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BON (VOYAGE) FULLER

March 2, 2007 — RUMBLINGS inside American Media now say that Editorial Director Bonnie Fuller is reaching out to Hachette Filipacchi and to TMZ.com, the celebrity dirt-digging Web site, as she scrambles for an exit strategy.

The high-octane editor has usually shown little patience for staying in one job for very long and is clearly showing signs of strain in her current gig, where she still has more than two years remaining on her three-year contract.

So far, there are denials on all fronts about any of the rumored moves.

“It is absolutely and categorically untrue,” Fuller said to Media Ink yesterday, when asked about her talks with Hachette and TMZ.

Jack Kliger, CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Media, also professes to know nothing.

“It’s news to me,” he said. “We talked to her a long time ago, when she left Condй Nast.”

Fuller is said to have trouble turning on her computer and opening her e-mail, so an executive job at TMZ.com or a similar Internet site struck insiders as a bit far-fetched. However, TMZ previously announced that it was going to launch a daily TV show in the fall season and is still searching for a host.

A TMZ spokeswoman said, “We’re not going to say who we are talking to, but we have not talked to Bonnie Fuller.”

Fuller has long been interested in TV, and last year tried to launch a reality-based TV show that would be produced in the offices of Star magazine. And, of course the cable network FX has “Dirt,” a TV series starring Courtney Cox as a tabloid editor widely believed to be based on Fuller.

American Media CEO David Pecker, in his tense negotiations with bankers and bondholders in recent weeks, had made little secret that Star’s newsstand circulation had been plunging before he put its Hollywood coverage in the hands of the National Enquirer staff - essentially stiffing Fuller of some key duties.

Though he didn’t mention Fuller or Joe Dolce, Star’s lame duck editor-in-chief, by name, there was little doubt he saw them as the culprits behind last year’s newsstand tailspin, which has since shown a modest rebound now that the Enquirer is handling Star’s Hollywood coverage.

Dolce is leaving when his current contract expires at the end of March, and is being replaced by Candace Trunzo, who was most recently executive editor of the Enquirer.

Fuller, meanwhile, has a contract that runs to mid-2009, with a base pay of $1.5 million a year plus bonuses.

Sale done

Time Inc. will complete its sale of 16 magazines to Sweden’s Bonnier Group tomorrow. >PAGE 1>

Devil is in detail of UN climate change talks

UNITED Nations’ talks on climate change are at risk of getting bogged down under the weight of hundreds of amendments from governments and China’s objections to a proposed blueprint for battling global warming.

Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries are meeting in Bangkok to review a 24-page draft summary outlining ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the costs of preventing damaging climate change.

For it to be considered valid by the UN, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draft must be unanimously approved by the 120-plus governments that participate, and all changes must be approved by the scientists.

But, as with two other reports released this year by the UN climate panel, scientists at the gathering are squaring up with the governments, some of which want to change or water down the latest draft report due for release on Friday.

Chinese officials have demanded a last-minute insertion of a paragraph spelling out that industrialised nations are to blame for most of the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution.

“They want a statement that the cumulative proportion of emissions due to industrial countries is very high - it’s about 75 per cent,” said a delegate, who did not wish to be identified.

“But they do not want a statement that also says that the proportion is declining. In the 1970s, the proportion of cumulative emissions was 90 per cent due to industrialised countries. Now it’s 77 per cent. They don’t want these two numbers reported. They only want one that is favourable to them reported,” he added.

Such a demand breached IPCC procedures and risked opening the way for other countries to request last-minute details to be inserted, potentially stalling the talks, he said.

“The Chinese have a lot of other things they want to do. They want to gut the report of meaning in lots of different ways. So this is just the start of what they are up to,” he said.

Governments had proposed about 1,500 amendments spanning more than 160 pages and many would be discussed during the week in special contact groups, the delegate said. Talks could run well into the night.

The report estimates that stabilising greenhouse gas emissions will cost between 0.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent of world gross domestic product by 2030, depending on the stiffness of curbs on emissions of greenhouse gases. But sections dealing with this could be altered or even taken out, the delegate said.

Another delegate, a veteran of climate negotiations, said the politicking was normal. “It’s exactly the same as one would expect in these things. Basically what happens is there is a whole lot of fiddling around for the first couple of days and then people get down to work.

“This is standard UN practice,” he added.

He described the Chinese move to insert the paragraph as “nothing new” and posturing ahead of Kyoto Protocol talks in Bali in December at which China, India and other big developing nations will come under pressure to cut emissions.

China is now the world’s second biggest producer of greenhouse gases after the United States, and India is fourth.

The United States and Australia have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, partly over objections that China and India are not held to carbon pollution reduction targets.

Beijing and New Delhi are excluded from Kyoto’s first phase that ends in 2012, setting targets to cut emissions, but Washington is demanding they agree to curbs.

The US says it doesn’t make sense for the giant economies of India and China to remain outside a global emissions pact.

“China doesn’t want to be corralled into commitments that minimise its freedom of action and questioning the science, and digging in is part of that,” said Paul Harris, an expert on climate change politics at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “It wants to put off into the future the serious discussion of accepting mandatory limits.”

The Global Times, a newspaper run by China’s Communist Party, accused Western politicians last week of using “climate terrorism” to undermine China’s quest for prosperity.

Tom Van Ireland, a senior EU climate policy expert, said it was crucial to engage China to cap global emissions.

“We don’t ask India, China and Brazil to do the same things we ask from developed countries, which is taking binding targets to reduce their emissions,” he said.

But it was crucial they adopted cleaner and greener technology to cut emissions, he said.

While the report does not mandate action like the Kyoto Protocol, it could influence negotiations over future climate pacts.

Harlan Watson, the head of the American delegation, said in an e-mail that the US goal is to produce a report that is “useful to the policy community” and is “supported by scientific and economic data.” MAIN CONCLUSIONS OF CLIMATE PANEL’S REPORT

EMISSIONS GROWTH: “Without additional climate mitigation and/or appropriate sustainable development policies global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades,” the report says.

A large portion of this increase is projected to come from developing countries.

TOOLS AND RESEARCH: It says GHG levels can be stabilised using “a portfolio of technologies that are commercially available today and those that are expected to be commercialised in coming decades, provided appropriate incentives are in place”.

These included fuel switching, more efficient power plants, nuclear power, renewable energy, more efficient buildings and building materials and lighting, more efficient appliances and improved agricultural practices.

COSTS: The deeper and more rapid the emissions cuts, the more costly to economies.

By 2030, the costs of letting greenhouse gas concentrations rise are 0.2 percent of global gross domestic product.

Greenhouse gas concentrations are now rising sharply. Carbon dioxide accounts for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, followed by methane and four others covered by international pacts.

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Fed chairman says markets working well

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday that the administration and federal regulators are closely monitoring financial markets in the wake of the biggest sell-off in stock prices in more than five years but so far the markets appear to be “working well.”

Facing his first market crisis since taking the top Fed job a year ago, Bernanke answered questions on Tuesday’s market plunge with a calm, matter-of-fact demeanor, explaining developments in plain language without any of the famously opague language that his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, sometimes used.

In what might have been a reference to Greenspan, Bernanke testified at one point that there did not appear to be a “single trigger” to Tuesday’s sharp sell-off, which saw the Dow Jones industrial average fall by 416.02 points.

Some analysts believe that Greenspan’s comments over the weekend that there was a possibility of a recession by the end of the year along with a sharp drop in China’s Shanghai stock market contributed to Tuesday’s big drop on Wall Street, which saw the Dow Jones industrial average fall by 416.02 points.

But Bernanke let members of the House Budget Committee know that he didn’t intend to assign blame.

“There didn’t seem to be any single trigger of the market correction we saw yesterday,” he said in response to a question. “I don’t think it would be useful for me to try to parse the movement into the components associated with different pieces of news or pieces of information.”

On Wall Street, investors seemed to take comfort from Bernanke’s comments that there was no single trigger to the big selloff. At midday, the Dow Jones average was up 42 points after having been up by more than 100 points earlier in the session.

Despite Tuesday’s market turmoil, Bernanke said he did not believe there had been a major change in the outlook for the economy. He repeated that the Fed expects “moderate growth” this year.

Bernanke said that the Fed along with the president’s working group, which was formed in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash, had been closely monitoring market developments. He said that the markets “seem to be working well.”

He said there had been “no material change in our expectations for the U.S. economy since I last reported to Congress” when he delivered the Fed’s latest economic outlook two weeks ago.

“We are looking for moderate growth in the U.S. economy going forward,” Bernanke said. He said that if current corrections under way in housing and the amount of inventories being held by business stabilize in coming months, the economy should begin to rebound from its current slowdown by the end of the year.

Bernanke’s comments on the stock market decline occurred at a hearing where he delivered virtually identical warnings as he did in a Senate hearing last month about the need to deal with looming budget problems in the government’s giant benefit programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

At the White House Wednesday, press secretary Tony Snow said that President Bush had called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to get a readout on the stock market plunge. Asked what advice the president would give to investors, Snow said: “The president does not give advice to investors in the stock market.”

Greenspan, speaking by satellite to an audience in Hong Kong on Sunday night, had said that the current five-year-old economic expansion was beginning to show early signs of the types of imbalances that could lead to a recession. He said it was possible the U.S. could be in a recession by the end of this year, although he noted that most private forecasters did not consider that a likely outcome.

Greenspan’s comments and the steep drop in the Shanghai market raised worries that investors needed to focus more on the risks facing the global economy.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Forth bridge anchors may have to be replaced after corrosion fears

HUGE concrete blocks which anchor the Forth Road Bridge’s main cables may have to be replaced in the latest multi-million-pound headache for those in charge of the beleaguered crossing.

Officials have confirmed that four new underground anchors could be required if cables encased in the concrete blocks cannot be checked for corrosion.

The problem is the latest in a growing list to beset the 42-year-old crossing, from which lorries may have to be banned in 2013 if damage to the main cables is not arrested.

The Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA) is already spending millions on installing equipment in an attempt to dry out the cables. However, separate sections sealed inside the concrete blocks in the two anchorage chambers at each end of the bridge still need to be checked.

Other major work on the crossing includes life-expired expansion joints on the carriageways, which will have to be replaced next year, causing its worst-ever traffic disruption. Further expensive repairs will be required if carriageway barriers fail crash tests due over the next two months.

FETA is already going into debt for the first time since the cost of the bridge was paid off a decade ago. It is being forced to borrow 15 million to cover mounting repairs and other bills. Having to replace the concrete anchors and barriers could increase this even further.

Each of the anchor chambers, which were built into the rock at each end of the bridge using explosives, contains concrete blocks up to 250ft long. The base of each is 100ft deep.

The blocks each encase 114 wires inside steel tubes, which are held in place with grouting.

The cables were pre-stressed to a load greater than that imposed by the bridge, and then attached to the bridge’s main cables at the top of the chambers. In 1961 the Engineer described the technical feat, which was an innovation for suspension bridges, as “a gigantic plug of concrete filling an inclined tunnel in the rock.”

Engineers are investigating whether the cables can be accessed to see if they are corroding. If this proves impossible, the anchors may have to be replaced to ensure the cables are secure.

The access problem is compounded by the risk of methane gas in the south chambers, which caused an explosion during bridge construction which severely burned five workers.

Vents and monitors were installed after the blast.

Alastair Andrew, bridgemaster and FETA’s general manager, said: “We need to find a method to test the integrity of the pre-stressed strands of the cable in the anchorage tunnel. If we can’t prove this, we may have to build another anchor chamber.”

Liz Cameron, the director of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said: “Discoveries of further issues with the integrity of the Forth Road Bridge structure are of major concern.

“We are hopeful the Scottish Executive’s recent announcement that it will authorise a new crossing will result in genuinely prompt action. Now more than ever we must see a timetable for the expedited delivery of this project. Failure to deliver a crossing for all traffic needs before the partial or complete closure of the existing bridge would be disastrous for Scottish business.”

adalton@scotsman.com

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Metals - Gold lower as dollar rises, amid weaker oil prices UPDATE

(Updating with more detail)

LONDON (Thomson Financial) - Gold was lower, dented by a stronger dollar and weaker oil prices, while demand looks set to soften short-term ahead of holidays this week in China and Japan.

At 10.43 am, spot gold was quoted at 677.25 usd per ounce, down from 679.10 usd seen in late New York trade Friday.

The dollar hit historic lows on Friday after the release of weaker-than-expected first-quarter GDP data from the US, buoying the precious metal in turn.

However, the metal gave up those gains this morning as the US currency rallied slightly, as the euro weakened on an unexpected decline in German retail sales.

“The dollar has firmed slightly and that has knocked gold back a bit,” noted analyst John Reade at UBS.

This week’s Golden Week holiday in China and Japan may also dampen short-term buying sentiment, analysts said.

“With the Chinese and Japanese markets closed in the Far East for most of this week, it brings into question the level of buying likely to emerge if prices were to dip again,” said analysts at Standard Bank.

But with the dollar still seen vulnerable what with some key data on schedule today, further currency-related gains in gold are possible, analysts said.

The precious metal is up 6 pct since the start of this year, and 1 pct from the beginning of this month.

Friday’s terrorist arrests in Saudi Arabia, which sent crude prices higher, also benefited gold.

James Moore of TheBullionDesk.com said gold’s rally towards the end of trading on Friday — after Saudi Arabia announced the arrest of a ring of alleged militants thought to be targeting oil installations in the country — proved terrorism was still impacting markets.

“The events in Saudi Arabia have gone some way to remind people that there are groups (and) people intent on carrying out these terrorist acts, and to some extent will entice investors towards safe-haven assets such as gold,” he said.

Other precious metals lost ground in sympathy. Platinum dipped to 1,282 usd per ounce from 1,286 usd in late New York trade Friday, while its sister metal palladium eased to 366 usd from 369 usd.

The medium term outlook for both PGMs remains positive, said Michael Jansen, an analyst at JP Morgan, although he added that he remains concerned about the high level of long positions remaining in the NYMEX market.

“Positioning might be a constraint to further gains in the short term,” he warned.

Silver meanwhile softened to 13.45 usd against 13.48 usd in late trade Friday.

anealla.safdar@thomson.com

as/ro/har/ss

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