World Business

HARARE, Zimbabwe The advice of doctors to Zimbabweans is, don’t get ill. If you do, don’t tell on hospitals - they’re short of drugs and functioning equipment.

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As the economy collapses, the laboratory at a main 1,000-bed hospital has virtually close down. X-ray materials, injectable antibiotics and anticonvulsants have emit out.

Emergency revival accoutrement is out of action. Patients needing casts for broken bones need to bring their own cement. In a country with one of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics, medical staff lack protective gloves.

Health authorities blame the drying up of foreign aid less than Western sanctions imposed to end political and full of common human feeling rights abuses for that which is less than President Robert Mugabe. A power-sharing agreement aimed at bringing the opposition into the sway could open the gates to foreign back. But negotiations have stalled over how much power rests with Mugabe.

Meanwhile, the economic meltdown is evident in empty store shelves, tedious lines at gas stations - and hospitals in which place elevators don’t work and patients are carried to upper wards in makeshift hammocks of torn sheets and blankets.

Jacob Kwaramba, an insurance clerk, brought his brother to Harare’s Parirenyatwa hospital, once the self-complacency of health services in southern Africa. Emergency room doctors sent Kwaramba to a private pharmacy to buy drugs for his brother’s lung infection. He returned two hours later to perceive his brother gone to one’s last home, he told the AP in the emergency room.

“I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t a fatal illness,” he said.

Another family before-mentioned a not absolute dying of cancer was sent home, and no painkillers could be found in Harare pharmacies. Relatives abroad were apt to pay for morphine, but by the time import clearance was obtained from the state Medicines Control Authority, the man had died in torment, the clan said, requesting anonymity for fear of commonwealth retribution.

A detonation by six unconventional Zimbabwean doctors indicates the scale of the extreme depression.

“Elective surgery has been abandoned in the central hospitals and even emergency surgery is often dependent on the address of patients’ relatives to purchase line of junction materials from private suppliers,” it said.

“Pharmacies continue empty and ambulances immobilized for want of spare parts … this is an consummate tragedy, scarcely conceivable just a year ago.”

The doctors who compiled the six-page report for the sake of circulation among aid and development groups withheld their names because comments seen as critical of Mugabe are a punishable offense.

SHANGHAI, China China’s official Xinhua News Agency says a Shanghai court has ordered the death penalty for a man convicted of killing six policemen in a knife bear down upon at a police station.

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Xinhua said the Shanghai No. 2 People’s Intermediate Court ordered Yang Jia sentenced to death Monday after finding him guilty of premeditated murder. Court officials would not comment.

Yang, 28, was said to subsist unemployed. State media reports say he told police he was seeking take vengeance for hind officers at the station questioned him for allegedly stealing bicycles.

Four others were injured in the attack.

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Commerzbank will buy its competitor from Allianz for $14.5 billion in two steps, taking 60 percent this year and the rest in 2009 to create a rival to flagship Deutsche Bank in Europe's biggest economy.

Much of the possession reward will be paid to Allianz in the form of shares, leaving Europe's biggest insurer through a adventure of almost 30 percent in the new Commerzbank.

The deal puts a price tag of 9.8 billion euros put on Dresdner — a fraction of the 24 billion euros Allianz paid for it near the height of the dot-com bubble in 2001.

But analysts and insiders were skeptical about whether the pairing of what great number see as two mediocre performers could be the occasion of a financial acknowledged chief.

Shares in Commerzbank tumbled by almost 7 percent, construction them the steepest decliner amid German pallid chips while Allianz slipped slightly.

"It is good on this account that Allianz. In the seven years they hold owned Dresdner they have erudite that they don't have a clue about running a bank," said Dirk Becker, every analyst with Landsbanki Kepler.

"But it is a huge integration. We resoluteness see in half a year that something will go wrong."

DZ Bank analyst Matthias Duerr wrote: "On a first glance we don't like the transaction at wholly. The acquisition of Dresdner is more expensive than expected."

On Monday, the new owner outlined a blueprint to cut costs, through more than half the savings to come from Dresdner Kleinwort, the straggling investing. bank what one. has been to a greater distance hobbled by the put faith in crunch.

JOBS GLOOM

About 2,500 of the 9,000 jobs that will have root cut are set to be lost outside Germany, much of those at Dresdner Kleinwort. The new group will have 67,000 staff before the cuts.

Outlining plans to slash proprietory trading, leveraged loans and other key investment banking operate, Commerzbank Chief Executive Martin Blessing said: "This is familiar territory in the place of us."

Commerzbank closed its be in possession of investment bank. Many now expect the winding up of the accident-prone Dresdner Kleinwort, which helped Allianz tot up $5 billion of writedowns during the credit crunch.

The sale will give the new Commerzbank 11 million deal out in small portions customers in Germany, a mart where margins are thin thanks to the dominance of state not-for-profit lenders.

It will also allow Allianz to end an unhappy marriage that tried to match investing. bankers with security against loss salesmen.

Allianz board member Paul Achleitner and other architects of the Dresdner takeover had hoped to sell bank accounts to Allianz customers for the reason that hale as products such at the same time that car insurance at bank branches.

Last June, Reuters reported that Allianz had begun to consider its options for Dresdner. The resulting jump in the insurer's share price reflected the degree of investor bringing to nought with the botched takeover.

But finding a buyer has not been easy, mostly for the reason that of Dresdner's investment bank — a employment, said one insider, which Allianz had never intended to keep.

"It was net from the raise to Allianz that they did not want to keep the investment bank," this person said. "But when the time was right to sell it — at the top of the investment banking boom in late 2006 — they fell asleep at the fetch a compass."

The sale will flesh of neat-cattle up Commerzbank. Despite being one of the country's biggest lenders, it is still a lightweight by European standards, with a market value of in an opposite direction 13 billion euros — smaller quantity than half that of Frankfurt neighbor Deutsche Bank.

Allianz was advised by Goldman Sachs, Shearman Sterling and Ernst & Young. Leonardo & Co gave a fairness opinion for Allianz and Rothschild for Dresdner Bank.

(Editing by Erica Billingham)

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"The first moiety of 2008 has seen a notable change in client expectations and investment choices," said Peter Braunwalder, cardinal executive of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), the British-based bank's main affiliate catering to the ultra-rich.

"Faced with inflation worries, volatile asset prices and sudden changes in exchange rates, a majority of investors have reduced their transaction volumes in equities, bonds, and structured products," he told a news briefing in Geneva.

This was specifically true in favor of clients from Asia, whose demand for intricate investment tools such as equity derivatives has "drastically decreased" in response to novel financial market upheaval, said Braunwalder.

"Concurrently, most clients increased their cash allocation and, for some, their leverage," he added.

Investors worldwide have been scrambling to find a whole place beneficial to their savings this year in the face of a global economic slowdown, a credit crisis that has spooked markets, and each zeal price head spurring concerns about inflation.

Alexandre Zeller, who will replace Braunwalder as HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) chief on October 1, declared that concerns about inflation would dominate many investing decisions ahead.

"My worry is that a lot of liquidity has been injected in the markets by means of central banks to explain the (confidence) critical situation," the former head of Banque Cantonale Vaudoise said, raising concerns about how that fluidity pleasure be removed from the place of traffic, and whether interest rates would have to rise as a result.

HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), rated AA by Standard and Poor's and Aa3 by Moody's, has been added shielded from recent banking sector woes than its larger Swiss rivals UBS (UBSN.VX) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX).

But the Geneva-based rising ground said the first six months of 2008 were necessarily arduous in light of "the most difficult financial markets notwithstanding distinct decades."

"Record levels of volatility thwart asset classes and markets have made clients other hesitant to move their assets between monetary institutions," it said.

Assets under management decreased by 13 percent to 23.8 billion Swiss francs ($21.7 billion) compared to December 2007, due both to unfavorable markets and the least bit of the U.S. dollar against the Swiss franc.

Net new money flows were 6.9 billion francs in the first moiety, with most funds advent from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the HSBC unit reported. Zeller said he considered that inflow "substantial" and stood by the bank's goal to grow assets under management by 60 percent into the bargain the next three years.

"I think this is something that we have power to achieve," he said.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Republicans only invited Bush to the convention because he's the sitting President of their party, as much as John McCain now wants voters to consign to oblivion. The McCain campaign didn't want a reprise of the of ill repute "undergo hug" at the 2004 meeting.. And Bush didn't paucity New Orleans to drown (again) on his watch. So it was hastily decided that Bush would have being with emergency evacuees in Texas rather than St. Paul. At least something decisive has arrive out of Hurricane Gustav. Bonus point: Dick Cheney was told he could dwell in his underground bunker.

The fact is, it would probably be a good thing concerning Republicans if Republicans didn't have a convention this year. Eight GOP Senators had already decided to skip it. Admitted Norm Coleman, Republican Senator from Minnesota, "If the convention wasn't in St. Paul, I wouldn't be at the meeting.."

The Democrats were proud Democrats in Denver. These days Republicans can't figure out who they are, or put on't want voters to find out. The festivities, we're now told, are day-to-day, pending the impact of Gustav.

I just arrived in St. Paul (or rather, each external suburb where we're staying) and the mood here, from my very limited early observations, is definitely subdued. At the airport in Denver, you could sense the excitement and hubbub encompassing the to come convention. At the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport (family of the "Larry Craig Memorial Men's Room," as Frank Rich acidly put it), all I could hear was classical music.

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South Korea's KDB could bribe up to 25 percent of the struggling U.S. investment sandbank, the writing said, without specifying sources. A spokesman for state-run KDB declined to remark.

A senior source at the Financial Services Commission (FSC), told Reuters South Korean authorities would not oppose or support any deal until price details were known.

That appeared to line a shift by the regulator, which previously uttered KDB should let local private banks take the lead in any international acquisitions, dashing hopes for a direct traffic with Lehman.

The source said the FSC had not been officially informed of new talks between Lehman and KDB. He said, however, even if there was deal it would be unlikely to be concluded within a week.

But FSC speaker Yoo Hoon later declared the regulator remained uneasy about the state-run bank leading any deal with Lehman.

"We have expressed our make anxious athwart KDB being the major player in a deal … we port't changed our view," he reported.

South Korea's Yonhap advice agency said on Monday KDB was seeking to pervert with money Lehman through a private monetary institution and majority of funding would come from the personal firm, citing a unnamed senior FSC official.

Lehman, which has more than $60 billion of mortgage and mortgage security exposure, is under pressure to raise fatal ahead of its results announcement this month. It may post a loss in the third quarter on likely pre-tax writedowns of $3.5 billion, a Morgan Stanley analyst said hindmost week.

Recent violent falls in valuations at Western banks have presented South Korean banks such as KDB by opportunities for acquisitions that could support their ambitions of becoming global players.

The Sunday Telegraph said if the talks with KDB fall through, Lehman was lining up other investments from others, such as China's CITIC Securities, or sovereign funds from the Middle East.

But Lehman was likely to put up to sale no greater degree than 10 percent to CITIC or Gulf investors if it reaches a deal with either, the paper said.

Earlier talks between KDB and Lehman had stalled because of disagreement over pricing, sources have reported.

"We haven't received any detailed report since, including the compensation," said the FSC source, who declined to be identified for the cause that of the sensitivity of the upshot.

"KDB is supposed to inform us if it finds different options. Everything depends on the price and terms, and the dominion can comment only after receiving such information."

The source also aforesaid any deal would need time in opposition to a review. "It can't be this week."

FSC Chairman Jun Kwang-woo said last week state-run institutions taking a leading role in purchasing foreign firms "appears burdensome."

Chinese financial regulators be delivered of in like manner repeatedly warned domestic pecuniary firms to be fully aware of investment risks and weigh them against opportunities in the U.S. credit crunch.

China's upper end brokerage CITIC Securities, which backed deficient in of a proposed investing. in troubled Wall Street firm Bear Stearns, before-mentioned last month it would focus on its domestic business this year.

Lehman's shares have fallen 75 percent because the beginning of the year, last mercantile at $16.09 per distribute to value the bank at around $11 billion.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Thatcher and Cheon Jong-woo; Editing by Marie-France Han, Ken Wills and Lincoln Feast)

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DENVER

The delegates left here happy and enthused, believing that the divisive nomination fight was finally behind them. But their star, Barack Obama, in continuance the climactic night of the conclave, gave each acknowledgment parlance that was nay versify equal for the keynote address he delivered at the 2004 convention in Boston. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, introducing his colleague again hither, said that first unit “changed politics in America.”

That is hardly an exaggeration. People were talking about the 2004 speech

No one is suitable to argue that the speech here “changed politics in America.” His jibes at John McCain and George Bush were standard-issue Democratic happen and his recital of a long list of domestic promises could have been delivered by any Democratic nominee from Walter Mondale to John Kerry.

There was none theme music to the speech and really no phrase or sentence that is likely to tarry in the memory of any listener. The thing I never expected did in fact occur: Al Gore, the famously wooden former vice president, gave a more lively and convincing speech than Obama did.

If this were just an right side night by a speaker we discern can soar, it would be no more than a blip on the screen. Obama picked a bad night to be normal, given the huge crowd that filled the Denver Broncos stadium and the elaborate Grecian setting constructed as being his performance.

But John McCain is hardly a greater threat as a speaker, so what’s the breach?

Here’s why I opine it matters. One of the major questions about Obama, of whom so brief is known, is whether he is really in earnest about challenging the champion gridlock in Washington or whether his election would simply bring on the regular wish list of liberal policies.

His Boston language

But the Denver speech, like many others he has given recently, subordinated any deliberate of fundamental systemic change to a checklist of traditionary Democratic programs.

Obama’s disappointing speech also reflected what I had thought was the one conspicuous failure of the convention program

The convention hall was well stocked of bright, attractive men and women serving as governors or mayors or in other posts. Obama knows numerous company of them from his campaign travels, and he gave the keynote place to one of them, Virginia’s Mark Warner.

But the prime-time spots without ceasing the meeting. program went to Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Joe Biden, the vice presidential candidate. All are comfortably near associate figures to members of my generation, and altogether are allotment of a Washington that is hardly the preferred of most voters.

My guess is that an Obama administration, allowing that there is one, would bring a lot of new faces and fresh ideas to the nation’s capital. But by giving such an ordinary speech and filling the TV screen with such familiar faces, Obama missed a chance to signal that such change is his mission.

He is not the first Democrat who has promised a new age. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, in different ways, tried to change Washington, and the pair wound up frustrated. The status-quo forces

The singly interval a new president can positively change Washington is which time he makes it the central message of his campaign, as Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

Reagan’s skill was his rhetoric; hence the label “The Great Communicator.” After the 2004 Obama speech, Democrats thought they had found one of their own. It’s too bad that fellow didn’t make it to Denver.

davidbroder@washpost.com

To save the troubled airline from collapse, Italy’s cabinet has changed laws to sunder Alitalia in two and obstacle its indebted quota go broke

by Nick Clark and Sarah Arnott

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The beleaguered airline industry was rocked by more crises yesterday as the Italian government was forced to modify the canon to save its national carrier and Aer Lingus reported losses for the sake of the first moiety and predicted worse to come.

At any emergency retired apartment meeting yesterday, Silvio Berlusconi reshaped bankruptcy and anti-competition rules to save Alitalia from toward undoubted collapse. A dispose of 17 investors propose splitting the airline in two—by the troubled quantity put into liquidation and the rest thrown a $1.5bn (£800m) lifeline. Up to 7,000 job losses are expected.

The strange corypheus executive self-reliance be Roberto Colaninno, the maverick businessman who already heads Piaggio, the iconic motorcycle manufacturer, and whose Immsi holding company is putting as much as €150m (&beat;121m) into the resurrected airline.

Alitalia’s existing board will meet today to go through the group’s first-half accounts. “The board is likely to petition administration for that which is less than the new rules at this meeting,” a beginning said.

The body created by Mr Colannino’s consortium—called Compagnia Aerea Italiana—will present the rescue hatch as soon as an administrator is appointed, which could be today. If accepted, all will be completed in the next brace months and the shareholders will be locked in for five years.

The new carrier demise incorporate Alitalia’s fleet and Air One, another Italian airline, which forced a rewriting of competition law to allow like government of lucrative internal routes.

Alitalia has been in dire straits for some time, hit by strikes, inefficiency and competition from low-cost rivals. The command tried to sell its 49.9 per cent stake three times in two years—it has not made a profit from the time of 1999—and the shares were suspended in June.

Before yesterday’s agreement, one industry expert warned: “If it doesn’t come, Alitalia will subsist dead in a couple of weeks.” But the progressive series of the rescue is not trivial. “The government is essentially creating Chapter 11 law from scratch.”

The next challenge is to find a strategic partner. Air France-KLM and Lufthansa are understood to be forward part runners, although “nothing has been decided yet,” the beginning said.

Such upheavals put Aer Lingus’s problems into context. The Irish low-cost carrier plunged to a loss of €22.3m (£17.9m) in the first half of the year, as rocketing oil prices well-nigh doubled its fuel bill to €56.5m.

It maintained revenue-per-passenger levels and increased its capacity by stingily a quarter. But the expectation during the term of the second half is to break exactly at in the highest degree, and there will subsist an overall loss for the full year and worse to come in 2009, Aer Lingus warned. “There are tough times ahead,” Sean Coyle, its science director, said. “Next year will see fuel prices up by probably a further 15-17 through cent, which would increase the loss to close to a sum in the three-figure millions.”

At the end of September, Aer Lingus will publish clear plans for how to keep the business afloat during the coming tricky years. Every view of the company force of will be with less than the microscope, including staff numbers, supplier and airport costs, and the potential for commercial partnerships. “At most of all in the next couple of years we will be seeking to minimise our losses,” Mr Coyle said.

The form into groups saw overall revenue growth of 10.2 per cent to €633m in the first half, and passenger numbers were up by 10.5 per cent. But consumer call is sliding, and only fares cuts of around 6 per cent this autumn will keep exact up, said Mr Coyle.

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Sure, Palin is cool — she's neat and brisk and athletic, a former beauty queen who runs marathons, hunts , fishes and eats mooseburgers, plus she's got five kids with unusual names like Willow and Track, including a newborn with Down's syndrome. I feel tired just thinking of what her daily life must be like, and if she were my neighbor I would probably like her a possibility. It shows how deeply feminism has penetrated American civilization that even anti-choice right-wing-christian women are breaking out of the old sugary-submissive pastel-suited stereotype. And grant that life were a Lifetime movie, Palin would do just fine running the country should McCain keel over. Girls can accomplish anything! and look great doing it!

But seriously. Vice President? After a stint as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of inferior than 8000, and slenderly two years similar to governor of a state with in addition grizzly bears than population? She makes obama's resume look as thick as Winston Churchill's.

Here's the reality: Palin is a rightwing-christian anti-choice extremist who opposes vain effort for any reason whasoever, except to save the life of the girl or woman. No exception even for carnal knowledge of a woman, incest, or the health of the woman. No exception for a ten-year-old, a woman carrying a fetus with no chance of life, a woman on the edge of suicide– let lonely the woman who is not ready to be a father, who is escaping domestic violence, who is already stretched to the limit as a single native. She wants to constraint over one million women and girls a year to give birth against their will and judgment. She wants to use the magnificent freedom the women's movement has won as far as concerns her at tremendous cost and struggle–the change that won her the right to run those marathons and run Alaska — to take away the freedom of every other woman in the country.

Her selection does not tell us McCain is a "maverick" who is reasonable stringing the disciple of christ right along wink-wink . It tells us that he has thrown in his assign with James Dobson, the Family Research Council, the Catholic system of gradation and others for whom criminalizing disappointment is the number-one issue. His record of votes against miscarriage and birth control — 125 votes public of 130 in his congresssional and Senate career– manifestly wasn't wholly enough for them. By choosing Palin, he wins their enthusiastic support.

McCain is gambling that women will vote their gender, and not their interests.

I look forward to pro-choice women will see through this gambit pretty immovable. If not, we really are as unable to speak as he thinks we are.

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