IHT Rendezvous: Environmental Warning Fatigue Sets in

Record levels of industrial smog? A dwindling number of fish in the world’s oceans? A 4° Celsius warming in global temperatures by the end of the century?

How about environmental warning fatigue?

Global concern for major environmental issues is at an all time low, according to the results of a global poll of more than 22,000 people in 22 countries, released earlier this week.

“Scientists report that evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever — but our data shows that economic crisis and a lack of political leadership mean that the public are starting to tune out,” said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan, the company that carried out the study.

While respondents clearly still had grave environmental concerns, fewer people were “very concerned” about various environmental issues than at any point in the last 20 years. The sharpest decrease in global concern occurred over the last two years.

The issue of climate change, which 49 percent of respondents rated last year as “very serious” was the only exception to the general trend. Pollsters found that there was less concern between 1998 and 2003 than today.

Shortages of fresh water and water pollution were the highest global concern, with 58 percent of the respondents marking it as “very serious.”

Respondents were asked to rate seven different environmental issues – from climate change to loss of biodiversity – as being either a “very serious problem,” “somewhat serious problem,” “not very serious problem” or “not a serious problem at all.”

The latest numbers were gathered last summer in telephone and face-to-face interviews with participants in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Join our sustainability conversation. Do you take the environmental issues more seriously now than in the past? Do you find yourself tuning out?

Read More..

David Bowie Makes Triumphant Comeback with New Album: PEOPLE's Critic

By Chuck Arnold

03/01/2013 at 08:40 PM EST

Ten years after his last album, David Bowie is back – and so is his swagger.

Forget the moody musings of "Where Are We Now?" – the reflective comeback single that he dropped, seemingly out of nowhere, on his birthday last month (Jan. 8). The Next Day – which, though not released until March 12, began streaming in its entirety on iTunes on Friday – represents much more of an emphatic, energetic return from the 66-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

"We'll never be rid of these stars/ But I hope they live forever," sings Bowie, sounding like the immortal rock god he is over the glittering guitar-pop bounce of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)."

It's one of many driving, guitar-charged tracks on The Next Day: You can just imagine Ziggy Stardust getting his groove on to the bouncy beat of "Dancing Out in Space," while "(You Will) Set the World on Fire" is a rocking, fist-pumping anthem for today's young Americans.

Elsewhere, "Dirty Boys" is a sleazy grinder that, with its saxed-up funkiness, harks back to his soulful periods like 1975's Young Americans. In another nod to Bowie's past, The Next Day was produced by Tony Visconti, who also worked on the star's Berlin Trilogy albums from 1977 to 1979.

On one of the standouts, the melodic, midtempo "I'd Rather Be High," the album takes a political turn with Bowie's anti-war message: "I'd rather be dead or out of my head/ Then training these guns on those men in the sand."

It's moments like these that make The Next Day a triumphant comeback from a much-missed icon.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Chinatown landmark named for pioneering jurist

He was the first Chinese American graduate of Stanford Law School and the first Chinese American judge to be appointed to the bench in the continental United States.

On Friday, he became the first Chinese American to have a Los Angeles landmark named after him: Judge Delbert E. Wong Square, which encompasses the intersection of Hill and Ord streets at the western edge of Chinatown.

Councilman Ed Reyes hopes that someday the stretch of Hill Street that runs in front of the Chinatown public library will be named after Wong, who died in 2006 at age 85. Wong and his wife, Dolores, were instrumental in getting the library built, so the location would be fitting.

"The square is a starting point," said Reyes, who presided over the dedication.

A street in Little Tokyo bears the name of Judge John Aiso, the nation's first Japanese American judge.

Wong was born in the Central Valley town of Hanford in 1920, the son of a grocer from China's Guangdong province. The family later moved to Bakersfield, where Chinese and other minorities were restricted to the balconies of movie theaters and could only use the public swimming pool on Fridays, according to an oral history by Wong's son, Marshall Wong.

Wong graduated from UC Berkeley and enlisted in the Army Air Forces during World War II. As a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress, he completed 30 bombing missions in Europe, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals.

When he returned home, Wong decided to attend law school. His parents disapproved, fearing that racial prejudice would prevent him from finding work.

After graduating from Stanford, Wong found that his job options were indeed limited. The few Chinese American attorneys in California practiced immigration law. Wong gravitated to the public sector, working as a deputy legislative counsel and then as a deputy state attorney general.

In 1959, Wong became the first Chinese American judge in the continental United States when then-Gov. Pat Brown appointed him to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court. He later joined the Superior Court, serving for more than two decades. He continued to make headlines in retirement, leading a probe into racial discrimination at the Los Angeles Airport Police Bureau and working as a special master in the O.J. Simpson case.

Wong and his wife were among the founding benefactors of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Chinatown Service Center. They were also pioneers in another arena: housing. After a real estate agent told them that Chinese could not buy in Silver Lake, they sought out the property's owner, who was happy to sell to them.

Wong's widow and three of his four children attended Friday's dedication.

California now has more than 90 Asian American trial judges. Four of seven state Supreme Court justices are Asian American, including Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. But young people passing through Judge Delbert E. Wong Square should remember those who paved the way, perhaps even drawing inspiration from them, Marshall Wong said.

"The children who grow up in this neighborhood will pass by and wonder, 'Who was Judge Wong?' Hopefully, they'll learn something about his story and his work and think, 'Maybe I should go to law school and be a judge someday.'"

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Read More..

Letter from Europe: Observing the Vatican From Within

ROME — On Feb. 11, the day Benedict XVI stunned the world with the announcement that he would resign from the papacy, Giovanni Maria Vian was at home, getting ready.

It was not surprising that the editor of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper, should have been among the handful of people who had advance notice. Sworn to secrecy, Mr. Vian told his staff to listen carefully to Vatican radio that morning.

Since his editors understand Latin, they immediately caught the gist of the pope's speech (so did a reporter for Ansa, the Italian news agency, who broke the story). Within hours, L’Osservatore hit the stands with the news, carefully packaged, and an editorial by Mr. Vian, which said Benedict had made his decision last spring after an exhausting trip to Cuba and Mexico.

“That was a scoop,” Mr. Vian said cheerfully, during an interview in his modest office on a Vatican side street, on a chilly evening after the rest of the staff had gone home.

Since then, Mr. Vian — a scholar whose doctoral thesis was on the writings of early Church leaders — has been calmly navigating the choppy waves of one of the biggest news stories of the year, as it veers from speculation about the next pope to rumors of more scandals in the Roman Catholic Church.

If Mr. Vian remains composed amid all the turmoil, it is because his eight-page newspaper, which comes out in Italian six days a week and weekly in several other languages, is hardly expected to follow the steady drip of slippery stories about gay lobbies, blackmail and dirty Vatican bank accounts.

“There’s nothing new,” he said. “With these articles, one should be very careful. It is normal that they come out now. On the eve of the election of a new pope, there are new dynamics afoot.”

The Vatican, he said, “is a small world, and there are different rumors, different voices. Many times, they are lies. It is very human, all this, but in the end, it all will serve to purify the church — the whole church, not just the Vatican.”

In Mr. Vian’s view, Benedict — who once said he had greeted his election with the dread of someone mounting the steps of the guillotine — had envisioned an early departure right from the start. But the pope, a frail 85, stayed on for almost eight years, Mr. Vian said.

“He doesn’t run away from the wolves,” he said.

So who are the wolves? Mr. Vian was at first surprisingly literal. “The wolves?” he asked. “The most obvious are those who persecute Christians.” There are other wolves, in Christian countries, who are intolerant of believers, he added.

But, he continued, “'there are also wolves within the church, and inside all humans.”

Mr. Vian, ever the scholar, swiveled back and forth between his bookshelf and his computer, pulling out references, from the Roman poet Ovid, and St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, to the perpetual struggle between good and evil.

Then he dug out, from a pile of newspapers, a lengthy discourse by Benedict himself, made without notes on Feb. 8, in which he spoke of “serious, dangerous omissions,” “errors” and a church that in some places “is dying because of the sins of men and women.”

Mr. Vian, who has run articles on the church's sex abuse scandals, believes that the VatiLeaks scandal, involving the theft of papal documents, was itself a sign that Benedict had succeeded in bringing about greater transparency, prompting a counterreaction. “The papacy of Benedict XVI has been very effective,” he said.

Five years ago, when he was named editor of L’Osservatore, Mr. Vian was hailed as an intellectual journalist, well suited to serve an intellectual pope, who was now his publisher. But his interests range beyond ecclesiastical subjects to include Tintin, the comic-book boy-hero whose posters hang in his office.

Mr. Vian was no stranger to the Vatican. The son of the secretary of the Vatican library, from a family that had ties to previous popes, he grew up within its walls, and played with his brothers in its gardens.

To his father’s dismay, Mr. Vian dabbled in journalism, writing for the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire and L’Osservatore, even as he pursued his doctorate and worked on the Italian encyclopedia.

“A rather strange career,” he said, “but it has helped prepare me, to take a critical approach, to respect history and facts. Writing for the encyclopedia is rigorous and sober: You can’t mix in ideology.”

When he took over in the fall of 2007, he wasted no time making changes to the paper. He expanded international news coverage while playing down Italian politics, devoted more attention to economic subjects and widened the cultural scope to include modern phenomena like the Beatles and James Bond. Non-Catholic commentators, including a Jewish columnist, are regularly invited to publish.

He added two women to the paper’s staff — the first in its 152-year history — and started publishing a monthly supplement on “Women, the Church, the World.”

Speaking of Benedict’s resignation, Mr. Vian did not hide his regret. “I am very attached to this pope,” he said. “He’s a real gentleman, a humble, nice man — in other words, a man of God.”

During the last two weeks, Mr. Vian has published a stream of articles on Benedict’s papacy from around the world, including one by a ranking member of the Russian Orthodox Church and one by Shimon Perez, the Israeli president.

The views have been, not surprisingly, uniformly positive. “That’s normal,” said Mr. Vian, asking whether other editors would publish articles critical of their publishers.

Read More..

Connie Britton: 'Being a Single Mom Is Challenging'

Peggy Sirota for MORE

Channeling her Nashville character’s reign over the country scene was not a far stretch for Connie Britton.

Since her big break in Friday Night Lights, the actress, 45, has been shining in her own spotlight, from scoring major onscreen roles to welcoming a new baby — son Yoby — from Ethiopia.

And now, between her hit show and her 2-year-old, Britton is busier — and happier! — than ever.

“The schedule is insane to the point where I lose a lot of sleep at night worrying about how little time I have to sleep and mostly what little time I have to be with my son,” she says in MORE‘s March issue.

But Britton logging long hours at work doesn’t seem to bother baby boy in the least. “The flip side of that is, he’s doing great. He comes to the set every day,” she says. “As working moms go, at least I have that luxury.”

After the death of her father, Britton put the dream of a husband aside and began to pursue adoption. While idea of raising a baby on her own was daunting, the actress wasn’t willing to call it quits on motherhood.

“Being a single mom is challenging, but never in a million years would that have stopped me. You get an idea in your head and you’re going to do it,” she says.

“People can tell you how hard marriage is or how hard it is to birth a baby, but we do these things. We want the journey of that.”

And her determination has paid off in a big way — Britton is completely smitten with her “incredibly openhearted” son.

“One of my favorite qualities is that he has an enormous curiosity about everything, but he’s not stupid about it,” she explains. “He wants to open and close doors, but he immediately learned that he’d better watch where his fingers are.”

With her professional and personal lives having recently reached all new highs, the new mom says her happiness has been a long time coming.

“My whole life has been building to all the good stuff that has happened to me in the last few years,” Britton muses. “I think — and this is ironic when I’m working harder and have more responsibility than ever before — that I now know the importance of grace and sitting back.”

She continues: “I have a deeper understanding of how most people are just trying to do the best they can.”

Peggy Sirota for MORE

– Anya Leon

Read More..

Las Vegas Strip shooting suspect is arrested in L.A.

A man suspected in a deadly car-to-car shooting in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip was arrested Thursday at a Studio City apartment complex, bringing an end to a weeklong manhunt.

Los Angeles police and FBI agents surrounded the suburban apartment complex in the 4100 block of Arch Drive about noon and ordered Ammar Harris to surrender. Officers said there was a woman inside the apartment where he was holed up; she was not arrested.

Harris, 26, is being held on suspicion of murder and is expected to be extradited back to Nevada.

"This arrest is much more than just taking Ammar Harris," said Las Vegas Sheriff Doug Gillespie, speaking at police headquarters near the Strip. "The citizens of our community as well as tourists who visit and work in the Las Vegas Valley are entitled to a safe community."

Harris — described by law enforcement officials as a man with an "extensive and violent criminal history" — is accused of being the gunman in the Feb. 21 shooting that killed three people, including Kenneth Cherry Jr., an Oakland native and rapper known as Kenny Clutch.

Las Vegas police said Harris opened fire from his Ranger Rover on Cherry's Maserati on Las Vegas Boulevard after an altercation at a valet stand at the Aria hotel resort.

The Maserati then sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, where it rammed a Yellow Cab, which erupted in flames near the mega-wattage casinos of the Bellagio, the Flamingo and Ceasars Palace. The explosion killed the taxi driver and passenger inside.

Cherry and a passenger in his Maserati were taken to a hospital, where Cherry was pronounced dead. Four other vehicles were involved in the fiery crash, which left three other people with injuries.

"What I can tell you is that Mr. Harris' behavior was unlike any other I've seen, and I've been in this community in law enforcement for 32 years," Clark County Dist. Atty. Steve Wolfson said.

"I cannot imagine anything more serious than firing a weapon from a moving vehicle into another moving vehicle on a corner such as Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo."

Even in a city accustomed to spectacle, the shooting and collision were shocking.

On the night of the shooting, Harris was accompanied by three people in his Range Rover, none considered suspects, said Lt. Ray Steiber of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. On Saturday, Las Vegas police found Harris' black Range Rover at an apartment complex in the city. The district attorney charged Harris with murder even though he could not be located, and a federal magistrate signed off on a charge of fleeing the jurisdiction.

Federal court documents show Las Vegas homicide detectives suspected that Harris may have fled to California because his phone showed he made calls in the state.

According to law enforcement sources, Harris operated as a pimp in Las Vegas. In a video released by Las Vegas police, Harris flashed a fistful of $100 bills as he bragged about the money. He boasted about money, guns, expensive cars and run-ins with the law on social media accounts, authorities said.

On one social media site, using the name Jai'duh, someone authorities believe was Harris posted pictures of stacks of $100 bills and a Carbon 15 pistol.

Harris' record includes a 2010 arrest in Las Vegas on suspicion of pimping-related offenses of pandering with force and sexual assault. He has previously been arrested on suspicion of a variety of crimes in South Carolina and Georgia, authorities said.

Harris is slated to appear in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Monday for an extradition proceeding.

richard.winton@latimes.com

john.glionna@latimes.com

kate.mather@latimes.com

Glionna reported from Las Vegas. Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.

Read More..

India Ink: What They Said: Budget 2013-14

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the Union budget in Parliament on Thursday morning. Reactions were mixed from analysts who felt that while the finance minister had delivered a satisfactory budget given the country’s economic climate, more could have been done to attract foreign investment.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking with Doordarshan News:

Given the challenges facing our economy, the finance minister has done a commendable job. India needs to create jobs for our growing labor force to the extent of about 10 million persons every year. To do that, we need to accelerate the tempo of our growth. We need, as the 12th Five-Year Plan has mentioned eloquently, a growth rate of about 8 percent. This is a growth rate which is consistent with our underlying potential. We have to get there. Although this is a difficult journey — it cannot be accomplished in a single year – but the finance minister has taken important steps to reverse the pessimistic view with regard to investment climate, with regard to the growth potential and possibilities of our economy.

The finance minister has laid out a road map. There is plenty of food for every ministry to chew upon. And each one of our ministries has to ask itself this question: If India needs an 8 percent growth rate, growth which is at the same time inclusive and sustainable, what is it that each ministry should do? The finance minister has, I think, mentioned these challenges. It is up to the collective wisdom of my Council of Ministers to convert these challenges into opportunities to accelerate the tempo of growth, to make it more inclusive, to make it more sustainable.

Dinesh Thakkar, chairman and managing director at Angel Broking in Mumbai:

The government’s reform momentum had been so strong since September that there were expectations of some exciting measures in the budget too. That was not the case, but it does not mean the budget was a disappointment. The finance minister has been seriously committed to bringing down the fiscal deficit, and he has delivered on that front, as he did not announce any major populist measure and largely maintained stability in tax policies, save for some tweaking for higher income brackets and corporates. In my view, there were no major positive or negative triggers for the markets or any particular sectors, and I think what the market will look forward to is the reform agenda being continued by the government outside the budget, in the coming Parliament sessions, for which the momentum still looks very much on track.

Anuj Puri, chairman and country head of Jones Lang LaSalle India:

We did not expect this budget to be a game-changer. The realities of the Indian economic situation need to viewed in context with the factors that drive it, not least of all the global economic situation. There is no escaping the fact that the business which comes to India from the European Union and the U.S. has a trickle-down effect on key economic drivers in India, and the Finance Ministry does not control these factors. The Union budget can only hope to address factors within its control.

This was a moderately encouraging budget in general, but tepid for the Indian real estate sector. There has been no proposal on certain key expectations from the real estate sector. These include implementation of the real estate regulator and the Land Acquisition Act. All said and done, Indian real estate will continue to struggle with its larger hurdles. While the affordable housing category has been rightly given due attention, aspects relating to improved transparency and corporate governance within the sector have been largely ignored.

That said, the budget has shown commitment to improving communication on taxation and regulatory policies. This should give more comfort to offshore real estate investors who have been bogged down by the political inertia and therefore unsure of India as an investment destination in the recent past.

Partha Iyengar, country manager for research, India, at Gartner:

The big overarching focus on growth by the finance minister is the fundamental “feel good” factor in this budget. Given the fact that one can argue that a lot of the weakness in the Indian economy is what I call a “sentimental recession,” his strong statement that there is no ground for “doom and gloom” heading into the new year.

The big specific positives of the budget are that he has focused both in terms of the letter and spirit of the budget on the key planks of growth for India and health of every industry, including IT, which is infrastructure, education, skills development and incentives for the growth of domestic manufacturing. Some of the other positive areas are support for entrepreneurship, the M.S.M.E. [micro, small and medium enterprises] sector, both in terms of financial and overall support. The recognition that the overseas “trust deficit” in terms of a comfort level on India’s investment climate has to be addressed is also welcome.

However, the budget is only a directional statement, and the challenge for India historically and even currently is in the execution of the statement of intent outlined in the budget. This has been India’s Achilles’ heel, in that bold pronouncements in the budget never see the light of day or are not implemented as effectively as they can or should be. So it was disappointing to not see any statements on what the government would do to ensure mechanisms and oversight to ensure speedy and efficient implementation of these programs. Overall, a 7/10 score for the budget.

Girish Vanvari, co-head of tax at KPMG:

This budget is along anticipated lines, given the economic scenario in the country. There is a stable tax regime. There is no weird tax introduced; nothing much has been tinkered with. The expenditure outlays of the government have not gone down and so the government is not going to stop spending, which means continued growth.

There is a tax on the super-rich with income above 10 million, but this will only affect about 42,000 people and not impact the larger base. Also, the tax is only a 10 percent surcharge and only effective for one year. In this situation, we have limited choices to manage the fiscal deficit, and the budget is quite good given the situation. It is generally an investor-friendly budget because the crux of this budget is growth. Without growth, the fiscal deficit will not be able to be constrained.

Sujan Hajra, chief economist and executive director at Anand Rathi Financial Services in Mumbai:

Given the macroeconomic climate – slowing growth, stable inflation, high fiscal deficit and current account deficit – this is the best budget that could be rolled out in these circumstances. The overarching priority in this budget is to affect some level of fiscal consolidation, and that has been delivered, having kept the fiscal deficit to 5.2 percent for this year.  The other priority for this budget is to induce financial saving and investment, and many measures have been introduced towards that, such as special incentives for over 1 billion rupees investment, a boost to infrastructure investment, particularly in the power and road sector, widening the scope for investing in mutual funds and the inflation index bond.

Despite this being the last full budget before the next election, the budget has largely resisted taking measures of overt populism. The two largely populist measures taken are the Food Security Act and the Direct Benefit Transfer, and none of these involve any major outlay. The subsidy component of the budget has been reduced rather than increased.

Also there has been some kind of benefit for the bottom of the pyramid with tax benefits for the lowest tax bracket and benefits on housing interest payment for the lower end of the spectrum.

Nobody can term this as a dream budget, but it is trying to address macro concerns and bring about some sort of revival in growth.

Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of India Industry, a trade group:

It is a very well thought through and analytical budget and not a political budget. It is a growth-oriented budget, where the focus on investment has been kept high.

Jaijit Bhattacharya, director for South Asia at Hewlett-Packard:

The IT and electronics manufacturing industry was looking forward to budgetary support to the government’s stated policy of promoting IT & electronics manufacturing in India. But this has not been done in this budget.

Dipen Shah, head of private client group, research, Kotak Securities:

The finance minister has projected a fiscal deficit in line with what he had promised, and it is far better than what the situation was when he had come in. To that extent, he has presented a responsible budget. We believe that the budget focuses rightly on higher investments, which can lead to better growth rates in the future. Several initiatives have been announced in the infrastructure sector. Followup action, in terms of removing infrastructure bottlenecks, will be needed and will go a long way in helping the government achieve the growth targets.

Nishith Desai, managing partner at Nishith Desai Associates, a research-based international law firm:

The budget brings some relief but not much excitement – in particular for foreign investors. It was expected that the finance minister would introduce new tax rates and this did not happen. We expected that estate duty would be reintroduced and this was not done. It was expected that there would be a whole host of new indirect taxes, and that was not done to a large extent. Therefore, it was not the draconian budget expected in the current macroeconomic situation. Only the super-rich have been charged a 10 percent surcharge, which is not too much of a burden, in my view.

However, we expected some big bang reforms for bringing foreign investment to India, which did not happen. The finance minister started by saying that foreign investment is “imperative,” but that imperative was soon lost. There was no assurance made to guarantee a stable regulatory environment and that there would not be any more retroactive amendments in general. It was expected that the finance minister would address cases that involve the offshore transfer of shares like Vodafone so that there could be some certainty, but this was not done.

I believe the finance minister will have to present another round of liberalization and reforms to attract foreign investment. I think that he has tried to please everybody, which is not a bad thing. But at the same time, if you look at this from the viewpoint of attracting the foreign investment necessary for growth – that has not happened.

Read More..

Why Jennifer Aniston Kept Her Hair Down on Oscar Night

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/26/2013 at 02:30 PM ET

');var brightcovevideoid = 2191160964001

');var targetVideoWidth = 300;brightcove.createExperiences();/* iPhone, iPad, iPod */if ((navigator.userAgent.match('iPhone')) || (navigator.userAgent.match('iPad')) || (navigator.userAgent.match('iPod')) || (location.search.indexOf('ipad=true') > -1)) { document.write('

Her longtime stylist, Living Proof’s Chris McMillan, says the star wanted to stick with what works. “She wanted to keep the makeup natural and the hair natural,” he says in the exclusive clip above. “I think it’s about, at this point, being really comfortable on the red carpet.” Amen!

To hear more on Aniston’s Oscar night look, and to hear McMillan give a how-to on the night’s hot short hairstyles (his faves were Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron), watch the clip above. Tell us: Did you like Aniston’s natural hair and makeup on Oscar night? 

Read More..

Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busy student years

Fourth in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

Ben Jealous still recalls walking into a Columbia University meeting of a new group called Black Men for Anita Hill and seeing a half-Jewish, half-Mexican kid from Los Angeles leading the discussion.

"What's he doing here?" he asked the professor who organized the meeting.

"Honestly brother," the teacher replied, "he's the only one here I'm certain will really work hard."

L.A. ELECTIONS 2013: Sign up for our email newsletter

It was Jealous' first exposure to Eric Garcetti, a committed young progressive known on campus for gliding between different worlds and liberal causes. As a political science major at Columbia, Garcetti patched plaster and painted walls in low-income apartments in Harlem while also serving as the president of an exclusive literary society known for its wealthy membership. He led a men's discussion group on gender and sexuality, ran successfully for student government, and wrote and performed in musicals.

His busy student years offered hints of the future political persona that would later help him win a Los Angeles City Council seat and emerge as a leading candidate for mayor. As he pursued countless progressive causes — improved race relations in New York City, democracy in Burma and human rights in Ethiopia — Garcetti also exhibited a careful stewardship of his image and a desire to get along with everyone.

Some of his critics complain that he is confrontation averse, and say his chameleon-like abilities are political. Others complain that he has lost touch with his activist roots, citing his recent advocacy for a plan to allow taller and bigger buildings in Hollywood despite strong opposition from some community members.

But Jealous, who went on to study with Garcetti at Oxford, where they were both Rhodes scholars, remembers his classmate as "authentically committed" to social justice and naturally at ease in different settings. That was a valuable trait in early 1990s New York City, when tensions between whites and blacks were high, said Jealous, who is now the president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Against a backdrop of racial violence, including the stabbing of the Rev. Al Sharpton in Brooklyn in 1991, "there was an urgent need to build bridges," he said.

On Columbia's campus, Garcetti pushed to involve more men in Take Back the Night protests against sexual violence and tracked hate crimes as president of the National Student Coalition Against Harassment. He also worked against homelessness and founded the Columbia Urban Experience, a program that exposes incoming freshmen to city life through volunteerism.

Judith Russell, a Columbia professor who taught Garcetti in a yearlong urban politics course, remembers him as a skilled organizer. "Eric was one of the best people I've ever met at getting people to agree," she said.

He was also ambitious. Russell says she wrote countless recommendation letters for Garcetti, who was always applying for some new opportunity. "For most people I have a file or two. For Eric I have a folder," she said.

Even as a student, Garcetti went to great lengths to guard his image and public reputation. In a 1991 letter to a campus newspaper, a 20-year-old Garcetti sought a retraction of a quote that he acknowledged was accurate. A reporter wrote that Garcetti called owners of a store that declined to participate in a Columbia-sponsored can recycling program "assholes." Garcetti said the comment was off the record.

"I would ask, then, if you would retract the quote, not because of the morality of my position, rather the ethics of the quoting," he wrote.

That self-awareness came partly from being raised in a politically active family. Back in Los Angeles, his father was mounting a successful campaign for county district attorney. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy clothier, ran a community foundation. Her father, who had been President Lyndon B. Johnson's tailor, made headlines in the 1960s when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on Johnson to exit the Vietnam War.

Garcetti's family wealth allowed him to carry on the legacy of political activism. While attending L.A.'s exclusive Harvard School for Boys, he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies. In college, while other students worked at summer jobs, he traveled twice to Burma to teach democracy to leaders of the resistance movement.

In 1993, after receiving a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Garcetti departed for Oxford. There he met Cory Booker, a fellow Rhodes scholar who is now the mayor of Newark, N.J., and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate. Garcetti, Booker said, "was one of those guys who would be in the pub at midnight talking passionately about making a better world."

In England, Garcetti worked with Amnesty International and also met his future wife, Amy Wakeland, another Rhodes scholar with activist leanings. Garcetti remembers being impressed when Wakeland missed President Clinton's visit to the Rhodes House at Oxford because she was on the streets protesting tuition hikes. Her worldview aligned with his, he told friends.

In his second year at Oxford, Garcetti persuaded student leaders to join him in a hunger strike after the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that denied immigrants access to state healthcare and schools.

Looking back, he sees the hunger strike as a bit of youthful folly. "We were young," Garcetti said. "Was a fast an ocean away going to overturn 187? No. But in my book, whether it's me in Los Angeles seeing an injustice across an ocean or vice versa, you have to stand up and be heard."

Read More..