Two pandas refused to make love in front of cameras in China. Maybe we should put away iPhones, iPads and cameras for a while and let the world go on.
In private, lovers Lu Lu and Zhen Zhen went at it for seven minutes and 45 seconds, which is very impressive considering that pandas typically last between 30 seconds and five minutes.
Thai authorities said on Monday they had found a group of 76 migrants from neighboring Burma, including six suspected Rohingya, in a sign that one of Asia’s busiest smuggling routes is still thriving despite Bangkok’s vow to stamp out trafficking.
It follows the discovery in January of a group of 98 suspected Rohingya trafficking victims, including dozens of children, who were found in pickup trucks in southern Thailand.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled Burma since 2012, when violent clashes with ethnic Arakanese Buddhists killed hundreds. Many head to Malaysia but often end up in smuggling camps in southern Thailand where they are held captive until relatives pay the ransom to traffickers to release them.
The latest group was stopped at Tong Sung district in Thailand’s southern Nakhon Si Thammarat province. They were heading to Malaysia in search of work, Police Colonel Anuchon Chamat, deputy commander of Nakhon Si Thammarat Provincial Police, told Reuters.
“They were sitting with Thai passengers and upon inspection by authorities were found to have no travel documents,” said Anuchon, adding that police have yet to determine whether traffickers were among the group.
“It seems they wanted to go to Malaysia for work and had boarded the train at different locations along the route. It is difficult to say whether traffickers are among them.”
Thailand is ranked one of the world’s centers of human trafficking. It was downgraded to the lowest “Tier 3” status last June on the U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report for not fully complying with minimum standards for its elimination.
Last week, Thailand’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to introduce harsher punishments for human traffickers, including life imprisonment and the death penalty in cases where their victims had died.
Thailand’s military government said in January it was “confident” it had met the minimum standards to improve its ranking in this year’s U.S. State Department ranking.
But a government report aimed at lifting Thailand from the list of the world’s worst offenders showed it had identified fewer victims of human trafficking last year than in 2013 and convicted fewer perpetrators.
Anuchon said the 76 migrants were being questioned by immigration police and would likely be charged with illegal entry.
Simon Johnson writes: Is it appropriate to use trade agreements to discourage countries from using large-scale intervention in the foreign-exchange market to hold down their currencies’ value? That is the question of the day in American economic-policy circles.
In recent years, Japan, South Korea, and China have manipulated their currencies to keep them undervalued. This boosted their exports, limited imports, and led to large current-account surpluses. But such intervention adversely affects trading partners and is barred under existing international rules. Unfortunately, those rules have proved completely ineffective.
Now a new opportunity to address the issue has emerged: The Trans-Pacific Partnership – the mega-regional free-trade agreement involving the United States, Japan, and ten other countries in Latin America and Asia. With the TPP close to being finalized, South Korea and China are watching intently, and other countries may want to join.
US President Barack Obama correctly argues that this is an occasion to set the rules for trade and investment in the twenty-first century. Yet the US Treasury Department and the US Trade Representative steadfastly refuse to include any language prohibiting currency manipulation in the TPP, for five main reasons – none of which fits the facts.
The first argument is that the International Monetary Fund can deal with instances of currency manipulation. The IMF does have up-to-date guidelines that define and seek to prevent currency manipulation. The IMF cannot enforce its guidelines, because currency manipulators are able to stall action. This has been the entrenched and continuing pattern, including when I was the IMF’s chief economist (from early 2007 to August 2008).
The second argument made by the US Treasury and the Trade Representative is that no sufficiently precise currency rules can be negotiated. But there is nothing wrong with the IMF guidelines – both the 2007 and 2012 versions – negotiated by the Treasury itself.
Recognizing this, Congressman Sander Levin – the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over international trade – proposes that a TPP currency chapter be based on the IMF guidelines.
The third argument against putting anti-manipulation provisions in the TPP is that they would imperil America’s ability to implement monetary stimulus.
Conventional monetary policy operates by altering short-term interest rates, which includes the central bank buying and selling short-term government debt. No intervention in the foreign-exchange market – buying and selling foreign currency – is involved.
Similarly, the quantitative easing (QE) that has defined many major central banks’ monetary policy in recent years does not involve buying or selling foreign assets. Under QE, the Federal Reserve buys – and announces that it will buy – assets; the only difference is that these assets are longer-maturity US government debt instruments and mortgage-backed securities of various kinds, all denominated in US dollars.
The fourth argument is that no major country is currently manipulating its exchange rate.There is also nothing to stop China or any other country from resuming large-scale currency-market intervention if and when it chooses. And the lack of diplomatic tension around exchange rates today makes this a good moment to raise the topic.
The final reason cited in support of excluding a currency chapter from the TPP is that the countries negotiating the deal would never agree.
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, developed economies with floating exchange rates, do not want to encourage currency manipulation. Chile, a middle-income country that has long had sound and responsible macroeconomic policies, does not favor currency manipulation. Mexico and Peru have much to fear from other countries becoming currency manipulators again.
Likewise, Japan, now running its own version of QE, worries about potential currency manipulation by other countries, such as South Korea and China. Malaysia and Singapore.
Currency manipulation is a real problem that causes significant damage. The TPP deal – if it establishes a dispute-resolution mechanism that can quickly dismiss frivolous claims and home in on genuine cases – may offer the best chance to fix it.
Bureau of Labor Statistics: The occupations with the largest employment in May 2014 were retail salespersons and cashiers. These two occupations combined made up nearly 6 percent of total U.S. employment, with employment levels of 4.6 million and 3.4 million, respectively. Of the 10 largest occupations, only registered nurses with an annual mean wage of $69,790, had an average wage above the U.S. all-occupations mean of $47,230. The highest paying occupations overall included several physician and dentist occupations, chief executives, nurse anesthetists, and petroleum engineers. Jobs and Wages
Wiomen out number men 10 to 1 in the profession in the US, but still get paid less than male nurses.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has asked Greek banks not to increase their holdings of Greek government debt, including Treasury bills, a banking source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
Greece’s international creditors, including the ECB, have set a 15 billion-euro cap on outstanding Greek T-bills which Athens has already hit.
“As supervisors, the ECB and the Bank of Greece are instructing the banks not to increase their exposure to Greek government debt for prudential reasons,” the source said.
Greece, which lives off aid from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the ECB, is running out of cash and has asked the ECB to raise the limit. The central bank has refused to do so.
“The ECB and the Bank of Greece have already made clear that further T-bills could not be accepted as collateral,” the source added.
Ukraine’s finance minister has insisted Russia will have to take part in a private sector debt write-off, putting the embattled country on a collision course with the Kremlin.
Natalie Jaresko said there was no alternative but for her government to proceed with a $15.3bn debt restructuring programme as a condition of the rescue plan by the International Monetary Fund.
“We don’t see another path right now,” said the American-born Ms Jaresko, who is visiting London in a bid to drum up western financial support for her war-ravaged country.
Russia has resisted taking any losses on a $3bn bond which is due mature in December. The debt was issued as part of a bail-out for the then pro-Moscow Yanukovych regime which was toppled last year.
But Moscow has so far maintained that it will be repaid in full, claiming it is not a private creditor and thus would not take part in any debt talks.
“It is our hope that all of our sovereign bond holders will come to the table and try and find a sustainable solution to Ukraine’s debt problem,” said Ms Jaresko.
Referring to any Russian objections to a haircut, Ms Jaresko said: “We have no intentions to discriminate on the basis of nationality or location.”
“We hope for creditor negotiations to be very transparent, we don’t see any other opportunity or path right now.”
Former fund manager and US state department staffer, Ms Jaresko joined Kiev’s new technocratic government last year
Kiev needs to agree on the terms of a bond restructuring, which may include the extension of maturities and reduced interest payments, with its creditors by the end of May in order to be eligible for $17.5bn in IMF cash.
The Ukrainian government has already begun initial talks with its country’s largest private creditors including in the UK and US, said Ms Jaresko.
Economic output contracted by 15pc in the last quarter of 2014, and is due to fall another 11pc in the first three months of the year. Inflation has reached 28pc.
Ms Jaresko insisted now was the right time for creditors to take the hit, warning that bondholders “do not want to be in a situation where there is an uncontrolled situation and we are forced to do a much worse deal for them.”
Creditors face a haircut as Ukraine’s perilous a debt mountain is projected to reach 98pc of its GDP at the end of this year, according to IMF forecasts.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to reboot an increasingly sour relationship,saying they are looking for ways to help Athens reach a deal with creditors that will keep it from falling out of the euro.
In his first visit to Germany since coming to power in January, Tsipras sounded a conciliatory note — though he stopped short of promising anything concrete on reforms that creditors like Germany want to see before they loan Greece more money.Greeurgently needs more funds as it faces a cash crunch within weeks.
Backtracking on some of his previous rhetoric blaming Greece’s problems on German insistence on budget austerity, Tsipras said he wanted to “break the stereotypes that have grown in the past five years: The Greeks are not lazy and the Germans are not to blame for everything.”
Tsipras said Merkel invited him to Berlin for talks as the tensions between the two countries increased, telling him “it is better to talk with one another than about one another.”
“I did not come here to ask for financial help,” Tsipras told reporters after meeting with Merkel behind closed doors for more than an hour. “I came for an exchange of our thoughts and opinions, to see where there is common ground and where there is disagreement.”
He characterized the talks as “positive,” saying he found Merkel “listens and wants to be constructive in the exchange of opinions.”
Merkel was careful to point out Germany was only one of the eurozone nations that would be responsible for deciding whether Greece’s reforms are sufficient for it receive more loans. She added that no decisions had been made in her talks with Tsipras.
“Today we can only talk about things,” she said, characterizing the meetings as being held in “a spirit of trust.”
The two continued their discussions over dinner following the press briefing.
Tsipras brought up reparations as he spoke alongside Merkel, but he said “there is no linkage at all with the financial crisis and the eurozone crisis — it is clearly a bilateral issue.”
He condemned as an “unjust provocation” a German magazine cover depicting Merkel amid Nazi officers by the Acropolis in Athens. And in a rebuke to his own justice minister, he said no one in Greece was considering seizing or auctioning off German property for war reparations.
“Please, let’s leave these shadows of the past behind us,” Tsipras said, stressing that the European Union (EU) was a force for stability in a troubled region.”
Merkel stuck to her government’s contention that “the question of reparations has been politically and legally settled” with a 1960 accord with Greece and the payment made at that time. But she noted Germany has earmarked $1.1 million annually for a “German-Greek future foundation” meant to fund remembrance and historical research projects, and “in this spirit we will talk with the Greek government further.”
Many Greeks blame the deeply unpopular bailout program administered by the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank for exacerbating Greek economic misfortune. The country’s unemployment rate is currently the highest in Europe, while Germany’s is the lowest — almost 26 percent compared to almost 5 percent.
Tsipras’s government agreed a month ago to push through reforms in exchange for keeping EU aid flowing, but has delayed submitting the measures for approval.
German officials have complained about their Greek counterparts making commitments and then publicly casting doubt on them, but also insist the debt spat isn’t a bilateral matter.
Albert Hunt writes: On the surface, Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the populist Democrat from Massachusetts, seem an unlikely team. But former Representative Barney Frank, co-author of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation enacted in 2010, said he views Paulson and Warren as twin pillars protecting the financial system.
In an interview this week on the Charlie Rose television program, Frank, who was chairman of the House Financial Services Committee during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, recalled former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Paulson telling Congressional Democratic leaders, “The economy is about to fall apart and we have got to do something the public isn’t going to like.”
Frank worked with Bernanke and Paulson to push through the unpopular but ultimately sucessful financial bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Paulson, Frank said, remained helpful even after leaving government, assisting in the drafting and passing of Dodd-Frank.
While Paulson helped establish Dodd-Frank, Frank said, “Elizabeth Warren is helping safeguard it” from Republicans eager to scuttle the law. He acknowledged that Dodd-Frank is complex. But Frank insisted it was neither politically nor substantively possible to make the legislation, which overhauls some regulations dating to the 1930s, less complicated. “In the thirties, there was no such thing as credit default swaps and collateralized loan obligations and collateralized debt obligations,” he said.
Dirk Schumer writes: Greece vs. Germany: What a drama! Any Hollywood screenwriter would delight at the brutality of this particular marriage. One launching accusations of fraud and theft, the other responding with calls for World War II debt repayment and reparations. Flags and depictions of the German chancellor have been burned. Cruel jokes circulating about the indebted south, with visiting politicians from the north requiring added police security.
Unfortunately, this is not fodder for a fictional screenplay but a political reality in Europe since 2008. It seems that while this aggressive marital drama plays out, its protagonists are unaware of just how much damage has been done to the foundation of the European Union. Is all that’s left of Europe the rubble of the past?
When the European idea took its beautiful and potentially healing shape after 1945, it was indeed built on rubble. Nowhere else in the world was there more to be found. Nowhere else was there more European common ground than at Auschwitz, where people of all European nationalities were murdered.
Among the ruins of Caen to Nuremberg, from Rotterdam to Milan, the national fight of everyone against everyone else, which had raged in Europe since the downfall of the Roman Empire, was to be discarded onto the dung heap of history. This was to be a bulwark against the anti-democratic Soviet Union, and economic pragmatism was to be the cure-all.
Instead of Napoleon, Bismarck or Hitler, there were mild, wise and mostly Catholic political veterans such as Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle and Alcide de Gasperi, who managed to disperse international problems by forming new commissions.
Slowly but surely even the worst wounds of the most recent past closed and became scars whose pain was bearable without national sovereignty ever having to be discussed. Europe was not decided upon openly but was bargained in secret with debates about fundamental principles.
But somehow something went wrong in the factory of compromises formed in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Later, historians may identify the tipping point as being somewhere between the introduction of the euro (1998-2001) and the failed 2005 attempt at a European constitution.
If the EU is seen as a common market, bringing together what can’t actually be united, the euro contributed to this disaster in creating a social centrifuge.
But it gets even worse: The democratic deficiencies that had been tolerated due to the advantages of a common market and porous borders have become unbearable to EU citizens. The black hole that once was European responsibility has obediently swallowed binding legal contracts on national debt arrangements, and freedom of travel and refugee treatment, these now being worth less than nothing from the UK to Greece.
That which we once called the European spirit has been annihilated in the process.
The dismantling of Ukraine and the destroyed landscapes of the former Yugoslavia have demonstrated what smoldering hate in a weak confederation of states can do. Is it too late? Or are reports of the EU’s death premature?
Keith Johnson writes: Four years after the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station paralyzed the sector, nuclear energy is again gearing up globally for what appears to be a long-awaited renaissance.
But while nuclear power’s rebirth from China to Argentina is driven by the imperative of finding clean and reliable power, it must still overcome a host of obstacles, including lingering concerns over safety, lousy economics, and growing worries about the risks of nuclear proliferation. And all of that could strangle the latest nuclear rebound before it really gets started. “Right now, the nuclear renaissance is happening, and it’s happening in East Asia,” said Geoffrey Rothwell, principal economist at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris. Asia alone could invest as much as three- quarters of a trillion dollars in new nuclear reactors in the next 15 years as the region seeks to meet growing energy demand while grappling with rising concerns about pollution.
Nuclear power’s development hit the pause button everywhere after the March 2011 accident at Fukushima, which led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese and the idling of Japan’s entire nuclear fleet. Indeed, some countries, such as Germany, swore off nuclear power altogether after the accident. Others, such as Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland, plan to phase out nuclear energy when their current reactor fleets retire.
But Japan is moving closer to restarting its first reactor since the accident, with plans to fire up the Sendai plant in the country’s southwest this summer; another 15 reactors await approval to restart. Nuclear Power
