Al Armendariz Resigns From EPA Post Over Comments

A top EPA official has resigned after coming under scrutiny for 2010 remarks in which he compared the agency’s enforcement strategy to Roman crucifixion.

Al Armendariz, the top environmental official in the oil-rich South and Southwest region, resigned in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Sunday, saying he did not want to be a distraction for the agency. The resignation is effective Monday .

“As I have expressed publicly, and to you directly, I regret comments I made several years ago that do not in any way reflect my work as regional administrator. As importantly, they do not represent the work you have overseen as EPA administrator,” he wrote. “I take great pride in having built a career based on integrity and hard work. These are the principles that guide me personally as well. While I feel there is much work that remains to be done for the people of this country in the region that I serve, after a great deal of thought and careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that my continued service will distract you and the agency from its important work.”

Read the rest here:

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) — Did Wal-Mart’s Mexican subsidiary pay bribes, in 2005 and earlier, to the Mexican officials who grant permits for stores like Wal-Mart? And did Wal-Mart cover up these actions for several years, after an internal investigation discovered the bribes, before finally reporting the internal investigation to the Department of Justice and the SEC last December?

The answer, according to recent news accounts, is yes. This could mean that Wal-Mart violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, adopted in 1977, which forbids U.S. companies from paying bribes to foreign officials.

If Wal-Mart violated the law, U.S. officials should prosecute. No one should be above the law, whether the law is sensible or not.

Yet the public and policymakers should also consider whether the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is good policy. And despite good intentions — particularly, the goal of reducing corruption — it is not.

The act is difficult to enforce on a consistent basis, since companies that wish to pay bribes can circumvent the law in numerous ways, mainly with minimal risk of exposure. So, most violations go undetected. The act therefore hurts companies that break the law clumsily and get caught, thereby creating a competitive advantage for companies that break the law cleverly and get away with it.

Read the rest here:

Joe Biden is back from hiding to wage a campaign against Mitt Romney.

In a speech Thursday, he attached Mitt Romney’s foreign policy experience and world views as being part of the past, and having no place in today’s environment.

“Governor Romney wants to take us back to a world that no longer exists with policies that are dangerously divorced from today’s reality,” Biden said.

Specifically, Biden pushed that Romney is intentionally taking the US in a direction of war with Iran.

TOKYO – A half dozen ominous new North Korean missiles showcased at a lavish military parade were clumsy fakes, analysts say, casting more doubt on the country’s claims of military prowess after its recent rocket launch failure.

The weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same make. They don’t even fit the launchers they were carried on.

“There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups,” Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany’s Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies. “It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work.”

Read the rest here:

A top EPA official has apologized for comparing his agency’s enforcement strategy to Roman crucifixion — as Republican Sen. James Inhofe launched an investigation and told Fox News the comments are part of a campaign of “threats” and “intimidation.”

Al Armendariz, the EPA administrator in the Region 6 Dallas office, made the remarks at a local Texas government meeting in 2010. He relayed to the audience what he described as a “crude” analogy he once told his staff about his “philosophy of enforcement.”

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,” he said. “They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them.

“And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years,” he said.

Read the rest here:

Read here:

ExxonMobil (XOM: 86.48, +0.17, +0.20%) increased its quarterly dividend by 10 cents on Wednesday, appeasing investors who have long urged the company to boost its yield in line with industry rivals.

The Irving, Texas-based company lifted its dividend by 21%, to 57 cents from 47 cents, payable on June 11 to shareholders of record on May 14.

Read here:

North Korea is armed with “powerful modern weapons” capable of defeating the United States, a top military chief in Pyongyang said Wednesday amid increased speculation abroad about the nation’s missile arsenal and nuclear ambitions.

Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho emphasized the importance of strengthening the military to defend North Korea against threats it sees from the United States and South Korea. He called his nation a nuclear and military power and praised new leader Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his late 20s, as a “military strategist” who has been giving the army guidance for years.

“The Korean People’s Army is armed with powerful modern weapons … that can defeat the (U.S.) imperialists at a single blow,” he told party and military officials, using familiar descriptions of the country’s rivals.

The meeting, attended by Kim Jong Un, was held to mark the 80th anniversary of the army’s founding. The Associated Press was among foreign news agencies based in Pyongyang allowed to observe the closed meeting at the April 25 House of Culture.

Ri, who is chief of the army’s General Staff, did not provide further details about North Korea’s weapons, but his call to arms comes as the United States, Britain and others warn the nation against a provocation that would further heighten tensions. The Korean peninsula officially remains at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korea is believed to have some nuclear weapons but not the technology to put them on long-range missiles.

Read here:

DETROIT (Reuters) – Nearly 100 protesters affiliated with the “99 Percent” populist movement disrupted General Electric Co’s annual shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday in an attack on the largest U.S. conglomerate’s low tax rate.

The demonstrators, who began chanting “Pay Your Fair Share” when the meeting began, were quickly ushered out of the meeting — held in the Detroit building that houses General Motors Co’s headquarters — but could still be heard chanting protests as the meeting got underway.

After their exit, Chief Financial Officer Keith Sherin stepped up to defend GE’s tax practices, and noted that the company’s low tax rates in 2008 and 2009 were the result of heavy losses at GE Capital.

“Over the 2008 through 2010 time period we lost over $30 billion in credit losses at GE Capital and that reduced our pre-tax income and also our rate,” Sherin said. “Our U.S. tax expense last year was $2.6 billion. We are a large taxpayer, we pay our taxes and we very much support tax reform.”

As they were ushered outside, protesters rejoined a large crowd of hundreds of other demonstrators with signs that read “Tax Dodgers at Work” and “This is What Democracy Looks Like.” Police herded them away from the riverfront building.

The protesters were part of the “99 Percent” movement, an offshoot of last year’s Occupy Wall Street protests. Both are loosely organized around the idea that the U.S. economy no longer serves the needs of most Americans. The “99 Percent” moniker contrasts the average citizen to the nation’s wealthiest.

None of the demonstrators were arrested, unlike the scene at Wells Fargo & Co’s shareholder meeting in San Francisco a day earlier, where about a dozen were arrested.

Read here:

With two of Europe’s biggest economies (UK and Spain) sliding back into recession in the past two days, there’s a growing concern that the region’s economic problems will spread far beyond its own borders. Add in the fact that there’s an uptick in nationalist rhetoric from places like France and the Netherlands (as well as the likelihood that street protests will resume as we hit May Day next week), and the European saga demands our attention and respect all over again.

As much as we can count on our economic leader (Bernanke, not Obama) to take action sooner rather than later, data points, like durable goods, had their sharpest drop in 3 years, making the waiting that much more uncomfortable.

“So much of economics is sentiment,” says Jeff Macke, in the attached video. “People just don’t spend when they feel bad.”

And neither do companies, I might add, a response that may have already started to materialize, given the shocking drop in durable goods.

The tricky question is, when does all of this become too big to ignore? And if we do, indeed, start paying closer attention to Europe’s descent, how much of an impact will it have on the global economy, as well as our own and China’s?

So far, stocks in the U.S. and Europe appear to be immune to such worries and are galloping higher on the heels of strong results from Apple (AAPL) and Boeing (BA). In reality, a sizable portion of the pop is predicated on the belief that bad economic news will garner more prompt service from the Stimulator in Chief, Ben Bernanke.

Yet amidst this relative domestic bliss and short-term appetite for stocks and risk-taking, the fact cannot be ignored that the S&P 500 is on track to post its first losing month of the year—it’s biggest dip since September—and that the mighty Tech Sector (XLK) is actually leading the way down.

..

Are they going to walk a bomb into South Korea? Because they sure as hell aren’t launching one.

ZING!

Read here:

North Korea’s military vowed a new and unusually specific threat to its neighbors, saying it would reduce South Korea “to ashes” in less than four minutes.

The statement, released Monday when programming was interrupted on North Korea’s state TV by a special report, comes amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Earlier this month, North Korea was unsuccessful in a long-range missile launch, prompting worries that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test. South Korean officials say new satellite images show that North Korea has been digging a tunnel in what appears to be preparation for a third atomic test.

According to the Associated Press, the statement from North Korea was unusual in promising something soon and in describing a specific period of time.

The North Korean military threatened to “reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, (or) in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style.”
For months the North has castigated South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and the conservative administration for insulting their leadership and criticizing a new cruise missile capable of striking anywhere in the south.

South Korean officials responded, urging North Korea to end the threats. “We urge North Korea to immediately stop this practice,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said, according to the Associated Press. “We express deep concern that the North’s threats and accusations have worsened inter-Korean ties and heightened tensions.”

Meanwhile, in a meeting Sunday with a North Korean delegation in Beijing, China’s senior official on foreign policy praised the leadership shown by North Korea’s new young leader, Kim Jong Un.

The meeting follows the April 13 launch of what the United States called a disguised ballistic missile test by North Korea. The rocket disintegrated minutes after launch.

Read here:

There’s at least one thing that bulls and bears on the U.S. economy agree on: the dollar, the most undervalued major currency in the world, is due to rise as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis threatens the global recovery.

Strategists who as recently as November were predicting the dollar would depreciate against currencies of the Group of 10 nations, now say it will climb by year-end. After weakening against all but the Mexican peso among its 16 most actively traded peers over the past decade, it has gained against 14 of them since February.

Bulls say the dollar will benefit from increased U.S. hiring and an economy that’s projected to grow 2.3 percent this year, almost double the 1.26 percent for the Group of 10, according to Bloomberg surveys of economists. The currency will also gain if global and U.S. growth slows as Europe’s debt crisis worsens, boosting demand for dollar assets such as Treasuries as traditional havens from market turmoil diminish.

“We’ve become more bullish on the dollar because the economic prospects in the U.S. are improving,” Ken Dickson, an investment director of currencies at Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh, which manages about $235 billion, said on April 18 by telephone. “There are additional reasons including problems in the periphery, and a weaker euro is required to help the transition to a better economic situation in Europe.”

Read here:

A string of disappointing developments in Europe put heavy pressure on global markets Monday morning.

In recent trading, the Dow was down 150 points while major bourses in Germany and France were off by nearly 3% as Europe’s crisis completed its migration from the back burner to the forefront of the market’s consciousness.

Last week, financial markets became fixated on Spain’s debt crisis and then turned to focus on French elections heading into the weekend. (See: Martin Wolf on Europe’s “Very Significant Moment” and the IMF’s “Dangerous Game”)

But it was developments in the Netherlands, where budget talks broke down this weekend, that really unsettled the markets.

Next to Germany, the Netherlands was considered “the cleanest country” in the EU in terms of its fiscal discipline, says Sassan Ghahramani, president and CEO of SGH Macro Advisors. “The triple-A of triple-A is now having a big dogfight over the budget. They may put a budget together but the government is going to fall apart.”

Indeed, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said new elections were an “obvious scenario” after budget talks ended and Rutte’s government lost the support of the right-wing Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders. The Freedom Party opposed Rutte’s plans to bring the country’s deficit toward 3% of GDP. The risk for financial markets is Netherlands losing its AAA rating.

In Europe, right-wing parties tend to be extremely conservative on social issues, like immigration, but not necessarily what Americans think of as “conservative” on fiscal issues. These parties are “very anti-bank, anti-establishment,” Gharamani says.

Right-wing politicians in the Netherlands and France, among others, have been critical of the EU and are pushing back against the austerity measures agreed to in the EU Fiscal Compact Treaty. The compact, which was approved in January, obliges EU members to keep budget deficits below 3% of GDP and keep public debt at 60% of GDP.

“Northern countries are drifting away from the fiscal austerity they’re preaching to southern countries,” Ghahramani observes. “That’s an issue people are concerned about.”

Read here:

A couple of weeks ago European finance ministers attended an informal meeting in Copenhagen to sign off on one of the final components of the plan to deal with the debt crisis once and for all. In return for funds from their richer EU partners in the form of bailouts and a firewall to deal with future problems, peripheral euro zone members were to put their house in order, imposing austerity measures to help cut, or at least slow the pace of incurring new debt.

Aided by nearly a trillion dollars of assistance from the ECB’s Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) which ended fears of a fully-fledged banking crisis in late 2011, policy makers met in Denmark hoping the worst was now behind them.

But having agreed upon extra funding for the IMF’s own rescue fund over the weekend, policy makers will unfortunately not be able to look forward to a calmer summer and two weeks on the beach.

The reason thousands of politicians and bureaucrats will not be able to hit the beach is an EU member that could do with as many people as possible spending the summer on its beaches: Spain. The cost of borrowing over 10 years for the Spanish government is now 6 percent after heavy selling of Spanish debt by bond traders who had just a few months ago been buying heavily using ECB money. The IBEX 35 in Madrid has seen huge volatility as investors question the sustainability of Spanish housing prices and the debt that banks hold against it.

“It is becoming increasingly likely that some kind of support program for Spain will be needed” said Carl Weinberg, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics in a research note on Monday. “The yield on Spanish 10-year debt is approaching borrowing rates that are destabilizing and un-economic.”

Spanish and European officials will not agree with Weinberg, particularly in public, but whether they like it or not ,the bond vigilantes are back and ready to test their resolve. Those betting against the Spanish bond market are not just betting against Spain and its imbalances, they are betting against German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ECB President Mario Draghi’s resolve to protect the European project.

Up until now the support of Angela Merkel and Mario Draghi for countries finding themselves in trouble has been dependent on them implementing austerity measures and halting runaway government borrowing. So far those having to accept big cuts have played along, with Greece, Ireland and Portugal imposing massive cuts in return for bailout cash, and others have also gone along, to avoid the fate of Greece in particular.

Doubting the path set by Germany and the ECB has been frowned upon and in the case of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi led to him losing power. But opposition to austerity and plan A is beginning to grow in more prosperous places than Athens and Lisbon. In France, one of the architects of the plan to resolve the debt crisis, Nicolas Sarkozy, risks losing power to socialist candidate Francois Hollande.

Hollande won this weekend’s first round vote promising to focus on growth and is now favorite to win the French presidency despite over a third of all voters backing either the far right or extreme left. Whether or not Hollande will back Angela Merkel’s thinking on the debt crisis could define the EU response in the second half of 2012, but the optimists say his election would not have to be a negative.

“Let me point out that sometimes changes open up new opportunities for reforms – the “Nixon goes to China” paradox. For example, France needs labor market reforms and I suspect that a socialist president would have a better chance of getting that done than a center-right president would, but we will see,” said Erik Nielson, the chief economist at Unicredit in a research note on Monday.

To the north of Paris in the Netherlands, talks over slashing government debt collapsed over the weekend after an anti-euro right wing ally of the governing coalition walked out demanding elections as “soon as possible”

“It is very regrettable that this government cannot finish its job,” said Frans van Houten, the CEO of Philips in a CNBC interview following the release of forecast-beating numbers which had little to do with the health of the Dutch economy.

Alistair Newton, a political analyst at Nomura following the news from the Netherlands said: “Although failure by the Netherlands alone to ratify would not in theory spell the compact’s demise – only 12 out of 17 euro zone members need to ratify for it to come into force – it would at best significantly damage the compact’s credibility and at worst encourage other members to follow suit.”

With opposition to austerity measures rising and the debt crisis moving to Spain, the current plan A is under threat and this could spell trouble for euro zone resolve, according to Newton.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A polluted drainage ditch that once flowed with industrial waste from Lake Charles, La., petrochemical plants teems with overgrown, wild plants today.

A light-rail line zips past the spot where a now-defunct Portland, Ore., gasoline station advertised in 1972 that it had run out of gas.

A smoking Jersey City, N.J., dump piled with twisted, rusty metal has disappeared, along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that were its backdrop.

Forty years after the Environmental Protection Agency sent an army of nearly 100 photographers across the country to capture images at the dawn of environmental regulation, The Associated Press went back for Earth Day this year to see how things have changed. It is something the agency never got to do because the Documerica program, as it was called, died in 1978, the victim of budget cuts.

AP photographers returned to more than a dozen of those locations in recent weeks, from Portland to Cleveland and Corpus Christi, Texas. Of the 20,000 photos in the archive, the AP selected those that focused on environmental issues, rather than the more general shots of everyday life in the 1970s.

Gone are the many obvious signs of pollution — clouds of smoke billowing from industrial chimneys, raw sewage flowing into rivers, garbage strewn over beaches and roadsides — that heightened environmental awareness in the 1970s, and led to the first Earth Day and the EPA’s creation in 1970. Such environmental consciousness caused Congress to pass almost unanimously some of the country’s bedrock environmental laws in the years that followed.

Today’s pollution problems aren’t as easy to see or to photograph. Some in industry and politics question whether environmental regulation has gone too far and whether the risks are worth addressing, given their costs.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has called for the firing of EPA chief Lisa Jackson, while GOP rival Newt Gingrich has said the EPA should be replaced altogether. Jackson has faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill so often the in past two years that a top Republican quipped that she needs her own parking spot.

“To a certain extent, we are a victim of our own success,” said William Ruckelshaus, who headed the EPA when it came into existence under Republican President Richard Nixon and was in charge during the Documerica project. “Right now, EPA is under sharp criticism partially because it is not as obvious to people that pollution problems exist and that we need to deal with them.”

Environmental laws that passed Congress so easily in Ruckelshaus’ day are now at the center of a partisan dispute between Republicans and Democrats. Dozens of bills have been introduced to limit environmental protections that critics say will lead to job losses and economic harm, and there are those who question what the vast majority of scientists accept — that the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming.

In the 1970s, the first environmental regulations were just starting to take effect, with widespread support. Now, according to some officials in the oil and gas and electric utility industries, which are responsible for the bulk of emissions and would bear the greatest costs, the EPA has gone overboard with rules.

For instance, Documerica photographers captured a wave of coal-fired power plants under construction. Republicans and the industry now say environmental regulations are partly to blame for shuttering some of the oldest and dirtiest coal plants.

Jim DiPeso of ConservAmerica, a group that recently changed its name from Republicans for Environmental Protection, says the EPA is caught in the center of a perfect storm. “This time of greater cynicism about government, more economic anxiety and the fact that the problems are not immediately apparent, has created this political problem for EPA,” he said.

In an interview, Jackson said she believes that people in the United States still want to protect the environment. “There’s a large gulf between the rhetoric inside the Beltway to do everything from cut back on EPA to get rid of the whole place, and what the American people would actually stand for,” she said. “It’s very easy to make rash statements without thinking about what that means to the health of everyday Americans.”

A 2010 Pew Research Center survey showed that 57 percent of those questioned held a favorable view of the EPA, compared with a 1997 poll that showed 69 percent with a positive view of the agency. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken last year found that 71 percent of people surveyed said that the government should continue provide money to the EPA to enforce regulations to address global warming and other environmental issues.

“We are not done. We still have challenges we have to face,” Jackson said.

Sweet. I love me some psychotic Islamist regimes. Now Israel is surrounded.

CAIRO (AP) — The head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company said Sunday it has terminated its contract to ship gas to Israel because of violations of contractual obligations, a decision Israel said overshadows the peace agreement between the two countries.

The 2005 natural gas deal has become a symbol of tensions between Israel and Egypt since the uprising. For many Egyptians, it typifies the close relations the regime of deposed President Hosni Mubarak forged with Israel and how his associates benefited greatly from such business deals.

Critics charge that Israel got the gas at below-market prices and that Mubarak cronies skimmed millions of dollars off the proceeds, costing Egypt millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Egyptian militants have blown up the gas pipeline to Israel 14 times since the uprising more than a year ago.

Israel insists it is paying a fair price for the gas.

Mohamed Shoeb, the head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company, said the decision to cancel the deal was not political.

“This has nothing to do with anything outside of the commercial relations,” Shoeb told The Associated Press.

He said Israel has not paid for its gas in four months. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor denied that.

Shoeb told Egyptian TV that the decision to cancel the contract was made Thursday because “each side has rights and we are representing our rights.”

On Sunday, Israel Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said the unilateral Egyptian announcement was of “great concern” politically and economically.

“This is a dangerous precedent that overshadows the peace agreements and the peaceful atmosphere between Israel and Egypt,” he said in a statement. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979, but relations have never been warm.

The Israeli side said the decision was “unlawful and in bad faith,” accusing the Egyptian side of failing to supply the gas quantities it is owed.

Israel insists it is paying a fair price for the gas. Israel’s electricity company has been warning of possible power shortages this summer, partly because of the unreliability of the natural gas supply from Egypt.

For the long term, Israel is developing its own natural gas fields off its Mediterranean coast and is expected to be self-sufficient in natural gas in a few years.

Hussein Salem, a close friend of Mubarak was among the shareholders of East Mediterranean Gas Co., which is a joint Egyptian-Israeli company that carries the gas to Israel. Once a close friend of Mubarak, Salem fled Egypt for Spain and was sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail over the natural gas issue.

On the Israeli side, EMG sought international arbitration in October because of the Egyptian side’s failure to supply the quantity of gas stipulated in the contract — because of the frequent bombings.

Under the 2005 deal, the Cairo-based East Mediterranean Gas Co. sells 1.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas to the Israeli company at a price critics say is set at $1.50 per million British thermal units — a measure of energy.

The gas deal has been the subject of litigation in Egypt. An appellate court last year overturned a lower court ruling that would have halted gas exports to Israel. Opposition groups that filed the suit before the uprising claimed that Israel got the gas too cheaply under the 15-year fixed price deal between a private Egyptian company, partly owned by the government, and the state-run Israel Electric Corporation.

Ibrahim Yousri, a former Egyptian diplomat who had brought the issue to court, welcomed the decision announced Sunday.

“It has become a scandal bigger than the (ruling) military council can withstand,” Yousri said. He said there are gas shortages in Egypt, and growing economic woes, further enflaming popular unrest. He called the business deal a “treason” to national interests, adding, “This is a great political step.”

TOKYO (AP) — Japan said Saturday it will take steps to forgive about 300 billion yen ($3.7 billion) of Myanmar’s debt and resume full-fledged development aid as a way to support the country’s democratic and economic reforms.

The government made the announcement after a meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Myanmar President Thein Sein following a summit with leaders from the five nations of the Mekong River region.

Myanmar’s military junta last year handed power to a nominally civilian government that has surprised the world with a series of sweeping political and economic reforms, including releasing prominent political prisoners and allowing democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to contest recent parliamentary by-elections.

“Reforms in Myanmar are steadily moving forward. As Myanmar approaches a crucial stage in its democratization, Japan will all the more encourage Myanmar’s efforts to reform,” Noda said at a news conference with Thein Sein. “We hereby pledge to strengthen our assistance to the country so that the Burmese people will be able to enjoy the fruit of its reforms.”

Myanmar, also known as Burma, owes Japan about 500 billion yen from past development loans.

Of that amount, the Japanese government said in a statement that it will cancel 127.4 billion yen in loans due after April 2003. It will also forgive 176.1 billion yen in overdue charges accumulated over the past two decades after one year’s time as the two countries jointly monitor reforms.

Japan does not have sanctions on Myanmar, although it cut most government aid in 2003 after Suu Kyi was put under house arrest, which ended last November. Japan was Myanmar’s largest aid donor until 2003 and has continued small amounts of humanitarian grass-roots aid in health and education.

“On behalf of the Myanmar government and its people, I would like to express my gratitude to Japanese government officials and the people of Japan,” Thein Sein said. “The resolution of Myanmar’s debt issues as well as our cooperation and aid will be effective and helpful for the people’s efforts for the development and reform of Myanmar.”

Japanese companies had held back from investing in resource-rich Myanmar because they didn’t want to upset relations with the United States and the European Union, which have imposed sanctions on the country, and due to the lack of transparency in business laws.

PARIS (AP) — Socialist Francois Hollande and conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy are heading for a runoff election in their race for France’s presidency, according to partial official results in a vote that could alter the European political and economic landscape.

French voters defied expectations and handed a surprisingly strong third-place showing to far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has run on an anti-immigrant platform aimed largely at Muslims. That could boost her influence on the French political scene, hand her party seats in parliament and affect relations with minorities.

With 75 percent of the vote counted, Hollande had 27.9 percent of ballots cast and Sarkozy 26.7 percent, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry after final polls closed.

Le Pen was in third with 19.2 percent of the vote so far. In fourth place was leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon with 10.8 percent, followed by centrist Francois Bayrou with 9.2 percent and five other candidates with minimal support.

Turnout was also surprisingly high, projected by polling agencies at about 80 percent, despite concern that a campaign lacking a single overarching theme had failed to inspire voters.

Hollande, a 57-year-old who has worried investors with his pledges to boost government spending, pledged to cut France’s huge debts, boost growth and unite the French after Sarkozy’s divisive first term.

“Tonight I become the candidate of all the forces who want to turn one page and turn another,” Hollande, with a confidence and stately air he has often lacked during the campaign, told an exuberant crowd in his hometown of Tulle in southern France.

PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s career was on the line Sunday as voters turned out in solid numbers for the first round of France’s presidential election, a contest that could shake up Europe’s political landscape and approach to myriad economic troubles.

The first-round balloting will trim down a list of 10 candidates from across the political spectrum to two finalists for a May 6 runoff.

Polls for months have shown that conservative Sarkozy and Socialist Francois Hollande are likely to make the cut — and suggest Hollande would win the campaign finale. Many voters are turned off by conservative Sarkozy’s flashy style as they worry about jobs and the economy.

The Interior Ministry said early turnout figures showed an impressive 70.6 percent of France’s 44-million-plus voters cast ballots by 5 p.m. local time (1500 GMT) — less than the 73.8 percent in 2007 at the same time, but more than in the four previous races. Overall turnout in the 2007 first round was nearly 84 percent, the highest figure since the 1970s.

The campaign has been marked by frustration with the incumbent and the rise of the extremes. Voters may hand higher-than-expected support to far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen or Communist-backed firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon.

While they are not expected to win, a strong performance by one or all of them could influence the second-round vote. Centrist candidate Francois Bayrou may take votes from the mainstream, while the other five candidates are expected to receive low single-digit support.

Sarkozy and Hollande have pushed for a strong turnout on the idea that it would help the political mainstream and dilute the impact of more ideological voters.

“This is an election that will weigh on the future of Europe. That’s why many people are watching us,” said Hollande after voting in Tulle, a town in central France. “They’re wondering not so much what the winner’s name will be, but especially what policies will follow.”

“I am in a competition in which I must give new breath of life to my country and a new commitment to Europe,” he added.

LONDON (Reuters) – Argentine oil group YPF has cut computer links with parent Repsol, two sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday, following Buenos Aires’ plans unveiled last week to seize control of the leading energy company.

The move is the latest in a string of actions that have shut Spain’s Repsol out of YPF, even before Argentina has implemented laws to provide the basis for the nationalization.

Last Monday, President Cristina Fernandez announced plans to expropriate a controlling 51 percent stake in YPF by seizing most of Repsol’s shares, saying a failure of Repsol to invest sufficiently in YPF was contributing to an energy crunch in the country.

Repsol, which holds about 57 percent of YPF, said it had consistently raised investment at YPF and analysts said Argentina’s price controls on oil and gas were the reason companies had not invested more in production.

Local media said that even before Fernandez finished her speech, the government’s representative on YPF’s board of directors, Roberto Baratta, had entered YPF’s offices and read out the names of executives who would have to leave the premises immediately.

Hours after the expropriation was announced live on national television, the state-appointed interim administrator, Planning Minister Julio De Vido, occupied the company’s offices in the upscale neighborhood of Puerto Madero.

The two sources said that days later, YPF shut down electronic communications with Repsol, preventing Repsol from accessing information about YPF’s operations.

“Later in the week the connection was cut between Repsol and YPF,” one source said.