4A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2009
INTERNATIONAL
Mexico's president proposes cutting three departments
Mexico's President Felipe Calderon speaks during a press conference at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City on Tuesday. Calderon has proposed eliminating the government departments of Tourism, Agrarian Reform and Public Administration to cut costs.
BY MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Felipe Calderon proposed eliminating three government departments Tuesday, part of a midterm Cabinet shake-up that included the resignation of the attorney general who was leading the battle against drug cartels.
The changes mark the biggest governmental changes since Calderon began his six-year term in late 2006 and launched an offensive against organized crime. Calderon appeared to suggest the government would turn more attention to fighting poverty amid one of Mexico's worst economic downtunes since the 1930s.
"In the difficult situation in which millions of Mexicans are living ... in a country that faces serious needs, as Mexico does, the government should be synonymous with service, not privilege," Calderon said in a speech announcing his Cabinet trimming idea.
Dropping the three departments and other austerity measures, which need Congress' approval, would save an estimated 80 billion pesos ($6 billion) next year, freeing up money for anti-poverty measures, he said.
The Department of Tourism would be rolled into the Economy Department, the Public Administration Department would be reduced to a comptroller's office, and the duties of the Agrarian Reform Department would be split between the Agriculture and the Social Development departments.
The agency reorganization was part of a 2010 federal budget proposal Calderon planned to send to Congress later Tuesday.
Calderon said employees' rights would be respected, but gave no estimate on how many jobs would be cut.
He said tax policy and other changes could bring in an additional 100 billion pesos ($7.5 billion) next year, which combined with the cost-cutting would free up the
equivalent of 1.4 percent of GDP to boost anti-poverty programs.
The budget I am proposing has an unprecedented emphasis on anti-poverty programs," Calderon said.
He also laid out part of his agenda for the second half of his term
— which ends in 2012 — saying he would push for reforms to the country's rigid and antiquated labor laws. He said he also plans reforms in the energy, telecommunications and financial sectors.
image was tarnished by charges that his top confidant was on the take and there had been rumors for some time that he would give up his post.
On Monday, Calderon announced that Arturo Chavez, a former prosecutor who served in the embattled northern state of Chihuahua, will replace Eduardo Medina-Mora as attorney general. Medina-Mora's
The president said the change did not signal a relaxation in the government's U.S.-supported war with vicious drug cartels.
But the all-out war has drawn criticism as more than 13,500 people have been killed in unrelenting drug-related violence since Calderon took office in late 2006, and his party lost ground in midterm congressional elections in July.
The Senate still has to approve Chavez's nomination.
CONSERVATION
Pacific walrus may be endangered
BY DAN JOLING
Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A petition to list Pacific walrus as a threatened or endangered species has passed its first review.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that a petition presented by the Center for Biological Diversity provided substantial information that listing the species as threatened or endangered was warranted.
The determination was based in part on projected changes in sea ice associated with climate change. The Center for Biological Diversity and other groups successfully petitioned for protection of polar bears using the same argument.
Center spokeswoman Rebecca Noblin said Tuesday that unless immediate action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases, warming will claim waltus as a victim.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife determination triggers a detailed status review, including a 60-day public comment period. The comment period closes Nov. 9.
"Climate change is the primary threat, but the offshore oil development in the Chukchi and Bering seas is also a problem," she said. Walrus could be forced into a land-based existence for which they are not adapted, she said.
The center petitioned for a walrus listing in February 2008 and sued in December when the agency missed its "90-day" initial finding
deadline. The case was settled in May when the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to make an initial determination by Sept. 10.
Walrus use sea ice to breed and forage. The animals dive from ice over the shallow outer continental shelf in search of clams and other benthic creatures. Females and their young traditionally use ice as a moving diving platform, riding it north like a conveyor belt as it recedes in spring and summer, first in the northern Bering Sea, then into the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast.
Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, shared with the Russian Far East, in 2007 and 2008 receded well beyond the outer continental shelf.
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Welcome home!
NASA can't afford return to moon, space experts say
SCIENCE
Associated Press
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
WASHINGTON - A White House panel of independent space experts says NASA's return-to-the-moon plan just won't fly.
The problem is money. The expert panel estimates it would cost about $3 billion a year beyond NASAs current $18 billion annual budget.
"Under the budget that was proposed, exploration beyond Earth is not viable," panel member Edward Crawley, a professor of aeronautics at MIT, told The Associated Press Tuesday.
The report gives options to President Barack Obama, but said NASA's current plans have to change. Five years ago, then President George W. Bush proposed returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. To pay for it, he planned on retiring the shuttle next year and shutting down the international space station in 2015.
All those deadlines have to
change, the panel said. Space exploration would work better by including other countries and private for-profit firms, the panel concluded.
The panel had previously estimated that the current plan would cost $100 billion in spending to 2020.
Former NASA associate administrator Alan Stern said the report showed the harsh facts that NASA's space plans had "a mismatch between resources and rhetoric." Now, he said, Obama faces a choice of "essentially abandoning human spaceflight" or paying the extra money.
NASA can't get beyond low-Earth orbit without spending more, but space travel with astronauts is important, the panel found. That will cost an extra $3
The panel, chaired by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, includes executives, scientists and ex-astronauts. It posted a summary report Tuesday on both White House and NASA web sites.
billion a year and is "unquestion-
ably worth it," Crawley said.
The question is where to go.
The Bush plan was to go to the moon, which would serve as a training ground for flights to Mars. The Augustine panel agreed Mars is the ultimate goal, but said going to the moon first is only one option and not the preferred one. Instead, the panel emphasized what it called a "flexible path" of exploring near-Earth objects such as asteroids, the moons of mars, and then landing on the moon after other exploration.
"There's a lot of places in the neighborhood," Crawley said. "In fact, going to the moon is more difficult than going to a near-Earth object."
The panel also said the space shuttle should continue flying until early 2011 to finish all its space station work and that it can't realistically retire by Oct. 1, 2010 as the Bush administration planned.
FINANCE
US sees record decrease in borrowing
Signs for American Express, Master Card and Visa credit cards are shown on a New York store's door. Banks have slashed credit limits for ten millions of card holders since early 2008, and data indicates most of the cuts hit people who had no late payments or other negative marks on their credit histories.
Associated Press
BY JEANNINE AVERSA
WASHINGTON — Consumers slashed their borrowing in July by the largest amount on record as job losses and uncertainty about the economic recovery prompted Americans to rein in their debt.
Economists expect consumers will continue to spend less, save more and trim debt to get household finances decimated by the recession into better shape. However, such action is a recipe for a lethargic revival, as consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.
The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumers ratcheted back their credit by a larger than-anticipated $21.6 billion from June, the most on records dating to 1943. Economists expected credit to drop by $4 billion.
Wary consumers and hard-toget credit both factor into the scaled-back borrowing. But economists are split on which force
— lack of demand by consumers or lack of supply from banks — is having the bigger influence.
"It's really a tug of war," said
Mark Williams, professor of finance and economics at Boston University and a former Fed bank examiner. "It's true that consumers are being more responsible, saying 'I don't really need that extra credit card,' but it is more related to banks clamping down on lending."
But Erik Hurst, economics professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, says it is impossible to know for sure. "We are seeing declines in
demand for loans from consumers but also declines in the supply of loans from banks. How much of the credit cutback is due to the decline in supply or demand, you can't really tell."
in a survey of bank loan officers, found somewhat weaker demand for all types of consumer loans. But fewer banks reported tightening their standards on credit card and other consumer loans,
Last month, the Federal Reserve.
the Fed survey said.
"How much of the credit cutback is due to the decline in supply or demand, you can't really tell."
Still, a report earlier this year by the company that produces the most widely known credit scores found that companies slashed limits for an estimated 58 million card holders in the 12 months ended in April, even though a high percentage had good credit scores when their limits were cut.
ERIK HURST
Economics professor,
University of Chicago
The cuts affected about a third of consumers, according to the study by FICO. But most people did not
In Tuesday's report, demand for non-revolving credit used to finance cars, vacations, education
see a big impact on the credit scores because lenders often cut limits on cards that were unused or lightly used.
and other things fell by $15.4 billion, also a record decline. That 11.7 percent pace was on top of an 8 percent annualized decline in June.
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