from a dollar-dominated system to a multi-currency one

Ex-IMF Chief: Emerging Markets to Dominate World; Dollar to Lose Power - Yahoo! News

 

As much as 80% of the world's economic growth in the next 40 years will come from emerging market countries, ex-managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Michel Camdessus predicted this week in Buenos Aires.

"By 2050 we can expect that close to 80% of the global economic growth will be a result of emerging countries," Camdessus, a French economist and managing director of the IMF from 1987-2000, said at the Annual Meeting for the Christian Association of Company Directors.

Xinhua news agency covered the conference last week, quoting Camdessus on a story that ran on the wire June 23. Camdessus said that emerging markets "are narrowing the gap with developed nations by developing their middle-class and improving their life quality."

Dollar Losing its Lure

He also said international economists believe that in the next few years the dollar will cease to dominate the global monetary system, which will help promote a multi-currency system. The monetary and finance system will in the future "be renewed so that emerging countries are recognized, changing from a dollar-dominated system to a multi-currency one."

Many economists and anti-dollar investors have been bearish on the dollar over the last five years, at least, with some commodities bulls being dollar bears as far back as the early 2000s. Some have even called for a return to the gold standard, meaning each dollar would have to be backed by an ounce of gold. Such a policy would cause the price of precious metals to skyrocket.

The dollar is the world's trading currency. All commodities are priced in dollars. Many nations, including Brazil and Argentina, have considered pricing commodities in their local currency, whereas Buenos Aires buyers would not have to pay for Brazilian commodities like oil in dollars. They could be in Brazilian reals, or pesos. However, the underlying value of the product is still dollar-based, and their currency's would have to be converted to the market rate even if they were trading in their local currency.

The IMF estimates that total GDP of the emerging market nations, led by China and India, will surpass that of developed economies in 2014.

According to Ernst & Young, the emerging markets already attract almost 50% of foreign direct investment (FDI) global inflows and account for 25% of FDI outflows. By 2020, the BRICs are expected to account for nearly 50% of all global GDP growth.

Securing a strong base in these countries will be critical for investors seeking growth beyond the US, Europe and Japan.

 

Law grads sue school, say degree is ‘indentured servitude’ |

 The Lookout - Yahoo! News

Three recent law school graduates are suing their alma mater in a $200 million class action, alleging they were deliberately misled about their future career prospects.

 

New York Law School "consigns the overwhelming majority of [students] to years of indentured servitude, saddling them with tens of thousands of dollars in crushing, non-dischargeable debt that will take literally decades to pay off," the suit charges.

The plaintiffs say they were told the employment rate for NYLS alumni 9 months after graduation was between 90 and 95 percent. They say they had no idea that figure included people who were employed in jobs that don't require a law degree, or even a college degree. The percentage of recent graduates who are in jobs that require or prefer a J.D. may even be below 50 percent, they allege.

 Two of the plaintiffs are practicing attorneys, while one graduated in 2010 and still hasn't been able to find permanent work. Plaintiff Alexandra Gomez-Jimenez, an immigration attorney, says she couldn't find permanent legal employment until April 2008, nearly a year after her graduation.

"These claims are without merit and we will vigorously defend against them in court," NYLS Dean Richard A. Matasar said in a statement.

NYLS students graduate with $119,437 in loans on average, and it is one of the most expensive law schools in the country even though it is rated in the bottom half of U.S. News' rankings. The plaintiffs' lawyer, David Anziska says he is filing this suit, and another against Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan, because he wants schools to be more transparent with their students about the tough market out there for young attorneys. (Cooley filed a countersuit alleging Anziska's firm defamed the school.)

"If you look at who is in charge of regulating law schools, it's all law school deans," Anziska told The Lookout. "It's like having the fox guard the henhouse."

The American Bar Association accredits the nation's 200 law schools. Facing mounting criticism, the ABA decided in May to require that law schools tell students how many graduates are in jobs that require a law degree, not just how many of them are employed at all. The new rule won't go into effect for at least another year.

According to the New York Times, law grads need to make at least $65,000 a year in order to keep up with their debt (which is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy). The law school industry has grown rapidly, even as the recession took a big bite out of the number of jobs at corporate law firms. Nine new law schools opened in the last 10 years, and the number of law degrees given out increased by 11 percent over the same period.

As we reported earlier, only 68.4 percent of the legal class of 2010 are in jobs that require them to pass the bar exam, the lowest share since the Association for Legal Professionals began collecting data. Another 10.7 percent of the class of 2010 are in jobs that require or prefer a J.D., while 8.6 percent have jobs that require neither a law degree nor bar passage. (The class' overall employment rate--for jobs in and out of the legal profession--is lower than it's been for any class since 1996, at 87.6 percent. So counting unemployed new graduates, the actual percentage of those in jobs that require bar passage is even lower, at 60 percent.)

These two suits are not without precedent. In May, the for-profit San Francisco's California Culinary Institute payed out $40 million in tuition reimbursements when they settled a class action filed by graduates who said they were told the school boasted a 98 percent job placement rate. That data included people employed as line chefs or as baristas at Starbucks, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Also that month, an out-of-work 2008 graduate of Thomas Jefferson School of Law sued, saying the school misrepresented its employment data.

 

Look at What China Wants

Concerned about the Consumer? Look at What China Wants - Yahoo! News

 

Investors concerned about a potential US “Double Dip” ought to focus where the growth is:  luxury brands with exposure in China.  One of the brightest candidates with great potential is Apple.

Luxury good demand in Asia Pacific generally, and China specifically, is driving revenues and profits of some of the world’s splashiest brands.  Take a look at some selected data points:

 

 

 

• Adidas increased 2011 guidance to 10+% growth, previously in the “high single digits” after H12011 sales increased 14%.  Sales to China were up 38% over H12010.

 

 

• Tiffany Q12011 worldwide sales were up 20%, driven largely by the growth in Asia Pacific of 37%.

 

 

• PPR, conglomerate made up of luxury brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, etc. had strong results “boosted by tourism from Asia.”

 

 

• Porsche operating profit up 59% in H12011 due to a boom in emerging markets, “especially China.

 

 

• LVMH experienced double-digit growth in revenue and profit for H12011.  The Louis Vuitton brand drove earnings, “largely in China.”

 

 

• Apple, too, saw its revenues in China (defined as Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) up 6 times in the first nine months of 2011 compared to the year earlier.  Moreover, the four stores in China have the highest average revenue per store of any other region geography for Apple.

 

 

 

The growth can be expected to continue, if only due to the sheer size of the growing middle class in China.  In 2010, China surpassed the US as the largest car market in the world.  In 2009, the size of the middle class in the US was 338M the size of the middle class in the Asia Pacific was 525M.  By 2020, the US middle class will be roughly the same size while Asia Pacific’s middle class will be the largest with over 3 times the size at 1.740B (54% of global share) with the greatest purchasing power.

Apple’s total addressable market inside China is also highly anticipated to increase.  Today, iPhones comprise over half of Apple’s revenue, making iPhones the largest driver of growth. Today, iPhones are sold officially through China Unicom, China’s second largest carrier with 181.6M subscribers.  That said, Apple and China Mobile, the largest carrier with 611M subscribers, and Apple and China Telecom, with 105.7M subscribers, have been rumored in talks for quite a while.  Many expect announcements from both by the end of the year to officially sell iPhones.  Regardless, 5.6M prepaid or unlocked iPhones are already operating on the China Mobile networks.   This broadens out Apple’s addressable market by over 700M subscribers…for a high-margin product that, in contrast to the other luxury items, is also a useful productivity and connectively tool.

Apple has plans to open a store in Hong Kong next quarter and another in Shanghai by the end of the year, further increasing its exposure.  If investors are wary of the US consumer, they should look toward growth catalysts where growth is and, for now, it is in China’s emerging middle and upper classes.

 

 

Only 2,7 percent of US consumers purchases have the "Made in China" label

'Made in China' Goods Only Small Sliver of U.S. Consumption - Yahoo! News

 

Politicians and pundits talk often talk of the undue sway Chinese businesses have over American consumers without the hard numbers to back up claims. So Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, have stepped in to do the mathematical heavy-lifting. What they've found is that only 2.7 percent of U.S. consumers purchases have the "Made in China" label.

Related: Explaining U.S.-China Relations

"Although globalization is widely recognized these days, the U.S. economy actually remains relatively closed," the authors write in a recent report. 88.5 percent of Americans' consumer spending is on things made in the U.S. In the U.S. market, China only had the edge over domestic businesses in the nondurable goods category that includes clothing and shoes. It also, unsurprisingly, does well in the U.S. in the groups of goods that include electronics and household appliances.

Related: The Dragon in the Room: The Place of China in Obama's Asia Trip

But China doesn't come that close in any other category. Even of the 2.7 percent of "Made in China" goods, only 1.2 percent represents "China-produced content," the authors write. (That's the "Final goods imported from China" category in the chart above.) The rest goes into things like American design and assembly and transocean transport. Just something to remember next try time you hear someone cursing a "Made in China" label.

 

Rape, mutilation: Pakistan's tribal justice for women

- Yahoo! News

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - On April 14, two men entered Asma Firdous' home, cut off six of her fingers, slashed her arms and lips and then sliced off her nose. Before leaving the house, the men locked their 28-year-old victim inside.

Asma, from impoverished Kohaur Junobi village in Pakistan's south, was mutilated because her husband was involved in a dispute with his relatives, and they wanted revenge.

Her fate is familiar in parts of Pakistan's remote and feudal agricultural belts, where women are often used as bargaining chips in family feuds, and where the level of violence they face is increasing in frequency and brutality.

At the hospital in nearby Multan town, Asma's shocked parents sat quietly by her bedside and struggled to explain what the future holds for their now disfigured daughter.

"I don't know what will happen to her when she leaves here," Asma's father, Ghulam Mustafa, said, in a dilapidated ward heavy with the smell of antiseptic and blood, where other women, doused with acid or kerosene by relatives or fellow villagers, awaiting an equally uncertain future.

Asked if Asma will return to her husband, her father remains silent.

Pakistan is the world's third-most dangerous country for women, after Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, based on a survey conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation (http://link.reuters.com/jet92s)

In its 2010 report, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says almost 800 women were victims of "honor killings" -- murders aimed at preserving the honor of male relatives -- and 2,900 women reported raped -- almost eight a day.

The bulk, or almost 2,600, were raped in Punjab alone, Pakistan's most populous province.

And the numbers are rising: media reports say crimes against women have risen 18 percent in the year to May and the human rights commission believes its figures represent only a fraction of the attacks which take place across the country.

Dr. Farzana Bari, director of Gender Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University, says Pakistan's patriarchal society often condones discrimination against women, which is more prevalent among poor and uneducated rural families.

That mindset can often influence the police and judiciary, which sometimes turn a blind eye to honor killings or rapes carried out to "punish" women.

"I think honor killings are a symptom of vigilante justice," she said. "And vigilante justice occurs in an environment where the state is unable to enforce its writ."

TRIBAL JUSTICE

In rural areas, women are often shut out of the justice system, which is compromised by powerful landowners and feudal lords who dominate a hierarchy that makes it difficult -- and deadly -- for those with little education or social standing to speak out.

Families or tribes then often take justice in their own hands, presiding over "jirgas" or "panchayats" -- gatherings of elders that hand down punishments that include rape, killing or barter of women for crimes that include falling in love with a man deemed inappropriate or besmirching family honor.

Some women are maimed just to settle scores.

Members of the panchayat systems say the tradition is hard to shake because it is entrenched in the local culture and also because it is much more efficient than the regular courts.

"In the settled areas there are courts but people can't always get justice or compensation," said lawyer and tribal elder Karim Masoud, who presides over both panchayat settlements and the mainstream court system.

"With the jirgas, they can get compensation, and it takes less time to settle a dispute. It's fairer and people don't have to use bribes to get justice."

Zarmuhamad Afridi, who also attends jirga rulings in Pakistan's northern tribal belt and works within the mainstream court system, said the jirga system survives because in many parts of Pakistan, a man's honor is intrinsically linked to how his wife or daughter behave.

"If a couple is not married and they are having a relationship, a jirga may rule that the woman should be shot," Afridi said. "That is okay for many, because they have to protect family honor."

The slightest transgression by a woman -- being seen talking to a man on the street, perhaps, or having an unknown phone number in a mobile -- can bring harsh punishment and social ostracism of the family, he says, making the quick, harsh judgment of the panchayats popular.

"Women are cherished here," he said. "Men protect them. If a woman is out of her house then what is she doing? That is what people think here."

Many women are unable to speak out because they lack the support and education to understand their rights, activists say.

But even those who dare often get nowhere.

The most high profile instance of a violent ruling by a tribal court against a woman is that of the gang rape of Mukhtaran Mai, which took place near Multan in 2002.

Mai was allegedly attacked to settle a matter of village honor, as decided by a panchayat. She was then paraded naked through her village.

Unlike most rape victims, who face stark recriminations for speaking out, and who are sometimes even expected to commit suicide, she filed a criminal case against 14 men.

Six men were convicted and sentenced to death that year, but in 2005 the Lahore High Court commuted one sentence to life in prison and acquitted the rest.

Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld that decision in April this year, in what rights activists said was a crushing blow to women's and minority rights in Pakistan.

The men were released days later. Mai said she is afraid they will return and kill her.

Ali Dayan Hasan, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch's South Asia division, said the lack of justice for women in cases like such as Mai's is "a structural failing of the criminal justice system".

"The verdict also lays bare the misogyny of Pakistan's judicial system because it is a judiciary that is instinctively unsympathetic to women."

(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Miral Fahmy)

Israel drops reference to God in army text

 - Yahoo! News

Israel's army has dropped references to God in a text read at a ceremony honouring fallen soldiers, a military official said on Friday, following pressure from secular families.

The relatives of some dead soldiers had protested that in many army units the text had been changed to the word "Yitzkor," which calls on God to remember the fallen troops.

The original text called on "the people of Israel" to keep the soldiers in their memories.

The decision to revert back to the original text was taken by a military commission appointed by the army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz.

 

 

 

via ScribeFire

Mideast upheavals open doors for Saudi strategies

 - Yahoo! News

 

Saudi Arabia is getting bolder in its strategy for dealing with the Middle East's uprisings. No longer waiting for Washington's cue, the kingdom is aggressively trying to influence the regional turmoil and boost its two goals — protect fellow royal houses and isolate its rival, Iran.

The more decisive policies by King Abdullah were on full display this week as he took the lead among Arab nations by yanking his ambassador from Syria and demanding an "end to the killing machine" of President Bashar Assad's regime in a startlingly strong condemnation of Damascus' bloody suppression of protesters.

It was the first time the predominantly Sunni kingdom has weighed in publicly on Syria's upheaval — and demonstrated the Saudis' willingness to shift gears dramatically as needed.

Saudi Arabia has tried to snuff out or buy off dissent at home and around the Gulf, most notably sending troops to Bahrain to help its Sunni monarch crush a Shiite protest movement in a deadly crackdown.

"It's a big move for Saudi Arabia," said Christopher Davidson, who studies Gulf affairs at Durham University in Britain. "Before, Saudi was seen as the main anti-Arab Spring power and interested mostly in preserving the status quo in the region. Now, you have the Saudis actively and openly against the Syrian regime."

"The reason, of course, is Iran," he added.

For the Saudis, the revolt in Syria is a chance to strike at one of the pillars of Iran's influence.

Assad's ruling clique is dominated by his Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot that comprises about 11 percent of the country and maintains close ties with Shiite power Iran. It's unclear how much further the Iranian influence reaches in Syria, but the country's Sunni majority looks more toward Western-allied neighbors in Lebanon and Turkey.

"Saudi sees this as a golden opportunity to further chip away at Iran's influence in the Arab Middle East and also ... to change the strategic map," said Theodore Karasik, a regional affairs expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. "This is going to make your foreign policy more robust and aggressive."

But that doesn't come without some potential complications for OPEC's No. 1 producer.

Stronger Saudi policies open the risks of friction with Washington, which is Saudi Arabia's main arms supplier and had counted on Saudi support to push U.S. interests in the Arab world. There is virtually no chance of a serious rift, and U.S. and Saudi officials are on the same page on other pivotal showdowns, such as efforts to get Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after months of protest and bloodshed. Saleh is recovering in Saudi Arabia after being badly injured in a June attack on his palace compound.

But even small rough patches between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia take on heightened significance in the tense Mideast climate.

The Saudi statement on Syria followed White House urging for the Saudis and their Arab allies to take a sharper stance on Assad's government. Days later, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Syria, and presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that Syria "would be a much better place" without Assad in charge.

In March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Bahrain was on the "wrong track" to allow Saudi-led forces to help crush protests in the island kingdom — which is home to the Pentagon's main military force in the region, the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Rights groups also have called on U.S. officials to take a sharper stance against Saudi Arabia's crackdowns on internal dissent, including a proposed law that Amnesty International said would allow authorities to prosecute peaceful protests as a terrorist act.

In Iraq, Saudi officials are deeply wary of the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who owes his power to Iranian-allied political groups.

Meanwhile, a higher regional profile invites uncomfortable scrutiny about Saudi royal succession with both King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan in their mid-80s and undergoing medical treatment this year.

Christopher Boucek, who follows Mideast security issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes Saudi leaders view U.S. policymakers as more preoccupied with "being on the right side of history instead of standing by its friends."

"Increasingly, it seems that Saudi Arabia looks out into the world and thinks that its foreign policy interests do not overlap with the United States and Washington's security interests," Boucek said. "Saudi Arabia is now in a position to pursue its own interests."

And that resonates throughout the Arab world.

Saudi objections in April also led the Arab League to shelve plans to hold its summit in Baghdad despite hopes by Washington that it would be a showcase for Iraq's regional bonds with the last U.S. troops possibly leaving in December. The snub was seen as payback for Iraqi support of Bahrain's Shiite-led protests — which Saudi Arabia and others claim are aided by Iran.

"The Saudi vision of the region is one where Iran is not welcome," said Shadi Hamid, director of research at The Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. "The Arab Spring became a time for the Saudis to act."

Saudi Arabia also is leading plans to transform the Gulf's once-sleepy political bloc, the Gulf Cooperation Council, into a kind of fortress for Middle East monarchs and sheiks. Jordan and Morocco — the region's two non-Gulf kingdoms — are in line for membership in a change that could have the council leapfrog over the Arab League as the region's more dynamic political voice with a clear anti-Iran agenda.

But even the possible end of Assad's power in Syria does not necessarily mean that Iran's regional influence would vanish, said Mohamad Chatah, a senior diplomatic adviser to former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. He said Iran still has deep ties with Hezbollah and Hamas and is widely viewed as a "defender of the Palestinians."

"If the Syrian regime goes, yes, Iran will be dealt a major blow," he said. "But it won't be a fatal blow. Iran will still be an influential player."

___

Associated Press writers Adam Schreck in Dubai, Elizabeth A. Kennedy in Beirut, Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad contributed to this report.

 

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,…

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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…

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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.