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| Relatives visit Briton on death row in China URUMQI, China (AP) -- Relatives made a last-minute plea for mercy Monday for a Briton scheduled to be executed in China for drug smuggling after visiting the man whom they say may be mentally ill.... hosted.ap.org |
Warren Buffett weighs into Kraft's battle for Cadbury • Buffett opposes Kraft's plans until cost is revealed• Cadbury investors unimpressed by Kraft's extra cashRespected US investor Warren Buffett threw a spanner into Kraft's £10bn bid for UK confectionery group Cadbury today when he revealed his investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway, would vote against Kraft's plans to take over the firm until he knew what Kraft was planning to pay.Berkshire Hathaway, which speaks for 9.4% of Kraft said that it has voted "no" to Kraft's proposal to issue up to 370m new shares to help pay for Cadbury which is chaired by Roger Carr. It is calling for other Kraft shareholders to follow its example at a special meeting due in February.The explosive statement from Buffett said that using Kraft stock to pay for Cadbury when it was trading at only $27 a share made it a very "expensive currency" to be used in an acquisition.But Berkshire Hathaway gave itself the flexibility to change its mind if Kraft's final offer for Cadbury on 19 January is pitched at a level that "does not destroy value for Kraft shareholders". If that happened, "we will change our vote to yes".Kraft is proposing to pay for Cadbury via a mix of shares and cash. Buffett chose to make his statement on the day that Kraft announced that it would sweeten its proposed offer for the British firm by adding a larger cash component.The extra cash is provided by Swiss food company Nestlé which is buying Kraft's frozen pizza business in the US and Canada for $3.7bn (£2.3bn).Nestlé, the maker of Nescafe, KitKat and Ski yoghurts also declared today that it "does not intend to make, or participate in, a formal offer for Cadbury". This follows discussions with the Takeover Panel, which regulates merger activity in Britain.Some City experts had speculated that Nestlé was gathering a war chest to unleash on Cadbury, after it raised $28bn (£17bn) in cash yesterday through the sale of its stake in an eye-care group, Alcon.Kraft, led by Irene Rosenfeld, is able to offer nearly 50% of its 740p a share bid for Cadbury via cash after the frozen pizza sale, but the British firm's shareholders seemed unimpressed. "This changes nothing," said one.The US company said: "Kraft Foods is doing this (adding more cash) because of the desire expressed by some Cadbury security-holders to have a greater proportion of the offer in cash and because Kraft Foods shareholders have expressed a desire for Kraft Foods to be more sparing in its use of undervalued Kraft Foods shares as currency for the offer."Cadbury, though, refused to be swayed from its opposition to Kraft's bid, which is worth about £10.3bn, or 740p per Cadbury share."Kraft has once again missed the point," said a Cadbury spokesman. "Despite this tinkering, the Kraft offer remains unchanged and derisory with less than half the consideration in cash."Shares in Cadbury fell by more than 3% on Tuesday to 779p.The panel has set today as the initial deadline for Cadbury shareholders to say whether they will support Kraft's offer. But the vast majority of investors are expected to sit tight and see whether Kraft improves its offer. Cadbury has until 15 January to release new information to bolster its defence to the takeover, while Kraft faces a deadline of 19 January if it wants to raise its offer. Other interested parties – potentially Italian firm Ferrero or Hershey of the US – have until 23 January to launch their own bids.Jeremy Batstone-Carr, analyst at Charles Stanley, said Nestlé's decision leaves Kraft as the "overwhelming frontrunner" in the battle for Cadbury."Nestle's decision effectively removes Ferrero and Hershey from the field as competitive forces, although we do not altogether rule out the possibility that Cadbury and Hershey might form a defensive alliance against a reinvigorated Kraft," Batstone-Carr said. He added that the fall in the value of Cadbury's shares suggested that stock market traders rate its survival prospects as "50:50".Warren BuffettCadburyKraftFood & drink industryFood & drinkMergers and acquisitionsSwitzerlandUnited StatesGraeme WeardenRichard Wachmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
A pilot's life: long hours for little reward $20,000 pay and lengthy commutes to work renew fears for passengers' safetyThe old hands say there was never much glamour in piloting several tonnes of metal thousands of feet in the air.But there's no denying that to the earthbound back in the jet-set era half a century ago – when Pan Am's "Clippers" ruled the air lanes and service was modelled on transatlantic ocean liners – pilots were regarded with an awe just short of that accorded to astronauts.The exotic blend of international travel, the authority of commanding the ever larger and faster airliners, and those dashing uniforms turned heads, drew autograph hunters and attracted groupies. Pilots also made a lot of money.Today it is different. Captain Dave Ryter earned so little when he was a co-pilot for a major airline that he lived in a gang area of Los Angeles, commuted for hours to work and made less money than a bus driver."I was standing at a gate waiting to commute a few years ago. I was in uniform and a passenger walks over to me and strikes up a conversation as people often do. He said: where's your second home? I looked at him, thinking he was making a joke. He was serious. I said: actually, it's my parents'," said Ryter. "I was living in a very small town home in a gang area and my wife also worked for the two of us to support our family."Anyone waiting for their underpants to be checked knows that the glamour went out of flying years ago. But nowhere has the cachet fallen so far as in the US, where pilots on commuter airlines responsible for more than half the country's flights now earn pitifully low salaries for long, unsocial hours. CachetMany are forced to fly half way around the country before they even begin work. Others sleep in trailers at the back of Los Angeles airport, in airline lounges across the country or even on the floors of their own planes. Some co-pilots, who typically take home about $20,000 (£12,500) a year, hold down second jobs to make ends meet.Unless they have come through the military, many pilots also start their first jobs deeply in debt. "Many of them come to these jobs with $150,000 of debt for a $15,000-$20,000 starting job," said Ryter. "It's hard to make the economics of that work out. But there's a theory that one day they'll make a lot more money than that. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But the problem is they are in, for a number of years, quite a hard haul and there's certainly no glamour. That's long since gone."The result is not only the diminishing of a once coveted profession but increasing concerns about safety as many pilots are worked to the very limits of regulations, leaving them exhausted as well as relatively poor.The largest union for pilots, the Air Line Pilots Association (Alpa), traces the change back about 20 years, when the smaller domestic airlines stopped selling their own tickets and began competing for contracts to act as local extensions of the major carriers. To win contracts they slashed costs, which included forcing down pay and demanding more of pilots.Then came the 9/11 attacks, which pushed some airlines into bankruptcy and others to cut costs even further. Many pilots lost their jobs. Even those on some of the biggest airlines saw their pay slashed by as much as half. But it is the regional pilots who have the toughest time. Ryter's salary rose to $72,000 (£45,000) a year when he was promoted to captain three years ago, but many co-pilots have little prospect of promotion for years.More than half of all regional pilots commute to work – which often means several hours in the jump seat of another aircraft before they begin their own job – largely because they are not paid enough to be able to afford to live in the major cities, such as New York or Miami, where their employers are based. Ryter said that smaller airlines also regularly shifted where their aircraft and pilots are based according to the needs of the big carriers, but pilots were reluctant to uproot their families, pull children out of school and sell houses only to be moved again in a year."In the post-9/11 world, when companies have done everything they can to reduce costs, there have been changes that have really made the piloting job very challenging, very fatiguing, very demanding."With our schedules now it's very common to leave one of the pilot domiciles and not see it for three or four days while you're flying around the nation in multiple time zones. Without doubt the effect is that you are physically and mentally tired. "The airlines have stayed right on the hairy edge of federal aviation regulations."The conditions in which commuter pilots now work were laid bare by an investigation into a crash near Buffalo, New York, that killed 50 people last year. It was revealed that neither the pilot, Marvin Renslow, nor co-pilot, Rebecca Shaw, had a proper night's sleep before the flight. Shaw, 24, was paid so little – just $16,200 (£10,000) a year – that she held a second job in a coffee shop and lived with her husband at her parents' house across the country in Seattle. The night before the doomed flight, Shaw flew for several hours in the jump seat of two FedEx courier flights to reach her job at Newark airport and slept a few hours in the pilots' lounge. Renslow also slept in the lounge after flying up to work from Florida, even though it was barred by the airline, Colgan Air, because of the regular disturbance from other pilots coming and going. The investigation revealed that Shaw's text messages just before the flight said she felt exhausted. Both pilots can be heard yawning on the voice recorder. During the flight, Shaw told Renslow that her husband, a soldier, was paid "more in one weekend of drill than I make [in a fortnight]".The co-pilot also reflected her relative inexperience by commenting that she had never seen so much ice on a plane, as it made its way through freezing weather. That was to prove an ominous observation. As the plane came in to land in bad weather at Buffalo the pilots did not notice their speed slow too much until an alarm sounded.Renslow did the opposite to what he should have done and caused the plane to stall. Experts told the investigation that Renslow's and Shaw's evident lack of comprehension as to why the alarm was sounding suggested insufficient training.One of the inquiry officials, Kitty Higgins, said she believed that the two pilots' working conditions had contributed to the accident. "When you put together the commuting patterns, the pay levels, the fact that the crew rooms aren't supposed to be used [for sleeping] but are being used, I think it's a recipe for an accident," she said.The head of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mark Rosenker, said that paying very low wages, knowing that it would result in pilots commuting long distances to get to work, was "winking and nodding" at safety.AccidentAlpa's vice-president, Captain Paul Rice, a 35-year airline veteran now flying transatlantic routes, says that the industry still remains extremely safe compared with other forms of travel. But he is concerned that it has driven out more experienced pilots while giving the legal minimum of training to new recruits to cut costs."If you constantly remove elements of training, and training that once took three weeks is down to one week, it's easy to see how there's less time to pass knowledge along, practise certain manoeuvres, things like that," he said."The public needs to ask the question: is it worth it to always look at prices as the driving factor? Our managements and the investors in the airlines need to think about what is the cost of safety."Many of the more experienced pilots who lost jobs on major airlines got out of the industry because they faced working for entry-level wages if they shifted to smaller carriers."If you can go down the street and get a job at Home Depot or in real estate where wages are substantially higher than at a regional carrier, that's probably where you're gonna go," said Ryter. "Our new entry pilots are right down at the food stamp wages. They can't afford to start over at a regional carrier." Yet while the glamour may have gone, there remains a certain pull for pilots such as Ryter. "It's all I ever wanted to do. I know we're talking about the negatives, of which there are many, but I still love what I do – being able to get into an aircraft that you could never afford to rent on your own, and be able to pilot it around the nation. I still love the business," he said.Air transportAirline industryChris McGrealguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Haiti quake aid effort still slow Aid delivery to Haiti's quake victims is being slowed by damaged infrastructure, aid workers say, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrives. news.bbc.co.uk |
The New Old World by Perry Anderson | Book review Andy Beckett is impressed by a study of the European Union's past, present and futureThis is a hugely ambitious and panoramic political book, of a sort rarely attempted in our era of quick leader Âbiographies and reheated histories of the second world war. Perry Anderson's stated subject is the past, present and future of the European Union; but his restless chapters keep roaming beyond this already vast territory to trace out a broader history of Europe, taking in everything from architecture under Mussolini to the decline of the Ottoman empire.And yet, on the second page, he emphasises that there is one subject he will not be covering. "I do not regret the omission of Britain," he writes, "whose history since the fall of Thatcher has been of little moment." Thus, in a single elegantly dismissive sentence, 20 years of history – the rise and fall of Blair, the great British boom and bust, the return of London as a world city – that most observers would consider pretty central to the story of modern Europe are declared not worthy of the author's attention.It is a characteristic Anderson judgment. For half a century, as an editor and writer at the influential New Left Review, as professor of history at the University of California and as one of the few left-associated academics still with a global following, he has summed up centuries and continents in books and essays that read like the loftiest end-of-term reports.Anderson comes from a prosperous Anglo-Irish family and went to Eton, as his many enemies on the right and the left rarely tire of pointing out, and has an impregnable smoothness and confidence on the page. He writes mostly about high politics: international organisations and treaties, the strengths and weaknesses of leaders, how power shifts and is wielded. He writes for grown-ups with patience – the chapters here are long and intricate; the book comes without an explanatory subtitle – but he is never dry or dull.His account of the EU has little time for the standard depiction, almost as common on the left as on the right, of it as a bland, bureaucratic conspiracy. Instead Anderson provocatively describes the organisation's creation as "the last great world-historical achievement of the bourgeoisie", an unprecedented piece of international cooperation to which radicals and idealists made a substantial contribution. He cites the involvement of Altiero Spinelli, a former member of the Italian Communist party interned by Mussolini on the island of Ventotene, who during his captivity secretly co-wrote a manifesto calling for a united Europe to replace the old one of competing nation states. The document was written in 1941, with the second world war raging, and had to be smuggled off the island. Anderson notes the path its co-author subsequently followed: "Forty years later, Spinelli ended his career . . . a member of the European commission and father of the European parliament, whose principal building in Brussels bears his name."Anderson is much less approving of how the EU has generally developed since. But his criticisms are typically counterintuitive and original: "Today's EU, with its pinched spending (just over 1% of GDP), minuscule bureaucracy (around 16,000 officials, excluding translators), absence of independent taxation, and lack of any means of administrative enforcement, could in many ways be regarded as . . . a minimal state, beyond the most drastic imaginings of classical liberalism." The EU is too pro-business, expansionist territorially and yet too vague and diffident in its underlying mission and, above all, too pro-American. During the war on terror, Anderson continues scathingly, EU countries have "surrendered" to the demands of the United States: "Ireland furnished Shannon [airport] to the CIA for so many flights that locals dubbed it Guantánamo Express . . . Italy helped a large CIA team to kidnap . . . Poland . . . [had] torture-chambers constructed for 'high value detainees' – facilities unknown in the time of [the Soviet-backed] Jaruzelski's martial law."In such passages Anderson's unusual combination of mandarin foreign affairs knowledge and leftist sympathies gives the book a fierceness and a revelatory quality comparable to the best political works of Noam Chomsky. Yet Anderson deploys his anger sparingly. Most of the time he is content to coolly analyse and synthesise, tracking the rise and fall of the EU's principal actors and guiding ideas, and quietly but often lethally critiquing other writers who have attempted to make sense of the whole sprawling edifice. Generally, he scorns the rosy picture of the modern EU put about by liberals and social democrats. This is not a great surprise: New Left Review writers, in the way of the radical left, have often reserved their sharpest barbs for the fainthearts and compromisers of the centre-left.Yet Anderson goes further, by praising rightwing thinkers on Europe, such as the American neoconservative Robert Kagan and the critic of multiculturalism Christopher Caldwell for being "lucid" and "hard-headed" about the EU's inconsistencies over immigration and transatlantic relations. I don't think Anderson is about to turn into a neocon – he is much too nuanced to accept their broad-brush ideas, and his residual leftism is probably too strong – but he shares with them a relish for depicting the world as it is, brutalities and all, which sometimes makes the reader wonder whether he is condemning the hard men or grudgingly impressed by them. Perhaps the fact that such a leftwinger has sustained a thriving career in socialism-free America is not such a surprise after all.For the middle section of the book, he turns from the EU itself to the countries he considers its "core": France, Germany and Italy. Each is awarded an extended essay, including a glide through its postwar political history, a consideration of its intellectual life and culture, and an assessment of its prospects. These essays have momentum and clarity – Anderson is good at both very short and very long sentences, and is averse to jargon – which makes them weirdly addictive. Who knew that the long retreat of the French left could be made so compelling?Sometimes Anderson gives flesh to his political characters with a novelist's eye: the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl has a "heavy bonhomous jaw and sharp feral eyes". And yet, at times his yardsticks for measuring a country – the health of its journals of ideas, the quality of its art-house cinema, the seriousness or otherwise of its major newspapers – can seem a little elitist and old-fashioned: as if he is some mid-20th-century man of letters, cosmopolitan and urbane but still a believer in a strict cultural and political canon. This book has been more than a decade in the making; but that does not fully explain why some key elements of contemporary European life, such as terrorism and the internet, scarcely feature. The absence of Britain also sometimes strains the book. Anderson portrays the recent Europe-wide financial crisis and bank bailouts as a sign of EU economic fragility, while avoiding mentioning the country in which both phenomena have arguably been most important and dramatic.The book is much more interested in Charles De Gaulle than in Alistair Darling. For British readers, increasingly lacking serious news coverage of their European neighbours, Anderson's continental bias is mostly a valuable corrective. An extensive section on Turkey, Cyprus and the EU's eastward expansion reinforces the sense of the non-Anglo-Saxon world being expertly explained to rather under-informed pupils. The pivotal 20th-century Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, like De Gaulle, is treated with a degree of admiration that suggests Anderson likes tough, wily politicians, even if they have conservative leanings, just as he likes tough, conservative writers. Sometimes, he concludes, paraphrasing a view of Trotsky's, "Reaction [can] solve . . . tasks the revolution [has] failed to acquit."Anderson sees today's EU in those terms: essentially a rightwing project but retaining radical potential. Until the European left revives – and he is bleak about the chances of that – the EU may be the realistic leftist's only practical vehicle. Its unfinished, messy quality, he writes, "might . . . [given] the unintended consequences that have tracked integration from the start . . . yield further, better surprises". And if the revolution never comes? I suspect Anderson's services will still be very much in demand.Andy Beckett's When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies is published by Faber.European UnionAndy Beckettguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |