1. Boom or bust?
March 30, 2012
It is not easy for an average middle-class Thai to buy an apartment in Bangkok. The economy is growing and incomes are rising but the price of real estate has, in the past few years, grown much faster.
A small studio apartment of about 28 square meters (around 300 square feet) can cost almost $100,000 while a luxury three-bedroom apartment or a house is worth millions. A mid-level white-collar employee, say an assistant or a real estate agent, makes less than $1,000 a month.
“For the middle class, it is very difficult. Look at me,” says Patcharin Manyuen, a real estate agent in Bangkok. “I am working but I can’t afford to buy.”
Bangkok is a good example of how resilient Asian real estate markets are. In the past few years, Thailand has gone through coups, political scandals and unrest, outbreaks of disease and massive flooding. “Yet the overall trend has been continued demand expansion and that has been met with a supply response,” says Dan Tantisunthorn, head of research for Thailand at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), a real estate management and consulting company.
The foretold butchering of real estate prices across many Asian markets at the end of 2011 did not happen. Some markets have gone softer and conditions in some places are difficult but any drops in value have been relatively mild and perhaps even beneficial, say economists. Several governments have spent the last couple of years trying to cool property prices without sending them spiraling down.
2. France asks: Were warnings missed on Toulouse killer? - CNN.com
CNN 2012-03-23
France asks: Were warnings missed on Toulouse killer?
Could more have been done in Toulouse?
(CNN) -- Did French intelligence services miss vital clues as Mohammed Merah showed signs of growing radicalization? In the words of the French newspaper, L'Express, on Thursday: "Did the security services fail in their surveillance?"
How do western intelligence agencies choose who to focus on as terror suspects, amid hundreds that express or harbor militant views? Do they have sufficient resources; and where lies the balance between surveillance and the protection of civil liberties?
These are just a few of the questions emerging after Merah's killings.
Merah had been on the radar of the French intelligence service for several years. He'd been detained in Afghanistan in 2010 and repatriated to France -- only to return to the Afghan-Pakistan border area in August of last year. He'd been interviewed by the French security services last November after returning from the Af-Pak area a second time. But he had apparently persuaded them, even showing photographs he had taken, that he had been on a tourist trip.
Gunman's attack videos reportedly found
In addition, it has emerged that Merah was on a U.S. no-fly-list, according to U.S. officials, which would have prevented him from boarding any U.S.-bound flight.
3. ‘I’m Definitely Not a Wolf’
The Wall Street Journal March 29, 2012,
Bloomberg News
Leung Chun-ying, a former Hong Kong government adviser, gestures during a news conference after winning the chief executive election in Hong Kong, China, on Sunday, March 25, 2012.
“Are you a wolf?”
It’s not an ordinary question to hear at a press briefing, but by this point, Hong Kong’s next top leader is used to it. For years, Leung Chun-ying has been dogged with criticisms that he’s too sly, too mysterious, and perhaps most damning of all, too close with Beijing.
Looking both amused and wearied by the reporter’s question, Mr. Leung laughed. “People who know me know that I’m definitely not a wolf. Not in any way,” he said in a Wednesday briefing with overseas media, the first since he was tapped to lead the city over the weekend.
Local media may have dubbed him a lupine character, but over the course of an hour-long briefing, he cracked jokes, smiled frequently and made a point of shaking hands with every one of the 30-odd reporters assembled around the table.
Still, despite his open demeanor he remained guarded in his comments. “Over the next three months, I’m not going to address any policy issues,” said Mr. Leung, who takes office on July 1. “I said it publicly, there’s only one chief executive in Hong Kong, one government and one set of policies.” For the next three months, he said, current chief executive Donald Tsang’s policies “will rule Hong Kong.”
Asked about whether he thinks the city’s property market is currently overheated, Mr. Leung smiled. “I don’t want to comment on the issue right now,” he said. “You have to ask Donald Tsang.” When pressed once more, Mr. Leung again declined to comment. “Ask me the question in three months and I will tell you in three months.”
He was likewise tight-lipped when asked whether he thought that Hong Kongers’ views of the Communist Party might shift in the coming decade—so that one day, being called a Communist (as Mr. Leung has) won’t be seen as an insult. Mr. Leung denied being a Communist Party member, as he has repeatedly in the past, but declined to comment further.
“I don’t want to comment on other aspects of the Communist Party or peoples’ views of the Communist Party in Hong Kong,” he said. However, he committed himself once again to protecting rule of law in the city, as well as Hong Kongers’ freedom of expression
沒有留言:
張貼留言