US President George W. Bush will emerge as the major obstacle to Britain's ambitious proposals for a new "Marshall Plan" for Africa this week as the world's finance ministers converge on London for the G7 summit.
With troops mired in Iraq, and Bush under pressure to reduce his vast budget deficit, Washington is reluctant to commit extra cash to relieve the plight of Africa.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder set the scene for a transatlantic confrontation when he became the latest European leader to throw his weight behind Britain's plans for an International Finance Facility that Gordon Brown hopes will release an extra US$50 billion for the world's poorest countries. France and Italy had already expressed support for a large increase in aid and debt relief, and a British Treasury official said: "We can go into the G7 this week with Europe presenting a united front. There's a momentum building."
However, campaigners are warning that US opposition could prove a major stumbling block.
"We are not expecting a complete agreement along the lines of the UK proposals: I think the US is still pretty intransigent," said Romilly Greenhill of the development charity Action Aid.
Japan has also expressed doubts about the proposals, but the British Treasury believes Tokyo would fall into line if the US signed up.
As the first step in Britain's year-long campaign to "make poverty history," Brown has promised to meet the cost of writing off 10 percent of the debt of the world's poorest countries to the World Bank, and challenged his fellow G7 finance ministers to follow suit.
Canada could agree to do so this week. But the US is proposing its own, cheaper, scheme in which debt relief would be deducted from existing aid flows.
Brown is also keen to win wider support for his proposal to revalue the International Monetary Fund's gold stockpile in order to pay for further debt relief. The IMF owns 100 million ounces of gold, which is worth US$45 billion, but it is only valued at US$8 billion in its accounts.
As well as the plight of Africa, finance ministers will discuss the sharp decline in the dollar over recent months. Eurozone politicians have blamed massive US deficits for the dollar's slide, which has pushed up the price of eurozone exports. But Bush's Treasury Secretary, John Snow, repeated last week that it was also the responsibility of the Europeans to redress the balance by growing their economies more quickly.
China, which has been invited for a special session with the finance ministers, is expected to come under renewed pressure to float its currency, the renminbi.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS