April 29, 2010 (New York Times)
Australia Fights Tobacco With Taxes and Plain Packs
By BETTINA WASSENER and MERAIAH FOLEY
Australia could become the first nation to ban brand images and colors on cigarette packages under a wide-ranging set of antismoking measures that the government unveiled Thursday.
Starting July 1, 2012, tobacco products would have to be sold in the plainest of packaging — with few or no logos, brand images or colors. Promotional text would be restricted to brand and product names in a standard color, position, type style and size, rendering them not unlike the bland boxes that carry generic prescription drugs.
Restrictions on Internet advertising, a hefty increase in the tax on tobacco products and new antismoking campaigns are also among the initiatives.
The government said the moves would cut tobacco consumption and generate billions of dollars of revenue that would be plowed into the health system. The action won praise from the World Health Organization, which welcomed the measures as “a new gold standard for the regulation of tobacco products.”
The proposals would radically limit how tobacco companies can design packaging, and remove, in the words of the Australian government, “one of the last remaining frontiers for cigarette advertising.”
Leading tobacco companies strongly criticized the measures, questioning their effectiveness and saying they would encourage counterfeiting.
“Plain packaging has not been introduced in any country in the world and there is no evidence to support the government’s notion that this will reduce consumption,” Imperial Tobacco said in a statement from its Sydney office. “Plain packaging would seriously harm our brands and infringe the intellectual property rights in which both Imperial Tobacco and its shareholders have invested.”
Philip Morris International declined to say whether it would take legal action against the measure but argued that the imposition of plain packaging would represent “an unconstitutional expropriation of valuable intellectual property, violating a variety of Australia’s international trade obligations.”
British American Tobacco’s Australia unit echoed this, saying it believed that the plain packaging proposals “would not hold up to close scrutiny.”
But in a TV broadcast, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said, “We, the government, will not be intimidated by any big tobacco company.”
Cigarette boxes would continue to carry graphic health warnings, including photographs of the effects of smoking-related diseases. Currently some boxes show a mouth infected with cancer and a gangrenous foot, said Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney and a member of the National Preventative Health Taskforce, which recommended the new plain packaging.
The measures announced on Thursday also include a 25 percent increase in the excise tax on tobacco products, which was to come into force as of midnight. That will increase the cost of a packet of 30 cigarettes by about 2.16 Australian dollars, to around 16.70 Australian dollars ($15.40).
According to the government, that measure alone is expected to reduce tobacco use by about 6 percent. The government said that as of 2007, 16.6 percent of Australians over age 14 smoked.
The additional tax revenue, estimated to total 5 billion Australian dollars over four years, would be invested in the nation’s health system, the government said.
The government will have to submit the proposal on the packaging changes to Parliament.
Next month in the United States, a rule banning the sale and marketing of tobacco products to teenagers, which was first proposed 15 years ago, will go into full effect. The rule was never adopted by the Food and Drug Administration because the Supreme Court had ruled that legislation was needed to empower the F.D.A. to regulate tobacco products. That legislation passed in 2009 and was signed by President Obama last June.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
for May 12th class
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/world/americas/29mexico.html?ref=world
April 28, 2010
For Migrants, New Law Is Just Another ChallengeBy MARC LACEY
NOGALES, Mexico — Despite its intent to “discourage and deter” unlawful entry to the United States, Arizona’s tough new immigration law is not what prevented Verónica from sneaking into the state without papers. After all, she had already endured a harrowing train ride, escaped dangerous drug traffickers and eluded Mexican authorities who were after the money she had stuffed in her underwear.
Verónica did not make it to the United States, she said glumly, simply because she got nervous. Her palms got sweaty and she slipped off the pole she and others in her group were shimmying up to get over the border fence and into Arizona.
It was a long fall and Verónica, a Honduran immigrant who declined to give her last name out of fear that it might hurt her chances of migrating north in the future, was bruised and limping when she recounted her failed border crossing. She was pregnant, too, and worried about how her fetus had handled the trauma.
As strict as Arizona’s new immigration legislation may be, prompting the Mexican government to issue a travel alert warning that “any Mexican citizen could be bothered and questioned without cause at any moment,” it happens to be child’s play compared with what many illegal immigrants regularly endure on their way to the north.
“If they think the migrants will stop coming, they’re wrong,” Rafael Limón Corbalá, head of the regional migration office for the Mexican state of Sonora, said of the Arizona legislators who approved the law. “There’s still jobs over there, and many people will still have their eyes on getting across.”
If a migrant can pay enough, heading north can be as simple as waiting in line at a border crossing, handing a forged identity document to a border guard and, if it works, strolling into the United States. But it is more likely to be a nightmarish trek through the Mexican countryside and then across the Arizona desert.
Either way, migrants pool significant sums, anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000, to make the passage. That is enough in many of their hometowns to build a basic home or start a small business, but it is widely viewed among migrants as a worthy investment.
Arizona’s new law — which calls for police officers who have “reasonable suspicion” of a person’s immigration status to demand proof of legal residency — was uniformly disliked by the many migrants interviewed in this border town on the Mexican side. The criticism seemed the same among those preparing to cross, those who were deciding what to do next after being deported and those in the midst of crossing who spoke as they trudged nervously north.
“We work for the people of Arizona and now they don’t want us,” fumed Miguel, who said he was part a group of several dozen people caught by the Border Patrol in the desert this week and bused back to the border. He said he would be making another attempt — his eighth in recent years — soon.
Relatively few migrants said the law would keep them from crossing, though they planned to steer clear of police officers even more than they did before.
While the new law is expected to give local law enforcement officers more power to detain illegal immigrants, that already occurs, migrants said. Take the case of Salvador, who like others declined to be fully identified. He said his deportation last year was prompted by an arrest for jaywalking.
He said that after living in Phoenix for 20 of his 23 years and graduating from high school there, he was crossing a street last year when a police officer took him in. Checking his records, it was discovered that he had an unpaid speeding ticket. His immigration records were then checked, he said, and when it was determined that he was in the country illegally, he was sent to Mexico, which he had left when he was a toddler.
“I should have crossed at the light,” he said.
Claudia, too, said it was a routine traffic stop and an expired vehicle registration that led to her deportation. She said she was bused back to Mexico with scores of others on Tuesday with a dazed look on her face and no firm plans for how she planned to reunite with her husband and two children, who live in the other Nogales, in Arizona.
Migrants start their treks in numerous countries and employ a dizzying array of schemes to slip across the border, making no two migrations the same. Mexicans, though, generally have it easier than Central Americans, who are often preyed upon by Mexican authorities even before reaching the increasingly fortified border.
“Riding precariously on the tops of freight trains, many are met with discrimination and xenophobia, targeted by people smugglers and prey to kidnapping by criminal gangs,” Amnesty International said in a report released this week.
“Every year thousands of migrants are ill treated, abducted or raped,” the human rights group said. “Arbitrary detention and extortion by public officials are common.”
Amnesty International gave the government of President Felipe Calderón some credit for improving the plight of migrants crossing its turf. Conditions at detention centers have improved, the group said, and migrants who are caught crossing Mexico spend less time in custody pending their repatriation.
In addition, the state government in Chiapas, where many migrants enter Mexico, established for the first time a special prosecutor for crimes against migrants. As a result, five members of an elite local police unit were arrested for assaults on migrants.
But Mexico has been much more vociferous in criticizing the United States on immigration than in setting model practices itself, Amnesty International and other groups have found.
In Mexico, it is supposed to be federal immigration officers and the federal police who verify the legal status of migrants. But anybody with a badge is liable to do it, a situation that several migrants said prepared them well for what they might face in Arizona.
As night fell one evening this week, a nervous smuggler who helps migrants get to the United States stood on a hilltop just feet from the border, barking out orders into his handheld radio. He had lookouts tracking the movements of the Border Patrol on the other side and confederates with a car parked just across the border waiting to pick up the migrants who had paid extra. He was not concerned about business drying up.
“They’ll keep coming,” he said confidently.
Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City.
April 28, 2010
For Migrants, New Law Is Just Another ChallengeBy MARC LACEY
NOGALES, Mexico — Despite its intent to “discourage and deter” unlawful entry to the United States, Arizona’s tough new immigration law is not what prevented Verónica from sneaking into the state without papers. After all, she had already endured a harrowing train ride, escaped dangerous drug traffickers and eluded Mexican authorities who were after the money she had stuffed in her underwear.
Verónica did not make it to the United States, she said glumly, simply because she got nervous. Her palms got sweaty and she slipped off the pole she and others in her group were shimmying up to get over the border fence and into Arizona.
It was a long fall and Verónica, a Honduran immigrant who declined to give her last name out of fear that it might hurt her chances of migrating north in the future, was bruised and limping when she recounted her failed border crossing. She was pregnant, too, and worried about how her fetus had handled the trauma.
As strict as Arizona’s new immigration legislation may be, prompting the Mexican government to issue a travel alert warning that “any Mexican citizen could be bothered and questioned without cause at any moment,” it happens to be child’s play compared with what many illegal immigrants regularly endure on their way to the north.
“If they think the migrants will stop coming, they’re wrong,” Rafael Limón Corbalá, head of the regional migration office for the Mexican state of Sonora, said of the Arizona legislators who approved the law. “There’s still jobs over there, and many people will still have their eyes on getting across.”
If a migrant can pay enough, heading north can be as simple as waiting in line at a border crossing, handing a forged identity document to a border guard and, if it works, strolling into the United States. But it is more likely to be a nightmarish trek through the Mexican countryside and then across the Arizona desert.
Either way, migrants pool significant sums, anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000, to make the passage. That is enough in many of their hometowns to build a basic home or start a small business, but it is widely viewed among migrants as a worthy investment.
Arizona’s new law — which calls for police officers who have “reasonable suspicion” of a person’s immigration status to demand proof of legal residency — was uniformly disliked by the many migrants interviewed in this border town on the Mexican side. The criticism seemed the same among those preparing to cross, those who were deciding what to do next after being deported and those in the midst of crossing who spoke as they trudged nervously north.
“We work for the people of Arizona and now they don’t want us,” fumed Miguel, who said he was part a group of several dozen people caught by the Border Patrol in the desert this week and bused back to the border. He said he would be making another attempt — his eighth in recent years — soon.
Relatively few migrants said the law would keep them from crossing, though they planned to steer clear of police officers even more than they did before.
While the new law is expected to give local law enforcement officers more power to detain illegal immigrants, that already occurs, migrants said. Take the case of Salvador, who like others declined to be fully identified. He said his deportation last year was prompted by an arrest for jaywalking.
He said that after living in Phoenix for 20 of his 23 years and graduating from high school there, he was crossing a street last year when a police officer took him in. Checking his records, it was discovered that he had an unpaid speeding ticket. His immigration records were then checked, he said, and when it was determined that he was in the country illegally, he was sent to Mexico, which he had left when he was a toddler.
“I should have crossed at the light,” he said.
Claudia, too, said it was a routine traffic stop and an expired vehicle registration that led to her deportation. She said she was bused back to Mexico with scores of others on Tuesday with a dazed look on her face and no firm plans for how she planned to reunite with her husband and two children, who live in the other Nogales, in Arizona.
Migrants start their treks in numerous countries and employ a dizzying array of schemes to slip across the border, making no two migrations the same. Mexicans, though, generally have it easier than Central Americans, who are often preyed upon by Mexican authorities even before reaching the increasingly fortified border.
“Riding precariously on the tops of freight trains, many are met with discrimination and xenophobia, targeted by people smugglers and prey to kidnapping by criminal gangs,” Amnesty International said in a report released this week.
“Every year thousands of migrants are ill treated, abducted or raped,” the human rights group said. “Arbitrary detention and extortion by public officials are common.”
Amnesty International gave the government of President Felipe Calderón some credit for improving the plight of migrants crossing its turf. Conditions at detention centers have improved, the group said, and migrants who are caught crossing Mexico spend less time in custody pending their repatriation.
In addition, the state government in Chiapas, where many migrants enter Mexico, established for the first time a special prosecutor for crimes against migrants. As a result, five members of an elite local police unit were arrested for assaults on migrants.
But Mexico has been much more vociferous in criticizing the United States on immigration than in setting model practices itself, Amnesty International and other groups have found.
In Mexico, it is supposed to be federal immigration officers and the federal police who verify the legal status of migrants. But anybody with a badge is liable to do it, a situation that several migrants said prepared them well for what they might face in Arizona.
As night fell one evening this week, a nervous smuggler who helps migrants get to the United States stood on a hilltop just feet from the border, barking out orders into his handheld radio. He had lookouts tracking the movements of the Border Patrol on the other side and confederates with a car parked just across the border waiting to pick up the migrants who had paid extra. He was not concerned about business drying up.
“They’ll keep coming,” he said confidently.
Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
More American Expatriates Give Up Citizenship
By BRIAN KNOWLTON Published: April 25, 2010 From The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.
“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the overseas community in the past two years,” said Jackie Bugnion, director of American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group based in Geneva. “Before, no one would dare mention to other Americans that they were even thinking of renouncing their U.S. nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”
The Federal Register, the government publication that records such decisions, shows that 502 expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency status in the last quarter of 2009. That is a tiny portion of the 5.2 million Americans estimated by the State Department to be living abroad.
Still, 502 was the largest quarterly figure in years, more than twice the total for all of 2008, and it looms larger, given how agonizing the decision can be. There were 235 renunciations in 2008 and 743 last year. Waiting periods to meet with consular officers to formalize renunciations have grown.
Anecdotally, frustrations over tax and banking questions, not political considerations, appear to be the main drivers of the surge. Expat advocates say that as it becomes more difficult for Americans to live and work abroad, it will become harder for American companies to compete.
American expats have long complained that the United States is the only industrialized country to tax citizens on income earned abroad, even when they are taxed in their country of residence, though they are allowed to exclude their first $91,400 in foreign-earned income.
One Swiss-based business executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive family issues, said she weighed the decision for 10 years. She had lived abroad for years but had pleasant memories of service in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Yet the notion of double taxation — and of future tax obligations for her children, who will receive few U.S. services — finally pushed her to renounce, she said.
“I loved my time in the Marines, and the U.S. is still a great country,” she said. “But having lived here 20 years and having to pay and file while seeing other countries’ nationals not having to do that, I just think it’s grossly unfair.”
“It’s taxation without representation,” she added.
Stringent new banking regulations — aimed both at curbing tax evasion and, under the Patriot Act, preventing money from flowing to terrorist groups — have inadvertently made it harder for some expats to keep bank accounts in the United States and in some cases abroad.
Some U.S.-based banks have closed expats’ accounts because of difficulty in certifying that the holders still maintain U.S. addresses, as required by a Patriot Act provision.
“It seems the new anti-terrorist rules are having unintended effects,” Daniel Flynn, who lives in Belgium, wrote in a letter quoted by the Americans Abroad Caucus in the U.S. Congress in correspondence with the Treasury Department.
“I was born in San Francisco in 1939, served my country as an army officer from 1961 to 1963, have been paying U.S. income taxes for 57 years, since 1952, have continually maintained federal voting residence, and hold a valid American passport.”
Mr. Flynn had held an account with a U.S. bank for 44 years. Still, he wrote, “they said that the new anti-terrorism rules required them to close our account because of our address outside the U.S.”
Kathleen Rittenhouse, who lives in Canada, wrote that until she encountered a similar problem, “I did not know that the Patriot Act placed me in the same category as terrorists, arms dealers and money launderers.”
Andy Sundberg, another director of American Citizens Abroad, said, “These banks are closing our accounts as acts of prudent self-defense.” But the result, he said, is that expats have become “toxic citizens.”
The Americans Abroad Caucus, headed by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, and Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, has made repeated entreaties to the Treasury Department.
In response, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner wrote Ms. Maloney on Feb. 24 that “nothing in U.S. financial law and regulation should make it impossible for Americans living abroad to access financial services here in the United States.”
But banks, Treasury officials note, are free to ignore that advice.
“That Americans living overseas are being denied banking services in U.S. banks, and increasingly in foreign banks, is unacceptable,” Ms. Maloney said in a letter Friday to leaders of the House Financial Services Committee, requesting a hearing on the question.
Mr. Wilson, joining her request, said that pleas from expats for relief “continue to come in at a startling rate.”
Relinquishing citizenship is relatively simple. The person must appear before a U.S. consular or diplomatic official in a foreign country and sign a renunciation oath. This does not allow a person to escape old tax bills or military obligations.
Now, expats’ representatives fear renunciations will become more common.
“It is a sad outcome,” Ms. Bugnion said, “but I personally feel that we are now seeing only the tip of the iceberg.”
WASHINGTON — Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of overseas Americans are taking the weighty step of renouncing their citizenship.
“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the overseas community in the past two years,” said Jackie Bugnion, director of American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group based in Geneva. “Before, no one would dare mention to other Americans that they were even thinking of renouncing their U.S. nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”
The Federal Register, the government publication that records such decisions, shows that 502 expatriates gave up their U.S. citizenship or permanent residency status in the last quarter of 2009. That is a tiny portion of the 5.2 million Americans estimated by the State Department to be living abroad.
Still, 502 was the largest quarterly figure in years, more than twice the total for all of 2008, and it looms larger, given how agonizing the decision can be. There were 235 renunciations in 2008 and 743 last year. Waiting periods to meet with consular officers to formalize renunciations have grown.
Anecdotally, frustrations over tax and banking questions, not political considerations, appear to be the main drivers of the surge. Expat advocates say that as it becomes more difficult for Americans to live and work abroad, it will become harder for American companies to compete.
American expats have long complained that the United States is the only industrialized country to tax citizens on income earned abroad, even when they are taxed in their country of residence, though they are allowed to exclude their first $91,400 in foreign-earned income.
One Swiss-based business executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive family issues, said she weighed the decision for 10 years. She had lived abroad for years but had pleasant memories of service in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Yet the notion of double taxation — and of future tax obligations for her children, who will receive few U.S. services — finally pushed her to renounce, she said.
“I loved my time in the Marines, and the U.S. is still a great country,” she said. “But having lived here 20 years and having to pay and file while seeing other countries’ nationals not having to do that, I just think it’s grossly unfair.”
“It’s taxation without representation,” she added.
Stringent new banking regulations — aimed both at curbing tax evasion and, under the Patriot Act, preventing money from flowing to terrorist groups — have inadvertently made it harder for some expats to keep bank accounts in the United States and in some cases abroad.
Some U.S.-based banks have closed expats’ accounts because of difficulty in certifying that the holders still maintain U.S. addresses, as required by a Patriot Act provision.
“It seems the new anti-terrorist rules are having unintended effects,” Daniel Flynn, who lives in Belgium, wrote in a letter quoted by the Americans Abroad Caucus in the U.S. Congress in correspondence with the Treasury Department.
“I was born in San Francisco in 1939, served my country as an army officer from 1961 to 1963, have been paying U.S. income taxes for 57 years, since 1952, have continually maintained federal voting residence, and hold a valid American passport.”
Mr. Flynn had held an account with a U.S. bank for 44 years. Still, he wrote, “they said that the new anti-terrorism rules required them to close our account because of our address outside the U.S.”
Kathleen Rittenhouse, who lives in Canada, wrote that until she encountered a similar problem, “I did not know that the Patriot Act placed me in the same category as terrorists, arms dealers and money launderers.”
Andy Sundberg, another director of American Citizens Abroad, said, “These banks are closing our accounts as acts of prudent self-defense.” But the result, he said, is that expats have become “toxic citizens.”
The Americans Abroad Caucus, headed by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, and Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, has made repeated entreaties to the Treasury Department.
In response, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner wrote Ms. Maloney on Feb. 24 that “nothing in U.S. financial law and regulation should make it impossible for Americans living abroad to access financial services here in the United States.”
But banks, Treasury officials note, are free to ignore that advice.
“That Americans living overseas are being denied banking services in U.S. banks, and increasingly in foreign banks, is unacceptable,” Ms. Maloney said in a letter Friday to leaders of the House Financial Services Committee, requesting a hearing on the question.
Mr. Wilson, joining her request, said that pleas from expats for relief “continue to come in at a startling rate.”
Relinquishing citizenship is relatively simple. The person must appear before a U.S. consular or diplomatic official in a foreign country and sign a renunciation oath. This does not allow a person to escape old tax bills or military obligations.
Now, expats’ representatives fear renunciations will become more common.
“It is a sad outcome,” Ms. Bugnion said, “but I personally feel that we are now seeing only the tip of the iceberg.”
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Wave of Fatal Bombings Widens Fissures in Iraq
The New York Times
April 23, 2010
April 23, 2010
Wave of Fatal Bombings Widens Fissures in Iraq
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and DURAID ADNAN
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and DURAID ADNAN
BAGHDAD — A coordinated series of explosions struck a party headquarters, two mosques, a market and a shop in Baghdad on Friday, deepening the country’s turmoil amid a political impasse and a concerted military campaign against the leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The attacks, which killed at least 58 people and wounded scores more in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, were the worst of an intermittent wave of bombings since the parliamentary election on March 7. The outcome of the vote remains unclear, as election officials prepare to conduct a partial recount in Baghdad and possibly other provinces.
The deadliest three bombings on Friday exploded in rapid succession near the headquarters of the political movement led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr in Sadr City, the impoverished Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad that bears his family’s name.
Each Friday hundreds of his followers gather in an open square there for noon prayers, and they accounted for many of the victims.
The movement’s candidates did well in last month’s election, giving them increased leverage to shape a new government that they say should not be led by the incumbent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
A member of Parliament from the bloc, Balqis Koli al-Kafaji, put the attacks in the context of several recent events that she said contributed to the overall chaos here: the still unresolved elections, the controversy surrounding a previously undisclosed prison in Baghdad that held Sunnis from northern Iraq, and the government’s claims of recent successes in dismantling the leadership of Al Qaeda in Iraq, also known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the main insurgent group here.
Her remarks reflected how Iraq’s myriad challenges — from politics to security to human rights — are perceived to be thoroughly entwined with the violence that still engulfs the streets.
“The security departments are messed up, as everybody looks to find a place in the new government,” she said. “Until now, we haven’t seen any of the security heads announce his resignation. I assert that influential figures in the government, with external agendas, are trying to unsettle security in Iraq.”
The attacks came five days after a joint Iraqi-American raid killed the top two leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Iraqi and American officials hailed the killings — and a series of other killings and arrests before and after — as a devastating blow to the group. At the same time they warned that retaliation was almost certain to come, though it was not clear that the group was behind the attacks on Friday.
At least seven explosions spread carnage in neighborhoods across Baghdad over the course of the day — from a clothing store in Dora to a market in Rahmaniya, from mosques in Huriya and Amin to the three bombs near the Sadr office. The attacks used bombs hidden in a parked motorcycle and cars, among other places, but did not involve suicide bombers, a typical tactic of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The attacks struck in mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhoods, but in Anbar, the sprawling Sunni province to the west of Baghdad, 7 people were killed and 11 wounded on Friday morning when five homemade explosives damaged a cluster of houses in a small village. A police lieutenant heading to the scene was also killed by a roadside bomb.
Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni extremists are blamed for much of the violence in Iraq, but the country faces threats from other militias and terrorists, including those representing Shiites, often with support from Iran. Without a claim of responsibility, and often even with them, it is difficult to determine the source and motive of attacks here.
If the motive was to discredit Mr. Maliki’s government and Iraq’s security forces, however, it appeared to work.
“I was sitting on the second floor with my children and I heard the explosion,” a man who identified himself only as Abu Ammar, 36, said near one of the explosions in Sadr City. “The windows were blown in. I came down and saw dead bodies everywhere. My house was burning. I did not know what to do, put out the fire or help the wounded.”
“I just want to ask,” he continued, “where is the government?”
The area around the Sadr headquarters is cordoned off during Friday Prayer, prohibiting vehicles from approaching. The first bomb was hidden in a motorcycle parked about 100 yards away. Minutes later, two bombs exploded in parked cars two blocks away. The force of the blasts severed bodies and charred more than a dozen cars nearby. Passers-by buried body parts they found on the street.
Iraqi police officers who arrived fired shots in the air to try to disperse an angry crowd that lingered at the scene. At the neighborhood’s main hospital, which began to turn away victims after filling up, friends and relatives of the wounded and the dead clambered to get inside.
Ahmed Mahdi, shirtless, his chest burned raw, cried as he lay on a hospital bed. He said he had no idea where his brother was and was desperate to find out.
“The politicians are busy forming the government and forgot all about us,” he said. “They are all useless.”
Zaid Thacker contributed reporting.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Tokyo's goal: Be the greenest
Tokyo's goal: Be the greenest
It’s been reducing solid waste, requiring factories and offices to cut carbon emissions, giving cash incentives to install solar panels, toughening building standards and planning more greenery.
By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times
April 23, 2010
Reporting from Tokyo
On a man-made island in Tokyo Bay, garbage is getting a makeover.
Tons of waste are trucked here daily to a large industrial building. What can't be recycled is burned and filtered for toxins. The ash is turned into building material, and the heat is converted into electricity — enough to power 55,000 homes.
The process saves landfill space. Air pollution is minimal. The 4-year-old firm, Tokyo Waterfront Recycle Power Co., will turn its first profit this year, said President Ikuo Onaka. But, he contends, the rewards aren't purely financial.
"We're making a social contribution," said Onaka, whose business is one of nine firms operating on Tokyo's waterfront to reuse the city's garbage instead of burying it.
These private-sector companies are part of a very public push by Tokyo's metropolitan government to turn this dense urban area, home to 13 million people, into the world's most eco-friendly mega-city.
In addition to reducing solid waste, Tokyo over the last few years has unveiled a slew of environmentally conscious initiatives. Those include toughened environmental building standards, cash incentives for residents to install solar panels, and a plan for greening the city, including planting half a million trees and converting a 217-acre landfill in Tokyo Bay into a wooded "sea forest" park.
The most ambitious effort yet kicked off this month, when Tokyo launched a mandatory program for 1,400 of the area's factories and office buildings to cut their carbon emissions 25% from 2000 levels by the end of 2020. The plan includes a carbon cap-and-trade system, the first ever attempted by a metropolitan area. The mechanism sets limits on emissions and requires those who exceed their quotas to buy pollution rights from those who are under their caps.
Tokyo's strategy is reminiscent of California's. The state's landmark legislation known as AB 32 requires polluters to curb their emissions significantly over the next decade. But while opponents, including large oil refiners, are bankrolling a campaign to stall that effort in the Golden State, Tokyo is hitting the gas.
More than half the world's population now resides in cities. Metropolitan Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures have about as many people as the entire state of California. The way such teeming places respond to climate change will largely determine whether global warming can be slowed.
"We recognize our role as big mega-city … to be a leader," said Teruyuki Ohno, director general for climate strategy for Tokyo's Bureau of the Environment. "It is because we are capable of doing it that we have the responsibility to do it."
Some say Tokyo doesn't have a choice. Endowed with few natural resources, Japan has long been a champion in energy efficiency and clean technology. But the nation is falling short on a commitment to cut greenhouse gases, which it made more than a decade ago, when it hosted the United Nations convention on climate change in Kyoto.
Japan's federal legislators so far have failed to agree on a cohesive national strategy. Now some local officials, including Tokyo's maverick governor, Shintaro Ishihara, are taking up the slack.
Ishihara, best known in the U.S. as the author of the controversial book "The Japan That Can Say No," is a conservative with a green streak. His administration banned older diesel trucks from the city's roads and led Tokyo's failed effort to win the 2016 Olympics with a pledge to make the city's Games the most environmentally friendly ever.
While some businesses have grumbled about his administration's new carbon-cutting plan, others see it as an opportunity.
Masahiro Takeda, manager of sustainability for Mori Building Co., one of Tokyo's largest commercial developers, said demand is rising for buildings that save energy and lower tenants' operating costs. Large-scale recycling, greenery, rainwater reuse and waste heat recapture have become standard features in Mori developments.
At Roppongi Hills, a major shopping and office complex built by Mori in the heart of Tokyo, more than one-quarter of the 21-acre site is covered with trees and shrubs — including a rooftop rice paddy. The plants absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lower roof temperatures, which in turn cuts heating and cooling bills.
"We want to stay internationally competitive," Takeda said.
Neighborhoods, too, are pushing for landscaping, to comply with Tokyo regulations enacted in 2001 requiring all new, large commercial buildings to devote at least 20% of their surface area to greenery. The effort was pioneered in the neon-lit Shibuya ward, best known for its youth-oriented shopping district, by officials looking to reverse the loss of trees, lawns and gardens to rampant development.
It hasn't been easy. Rooftop gardens account for less than 0.5% of the ward's green spaces, according to Noriyuki Matsushima, director of Shibuya's environmental efforts. The total area covered by plants — about 21% — is about the same as it was a decade ago.
Still, simply preserving what's there is a victory, Matsushima said, and essential in combating the so-called heat-island effect. Heat-trapping concrete and asphalt have raised Tokyo's temperature by about 3 degrees Celsius over the last century, according to the government. Green roofs, along with tree planting and community gardens, are a way to build community support to fight climate change, Matsushima said.
"It's a visible environmental policy," he said. "Most of the people of Shibuya expect to have more greenery."
Tokyo rooftops are also sprouting solar panels. To spur adoption of photovoltaics, the metropolitan government offers its homeowners a subsidy of 100,000 yen (about $1,070) per kilowatt. (A typical system is about four kilowatts.) That comes on top of the federal subsidy of 70,000 yen (about $750) per kilowatt. The metropolitan government is also offering solar incentives to businesses.
Meanwhile, garbage is getting an afterlife. Tough recycling laws over the years have produced results such as a 99% reuse rate for asphalt and concrete and 72% for paper. What isn't recovered is incinerated and the residue buried. But with landfill space in short supply, the metropolitan government in 2006 launched an initiative known as Tokyo Super Eco Town to take recycling to the next level.
Built on the site of a former garbage dump in Tokyo Bay, the project is home to Tokyo Waterfront Recycle Power Co. and eight other private companies, including one that treats toxic chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, and another that converts the city's food waste into animal feed.
Such efforts have attracted some big-name attention. Rock star Bono stopped by in 2008 to plant a tree in nearby Umi-no-Mori, a wooded waterfront park that's also rising on the former landfill.
But not everyone is impressed. Environmental activists have severely criticized Tokyo's administration for supporting housing on Minamiyama, a forested mountain near Tokyo whose trees are being felled by developers. And places such as Aichi prefecture, home of the city of Nagoya, have been much more aggressive in their solar efforts.
Still, Tokyo is well ahead of other major cities on a variety of environmental issues. Environmentalists are particularly enthusiastic about the government's willingness to push ahead with its cap-and-trade program in the midst of a sluggish global economy.
"Tokyo is the first metropolitan area in the world to try this," said Tetsunari Iida, executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo. "They want to show it can work."
It’s been reducing solid waste, requiring factories and offices to cut carbon emissions, giving cash incentives to install solar panels, toughening building standards and planning more greenery.
By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times
April 23, 2010
Reporting from Tokyo
On a man-made island in Tokyo Bay, garbage is getting a makeover.
Tons of waste are trucked here daily to a large industrial building. What can't be recycled is burned and filtered for toxins. The ash is turned into building material, and the heat is converted into electricity — enough to power 55,000 homes.
The process saves landfill space. Air pollution is minimal. The 4-year-old firm, Tokyo Waterfront Recycle Power Co., will turn its first profit this year, said President Ikuo Onaka. But, he contends, the rewards aren't purely financial.
"We're making a social contribution," said Onaka, whose business is one of nine firms operating on Tokyo's waterfront to reuse the city's garbage instead of burying it.
These private-sector companies are part of a very public push by Tokyo's metropolitan government to turn this dense urban area, home to 13 million people, into the world's most eco-friendly mega-city.
In addition to reducing solid waste, Tokyo over the last few years has unveiled a slew of environmentally conscious initiatives. Those include toughened environmental building standards, cash incentives for residents to install solar panels, and a plan for greening the city, including planting half a million trees and converting a 217-acre landfill in Tokyo Bay into a wooded "sea forest" park.
The most ambitious effort yet kicked off this month, when Tokyo launched a mandatory program for 1,400 of the area's factories and office buildings to cut their carbon emissions 25% from 2000 levels by the end of 2020. The plan includes a carbon cap-and-trade system, the first ever attempted by a metropolitan area. The mechanism sets limits on emissions and requires those who exceed their quotas to buy pollution rights from those who are under their caps.
Tokyo's strategy is reminiscent of California's. The state's landmark legislation known as AB 32 requires polluters to curb their emissions significantly over the next decade. But while opponents, including large oil refiners, are bankrolling a campaign to stall that effort in the Golden State, Tokyo is hitting the gas.
More than half the world's population now resides in cities. Metropolitan Tokyo and its surrounding prefectures have about as many people as the entire state of California. The way such teeming places respond to climate change will largely determine whether global warming can be slowed.
"We recognize our role as big mega-city … to be a leader," said Teruyuki Ohno, director general for climate strategy for Tokyo's Bureau of the Environment. "It is because we are capable of doing it that we have the responsibility to do it."
Some say Tokyo doesn't have a choice. Endowed with few natural resources, Japan has long been a champion in energy efficiency and clean technology. But the nation is falling short on a commitment to cut greenhouse gases, which it made more than a decade ago, when it hosted the United Nations convention on climate change in Kyoto.
Japan's federal legislators so far have failed to agree on a cohesive national strategy. Now some local officials, including Tokyo's maverick governor, Shintaro Ishihara, are taking up the slack.
Ishihara, best known in the U.S. as the author of the controversial book "The Japan That Can Say No," is a conservative with a green streak. His administration banned older diesel trucks from the city's roads and led Tokyo's failed effort to win the 2016 Olympics with a pledge to make the city's Games the most environmentally friendly ever.
While some businesses have grumbled about his administration's new carbon-cutting plan, others see it as an opportunity.
Masahiro Takeda, manager of sustainability for Mori Building Co., one of Tokyo's largest commercial developers, said demand is rising for buildings that save energy and lower tenants' operating costs. Large-scale recycling, greenery, rainwater reuse and waste heat recapture have become standard features in Mori developments.
At Roppongi Hills, a major shopping and office complex built by Mori in the heart of Tokyo, more than one-quarter of the 21-acre site is covered with trees and shrubs — including a rooftop rice paddy. The plants absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and lower roof temperatures, which in turn cuts heating and cooling bills.
"We want to stay internationally competitive," Takeda said.
Neighborhoods, too, are pushing for landscaping, to comply with Tokyo regulations enacted in 2001 requiring all new, large commercial buildings to devote at least 20% of their surface area to greenery. The effort was pioneered in the neon-lit Shibuya ward, best known for its youth-oriented shopping district, by officials looking to reverse the loss of trees, lawns and gardens to rampant development.
It hasn't been easy. Rooftop gardens account for less than 0.5% of the ward's green spaces, according to Noriyuki Matsushima, director of Shibuya's environmental efforts. The total area covered by plants — about 21% — is about the same as it was a decade ago.
Still, simply preserving what's there is a victory, Matsushima said, and essential in combating the so-called heat-island effect. Heat-trapping concrete and asphalt have raised Tokyo's temperature by about 3 degrees Celsius over the last century, according to the government. Green roofs, along with tree planting and community gardens, are a way to build community support to fight climate change, Matsushima said.
"It's a visible environmental policy," he said. "Most of the people of Shibuya expect to have more greenery."
Tokyo rooftops are also sprouting solar panels. To spur adoption of photovoltaics, the metropolitan government offers its homeowners a subsidy of 100,000 yen (about $1,070) per kilowatt. (A typical system is about four kilowatts.) That comes on top of the federal subsidy of 70,000 yen (about $750) per kilowatt. The metropolitan government is also offering solar incentives to businesses.
Meanwhile, garbage is getting an afterlife. Tough recycling laws over the years have produced results such as a 99% reuse rate for asphalt and concrete and 72% for paper. What isn't recovered is incinerated and the residue buried. But with landfill space in short supply, the metropolitan government in 2006 launched an initiative known as Tokyo Super Eco Town to take recycling to the next level.
Built on the site of a former garbage dump in Tokyo Bay, the project is home to Tokyo Waterfront Recycle Power Co. and eight other private companies, including one that treats toxic chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, and another that converts the city's food waste into animal feed.
Such efforts have attracted some big-name attention. Rock star Bono stopped by in 2008 to plant a tree in nearby Umi-no-Mori, a wooded waterfront park that's also rising on the former landfill.
But not everyone is impressed. Environmental activists have severely criticized Tokyo's administration for supporting housing on Minamiyama, a forested mountain near Tokyo whose trees are being felled by developers. And places such as Aichi prefecture, home of the city of Nagoya, have been much more aggressive in their solar efforts.
Still, Tokyo is well ahead of other major cities on a variety of environmental issues. Environmentalists are particularly enthusiastic about the government's willingness to push ahead with its cap-and-trade program in the midst of a sluggish global economy.
"Tokyo is the first metropolitan area in the world to try this," said Tetsunari Iida, executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo. "They want to show it can work."
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Hear Them Roar
Female dissidents are rewriting the rules in countries where they can't even show their faces.
By Rana Foroohar NEWSWEEK
For women in Iraq, running for office is an especially risky proposition. The country's Constitution, like those of many nations that have been racked by conflict, requires that a quarter of all parliamentary seats must go to women. Yet even as the number of female leaders and political activists has increased, so has the backlash. In February, a female candidate was shot and killed in Mosul.
Yet female activists continue to challenge Iraq's religious conservatives. Hanaa Edwar, one of the founders of the Iraqi Women's Network, a coalition of NGOs, recently blasted the minister of education for trying to separate boys and girls in public schools. "These ideas are imported from Iran!" she says. The minister eventually backed down. Another activist, Jenan Mubark, who became frustrated about the lack of progress around women's rights, has pulled together a slate of 20 women, whom she hopes will be elected into other political parties. Once in Parliament, they could work together as a voting bloc. "I will continue to fight for Iraqi women and their rights," she says.
A surprising number of women are leading political dissent in countries like Iraq and others where women's voices are often suppressed. Women are at the forefront of Iran's Green Movement, and are leading reformist agendas in Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, and Angola. They are especially visible in conflict zones, where they are blogging, marching in the streets, holding sit-ins, and launching petitions to secure their rights—as Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has done with the One Million Signatures campaign, which supports changing laws that discriminate against Iranian women.
In some ways, the rise of dissidents reflects a larger trend toward greater female political participation everywhere. Globally, the percentage of women holding parliamentary seats went from 11.3 percent in 1995 to 18.8 at the end of 2009—largely because of legislated quotas like the one in Iraq. At the same time, educational levels of girls are rising rapidly across the developing world, leading to greater economic power, particularly in developing nations: in China, 20 percent of entrepreneurs are women, and in Russia, 73 percent of businesses have a woman in senior management. And while women in conflict zones or conservative countries can be at risk for violence if they engage in dissent in public spaces, the Internet has provided a safer way for them to air their grievances.
It may also be that women have grown tired of waiting for justice. Last month the United Nations launched a review of the progress that has been made since the last major conference on women, in Beijing in 1995. While the Beijing conference set an official agenda for ensuring women's basic health, safety, and security, it has yet to be broadly implemented. The ongoing threat of death, sexual violence, and the rollback of basic rights for women in conflict areas recently led one U.N. official to observe that "it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in war." Afghan women activists recently had to gate-crash their own country's conflict-resolution conference in London, since there was only one female official invited—and even though Hillary Clinton is the main global spokesperson for Afghan women's rights. A new crop of female activists has come to realize that if they don't fight for their own rights, no one else will.
Women in the developing world are far more prepared to take up the struggle than previous generations did. In many developing economies, there are now as many girls as boys in primary and secondary school, with particular gains in countries such as Iran, India, Egypt, and China. In some countries, the gains are a result of a communist or socialist legacy that pushed broad-based education for both men and women. Other times, it's simply a result of the striving attitudes common in many developing nations, where there's desperate need for more engineers and doctors, regardless of gender. As in the U.S., the percentage of women in higher education in developing nations often meets or exceeds that of men. In Brazil, Russia, and the U.A.E., women represent more than 60 percent of college graduates; in India and China, they are at 47 and 42 percent, respectively. Women also hold increasing economic power (the majority of the world's new earned income over the next 10 years will come from women), and receive greater support from international institutions, which have come to see female economic empowerment as the fastest and most cost-effective way to develop peaceful, prosperous, and stable societies.
Quotas are antithetical to many Americans, yet the efforts of female dissidents have been helped by the increased use of such systems. Among the 46 nations that have political quota systems, women now account for 21.9 percent of elected offices, versus 15.3 percent for countries that don't. In Rwanda, which (like many postconflict areas) uses a quota system, 56.3 percent of parliamentarians are women, the highest level worldwide. In countries like Uganda, Burundi, and Ecuador, women account for 30 percent of elected officials, the "critical mass" necessary to allow them to work together to effect change, according to Anne Marie Goetz, UNIFEM's chief adviser for Governance, Peace and Security. "In these places, getting women into power is seen as a broader sign of democratization," notes Pippa Norris, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. In some cases, nations decimated by war or famine are also inclined to subscribe to what Laura Liswood, the secretary-general of the Aspen Institute's Council of Women World Leaders, calls "the crumbling-cliff theory": if things are going to hell anyway, why not give the outsiders a shot at fixing them?
Yet even in countries like Iran, where there are no quotas and women make up only 2.8 percent of parliamentarians, female activists are omnipresent. In the wake of last summer's contested elections, female protesters of all ages, some fully covered in traditional clothing, others wearing tight jeans and loose headscarves, flooded the streets, in part because two of the key symbols of political opposition were female. Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a prominent academic and writer, boldly appeared in public prior to the election holding hands with her husband and calling for an end to discrimination against women. So did Fatemeh Karroubi, the wife of Mehdi Karroubi, another opposition candidate. Rahnavard in particular underscored that in Iran, women are at least as well educated and prepared for public office as men—60 percent of all university degrees are earned by women, and as in Iraq, there is a large and wealthy female middle class. "I can say that even though their husbands are the symbolic leaders of the Green Movement, the real leaders are these two courageous women," says Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist now in exile in London. "It is because of them that millions of women came into the streets before and after the elections."
Alinejad herself, who blogs and uses her Facebook pages as a tool for political protest, is emblematic of a new generation of female activists worldwide who are using technology to spread their views. Smart phones and handheld digital cameras allow protest images to be beamed throughout the world, and social networking is allowing women to mobilize. "This is quite significant in parts of the Middle East, where women have restricted public life but high levels of education and income," says Norris. As a result, the U.N., World Bank, and various NGOs are making information-technology access a key point of peace building.
The real question, of course, is how—and whether—women's increasing political power could improve things in the world's most difficult countries. It's not a straightforward question: there are any number of examples (Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi) to show that female leaders aren't necessarily more peaceable than their male counterparts. Nor is there any real proof that they lead better than men do. But they do tend to have different priorities. Academic research has shown that female politicians around the world pay more attention to issues like public health, education, and child care. Women still have a long way to go in the struggle for political parity—and U.N. figures show that without legal mandates, it won't be achieved until the end of this century. But you can be sure that female dissenters won't stop fighting for it.
(Words)
1. rack : torment emotionally or mentally
2. backlash : an adverse reaction to some political or social occurrence
3. dissent : a difference of opinion
4. sit-ins : demonstration
5. dissidents : a person who dissents from some established policy
6. air one’s grievances : complain about a (real or imaginary) wrong that causes resentment and is grounds for action
7. gate-crash : enter uninvited; informal
8. antithetical : sharply contrasted in character or purpose
9. decimate : kill in large numbers
10. omnipresent : being present everywhere at once
11. straightforward question : easy question
By Rana Foroohar NEWSWEEK
For women in Iraq, running for office is an especially risky proposition. The country's Constitution, like those of many nations that have been racked by conflict, requires that a quarter of all parliamentary seats must go to women. Yet even as the number of female leaders and political activists has increased, so has the backlash. In February, a female candidate was shot and killed in Mosul.
Yet female activists continue to challenge Iraq's religious conservatives. Hanaa Edwar, one of the founders of the Iraqi Women's Network, a coalition of NGOs, recently blasted the minister of education for trying to separate boys and girls in public schools. "These ideas are imported from Iran!" she says. The minister eventually backed down. Another activist, Jenan Mubark, who became frustrated about the lack of progress around women's rights, has pulled together a slate of 20 women, whom she hopes will be elected into other political parties. Once in Parliament, they could work together as a voting bloc. "I will continue to fight for Iraqi women and their rights," she says.
A surprising number of women are leading political dissent in countries like Iraq and others where women's voices are often suppressed. Women are at the forefront of Iran's Green Movement, and are leading reformist agendas in Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, and Angola. They are especially visible in conflict zones, where they are blogging, marching in the streets, holding sit-ins, and launching petitions to secure their rights—as Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has done with the One Million Signatures campaign, which supports changing laws that discriminate against Iranian women.
In some ways, the rise of dissidents reflects a larger trend toward greater female political participation everywhere. Globally, the percentage of women holding parliamentary seats went from 11.3 percent in 1995 to 18.8 at the end of 2009—largely because of legislated quotas like the one in Iraq. At the same time, educational levels of girls are rising rapidly across the developing world, leading to greater economic power, particularly in developing nations: in China, 20 percent of entrepreneurs are women, and in Russia, 73 percent of businesses have a woman in senior management. And while women in conflict zones or conservative countries can be at risk for violence if they engage in dissent in public spaces, the Internet has provided a safer way for them to air their grievances.
It may also be that women have grown tired of waiting for justice. Last month the United Nations launched a review of the progress that has been made since the last major conference on women, in Beijing in 1995. While the Beijing conference set an official agenda for ensuring women's basic health, safety, and security, it has yet to be broadly implemented. The ongoing threat of death, sexual violence, and the rollback of basic rights for women in conflict areas recently led one U.N. official to observe that "it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in war." Afghan women activists recently had to gate-crash their own country's conflict-resolution conference in London, since there was only one female official invited—and even though Hillary Clinton is the main global spokesperson for Afghan women's rights. A new crop of female activists has come to realize that if they don't fight for their own rights, no one else will.
Women in the developing world are far more prepared to take up the struggle than previous generations did. In many developing economies, there are now as many girls as boys in primary and secondary school, with particular gains in countries such as Iran, India, Egypt, and China. In some countries, the gains are a result of a communist or socialist legacy that pushed broad-based education for both men and women. Other times, it's simply a result of the striving attitudes common in many developing nations, where there's desperate need for more engineers and doctors, regardless of gender. As in the U.S., the percentage of women in higher education in developing nations often meets or exceeds that of men. In Brazil, Russia, and the U.A.E., women represent more than 60 percent of college graduates; in India and China, they are at 47 and 42 percent, respectively. Women also hold increasing economic power (the majority of the world's new earned income over the next 10 years will come from women), and receive greater support from international institutions, which have come to see female economic empowerment as the fastest and most cost-effective way to develop peaceful, prosperous, and stable societies.
Quotas are antithetical to many Americans, yet the efforts of female dissidents have been helped by the increased use of such systems. Among the 46 nations that have political quota systems, women now account for 21.9 percent of elected offices, versus 15.3 percent for countries that don't. In Rwanda, which (like many postconflict areas) uses a quota system, 56.3 percent of parliamentarians are women, the highest level worldwide. In countries like Uganda, Burundi, and Ecuador, women account for 30 percent of elected officials, the "critical mass" necessary to allow them to work together to effect change, according to Anne Marie Goetz, UNIFEM's chief adviser for Governance, Peace and Security. "In these places, getting women into power is seen as a broader sign of democratization," notes Pippa Norris, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. In some cases, nations decimated by war or famine are also inclined to subscribe to what Laura Liswood, the secretary-general of the Aspen Institute's Council of Women World Leaders, calls "the crumbling-cliff theory": if things are going to hell anyway, why not give the outsiders a shot at fixing them?
Yet even in countries like Iran, where there are no quotas and women make up only 2.8 percent of parliamentarians, female activists are omnipresent. In the wake of last summer's contested elections, female protesters of all ages, some fully covered in traditional clothing, others wearing tight jeans and loose headscarves, flooded the streets, in part because two of the key symbols of political opposition were female. Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a prominent academic and writer, boldly appeared in public prior to the election holding hands with her husband and calling for an end to discrimination against women. So did Fatemeh Karroubi, the wife of Mehdi Karroubi, another opposition candidate. Rahnavard in particular underscored that in Iran, women are at least as well educated and prepared for public office as men—60 percent of all university degrees are earned by women, and as in Iraq, there is a large and wealthy female middle class. "I can say that even though their husbands are the symbolic leaders of the Green Movement, the real leaders are these two courageous women," says Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist now in exile in London. "It is because of them that millions of women came into the streets before and after the elections."
Alinejad herself, who blogs and uses her Facebook pages as a tool for political protest, is emblematic of a new generation of female activists worldwide who are using technology to spread their views. Smart phones and handheld digital cameras allow protest images to be beamed throughout the world, and social networking is allowing women to mobilize. "This is quite significant in parts of the Middle East, where women have restricted public life but high levels of education and income," says Norris. As a result, the U.N., World Bank, and various NGOs are making information-technology access a key point of peace building.
The real question, of course, is how—and whether—women's increasing political power could improve things in the world's most difficult countries. It's not a straightforward question: there are any number of examples (Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi) to show that female leaders aren't necessarily more peaceable than their male counterparts. Nor is there any real proof that they lead better than men do. But they do tend to have different priorities. Academic research has shown that female politicians around the world pay more attention to issues like public health, education, and child care. Women still have a long way to go in the struggle for political parity—and U.N. figures show that without legal mandates, it won't be achieved until the end of this century. But you can be sure that female dissenters won't stop fighting for it.
(Words)
1. rack : torment emotionally or mentally
2. backlash : an adverse reaction to some political or social occurrence
3. dissent : a difference of opinion
4. sit-ins : demonstration
5. dissidents : a person who dissents from some established policy
6. air one’s grievances : complain about a (real or imaginary) wrong that causes resentment and is grounds for action
7. gate-crash : enter uninvited; informal
8. antithetical : sharply contrasted in character or purpose
9. decimate : kill in large numbers
10. omnipresent : being present everywhere at once
11. straightforward question : easy question
Iceland's volcanic eruption
Outlook: cloudy
Why so little is known about the effects of erupting volcanos on air travel
Apr 19th 2010 From The Economist online
NORTHERN Europeans will not forget the name Eyjafjallajokull in a hurry, even if they may have trouble pronouncing it. Monday April 19th marked a fifth day of jet-free skies over a huge swathe of the continent as a result of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which began pumping large quantities of ash into the sky last Wednesday. That fine volcanic ash could pose a risk to jet engines, which have cut out in the past after exposure to similar volcanic material. Many of Europe’s busiest airports remained out of action.
Demonstrating the unpredictability of volcanic eruptions, Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said on Monday afternoon that airspace in Scotland and parts of northern England would reopen on Tuesday morning, and sounded optimistic that the rest of Britain would be cleared for flying later in the day; but later switched to a more cautious tone as a new ash cloud began spreading. Earlier, Norway, Sweden and Finland had allowed a few mainly domestic flights to operate.
The civil-aviation authorities had come under strong pressure from European airlines, several of whom had conducted successful test flights in the supposed danger zone. However, the engines of a Finnish military jet did suffer considerable damage as a result of breathing in the ash.
By late on Monday night there was still no clear answer as to how long the disruption might last. For one thing, the European Aviation Safety Agency says that there is currently no consensus as to what is an acceptable level of ash in the atmosphere. Furthermore, there is no way of telling what concentration of ash the test aircraft were flying through. The best source of information for the moment is a theoretical model of where the cloud might be, taking into account the prevailing wind and other weather conditions. One interesting wrinkle is that studies of natural disasters tend to be paid for by insurance companies. As volcano eruption is deemed to be an uninsurable risk, there are few studies to turn to.
Airlines say they have lost $200m a day—and want compensation
This uncertainty has led the International Air Transport Association to plead on behalf of its members for Europe’s government to rethink policy on shutting airspace. The industry body reckons that its members have been losing $200m a day as a result of the shut-down. On Monday British Airways said that it and other European airlines had asked for cash from the EU in compensation for the losses suffered because of the closure of airspace, citing the bail-out offered to American airlines in the wake of the September 11th 2001 terror attacks. IATA reckons the situation for Europe's airlines is even worse than then.
If the eruption were to worsen again, there are several ways that the damage wrought by the volcano might be mitigated. If meteorologists and vulcanologists developed a dynamic model of the ash cloud’s progress, it might be possible to keep more airports open, and to reroute planes to get passengers moving again. Wind patterns could change at any time and some reckon that they might do so by the end of the week. If the ash cloud were to drift in another direction flights could be sent around or above it. But when it sits over Europe’s biggest airports that is all but impossible. And while there remains any uncertainty, passengers may decide not to make trips in case the temporary respite reverses along with the wind, stranding them far from home.
If a renewed eruption threatened to continue for days or even weeks, the ad hoc efforts to get people home could develop into more permanent solutions for those making essential trips. Madrid’s large airport, so far unaffected by the ash cloud, could handle extra flights with passengers then continuing their journey north by land. Cross-channel ferries and the Eurostar trains that connect London with Brussels, Paris and points beyond are currently full to bursting with short-haul flyers returning home and businessmen who have no alternative but to travel. But these services and Europe’s rail and road networks could provide some with alternative means of getting to their destinations.
Some air freight might take to the road or water—98% of the world’s trade is already carried by ship. And plenty of the world’s container vessels are sitting idly waiting for the world economy to pick up after the recent recession in the rich world. But for some freight, from Formula One racing cars stuck in China after Sunday's Grand Prix there to flowers farmed in Kenya and destined for restaurant tables in London, there is no alternative route.
It might still take weeks for airlines to return to normal
Even if the volcano stopped emitting ash immediately, it might take two or more weeks before airlines could restore their schedules, with planes and crew stuck around the globe along with their passengers. Some fear that they could be in for a long wait. Icelandic volcanic activity has been low for some time. Eyjafjallajokull is particularly prone to producing the fine ash that has caused the current mayhem.
The last big eruption from Eyjafjallajokull, in 1821, belched ash into the atmosphere for over a year. Perhaps even more worrying than that is the risk that the neighbouring Katla volcano might erupt too. Archaeological evidence suggests that when roused it is even more destructive.
So far, aside from airlines and air travelers, the impact has been limited. But as the shutdown continues Europe’s fragile economies will suffer as tourists fail to arrive, meetings are cancelled and businesses with supply chains that rely on air freight nervously watch stocks running down.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15939414
*WORDS
Swathe: A swathe of land is a long strip of land.
Ash: Ash is the grey or black powdery substance that is left after something is burnt. You can also refer to this substance as ashes.
Aviation: Aviation is the operation and production of aircraft.
Reckon: If you reckon that something is true, you think that it is true.
Mitigate: To mitigate something means to make it less unpleasant, serious, or painful.
Freight: Freight is the movement of goods by lorries, trains, ships, or aero planes.
Vessel: A vessel is a ship or large boat.
Prone: To be prone to something, usually something bad, means to have a tendency to be affected by it or to do it.
Belch: If someone belches, they make a sudden noise in their throat because air has risen up from their stomach. (내뿜다.)
Why so little is known about the effects of erupting volcanos on air travel
Apr 19th 2010 From The Economist online
NORTHERN Europeans will not forget the name Eyjafjallajokull in a hurry, even if they may have trouble pronouncing it. Monday April 19th marked a fifth day of jet-free skies over a huge swathe of the continent as a result of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which began pumping large quantities of ash into the sky last Wednesday. That fine volcanic ash could pose a risk to jet engines, which have cut out in the past after exposure to similar volcanic material. Many of Europe’s busiest airports remained out of action.
Demonstrating the unpredictability of volcanic eruptions, Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said on Monday afternoon that airspace in Scotland and parts of northern England would reopen on Tuesday morning, and sounded optimistic that the rest of Britain would be cleared for flying later in the day; but later switched to a more cautious tone as a new ash cloud began spreading. Earlier, Norway, Sweden and Finland had allowed a few mainly domestic flights to operate.
The civil-aviation authorities had come under strong pressure from European airlines, several of whom had conducted successful test flights in the supposed danger zone. However, the engines of a Finnish military jet did suffer considerable damage as a result of breathing in the ash.
By late on Monday night there was still no clear answer as to how long the disruption might last. For one thing, the European Aviation Safety Agency says that there is currently no consensus as to what is an acceptable level of ash in the atmosphere. Furthermore, there is no way of telling what concentration of ash the test aircraft were flying through. The best source of information for the moment is a theoretical model of where the cloud might be, taking into account the prevailing wind and other weather conditions. One interesting wrinkle is that studies of natural disasters tend to be paid for by insurance companies. As volcano eruption is deemed to be an uninsurable risk, there are few studies to turn to.
Airlines say they have lost $200m a day—and want compensation
This uncertainty has led the International Air Transport Association to plead on behalf of its members for Europe’s government to rethink policy on shutting airspace. The industry body reckons that its members have been losing $200m a day as a result of the shut-down. On Monday British Airways said that it and other European airlines had asked for cash from the EU in compensation for the losses suffered because of the closure of airspace, citing the bail-out offered to American airlines in the wake of the September 11th 2001 terror attacks. IATA reckons the situation for Europe's airlines is even worse than then.
If the eruption were to worsen again, there are several ways that the damage wrought by the volcano might be mitigated. If meteorologists and vulcanologists developed a dynamic model of the ash cloud’s progress, it might be possible to keep more airports open, and to reroute planes to get passengers moving again. Wind patterns could change at any time and some reckon that they might do so by the end of the week. If the ash cloud were to drift in another direction flights could be sent around or above it. But when it sits over Europe’s biggest airports that is all but impossible. And while there remains any uncertainty, passengers may decide not to make trips in case the temporary respite reverses along with the wind, stranding them far from home.
If a renewed eruption threatened to continue for days or even weeks, the ad hoc efforts to get people home could develop into more permanent solutions for those making essential trips. Madrid’s large airport, so far unaffected by the ash cloud, could handle extra flights with passengers then continuing their journey north by land. Cross-channel ferries and the Eurostar trains that connect London with Brussels, Paris and points beyond are currently full to bursting with short-haul flyers returning home and businessmen who have no alternative but to travel. But these services and Europe’s rail and road networks could provide some with alternative means of getting to their destinations.
Some air freight might take to the road or water—98% of the world’s trade is already carried by ship. And plenty of the world’s container vessels are sitting idly waiting for the world economy to pick up after the recent recession in the rich world. But for some freight, from Formula One racing cars stuck in China after Sunday's Grand Prix there to flowers farmed in Kenya and destined for restaurant tables in London, there is no alternative route.
It might still take weeks for airlines to return to normal
Even if the volcano stopped emitting ash immediately, it might take two or more weeks before airlines could restore their schedules, with planes and crew stuck around the globe along with their passengers. Some fear that they could be in for a long wait. Icelandic volcanic activity has been low for some time. Eyjafjallajokull is particularly prone to producing the fine ash that has caused the current mayhem.
The last big eruption from Eyjafjallajokull, in 1821, belched ash into the atmosphere for over a year. Perhaps even more worrying than that is the risk that the neighbouring Katla volcano might erupt too. Archaeological evidence suggests that when roused it is even more destructive.
So far, aside from airlines and air travelers, the impact has been limited. But as the shutdown continues Europe’s fragile economies will suffer as tourists fail to arrive, meetings are cancelled and businesses with supply chains that rely on air freight nervously watch stocks running down.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15939414
*WORDS
Swathe: A swathe of land is a long strip of land.
Ash: Ash is the grey or black powdery substance that is left after something is burnt. You can also refer to this substance as ashes.
Aviation: Aviation is the operation and production of aircraft.
Reckon: If you reckon that something is true, you think that it is true.
Mitigate: To mitigate something means to make it less unpleasant, serious, or painful.
Freight: Freight is the movement of goods by lorries, trains, ships, or aero planes.
Vessel: A vessel is a ship or large boat.
Prone: To be prone to something, usually something bad, means to have a tendency to be affected by it or to do it.
Belch: If someone belches, they make a sudden noise in their throat because air has risen up from their stomach. (내뿜다.)
Lee Jeong Hyun
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/21/world/international-uk-japan-generation.html?_r=1
Japan May Suffer Second "Lost Generation" Of YouthBy REUTERS
Filed at 8:06 p.m. ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese college student Hiroki was keen to graduate last month and start his first full-time job, but despite applying to 40 firms, from IT ventures to big media companies, nary an offer was in sight.
So Hiroki did what a growing number of students are doing to avoid joining what some experts fear will become a "Lost Generation" of young Japanese trapped in unstable, low-pay jobs. He stayed at university and kept looking.
"If you're a 'freeter', there's no security," said the slender, 23-year-old Hiroki, who declined to give his full name, referring to youth who flit from part-time job to part-time job after leaving school.
Japan already has one "Lost Generation" of youth stuck in insecure jobs as part-timers, contract workers and temps after failing to find steady employment when they graduated from high school or college during a hiring "Ice Age" from 1994 to 2004.
Now the country's leaders worry that a still-fragile recovery from Japan's worst recession in 60 years and cautious corporate hiring plans are putting a second batch of youth at risk, raising prospects of a further waste of human resources the country can ill afford as it struggles with an ageing, shrinking population.
Experts share the concern, but critics charge that efforts by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government to fix the problem, including planned new limits on employing temporary workers, fall short at best, or, at worst, aggravate the problem.
"What they should be doing is redressing the protection and security of the permanent workers, making it easier to change jobs, improving pension mobility, and making the differences (between regular and non-regular workers) narrower," said Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Securities (Japan) Limited.
"If you do the opposite, all that happens is that you reduce overall enthusiasm to hire. They are going about it in exactly the wrong way."
"ONE CHANCE IN A LIFETIME"
That an economic downturn and sluggish recovery spell a tough job market is hardly surprising and indeed, at 4.9 percent, Japan's jobless rate is still the envy of many other countries.
Even at the depth of Japan's employment "Ice Age," some 90 percent of university graduates had jobs when they left school.
But a system in which companies hire masses of new graduates each April, often after making offers a year earlier, means the chances of stable, career track jobs narrow sharply for those left out.
"There are some people who become regular employees after working as temps, but not many," said Shin Hasegawa, vice president of Tokyo's Aoyama Gakuin University, where students can now opt for a fifth year for half tuition.
"You could say it's one chance in a lifetime."
The system, cemented during Japan's era of rapid economic growth after World War Two, provided a steady source of cheap and malleable workers for companies' life-time employment systems, where firms provided training and salaries rose steadily with age.
While life-time employment has unravelled during decades of economic stagnation, the recruitment system remains much the same. That means the burden falls mainly on new graduates and non-regular workers, now about one-third of Japan's labour force, when companies cut back on hiring to save costs.
"To protect the high wages of senior workers, they are sacrificing opportunities for youth," said Naohiro Yashiro, an economics professor at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo. "Companies put all the adjustment onto non-regular workers and new graduates, who are the weakest."
Government efforts to address the problem are focussing on career counselling, job training and urging companies to hire more full-timers, on the one hand, while putting new limits on employing temps on the other.
"If students don't get job offers before they graduate, they often become 'freeters' or other non-regular workers with low salaries and no benefits, so we want to help them as much as possible to find stable employment before they graduate," said Masayo Murayama at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which has set up a special counselling service for unemployed new grads.
LABOUR MARKET ADJUSTMENT
Hatoyama's cabinet last month approved a bill that would prohibit worker dispatch firms from sending short-term temps to manufacturers, with the ban to take effect in three years.
The move by the Democratic Party-led government, which took power last year pledging to pay more heed to worker and consumer rights than companies, would reverse deregulation implemented by the business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party in 2004.
Experts say counselling and training may help at the edges, in part by getting students to widen their job search beyond the "brand name" firms that many target in hopes of job security.
But critics argue restrictions on temporary workers will make the situation worse longer-term by forcing companies to flee abroad in search of cheaper, more flexible sources of labour.
"The labour market needs to be more flexible, accepting a variety of workers including temporary workers," said Yashiro, who advocates revamping the seniority-based wage system, for example by adopting equal pay for equal work.
"It's a choice between being unemployed and having an unstable job. But the government attitude is, stable or nothing."
Such changes, however, would be tough for the Democratic Party-led ruling coalition to push at present, given the importance of labour unions to the party's electoral base and a slide in government voter ratings due to doubts about Hatoyama's ability to make tough policy decisions.
"It's very difficult for a left of centre government to have a growth plan that involves lots of labour market adjustment. They have a lot of labour money," said Macquarie's Jerram.
"It's too difficult if there is no political leadership to push the things that are necessary, but unpopular."
In the meantime, for students like Hiroki, who has applied to about 10 firms this time round, prospects are murky.
"Fewer of the places where I want to work are hiring this year," he said. "I don't really know what my chances are."
Japan May Suffer Second "Lost Generation" Of YouthBy REUTERS
Filed at 8:06 p.m. ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese college student Hiroki was keen to graduate last month and start his first full-time job, but despite applying to 40 firms, from IT ventures to big media companies, nary an offer was in sight.
So Hiroki did what a growing number of students are doing to avoid joining what some experts fear will become a "Lost Generation" of young Japanese trapped in unstable, low-pay jobs. He stayed at university and kept looking.
"If you're a 'freeter', there's no security," said the slender, 23-year-old Hiroki, who declined to give his full name, referring to youth who flit from part-time job to part-time job after leaving school.
Japan already has one "Lost Generation" of youth stuck in insecure jobs as part-timers, contract workers and temps after failing to find steady employment when they graduated from high school or college during a hiring "Ice Age" from 1994 to 2004.
Now the country's leaders worry that a still-fragile recovery from Japan's worst recession in 60 years and cautious corporate hiring plans are putting a second batch of youth at risk, raising prospects of a further waste of human resources the country can ill afford as it struggles with an ageing, shrinking population.
Experts share the concern, but critics charge that efforts by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government to fix the problem, including planned new limits on employing temporary workers, fall short at best, or, at worst, aggravate the problem.
"What they should be doing is redressing the protection and security of the permanent workers, making it easier to change jobs, improving pension mobility, and making the differences (between regular and non-regular workers) narrower," said Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Securities (Japan) Limited.
"If you do the opposite, all that happens is that you reduce overall enthusiasm to hire. They are going about it in exactly the wrong way."
"ONE CHANCE IN A LIFETIME"
That an economic downturn and sluggish recovery spell a tough job market is hardly surprising and indeed, at 4.9 percent, Japan's jobless rate is still the envy of many other countries.
Even at the depth of Japan's employment "Ice Age," some 90 percent of university graduates had jobs when they left school.
But a system in which companies hire masses of new graduates each April, often after making offers a year earlier, means the chances of stable, career track jobs narrow sharply for those left out.
"There are some people who become regular employees after working as temps, but not many," said Shin Hasegawa, vice president of Tokyo's Aoyama Gakuin University, where students can now opt for a fifth year for half tuition.
"You could say it's one chance in a lifetime."
The system, cemented during Japan's era of rapid economic growth after World War Two, provided a steady source of cheap and malleable workers for companies' life-time employment systems, where firms provided training and salaries rose steadily with age.
While life-time employment has unravelled during decades of economic stagnation, the recruitment system remains much the same. That means the burden falls mainly on new graduates and non-regular workers, now about one-third of Japan's labour force, when companies cut back on hiring to save costs.
"To protect the high wages of senior workers, they are sacrificing opportunities for youth," said Naohiro Yashiro, an economics professor at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo. "Companies put all the adjustment onto non-regular workers and new graduates, who are the weakest."
Government efforts to address the problem are focussing on career counselling, job training and urging companies to hire more full-timers, on the one hand, while putting new limits on employing temps on the other.
"If students don't get job offers before they graduate, they often become 'freeters' or other non-regular workers with low salaries and no benefits, so we want to help them as much as possible to find stable employment before they graduate," said Masayo Murayama at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which has set up a special counselling service for unemployed new grads.
LABOUR MARKET ADJUSTMENT
Hatoyama's cabinet last month approved a bill that would prohibit worker dispatch firms from sending short-term temps to manufacturers, with the ban to take effect in three years.
The move by the Democratic Party-led government, which took power last year pledging to pay more heed to worker and consumer rights than companies, would reverse deregulation implemented by the business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party in 2004.
Experts say counselling and training may help at the edges, in part by getting students to widen their job search beyond the "brand name" firms that many target in hopes of job security.
But critics argue restrictions on temporary workers will make the situation worse longer-term by forcing companies to flee abroad in search of cheaper, more flexible sources of labour.
"The labour market needs to be more flexible, accepting a variety of workers including temporary workers," said Yashiro, who advocates revamping the seniority-based wage system, for example by adopting equal pay for equal work.
"It's a choice between being unemployed and having an unstable job. But the government attitude is, stable or nothing."
Such changes, however, would be tough for the Democratic Party-led ruling coalition to push at present, given the importance of labour unions to the party's electoral base and a slide in government voter ratings due to doubts about Hatoyama's ability to make tough policy decisions.
"It's very difficult for a left of centre government to have a growth plan that involves lots of labour market adjustment. They have a lot of labour money," said Macquarie's Jerram.
"It's too difficult if there is no political leadership to push the things that are necessary, but unpopular."
In the meantime, for students like Hiroki, who has applied to about 10 firms this time round, prospects are murky.
"Fewer of the places where I want to work are hiring this year," he said. "I don't really know what my chances are."
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Schedule on April 21st
9:00 a.m. – Min Sook Jo
9:10 a.m. – Ji Hwan Kim
9:20 a.m. – Jung Hwa Noh
9:30 a.m. – Ju Yeon Park
9:40 a.m. – Youn Roh
9:50 a.m. – Sang Mion Han
10:00 a.m. – Seo Kyung
10:10 a.m. – Jeong Hyun Lee
10:20 a.m. – Hyun Hee Kim
9:10 a.m. – Ji Hwan Kim
9:20 a.m. – Jung Hwa Noh
9:30 a.m. – Ju Yeon Park
9:40 a.m. – Youn Roh
9:50 a.m. – Sang Mion Han
10:00 a.m. – Seo Kyung
10:10 a.m. – Jeong Hyun Lee
10:20 a.m. – Hyun Hee Kim
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
World's mega-rich adding wealth, Carlos Slim No. 1
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim is the world's richest person, knocking Microsoft founder Bill Gates into second spot, as the wealth of the world's billionaires grew by 50 percent over the last year, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.
It is only the second time since 1995 that Gates has lost the crown, the magazine said, estimating Slim's net worth at $53.5 billion, compared to Gates's $53 billion fortune, while investor Warren Buffett came in at No. 3 with $47 billion.
The trio regained $41.5 billion of the $68 billion they had lost the previous year, Forbes said.
The number of billionaires around the world has nearly recovered in 2010 after dropping by a third last year during the global financial crisis. There are now 1,011 billionaires, compared with 793 last year and
The net wealth of those billionaires grew to $3.6 trillion from $2.4 trillion last year, but is still down from 2008's $4.4 trillion, according to the 24th annual Forbes list, which took a snapshot of wealth on February 12 to compile its ranking.
The average billionaire is now worth $3.5 billion, up $500 million from last year. And the number of women on the list rose to 89 from 72 last year.
"The global economy is recovering and it's reflected in what you see in the list this year," Steve Forbes, chief executive of Forbes, told a news conference. "Financial markets have also made an even more impressive comeback from the lows of just about a year ago, particularly in emerging markets."
"
The number of billionaires in the Asia-Pacific region grew by 80 percent to 234 and their net worth almost doubled to $729 billion, which the Forbes ranking attributed to the area's "swelling stock markets and several large public offerings during the past year."
Two Indians round out the top five richest people in the world -- Mukesh Ambani, with a petrochemicals, oil and gas fortune of $29 billion, and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, who is valued at $28.7 billion.
Of the 97 billionaires making their debut on the Forbes list, 62 are from Asia, while for the first time
"The
The Forbes ranking of the world's billionaires can be seen at www.forbes.com/billionaires
Vocabulary:
trio：any group of three persons or things（三人，三重唱）
public offering：a sale of a new issue of securities to the general public through a managing underwriter（公开销售证券，公开募股）
magnate：a person of great influence, importance, or standing in a particular enterprise, field of business, etc.（大资本家，巨头）
America's nuclear posture Logic v politics Barack Obama reviews first use and revisits the test-ban treaty
Apr 8th 2010 From The Economist print edition
HE HAD stopped over briefly in Prague for a handshake with Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, on a new strategic arms-reduction treaty—and a new start also, it is hoped, in relations with America’s still prickly cold-war rival. And then Barack Obama was due back in Washington to play host to more than 40 heads of government for his own nuclear-security summit on April 12th and 13th. Mr Obama wants pledges from them to secure nuclear materials around the world and to crack down harder on illicit traffickers, ahead of next month’s five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the world’s main bulwark against proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
Yet when it comes to recasting America’s own nuclear-weapons policy to deal more efficiently with the same threats, Mr Obama may have a battle ahead. In many ways, this week’s delayed nuclear posture review simply brings America’s official nuclear thinking into line with long-standing practice, including that of his more warlike predecessor, George Bush. With the demise of the old Soviet threat, nuclear weapons play a diminishing role in America’s defences. Like Mr Bush, Mr Obama plans instead to rely more on America’s array of powerful conventional weapons to deter future adversaries in a crisis.
But Mr Obama has followed this logic several steps further. He did not, as some inside and outside his administration wanted, declare that America would never be the first to use its nuclear weapons. That would have unsettled allies in exposed places who still rely for their safety on America’s nuclear umbrella.
Instead the review repeats a past pledge that America will not use nuclear weapons against states that do not have them and are in compliance, Mr Obama says, with their commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That leaves Iran, Syria and others suspected of illicit nuclear dabbling still theoretically on the potential target list. Yet Mr Obama has also ruled out, as Mr Bush never did, nuclear retaliation against chemical, biological or cyber attacks by the nuclear have-nots—unless, that is, America’s fundamental security or that of its allies is at risk.
He agrees with Mr Bush that America can make deep cuts in the weapons stocks it keeps in reserve to hedge against technical failure or a surprise new threat. Mr Bush would have done this while building fewer, but more modern, replacement nuclear warheads. Mr Obama prefers instead to refurbish some existing ones. He also plans to upgrade further America’s nuclear-weapons labs and other facilities. The vice-president, Joseph Biden, has called the labs “national treasures”. Mr Obama’s budget includes $624m beyond the sum Congress earmarked last year for such work, with more to come over five years.
But already there are grumbles. The extra cash has not stopped the labs’ directors asking for more. Mr Obama needs their support. For he intends to do something Mr Bush refused to do: to work to win Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was rejected on a partisan vote in 1999.
The leader of the attack last time was Arizona’s Jon Kyl, still a Republican senator. Mr Kyl insists, as he did then, that a CTBT is unverifiable—and, by banning future testing, puts America’s nuclear safety and security at risk. In fact, America has not felt any need to test its bombs since 1992. Advances in high-speed computing and other technologies allow today’s labs to solve problems that actual weapons tests never could. Meanwhile, the treaty’s global monitoring system is now a reality. Unlike other enemies, however, Mr Kyl is undeterred.
1) prickly : very irritable, having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.
2) crack down : repress or suppress
3) illicit traffickers : someone who promotes or exchanges goods or services for money illegally.
4) Non-Proliferation : the prevention of something increasing or spreading (especially the prevention of an increase in the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons)
5) Bulwark : an embankment built around a space for defensive purposes, a fencelike structure around a deck, a protective structure of stone or concrete; extends from shore into the water to prevent a beach from washing away
6) Warlike : disposed to warfare or hard-line policies
7) demise : the time when something ends
8) adversary : someone who offers opposition
9) dabble : dip a foot or hand briefly into a liquid, work with in an amateurish manner
10) retaliation : action taken in return for an injury or offense
11) refurbish : make brighter and prettier
12) earmark : give or assign a resource to a particular person or cause
13) grumble : a complaint uttered in a low and indistinct tone
HE HAD stopped over briefly in Prague for a handshake with Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, on a new strategic arms-reduction treaty—and a new start also, it is hoped, in relations with America’s still prickly cold-war rival. And then Barack Obama was due back in Washington to play host to more than 40 heads of government for his own nuclear-security summit on April 12th and 13th. Mr Obama wants pledges from them to secure nuclear materials around the world and to crack down harder on illicit traffickers, ahead of next month’s five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the world’s main bulwark against proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
Yet when it comes to recasting America’s own nuclear-weapons policy to deal more efficiently with the same threats, Mr Obama may have a battle ahead. In many ways, this week’s delayed nuclear posture review simply brings America’s official nuclear thinking into line with long-standing practice, including that of his more warlike predecessor, George Bush. With the demise of the old Soviet threat, nuclear weapons play a diminishing role in America’s defences. Like Mr Bush, Mr Obama plans instead to rely more on America’s array of powerful conventional weapons to deter future adversaries in a crisis.
But Mr Obama has followed this logic several steps further. He did not, as some inside and outside his administration wanted, declare that America would never be the first to use its nuclear weapons. That would have unsettled allies in exposed places who still rely for their safety on America’s nuclear umbrella.
Instead the review repeats a past pledge that America will not use nuclear weapons against states that do not have them and are in compliance, Mr Obama says, with their commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That leaves Iran, Syria and others suspected of illicit nuclear dabbling still theoretically on the potential target list. Yet Mr Obama has also ruled out, as Mr Bush never did, nuclear retaliation against chemical, biological or cyber attacks by the nuclear have-nots—unless, that is, America’s fundamental security or that of its allies is at risk.
He agrees with Mr Bush that America can make deep cuts in the weapons stocks it keeps in reserve to hedge against technical failure or a surprise new threat. Mr Bush would have done this while building fewer, but more modern, replacement nuclear warheads. Mr Obama prefers instead to refurbish some existing ones. He also plans to upgrade further America’s nuclear-weapons labs and other facilities. The vice-president, Joseph Biden, has called the labs “national treasures”. Mr Obama’s budget includes $624m beyond the sum Congress earmarked last year for such work, with more to come over five years.
But already there are grumbles. The extra cash has not stopped the labs’ directors asking for more. Mr Obama needs their support. For he intends to do something Mr Bush refused to do: to work to win Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was rejected on a partisan vote in 1999.
The leader of the attack last time was Arizona’s Jon Kyl, still a Republican senator. Mr Kyl insists, as he did then, that a CTBT is unverifiable—and, by banning future testing, puts America’s nuclear safety and security at risk. In fact, America has not felt any need to test its bombs since 1992. Advances in high-speed computing and other technologies allow today’s labs to solve problems that actual weapons tests never could. Meanwhile, the treaty’s global monitoring system is now a reality. Unlike other enemies, however, Mr Kyl is undeterred.
1) prickly : very irritable, having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.
2) crack down : repress or suppress
3) illicit traffickers : someone who promotes or exchanges goods or services for money illegally.
4) Non-Proliferation : the prevention of something increasing or spreading (especially the prevention of an increase in the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons)
5) Bulwark : an embankment built around a space for defensive purposes, a fencelike structure around a deck, a protective structure of stone or concrete; extends from shore into the water to prevent a beach from washing away
6) Warlike : disposed to warfare or hard-line policies
7) demise : the time when something ends
8) adversary : someone who offers opposition
9) dabble : dip a foot or hand briefly into a liquid, work with in an amateurish manner
10) retaliation : action taken in return for an injury or offense
11) refurbish : make brighter and prettier
12) earmark : give or assign a resource to a particular person or cause
13) grumble : a complaint uttered in a low and indistinct tone
Thursday, April 8, 2010
North Korea sentences American to 8 years
address: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-04-06-North-Korea_N.htm
North Korea sentences American to 8 years
North Korea announced last month that it had arrested Aijalon Mahli Gomes for entering the country illegally.
North Korea has sentenced an American teacher to eight years of hard labor and ordered him to pay a $700,000 fine after he crossed illegally into the country the fourth U.S. citizen to be detained by the islolated regime since last year.";
SEOUL (AP) — North Korea has sentenced an American teacher to eight years of hard labor and ordered him to pay a $700,000 fine after he crossed illegally into the country — the fourth U.S. citizen to be detained by the isolated regime since last year.
Aijalon Mahli Gomes, of Boston, acknowledged his wrongdoing during a trial at the Central Court Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch on Wednesday.
The North said last month that it arrested Gomes, 30, on Jan. 25 for trespassing after he crossed into the country from China.
Gomes, a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, had been teaching English in South Korea and no details have emerged about why he went to the North. However, Jo Sung-rae, a Seoul-based activist, said Gomes may have been inspired by his acquaintance with an American missionary who made a similar trip to the North in December to protest the country's human rights record.
The KCNA report said the court sentenced Gomes to eight years of "hard labor" and a fine of 70 million won. North Korea's official exchange rate is 100 won to the dollar.
"An examination was made of the hostile act committed against the Korean nation and the trespassing on the border of (North Korea) against which an indictment was brought in and his guilt was confirmed," it said.
Verdicts issued by the Central Court — North Korea's highest — are final and cannot be appealed, according to the Unification Ministry in Seoul.
But Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Korea University, said Gomes would almost certainly be released as the North appears to want to use his case as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the U.S. on its nuclear program.
"Continuing to hold him in custody is also a burden for North Korea" as it will only galvanize criticism of its human rights record, Yoo said.
Three other Americans have crossed into the North since March 2009 but all were freed after diplomatic negotiations, including a visit by former President Bill Clinton.
The North is under international pressure to go back to stalled nuclear disarmament talks it quit last year, and could use Gomes as leverage in negotiations about its return. But the isolated, impoverished regime also craves international recognition, especially from the U.S. Clinton's visit was thought to be a diplomatic victory for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il at a time when the two countries were locked in a tense standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.
Activists and colleagues in South Korea describe Gomes as a quiet and devout Christian who was serious about his work teaching English.
Last summer, Gomes met missionary Robert Park — who crossed into the North on Christmas Day — and later participated in two Seoul rallies calling for Park's freedom, Jo, the activist who organized the protests, said Wednesday.
"Gomes was weeping and he looked so sincere when he asked me if I knew anything about Robert Park's status in North Korea," Jo said.
Representatives of the Swedish Embassy in North Korea, which looks after U.S. interests in the country, witnessed Gomes' trial, the KCNA report said. A person who answered the telephone of the first secretary at the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang referred queries to the U.S. State Department.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the government has seen reports about the matter, but that she could not immediately comment. Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.
U.S. officials have said they want to make sure that Gomes is returned to the United States as soon as possible.
Thaleia Schlesinger, spokeswoman for Gomes' relatives, said they are "disturbed" by the verdict and will pray for his early return.
"The family has no comment beyond that they are praying for him and hoping for his return home as soon as possible," Schlesinger said. "Needless to say, they are disturbed (by the sentence) but they are hopeful that he would be returned home to them and they are praying for that."
Park strode into North Korea from China on a self-proclaimed mission to draw attention to North Korea's human rights record and to call for leader Kim Jong Il to step down. He was released in February after more than 40 days in custody.
Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested in March last year near the Chinese border and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in hostile acts. They were freed in August after Clinton made his high-profile humanitarian visit to Pyongyang to negotiate their release. The women were held in a Pyongyang guesthouse until their release without serving their prison terms.
North Korea sentences American to 8 years
North Korea announced last month that it had arrested Aijalon Mahli Gomes for entering the country illegally.
North Korea has sentenced an American teacher to eight years of hard labor and ordered him to pay a $700,000 fine after he crossed illegally into the country the fourth U.S. citizen to be detained by the islolated regime since last year.";
SEOUL (AP) — North Korea has sentenced an American teacher to eight years of hard labor and ordered him to pay a $700,000 fine after he crossed illegally into the country — the fourth U.S. citizen to be detained by the isolated regime since last year.
Aijalon Mahli Gomes, of Boston, acknowledged his wrongdoing during a trial at the Central Court Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch on Wednesday.
The North said last month that it arrested Gomes, 30, on Jan. 25 for trespassing after he crossed into the country from China.
Gomes, a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine, had been teaching English in South Korea and no details have emerged about why he went to the North. However, Jo Sung-rae, a Seoul-based activist, said Gomes may have been inspired by his acquaintance with an American missionary who made a similar trip to the North in December to protest the country's human rights record.
The KCNA report said the court sentenced Gomes to eight years of "hard labor" and a fine of 70 million won. North Korea's official exchange rate is 100 won to the dollar.
"An examination was made of the hostile act committed against the Korean nation and the trespassing on the border of (North Korea) against which an indictment was brought in and his guilt was confirmed," it said.
Verdicts issued by the Central Court — North Korea's highest — are final and cannot be appealed, according to the Unification Ministry in Seoul.
But Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Korea University, said Gomes would almost certainly be released as the North appears to want to use his case as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the U.S. on its nuclear program.
"Continuing to hold him in custody is also a burden for North Korea" as it will only galvanize criticism of its human rights record, Yoo said.
Three other Americans have crossed into the North since March 2009 but all were freed after diplomatic negotiations, including a visit by former President Bill Clinton.
The North is under international pressure to go back to stalled nuclear disarmament talks it quit last year, and could use Gomes as leverage in negotiations about its return. But the isolated, impoverished regime also craves international recognition, especially from the U.S. Clinton's visit was thought to be a diplomatic victory for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il at a time when the two countries were locked in a tense standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.
Activists and colleagues in South Korea describe Gomes as a quiet and devout Christian who was serious about his work teaching English.
Last summer, Gomes met missionary Robert Park — who crossed into the North on Christmas Day — and later participated in two Seoul rallies calling for Park's freedom, Jo, the activist who organized the protests, said Wednesday.
"Gomes was weeping and he looked so sincere when he asked me if I knew anything about Robert Park's status in North Korea," Jo said.
Representatives of the Swedish Embassy in North Korea, which looks after U.S. interests in the country, witnessed Gomes' trial, the KCNA report said. A person who answered the telephone of the first secretary at the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang referred queries to the U.S. State Department.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said the government has seen reports about the matter, but that she could not immediately comment. Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.
U.S. officials have said they want to make sure that Gomes is returned to the United States as soon as possible.
Thaleia Schlesinger, spokeswoman for Gomes' relatives, said they are "disturbed" by the verdict and will pray for his early return.
"The family has no comment beyond that they are praying for him and hoping for his return home as soon as possible," Schlesinger said. "Needless to say, they are disturbed (by the sentence) but they are hopeful that he would be returned home to them and they are praying for that."
Park strode into North Korea from China on a self-proclaimed mission to draw attention to North Korea's human rights record and to call for leader Kim Jong Il to step down. He was released in February after more than 40 days in custody.
Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested in March last year near the Chinese border and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in hostile acts. They were freed in August after Clinton made his high-profile humanitarian visit to Pyongyang to negotiate their release. The women were held in a Pyongyang guesthouse until their release without serving their prison terms.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Brief Information of the 23rd KF Forum next week
Obama Administration's East Asia Policy
◎ CSIS (the Center for Strategic and International Studies)
The Center for Strategic and International Studies is a bipartisan Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank. The center was founded in 1964 by Admiral Arleigh Burke and Ambassador David Manker Abshire, originally as part of Georgetown University. The formal affiliation between Georgetown and CSIS ended on July 1, 1987.
According to its mission statement, "CSIS provides strategic insights and policy solutions to decision makers in government, international institutions, the private sector, and civil society." The center conducts policy studies and strategic analyses on political, economic and security issues, focusing on technology, public policy, international trade and finance, and energy.
◎ Speaker: John J. Hamre(CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies)
John J. Hamre (born July 3, 1950 in Watertown, South Dakota) is a specialist in international studies, a former Washington bureaucrat and the current president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a position he has held with that think tank since April 2000.
Hamre was Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (1993–1997) and Deputy Secretary of Defense (1997–1999), both under President Bill Clinton. Also worked on the Obama transition team. He is chairman of the Defense Policy Board.
- Educational background
He earned an M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1978) with distinction from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
- Political background
Hamre served in the Congressional Budget Office (1978–1984), where he became its deputy assistant director for national security and international affairs. In that position, he oversaw analysis and other support for committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the 1980s, he worked for ten years at the Senate Armed Services Committee. During that time, he was primarily responsible for the oversight and evaluation of procurement, research and development programs, defense budget issues, and relations with the Senate Appropriations Committee.
◎ Victor Cha (Senior Adviser and Korea Chair)
Dr. Cha is the author of numerous articles, books, and other works on Asian security. He authored Alignment Despite Antagonism (2001), recipient of the Ohira Book Prize, which presented a new, alternative theory regarding Japan and South Korea's political alignment despite their historical animosity. Dr. Cha wrote this in response to previous research on the subject, which he felt focused too heavily on their respective historical antagonism. In 2005, Cha co-authored Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies with Professor David Kang of Dartmouth College and its Tuck School of Business. The co-authors presented their respective viewpoints on the best way to handle the Korean situation, with Dr. Cha presenting a more "hawkish" approach and Dr. Kang presenting his more "dovish" arguments.
Dr. Cha is currently planning on publishing two new works on East Asia: a book on "Sports diplomacy and the Olympics in Asia" and a monograph concerning “Origins of the Postwar American Alliance System in Asia".
- Educational background
Dr. Cha received both his A.B. and his Ph.D. from Columbia University, as well as a B.A. (and subsequent M.A.) from the University of Oxford
◎ Michael J. Green (Senior Adviser and Japan Chair)
Michael Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He previously served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), from January 2004 to December 2005, after joining the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. His current research and writing is focused on Asian regional architecture, Japanese politics, U.S. foreign policy history, the Korean peninsula, Tibet, Burma, and U.S.-India relations.
Dr. Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. business. He has also been on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and a senior adviser to the Office of Asia-Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group. He is also vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue and the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly.
◎ Summary of Recent Interview with Dr. John J. Hamre
by JoongAng Daily
“Obama's trading policy is grade D… U.S must facilitate FTA with Korea ”
◇ Obama's Administration
Dr.Hamre evaluated Obama's administration upon each divided aspects.
Grade A+
-Hard work for changing American's attitude for other nation around the world
Grade A
-Proper confrontation policy to the middle east and north korea
Grade B
-Internal politic operation with some inefficiency
Grade C-
-Fail to make bipartisan culture in political system
◇ U.S Economy and Solution
Dr.Hamre evaluated U.S Economy upon each divided aspects.
Grade A
-Well-maintained financial system during the worst economic crisis.
Grade D
-Trading policy. Especially FTA between Korea and U.S needs to be effective.
◇ The Relationship between U.S and Korea
Dr.Hamre emphasized U.S-Korea's FTA as a point of boosting the relationship between U.S and Korea. He believed that FTA will makes positive outcome in Northern east asia's framework as well as Korea.
◇ G2
Dr.Hamre doesn't think China as a great partner in the international community with U.S. He thinks China is only focusing on Asian area as a leading power.
◇ North Korea's nuclear threat
Dr.Hamre said, Obama dealt with North Korea's nuclear threat in a good fundamental rule. He also mentioned that "This problem is basically for North Korea not the United States. They are turning against the world. Obama is ready to welcome them when they finish threatening.
◎ CSIS (the Center for Strategic and International Studies)
The Center for Strategic and International Studies is a bipartisan Washington, D.C., foreign policy think tank. The center was founded in 1964 by Admiral Arleigh Burke and Ambassador David Manker Abshire, originally as part of Georgetown University. The formal affiliation between Georgetown and CSIS ended on July 1, 1987.
According to its mission statement, "CSIS provides strategic insights and policy solutions to decision makers in government, international institutions, the private sector, and civil society." The center conducts policy studies and strategic analyses on political, economic and security issues, focusing on technology, public policy, international trade and finance, and energy.
◎ Speaker: John J. Hamre(CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies)
John J. Hamre (born July 3, 1950 in Watertown, South Dakota) is a specialist in international studies, a former Washington bureaucrat and the current president and CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a position he has held with that think tank since April 2000.
Hamre was Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (1993–1997) and Deputy Secretary of Defense (1997–1999), both under President Bill Clinton. Also worked on the Obama transition team. He is chairman of the Defense Policy Board.
- Educational background
He earned an M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1978) with distinction from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
- Political background
Hamre served in the Congressional Budget Office (1978–1984), where he became its deputy assistant director for national security and international affairs. In that position, he oversaw analysis and other support for committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the 1980s, he worked for ten years at the Senate Armed Services Committee. During that time, he was primarily responsible for the oversight and evaluation of procurement, research and development programs, defense budget issues, and relations with the Senate Appropriations Committee.
◎ Victor Cha (Senior Adviser and Korea Chair)
Dr. Cha is the author of numerous articles, books, and other works on Asian security. He authored Alignment Despite Antagonism (2001), recipient of the Ohira Book Prize, which presented a new, alternative theory regarding Japan and South Korea's political alignment despite their historical animosity. Dr. Cha wrote this in response to previous research on the subject, which he felt focused too heavily on their respective historical antagonism. In 2005, Cha co-authored Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies with Professor David Kang of Dartmouth College and its Tuck School of Business. The co-authors presented their respective viewpoints on the best way to handle the Korean situation, with Dr. Cha presenting a more "hawkish" approach and Dr. Kang presenting his more "dovish" arguments.
Dr. Cha is currently planning on publishing two new works on East Asia: a book on "Sports diplomacy and the Olympics in Asia" and a monograph concerning “Origins of the Postwar American Alliance System in Asia".
- Educational background
Dr. Cha received both his A.B. and his Ph.D. from Columbia University, as well as a B.A. (and subsequent M.A.) from the University of Oxford
◎ Michael J. Green (Senior Adviser and Japan Chair)
Michael Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He previously served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), from January 2004 to December 2005, after joining the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. His current research and writing is focused on Asian regional architecture, Japanese politics, U.S. foreign policy history, the Korean peninsula, Tibet, Burma, and U.S.-India relations.
Dr. Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. business. He has also been on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and a senior adviser to the Office of Asia-Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group. He is also vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue and the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly.
◎ Summary of Recent Interview with Dr. John J. Hamre
by JoongAng Daily
“Obama's trading policy is grade D… U.S must facilitate FTA with Korea ”
◇ Obama's Administration
Dr.Hamre evaluated Obama's administration upon each divided aspects.
Grade A+
-Hard work for changing American's attitude for other nation around the world
Grade A
-Proper confrontation policy to the middle east and north korea
Grade B
-Internal politic operation with some inefficiency
Grade C-
-Fail to make bipartisan culture in political system
◇ U.S Economy and Solution
Dr.Hamre evaluated U.S Economy upon each divided aspects.
Grade A
-Well-maintained financial system during the worst economic crisis.
Grade D
-Trading policy. Especially FTA between Korea and U.S needs to be effective.
◇ The Relationship between U.S and Korea
Dr.Hamre emphasized U.S-Korea's FTA as a point of boosting the relationship between U.S and Korea. He believed that FTA will makes positive outcome in Northern east asia's framework as well as Korea.
◇ G2
Dr.Hamre doesn't think China as a great partner in the international community with U.S. He thinks China is only focusing on Asian area as a leading power.
◇ North Korea's nuclear threat
Dr.Hamre said, Obama dealt with North Korea's nuclear threat in a good fundamental rule. He also mentioned that "This problem is basically for North Korea not the United States. They are turning against the world. Obama is ready to welcome them when they finish threatening.
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