Iran Urges West To Drop Conditions Ahead of Nuclear Talks

qua tang cuoc song | harvard university |

Iran has confirmed it will meet with Western powers in Istanbul Saturday but is urging them to take pre-conditions off the table ahead of the nuclear talks.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council confirmed Monday it will meet with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France -- plus Germany.  Iran wants a further round of talks held in Baghdad at a later date to discuss its controversial nuclear program.

There was no immediate response from the world powers. Iran has been balking at holding talks in Istanbul because it says Turkey has turned against its ally, Syria.

World powers say the talks, the first since January 2011, should bring a curtailment of Iran's high-level uranium enrichment and the closing of an underground nuclear development site,

But Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told Iranian media Monday that pre-conditions on the talks are "meaningless."

Western powers suspect Tehran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons.  Iran denies the allegation and maintains its nuclear activities are purely for power generation and medical research purposes.

Iran's nuclear chief Fereidoun Abbasi told Iranian media Sunday the country may scale back production of highly enriched uranium. Abbasi said Iran may eventually reduce production of 20 percent enriched uranium to 3.5 percent enrichment levels -- the purity needed for power generation -- once enough fuel is created to keep its research reactor going.

Iran's uranium enrichment lies at the heart of the dispute between Tehran and Western powers.  Uranium enriched to 20 percent could be turned into weapons-grade material within months.

Earlier this year, Iran confirmed it had started enriching uranium at an underground facility near the Shi'ite holy city of Qom.  The Fordo complex is beneath a mountain and is better protected from potential air strikes by nations suspicious of the intent of Iran's nuclear program.

^{_{Some information for this report provided by AFP and Reuters.}}

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Op-Ed Contributor

bat dong san | harvard university |

Dental Insurance, but No Dentists

By LOUIS W. SULLIVAN

Published: April 8, 2012

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WE know that too many Americans can't afford primary care and end up in the emergency room with asthma or heart failure . But in the debate over health care coverage, less attention has been paid to the fact that too many Americans also end up in the emergency room with severe tooth abscesses that keep them from eating or infections that can travel from decayed teeth to the brain and, if untreated, kill.

More than 830,000 visits to emergency rooms nationwide in 2009 were for preventable dental problems. In my state of Georgia, visits to the E.R. for oral health problems cost more than $23 million in 2007. According to more recent data from Florida, the bill exceeded $88 million. And dental disease is the No. 1 chronic childhood disease, sending more children in search of medical treatment than asthma. In a nation obsessed with high-tech medicine, people are not getting preventive care for something as simple as tooth decay .

It's easy to understand why. Close to 50 million Americans live in rural or poor areas where dentists do not practice. Most dentists do not accept Medicaid patients. And the shortage of dentists is going to get only worse: by 2014, under the Affordable Care Act, 5.3 million more children will be entitled to dental benefits from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program . Little is being done — by the dental profession or by the federal or state governments — to prepare for it.

During the physician shortage of the middle of the last century, the federal government began creating about 50 new medical schools , doubling the number of graduating doctors. Today our government can and should train more dentists to address the long-term problem. But there is no guarantee that the new recruits would practice in underserved areas, and we need practitioners now.

A more immediate solution is to train dental therapists who can provide preventive care and routine procedures like sealants, fillings and simple extractions outside the confines of a traditional dentist's office. Dental therapists are common worldwide, and yet in the United States they practice only in Alaska and Minnesota, where state law allows it. Legislation is pending in five more states.

The dental profession has resisted efforts to allow midlevel providers to deliver this kind of care, and the government has so far failed to push for the change. It must do so now. The federal government could encourage states to pass laws allowing these providers to practice by calling for demonstration projects proving their worth.

The best model for how this system can work is found in remote Alaska Native villages, many accessible only by plane, snowmobile or dogsled, where high school seniors once graduated with full sets of dentures. Unable to recruit dentists to these areas, Alaska has been training its own dental therapists.

When Alaska began the project in 2003, there were no training programs in the country, so the state first sent students to New Zealand, which had a rigorous training program for dental therapists. These therapists now travel to small clinics and schools, often carrying their equipment with them. They consult with a supervising dentist from the region but do most procedures themselves. Many were raised in the communities in which they now work, so they understand the culture, children trust them and they have quickly become local health care leaders. Thanks to the program, around 35,000 people now live in communities where there is regular access to dental care .

We have two years to prepare before millions of children will be entitled to access to dental care, and Alaska shows us the way forward. Access means more than having an insurance card; it means having professionals available to provide care. Public officials should foster the creation of these midlevel providers — and dentists should embrace the opportunity to broaden the profession so they can expand services to those in need.

Louis W. Sullivan, a physician, was the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993.

Theo www.nytimes.com

Burma, S. China Sea Dominate ASEAN Summit Discussions

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This week leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are meeting in Phnom Penh, where competing claims to parts of the South China Sea, Sunday"s election in Burma and North Korea's planned satellite launch are dominating discussions.

Photo: AP

Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN Foreign Ministers from left, K. Shanmugam of Singapore, Surapong Tovichakchaikul of Thailand, Pham Bihn Minh of Vietnam, Hor Namhong of Cambodia and Lim Jock Seng of Brunei wait for their counterpart from Myanmar Wunna Maung Lwin, bottom, prior to the photo session of their meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia April 2, 2012.

Burma's political reform process has been a high-profile objective for the 10 member bloc of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Last November the group agreed to grant Burma the chair of the bloc in 2014 on the basis of its democratic reforms.

After Sunday's by-election, which Burma had invited ASEAN representatives to observe, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa praised the vote's execution.

"As far as Indonesia is concerned, this is a very good development. An important step in further making irreversible the democratization process in Myanmar," Natalegawa said.

This year's chair, Cambodia, released a statement calling the election "successful" and "peaceful" and urged the international community to consider lifting longstanding economic sanctions.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said he was "encouraged" by the vote in Burma, also known as Myanmar.

"We hope that this will contribute to a more effective integration of Myanmar [Burma] in the global community and Myanmar and ASEAN will be able to work on other issues that will be more meaningful and contributing to the well-being of the people of Myanmar, rather than being stuck on the issue of instability and lack of political reconciliation in Myanmar," he said.

During the leaders summit this week, territorial disputes in the South China Sea are also expected to be a high-profile issue.

Four ASEAN members claim rights to parts of the South China Sea, along with China and Taiwan.

At a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday, the Philippine's secretary of foreign affairs, Albert del Rosario, urged his counterparts to take concrete steps forward on a collective code of conduct, or COC, for dealing with the dispute. Del Rosario said he hopes ASEAN will formulate its stance by the end of the year, but acknowledged the group remains divided over how to proceed.

"I think the difference of opinion lies in the fact that we are advocating a draft of the COC be prepared before we sit down with China," del Rosario said. "Others are taking the view that China should be invited to come in for the initial discussions."

ASEAN ministers also expressed concern over North Korea's announcement of a planned satellite rocket launch. Observers have said the rocket trajectory could see it head south near Philippines, Australian or Indonesian territory.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Natalegawa called on North Korea to refrain from the launch.

"We are obviously deeply concerned by the prospect of the launch of the satellite, both in terms of the safety and security issues," Natalegawa said. "But most of all, and not least, in terms of the disruption it is causing to the conditions conducive for the resumptions of six party talks."

Monday's meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers is ahead of Tuesday's main leaders' summit.

Theo www.voanews.com

Memo From Mexico

Lap nghiep | school of medicine |

A Race Recast by YouTube and Twitter

Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI campaigning in Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico. Limits on political advertising are forcing presidential candidates to adapt.

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and ELISABETH MALKIN

Published: April 29, 2012

MEXICO CITY — It sounds like the typical hardball, American-style campaign. The presidential candidate from the incumbent's party calls the front-runner a "liar" in television and Internet advertisements. Supporters of the front-runner retaliate with a Web site and Twitter posts that say his top opponent "lies." And the third-place candidate wraps the gaffes of both of them into a YouTube video cheekily titled "Excuses Not to Debate."

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The PAN candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, at a rally in Monterrey, Mexico. The election is July 1.

State-of-the-art, no-holds-barred political warfare, perhaps, except that after President Felipe Calderón narrowly won a divisive race here six years ago that featured ads calling his opponent a danger to the country, Mexico 's political establishment had vowed that it would tolerate no more of that.

But a law passed in 2007 that was intended to keep campaigning orderly and clean — it bans the Mexican equivalent of political action committees, limits spending, regulates language in advertisements and tightens the official campaign period to just 89 days — has been undercut by the unpredictable and uncontrollable Web.

On Web sites and in the online social media, a parallel battlefield has emerged as candidates vie for the support of voters, more than a quarter of whom, polls say, have not made a choice as the July 1 election nears. Many of the undecided are part of the fast-growing bloc of young middle-class Mexicans who tend to be more politically independent and may prove pivotal in determining the country's next president.

"If you want to win a campaign you need to win every space of the terrain," said Agustín Torres Ibarrola, a 34-year-old lawmaker who coordinates the digital strategy for Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of Mr. Calderón's National Action Party , or PAN, who trails by double digits in the polls.

Mr. Torres was sitting beside a large screen displaying his TweetDeck page, which manages Twitter and Facebook accounts, as a handful of young campaign workers hunched over laptops monitoring social media sites and posting material related to a dispute with the campaign of the front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Recently, Mr. Torres used his Twitter account to take a veiled swipe at Mr. Peña Nieto, alluding to suspicions that his party, which governed Mexico for seven decades until 2000, would make deals with drug gangs. The election, Mr. Torres wrote, was "about choosing between politicians who fight drug trafficking or politicians who tolerate it."

"Which country do you want?" he asked.

Just under a third of Mexico's population regularly uses the Internet (compared with 80 percent in the United States). But the campaigns have seen how social media sites can help shape public opinion — newspapers here closely track and publish the number of each candidate's Twitter and Facebook followers — and they skirt the heavily regulated airwaves.

Often using automated programs or armies of volunteers, the campaigns battle to land trending topics on Twitter and celebrate them as important discussion points. Last Wednesday, "Josefina gets confused," a reference to a verbal gaffe by Ms. Vázquez Mota, was a popular topic for much of the day.

So far, the weighty problems facing Mexico — the drug war, feeble job growth, persistent poverty and the failings of the police and judicial system — have received little attention and generated only vague pronouncements.

Instead, the campaigns expand and refine their digital attacks, often using hard-to-trace and easily disavowed volunteers and supporters to do the dirty work.

Aurelio Nuño Mayer, the media director of the Peña Nieto campaign, said his operation relied on about 20,000 volunteers to post Twitter messages and drive up the popularity of favored topics. While the volunteers are ordered not to undercut Mr. Peña Nieto's positive message of efficiency — he is broadcasting new ads this week equating the divisiveness in the race this year to that of the 2006 campaign — Mr. Nuño Mayer acknowledged that the campaign could not always control them.

"Twitter is like a jungle," he said. "With the anonymity, it is like a free-for-all."

A dizzy spell by Ms. Vázquez Mota during a speech and her failure to directly answer a student's question on education policy ricocheted across YouTube and Twitter, though none of it carried the signature of her opponents' official campaign or party.

Mexico has taken one of the more aggressive approaches toward regulating campaign speech, with the result that parties are repeatedly complaining to the election commission about opponents' ads and remarks, and then calling the decision biased when it goes against them.

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Vietnam helps raise Cambodias rice productivity

may chieu | school of medicine |

The conference, held by the Binh Dien fertilizer company, with the participation of Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam On, heard that with the widespread use of Vietnam's fertiliser, productivity on Cambodian rice fields has tripled to 5-6 tonnes per hectare during the past ten years.

At the event

More than 15% of Binh Dien's annual fertiliser output of 1 million tonnes of NPK is sold in Cambodia.

Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam On said the Cambodian government is prioritising agricultural development to ensure food security, reduce poverty among farmers, and gradually increase rice exports.

( VNA )

Theo en.baomoi.com

Corrections April 28

religionchung.name.vn | school of medicine |

Because of an editing error, an article on April 20 about the halting of fraternity pledging at Binghamton University because of hazing complaints overstated what is known about the cause of death of a student at Cornell University in 2011. While the student, who was not named in the article, died after drinking at a fraternity kidnapping ritual, the cause of his death is the subject of current criminal and civil cases. It has not been determined that forced drinking indeed killed him.

Published: April 27, 2012

NEW YORK

BUSINESS DAY

Because of an editing error, the Advertising column on April 18, about marketers' rapid embrace of the image-sharing Web site Pinterest, misstated the number of Twitter posts that could be made of a thousand words. The number would vary according to word length, but would almost certainly be more than "about seven posts." (Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, not 140 words. While that number of characters could yield a thousand words in about seven posts, they would have to be single-letter words like "a" and "I." This would result in a post not much worth retweeting.)

SPORTS

Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about the Rangers' 2-1 victory over the Ottawa Senators in Game 7 of their playoff series described incorrectly in some copies the shots the Senators took in the final 7 minutes 40 seconds. They had six shots on goal, not six shots. (They took 14 shots over all, including, as the article correctly noted, five that were blocked and three that missed the net.)

•

A report in the baseball roundup on Thursday about the season-ending shoulder injury of Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda misstated his age in some copies. He is 23, not 22.

WEEKEND

An entry in the Spare Times for Children listings in some editions on Friday misstated the number of free family films that will be screened today at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The center is showing one film, "The NeverEnding Story," not three.

OBITUARIES

An obituary on Friday about the disc jockey Pete Fornatale misidentified the area of Long Island where he had lived for many years. It is Port Washington, not Port Jefferson.

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African Economists Push to Sever Colonial-Era Monetary Ties with Europe

may quay phim | medical school interview questions |

While weak European economies create concerns around the world, economists in Africa are pushing to sever ties binding the continent to former colonial powers. One idea is to decouple the CFA franc, the currency in 14 African countries, from the euro.

Photo: VOA - N. Colombant

Some economists say ending the peg between CFA francs, shown here on a bus in Abidjan, and the euro would help West and Central African economies.

One of the speakers at the Revival of Pan-Africanism Forum was economist Salomon Samen, who advises several African countries on economic policy.

Samen calls the post-World War II CFA franc, which is used in West and Central Africa, an umbilical cord that needs to be cut. A good start, he says, would be to loosen the fixed relationship between the euro and the CFA franc.

"The fixed parity between the CFA and the euro is no longer justified because trade between Africa and Europe has changed drastically over recent years with the greater role being played by Asian countries and China, and with a lot of trade being done with the United States as well. So it is not acceptable to have a simple fixed parity between the CFA franc and the euro. It has got to be overhauled," he said.

Another African economist, Ivory Coast national Nash Kpokou, wants CFA franc countries to have their own currencies, so that African economies can increase their competitiveness and not be so influenced by the uncertain standing of the euro. "If we have our own currency, this will really help our economies to deal with most of the countries and they will be able to sell their goods to the rest of the world," he said.

Kpokou calls the current system "banking tourism" that has benefited France and French-backed leaders, not African populations, even when their countries post solid economic growth. "When we talk about growth it should be inclusive.  They miss that it should take into consideration reducing poverty. So when growth is not taking into consideration the population, then there is no growth," he said.

Kpokou also notes that the current system requires participating countries to hold most of their foreign reserves in accounts held at the French Treasury. Other participants at the forum said that instead of relying on this system to reassure investors who are wary of doing business in a highly-indebted region, African states need to improve their business and investment environments, and increase intercontinental trade.

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US Lawmakers Call for Hard-Nosed Approach With Iran

religion chung | medical school interview questions |

Leading U.S. lawmakers are urging the Obama administration to take an even tougher stance with Iran over its nuclear program, questioning whether expanding economic sanctions are making a difference.

Photo: Reuters

Iran's International Atomic Energy Agency ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh (R) briefs the media during a board of governors meeting at the United Nations headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 8, 2012.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Democrat John Kerry, called Iran and its nuclear program the "biggest foreign policy challenge facing the U.S." during a hearing Wednesday. He said sanctions alone are unlikely to make Iran change course and called for Washington to engage in what he called "hard-nosed diplomacy."

The committee's leading Republican lawmaker, Senator Richard Lugar, also warned that Iran has refused to change "even as its isolation has grown." He said Tehran needs to understand it must choose between pursuing its nuclear program or preserving Iran's economic viability.

The lawmakers said the U.S. is keeping all options on the table, including the use of military force.

Iran denies Western claims it is trying to develop atomic weapons and says its nuclear activities are purely for power generation and medical research purposes.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Wednesday that he expects renewed talks with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France, plus Germany - to begin April 13.

The group, known as the P5+1, reaffirmed its support for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue earlier this month. But in a statement, the group also voiced "regret" about Iran's escalating campaign to enrich uranium, and urged Tehran to open its Parchin military site to inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Kerry said the prospect of a military confrontation gives "added urgency" to the upcoming talks.

A spokesman for European Union policy chief Catherine Ashton said there is no agreement on a time or place for the talks. But Salehi told Iranian state media Wednesday that a site will be set in the next few days.

Iran wants the meeting to take place in the Turkish city Istanbul, where a previous round of talks broke down in January 2011.

Salehi welcomed Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Tehran on Wednesday for meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials.

Turkey's Anatolia news agency quoted Erdogan as saying no one has the right to "impose anything" on a country using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. He also said, though, "Anyone who has common sense is against nuclear weapons. And so no one has the right or the entitlement to impose such a thing."

Join the conversation on our social journalism site - Middle East Voices . Follow our Middle East reports on Twitter and discuss them on our Facebook page.

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UK helps Vietnam improve the quality of auditors

Kinh Doanh | international summer school |

(VOV) - The Vietnamese Ministry of Finance and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) have agreed to organize professional auditors contests in Vietnam.

At the signing of a cooperative agreement in Hanoi on April 18, Minister of Finance Vuong Dinh Hue highlighted ACCA's assistance in developing auditing work in Vietnam.

Under the agreement, ACCA will help the MoF's staff improve their ethical and professional standards. ACCA is also committed to granting full scholarships to Vietnamese financial officials.

The cooperative agreement will take effects in five years (from April 18, 2012 to April 17, 2014).

Theo en.baomoi.com

Op-Ed Columnist

news | international summer school |

In Search of Sustainable Swagger

By ROGER COHEN

Published: April 2, 2012

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RIO DE JANEIRO — I came to Brazil in the 1980s at a time of funny money. Inflation peaked at 6,821 percent in April 1990. Today it's a place of funny prices. An ordinary Chilean red may go for $100 and brand-name sneakers for $350. Paris and New York seem like a steal.

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The funny money was given many names — cruzeiro, cruzado, cruzado novo, cruzeiro real — in search of an elusive credibility. But Brazil had only one name: instability. Then came the introduction of the real in 1994, solid democratic institutions, monetary reform, privatizations, booming commodities, trade with China, massive oil discoveries — and pizza margarita at $45.

This boom-era Brazilian pizza makes me glum. A certain swagger is needed to bake and flog flat, round bread for that price — the very swagger gone from the West. We are living the great global inversion. The price tag screams: You're history, baby!

It can certainly seem that way. Citibank officers once viewed Brazil as a basket case: there's a story of tables turned. Brazilian capitalism has fared better than U.S. capitalism of late and a lot better than U.S. banks. Inequality, still marked, has declined here in recent years. Of all the fast-growing Brazilian commodities, confidence is the most conspicuous.

Let's deconstruct this Gucci of pizzas. After all, it sells. Behind the fabulously expensive dough, tomato and mozzarella lurks an overvalued Brazilian currency. Behind that stand interest rates high enough and a nation stable enough to attract global corporations and the world's super-rich to put their money here. Behind that investment choice lie American and European crises that have cheapened major currencies, in part through the Central Bank cash infusions known as quantitative easing.

In short, this is a bellwether pizza. There is more belief in Brazil than in the Europe of the compromised euro or the United States of a compromised financial industry. Bullish Brazil, with its offshore oil and onshore Olympics coming, offers a mirror image of a brittle West. Looking for the promise of the Americas? Come here.

The global agenda in 2012 has no more important focus than finding a balance between the extremes of developing-world optimism and developed-world moroseness. The post-9/11 wars are over or ending. They were not entirely lost but nor were they won.

The recent murderous rampage of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales — a U.S. infantryman in southern Afghanistan on his fourth deployment in those wars, plagued by financial problems, in danger of losing his home — summed up the frustrations of those conflicts. Bales lost it. Many have lost everything. After the wars and the trillions of dollars they have consumed comes the hard slog of overcoming debt and deficits and high unemployment and anemic growth and shaken self-esteem.

This digging-out from a time of injury cannot be anything other than a joint effort. Developing economies like China and Brazil will have to see their surpluses come down if the debilitating deficits of the West are to be addressed.

That overvalued real, which punishes manufacturers trying to export, is no better for Brazil in the long term than a euro lurching from one salvage operation to the next is for Europe. Brazil, China and all the emergent economies are not served by a U.S. and Europe seized by doubt and plagued by youth unemployment. The world is still looking for a sustainable path out of the meltdown of 2008. Papering-over, at moral cost, has averted the worst. It has not laid credible new economic foundations.

When an outgoing Goldman Sachs executive, Greg Smith, wrote recently in The New York Times that, "It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off," his disgust with his company mirrored a widespread disquiet over the way big American financial institutions, bailed out by the taxpayer, walked away from the 2008 crisis without any serious reckoning.

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Health Ruling Hinges on How Justices Frame the Core Issue

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday is hearing arguments on the central question in the constitutional challenges to President Obama ’s health care overhaul law. How it answers the question depends in large part on how the justices decide to frame the core issue.

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: March 27, 2012

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The law’s challengers — 26 states led by Florida, the National Federation of Independent Business and several individuals — present the central question as one of individual liberty. May the federal government, they ask, compel individuals not engaged in commerce to buy a product, here health insurance , from private companies?

The Obama administration, by contrast, urges the court to answer a different question. May Congress decide, in fashioning a comprehensive response to a national crisis in the health care market, to regulate how people pay for the health care they will almost inevitably need?

However the questions are ultimately framed, the Supreme Court’s answers will be grounded in the text of two provisions of the Constitution and in the precedents interpreting them.

The Constitution grants the federal government specified powers, reserving the rest to the states and to the people. The two powers at issue in the case, set out in Article I, Section 8, concern the regulation of interstate commerce and the imposition of taxes.

The administration’s primary argument is that the law is authorized by the commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce "among the several states." The Supreme Court has read the clause broadly, saying it allows Congress to limit how much wheat may be grown on a family farm and to punish the cultivation of home-grown marijuana.

There have been only two modern exceptions to that broad interpretation. In 1995, the court struck down a federal law regulating guns near schools . In 2000, it struck down a federal law allowing suits over violence against women . In both cases, the court said the activity sought to be regulated was local and noncommercial.

The decision under review , from the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, said the health care law overstepped the limits imposed by the commerce clause by regulating inactivity and forcing people into the marketplace.

In his main brief , Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. urged the justices to look at the bigger picture.

"The minimum coverage provision," he wrote, using the law’s name for what most people call the individual mandate, "is within Congress’s power to enact not only because it is a necessary component of a broader scheme of interstate regulation, but also because, within that scheme, the provision itself regulates economic conduct with a substantial effect on interstate commerce, namely the way in which individuals finance their participation in the health care market."

Uninsured Americans each year use $43 billion of health care they cannot pay for, effectively transferring those costs to other American families to the tune of about $1,000 per year, Mr. Verrilli said.

In response , Paul D. Clement, representing 26 states challenging the law, said this conception of federal power amounts to "a revolution in the relationship between the central government and the governed."

"If this is to remain a system of limited and enumerated federal powers that respects individual liberty, accountability and the residual dignity and sovereignty of the states, the individual mandate cannot stand."

The federal government also argued that the mandate is separately authorized by Congress’s power to levy taxes. The penalty that people who fail to obtain insurance must pay is calculated as a percentage of their income and is paid to the Internal Revenue Service along with income and other taxes each April.

Mr. Clement responded that the challenge is to the mandate, which applies to almost all Americans, rather than the penalty, which applies to a subset of them. In any event, he said, a penalty is not a tax.

Theo www.nytimes.com

Southeast Asia starts to plan for climate change

vietnam tourism | harvard summer school 2011 |

A forum on fighting climate change was held in Thailand recently. Viet Nam News spoke to Robert Mather, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Southeast Asia Group, about the project.

Can you tell us about the project?

The project started last year and will last until December 2014. Supported by funding from the European Union, it seeks to strengthen the capacity of local governments and people to plan for and adapt to future climate risks in Cambodia's Kampot and Koh Kong Provinces, Thailand's Chanthaburi and Trat, and HCM City, Ben Tre, Soc Trang, and Kien Giang in Viet Nam.

This will enable local government agencies to conduct vulnerability assessments, identify pilot activities to reduce the vulnerability, design, implement, and monitor the success of these activities, and carry out cost-benefit analysis and feasibility assessment for replicating pilot actions over a wider area.

It will identify best practices developed by local people and provide opportunities for communities on different parts of the coast to learn from each other.

In Viet Nam, the IUCN has two partners – the Viet Nam Administration of Sea and Island and German Society for International Co-operation (GIZ) – with their own projects and collaborative ones in various Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces.

What we have in the project that will be important is sharing and learning between the different countries and different provinces or sites working in each country.

Climate change is now becoming a familiar word. How can we cope with it?

Climate change is real. It has already happened and is happening now. We don't know how long it will happen and how quickly. We do know it has already happened and is getting worse.

The impact of climate change will be totally different for different people, depending on who you are, where you live, what you do, and how you feel about climate change.

If you look at one community, one place, depending upon whether you are a man or woman, old or young, fishermen or farmer, it will be different for you.

Climate change is a new issue that as garnered a lot of attention. Climate change adaptation is something that I think a lot of people are trying to find how we should do, what we should actually do, what climate change adaptation really needs.

That is why we need to find out local places for a project to share and learn from each other. And also carry out exchanges between local communities, local governments, technical experts and also higher level of national government.

It is important to learn, to exchange both vertically and horizontally.

So climate change adaptation is still a question without an answer?

Here is an obvious message: There no single solution for climate change. There are many solutions because we need solutions for every community and for different groups of people.

I try to think of a number. There may be 20 million communities around the world. Let us say we need at least 10-20 different climate change adaptation solutions for each community. So in the world we need 200 – 400 million solutions for climate change. And our project can only help deliver 20 to 40.

What we really want to focus on is how nature can offer us solutions. We want to focus on nature-based solutions because we really need nature.

Whether we reforest the watershed or replant the mangrove forest, all natural solutions to climate change will be important. Natural solutions will not be the only solutions, we are still seeking some hard-infrastructure options but when we think about the benefits of natural solutions, they are available to everybody and cheap.

If you build a wall to stop the sea level from rising, it will cost a lot of money. If you have mangroves to stop the sea level from rising, it is cheaper and you can get a lot of other benefits too.

But none of this is going to work unless local communities, local people really have secure access to natural resources and local environment so that they can manage climate change adaptation.

Is there anything else on the forum agenda?

Writing about climate change, how to figure out what is climate change is difficult for journalists too. If even people implementing the projects are still not sure about the right solutions, how can we expect journalists to understand the right solutions? And if journalists carry stories on newspapers or TV, how many people reading, listening, or watching can understand?

So a strong focus on the media with regard to climate change is very important and we also want to know how the media understands climate change and tells the public about the issue.

We hope this is the first step in starting close long-term collaboration between international organisations and the media to figure out the right thing and take it to everyone in these countries. — VNS

Theo en.baomoi.com

David Hallberg Joins The Bolshoi Ballet as a Premier Dancer

cong nghe | harvard summer school 2011 |

An American ballet star has joined the Bolshoi Ballet as what"s called a premier dancer. David Hallberg is the first American to achieve such a distinction.

They call him the Prince, that's the Prince of Ballet.   He is 29 year-old David Hallberg of Rapid City, South Dakota.

AP/Evan Agostini

American ballet dancers David Hallberg, right, and Tiler Peck perform at the 2010 World Science Festival opening night gala performance at Alice Tully Hall on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 in New York.

This young dancer, who hails far from the cultural centers of the U.S.,  is now the first American to enlist permanently with the world-renowned Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow.  It has special meaning for him.  "For me the responsibility is large," he said. "The pressure is, of course, quite large.  So is the responsibility to represent a new generation, a new era in ballet."

Hallberg will have a starring role with the Bolshoi.  Over the last 10 years he has made tremendous strides.  In 1999, he trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School and in 2000 he joined American Ballet Theater in New York.

He's now a principal dancer with ABT and will continue to dance with Ballet Theater from time to time.

Kevin McKenzie is artistic director of ABT. He says he never doubted Hallberg's potential.  "We knew right away that we had a talented boy on our hands," he said.

"It was just evident when it was time to open the gates and let him go and he took off like a meteor."

The move comes 50 years after Rudolf Nureyev's historic defection from the Soviet Union.  That turned the world of dance upside town.

Then, in 1974, the great Mikhail Baryshnikov defected.

Now, the journey is in reverse.

Hallberg believes the collaboration will be positive. "I will be like a sponge trying to absorb everything around me and trying to see all the other dancers, the ballets and the repertoire.  And on the other hand, I feel the dancers can be influenced by the way I dance as well," he said.

Kevin McKenzie, of ABT, is proud. "Until this very moment in time it was always American companies or American audiences looking for validation -- to have a guest Russian dancer with them.  And now the shoe is on the other foot," he said.

Hallberg will debut in "Giselle" at the Bolshoi in early November.

Theo www.voanews.com

Dior Turns to Raf Simons

congtythietkeweb.edu.vn | international summer school |

The Belgian designer Raf Simons was named late on Monday as the next artistic director of Christian Dior — a post that had been empty for more than a year since the dramatic departure of John Galliano in March 2011.

Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Belgian designer Raf Simons acknowledged the audience at the end of Jil Sander Spring-Summer 2012 ready-to-wear collection last September in Milan.

By SUZY MENKES

Published: April 9, 2012

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"I feel fantastic," Mr. Simons said by telephone from his studio in Antwerp. "It is one of the ultimate challenges, and a dream to go to a place like Dior, which stands for absolute elegance, incredible femininity and utter luxury."

Mr. Simons, 44, began his career in men's wear in 1995 and went on to revitalize men's and women's lines at Jil Sander 10 years later.

Now he has been chosen by Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to modernize Dior, the most classic of Parisian couture houses. In a statement, LVMH said that "Raf Simons' journey with the house of Dior will propel its iconic style into the 21st century."

Mr. Simons will be in charge of haute couture, women's ready-to-wear and accessories, starting with the couture show in July, while keeping his eponymous men's line.

Mr. Arnault and Sidney Toledano, Dior's chief executive, began searching for a new designer after Mr. Galliano was removed from the post because he had made anti-Semitic slurs in a bar in Paris.

Several designers said they had turned down the house, apparently seeing a post-Galliano role as a poisoned chalice.

The front runner, the American-born Marc Jacobs, design director of Louis Vuitton, decided to stay where he was. In the meantime, design direction at Dior was in the hands of Bill Gaytten, Mr. Galliano's former assistant. LVMH's financial figures for 2011 show that Dior's results were not affected.

Mr. Simons's name had been bandied about with other supposed contestants in recent months, particularly after his on-off courtship by the house of Yves Saint Laurent ended. The Dior appointment is being made as the designer Hedi Slimane, once a men's wear rival of Mr. Simons's, takes on the top job at Saint Laurent, the fashion house owned by PPR, a major LVMH rival.

The Christian Dior heritage began with the romantic Mr. Dior himself, a man who brought femininity to the postwar 1950s, building the tiny waists and sweeping skirts of his voluptuous "flower women" on his obsession with the Edwardian elegance of his early memories of his mother. He died suddenly in 1957 after only 10 years at the helm, to be followed by a young unknown, Yves Saint Laurent.

Mr. Simons's style could not be more different from that of the founder: He has a modernist vision and a spare, linear style based on fine tailoring. "My aim is a very modern Dior, but at the end of the day, I also look back," he said, referring to what he calls "mid-century modernism."

"I find that period between 1947 and 1957 extremely attractive, and there was a lot of modernity," Mr. Simons said of Christian Dior's designs. "There was the romantic appeal looking back to his mother and the belle époque, but there was also a constant evolution in shape, changing proportions and the ideas connected to the World War were revolutionary."

Mr. Simons comes from the Flemish town of Neerpelt, the only son of a modest family. His mother worked as a house cleaner and his father was on military night watch. Some of that uniform severity may have been worked into the spare lines of early men's collections, where the obsessive focus was the angst and tension of youth culture and the beat of the Belgian music movement.

"But my father was not a strict man, it was a warm nest," Mr. Simons said, adding that his interest in fashion was more about escaping from a Catholic background and a rigorous college full of students aspiring to become lawyers or doctors.

While Christian Dior embraced flower gardens and the decorative stage sets of his artist friend Christian Bérard, Mr. Simons trained as an industrial designer in Genk before trying men's fashion. His world was defined by one of his earliest shows for autumn winter 1996-97. In "We Only Come Out at Night," youths with skinny bodies, sculpted faces and sensual lips dragged on cigarettes and reveled in their adult-free world.

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 9, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the town where Raf Simons trained as an industrial designer. The town is not Ghent, it is Genk.

Theo www.nytimes.com

US Urges China to Convince N. Korea to Scrap Missile Launch

may say toc | medical school interview questions |

The Obama administration is urging China to help convince North Korea to abandon its planned ballistic missile launch. There are new concerns that North Korea may also be planning another nuclear test.

Photo: AP

South Korean Army soldiers watch a TV news program which shows North Korea's Unha-3 rocket at Seoul train station in Seoul, South Korea, April 9, 2012

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States continues to urge all countries that may have influence on North Korea - most notably China - to use that influence to make clear that they also disapprove of the planned missile launch and believe it will further isolate Pyongyang.

As for Washington's message about the launch, Nuland said it is simple: Don't do it.

"North Korea's launch of a missile would be highly provocative. It would pose a threat to regional security," said Nuland. "And it will be inconsistent with its recent undertakings to refrain from any kind of long-range missile launches."

The most recent of those undertakings was a February agreement with the United States to resume nuclear inspections in exchange for food aid. That deal was broken by Pyongyang's announcement that it will launch a weather satellite in the next few days aboard an Unha-3 rocket.

South Korean intelligence photos, obtained by VOA, also show what appear to be preparations for a third North Korean nuclear test.

While she would not confirm that intelligence information, Nuland said another nuclear test "would be equally bad if not worse" than the missile launch.

North Korea says launching a weather satellite is a purely civilian operation. But Nuland says U.S. negotiators made clear that any ballistic missile use would be a deal breaker.

"They can't launch the thing without using ballistic missile technology, which is precluded by U.N. Security Council resolution 1874. So regardless of what they say about it, it's still a violation," Nuland said.

U.S. officials hoped for more from this first deal negotiated with North Korea's new president, Kim Jong Un, who took power following his father's death in December.

Victor Cha is the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. While North Korea's new president is thought to be assisted by top generals and an uncle, Cha says it would be a mistake to conclude that this decision came from anyone but the president himself.

"The political culture of this place is such that any decision of national significance has always been taken by one person, and that is the direct descendant of the Kim Il Sung line," said Cha. "And so I think while he [may] have people around him who are helping him, in the end decisions are being made by this 28-year-old."

Cha says the decision to break the February deal must be seen in light of North Korea's long pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"Even though this may look like puzzling behavior, we have to think of it as part of a systematic program really that is decades-old to try to get to the point where they can deliver nuclear-tipped missiles anywhere in the world and basically try to achieve, in their own minds, the ultimate security umbrella," Cha added.

With North Korea's determination to press ahead with its nuclear program, Cha says the resumption of six-party talks to resolve the dispute appears a long way off. "I don't think we are going to see any sort of return to the negotiations any time soon," Cha said. "If anything, I think the situation could get worse from here."

Talks between North Korea, the United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan broke down in 2009, when Pyongyang expelled international inspectors before conducting its second nuclear test.

Stemming North Korea's nuclear ambitions will be part of talks in Washington Wednesday and Thursday, when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosts foreign ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations.

Theo www.voanews.com

Judge Tells Bloomberg to Release 911 Report

may tinh xach tay | medical school interview questions |

A state judge ordered Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Monday to release what is said to be a sharply critical report on New York's costly, much-delayed emergency dispatch system, but gave the city a week to appeal.

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Published: April 9, 2012

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The judge, Justice Arthur F. Engoron of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said the city's rationale for suppressing the review of the $2.3 billion 911 call-handling system called to mind President Richard M. Nixon's obfuscations during the Watergate scandal. "Nixon kept claiming executive privilege," the judge said. "The public and the courts didn't buy it."

"Executive privilege is not a phrase that the city is invoking here," the judge added. "But I think we are talking about much the same thing."

City lawyers argued that the review was an unfinished draft , and that to release it prematurely could deter officials from freely expressing their opinions.

But Justice Engoron, citing a belief in openness and transparency, said the report and all its drafts, which were paid for with public money, belonged to New Yorkers.

Mr. Bloomberg said he was studying his options, but warned that the ruling would set a dangerous precedent if upheld.

"I don't know how any government would be able to function if you had to put out every single paper, even at the beginning of a study," he said at a midday news conference, adding: "You'd come to a screeching halt. You just can't do this."

The mayor drew a comparison to journalists' having to publish their notes. "I don't know how your paper could survive if they had to publish the first copy of your story," he told a reporter.

"No company could survive," he added. "No government could survive. And that's exactly what, if this ruling — if the courts say you have to publish this, you'd have to publish everything."

The 911 system is already years behind schedule and more than $1 billion over budget. Critics have accused the administration of trying to suppress a report that could deliver another blow to the mayor's already tarnished image as a steward of large-scale technology projects, after a scandal with the CityTime payroll system and delays and overruns in a system handling personnel records.

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, said the mayor should give up the fight to suppress the 911 review. "When is a draft a report? When a Supreme Court judge says so," he said in a statement. "New Yorkers deserve to read this report as well, because lives literally hang in the balance."

The outside review of the 911 system, formally called the Emergency Communications Transformation Project, was performed by Winbourne Consulting , based in Washington, a longtime subcontractor on the project.

Two unions representing city firefighters learned of the existence of the consultant's report several months ago and subpoenaed it in a long-running legal battle over the new 911 system, which they say has only worsened emergency response times.

At the hearing, Justice Engoron, a nine-year veteran of the bench whose term ends this year, said that by the administration's logic it could merely stamp a damaging report with the word "draft" and keep it out of public view indefinitely.

"Anything can be labeled a draft," he said. "In 10 years we can have an even more final or subsequent draft, but meanwhile fires are happening and firefighters are responding."

He also said that an analysis by an outside party had intrinsic value, even if it were revised before being issued in its final form.

"This isn't some man or woman sitting at a desk giving his private thoughts," Justice Engoron said. "I totally buy the firefighters' argument here: public safety is at stake."

Kate Taylor contributed reporting.

Theo www.nytimes.com

Japan helps Vietnam develop e-customs

DuLichDoSon.net | international summer school |

(VOV) - Japan will provide US$6.58 million to support modern technology application for Vietnam's customs sector.

Japan assists Vietnam in building e-customs services

A project to this effect was signed in Hanoi on April 9 between the Vietnamese General Department of Customs and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The project aims to amend the current legal frameworks, create a viable strategy for information and technology, and human resources development, as well as to deploy the Vietnam Automated Cargo and Port Consolidated System (VNACPCS) and the Vietnam Customs Information System (VCIS).

Nguyen Ngoc Tuc, Head of Vietnam's customs, says the project will greatly improve efficiency and contribute to reforming and modernizing the customs sector following the guidelines of the Government and the Ministry of Finance.

Theo en.baomoi.com

Corrections April 13

thiet bi mang tot | international summer school |

An article on Monday about Israel's decision to bar Günter Grass, one of German's best-known writers, from entering the country because of his recent poem that assailed Israel for its threats to attack Iran over its nuclear program described imprecisely Poland's relationship to Nazism. While there were Nazi sympathizers in Poland, especially among ethnic Germans, the Polish people as a whole did not support Nazi ideology nor did Nazism "rise" there. It was imposed by a victorious German army.

Published: April 12, 2012

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INTERNATIONAL

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An article on Thursday about a naval standoff between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea described incorrectly the location of the Philippine island of Luzon and Scarborough Shoal, which is claimed by both countries and is near where Philippine surveillance aircraft spotted eight Chinese fishing boats on Sunday, leading to the standoff. The shoal is 124 nautical miles west of Luzon, not east.

ARTS

The Books of The Times review on Thursday , about "Escape From Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West," by Blaine Harden, misidentified the prisoner who tried to kill himself by jumping down a coal mine shaft. It was Kim Yong, a former North Korean Army officer — not Shin Dong-hyuk, the subject of the book.

•

A music review on Tuesday about a recital by the pianist Maxim Anikushin, at Carnegie Hall, misidentified a work by Samuel Barber that was one of the encores. It is "Let's Sit It Out; I'd Rather Watch: A Walls," not the "Waltz" from "Souvenirs."

•

An article on Thursday about the band Kraftwerk's concerts at the Museum of Modern Art misidentified the album they are scheduled to perform tonight. It is "Trans Europe Express," not "The Man-Machine." (A performance of that album is scheduled for Saturday night.)

OP-ED

An earlier version of this editorial misstated attendance in the Florida Marlins' new stadium. There had been only one game there, which was nearly sold out. Attendance had not been as low as in the old stadium.

 

 

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Documentary Examines the Ordeal of Bullied Children

HoiGia.vn | school of medicine |

The documentary Bully is a bleak movie that focuses on the ordeal of bullied kids in America.  Originally, the film received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association which meant that millions of kids 17 and under would not have been able to watch it. And that sparked a controversy. Now, the MPAA has changed its mind. VOA's Penelope Poulou talked with the filmmaker and with a bullied teen who drafted a petition against the MPAA.

"All it takes is for one person to stand up. Make a Difference. Go out and find that one child, that new kid standing over there by himself." - from the documentary "Bully"

Tyler Long was  a happy little boy. But at 17, he committed suicide because he was bullied at school, says his father David Long. "We had heard that he had his head shoved into a wall locker. So kids had told him to go hang himself. That he is worthless. And I think he got to the point where enough was enough," he said.

Tyler's story is one of five family accounts director Lee Hirsch presents in Bully, a harrowing documentary about bullying in schools.

Watch the Movie Trailer

"It happens in urban schools, it happens in rural schools. I don't believe that the problems the families in this film experience are unique to small town America," he said.

From the Long family in Georgia, the film takes us to Alex Libby and his family in Iowa. For years, Alex endured abuse at the hands of his schoolmates. "They'd punch me, strangle me, sit on me," he said.

The film follows Alex's mom as she confronts the school principal who seems to be in denial.

But Lee Hirsch managed to capture the abuse on camera. "We weren't a big production, there's no lights, there was no sound person, there was just me with a tiny Canon, what looked like a consumer camera. So, I think that they acted as they normally did, and that was, to feel that it was okay to pick on Alex," he said.

Bully is an emotional rollercoaster that takes us next to Oklahoma and to Kelby, a lesbian.  "When I opened my locker there was a note that said '[gay people] are not welcomed here.' Then the teacher was calling roll and said boys, and then he said girls, and then paused and said Kelby," she said.

The film's power lies in the heartbreaking testimony of these socially isolated kids and their parents. Some of them have lost their kids forever. The movie aims at educating and mobilizing people against bullying.

The Motion Picture Association refused to give Bully a PG 13 rating so teens could watch it. The reason was explicit language used by bullies against their victims and captured on film.

About half a million people opposed the ruling by signing an online petition drafted by Katy Butler.  Butler, a bullied teen from Michigan, wrote the petition after watching the film.  "I want to make sure that every school in the United States and hopefully beyond that knows how important this movie is and ends up showing it in schools so the kids can actually see it," she said.

Her efforts paid off. At the last minute, the MPAA granted the film a PG 13 rating. Bully is expected to be a box office hit when it opens nationwide on April 13.

Theo www.voanews.com

New Submarine Cables Set to Revolutionize West African Internet

tai nghe nao tot | international summer school |

Slow downloads and faulty Internet connections could soon become distant memories in West Africa. Two underwater fiber-optic cables stretching from Europe down the western coast of Africa are set to go online in mid-2012. The cables will bring faster, and likely cheaper, broadband Internet to nearly every country in the region.

Patricia Oben runs an international trade and consultancy firm in Douala, Cameroon. She pays nearly $100 each month for the best Internet connection available, which she describes as one step up from "snail speed."

"I try to send sometimes 60 pages. That might take you anything up to 18, 20 hours, which means that sometimes at night you set it up and you keep your fingers crossed that sometime in the middle of the night it will not just stop working. Sometimes it takes more time to use the Internet than to use DHL. I sent a CD to India. The CD got there before we could finish uploading. Three days. It's incredibly frustrating. A lot of time wasting and money wasting," she said.

Oben says her firm has lost sales because she could not access catalogues or information in time.

But that could all change in just a few months as two extensive submarine fiber-optic cables are to set to bring faster and more reliable broadband Internet to Cameroon and 18 other countries along the Atlantic coast of Africa.

Seven of those countries, including Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, will get broadband access for the first time after years of relying on slower and more expensive satellite links.

Paul Brodsky is a senior analyst at the Washington-based market research firm, Telegeography. Broadband Internet, he says, is actually a vast global "plumbing" of fiber-optic cables. "It is quite literally strands of glass that are no thicker than a human hair through which pulses of light, laser light, get shot through. These very high frequencies of laser light carry the information, the data, between computers in West Africa and Europe, North America and the rest of the world," he said.

The strands of glass are twisted in pairs, encased in protective layers of steel and rubber and then run along the ocean floor from global network hubs in Europe.

Eight West African countries, including Cameroon, are already connected via the older and slower SAT-3 cable and the Nigeria-based MainOne cable, which came online in mid-2010.

Brodsky says the two new cables will each have potential capacities of 5.12 terabits a second - more than the region may likely ever need. "Those benefits should translate to lower pricing for consumers and businesses who need access to the Internet, as well as improved bandwidth," he said.

However, he said telecom monopolies in some countries could keep consumer prices high, at least in the short term, though overlaps in coverage could also foster competition.

National governments and private telecoms, like MTN and France Telecom, are footing the more than $600-million bills for each cable.

The Africa Coast to Europe, or ACE, cable will stretch 17,000 kilometers and land in 20 countries on its way from France to South Africa. The West Africa Cable system, or WACS, will measure 14,000 kilometers and hit 13 countries between London and South Africa.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of terrestrial cables must also be built to connect rural areas and landlocked countries, like Mali and Niger, to the submarine network.

The economic impact could be huge. The World Bank says every 10-percent increase in broadband connection boosts economic growth by 1.38 percent. The WACS cable alone is expected to increase connectivity by more than 20 percent.

Eastern and Southern Africa are a few years ahead of West Africa. A second underwater cable, SEACOM, went online on that side of the continent in July 2009.

Harvard University professor and telecommunications expert, Calestous Juma, says he has already seen the results in his native Kenya. "We are starting to see the emergence of small enterprises that rely on high-speed Internet or broadband access. For example, small start-up companies in Kenya that are working on animation for Hollywood. Animators can get contracts from Hollywood, do the work in Kenya and ship the product back to Hollywood," he said.

High speed Internet, he says, creates jobs, increases productivity and levels the playing field between businesses in developed countries and those in emerging economies.

"Think of it as the equivalent of roads. When you build a road somewhere, you open up not just new possibilities, but it is a signal of hope to the people that there is actually a future. For the first time, they can think about being able to reach the rest of the world," he said.

Analysts also expect better broadband connectivity to boost the already booming market for wireless 3G devices in Africa.

Theo www.voanews.com