Latest News Clips 2014.02.17

Bengo’s Latest News Clips 2014.02.17

1. China and Taiwan Hold First Direct Talks Since ’49

The New York Times FEB. 11, 2014

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Wang Yu-chi, left, head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, and Zhang Zhijun, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, greeted each other before their meeting on Tuesday in Nanjing, China. Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Representatives of Taiwan and China held their first official talks on Tuesday since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, a meeting expected to produce few concrete results but one that was a symbolic development in the easing of the two sides’ longtime rivalry.

The setting was a resort hotel in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which was at times the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China before its government fled to Taiwan after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces.

“Before today’s meeting, it was hard to imagine that cross-strait relations could get to this point,” said Wang Yu-chi, head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council.

The improved ties were “hard-earned through efforts of generations,” said Zhang Zhijun, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. “We should cherish it and work together to maintain this favorable momentum.”

China considers Taiwan to be a part of its territory that must eventually be reunited. It has reacted angrily in the past to steps seen as moving the self-governed island toward formal independence.

In 1995 and 1996, it fired missiles into waters around Taiwan ahead of its first democratic presidential election, and it regularly denounced Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s independent-leaning president from 2000 to 2008.

Since the 2008 election of President Ma Ying-jeou, who favors closer ties with the mainland, Beijing has taken a more conciliatory approach. Cross-strait trade has nearly doubled over the course of Mr. Ma’s presidency, reaching $197 billion last year. Nearly three million Chinese traveled to Taiwan last year, constituting the largest single group of visitors after Taiwan’s easing of restrictions on mainland arrivals starting in 2008.

The two sides signed a landmark trade agreement, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, in 2010. Those negotiations were carried out by semiofficial bodies: Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.

A follow-up agreement to the trade accord that lifts barriers on cross-strait trade in services has been held up in Taiwan’s legislature as it debates possible effects on Taiwanese companies.

Until now, representatives of China and Taiwan had met only through unofficial organizations or through retired officials, as Beijing has resisted any steps that might be seen as recognizing Taiwan’s sovereignty.

2. Medal price tag: What do athletes sacrifice for the sake of Olympic glory?

RT FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Behind the Olympic triumphs there are horrific, but also inspiring stories of a painful road to success. Russia’s Evgeny Plushenko skates despite pins implanted in his spine and Poland’s Justyna Kowalczyk wins her 10km ski race with a broken foot.

Hardly a year has passed since Plushenko, 31, had major surgery on his spine – a twelfth operation during his figure skating career – which fired back with debilitating pain through much of his Olympic training.

The 2006 Turin Olympic champion suffered a back injury at the European Championships in Zagreb, Croatia in January 2013 where he fell performing a triple axel during a short program.

Medics recommended he withdraw from the competition since the injury aggravated the back problem that Plushenko had been suffering from for about a year before the incident. He even had to take baths with scalding water five times a day during the Championship to ease the pain.

In late January last year, he successfully underwent a surgery in Tel Aviv to replace intervertebral disc.

“That was the most difficult surgery in my career and in my life. I had to learn walking anew, getting up from bed,” Plushenko said earlier this week in an interview with Kommersant daily. He recalled that when he first got on ice after the operation, he felt like a beginner rather than a professional and had difficulty performing even simple figure skating elements.

Back then, Plushenko said, he could not even imagine that he would be able to make it to the Sochi Games. In September, the skater performed his first flip since the operation.

At the Sochi Olympics, the Russian skating legend scored 168.20 for the free skate program – his most difficult in terms of combination of elements in over a decade. Priceless for his fans, the performance, along with a successful short program, helped Russia to win its first gold in Sochi in the team skating event.

“You know what he did? No one has any idea…There was one chance in a thousand that he would be able to come back [to sport],” his wife, Yana Rudkovskaya said. Plushenko was training 10 hours a day before Sochi, she added.

Unfortunately, on Thursday, Plushenko had to withdraw from the men’s individual event after injuring his back during the warm-up.

“I withdrew because of severe back pain,” he said, adding that he tried his best to end his career on a positive note, and was preparing to compete in the individual event. “God probably said: ‘Evgeny, it’s time to finish.’ I believe that’s the only way to stop me.” Plushenko added that he has lots of plans for the future, but would likely not take part in competitive skating. “But still, I say neither ‘no’ nor ‘yes’,” he said.

3. Flooding and storms in UK are clear signs of climate change, says Lord Stern

Author of 2006 report says recent weather is part of international pattern and demonstrates urgent need to cut carbon emissions

Conal Urquhart

theguardian.com, 13 February 2014

Flooding on Somerset Levels

Flooded houses in the village of Moorland on the Somerset Levels. Writing in the Guardian, Lord Stern says failure to cut emissions will result in 'even more devastating consquences'. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The devastating floods and storms sweeping Britain are clear indications of the dangers of climate change, according to Lord Stern, the author of a 2006 report on the economics of climate change.

Writing in the Guardian, the crossbench peer said the flooding and storm damage demonstrate the need for Britain and the rest of the world to continue to implement low-carbon policies to reduce the probability of greater tragedies in the future.

He said the five wettest years and the seven warmest years in the UK have happened since 2000, which is explained by a clear body of evidence showing that a warmer atmosphere contains more water and causes more intense rainfall. When this is combined with higher sea levels in the English Channel, the risk of flooding increases.

Recent UK weather is part of an international pattern of extreme weather which proves the dangers of climate change and the need to cut carbon emissions, Stern said.

"If we do not cut emissions, we face even more devastating consequences, as unchecked they could raise global average temperature to 4C or more above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

"The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity."

Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, noted that Australia has just had its hottest year on record, Argentina one of its worst heatwaves in late December, while parts of Brazil were struck by floods and landslides following record rainfall.

He said that delay is dangerous: "Inaction could be justified only if we could have great confidence that the risks posed by climate change are small. But that is not what 200 years of climate science is telling us. The risks are huge."

Britain must continue to implement the 2008 Climate Change Act, he said. This commits the UK to cut its emissions by at least 80% by 2050.

Latest News Clips 2014.02.10

1. 
   Vladimir Putin all smiles for an elegant, surreal look at Russian history in Sochi

Winter Olympics' opening ceremony was light on nationalism but with a share of psychedelia and a utopian view of history

the Guardian.com, Friday 7 February 2014

Dancers perform against a backdrop of onion domes during the opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics

In a buttoned-down black overcoat with a fur collar, Vladimir Putin smiled a big smile as the lights went down in the Fisht Stadium. Putin himself may have been restricted to an uncharacteristic peripheral role by the Olympic charter, which only allowed him to say one sentence, announcing the official opening of the Games. But the triumphant smile on his face was worth a thousand words. For him, these are the biggest two weeks of his political career.

Misfiring Olympic ring aside, the games got off to an impressive start with an opening ceremony that took a dreamy and sumptuous look at Russian history, mounted on a scale that matches the preparations for the Games themselves.

The official opening ceremony came after another warm and sunny day in Sochi, and was preceded by an hour of entertainment for those in the stadium, not shown to television audiences either in Russia or abroad. In a somewhat surreal turn of events, much of the hour had been given a – perhaps unintended – gay theme. The competitors' seats were painted in rainbow colours, the first song was a rendition of Queen's We Are the Champions, followed by the faux-lesbian pop duo tATu, who sang one of their hits from a decade ago, Not Gonna Get Us.

2. Emerging markets split into tortoises and hares: Which will win 2014?

CNN January 21, 2014

The curtain goes up on Davos Janet Yellen and the U.S. economy in 2014

But Davos 2014 may bring an end to sweeping generalizations, as those here representing the Fortune 500 become more discerning in their hunt for growth.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University sees it as the next phase of an economic evolution.

"Some of these emerging economies are well managed, others have some fairly miserable politics, some have good growth prospects, others fairly mediocre," Sachs said in interview with CNN. "So I think that it's good to scrutinize to get much more detail and fine grain in one's analysis."

As an institution, the World Economic Forum was quick to embrace the shift of growth to the East and the rise of India and China. In the early 1990s here in Davos, I bore witness to leaders of China being welcomed on stage signaling the start of economic reforms. Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were here what as well after the Soviet Union broke apart.

Large, populous countries shows signs of racing ahead. But those that have been slow to reform like Brazil, Russia and Turkey have lagged behind.

Those major forces of globalization sparked a decade-long drive by chief executives to direct their investments to the developing world.

Nearly a quarter century later, today's emerging markets can be divided into the tortoises and hares. Large, populous countries such as China, Nigeria, and the Philippines shows signs of racing ahead. But those that have been slow to reform like Brazil, Russia and Turkey have lagged behind.

With growth that fell from recent highs, all three of the latter countries bore witness to intense protests with citizens disgruntled about decisions made at the top.

Sachs says this trend is not limited to the developing world, but it is more pronounced now with growth a third if not half of what it was just a few years ago.

"We see in just about every country throughout modern history that politics can interfere with the good economic policy and that's certainly happened in many of the major emerging economies," said Sachs.

3. China's 21st century challenge: Define your narrative or fall behind

CNN January 23, 2014

In November, China's Communist rulers announced an easing of the controversial one-child policy amid a raft of sweeping pledges unveiled including the abolition of 're-education' labor camps and loosening economic controls.

(CNN) -- If the 21st century belongs to China, as some have argued, then it is worth asking what the defining Chinese idea will be.

It is unsurprising that this very issue has ginned up ferocious debate within China, as the country's might grows but its voice remains meek on the global stage.

Economic success alone has yet to evince a self-assured China that it can offer a set of compelling values and ideas to the world. As a country that prides itself on the continuity of its great civilization and cultural force, China seems to grow increasingly dissatisfied with punching below its weight in the world of ideas.

Indeed, much of the 20th century was defined by the rise of the United States and the dominance of the American idea: It was essentially an articulation of what modernity means.

To be modern meant widespread economic prosperity, a healthy middle class, and technological superiority, combined with values that emphasized individual rights and freedoms to pursue whatever lives, liberties, and happiness that one sought. It was a manifestation of the ideals that were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, a document that, at the young nation's inception, defined what kind of country the United States ought to strive for.

It seems that China has little choice but to look to its distant past in search of a continuous narrative and an indigenous idea that can carry the nation forward in the 21st Century.

4. Japan-China tensions take center-stage with Abe in Davos

Reuters, Jan 22 2014

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing took centre-stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday as Japan's prime minister called for military restraint in Asia and a senior Chinese academic branded him a troublemaker.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe defended his visit to a controversial shrine to Japan's war dead, which outraged China and South Korea, and took a veiled swipe at China's military buildup in his speech to global business leaders.

Sino-Japanese ties, long colored by what Beijing considers Tokyo's failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during World War Two, have deteriorated in the past two years over a territorial dispute, Abe's visit to a shrine that critics say glorifies Japan's wartime past and a new Chinese air-defense zone.

Asia's two biggest powers each accuse the other of bellicosity. Strategic experts in Davos said their tensions posed the biggest risk of conflict around the world in 2014, along with hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

"We must ... restrain military expansion in Asia, which could otherwise go unchecked," Abe, the first Japanese leader to give the keynote address, said in a speech dominated by a defense of expansionary economic policies dubbed Abenomics.

"The dividend of growth must not be wasted on military expansion," he said. "We must use it to invest in innovation and human capital, which will further boost growth in the region."

Abe is pursuing a more assertive military and national security policy, such as moving towards approving the use of force to help allies under attack and calling for debate on revising Japan's pacifist post-war constitution.

His government has ended years of declines in defense spending and plans modest increases in coming years. At the same time, Tokyo has criticized China's decades of hefty rises in military spending and implicitly accused Beijing of a lack of transparency in its defense budgets.

"Military budgets should be made completely transparent and there should be public disclosure in a form that can be verified," Abe said, following his government's custom of not naming China in such references.

5. Lessons from a self-made billionaire

CNN July 11, 2013

Woman billionaire: How I did it

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Worth $3.6 billion, Zhang Xin is the world's seventh richest self-made woman
• Xin runs China's largest real estate developer
• She rose from assembly line of a Beijing factory to property magnate
• Her family partly owns a 40% stake in NYC's GM building

Leading Women connects you to extraordinary women of our time -- remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science and more.

(CNN) -- Zhang Xin is an example of true grit success. She rose from the faceless assembly line of a Beijing factory to a property magnate richer than Donald Trump and Oprah.

Her company, SOHO China, literally changed the landscape of Beijing and Shanghai over the past two decades. Forbes magazine has listed her family's net worth at $3.6 billion.

And she's not stopping there. In a private transaction (not related to her company business), her family and the Safra banking family of Brazil just bought a 40% stake in the iconic GM building in New York City -- the building that houses the flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue.

Zhang recently sat down with CNN's Pauline Chiou to talk about everything from her Beijing childhood to the volatile property market and how her 14-year old son tried to get a job at McDonald's.

Failure is part of the puzzle

CNN: Did you come across a lot of bumps in the road and a lot of failures?

Zhang Xin: Every day. I mean, I think that's just life. You will always bump into difficulties, challenges and problems. It appears to be that we seem to be doing quite well, but as it is now, we're still having challenges every day. So I think that's just nothing unique. That's just life.