June 7, 2010
12 Americans Detained in Yemen
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — Twelve Americans have been taken in custody in Yemen, the State Department spokesman said Monday, but the circumstances of why and when they were detained were unclear.
“If the question is, are we aware that there are Americans in custody in Yemen, we are,” the spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, told reporters. “We’re trying to find out more information.”
A Yemeni official who was trying to sort out the contradictory reports on Monday said that several dozen foreigners have been detained on suspicion of radical or terrorist ties since December, when the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by a Nigerian trained in Yemen set off a security crackdown.
But the Yemeni official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, said he did not have details on the number of people arrested, their nationalities and the exact charges they face.
Agence France-Presse, citing an unnamed security official in Yemen, reported Sunday that Yemeni security forces had arrested more than 30 foreign citizens on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda, among them 3 Frenchmen, an American and a Briton.
Other news agencies have reported in recent days that some or all of the foreigners detained were students studying Arabic at one or more of the language institutes in Sana, the Yemeni capital.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb the airliner on Christmas, studied at one of the schools, the Sana Institute for the Arabic Language, before he met with Qaeda operatives in Yemen to prepare to carry out his plot.
When asked if any of the Americans arrested had ties to terrorist activities, Mr. Crowley said he would not get into specific details.
Mr. Crowley declined to say whether any of the foreigners detained in Yemen had been taken into custody at the request of their governments.
Senior American officials have expressed growing alarm about the increasing number of Americans who are drawn to video and audio recordings that promote jihad, including lectures by the American-born cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen.
Scott Shane contributed reporting.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Junghwa Noh
Changes in China Could Raise Prices
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — The cost of doing business in China is going up.
Coastal factories are raising salaries, local governments are hiking minimum wage standards and if China allows its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate against the U.S. dollar later this year, as many economists are predicting, the cost of manufacturing in China will almost certainly rise.
Although the salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and Europe (the minimum wage in southern China is close to $125 a month), economists say the changes will eventually ripple through the global economy, driving up the prices of everything from T-shirts and sneakers to computer servers and smart phones.
“For a long time, China has been the anchor of global disinflation,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, referring to how the two decade-long shift to manufacturing in China helped many global companies lower costs and prices. “But this may be the beginning of the end of an era.”
The shift was dramatized Sunday, when Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturers and the maker of everything from the Apple iPhone to Dell computer parts, said that within three months it would double the salaries of many of its assembly line workers.
The announcement follows a spate of suicides at two Foxconn campuses in southern China and criticism of the company’s labor practices.
Taiwan-based Foxconn, which has more than 800,000 workers in China, said the salary increases are meant to improve the lives of its workers.
Last week, the Japanese auto maker Honda said it had agreed to give about 1,900 workers at one of its plants in southern China raises of between 24 percent and 32 percent in the hopes of ending a two week-long strike, according to people briefed on the agreement.
The changes are coming about because of the growing clout of workers in China’s sizzling economy, analysts say, and because soaring food and housing prices are eroding the spending power of migrant workers.
But there are other reasons. Analysts say Beijing is backing wage increases as a way to spur domestic consumption and make the country less dependent on low-priced exports. The government hopes the move will force some export-oriented companies to invest in more innovative or higher-value goods.
But Chinese policymakers also favor higher wages because they could help ease a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.
Last Thursday, the Beijing municipal government said it would raise its minimum wage 20 percent to about $140 a month; several other cities are preparing to implement similar increases.
Big manufacturers are moving to raise salaries because they are desperate to attract new workers at a time when many coastal factory cities are struggling with labor shortages.
A Foxconn executive said last week that the turnover rate at its two Shenzhen campuses — which employ over 400,000 — is about five percent a month, meaning that an astounding 20,000 workers are leaving every month and need to be replaced.
Marshall W. Meyer, a China specialist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says demographic changes in China are reducing the supply of young workers entering the labor force, and that’s behind some of the wage pressure.
“Demography will do what the Strategic & Economic Dialogue hasn’t: raise the cost of Chinese goods,” he said, referring to U.S.-China talks on Chinese currency reform and other economic issues. “There is no way out.”
Economists say many of the same forces that were at work in 2007 and 2008 — when China’s economy was overheating — have returned and even intensified this year.
Local governments have stepped up enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, driving up production costs.
And perhaps most troubling for companies here is the prospect of an appreciating Chinese currency, which would make their exports more expensive overseas.
Beijing has long promised to allow its currency to fluctuate more freely. But when the global financial crisis shuttered many Chinese factories, the government effectively re-pegged the renminbi to the dollar. That was a way to protect exporters.
Even though labor accounts for a small percentage of the final cost of many products, salary increases are expected to affect much of the supply chain and force companies to raise prices.
For many exporters, profit margins are already razor thin, and raising prices could hurt business.
“They’re going to have to find a way to pass this on to the end user,” says Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse.
Still, economists say a necessary restructuring is under way, one that should allow the nation’s huge “floating population” of migrant workers to better share in the benefits of growth and spur domestic consumption.
United States and European Union officials have been pressing China to help improve the health of the global economy by consuming more and reducing the country’s massive trade surpluses.
Rising labor costs here aren’t the end of cheap production in China, analysts say, but they are likely to help change the country’s manufacturing mix.
“China isn’t going to lose its manufacturing base because it’s got a huge domestic market,” said Mary Gallagher, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. “But it will move them toward higher-end goods. And that matches the Chinese government’s ambition. They don’t just want to be the workshop of the world. They want to produce high-tech goods.”
renminbi-Another name for the Chinese yuan.
desperate to- you want or need it very much indeed. A desperate situation is very difficult , serious, or dangerous.
fluctuate-If something fluctuates, it changes a lot in an irregular way.
Questions.
1. Is it helpful to international trade, if prices raise in china?
2. what is the best efficient way in china economy?
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — The cost of doing business in China is going up.
Coastal factories are raising salaries, local governments are hiking minimum wage standards and if China allows its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate against the U.S. dollar later this year, as many economists are predicting, the cost of manufacturing in China will almost certainly rise.
Although the salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and Europe (the minimum wage in southern China is close to $125 a month), economists say the changes will eventually ripple through the global economy, driving up the prices of everything from T-shirts and sneakers to computer servers and smart phones.
“For a long time, China has been the anchor of global disinflation,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, referring to how the two decade-long shift to manufacturing in China helped many global companies lower costs and prices. “But this may be the beginning of the end of an era.”
The shift was dramatized Sunday, when Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturers and the maker of everything from the Apple iPhone to Dell computer parts, said that within three months it would double the salaries of many of its assembly line workers.
The announcement follows a spate of suicides at two Foxconn campuses in southern China and criticism of the company’s labor practices.
Taiwan-based Foxconn, which has more than 800,000 workers in China, said the salary increases are meant to improve the lives of its workers.
Last week, the Japanese auto maker Honda said it had agreed to give about 1,900 workers at one of its plants in southern China raises of between 24 percent and 32 percent in the hopes of ending a two week-long strike, according to people briefed on the agreement.
The changes are coming about because of the growing clout of workers in China’s sizzling economy, analysts say, and because soaring food and housing prices are eroding the spending power of migrant workers.
But there are other reasons. Analysts say Beijing is backing wage increases as a way to spur domestic consumption and make the country less dependent on low-priced exports. The government hopes the move will force some export-oriented companies to invest in more innovative or higher-value goods.
But Chinese policymakers also favor higher wages because they could help ease a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.
Last Thursday, the Beijing municipal government said it would raise its minimum wage 20 percent to about $140 a month; several other cities are preparing to implement similar increases.
Big manufacturers are moving to raise salaries because they are desperate to attract new workers at a time when many coastal factory cities are struggling with labor shortages.
A Foxconn executive said last week that the turnover rate at its two Shenzhen campuses — which employ over 400,000 — is about five percent a month, meaning that an astounding 20,000 workers are leaving every month and need to be replaced.
Marshall W. Meyer, a China specialist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says demographic changes in China are reducing the supply of young workers entering the labor force, and that’s behind some of the wage pressure.
“Demography will do what the Strategic & Economic Dialogue hasn’t: raise the cost of Chinese goods,” he said, referring to U.S.-China talks on Chinese currency reform and other economic issues. “There is no way out.”
Economists say many of the same forces that were at work in 2007 and 2008 — when China’s economy was overheating — have returned and even intensified this year.
Local governments have stepped up enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, driving up production costs.
And perhaps most troubling for companies here is the prospect of an appreciating Chinese currency, which would make their exports more expensive overseas.
Beijing has long promised to allow its currency to fluctuate more freely. But when the global financial crisis shuttered many Chinese factories, the government effectively re-pegged the renminbi to the dollar. That was a way to protect exporters.
Even though labor accounts for a small percentage of the final cost of many products, salary increases are expected to affect much of the supply chain and force companies to raise prices.
For many exporters, profit margins are already razor thin, and raising prices could hurt business.
“They’re going to have to find a way to pass this on to the end user,” says Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse.
Still, economists say a necessary restructuring is under way, one that should allow the nation’s huge “floating population” of migrant workers to better share in the benefits of growth and spur domestic consumption.
United States and European Union officials have been pressing China to help improve the health of the global economy by consuming more and reducing the country’s massive trade surpluses.
Rising labor costs here aren’t the end of cheap production in China, analysts say, but they are likely to help change the country’s manufacturing mix.
“China isn’t going to lose its manufacturing base because it’s got a huge domestic market,” said Mary Gallagher, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. “But it will move them toward higher-end goods. And that matches the Chinese government’s ambition. They don’t just want to be the workshop of the world. They want to produce high-tech goods.”
renminbi-Another name for the Chinese yuan.
desperate to- you want or need it very much indeed. A desperate situation is very difficult , serious, or dangerous.
fluctuate-If something fluctuates, it changes a lot in an irregular way.
Questions.
1. Is it helpful to international trade, if prices raise in china?
2. what is the best efficient way in china economy?
Youn's
The New York Times June 6, 2010
Japanese Leader Tells Obama He’ll Work to Fulfill Base Pact
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Japan’s new prime minister, Naoto Kan, told President Obama on Sunday that he would work to fulfill an agreement to relocate an American air base, moving to get beyond a contentious issue that had confounded his predecessor.
Making his diplomatic debut with a phone call to the White House, Mr. Kan also reaffirmed that his nation’s security alliance with the United States remained the “cornerstone” of Japanese foreign policy, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry released few details of the 15-minute call, which it said Mr. Obama had requested.
Mr. Kan, who succeeded Yukio Hatoyama on Friday, has promised to focus on pocketbook issues in an attempt to re-energize his governing Democratic Party, which has lost popularity since its election victory last summer.
However, he also inherits difficult decisions on relocating the American base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa, a politically toxic issue that drove Mr. Hatoyama to resign after he gave in to the Obama administration’s demands that the base stay on the island.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Kan can better balance Washington’s demands with those of Okinawans, who have opposed the base. Mr. Kan must also appease national public opinion, which turned against Mr. Hatoyama for appearing indecisive and causing mistrust with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector.
Mr. Hatoyama stepped down a week after announcing an agreement with the Obama administration to move the base to a less populated part of Okinawa. In making the deal, he broke a prominent campaign pledge to move the base off the island.
Under the new agreement, Tokyo has until August to announce the details of the new air field’s construction. That means Mr. Kan will likely have to make tough choices early in his government because any new construction could face mass opposition on Okinawa.
Japanese Leader Tells Obama He’ll Work to Fulfill Base Pact
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Japan’s new prime minister, Naoto Kan, told President Obama on Sunday that he would work to fulfill an agreement to relocate an American air base, moving to get beyond a contentious issue that had confounded his predecessor.
Making his diplomatic debut with a phone call to the White House, Mr. Kan also reaffirmed that his nation’s security alliance with the United States remained the “cornerstone” of Japanese foreign policy, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry released few details of the 15-minute call, which it said Mr. Obama had requested.
Mr. Kan, who succeeded Yukio Hatoyama on Friday, has promised to focus on pocketbook issues in an attempt to re-energize his governing Democratic Party, which has lost popularity since its election victory last summer.
However, he also inherits difficult decisions on relocating the American base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa, a politically toxic issue that drove Mr. Hatoyama to resign after he gave in to the Obama administration’s demands that the base stay on the island.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Kan can better balance Washington’s demands with those of Okinawans, who have opposed the base. Mr. Kan must also appease national public opinion, which turned against Mr. Hatoyama for appearing indecisive and causing mistrust with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector.
Mr. Hatoyama stepped down a week after announcing an agreement with the Obama administration to move the base to a less populated part of Okinawa. In making the deal, he broke a prominent campaign pledge to move the base off the island.
Under the new agreement, Tokyo has until August to announce the details of the new air field’s construction. That means Mr. Kan will likely have to make tough choices early in his government because any new construction could face mass opposition on Okinawa.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
News
Gay rights in developing countries
A well-locked closet
Gays are under attack in poor countries—and not just because of “local culture”
May 27th 2010 From The Economist print edition
Militancy in Mauritius
THEIR crimes were “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts”. Their sentence was 14 years’ hard labour: one intended, said the judge, to scare others. He has succeeded. A court in Malawi last week horrified many with its treatment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple engaged to be married. The two men are the latest victims of a crackdown on gay rights in much of the developing world, particularly Africa.
Some 80 countries criminalise consensual homosexual sex. Over half rely on “sodomy” laws left over from British colonialism. But many are trying to make their laws even more repressive. Last year, Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, signed a law criminalising consensual gay sex, despite the Senate’s overwhelming rejection of the bill. A draconian bill proposed in Uganda would dole out jail sentences for failing to report gay people to the police and could impose the death penalty for gay sex if one of the participants is HIV-positive. In March Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who once described gay people as worse than dogs or pigs, ruled out constitutional changes outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In many former colonies, denouncing homosexuality as an “unAfrican” Western import has become an easy way for politicians to boost both their popularity and their nationalist credentials. But Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay-rights campaigner, says the real import into Africa is not homosexuality but politicised homophobia.
This has, he argues, coincided with an influx of conservative Christians, mainly from America, who are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed its horrid bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.
Discrimination against gays, in Africa in particular, risks undermining the fight against HIV/AIDS. In February, those suspected of being gay were targeted in Kenya in mob violence at a government health centre providing HIV/AIDS services. Bishop Joshua Banda, chairman of Zambia’s National AIDS Council, said that donor countries’ efforts to speak out against violations of gay rights were against Zambia’s “traditional values”. The increasing crackdown on gay rights in Africa will be a disaster for public health, according to Mr Epprecht, as gay people go underground and do not get treatment for HIV/AIDS.
The problem goes beyond Africa and is more than one of state-sponsored homophobia. In Iraq, for example, homosexuality is legal. But in 2009 Human Rights Watch described the persecution that men suspected of being gay there face, including kidnappings, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, there has been a growing fear of the “feminisation” of Iraqi men. The Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, has played on these fears and, claiming to uphold religious values and morality, offered violent “solutions”. Members of the Iraqi security forces have also been accused of colluding in the violence.
South Africa was the first country anywhere to ban homophobic discrimination in its constitution. It is the only country in Africa to allow gay marriage. In formal legal terms, it is a beacon for gay rights, says Mr Tatchell. But the growing phenomenon of “corrective rape” both there and in Zimbabwe, where women are assaulted in an attempt to “cure” them of lesbianism, suggests these laws often fail on the ground. As worrying to campaigners as the violence itself is a reluctance by the authorities to acknowledge that the attacks are motivated by homophobia. In April 2008 Eudy Simelane, a South African football player who was a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Two men were convicted of her murder but, in his sentencing, the judge denied that Ms Simelane’s sexuality played a part in the crime.
Hopes rose a little in June 2009 when India overturned its 149-year-old sodomy law but since then the global trend seems to have been in the opposite direction. Campaigners argue the proposed laws have implications beyond gay rights. How countries treat one particularly vulnerable group is a good measure of how they will act towards the rest of their citizens.
A well-locked closet
Gays are under attack in poor countries—and not just because of “local culture”
May 27th 2010 From The Economist print edition
Militancy in Mauritius
THEIR crimes were “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts”. Their sentence was 14 years’ hard labour: one intended, said the judge, to scare others. He has succeeded. A court in Malawi last week horrified many with its treatment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple engaged to be married. The two men are the latest victims of a crackdown on gay rights in much of the developing world, particularly Africa.
Some 80 countries criminalise consensual homosexual sex. Over half rely on “sodomy” laws left over from British colonialism. But many are trying to make their laws even more repressive. Last year, Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, signed a law criminalising consensual gay sex, despite the Senate’s overwhelming rejection of the bill. A draconian bill proposed in Uganda would dole out jail sentences for failing to report gay people to the police and could impose the death penalty for gay sex if one of the participants is HIV-positive. In March Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who once described gay people as worse than dogs or pigs, ruled out constitutional changes outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In many former colonies, denouncing homosexuality as an “unAfrican” Western import has become an easy way for politicians to boost both their popularity and their nationalist credentials. But Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay-rights campaigner, says the real import into Africa is not homosexuality but politicised homophobia.
This has, he argues, coincided with an influx of conservative Christians, mainly from America, who are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed its horrid bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.
Discrimination against gays, in Africa in particular, risks undermining the fight against HIV/AIDS. In February, those suspected of being gay were targeted in Kenya in mob violence at a government health centre providing HIV/AIDS services. Bishop Joshua Banda, chairman of Zambia’s National AIDS Council, said that donor countries’ efforts to speak out against violations of gay rights were against Zambia’s “traditional values”. The increasing crackdown on gay rights in Africa will be a disaster for public health, according to Mr Epprecht, as gay people go underground and do not get treatment for HIV/AIDS.
The problem goes beyond Africa and is more than one of state-sponsored homophobia. In Iraq, for example, homosexuality is legal. But in 2009 Human Rights Watch described the persecution that men suspected of being gay there face, including kidnappings, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, there has been a growing fear of the “feminisation” of Iraqi men. The Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, has played on these fears and, claiming to uphold religious values and morality, offered violent “solutions”. Members of the Iraqi security forces have also been accused of colluding in the violence.
South Africa was the first country anywhere to ban homophobic discrimination in its constitution. It is the only country in Africa to allow gay marriage. In formal legal terms, it is a beacon for gay rights, says Mr Tatchell. But the growing phenomenon of “corrective rape” both there and in Zimbabwe, where women are assaulted in an attempt to “cure” them of lesbianism, suggests these laws often fail on the ground. As worrying to campaigners as the violence itself is a reluctance by the authorities to acknowledge that the attacks are motivated by homophobia. In April 2008 Eudy Simelane, a South African football player who was a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Two men were convicted of her murder but, in his sentencing, the judge denied that Ms Simelane’s sexuality played a part in the crime.
Hopes rose a little in June 2009 when India overturned its 149-year-old sodomy law but since then the global trend seems to have been in the opposite direction. Campaigners argue the proposed laws have implications beyond gay rights. How countries treat one particularly vulnerable group is a good measure of how they will act towards the rest of their citizens.
America and Israel
Not quite as it was Support remains strong but is no longer unquestioning
Jun 3rd 2010 WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition
FROM Barack Obama’s point of view, the timing could not have been worse. The administration has been pushing hard in the Security Council for new sanctions against Iran and had invested heavily in the Israeli-Palestinian “proximity talks” brokered by Mr Obama’s special envoy, George Mitchell. Both of these efforts are now in jeopardy. Moreover, the Israeli raid came soon after Mr Obama had decided to rescue America’s relations with Israel from the ditch into which they fell in March, when Israel announced plans for a Jewish suburb in occupied East Jerusalem just as the proximity talks were about to begin.
During that confrontation Mr Obama asked Binyamin Netanyahu to freeze Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, an undertaking the Israeli prime minister refused to give. Mr Netanyahu received a frosty reception at the White House in March. But for one reason or another the Obama administration decided several weeks ago that it was time to make up. Mr Netanyahu was invited back and was supposed to drop by this week. After the raid he flew directly home to Israel from a visit to Canada.
Whatever the private thoughts of Mr Obama, America has refused to join the international outcry against its wayward ally. In New York American diplomats ensured that a special meeting of the UN Security Council did not condemn Israel and called only for an impartial investigation of the facts. In a telephone call with Turkey’s enraged prime minister, Mr Obama was cautious. He expressed his condolences and affirmed the need to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza—but, according to a White House summary of the conversation, “without undermining Israel’s security”.
As ever, domestic politics have played a part in shaping Mr Obama’s responses. Israel’s friends on Capitol Hill have pushed back hard since the March spat. A letter affirming the value of a close relationship with Israel was signed by 334 of the 435 members of the House, and a similar one by 76 of the 100 senators. Despite the emergence of J Street, a feisty and doveish pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has far more muscle and is not afraid to flex it.
Even in Congress, however, support for Israel is not rock solid, and is showing signs of change. Dan Senor, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted recently that there were “real divisions” among congressional Democrats over Israel, “and those divisions are widening and cementing in ways not seen in decades”. For most Republicans, on the other hand, supporting the Jewish state remains, literally, an article of faith.
With mid-term congressional elections due in November and the Democrats braced for a drubbing, this would be a tricky time for Mr Obama to pick a fresh fight with Israel. That may be why, since early May, the White House has been labouring to correct what Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, has described as the administration’s flawed “messaging”. A posse of senior officials have stressed that the ties to Israel are unbreakable.
That said, the influence of domestic politics can be exaggerated. Despite the pre-flotilla thaw, Mr Obama has made it abundantly clear in recent months that Israel can no longer take American support for granted. He seems genuinely to believe that the United States can and should bring about a two-state solution in Palestine. Mr Netanyahu says that is his aim too, but in his case there are strong reasons to doubt whether he is sincere. So long as both leaders remain in office, with their convictions unchanged, that will be a recipe for growing estrangement.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
UN to ban texting by drivers of its vehicles
(Form China Daily 2010-05-20)
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday he was banning all drivers of United Nations vehicles from texting while driving, to back efforts to curb a practice believed to kill thousands of people each year.
Ban made the announcement at a UN event where the United States and Russia issued what they called a "global call to end distracted driving."
Ban said he was issuing an "administrative instruction" to promote road safety that would include a prohibition on texting at the wheel. UN officials said the world body's legal department was studying the order and could not say what sanctions anyone caught sending text messages on cellphones or other hand-held devices while driving would receive.
The instruction potentially applies to all UN employees, of whom there are more than 70,000 worldwide.
"I want every driver in the world to get the message: texting while driving kills," the UN chief said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that in the United States alone, nearly 6,000 people died and more than half a million were injured in "distracted driving" crashes in 2008.
Some 32 countries have passed laws restricting the use of cellphones and other hand-held devices while driving.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said measures to combat the "epidemic" of distracted driving were being incorporated into an action plan being prepared by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies for a road safety decade due to run from 2011 to 2020.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday he was banning all drivers of United Nations vehicles from texting while driving, to back efforts to curb a practice believed to kill thousands of people each year.
Ban made the announcement at a UN event where the United States and Russia issued what they called a "global call to end distracted driving."
Ban said he was issuing an "administrative instruction" to promote road safety that would include a prohibition on texting at the wheel. UN officials said the world body's legal department was studying the order and could not say what sanctions anyone caught sending text messages on cellphones or other hand-held devices while driving would receive.
The instruction potentially applies to all UN employees, of whom there are more than 70,000 worldwide.
"I want every driver in the world to get the message: texting while driving kills," the UN chief said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that in the United States alone, nearly 6,000 people died and more than half a million were injured in "distracted driving" crashes in 2008.
Some 32 countries have passed laws restricting the use of cellphones and other hand-held devices while driving.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said measures to combat the "epidemic" of distracted driving were being incorporated into an action plan being prepared by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies for a road safety decade due to run from 2011 to 2020.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Lee Jeong Hyun
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/business/global/03foxconn.html?ref=asia
June 2, 2010
After Spate of Suicides, Technology Firm in China Raises Workers’ SalariesBy DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — Stung by labor shortages and a rash of suicides this year at its large factories in southern China, Foxconn Technology said Wednesday that it would immediately raise the salaries of many of its Chinese workers by 33 percent.
The pay increase is the latest indication that labor costs are rising in China’s coastal manufacturing centers and that workers are demanding higher pay to offset an increase in inflation and soaring food and property prices.
On Wednesday, Honda Motor said it had resolved a strike in southern China and resumed operations at a transmission plant there after agreeing to give 1,900 Chinese workers a 24 percent pay raise.
The Honda strike, which lasted more than two weeks, was a rare show of power by Chinese workers, who are not commonly allowed by the government to publicly strike and walk off the job for higher wages.
At Foxconn, the basic salary for an assembly line worker in Shenzhen is expected to rise from 900 renminbi ($132) a month to 1,200 renminbi ($176). The minimum monthly wage in Shenzhen is 900 renminbi, about 83 cents an hour.
The announcement comes just a week after Foxconn’s chairman, Terry Gou, visited its factories in the southern city of Shenzhen and promised to do everything possible to halt a spate of worker suicides and improve conditions at Foxconn, which is the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.
The police say 10 Foxconn workers have committed suicide this year in Shenzhen.
The company, which is based in Taiwan and employs more than 800,000 workers in China, has denied that the suicides were work-related or above the national average, saying instead that they were the result of social ills and personal problems of young, migrant workers. Foxconn said Wednesday that the decision to raise salaries was not a direct response to the suicides.
But Foxconn, which produces electronics and computer components for Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple, has come under growing scrutiny in recent years because of recurring reports of harsh labor conditions at its factories, including long working hours and claims by labor rights activists that the company treats workers like machines.
Apple, Dell and H.P. each said last week that they were concerned about the recent suicides and were investigating the situation at Foxconn.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said Tuesday during a technology conference in California that he was concerned about the deaths at Foxconn, but said that the factory was not a “sweatshop” and added that Apple was “over there trying to understand what is happening.”
Like most manufacturers in southern China, Foxconn is also struggling to hire thousands of workers at a time when the economy is booming and there is a shortage of unskilled migrant workers in many parts of coastal China.
Many migrant workers who typically move from inland provinces to coastal cities looking for factory work have complained that factory salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Many of them have decided to look for work closer to home.
Foxconn executives say the company’s factories in Shenzhen alone have hired more than 100,000 workers during the last year, and that labor rights groups have pressed the company to raise salaries.
“First, a pay raise will give our workers more leisure time,” said Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “Second, such a huge pay raise will attract more qualified workers.”
Southern China’s manufacturing centers have been struggling with labor shortages since about 2003, and many coastal cities have raised the minimum wage in recent years.
Indeed, to help offset inflation and rising food, energy and housing costs — and to spur domestic consumption among the lower classes — Beijing urged local governments early this year to raise the minimum wage in the regions.
Many cities responded by raising the minimum wage by about 10 to 15 percent, to about 750 to 1,100 renminbi.
To cope with labor shortages and hold down costs, many factories in southern China expect employees to work a considerable amount of overtime. And often half of an employee’s wages come from overtime pay.
As a result, Foxconn’s 33 percent increase in wages could translate into even higher labor costs. Mr. Huang at Foxconn said the company had not yet calculated its impact on profitability.
But Debby Chan, project officer at Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a labor rights group based in Hong Kong, said the wage increases were insufficient.
“We’re advocating the living wage, and we think the standard should be between 1,700 to 2,100 renminbi a month,” Ms. Chan said Wednesday. “And we also have other demands, like Foxconn should look into the problems of their management methodology.”
June 2, 2010
After Spate of Suicides, Technology Firm in China Raises Workers’ SalariesBy DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — Stung by labor shortages and a rash of suicides this year at its large factories in southern China, Foxconn Technology said Wednesday that it would immediately raise the salaries of many of its Chinese workers by 33 percent.
The pay increase is the latest indication that labor costs are rising in China’s coastal manufacturing centers and that workers are demanding higher pay to offset an increase in inflation and soaring food and property prices.
On Wednesday, Honda Motor said it had resolved a strike in southern China and resumed operations at a transmission plant there after agreeing to give 1,900 Chinese workers a 24 percent pay raise.
The Honda strike, which lasted more than two weeks, was a rare show of power by Chinese workers, who are not commonly allowed by the government to publicly strike and walk off the job for higher wages.
At Foxconn, the basic salary for an assembly line worker in Shenzhen is expected to rise from 900 renminbi ($132) a month to 1,200 renminbi ($176). The minimum monthly wage in Shenzhen is 900 renminbi, about 83 cents an hour.
The announcement comes just a week after Foxconn’s chairman, Terry Gou, visited its factories in the southern city of Shenzhen and promised to do everything possible to halt a spate of worker suicides and improve conditions at Foxconn, which is the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.
The police say 10 Foxconn workers have committed suicide this year in Shenzhen.
The company, which is based in Taiwan and employs more than 800,000 workers in China, has denied that the suicides were work-related or above the national average, saying instead that they were the result of social ills and personal problems of young, migrant workers. Foxconn said Wednesday that the decision to raise salaries was not a direct response to the suicides.
But Foxconn, which produces electronics and computer components for Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple, has come under growing scrutiny in recent years because of recurring reports of harsh labor conditions at its factories, including long working hours and claims by labor rights activists that the company treats workers like machines.
Apple, Dell and H.P. each said last week that they were concerned about the recent suicides and were investigating the situation at Foxconn.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said Tuesday during a technology conference in California that he was concerned about the deaths at Foxconn, but said that the factory was not a “sweatshop” and added that Apple was “over there trying to understand what is happening.”
Like most manufacturers in southern China, Foxconn is also struggling to hire thousands of workers at a time when the economy is booming and there is a shortage of unskilled migrant workers in many parts of coastal China.
Many migrant workers who typically move from inland provinces to coastal cities looking for factory work have complained that factory salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Many of them have decided to look for work closer to home.
Foxconn executives say the company’s factories in Shenzhen alone have hired more than 100,000 workers during the last year, and that labor rights groups have pressed the company to raise salaries.
“First, a pay raise will give our workers more leisure time,” said Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “Second, such a huge pay raise will attract more qualified workers.”
Southern China’s manufacturing centers have been struggling with labor shortages since about 2003, and many coastal cities have raised the minimum wage in recent years.
Indeed, to help offset inflation and rising food, energy and housing costs — and to spur domestic consumption among the lower classes — Beijing urged local governments early this year to raise the minimum wage in the regions.
Many cities responded by raising the minimum wage by about 10 to 15 percent, to about 750 to 1,100 renminbi.
To cope with labor shortages and hold down costs, many factories in southern China expect employees to work a considerable amount of overtime. And often half of an employee’s wages come from overtime pay.
As a result, Foxconn’s 33 percent increase in wages could translate into even higher labor costs. Mr. Huang at Foxconn said the company had not yet calculated its impact on profitability.
But Debby Chan, project officer at Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a labor rights group based in Hong Kong, said the wage increases were insufficient.
“We’re advocating the living wage, and we think the standard should be between 1,700 to 2,100 renminbi a month,” Ms. Chan said Wednesday. “And we also have other demands, like Foxconn should look into the problems of their management methodology.”
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