LONDON (AFX) – Britain’s former foreign secretary Jack Straw is set to run Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s campaign for the governing Labour Party leadership, according to a letter from Straw made public today.
Straw told lawmakers Saturday he is in ‘absolutely no doubt’ that the long-serving chancellor is the right person to take over from Tony Blair.
Blair is due to stand down in the coming months and Brown is widely expected to succeed him. As leader of the biggest party in parliament, Brown would automatically become prime minister without a general election being called.
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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – Seven former National Park Service directors say raising the limit on the number of snowmobiles allowed in Yellowstone National Park would harm the park’s environment.

In a letter released Monday, the directors wrote that increasing the number of snowmobiles allowed in the park would ‘undercut the park’s resurgent natural conditions’ and reverse air quality improvements.

The letter comes as park administrators are set to release on Tuesday their latest plan for snowmobiles at the nation’s original national park.

The former directors sent the letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, and Park Service spokesman David Barna said Kempthorne will respond in the coming days. Barna added that a final policy will not be adopted until after a 60-day public comment period.

Snowmobile use at the park has fueled years of legal wrangling. Pressure to allow more of the vehicles has come from snowmobilers, nearby communities eager for winter tourists and the advocates’ congressional allies.

A draft version of the latest winter-use plan recommends allowing up to 720 snowmobiles a day. The cap would be consistent with temporary rules in place the last three winters. Those rules expired last week.

The proposed plan would also extend rules requiring that hired guides accompany snowmobilers and that the machines have less-polluting engines.

During the three winters, actual snowmobile traffic averaged only about 250 machines a day, a sharp drop from the historical daily average of 765.

The letter said allowing snowmobile numbers to return almost to historical levels would ‘radically contravene both the spirit and letter’ of Park Service policies, and contradicts the service’s draft environmental impact statement that found snowmobile noise and exhaust would increase.

The directors did not include Fran Mainella, who resigned last year. Mainella was not involved because ethics rules prohibit her involvement, said a spokesman for the former directors.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

OSLO (AFX) – Fast Search & Transfer ASA said it has won a deal with US biotechnology group Millipore for the deployment of its Fast Enterprise Search Platform.
While no financial details were disclosed, Fast said the deal is based on software licence and maintenance fees.
Millipore specialises in the provision of products and services that improve productivity in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and in clinical, analytical and research laboratories.
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BANGKOK (XFN-ASIA) – The head of Thailand’s junta reiterated that elections will be held to restore democracy by the end of the year, in a wide-ranging televised defense of the military coup six months ago.

‘We will have free and fair elections on schedule,’ General Sonthi Boonyaratglin said in a more than two-hour news conference at the army headquarters, carried live on all Thailand’s television stations.

He did not rule out the possibility that he would keep a political role after the polls.

‘I’m Thai, and I want to protect the national well-being, so I will do anything I can for the good of the country.’

The junta has long promised to hold a referendum on a new constitution followed by general elections before the end of the year.

Efforts to write a new charter have been held up by contentious debate over issues ranging from whether the prime minister should be appointed to whether Buddhism should be declared the official religion.

‘It is a very difficult and slow process to solve problems resulting from the pseudo-democracy and capitalist dictatorship’ of Thaksin (Shinawatra’s) government, Sonthi said, referring to the ousted premier.

‘The constitution will be completed on time and will be approved in a referendum. National elections will eventually be held by the end of this year,’ said Decho Savananont, deputy chief of the Constitutional Drafting Council, during the conference.

Polls show public support for the regime has steadily dropped, amid growing worries about the nation’s political and economic future.

During the briefing, eight agencies — including the constitution drafters, the Election Commission and the attorney general’s office — gave 15-minute rundowns on their work since the coup.

Thaksin’s lawyer, Noppadon Pattama, said the junta’s lengthy briefing only highlighted how little the military government has accomplished since then.

‘The junta should explain what they will do in the next six months instead of reiterating the same old things,’ Noppadon said.

‘A military dictatorship is worse than a capitalist dictatorship.’

LONDON (AFX) – The concerns related to high current account deficits of some emerging European countries could lead to a crisis similar to the Asian crisis of 1997 are misplaced, Moody’s Investors Service said.
In a report titled ‘International Policy Perspectives’, Moody’s however said the vulnerability to capital outflows and the associated output contraction and balance sheet adjustments is rising, with potentially serious implications and policymakers have very few viable options to address the problems.

The report focuses on the group of European countries with a current account deficit equal to or higher than 10 pct of GDP. These are the three Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as also Romania and Bulgaria.

‘Current account deficits in these countries have reached very high levels, prompting fears that a repeat of the Asian crisis could be in the making. Such concerns are aggravated by the countries’ fixed or heavily managed exchange rates – usually a recipe for financial disaster,’ says Pierre Cailleteau, Moody’s Chief International Policy Analyst and author of the report.

‘However, comparisons with Asia 1997 ignore the nature of EU integration, which lends support to a realistic real income convergence scenario and reduces considerably the risk of a sudden and prolonged halt to external financing,’ Cailleteau added.

The Asian crisis is not the relevant reference for these countries, which are in fact more exposed to a ‘Portuguese syndrome’ — economic stagnation brought about the slow adjustment of overextended balance sheets in the private sector,’ Cailleteau said.

‘EMU accession, which may ironically be facilitated by the materialisation of such a deflationary scenario, will eventually remove any balance of payment risk. However, it would not eliminate the need to get through the painful unwinding of financial excesses,’ he noted.

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