WASHINGTON, July 29--The House of Representatives approved an ambitious overhaul of US pension laws, hoping to prolong the traditional employer-based pension plans relied upon by millions while also promoting new saving options and protecting the government from future taxpayer bailouts, AP reported.
The reforms in the bill “represent the most sweeping changes to America’s pension laws in more than 30 years,“ said House Majority Leader John Boehner.
He said the bill “will ensure that workers and retirees can continue to count on their hard-earned pension benefits.“
The legislation now moves to the Senate, which is expected to take it up next week before it departs for its August recess, sending it to the president for his signature.
Opponents, mainly Democrats, said the bill did too little to prevent employers from eliminating their defined-benefit plans and favored some industries over others.
“This tilts the table toward the decisions by companies to terminate or to freeze those plans,“ said Democratic Congressman George Miller.
The legislation, which tightens controls on companies that fall behind in their contributions to defined-benefit plans, gives special repayment breaks to the airline industry and is of particular urgency for several airlines threatening to terminate their plans.
“If passed, the airline provision currently before the Congress will save Northwest Airlines employees’ hard-earned pension benefits,“ the airlines said in a statement.
After the pension vote, the House moved to consider its last major task before adjourning, a bill coupling a $2.15 (1.70 euro) increase in the $5.15 (4.05 euro) hourly minimum wage over three years with lower inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.
While the wage-tax measure was expected to pass the House, its fate in the Senate, which will take it up next week, was anything but certain.
Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans favor the minimum wage increase, but many conservatives oppose it.
And the idea of cutting inheritance taxes lacks the 60 votes needed in the Senate to overcome parliamentary hurdles expected to be erected by Democrats.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, July 29--Brazil’s state-run energy company Petrobras failed to reach an agreement on higher gas price in a third meeting with its Bolivian peer Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), AP quoted Petrobras as saying.
“YPFB and Petrobras presented and listened to each other’s arguments and evaluated alternatives to proceed with the negotiation process,“ Petrobras, said.
YPFB President Jorge Alvarado said there were 45 days left to conclude talks with Petrobras, according to the Bolivia government official news agency, Agencia Boliviana de Informacion (ABI).
“There are two alternatives: the first is a common agreement about the price with Petrobras and the second is to access the international arbitrage court,“ Alvarado said.
If the case is referred to arbitration, oil company representatives and a third independent mediator will be called on to reach a final decision.
Brazil and Bolivia have disagreed about natural gas prices since Bolivian President Evo Morales nationalized the country’s oil and gas reserves on May 1 and demanded the renegotiation of prices for gas shipped to Brazil, Bolivia’s biggest customer, as well as Argentina.
Argentina already has agreed to a 47 percent price hike for Bolivian natural gas, while passing some of the expense on to Chile, which depends heavily on Argentine natural gas.
Morales government appears to be wary of immediately forcing a price hike on Brazil and hurting the re-election bid of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s, a fellow leftist, ahead an Oct. 1 vote.
Brazil currently imports about 26 million cubic meters (912 million cubic feet) of gas a day from Bolivia, and pays close to $4 (3.15 euro) per million British thermal units.
Bolivia wants to raise the price to international market levels, which currently hover around $5.60 (4.40 euro) per million Btu’s.
Silva, who was sharply criticized for meekly accepting Morales’ decision to increase prices, said in a radio interview Thursday that his government is committed to reaching self-sufficiency in natural gas by 2008 and that its dependence on Bolivian gas was a mistake.
Silva plans to increase Brazil’s natural gas production from large offshore reserves in the Santos Basin off the coast of Sao Paulo state, but the increase will require heavy investments.

An HIV positive Ethiopian girl gets her free antiretroviral that she periodically receives for her treatment in Makaniza, one of the poorest neighborhood in Addis Ababa. (AFP File Photo)

NAIROBI, Kenya,
July 29--Trade officials said here Friday that Africa would lose the benefits derived from global trade liberalization, which resulted in access to medicine developed by drug companies to treat common ailments troubling most countries in the continent, according to Xinhuanet.
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretary General Erastus Mwencha blamed the collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations on what he called the “transigencies“ of the parties’ intent on enjoying “inequitable“ trading environment.
Kenyan Trade and Industry Minister Mukhisa Kituyi said Africa would also have to develop its own markets and bolster trade among the various regional blocs in the absence of the European markets following the collapse of the global trade talks.
“The companies from the rich nations would continue to flood our own markets with goods from Europe. The collapse of the talks is a threat to compulsory licensing for African countries to access drugs at cheaper prices,“ Kituyi told journalists at a regional meeting in Nairobi.
Africans, the minister said, were allowed to access drugs for common illnesses such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis through the compulsory licensing agreed as part of the Doha Round agenda to counter health crises in the continent.
Kituyi said Doha Round was based on greater market access for Africa, access to cheaper drugs under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and would have been binding commitments to the pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US.
“We should now focus on strengthening intra-Africa trade. These would have been binding commitments if the Doha Round was concluded,“ Kituyi said.
“The Doha Round collapsed because of transigencies of the parties that want to enjoy inequitable environments,“ said Mwencha, who is attending African Trade Insurance (ATI) meeting, which brought together finance, and trade ministers who are the shareholders of ATI.
He said the rich nations were subsidizing farmers, making it impossible for Africans to sell their products.
African countries were counting on the success of the Doha Round of talks, which was limping towards a concession on drastic reductions of the external taxes charged on African products entering the European markets and wider market access for goods.

On a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Steven Cliff collects evidence of an industrial revolution taking place thousands of miles (kilometers) away, AP said.
The tiny, airborne particles Cliff gathers at an air monitoring station just north of San Francisco drifted over the ocean from coal-fired power plants, smelters, dust storms and diesel trucks in China and other Asian countries.
Researchers say the environmental impact of China’s breakneck economic growth is being felt well beyond its borders. They worry that as China consumes more fossil fuels to feed its energy-hungry economy, the US could see a sharp increase in trans-Pacific pollution that could affect human health, worsen air quality and alter climate patterns.
“We’re going to see increased particulate pollution from the expansion of China for the foreseeable future,“ said Cliff, a research engineer at the University of California, Davis.
He has monitoring stations on Mount Tamalpais, Donner Summit near Lake Tahoe, and Mount Lassen in far Northern California. Those sites see little pollution from local sources, and the composition of the dust particles matches that of the Gobi Desert and other Asian sites, Cliff said.
About a third of the Asian pollution is dust, which is increasing due to drought and deforestation, Cliff said.
The rest is composed of sulfur, soot and trace metals from the burning of coal, diesel and other fossil fuels.
Cliff is studying whether transported particulate matter could affect climate by trapping heat, reflecting light or changing rainfall patterns.
Most air pollution in US cities is generated locally, but that could change if citizens in China, India and other developing nations adopt American-style consumption patterns, researchers say.
“If they started driving cars and using electricity at the rate in the developed world, the amount of pollution they generate will increase many, many times,“ said Tony Van Curen, a UC Davis researcher who works with Cliff.
The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California’s air pollution.
Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, said he has detected ozone, carbon monoxide, mercury and particulate matter from Asia at monitoring sites on Mount Bachelor in Oregon and Cheeka Peak in Washington state.
China’s environmental problems are severe and getting worse. Nearly 30 years of relentless industrial expansion has fouled the country’s rivers, lakes, forests, farmland and skies.
The World Bank estimates that 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, and air pollution is blamed for about 400,000 premature deaths there each year.
Coal-fired power plants supply two-thirds of China’s energy and are its biggest source of air pollution. Already the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, China on average builds a new coal-fired power plant every week.
Meanwhile, car ownership is soaring as the country’s economy grows about 10 percent a year, contributing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
If current trends continue, China will surpass the US as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the next decade, said Barbara Finamore, who heads the Natural Resources Defense Council’s China Clean Energy program, which is helping the country boost its energy efficiency.
Even Chinese environmental officials warn that pollution levels could quadruple over the next 15 years if the country doesn’t curb energy use and emissions. Beijing plans to spend $162 billion (-128 billion) on environmental cleanup over the next five years, but the scale of the country’s pollution problems is immense.
China’s pollution also regularly dirties the air in neighboring South Korea and Japan, but until recently researchers did not think it had much effect on North America. Some scientists predict that global warming could change those circulation patterns, either speeding or slowing the transport of pollutants from Asia.
China’s environmental challenges are daunting, but the country is taking action to reduce its energy use and air pollution.
Beijing has set ambitious goals for increasing energy efficiency, fuel economy standards and use of renewable power sources such as wind and solar.

BAIKONUR, Russia, July 29--South Korea sent a satellite into space on Friday primarily for geographical surveys but also for possibly spying on North Korea, which raised regional security concerns by launching missiles earlier this month.
The 900-kg Arirang-2 satellite, launched in Russia, can take high-resolution pictures of the earth’s surface, Reuters quoted a government agency as saying.
Experts said it would be the country’s most advanced surveillance satellite.
“The high-definition MSC (multi-spectral camera) will be able to give real-time visual data on North Korea’s missile launch preparations or military activities, which would be otherwise unavailable,“ South Korea’s Overseas Information Service said.
The Arirang-2 satellite gives South Korea the ability to identify objects on the ground one meter in diameter, the information service said. The satellite will mostly work on mapping and help search for natural resources.
The multi-spectral camera in Airrang-2 will provide high-resolution images for earth mapping, which is used for geographical surveys, environmental observation and searches for natural resources.
The rocket was converted from an intercontinental ballistic missile and is designed to deploy the satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit.
The launch had been planned for several months. The Russian rocket with the satellite blasted off from a launch pad in the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, approximately 800 km (500 miles) northeast of Moscow, the information service said.

WASHINGTON, July 29--Uruguay will become the latest Latin American nation to start repaying its International Monetary Fund debts early under a decision announced Friday by the IMF.
According to AFP, IMF said that Uruguay’s government had decided to advance its repayment of 916.4 million dollars in debts owed to the IMF that were due in August 2007.
The pre-payment will nearly halve Uruguay’s outstanding obligations to the Fund, leaving it owing about 1.1 billion dollars.
All of Uruguay’s obligations due in 2006 were advanced in a similar operation four months ago.
“The Fund welcomes Uruguay’s decision, which is a reflection of a strengthened external position and another measure of the success of the authorities’ program,“ IMF chief Rodrigo Rato said in a statement.
Late last year, both Brazil and Argentina said they would repay all their IMF debts ahead of schedule, marking a watershed after years of economic turmoil.

MADRID, Spain, July 29--Barcelona airport struggled to return to normal Saturday after a wildcat strike by Iberia ground employees who occupied runways and forced the cancellation or rerouting of nearly 600 flights on one of the busiest days of the vacation season.
According to AP, Iberia, the flagship Spanish carrier which had canceled all its flights to and from Barcelona, said they resumed Saturday but were suffering unspecified delays.
Iberia and unions representing the disgruntled ground staff staffers were meeting Saturday morning, Iberia said.
Iberia’s airport employees were protesting the airline’s loss of the license to operate handling operations at Spain’s second-busiest airport.
Thousands of people spent the night at the jam-packed airport. Red Cross crews handed out food and water.
Frustrated travelers blocked roads leading into the airport Friday night.
Close to 100,000 passengers were affected by the airport disruption, Iberia said.
Some 2,500 Iberia ground crew employees began the unannounced strike Friday morning and some 200 of them in bright green reflective vests swarmed over the airport’s three runways. A trickle of flights resumed Friday night.
The Iberia employees were angry because the Spanish national airport authority, known as AENA, this week granted a new handling license at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport to Spanish construction and services company
Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas SA and to affiliates of Iberia’s rivals Air Europa and Spanair, which is a unit of Scandinavian airline operator SAS AB.