LEARNING ENGLISH THROUGH NEWS - WEEK 25 - 2012

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The world this week

Franois Hollande's Socialist Party won an absolute majority in the second round of parliamentary elections in France, taking 314 seats, well above the 289 needed to secure a majority. The Socialists now control almost all France's political institutions. Doctors in Britain took industrial action for the first time in almost 40 years by refusing to carry out non-urgent care in a dispute over pensions. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, sought political asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, days after Britain's Supreme Court rejected his final appeal against extradition to Sweden to face sex-crime charges In Canada the opposition forced votes on 800 amendments to the budget bill, after a marathon parliamentary session that lasted nearly 24 hours. This was in protest at the government's decision to use the bill to pass other, unrelated, measures. Protests against spending cuts and food-price rises under the government of President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, persisted for several days. In Tunisia disturbances by fundamentalist Salafists in Tunis, the capital, were dealt with by riot police. Talks in Moscow aimed at ending the crisis over the alleged military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programme broke down. The gap between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, remains wide. Iran insists on recognition of its right to enrich uranium "for peaceful purposes" and a lifting of sanctions, but the six powers will not make concessions until Iran agrees to a broad range of "confidence-building" measures. The lack of progress will increase speculation about a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear In the biggest shake-up to immigration policy in America for years, Barack Obama announced that the government would no longer deport illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who had been brought to the United States as children, had been in education or the armed forces and had no criminal record. The policy is similar to the DREAM act, a bill in Congress that has been blocked by Republicans. In Myanmar violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the western state of Rakhine was said to have killed at least 50 people and displaced 90,000. Neighbouring Bangladesh refused entry to any more refugees and closed its border. Meanwhile, Myanmar's president, Thein Sein, pledged a second round of reform, this time focused on the economy and privatisation. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar's democracy movement, continued her two-week tour of Europe. She visited Norway to be presented with her 1991 Nobel peace prize and Britain to accept an honorary civil-law doctorate from Oxford, which she had also been unable to collect while she was under house arrest in Myanmar. Pakistan's Supreme Court dismissed Yousaf Raza Gilani as prime minister for contempt of court after he refused to pursue corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari. The decision deepened the animosity between the court and the civilian government. Mr Gilani's replacement is Makhadoom Shahabuddin, noted more for his loyalty to the president than for his ministerial talents. Tension lessened in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines, when the Philippines withdrew its ships from the disputed Scarborough Shoal area. The two countries have been in a stand-off over the disputed territory since April. The Philippine foreign ministry stressed that the ships were forced back by a tropical storm. Australia unveiled a plan for the world's largest network of marine parks. They will cover 3.1m square kilometres of ocean, including the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef off the north-east coast. Limited fishing and energy exploration will still be allowed. The Federal Reserve extended until January its programme of buying longer-term bonds in exchange for short- or medium-term bonds already in its portfolio. Nicknamed "Operation Twist" (because it "twists" the slope of the yield curve on bonds) the programme is intended to help America's economy by lowering long-term interest rates. The minutes of a meeting of the Bank of England's monetary-policy committee confirmed that most of its members believe further stimulus will soon be warranted. This would be in addition to the "funding for lending" scheme announced by George Osborne, the chancellor, which is designed to support an estimated 80 billion ($125 billion) in new bank loans by cutting banks' funding costs. Denmark followed Switzerland into the bittersweet status of a haven economy, enjoying negative yields on government bonds but facing pressure from an appreciating currency. Investors bought a two-year bond with an average yield of minus 0.08%, attracted by the Nordic country's low budget deficit and close links to Germany. Turkey's credit rating was upgraded to a notch below investment grade by Moody's because of the country's improving public finances. China's securities regulator issued draft rules that would lower the barriers to foreign investors, such as reducing the minimum amount that fund managers must have in assets under management from $5 billion to $500m. It also proposed freeing up access to China's bond markets, another step towards the government's goal of turning the yuan into a global currency. The Federal Reserve extended until January its programme of buying longer-term bonds in exchange for short- or medium-term bonds already in its portfolio. Nicknamed "Operation Twist" (because it "twists" the slope of the yield curve on bonds) the programme is intended to help America's economy by lowering long-term interest rates. The minutes of a meeting of the Bank of England's monetary-policy committee confirmed that most of its members believe further stimulus will soon be warranted. This would be in addition to the "funding for lending" scheme announced by George Osborne, the chancellor, which is designed to support an estimated 80 billion ($125 billion) in new bank loans by cutting banks' funding costs.

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Denmark followed Switzerland into the bittersweet status of a haven economy, enjoying negative yields on government bonds but facing pressure from an appreciating currency. Investors bought a two-year bond with an average yield of minus 0.08%, attracted by the Nordic country's low budget deficit and close links to Germany. Turkey's credit rating was upgraded to a notch below investment grade by Moody's because of the country's improving public finances. China's securities regulator issued draft rules that would lower the barriers to foreign investors, such as reducing the minimum amount that fund managers must have in assets under management from $5 billion to $500m. It also proposed freeing up access to China's bond markets, another step towards the government's goal of turning the yuan into a global currency. Microsoft unveiled its Surface computer tablet, the first such product from the software company. The Surface is slim and light and will run on Windows 8, a version of the operating system that will be launched shortly. A novel feature is a detachable magnetic cover that doubles as a keyboard. Techies wondered how well it would compete against the iPad and Android tablets, which have thousands more apps available. Allen Stanford, a Texan banker who was convicted in March of a $7 billion fraud conducted through his offshore companies, was sentenced to 110 years in prison. (Bernie Madoff was sentenced in 2009 to 150 years for the biggest fraud in history.) Mr Stanford used his riches to sponsor his own cricket tournament in the West Indies.

Vietnam Law on Contested Islands Draws Chinas Ire

By Jane Perlez, The New York Times, 21 July 2012 In a show of its resolve in a dispute over the South China Sea, China sharply criticized Vietnam on Thursday for passing a law that claims sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, saying they are the indisputable territory of China. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing summoned the Vietnamese ambassador, Nguyen Van Tho, to strongly protest the new law, said a spokesman, Hong Lei. Vietnams Maritime Law, declaring sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, is a serious violation of Chinas territorial sovereignty, a ministry statement said. China expresses its resolute and vehement opposition. The dispute between China and Vietnam over the law, which had been in the works for years, is the latest example of Beijings determination to tell its Asian neighbors that the South China Sea is Chinas preserve. The Chinese statement comes two weeks before a meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which will be attended by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The South China Sea is expected to be high on the agenda. To reinforce its claims, China also announced that it had raised the level of governance on three island groups in the sea: the Spratlys, the Paracels and the Macclesfield Bank, known in Chinese as the Nansha, Xisha and Zhongsha Islands. The Chinese State Council issued a statement placing the three groups of islands and their surrounding waters under the city of Sansha as a prefectural-level administration rather than a lower county-level one. Xinhua, the state-run news agency, quoted a Ministry of Civil Affairs spokesman as saying that the new arrangement would further strengthen Chinas administration and development of the three island groups. China and South Vietnam fought over the Paracels and the Spratlys in 1974, and a unified Vietnam fought briefly with China in 1988 over the islands. China controls the Paracels and reefs and shoals within the Spratlys, according to the International Crisis Group, a research organization. The Macclesfield Bank comprises a sunken atoll and reefs. In another South China Sea squabble, President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines said Wednesday that he would order Philippine government vessels back to the Scarborough Shoal if China did not remove its ships from the disputed area, as had been promised. A two-month standoff between China and the Philippines at the shoal appeared to have been defused last weekend, when a typhoon forced Philippine fishing boats and a navy vessel to leave. China pledged to remove its vessels, too, the Philippines said at the time. But this week, Philippines officials said half a dozen Chinese government vessels and fishing boats remained at the shoal. The exact position of the Chinese boats whether they were inside the shoals large lagoon, or outside the lagoon in more open waters was not clear. The Philippine government spokesman, Raul Hernandez, said a verbal agreement between China and the Philippines applied only to the withdrawal of vessels from the sheltered lagoon, where Chinese fishermen were poaching rare corals, fish and sharks. The two sides are still talking about the vessels outside the lagoon, he told a Philippine radio station. The Asean ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh will almost certainly come under competing pressures from China and the United States over the tensions in the South China Sea. Last month, at an Asean session in Phnom Penh in preparation for the ministerial meeting, Cambodia, which holds the chairmanship of the regional bloc and is a close ally of China, refused to allow the issuing of a statement on the need for a peaceful resolution of the disputes. The United States is expected to urge the association to strengthen an existing code of conduct on the South China Sea, probably over Chinas objections.

China says Vietnam claim to islands "null and void"

Reuters 21 July 2012 China on Thursday "vehemently opposed" a new Vietnamese law asserting sovereignty over islands in disputed waters, the latest escalation in tensions over the resource-rich South China Sea. The row comes days after an easing in a months-long stand-off between China and the Philippines, but shows the persistent cycle of territorial frictions triggered by what some see as Beijing's growing assertiveness in the area. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun summoned Ambassador Nguyen Van Tho and told him that Hanoi's new law claiming the contested Paracel and Spratly Islands was a "serious violation" and called for an "immediate correction". "Vietnam's Maritime Law, declaring sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Paracel and Spratly Islands, is a serious violation of China's territorial sovereignty. China expresses its resolute and vehement opposition," Zhang said, according to a Foreign Ministry statement. The law was null and void, Zhang said, adding that China would "resolutely defend" its sovereignty. Vietnam's National Assembly approved the law on Thursday. It says all foreign naval ships passing through the waters must notify Vietnamese authorities. China has conflicting claims with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan across the South China Sea,
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key shipping lanes thought to contain rich energy reserves. Vietnam and the Philippines have been the most vocal opponents of China's claims. In the past few days, both Beijing and the Manila cited bad weather after pulling back vessels from a two-month stand-off near the Scarborough Shoal, a contested group of rocks in the sea. The South China Sea is potentially the biggest flashpoint for confrontation in Asia, and tensions have risen since the United States adopted a policy last year to reinforce its influence in the region. Chinese Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo told Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily website on Thursday that China was well able to fight back in case of any provocation. "Our navy has the absolute ability and the absolute confidence to use arms to defend our country's sovereignty, territorial integrity and maritime rights ... We're just waiting for the order," he said.

Vietnam's bad debts at 4.14 pct as of end-April - report

Reuters 19 July 2012 Bad debts in Vietnam's banking system rose to 4.14 percent of total loans as of April as economic difficulties prevented businesses from settling debts and getting new loans, a state-run newspaper said on Tuesday. The total non-performing loans at banks stood at 108.6 trillion dong ($5.18 billion) at the end of April, the Vietnam Economic Times said on its website, quoting the central bank governor's report to the National Assembly. Bad loans at banks were about 3.06 percent of total loans at the end of last year, the report showed. In the first four months this year, bad debts jumped at an average of 8.6 percent a month, according to the report. "The property market was slow to recover, which added difficulties to businesses' ability to settle loans and to banks' settlement of mortgages to resolve non-performing loans," the newspaper quoted the report as saying. Property accounts for around 60 percent of the mortgages in Vietnam's banking system, bankers said. After years of heating credit expansion, Vietnam faced double-digit inflation and bad debts which analysts estimate at two to three times higher than the official data. Money supply grew at an average of 30.2 percent a year while annual credit growth averaged at 33.2 percent in the 2006-2010 period, the National Financial Supervisory Commission, which advises the government, has said in a report. In the banking system reform plan publicised in March, the State Bank of Vietnam said it would resolve non-performing loans by selling mortgaged bad debts to the Finance Ministry's Debt and Asset Trading Co and allowing banks to turn their loans into the stakes in borrowers' firms. The government will consider buying property projects which were used as the mortgages for loans and use them for social welfare purposes and state agencies' use, the plan said. The central bank also aims to establish a national asset management firm to speed up resolving bad debts, the newspaper said.

Banks in Vietnam had weaker 2011 results, face rising debts

Reuters 20 June 2012 Banks in Vietnam had weaker financial performance in 2011 than the year before and their bad debts recently have been "rising continuously," the central bank said in a report on Wednesday. The State Bank of Vietnam said the country's banks last year had slower profit growth as well as reduced rates of return on equity and return on assets. The government adopted tight fiscal and monetary policies in 2011 to help control inflation, which affected the performance of banks and businesses, with many enterprises facing bankruptcy, the central bank said. The report comes at a time of concern about some Vietnamese banks, given the tight policies and slowed economic growth. The government has started restructuring the financial system and seeking to get some banks to merge, but analysts say its steps have been behind schedule. Half of all lenders recorded lower profit last year and 10 percent of them faced losses, the central bank report said without naming any banks or giving figures for the their earnings results. The report said that overall profit growth of banks slowed in 2011 to 15.1 percent, but it didn't give any comparable figure for 2010. The return on equity (ROE) of Vietnam's banking system was 11.86 percent last year compared with 14.56 percent in 2010, and the 2011 return on assets (ROA) dropped to 1.09 percent from 1.29 percent the previous year, according to the report said. Banks in Southeast Asia have their ROE of 14-15 percent, it said. The central bank report didn't comment on the outlook for banks in 2012. But it expressed concern about bad debts. "The absolute value and bad debt ratio of banks have been rising continuously, especially in the last months of 2011 and early in 2012," the report said, citing bank inspectors. Bad debts in Vietnam hit $5.18 billion, or 4.14 percent of total loans as of April, up from 3.06 percent in 2011, due to economic difficulties faced by businesses, state-run media on Tuesday cited a central bank report as saying. Earlier this month, governor Nguyen Van Binh told the National Assembly the system's bad debt had risen to 10 percent of loans from 6 percent earlier, but he gave no specific timeframe. Last year, Vietnam's economic growth slowed to 5.89 percent from 6.78 percent in 2010. Vietnam's economic growth is forecast to slow to an annual pace of 4.31 percent in the first half of this year, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said last Friday. Nearly 50 banks operate in Vietnam, including three fully state-owned lenders, 39 partly private banks and five fully foreign-owned banks. The banking system also has 54 foreign bank branches, four joint venture banks, 17 financial firms, 12 financial leasing companies and nearly 1,100 credit funds, central bank data show.

Vietnams Blogger Revolution?

By Marianne Brown, The Diplomat 20 June 2012 When security forces tried to evict a family of fish farmers from their land in Tien Lang district in northern Vietnam, they werent expecting to be met with guns and land mines. The ensuing battle ended up with six officers in the hospital and four men charged with attempted murder. The case was explosive in more than one sense of the word. In a rare move in a country where news is strictly censored by the government, reporters were allowed to thoroughly investigate the case. Indeed, one former Western diplomat said at the time he had never seen local media cover a story to the same depth as bloggers. Gradually, more and more details came to light revealing broken promises and mismanagement on the part of local authorities. Several officials were disciplined for their involvement. Such reporting is highly unusual in Vietnam, a country rated 172nd out of 179 countries in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index

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2011-2012. Editors have to meet the Propaganda Department every Tuesday for guidance on what can and cant be published. Although some go further than others in covering issues of corruption, self-censorship is rife. The incident therefore gave hope to some that things might change, but just a few months later, on April 24, another protest just outside Hanoi in Hung Yen Province provided evidence to the contrary. Images of hundreds of police in riot gear facing residents of Van Giang village were posted on blogs, going viral instantly. The protesters were demanding higher compensation for land taken by local authorities to build a satellite city on the outskirts of Hanoi. But despite the hot news, local newspapers remained silent. Non-governmental organization Red Communication works to improve the quality of journalism in Vietnam. Director Tran Nhat Minh says reporters werent given the same freedom to cover the protest in Van Giang as they were in Tien Lang. Before Van Giang authorities held a press meeting. The local authorities requested reporters to cover the story according to their own documents and not come to the site because of safety reasons, he says. Over the following weeks, a handful of stories filtered through. However, when two men captured on video being beaten by police at the protest were identified as journalists from a state-owned radio station, the incident started making headlines. The case in Van Giang showed the failure of the government to silence local media, says Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Thi Hung.* There was an order not to report on the case, but the beating of the two reporters from VOV was an excuse for people to cover it. Coverage of the attack lasted about a week, and didnt delve into the details of the reasons behind the protest. But although reporting on the case in Van Giang was stifled, director Minh says change is in the air. The situation now isnt the same as a few years ago, he says. Before if there was a case of a project where the state had to take the land from the people, then journalists could only report from the point of the view of the state. Protests over land confiscation are common and have been for a long time, he says, but national newspapers have rarely paid any attention to them. Often only the immediate locality is interested and with the majority of readership living in cities, most news organizations simply arent concerned with the problems of farmers. However, the battle between farmers and authorities in Tien Lang changed that. First, readers were attracted by the level of violence, and then appalled by the level of mismanagement by the authorities. The space for land protests in the national press is larger now because of the Tien Lang case, Minh says, adding the incident established the issue as hot, meaning more cases will be covered. Such coverage, if it does materialize, could also help boost Vietnams development efforts, says Britains ambassador to Vietnam. Britain is a leading donor on anti-corruption in Vietnam and funds training programs for local media. Ambassador Antony Stokes says the role of the media is to bring information to light in a professional and independent way. This is fundamental in fighting corruption. Its a bit of a challenge and we want to work with the Vietnamese government to address that challenge, he says. Stokes says he hopes helping the media become freer from political influence will help promote development. The media can play a very important part in identifying corrupt individuals. However, theres a potential for individuals to feel threatened by this, he adds. Pham Van Linh,* who works for a Vietnamese newspaper, says he believes the system of censorship isnt changing, and may even be becoming stricter. Reporting depends on the benefit group in government and who editors have support from, Linh says. He believes the government restricts the media because it is afraid of losing control over public opinion. If authorities lose control they will lose the regime, he says. Fellow journalist Hung says she thinks restrictions remain on a case-by-case basis, but that the real force for change is blogging. The interest in the case in Van Giang was triggered almost entirely by the extent of coverage by bloggers. Blogging is pushing local coverage forward by bringing more information into the public forum, she says. The government cant reverse information published on the internet. Some reporters get around the restrictions by writing blogs under pen names. However the rising influence of this medium hasnt been overlooked by the government. Contents of blogs are used increasingly in indictments at court that end in jail terms. One blogger, Le Duc Thich,* says he is regularly followed by police and his work is closely monitored. They try to pressure me not to write about sensitive issues, he says. There have also been reports that Hanoi blogger Nguyen Xuan Dien, who was one of the first to spread the news about the protest in Van Giang, has been harassed and forced to close his blog. Vietnamese laws can serve either to repress or nurture the growth of quality journalism, according to some analysts. One piece of legislation which has sparked concern among the international community is a draft decree on usage of the internet, which is expected to be released this month. The U.S. Embassy in Vietnam issued its own comments on the draft in a letter to the Vietnamese government made public on Thursday 7 June. The decree could force internet users to register using their real names and force news sites to gain government approval before publishing. The embassy said provisions on banned behaviour on the internet were overly broad and vague, and therefore likely to negatively impact individuals rights to freedom of expression in Vietnam. Still, not everyone is pessimistic about the rights of journalists and bloggers in Vietnam. Red Communications director Minh says there are provisions under existing laws that can help improve reporting, but these are rarely implemented. He says under Articles 6 and 8 of Decree 02 Sanctions for Administrative Violations in Journalism and Publishing journalists have the right not to be obstructed, and government agencies are obliged to give them information. The president of the Vietnam Journalist Association said after Hung Yen that we should wait and see if the reporters acted according to the law. But this was wrong, Minh says. According to the law journalists are allowed to work in all territories of Vietnam so they were right to be there. While blogging is pushing news reporting to new limits, Minh says people will report more when they know their rights. When journalists understand the law they will be more confident and there will be less self-censorship, he says.

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