NEWS,25.02.2013

Obama: Time to start governing

US President Barack Obama warned warring politicians on Monday it was time to start governing as Washington headed into another manufactured crisis threatening the fragile economy. Obama told an annual meeting of state governors at the White House that huge budget cuts due to hit on 1 March would "slow our economy, eliminate good jobs" and leave Americans with "thinly stretched" budgets wondering what to do.The president is demanding that congressional Republicans stave off a set of arbitrary, automatic spending cuts known as the sequester by closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and corporations."We can't just cut our way to prosperity. Cutting alone is not an economic policy," Obama told Democratic and Republican governors in the State Dining Room of the White House.Many Republicans agree that the sequester, which imposes across the board cuts of $85bn this year from government programme, is a bad way to cut spending and reduce the deficit.But they argue that Obama is not serious about reining in spending and warn the president that his success in getting higher income tax rates on the rich late last year is the last time they will permit him to raise more revenue.Obama, who no longer has to worry about answering to voters, warned Washington had to "get past its obsession with focusing on the next election instead of the next generation”."All of us are concerned about our politics, both in our own party as well as the other party. But at some point we've got to do some governing."What we can't do is keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. "The American people have worked hard and long to dig themselves out of one crisis. They don't need us creating another one."

World powers have 'good offer' for Iran

World powers will present Iran with an updated and "good" offer at talks this week on its nuclear programme, an EU official said on Monday, although hopes for a breakthrough were slim. Talks aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear drive start in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, with the so-called 5+1 world powers represented by the EU sitting down with an Iranian team led by its top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili."We have prepared a good and updated offer for the talks, which we believe is balanced and a fair basis for constructive talks," said the spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton."The offer addresses international concerns... on the nature of the Iranian nuclear programme, but is also responsive to Iranian ideas," said the spokesperson, Michael Mann."We hope that Iran will seize this opportunity and come to the talks with flexibility and commitment to make concrete progress towards a confidence-building step."A source close to the negotiations said the offer would still insist that Iran halts enriching uranium to 20%, shuts down its controversial Fordo uranium enrichment plant and sends abroad all uranium already enriched to 20%."This still forms the basis of the demands of the 5+1 group," said the source who asked not to be identified.Reports have said that Iran could in return be offered a softening of sanctions imposed against it, possibly starting with a lifting of measures against its gold industry.However, Jalili said at the weekend that Tehran would not go beyond its obligations or accept anything outside its rights under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT)."We don't expect any breakthrough. The Iranians have made different declarations in the last days. It depends if you take the positive or the negative ones," said one Western official who asked not to be identified.The 5+1 world powers are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US.

China manufacturing growth falls

China's manufacturing growth hit a four-month low in February but remained positive, British banking giant HSBC said Monday, noting that the world's second-biggest economy was still recovering slowly.The bank's seasonally adjusted preliminary purchasing managers' index (PMI) stood at 50.4 for the month, down from a final 52.3 in January, it said in a statement.A reading above 50 indicates expansion and it was the fourth consecutive month of growth, after 12 months of contraction."The Chinese economy is still on track for a gradual recovery," Qu Hongbin, a Hong Kong-based economist with HSBC, said in the statement, downplaying the fall in PMI."The underlying strength of Chinese growth recovery remains intact, as indicated by the still expanding employment and the recent pick-up of credit growth," he added.Chinese banks more than doubled their lending in January from December, granting 1.07 trillion yuan ($171.7bn) worth of new loans, official data showed earlier this month, as Beijing seeks to boost economic growth.The domestic economy expanded at 7.8% last year, its slowest pace in 13 years, in the face of weakness at home and in key overseas markets.Policymakers cut interest rates twice in 2012 and have trimmed the amount of cash banks must place in reserve three times since December 2011 to encourage lending and pump up growth.The PMI figure, compiled by information services provider Markit and released by HSBC, tracks manufacturing activity and is a closely watched barometer of the health of China's economy.Liao Qun, a Hong Kong-based economist with Citic Bank International, said weaker manufacturing activity in February may have suggested the domestic rebound was unstable, but the overall recovery trend remained intact."The figure, after being seasonally adjusted, might indicate a weaker economic rebound in February due to the uncertainty in overseas economies and a lack of clarity in China's fiscal and monetary policies ahead of the two sessions," Liao said.The "two sessions" is a Chinese reference to the annual meetings of the country's top legislative and political advisory bodies in March, which will set the tone for the country's economic policies."Given the HSBC PMI index is just preliminary, we'll have to wait for the official PMI to gauge the momentum of China's growth recovery," Liao added. The official PMI, released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and the National Bureau of Statistics on a monthly basis, focuses more on large and medium companies, while the HSBC PMI covers mostly small firms.

China communists lament spoiled generation

The mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party on Monday lamented a generation who had never tasted "hard work" after the son of a general was detained on suspicion of involvement in a gang rape.Li Guanfeng, the teenage son of general Li Shuangjiang - a popular military singer and household name in the country - was held last Thursday in the latest allegation against privileged children of officials to spark public outrage.The news has dominated internet message boards, online news portals and state-run newspapers in China, where crimes by the offspring of the country's elite cause particular anger among ordinary people."Family education" among successful, well-known figures in China needs to be "cautious", said the People's Daily, the ruling party's official organ, in an editorial on the case."Many of these children have not experienced the hard work needed in the struggle to achieve success, but are shown the results of this success."Used to getting everything they want and having all their problems handled, they will use their father's name as an excuse, take flaunting wealth for granted and regard defying the law as brave behaviour."AssaultLi is among five suspects detained over allegations of a sexual assault on 17 February, the state-run China Daily said.The newspaper quoted an unnamed Beijing police source saying the group were accused of gang-raping a woman in a hotel room after a night of drinking.It is not the first time the 17-year-old has come to public attention.He was sent to a government correctional facility for one year in 2011 for beating a couple while their young child looked on. Domestic media reports said his parents changed his name from Li Tianyi to Li Guanfeng on his release.Hundreds of thousands of people went online to express their outrage at the time, and the general apologised for his son's actions.

Horsemeat found in Swedish meatballs

Czech authorities said on Monday they have detected horsemeat in meatballs labelled as beef and pork for Swedish furniture retailer giant Ikea, while EU officials met to discuss tougher food labelling rules to counter the developing scandal.The horsemeat was found in 1kg packs of frozen meatballs made in Sweden and shipped to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there, the State Veterinary Administration said. A total of 760kg of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.Ikea's furniture stores feature restaurants and also sell typical Swedish food, including the so-called Kottbullar meatballs.It was not immediately clear whether Ikea exported the same product to other countries. Calls seeking comment from Ikea in Sweden were not immediately returned on Monday.The Czech authority also found horsemeat in beef burgers imported from Poland during random tests of food products.Authorities across Europe have started doing random DNA checks after traces of horsemeat turned up in frozen supermarket meals such as burgers and lasagne beginning last month.The EU's agriculture ministers gathered in Brussels on Monday to discuss the widening scandal's fallout, with some member states pressing for tougher rules to regain consumer confidence.The 27-nation bloc must agree on binding origin disclosures for food product ingredients, starting with a better labelling of meat products, German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said."Consumers have every right to the greatest-possible transparency," she insisted.Austria backs the German initiative; but others like Ireland say existing rules are sufficient although Europe-wide controls must be strengthened to address the problem of fraudulent labelling.The scandal has created a split between nations like Britain who see further rules as a protectionist hindrance of free trade under the bloc's single market, and those calling for tougher regulation.Processed food products - a business segment with traditionally low margins that often leads producers to hunt for the cheapest suppliers - often contain ingredients from multiple suppliers in different countries, who themselves at time subcontract production to others, making it hard to monitor every link in the production chain.Standardised DNA checks with meat suppliers and more stringent labelling rules will add costs that producers will most likely hand down to consumers, making food more expensive.The startThe scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country's announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by British supermarket kingpin Tesco was more than a quarter horse.Such discoveries have spread like wildfire across Europe as governments, supermarkets, meat traders and processors began their own DNA testing of products labelled beef and have been forced to withdraw tens of millions of products from store shelves.More than a dozen nations have detected horse flesh in processed products such as factory-made burger patties, lasagnes, meat pies and meat-filled pastas. The investigations have been complicated by elaborate supply chains involving multiple cross-border middlemen.

Ikea pulls meatballs from 14 countries

Swedish furniture giant Ikea has withdrawn some of its company-branded meatballs in 14 European countries after horsemeat was found in the product by Czech authorities, the company said on Monday."We take this very seriously and have withdrawn one-kilo bags of frozen meatballs from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Ireland," in addition to Sweden, said company spokesperson Ylva Magnusson.

NEWS,28.07.2012

Olympics open with pageant for next generation

Queen Elizabeth declared the London Olympics open after playing a cameo role in a dizzying ceremony designed to highlight the grandeur and eccentricities of the nation that invented modern sport.Children's voices intertwining from the four corners of her United Kingdom ushered in an exuberant historical pageant of meadows, smokestacks and digital wizardry before an audience of 60,000 in the Olympic Stadium and a probable billion television viewers around the globe.Many of them gasped at the sight of the 86-year-old queen, marking her Diamond Jubilee this year, putting aside royal reserve in a video where she stepped onto a helicopter with James Bond actor Daniel Craig to be carried aloft from Buckingham Palace.A film clip showed doubles of her and Bond skydiving towards the stadium and, moments later, she made her entrance in person."In a sense, the Olympic Games are coming home tonight," IOC President Jacques Rogge told the crowd."This great, sports-loving country is widely recognised as the birthplace of modern sport."To underline the point, Bradley Wiggins, crowned five days earlier as Britain's first winner of the Tour de France and hoping to add more road cycling gold in London, tolled the world's largest tuned bell to begin the ceremony.In one moment of simple drama, the stadium fell silent as five giant, incandescent Olympic rings, symbolically forged from British steel mills, were lifted serenely out of the stadium by weather balloons, destined for the stratosphere.And at the climax of an evening that had children centre-stage, seven teenage athletes were given the honour of lighting the Olympic cauldron that will burn for the duration of the Games, in keeping with the theme of "Inspire a Generation".More than 10,000 athletes from 204 countries will compete in 26 sports over 17 days of competition in the only city to have staged the modern Games three times.Most of them were there for the traditional alphabetical parade of the national teams, not least the athletes from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen competing in their first Olympics since their peoples overthrew autocrats in Arab Spring revolutions.Brunei and Qatar were led in by their countries' first ever female Olympians and so, along with Saudi Arabia, ended their status as the only countries to exclude women from their teams.At a reception, the queen spelled out the role played by her family after the Olympics were revived in Athens in 1896."This will be the third London Olympiad. My great grandfather opened the 1908 Games at White City. My father opened the 1948 Games at Wembley Stadium. And, later this evening, I will take pleasure in declaring open the 2012 London Olympic Games at Stratford in the east of London," she said."Over recent months, many in these islands have watched with growing excitement the journey of the Olympic torch around the United Kingdom. As the torch has passed through villages and towns, it has drawn people together as families and communities."To me, this spirit of togetherness is a most important part of the Olympic ideal. And the British people can be proud of the part they have played in keeping the spirit alive."The opening show, costing an estimated 27 million pounds, was inspired by William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, his late-life meditation on age and mortality.But it was children who set the tone, starting from the moment when live pictures of junior choirs singing in the landscapes of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were beamed into the stadium's giant screens, four traditional songs woven together into a musical tapestry of Britain.Oscar-winning film director Danny Boyle began his sweep through British history by grassing over the arena in a depiction of the pastoral idyll mythologised by the romantic poet William Blake as "England's green and pleasant land".Idyll turned swiftly to inferno as the Industrial Revolution's "dark Satanic mills" burst from the ground, before those same mills forged the last of five giant Olympic rings that rose into the sky.At the end of a three-hour extravaganza, David Beckham, the English soccer icon who had helped convince the IOC to grant London the Games, stepped off a speedboat carrying the Olympic flame at the end of a torch relay that inspired many ordinary people around Britain.Past Olympic heroes including Muhammad Ali, who lit the cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and British rower Steve Redgrave, the only person to win gold at five successive games, welcomed the flame into the stadium.Yet it was not a celebrity but seven teenage athletes who lit a spectacular arrangement of over 200 copper 'petals' representing the participating countries, which rose up in the centre of the stadium to converge into a single cauldron.Moments later, a balloon-borne camera relayed live pictures of the earlier-released interlocked rings gliding through the stratosphere against the curved horizon of the planet below.The performance included surreal and often witty references to British achievements, especially in social reform and the arts, and ended with former Beatle Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude.Many sequences turned the entire stadium into a vast video screen made up of tens of thousands of "pixels" attached to the seats. One giant message, unveiled by Tim Berners-Lee, British inventor of the world wide web, read "This is for Everyone".Until the last few days, media coverage had been dominated by the security firm G4S's admission that it could not provide enough guards for Olympic venues. Thousands of extra soldiers had to be deployed at the last minute, despite the company's multi-million-dollar contract from the government.Suicide attacks that killed 52 people in London in July 2005, the day after it was awarded the Games, ensured that security would remain a worry. And this year the Games mark the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre, when 11 Israeli Olympic team members were killed by Palestinian militants.Although no medals will be awarded until Saturday, the women's soccer tournament started on Wednesday, and on Friday South Korean archers set the first world records of the Games.Im Dong-hyun, who suffers from severe myopia and just aims at "a blob of yellow colour", broke his own 72-arrow world record with a score of 699 out of a possible 720, leading his two colleagues to a record combined score as well.The Games' first medals will be decided in the women's 10 metres air rifle final on Saturday, with the big action coming in the men's cycling road race, where world champion Mark Cavendish is favourite to become Britain's first gold medallist.In the evening, Americans Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte are scheduled to line up for a classic confrontation in the men's 400 metres individual medley final.Phelps, competing in seven events after winning a record eight gold medals four years ago in Beijing, is bidding to become the first swimmer to win gold in the same discipline three times in a row."This is going to be a special race," said Gregg Troy, head coach of the American men's team. "I can't imagine a better way to promote our sport than a race like this on the first day."

 

Iran expands oil tanker insurance

Iran is expanding its insurance on its fleet of 47 oil tankers through a multi-billion-dollar line of credit as it seeks to get around EU sanctions crimping its crude exports, reports said on Saturday."Iran is ready to give total insurance for the transport of its oil... and the commitments by Iranian insurers are no different from those by Western insurers and therefore all risks and dangers are insured," Iran's Opec representative, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, was quoted as saying by the state-run newspaper Iran.The Fars news agency cited an "informed source" it did not identify as saying that the government had given the central state insurance agency, Bimeh Markazi, a line of credit worth several billion dollars to insure the tankers. It said 10% of the money had already been transferred.The measure, apparently aimed at any buyer of Iranian crude worldwide, expands on a promise of insurance for deliveries of its oil using Iranian tankers to major customers China and India. South Korea is also mulling joining the offer.Iran is suffering a cut in oil sales abroad of up to 40%, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), because of an EU embargo on Iranian crude imports and a related ban on European insurers providing cover for deliveries of Iranian oil anywhere in the world.European insurers accounted for 90% of coverage for Iran before the EU sanctions took effect on 1 July.Iran, which is striving to maintain a semblance of business as usual over its oil exports, is attempting to fill the insurance gap itself, but it faces several obstacles.US sanctions targeting Iranian financial transactions make it unclear how Iran could pay out any claims arising from accidents involving its tankers.Oil tankers are typically insured for up to $1bn because of the risk of oil spills.A European analyst in Tehran noted that the 40 tankers in Iran's fleet owned by the NITC, formerly known as the National Iranian Tanker Company, each had a long-distance capacity of up to two million barrels of oil.Iran, before the EU sanctions, exported around 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. The IEA estimates that has now been cut to around 1.5 million barrels per day.Several of the NITC vessels were being used in June to store Iranian offshore crude that Tehran has not been able to sell because of the sanctions, according to industry specialists.Iran has announced plans to quickly expand its onshore storage capacity, which has been saturated, including by subcontracting to private firms. Tehran has also ordered 12 new supertankers from China and should receive the first in December.

Pass tax proposal - Obama urges

US President Barack Obama urged Republicans in the House of Representatives on Saturday to pass his proposal calling for extending tax cuts for everybody but the richest Americans."Now it comes down to this," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "If 218 Members of the House vote the right way, 98% of American families and 97% of small business owners will have the certainty of knowing that their income taxes will not go up next year."On 1 January, a tax cut adopted under former president George W Bush and extended under Obama is set to expire. But Democrats and Republicans strongly disagree over how to extend it.While Obama favours higher taxes for the rich, Republicans argue it would undercut the nation's fragile economic recovery.This past week, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a tax cut extension for American families earning less than $250 000 a year, but Republicans in the House are staunchly opposed to this bill, arguing that all Americans, including the wealthy ones, should benefit from the extension.The president noted that he fundamentally disagreed with those who believed that the best way to create prosperity in America was to let it trickle down from the top."I know they're wrong because we already tried it that way for most of the last decade. It didn't work," Obama said."We're still paying for trillions of dollars in tax cuts that benefited the wealthiest Americans more than anyone else; tax cuts that didn't lead to the middle class jobs or higher wages we were promised and that helped take us from record surpluses to record deficits."The president said the country could not afford more of top-down economics. He said America needed policies that would grow and strengthen the middle class, help create jobs and make education and training more affordable.