Bengo’s Latest News Clips 2014.06.02
- The Fringe Gets Bigger
The New York Times By THE EDITORIAL BOARD MAY 28, 2014
As expected, angry Europeans across the Continent delivered a drubbing to establishment parties in elections to the European Parliament that ended Sunday. It was not only fringe parties in smaller states that did it: Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France and Nigel Farage’s UKIP (U.K. Independence Party) in Britain each took about a quarter of the votes in their countries, the second- and third-biggest economies in the European Union.
Despite a widespread sense that something akin to an earthquake had struck the Continent, the vote does not mean that the European project — the “ever closer union” promised by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 — is in any immediate danger of being voted out of existence by hostile xenophobes in the European Parliament. Though the Euroskeptics will be a sizable, if fragmented, bloc, the parties most supportive of the union will command almost 70 percent of the 751 seats. Even so, Europe’s leaders must now take serious stock of mounting frustration, apathy and even antipathy to the very idea of the union.
The European Parliament has fewer powers than Europe’s national legislatures, and while it plays an important role in shaping laws on certain issues as the union’s only directly elected body, it has never fully engaged the attention of voters in the union’s 28 members, which are much more focused on national politics. Moreover, the election came in the wake of a protracted economic crisis in Europe. More than a tenth of the European work force, about 26 million people, is unemployed, with the highest rates in countries worst hit by the euro crisis. That, in turn, has increased suspicion among poorer Europeans that foreigners are taking their jobs.
But European leaders would be foolish to see this as a transitory protest that will dissipate as economic recovery takes hold. Many Europeans appear to feel that the mainstream parties have become deaf to their problems and mired in scandal and inaction. The election must prompt a serious discussion on issues like immigration, which touch on nearly every member country, and more broadly on whether the European Union has, in fact, become too intrusive and controlling.
- China is destabilising south-east Asia, US defence secretary says
The Guardian May 31, 2014
• Chuck Hagel says US will not ignore from Beijing's actions • Chinese general says 'criticisms are groundless' • Washington pledges to support uneasy allies, including Japan
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel with Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong, of China. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
China's aggressive moves to claim jurisdiction over land and sky in the Asia-Pacific risk undermining peace and security in the region and beyond, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. Beijing scoffed at the "groundless" charges.
Hagel told an international security conference that the US "will not look the other way" when China and others try to restrict navigation or ignore international rules and standards.
Chin's territorial claims in the South China Sea are destabilising the region, he said, adding that Beijing's failure to resolve such disputes threatens East Asia's long-term progress.
A Chinese general took issue with Hagel's comments, saying that "although I do think that those criticisms are groundless, I do appreciate your candor."
Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of the general staff, told Hagel during a brief meeting after the defense secretary's speech: "You were very candid this morning and, to be frank, more than our expectation."
Reporters were taken from the meeting room before Hagel responded. But the Pentagon press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, said Hagel told Wang all regional disputes should be solved through diplomacy, and encouraged China to foster dialogue with neighbouring nations.
As he did in 2013, Hagel used his appearance at the Shangri-La conference to single out China for cyberspying against the US. While this has been a persistent complaint, his remarks came less than two weeks after the Obama administration charged five Chinese military officers with hacking into American companies to steal trade secrets.
The Chinese, in response, suspended participation in a US-China Cyber Working Group, and released a report that said the US is conducting "unscrupulous" cyber-espionageand that China is a major target.
Noting the suspension, Hagel said the US will continue to raise cyber issues with the Chinese, "because dialogue is essential for reducing the risk of miscalculation and escalation in cyberspace".
In comments aimed directly at China, Hagel said the US opposes any country's use of intimidation or threat of force to assert territorial claims.
"All nations of the region, including China, have a choice: to unite, and recommit to a stable regional order, or, to walk away from that commitment and risk the peace and security that has benefited millions of people throughout the Asia-Pacific, and billions of people around the world," he said.
- Mothers reveal all: The secrets to raising a successful child
CNN May 27, 2014
Eve Branson, mother of the Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, runs the not-for-profit Eve Branson Foundation that provides training projects to local communities in Morocco.Eve Branson, mother of the Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, runs the not-for-profit Eve Branson Foundation that provides training projects to local communities in Morocco.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Nina dos Santos sits down with women who've raised some of the world's business and sporting leaders
- Judy Murray, Eve Branson, Mary-Lee Berners-Lee and Maye Musk share their memories
- The moms reveal similar stories from their chidren's childhood, and fears as they grew up
(CNN) -- Perched on a sofa in her West London apartment, Eve Branson recounts early memories of her son Richard. Disciplining him, it seems, was delicate business.
"He was like a ball of fire as a little boy," the 90-year-old told me. "Like a thoroughbred. You didn't want to pull the reins too hard and spoil him, spoil his adventures and his madness but you had to pull a little bit."
His single-mindedness began to reveal itself when he was just three or four, she recalls. Branson ran off and hid at a local farmer's house after a strong reprimand. "Eventually someone rang to say 'We've got a little blue-eyed boy here? Does he belong to you?' Gosh was I relieved."
Now, her son has a knighthood, is worth more than $5 billion according to Forbes and is one of the world's most able -- if eccentric -- entrepreneurs.
But what was the secret to such success?
Does tough love breed success or is support and encouragement key to raising tomorrow's tycoons?
I set out to answer these questions in a series of interviews with the mothers of sports stars, tech pioneers and rockers and discovered they had many traits in common.
Branson, it seems, was not the only budding businessman with a mind of his own.
Maye Musk, mum of PayPal magnate Elon, has a similar story.
I used to think my children were terribly well behaved but when I look back at this I realize it wasn't always so.
The South African model and nutritionist laughs nervously as she recalls the time she left a young Elon Musk behind at home for misbehaving while taking her other children to visit their cousins.
It was a 20 minute drive away or four hours on foot, she says. Just as she was leaving Musk says her son turned up out of nowhere.
"I saw this tiny little boy, just past toddler stage, coming down the sidewalk. It was Elon. He'd walked there! I was horrified."
Now aged 42, her son has revolutionized the world of e-commerce and electric vehicles through his companies Paypal and Tesla.
Elon Musk's mother shares her story Meet Eve Branson
And just like Branson, who soon aims to make passenger space travel a possibility, Musk is taking on the final frontier: with a contract from NASA for his firm Space X to transport orbital cargo.
Maye says her each launch leaves her "anxious and shaking and sick," with relief finally coming with success.
It's a reaction Judy Murray can sympathise with.
Murray has raised two successful children, both of whom hold Wimbledon titles. Older son Jamie is a doubles champion while younger is the singles title holder Andy.
When Andy Murray clinched the Wimbledon title last year, the first Briton to do so in 77 years, his mother couldn't look. "I buried my face because I knew the cameras would be on me."
Murray, herself an accomplished tennis player and coach, introduced her sons to the sport as a way of keeping them busy, but never expected her family name to make the sport's hall of fame.
"As eight and nine year olds they were exceptionally good tennis players...but when I saw Andy holding the trophy, I just thought "I can't believe it," she says.
Judy Murray has been accused of being pushy but says people "make assumptions because they don't know me.
"I've heard Andy and Jamie being asked that before and they say 'my mum never pushed us.' That's why they are still doing what they are doing, because they love what they are doing."
Another famous son inspired by his parent's passion is Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.
The child of two computer programmers and maths aficionados, Berners-Lee grew up in a household of calculus before bedtime.
His 90-year-old mother Mary-Lee shows me a sketch drawn by a family friend on holiday one year depicting a young Tim and three siblings in animated conversation; the word "Noise" scribbled above their heads.
"I used to think my children were terribly well behaved but when I look back at this I realize it wasn't always so," she says.
She recalls evenings around the dinner table, when the family would try and solve maths problems. If his parents were unable to crack it, Tim Berners-Lee would step in, she told me. "It was all terribly good fun."
