Archive for March 2017

NHS boss targets wrong area in cost-saving drive

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NHS boss targets wrong area in cost-saving drive


SIMON Stevens, the head of the NHS, has said that patients will have to wait longer for what he calls “non-urgent” operations such as hip and knee replacements or cataract removal.

Source: Daily Express :: Comment Feed http://ift.tt/2npkySo

Ivanka Trump’s new job

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Ivanka Trump’s new job

IVANKA TRUMP is not the first presidential child to be a close assistant to her father. Anna Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1944 and accompanied Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta conference of world leaders in February 1945. George H.W. Bush listened to the advice of his sons George and Jeb. Yet Ms Trump is the first child whose spouse also plays an important advisory role. She and her husband, Jared Kushner, both have security clearance, access to top-level presidential meetings and offices in the West Wing of the White House, home to the offices of the president. Their roles have raised eyebrows ever since Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s 45th president.

After a particularly rough week for his new administration, Mr Trump tried to calm mounting concerns over potential conflicts of interest among members of his family. On March 29th the White House announced that Ms Trump would become an unpaid federal employee, with the title “assistant to the president”, subject to the same rules as all other federal employees. Her appointment comes after Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, two ethics lawyers, expressed concern in a letter to Donald McGahn, counsel of the White House, “about...Continue reading

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A new Israeli settlement on the West Bank

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A new Israeli settlement on the West Bank

IN RESPONSE to international pressure, Israel has built no new settlements in the occupied West Bank for over two decades, focusing instead on construction within the 120 or so that are already there. But on March 30th the Israeli government announced it would be building a brand new settlement 25km (15 miles) north of Jerusalem.

The new settlement is to be built as part of an agreement with the 42 Israeli families evicted on February 1st from the Amona outpost, following a ruling by the High Court that they had built their homes on privately owned Palestinian land. Despite authorising the new construction, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu also told his cabinet that henceforth, any further building would take place only within the boundaries of the current settlements. This is to accommodate the wishes of America’s president, Donald Trump, who at a joint press conference in Washington on February 15th declared to Mr Netanyahu: “I’d like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit.”

Mr Netanyahu’s decision, to press ahead with one new settlement while in effect restricting all other construction, is closely co-ordinated with the White House. His...Continue reading

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SpaceX successfully reuses a rocket booster

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SpaceX successfully reuses a rocket booster

IT WAS a nice piece of marketing. The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 6.27pm on March 30th by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocketry company, had already been into space once. But there was to be no talk of “used” hardware. Instead, insisted the company, the booster was “flight proven”. And in the end, its mission—to deliver a communications satellite into geostationary orbit—went off without a hitch.

PR aside, successfully relaunching a used rocket is another impressive achievement for the firm. When Mr Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, his goal was a drastic cut in the cost of getting things into orbit. He has already delivered, to some extent: launch costs for a satellite on a Falcon 9 are substantially lower than on other rockets. But he has always insisted that cheap spaceflight will only be truly possible once rockets become reusable.

It is hard to argue. Aside from the Falcon 9, all the rockets flying commercially today are one-shot affairs. No airline would dream of destroying its planes after every flight. Yet once rockets have done their job, they are either dropped into the sea or abandoned in space. SpaceX hopes to change...Continue reading

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Pound news latest: One-month HIGH for GBP against the euro

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Pound news latest: One-month HIGH for GBP against the euro


WHILE the UK’s official Brexit negotiations having finally kicked off, the pound has remained pretty upbeat so far with the currency recording gains against the euro, US dollar, Australian dollar and New Zealand dollar.

Source: Daily Express :: Finance Feed http://ift.tt/2ogIc7U

South Africa’s president sacks the finance minister in a cabinet reshuffle

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South Africa’s president sacks the finance minister in a cabinet reshuffle

JACOB ZUMA waited until the dead of night to tell South Africans that he had fired their respected finance minister. Rumours of a cabinet reshuffle had been swirling for months. Finally, in a press statement released just after midnight, President Zuma announced that he was shuffling 20 posts in his cabinet including the axing of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan as well as his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas.

The potential fallout of removing Mr Gordhan had been clear for some time. Each time it seemed likely that Mr Zuma, a president facing 783 corruption charges, was preparing to prise Mr Gordhan’s hands from the purse strings, the rand would wilt and investors would dump South Africa’s bonds. Well before the move, senior members of Mr Zuma’s party, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) were speaking out in support of Mr Gordhan, and business leaders were sounding warnings that South Africa’s credit rating could be cut to junk. Despite all of this, Mr Zuma’s dislike of Mr Gordhan and his deputy was so great that he sacked them anyway, consequences be damned.

And indeed the consequences are damning. Within hours the rand slumped, taking it down almost 7%...Continue reading

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South Korea’s president is arrested on charges of bribery and abuse of power

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South Korea’s president is arrested on charges of bribery and abuse of power

PARK GEUN-HYE has had a tough ten days: 14 hours of interrogation by prosecutors, followed by another nine spent in a local court yesterday. The prosecutors had been waiting for months to serve the former South Korean president with an arrest warrant; it took the judges an extraordinarily long day of deliberation to weigh the merits of their request. As the former South Korean president left her home in Seoul to attend the hearing, flag-waving supporters lined the streets; several lay down in the road in an attempt to block her path to court.

It was to no effect: shortly before dawn on March 31st, Ms Park was arrested at the prosecutors’ office. The justice who approved her pre-trial detention said that the main charges against her were “demonstrable” and that, were she allowed to leave, she might destroy evidence. Prosecutors had submitted 120,000 pages of documents to the court earlier this week concerning the 13 charges against Ms Park. In their warrant they noted that Ms Park had “let down the trust of the people”, was “consistently denying objective facts”, and “showing no signs of remorse”.

Yet her early imprisonment does not rule out a...Continue reading

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A stalled treaty with China highlights Australia’s geopolitical dilemma

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A stalled treaty with China highlights Australia’s geopolitical dilemma

LI KEQIANG, China’s prime minister, could not have been more tactful during his recent visit to Australia. On March 25th he joined Malcolm Turnbull, his Australian counterpart, at an Australian rules football match between Sydney and Port Adelaide. Having been presented with a scarf in Port Adelaide’s colours, he requested one in Sydney’s too, and wore them both throughout the match in spite of the heat, so as not to show any favouritism. He must have been disappointed, therefore, by the poor manners of his host after the match. Just two days after Mr Li flew on to New Zealand, Mr Turnbull’s conservative government scrapped a planned parliamentary vote to ratify an extradition treaty between Australia and China.

An earlier conservative government concluded the treaty ten years ago, but it has never been ratified. Julie Bishop, the foreign minister, championed the deal as recently as March 28th, saying it was “in Australia’s national interest”. But a loose alliance of opposition parties and even some government MPs had their doubts. They expressed concern that alleged criminals whom Australia extradited under the treaty might be dealt with unfairly by China’s...Continue reading

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Justices consider the case of an immigrant who received bad legal advice

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Justices consider the case of an immigrant who received bad legal advice

HOWEVER the Supreme Court decides Lee v United States, a vexing case argued on March 28th, criminal defendants would be wise to heed this warning: client beware. Your lawyer may be a nitwit.

Jae Lee would be much better off today had he received that admonition years ago. Now he rues the day he hired Larry Fitzgerald to represent him in a drug case. Mr Lee came to America as a teenager from South Korea with his parents in 1982. He has been a lawful and entrepreneurial permanent resident ever since—opening a couple of restaurants in Memphis—and has never returned to his birth country. Unlike his parents, Mr Lee did not become an American citizen. So when he was caught with 88 ecstasy pills and a loaded rifle in 2009, his first priority was to ensure his immigration status would not be imperiled.

Don’t worry, Mr Fitzgerald told his client as he mulled a plea bargain, there's nothing to fear. Pleading guilty to a charge of intent to distribute drugs—in exchange for a reduced sentence of one year and one day—would protect him from deportation. With “30+ years of living in the US and strong ties” to his community, a “lack of prior criminal history” and the “small...Continue reading

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Is China challenging the United States for global leadership?

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Is China challenging the United States for global leadership?

AS DONALD TRUMP prepares to welcome Xi Jinping next week for the two men’s first face-to-face encounter, both countries are reassessing their place in the world. They are looking in opposite directions: America away from shouldering global responsibilities, China towards it. And they are reappraising their positions in very different ways. Hare-like, the Trump administration is dashing from one policy to the next, sometimes contradicting itself and willing to box any rival it sees. China, tortoise-like, is extending its head cautiously beyond its carapace, taking slow, painstaking steps. Aesop knew how this contest is likely to end.

China’s guiding foreign-policy principle used to be Deng Xiaoping’s admonition in 1992 that the country should “keep a low profile, never take the lead…and make a difference.” This shifted a little in 2010 when officials started to say China should make a difference “actively”. It shifted further in January when Mr Xi went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and told the assembled throng that China should “guide economic globalisation”. Diplomats in Beijing swap rumours that a first draft of Mr Xi’s speech focused...Continue reading

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Can Hong Kong’s next leader satisfy her masters and the public?

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Can Hong Kong’s next leader satisfy her masters and the public?

IN THREE months, celebrations will take place at Hong Kong’s harbour-front convention centre to mark the 20th anniversary of the territory’s momentous return from Britain to China. The rumour is that President Xi Jinping himself will attend. What was striking about the handover ceremony on July 1st 1997 was that Hong Kong’s people were not represented. They were mere bystanders—or else helping with the catering. From the start, Hong Kongers were symbolically put in their place. At the convention centre, the new flag chosen for them was raised on a lower pole than that of the bigger flag of the People’s Republic of China. Both flags snapped rigidly to attention in a manufactured breeze.

The flags will fly again at the anniversary celebrations, and Hong Kong people will get a further reminder of their place when the territory’s next leader is sworn in, promising to ai guo, ai gang—love the motherland and love Hong Kong (in that order, and in Mandarin—not the local Cantonese). Carrie Lam was the resounding victor among three candidates for the post of chief executive in an election on March 26th, with two-thirds of the votes. Yet out of a...Continue reading

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Islamic State is losing land but leaving mines behind

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Islamic State is losing land but leaving mines behind
One down, many thousands to go

SCENES of jubilation greeted Kurdish-led forces when they routed Islamic State fighters from the city of Manbij in northern Syria last August. In the streets, women set fire to the long black veils the jihadists had forced them to wear since they seized the city in January 2014. Men shaved off the beards they had been obliged to grow. One old woman was photographed puffing merrily on a cigarette, an activity punishable with prison in the “caliphate”. For many, however, the giddy joy of liberation soon gave way to tragedy.

“The first explosion killed our neighbour and his sister-in-law when they entered their house,” said Ali Hussain Omari, a former fighter from the city. “Three days later another mine killed my cousin. His 11-year-old daughter’s leg was amputated and their house was destroyed. A week later another mine in an olive tree exploded. My neighbour lost his leg.”

The amount of land that IS controls is shrinking quickly in both Iraq and Syria. But the group can still kill and maim, even in areas it no longer occupies. Within ten days of Manbij’s liberation, booby-traps and mines...Continue reading

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Famine menaces 20m people in Africa and Yemen

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Famine menaces 20m people in Africa and Yemen

OUTSIDE a thatched hut in Panyijiar, in South Sudan, Nyakor Matoap, a 25-year-old woman, clutches the youngest of her three children. Dressed in a silky emerald shawl, she hides the baby, named Nyathol, underneath its folds. Her other children crowd happily enough around her legs. But the baby is in a bad way. Though almost a year old, he is scarcely larger than a newborn. When he cries, it is quiet and gasping, his tiny ribs pushing out his chest. His swollen head lolls uncomfortably on his emaciated frame. Asked whether he will survive, she replies simply, “I do not know.”

Before 2013 Mrs Matoap cultivated a patch of land near Leer, some 80km (50 miles) further north. But then civil war broke out in South Sudan, and her husband went to join rebel fighters. In August last year, government forces came into her village. They pulled the men out of their huts and shot them; the women fled. She found herself in the murky waters of the Sudd, a vast swamp which spreads either side of the White Nile. For seven months she has lived off wild fruit and the roots of water lilies. She last saw her husband in 2015, when her son was conceived. Though Panyijiar is friendly territory, and...Continue reading

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Bibi Netanyahu takes on the media

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Bibi Netanyahu takes on the media

ISRAEL’S prime minister recently told an American audience that “there is no country in the world where the press is freer [than Israel]. There is no country in the world that attacks its leader more than the Israeli press attacks me. That’s fine. It’s their choice. They are free press and they can say anything they want.” Yet even as Binyamin Netanyahu extols the virtues of a free press and Israel’s democracy abroad he is risking the survival of his governing coalition by trying to take control of parts of the media at home.

The prime minister has embarked on a campaign against Israel’s new public broadcasting corporation, which is scheduled to begin operating on April 30th. Despite having voted three years ago in favour of a law disbanding the old, unwieldy Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), Mr Netanyahu is now convinced that its replacement threatens his government. He wants to institute controls over the new corporation, to be called Kan (“Here”), although he has still not spelled out precisely what these might entail.

The controversy pitted Mr Netanyahu against his finance minister, Moshe Kahlon, leader of the centrist Kulanu Party....Continue reading

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Why Egypt’s ruler loves Donald Trump

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Why Egypt’s ruler loves Donald Trump

DONALD TRUMP’S decision to give up his salary as president was not inspired by similar gestures made by previous American leaders, such as Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy. Rather, Mr Trump was “following in the footsteps” of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the president of Egypt, claimed two Egyptian newspapers. Mr Sisi, after all, is Mr Trump’s “role model”, said an Egyptian television host. He was on top of Mr Trump’s guest-list for the inauguration, reported an Egyptian news website.

Such fake news is easily debunked. Mr Trump promised to forgo his salary before ever meeting Egypt’s strongman. Mr Sisi, who cut his own salary only by half, did not attend the inauguration. But the relationship between the two leaders, who will meet in the White House on April 3rd, has captivated Egypt’s scribes and talking heads. Many of them see Mr Trump’s affection for Mr Sisi as a matter of national pride worth celebrating—and exaggerating.

Take Mr Trump’s phone call to Mr Sisi in January, which the White House described in anodyne terms. Egyptian journalists, by contrast, were ecstatic. Newspapers cited officials who claimed that the call heralded a new era...Continue reading

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France’s presidential race is a clash of worldviews

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France’s presidential race is a clash of worldviews
Two against the EU

WHAT did Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s National Front, expect to gain by visiting Moscow on March 24th? Her core supporters relished seeing her with Vladimir Putin, a strong woman standing next to a strongman. Ms Le Pen came away claiming that the world now belongs to nationalist populists such as Mr Putin, Donald Trump, India’s Narendra Modi and, implicitly, herself. Interestingly, the visit did not seem aimed at the usual goal of candidates who go abroad: reassuring voters that they can safely be trusted with foreign policy.

In French campaigns, gravitas-enhancing trips beyond the Hexagone (as mainland France is known) are especially popular with candidates who have little experience of governing. This year Ms Le Pen has been to America (where she was seen sipping coffee in Trump Tower in New York), Germany, Lebanon and Chad. Emmanuel Macron, the young centrist who is tied with her for first place in the polls, has been to Algeria, Britain, Germany, Jordan and Lebanon, in part to reach out to expat voters and donors.

Ms Le Pen’s trip to the Kremlin was risky. She needs to broaden her...Continue reading

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Aleksei Navalny brings Russia’s opposition back to life

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Aleksei Navalny brings Russia’s opposition back to life

NOBODY inside or outside Russia saw it coming. The government seemed to have established complete control over politics, marginalising the opposition with nationalist adventures in Ukraine and Syria. Vladimir Putin’s approval rating had stabilised at more than 80%. After Donald Trump’s victory in America, the Kremlin had proclaimed the threat of global liberalism to be over. And yet on March 26th, 17 years to the day after Mr Putin was first elected, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets in nearly 100 cities to demonstrate against corruption, in the largest protests since 2012.

The protests began in Vladivostok and rolled across the country to Moscow and St Petersburg, which saw the largest crowds. Riot police arrested more than 1,000 people in Moscow alone. The state media ignored the demonstrations; the top Russian search engine, Yandex, manipulated its results to push reports of them down the page. The Kremlin was speechless.

The marches came in response to a call from Aleksei Navalny, an opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner who wants to run for president next year. Despite the government’s crackdown on activism, Mr Navalny has...Continue reading

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As the world sours on trade, the EU sweetens on it

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As the world sours on trade, the EU sweetens on it

WHAT a difference a few months makes. Barely half a year ago the European Union’s (EU’s) trade policy was a mess. A much-touted trade and investment partnership (TTIP) with the United States was on life support, trashed by NGOs and consumer groups, and disowned by some of the politicians who had asked for it in the first place. A deal with cuddly Canada (CETA) barely survived an encounter with a preening regional parliament in Belgium. Governments were scrapping over how to respond to state-subsidised Chinese steel, and Britain, among the club’s weightiest pro-trade voices, had voted to leave the EU, a decision made flesh by the government’s Article 50 letter this week.

And now? Trade is “going to be huge in the coming months”, says a European diplomat. His word choice is a reminder of the reason for the change: Donald J. Trump. One of the American president’s first acts was to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal covering a dozen countries around the Pacific Rim. Mr Trump complains about Germany’s trade surplus, and his administration hints that it will ignore rulings from the World Trade Organisation. The leader of the free world is...Continue reading

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