Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda fails to get much traction in his bid to revitalize his country’s economy.

Former Bank Governor Shirakawa always claimed the causes of Japan’s deflation were a rigid economy and bad demographics, not a lack of money supply. Kuroda has yet to concede the point explicitly, but his bank’s actions essentially do.  BOJ officials have started issuing tacit admissions that Kuroda’s efforts at monetary stimulus have failed.

To be sure, sustained inflation would give the Prime Minister major bragging rights, and vindicate his decision to axe Shirakawa and take a more aggressive tack to end Japan’s lost-decade ordeal.

India’s credibility is still taking hits from its abrupt recalculation of the country’s 2014 gross domestic product, from 4.7 percent  to 6.9 percent. At the time, one analyst fumed that officials were “smashing India’s credibility and making its statistics bureau a laughing stock in global financial circles.”

BOJ officials argue that “the price stability target and the quantitative and qualitative monetary easing, introduced by the Bank in 2013, contributed to strengthening the anchor of inflation expectations.” Too bad the neither data nor bond rates jibe with that view. Yields on 10-year government debt are currently around 0.43 percent, lower than 0.54 percent 12 months ago. If anything, the inverse of what the BOJ is arguing is true.

Meanwhile, the BOJ’s lobbying efforts to tweak official statistics are starting to fall flat.

The truth is, Kuroda’s team has gotten as far as it can with its two huge monetary infusions since April 2013. In addition to buying about $700 billion of government debt annually, the BOJ is also pumping money into everything from asset-backed securities to exchange-traded funds. The results can be seen in the 56 percent rally in the Nikkei, but not in the areas needed to generate a sustainable recovery like sizeable wages gain or capital investments by huge companies.

That has the BOJ resorting to cheerleading. Kuroda’s team continues to churn out report after report insisting reflation efforts are working. The common theme (including last week’s report by Kamada) is that the BOJ’s moves are lifting trend inflation, stimulating the economy and loosening financial conditions. Yet the International Monetary Fund seems to have missed the memo. It just downgraded its forecast for Japanese growth this year to a 0.8 percent from a prediction of 1 percent in April.

If Kuroda wants to motivate any audience it should be Abe’s cabinet. As BOJ governors past warned, ending deflation requires much more than printing yen — or moving the data goalposts. Aside the devaluation of the yen and modest efforts to improve corporate governance, the government has done little to remake the economy. Plans to encourage startups, loosen labor markets, cut red tape and better utilize the female workforce remain largely on the drawing board. Kuroda’s monetary bonanza was meant to pave the way for structural shock-therapy that has yet to materialize. Kuroda should know that applauding the government’s failures won’t do much to restore his credibility.

Proceeds from poaching have become a fcator in financing terrorism.  Defense departments,anti-terrorism departments and enforcement institutions are now working to prosecute poachers and end this trade.

1. Big Business
Wildlife hunting is big business – a recent 2013 estimate valued the illegal poaching trade in Africa as being worth $17 billion dollars a year and growing.

3. Big Profits
According to gun policy officials the going rate for a rifle in Kenya is around $100-120 – a fortune by local economic standards but a mere fraction of the money that can be made from just one elephant (a single tusk can be worth up to $240).

4. Chinese Prices
In China such a tusk would sell for more than $2000 – its value therefore increasing tenfold by the time it is shipped out of Africa and arrives in Asia.

5. Local Misunderstanding
A recent study found that less than a third of Chinese people surveyed knew that elephants are killed for their tusks.

6. Common mythology
A separate study showed 70 per cent think they grow back like fingernails. Another myth propagated is that elephants’ tusks fall out naturally.

7. 104 Deaths a Day
Animal rights groups estimate that poachers in Africa kill between 25,000 and 35,000 elephants annually – meaning about 104 die a day.

8. An Offence Without Prosecution
Of the 157 poaching-related cases detected in Kenya in the past three years, less than five per cent have been prosecuted and only three of those convicted were sentenced to jail.

9. Pulverizing the Trade
The Obama administration destroyed the US reserve of elephant tusks on November 5, 2013 – announcing that the pulverizing of 6 tons (5.4 tonnes) of ‘blood ivory’ would send out the right message to the world.

10. Not Far from Human
Elephants are more like us than you may know. They can be gay, left-handed, have the ability to grieve and – true to reputation – have amazing memories.

Even by Indian standards, the ongoing Vyapan corruption scandal is simply staggering for what it says about the gaps in systemic coherence, safeguards – and yes, the way the country still conducts examinations. The alleged scam, which is said to have run for years in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, revolves around a massive scheme to manipulate the results of entrance examinations for medical colleges and government jobs. Every job one can think of – doctor, dentist, vet, forest ranger – is said to have been up for grabs. Police say that for at least eight years, tens of thousands of students and job aspirants paid hefty bribes to rig test results.

Nearly 2,000 people have been arrested so far, hundreds of medical students are in prison, as are several bureaucrats. Even the state’s governor is implicated. What’s more, many witnesses and alleged participants have been dying under “mysterious circumstances”, most recently a TV reporter who was investigating those deaths. One Indian news portal has described the scandal as one of the most complex to affect public life and one that “is fast acquiring the shades of a macabre crime thriller”.

Several corruption scandals have rocked Asia’s third-largest economy in the past decade but the alleged scam in Madhya Pradesh says something larger. It focuses attention on India’s outmoded exam system – a process that interrogates mostly rote learning and all at one go, rather than grading after a series of aptitude and ability tests whose results cannot be bought (or faked) however hard anyone tries. Though cheating in examinations is commonplace in India, what’s different about the alleged racket in Madhya Pradesh is its sophistication – different methods were used, including fake identity cards for people who impersonated examinees and crooked testing board officials inflated scores. This is low-level graft, yes, but the stakes are high.

It was once said that two intertwining strands run through Indian history: the incredible potential of the place and the betrayal of that potential, for example, by corruption.

Sarah Townsend writes:The Libyan Investment Authority has failed in an attempt to sue struggling British real estate mogul Glenn Maud for more than £20 million ($31 million), but it has been granted permission to appeal the court’s decision.

Romania and Bulgaria rank as the most corrupt countries in the European Union. On the birght side,the National Antit-Corruption Directorate in Romania arrested officials in 2014.

In June, the Primat Miinister Victor Ponta was charged with forgery and conflict of interest. This step may be a Catch 22, because it could force his Social Democratic Party to stay away from passing anti-corruption laws in order to keep him out of prison.

Ponta is reported to have received unaccounted consulting fees and forged documents.  It is relatiively small peanuts compared to other corrupt operatives in Romania.  Even if it turns out to be a bad move, it certainly draws attention to the problem of corruption in the country.

Julian Pecquet writes:  The State Department (State) is three years late in slapping certain sanctions on Iran, prompting new allegations that the Barack Obama administration is deliberately skirting US law in its quest for a nuclear deal.
Under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA), State is supposed to inform Congress every six months of attempts to help the three countries obtain weapons of mass destruction and certain missile technology. The law requires the agency to sanction violators or justify its decision not to.
But the department has fallen way behind in recent years.  Delays have kept on getting longer, with Congress receiving an update on violations committed in 2011 only in December 2014.

The State Department acknowledges the delays but faults a complex web of agency reviews to make sure allegations of violations are substantiated. Republicans, however, are jumping on the report as further evidence of the Obama administration bending over backwards to placate Tehran.

The GAO report is but the latest example of questionable sanctions enforcement that has raised congressional ire in recent months. A panel of experts for the UN’s Iran sanctions committee said that member states have not been reporting international sanctions violations by Iran. That’s despite widespread evidence of continued arms shipments to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen in addition to Hezbollah and Hamas.
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The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, disputed that account in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 16.

“There’s a direct correlation between this administration not wanting to sanction anyone or any violation and their lack of reporting on those violations,” she said. “And it’s sending a signal to the international community that the United States is not serious about any of our sanctions, that if you talk to the right folks at certain agencies and get a pass.”