NEWS,21.07.2013

OECD publishes plan to cut tax evasion

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) unveiled new plans to tackle tax evasion by improving the way tax authorities share information about individuals and entities like trusts.
Countries are increasingly moving to a standard of sharing information on taxpayers even in the absence of any specific request.
This is more likely to flag up inappropriate behaviour than the longer established practice of one tax authority starting an investigation into suspicions of wrongdoing, and then making a request for data.
The European Union has estimated hundreds of billions of euros are lost each year to tax evasion. The stashing of undeclared earnings in accounts in offshore jurisdictions has long been a favoured method for hiding cash from one's home tax authority, aided by the veil of secrecy.
The OECD, which advises its mainly rich nation members on economic and tax policy, issued an updated standard for the automatic exchange of information at the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance ministers on Saturday.
The OECD has proposed a detailed description of the kinds of information that would be exchanged and proposals for common legal and technological standards to facilitate the flow of information.
The OECD hopes to have a new draft agreement ready for countries to sign in late 2013.
The shift to an international standard on automatic sharing of information has been accelerated by the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) which forces banks outside the United States to give Washington details of foreign accounts held by US citizens.
Countries like Bermuda, often labelled a tax haven by Western lawmakers, said that once they agreed to share information with the United States, other large countries pressured them for a similar deal.

China frees up lending rates

China's central bank removed controls on bank lending rates, effective on Saturday, in a long-awaited move that signals the new leadership's determination to carry out market-oriented reforms.
The move gives commercial banks the freedom to compete for borrowers, a reform the People's Bank of China said on Friday will help lower financial costs for companies. Previously, the lending floor was 70% of the benchmark lending rate.
However, the PBOC, in a statement, left a ceiling on deposit rates unchanged at 110% of benchmark rates, avoiding for now what many economists see as the most important step Beijing needs to take to free up interest rates.
The latest step underscores Beijing's resolve to start fixing distortions in its financial system and the economy more broadly as it tries to shift from export- and investment-led growth to more consumption-led activity.
Some analysts said cheaper credit could help support the economy, which has seen year-on-year growth fall in nine of the last 10 quarters.
"This is a big breakthrough in financial reforms," said Wang Jun, senior economist at China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a prominent government think-tank in Beijing.
"Previously, people had thought the central bank would only gradually lower the floor on lending rates. Now they scrapped the floor once and for all."
The Australian dollar rose modestly on the news on hopes cheaper credit will lead to more demand from Australia's biggest export market.
The announcement provided some support to weak stock markets in Europe and a timely reminder to the world's top financial leaders meeting in Moscow of China's intention to rebalance its economy.
A Group of 20 draft communique will urge China to encourage more domestic demand-driven growth as part of wider efforts to rebalance the world economy, G20 sources said.
The United States welcomed the move, saying China promised to let markets play a bigger role in allocating credit during the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington last week.
"This is a welcome further step in the reform and liberalisation of China's financial system," Holly Shulman, a spokesperson for the US Treasury, said in an email.
Signal of resolve
China's big lenders, such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China , China Construction Bank, Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China have generally resisted interest rate reforms because they do not want to see their rate margins get squeezed.
But many economists say such a push is necessary so that lenders learn to better price risk, which will force them to allocate capital more efficiently and so help rebalance an economy saddled with overinvestment and overcapacity in sectors from cement to steel making to solar panels.
Scrapping the lending floor will likely cut borrowing costs for businesses and individuals, ending what many observers say had been artificially high rates that benefited state lenders at the expense of private enterprise.
Some economists were sceptical at how much direct economic impact the move would have because few banks have fully utilised the limited freedom they already had to charge interest rates slightly below benchmark rates, choosing instead to keep their rates slightly above the floor that has been in place.
"So the move may have more of a signalling effect than transmit immediately to the economy but it is an important signalling effect," said Manik Narain, emerging market strategist at UBS in London.
However, to the extent that it does lead banks to lower their lending rates, the move could serve to stimulate investment at a time when the world's second-largest economy is running around its lowest growth rates since 2009, having logged 7.5 percent growth in the second quarter.
More important, though, is the sign that policymakers are getting serious about tackling challenging reforms, just four months after Premier Li Keqiang took office, analysts said.
"This is one of the biggest steps they could have taken," said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics. "It tells you something about the trajectory."
The need for financial reforms was put on full display in late June, when the central bank attempted to choke off funds flowing to "shadow banking" activities, leading to a crunch in the country's money markets that sent short-term borrowing rates to levels normally seen only during financial crises, prompting jitters among investors around the world.
The shadow banking sector, or non-bank lending, has ballooned in recent years, raising concerns that authorities are losing track of potential bad debts building in the economy.
Long path ahead
The central bank said it is also scrapping controls on rates on discounted bills, a common form of payment among companies.
The PBOC made clear in its statement it does not intend to ease up on its controls over mortgage rates. Beijing has been clamping down on the property sector for several years to try to keep a lid on rising prices and speculative buying.
It said it planned to free up deposit rates eventually but now was not the right time. It said it still needed to do more groundwork, which is expected to include launching a deposit insurance system, something many observers expect may happen this year.
"(Reform of deposit rates) is more difficult and more sensitive. We should not expect it to happen very soon," said Yu Yongding, former member of the central bank's monetary policy committee and a researcher at the Chinese Academy Of Social Sciences in Beijing.
Beijing worries that allowing banks to raise deposit rates to compete for funds could crush some smaller lenders and force them to go bust.
Longer term, the latest move could signal that the government will step up other reforms seen as necessary to help rebalance the economy.
"This underlines that China is moving to a fully convertible currency and floating exchange rates," said Flemming Nielsen, senior analyst at Danske Bank in Copenhagen. "Their next step will be to widen the daily trading band for RMB (yuan). They should do that within the next three months."

Israel to free Palestinian prisoners

Israel announced on Saturday it will release some Palestinian prisoners as a "gesture", after the two sides agreed to lay the groundwork to resume peace negotiations frozen for three years.

Some of those to be freed have been in prison for decades, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said.

His announcement came hours after US Secretary of State John Kerry said Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had agreed to meet to pave the way for a resumption of direct peace talks.

The last round of direct talks broke down in 2010 over the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Speaking on privately owned Channel 2, Israeli Justice Minister and chief peace negotiator Tzipi Livni noted that while there were no preconditions to talks, "everything will be on the table", including the 1967 borders and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital.

Steinitz said his government would engage in the staggered release of a "limited number" of prisoners, some of whom he defined as "heavyweights", who have been in jail for up to 30 years.

4 713 imprisoned

"There will definitely be a certain gesture here", he said, without noting how many prisoners were to be freed.

According to Israeli rights group B'Tselem, at least 4 713 Palestinians are imprisoned in the Jewish state.

Their release is one of the Palestinians' key demands for resuming peace talks, particularly the 107 prisoners arrested prior to 1993, when the Oslo peace accords were signed.

An Israeli official said no prisoners would be released before direct talks begin, and the process would then be dependent on the Palestinians proving they are "really serious and not playing games".

"It won't happen tomorrow and not next week," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. He could also give no indication of the number of prisoners involved.

He said the releases, once they begin, would take place in stages and include "pre-Oslo prisoners, prisoners set to be released anyway, and those the Palestinians 'forgot' during the Oslo accords".

Commitment

Steinitz said Israel would not compromise "diplomatic issues", and that there was no agreement on a settlement construction freeze or on accepting the borders that existed prior to 1967 Six-Day war as the basis for talks, as the Palestinians demand.

He said the Palestinians had committed to "negotiate seriously" for "at least nine months", during time which they would refrain from taking action at the United Nations and other international institutions.

Kerry gave away very little detail of the agreement, which came after four days of consultations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, saying both sides had reached "an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming direct final status negotiations".

"This is a significant and welcome step forward," he added, having doggedly pushed the two sides to agree to resume talks in six intense trips to the region since becoming secretary of state in February.

A State Department official said Kerry had wrenched a commitment from both sides "on the core elements that will allow direct talks to begin".

The Israelis and Palestinians remain far apart on final status issues including the borders of a future Palestinian state, the right of return of Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem.

'Ball in Israel's court'

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has also repeatedly called for a freeze to Israeli settlement building and a prisoner release.

"The ball is now in Israel's court," a Palestinian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Kerry has proposed the bases for a resumption of negotiations and asked [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to respond favourably to one of them.

"The bases are the release of Palestinians jailed before the Oslo accords, minors, the sick or the elderly," he said. "And that Israel recognise the 1967 border lines as a reference point, or a halt to settlement building."

The official said Netanyahu had agreed to hold a special cabinet session to draw up Israel's response to Kerry's proposals.

The Islamist Hamas movement which runs the Gaza Strip rejected a return to talks, saying Abbas had no legitimate right to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people.

And the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine warned that "a return to talks outside the framework of the United Nations and its resolutions would be political suicide".

Venezuela ends rapprochement with US

Venezuela says it has "ended" its rapprochement with the United States due to a statement by Samantha Power, nominated to become the US envoy to the United Nations.
Power said at a US Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that if she got the job she would stand up to "repressive regimes" and challenge the "crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela."
Washington and Caracas have not exchanged ambassadors since 2010 even though Venezuela exports 900 000 barrels of oil to the US per day.
"The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela hereby ends the process ... of finally normalising our diplomatic relations" that began in early June, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Venezuela is opposed to the "interventionist agenda" presented by Power and noted that her "disrespectful opinions" were later endorsed by the State Department, "contradicting in tone and in content" earlier statements by Secretary of State John Kerry.
Kerry and his Venezuelan counterpart, Elias Jaua, agreed on the sidelines of an Organisation of American States meeting in Guatemala in June that officials would "soon" meet for talks that could lead to an exchange of ambassadors.

NEWS,14.07.2013

Kenya raises price of petrol, diesel

Kenya's energy regulator raised retail prices for petrol and diesel on Sunday due to rising global oil prices and a weaker local currency, while decreasing the price of kerosene.

Fuel prices have a big impact on the rate of inflation in the east African economy. The rate rose to 4.91% in June from 4.05% a month earlier.

The economy heavily depends on diesel for transport, power generation and agriculture. Kerosene is used in many households for lighting and cooking.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) reviews domestic energy prices every month, with adjustments made depending on fluctuations in international energy prices and foreign exchange fluctuations.

The cost of importing super petrol and diesel in June rose, while that of kerosene fell, while at the same time the Kenyan shilling weakened to 85.65 per dollar from 84.30 per dollar in the previous month the ERC said in a statement.

The regulator raised the maximum price of a litre of super petrol in Nairobi by 1.34 shillings to 109.52 shillings, and increased the price of diesel by 3.70 shillings to 102.86 shillings per litre.

The price of kerosene will fall by 2.03 shillings to 79.49 shillings, the commission said.

The new prices will take effect on July 15, and will be in force for a month.

Hollande rules out shale gas exploration

French President Francois Hollande ruled out exploration for shale gas during his presidency on Sunday, dousing hopes that a ban on hydraulic fracturing could be reviewed following a legal challenge by a US firm.
France's top court said this week it will examine the challenge to the ban by Schuepbach Energy, which held two exploration permits that were cancelled when the law was passed in 2011.
Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg stirred debate when he suggested creating a state-backed company to examine exploration techniques. But he was promptly overruled by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
"As long as I am president, there will be no exploration for shale gas in France," Hollande told France 2 TV in a live interview after Bastille Day celebrations.
The International Energy Agency has named France as a European country with some of the most plentiful underground reserves of shale gas.
But Hollande's government, which comprises members of the Greens Party, has kept in place the 2011 ban and said it should remain in effect due to concerns that hydraulic fracturing can pollute underground water sources.
Scheupbach Energy challenged the ban in the local court of Cergy-Pontoise near Paris, which forwarded the case to France's highest administrative court, which then passed it on to the Constitutional Council.
"The debate on shale gas has gone on for too long," Hollande said.

EU to probe German energy law - report

The European Union plans an investigation into Germany's renewable energy law due to concerns that exemptions for some firms from charges levied on power users breaches competition rules, a German magazine reported on Sunday.
Without citing sources, Der Spiegel weekly said lawyers in Brussels had looked at the law which provides a framework for Germany's push to renewable energy, and that Commissioner Joaquin Almunia had concluded it may breach EU rules.
The Commission would open proceedings on Wednesday, it said.
The officials criticised exemptions made for energy intensive companies in Germany, reported the magazine, adding this may lead to companies having to pay millions of euros in back payments.
A spokesman for the Commission declined to comment on the report.
The EU said in March it would investigating power grid charge exemptions which have been granted to big steel, chemicals, glass, cement and building materials companies.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has set out ambitious goals for Germany to wean itself off fossil fuels, phase out nuclear power and switch to renewable energy sources but it is costly.
Households are paying for subsidies to renewable energy producers and have been hit by sharp increases in the last few years. Yet fears that German industry will become uncompetitive if it has to pay too much for energy has led to exemptions from these charges for many firms.
The debate about the cost of the energy transition and energy prices could become an issue in the September election.
Merkel has said she intends to rein in renewable subsidies and reduce the costs of the green revolution on consumers if she is re-elected in September.

Wind of austerity chills turbine industry

Wearing face masks and wielding sanders, two workers smooth the surface of a massive fan for a wind turbine at the Gamesa factory in Aoiz, a town in Navarre, northern Spain.
But in hard times, it will be winds in Finland, not Spain, that make the finished product spin.
Last year, the plant delivered a wind turbine park to Malaga in southern Spain and another to Burgos, in the north, said factory manager Javier Trapiella.
"Now we don't produce for Spain," he added.
"It has all stopped."
For green energy producers, Spain has changed from a paradise with generous public support to a markedly less agreeable home.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government is imposing an austerity regime to plug an accumulated energy sector deficit of €26bn ($34bn).
On Friday, the horizon darkened further with the approval of reforms cutting annual state aid for renewable energies by more than €1bn.
The change is enough to place at risk huge strides in the Spanish wind energy industry.
Spain ranks as number four globally in terms of installed wind energy but has dropped to seventh place in terms of new projects, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
"For Spain, wind energy has really been an energy revolution. In 20 years we have gone from producing zero kilowatts to producing 20% of national demand today," said Heikki Willstedt Mesa, director of energy policy at the Spanish Wind Energy Association.
In the fourth largest economy of the eurozone, wind is often the main source of electricity.
"Unfortunately, since 2009 the government has slowed the development of wind energy in Spain with various regulatory measures," he said.
Cuts in state aid of 35%, removing subsidies for new turbines since the start of 2013, and then the latest changes announced on Friday: the sector has been hit hard and manufacturers are the first to feel the pain.
In February, French group Alstom closed two factories in Spain and laid off 373 employees.
"The economic crisis and the absence of a stable regulatory framework have slowed domestic demand," the group said, stressing the lack of activity in its Spanish sites.
Spain's Gamesa, which is among the industry's world leaders, gave the same reasons as it laid off 606 of its 4,800 staff in Spain and closed two blade factories in recent months.
Gamesa notably pointed to the "regulatory uncertainty" , the persistent economic crisis and financial problems in the sector, especially in southern Europe.
Making a wind turbine is almost a work of craftsmanship, said Gamesa's Trapiella. "You need good hands," he said. The fibreglass and carbon fibre blades measure 62.5 metres (205 feet) and weigh 15 tonnes each.
When finished they will leave by truck overnight for the port of Bilbao to be shipped by sea to Finland. About 40 blades are scheduled for delivery by February.
"If 90% of our sales were in Spain 10 years ago, it is the exact opposite today with 90% of sales coming from abroad," said Jose Antonio Cortajarena, Gamesa's corporate managing director.
"We are in more than 50 countries," he said, citing Mexico, Brazil and India as key markets.
"Even if our corporate headquarters are in Spain, the risk, our dependance on the Spanish market, is limited."
The Spanish Wind Energy Association is not so reassured.
"We have destroyed 25 jobs a day in the wind energy sector since the start of the year and the industry is on the borderline, it cannot take any more cuts," it said.
The industry has already suffered heavily.
"Of the 43 000 jobs we had in the wind industry in 2009, there are only 23 000 left, said Sergio de Otto, secretary general of the business group Fundacion Renovables (Renewables Foundation).

Snowden could cause 'more damage'

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday marked three weeks stuck in an airport transit lounge since he arrived in Russia, as a supporter warned the fugitive possessed even more secrets that could damage the US government.

Snowden, wanted by the United States for revealing sensational details of its surveillance operations, flew into Russia from Hong Kong on 23 June and has languished ever since in the transit zone in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

Breaking cover for the first time since he arrived, Snowden told a group of activists on Friday that he was applying for asylum in Russia until he could travel on to Latin America.

But Russian officials have yet to confirm receiving such an application which, if approved, would risk further straining Russia's already tense relations with the United States.

Meanwhile, the journalist first who published Snowden's revelations based on the sweeping US surveillance programmes said he possesses data that could prove far more "damaging" to the US government.

Glenn Greenwald told Argentina's La Nacion paper that Snowden, aged 30, had chosen not to release this information.

Damaging information

Russian President Vladimir Putin had said last week that Snowden could claim asylum in Russia only if he stopped harming US interests, a remark that prompted the fugitive to withdraw a previous application for asylum in Russia.

"Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States," Greenwald told the paper.

"But that's not his goal," said Greenwald.

Russia was still waiting on Sunday for the promised request for asylum from Snowden, who had said that application would be made on Friday. It was not clear whether the hold-up was simply due to the weekend.

The head of Russia's Federal Migration Service (FMS) Konstantin Romodanovsky said on Saturday that "there is for the moment no application from E Snowden". If one was made, it would be examined "according to normal legal procedures", he added.

"For the moment, we do not know anything" about an asylum application, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency.

Human rights in the transit lounge

The United States wants the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor returned to them to face trial over the leaks. Moscow has so far rejected that demand, saying it has no extradition treaty with Washington.

Washington has reacted sharply to the possibility that Moscow might offer Snowden a safe harbour.

"We would urge the Russian government to afford human rights organisations the ability to do their work in Russia throughout Russia, not just at the Moscow transit lounge," White House spokesperson Jay Carney said.

"Providing a propaganda platform for Mr Snowden runs counter to the Russian government's previous declarations of Russia's neutrality," he added.

US President Barack Obama spoke to Putin by telephone on Friday on issues including the Snowden affair, the Kremlin and White House both said, but no further details were forthcoming.

The United States has already rebuked China for allowing Snowden to leave for Russia from Hong Kong.

Asylum offers from the left

At his meeting with activists, Snowden vowed he did not want to harm the United States but it was not clear however whether this meant he was prepared to stop leaking intelligence in order to stay in Russia.

The leftist governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have all offered Snowden asylum, but Snowden said that Western governments would prevent him from travelling to the region.

A summit of the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc issued a statement on Friday reaffirming the right to asylum and rejecting "any attempt at pressure, harassment or criminalisation by a state or third parties".

The bloc, meeting in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, denounced four European countries that denied airspace to a plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales back from Moscow earlier this month.

They apparently suspected that Snowden was on board.

Mercosur leaders said they would recall their ambassadors from Spain, France, Italy and Portugal for consultations in protest at the incident.

In a statement, they rejected "any attempt at pressure, harassment or criminalisation by a state or third parties" in response to a decision to grant asylum.

Flight attendants praised for heroism

Before Asiana Flight 214 crash-landed in San Francisco, the last time the Korean airlines' flight attendants made news it was over an effort by their union earlier this year to get the dress code updated so female attendants could wear trousers.

Now, with half of the 12-person cabin crew having suffered injuries in the accident and the remaining attendants receiving praise for displaying heroism during the emergency evacuation, the focus has shifted from their uniform looks to their heroic actions.
In the 6 July crash three members of the crew were ejected from the planes sheared off tail section while still strapped in their seats. Those who were able, meanwhile, oversaw the emergency evacuation of nearly 300 passengers using knives to slash seatbelts, slinging axes to free two colleagues trapped by malfunctioning slides, fighting flames and bringing out frightened children.
'Muscle memory'
"I wasn't really thinking, but my body started carrying out the steps needed for an evacuation," head attendant Lee Yoon-hye, 40, said during a news conference on Sunday night before federal safety investigators instructed the airlines not to let the crew discuss the accident.
"I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger."
Such conduct has given a measure of pride to members of a profession who often are recognised only for their appearance and customer service skills.
"In the face of tremendous adversity and obstacles, they did their job and evacuated an entire wide-bodied aircraft in a very short period of time," said Veda Shook, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants and an Alaska Airlines flight attendant.
"It's such a shining reflection, not just of the crew, but of the importance of flight attendants in their roles as first responders," Shook said.
Along with training in first aid and firefighting, flight attendants every year are required to practice the moves needed to get passengers off a plane in 90 seconds or less, Shook said.
They go through timed trials, practicing skills that include shouting over pandemonium and engine noise, communicating with people frozen in fear and opening jammed doors and windows, she said. The goal is to make performing these tasks automatic.
"We have the muscle memory," Shook said.
It's a significant departure from the days when flight attendants were always women and known as stewardesses or air hostesses. In that era decades ago, members of the cabin crew weren't expected to play much of a role in emergencies.
Laura Brentlinger, who spent 31 years as a United Airlines flight attendant, recalled having no idea how much danger everyone was in during one of her first emergency landings in 1972. She didn't realise the severity of the situation until it was over and she saw the pilot's face.
"In those days, it was like pat you on the head, just go back and keep the people nice and smile. That's how far we've come, thank the Lord," Brentlinger said. "We were just little Barbie dolls back there."
Roles expanded
The role of flight attendants in the US expanded significantly in 1989 after Air Ontario Flight 1363 crashed after taking off in Canada. An investigation revealed that a flight attendant had seen ice on a wing but did not speak up, assuming the pilots knew and would not welcome the information from her.
Since then, FAA rules have required that cabin crew members be incorporated into the communications system known as "crew resource management" that empowers all airline personnel to voice concerns to the cockpit even if it means challenging senior pilots.
The philosophy also authorises flight attendants to order emergency evacuations.
Hearing that the pilots of Asiana Flight 214 told the flight attendants to delay an evacuation for 90 seconds after the crash landing in San Francisco, giving the order only after a flight attendant spotted flames outside, made Brentlinger wonder whether Asiana Airline's attendants have the same authority.
"I'm sure they have a very different hierarchy and can't do anything without the pilot's permission," she said. "There is no doubt in my mind I would have evacuated that aircraft immediately."
'After the dust settles'
Brentlinger said her heart aches when she thinks about what Asiana's flight attendants are going through now and are likely to go through in the months to come.
She was aboard a 747 that lost a cargo door at 6 600 metres, sucking nine passengers to their deaths over the Pacific Ocean in 1989.
After the disaster aboard United Flight 811, Brentlinger said she suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to get back on a plane for more than four years.
Handling the emergency itself was "the easiest part of the whole process... because you train for it and you just do it", she said.
She went on to say that "after the dust settles, so to speak" and one tries to get on with life, "it's horrific, at least it was for me".
The Flight 214 cabin crew consisted of 11 women and one man, ranging in age from 21 to 42, according to the airline.
Spokesperson Lee Hyomin said Asiana is not sharing information on emergency training hours of its flight attendants because the National Transportation Safety Board asked it not to share any information related to the accident while it's being investigated.
Rigorous training
Jean Carmela Lim, 32, a Sydney-based travel consultant, spent a year working as an Asiana flight attendant eight years ago and posted pictures from her experience on her travel blog, Holy Smithereens, this week. She recalls her weeks-long safety training as rigorous.
"We needed to be able to swim while dragging another human - dead weight - in one hand, and hoist ourselves and the dead weight onto the safety raft," Lim said.
The appearance standards were almost as demanding. Lim, who was 23 when she applied for the job, initially was told she was too old. During the interview, she was required to wear a short skirt without stockings.
Flight attendant school included sessions on hair, makeup and comportment. During flights, the cabin manager inspected the attendants to make sure they were wearing the right colour of nail polish and had their aprons properly ironed.
Lim said that appearance is important, but seeing pictures of Flight 214's attendants outside the burned-out aircraft in skirts made her hope their union prevails on the pants issue.
"If there's evidence that wearing a skirt will enable you to save more lives than wearing pants, then by all means keep them in skirts," she said. "If I'm trapped in a burning aircraft , I doubt I'll notice if the cabin crew saving me had lipstick on her teeth or had a tuft of hair out of place."

NEWS,10.07.2013

Surge in growth for online mobile ads

Global spending on mobile internet ads surged 82.8% to $8.9bn in 2012, an industry survey showed this week.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) said the figures highlight "a strong positive growth story taking place across mobile advertising formats".
"Mobile is coming into its own as a powerhouse advertising medium," the IAB's Anna Bager said.
"The massive and continuing acceleration of mobile's international impact provides new and exciting frontiers for content and communication."
More than half of spending was for search ads, or paid ads linked to web search queries; display ads accounted for 38.7% and messaging ads 8.5%, the IAB said.
The survey said the Asia-Pacific region accounted for some 40.2% of revenues, compared to 39.8% for North America and 16.9% for Western Europe,
A key factor for mobile advertising growth is the adoption of advanced fourth-generation mobile networks, which encourage people to spend more time using the internet on mobile devices.
A separate report last month by the research firm eMarketer said Google captured more than half of the mobile Internet advertising revenues worldwide last year and is expected to boost its share in 2013, and that Facebook's share is growing rapidly

Pentagon - WikiLeaks a journalistic site

The US military viewed anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks as a news gathering operation before Private First Class Bradley Manning leaked a trove of classified files to it, a Harvard professor testified at Manning's court-martial on Wednesday.
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard University law professor and expert on media law, testified for the defence that a 2008 Defence Department report on WikiLeaks had said that a US enemy could theoretically use the site to gather information.
But the Pentagon report, which had been based on publicly available material, said there was no sign that that had happened, said Benkler, the co-director of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society.
The Pentagon report came out before Manning, 25, is alleged to have leaked more than 700 000 classified files, combat videos and State Department cables while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.
Benkler is the 10th witness called by chief defence lawyer David Coombs since he started his case on Monday. Coombs has not divulged a customary list of witnesses, but Benkler could be the last called by the defence.
The 21 charges against Manning include espionage, computer fraud and, most seriously, aiding the enemy by disclosing material that could be used by the al-Qaeda extremist network.
Manning, a native of Crescent, Oklahoma, could face life in prison without parole if convicted of aiding the enemy.
In other testimony, a specialist at the Centre for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, said in a sworn statement that the centre had not recommended changes, such as in training or tactics, because of the WikiLeaks disclosures.
The centre, which focuses on adapting operations to changing conditions, also had not been requested to do so, said the witness, whose name was not disclosed.
The defence has sought to portray Manning as a naive but well-intentioned soldier who wanted to show Americans the reality of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Defence lawyers also have contended that much of the material Manning is charged with leaking had been available from public sources before the WikiLeaks disclosure.
The prosecution rested last week after five weeks of testimony, some in closed session. The trial is scheduled to end by 23 August.

Snowden not afraid, no regrets

Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is not afraid and has no regrets about his revelations of US espionage activities, the reporter who first published the secret documents said Wednesday.
Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist for Britain's Guardian newspaper, also said in an interview with AFP that Venezuela seems like a "logical" asylum destination for Snowden.
"He's anxious about the next step... but feels really good about the debate he provoked," said Greenwald.
"I hadn't spoken to him in two weeks since he got out of Hong Kong until Saturday, when I spoke to him and then again yesterday Tuesday," he added.
"He's very calm, without any fear and definitely happy about the choices that he made," said the journalist, who lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Currently stranded in Moscow, Snowden has applied for asylum in more than two dozen countries in a bid to evade US espionage charges over his disclosure of US initiatives to gather Internet and phone data.
The 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor has gained a sympathetic ear from some leftist Latin American countries. Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have all offered him asylum.
Greenwald said he did not know which country would eventually accept the US fugitive, but suggested Venezuela was the most likely.
"I didn't spend any time talking about his asylum plans. I don't really know what he's planning on doing in terms of that," the 46-year-old US blogger said.
"To me, Venezuela seems like the most logical choice because it's bigger and stronger than the other two countries that offered asylum and will be able to protect him," he added.
I use encryption
On Tuesday, the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said that Snowden had not yet formally accepted asylum in Venezuela as was claimed by a top Russian lawmaker in a Twitter posting that was later deleted.
Pro-Kremlin lawmaker Alexei Pushkov sparked confusion when he tweeted on Tuesday that Snowden had agreed to an offer from Caracas. He deleted the posting after about 30 minutes.
Greenwald spends much of his time in Brazil, where he lives with a Brazilian partner who was unable to join him permanently in America due to legal restrictions.
New York-born and Florida-raised, he specialised in litigating constitutional and civil rights cases before shifting in 2005 towards blogging, book-writing and what he calls "adversarial journalism".
In four best-selling books, most recently With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, he has sought to expose threats to freedom of information.
He entered journalism through his own blog, Unclaimed Territory. He later wrote for Salon.com before contributing to The Guardian in August 2012.
Greenwald said he had many more stories to write based on Snowden's documents.
"I just wrote with O Globo three stories about massive [US] spying first in Brazil and then Latin America," he noted.
"There's a lot more stories like that, big stories about what the NSA is doing inside the United States. These stories take time, but there's a lot more coming."
He said he is fully aware that the US government is keeping him under close surveillance.
"I always assume that I'm being monitored and when I use computers or anything like that, I make sure I use encryption and I'm very careful," he said.
Even though some US politicians have called for Greenwald's arrest on grounds his reporting amounted to a "crime", he insisted: "I have never been directly threatened".
Asked whether he viewed Snowden as more than a source, Greenwald replied: "He is a source, but I have been very clear about the fact that I have a lot of admiration for what he did, a lot of respect.
"I think what he did was heroic. I care about him as a person and hope for the best for him."

Mudslide from flood buries dozens in China

Flooding in western China, the worst in 50 years for some areas, has triggered a landslide that buried up to 40 people and destroyed a high-profile memorial to a devastating 2008 earthquake.

There was no immediate word on the chances of survival for the 30 to 40 people buried in the city of Dujiangyan, but rescue workers with search dogs had rushed to the area, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Mudslides and flooding are common in China's mountainous areas, killing hundreds of people every year. Deforestation has led to soil erosion and made some parts of China prone to mudslides after strong rains.
In nearby Beichuan county, flooding destroyed buildings and destroyed exhibits at a memorial for the earthquake five years ago in Sichuan province that left 90 000 people dead or missing.
The quake left the Beichuan county seat unliveable. The town was abandoned and 27 square kilometers of ruins was turned into a memorial and museum.
The flooding also caused the collapse of an almost 50-year-old bridge in a neighboring county, sending six vehicles into the raging waters and leaving 12 people missing.
Since Sunday, flooding in Sichuan has affected 360 000 people, damaging or destroying 300 homes, and forcing at least 6 100 emergency evacuations, state media reported.