The BSE Sensex slipped 1 percent on Wednesday as high world oil prices sparked concerns of a possible increase in domestic auto fuel prices that could stoke inflation. Banking shares fell for a third successive day on worries rising lending rates in the sector would affect demand for loans, while a sharp increase in deposit rates would squeeze margins.
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Quitto, Ecuador (AHN) – Ecuador has offered a residency proposal to Wikileaks’ Australian founder Julian Assange after Sweden refused his residency rights earlier this year. Assange has sparked outrage among world leaders after publishing alleged American diplomatic documents last Sunday.
Ecuadorian Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said his country was open to giving him residency without any problem and without any conditions. “We are going to try and invite him to Ecuador to freely present, not only via the Internet, but also through different public forums, the information and documentation that he has,” he said.
The minister added that Ecuador considers it important to converse as well as listen to him. Wikileaks, through its latest releases, claims that the United States’ diplomats spy on friendly governments and also adds that it has more than 1,600 cables, which are yet to be disclosed. The cables are believed to be originated from the U.S. embassy in Quito.
The minister hoped that the latest offer to Assange would not affect his left-leaning government’s relations with the U.S.
Meanwhile, Australian authorities have started an investigation to find out whether Assange breached any laws in his home country.
Responding at the latest Wikileaks revelations, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez called for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s resignation. “Somebody should study Mrs Clinton’s mental stability,” he said and added, “It’s the least you can do: resign, along with those other delinquents working in the state department.”
Wikileaks has also published a document dated January 2008 about a counter-terrorism cooperation between the U.S. and Brazil – a country, which publicly denies participating in any such operations. According to ex-U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Clifford Sobel, Brazilian police often arrested suspects with terrorism links, but later charged them with customs and drugs offences to distract media’s attention.
The Wikileaks documents also exposed American and British diplomats’ fear about Pakistan’s nuclear material, which if falls into wrong hands, could make world more insecure. The documents warned Pakistan against rapidly constructing its nuclear arsenal despite rising instability in the country. Britain, in September 2009, had expressed deep concerns about Pakistan’s n-arms’ safety and security.
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Dubai, United Arab Emirates Michael Grubb – Dubai International Airport, the largest in the Gulf, is outpacing the world aviation industry’s recovery this year as it capitalizes on its role as a pivot for business travelers arbitraging between a struggling Europe and the burgeoning economies of Asia. But analysts warn that Dubai’s success makes it a likely magnet for new competition.
Traffic through Dubai International rose by close to 16 percent in the first nine months of the year, well ahead of the 12.9 percent average increase in the Asia-Pacific market, making it the world’s fastest growing, according to Airports Council International. The pace of growth for Dubai continued in October, when traffic exceeded 4 million people for the second time ever, Dubai Airports reported Wednesday.
Aviation is a big and thriving business for tiny Dubai, whose economy is otherwise struggling with some $100 billion of real estate debt. Dubai is home to the world’s 14th busiest airport, just behind New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and ahead of Amsterdam’s Schiphol. The number of people passing through the airport in October alone was equal to more than twice the country’s entire population.
Dubai Airports has ambitious plans for expanding. Annual capacity at Dubai International will grow from 60 million passengers to 75 million next year when it dedicates Concourse 3, the world’s only facility dedicated to servicing the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world.
Meanwhile, a second airport, the Al-Maktoum International, is under development next door. Al-Maktoum began cargo operations six months ago and will be opening for passenger travel in March 2011.
Dubai Airports is expecting growth to continue at a strong double-digit rate in 2011, with annual passenger traffic jumping 13.1 percent to 52.2 million from a forecast 46.1 million for all of 2010. Dubai’s flag carrier Emirates is counting on its passenger numbers growing 10 percent next year while the discount carrier Flydubai forecasts its traffic doubling.
“Before the end of the decade passenger numbers will approach 90 million making Dubai International the busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, said last week.
But Dubai’s airports – and its airlines — are vulnerable to emerging competition because it is entirely dependent on funneling passengers from Europe and Asia through its airports and sending them on to their final destinations, he said. The airport has no domestic market and a tiny regional one. Indeed, measured by international traffic alone, Dubai rises in the world airport rankings to No. 6.
“They will have competition, the dynamics will definitely change,” Philip Butterworth-Hayes, lead consultant of the aviation advisory firm PMi Media, told The Media Line. “I would look at Indian airlines in particular. Once you have a strong home market like India, you have the ability to capture traffic.”
Dubai has not only benefited from huge investment in its airport and carriers but also from low costs, the absence of environmental constraints to airport expansion and its strategic location. Demand for Europe-Asian travel has grown as European companies focus sales on the growing economies of China and the rest of Asia while newly wealthy Asians have the disposable income to travel to Europe for holidays. Dubai is about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) from London and 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Shanghai.
Adding to world-class airports, Dubai’s state-owned Emirates airlines has been an aggressive competitor, taking market share from hobbled European rivals by adding capacity – the airline has the biggest fleet of the giant A380s on order – and is keeping fares and costs low.
But India could match many of these assets. Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital is about 7,200 kilometers (4,500 miles) from London and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from Shanghai, on top of being a business and tourism destination in its own right.
As India’s economy grows, demand for domestic air travel for its 1 billion people has also increased. Domestic air traffic in India grew 15 percent in October compared with a year ago to 4.6 million passengers, the government said last week. What the country still lacks to take on Dubai is a competitive airline to service an Indian hub, Griffiths said.
“If you were to have an Emirates-like operation in India, you could make it a major hub,” he said. “But they would also benefit from the presence of a huge domestic market.”
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Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates David Rosenberg – The world got its first look Thursday at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed National Museum when backers unveiled architectural renderings of the dramatic 345,000-square-foot structure comprised of five soaring pavilions that mimic the feathers of a falcon’s wing. The project radiates money and prestige, if not a little but of glamour.
The internationally renowned architect Lord Norman Foster is designing the building and the British Museum is lending its expertise. When it opens in 2014 on Saadiyat Island, a sandy patch 500 meters off the Abu Dhabi coast, it will be only one of several world-class cultural attractions that include branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums. A prestige golf course, a St. Regis Hotel and a host of other high-end attractions are also slated. The tab for building all this? About $27 billion.
If the plans for Saadiyat Island ring a familiar bell of over-the-top development, the kind that sent Dubai, Abu Dhabi’s next door emirate soaring and then crashing, economists beg to differ. With substantial oil wealth and the lessons learned from Dubai’s experience, the United Arab Emirate’s rising economic power stands a good chance of steering its way through a breakneck growth agenda dubbed Plan Abu Dhabi 2030.
“After the financial crisis they are shifting from real estate. They know that property development alone is not a sustainable growth model over the next five to 10 years,” Jean-Paul Pigat, head of Middle East and North Africa analysis at Business Monitor International, told The Media Line.
Until Dubai World, a quasi-governmental holding company, asked for more time to pay back investors a year ago, Dubai was riding high on luxury real estate development, offices and malls. The emirate, along with Abu Dhabi one of seven that make up the UAE, is now weighed down by debt that may be as much as $100 billion while the property boom has fizzled. The more conservative Abu Dhabi even helped its high-flying brother with a $20 billion aid package last year.
Abu Dhabi still has six hotels opening in 2011, and the tiny emirate is home to three PGA-standard golf courses. But the focus of economic development is on less glamorous projects, like a $5.7 billion aluminum plant; the development of a healthcare center with help from Johns Hopkins University; the Cleveland Clinic; and a host of energy projects.
Abu Dhabi’s state-owned Advanced Technology Investment Co. has taken a majority stake in the semiconductor maker Globalfoundries, which will build a $6 billion plant near Masdar City employing 1,500 people, Ibrahim Ajami, ATI’s chief executive, said in an interview with the UAE’s The National newspaper last week.
The goal is to derive two thirds of its gross domestic product from things other than oil by 2030.
Abu Dhabi also has the added benefit of holding 9 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves — 98.2 million barrels — and 5 percent of the world’s natural gas. It also has enough land to develop without reclaiming it from the Gulf, Robin Teh, director of valuation and research at the international property agency Chesterton International, wrote in The Gulf Times this week.
“Soon, Dubai is likely to have some competition from its neighbor, Abu Dhabi,” Teh said. “Abu Dhabi is in line to offer a greater variety of retail, leisure and recreational activity than most cities in the [Gulf].”
Giyas Gokkent, head of research at Abu Dhabi National Bank, said he didn’t see competition emerging between the two emirates. Much of what Abu Dhabi is developing, such as its airlines and airports and its aluminum industry, is competing with Europe or other non-Gulf economies, not with Dubai, he told The Media Line.
“We’ll have a rapid rail link between the two areas, and if you come back in 15-20 years time you will find a single cosmopolitan area. There will be a merging between Dubai and Abu Dhabi,” he said. “People will fly to Dubai and say, ‘let’s go visit the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi today.’ It will be a single destination. In Yas Island, there will be theme parks – it will be like an Orlando for the region.”
If Abu Dhabi does have any competition, it may be coming from Qatar, another Gulf country with substantial energy resources, said Pigat of Business Monitor International. Qatar aims to boost its liquefied natural gas export capacity by 12 percent to 77 million metric tons a year. Eventually, it wants to raise total oil and gas output to five million barrels of oil equivalent per day, from 2.8 million last year.
Vast amounts are already being spent on education and sports initiatives, the arts and property development, including a quixotic bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
“In terms of infrastructure spending and growth, Qatar is star performer in the Gulf,” Pigat said. “There is a competition within Gulf over who will become the major hub of political and economic power in the Gulf. Abu Dhabi is competing with the likes of Qatar and Bahrain.”
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World food prices are rising again, but SA consumers are fortunate because the wave of international food-price increases has not spilled over here yet.
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The World Bank has approved two loans, totaling US$800 million, to support priority reform programs of the Indonesian government.
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Geneva, Switzerland (AHN) – India’s social security network is poor, leaving its citizens “very highly vulnerable” to poverty and unfair labor practices, according to a report this week by the International Labor Office.
The international organization claimed that the country could have done better in terms of providing social security cover to its citizens, in tandem with its fiscal status.
ILO’s social security criteria is based on factors such as proper healthcare, pensions, social assistance and unemployment benefits. According to the report, issued Tuesday, India is yet to bring itself at par with the world standards in social security, as a large majority of its population remains deprived of any such benefits as described by the ILO.
Krzystof Hagemejer, one of the authors of the report, said, “Clearly, this is one side of the coin, where India performed below its capacity in coverage and expenditure for broad social security measures until recently.” At the same time, he added, the effect of new schemes such as the National Employment Guarantee Scheme and the health policy for 300 million Indians is yet to measured.
The report, entitled “World Social Security Report,” also mentioned that while India, along with its immediate neighbor China, has turned into a popular destination for manufacture of goods and propagation of services, the country has ignored social security protection. However, the report added that both the countries have shown “considerable change” in the recent years.
Meanwhile, another study, conducted by the Center for Decentralization and Development in Bangalore, asked the Indian government to follow the South African model for social security. In South Africa, the social security policy considers earnings of the beneficiary and spouse.
The Center is of the opinion that if India adopts the South African model, it would be able to meet its goal of “extending the social security net to all sections of the population.” The report also suggested that the government could increase the social security assessment on income tax in order to mobilize resources for widening the social security cover.
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Dead Sea, Jordan (TML) – Nuclear experts from around the world were climbing into craters and clamouring up landslides as they gathered in a desolate corner of Jordan beside the Dead Sea to test their ability to uncover evidence of an unauthorized test explosion.
Some 35 experts from 20 countries poured over the 1,000 square-kilometer (390-square-mile) area during the first two weeks of November, dressed in protective suits and hauling monitors and three-dimensional maps across the desert landscape in the simulation. Later they assembled in campsites to collect and analyze their data.
Jordan itself has no nuclear weapons, nor is it known to aspire to develop them. But, the kingdom does want to become a respected member of the global nuclear community as it embarks on plans to produce energy from atomic power. Fortunately for Jordan, the terrain near the Dead Sea looks like it just experienced a nuclear explosion.
“The sinkholes, landslides, depressions and craters near the Dead Sea provided a perfect venue to conduct the tests,” Matjaz Prah, of the Croatian State Office for Nuclear Safety and director of the 10-day exercise, told The Media Line.
Near Ghour Al-Haditha, a poor farming town, nearly 800 sinkholes big enough to swallow factories and homes punctuate the landscape, the result of Dead Sea’s declining sea level. The sporadic nature of the giant holes is very similar to aftermath of nuclear explosions, explained Prah. Indeed, the massive cavities make the landscape nestling the southern shores of the Dead Sea largely inaccessible to all but the small community of poor farmers who live there.
The exercise was sponsored by the Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), whose task is to develop mechanisms for monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). The Vienna-based organization includes 153 countries that ratified nuclear ban treaty, in addition to a further 35 states that have agreed to endorse the agreement.
Tibor Toth, the CTBTO’s executive secretary, said the goal of the experiments was to establish worldwide detection system that relies on reports from 337 facilities.
Nearly half of detection facilities are located in the Middle East, said Toth.
While the CTBT has yet to go into force, the five countries allowed to have nuclear weapons have all adopted unilateral moratoriums on nuclear testing. India and Pakistan followed suit after they conducted tests in 1998.
But the risks of unauthorized tests remain. North Korea tested devices in 2006 and 2009 while other countries, including three in the Middle East — Israel, Egypt and Iran — have signed but not ratified the treaty. Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons, but it is believed by foreign experts to have an arsenal of 100 or more. Iran has been accused by the West of secretly developing nuclear technology for military purposes, a claim Tehran denies.
Meanwhile, to Jordan’s north, Syria is suspected of having undertaken a nuclear-development program that was cut short by a September 2007 air raid Damascus accuses Israel of staging. Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said November 9th that the nuclear watchdog has been pressing Syria to admit inspectors to at least two suspect sites.
In theory, Jordan could find itself in the middle of a nuclear confrontation between Israel and Iran. But, the exercise on the Dead Sea last week was purely scientific and technical, said Darweesh Jasem, assistant general manager of Jordan’s natural resources department. The exercise also boosted the ability of Jordanians to handle nuclear inspections, which officials see as a facet of the kingdom’s ambition to build its own nuclear reactors.
“We had been proposing holding such an exercise in Jordan since 2004. We are very excited about what we can learn from sharing this type of experience with established experts from the world,” he told The Media Line, noting that at least 13 Jordanian experts were among inspectors.
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The kingdom plans to build a nuclear facility near the port city of Aqaba to provide energy and potable water for the energy-poor, drought-stricken nation. The two 1,000-megawatt reactors it envisions developing over the next 15 years will cost billions of dollars, and even more, if it embarks on the second stage of expanding capacity to four reactors with the potential to produce over half of the kingdom’s electricity needs.
With limited financial resources, Jordan will have to raise capital abroad and convince the world nuclear community that it has the technical ability to undertake such an expensive and sophisticated project, officials in Amman say. Jordan has inked deals on nuclear cooperation with France, South Korea, China, Canada, Russia, Britain and Argentina and is preparing for similar deals with other countries.
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Miami, United States (AHN) – Royal Caribbean has introduced the world’s largest cruise ships, Allure of the Seas, and its twin Oasis of the Seas, into Fort Lauderdale with great fanfare on Veteran’s Day. A flotilla of maritime escorts accompanied the $1.5 billion Allure with water-spurting fireboats and private watercraft as it made its U.S. debut while entering its new home, Port Everglades.
Hundreds of people waved American flags from shore as they greeted the 5,400-passenger vessel, which is 360-meter long, 65-meter high and can weigh 225,282 tons.
South Korea’s STX Finland Cruise shipyards built Allure in Finland. Its one-year old sister ship Oasis of the Seas was also built in Finland.
It took Allure nearly 13 days to finish its transatlantic voyage from Finland’s Turku to Florida.
Expressing her happiness on the ship’s successful arrival, Royal Caribbean Marketing Director Rebecca Barba said that her group was extremely proud of these two ships, which are the world’s largest cruise ships. “They are twins, sharing exactly the same size and design,” she added.
Allure has 16 decks, which is divided into seven neighborhoods. It has reproduced New York’s Central Park, a Coney Island-style Boardwalk, swimming pools with surf simulators, ice skating rinks, several amenities offering rock walls and a large green area full of fully grown trees. Among one of its 26 dining attractions is world’s first Starbucks coffeehouse at sea.
“It’s like being on seven different ships at once, and it’s so big you at times forget you’re at sea,” said Barba.
Barba said that the Royal Caribbean was optimistic of getting customers for the twin giant cruise ships despite the global financial crisis because they were offering luxury cruises at relatively affordable prices.
She added that the cheapest Allure package offers a week-long voyage for a person in just $899 and it offers 25 percent less per individual if it is a family of four. The Royal Loft Suite and other expensive packages cost around $15,609 per person for a week.
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New Delhi – President Barack Obama ended his three-day trip to India Monday with a call for raising the world’s biggest democracy to global power status by granting it a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
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