Free Republic

New Delhi – Anecdotal reports by health-care workers in Africa and Southeast Asia reveal a worrying new trend: Drugs successfully used for years to combat malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV are failing more and more often. Misdiagnosis of disease, coupled with the (related) misuse and overuse of drugs, likely plays a role, especially in resource-constrained countries where scientific diagnostic tests are unavailable or too expensive to be practical. But many doctors suspect another culprit: counterfeit drugs. Nothing is more dangerous for a poor patient with a potentially fatal disease than taking drugs that do not work. Not only can faulty drugs...

China's breathtaking transformation of their own country over the past couple of decades is accompanied by robust new Chinese enterprises all over the world. In this report on China's activities in Africa, the Chinese are seen to be involved in infrastructure projects across this vast continent. Everything about Africa is writ large - during the past twenty years, as China's economy exploded, Africa's population doubled. There are now over 900 million people living in Africa, and collectively the Africans have lower per capita wealth than the peoples of any other continent. But the potential in this vast land mass of...

The entire world may not have sat up and taken notice in the last week, and that is probably just fine with China, which has just made a major move into central Africa. With its agreement to lend $5 billion to Congo, what might have often looked like a grab-bag approach to the African continent by a country with only sporadic involvement there has finally taken on a distinct outline. .............................................. It must be said that China has chosen a daunting proving ground for its long-held ideas about engagement with the developing world, which could be summed up as "it's...

BEIJING, May 14 -- China announced Monday that it had launched a Chinese-manufactured communications satellite into orbit on behalf of Nigeria, marking the first time China has built a commercial satellite and put it into orbit on contract for another country. The launch, in Monday's pre-dawn hours from the Xichang space center in southwestern Sichuan province, was viewed as another sign of China's increasing prowess in space and its determination to be among the world's great powers seeking to utilize the reaches of outer space for benefits on Earth. The country's space agency, which is managed by the military, sent...

HONG KONG - China Development Bank may be turning its attention from taking a piece of troubled Citigroup to investing in Nigeria, seizing an opportunity to channel its monumental resources toward the oil-rich West African country. China Development Bank is one of the three policy banks created by Beijing, placed under direct jurisdiction of China’s State Council and charged with funding major infrastructure projects. It is in talks to buy a $5 billion stake in Nigeria's United Bank for Africa, the biggest financial institution in West Africa by asset value. The Chinese lender is bargaining for some management control of...

FROM MATHIAS OKWE, ABUJA REPRIEVE may not be long in coming to the nation's pitiable infrastructure as China has promised to help out with about $50b (six trillion naira). The fund according to the Finance Minister, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman is to help rehabilitate the nation's contemptibly poor infrastructure. Already, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between the Africa Finance Company (AFC) on the one hand; and the Managing Directors of Zenith Bank, Oceanic Bank and First Bank on the other on behalf of other Nigerian financial institutions with the Chinese Export Credit Guarantee Agency called SINOSURE for the...

By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) - China is ramping up financing for power and transport projects in Africa, with the majority in four countries endowed with natural resources, according to a report by the World Bank on Thursday. The report, which looks at the growing role of the Chinese government as a financier of infrastructure projects in Africa, estimates China's funding for roads, railways and power projects peaked at $7 billion in 2006 from just $1 billion a year between 2001-03. The bulk of those commitments were to Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Ethiopia and is welcome in a...

Ahead of the summer Olympics, Apple on Saturday will open the doors to its first retail store in China, a glass-enclosed high-profile shop situated in Beijing's newest retail development: the Village at Sanlitun. Keeping with his tradition of attending Apple's gala international retail launches, our friend Gary Allen from ifoAppleStore has made the grueling journey across the Pacific to be on hand for tomorrow's grand opening at 10:00 a.m. Allen reports that Apple's space within the Sanlitun complex "is nearly invisible from the street," because it sits within the center's inner courtyard. "But once you see it, it’s impressive --...

Abdurrahman Ahmed, spokesperson from Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation, says that ETC has signed a contract worth about US$2.4 billion with three Chinese companies to help upgrade and expand the African nation's telecom services. Eight companies, including Siemens, Nokia, Alcatel and Ericsson, participated in the bidding, but ultimately three Chinese companies, ZTE, Huawei and China International Telecommunication Construction Corporation, won the deal. According to their contract, these three will help ETC extend its fiber cable from current 4000 kilometers to 10000 kilometers before 2010. Among other strategic plans, according to Abdurrahman, are increasing the number of mobile subscribers from 1.5 million to...

Full scale work by the Chinese begins to rebuild 2,050 miles of roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo, left to rot in the rainforest after the Belgian colonialists pulled out 48 years ago and further shattered by seven years of war. The vast project, which will triple Congo's current paved road network, is part of China's largest investment in Africa, a £4.5 billion infrastructure-for-minerals deal signed in January. As well as the roads, Beijing has promised to repair 2,000 miles of largely defunct railways, build 32 hospitals and 145 health centres, install two electricity distribution networks, construct two hydropower...

In March, under the banner, ‘The New Colonialists?’ the Economist explored China’s role and impact in Africa. This followed a Forum for China-Africa Cooperation hosted by Beijing in November 2006, when 48 African heads of state signed deals worth billions of dollars. ................... But it is not Western governments that the Chinese appear to be upsetting. For years Western NGOs have sought to teach their domestic audiences that all that is required in Africa is small-scale, sustainable development. Oxfam encourages people to buy Africans a goat, some seed, condoms, a toilet, or even dung for Christmas. And all this comes...

A major theme of this year's presidential campaign is that the United States has lost the respect of the world and that electing a Democrat, especially Barack Obama, is the way to fix it. "What if we could restore America's place in the world, and people's faith in our government?" asks one Obama ad. Obama's supposed ability to make the United States loved again is taken as a given by the pundit class, not to mention his adoring followers. Listing his reasons for supporting the junior senator from Illinois, the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan swooned, "First and foremost: his face. Think...

On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent. 'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton. 'I should expect that...

How Gilroy turned a potent Italian bulb into a culinary staple and the country's biggest and smelliest food festivalTHIRTY YEARS AGO, a group of American food writers trooped into a packing shed at Gilroy's Christopher Ranch off Highway 101. Greeted by the pungent aroma of millions of garlic cloves being processed in the building, the journalists sat down for a garlic-laced lunch that included scampi, calamari, pasta and pepper steak. Together with the Fresh Garlic Producers Association, an industry trade group, Christopher Ranch founder and former president Don Christopher hosted the journalists to showcase Gilroy garlic. Gilroy was then the...

American consumers have come to expect warning labels on products that might pose a risk. But Congress is considering allowing the mass (re)importation of drugs that originated outside the safety and security of the U.S. chain of custody, without so much as requiring a warning label. This is a very risky business. If Congress is going to adopt such legislation, Americans deserve to be put on notice. That's why all (re)imported drugs should be required to carry a warning label: "WARNING: THIS DRUG LEFT THE U.S. CHAIN OF CUSTODY AND THEREFORE ITS SAFETY CANNOT BE GUARANTEED

China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10.4 percent to 13.06 trillion yuan (1.9 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first half over the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday. The growth rate was 1.8 percentage points lower than the first half last year, or 0.2 percentage points lower than the first quarter of this year. The GDP included 1.18 trillion yuan generated by the primary sector, up 3.5 percent, 6.74 trillion yuan by the secondary sector, up 11.3 percent, and 5.14 trillion yuan by the tertiary sector, up10.5 percent. The growth rates were 0.5...

Trade deals with Colombia, Korea, and Panama, all rife with political import, are stalled in Congress. In the meantime, some U.S. exports lag In its Decatur (Ill.) factory, Caterpillar (CAT) assembles a line of the heaviest-duty off-highway trucks, behemoths specialized for use in mining, quarry, and construction operations. One model, the $1.2 million, 163,089-lb. 777F truck, can hit a top speed of 40 mph even while carrying 100 tons of dirt, enough to fill 350 wheelbarrows. Caterpillar has seen a robust market in recent years for these monster trucks, but is worried that companies in other countries will start to...

Thanks to oil prices that have reached record levels, proponents of increased exploration in the U.S. have gained an upper hand in the debate over whether to drill in previously untapped areas.While it would be hard to argue against more robust domestic exploration, it should be said that some of its adherents ignore the dollar's outsized impact on the price of oil, along with basic economic laws regarding comparative advantage and trade. Much has been made of expensive oil in recent years, while much less has been said about oil being expensive due to the dollar being weak. The oil...

Some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds are seeking to scale back their exposure to the US dollar in a sign of global concern about the currency. One big sovereign fund in the Gulf has cut its dollar-denominated holdings from more than 80 per cent a year ago to less than 60 per cent, while China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) has been looking to strike deals with private equity firms in Europe as a part of a strategy to reduce its dollar holdings. Sovereign wealth funds have played a leading role in helping to recapitalise faltering US...

China's devastating pollution problems aren't just taking a toll on China -- they're also affecting the rest of the world, says New Republic. For example: Acid rain partly caused by Chinese sulfur emissions, pours down on Japan and South Korea. On some days, one-third of California's background air pollution -- consisting of dust, sulfur and trace metals -- can be traced back to China. Some 80 percent of the East China Sea, one of the world's largest fisheries, has become toxic, due to sewage dumps from the mainland. Even if the Chinese government does spruce up Beijing in time for...

Fears surrounding the global financial sector and a U.S.-led economic downturn continued to set the tone in foreign-exchange markets Wednesday, leaving the dollar under pressure but above recent lows against major counterparts. The euro is slightly higher against the dollar, changing hands at $1.5928 a gain of 0.1%. The euro notched another all-time high against the greenback Tuesday near $1.6036 then trimmed gains. The dollar is down 0.8% against a broadly stronger Japanese yen at 103.84 yen and is off 0.4% against the Swiss currency to 1.0044 francs. The dollar's decline was slowed by a sharp fall in crude oil...

Merrill Lynch has warned that the United States could face a foreign "financing crisis" within months as the full consequences of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage debacle spread through the world. The country depends on Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern investors to fund much of its $700bn (£350bn) current account deficit, leaving it far more vulnerable to a collapse of confidence than Japan in the early 1990s after the Nikkei bubble burst. Britain and other Anglo-Saxon deficit states could face a similar retreat by foreign investors. "Japan was able to cut its interest rates to zero," said Alex...

Trade Facilitation by: Ben Giles, July 15, 2008 The Cato Institute’s Daniel Ikenson and World Bank’s Simeon Djankov presented the findings of a new Cato trade policy analysis at the Rayburn House Office Building on July 11. Ikenson’s paper, entitled Protection without Protectionism: Reconciling Trade and Homeland Security, highlights the disconnect between Americans’ perception of the economy and the realities of international trade. “The polls tell us that Americans have soured on trade…” said Ikenson. “It’s because Americans are barraged nightly by reports on the news that they’re losing their jobs and that the economy is imperiled by globalization and...

Insofar as a currency derives its strength from the balance sheet of the issuing central bank, the euro is unsound and becoming more so, as Mr. Mersch did not quite say. We, however, will say it for him. In fact, we will say the same for most of the leading monetary brands, that of the United States not excluded. The mortgage mess is the immediate cause of the new debasement. A long-held article of central banking dogma is the remote cause.

German carmaker Volkswagen (VW) has chosen to locate its new US car plant in Tennessee, a move that could pump $1bn (£498m) into the local economy. VW opted for a site in the city of Chattanooga in preference to possible locations in Alabama and Michigan. The euro's rise against the dollar has made it costly to make cars in Europe and export them to the US, leading VW to explore manufacturing again there. The move is good news for a US car industry shedding thousands of jobs. New car Earlier on Tuesday, GM said it planned to make further cutbacks...

Chattanooga Chosen For $1 Billion Volkswagen Plant Plant At Enterprise South To Have 2,000 Jobs posted July 15, 2008 Volkswagen AG has chosen Chattanooga for its new $1 billion U.S. plant, the European carmaker announced today.

While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries. A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007.

Written by Egypt News Wednesday, 14 November 2007 Top Egyptian investment sources announced that the first Chinese economic zone, out of the five proposed in Africa, is likely to be established in Egypt, which will contribute to the growth of Chinese investment in Egypt Egyptian chairman of the General Authority of Investment and Free Zones in Egypt has said as the trade between the two countries is expected to triple to $10 billion by 2010, investment of Chinese companies in Egypt can grow at a similar pace. According to a statement of the Egyptian Ministry of Commerce, in the first...

FARNBOROUGH (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) struck first in its biennial battle with archrival Airbus by securing an order for 50 single-aisle 737 airliners as the world's biggest air show opened on Monday in Farnborough near London. The deal from upstart FlyDubai is worth $4 billion including an additional four aircraft to be sourced from lessor Babcock & Brown (BNB.AX). < > In a reminder of tensions overshadowing this year's event, a business jet in Israeli Air Force colors maneuvered onto the tarmac on Sunday packed with eavesdropping equipment in long, bulbous side panels. The converted Gulfstream jet is only...

The normalization of Iraq, which would generate 250 billion dollars in oil revenues, would boost Turkey's trade volume with this country to 30 billion dollars, Turkey's Trade Minister Kursad Tuzmen said on Sunday. The establishment of stability in Iraq would earn Turkey a neighbor with the ability to generate $250 billion in oil revenues, Tuzmen told the Anatolian Agency. Tuzmen said exports and the construction services Turkey provided to Iraq would be boosted and the transportation sector would also benefit as the revenue of the country increased. "Had Iraq normalized the business volume between Turkey and Iraq would rise to...

FARNBOROUGH, England (AFP) - With record oil prices crippling airlines worldwide, Canadian planemaker Bombardier said here Sunday it planned to launch its eco-friendly CSeries single-aisle passenger jet in 2013. German carrier Lufthansa has signed a letter saying it was interested in buying 30 CSeries jets and possibly up to 60, Bombardier said in a statement. Launch customer Lufthansa could be followed by other airlines after Bombardier said it had received "significant interest" worldwide regarding the new plane. "The CSeries family offers the greenest single-aisle aircraft in its class," said Gary Scott, president of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. "These game-changing aircraft emit...

McALLEN - Barack Obama's statements that he would consider renegotiating the decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement are drawing criticism from Rio Grande Valley business leaders. The treaty, which removed most trade and investment barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada, has quickly turned into a point of contention between Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and his Republican counterpart, John McCain, whose pro-free trade stance calls for even more NAFTA-like trade blocs - specifically with Colombia and South Korea. Obama has routinely denounced the treaty as a deal that "put special interests over workers' interests," as he said...

Federal prosecutors are investigating Indian generic drugmaker Ranbaxy for allegedly falsifying records that resulted in the production and sale of generic medicines that did not meet federal standards. The government alleges officials at Ranbaxy's northern India plant used raw pharmaceutical chemicals from unapproved sources, fabricated in-house test data to meet FDA standards and attempted to conceal the ruse. The "pattern of systemic fradulent conduct," left an untold portion of the tablets and capsules too weak, too potent or lacking the advertised shelf life, said government papers filed in US District Court, Maryland.

Analysis: Blame the dollar By Massoud Hedeshi, international development expert, in Vienna The US economic power horse is running out of ideas and cash as it jostles with a massive national debt, housing and financial crises, rising inflation, and a depreciating currency. This has all contributed to a growing tendency to live off credit amassed through petrodollars and foreign loans, leaving repayment for future generations. Today, in much of America, communities and suburbs are dealing with a drastic increase in foreclosures and short sales. This has not been helped by the fact that gas is selling at over $1 a...

Why US could lose out on India nuclear trade By Brajesh Upadhyay BBC News, Washington US companies may end up watching from the sidelines as nuclear fuel and technology trade between India and other suppliers develops. That is the warning to Washington if the Indo-US nuclear deal is unable to get Congressional approval in time. Experts closely associated with the deal say there is a serious risk that the Congressional calendar may not have enough days left to clear the deal, that is assuming that India gets the go-ahead for it from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)and the 45-member...

Quo Vadis TPA? by: Emily Miller, July 11, 2008 Congressional leadership resistance and election year politics are to blame for stalling the passage of the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA), said Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Christopher A. Padilla last week at the Heritage Foundation. The TPA, previously called the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, was signed by the U.S. and Colombia two years ago in November of 2006, yet it still awaits congressional approval needed for final passage. Padilla, frustrated with Congress’ inaction, points the finger at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for thwarting the TPA’s progress. The Bush administration...

A financial bubble. I will use the familiar term “bubble” as a shorthand, but note that it confuses cause with effect. A better, if ungainly, descriptor would be “asset-price hyperinflation”—the huge spike in asset prices that results from a perverse self-reinforcing belief system, a fog that clouds the judgment of all but the most aware participants in the market. Asset hyperinflation starts at a certain stage of market development under just the right conditions. The bubble is the result of that financial madness, seen only when the fog rolls away. is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry,...

Iran has really gone and done it now. No, they haven't sent their first nuclear sub in to the Persian Gulf . They are about to launch something much more deadly -- next week the Iran Bourse will open to trade oil, not n dollars but in Euros' This apparently insignificant event has consequences far greater for the US people, indeed all for us all, than is imaginable. Currently almost all oil buying and selling is in US-dollars through exchanges in London and New York . It is not accidental they are both US-owned. The Wall Street crash in 1929...

Wire Hangers Caught In Twists Of Trade Dispute By KATHERINE REYNOLDS LEWIS   Customers at Westwood Cleaners in Westfield, N.J., are asked to return hangers for reuse. (Photo by Joe Epstein)     In Westfield, N.J., Suho Chae urges customers to return used hangers to his dry cleaning shop. He's paying $50 for a box of 500 pants hangers, up from $24 six months ago. "Every time I order a new supply," Chae said, "the price goes up."In Leeds, Ala., M&B Hangers, the only major hanger maker left in the U.S., has doubled its work force and still can't keep...

Last week’s daring rescue of 15 Colombian hostages held by the Marxist FARC has been universally hailed as a triumph of military strategy. But at least one group besides the gulled guerilla jailers looks diminished in its aftermath: Congressional Democrats. While Colombia’s military will rightly reap praise for the rescue, the operation was in no small measure an American achievement. In addition to U.S. satellite intelligence that pinpointed the FARC guerillas’ jungle location, Colombian security forces have benefited from $4 billion in American aid since 2002. For this assistance – so vital in last week’s events – Colombia does not...

NEW YORK – An Abu Dhabi investment fund has bought a 75 percent stake in the Chrysler Building, one of the best-known landmarks on the city skyline. The Abu Dhabi Investment Council, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, closed the sale with Prudential Financial Inc. on Tuesday, Prudential spokeswoman Theresa Miller said Wednesday. Miller wouldn't disclose the sale price, which many published reports placed at $800 million. Prudential held its stake in the building on behalf of a fund of primarily German investors that had closed in the past couple of years, she said. A telephone message left...

If anyone ever tries to tell you that the economy is driven by consumer spending, I have one piece of advice–RUN! This one fallacy alone has arguably caused more damage to our nation than any other, and a person who believes it is either deceived, or is using it to be deceptive, or both. I walked out of an investing seminar recently because the speaker used this fallacy–that consumer spending is the basis of the economy–as a foundational argument for his thesis. His thesis was that America is headed toward a serious economic downturn based on future reduction of consumer...

China's economy will overtake that of the United States by 2035 and be twice its size by midcentury, a study released Tuesday by a US research organization concluded. The report by economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said China's rapid growth is driven by domestic demand more than exports, and will sustain high single-digit growth rates well into the 21st century. "China's economic performance clearly is no flash in the pan," Keidel writes. "Its growth this decade has averaged more than 10 percent a year and is still going strong in the first half of 2008....

U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, on Tuesday reacted to a report of rising U.S. cigarette exports to the country by saying it may be "a way of killing 'em." McCain, known for acerbic comments and for sometimes firing verbally from the hip, was responding to a report that U.S. exports to Iran rose tenfold during President George W. Bush's term in office despite hostility between the two states. A rise in cigarette sales was a big part of that, according to an Associated Press analysis of seven years of U.S. trade...

Early this year, the price of crude oil surpassed its previous inflation-adjusted peak of $103.76 a barrel (a record established in 1980). Since then, the price of crude has been making new record highs on a regular basis... Just what is pushing prices skyward? Surprisingly, the G-8 finance ministers failed to mention the US dollar’s role. Every commodity trader knows that all commodities trade off changes in the value of the greenback... For example, if the greenback had held its January 2001 value against the euro, oil would have traded at about $76 a barrel in May 2008. This is...

Europe is on the brink of an economic slowdown. Its citizens are being choked by record inflation. Plans to reform its political institutions have hit their second major stumbling block in three years. Now is not exactly a great time for France to take up the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union, but it does give a good excuse for Nicolas Sarkozy to take a pop at the European Central Bank. The French president has made no secret of his contempt for the euro zone's central bank in the past, which he has publicly slammed for refusing to bring...

Gateway Pundit gives us this:SWAMP POLITICS—New information reveals that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was indirectly sending messages to the FARC. The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is designated as a terrorist group by the US government. Speaker Pelosi was doing this while at the same time she refused to bring a free trade agreement with Colombia up for a vote in the US House. In fact, Pelosi took extraordinary steps to block this trade agreement with America’s closest ally in South America.Cordoba-Pelosi-McGovernColombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba (left) is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to...

Mexico City, Official Residence The Presidency reported that President Felipe Calderón met Arizona Senator John McCain, who will be nominated as the US Republican Presidential Candidate in September, at the official Los Pinos residence today. The President remarked that Mexico trusts the United States will value the priority given to bilateral work on migration, trade, development, regional competitiveness and security as the means for promoting the well-being of both societies. President Calderón confirmed his government’s intention of continuing to collaborate on all issues of common interest, including the prevention of and response to natural disasters and pandemics, food security and...

The great oil shock of 2008 is bad enough for us. It poses a mortal threat to the whole economic strategy of emerging Asia. The manufacturing revolution of China and her satellites has been built on cheap transport over the past decade. At a stroke, the trade model looks obsolete.

China's top offshore oil firm is diving into the global oilfield-services industry by launching a $2.5 billion friendly takeover of a Norwegian rival. The deal is bold move by China to capture a larger share of the profits from a global boom in new exploration as oil prices soar. China's double-digit growth and the voracious appetite for natural resources to fuel its future expansion are key factors pushing oil prices higher and driving much of the demand to tap new reserves. The tender offer by the oil-services arm of China National Offshore Oil Corp., known as Cnooc, for Norway's Awilco...