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 This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.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.
alastair.reed@thomson.com
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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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UATEMALA CITY (AP) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s radical policies pose ‘substantial risk’ for private firms and are expected to drive down the South American country’s economic growth in 2007, the world’s leading banking organization said Sunday.

The Institute of International Finance presented the doom-and-gloom outlook for Venezuela in its annual Latin American Regional Overview report released at a conference on the sidelines of the Inter-American Development Bank’s annual meeting, which ends Tuesday.

The report called Chavez ‘the all-powerful president,’ noting that his supporters entirely control congress, and said his ‘hostility toward markets poses substantial risk to private firms.’

The institute, which represents 375 banks, said Chavez may turn to more extreme policies as the economy worsens, though it did not explain why it expects such a turn toward more radical stances. It predicted Venezuela will continue struggling with high inflation and will be forced to devalue the bolivar in 2007 as oil prices decline. Venezuelan officials have said they do not plan to devalue the currency.

The institute forecast Venezuela’s economic growth at 7 percent, down from 10.3 percent in 2006. High world oil prices have in recent years boosted the economy of Venezuela, a major producer.

Venezuelan officials could not be reached for comment Sunday about the report.

Chavez has said his government wants to maintain a flourishing private sector and will fully respect private property rights. While Chavez has moved to nationalize key companies in areas such as telecommunications and electricity, his government has struck deals with affected companies to pay investors for their shares.

Charles Dallara, general manager of the institute, said the ‘radicalization of Chavez is suffocating’ the country’s already deteriorating democratic institutions.

He has justified the nationalizations as necessary to give the government control of sectors ‘strategic’ to Venezuela’s interests.

The report said: ‘As Chavez seeks to convert Venezuela into a socialist state, it is likely that he will extend the nationalization drive to other sectors and increase state intervention by, for example, capping private sector earnings and imposing mandatory contributions to finance social programs.’

The institute said that, overall, Latin America recorded a year of rapid growth in 2006, but economic growth is forecast to lose momentum in 2007.

Argentina is expected to have the strongest economic growth in 2007 at 7.2 percent, but that is down from 8.5 percent in 2006. The report said the biggest risk to Argentina’s economic growth is the government’s non-market approach to economic policy.

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NEW YORK (AP) – WPP Group PLC, the world’s second-largest marketing conglomerate, is buying online advertising company 24/7 Real Media Inc. for $649 million in the latest deal to plunge media and technology companies further into the Internet advertising boom.
The deal announced Thursday came fast on the heels of Internet search leader Google Inc.’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. in mid-April, a move that gave Google a major foothold in online display advertising.
Yahoo Inc. also struck a deal last month to buy the rest of privately held online ad exchange Right Media Inc. that it didn’t already own for $680 million.
Those moves by Google and Yahoo are motivating traditional advertising agencies such as WPP to act quickly so as not to get left behind in the race to offer online advertising services, particularly since Internet ad spending is growing far faster than advertising through traditional media outlets such as television, radio and newspapers.
Youssef Squali, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., says advertising agencies are trying to ‘protect their turf’ by preserving their relationships with clients, and that the flurry of recent deals has heightened tensions between technology companies and traditional ad agencies over divvying up the spoils of the online ad boom.
24/7 Real Media ran an online advertising network, allowing advertisers to make one deal that would allow an ad to appear on hundreds of sites at once, saving advertisers the headache of making many separate deals.
In January another major advertising conglomerate, the Paris-based company Publicis Groupe, purchased the online advertising company Digitas, and last month the Interpublic Group of Cos. said it would acquire a privately held marketing agency, Reprise Media Inc., for an undisclosed price.
With 24/7 Real Media now sold — unless a higher bidder emerges — relatively few publicly traded online advertising companies remain, says analyst Brian Pitz of Banc of America Securities, a result of the recent ‘land grab’ in the sector.
The two remaining companies of any scale in the online advertising arena are ValueClick Inc. — which runs an online advertising network along the lines of 24/7 Real Media, but with a greater number of smaller sites — and aQuantive Inc., which acts as a broker for buying and selling keyword advertising on search leaders like Google.
Microsoft Corp. has been widely seen as a potential bidder for an online advertising company such as 24/7, but so far the software giant has yet to make a move.
WPP is paying $11.75 per share for 24/7 Real Media, a 30 percent premium over the company’s average closing price over the past two months.
Shares of New York-based 24/7 rose 39 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $11.65 Thursday, while shares of WPP edged up 11 cents to $75.14.
London-based WPP is a major advertising services company and includes several major agencies, such as Grey Worldwide, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam. It’s the second-largest marketing conglomerate in the world after Omnicom Group Inc.
Online:
http://www.247realmedia.com.
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