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731 - 740 from 772 . In "Opinion / Editorial"
South Africa's President Jacob Zuma celebrates with his supporters after he survived a no-confidence motion in parliament in Cape Town. —
Zuma escapes censure
SOUTH African president Jacob Zuma has survived his eighth parliamentary vote of no confidence but his victory was narrow and his opponents claim this was because it had been a secret ballot. It is clear that a significant number of African National Congress legislators, maybe as many as 30, voted against their chief.Zuma was celebrating after the vote but the scandal-plagued South African leader should surely not be feeling triumphant at this moment. Indeed, there is a strong political, rather than moral, case for him to have resigned long ago. The problem is that, as his revered predecessor Nelson Mandela clearly appreciated, political power is not a personal gift but a loan. It may confer many privileges but it also imposes many duties and obligations. Every leader has a responsibility...
August 11, 2017

Zuma escapes censure

Have the banking collapse lessons really been learned?
Ten years ago this week, the world’s financial system went into meltdown. The trigger was a French bank that had put investors’ money into US subprime mortgages that had been “securitized” by the original lenders. These loans should never have been made to the borrowers who were quite incapable of keeping up regular payments. But mortgage brokers were so anxious to win commissions, and banks and other lenders were so eager to book fat upfront fees that no one bothered to consider the underlying risks.And besides, the original lender sold on the loan to others, so no longer needed to worry if thereafter it ceased to perform. The “securitization” of virtually every form of credit, but particularly the subprime lending, created a quasi-commodity for dealers who diced and sliced...
August 10, 2017

Have the banking collapse lessons really been learned?

Understanding North Korea
North Korea is still officially at war with the United Nations. When the fighting in the three-year Korean War came to an end on July 27, 1953, it finished because of an armistice, not because of a peace agreement. That was supposed to be negotiated later. But just over 64 years on, no such peace deal has been made. North Korea considers itself still at war.This is the reality of the rising tensions between the regime in Pyongyang and the rest of the world. The increased sanctions on the regime agreed by the UN Security Council last week will, therefore, be seen by the paranoid hermit regime of Kim Jong-un as further evidence that its old foe intends to destroy it. The only difference is that the tightened sanctions on the regime ordered by the Security Council were backed by Beijing,...
August 09, 2017

Understanding North Korea

The failed Venezuela coup
POLITICS is the art of the possible. At the heart of any government lies the principle of consensus. In democracies, there will always be a proportion of the electorate, sometimes a significant proportion, that do not vote for a government. If the system is working properly the government will accept that opposition politicians have a valid voice in parliament and will not seek to drive through key policies that do not carry the support of the majority of voters.Venezuela is a supposed to be a democracy. Before Hugo Chavez was voted in as president in 1999, the country may have embraced political pluralism but a relatively small coterie dominated both the economy and politics. There were the inevitable accusations of corruption. In 1992 Chavez, then a member of the country’s elite...
August 08, 2017

The failed Venezuela coup

US options in Afghanistan
AT last an American president has acknowledged a bitter truth: The US is not winning the Afghan war. In a two-hour meeting in the White House situation room on July 19, Donald Trump, according to NBC News, went one step further and said: "We are losing.”Trump has always been inconsistent in his views on this war, America’s longest. Afghanistan hardly figured in his campaign speeches or statements except when he wanted to ridicule his predecessors for their military adventures. But immediately after assuming office, he cited Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear weapons as a justification for America’s continued presence in Afghanistan. Now he mentions Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth as a reason for American involvement in that country.Trump may be inconsistent in his views on the...
August 07, 2017

US options in Afghanistan

The shrinking size of airplane seats
Anyone who travels extensively must have noticed that airline passenger seats are getting smaller and smaller. Average seat width has narrowed from about 46 cm to 42 cm over the last decade. Economy-class seat pitch - the distance between seat rows - has decreased from an average of 89 cm in the 1970s to 79 cm, and in some airplanes to 71 cm.But now help is on the way. The US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, recently ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to consider setting minimum standards for the space airlines give passengers.All three judges agreed the FAA must conduct a new review following a request by a passenger advocacy group, Flyers Rights, to set a minimum airline seat size. The FAA had tried to make the case that uncomfortably space-crunched seats have no impact on...
August 06, 2017

The shrinking size of airplane seats

It will be easier to quit smoking
It has taken what feels like an eternity for the American Food and Drug Administration to make the recent announcement that it wants to slash the level of nicotine in cigarettes to make them less addictive and easier to quit. From the days of the 1964 surgeon general’s warning that smoking was dangerous and a major cause of cancer - save for anti-smoking ads in the media, warnings slapped on cigarette packs, and the setting up of no smoking public zones – precious little has been done to help the smoking public quit.In the US, the major cause of preventable deaths as well as diseases is tobacco. To be sure, nicotine is not what kills the hundreds of thousands of people each year. It’s the other chemical compounds when the tobacco is lit. The FDA plan is expected to serve as a roadmap...
August 05, 2017

It will be easier to quit smoking

Alarming truths from Las Vegas
A group of highly dangerous individuals has just met in Las Vegas. Among other crimes, they broke into electronic voting machines and altered the code inside them so that they played pop music, they cracked automatic teller machines (ATMs) so that they would deliver all the money inside them, they disabled a supposedly high-technology device that would prevent a gun being fired by an unauthorized person and they penetrated high-security corporate systems.All of these “criminals” were gathered under the gaze of police and security officials. Yet not a single arrest was made. This was because the event was the annual DefCon hacking conference, which with its California counterpart, the Hackers’ Conference, brings together computer geeks from all over the world. Whether they are young...
August 04, 2017

Alarming truths from Las Vegas

Cryptocurrencies carry very real risks
One good reason why economics is known as the “dismal science” is that it is not a science at all, because virtually all of its complex tabulations come up against one single and disruptive imponderable, which is human behavior. And herein lies the reason that by and large the predictions of most economists turn out to be wrong. The laurels go to the few “outliers”, those economists who, from conviction or cunning, predict against the prevailing trend on the basis that at some point markets will change and their warnings will proven right.The history of economic forecasting is strewn with individuals who have stood out against the generally rosy predictions of their peers and, sooner rather than later, been found to have called the economic cycle correctly. Yet, after they have...
August 03, 2017

Cryptocurrencies carry very real risks

The constant attacks on Trump
More than six months into the new presidency, Washington is still in shock. The Trump White House is every bit as extraordinary as the 45th president of the United States. The bare-knuckle fights that have gone on in the West Wing have left outside observers gasping with surprise. Every presidency has had its rivalries and power struggles among those around the incumbent. This goes with the territory of American politics. But what is amazing is the very public manner in which the Trump administration squabbling has gone on.The latest Trump aide to be floored in this vicious power struggle is White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier said to have been extremely close to the president. However, clearly not so close that the president has hesitated in...
August 02, 2017

The constant attacks on Trump

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