Category Archives: Global: Miscellaneous

AP: The communist government wants Chinese studios to learn from Hollywood and is trying to attract foreign studios to form ventures by promising more market access and a bigger share of ticket sales.

AP: Foreign demand for U.S. Treasury debt rose to a record high in February. China, the largest buyer of Treasury debt, increased its holding . . .

Telegraph: The unabated controversy over George Osborne’s decision to cap the tax relief on charitable donations may look like another of the small-scale bushfires that sprang up in the wake of last month’s Budget. These rows over the ambient temperature of pasties or the freezing of tax allowances for pensioners have been dismissed as media-led distractions from the main thrust of the Chancellor’s strategy, which is to focus on restoring the health of the public finances.

Irish Times: With the rate of payment of the charge at about 50 per cent local authorities are facing an unprecedented gap in funding.

BBC: Thousands at Dublin household charge protest

Boston Globe (AP): The exiled son of the toppled shah of Iran called on Israel not to bomb his home country, but rather to help the opposition to the ruling system, in an interview aired Monday on Israeli television.

NY Times: But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the 16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the most formative time of their careers, they sized each other up . . .

AFP: The United States has underestimated the growth of China’s military as policymakers have taken public statements at face value or failed to understand Beijing’s thinking, a study said Thursday.

Stripes.com: Two high-ranking U.S. senators have criticized the Chinese government for failing to halt counterfeiting of military parts, citing a Government Acccountability Office report that found bogus components were easy to obtain on the Internet from suppliers in China.

International Business Times: “All these years, the Chinese communist government has subjected its people to unfair laws and unhealthy processes,” reads the statement. “Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall.”

AFP on Yahoo: At least 43 Cuban dissidents have been arrested in areas near where Pope Benedict XVI visited last week, dissidents said Tuesday, as the United States urged their immediate release.

BBC: A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.

NCPA Policy Digest: Canada’s center-right government called for the retirement age to be raised and for major public service cuts recently, in an austerity budget that aims to balance the books by 2016, says Yahoo! News.

Real Clear Politics (includes video): “We want to create (what’s called) a global minimum tax, because American taxpayers shouldn’t be providing a larger subsidy for investing abroad than investing at home,” Biden said at a campaign event.

AFP on Yahoo: Flaherty said old age security and guaranteed income supplement benefits worth up to a total of Can$15,000 and now paid out at age 65 would be offered only at age 67, starting in 2023.

Reuters on Yahoo: A Moroccan worker in Italy set himself on fire on Thursday in protest at not being paid for months, a day after an Italian businessman set himself alight over a tax dispute, police said.

AP: Exxon Mobil is no longer the world’s biggest publicly traded producer of oil.

Washington Free Beacon: A former Chinese security official, whose attempted defection to the United States was rejected by the Obama administration, officially requested asylum during his 10-hour stay at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, China, according to an official Chinese report.

The Washington Free Bacon: Keeping up with its longstanding policy, the State Department refuses to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital—despite a U.S. law stating otherwise. Obama faced criticism on the issue last year, when it was revealed that the White House had scrubbed all references to Jerusalem being part of the Jewish state from a collection of photos on its website.

The Hill: The bill’s sponsors warned that China and Russia might seek a U.N. resolution to give authoritarian regimes censorship powers.

Boston Globe (AP): Brazil is asking more than 2,000 websites to remove sexual content that promotes Latin America’s biggest country as a sex tourism destination, the Tourism Ministry said Tuesday.

AP: Bailed-out Ireland will stage a referendum on the European fiscal treaty May 31 . . .

Washington Times: Kim was asked what he considered to be the high point of his career. He responded: “The high point was when we started receiving support, first from George Soros who gave us our first grants [to battle tuberculosis], …

NCPA Policy Digest: Moreover, 70 percent of all net profits made by China’s centrally-owned enterprises in 2009 came from only 10 companies that had been bestowed heavy market advantages by the state.

FP.com: The State Department announced on Tuesday that it would exempt 10 European countries and Japan from penalties for doing business with Iran’s central bank, because those countries are making significant progress toward weaning themselves off of Iranian oil.

Washington Post: When President Obama names his pick to replace outgoing World Bank President Robert Zoellick, that nominee will take over an institution whose role in the global economy is becoming ever more unclear.

Financial Times: Tehran has warned Saudi Arabia several times over the last two months not to increase its oil production to offset the impact of the US and European sanctions on Tehran’s crude exports.

BBC: Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has announced he is to stand down in December.

AFP on Yahoo: China was the top foreign investor in Germany in 2011, ahead of the United States, Switzerland and France, the government development agency Germany Trade & Invest said on Thursday.

AP: China, the largest buyer of Treasury debt, increased its holdings . . .

The AP reports.

AP: Israel’s parliamentary speaker called off a legislative delegation’s visit to the U.S. after Washington denied an ultranationalist lawmaker a visa, citing his links to a terror group.

Washington Post: A majority of Americans — 55 percent — believe that most Afghans are opposed to what the United States is trying to accomplish in that country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

AP: China’s government vowed Friday that it will not deviate from its socialist path, defending anew its authoritarian system and saying Western capitalist political systems are not suitable for China.

AP: A plan by Fiji’s military rulers to institute a new constitution is raising hopes among those eager to see democracy restored to the Pacific island nation.

B92.net: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said there are too many foreigners in France and the system for integrating them is working “increasingly badly”.

Robert C. Koons at Public Discourse: It would be wrong for the United States to engage at this time in an attack on Iran or to participate substantially in an Israeli action.

Boston Globe (AP): Egyptian security officials say militants have again blown up a gas pipeline in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula that transports fuel to neighboring Israel.

LA Times: China announced on Sunday an 11.2% increase in its defense budget for 2012, the latest in a string of double-digit hikes in recent years.

AP: “Loose talk of war” only plays into Iran’s hands, Obama said Sunday. On Monday, he will try to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to slow quickening pressure among many in his hawkish government to attack Iran’s disputed nuclear development sites.

AP: Thousands of Russians gathered Monday for a massive rally to challenge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s victory in Russia’s presidential election, chanting “Shame!” and “Russia without Putin!”

AFP: China’s holdings of US Treasury securities fell 9.3 percent from September to December to $1.1529 trillion . . .

Spiegel: Traditionally, the US gets to appoint the president of the World Bank. But China is keen to make its influence felt in the search for a successor to Robert Zoellick, who will step down in June. The next head may still be American, but he or she will need to get Beijing’s blessing.

Daily Caller: Many in the Islamic regime believe that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who became the Iranian supreme leader after Khomeini’s death, is the chosen one to pass the flag of Islam to Imam Mahdi. In fact, statements made by close associates of Khamenei indicate that the supreme leader himself is convinced that he is the one who will trigger the coming.

Wall Street Journal: The European Commission proposed Wednesday to suspend €495 million ($602.2 million) in European Union budget funds for Hungary in 2013 unless it acts quickly to cut its deficit.

Robert McDowell at the Wall Street Journal: On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet.

WorldNetDaily: Part of Obama’s apparent war against U.S. energy independence includes a foreign-aid program that directly threatens my state’s sovereign territory. Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin.

AP: Three Iranians detained after accidentally setting off explosives in Bangkok were planning to attack Israeli diplomats . . .

Breitbart: Soros warned against addressing the crisis with spending cuts, urging the injection of funds instead.

News from The Associated Press: Egypt’s military-backed prime minister says Cairo will not halt its crackdown on foreign nonprofit groups despite what he calls threats to cut off aid from Western and Arab countries.

BBC News: wenty-five of the EU’s 27 member states have agreed to join a fiscal treaty to enforce budget discipline.

News from The Associated Press: South Korea allowed members of a private group to accompany aid to North Korea for the first time Friday since leader Kim Jong Il died last month.

News from The Associated Press: Egypt has banned the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and a number of other Americans from leaving the country as tensions rise over moves by Egyptian authorities to restrict the work of international rights organizations.

News from The Associated Press: Several popular Polish websites are planning to go dark for an hour Tuesday evening to protest the government’s plan to sign an international copyright treaty.

Bloomberg: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said relying less on the U.S. would help strengthen the country’s “financial security.”

News from The Associated Press: An aide to Iraq’s most prominent Shiite cleric is urging politicians on both sides of the country’s sectarian divide to end a government crisis, as fears of civil war rise a month after the U.S. military withdrawal.

Pat Buchanan at Townhall: Before some agent provocateur pushes us into war with Iran, Congress should debate the wisdom of authorizing President Obama, or anyone else, to take America into her fifth war in a generation in the Middle and Near East.

News from The Associated Press: Demonstrations against Romania’s harsh austerity measures took place across the country again on Wednesday, with protesters demanding the government’s resignation.

The Independent: Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC restated the UK Government’s view that the “Scottish Parliament has no power to deliver a referendum on independence”.

The Christian Institute: Britain’s Security Service, MI5, has been included in a lobby group’s top 100 employers for homosexuals for the first time.

News from The Associated Press: The number of Internet users in China has surged past 500 million as millions of new Web surfers go online using mobile phones and tablet computers, an industry group reported Monday.

CNBC: Standard & Poor’s will cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch, a French newspaper said Friday, without citing its sources.

News from The Associated Press: Thousands of mourners chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” on Friday during the funeral of a slain nuclear expert whom Iranian officials accuse the two nations of killing in a bomb blast this week as part of a secret operation to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

CSMonitor.com: Evidence of a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program is mounting. Yesterday’s assassination of an Iranian scientist tied to the program is just the most recent data point in the last year that indicates an accelerating effort to spread fear and slow the country’s nuclear work.

The Hill: Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), brushed off criticism of his group’s plan to allow for new Web domain endings in an interview with The Hill on Wednesday.

JPost: Clinton flatly denies US involvement “in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” calls Hormuz threats “provocative, dangerous.”

NY Times: A bomber on a motorcycle killed a scientist from Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment site and his bodyguard-driver on Wednesday during the morning commute in Tehran, Iranian media reported, in an assassination that could further elevate international tensions over the Iranian nuclear program and stoke the country’s growing anti-Western belligerence.

News from The Associated Press: The World Economic Forum warned Wednesday that the financial crisis that has gripped the global economy for the past few years is fueling resentment that could lay the seeds for a rising tide of protectionism, nationalism and social unrest.

The Guardian: Alex Salmond has revealed he plans to stage his independence referendum in the autumn of 2014 after he resisted UK government demands to set an early date for the historic poll.

News from The Associated Press: Britain’s government says it will give Scotland the power to hold a binding vote that would give it independence from Britain, turning back centuries of history.

VOA News: an announced on Monday it had sentenced a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen to death for spying for the CIA, creating fresh grounds for hostility with Washington at a time when Tehran has responded to new U.S. sanctions with military threats.

Robert Wright at the The Atlantic: This is sheer conjecture; Ron Paul is no expert on Iran. But now someone who does have relevant credentials has weighed in, and the picture he paints is disturbingly reminiscent of the one Paul painted. It suggests we may be closer to war than most people realize.

Bonian Golmohammadi at the : Huffington Post: On December 15-16, governments, international agencies and civil society groups met to discuss hundreds of recommendations on sustainable development in preparation for the June 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development. Focuses ranged from creating green jobs, to improving food security, achieving universal energy access, bettering water resource management, and addressing shark finning and marine pollution.

NCPA Policy Digest: Considering that the United States has a 17.75 percent share in the IMF, these lending commitments put the U.S. taxpayer at risk for an almost $20 billion loss should those countries be unable to repay the IMF.

Religion Clause: Reuters yesterday reported on controversy that is being caused by the entry of the large U.S. investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs, into the Islamic finance market.

Bloomberg: The West is using cultural means to divide China (PRCH), which needs to be alert to this threat, President Hu Jintao said in a Communist Party magazine.