Ship owner: 'Significant human error' by captain likely

Divers were out in cold water, searching for survivors after the Costa Concordia ran aground and capsized. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports from the Italian coast.

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By msnbc.com staff and news services

Updated at 4:45 p.m. ET:
The owner of the capsized Italian cruise ship issued a statement Sunday saying it appears the ship's captain was at fault. in the tragedy that has claimed at least five lives. Fifteen more people, including two Americans, are still missing.??

"While the investigation is ongoing, preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship's master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences," Costa Cruises, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., stated. "The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and in handling the emergency the captain appears not to have followed standard Costa procedures."

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Updated at 3 p.m. ET:
The captain?was spotted on land during the evacuation, and he ignored pleas by?officers that he return to his ship and honor his duty to stay aboard until everyone else was safely off the vessel, a Coast Guard official said Sunday.

"We did our duty,"?Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo told The Associated Press, referring to efforts to get Francesco Schettino back on the Costa Concordia Friday night.

Safety standards require cruise ships to have public address systems, enclosed lifeboats and evacuation chutes. NBC's Mark Potter has more.

?Schettino, who is in police custody while?officials investigate the cause,?has insisted he didn't leave the liner before all passengers were off, saying "we were the last ones to leave the ship."

According to the Italian navigation code, a captain who abandons a ship in danger can face up to 12 years in prison.

Slideshow: Luxury ship runs aground

Updated at 12:15 p.m. ET:
Divers searching for missing passengers and crew from the capsized Italian cruise ship found two more bodies on Sunday?but?are facing dangerous obstacles themselves.

The vessel could suddenly move and sink into deeper waters, and floating objects inside the ship as well as muck are hindering divers.

"There are tents, mattresses, other objects moving which can get tangled in the divers' equipment," Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Cosimo Nicastro said Sunday.

Enzo Russo / AFP - Getty Images

Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia, is taken into custody in Grosseto, Italy, on Saturday.

Officials were going to huddle soon to see how long the underwater search could safely continue, he said.

In order to find their way out, divers are using a long cord they hook near the point of entrance and unroll as they work.?

Three people have been found alive after most of the 4,200 passengers and crew escaped on life boats, fishing boats and even swimming to shore, but 5 are confirmed dead and 15 more are missing.

Updated at 10:40 a.m. ET:
Two more bodies were recovered from the capsized Italian cruise ship, raising the official death toll to 5, as investigators looked into accusations that the captain abandoned ship early.

Patrick Capito was a passenger on the capsized Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia and describes swimming to shore after attempts to get into a life raft failed.

The bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets were recovered by divers?at the emergency?gathering point near?a restaurant area. Fifteen people are still unaccounted for. Two of those are U.S. citizens, the U.S. Embassy in Rome said.

Updated at 10:10 a.m. ET:
Two?survivors of the Italian cruise ship that hit a reef are among those who said the captain abandoned ship early. A prosecutor earlier said he's investigating those allegations.

Ophelie Gondelle and David Du Pays of Marseille, France,?said they saw the captain in a lifeboat, covered by a blanket, well before all the passengers were off the ship. They insisted on telling a reporter what they saw, so incensed that ? according to them ? the captain had abandoned the ship before everyone had been evacuated.

"The commander left before and was on the dock before everyone was off," said Gondelle, 28, a French military officer.

Two of the 129 Americans who escaped injury when a submerged rock brought down a cruise ship shortly after departing an Italian port Friday tell TODAY's Lester Holt that the crew appeared was unprepared and unsure about emergency procedures.

"Normally the commander should leave at the end," said Du Pays, a police officer who said he helped an injured passenger to a rescue boat. "I did what I could."

Updated at 7:25 a.m. ET:
An Italian prosecutor confirms he's investigating?allegations from passengers and others that the captain of the cruise ship Costa Concordia abandoned the stricken liner before all the passengers had left.

Officials believe the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, had brought the 114,500-tonne vessel too close to the shore, where it struck the rock, tearing a large gash in the hull.

Stringer/Italy / Reuters

A combination photo shows a South Korean couple after they were rescued from the Costa Concordia.

Three people are confirmed dead after the huge cruise ship carrying more than 4,200 people ran aground on Friday night. Three people -- a South Korean couple and a crew member -- have reportedly been rescued.

Rescuers found the crew member, chief purser Manrico Gianpetroni, after hearing his screams. He suffered a broken leg, Reuters reports.

Rescue crews were searching for 17 missing people in our around the ship, down from around 40 people who were unaccounted for right after the luxury liner went down, Sky News reports.?

Updated at 6:50 a.m. ET:
The U.S. Embassy in Rome issues a statement revising the number of Americans estimated on board the Costa Concordia to 125 from 126.

"We continue to account for and provide emergency assistance to them," the Embassy via Twitter.

Panic ensues after a luxury cruise ship dubbed the "Floating Temple of Fun" runs aground off Italy. NBC's Claudio Lavanga reports.

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A Korean couple on their honeymoon were taken off the ship early on Sunday.? A third person, reportedly a crew member, was being removed late Sunday morning, according to Sky News.

Updated at 5:50 a.m. ET:

Reuters reports that teams are painstakingly checking thousands of rooms on the Costa Concordia for the nearly 40 people still missing after the huge vessels foundered and keeled over with more than 4,000 n board, killing at least three and injuring 70.

A Korean couple on their honeymoon were taken off the ship early on Sunday.? A third person, reportedly a crew member, was being removed late Sunday morning.

Reuters adds:

The task is akin to searching a small town - but one tilted on its side, and largely in darkness and submerged in freezing water. Scores of divers were taking part.

Just after dawn on Sunday, a team made voice contact with a third survivor still on board the ship. "We are doing the impossible to reach this person," coast guard spokesman Luciano Nicastro told Italian television.

After midnight, rescue workers had found the two South Koreans still alive in a cabin, after locating them from several decks above, and brought them ashore, looking dazed but unharmed.

The captain of the luxury 114,500-tonne ship, Francesco Schettino, was under arrest and accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship, Italian police said.

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Updated at 5:43 a.m. ET:

Sky News is reporting that a rescue team has placed a third survivor on a stretcher and are in the process of removing him from the ship.

Updated at 5:20 a.m. ET:?
A third survivor was located inside the overturned Costa Concordia cruise ship off the western coast of Italy, a spokesman for Italian firefighters told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Rescuers had spoken to the person inside the ship but the survivor had not yet been removed, Luca Cari told the AP.

Published at 4:45 a.m. ET:?
Rescue crews circling the wreckage of a cruise ship that ran aground off the Tuscan coast have heard sounds from within the ship, Britain's Sky News reported on Sunday.

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Sources said that fire department crews had heard sounds from deck 3, Sky reported. A few dozen people remained unaccounted for.

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Crews in dinghies were seen Sunday morning touching the hull with their hands. They were near the site of the 160-foot-long gash where water flooded in and caused the ship to fall on its side.

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Coast guard officials have said divers will try to enter the belly of the ship in case anyone is still inside Italian news reports quoting local officials say some 40 people remain unaccounted for out of the 4,200 passengers and crew. Three people are confirmed dead.

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The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/15/10159776-ship-owner-significant-human-error-by-captain-likely

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Former Turkish Cypriot leader Denktash has died (AP)

NICOSIA, Cyprus ? Rauf Denktash, the former Turkish Cypriot leader whose determined pursuit of a separate state for his people and strong opposition to the divided island's reunification defined a political career spanning six decades, has died. He was 87.

Dr. Charles Canver, who treated Denktash for his heart condition, said he died late Friday of multiple organ failure at Near East University Hospital in the Turkish Cypriot north of Nicosia. He had been in poor health since suffering a stroke last May. Denktash was hospitalized last week with diarrhea and dehydration. Canver said Denktash's weakened heart contributed to his organ failure.

Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu said: "We as Turkish Cypriots won't forget (Denktash's) selfless struggle for our freedom."

Denktash's son, Serdar, said his father was no longer with his people, but that "he is now among the fallen heroes and soldiers."

Denktash's death comes in the middle of yet another diplomatic drive to reunify Cyprus, which has been split along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey invaded the island in the aftermath of a short-lived coup by supporters of union with Greece.

Denktash had maintained the Turkish Cypriots needed a separate state to preserve peace and avoid a return to what he called massacres of Turkish Cypriots at the hands of the majority Greek Cypriots.

His dedication to the partitionist cause made him a hero to many Turkish Cypriots, just as Greek Cypriots saw him as their arch-villain ? the standard-bearer of all they opposed.

That image began to be molded in the late 1950s when Denktash helped found the Turkish Resistance Organization or TMT as a counterweight to EOKA, a Greek Cypriot group waging a guerrilla campaign against the island's then colonial ruler Britain to achieve union with Greece.

"Greek Cypriots saw him as the cynical adversary," said Cyprus University History Professor Petros Papapolyviou. "He was seen as the man who put the interests of Turkey above those of Cyprus."

Born in Paphos, Cyprus, on Jan. 24, 1924, the London-trained lawyer known for his wit rose to prominence as a leading figure in the Turkish Cypriot community during the tumultuous period in the 1960s and 1970s when intercommunal conflict claimed hundreds of Cypriot lives.

He blocked efforts to reunite the island, claiming that unification would open the way for Greek Cypriot domination and raise the threat of renewed violence.

After the Turkish invasion, he was chosen as leader of what was then the self-declared Cyprus Turkish Federated State. He proclaimed the independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in 1983, but the breakaway state failed to gain recognition from any other country other than Turkey, which maintains some 35,000 troops there.

"He was Mr. TRNC," said Eastern Mediterranean politics professor Erol Kaymak. "He was very much a man of is time ... you could rely on him to stick to the ethno-nationalist line that he believed in."

A series of United Nations-backed talks to end the island's division through the 1980s and 1990s went nowhere.

Most of these negotiations pitted Denktash against a familiar adversary ? Glafcos Clerides, who was Denktash's Greek Cypriot counterpart for much of his time in power.

Clerides, like Denktash, is a lawyer, and the two men knew each other from the 1950s when they locked horns in the courtroom with Denktash prosecuting EOKA fighters and Clerides defending them.

Their personal relationship was said to be cordial, even friendly ? the two men often cracked jokes as an icebreaker prior to hard bargaining in numerous rounds of peace talks.

But that friendship did not extend as far as the negotiating table, where they were unable to overcome their differences.

Clerides and the Greek Cypriots sought to reunify Cyprus as a single federated state, envisioning a power-sharing arrangement between Cypriots of Turkish and Greek origin.

But Denktash said Greek Cypriots abrogated any right for a renewed partnership under the island's 1960 constitution when they launched attacks on Turkish Cypriots.

Backed by Ankara and the powerful military establishment whose respect he commanded, Denktash argued for a two-state solution in defiance of international support for a federation.

Denktash's dominance of Turkish Cypriot politics was reflected in his victory in every presidential election between 1983 and 2000.

But in his later years, many Turkish Cypriots came to view his insistence on a separate state as an obstacle to a settlement that would lift them out of international economic and political isolation and usher them into the European Union that the internationally recognized Greek Cypriots were negotiating with the bloc.

Denktash's domestic opponents also accused him of bringing in settlers from Turkey who voted for him in exchange for promises of land that had previously belonged to Greek Cypriots.

As thousands of Turkish Cypriots took to the streets in 2003 in support of a settlement coupled with a realignment of Turkish government policy objectives on Cyprus, another round of U.N.-sponsored talks culminated in 2004 in a reunification plan that Greek Cypriots rejected and Turkish Cypriots endorsed in separate referendums.

Cyprus subsequently joined the EU but only the Greek Cypriots enjoy membership benefits. Nonetheless, Denktash was relieved at the plan's failure, said Kaymak.

Denktash left politics in 2005 after announcing that he would not seek re-election. But as a respected elder statesman, he continued to be a very vocal supporter of a two-state solution.

"Whatever mistake we committed, the result is a 23-year-old young, dynamic, small Republic which is absolutely necessary for the security and strategic location of Turkey," Denktash said in 2006.

"No one would like to see the Turkish soldiers to return to Anatolia as if they lost a war ... May God save this nation from seeing such a shame," he said.

Denktash was highly critical of his leftist successor Mehmet Ali Talat's handling of renewed peace talks that began in 2008 and have made limited progress since. Talat lost a presidential election in 2010 to Denktash protege Eroglu who for years led the right-wing National Unity Party that his mentor founded in 1973.

Denktash lost two of his sons, one during surgery and another in a car crash. His surviving son, Serdar, also entered politics and for a while served as prime minister. Denktash, who is survived by his wife Aydin, also had two daughters and 11 grandchildren.

A keen photographer, Denktash published several volumes of photographs, as well as books outlining his views on the Cyprus problem and possible solutions.

(This version corrects spelling of Clerides' first name.)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obits/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120113/ap_on_re_eu/eu_cyprus_obit_denktash

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S&P, Greek standoff pressure euro zone to boost defenses (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? Financial markets are unlikely to be derailed by mass euro zone downgrades but with Greek debt talks at an impasse, pressure has been loaded on the bloc to shore up its defenses and glimmers of optimism from last week have been firmly doused.

With the United States and Japan already downgraded from "AAA" the likes of France and Austria are in good company and Standard & Poor's ratings cuts had been flagged in December. Nonetheless, the upbeat tone that surrounded last week's strong Spanish bond auction now seems a distant memory.

"The euro zone crisis is now dominating market activity again, after a period in which better economic news from the U.S., and easier monetary policy in China had helped markets move higher," said Dominic Rossi, chief investment officer, equities, at Fidelity Worldwide Investment.

U.S. markets are closed Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday but the euro zone will not have to wait long for a test of investor appetite.

France will attempt to sell up to 8 billion euros of debt on Thursday and Spain will tap the market again after a successful bond auction last week where it raised twice as much as expected at lower borrowing costs.

Analysts put that success down to the flood of cheap 3-year money the European Central Bank pushed into the banking system in December. It will make the same offer in February, fostering hopes that it can avert a credit crunch and helped bolster struggling euro zone debt issuers to boot.

But the twin blows of the serial S&P downgrades and the stalled Greek bond swap talks have cast another pall of gloom. This time, Spain will try to sell longer-term debt, which could be tougher.

"While the market impact of the downgrades is unlikely to be very significant in the short term, they serve as a stark reminder that the euro area sovereign crisis is here to stay," analysts at RBS said. "We continue to expect the crisis to deepen eventually leading to further widening in spreads across countries vis-a-vis Germany."

After downgrading nine of the euro zone's 17 countries, S&P said it would decide shortly whether to do the same for the currency area's EFSF bailout fund. Ratings cuts for commercial banks are probably imminent too.

"Speculation around an EFSF downgrade will now grow, complicating its ability to raise capital and displace the ECB in the sovereign bond purchasing program," Rossi said. "Both the ECB and the IMF will get sucked further into central roles."

A senior euro zone official said the EFSF could retain its AAA rating with Standard & Poor's through higher guarantees from the euro zone's remaining triple A countries or lower lending capacity.

Negotiations with the banks on a bond swap scheme designed to eat into Greece's colossal debts are expected to restart on Wednesday with Athens warning of catastrophe if they fall apart.

Without a deal, a planned 130 billion euros Greek bailout of which the bond swap is a vital part will be fundamentally holed, raising the prospect of default in March when massive bond payments are due. That, rather than the long-anticipated S&P downgrades, looks to be the bigger worry for investors.

"At this stage, there is a growing risk of a coercive rather than voluntary debt restructuring, even though the latter is still our base case," said Joachim Fels, economist at Morgan Stanley.

SENSE OF URGENCY

Euro zone leaders do seem to be gripped with a sense of urgency although they have failed for nearly three years to get on the top of the sovereign debt crisis born in Greece.

Rather than launch a broadside at S&P, German Chancellor Angela Merkel Saturday said she and her fellow leaders must act more swiftly to impose common fiscal rules and get a permanent rescue fund up and running.

"Although nobody is excited about the S&P decision, the step may actually help to get a quick agreement on the fiscal compact," a German government official said.

While not expecting a euro zone break up, S&P blamed its leaders for focusing too much on cutting debts and not sufficiently on competitiveness and growth.

The ratings agency, and many economists, say austerity for its own sake will be self-defeating - deepening economic downturns and cutting government revenues needed to lower debt.

"Market participants are worried about a vicious circle in which they tighten, growth weakens, the deficits get bigger despite the efforts to tighten," said Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Ahead of an EU summit on January 30 which will attempt to alight upon a growth strategy, shuttle diplomacy continues apace this week.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy sees Spain's Mariano Rajoy in Madrid Monday. Italian premier Mario Monti visits Britain's David Cameron in London Wednesday, then hosts Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Rome at the end of the week.

Aside from Greece it is Italy, facing massive bond repayments over the next three months, which poses the biggest threat to the euro zone. It was downgraded two notches by S&P.

"More than the moves on France and Austria, which are relatively symbolic and to a large extent reflected in prices already, the Italian downgrade might be key going forward," said Laurent Fransolet at Barclays Capital. "Italy is at BBB+ now by S&P, but is on watch negative by Fitch and on negative outlook by Moody's and therefore some further downgrades are likely."

The more upbeat view is that, in the end, Europe's leaders will not allow the whole edifice to collapse, despite German and ECB reservations about many of the policy options. But even optimists say uncertainty will reign for some time.

"Some day the markets will wake up and see that Europe is not going to allow a collapse. If they get through the next six months, you can see the tide turning. Sentiment changes very rapidly," said John Fitzgerald of the Economic and Social Research Institute, a Dublin-based think tank, who also sits on the board of the Irish central bank.

Europe is the biggest threat to the global economy, JP Morgan's chief executive Jamie Dimon told German newspaper Die Welt's Sunday edition. "I thought Europe would muddle through. I still believe that," he was quoted as saying.

(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke, Alex Smith, Nigel Stephenson, Robin Emmott, Jamie McGeever and Adrian Croft)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120115/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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New clue in battle against Australian Hendra virus: African bats have antibodies that neutralize deadly virus

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2012) ? A new study on African bats provides a vital clue for unravelling the mysteries in Australia's battle with the deadly Hendra virus.

The study focused on an isolated colony of straw-coloured fruit bats on islands off the west coast of central Africa. By capturing the bats and collecting blood samples, scientists discovered these animals have antibodies that can neutralise deadly viruses known in Australia and Asia.

The paper was published 12 January, in the journal PLoS ONE, and is a collaboration of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, the Zoological Society of London and the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory.

Hendra virus in Australia and Nipah virus in Asia are carried by fruit bats and sporadically "spill over" into people with tragic consequences. The findings of the new study are significant as they yield valuable insights for our understanding of how these viruses persist in bat populations.

Cambridge PhD student Alison Peel explains, "Hendra and Nipah viruses cause fatal infections in humans, but we currently understand very little about how the viruses are transmitted from bats to other animals or people. To understand what the risk factors for these 'spill-overs' are, it is crucial to understand how viruses are maintained in bat populations. The ability to study these viruses within an isolated bat colony has given us new insight into these processes."

It was previously believed that these viruses were maintained in large interconnected populations of bats, so that if the virus dies out in one colony, it would be reintroduced when bats from different colonies interact. The new study indicates that a closely related virus is able to persist in a very small and isolated population of bats. This is the first time this has been documented in a natural wild population, casting doubt on current theories.

Peel added, "Although Hendra and Nipah viruses are relatively new to science, it appears that bats have lived and evolved with them over a very long time. We hope that by gaining a better understanding of this relationship, we may then be able to understand why it is only within the last 20 years that spill-over to humans has occurred."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Cambridge. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Alison J. Peel, Kate S. Baker, Gary Crameri, Jennifer A. Barr, David T. S. Hayman, Edward Wright, Christopher C. Broder, Andr?s Fern?ndez-Loras, Anthony R. Fooks, Lin-Fa Wang, Andrew A. Cunningham, James L. N. Wood. Henipavirus Neutralising Antibodies in an Isolated Island Population of African Fruit Bats. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (1): e30346 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030346

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112193438.htm

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Pakistan's army chief calls PM's criticisms "divisive" (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) ? Pakistan's army chief is furious with the prime minister for statements criticising the army and has demanded that they be clarified or withdrawn, a senior military source told Reuters on Saturday.

Recent tension has raised fears for the stability of the nuclear-armed country and exposed a struggle between the government and the military, which has ousted three civilian governments in coups since independence in 1947 and has ruled the nation for more than half of its history.

"The army chief complained to the president about the prime minister's statements, and said they needed to be either clarified or withdrawn," the source told Reuters.

"He said such statements were divisive and made the country more vulnerable."

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani this week criticized Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani and the director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha for filing court papers in a case involving a mysterious memo that has pitted the military against the civilian government.

In an interview with Chinese media, Gilani said the filings were "unconstitutional," infuriating the military's high command, who issued a stern press release.

"There can be no allegation more serious than what the honourable prime minister has levelled," it said.

"This has very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country."

Gilani further infuriated the army on Wednesday by sacking the defence secretary, retired Lieutenant General Naeem Khalid Lodhi, for "gross misconduct and illegal action which created misunderstanding" between institutions.

Lodhi was the most senior civil servant responsible for military affairs, a post usually seen as the military's main advocate in the civilian bureaucracy.

"The army is not going to concede an inch," said Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times. "Reconciliatory statements are for form, the demanding statement is the bottom line. The army is not going to do anything directly, the army will wait for the Supreme Court to lay down the rules and will back it to the hilt."

As angry as Kayani is, the military source said, the council of senior military commanders is even more angry. "There is a lot of pressure by the main corps commanders on the army chief regarding the statements of the prime minister."

The military, which sets foreign and security policies, drew rare public criticism after U.S. special forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in a raid in May 2011, an act seen by many Pakistanis as a violation of sovereignty.

Pakistanis rallied behind the military after a November 26 cross-border NATO air attack killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the frontier with Afghanistan, driving ties with Washington to their lowest point in years.

"My sense is that the PM is also at the end of his tether," Sethi added. "I think his view is that we've done everything for these guys, and these guys have embarrassed us time and again. ... And these people have not once stood by us. And that is actually an accurate description of the ground realities."

The army's fury is cause for serious concern for the civilian government, and Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari went on a charm offensive on Saturday.

"Our government and parliament, and above all our patriotic people, have stood fully behind our brave armed forces and security personnel," Gilani said at a cabinet defence committee meeting also attended by Kayani.

"It has been my government's policy to allow and enable all state institutions to play their role in their respective domains," he added.

Earlier, Zardari met Kayani in an attempt to mend fences.

"The current security situation was discussed," a presidential spokesman said, without giving any details.

Pakistan's politicians and media pundits have been abuzz with rumours of a possible coup since the memo controversy erupted in October.

The disputed memo - allegedly from Zardari's government, seeking U.S. help in reining in the generals - has pushed relations between the civilian leadership and the military, to their lowest point since the last military coup in 1999.

The latest crisis also troubles Washington, which wants smooth ties between civilian and military leaders so that Pakistan can help efforts to stabilise neighboring Afghanistan, a top priority for President Barack Obama.

Gilani's office denied a report on Friday that the prime minister this week called the British High Commissioner in Islamabad, expressing concerns that the army might be about to mount a coup, and asking for London to support the government.

An official at the high commission also denied the report.

"The problem really is the army doesn't want to be associated with this government and its leaders at any level in the public imagination," Sethi said. It wants to be seen as resisting them, standing up to them, rather than following them or obeying them."

"I think they want to see an end to this government. Nothing less than that will satisfy them."

(Additional reporting by Sheree Sardar; Writing by Chris Allbritton; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120114/wl_nm/us_pakistan

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Bad Newt Wins: Gingrich's Attacks On Romney Reinforce 'Erratic' Image

WASHINGTON -- At the peak of Newt Gingrich's surge in the polls in early December, the former House speaker answered a question about his past mistakes and personal shortcomings by suggesting that he had mellowed in his later years.

"I've said upfront openly I've made mistakes at times. I've had to go to God for forgiveness. I've had to seek reconciliation," Gingrich said, implicitly referencing his two extramarital affairs. "But I'm also a 68-year-old grandfather. And I think people have to measure who I am now and whether I'm a person they can trust."

For a brief moment, it appeared that Gingrich was a different person. Good Newt -- calm, patient, yet still shrewd and fiery -- was beating out impetuous, impulsive Bad Newt.

But after that moment in early December, Gingrich's forbearance wore thin under a barrage of attack ads on Iowa TV sets from an outside group supporting Mitt Romney. And now, his own attacks on Romney over the past week or so have recast Gingrich once again as a politician incapable of controlling his anger when provoked.

More damaging in the long term, conservatives see Gingrich's assault on Romney's career in private equity as the undoing of years of painstaking work to repair his image and reputation.

"I think he's hurt himself pretty badly. He had rehabilitated himself so much after his speakership, to the point where he was a credible candidate for president," said a top GOP leader, who asked not to be identified. Gingrich's latest broadsides against Romney have "just reinforced the perception that he's erratic, but also that he lacks conviction or principles," the Republican added.

"It's like the modern-day equivalent of getting off the back of Air Force One," he said, referring to the infamous incident in which an angry Speaker Gingrich took a hard line in 1995 budget talks at least in part he said because he'd been asked to get off President Bill Clinton's plane by the back stairs. "First the incessant whining, and then the lashing out. It's all seen in that context."

Rich Galen, a onetime press secretary for Gingrich, said that his former boss's actions in the presidential campaign are "going to be very dangerous for his reputation long-term."

"It will continue the same reputation he had, which is that Newt is undisciplined and vengeful," Galen observed. "For these exact reasons, I don't think he has the skill set to be president of the United States."

"The new Newt lasted about a week and a half, and we're back to the angry Newt, which has not served him well," Galen said.

Gingrich has been publicly rebuked by conservative TV talkers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, as well as by outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review and anti-tax groups such as the Club For Growth.

Former George W. Bush administration adviser Peter Wehner wrote Tuesday in Commentary that "many of us who are conservative have expressed our concerns about Gingrich because of his chronic indiscipline, his grandiosity, his erratic behavior."

"His pendulum can swing very widely and very quickly. This last week is roughly what we had in mind. And it has reinforced our belief he simply does not have the temperament to be America's commander-in-chief," Wehner wrote.

Limbaugh lambasted Gingrich for a second straight day on Wednesday after ripping him for much of the show on Tuesday, hours before Romney won going away in the New Hampshire primary.

A wide swath of conservatism has chastised Gingrich for attacking profit-making, calling it an assault on capitalism. But Limbaugh went a step further and called Gingrich out for seeking revenge on Romney. A super PAC supporting Romney had waged a relentless TV ad war in Iowa last month against Gingrich, erasing the Georgia Republican's lead in the polls.

Gingrich spent the first few weeks of December complaining about those ads and promising to run a positive campaign in response. But a super PAC backing him has now received $5 million from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and is pouring $3.4 million into South Carolina to blanket the airwaves with ads hitting Romney ahead of the Jan. 21 primary.

The former speaker's own rhetoric heated up in recent days ahead of the ad buy and the release online of a 28-minute propaganda film casting Romney as a "predatory corporate raider" who left a "trail of wreckage" in the wake of his business deals.

Gingrich was taken to task by a voter in Spartanburg, S.C., on Wednesday, who said he had "missed the target" with his slams on Romney's career in private equity. He told the voter that he agreed with that critique, but his campaign pushed back later in the day against reports that their candidate was backing away from a full-throated criticism of Romney.

"This issue at hand is neither about Bain Capital, private equity firms, nor about capitalism. It is about Mitt Romney's judgment and character," said Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond. "It was Governor Romney's decision to base his candidacy, in large part, on his background as a portfolio manager. Thus, it is entirely legitimate to ask questions about whether he is accurately presenting how he conducted himself during that career."

Also on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/newt-gingrich-image-reputation-harm_n_1200579.html

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Private Investing Network CapLinked Raises $500K | TechCrunch

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney???s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-Salesforce for private investing, has raised $500,000 in new funding from Chris Yeh, Jason?Portnoy (the former CFO of Palantir Technologies), Stephan Paternot, Alexsis de Raadt-St. James, Lok Lee and Clark Landry. This brings the startup?s total funding to $1.4 million. Previous investors include Peter Thiel, Dave McClure, David Sacks, Joe Lonsdale, Aman Verjee and David Anderson.

As we?ve written in the past, CapLinked launched to allow entrepreneurs to raise capital and sell or buy assets, manage and contact investor prospects, centralize document flow on a secure platform and connect with new investors, advisors and companies. Investors can use CapLinked to manage deals, build public profiles, leverage LinkedIn contacts and connect with promising startups.

Both sides can also invite their advisors (e.g. lawyers, consultants, board members, etc.) to receive information and review deals. Caplinked, which has $12 billion in investment deals hosted on the site, now has over 95,000 user accounts and 10,000 active company profiles.

The company recently expanded its social integrations with Facebook and Twitter and will soon roll out professional accounts with additional functionality, says co-founder and former PayPal marketing exec Eric Jackson. The new funding will be used towards hiring additional engineers and business development staff and for scaling the platform in the coming months.

CapLinked is a free online platform for private companies, investors, and their advisors to network, manage a capital raise or asset sale, and exchange updates. CapLinked makes private investment easy, secure, and social.

Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/11/private-investing-network-caplinked-raises-500k/

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