Tag: international
Japan Plans To Resume Whaling Next Year

Japan Plans To Resume Whaling Next Year

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Japan informed the International Whaling Commission on Tuesday that it intended to resume hunting whales for scientific research next year, a move that conservationists called a defiance of the International Court of Justice ruling that Japan’s whale kills are illegal.

Since the commission invoked a moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, Japan had been claiming an exception to the ban that allows whaling for scientific purposes and had set quotas of 1,035 kills in each of the last few years.

The International Court of Justice ruled in March that Japan’s failure to publish results from its purported research demonstrated that its claim of science-related whaling was a cover for banned commercial hunting and ordered a halt.

In the revised program submitted to the commission on Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries cut its catch quota to 333 minke whales and said it would no longer hunt the more limited pods of fin and humpback whales.

Joji Morishita, Japan’s whaling commissioner, said research findings would be published in the future to comply with the terms of the moratorium exceptions.

“All these activities, as we have been arguing, are perfectly in line with international law, a scientific basis, as well as ICJ judgment language,” he told the whaling commission, asserting that Japan’s new program to start in late 2015 will be responsive to the court order.

The challenge to Japan’s whaling program was brought in 2010 by Australia. The international court, in the Netherlands, ruled that there was no scientific basis for Japan’s quotas, nor was there sufficient published findings of its research to justify the size of the projected annual catch.

Conservationists said nothing has changed with the plan submitted by Tokyo on Tuesday.

“Japan’s new whaling proposal for the southern ocean sanctuary is neither new nor improved,” said Kitty Block, vice president of Humane Society International. “Despite the ICJ decision condemning the nation’s so-called scientific program, Japan is still trying to explain the inexplicable and defend the indefensible. The hunt is for commercial purposes — not science.”

Although Japan set catch quotas of 935 minke whales and 50 each of fin and humpbacks, its annual captures have been significantly lower in recent years due to declining demand for whale meat and increasing intervention by protesters such as the Sea Shepherd group. In 2012, Japan caught 103 minke whales and last year its catch was 251, the Japan Times reported.

Japanese whalers were ordered to suspend operations after the court order, although they plan a nonlethal hunt in spring.

Tokyo doesn’t require approval by the International Whaling Commission to resume its lethal hunt, and it was unclear whether Australia would make any legal challenge. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was elected last year, has drawn fire for weakening his country’s environmental commitments with expanded mining and logging.

Photo via WikiCommons

Putin Resists Western Offensive As Testy G20 Closes

Putin Resists Western Offensive As Testy G20 Closes

Brisbane (Australia) — A weary Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday shrugged off a new barrage of Western fire over Ukraine at a G20 summit where the world’s most powerful leaders vowed to heat up the cooling global economy.

Host Tony Abbott insisted that everyone including Putin — who left the Brisbane summit early — was on board the G20 campaign to enact reforms that could infuse more than two trillion dollars into the world economy.

“I’m happy to be on a unity ticket with Vladimir Putin on that subject,” the Australian prime minister told a news conference after the two-day talks, during which the two leaders put aside days of sniping to share a photograph with cuddly koalas.

Nevertheless, Abbott insisted that he had had “very robust” discussions with Putin in recent days and described the July downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine as “one of the most terrible atrocities of recent times”.

Putin flew out of Brisbane shortly before the summit formally ended but denied any snub to Abbott, saying it would take 18 hours to fly home via Vladivostok in Russia’s far east.

“Then we need to get home and return to work on Monday. There’s a need to sleep at least four to five hours,” said Putin, a judo black belt who prides himself on his stamina.

And the Russian strongman played down the testy exchanges seen in Brisbane, when at one point Canada’s leader expressed reluctance to shake his hand.

In general at the G20, Putin said, “some of our views do not coincide, but the discussions were complete, constructive and very helpful”.

– Going after tax cheats –

The G20 leaders backed efforts to close loopholes between different tax regimes that allow some multinationals to get away with paying only a pittance on their profits.

Luxembourg is accused of having connived with such companies to the detriment of their home countries’ treasuries for years when Jean-Claude Juncker, now the European Commission president, was its prime minister.

The G20 endorsed a “common reporting standard” so that companies cannot arbitrage differences between tax regimes, stressing: “Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created.”

The Financial Transparency Coalition, a campaign group, welcomed the G20’s emphasis on “the ravaging effects tax evasion, avoidance, and money laundering have on our economies”.

But it urged tougher rules to make public who owns companies and where they are based — a stipulation that has stirred discomfort in China, where the issue of communist leaders’ personal wealth is a political livewire.

The G20 countries, which represent 85 percent of global economic output, committed to structural reforms that would lift their combined economic growth by at least 2.1 percent by 2018.

That amounts to more than two trillion dollars, although economists are skeptical that many of the G20 members have the stomach for such reforms when growth is already slipping in some key countries, including China and Germany.

– ‘Trench warfare’ –

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde welcomed Sunday’s pledge while stressing: “Implementation is now critical, with a strong accountability framework to monitor progress, supported by the IMF.”

Oxfam said the focus on growth should be allied with a focus on reducing yawning levels of inequality around the world, “to ensure the bottom 40 percent benefit more than the top 10 percent”.

The G20 declaration also endorsed “strong and effective action” on climate change despite attempts to prevent its mention by Abbott, who wanted the focus to remain on the economy.

One European diplomat likened the G20 negotiations with Abbott to “trench warfare”, but the pro-climate lobby was confident of victory after Obama breathed new life into global discussions on greenhouse emissions with a surprise pact with China last week.

Real warfare remains the fear in Ukraine, where the West alleges that Russia is aiding and abetting rebels in the former Soviet satellite’s east.

In Brisbane, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron hammered home the West’s determination to curb Russian meddling in Ukraine, which the U.S. president said violated international principles.

“One of those principles is that you don’t invade other countries or finance proxies and support them in ways that break up a country that has mechanisms for democratic elections,” he said.

Cameron said the West would maintain its campaign of sanctions for years if need be, because the alternative was allowing the Ukraine crisis to develop into “some permanent frozen conflict on the continent of Europe”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who held lengthy talks with Putin far into the night in Brisbane, said after the G20 that it was “important to take advantage of every opportunity to talk”.

But she stressed: “There is a close agreement among Europeans about Ukraine and Russia.”

AFP Photo/Steve Holland

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Internet Caretaker ICANN To Escape U.S. Control

Internet Caretaker ICANN To Escape U.S. Control

San Francisco (AFP) — The head of the private agency entrusted with running the Internet has said that the group is on course to break free of U.S. oversight late next year.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) chief Fadi Chehade expressed his confidence in the move during a press briefing at the opening of the nonprofit organization’s meeting this week in Los Angeles.

“ICANN is in a very solid, confident place today,” Chehade said of its readiness for a ‘post U.S.-government role’ in charge of the Internet addressing system.

The timeline for the shift is months rather than years, according to Chehade.

While cautioning that there was no strict deadline, he said that substantial progress has been made toward ICANN being answerable to a diverse, global group of “stakeholders” and not the just the U.S. government, as has long been the case.

The U.S. government in March of this year announced that it is open to not renewing a contract with ICANN that expires in about 11 months, provided a new oversight system is in place that represents the spectrum of interests and can be counted on to keep the Internet addressing structure reliable.

ICANN plans to hand a proposal fitting the bill to the U.S. Department of Commerce next year.

“If the U.S. government is satisfied, they would not renew the contract,” Chehade said.

“There are many people in the community who would like to see we not renew the contract past 2015.”

If U.S. officials are unhappy with the proposal, the contract could be renewed for a short period to allow time for it to be revised.

– Grabs for control –

As the U.S. steps back from overseeing ICANN, states and corporations are grabbing for the reins.

ICANN has gone from being behind the scenes tending to the task of managing website addresses to being center stage in a play for power on the Internet.

“Governments want to exert control over the sweeping transnational power of the Internet that is effecting their policies, politics, social fabric, and/or their economic conditions,” Chehade told AFP just days before the group gathered in Los Angeles to tackle an array of hot issues.

“The other groups are large corporations concerned about security issues,” he continued while discussing forces striving for influence over the organization.

“Therefore, they are stepping in with force to figure out how to reduce potential harm to customers and to their businesses.”

Governance of the Internet will be a high-profile topic at the ICANN 51 meeting that will continue through October 16 in Los Angeles.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker addressed the gathering on Monday, affirming support for ICANN being accountable to the “global multistakeholder community” and not to any single organization.

“Let me be clear about this,” Pritzker said.

“The United States will not allow the global Internet to be co-opted by any person, entity or nation seeking to substitute their parochial world view for the collective wisdom of this community.”

The ICANN 51 agenda includes tackling whether identities of those running websites should be public or whether privacy should be safeguarded and operators true names revealed only with proper court orders.

Another hot topic is the historic roll-out of a vast array of new domain names that has seen controversy over website address endings such as .wine or .gay.

“There is quite a bit of thematic focus on the top-level domain space,” Chehade said, referring to online neighborhoods making debuts.

“ICANN is not in the content policing business; this is not what we do,” he added when asked about potential for some domain operators to allow inappropriate material.

“We just want to make sure the company that gets the domain can deliver on what they say and do it with reliability.”

AFP Photo/Roslan Rahman

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Passport Woes

Passport Woes

So you put off renewing your passport because, hey you’ve got five months left before it expires. Not so fast.  According to Consumerist many countries require at least six-months of validity before they’ll let you in – just like the United States.  So “before you fly, make sure to check the country’s passport requirements on the State Department’s travel advisory website. Otherwise, you’ll be lucky to find a 24-hour passport processing center” where you’ll pay through the nose, “or if you’re unlucky… well, you’ll be grounded.”

Photo: Flickr via Clappster