Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Friday, July 15, 2011

On Tuesday, the Euro fell to a new record low in relation to the Swiss Franc, and to multi-month lows against the U.S. Dollar and Japanese yen; all considered by investors to be safe currencies during times of economic turmoil.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that recent comments from the newly installed head of the International Monetary Fund, France’s Christine Lagarde, resulted in a sell-off of the Euro. At a roundtable discussion in Washington, Lagarde noted that the IMF had not yet reached discussion of terms and conditions of a second Greek bailout plan. In fact, a representative from the IMF is currently meeting with Eurozone policymakers to draft such a new proposal. The yield differential between Italian bonds and German bonds has spread to more than 300 basis points, something not seen in over a decade and evidence of investors’ concern.

Adding to the Euro’s woes is the upcoming release of the bank stress tests on Friday. The European Bankers Association said that they expect the data release to shed new light on the Eurozone’s banking situation. Representatives of several of the Eurozone’s governments, including Germany, have requested that the association consider releasing fewer specific details for fear that investor panic will ensue. The inadequacy of the capitalization rates has been an issue with the European Central Bank, whose president recently called upon Eurozone banks to make every effort to put their balance sheets in order.

For the time being at least, an unsubstantiated rumor reported by the Wall Street Journal states that the Eurozone’s central banks’ purchase of periphery debt has helped to quell the downward momentum of the Euro.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Italian prosecutors have asked a judge to indict a United States soldier for fatally shooting Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari at a roadblock in Iraq a year ago. The shooting occurred when Calipari was escorting the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on her way to Baghdad airport. When their car came under fire from U.S. Marines at a roadblock, Calipari was fatally shot while trying to shield Sgrena, who was only lightly wounded in the incident.

The circumstances of the shooting are a matter of dispute between Italy and the United States. The U.S. military claims that the car was approaching the checkpoint at high speed, when the troops attempted to signal the car with light signals, aiming a green laser at the windshield and warning shots. When the car failed to slow down, the soldiers shot into the engine of the car.

The Italian government claims that there were no warning signs prior to the shootings. They contest that the car was speeding and that it accelerated after the first round of fire. Moreover, they allege that a proper inquiry into the case was impossible since the vehicle was removed and army logs destroyed shortly after the incident.

Italian prosecutors are arguing that the shooting was a “political murder” as Calipari was a civil servant and the shooting damaged Italy’s interests. In Italy, murder suspects cannot be tried in absentia unless the murder has political connotations. It is expected to take at least two months for a judge to rule on the indictment request.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to comment.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

The tsunami caused by Japan’s magnitude 8.9 quake on Friday destroyed the commercial fishing harbor of Crescent City, California, a coastal town still recovering from a devastating tsunami in 1964. Although most of the fishing boats were removed in advance, the 198 docking slips that the harbor had provided for boats, enabling the livelihoods of the fishing crews, were lost.

Harbormaster Richard Young said that the harbor is destroyed. “We’re facing not only physical but financial disaster,” he said during a briefing. “Our business activity came to a screeching halt yesterday, and that affects the entire community.” Councilwoman Kelly Schellong said, “This is going to have a trickle-down effect beyond the lost jobs.”

Crescent City’s unemployment rate was 13 percent before Friday’s tsunami destroyed its commerical fishing industry.

The 1964 tsunami that hit Crescent City killed 11, demolished the harbor and heavily damaged large portions of the business district. Although the city subsequently rebuilt, another tsunami again damaged the harbor in 2006. The city was in the midst of reconstructing the harbor when Friday’s tsunami hit. The harbor is surrounded by land and a breakwater built after the 1964 disaster. The tsunami’s huge waves entered through a small opening provided for the entrance and exit of boats.

Lori Dengler, director of the Humboldt Earthquake Education Center, says Friday’s tsunami was one of as many as 38 tsunamis to strike Crescent City within the last 78 years. She calls the city a “tsunami magnet” because of the topography of the ocean floor that contributes to its vulnerability. She also blames the breakwater built after the 1964 tsunami because it traps tsunami waves in the harbor, causing them to boil and churn.

A county supervisor found the view painful on Saturday as she surveyed the wreckage accompanied by state officials. She is hoping they will provide emergency assistance. “We don’t have the financial resources,” she said. “We need money. That’s what it takes to fix things…. Our poor little harbor.”

Tuesday, May 9, 2006The Australian Budget (Appropriation Bill No. 1) for 2006-2007 was released by the Australian Liberal Party–Australian National Party coalition government treasurer, Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal).

Costello noted the resilience of the economy against natural disasters and terrorism, and through “disciplined and prudent management” the Government was able to “repay Labor’s debt” of quoted 96 billion dollars of net debt and the Government was now “debt-free”.

Costello noted that the Government budget was in “surplus for the ninth time” with a forecast surplus of 10.8 billion.

Friday, September 9, 2005

New Orleans, Louisiana —After Category 4 storm Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, on the night before August 29, 2005, several flood control constructions failed. Much of the city flooded through the openings. One of these was the flood wall forming one side of the 17th Street Canal, near Lake Pontchartrain. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the primary agency for engineering support during such emergencies. A USACE team was assessing the situation in New Orleans on the 29th, water flow was stopped September 2nd, and the breach was closed on September 5th.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger Wednesday jokingly named Bill Clinton to a professorship.

In opening remarks at the Kraft Program Series, “Challenges of New Democracies,” he said that “the last time he was here I said that ‘one more lecture,’ and he’d be up for tenure. So, this is it. Today we welcome professor Bill Clinton.”

Mr. Clinton and former Czech President Václav Havel were guest lecturers at the Morningside Heights campus. Havel is midway through a seven week writing residency at Columbia.

Both nations former leaders spoke about the challenges they faced during their times in office in order to bring the former Warsaw Pact countries into the West.

Havel mentioned that no one anticipated the rise of criminal mafias in the post-communist period, and that he and other dissidents imaged a swift transition from communism to democracy. He cited Czechoslovakia‘s 1948 destruction of civil society as a significant delay.

Clinton urged the United States to use its international economic power to improve the world.

Citing an even distribution of “intelligence and ability… throughout the world,” with India and China’s enormous population, he said that it’s only a matter of time when “other people get their act together” and “have more people than we do” when, “as a nation, we won’t be dominant.”

Acknowledging increasing American reliance upon Chinese economic growth, Clinton said the Chinese government will shortly have “a trillion dollars in cash reserves” while the United States has “a combined annual budget and trade deficit of a trillion dollars.”

Mentioning the Bush administration’s tax cut given to him and others in his income tax class, he said that the United States “had to borrow money from (the Chinese government) to pay for my tax cut.”

He also suggested that increasing American foreign aid to 0.7% of the U.S.’s $11 trillion Gross Domestic Product aid through cuts in the Department of Defense budget would “create a world with more partners and fewer adversaries.”

Mr. Bollinger also mentioned the war in Iraq.

Criticizing a “dubious construction of a very vaguely identified threat of WMDs in Iraq,” Mr. Havel questioned why planners failed to anticipate civil instability after initial combat operations.

Mr. Clinton declined comment citing his recent testimony before the Baker-Hamilton Commission and his wife Hillary’s position as New York senator. He added, however, that “whatever she says, I’m for.”

He acknowledged that it is an international best interest policy if Iraq “held together rather than falling apart, we would be better off if it had some measure of security and couldn’t become a base for terrorist operations.”