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Wednesday, April 17, 2013
No consulates yet, but China and Taiwan opt for the next best thing
China and Taiwan are set to mark five years of improving ties with de facto consulates. If they are approved, they will represent the highest-level presence by either country. ?
First came the historic handshakes. Then the first scheduled flights. Mass tourism followed, and investment chased that. The landmarks that took China-Taiwan relations from zero to today?s much more open relationship in five years are now leading to a new one: de facto consulates.
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The move to set up representative offices, despite decades of severed diplomacy and strong mutual distrust before 2008, will make life easier for the millions of tourists and investors who hop across the 99-mile wide Taiwan Strait from China to Taiwan. De facto consulates also would?be?the highest-level official presence by one side on the other.
?Cross-Strait ties are getting closer and closer, so it?s good to keep up with the current momentum,? says Li Peng, Taiwan Research Institute assistant director at Xiamen University in China. ?For the public, these offices will be a good way to protect their legal rights. I think the wishes of people on both sides have been given priority.?
On April 11, Taiwan?s cabinet sent parliament a draft law?allowing Beijing to set up a?representative office?on the island. The draft follows conceptual agreement last year by negotiators from both sides after lobbying by China. Taiwan?s China-sympathetic ruling party also controls Parliament, meaning all but sure passage of the draft.
Scopes of duties have yet to be decided, but analysts expect the offices to enforce investor protection rules and sort out legal issues involving travelers.
?The absence of an official presence hampers the ability of handling accidents, deaths, lost passports, and other problems that occur on an almost daily basis,? says Bonnie Glaser, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies Staff members?could?also smooth business deals and set up high-level visits, she adds.
About 1 million Taiwanese live in China, where they have long groused about lack of homeland support in business disputes. Last year, 2.58 million mainland Chinese visited Taiwan,?making accidents and small disputes?increasingly?common. Two-way trade?also?reached?$121.6 billion in 2012, with China as Taiwan?s top trading partner.
Taiwan and China had virtually no relations from the Chinese civil war of the 1940s through 2008. China had advocated reunification and threatened to use force if peaceful means failed. That tension led Taiwan to ban official contact. Then in 2008, Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou and his counterparts in Beijing set aside political issues to establish economic ties.
But as the two sides still do not recognize each other diplomatically, setup of representative offices requires answering sticky questions: whether to fly official flags, how to reduce the risk of espionage, and whether to follow international diplomacy protocol, such as immunity for the chief representative, in line with world standards ? or work out a new list of rules.
Image-conscious Beijing, which frowns on political dissent,?also may fret about its office being the target of protests by anti-China groups that are allowed freedom of speech in democratic Taiwan.
Its office in Taipei would be an ?instant magnet? for groups pushing human rights in China or more freedom for Tibet, for example, says Sean King, senior vice president with the political consulting firm Park Strategies in New York.
?I can give you more than 100 details that need to be cleared out before the office can be set up,? adds Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.
The island?s main opposition party, which advocates a more cautious relationship with China given old hostilities, worries that the new offices would be used to enforce Beijing?s goal of uniting both sides under a single flag even as many Taiwanese prefer self-rule.
?It would be harder for Taiwan to break away and claim we are not under China?s jurisdiction,? says Joseph Wu, policy committee executive director with the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. ?We need to clear the doubt that Taiwan is not part of China.?
It?s unclear whether the opposition would continue, call off or change the government?s engagement with Beijing if it won the next presidential election in 2016.
The government?s China policymaking body says 70 percent of Taiwanese support the?plan.??Therefore, to handle today?s cross-Strait interaction and the trend of close contact between people, as well as to assist people on both sides, the government will advance this as one of its top policy priorities,? that body, the Mainland Affairs Council, said in a statement on Saturday.
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US housing starts surpass 1 million in March
In this Friday, March 29, 2013, photo, a worker helps frame a new home under construction in Matthews, N.C. The Commerce Department reports the pace at which builders broke ground on homes in March, on Tuesday, April 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
In this Friday, March 29, 2013, photo, a worker helps frame a new home under construction in Matthews, N.C. The Commerce Department reports the pace at which builders broke ground on homes in March, on Tuesday, April 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. homebuilders broke the 1 million mark in March for the first time since June 2008. The gain signals continued strength for the housing recovery at the start of the spring buying season.
The overall pace of homes started rose 7 percent from February to March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.04 million, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.
Apartment construction, which tends to fluctuate sharply from month to month, led the surge: It jumped nearly 31 percent to an annual rate of 417,000, the fastest pace since January 2006.
By contrast, single-family home building, which makes up nearly two-thirds of the market, fell 4.8 percent to an annual rate of 619,000. That was down from February's pace of 650,000, the fastest since May 2008. The government said February's pace was a sharp 5.2 percent higher than it had previously estimated.
Applications for building permits, a gauge of future construction, declined 3.9 percent to an annual rate of 902,000. It was down from February's rate of 939,000, which was also nearly a five-year high.
Scott Laurie, president of Olson Homes, said that last month's falloff in single-family starts is not representative of what's happening in the market.
A scarcity in ready-to-build land has many builders working to get local governments to approve new land for construction, he said. The process can take 12 to 18 months. A survey of homebuilders released Monday noted similar concerns.
"You'll see starts will continue to increase as the year goes on and new projects start to open up," Laurie said.
Laurie's company builds homes in Southern California priced roughly from $325,000 to $750,000. He says Olson's construction starts are on pace to climb at least 40 percent this year, as the builder moves to add as many as eight new communities.
"The market started showing improvement in the early part of 2012 and really hasn't slowed down since," said Laurie. "Right now, were very bullish."
The jump in home building is expected to contribute to economic growth in 2013 for a second straight year ? a reversal from 2006 through 2011, when it held back the economy.
Deutsche Bank predicts that home construction will reach an annual pace of 1.2 million by year's end. Brett Ryan, an economist at Deutsche Bank, said that rate could add 0.5 percentage point to 2013 growth. That would be the biggest contribution from housing since 2004.
The housing recovery could spur an additional percentage point of growth by encouraging more consumer spending, Ryan said. More building and higher home sales mean Americans will likely spend more on things like furniture and landscaping. Higher home prices also create a "wealth effect" that gives homeowners the confidence to spend more.
Steady job growth, near record-low mortgage rates and rising home values have encouraged more people to buy homes. In response to higher demand and a low supply of available homes for sale, builders have stepped up construction.
March's pace of homes started was nearly 46 percent higher than in the same month in 2012.
Housing construction fell 5.8 percent in the Northeast but gained in the rest of the country, led by a 10.9 percent rise in the South. It rose 9.6 percent in the Midwest and 2.7 percent in the West.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo April survey released Monday showed that builders are concerned that limited land and rising costs for building materials and labor could slow sales in the short term. That led to a third straight monthly drop in confidence.
Still, the builders' outlook for sales over the next six months climbed to the highest level in more than six years, suggesting that the obstacles could be temporary.
And construction firms have stepped up hiring in recent months. They added 18,000 jobs in March and 169,000 since September, according to the Labor Department.
Though new homes represent only a fraction of the housing market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in tax revenue, according to statistics from the homebuilders.
___
AP Economics Writer Christopher S. Rugaber contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
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1 dead, 1 missing in avalanches east of Seattle
SNOQUALMIE PASS, Wash. (AP) ? A female snowshoer has died hours after she was dug out of an avalanche by fellow hikers, and a man remained missing Sunday, one day after a pair of spring avalanches struck separate groups hiking in the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle, authorities in Washington state said.
Sgt. Katie Larson with the King County Sheriff's Office said a team of rescuers worked through the night in blizzard-like conditions to carry the female snowshoer off the mountain just after midnight.
Medics confirmed that she had died when they reached the base of the mountain, Larson said.
"The conditions yesterday were horrific," Larson said Sunday. "It took 25 rescuers about five to six hours" to bring her off the mountain in a sled.
The woman, whose identity was not known, had been hiking with her dog near a group of a dozen other people Saturday afternoon when an avalanche hit Red Mountain near Snoqualmie Pass east of Seattle.
She was buried in five feet of snow but was dug out with the help of the group of snowshoers, who had also been caught in the avalanche.
Members of that group told authorities that it took them 45 minutes to find the woman. "They did their best to try to warm her up," Larson said.
This is the first avalanche fatality reported in Washington state for the 2012-2013 season, according to the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center in Seattle. Nationwide, 16 others have died avalanches this season, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Meanwhile, the search for a 60-year-old hiker who was swept down the mountain in a separate avalanche at Granite Mountain Saturday was suspended indefinitely due to the poor weather conditions.
"There was a heavy snow dump last night, and conditions are still very hazardous," Larson said.
The man, from Kent, Wash., was with two other friends when the avalanche carried them more than 1,200 feet down the mountain. The two friends emerged from the snow, but their friend did not. The two men suffered injuries that were described as not life-threatening. One of them was taken to a hospital for treatment, but Larson did not know his condition.
The avalanches occurred as heavy snow fell near Snoqualmie Pass.
Kenny Kramer, director of Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center, said between 20 and 30 inches of snow fell over the weekend and the center warned of dangerous avalanche conditions.
"We had a considerable danger," the meteorologist said Sunday. "We were expecting a lot of snow."
All that new snow was weakly attached to the old snow crust, making it more unstable, Kramer said.
Avalanches during the spring aren't a rare occurrence, he said, noting that there's a secondary peak of incidents during this time because the Northwest still sees winter-type storms that brings lots of snow. When that snow falls in the spring, it often warms up quickly, creating unstable conditions, he said.
Won Shin, 56, of Mukilteo, Wash., was among the group of 12 snowshoers who were on Red Mountain at the time of the avalanche.
He told The Seattle Times that when the avalanche hit, "the only thing I thought about was just, 'Get out of here.' I've never felt anything like that."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/1-dead-1-missing-avalanches-east-seattle-163311465.html
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Giant Snails Invade Florida
It always amazes me that people worry so much about moving one or two genes around in plants in a thought out and carefully controlled manner yet they hardly worry about the introduction of whole functional genomes (i.e. invasive species) into ecosystems. Given the clear and deleterious impacts of introduced species (as opposed to those for GMOs which are debatable at best) you would think there would be large organizations of anti-introduced genome activists.
Why would you expect activists on an issue where there is virtually no counterpressure?
Accidental introductions still happen, reasonably frequently, and individual 'wildcat' introductions (usually of something that somebody thinks will be tasty and/or amusing to hunt/fish) do happen as well; but essentially nobody in anything resembling an authoritative role will even suggest a deliberate introduction in anything but the most cautious terms(and usually then only in an effort to control a prior introduction that got out of hand).
The sheer difficulty of the task, and the near-impossibility of eradicating established populations, works against the effort; but there is no activism because being against introduced species is already policy(and downright uncontroversial policy, at that).
GMOs, by contrast, have much more... effective... friends and allies, which provides their opponents with some incentive to try to push back.
Regardless of how good or bad their cause is, people rarely get worked up about things that are already going the way they want.
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/azhiTxH784s/story01.htm
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Monday, April 15, 2013
2 dead, a100 injured in marathon explosion
At least 105 people are injured and two dead after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon. The injuries include dismemberment, witnesses said, and local hospitals say they are treating shrapnel wounds, open fractures and limb injuries. An eight-year-old boy is one of the two known dead, multiple news outlets reported, and several of the injured are also children.
Authorities are telling Boston residents to stay home and avoid crowds as they try to "stabilize" the situation.
"We recommend to people that they stay home," Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said at a brief press conference Monday afternoon. "We want to make sure that we completely stabilize the situation."
"We are asking that people ... calmly make their way home," Gov. Deval Patrick said.
Davis said Boston police were not aware of any specific threat to the marathon before it began. Police have no one in custody, but are questioning many people.
Two large explosions, just 50 yards apart, went off shortly before 3 p.m. ET, more than four hours into the race. One of the explosions happened near the entrance of the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Copley Square. The blast scattered hundreds of onlookers and runners, and left a bloody scene of injured spectators, including children. Local news reporter Jackie Bruno wrote that she saw some people with their limbs blown off. The Boston Police Department said it is looking for video footage taken from the finish line as part of its investigation.
Boston Medical Center took in 20 patients, including two children, most of whom are being treated for "lower leg injuries," a spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman for Tufts Medical Center said the hospital is treating nine patients for conditions such as shrapnel wounds, ruptured ear drums, and "serious orthopedic and neuromuscular trauma to the lower legs."
President Barack Obama warned Americans in a brief statement Monday evening not to jump to conclusions before authorities find out who committed the act. "We will find out who did this," Obama said. "Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups will feel the full weight of justice." A White House official said the incident is being treated as an act of terror.
NBC News, citing anonymous law enforcement sources, reported Monday that a "small homemade bomb" is believed to be responsible for the explosion. Authorities found and dismantled at least two more explosive devices. The FAA has created a no-fly zone around the area, and the Boston subway was shut down. Cell phone service was shut down in the area, the AP reported, to prevent any remote detonations. Family and friends of marathon runners or spectators can call 617-635-4500 for information.
This video from the Boston Globe shows the moment the bomb went off, and the paper has also pulled together dramatic photos from the aftermath. According to marathon officials, several thousand runners had not finished the race when the explosions detonated.
Police have evacuated the area on Boylston Street to continue sweeping for more devices. Runners who had not yet finished the race were stopped at mile 25 and directed to Boston Common. The Boston Police Department is calling in all off duty officers in the city. This New York Times map shows where on the route the explosions took place.
Patrick called it a "horrific day in Boston" in a statement.
The New York Police Department is stepping up security around the city in response to the explosion. At the White House, yellow police tape was used to block off Pennsylvania Avenue from pedestrians in front of the White House's north gates and secret service were positioned along the perimeter. Credentialed pass holders continued to be permitted entry and exit from both the White House and the Executive Office Building.
--The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/dozens-people-injured-explosion-boston-marathon-190955311.html
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