Eideard

Reuters found a Japanese banker who is a key figure in the Olympus Corp accounting scandal at a luxury apartment block in Hong Kong on Sunday, where he exploded in anger at finally being tracked down.

Akio Nakagawa’s boutique U.S. investment firm earned a $687 million fee from Olympus for a 2008 deal that made it the biggest advisory payment in history, and which the Japanese camera maker now admits was used to hide investment losses.

The whereabouts of the former PaineWebber banker had been unknown until Sunday. Nakagawa looked startled when a reporter introduced himself outside the building, located in a high-priced area near the financial district on Hong Kong island.

“Get out of here. Get out of here,” Nakagawa yelled in English at the Reuters reporter who approached him. The banker, who appeared in his 60s and was with a middle-aged woman, was walking into the marbled foyer with some grocery bags.

“I don’t want him here,” Nakagawa said, turning to a concierge, when asked to answer questions about the scandal, which has brought the once venerable maker of endoscopes and cameras to its knees.

Nakagawa was tanned, tall and slim. He wore large, dark round glasses and a sky-blue polo shirt and carried two plastic shopping bags with Japanese writing on them.

When asked about the advisory fee, he told the concierge: “Please contact the police…”

It is the first time Nakagawa has been found and asked by the media for his side of the story since former Olympus chief executive Michael Woodford blew the whistle last month on the advisory fee and several other dubious deals…

Sources have told Reuters that Nakagawa had business ties with Olympus stretching back three decades, including his time at PaineWebber in the 1990s when he helped the firm temporarily shuffle securities losses off its books in a practice known as “tobashi” that was common in Japan at the time.

Tobashi roughly translates as “to make fly away.”

Terrific job by James Pomfret and Reuters. I expect business news reporters – even some of the crappola mainstream networks – to be buzzing about this tomorrow morning.

Wonder how many will credit the Reuters crew?

The Chinese president has resisted US arguments about why China should let its currency strengthen, saying the dollar-based international currency system is a “product of the past”.

However, Hu Jintao admitted that it would take a long time to make China’s yuan (RMB) a world currency.

“China has made important contribution to the world economy in terms of total economic output and trade, and the RMB has played a role in the world economic development,” he told two US newspapers in a written interview ahead of his visit to the US next week. “But making the RMB an international currency will be a fairly long process…”

Hu said arguments that allowing the yuan to appreciate would curb inflation are too simplistic, adding that China is fighting inflation with a range of policies including interest-rate increases.

While inflation in China hit a 28-month high in November, Hu told the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that prices were “on the whole moderate and controllable…We have the confidence, conditions and ability to stabilise the overall price level,” he said…

On other issues, Hu struck an upbeat tone about ties with the US. “We should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality,” he said and “respect each other’s choice of development path.”

The president suggested co-operation with the US in areas like new energy sources, clean energy, infrastructure development, aviation and space…

The Chinese leader, who is expected to step down as president and general secretary of China’s Communist Party in 2012, arrives on Wednesday in Washington for his first and last state visit.

I chose this article from Al Jazeera deliberately to offer folks a middle-of-the-road view from outside the United States and most Western yes-men. Certainly, the content of the interview isn’t altered; but, presentation is still linked to American domestic politics – and that includes foreign policy.

The Washington Post article is somewhat neutral. The NY Times reflects their policy of being as hawkish as any Cold Warrior when it comes to economic and commercial challenges to the United States.

To prevent attacks like the Lockerbie bombing, caused by a suitcase containing a bomb loaded onto a plane without the passenger who checked it also on being on board, airlines are supposed to remove the bags of any passengers who check luggage onto flights they do not board.

In an era of suicide attacks, that precaution no longer seems as reassuring as it once did, but it is still observed carefully enough to trigger alarms like the one on Monday [about 2 Yemeni-Americans].

But, while all passengers — and their carry-on bags and checked luggage — are screened before they board flights, passenger jets flying into the United States from abroad still routinely carry unscreened cargo, a loophole The Lede pointed out in January.

Asked about the cargo shipped on passenger jets, Nicholas Kimball, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, drew our attention to the fact that 100 percent of the cargo loaded into the holds of passenger jets alongside luggage in the United States is now screened at some stage. In January that figure was said to be “at least 50 percent.”

But in a statement earlier this month announcing that accomplishment, the agency acknowledged that one part of the loophole had yet to be closed: cargo loaded onto jets flying passengers into the country from abroad does not have to be screened…

The agency’s administrator, John Pistole, said in the statement, “International air cargo is more secure than it has ever been.” He added, “T.S.A. continues to work closely with our international partners and is making substantial progress toward meeting the 100 percent mark in the next few years.”

Or – real soon now.

An international team of researchers are embarking on what has been described as the most ambitious tornado study in history.

An array of instruments will be deployed across the US Great Plains, where violent twisters are more common than anywhere else on the planet. It is hoped that the data gathered will improve tornado warnings and forecasts.

More than 100 scientists will be involved in the study, which will continue until the middle of June…

The study, Vortex2, will use a range of enhanced mobile radars and other weather-sensing equipment in order to build up a comprehensive picture of the zones where tornadoes develop.

Researchers say that rapidly changing contrasts in wind and temperatures in an area just a few miles across can spawn a tornado in a matter of minutes.

But, they added, only a small percentage of “supercell storms” generate twisters, and standard observing networks and radars struggle to pick up the atmospheric conditions that lead to the formation of a tornado…

The study area stretches from West Texas to south-west Minnesota, covering more than 900 miles.

The researchers will not have a fixed base, spending the entire six weeks on the road following outbreaks of severe weather.

Surrounded by pilots in this family, you know I had to get this post up for the weekend.

Though, frankly, as someone who used to live on the road – in later years in regions including part of Tornado Alley – I’m as interested as any of the usual weather geeks in the family.

The competitive edge of the European Union’s economy has risen over the past decade while that of the United States has eroded, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group published Wednesday.

The report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found that the United States ranked sixth among 40 countries and regions, based on 16 indicators of innovation and competitiveness…

Indicators included venture-capital investment, scientific researchers, spending on research and educational achievement

The study rated the most competitive nation as Singapore, which embarked on a national innovation strategy years ago, investing heavily and recruiting leading scientists and technologists from around the world.

Sweden, on the strength of its government and corporate investment in research and development, among other factors, Luxembourg and Denmark ranked second, third and fourth.

The report said while the EU had made progress, it – like the United States – had been superseded in advances by Asia. South Korea is rated fifth on the list, while China, Singapore and Japan were in the top 10 most improved countries.

The new report…warned that America’s lead in science and technology was “eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength.”

RTFA. Lots of interesting bits and pieces you may or may not agree with. I found it specially interesting that we’re down to sixth in venture capital investment – which was practically invented here – while Sweden is first.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

Kite-flying enthusiasts try to control 50 feet in diameter “Windsock” kite during their practice session ahead of the 19th International Kite festival in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad January 7. 2009. More than 163 kite-flying enthusiasts from 36 countries will compete in the five-day long festival which starts January 10.

Wow! That looks like serious fun.

The yuan will be used in transactions with neighboring trade partners as part of a pilot project – in what could be the first step on the road to making it an international currency. The pilot program was announced with a raft of other measures designed to help bolster the nation’s export sector. The State Council did not give details of how and when the currency project would start…

The lion’s share of China’s foreign trade is currently settled in US dollars or the euro. But many analysts predict the greenback might depreciate substantially in the coming years because of the ailing US economy.

“The move will also increase the yuan’s acceptance in Asia, which will help it become an international currency in the long run,” said Zhao Xijun.

The yuan’s acceptance has been rising in recent years, thanks to the nation’s economic prowess and its $1.9 trillion reserves of foreign exchange. Over the past year, there has been a growing advocacy at home to make the yuan a global currency, since the weakening of the greenback has caused hefty losses to China’s forex reserves.

But the government has been cautious about moving in that direction, which would also require the yuan to be freely convertible. Analysts say it will take time for policymakers to make the shift as they try to maintain the stability of the currency regime.

I haven’t thought much about this, though I was involved for enough years with currency as commodity – especially in the Orient, in yen – that I guess I should have.

Most folks are cognizant of the battle between dollars and euros coming to sharp confrontation in the wonderful world of Big Oil. Some – including yours truly – think it played a significant part in the decisions leading to Bush’s War on Iraq. Throw yuan into the mix and this get really exciting.

Gambling is OK if the state gets their cut
Daylife/AP Photo by Ed Reinke

Lawyers representing online gambling interests have told the Kentucky Court of Appeals that Gov. Steve Beshear’s effort to seize domain names is blatantly unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel is weighing Beshear’s unprecedented move to seize the domain names of 141 gambling Web sites.

Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate allowed the Cabinet for Justice and Public Safety to seize the domain names last month. The seizure, at this point, is meaningless because the state cannot control the content of the Web sites until a judge orders the domain names forfeited to the state.

In oral arguments Friday, lawyers representing six domain names, two online gambling trade groups and The Poker Players Alliance said the cabinet ís move is littered with legal and constitutional flaws. They focused on four arguments:

■ Wingate does not have jurisdiction to allow the state to seize domains registered in other countries where gambling is legal.

■ Domain names are not gambling devices.

■ Domain names can only be seized after a criminal conviction. The state has not attempted to criminally prosecute the Web site operators.

■ Kentucky is prohibited by the commerce clause of the U.S Constitution from regulating interstate and international commerce, which the trade groups argue Wingate’s order affectively allows.

Perhaps they should take into account the fact that the Governor is a greedy, power-hungry nutball. Did the U.S. Constitution, Magna Carta or any other document describing personal or commercial liberties mean anything to the Sheriff of Nottingham?

Daylife photo from Reuters Pictures

Senior military officers from 50 countries gathered in Geneva Monday to put international humanitarian law into simple language that can be understood in theatres of war worldwide.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which organized the two-week course with the Swiss Armed Forces, said that civilians accounted for the overwhelming majority of war casualties despite being protected in the Geneva Conventions laying out the rules of war.

“By making international humanitarian law more easily understandable and accessible to military personnel, the ICRC hopes to give combatants the guidance they need to make the right choices,” the neutral aid organization said…

International humanitarian law sets constraints on the methods by which conflicting parties can fight, aiming to avoid unnecessary carnage and spare civilians and their property.

The rules also spell out principles for providing medical services to those wounded by war, including enemy combatants, as well as acceptable conditions for detention and imprisonment.

Kellenberger said the ICRC is engaging in confidential dialogue with military leaders around the world, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Chad, and Sri Lanka, as part of its mandate to encourage compliance with international humanitarian law. It also meets non-state armed groups when security permits.

Then, we face the question of getting the elected leaders of our nations to live up to the mandates and guidance which our military may understand – and our politicians refuse to obey.