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| GM gives Saab a last-minute reprieve General Motors extends deadline for Saab sale to SpykerThe Saab motor company was given a late reprieve when General Motors agreed to extend the deadline for a potential suitor to raise the funds needed to buy the loss-making Swedish brand.GM had originally demanded that Spyker Cars conclude a deal by 12 o'clock tomorrow night but has now decided that the Dutch sports car company can have another week. The future of the 60-year-old Swedish marque and the 3,400 jobs in that country hang in the balance, though Spyker continues to speak confidently of its ability to reach some kind of deal with GM.The US company, which wants to concentrate on its local brands, such as Chevrolet and Cadillac, and the Vauxhall and Opel operations in Europe, said Saab production lines would restart in January but only to serve existing orders."The December deadline has been lifted and the final offer from Victor Muller [chief executive of Spyker] must be made by 7 January now," said a spokesman for GM Europe. He was not aware of any negotiations currently under way with any other potential suitor and hinted that the only stumbling block to a deal with Spyker was whether the Dutch firm could raise the cash in time.Spyker had originally hoped to receive financial support from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for its attempt to buy Saab which has run up eight straight years of losses for GM.But the EIB money is apparently not forthcoming, leaving Spyker to try to raise alternative cash in the Netherlands and in Russia. The main investor in the Dutch car maker is the Russian bank, Convers Group, controlled by the Russian entrepreneur, Alexander Antonov. His son Vladimir Antonov, a 34-year-old banker, is chairman of Spyker which produced 43 hand-made luxury cars last year compared with the 93,000 turned out by Saab.Muller has said that if a deal is achieved, Saab and Spyker Cars would operate as sister companies. The Dutch company could benefit from the Swedish firm's technical resources and its distribution network, while Spyker would bring entrepreneurial skills to Saab.But sceptics question whether a small Dutch business can reinvigorate a very much larger one that has only one new model in the pipeline waiting to be launched and which ran up losses of £200m last year.SaabVauxhallGeneral MotorsAutomotive industrySwedenNetherlandsTerry Macalisterguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Greece Revises Pledge to Cut Deficit Greece vowed to bring its ballooning budget deficit in line with EU rules within three years, amid rising pressure from financial markets and EU authorities to repair its public finances. online.wsj.com |
STIMULUS WATCH: White House changes job-count rule WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money.... hosted.ap.org |
The haves and the have-nots in Haiti | Gwyn Topham Condemning cruises for sailing carefree into Haiti's hell makes little sense if we don't apply the same standards elsewhereAn instinctive revulsion is hard to suppress: a cruise ship of pampered passengers pulls in to dock at a private beach in Labadee, Haiti, in the wake of the earthquake that killed more Haitians than the survivors can find space to bury. How could holidaymakers sip cocktails or take jetski rides, knowing the devastation that persists nearby? Some may have felt uncomfortable, but not enough to dissuade Royal Caribbean from keeping their giant liners to their usual schedule.Yet this starkest of juxtapositions only highlights in its bleak extremity what is regarded as acceptable elsewhere. Tourism provides a microcosm of modern globalised inequality, with all the advantages or injustices it bestows on those on different sides of the divide. From the Caribbean to south-east Asia, cheap labour and land allow holidaymakers to relax in style for less. The Haitian private beach, in this case reliant on more armed guards than most, is otherwise reminiscent of gated resorts around the world; locals may have access to the beaches in front of hotels but are only notionally welcome, like jellyfish.And cruise holidays have distilled that essence still further. Nowhere should the economics be more vividly obvious, yet they remain magically suppressed. On these giant floating metaphors, the guests' enormous consumption (cruises, where buffets appear from dawn to midnight, are notorious places to gain weight) is serviced by staff hired from the poorest countries on earth, brought on board under the kind of contracts made feasible by a global labour market. In justifying their decision to press ahead, Royal Caribbean disclosed that 200 Haitians are among the employees on their ships.While their headquarters are in Miami and the clients are predominantly American, the biggest cruise operators are incorporated in Panama and Liberia and their ships sail under flags of convenience (the Bahamas is a popular modern choice). Legislation is a grey area. The Independence of the Seas, the massive 4,370-berth liner docking in Labadee, is aptly named: the concept of statehood and territory looks increasingly meaningless from the bow of a ship. This corner of Haiti, like Guantánamo on Cuba, is more or less American on a long-term lease. Labadee's picnicking cruise passengers need, perhaps, feel no more guilty than a holidaymaker lounging in the slightly richer Dominican Republic on the other side of the island.Royal Caribbean's pledge to "not abandon Haiti now they need us most" might raise eyebrows in other destinations: such as Grenada, abandoned in the late 1990s for requesting a modest waste management levy, or conversely Alaska, who found it difficult to keep cruise liners away despite a referendum seeking to curb their effects on unspoilt waters. The worth of cruises to their ports of call has long been controversial. Certainly, the logic of the private beach does not suggest funds being channelled openly to local economies.For all the ills of this specific industry, and the current horror in Port-au-Prince, the chasm that lies between the short lives of poverty led in Haiti and those that occasionally touch its shores is not new, or worsened by the Labadee daytrippers. If outrage did not exist last week, does it make sense to now subject a shipload of holidaymakers to standards we are unwilling to apply to consumption and trade elsewhere? The "sweatshop conditions" that the International Transport Workers' Federation has warned crew endure exist as literally in the provision of many of our everyday comforts. They simply exist at a greater remove than on a cruise ship, where the labour is just a couple of decks below.Ironically, this is an occasion when the cruise ships may be doing some good: ferrying relief supplies and making a donation to the appeal. The cruise passenger who reported he was "planning on enjoying my zip line excursion" and day on the beach in Haiti may sound callous, but by no means uniquely wrong.Few today recite the mantra that travel broadens the mind without a touch of scepticism – especially when applied to mass-market holidays in the developing world, where great care is taken to shield the customer from anything as depressing as local reality. We don't talk about dream holidays for nothing. That bubble has been briefly pierced."I can't imagine having to choke down a burger there now," one passenger wrote on an internet forum. We should applaud Royal Caribbean for sailing carefree into Haiti's hell. For once, that leap of imagination isn't needed.HaitiHaitiNatural disasters and extreme weatherCruisesGwyn Tophamguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Baghdad suicide bombs kill 30 Three separate attacks on targets used by westerners in centre of capital as Iraq prepares for general electionFour landmark Baghdad hotels were heavily damaged by car bombs this afternoon in the fourth co-ordinated attack on prominent targets as Iraq readies for an increasingly fraught election.Security officials said at least 36 people were killed and more than 80 injured by attackers including suicide bombers and gunmen.The blasts took place around the same time as the execution of one of Saddam Hussein's most infamous henchman, Ali Hassan al-Majid, otherwise known as Chemical Ali. The timing raised fresh fears that former Ba'athists had launched the campaign in an attempt to destabilise the government before the poll.The first bomb was detonated between the Sheraton and Palestine hotels in the centre of the capital, causing massive damage to both well-known structures. Around three minutes later, the Babylon hotel on the banks of the Tigris river, just south of the US embassy, was hit by a suicide bomber driving a car past the perimeter barriers. Damage was also reported to be severe.The final - and most audacious - attack came just two minutes later when gunmen opened fire on guards manning the gates to the Hamra hotel, which had been home to many foreign reporters since early 2005. In the ensuing firefight, Kurdish peshmerga soldiers, guarding the border of the presidential neighbourhood directly across the street, engaged with an unknown number of insurgents. Guards from the Hamra, employed by a British security firm, also opened fire. As they took defensive positions behind blast walls further inside the Hamra perimeter, a white van with a flashing red light to resemble an emergency vehicle broke through the hotel's security barriers and exploded inside the compound."It was racing at incredible speed," said Australian reporter Paul McGeough, who witnessed the Hamra attack from his eighth-floor balcony. "I noticed that it had a red flashing light on its roof and as it detonated, I dropped behind my balcony."The lower levels of the Hamra were destroyed, with the blast taking place about 30 metres from the lobby.The Hamra compound, which houses reporters from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Times and US National Public Radio, was littered with body parts and charred splinters of the bomb vehicle. Wounded people were walking amongst the ruins wrapped in bandages, and damage in the densely populated apartment buildings nearby was reported to be extensive.The attacks were highly co-ordinated, mirroring three earlier spectacular assaults on government ministries and court houses in August, October and December.Again, the car bombs would have certainly passed the highly contentious British-made explosive detection wands which have been labelled fraudulent by the US military. The British government imposed an export ban on the detectors on Friday after Cambridge University scientists proved the wands – which are used at most checkpoints throughout Baghdad – contained nothing more than a chip used to detect theft from stores.The death toll from today's attacks is significantly lower than those from the three previous blasts, which saw a total of more than 450 killed and up to 2,000 wounded.But the symbolism is just as stark. Taking place six weeks before the planned 7 March general election, they underscore yet again that Baghdad's prime targets remain highly accessible to terrorists and will make it increasingly difficult for the government to claim it has increased security in the capital.IraqGlobal terrorismMartin Chulovguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |