It was billed as a chance to kick back on the golden sands of Copacabana — and save the world at the same time. Organisers of the Brazilian leg of the Live Earth concerts had hoped to lure more than 1 million people to South America’s most famous beach on Saturday to watch Lenny Kravitz, Macy Gray and Brazilian popstar Jorge Benjor. But today Al Gore’s global crusade against climate change appeared to have fallen victim to Rio’s drug-trafficking gangs after a judge cancelled the event, ruling that police were too busy to provide security at the show.

“It is far too risky putting on a concert for 700,000 people on the eve of the Pan-American Games and when the police are also involved in the frequent conflicts in the [Complexo do] Alemao [shantytown network],” said Judge Denise Tarin in a statement, referring to the recent clashes between drug traffickers and security forces in Rio.

The court order came after local resident associations voiced fears the event would cause security problems and noise pollution. Today organisers scrambled to reverse the decision. Vanessa Vascouto, a Live Earth Brazil organiser, said she was hopeful the show would still go ahead, even after a second ruling upheld the cancellation.

In an interview with Rio newspaper O Globo, Judge Tarin said her children were furious with her decision.

“They want to slit my throat. But I think we need to reflect on this for a moment: if the idea of the show is environmental protection, it cannot trigger such a significant noise impact,” she said.

From the outset Live Earth Brazil has been dogged with problems. Several high-profile Brazilian artists pulled out, voicing doubts about whether such a vast show would really help combat climate change. Alanis Morissette also withdrew from the event.

There have also been concerns about attendance, despite the Rio event being the only one of the Live Earth shows where entrance is free. Until the event was suspended on Tuesday, there was little coverage in the Brazilian press, which was more focused on the Pan-American games, the Americas’ answer to the Olympics, which will begin in Rio in just over a week.

“Until now nothing significant has been written about the cause, about global warming or about how the show should represent an opportunity to mobilise people [against global warming],” said ecologist Sergio Ricardo.

Last month the Istanbul leg of Live Earth was cancelled because of a lack of interest. “I think Cariocas [Rio residents] are more worried about football, going to the beach and carnival than global warming,” said Rafael Kalil, the 26-year-old singer of a Rio rock band that tries to raise social and environmental awareness with its music. “Even when there is a protest against the politicians hardly anyone goes. You can’t even get 100 people to go to a protest against a politician who has stolen $10m (5m) of public money. With the environment it’s the same. The sense of social and environmental responsibility is very weak here.”

VIENNA: Nine men will go on trial in Vienna on Monday accused of gambling away one of Austrias largest banks, Bawag, in risky yen trading and then hiding the losses through false accounting.

The former Bawag chief executive, Helmut Elsner, a hedge fund manager, Wolfgang Flцttl, and seven other men will face Judge Claudia Bandion-Ortner for their role in causing \1.4 billion, or $1.9 billion, of losses, which led to a political uproar when the scandal emerged last year.

The revelations triggered a run on Bawag in April last year and the government had to broker a bailout.

State prosecutors have filed charges including breach of trust or aiding breach of trust, false accounting and fraud, although not all of the men are accused of all those charges.

The defendants include Elsners successor, Johann Zwettler, other Bawag board members, a unions finance chief, Gьnter Weninger, and a KPMG auditor. All are pleading not guilty.

The problems at Bawag began to emerge in March last year when managers and top union officials admitted the bank had major losses in offshore deals that went awry in the late 1990s, and that they had kept the losses off the balance sheet.

Austrias once-wealthy trade union federation, which founded Bawag in 1922, had to sell the bank. Their president, a popular center-left lawmaker, resigned.

“It was a massive catastrophe for us,” the vice president of the trade union federation ЦGB, Roswitha Bachner, said during an interview. “It threatened our existence.”

The 109-page indictment draws a picture of the bankers machinations that is at odds with Bawags reputation as a staid trade union bank managing deposits saved from working-class pay packets.

“The dogged behavior of the accused brought Bawag to the brink of ruin by the end of 2000,” the indictment, obtained by Reuters, says.

“The reason was always the same kind of speculation. Every time, highly leveraged derivative instruments were underwritten. Every time, they bet on a falling yen or on rising yen interest rates. Every time, the accused were unlucky.”

The beginnings of Bawags misadventure started in the late 1980s when Elsners predecessor, Walter Flцttl, entrusted Bawag funds to his son Wolfgang, who was in his 20s, to play the international financial markets.

Bawag abandoned the offshore investments, but Elsner restarted them after he became chief executive in 1995 to bolster Bawags meager earnings. In October 1998, Wolfgang Flцttl bet the entire fund on a falling yen - and lost it all in days.

Instead of owning up, Elsner and others upped the ante to gain back the losses and started a web of offshore vehicles to hide them, according to the prosecutors indictment.

Flцttl bet two more rounds of cash until early 2000, and lost both. Austrias central bank said last year that his net loss by the end of 2000 was at least \1.4 billion.

Elsner and Weninger allegedly devised a scheme using offshore vehicles and a debt guarantee by the trade unions to fabricate a balance sheet that bore no traces of the losses.

They have defended their actions by saying that they employed legal accounting measures, and that making the losses public would have caused a run on the bank. Instead, they gradually wrote off the losses over the following years.

One of the judges main tasks will be to decide how Elsner and Flцttl share the responsibility for the losses, which are undisputed and which, according to the prosecution, are based on mismanagement, not fraud or personal enrichment.

Elsner says Flцttl ignored investment rules and went for riskier products than he was authorized. Flцttl says he warned Elsner about the risk but was told to take it. The prosecution sides with Flцttls line but says he should have known Elsner was acting illegally and should have blown the whistle.

But Elsner and his circle kept the lid on their secret.

“This was only possible because there was an extremely authoritarian leadership style, under which this small circle could run things that way,” said BAWAGs new chief executive, Ewald Nowotny, who was brought in last year.

It was only when U.S. investigators sifting through the accounts of the collapsed futures trader Refco unveiled suspicious Bawag accounts last March that the secret came to light.

A second powerful earthquake in as many days jolted south-east Asia today, triggering a regional tsunami warning, damaging hundreds of houses and creating panic along Indonesia’s west coast.

At least nine people have been killed and 49 hurt in the twin tremors that caused tall buildings to sway in at least three countries, and sent panicked residents fleeing by foot, motorcycle and lorry.

All the deaths and injuries occurred in Indonesia, which was hit hardest by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. There was no immediate information on casualties in other countries.

Today’s quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, rattled the same area of Sumatra as yesterday, causing extensive damage. “At least five large buildings - including mosques, houses and a school - collapsed,” said Surya Budhi, who was overseeing emergency response in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra.

Thousands of people piled into trucks or sought shelter on high ground.

Rafael Abreu, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), said today’s quake did not appear to be an aftershock of the one yesterday.

“It’s fairly large itself,” he said. “It seems to be a different earthquake.”

Yesterday’s 8.4-magnitude quake, was the biggest this year and prompted tsunami warnings for much of Asia and as far away as countries in Africa.

Indonesia issued a tsunami alert, lifted it and then reissued it when an aftershock hit.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology warned that unusual waves could hit Christmas Island early today, but residents said there was no sign of a tsunami about an hour after the predicted time.

“The danger has passed,” said Linda Cash, a manager at the Christmas Island visitors centre, adding that police were telling people to stay away from beaches.

The USGS said the new quake, centred about 125 miles from the Sumatran city of Bengkulu, was six miles deep and struck at 6.49am (12.49am BST). Several strong aftershocks followed.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, in Hawaii, said today’s quake had the potential to generate a destructive regional tsunami along coasts within 600 miles of the epicentre. It advised authorities to take immediate action to evacuate coastal areas.

After yesterday’s quake, many people refused to return to their homes, fearing a repeat of the 2004 earthquake off Sumatra. It triggered a tsunami that spread around the Indian Ocean, killing an estimated 230,000 people in a dozen countries, more than 130,000 of them in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

An Australian seismologist said today the region was lucky to have escaped another devastating tsunami.

“There was a tsunami created by the earthquake, it just travelled in a southwest direction away from land,” Mike Turnbull at Central Queensland University told Reuters.