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.

NEWS.09.02.2012.

Iran turns to barter for food as sanctions cripple imports

Cooling towers at a nuclear power plant northeast of downtown Tehran, Iran.

Iran is turning to barter - offering gold bullion in overseas vaults or tanker loads of oil - in return for food as new financial sanctions have hurt its ability to import basic staples for its 74 million people, commodities traders said. Difficulty paying for urgent import needs has contributed to sharp rises in the prices of basic foodstuffs, causing hardship for Iranians with just weeks to go before an election seen as a referendum on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic policies. New sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union to punish Iran for its nuclear programme do not bar firms from selling Iran food but they make it difficult to carry out the international financial transactions needed to pay for it. Surveys of commodities traders around the globe show that since the start of the year, Iran has had trouble securing imports of basic staples like rice, cooking oil, animal feed and tea. Grain ships have been held at its ports, refusing to unload until payment can be received for cargo. With Iran's real currency tumbling, the prices of rice, bread and meat in Iranian bazaars have doubled or more in dollar terms in recent months. Iranian grain importers have in the past side-stepped sanctions by booking business through the United Arab Emirates, traders said, but this option was cut off by the UAE government in response to sanctions. Iran has been trading oil in currencies like Japanese yen, South Korean won and Indian rupees, but such deals make it difficult to repatriate profits. Deals revealed on Thursday appear to be among the first in which Iran has had to result to offering cashless barter to avoid sanctions, a sign of new urgency as it seeks to buy food and get around the financial restrictions.” Grain deals are being paid for in gold bullion and barter deals are being offered," one European grains trader said, speaking on condition of anonymity while discussing commercial deals. "Some of the major trading houses are involved.” Another trader said: "As the shipments of grain are so large, barter or gold payments are the quickest option.” Details of how the barter deals work are still unclear as the payments problem is so new, and traders did not disclose the exact size of such deals. The economic hardship is being felt in Iran at a pivotal time in its domestic politics and its nuclear diplomacy with the West. The United States and Europe say the sanctions are needed to push Iran to the negotiating table before it produces enough nuclear material to build an atomic bomb. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful. Last month it began nuclear enrichment at a new facility deep under a mountain to make it secure from military strikes. Iranian officials deny that sanctions are having a serious economic impact, while also saying that their people are willing to endure any hardship in support of the country's sovereign right to nuclear technology. Officials in Israel, Iran's arch foe, openly say time is running out for air strikes to destroy the nuclear programme if sanctions do not persuade Tehran to back down. Iran’s parliamentary election on March 2 will be its first vote since a presidential vote in 2009, when Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election against a reformist opponent triggered eight months of violent street demonstrations. The Iranian government successfully put that uprising down by force, but since then the "Arab Spring" has revealed the vulnerability of authoritarian states in the region to popular anger fuelled by economic hardship.

Reformists are barely represented in next month's election, having been barred from standing or declaring boycotts. The vote will be hotly contested between Ahmadinejad's supporters and conservative opponents who blame him for economic disarray. Children of Iranian opposition leaders called on the international community to help their voices reach the rest of the world, opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi's website Kaleme reported on Wednesday. Reformists are planning a rally next week, which could be a rare test of whether the soaring food prices are increasing anger on the streets.The Feb. 14 rally would mark a year of house arrest for Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the candidates who opposed Ahmadinejad in 2009. It was announced on Mousavi's website, Kaleme. The effect of Iran's difficulty processing payments on often opaque international commodities markets can be felt directly on the streets in the form of higher prices and shortages. According to commodities traders in Asia, shipments of palm oil from both the top suppliers, Indonesia and Malaysia, have been halted to Iran because traders fear they cannot get paid. The two countries account for 90% of global supply of the oil, a staple ingredient for products from margarine to sweets.” I can confirm that Singaporean firms have stopped. We don't want to go anywhere near Iran at this moment, it is too risky," said a trader with a listed Singaporean firm that ships Indonesian palm oil cargoes to the Middle East and Iran. A trading source from Saudi Arabia whose firm runs a 16,000-tonne-a-year plant that refines food oil in Iran said the sector was barely operating. A margarine factory owner in Tehran told Reuters on Wednesday he expected to halt production within months because of a shortage of raw materials. The impact could be felt in a Tehran pastry shop.” We are going bankrupt and probably will be closed within weeks," said the owner on Thursday. "All my ingredients come from abroad. Either the prices suddenly doubled or they stopped being shipped. We are doomed.” While the United States and Europe lack the authority without the United Nations to ban dealings by other countries with Iran, their measures can raise the cost of doing business so much that it is no longer profitable for traders.” The objective of current and likely sanctions is very simple: to raise the cost of having anything to do with the purchase or shipping of Iranian petroleum to such an extent that even such potential partners who are formally beyond the legal jurisdiction of the United States or its allies will nonetheless shun doing business with Tehran," said J Peter Pham, with the Atlantic Council, a US think-tank. China, which bought a fifth of Iran's oil exports last year, has cut its imports this year in half, seeking a steeper discount which will hurt Iran's revenues.In public, companies and countries say they will still trade with Iran as long as it remains legal to do so.” Like all the international companies, we do business there, but you have to be very careful," Paul Conway, chairman of US agribusiness giant Cargill told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. Rahul Khullar, trade secretary of India, one of Iran's main trade partners, said: "If the EU and the US both want to stop exports to that country, please tell me why I should follow suit? Why shouldn't I take up that business opportunity?"Under US pressure, India shut down a payments system for trade with Iran last year. Under a new system, Indian firms are expected to pay for 45% of their Iranian oil imports in Indian rupees to avoid going through international banks. Implementing the system has been stalled while Indian authorities work out whether to subject such payments to tax.Traders revealed to Reuters this week that Iranian buyers had defaulted on payments for Indian rice. Khullar said there were also payment problems in tea, although he did not give details. Indian tea exports to Iran fell by a third last year.Azam Monem, director at McLeod Russel India, the world's largest tea producer, said exporters were waiting for a system to be set up so that Iranian buyers can pay in rupees.Reza Hosseini, a food wholesaler in Tehran, said: "The price per regular package of tea has doubled.... Since Iran is a big importer of tea, the sharp rise in price means that there is a problem with its import.” International shipping firms are cutting back business with Iran. Last year the United States blacklisted major Iranian port operator Tidewater Middle East Co, which operates seven terminals in Iran including Bandar Abbas, Iran's only container port connected to the world's big shipping lines.” I sense that many international shipping companies are challenged beyond what they find can be justified when looking at the potential earnings of trading with Iran," said Jakob Larsen, a maritime security officer with BIMCO, the world's largest private ship-owners' association.” Having said that, I think there are still some who are able to carry on their business in a way that does not breach sanctions and yet ensures a decent return on investment.” Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk said this week it had suspended new oil tanker deals with Iran due to the EU measures. German container shipping group Hapag-Lloyd said on Thursday it no longer offered limited services to Iran. It had already ended consignments last year to Tidewater-run ports. Iran faces a bigger challenge if US lawmakers pass sanctions on its main tanker group, the privately run National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) with a fleet of 40 tankers, or on the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company.” The measure ... would amount to de facto oil and shipping embargos," the Atlantic Council's Pham said. "The mere taint would also have a net negative effect on Iran, driving those fearful of the reach of sanctions to decide not to go through with transactions while giving Iran's remaining partners - one thinks, for example, of Chinese firms - the leverage to drive the price they pay down."