Conservatives take reins
after elections in Australia


Australia's conservative opposition swept to power Saturday in a landslide election victory, ending six years of turbulent Labor Party rule.

Observers say the win for Tony Abbott’s opposition Liberal-National coalition reflects frustrations by Australians with Labor Party infighting and problems with the nation's economy. Abbott Saturday declared Australia under new management.

"I now look forward to forming a government that is competent, that is trustworthy, and which purposefully and steadfastly and methodically sets about delivering on our commitments to you, the Australian people," he said.

The election was held just three months after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ousted Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, in a party leadership challenge intended to better position Labor for the national vote.

But with more than 95 percent of the vote counted, the Australian Electoral Commission showed the Liberal/National coalition with 88 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives to Labor's 57.

Rudd conceded defeat Saturday, saying he had given the election his all.

"A short time ago, I telephoned Tony Abbott to concede defeat at these national elections," he said. "As prime minister of Australia I wish him well now in the high office of prime minister of this country. Therese and I wish he, Margie and their family well in coping with the stresses and strains of high office that lie ahead. We know a little bit of what that is like.''

Rudd also announced that he would step down as Labor leader.

The campaign had been dominated by concerns about the economy, asylum seekers and climate change.

Unemployment in Australia has been creeping upward, and both parties tried to convince voters that they can guarantee future economic prosperity.

Both candidates had also proposed tough immigration policies to discourage asylum seekers from sailing into Australian waters to claim shelter.

But Abbott has promised that his government's first action will be to repeal an unpopular tax on the country's biggest polluters, which he blames for pushing up domestic power bills.

Voting is compulsory in Australia.  More than 14 million people are listed on electoral rolls, but authorities estimate about a half-million 18- to 24-year-old Australians have never registered to vote, suggesting widespread apathy among young people about domestic politics.


Rim Fire now third biggest
in California record books


A wildfire that has consumed parts of Yosemite National Park and charred an area greater than the city of Dallas, Texas, is now California's third largest wildfire on record, fire managers said.

The Rim Fire is expected to burn another two weeks, they added.

The blaze has blackened about 246,350 acres (99,694 hectares), or 385 square miles, of timber and chaparral in the rugged northern California forests since it broke out on Aug. 17.

Fanned by wind in hot and dry weather, the fire has grown by almost 10,000 acres since Thursday, although it has stayed mostly within containment lines that firefighters have drawn around 80 percent of the blaze's perimeter.

The Rim Fire ranks as the largest of dozens of wildfires that have raged across several states in the drought-parched West this year, straining U.S. firefighting resources.

The fire was started by a hunter's illegal campfire that got out of control in secluded Stanislaus National Forest, officials said Thursday.

Friday's setback follows efforts by ground crews Thursday to tame the fire using hand tools and chainsaws, backed by bulldozers, water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers with payloads of chemical retardant.

A stretch of Highway 120 that leads from Groveland to the west side of the 750,000-acre [300,000-hectare] park was set to reopen Friday at noon.

Yosemite has some 4 million visitors each year, mostly from June through August. About 620,000 normally visit in August alone, but the fire has caused tourism at the park to decline.

Firefighting costs had run $84.8 million as of Friday, with some 5,000 personnel assigned to battle the blaze at its peak, though crew numbers have dropped to roughly 3,600.

Officials said 111 structures, including 11 homes, have been destroyed, and roughly 1,900 structures in the region were still threatened by the blaze on Friday.

But no serious injuries have been reported, and most evacuation orders and advisories have been lifted as firefighters tightened their grip on the flames.

 
Unmanned atmosphere probe
sent to sample on the moon


The U.S. space agency is returning to the moon.

An unmanned rocket blasted off late Friday from Virginia's Eastern Shore with a robotic explorer that will study the lunar atmosphere and dust.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, known as LADEE, is the size of a small car, and it will collect data for 100 days as it orbits the moon.

Scientists want to learn more about the moon's thin atmosphere because they think it could be common in our solar system. That knowledge could help them better understand large asteroids and other planets, including Mercury.

Most of NASA's previous lunar missions were launched from Florida. The first moon shot from Virginia was visible over a large area of the eastern United States, home to more than 50 million people.

The LADEE capsule will have no way to return from lunar orbit, so the U.S. space agency intends to aim spacecraft into a controlled crash on the surface of the moon.


Google seeks a ruling
on email privacy lawsuit


Google is calling on a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of violating its email users' privacy by electronically scanning the content of their messages.

Google says all email users must expect their emails will be subject to automated processing.

But the lawsuit, filed in the western U.S. state of California, says the Internet giant illegally opens and reads the emails in violation of California's privacy laws and federal wiretapping statutes.

Google says it displays advertising based on words within Gmail messages but adds that no humans are reading the emails.

The case comes at a particularly sensitive time for Google after documents leaked by former U.S. intelligence analyst Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency secretly gathered user data from Google and other U.S. Internet companies to track people's movements and contacts.



Shell gets $1.1 million fine
for air pollution in Arctic


Shell has agreed to pay $1.1 million for air-quality violations from the vessels it used to drill two oil-exploration wells in Arctic waters off Alaska last year, federal regulators said.
 
Shell will pay the civil fines for Clean Air Act violations that were discovered during inspections of the Discoverer and Kulluk drillships, which operated in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, the Environmental Protection Agency said.
 
The breaches of air-quality permits that Shell needed to operate in the icy waters were among several mishaps for the oil giant as it sought to explore in the remote but potentially petroleum-rich Arctic outer continental shelf.
 
First, equipment problems delayed the start of its drill season. Instead of the five wells it had planned to complete in 2012, Shell could do only preliminary drilling on two wells, a limit placed by regulators because of equipment failures on a required oil-spill vessel. The Discoverer, contracted from Noble Corp, was detained for safety and environmental problems.
 
It all culminated with the grounding of the Kulluk during a December storm near Kodiak Island. Federal investigations were launched into the grounding and the Discoverer's shortcomings, and the Department of Interior now plans to issue new rules for Arctic drilling by the end of the year.
 
The violations resolved by Shell's settlement include excessive hourly nitrogen-oxide emissions on the drillships and support vessels and lapses in use of emissions-cleansing equipment.
 
The agreement requires Shell to pay $710,000 for 23 violations that inspectors said occurred on the Discoverer and its support fleet and $390,000 for 11 violations on the Kulluk.
 
Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the brief 2012 season had taught the company lessons about controlling air pollution.
 
And while Shell will pay fines for excessive hourly air pollution, the drilling operations produced only a tiny fraction of the total air pollution Shell would have been allowed to emit during a full year, according to the settlement agreement.
 
"Despite reported overages in 2012, the EPA did not allege any negative impact from Shell's emissions to local populations," Smith said in an email.
 
Shell has spent about $5 billion on its Alaska offshore program, including $2.1 billion in a 2008 Chukchi lease sale.


World economy improving,
Group of 20 message says


The Group of 20 powers said on Friday the world economy was improving, but it was too early to declare an end to crisis with emerging markets facing increasing volatility.
 
The prospect that the Federal Reserve may rein in its expansive monetary policies as soon as this month has plunged into turmoil some emerging economies that had enjoyed rapid growth helped by a flood of cheap dollars.
 
In talks on the economy which were overshadowed by the Syrian crisis and which were described as difficult by participants, emerging and developed powers in St. Petersburg managed to find a common form of words.
 
Leaders of the G20, which accounts for 90 percent of the world economy and two-thirds of its population, agreed to adjust policy carefully but said countries at the sharp end also had to put their houses in order.
 
A communique issued at the end of the two-day summit stuck closely to the statement issued by finance ministers in July, demanding changes to monetary policy must be carefully calibrated and clearly communicated.
 
International Monetary Fund's Christine Lagarde welcomed that commitment, adding: "Both advanced economies and emerging markets will have to address their domestic challenges in order for spillovers to be effectively managed."
 
The G20, which united in response to global crisis in 2009, now faces a multi-speed recovery with the U.S. economy pushing ahead, Europe may be finding a floor and developing economies facing blowback from the looming Fed action.
 
The nod in the communique to managing spillovers of policy shifts was the closest countries like India got to an acknowledgement of their plight.
 
"The situation in the global economy looks better now than it did five years ago. Economic growth is recovering, but risks of course are still very, very great," Russian President Vladimir Putin told a news conference.
 
As the statement was released, markets were fixated on the monthly U.S. jobs report which came in weaker than expected, complicating the Fed's decision on whether to scale back its massive monetary stimulus later this month.
 
Demands led by Germany for binding targets to extend the Toronto debt reduction goals agreed at a summit hosted by Canada in 2010, fell on deaf ears as the focus has shifted firmly towards promoting growth.
 
"Medium-term fiscal strategies... will be implemented flexibly to take into account near-term economic conditions, so as to support economic growth and job creation, while putting debt as a share of GDP on a sustainable path," the communique said.
 
New elements referred to a growth initiative proposed by Australia, which assumes the G20 chair next year, a proposal to tighten regulation of so-called shadow banking and extending a deadline on reining in trade protectionism.



Ghost of Pinochet colors
upcoming elections in Chile


Four decades after a military coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, a fierce debate over his long rule has shaken up the presidential election, with some right-wing politicians under fire for their past support of the former dictator.
 
Pinochet, who was then the head of the army, toppled the democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, in a violent coup on Sept. 11, 1973.
 
He finally gave up power in 1990 and died in 2006, but Pinochet and his legacy have again dominated Chile's politics in recent weeks as the 40th anniversary of the coup approaches.
 
The rightist Alianza bloc's already weak chance of victory in November's election has been further damaged by the association of its more extreme Unión Demócrata Independiente with the coup.
 
Many Unión Demócrata Independiente politicians supported Pinochet, and continue to justify the military takeover by citing the chaos of the Allende years.
 
That is something the left-leaning bloc has leapt upon.
 
“There are facts that are not known, justice that hasn't come, pain and wounds that haven't healed. And there are people who do not recognize nor repent over what they did and didn't do,” Michelle Bachelet, a former president and the front-runner in this year's campaign, said last week on the campaign trail.
 
Ms. Bachelet was directly affected by the violent side of Pinochet's rule.
 
Her father, an air force general, remained loyal to Allende after the coup and was imprisoned, where he died of a heart attack after months of torture. Ms. Bachelet, herself, was also arrested and tortured and went into exile.
 
Ms. Bachelet's closest rival for the presidency is Evelyn Matthei, the nominee of the Alianza bloc.
 
Ms. Matthei's father was also an air force general, but he sided with Pinochet and she, herself, campaigned for him in a 1988 referendum on whether Pinochet should remain president for eight more years. His defeat in that vote led to him step down in 1990.
 
In response to demands from leftist opponents for her to apologize, Ms. Matthei defended her record on human rights and said: “I was 20 years old when the coup happened. I don't have to ask forgiveness.”
 
Incumbent President Sebastian Pinera, a moderate right-winger whose opposition to the dictatorship was key to his own electoral success, said Chile still had a way to go to reach reconciliation.
 
“Truth and justice are two moral imperatives for any society who lived through times as traumatic as those,” he told journalists in a meeting at the presidential palace, La Moneda, to discuss the anniversary. “We still lack truth and justice.”
 
Over 3,000 people disappeared, presumed killed by the military government, during the Pinochet years. Thousands of others were forced into exile or imprisoned in clandestine detention centers, where torture was carried out almost as a matter of routine.
 
Allende committed suicide in La Moneda as the troops moved in. Footage of the palace being strafed by the air force has become a potent symbol around the world of Chile's break with democracy.
 
This week, in a shabby building opposite La Moneda hung with an enormous Allende photo, union activists are preparing to commemorate the anniversary. They say reconciliation for them will be difficult until all those responsible for atrocities are brought to justice.
 
“For what my parents suffered, what we suffered, my children have seen me cry. Without wanting to, I have passed that pain to them and afterwards it will pass to my grandchildren,” said 53-year-old Luis Ancapil.
 
Pinochet also pushed through free-market reforms that many believe set the foundation for Chile's economic progress. That has moderated criticism of his rule over the years, but perceptions of his dictatorship are increasingly negative.
 
Some 55 percent of Chileans now describe Pinochet's government as all bad, compared with 35 percent just three years ago. Only 9 percent describe it as all good, according to a poll released this week by research center CERC.
 
It has only been in recent years, with the advent of the Internet and cable television, that most Chileans have really started to learn the truth of what happened during the dictatorship, said Pablo Salvat, politics professor at the University of Alberto Hurtado in Santiago.
 
“The new generation is pushing. They want their parents to tell the truth, how it was, what happened, who is responsible,” said Hurtado.
 
About 75 percent of Chileans believe traces of the military dictatorship remain today, according to the CERC survey.
 
Pinochet's legacy lives on in a privatized education system, the subject of regular student protests, which Ms. Bachelet has pledged to reform.
 
To do that, however, she has to overcome another legacy of the Pinochet-era, an electoral system that makes it very difficult for any one party to gain a significant majority in Congress.
 
Ms. Bachelet wants to reform that too, but she would need to persuade the right to support her or win the sort of majority that is next to impossible under the current system.
 
The final part of her three-pronged initiative is to raise taxes in order to pay for the education reforms. Again, she would need to win over the skeptical Alianza.
 
“Probably no country has an experience like that, a democracy in which a minority can veto the majority and where the majority in the end cannot do what the people wanted when they voted for them,” Ms. Bachelet complained recently.
 
Her supporters have high expectations she will deliver on her pledges, and might not accept compromises with the right, warned Salvat. “If Bachelet wins, she is going to have it difficult. ... People will go out on the street demanding she carries out the reforms she promised,” said he.
 
But the framework that Pinochet and his allies created cannot easily be dismantled, said Sergio Bitar, who served as a minister under both Allende and Ms. Bachelet, in an interview. “The feeling is that you are in a cage,” said he.