The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Evacuations, shutdowns on U.S. East Coast before storm
- Hurricane Sandy blows U.S. election off course
- Insight - China grassroots democracy challenge awaits new leaders
| Evacuations, shutdowns on U.S. East Coast before storm Posted: 28 Oct 2012 07:50 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hurricane Sandy, which could become the largest storm ever to hit the United States, is set to bring much of the East Coast, including New York and Washington, to a virtual standstill in the next few days with battering winds, flooding and the risk of widespread power outages.
About 50 million people are in the path of the massive storm, which has already killed 66 people in the Caribbean and is expected to hit the U.S. Eastern Seaboard on Tuesday morning. While the storm does not pack the punch of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, forecasters said it could be the largest in size when it strikes land. At the moment, Sandy's winds stretched some 520 miles (835 km) and churned up 12-foot (3.6-meter) seas spanning more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km), meteorologists said. New York and other cities and towns closed their transit systems and schools and ordered residents of low-lying areas to evacuate before a storm surge that could reach as high as 11 feet (3.4 meters). The New York Stock Exchange said it will close its trading floor on Monday for the first time since Hurricane Gloria in 1985, though stocks will still trade electronically. In addition, the United Nations, Broadway theatres, New Jersey casinos, schools up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and a myriad corporate events are all being shut by the storm. Sandy also blew the presidential race off course, forcing President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney to cancel some campaign stops. It fuelled fears that the storm could disrupt early voting before the November 6 election. Officials ordered people in coastal towns and low-lying areas to evacuate, often telling them they were putting emergency workers' lives at risk if they stay. "Don't be stupid, get out, and go to higher, safer ground," New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told a news conference. Forecasters said Sandy was a rare, hybrid "super storm" created by an Arctic jet stream wrapping itself around a tropical storm, possibly causing up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain in some areas, as well as up to 3 feet (90 cm) of snowfall in the Appalachian Mountains from West Virginia to Kentucky. Worried residents in the hurricane's path packed stores, searching for generators, flashlights, batteries, food and other supplies in anticipation of power outages. Nearly 284,000 residential properties valued at $88 billion (54.7 billion pounds) are at risk for damage, risk analysts at CoreLogic said. Transportation is set to grind to a halt on Monday, with airlines cancelling flights, bridges and tunnels likely to be closed, and the Amtrak passenger rail service scrapping nearly all service on the East Coast. The federal government told non-emergency workers in Washington D.C. to stay home. "This is a serious and big storm," Obama said after a briefing at the federal government's storm response centre in Washington. "We don't yet know where it's going to hit, where we're going to see the biggest impacts." [ID:nL1E8LS151] The second-largest refinery on the East Coast, Phillips 66's 238,000 barrel per day (bpd) Bayway plant in Linden, New Jersey, was shutting down and three other plants cut output as the storm affected operations at two-thirds of the region's plants. Benchmark gasoline prices rose 1 percent in early futures trading. EVACUATION ORDERS At 8 p.m. Sunday (00:00 a.m. British time Monday), Sandy was centred about 485 miles (780 km) south of New York City, the National Hurricane Centre said. The storm was moving northeast over the Atlantic, parallel to the U.S. coast, at 15 mph (24 kph). "We're expecting the worst, hoping for the best. We're getting everything off the basement floor. We've got two sump pumps. But during Hurricane Floyd, we were down there for 17 hours straight sweeping water into the sump pumps," said Maria Ogorek, a Maplewood, New Jersey, lawyer and mother of three. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of some 375,000 people from low-lying areas of the city, from upscale parts of lower Manhattan to waterfront housing projects in the outer boroughs. Not everyone heeded the warning. Mike Cain, a construction manager who lives in a high-rise building in Manhattan's Battery Park City, said he was staying put. "We have stocked up on water, food and taped up our windows. If the track or size of the storm changes we may leave after all, but for now we are staying here, we'll be OK," he said. Big banks in the world's financial capital put key personnel in hotels overnight so that they could make it to work on Monday morning. Like the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq planned to open for electronic trading on Monday. While Sandy's 75 mph (120 kph) winds were not overwhelming for a hurricane, its exceptional size means the winds will last as long as two days, bringing down trees and damaging buildings. The slow-moving storm is expected to bring lashing rains in coastal areas and snow farther inland. "This is not a typical storm," said Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett. "It could very well be historic in nature and in scope, and in magnitude because of the widespread anticipated power outages, and the potential major wind damage." As of 2:00 p.m. EDT/6:00 p.m. British time on Sunday, there were fewer than 5,000 customers without power in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, the U.S. Department of Energy said in a statement. Even with all the warnings, some people tried to carry on with their plans. "I just don't buy into the hype," said Kate Sullivan, a 40-year-old computer specialist from Alexandria, Virginia, who was headed to Baltimore-Washington International airport for a planned flight to Los Angeles. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up in LA by the end of the night." (Additional reporting by Edith Honan, Caroline Humer, Paul Thomasch, John McCrank and Janet McGurty in New York, Gene Cherry in North Carolina, Dave Warner in Philadelphia, Mary Ellen Clark and Ebong Udoma in Connecticut, Will Dunham, David Morgan and Matt Spetalnick in Washington. Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Will Dunham, Christopher Wilson and Philip Barbara)
Four U.S. East Coast refiners shut, cut rates as Sandy nears U.S. companies delay earnings reports due to hurricane Factbox - U.S. Northeast service suspensions due to Hurricane Sandy Copyright © 2012 Reuters | ||
| Hurricane Sandy blows U.S. election off course Posted: 28 Oct 2012 07:27 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hurricane Sandy blew the U.S. presidential race off course on Sunday even before it came ashore, forcing Republican Mitt Romney to shift his campaign inland and fuelling fears that the massive storm bearing down on the East Coast could disrupt an election that is already under way.
As he juggled his governing duties with his re-election effort, President Barack Obama said the heavily populated East Coast could face power failures and other disruptions for several days. "Don't anticipate that just because the immediate storm has passed that we're not going to have some potential problems in a lot of these communities going forward through the week," Obama said after a visit to the federal government's storm-response centre. Romney rerouted his campaign from Virginia to join his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan in Ohio, one of the handful of battleground states that will decide the outcome of the November 6 election. "You are the battleground of battlegrounds. You get to decide," Ryan told a crowd of 1,000 people who were not able to join 2,000 others in a high school gymnasium in Celina, Ohio. Obama later flew to Florida for a campaign stop. Like Romney, he cancelled events in Virginia, a battleground state that could bear the brunt of the storm's impact. Obama cancelled plans to campaign in Ohio after Monday's event in Florida, opting to return to the White House instead. "I'm not going to be able to campaign quite as much over the next couple of days," Obama told volunteers at a local campaign office in Orlando late on Sunday. "So you guys gotta carry the ball!" he said to cheers. Both campaigns also cancelled events in New Hampshire, which could face high winds and heavy rain. "The last thing the president and I want to do is get in the way of anything. The most important thing is people's safety and people's health," Vice President Joe Biden told campaign volunteers in Manchester, New Hampshire, before leaving for Ohio. Officials in the path of the storm scrambled to ensure that extended power outages would not disrupt the early voting that appears to be critical for both candidates this year. Obama said he did not think the storm would impact voting, but some on his campaign staff were not so certain. "Obviously we want unfettered access to the polls because we believe that the more people that come out, the better we'll do," top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CNN. Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said his state plans to extend early voting hours and restore power quickly to election facilities in the event of outages. Officials in neighbouring Maryland said early voting stations would close on Monday. WINDS OF UNCERTAINTY The looming storm threw another note of uncertainty into a race that remains a statistical dead heat. The vast majority of voters have made up their minds at this point, and more than one in five have already cast their ballots. But the storm could throw a wrench in the campaigns' efforts to drive voters to the polls in the final days before the election and will require them to ensure that their armies of door-knocking volunteers stay safe. An extended power outage could sideline millions of dollars worth of television advertising that is set to saturate the airwaves in the final days of the race. It also scrambles their efforts to schedule rallies in the handful of states that are likely to decide the outcome. "The poll numbers aren't changing that much and I don't think the storm is going to change that dynamic. It's just going to present logistical challenges for the campaign," Hunter College political science professor Jamie Chandler said. A severe disruption could hurt Obama more than Romney because his campaign has counted on early voting to lock up the support of those who may be less likely to vote on Election Day, Chandler said. Officials from both campaigns said they were confident they would be able to get their message out and drive voters to the polls over the coming days. But they recognized that, after years of obsessive planning and nearly $2 billion in campaign expenditures, the storm had introduced a last-minute element of chaos. "There's certain things we can't control and nature is one of them. We try to focus on the things that we can control," Romney adviser Kevin Madden told reporters. There is some evidence that natural disasters can hurt an incumbent's re-election chances as voters often blame whoever is in office for adversity. Research by Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University and Christopher Achen of Princeton University found that Vice President Al Gore may have lost the election in 2000 because of severe drought and excessive rainfall in seven states. Bush's approval ratings plummeted after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, and voters could similarly blame Obama if the government fumbles its response to this storm. But there are also dangers for Romney, who will have to be careful to avoid being seen as politicizing the disaster. His campaign's hasty response to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East in September was widely criticized. The Obama campaign said it would suspend fundraising e-mails in the mid-Atlantic region on Monday and encouraged supporters to donate to the Red Cross. Opinion polls show the race to be essentially tied at the national level. A Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll released on Sunday found Obama leading Romney among likely voters by 49 percent to 46 percent, within the online survey's credibility interval. Among all registered voters, Obama held a wider lead of 51 percent to 39 percent. However, Obama retains a slim advantage in many of the battleground states that will decide the election. A Washington Post poll released on Sunday found Obama leading Romney by 51 percent to 47 percent in Virginia, just outside the poll's margin of error. In Ohio, a poll by a group of newspapers found the two tied at 49 percent each. Other polls have shown Obama ahead there. Romney received the endorsement of Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, which has not backed a Republican since 1972. He also won the endorsement of newspapers in Richmond and Cincinnati. Obama won the endorsement of newspapers in Miami, Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, as well as The New York Times. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Florida, Lisa Lambert in New Hampshire and Steve Holland and Samuel P. Jacobs in Ohio; Editing by Alistair Bell and Stacey Joyce)
Copyright © 2012 Reuters | ||
| Insight - China grassroots democracy challenge awaits new leaders Posted: 28 Oct 2012 05:57 PM PDT XIAOSHAN/WUKAN, China (Reuters) - Hua Youjuan is an unlikely Chinese official.
Free-spirited but driven, she left her village at age 17, got a degree in marketing, and opened a string of businesses in nearby cities in eastern China before settling in the coastal boomtown of Ningbo, 160 km (100 miles) from home. She never looked back - until she got a phone call two years ago that set off a chain of events that would turn her into an anti-corruption campaigner, then the elected head of her village and, finally, into a disillusioned witness to the ruling Communist Party's attempts at limited grassroots democracy. Her story, as she tells it, ends with a party unwilling to yield power and with her campaign losing momentum - a tale that reveals one of the most challenging riddles facing China's incoming new leadership team: how can the party shore up its waning legitimacy without loosening its grip on power? So far, an answer has been elusive. Critics say political reform stalled as the current leadership focused on delivering economic growth. Rumours have circulated ahead of the once-in-a-decade transition that leader-to-be Xi Jinping and his colleagues may be willing to push through much needed reforms - but it is far from clear. Large-scale protests have increased in China, reflecting anger over corruption and the lack of government accountability and transparency - the kind of unrest that experiments in grassroots democracy, like the one Hua Youjuan participated in, were meant to help short-circuit. Instead, Hua said democracy in her home village of Huangshan, in eastern Zhejiang province, was never allowed to fully succeed, thwarted by senior party officials who she accused of resisting her campaign to root out corruption. "If real reform comes, then I don't mind staying where I came from, but if things continue like this I just don't see hope," she told Reuters. Hua's frustrations are shared in other villages that have been to the ballot box, including China's most famous testing ground for greater democracy, the southern fishing village of Wukan where a violent standoff over government land seizures led last year to the sacking of local leaders and elections. On the first anniversary of the Wukan uprising in September, more than 100 villagers rallied outside Wukan's party offices to protest against what they saw as slow progress by their newly elected village committee to return seized land. Some critics say the committee was outmanoeuvred by higher party officials. China has experimented with limited democracy since the 1980s, holding nationwide village chief elections and giving people a voice in low-level government budgeting in some locales. But China experts say most of these efforts have fizzled because of opposition from within the Communist Party, and that mass protests are still frequent. Some experts such as Sun Liping of Tsinghua University estimate there could have been 180,000 mass protests and riots in China in 2010. "Most people I know and meet know change is going to happen, but I don't think anybody knows what kind of change and I don't think anybody really knows how to initiate change," said Tony Saich, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "You can only push a ball down the road so long before it runs out of control." IMPEACH THE LEADER In October 2010, the ball ran out of control in Huangshan village, a suburban warren of houses and small factories on the south side of the city of Hangzhou. Convinced their local party boss was getting rich through corrupt means, residents launched a sit-in to block a construction project he was involved in. Hua, living in Ningbo, did not even know it was happening, but her father joined the movement, collecting donations from the village's 6,000 residents to keep the protest going. A friend of Hua's with close ties to the local government called her and asked her to return to Huangshan to plead with her dad to quit. She did so in early November, but her father refused and the movement gained momentum. "He said, 'Telling me to stop is worse than telling me to go and die at this point'," she recounted. Police increased the pressure, summoning Hua and warning that her father could get into trouble if he did not stop. That turned out to be the wrong tack with the 36-year-old who has a soft smile but a hard head. She demanded to know what law his actions violated, and then left uncowed. She then became part of the villagers' movement, suggesting they step up their protest by trying to impeach the party chief from his role as head of the village economic cooperative. They began collecting signatures. On November 10 officials from the district that oversees Huangshan village came to negotiate, but the villagers blocked their exit for several hours. Police were called to get them out, Hua said. The next day, villagers, officials and police scuffled over the village financial books, which were to be collected by investigators for a probe into the party chief. Hua was summoned by police for questioning. Thousands of villagers gathered outside the police station to demand her release, Hua said. She was finally freed around midday the next day and given a hero's welcome replete with flowers. "From that day the villagers started to know who I was," she said. By the end of November, the tension seemed to have peaked. The party chief stepped down and was subsequently put under house arrest, according to Hua. OPEN NOMINATION, CLOSED SELECTION With the new year came hope as the wheels of village democracy began to turn. First, the party selected leaders for the village party branch, a body that technically parallels the village committee but in reality holds more power, through a new and relatively open mechanism. Villagers were allowed to nominate candidates, and the party would then pick a leader from among the top five. The process, called "open nomination, direct election", was part of the party's latest nationwide attempt to infuse public affairs with a degree of accountability. Party leaders have directly dismissed the possibility of China adopting "Western-style", multi-party democracy, but the concept of "intra-party democracy" - more openness and competition behind the red wall of the 80 million-strong party - has gained traction and there appears to be consensus behind it. Li Yuanchao, who is expected to join China's top leaders in the Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Party Congress in November, championed "open nomination, direct election" when he ran Jiangsu province from 2002-2007. China watchers say the concept of intra-party democracy is likely to get a boost at next month's congress - where China's new leadership team will be unveiled - but critics say this misses the point. While village elections are enshrined legally in China, fair votes free of behind-the-scenes meddling are relatively rare. In Huangshan, Hua was elected village chief in April 2011 despite eligibility rules she said were an attempt to prevent rebellious villagers from standing. The old party and village bosses were out, but Hua soon found she could not work with the new party chief, who outranked her in China's hierarchy of officials, and who she said was favoured by party officials at higher levels. In July, the villagers started to organise again to petition the Hangzhou government and party officials called Hua to step in. Instead, she turned off her phone and ignored them. The response was swift. Thirteen people were arrested, 10 of whom, including Hua's father and brother, were brought up on criminal charges for previous actions, she said. Multiple phone calls to the party office of Wenyan township, one level above Huangshan, to seek comment for this article went unanswered. The Xiaoshan district party office, above Wenyan, had no immediate comment on the situation in Huangshan when contacted by phone. COMPLETELY OPEN A day after Lunar New Year this year, Hua went to the village of Wukan in southern Guangdong province where an uprising against illegal land sales had resulted in concessions being granted by the province's high-flying leader, Wang Yang. She said she went on a whim, feeling lonely with her brother and father still in detention with no court date yet set, and hoped to learn something from the Wukan experience. For Hua and others, Wukan symbolised the possibility of rural activism in China and opened a path toward more democratic, equitable and transparent village governance. In Wukan, decades of strong-arm rule by its former village party secretary, Xue Chang, had resulted in widespread abuses of power. Villagers felt powerless, unable to choose their own village chief or village committee representatives. In September last year, these tensions boiled over into a protest movement which led to village elections in March. Villagers flocked to vote. The poll also drew plaudits for using secret ballot boxes and open nominations and it resulted in the new village committee being largely comprised of former protest leaders. But even in Wukan the new officials have had a tough time achieving their goals - partly, some say, for the same reason Hua is frustrated: higher-ranking party officials are opposed. Zhuang Liehong, a core village committee member and advocate of improved grassroots democracy and governance, quit recently in frustration at the limited progress in negotiating the return of seized land from uncooperative higher authorities. "If after the 18th party congress there isn't further progress in getting back our land, more will quit," said Zhang Jiancheng, another democratically elected member of the new Wukan village administration. Pressure is building around China, said Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College in California. "That's a political reality we cannot ignore," he said, adding China's new leaders must push through reforms or pay a high price. "If they don't push, where they end up is lots and lots of Wukans, lots and lots of Shifangs and Qidongs," he said, citing other places where large violent protests have erupted recently. Hua, who Reuters first met in Wukan, said she was worried things in her village could back-slide if she did not run again when her term ends in 2014. "If I can do this and feel like there are results then it's something I want to do," she said. "But if, for instance, another term is going to be like this, without being able to change anything, then I don't want to do it." (Corrects dateline to XIAOSHAN, not XIANGSHAN) (Editing by Mark Bendeich and Dean Yates) Copyright © 2012 Reuters |
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