied forces clashed with their Germany enemies for most of the war.

What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden

By CARLOTTA GALL 

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, I went to live and report for The New York Times in Afghanistan. I would spend most of the next 12 years there, following the overthrow of the Taliban, feeling the excitement of the freedom and prosperity that was promised in its wake and then watching the gradual dissolution of that hope. A new Constitution and two rounds of elections did not improve the lives of ordinary Afghans; the Taliban regrouped and found increasing numbers of supporters for their guerrilla actions; by 2006, as they mounted an ambitious offensive to retake southern Afghanistan and unleashed more than a hundred suicide bombers, it was clear that a deadly and determined opponent was growing in strength, not losing it. As I toured the bomb sites and battlegrounds of the Taliban resurgence, Afghans kept telling me the same thing: The organizers of the insurgency were in Pakistan, specifically in the western district of Quetta. Police investigators were finding that many of the bombers, too, were coming from Pakistan.

In December 2006, I flew to Quetta, where I met with several Pakistani reporters and a photographer. Together we found families who were grappling with the realization that their sons had blown themselves up in Afghanistan. Some were not even sure whether to believe the news, relayed in anonymous phone calls or secondhand through someone in the community. All of them were scared to say how their sons died and who recruited them, fearing trouble from members of the ISI, Pakistan’s main intelligence service.

After our first day of reporting in Quetta, we noticed that an intelligence agent on a motorbike was following us, and everyone we interviewed was visited afterward by ISI agents. We visited a neighborhood called Pashtunabad, “town of the Pashtuns,” a close-knit community of narrow alleys inhabited largely by Afghan refugees who over the years spread up the hillside, building one-story houses from mud and straw. The people are working class: laborers, bus drivers and shopkeepers. The neighborhood is also home to several members of the Taliban, who live in larger houses behind high walls, often next to the mosques and madrasas they run.

Continued......

Rare earth mining in China: the bleak social and environmental costs

Although Wang Jianguo knows little about rare earths mining, he is an accidental expert on its consequences.
A short walk from the 43-year-old former farmer's dilapidated brick home in Xinguang Number One Village, is the world's largest rare earths mine tailings pond – an endless expanse of viscous grey sludge built in the 1950s under Mao Zedong. The pond, owned by the Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company, or Baotou Steel, lacks a proper lining and for the past 20 years its toxic contents have been seeping into groundwater, according to villagers and state media reports. It is trickling towards the nearby Yellow River, a major drinking water source for much of northern China, at a rate of 20 to 30 metres a year, a local expert told the influential Chinese magazine Caixin.
"In the beginning, there was no tap water here, so we all drank from wells," Wang said. "The water looked fine, but it smelled really bad." In the 1990s, when China's rare earths production kicked into full gear, his sheep died and his cabbage crops withered. Most of his neighbours have moved away. Seven have died of cancer. His teeth have grown yellow and crooked; they jut out at strange angles from blackened gums.
Rare earths are a group of 17 elements: "iron grey to silvery lustrous metals" that are "typically soft, malleable, and ductile; and usually reactive", according to the US Geological Survey. They're crucial in manufacturing a broad array of high-tech products, such as smartphones, wind turbines, camera lenses, magnets and missile defence systems. China produces more than 85% of the world's supply, about half of which comes from Baotou, a city of 2.5 million in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 650km northwest of Beijing.
Processing rare earths is a dirty business. Their ore is often laced with radioactive materials such as thorium, and separating the wheat from the chaff requires huge amounts of carcinogenic toxins – sulphates, ammonia and hydrochloric acid. Processing one ton of rare earths produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste; Baotou's rare earths enterprises produce 10m tons of wastewater per year. They're pumped into tailings dams, like the one by Wang's village, 12km west of the city centre.

Secret Clinton WH tapes mysteriously vanish

Ask any liberal, and he’ll tell you that the worst insult you can heap on any President is comparing him to Richard Nixon. Meet the newest inductee to the Nixon Missing Tapes Hall of Fame — the still-much-beloved of liberals Bill “Bubba” Clinton.

Among the thousands of pages of documents released by the Clinton Library recently, two had this tantalizing notation at the top: “Tape One, Side One.”
That stamp appeared on transcripts of two conversations Bill Clinton had behind closed doors with aides inside the Oval Office. They included the president’s ribald remarks on race, frank talk about gays, and even how to prepare for Y2K. And they were captured on cassette tapes.

Might we hear Clinton in his famous Arkansas twang musing that Rep. Tom DeLay was “probably” to blame for the notorious dragging death of a black man? Could we hear Clinton admit that talking about gays caused his poll numbers to drop? Or that he wishes he could advise Americans to buy shotgun shells before the millennium?

The answer, sadly (albeit somehow unsurprisingly), is no. When ABC News requested copies of the tapes, officials at the Clinton Library said they couldn’t find them. A library official named Diane LeBlanc wrote in an email to ABC:

The creation of this particular audio tape, its use, and any transcription [aides] chose to make were all done by White House staff prior to the transfer of Clinton Presidential records to NARA [the National Archives and Records Administration], and as such we simply don’t know much more than what can be found by searching the holdings as our Archival staff has done.

But at least there are transcripts, and as anyone can tell you, White House transcripts are the next best thing to being there. These documents can’t be doctored (right!).
Nevertheless at least one of the transcripts seems to be the authentic rough cut. In it, Clinton is wrestling with the question of whether to mention the beating death of Matthew Shepard, a gay man, in a speech he is planning. He reveals to his aides (on paper) that, according to his pollster, his “numbers go down” every time he mentions gays in a speech.

U.S. Fed cuts monthly bond-buying to $55B a month

The U.S. Federal Reserve is continuing with its slow reduction of stimulus to the economy, reducing its monthly bond buyback program by $10 billion US to $55 billion a month.
It was a move widely expected by the markets and indicates the U.S. central bank believes the economy is strengthening.
The Fed statement issued at 2 p.m. Wednesday pointed to slowing economic growth and a deteriorating labour market early in the year, but said some of the slowdown was weather related.
“There is sufficient underlying strength in the broader economy to support ongoing improvement in labour market conditions,” it said in its statement.
The statement made by the Fed’s powerful open market committee warned investors that assets purchases are not on a preset course, an indication that the central bank is prepared to slow or speed up the pace of its tapering if necessary and that its unemployment rate target is flexible.

Balancing joblessness and inflation

It also said it is balancing its goals of maximum employment with the need to boost inflation to the two per cent level, considered more healthy than the current level of 1.5 per cent.  It won't raise the federal funds rates, which in turn affect interest rates, from the 0 to .25 per cent range until it is nearing its goals on both indicators, the statement said.
“The committee currently anticipates that, even after employment and inflation are near mandate-consistent levels, economic conditions may, for some time, warrant keeping the target federal funds rate below levels the committee views as normal in the longer run,” it read.

New radiation release reported at U.S. nuke waste plant

HOUSTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- A second radiation release was detected nearly a month after a leak was confirmed at a nuclear waste repository in the U.S. state of New Mexico, U.S. media reported Tuesday.
New air sampling data from a monitoring station near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico indicated another small radiation release at the site, local TV KOB quoted unnamed officials with the U.S. Department of Energy as saying.
Officials said the monitoring station picked up elevated radiation readings around the WIPP on March 11. The facility was shut down on Feb. 14 when air sensors detected unusually high levels of radioactive particles on its underground levels.
Engineers said they believe the new contamination was from previous deposits on the inner surface of exhaust ductwork. Officials assured the public occasional low-level releases are anticipated, but they should be well within safe limits.
Earlier 17 employees working at the site were tested positive for radiation. A statement from the U.S. Department of Energy on March 9 said the affected workers are not "expected to experience any health effects from the exposures" and stressed their levels of exposure are "extremely low."
The repository remained shuttered as crew are reportedly being trained to handle the crisis. The WIPP operators said they will send qualified personnel down the underground facility once it's safe to do so, but they have not given a recovery timetable.
The cause of the leak remains unknown. A truck fire was reported at the underground site on Feb. 5 and prompted evacuations, but officials said the fire was in a different part of the site and did not seem related to the leak.

Here come the (Obama) girls! Michelle lands in China for week-long trip with her daughters and mother...

Michelle Obama arrived in China on Thursday for a weeklong visit that will steer clear of politics and instead focusing on education and community.
The First Lady arrived in Beijing today, accompanied by daughters Sasha and Malia as well as her mother Marian Robinson.
On Friday, she is to spend the day with Peng Liyuan, the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, something which diplomats hope will build bridges between the two countries.

'I think this is a very good opportunity to improve the China-U.S. relations, as the first lady can represent the soft side of diplomacy,' said Wang Dong, a political scientist at Peking University's School of International Studies.
'Michelle Obama herself has been accomplished in areas such as women's rights, children issues and education, and I think members of the Chinese public are anticipating her visit with a positive attitude,' Wang said.

During her trip to China, Mrs Obama will visit several schools and universities in Beijing as well as hosting a roundtable on education and promoting exchange programmes.
By her side will be her two daughters, but also her 76-year-old mother Marian Robinson.
Mrs Robinson, the first live-in grandmother in the White House since the 1950s, is the only living grandparent of Malia, 15, and Sasha 12. 

SolarCity $166 million in the red after losing $55 million in 2013

SolarCity, a California-based solar energy firm backed by hundreds of millions in federal grants and loans, posted $55 million in losses during 2013 and is running a deficit of more than $166 million, according to an annual financial report released this week.
Still, company officials say the future is looking sunny.
“All our states are doing extremely well and we continue to invest in every state,” said CEO Lyndon Rive in a conference call after the report was released.
TheStreet, a news service devoted to Wall Street, has rated SolarCity’s stock a D+ and urged investors to sell.
“A number of negative factors … could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover,” TheStreet wrote. “Among the areas we feel are negative, one of the most important has been very high debt management risk by most measures.”
The annual filing to the Securities and Exchanges Commission, published this week after several delays and an admitted “accounting error” shows plenty of storm clouds on the horizon for the solar energy firm. Chief among the concerns are declining assistance from federal programs designed to prop up alternative energies and cuts in spending like the sequestration in March 2013.
The accounting error stems from a miscalculation of overhead expenses that didn’t have an effect on cash flow, SolarCity reported in a news release earlier in the month.
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