Meryl Streep, Stevie Wonder among recipients of top US honour |
- Meryl Streep, Stevie Wonder among recipients of top US honour
- Cover Media Video: Bourne again — Matt Damon makes return to action thriller!
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt to star as whistleblower Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone film
- China’s Silk Road challenges US dominance in Asia — John Kemp
- Mexico’s missing students: Nestle says sorry for offensive Tweet
- After Indian slavery case, Putrajaya urged to scrutinise rules on migrant workers
| Meryl Streep, Stevie Wonder among recipients of top US honour Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:53 PM PST
Others to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award for those who make "especially meritorious contributions" to the United States' security, interests, world peace or the arts, include the composer Stephen Sondheim, author Isabel Allende and journalist Tom Brokaw. The economist Robert Solow and late dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey will also be recognized. "I look forward to presenting these 19 bold, inspiring Americans with our nation's highest civilian honor," Obama said in a statement. "From activists who fought for change to artists who explored the furthest reaches of our imagination; from scientists who kept America on the cutting edge to public servants who help write new chapters in our American story, these citizens have made extraordinary contributions to our country and the world." The awards will be presented November 24 at the White House. — AFP  |
| Cover Media Video: Bourne again — Matt Damon makes return to action thriller! Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:48 PM PST Duration: 00:47, Published 11 Nov 2014 Excellent news for fans of the 'Bourne' movies as Matt Damon has recently confirmed that he will star in the newest addition of the action franchise. — Cover Media |
| Joseph Gordon-Levitt to star as whistleblower Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone film Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:45 PM PST
Stone, who won best director Oscars for "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July," has written the screenplay based on two books - "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man" by Luke Harding and "Time of the Octopus" by Anatoly Kucherena. The still untitled film goes into production in Munich in January, said independent studio Open Road Films and production and financing companyEndgame Entertainment. Producer Moritz Borman said in a statement that he and Stone chose Open Road and Endgame because "this film needs an independent in the true sense, where political pressures will not come into play." Snowden leaked tens of thousands of classified intelligence documents to the media in 2013 and sparked a firestorm over the NSA's gathering of data from the Internet activities and phones of millions of ordinary Americans and dozens of world leaders. The recently released documentary "Citizenfour" by Laura Poitras chronicles how the former NSA contractor decided to leak the documents and the global repercussions of that act. Snowden spent almost six weeks at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport before Russia granted him asylum for a year on Aug. 1, 2013, creating a furor in theUnited States. In August this year he was given a three-year resident permit by Russia and now lives at an undisclosed address in Moscow. He is wanted by the United States on charges including theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person. Gordon-Levitt, 33, most recently directed and starred in "Don Jon" and has acted in high-profile films "Lincoln," "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Inception." — Reuters |
| China’s Silk Road challenges US dominance in Asia — John Kemp Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:44 PM PST NOVEMBER 11 — "The Silk Road, no longer just a concept in history BOOKS, has evolved into a story of modern logistics and Sino-European cooperation," Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat, told a conference this month. The New Silk Road Economic Belt — from China across Central Asia and Russia to Europe — and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road — through the Malacca Strait to India, the Middle East and East Africa — have become the centrepiece of China's economic diplomacy. The belt and the road, as China's diplomats refer to them, are the focus of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing this week. They aim to cement China's emerging role at the heart of the 21st century economy.
Chinese diplomats have also been busy promoting a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, promising to provide half of its US$50 billion start-up capital, to help build ports, roads, power projects and other desperately needed infrastructure across the region. The Silk Road fund and Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank pose a direct challenge to the traditional primacy of US-dominated financial and trade institutions in the region, including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Asian Development Bank, all of which were set up following the US victory in World War Two. US diplomats have been manoeuvring furiously to limit the impact of China's economic diplomacy. In the past month, Australia and South Korea both declined to join the new Infrastructure Investment Bank following intense lobbying from officials in Washington, which went all the way up to Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama himself. US leadership challenged Officially, US diplomats are concerned about governance standards at the new institutions. There are fears about the large share of the voting rights that will go to China and the willingness of the new institutions to lend for projects that do not meet the social and environmental criteria currently employed by multilateral development banks. Under intense pressure from the United States, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank will no longer finance coal-fired power stations due to concerns about climate change. But many countries, including India, have indicated they intend to continue building coal-fired plants to bring electricity to millions of homes that are currently without secure and affordable access to modern energy. US officials fear the new Chinese-led institutions will lend to projects that are unable to secure financing from other multilateral institutions, rendering the conditionality ineffective. But there is a deeper, unspoken fear that the new institutions will be used to enhance China's leadership at the expense of the United States and its traditional allies in Asia including Japan, South Korea and Australia. In the run-up to the APEC summit, US diplomats have sought to keep the focus on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed US-led regional trade deal, rather than the broader Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, promoted by China. It is part of a mounting economic, political and military competition between the United States and China across the region. Balance of economic power Asia-Pacific is not the only area where the post-war economic and financial leadership of the United States and its network of allies is being challenged. The US pivot to Asia is being matched by a similar move on the part of Russia, which has sought to reduce its dependence on the United States and Europe by upgrading its economic ties with China. In the past six months, Russia has signed two major deals to supply natural gas to China, which has become Russia's most important trading partner. In July 2014, China, Russia, India and Brazil reached agreement on a US$100 billion New Development Bank to be headquartered in Shanghai. China andRussia have also been busy promoting economic and military ties across Central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The major financial and economic institutions, which experts sometimes call the "international financial architecture", no longer correspond to the balance of power and the shifting centre of gravity in the world economy. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and regional development banks are all dominated by the United States and its allies in terms of voting rights, capital structure, headquarters location and staffing. Efforts to reform them to give a greater role to China and the other fast-growing developing economies have largely proved unfruitful. The multilateral lending institutions are severely undercapitalised and have nowhere near enough resources to meet the enormous infrastructure needs across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The result is that many multilateral institutions appear to be outdated, too small and entrenched in colonialist approaches to development. Trade and financial flows There is still an assumption that economies of developing countries are defined by their relationship with their more developed counterparts. But that world has vanished over the last decade. More than half the exports from developing economies were sent to other developing economies in 2013, according to the World Trade Organisation("International Trade Statistics 2014"). Countries in Asia sent more than 60 per cent of their exports to other nations in Asia and to Africa and the Middle East, compared with just over 15 per cent each to North America and Europe. As the world's greatest export powerhouse, China has accumulated vast foreign exchange reserves and is now becoming a major supplier of capital. Prior to the financial crisis, that capital was tied up passively and uselessly in US Treasury bonds. Now China wants to use its capital more productively to invest in infrastructure in its major trading partners and at the same time buy more economic and political influence. There is nothing new in the idea that countries seek to turn financial capital into political power. Britain pursued the same approach in the 19h century, and the United States has done so successfully since World War Two. Market access and capital can all be traded for various forms of influence. The Marshall Plan traded US economic assistance in European reconstruction for a pro-American orientation in European foreign policy. As the balance of power within the global economy shifts, it is inevitable that the international economic architecture will have to evolve. Some western foreign policy specialists have naively assumed that emerging markets would become integrated into existing post-war, western-dominated structures of power and governance. But it was always at least as likely that those institutions would have to adapt and change to accommodate the rising economic and financial power of emerging markets. Just as access to American markets and capital was once a key component of US diplomacy, China is now employing its financial and trade muscle to win friends and influence. * This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online. |
| Mexico’s missing students: Nestle says sorry for offensive Tweet Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:41 PM PST
Mexico's attorney general on Friday said the students from the small town of Ayotzinapa were apparently killed, incinerated and ground up after being abducted by corrupt police in league with a local drug gang in late September. Just after midnight on Sunday, a tweet published by a Mexican account dedicated to Nestle's "Crunch" brand candy bar, said "A los de Ayotzinapa les dieron Crunch", a pun on a slang Mexican expression that translates as, "They crushed those from Ayotzinapa". A spokesman for Nestle Mexico said yesterday that the tweet was removed shortly after publication. She said the company had initiated an investigation to find out who had sent the tweet but would not to say whether the account had been hacked. Yesterday, the company issued a fresh tweet that read: "Once more we offer the sincerest apology for this offensive tweet which is completely contrary to our values." The apparent massacre is the toughest challenge yet to face President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office two years ago vowing to restore order inMexico, where about 100,000 people have died in violence linked to organized crime since 2007. — Reuters |
| After Indian slavery case, Putrajaya urged to scrutinise rules on migrant workers Posted: 10 Nov 2014 05:40 PM PST
Tenaganita, which champions the rights of women and migrant workers, said that the lack of comprehensive policies on the welfare of migrant workers needs to be addressed immediately. "There are only ad hoc policies so far and this will see the problem continuing. "The case of the Indian migrant worker who was enslaved is not an isolated case," the organisation's executive director Glorene A. Das told Malay Mail Online. Das was commenting on the modern-day slavery case of a migrant worker from India whose harrowing tale came to light recently. The worker, 27-year-old Lokesh Sapaliga narrated his tale of slavery in Malaysia to Mumbai-based news agency "Mid Day", which became a viral hit online. Sapaliga, who answered an oil and gas industry recruitment call in Malaysia, claimed he was sold to a "human trafficking mafia" here and forced to work for a month in an oil palm waste factory in Sibu, Sarawak, in atrocious conditions. He told Mid Day last week how he flew to Kuala Lumpur on September 19 after being promised a well-paying job at an oil and gas rig by Ram Support Service, a placement agency based in India's Maharashtra state, before being smuggled to Sarawak where he was forced to work for up to 20 hours a day alongside hundreds of other migrant workers under close watch by violent factory guards. In addition to the lack of proper mechanism and framework, Das also lamented the unnecessary meddling by 'unrelated ministries' as the root cause of the problem faced by the likes of Sapaliga. "Tenaganita holds everybody responsible. This is the game they (government and employers) play. "Last year alone, we (Tenaganita) handled 305 new cases consisting of more than 500 migrant workers who had come to see us and in all cases, there were clear elements of forced labour and human trafficking," Das said. She added that contract substitution, whereby the workers are given a different contract than the one they had initially signed up for was another regular occurring which prompts forced labour. "Upon arrival they (migrant workers) are also given lesser wages and forced into long hours of work They also face wrongful deduction of wages from levy for electricity and food, in addition to facing sub-human living conditions," she said, adding that it is the state which needs to be held accountable since it formulates policies. "Why is the Home Ministry interfering in migrant worker related matters? It should be the purview of the Human Resources Ministry. Their (Home Ministry) work is to simply issue visas. Why are they making policies with regards to migrant labour? "End of the day, it is really about the profit. They know where the profit is coming from." Mary Magdalene Pereira, a former associate professor at Mara Technological University (Uitm) specialising in labour law and human rights, said that the inherent weaknesses in the related laws and enforcement agencies will see more people treated like Sapaliga. Pereira said that since it is the government that holds the highest responsibility on this regard, there is nothing much which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can do as there are no proper laws and enforcement in place. She also pointed out the "middle-men policy" in the recruitment of foreign workers as being the crux of the problem. "There is no recourse for migrant workers here," she told Malay Mail Online. Klang MP Charles Santiago said that Malaysia has an obligation to abide by five out of eight core International Labor Organisation (ILO) conventions, which it has ratified. Santiago said that the government also does not pay heed to cases of employers switching the employment contracts of migrant workers upon arrival, with an estimated 90 per cent of local employers retaining the passports of the workers. He stressed that prosecution for forced labour trafficking offences is also 'rare' in Malaysia. "Between 2012 and August 2013 there were a total of 120 cases brought under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, but resulted only in 23 convictions," Santiago said in a statement. He said that Putrajaya has to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted and victims are not treated as offenders. "After years of warnings, the United States (US) recently downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3 in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, after the country ignored warnings to draw up a plan to comply with "the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking". "Despite the gravity of the problem, we have only seen scorn and complacency from ruling party leaders," Santiago added. |
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