Britain Heads For Hottest Year Since 1659--New WMW

[Gloria]

Excerpts, Links up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com


WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR DECEMBER 8, 2003

1//The Turkish Daily News, Turkey--TURKISH-US TIES PUT BACK ON TRACK (Turkey and the United States have agreed to boost their security cooperation and coordination in Iraq in signs of a breakthrough as the two allies try to patch up ties after a series of stumbles over Iraq. To consolidate the progress, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be heading to Washington probably in January for his first visit as premier, Turkish officials said…At the end of talks with top U.S. Treasury officials in Washington, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Ugur Ziyal secured assurances from the U.S. administration of a greater share for Turkish companies from multi-billion restructuring tenders in Iraq.)



2//The Jordan Times, Jordan--BAGHDAD MOTORISTS BLAME BLACK MARKET FOR GIANT GASOLINE QUEUES (Long queues at gas stations, and roadside black- marketers with jerry cans, are one of the most obvious signs that life is a long way from normal in this country eight months after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. “I usually come here but this is the longest the queue has been,” said Rashid, 24, a student. “Since Eid it's been getting worse,” said Amar Hamoudy, 31, a taxi driver waiting in the middle of the bridge with an oil refinery in the distance behind him.)



3//The Moscow Times, Russia--LDPR, HOMELAND ALSO BIG WINNERS (The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the Homeland bloc appeared to be among the winners of Sunday's election, showing the broad appeal of both parties' nationalist and anti-oligarch rhetoric among impoverished and disillusioned voters…The strong showing for LDPR and Homeland stems from their success in wresting away a chunk of the protest vote from the Communist Party and from Yabloko, which also has traditionally railed against oligarchic capitalism, said Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Politika think tank…The Communists were hurt by the amount of mud slung at the party during the campaign, said Nikonov and Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. The Communist Party was attacked by pro-Kremlin parties, and the coverage it received on state-controlled television was largely negative. The Kremlin either set up or helped promote a number of parties, including Homeland, in an effort to steal votes from the Communist Party or discredit it in the eyes of its traditional electorate.)



4//The Independent, UK--BRITAIN HEADS FOR HOTTEST YEAR SINCE 1659 (Professor Phil Jones, co-director of the CRU, said this could not be accounted for by natural climate variability, and can be attributed to global warming caused by human actions. It is unusual for a leading scientist to make the link so directly. "The temperatures recorded in Europe this year were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said.)



5//Inter Press Service, Italy--ATTEMPTS AT WEAKENING MEDIA A NEW BATTLE FOR JOURNALISTS (- For most Thai journalists, attempts to control the media in the past two years under the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are a new battlefront they have never experienced before. The recent acquisition of 11 percent of shares in The Nation Multimedia Group, an independent media organisation, by family members of a cabinet minister has alerted many journalists to more subtle threats to media freedom, like issues of ownership.)

[robcon]

1. On the other hand...

4//The Independent, UK--BRITAIN HEADS FOR HOTTEST YEAR SINCE 1659 (Professor Phil Jones, co-director of the CRU, said this could not be accounted for by natural climate variability, and can be attributed to global warming caused by human actions. It is unusual for a leading scientist to make the link so directly. "The temperatures recorded in Europe this year were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said.)

There's a lot of difference of opinion on the future of climate:

Experts: Global Warming May Cool Europe
Sun Dec 7, 2:42 AM ET

By EMILY BACKUS, Associated Press Writer

MILAN, Italy - "Western Europe might actually get colder as a result of global warming (news - web sites), because the melting Arctic ice cap is cooling off the warm ocean current that is largely responsible for Europe's mild weather, scientists and environmentalists said.

If the ice cap in Greenland and the Arctic continues to melt at its current rate, Europe's temperatures would take a sharp dip after five or more decades of increasingly warm weather. That turnaround could spell trouble for regions that by then will have adapted to more tropical conditions, the experts told reporters Friday at a U.N. climate change conference here...."