Negotiations conclude after IMF praises country’s new budget, which transitional rulers say will help improve social justice Egypt’s interim government has agreed a $3bn loan package with the International Monetary Fund to help stabilise the country’s finances during the post-Mubarak transition period. The deal was hailed by the Egyptian finance minister as a “fund to relaunch the Egyptian economy” and a first step towards tackling a national budget deficit that has escalated sharply in the aftermath of this year’s political upheaval. US President Barack Obama has also promised Egypt $1bn in loan guarantees as well as a further $1bn of debt cancellation. French leader Nicolas Sarkozy has said the G8 will provide up to $10bn in direct aid to both Egypt and Tunisia, a figure likely to be matched by oil-exporting countries in the Gulf. Negotiations for the 12-month loan concluded just days after the IMF praised a new budget in Egypt which raised government spending by a quarter. The country’s transitional rulers claim the budget will help improve social justice and remedy some of the grievances that helped inspire the anti-government uprising in January. Some Egyptian business leaders have voiced opposition to the new policies, which include the raising of the national minimum wage from the near three-decades old level of 34 Egyptian pounds (£3.50) per month to 700 Egyptian pounds, and the establishment of a 2bn Egyptian pounds fund to pay for unemployment benefits. The IMF, however, argued that the package put the Egyptian economy back on the right track. “Following a revolution and during a challenging period of political transition, the Egyptian authorities have put in place a homegrown economic programme with the over-arching objective of social justice,” Ratna Sahay, deputy director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, said last week. The IMF’s latest overtures have been met with criticism elsewhere in Egypt, where the Mubarak regime’s neo-liberal reforms were widely applauded by the global financial community despite contributing to a growing chasm between rich and poor. Since the last major IMF injection of funds into the country in 1991, which was accompanied by a strict “structural adjustment programme”, the percentage of the population living below $2 a day has doubled. Over the past decade, when GDP growth rates were at their highest, levels of absolute poverty – the international measure used to describe much of the poverty in the third world – have climbed from 16.7% to almost 20%. The IMF has also been criticised for its record of issuing favourable reports about the progress of autocratic north African governments just days or weeks before they experienced widespread revolts. An IMF evaluation of Tunisia’s dictatorship in September 2010 praised its “sound macroeconomic management and structural reforms over the last decade” just three months before President Ben Ali was toppled by protests. IMF Reports in February this year noted the Mubarak regime’s “sound fiscal management” in Egypt and stated that the “outlook for Libya’s economy remains stable”. Days later Mubarak was ousted and Libya was engulfed in anti-Gaddafi demonstrations. Meanwhile, Egypt’s former finance minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali has been found guilty of profiteering and abusing state and private assets. Boutros-Ghali, who instituted a flat-rate income tax of 20% and fled abroad during the uprising, was sentenced in absentia to 30 years in jail. The IMF previously described Boutros-Ghali’s policies as “impressive” and praised his stewardship of “one of the Middle East’s fastest-growing economies”. Egypt Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East IMF Africa Economics Global economy Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rev. Robin Hoover, a human rights activist, wants to give GPS devices to human smugglers along the dangerous Mexico-Arizona border, reports the Christian Science Monitor . “It’s like giving a life preserver to somebody that’s using a boat,” and would allow the “coyotes” to alert search and rescue of any trouble,…
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Niall Ferguson and Steven Pinker also join AC Grayling’s initiative but critics complain of greater inequality in education University lecturers and students reacted with dismay on Sunday after a group of leading British academics took a step towards the establishment of an elite US-style university system in the UK by launching a new private college offering £18,000-a-year courses. AC Grayling, a professor of philosophy at the universities of London and Oxford, will welcome next year the first students to the New College of the Humanities to study for degrees in English, philosophy, history, economics and law taught by academics from Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge. There is a starry lineup of professorial talent: Richard Dawkins will teach evolutionary biology and science literacy; Niall Ferguson will lecture on economics and economic history; and Steven Pinker will teach philosophy and psychology. Inspired in part by the business model of American Ivy League universities where $40,000 (£24,000) annual fees are not unusual, New College will cost double the maximum tuition fee allowed in government-funded universities. It is set up to deliver a profit to its shareholders who include the professors and a team of wealthy businessmen who have bankrolled the plan. “At £18,000 a go, it seems it won’t be the very brightest but those with the deepest pockets who are afforded the chance,” said Sally Hunt, general secretary of the lecturers’ association, the University and Colleges Union. “The launch of this college highlights the government’s failure to protect art and humanities and is further proof that its university funding plans will entrench inequality within higher education.” Grayling said the decision to set up New College came after the government cut subsidies to humanities and social science subjects and introduced increased competition by allowing universities to charge annual tuition fees of up to £9,000. He admitted the business model might seem unusual for a group of professors who are, for the most part, “pink around the gills and a little bit left of centre”, but he said government cuts meant going private was the only way to provide a high-quality humanities education and he predicted more universities would go private. “It is the economic reality,” he said. “The £9,000 cap is completely unsustainable. The true cost is way more and that ceiling is going to have to be burst. Other universities might also think ‘either we sink or go independent’. Almost all of [the professors signed up] have served our time with decades in public sector higher education and we have seen it get more and more difficult. It is quite a struggle now to see into the future with how we can cope with these cuts. Either you stand on the sidelines deploring what is happening or you jump in and do something about it.” Other teachers signed up include Sir David Cannadine, a history lecturer at Princeton; Ronald Dworkin QC, a leading constitutional lawyer teaching at University College London and New York University; and Steve Jones, a leading geneticist. Lawrence Krauss, professor of earth and space exploration and physics at Arizona state university, who has advised Barack Obama on science policy, will teach cosmology. The college sets out to “inspire the next generation of lawyers, journalists, financiers, politicians, civil servants, writers and teachers” and every student must take extra classes in ethics, science, literacy and logic and critical thinking as well as a course in practical professional skills. Scholarships will be granted to one in five of the first 200 students. An endowment fund is being established to try to increase that ratio to one in three. Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said the move showed that “an education in humanities from some of the leading thinkers in the world will be restricted to the richest” and that academics would be removed from the public system. “This institution has been created as a reaction to the government’s swingeing cuts to higher education funding that have seen all teaching funding removed from many humanities subjects,” he said. “If the government does not hit the brakes on this rushed reform and reverse the cuts to funding, the UK’s currently world-leading public universities will be irreparably damaged.” Gareth Thomas, Labour’s universities spokesman, commended Grayling for his initiative, but added: “It is a sad reflection of the scale of government cuts in higher education that it is taking a private initiative to drive new investment in arts, humanities and social sciences courses. “When independent experts are warning that 80% cuts in funding are likely to lead to large numbers of humanities courses being axed I worry that high fees will deter many of the brightest and best from studying those arts, English and humanities courses that remain.” The college aims to attract candidates with at least three A grades at A-level with the promise of more direct teaching than at traditional universities. The student-teacher ratio will be better than 10 to one and there will be 12 to 13 hours’ contact with teachers each week. Graduates will come away with a degree from the University of London and a separate diploma from the college to reflect the additional course that includes practical professional skills such as financial literacy, teamwork, presentation and strategy. One of the backers is Charles Watson, chairman of the City PR firm Financial Dynamics. He said: “Higher education in the UK must evolve if it is to offer the best quality experience for students and safeguard our future economic and intellectual wealth. New College offers a different model – one that brings additional, private sector funding into higher education in the humanities when it is most needed, and combines scholarships and tuition fees.” Grayling said the organisation had raised “a very significant” amount of money, thought to be more than £5m, to fund the college . One third is owned by Grayling and the 13 other founding professors, while shares are also owned by a group of wealthy businessmen. They include Jeremy Gibbs, former chief executive of specialist venture capital consultancy, Matthew Batstone, former marketing chief of the Economist Group and a trustee at Bedales, a £30,000-a-year boarding school, and Roy Brown, the founder of Metier Management Systems which pioneered computer project management systems in the 1970s and 1980s. Higher education Tuition fees Students Lecturers Richard Dawkins Steve Jones Niall Ferguson Robert Booth guardian.co.uk
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Bloodiest weekend of uprising yet as Assad regime attempts to quell news by cutting off internet in major cities Syria has experienced one of its bloodiest weekends since the start of the uprising, with details emerging today of a violent crackdown on Friday despite the government’s attempt to stop news spreading by cutting off the internet in major cities. Across the country, an estimated 90 people were killed on Friday, with dozens more dying since. Residents of the western town of Jisr al-Shughourin said at least 35 people had been killed there since Saturday. The crackdown continued today, with activists reporting gunfire and tanks moving into the town of Khan Shikhon in the north-west province of Idlib. Rights groups say more than 1,200 people have died and at least 10,000 have been detained in Syria since March . Videos from Friday show what appears to be some of the biggest rallies yet, as well as graphic scenes of violence. One, purportedly taken from the roof of Al-Karak mosque in Deraa shows five men with their heads smashed lying in pools of blood. Another shows a man in plain-clothes firing on unarmed protesters in the city of Hama, where most of the people were killed on Friday; the city was calmer on Saturday, when thousands of people gathered for funerals, activists said. In 1982 in Hama, between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed when Syria’s then president, Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president, Bashar al-Assad, ordered security forces to put down an Islamist uprising in the city. State media agency, Sana, reported that four policemen were killed by armed terrorist groups who attacked state buildings and police stations in Jisr al-Shughour. It did not mention a video posted online that purports to show Hama protesters hanging a man, apparently a security policeman found among mourners at a funeral on Saturday. Activists say the video has not been verified, but acknowledge that a small minority of protesters are fighting back. At least four children were among those killed at the weekend, the Local Co-ordinating Committees, a network of local opposition groups, said. Friday’s protests were called Freedom for Children Friday in memory of more than 72 children killed since the protests began in mid-March. Outrage has grown over the death of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb, whose body was handed back to his parents last week with marks of severe torture. “We are all mothers of Hamza al-Khateeb” reads one of the banners held by women shown in a video of a sit-in at a private home. Meanwhile, rights groups say around 500 people have been released from prison under an amnesty announced last week as the government continues to claim it is making preparations for a national dialogue. Opposition members and analysts have said the moves are insincere, and do not go far enough. A gathering of opposition members last week in Turkey described Assad’s rule as unsustainable, given the brutality of the regime towards its citizens. A statement on Friday at the end of the four-day conference called on Assad to “resign immediately” and to hand authority to his vice-president “until the election of a transitional council”. The decision to cut the internet on Friday appears also to have backfired, irritating Syrians and drawing condemnation from the US. On Saturday, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said: “Syria must understand that attempting to silence its population can’t prevent the transition taking place.” However, despite growing criticism by western governments, they have stopped short of calling on Assad to step down. A draft UN security council resolution has yet to be put to the vote, with opposition coming from China and Russia. Syria Bashar Al-Assad Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Hillary Clinton Nidaa Hassan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Israeli troops opened fire across the Syrian frontier today to disperse hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who stormed the border of the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, reportedly killing four people in unrest marking the anniversary of the Arab defeat in the 1967 Mideast war. The Israeli military accused Syria of instigating the…
Continue reading …GPS and wireless Internet are two of the most-loved and most important tech advances of our time—but now a clash of frequencies is threatening a high-tech showdown. LightSquared is developing a $14 billion, 40,000-transmitter high-speed wireless Internet network, but that system bumps right up against GPS operating frequencies,…
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Music industry sources suggest that Apple has signed up the four major US labels for a Spotify-style streaming service Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, will make a rare public appearance on Monday to show off a new music subscription and content sharing service called iCloud, and new software to power the iPhone. Jobs, 56, is unexpectedly breaking his medical leave from the company to appear at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Music industry sources indicate that Apple has now signed up the four major music labels in the US – Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner Music – for iCloud. It is thought that it will provide a music streaming service in the US similar to that available in Europe from Spotify. However it is not clear whether the music elements of iCloud will initially be available outside the US. Reports by the New York Post suggest that Apple has had to make upfront payments to the labels of between $100m (£61m) and $150m to secure their business and ensure that it gets a lead over Spotify and rival music services launched in March and May from Amazon and Google. Jobs is also scheduled to show off the new version of the software to run the hugely successful iPhone – but analysts are not expecting to see a new version of the device itself before September. They think that Apple is shifting its timing so that iPhone releases come closer to Christmas, in order to boost seasonal sales. The Apple chief will have an audience of app developers who may also be keen to know how the company is going to protect them from a growing number of threats from patent holders in the US, where software can be patented. In the past two months more than a dozen developers for the iPhone have been sued by companies which claim to have patents covering the systems they use, and demanding payments. The developers, though, hope that Apple will seek to protect them because if developers are scared off there will be fewer apps for the iPhone and iPad – which will hit Apple’s sales. Jobs’s presence is surprising because he announced in January that he would be taking time away from the company for unexplained medical reasons. It is believed that they are related to his surgery in 2004 for neuroendocrine cancer in the pancreas, a treatable condition, and a subsequent liver transplant. Jobs appeared very gaunt in pictures published this year, such as at a dinner with Barack Obama in February and his only other public appearance, to launch the iPad 2 tablet in March. Steve Jobs Digital music and audio Apple Computing Tablet computers Spotify Internet Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Ash and gas continue to billow from Chilean volcano that erupted violently on Saturday Ash and gas continue to billow from the Chilean volcano that erupted violently on Saturday, prompting the evacuation of more than 3,500 people living nearby and forcing the cancellation of flights. A column of gas six miles high and three miles wide rose from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle complex, according to Chile’s national geology and mining service. There were no reports of injuries from the eruption. Rodrigo Ubilla, Chile’s undersecretary of labour, said some people near the volcano had decided not to leave their homes because they did not want to abandon their animals. Wind carried ash across the Andes to Argentina, dusting the tourist town of San Carlos de Bariloche, which closed its airport. Officials urged people to use cover their mouths and noses against the ashand to stay indoors if possible. The eruption is nearly 620 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago. Authorities had put the area on alert on Saturday morning after a flurry of earthquakes, and the eruption began in the afternoon. The National Emergency Office said it had recorded an average of 230 tremors an hour. Chile Argentina Natural disasters and extreme weather guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Ash and gas continue to billow from Chilean volcano that erupted violently on Saturday Ash and gas continue to billow from the Chilean volcano that erupted violently on Saturday, prompting the evacuation of more than 3,500 people living nearby and forcing the cancellation of flights. A column of gas six miles high and three miles wide rose from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle complex, according to Chile’s national geology and mining service. There were no reports of injuries from the eruption. Rodrigo Ubilla, Chile’s undersecretary of labour, said some people near the volcano had decided not to leave their homes because they did not want to abandon their animals. Wind carried ash across the Andes to Argentina, dusting the tourist town of San Carlos de Bariloche, which closed its airport. Officials urged people to use cover their mouths and noses against the ashand to stay indoors if possible. The eruption is nearly 620 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago. Authorities had put the area on alert on Saturday morning after a flurry of earthquakes, and the eruption began in the afternoon. The National Emergency Office said it had recorded an average of 230 tremors an hour. Chile Argentina Natural disasters and extreme weather guardian.co.uk
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As Bonn talks begin, UN climate chief warns of temperature goals set too low and clock ticking on climate change action The world may have to resort to technology that sucks greenhouse gases from the air to stave off the worst effects of global warming, the UN climate change chief has said before talks on the issue beginning on Monday. “We are putting ourselves in a scenario where we will have to develop more powerful technologies to capture emissions out of the atmosphere,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change. “We are getting into very risky territory,” she said, stressing that time was running out. The UN climate talks starting on Mondayin Bonn, which run for the next two weeks, will try to revive the negotiations before the next climate conference, taking place in Durban, South Africa, in December. But little progress is expected, as the negotiating time is likely to be taken up with details such as rules on monitoring emissions. Figueres tried to inject a greater sense of urgency into the proceedings by pointing to research from the International Energy Agency that found that emissions had soared last year by a record amount. The strong rise means it will take more effort by governments to curb emissions. Figueres told the Guardian in an interview that governments should act now to save money: “We add $1tn to the cost [of tackling climate change] with every year of delay.” However, as the latest talks begin, the world’s leading climate change official has upset governments by insisting that the aim of the negotiations ought to be to hold warming to less than 1.5C. That would be a much tougher goal than that set by governments last year, which seeks to limit the temperature rise to no more than 2C – the safety threshold, scientists say, beyond which warming becomes catastrophic and irreversible. “In my book, there is no way we can stick to the goal that we know is completely unacceptable to the most exposed [countries],” Figueres said. The difference between the two goals may not seem great, but since it has taken more than 20 years of talks for countries to agree on the 2C limit, many are unwilling to reopen the debate. Delegates are conscious that wrangling over whether to stick to 1.5C or 2C was one of the main sources of conflict at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009; the hope has been that talks can move on to other issues such as how to pay for emissions curbs in poorer countries. The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “Countries agreed in Copenhagen they would revisit the adequacy of the 2C goal in 2015. With the climate change negotiations seemingly stagnant, the focus now needs to be on doing what has already been agreed.” Other parties agreed. “This is an extraordinary intervention,” said one official, who could not be named. Figueres said that she had the support of the world’s least developed countries, most of Africa, and small island states. Another factor casting a pall over this year’s talks, which are intended to forge a new global treaty on climate change, is criticism of the South African government, which will host the Durban talks. No interim meetings have yet been set up, and countries have complained of disorganisation and a lack of enthusiasm. But Figueres said: “South Africa has been very carefully listening, trying to understand where there are commonalities and where the weaknesses are.” She also predicted the US would play a strong role in the talks, despite the Obama administration facing Republican opposition in Congress to action on emissions. “It’s very evident that the legislative body in the US has disengaged, but … the administration continues to be engaged.” she said. But Todd Stern, chief negotiator for the US, praised the spirit of co-operation he perceived in the talks: “People are rolling up their sleeves and being constructive.” Global climate talks Climate change United Nations Carbon emissions Switzerland Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
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