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NEW YORK (AFP) - - Chrysler asked a bankruptcy court Thursday to shut down 789 dealers, nearly one-fourth of its sales outlets, saying this will cut costs and boost the odds for the success of its alliance with Italy’s Fiat.

The troubled auto giant, which is aiming for a quick court restructuring to start fresh under a partnership with Fiat, said the large dealer network compared with its rivals “substantially increases expenses and inefficiencies in the distribution system.”

The large number of dealers creates costs for “training, new vehicle allocation personnel, processes, and procedures, oversight” as well as other expenses, Chrysler said in a court filing.

The filing said that Chrysler sold some one million vehicles last year through 3,298 dealers, for an average of 303 per dealer. By contrast, Toyota sold 1.6 million new vehicles in the United States through 1,242 dealers and Honda sold 1.2 million through 1,030 dealers.

“This effort to strengthen the domestic dealer network is a critical component of the proposed Fiat transaction both to improve the viability of the domestic dealer network and position New Chrysler for viability and long-term success,” the filing said.

Chrysler now has 3,181 dealers in the United States, down from a high of 6,500 in the 1960s and 4,320 in 2001, according to the court documents.

Court approval of the plan would leave Chrysler with 2,392 domestic auto dealers.

Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy protection on April 30, said it hopes to wrap up the court process within 30 to 60 days by selling the automaker’s main assets to a new entity including Fiat.

The new firm would be majority owned by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, with small stakes by the US and Canadian governments, which would contribute some 10.5 billion dollars to the venture.

Fiat would initially take a 20 percent stake in the firm that would rise to 35 percent and could reach 51 percent as early as 2013 if Chrysler is able to repay its government loans.

Chrysler cleared a major hurdle to its restructuring plan last week after a group of creditors dropped their objections to a plan to sharply reduce the value of their debt holdings.

The plan would reduce some 6.9 billion dollars in secured loans to around 2.0 billion dollars.

Major banks had agreed to the deal ahead of the bankruptcy filing, but a group holding some one billion dollars in debt had objected. These holdouts dwindled down and eventually dropped their claims.

MANADO, Indonesia (AFP) - - Climate change could wipe out the world’s richest ocean wilderness by the end of the century without drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, environmental group WWF said Wednesday.

Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity are threatening to destroy the vast region of Southeast Asia known as the Coral Triangle, labelled the ocean’s answer to the Amazon rainforest, the WWF said in a new report.

Collapse of the reefs would send food production in the region plummeting by 80 percent and imperil the livelihoods of over 100 million people.

With too little action on climate change, “you get a world in which you have perhaps tens of millions of people homeless by the inundation of coastlines through rapid sea level rises,” report lead author Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“You see the erosion of food security and you see a world by the end of this century which is, I think, pretty much a nightmare.”

WWF Coral Triangle Initiative Network head Lida Pet Soede said the seas in the triangle — bordered by East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands — were vital sources of biodiversity.

“Some of the locations in the Coral Triangle are really important areas for all sorts of fish. The migration of tuna and turtles that spawn in the Coral Triangle are not going to have a next generation,” she told AFP.

Saving the Coral Triangle will require countries to commit to deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Heat-trapping carbon gases — notably from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas — are blamed for warming Earth’s atmosphere and driving changes to weather patterns, as well as creating acidic seas hostile to much marine life.

The warnings come ahead of tough negotiations over a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December.

Emissions cuts of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 will be needed to avert the worst effects on the region, home to more than half the world’s coral reefs and a lynchpin for ocean life, the WWF said.

Local communities and governments will also have to curb over-fishing and pollution, the report said.

“If you continue down the path of the over-exploitation of resources, even if you get an incredible reduction in emissions, there will still be a threat,” WWF climate campaigner Richard Leck said.

The report was released as ministers and officials from over 70 countries meet in the Indonesian city of Manado for the World Ocean Conference, the first global meeting on the relationship between oceans and climate change.

Nations at the conference hope to pass a joint declaration aimed at influencing the direction of the Copenhagen talks.

A meeting Friday will also see leaders from the six Coral Triangle nations pass a joint plan on conserving the region.

Leck said that despite the gloomy forecasts he was impressed by the response from littoral states.

“What is amazing is the level of political commitment we are seeing this week,” he said.

However, report author Hoegh-Guldberg warned: “If we don’t get decisive action in Copenhagen, then doing all the enormously important things that we’re doing with the Coral Triangle Initiative will be pointless.”

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AFP) - - NASA scientists were Tuesday assessing damage found on the underside of the Atlantis space shuttle, as it raced towards a risky space rendezvous with the Hubble telescope.

During a marathon 10-hour survey of fragile heatshielding on Tuesday, the seven-strong Atlantis crew found some damage to the underside of the shuttle’s right wing.

NASA initially characterized the damage, which will undergo at least two days of evaluation by imagery experts in Mission Control, as minor.

But it may warrant a second look on Friday with cameras and lasers fitted to the tip of an inspection boom fitted to the end of the shuttle’s robot arm.

“The damage to me looked very small, but I’m not an expert,” NASA’s Tony Ceccacci, the lead flight director, told a news briefing. “We will let those folks take a look at it.”

The astronauts found a 53-centimeter long scrape (21 inches) extending across four heat shielding tiles on the underside of the forward portion of the right wing.

“The preliminary assessment is that it does not look too serious,” shuttle communicator Dan Burbank told Atlantis commander Scott Altman from Mission Control.

Atlantis lifted off with seven astronauts on Monday, initiating an 11-day day mission to overhaul the 19-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, equipping the observatory to carry on operations for at least another five years.

The shuttle crew was on course to rendezvous with the 560-kilometer (350-mile) high observatory on Wednesday shortly after noon.

In what will be a nail-biting operation, Altman will steer his ship close to the observatory, as astronaut Megan McArthur reaches out with the shuttle’s robot arm to grab the 13.2 meter long telescope.

With the observatory in the arm’s grasp, McArthur will mount the telescope upright atop a circular platform in the shuttle’s cargo bay, establishing the work site for the overhaul.

The first of five daily spacewalks by the astronauts to upgrade the observatory will get under way Thursday.

The damage to the underside of the Atlantis may have occurred about 103 seconds into the shuttle’s climb to orbit, the time at which a sensor in the right wing recorded an impact, Burbank said.

A camera positioned on the underside of Atlantis and aimed at the shuttle’s external fuel tank may have recorded the source of the impact debris.

However, a power cable problem prevented the astronauts from retrieving and transmitting the electronic imagery to Mission Control following the launch, and they were to make another attempt to retrieve the photos on Tuesday.

During the mission, the spacewalkers aim to install a pair of new science instruments and make unprecedented repairs to the electronic circuitry within an older camera and spectrometer.

NASA has characterized the mission as the riskiest in the dozen shuttle visits to the International Space Station (ISS) since the 2003 Columbia tragedy that claimed the lives of seven astronauts.

That disaster was blamed on an undetected breach of the protective heat shields caused by a launch day collision with a breakaway chunk of foam fuel tank insulation.

In the aftermath of the explosion, NASA made heat shield inspections a part of every mission and made plans to mount a rescue mission if the astronauts on future missions found damage that could not be repaired.

Circling the Earth much higher than the space station, Hubble is exposed to an accumulation of space debris from a satellite collision earlier this year as well as the fragments left from previous spacecraft breakups.

While the space station offers weeks of refuge for the crew of a stricken shuttle, Hubble is not equipped to house astronauts.

PARIS (AFP) - - The downturn in some recession-hit countries is easing despite ongoing signs of a strong slowdown, the OECD grouping of leading economies said in a report on Monday.

“Composite leading indicators continue to indicate a strong slowdown in the OECD area but the pace of the deterioration is easing,” the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said.

The indicators assessed by the OECD in major member countries “continue to point to deterioration in the business cycle, but at a decreasing rate,” it said.

The OECD said its key CLI economic indicator decreased by 0.1 point in March and was down 9.5 points since the same month last year.

The body’s indicators “for March 2009 continue to point to a strong slowdown in the OECD,” which covers 30 big economies.

“However France, Italy and the United Kingdom are showing tentative signs of, at least, a pause in the economic slowdown,” it added, pointing to a “possible trough” in these economies.

The indicator for the United States fell 0.6 points in March and 11.8 since March 2008. In the eurozone the index was down 7.9 points on the year, but rose 0.2 points in March on a monthly basis.

The indicator rose in recession-hit Britain and Italy and in France and China, which is not an OECD member.

“With the exception of China, where signs of a pause have also emerged, major non-OECD economies still face deteriorating conditions,” the report said.

MELBOURNE (AFP) - - An Australian zoo was evacuated Sunday when an orangutan escaped after using a branch to scale an electric fence around her enclosure, zoo officials said.

Adelaide Zoo said patrons were evacuated as a precaution when 27-year-old Karta, described as “extremely intelligent”, breached the electric fence on Sunday morning.

Zoo curator Peter Whitehead said Karta got as far as a boundary fence but was still some distance from the public before seeming to realise she was in the wrong place and returning to her enclosure.

Whitehead said although the primate showed no aggression during her 30 minute escapade, she was secured inside her night den before the public were readmitted.

“She was probably secured by the time we got most of the people out of the zoo,” he told Sky News.

AMSTERDAM (AFP) - - Men who were grossly overweight at the age of 18 had nearly 50 percent less chance of being married by their 30s and 40s, an international conference on obesity heard in Amsterdam on Thursday.

The findings, which held true regardless of the men’s intellectual performance or socio-economic position, could suggest that women rank a man’s appearance higher than other traits when choosing a partner.

“Yes, that may be one explanation,” researcher Malin Kark of the Swedish Karolinska Institutet medical university, told AFP on the sidelines of the four-day gathering hosted by the European Association for the Study of Obesity.

Kark’s study was conducted among more than 500,000 Swedish men born between 1951 and 1961.

It found that men who had been obese at 18 were 46 percent less likely to be married in 1991, when they were aged between 30 and 40, than men with no weight problem, and 45 percent less likely by 2004.

For men who were overweight but not obese at 18, the chances of marriage were somewhat higher — 10 percent lower than for men of normal weight in their 30s and nine percent lower in their forties.

“We think this shows that there is stigmatisation of obese young men that continues into adulthood — in their working life and also in inter-personal relationships,” said Kark.

While no information was available on the men’s adult weight, other studies have found that obese adolescents were likely to become obese adults, she added.

Obesity for the purposes of the study was qualified as a person with a body mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) of more than 30.

The World Health Organisation estimates that in 2005 about 1.6 billion adults were overweight, of which at least 400 million were obese.

NAIROBI (AFP) - - Women’s activist groups in Kenya have called for a seven-day sex ban on the country’s men in an attempt to shock the political class into overcoming bitter feuds and working together.

“This is a national boycott to show that the women of this country have resolved to push for reforms,” Rukia Subow of Maendeleo ya Wanawake of the G10 umbrella of Kenyan women’s organisations said late Wednesday.

The activists argued that the country’s egocentric male leaders should have no time for matters of the flesh when the east African nation is ensnared in economic and political trouble.

The grouping even said it would pay prostitutes to join the strike.

“We want an urgent solution to the political problems facing this country,” Subow said, urging the wives of quarrelling coalition partners President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to support the movement.

The premier’s wife, Ida Odinga, said she supported the strike body and soul.

“This should not be seen as a punishment to men, it is a measure that is aimed at drawing their attention to the real issues,” she told AFP.

Patricia Nyaudi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers, argued the initiative was more than just a media stunt and was aimed at promoting a stronger sense of sacrifice.

“Let people not end up trivialising this issue. It is a serious one and needs attention. The idea is to deny ourselves what we consider essential for the good of our country,” she said.

Raila accused Kibaki of stealing the December 2007 presidential election, prompting protests that spiralled into a cycle of tribal violence and killed around 1,500 people.

The two rivals were pressured into a power-sharing deal by an international mediation but lingering tensions, petty disputes and individual appetites have crippled the coalition government and fuelled wide popular discontent.

LONDON (AFP) - - A US-based fertility doctor claimed to have cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women in an interview published on Wednesday.

Panayiotis Zavos told Britain’s Independent newspaper that although none of the women had had a viable pregnancy as a result, the first cloned baby could now be born within a couple of years.

“There is absolutely no doubt about it… the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen,” he said, quoted by the paper.

“If we intensify our efforts, we can have a cloned baby within a year or two, but I don’t know whether we can intensify our efforts to that extent.”

Zavos’s work is widely condemned by mainstream fertility experts, who question whether the technique, which also raises complex ethical questions, is safe.

Although other scientists have created human cloned embryos in test tubes to extract stem cells for research, Zavos has broken a taboo by actually putting them inside women’s wombs.

He said he has also produced cloned embryos of three dead people, including a 10-year-old girl called Cady who died in a car crash in the US. The child’s blood cells were frozen and sent to Zavos.

The doctor, a naturalised US citizen born in Cyprus, is thought to have carried out the procedures in a secret laboratory somewhere in the Middle East to escape the US ban on cloning.

He uses the same technique as was used to clone Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.

The procedures were recorded by a documentary maker and will be shown on the Discovery Channel in Britain later Wednesday.

In 2004, Zavos claimed to have implanted the first human cloned embryo into a woman’s uterus although scientists then expressed scepticism over a lack of proof about his findings.

MOSCOW (AFP) - - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Bulgarian counterpart Sergey Stanishev said Tuesday they were close to signing a deal on the South Stream gas pipeline to Europe after resolving differences.

“There is no disagreement between Russia and Bulgaria,” Putin was quoted by RIA Novosti and Interfax as saying at the close of a meeting with Stanishev.

Putin added that an agreement on the pipeline would be signed as soon as two weeks from Tuesday.

Stanishev was also upbeat, playing down strains in Bulgarian-Russian relations over the pipeline issue.

“By the middle of next month a decision will be taken. I voice my satisfaction that the issue has been resolved,” Stanishev said.

South Stream is one of two major gas pipeline projects that Russia is developing, aimed at consolidating its commanding position in supplies of gas to Europe.

Analysts have pointed to a variety of difficulties with the two prestige projects, including a raft of objections from Russia’s neighbours.

Meeting Stanishev later, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said: “You had very satisfactory talks with Prime Minister Putin. I hope we will be able to sign the agreements very soon… And we hope that South Stream will not only exist on paper.”

Russian gas export monopoly Gapzprom said in a statement Tuesday that it had already agreed on a draft of a partnership accord to go ahead with the South Stream project in talks with the Bulgarian delegation.

It said the two sides planned to seal the deal “very soon.”

Tuesday’s meetings came after Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov said Saturday there was a “clash of interests” between Sofia and Moscow on the terms of the South Stream deal and insisted the small Balkan state would defend its interests.

Bulgaria had hoped Putin would attend a regional energy conference last weekend and took the Russian premier’s decision to stay away as a slight, resulting from Sofia’s refusal to commit to the South Stream project.

Sofia and Moscow agreed in principle last January to have a 50-50 share in the new pipeline, which will span Bulgarian territory from east to west before branching off toward Austria on one side, and Greece and Italy on the other.

But a recent Russian plan to cut South Stream costs by using Bulgaria’s existing pipeline network, which already channels Russian gas to neighbouring Greece, Macedonia and Turkey, has angered Sofia.

And in a move to reduce its almost total dependence on Russian supplies, Sofia has also voiced support for the competing EU-backed Nabucco pipeline to feed Europe gas from the Caspian region, while bypassing Russia.

PARIS (AFP) - - The global outbreak of swine flu sent shivers through financial markets on Monday just as some signs had appeared that the global economic crisis might be easing.

Travel and tourism took the brunt of uncertainty about how the threat of a pandemic might crimp economic activity, but the pharmaceutical sector rose as attention turned to defensive medical treatments and equipment.

Shares in Swiss drug giant Roche surged and then settled with a gain of 3.51 percent on prospects of a surge in demand for its treatment Tamiflu, a focus of interest during previous alerts over bird flu.

An analyst at Vontobel in Switzerland, Andrew Weiss, said: “When fear about bird flu really took hold in the fourth quarter of 2005, the price of shares (in Roche) rose strongly.”

In 2006 and 2007 Roche had made sales of Tamiflu worth a total of 4.0 billion Swiss francs (2.65 billion euros, 3.49 billion dollars), he recalled.

Rapidly spreading concern about possible international contagion from a fatal outbreak of the human version of flu originating in pigs also pushed up the yen.

In Tokyo, the yen firmed to 96.75 against the dollar from 97.13 in New York late on Friday. Analysts said that the dollar was weakened in part by growing concern over the impact of the new strain of swine flu.

“The outbreak of swine flu in Mexico is a concerning development for the global economy,” said Societe Generale analyst Patrick Bennett. “Initial investor reaction has not surprisingly been towards risk aversion.”

Pig flu also drove down oil prices with the threat of a drop in air travel, analysts said.

In New York, light sweet crude for June delivery fell 2.59 dollars to 48.96 dollars. Brent North Sea crude fell 2.31 dollars to 49.36 dollars a barrel in late morning trade in London.

In London, Manoj Ladwa, a senior trader at financial spread-betting firm ETX Capital in London, said: “Swine flu is ripping through the markets creating uncertainty in its wake.”

He added: “US markets are sure to be heavily affected by this crisis when they open later today.”

With the World Health Organisation warning that the outbreak could become a pandemic, the United States declaring a public health emergency and the European Commission calling an urgent meeting of health ministers, stock markets recoiled in alarm.

Amid uncertainty over the possible implications of anxiety over flu on economic activity, notably in such sectors as tourism and retailing, investors and analysts took the line of caution.

In London the FTSE index of leading shares was showing a mid-morning fall of 1.20 percent, Frankfurt stocks fell by 1.05 percent and the Paris CAC 40 index fell 1.83 percent.

Stocks in Tokyo edged up 0.21 percent but traders said they were held back by concern about the effects of the flu outbreaks. In Hong Kong they fell by 2.74 percent, and in South Korea by 1.05 percent.

“News over the weekend of a deadly flu outbreak is rocking financial markets,” said Matt Buckland, dealer at financial spread-betting firm CMC Markets.

“After last week’s gains many would have been looking to start locking in profits,” he said, referring to recent rises in share prices reflecting some optimism that the global economic crisis may be flattening out.

“But clearly this (flu) news has the potential to become a rather serious development.”

In Europe, shares in German airline Lufthansa were showing a fall of 10.60 percent and shares in Air France-KLM were down by slightly more than nine percent.

British Airways stocks were down 7.26 percent, shares in travel agency Thomas Cook 7.87 percent and in travel group TUI 5.52 percent.

Stock in cruise liner group Carnival showed a fall of 6.50 percent and Rolls Royce, which makes engines for aircraft and ships, saw its shares fall by 4.43 percent.

But companies making drug treatments were strong. GlaxoSmithKline gained 3.58, AstraZeneca 1.55 percent and Shire 1.21 percent.

In Tokyo, airline and tourism shares were hit by the swine flu worries. Travel agency H.I.S. tumbled 10 percent while Japan Airlines dropped 5.2 percent on fears that tourists and business travellers may cancel their overseas trips.

But Chugai Pharmaceutical, which sells the Tamiflu drug, climbed 14 percent.