China buys at least $1 billion every day to keep the dollar strong and its own renminbi weak

China may be worst protectionist ever: U.S. analyst - Yahoo! News

 

) - China's massive intervention in currency markets could qualify it as the most protectionist nation in history, a leading U.S. economist said on Friday.

"China has intervened massively in the foreign exchange markets for at least five years, buying at least $1 billion every day to keep the dollar strong and its own renminbi weak," Fred Bergsten, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said in the text of a speech.

"This is by far the largest protectionist measure adopted by any country since the Second World War -- and probably in all of history," Bergsten said.

Bergsten estimated the China's renminbi, also known as the yuan, is currently undervalued by at least 20 percent against the U.S. dollar as a result of China's currency intervention.

That "is the equivalent of a subsidy of 20 percent on all China's exports and an additional tariff of 20 percent on all China's imports," Bergsten said.

Bergsten, who served in various White House and Treasury positions between 1969 and 1981, has long been a critic of China's exchange rate policies.

His latest broadside comes amid signs Beijing could let the yuan rise more rapidly to contain inflation.

Meanwhile, U.S. government data on Thursday showed the bilateral trade deficit with China grew nearly 12 percent in the first half of 2011 to $133.4 billion, which could stir Congress to act on currency concerns.

Bergsten again urged the U.S. Treasury Department to formally label China a currency manipulator, something it has refused to do five times under President Barack Obama.

Treasury's next semi-annual report on the foreign exchange trading practices is due on Oct 15. Labeling China a currency manipulator would require the department to launch negotiations with Beijing to remedy the situation.

Bergsten also suggested other U.S. policy responses, such as filing a case at the World Trade Organization against China for currency manipulation and then sharply limiting its access to the U.S. market if the case prevailed.

Or "we could initiate 'countervailing currency intervention,' buying Chinese renminbi to offset the effect on our exchange rate of their massive purchases of dollars," Bergsten said.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

 

China buys at least $1 billion every day to keep the dollar strong and its own renminbi weak

China may be worst protectionist ever: U.S. analyst - Yahoo! News

 

) - China's massive intervention in currency markets could qualify it as the most protectionist nation in history, a leading U.S. economist said on Friday.

"China has intervened massively in the foreign exchange markets for at least five years, buying at least $1 billion every day to keep the dollar strong and its own renminbi weak," Fred Bergsten, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said in the text of a speech.

"This is by far the largest protectionist measure adopted by any country since the Second World War -- and probably in all of history," Bergsten said.

Bergsten estimated the China's renminbi, also known as the yuan, is currently undervalued by at least 20 percent against the U.S. dollar as a result of China's currency intervention.

That "is the equivalent of a subsidy of 20 percent on all China's exports and an additional tariff of 20 percent on all China's imports," Bergsten said.

Bergsten, who served in various White House and Treasury positions between 1969 and 1981, has long been a critic of China's exchange rate policies.

His latest broadside comes amid signs Beijing could let the yuan rise more rapidly to contain inflation.

Meanwhile, U.S. government data on Thursday showed the bilateral trade deficit with China grew nearly 12 percent in the first half of 2011 to $133.4 billion, which could stir Congress to act on currency concerns.

Bergsten again urged the U.S. Treasury Department to formally label China a currency manipulator, something it has refused to do five times under President Barack Obama.

Treasury's next semi-annual report on the foreign exchange trading practices is due on Oct 15. Labeling China a currency manipulator would require the department to launch negotiations with Beijing to remedy the situation.

Bergsten also suggested other U.S. policy responses, such as filing a case at the World Trade Organization against China for currency manipulation and then sharply limiting its access to the U.S. market if the case prevailed.

Or "we could initiate 'countervailing currency intervention,' buying Chinese renminbi to offset the effect on our exchange rate of their massive purchases of dollars," Bergsten said.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

 

China urges action on EU and U.S. debt, to keep yuan policy

 - Yahoo! News

 

- China is worried about challenges that the European Union faces in the next two months and urged the bloc as well as the United States to hold down government debt, its trade minister said on Friday.

Speaking at a meeting of Southeast Asian trade ministers, Chen Deming called on governments in the United States and Europe, China's top two trading partners, to act responsibly and get their fiscal houses in order.

"We support stabilizing measures taken by relevant countries, but we hope these countries will take measures to control their government debt proportion and take bigger responsibilities," Chen said.

"We are also concerned about new challenges facing European countries in August and September," he said, but did not elaborate.

His remarks echo recent comments from Beijing, which has invested nearly all of its $3.2 trillion foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest, in dollars and euros and would loathe to see the currencies plummet on economic problems.

World financial markets have swung wildly in the past week on fears that Europe cannot contain its debt crisis and after a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating, which amplified concerns that the U.S. economy may slide back into another recession or a prolonged period of meager growth.

U.S. Deputy Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis, attending the meeting, said the United States was now on a path toward fiscal discipline, following a deal this month to lift its debt ceiling.

He brushed off concerns by trade ministers at the meeting worried about weaker U.S. demand for Asian goods.

"The U.S. is the biggest market in the world and will continue to be a driver of global growth," he told Reuters.

STRONGER YUAN

The U.S. Federal Reserve has vowed to maintain interest rates near zero until 2013 to prop up its economy, and Chen said Asian governments should work together to monitor the impact, after funds seeking higher yields have driven up Asian stocks and currencies in the past year.

Chen noted the world was still struggling with the excess cash left behind by the loosening of monetary and fiscal policies during the 2008 financial crisis, which was "like taking medicines that will have a side effect."

"Where would the excessive liquidity flow to? Commodities, stock markets or bond markets? We are not quite sure yet," Chen said.

On the yuan, a controversial issue among China and its trade partners, Chen reiterated Beijing's usual refrain that the currency should only rise gradually and said it will stick to restructuring reforms of the domestic economy.

"We will also stick to gradual and steady currency reform," he told Reuters, adding that yuan volatility would be greater when global markets were jumpy. "But looking from a longer term perspective, the yuan currency policy will not change."

Chen's remarks come amid market talk that China may be about to shift its policy stance on the yuan soon after guiding the currency to a series of record highs.

A flurry of Chinese media reports that predicted speedier gains in the yuan have also fueled speculation.

China keeps the yuan on a tight leash as it worries any sharp gains could hurt its exports and weigh on the world's second-biggest economy.

Its trade partners, however, accuse Beijing of deliberately suppressing the yuan for trade advantage, an allegation that China has always denied.

Indeed, new data from Washington that showed the U.S. trade gap with China grew almost 12 percent in the first six months of 2011 could fuel efforts in Congress to get tough with China's currency practices.

By contrast, export-dependent Southeast Asian countries, whose currencies have risen along with the yuan, would prefer to avoid a rapid rise in the Chinese currency which could curb their export competitiveness.

"That's a problem for everyone," Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary general of regional bloc ASEAN, told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Neil Chatterjee; Editing by Kim Coghill)

 

China and ASEAN

Troubled Waters: Why China's Navy Makes Asia Nervous -- Printout -- TIME

 

Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2011

Troubled Waters: Why China's Navy Makes Asia Nervous

By Austin Ramzy / Dalian

 

The last time the aircraft carrier once known as the Varyag generated this much concern, it was for fear it might sink. The ship was one of the Soviet Union's last naval commissions, but construction at the Black Sea shipyard of Mykolaiv was abandoned in 1992 after the U.S.S.R.'s breakup. The Varyag languished as an unfinished hulk until 1998, when a Chinese company, based in Macau and with ties to the Chinese navy, bought it from Ukraine, ostensibly to take the ship to the gambling enclave as a floating casino. Turkish officials worried that the 300-m vessel — a rusting shell without weaponry, engines or navigation equipment — would sink while crossing the Bosphorus Strait, causing an environmental headache and a hazard to navigation. So they delayed its passage for three years, only agreeing in 2001 to halt traffic on the Bosphorus to allow the symbol of Soviet decline to be tugged past the shoreside forts and luxury homes of Istanbul on its five-month journey to the Pacific.

Macau's harbor was never deep enough for the Varyag. The orphaned warship of a former superpower, with its distinct ski-jump-like bow for launching planes, wound up instead in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. There, it has slowly been transformed into the first aircraft carrier of a future superpower. Now the world has a new set of concerns about the former Varyag. On Aug. 10 the newly refurbished carrier set sail from Dalian for its first sea trial. Its casino cover story long discarded, the ship will enter a wager with decidedly higher stakes: the projection of China's military power on the high seas. (See China's largest military parade in its history.)

The Varyag's launch comes at a fraught time. China's armed forces are modernizing — military spending has grown by an annual average of 15% since 2000 — and after a decadelong charm offensive in East and Southeast Asia, Beijing has begun taking a more aggressive stand on territorial disputes. Several factors are driving this tougher approach, including the possibility that disputed waters may have valuable energy reserves, a desire to challenge the regional influence of the U.S., the ever present influence of nationalism and a fear of looking weak before next year's leadership transition. "The Chinese attitude appears to have become substantially more assertive in character," says Clive Schofield, director of research at the University of Wollongong's Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security. "You see this across the board."

China's neighbors, particularly Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have responded with tough talk and posturing of their own. Last year China and Japan sparred over islands in the East China Sea that Japan administers and both nations claim, known as the Diaoyu to the Chinese and the Senkaku to the Japanese. When Japan detained a Chinese trawler captain near the islands, China cried foul. Two weeks later Japan released the fisherman, who returned to a hero's welcome in China. This summer, Chinese warships passed through international waters near Okinawa, which has unsettled Tokyo. Japan's latest white paper on national defense said Chinese military modernization, increased activities in Asian waters and lack of transparency "are becoming a cause for concern in the region and within the international community."

The more contentious cockpit is the South China Sea. Its 3 million sq km are dotted by tiny islands, and many of its waters are thought to hold rich oil and natural-gas deposits. Tensions have been rising between China, which claims almost all of the South China Sea, and some of the other Asian states that assert sovereignty over parts of it. The Philippines, which says that Chinese ships have harassed its survey ships and fishing boats a half-dozen times since the spring, announced it would begin to refer to the area as the West Philippine Sea and sent its navy's flagship, the World War II — era frigate Rajah Humabon, to patrol it. Vietnam accuses Chinese vessels of deliberately cutting, twice this summer, the cables of survey ships belonging to PetroVietnam. Hanoi says it is considering a possible reinstatement of the military draft and carried out live-fire drills in June. China responded with three days of naval exercises of its own. (See "China-Japan Tensions Grow After Shipping Collision.")

Surface Tension
The disputes over Asia's waters have drawn in the U.S. Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the U.S. had a "national interest" in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and offered Washington's assistance as a mediator. China responded angrily that the U.S. was seeking to "internationalize" an issue that should be resolved among neighbors. Some observers figured that Beijing would take a less antagonistic approach in 2011, having seen how regional disputes invited greater U.S. involvement. "That hasn't happened," Ian Storey, a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore said in June. "In fact, tensions have risen in the past two or three months, probably to a higher level than they've been at since the end of the Cold War."

On July 20, China and ASEAN announced nonbinding guidelines on how a settlement in the South China Sea might be pursued, but the differences have hardly narrowed. Cui Tiankai, a Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, warned that the U.S. was at risk of becoming entangled in a regional conflict if it did not work to restrain other states in the region. "I believe that individual countries are actually playing with fire," he told reporters in late June. "I hope that fire will not be drawn to the United States." In mid-July, General Chen Bingde, the Chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), publicly complained to his U.S. counterpart, Admiral Mike Mullen, about U.S. military spending, maritime surveillance operations near China's borders and joint exercises with Vietnam and the Philippines that he called "ill timed." Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said after a four-day visit to China that he was not convinced that Beijing's military advancements were entirely defensive in nature, and he fretted that the strife over the South China Sea "could result in some kind of escalation, some kind of miscalculation — an incident, a misunderstanding that would greatly heighten the stakes."

See "Asia's New Cold War."

 

The future of Europe: A stronger union or a smaller one?

 - Yahoo! News

It may be called the European Union, but at least part of that name is being called into question. The market convulsions of the past week are clearly about short-term concerns, about the balance sheets of countries like Italy, Spain and even France. But they're also about a problem with a more distant horizon: Does the E.U. still make sense in its current form?

 

As long as that question remains unanswered, uncertainty is bound to continue. Short-term measures, like the propping up of Spanish and Italian bonds by the European Central Bank "are quick fixes that smooth things over the short term," says Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC in London. "But they don't answer the questions the markets are asking: What are the political and fiscal arrangements that would create stability in the future?"

The trouble is one that was identified long ago. The E.U. has created a single currency, but it hasn't forged a deeper political or fiscal union. The result has been the creation of a system that yokes individual countries to a single unified monetary policy, without allowing for the transfer of funds that would allow the union's member states to ride out the distortions that setup can create. As a result, consensus is mounting that the current situation is simply not sustainable. The E.U., says a rising chorus of voices, needs either to be strengthened, or it will break apart. "What needs to happen is that there's an honest recognition that those two choices exist and that a choice has to be made," says King. "Pretending we're going to muddle through just won't work." (Read about how much worse the euro crisis can get.)

The E.U., as is stands, "is a fair-weather construction," says Emma Bonino, the vice president of the Italian Senate and a former commissioner at the E.U. "It works only in the absence of economic trouble." The solution, she argues, is the further centralization of political power. Such a move wouldn't have to be the creation of a single European superstate along the lines of the U.S. Bonino herself has proposed an intermediate solution, in which member states cede only some of their powers - such as foreign policy, defense and border control. Most crucially, it would include a Finance Ministry in charge of economic stabilization, and, when needed, transfers of funds from the central government to individual states. The common political identity, she argues, would make the necessary redistribution more palatable. "Help normally comes only if there is a shared feeling of belonging," she says.

The other possibility - argued most loudly in Germany, where anger is mounting about taxpayers being forced to bail out less-responsible countries like Greece or Ireland - is to start to break the union apart. "It is better for all concerned, in particular for Greece, if the country leaves the euro temporarily," Hans-Werner Sinn, an influential economist at the University of Munich, wrote in a recent essay. The weaker country would be free to devalue its currency and begin to regain its competitiveness. The rest of the E.U. wouldn't be forced to come to its assistance. Even Otmar Issing, a former member of the European Central Bank and one of the driving forces behind the single currency has warned against the rushed strengthening of the union. A proponent of European integration who once famously cautioned that "there is no example in history of a lasting monetary union that was not linked to one state," Issing now worries that a bailout of Europe's less solvent members would lead to "fiscal indiscipline" and even unrest by taxpayers furious over being forced to sacrifice when others didn't. (Read "The New Battle for Europe: Bankers vs. Taxpayers.")

Both choices have historical precedents, says HSBC's King. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, countries that for decades were united under a single political authority suddenly weren't. Many of the newly formed, previously Soviet republics first tried to keep using the Russian ruble. But soon, in a development that should give pause to anybody watching the E.U., the economic discrepancies between the various economies became too great. And the single currency fell apart.

A model for the alternative scenario is the E.U. itself. Before the introduction of the euro, the European Community had introduced a currency mechanism intended to reduce the variability in exchange rates between the various member countries. In 1992, however, that system began to fail. In a sequence of events that would seem familiar to anyone watching the markets this week, speculation sent the market into a frenzy. The U.K., which had joined the mechanism two years earlier, hastily withdrew. The other countries drew the opposite lesson and pledged to move toward closer economic integration. "The single currency wouldn't have happened without that crisis," says King. "The crisis reveals the choice, and the choice has to be made."

 

Snaptu: American Christianity: constantly reimagined, manipulated and exploited | Sarah Posner

The maligning of do-gooder Protestants, for example, is far older than Glenn Beck's assault on social justice

The question: Is America still Christian?

America is not a Christian nation, as the religious right and many Republicans would have it,…

Click here to read the full story

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Snaptu: Social networking surveillance: trust no one | Dan Gillmor

Governments will always try to monitor citizens' 'secure' communications – and corporations will always help them

Law enforcers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere are coming to grips with a hard reality: modern communications technologies give…

Click here to read the full story

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Ryan Blair

Entrepreneurship: Nothing to Lose and Everything to Gain | Power Your Future - Yahoo! Finance

 

by Dan Schawbel, contributor

I recently caught up with Ryan Blair, who is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain." Ryan established his first company, 24-7 Tech when he was only twenty-one years old. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. After he sold his company ViSalus Sciences to Blyth in early 2008, the global recession took the company to the brink of failure resulting in a complete write off of the stock and near bankruptcy. Ryan as CEO went "all in" betting his last million dollars on its potential and turned the company around from the edge of failure to more than $150,000,000 a year in revenue in only 16 months winning the coveted DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010. In this interview, Ryan talks about how he re-branded himself after being in a gang, the issues with the education system, and more.

How did you shake your criminal record and re-brand yourself?

I remember when I was working my way up in the first company that employed me, I used to have nightmares that one day they'd find out about that I had been in a gang, call me into the office, and fire me. In the beginning I didn't talk much about what I'd been through. But eventually when I got to a point where I had established myself as a professional entrepreneur, I embraced my past, used it as part of my branding, and crossed over.

 

Ryan Blair

 

In this day and age people want authenticity. Now that the world is social, people know all about you. Assuming you decided to join humanity, that is. It turned out that as I started showing my true identity, so did the rest of the world. One of the reasons my company ViSalus is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry today is because we share our good, bad, and ugly. Like sharing a video of me playing a practical joke on one of my employees, for instance. As a result of embracing authenticity, I turned the company around from near bankruptcy to over $15 million a month today. Unlike our competitors, our distributors and customers know exactly who we are, and I'd say that corporate America has a lot of catching up to do.

What's your take on the educational system? Will a college degree help or hurt your chances at starting a successful business?

As a product of Los Angeles's public school system, in a state with the highest dropout rate in the nation (about 20 percent), I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.

I recall sitting with a career counselor in continuation high school, being told that I didn't have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. They suggested a trade school, construction, something where I'd be working with my hands.

The irony is that today I employ plenty of doctors and lawyers. Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?

If President Obama phoned me today and told me he was appointing me Educational Czar, I'd turn education into a business, a capitalistic, revenue driven system, creating a competitive environment where each school is trying to attract customers, based on quality of customer experience.

As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won't hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it's ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers," he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.

What three business lessons did you learn from juvenile detention?

I learned a lot about business and life from my time spent incarcerated. I like to call these pieces of wisdom my Philosophies from the Jail Cell to the Boardroom. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that in Juvenile Hall, new guys always get tested. When I went in the first time, I was just a skinny little white kid and I had to learn fast. People will be bumping into you on the basketball court, or asking you for things, testing to see if you're tough.

And everyone knew that if a guy let someone take their milk during lunchtime, they weren't as tough as they looked. Soon you'd be taking their milk everyday, and so would everyone else. It's the same for business, if you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.

Also, adaptation is the key to survival. In jail the guy who rises to power isn't always the strongest or the smartest. As prisoners come and go, he's the one that adapts to the changing environment, while influencing the right people. You can use this in business, staying abreast of market trends, changing your game plan as technology shifts, and adapting our strategy around your company's strongest competitive advantages. Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change.

The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don't know who to trust. It's the same for business because a lot of people come into my office with a front. I have to figure out quickly who is the real deal and who isn't. Based on that fact, I developed an HR system that I use when interviewing potential new hires that I call the Connect Four Technique. Yep, you guessed it. I make my future employees — and I have hundreds of them — play me in Connect Four.

Can everyone be an entrepreneur? Can it be learned or do you have to be born with a special gene?

No. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people in the world, domesticated and undomesticated. Some people are so domesticated through their social programming and belief system, so employee minded, that they could never be entrepreneurs. And they shouldn't even bother trying. The irony is that this is coming from a guy who teaches millions of people how to become entrepreneurs. I'm literally selling a book about becoming an entrepreneur, telling you that not everyone should read it.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to have fighting instincts. Are instincts genetic? I don't think so, but you 'inherit' them from your upbringing. Now, if you're smart you can reprogram your beliefs. But there are still some people that would rather watch other people be entrepreneurs, like the people in the Forbes "richest celebrity list" than take the time to reprogram themselves, and live their lives like rock stars, too.

Is there a need for business plans these days?

When you've really got the entrepreneurial bug, the last thing you want to do is sit down and write a business plan. It's the equivalent of writing a book about playing the guitar before actually knowing how to play the guitar. You don't know what your new business is going to be like. And just like a guitar, a business will have to be tweaked and tuned multiple times, and you'll need long practice sessions and repetition, before you can get even one successful song out of it.

In my book "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain," I actually included a chapter called "I Hate Business Plans" where I talk about this. Most business plans that get sent to me, I close within seconds of opening them up because they are full of fluff and hype. A business plan should be simple, something you could scribble on a scratch pad. No more than three pages of your business objectives, expected results, and the strategy to get there. But the best business plan is one built from a business that is already up and running and that matches the business's actual results.

The point is that you should be so obsessed with your business that you can't sleep at night because that's all you can think about. And that's your ultimate "business plan."

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency, and author of "Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future."

 

The Winson Green area of Birmingham

Asians accounted for 47 per cent of the ward’s total 25,634 population, Afro-Caribbeans 18 per cent, and other black 2 per cent

Birmingham riots: Against all odds, peace is restored to streets where 3 men died | Mail Online

 

A shrine to the three Birmingham men killed as violence gripped the city this week has become a focal point for unity in a community that seemed teetering on the edge of race riots.

Racial tensions nearly boiled over last night as vigilantes armed themselves with sticks and baseball bats, vowing to protect their streets if a third night of terror hit the streets of the UK's second city.

Gangs had vowed to avenge the death of three young Muslim men mown down by a hit-and-run driver on Tuesday night, as locals held a moving nighttime vigil for the trio.

Unity: Members of the community lay flowers at the scene of the hit and run attack that killed three men during civil unrest in Winson Green, Birmingham

But against the odds, conflict never erupted in the streets of Winson Green, where Asian communities had blamed their black neighbours for the unrest that saw businesses smashed and Asians attacked in the streets.

Today members of the community gathered to pay their respects to 21-year-old Haroon Jahan, and brothers Shazad Ali, 31, and Abdul Musavir, 30, who were killed by a hit and run driver during the height of the violence on Tuesday night.

More...

• Olympic ambassador 'hurled bricks at police car' and led attack on Vodafone store during riots - and was shopped to police by her mum
• 'Britain is great': Malaysian student mugged by 'Good Samaritan' released from hospital says he feels sorry for his attackers
• Petition on Government website calling for looters to be evicted from council houses receives 100,000 signatures in 48 hours
• Unmask the thugs! Looters will no longer be able to cover up, says PM as he also promises a crackdown on social media AND cash for the rioters' victims
• BBC orders staff to refer to 'English' riots to avoid offending Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish
• It's payback time for the looters: Police snatch squads swoop on homes of riot suspects in a string of dawn raids across London
• 'I only have 25p left but I WILL start again': Shopkeeper whose stores was ransacked by rioters vows to re-open
• Straight from Shameless: Rogues' gallery of riot thugs who have already been found guilty by the court (but police say sentences are too lenient)
• Hiding under her hood: The smirking 11-year-old GIRL in 'large scale riot rampage' refuses to apologise
• Smile stupid, you’re on CCTV: West Midlands Police release photos of looters… now help us identify them
• Face of the mystery man beaten by mob: Police finally identify victim in critical condition after riot attack
• Revealed: Face of woman who leapt from the flames to escape the Croydon inferno
• Gangs ferried thugs into riot hotspots by bus and were orchestrating violence, say police

 

Asians were joined by their white and black neighbours to lay tributes at the spot where the three young men lost their lives.

They have been hailed heroes for standing up to the savagery of the violent looters who had threatened to pitch the community into anarchy.

Tributes: Left, Abdul Nassir Khan, right, cousin of Shahzad Ali, 30 and Abdul Musavir, 31, visits the scene of their deaths; right, an unknown well-wisher pays a moving tribute with flowers and a note

Grief: Yasser Khan, centre, cousin of Shahzad Ali, 30 and Abdul Musavir, 31, who died after being struck by a vehicle, visits the scene where the three men were killed

Haroon's dignified father, Tariq Jahan, was today thanked in person by the West Midlands' chief police officer, who told him his 'powerful and generous' plea for peace stopped another night of violence.

Mr Jahan, though deeply in grief, had begged for calm in the tinderbox atmosphere of Winson Green just hours after his son was killed by a hit-and-run riot thug.

Pakistani-born Tariq spoke to hundreds of Muslims who gathered to express fury at the killings and asked them: 'Why are we killing each other? Calm down and go home.'

Chris Sims, Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, thanked Mr Jahan for urging the community not to avenge the killings during a ten-minute private meeting.

No time for conflict: Members of the community lay flowers at the scene of the hit and run. The area had seemed poised on the edge of racial conflict last night

Heartbroken community: Left, unidentified mourners lay flowers for the killed men. Right, Yasser Khan, cousin of two of the killed men, throws up his arms in disbelief

Respects: Yasser Khan, left, and Abdul Nassir Khan, right, cousins of Shahzad Ali, 30 and Abdul Musavir, 31, visit the scene where they were killed

'The intervention he [Mr Jahan] felt able to make was one of the most powerful, generous and far-sighted that I think I have ever seen, at the moment of absolute grief and devastation,' the chief constable said.

'Anyone who heard them must have been moved. Anyone who felt there was any mileage from continuing a cycle of violence in the name of those young men who died must have thought twice about it.

'I think it was decisive in terms of Birmingham not suffering tension and violence between communities.'

Mr Sims also went on to urge the predominantly Asian and Sikh community to 'build on the foundations' of Mr Jahan's sentiments. 'Those words were powerful, heartfelt and spontaneous.

'They will only take root if people use them as the starting point and work to break down any sense of community tension.'

Tributes: Locals light candles and place tributes at the scene in Winson Green, Birmingham, where three young Asian men died on Tuesday

 

Two men light a candle next to a bunch of flowers as they pray for an end to the violence

 

Yesterday afternoon, gangs of black men in 4x4 cars had apparently been spotted cruising the streets of Winson Green, near the seen of the collision, stopping by mosques and chanting 'burn, burn' from the open windows.

Local police chiefs tried to calm the situation by talking to community leaders in the area, but shopkeeper Mazhar Iqbal, 34, accused the police of failing to protect Asian communities.

'The police have done nothing. They care more about protecting electrical shops than us,' he stormed.

'We are here to protect ourselves and our families. People from out of the area are attacking us, it's mostly black people, but also whites too.

'We are here to fight back because the police do nothing.

'We lost three of our brothers, what will be done about it? We have to protect our streets.'

In another inflammatory development, it also emerged that members of the English Defence League (EDL) were threatening to storm mosques.

'They sent messages on the internet to attack our mosques.,' said Mr Iqbal. 'We are under attack and need to protect ourselves and we will do whatever it takes. We cannot trust the police to help us anymore.'

United together: About 300 people gathered in the forecourt of the petrol station, near where the three men were hit

Just after 8pm last night, a group of more than 100 Muslim men brandishing baseball bats and sticks had run down the streets after rumours spread of a group of black men robbing a house nearby.

A resident, who called himself Mr Arshad, 64, said: 'This is not acceptable, we were under attack. The police need to protect us.

'There are black people running round doing what they like. This is not about rioting any more, this is a race war which goes back decades.'

Police yesterday pulled down a cordon surrounding the scene of the deaths of keen amateur boxer Haroon Jahan, business graduate Shazad Ali, and his brother Abdul Musavir.

Mowed down: Haroon Jahan, 21, left, Shazad Ali, 31, and Abdul Musavir, 30, were killed in a hit and run during riots in Birmingham

Haroon Jahan is pictured in a school photograph, while Shazad Ali and Abdul Musavir are pictured as toddlers

The men had left their mosque after evening prayers at 11.30pm on Tuesday and were standing on Dudley Road near a petrol station when a speeding car allegedly swerved into them deliberately.

They had been trying to protect the garage and nearby stores.

Stop the violence: Tariq Jahan holds a picture of his son Haroon Jahan, one of the three hit-and-run victims

Police revealed today that detectives have until midday to question a 32-year-old black man arrested on suspicion of their murder. West Midlands Police were granted a superintendent's extension.

Friends and relatives gathered at the petrol station yesterday, with some weeping as others knelt and prayed and laid flowers.

Inspector Lloyd Davis, neighbourhood inspector for Soho and Ladywood of West Midlands Police, appealed for calm in the Muslim community.

'They are angry with what happened and we will do what we can to protect.

'Once this is over and we feel there are areas we should have done more in we will say so and apologise to the community.

'This place is in my heart and I am deeply saddened with what happened.'

At about 10pm yesterday, a group of around 300 people had gathered on the petrol station forecourt for an organised nighttime vigil.

They had initially planned to march the two-mile route along the Dudley Road into the city centre but roads into Birmingham were shut.

Members of the Muslim and Sikh communities linked arms, lit candles and said prayers for the three men and for an end to the rioting.

Some men broke down in tears as they chanted religious slogans and raised their candles into the air.

Gurpreet Singh, 28, a Sikh businessman, led calls for calm alongside Tariq Jahan, the father of Haroon Jahan.

'By coming together we are showing the country that peace is possible. We don't want violence. We want to bring peace to our street,' he said.

'We need to show solidarity, that we will help whoever we see.

'People see Sikhs and Muslims as terrorists, you don't see any terrorists here today. Muslims and Sikhs must come together now to help each other and the whole community.'

Mr Singh condemned the police for failing to do enough to protect the minority communities. He said: 'The police are to blame for not doing enough. It is their fault the three men died.'

Muslim Ansar Majid, 28, added: 'We are all in this together. We are doing this to send a message to the world that we have to be united.

Rousing speech: Mr Jahan delivers his statement calling for calm in a street in Birmingham asking: 'Why do we have to kill one another?'

'The madness has to stop. This is a peaceful protest but if the rioters come we will take action against them.'

A preacher at the service said: 'Bless our brothers who have become Martyrs, give them a higher place in paradise.

'Bless each and every one of us and give us the blessing of unity, let those who did this face justice in sh'allah.'

Earlier, Haroon's father Tariq Jahan, 45, who desperately tried to revive his dying son, urged people not to seek revenge.

Standing on a wall in front of a crowd he said: ‘I lost my son. Blacks, Asians, whites – we all live in the same community.

‘Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this?

‘Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home – please.’

Tariq Hussain, 48, watched the attack unfold and warned that the community would take revenge for the killing.

Fingertip search: A group of police officers examine the pavement close to where the three men died

A police forensics officer steps past a shoe as he inspects the scene where the three men were killed by a car in Winson Green

The shop-owner, who is a close family friend of Mr Jahan’s, said: ‘The car hit all three of them up and sent them up like tennis balls. Other Asian people pelted the car with bricks and it drove off.'

Tensions had already been running high in Birmingham on Tuesday before the men's deaths. A 39-year-old woman, Rashida Ahmed, was attacked by a gang of 12 black men in the Alum Rock area of the city.

The Prime Minister, on a visit to Birmingham, offered his condolences for the ‘truly dreadful’ deaths.

• Detectives investigating the deaths of three men have arrested two youths and a man on suspicion of murder. West Midlands Police said the suspects - aged 16, 17 and 26 were all from Birmingham. A spokeswoman for the force also confirmed that a 32-year-old man arrested on suspicion of murder early yesterday had been released on bail pending further inquiries.
  

A forensic worker places markers on the road at the location where the three men were knocked down

Rising tension where black and Asian lived side by side in peace

By DAVID WILKES and NICK MCDERMOTT

Clifton Stewart was among the first to offer his condolences to Haroon Jahan’s family yesterday.

The 80-year-old Jamaican father of three and his wife have lived next door to Haroon’s Asian parents in multi-racial Winson Green since 1993.

‘It’s very sad – he was a nice boy,’ said Mr Stewart, a retired factory worker who came to England in 1960. ‘I’ve never had any argument with anyone here. Everyone gets along.

‘But I’m a bit frightened now. You don’t know where the uprising is going to be next.’

Paying respects: Locals in Winson Green lay flowers at the garage near where the three men were hit

Amid the rising tensions caused by the killing of Haroon and his two friends, Mr Stewart was not alone last night in fearing the tragedy could spark further violence in the area.

Shakeel Hussain, 36, a carer, said: ‘There is a lot of anger. I’ve heard some people say they’re not going to let this slide

‘I hope people respect what Haroon’s father said and don’t take the law into their own hands.’

The Winson Green area of Birmingham is run-down inner-city and best known for being the location of HM Prison Birmingham.

It was developed at the end of the 18th century, as it was considered to be far enough from the smoke of the main city of Birmingham, but close enough for easy access via the Dudley and Wednesbury turnpikes.

In the middle of the 19th century, the area was used for the lunatic asylum, workhouse and fever hospital.

United in grief: A large group of men gather in the street where the three men died. The area has a large mix of ethnic minority residents, many of whom have offered their condolences

Now the area has large Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities. It is part of the city’s Soho ward, where ethnic minorities make up three-quarters of the population.

According to the 2001 census, Asians accounted for 47 per cent of the ward’s total 25,634 population, Afro-Caribbeans 18 per cent, and other black 2 per cent.

Winson Green is a five-minute drive from Handsworth, scene of notorious race riots in the 1980s.

Some claim these were fuelled by a nationwide wave of uprisings in the wake of the 1981 Brixton riot. Other sources have suggested that the local black British felt aggrieved at the increase in Asian-owned businesses which were prospering in the area.

Tributes: A man lights a candle to place beside flowers left at the scene in Winson Green where the three men were run down

Grieving: The pain on this man's face is clear to see as he is comforted by others, while a man wipes his tears with a handkerchief as they mourn the three deaths in Birmingham

 

Latent tensions between the two communities were brought into sharp focus again in 2005 in another nearby area, Lozells, where a man was stabbed to death during rioting triggered by a rumour, never substantiated, that a 14-year-old black girl had been caught shoplifting by a Pakistani shopkeeper and subsequently gang-raped.

The people of Winson Green are at pains to stress that it has never seen trouble of the level seen in either Handsworth or Lozells.

But yesterday tensions almost boiled over at a meeting of community representatives following the killing of the three young Asian men.

A crowd of more than 200 males, mostly teenagers, were unable to gain access to the packed talks at Summerfield Community Centre, and vented their frustration at officers stationed outside. At 3.30pm a brief scuffle broke out with a passing black youth.

Onlookers: A group of men wait by the scene of the incident in the Winson Green area of Birmingham

Memorial: A group of men tie their floral tributes to a lamppost

Some of those in the crowd moved quickly to defuse the situation but feelings remained high, with some calling for direct action against the alleged perpetrators, prompting Haroon’s father Tariq Jahan to appeal for calm on the streets.

Mounting a wall outside the community centre, he said: ‘I don’t want you to fight. I’m lost for words. Go home please, go home.’

Dozens of the youngsters took heed and left. But a larger number remained and angrily continued to debate the deaths.

As dusk fell on Dudley Road, the scene of the tragedy, Carol White, 50, a black mother of four who has lived in Winson Green all her life, said: ‘It doesn’t matter what colour you are. For anyone to lose a son is sad. I’m just praying that nothing more happens tonight.’

This burnt out car sits in a street in the Birmingham district, where the riots and the deaths of three men have affected every resident, no matter what race

 

a child educated only at school is an uneducated child

Was the $5 Billion Worth It?: Bill Gates Talks Teachers, Charters, and Regrets. - Forbes

George Santayana, “a child educated only at school is an uneducated child.”

London Riots : Uneasy Peace

UK's Cameron under pressure over cuts after riots - Yahoo! News

 

UNEASY PEACE

Britons were appalled at the scenes on their streets, from the televised mugging of a badly beaten Malaysian teenager by people pretending to help him, to a Polish woman photographed leaping from a burning building.

The scale and ferocity of the rioting -- not only in inner-city areas but also in some middle-class suburbs -- battered Britain's image as a civilized and peaceful society.

Footage of looters kicking in shop windows and stealing everything from baby clothes to food and large television sets was repeated for days on rolling news channels around the world.

The unrest flared first in north London after police shot dead a black man and refused to give his relatives information about the incident. A local protest then developed into widespread looting and violence.

But social strains have been growing in Britain for some time, with the economy struggling to clamber out of an 18-month recession, one in five young people out of work and high inflation squeezing incomes and hitting the poor hardest.

Some of the looters spoke of taking a stand against "the system" and picked out the recent scandal of lawmakers' fraudulent expenses claims and huge bonuses paid to bankers.

Morale in London's police force has been dented by the loss of its leader and other senior figures in recent weeks in the fallout from the phone-hacking and bribery allegations at Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers.

As courts stayed open through the night to deal with the hundreds of people charged over the violence, police flooded the streets to maintain an uneasy peace.

Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said 16,000 officers would remain on duty in the capital on Friday. That is their biggest peacetime deployment and compares with a normal figure of around 2,500.

"London has remained calm for the last two nights and I certainly hope and pray it stays that way," he said in a statement on Thursday evening.

 

After Norway, Will Germany Ban a Far-Right Political Party

After Norway, Will Germany Ban a Far-Right Political Party? - Yahoo! News

 

Two weeks after Anders Breivik's killing spree, Germany's Federal Interior Ministry said it will take part in a new working group, along with representatives of Germany's state governments, weighing a ban on the country's most influential far-right political party, the National Democratic Party, or NPD. The extreme right group, which advocates a crackdown on immigrants is a legal political party and benefits from state funding. A recent poll found that almost 70% of Germans support outlawing the controversial group and the Interior Ministry reports that 11 out of 16 states were willing to discuss it. Opposition politicians, it seems, are also on board. "I'm pleased that other states have come out in favor of an NPD ban which we initiated in the city of Hamburg," said Michael Neumann, Hamburg's Interior Minister. Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD opposition told Bild am Sonntag that he backed the ban because the NPD's "rabble-rousing" should not be supported by taxpayers' money.

Still, the ban is a long shot. Chancellor Merkel's government is cautious, wary that the process may be mired in complications or could play into the NPD's hands. According to a statement released on Friday, the government "still subscribes to the view that has been held for the past few years that another bid to ban the NPD ... would involve a high risk of another failure." In the past, they've said a ban would not be feasible because the government and security agencies would have to withdraw their undercover agents from the Far-Right Party. (See pictures of the rise of Adolf Hitler.)

Previous attempts to curb the 6,600-strong NPD party have failed. In 2001, Chancellor Gerhard SchrÖder's government tried to outlaw the NPD, arguing that the party's far-right ideology breached Germany's constitution. But Germany's highest court threw out the case in 2003, after it emerged that the government had for years relied on evidence provided by paid informants in the far-right scene. "Germany's political class is in broad agreement that the NPD is neither constitutional nor democratic and should be outlawed. Yet it fears a similar debacle to 2003 when the NPD ban failed," says JÖrg Forbrig, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. "Behind those concerns may be an acknowledgment that close surveillance and infiltration of the party by security services - the reason why the constitutional court dismissed the ban in 2003 - has continued right up till today."

The Constitutional Court's ruling in 2003 was an embarrassing blow to SchrÖder's government and provided a significant boost for the morale of the NPD, which went on to make big gains in regional elections. The NPD is represented in two state parliaments but it doesn't have any seats in the German federal parliament, or Bundestag. Still, it is the biggest far-right party in Germany in terms of its members and influence. While some experts argue that banning far-right political parties could prove counter-productive, driving members underground and radicalizing them further, others claim they shouldn't get a financial lifeline from taxpayers. "The NPD is dangerous - its far-right, violent and xenophobic ideology threatens the multi-ethnic fabric of German society," says Hajo Funke of the Free University of Berlin. Funke says Germany is still home to "an active, dangerous and strong Neo-Nazi movement" with far-right grassroots groups that are bent on violence. (See more on Anders Behring Breivik.)

The NPD dismissed plans for a ban as "absurd." "We aren't engaged in any forbidden activities so we can't be banned," Klaus Beier, the NPD's federal spokesman, told TIME. In other words, they plan to stick around.

 

Should Israel be More European or American?

Massive Protests Raise the Question: Should Israel be More European or American? - Global Spin - TIME.com

Back in February when Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow longtime Israel's longtime friend and ally Hosni Mubarak, many Israelis fretted over what ill wind the "Arab Spring" would bring. Would a more democratic Egyptian government veer away from the U.S.-Israel axis and ally with Hamas? Would it abrogate the Camp David treaty that had brought Israel three decades of peace with its most powerful neighbor? Would it inspire the Palestinians to cast aside the hapless President Mahmoud Abbas and mount their own peaceful rebellion against Israel?

 

Nobody dreamed, however, that  the Arab Spring's most immediate impact on Israel would be to spark a copycat movement, drawing hundreds of thousands of Israelis onto the street in peaceful mass protests denouncing their own government and demanding social justice in the face of declining living standards. The echo of Cairo is unmistakable: The Israeli protestors chant (in Hebrew) "The people demand social justice" to the same tune as Egypt's protestors chanted, in Arabic, "The people demand the fall of the regime."

Despite the slogans, however, the Israeli protest  has more in common with those that shook southern Europe in the spring than with the Arab uprisings. Those marching on Israel's streets live in a relatively advanced economy and get to vote for their government. But they're outraged, nonetheless, and polls show they have the support of the overwhelming majority of Israelis. The protest movement led by the shrinking middle class, moved to act by the steady erosion of their standard of living in a system whose economic growth in recent years has benefited mostly a tiny elite. It was outrage at the cost of housing (which has increased six-fold over two decades) that sparked the original demonstrations, which have since mushroomed into a broader movement representing a range of constituencies, including Arab Israelis, bound by a common sense that the country's social system no longer serves them. And, at least so far, they appear unwilling to accept their government's traditional response of citing external threats, from Iran to Gaza, as reason to dip their banners and go home.  

Social justice is a highly contested term in the Israeli context, and many more left-wing elements in the protest movement insist that justice for Israelis is indivisible from justice for the Palestinians. But issues of the Palestinians beyond the 1967 borders are left out of the protestors' demands, in order to maintain the broadest front across political divisions. Even then, some settler leaders are worried, because even raising the issue of the cost of housing, transport and other basic necessities draws attention to the fact that the government spends twice as much on public assistance to the average settler as it does on public assistance to the average Israeli. By some estimates, the occupation soaks up 10% of the national budget. And the nationalist right is hardly comfortable with the spectacle of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of Israelis raucously applauding a Palestinian Israeli writer's speech calling for justice and equality for all citizens.

But what may be most striking about the protest is a reassertion of the values of European social democracy in a country whose politicians -- and public -- have over the past three decades increasingly embraced American individualism and winner-take-(almost)-all capitalism.

Netanyahu's government, in keeping with Likud-led governments of the past two decades is of a mind with conservative Western governments committed to free-market economics, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and a kind of social Darwinism when it comes to public spending on the poor -- albeit with many compromises dictated by Israel's political system, in which creating a governing coalition requires that the religious parties are essentially bought off with massive social grants; and also by its nationalist drive to settle the West Bank. (Some Israelis joke that while Likud and its right-wing allies have throttled Israel's welfare state inside the 1967 borders, it's alive and well in the settlements.)

The benefits of the Israeli economic success story over the past decade and a half have accrued largely to a wealthy elite growing wealthier, while the middle class shrinks and a growing number of Israelis struggle to make ends meet. Israel congratulated itself for becoming the 34th member OECD last year, confirming its accession to the global economic elite. But supporters of the protest movement point out that among OECD members only Mexico has a higher rate of poverty and social inequality.

While the domestic economic policy orientation of the current Israeli government would be shared by its most fervent U.S. allies in the GOP, Israel's founders -- and the Labor Party that ruled the country during its first three decades -- were a lot more Bernie Sanders than Eric Cantor, to use an American political yardstick.

From the kibbutz collective farms that produced the country's political and military elite of an earlier generation to the welfare-oriented social policies that provided generously funded public health care, education and social support, the solidarity and well-being of the community, even if narrowly defined on ethnic nationalist lines, was given priority over the acquisition of wealth by the individual.  Israel modeled itself on the social solidarity of European social democracy rather than the unrestrained and often predatory capitalism of its American ally. Of course, that's largely in the past, although the ongoing protests have served up  a kind of militant nostalgia for that bygone era. After all, average earnings in Israel are substantially lower than those in Europe, but the cost of living is often higher -- and Israelis have come to expect Western standards of living.

Netanyahu epitomizes an Israel that has embraced an American economic and social system -- the idea of 15 million Americans (the proportional equivalent of 300,000 Israelis) taking to the streets to protest the cost of housing or childcare is almost unthinkable, since the idea that the state is responsible for ensuring a decent basic standard of living for its citizens has been a heresy in Washington since the early 1980s.  But the Israeli prime minister is facing an unprecedented level of dissent from that vision.

It's too soon to tell what effect the protest movement will have on Netanyahu's political prospects, but it appears increasingly likely that the most serious social protest Israel has seen in decades will realign his agenda. "I understand my views need to change," the Prime Minister is quoted in the Israeli media as having said Tuesday of the challenges raised by the demonstrations. But it remains to be seen whether and how Netanyahu change. Some suspect he may, instead, take  initiatives of his own on national security issues to change the subject. Still, an Israeli political scene that had seemed static and complacent just a few short month ago suddenly seems alive with possibilities as a result of Israelis' improbable mimicking of their Egyptian neighbors.

 

London Riots: Why the Violence Is Spreading Across England

 - Yahoo! News

 

The morning after riots gripped its main shopping thoroughfare, parts of Ealing, northwest London, looked less like a middle-class suburb and more like a war zone. On the night of Aug. 8, a group of hooded youths ran up the street throwing trash bins while others stomped on the top of police patrol cars. Still others shattered through glass phone booths and set cars on fire, not far from the town's picturesque rows of Victorian houses. Simon Kirby, who runs Flower Haven, a small florist, says his brother phoned him at 6:30 a.m. to let him know that his shop's windows had been smashed and his floral displays ransacked. The violence sickens him, but he understands why disaffected youth - whom he thinks traveled to Ealing from elsewhere - would lash out. "If they had something to do, if they had money and jobs, they wouldn't do this," he says. "They see footballers who all have lots of money but aren't very bright, and they want to know why they don't have any."

In the three days that followed the initial riots in Tottenham, disgruntled youth across the country have shown they're ready for a riot - and whatever status and material objects their disobedience may confer on them. By 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, mobs were disturbing the peace for the fourth consecutive evening. In Manchester, hundreds of youth - some clad in balaclavas, others in ski masks - fought running battles with police. In Salford, a nearby suburb, separate groups of hooligans looted a liquor shop and set a clothing store on fire. In Nottingham, a group of at least 30 men firebombed a police station. And in Birmingham, a hit-and-run driver killed three men who had taken to the streets to protect local shops. That unrest followed copycat lootings and violence that had already taken place in other major hubs including Bristol and Liverpool. Nationwide, police have now made more than 1,000 arrests. (See photos of the riots in England.)

Paul Bagguley, a sociologist at the University of Leeds, believes rioting will continue to spread to other cities unless police step up their intervention. The brigands hurling bricks through windows aren't doing so out of solidarity with the people of Tottenham. "They are making a rational calculation that they can go out and do this," he says. "They see on television and the Internet people looting shops, going in and walking out with new mobile phones and flat-screen TVs. And no one is stopping them." That might explain the images of one teenager calmly texting someone on her phone as she stands among looters in a computer store in Croydon or of the looters in Brixton who stood in line to try on a pair of stolen sneakers.

Bulking up the police presence - 16,000 officers policed the streets last night, compared with 6,000 the night before - did much to turn off would-be vandals. London saw relative calm for the first time since Aug. 6, though there were a few minor clashes as community vigilantes took security into their own hands. The decision to release images of rioters, culled from CCTV footage, on the London police's Flickr page and via the BBC on Tuesday afternoon has also sent a strong message that authorities - and the wider public - want to see justice served. The police's Flickr page received around 3 million hits within five hours of going live. (Read "The Great Riot of London: The Stakes for David Cameron.")

But arrests resulting from those photos may not come for months, if at all. And they will do little to resolve the underlying issues that are now boiling over. Racial tensions have fomented much of the anger that's being released, and that informs the deteriorating relationship between officers and the communities they police. In the past five years, the number of black and South Asian people stopped and searched by the police in the country has nearly doubled to 310,000. "Most of the time the police don't find anything," Bagguley says. "I think what we're seeing is partly a consequence of those tactics." That many of the looters come from high-crime areas that are heavily policed strains the relationship even more. The riots in Hackney on the afternoon of Aug. 8 reportedly kicked off after one of these searches. (See more about the events in Ealing.)

Social scientists say it's too simplistic to make a direct connection between Britain's austerity cuts and the mob violence. But the effects of those cuts may influence idle young people. The issue, sociologists say, is not that youth are unemployed. It's that they're unoccupied - and therefore more likely to loiter on the streets and in shopping centers, and to get wrapped up in the madness of rebellion. Tottenham, for instance, is in the borough of Haringey, where the local council had to shut 8 of its 13 youth centers at the beginning of July. The centers had offered courses on everything from beauty treatments to DJing, and services ranging from sexual-health tests to exam revision. "A lot of those radicalized youth who were on the street Saturday night would have been going to those youth centers," says Clifford Scott, a senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Liverpool. "They no longer had anywhere else to go."

As the sun set on Tuesday evening and the country braced for a fourth night of riots, the BBC rolled footage of still more disturbances, this time in Wolverhampton, a town northwest of Birmingham. Groups of youth dressed in black hoodies ran down the street and set to attacking shops. Back in Ealing, local MP Virendra Sharma walked through the town after nightfall to reassure residents that peace had returned to the community. Businesses shut at 3 p.m. Many boarded up their windows anyway.
- With reporting by Sonia Van Gilder Cooke / London and Thomas K. Grose / Ealing

Read "London Riots: Fires Spread on Third Night of Violence."

 

Ryan Edward Dougherty, Dylan Dougherty, and Lee Dougherty :Florida fugitive siblings

Florida fugitive siblings caught in Colorado - Yahoo! News

Three fugitive siblings wanted in connection with crimes in Florida and Georgia last week were taken into custody in Colorado after shots were fired and a high-speed chase ended in a crash, police said on Wednesday.

A citizen tip paved the way for their capture, with the Colorado State Patrol learning at about 9 a.m. local time that the siblings' white car had been spotted at a campground near Colorado City.

Authorities had been searching since August 2 for Ryan Edward Dougherty, 21, Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, and Lee Grace E. Dougherty, 29, who are accused of shooting at a Florida police officer and robbing a bank in Georgia on the same day.

 

REUTERS/Pasco County Sheriff' Office/Handout - Click image to see more photos.

 

 Their car was no longer at the campground when deputies arrived on Wednesday, but a Pueblo County Sheriff's deputy soon spotted it at a gas station, according to the state patrol.

The siblings took off as troopers tried to make a traffic stop, and a high-speed pursuit ensued.

Shots were fired at troopers during the chase, a preliminary investigation found. The suspects' car crashed on I-25 after troopers deployed stop sticks, tire deflators which police use in high speed chases, the patrol said.

Lee Grace Dougherty and one of her brothers were apprehended at that time, police said. The other brother ran but was quickly captured.

Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor said the suspects had minor injuries, but no police officers were injured.

At a press conference in Florida, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said the siblings' car flipped during the chase and Lee Grace Dougherty was shot in the arm during the gun battle.

"We won," Nocco said of the capture. "It's absolutely a huge relief. These three were dangerous people."

 

 

The scene in Colorado on Wednesday was similar to the one police said played out in Florida last week.

Authorities said the trio's alleged crime spree began when suspects inside a white car being pursued for speeding shot at the patrol vehicle of a Zephyrhills, Florida, police officer.

The chase, which reached speeds up to 100 miles per hour, ended when the officer's vehicle was disabled by a flat tire caused by a bullet fired by the suspects, police said.

About five hours later, suspects of a similar description robbed a bank in Valdosta, Georgia, police said.

One of the suspects carried an AK-47 assault rifle as they entered the bank dressed in black and wearing masks, the FBI said. Shots were fired at the ceiling, and everyone in the bank was ordered to get down. The three suspects escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash, the FBI said.

 

The unemployment benefits seekers in the US

Unemployment aid applications at 395k, 4-month low - Yahoo! News

 

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell last week below 400,000 for the first time in four months, a sign that the job market may be improving slowly after a recent slump.

Applications for unemployment aid dropped by 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 395,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Applications had been above 400,000 for the previous 17 weeks.

The four-week average, a less-volatile figure, fell to 405,000, its sixth straight decline and the lowest level since mid-April. That suggests layoffs have eased.

The decline in applications helped lift stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 85 points in the first hour of trading.

Applications fell in February to 375,000, a level that reflects healthy job growth. They soared to an eight-month high of 478,000 in late April, and have declined slowly since then.

There were fewer layoffs last week in the manufacturing, transportation and service industries, according to the report. Only nine states reported an increase in applications.

Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics said the decline shows the job market is at least not getting worse.

"Of course, it tells us nothing about hiring, which the market turmoil of recent weeks will not have helped," said Dales, noting the 16 percent decline in the Dow Jones industrial average since July 21.

The economy added 117,000 net jobs in July, the government said last week. That was an improvement from the previous two months. But it's far below the average of 215,000 jobs per month that companies created from February through April.

Many employers pulled back on hiring after signs emerged that the economy had weakened from last year. High gas prices and scant wage gains left consumers with less money to spend on discretionary purchases, such as appliances, furniture and electronics. Supply chain disruptions caused by the Japan crisis also dampened U.S. factory production.

The economy expanded at an annual rate of just 0.8 percent in the first six months of the year, the slowest growth in the two years since the recession officially ended.

Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics, said the declining trend in weekly unemployment benefit applications is an encouraging sign for the job market.

"Although the labor market also hit a "soft patch" along with most of the rest of the economy during the spring and early summer, it now appears to be strengthening, at least a little, again," he said.

Still, the outlook for the economy is dim. The Federal Reserve on Tuesday said it expects growth will stay weak for two more years. The Fed also acknowledged that the economy's problems go beyond temporary factors, such as high gas prices.

As a result, the Fed said it would likely keep the short-term interest rate near zero at least through mid-2013.

Economists have slashed their growth estimates. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects just 2.5 percent growth in the July-September quarter, down from its previous estimate of 3.25 percent. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced its estimate to 1.5 percent, down from as high as 3 percent several weeks ago.

Growth of about 2.5 percent is barely enough to reduce the unemployment rate. The economy needs to grow by 5 percent for a whole year to bring down the rate by one percentage point.

Fears that the U.S. economy could be at risk of falling back into a recession, along with concerns that Europe is struggling to control its debt crisis, have roiled markets in recent weeks. The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen nearly 12 percent so far this month.

Many analysts worry that market turmoil could spook investors and consumers, causing them to take fewer risks and cut back on spending. That would hurt economic growth, making the markets' jitters a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits fell by 60,000 to 3.69 million. But that doesn't include nearly 4 million additional unemployed people who are receiving extended benefits under emergency programs set up during the recession.

In all, about 7.5 million people received unemployment benefits in the week ending July 23, the latest data available.

 

East Africa's Famine

UN: Hundreds of thousands face starvation - Yahoo! News

The United Nations warned Wednesday that the famine in East Africa hasn't peaked and hundreds of thousands of people face imminent starvation and death without a massive global response.

 

U.N. deputy emergency relief coordinator Catherine Bragg appealed to the international community for $1.3 billion needed urgently to save lives.

"Every day counts," she told the U.N. Security Council. "We believe that tens of thousands have already died. Hundreds of thousands face imminent starvation and death. We can act to prevent further loss of life and ensure the survival of those who are on the brink of death."

Bragg's office, which coordinates U.N. humanitarian efforts, said the famine is expected to spread to all regions of south Somalia in the next four to six weeks unless further aid can be delivered. The global body says it has received $1.1 billion, just 46 percent of the $2.4 billion requested from donor countries.

Bragg's appeal came as a U.N. food agency official warned that the number of people fleeing famine-hit areas of Somalia is likely to rise dramatically and could overwhelm international aid efforts in the Horn of Africa.

 

Chelsea Ives

London riots 2011: Olympic ambassador Chelsea Ives, 18, led Enfield Vodafone attack | Mail Online

 

An Olympics ambassador allegedly hurled bricks at a police car and led an attack on a mobile phone store during the riots.

Chelsea Ives, 18, was today revealed as a riot suspect - after being reported to police by her mother.

She was filmed by the BBC allegedly throwing bricks at a police car during violent disturbances in Enfield on Sunday night.

Detained: Chelsea Ives is seen arriving at Westminster Magistrates Court overnight

She was seen on the nightly news by her mother Adrienne, 47, who immediately called the police.

Westminster magistrates' court heard that police had to abandon their BMW in the 'frenzied' attack.

Ives, described by her lawyer as a 'talented sportswoman', is alleged to have boasted later that she had had 'the best day ever', magistrates heard.

She denied two counts of burglary, violent disorder and attacking a police car.

Ives was refused bail until August 17 when she will appear at Highbury Corner magistrates' court.

Prosecutor Becky Owen said Ives had also led an attack on a Vodafone store.