Global News Blog
Two men walk in the business district in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday. (Paul White/AP)
Rest easy, Spain: Your money's safe in a mattress safe
Europeans have tossed and turned at night since the continent's sovereign debt crisis began three years ago. Right now it’s the Cypriots, surprised earlier this month by an announcement that some personal bank accounts could be taxed in order to raise the needed contribution for a bailout.
But Greeks, Irish, and Spaniards know the drill all too well themselves. Spanish bank deposits, for instance, dropped by 4.7 percent between June and July 2012, as faith in the country’s banking system plummeted.
In banks, it’s safe to say, many Europeans do not trust.
So what better way to slip soundly into sleep each night than knowing the precise status of one’s life savings? That’s the idea behind the simple and inventive Caja MiColchón, or My Mattress Safe, a bed manufactured in northwestern Spain that is outfitted with a safety deposit box.
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Francisco “Paco” Santos worked in the mattress business for 14 years before losing his job in 2009. Unemployed, he tapped a dormant entrepreneurial spirit, designing this mattress that stands out from the rest.
My Mattress Safe was released by Mr. Santos' company Descanso Santos Sueños (DESS) three weeks ago, in step with the Cyprus banking saga. It sells for about $1,120.
Set to upbeat, jazzy music, one promotional video on the company’s website shows the ins and outs of production. The mattress is made with “the best materials” and implanted at the foot of the bed is a digital-entry safety box (there's no mention of whether or not it’s fireproof).
In the video, Mr. Santos parodies a bank commercial, calling My Mattress Safe a “financial institution” with a new, imaginative take on saving. Not to fear, he says – this approach to savings doesn’t come with the threat of bankruptcy, mergers, or market fluctuations.
That could be a powerful selling point, with the safety of bank deposits high on the mind in Europe once again this month. According to The Christian Science Monitor, the European Union “raised serious doubts about its promise to guarantee citizens’ savings – a vital pillar of any financial sector that underpins savers’ trust – when it went along with a plan to levy small Cypriot depositors.”
DESS hasn’t released sales figures, but the company said they’ve exceeded expectations. And despite the initial double take, there may be a larger audience for a Mattress Safe than one might expect.
In Argentina, for example, many keep their US dollars (a popular currency because of high rates of inflation) out of Argentine banks after “harsh lessons” learned from past economic crises. The Monitor met one Argentine last summer who keeps his dollars in a safety deposit box.
“I know that the dollars in my box are actually there,” says Francisco, an IT worker in Buenos Aires. “If you have a bank account in dollars your money doesn’t exist – it’s just virtual money."
The My Mattress Safe tagline feeds into this mentality: “Your money, very close to you.”
For customers looking for assurance that their money isn't going anywhere with the Caja MiColchón, there’s a calculator on the website where customers can work out their savings over time. Enter the deposit amount, the number of months of planned investment, and voila: The same number of euros deposited in a My Mattress Safe is at the investor’s disposal a month, year, or decade later. (“What you deposit is what you have. So easy, so simple,” reads the website.)
"History repeats itself,” Santos told Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
“Older generations thought the safest place to keep their money was under the mattress. Now we’re proposing the same thing as we've seen people's uneasiness about the current situation. I'm not going to deny that the idea is a little crazy, but we believe that people with this mattress not only will sleep well, but also will be more relaxed because their savings are safe."
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Locusts make their way from Egypt just before they land in Kerem Shalom near the border with Egypt, in southern Israel's Negev Desert, March 11. (Ariel Schalit/AP)
Bible comes to life as locusts swarm Israel
Locusts have descended on Israel this week, just in time for Passover. As millions of Jews commemorate the story of the children of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, including the 10 plagues that afflicted Pharaoh and his people, millions of the crunchy buggers are creeping all over Israel’s southern deserts.
This is nothing like the eighth plague of biblical times, in which locusts covered “the whole face of the earth” in a kind of collective punishment for the Egyptians whose leader refused to let his Hebrew slaves go free.
But this year is the first time since 2005 that modern Israel has had to combat locusts, which can swarm so thickly that drivers can’t see beyond their windshield. Potato farmers bemoaned the detrimental effect of a previous wave of the grasshopper-like insects several weeks ago. The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, which was on “locust alert,” has responded quickly to the latest wave with pesticides.
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But it’s not just Israel. Today the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Agriculture sprayed pesticides in Hebron, in the southern West Bank. And Egyptian farmers have suffered millions of dollars in damage after a swarm of about 30 million locusts hit Cairo earlier this month.
The most serious situation, however, appears to be in Sudan, where the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) head has warned that immature “hoppers” are lining up along a 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) stretch of the Nile and could pose a serious threat to Nile Valley crops in May.
OK, so locusts are not your average grasshopper. But still, how can they cause such massive damage?
Consider these arresting facts: They can eat their weight in crops every day; they can fly more than 80 miles a day – in swarms as dense as 200 million per square mile; and females can lay as many as 1,000 egg pods in roughly 10 square feet, according to an FAO fact sheet.
To put the threat in practical terms, one ton of locusts (just a fraction of your average swarm) can eat about as much food as 2,500 people can in a day, says FAO.
The Israelis have sought to reverse the food chain this Passover, however, by grilling the kosher insects for a crunchy, high-protein delicacy. And they’re not alone. Locust recipes abound.
A Mexican version from “Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects,” by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, calls for roasting locust torsos and sprinkling them on homemade guacamole in a taco shell. Scrap that. Sprinkle and enjoy, the cookbook says.
B’tayavon, as the Israelis would say. Bon appétit.
A man collects a copy of a newspaper at a newsstand in London, Oct. 2010. Could Ireland's model of an official Press Council and ombudsman work in Britain? (Ian West/AP/File)
Could Ireland's press regulation system work in Britain?
With the British government moving ahead on a new media regulator and the UK press in revolt against, some in the country wonder if their neighbors to the west could offer a solution. Could Ireland's model of an official Press Council and ombudsman work in Britain?
Set up by the newspaper industry in response to a government threat to introduce privacy legislation, the 13-member Press Council includes representatives of publishers, members of the public (the appointments are publicly advertised), and one from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), the leading journalists' union in Britain and Ireland.
Publications that are members, including all of the national newspapers, agree to be bound by its code of conduct, and to recognize the decisions of the council and ombudsman. Membership in the council is not mandatory, but publications that are members are generally subject to lesser damages in the event of successful court actions against them, as a result of the council and ombudsman being "recognized in statute."
The ombudsman, currently John Horgan, a former Labor party politician and journalism professor, adjudicates on complaints from subjects of newspaper stories, and if agreement cannot be found between all parties involved, he can make a ruling or refer the complaint to the Press Council for a final decision.
Seamus Dooley, the Irish secretary of the NUJ, says regulation has not been proscriptive.
The Press Council's code of conduct is more carrot than stick, and starts with a full-throated defense of a free press, saying: "The freedom to publish is vital to the right of the people to be informed. This freedom includes the right of a newspaper to publish what it considers to be news, without fear or favour, and the right to comment upon it."
It goes on, however, to detail what the Press Council sees as the correct way for publications to operate, although the tone is more aspirational than condemnatory. For example, retractions must be printed in a prominent place and ordinary members of the public are entitled to privacy.
"We're quite happy with the way it's going," says retired business journalist Martin Fitzpatrick, NUJ's appointee to the Irish Press Council. "We've never had a hugely contentious press. There is a degree of timidity, and you could fault them for not foreseeing the onset of the financial crisis, but that's not down to regulation."
The high opinion of press regulation is not universally held, however, even in the NUJ's Irish ranks.
"[British] newspapers did horrible things, but they also uncovered horrible things that were done. The effect of regulation will not be the protection of people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves at the center of press attention, it will be the protection of the rich and powerful," says Gerard Cunningham, chairman of the NUJ's freelance branch in Ireland.
(Could Ireland's regulation work in Britain? British papers rebel as UK press regulation moves closer to reality)
Mr. Cunningham, who formerly worked in the US, says the culture of the British press is, for demonstrable reasons, comparable to other countries only in very general terms.
"This is about all about competition," he says. "Maybe The New York Times and, to a lesser extent, The Christian Science Monitor have a national reach, but they're not really competing against a regional metro daily," he says.
This situation with each US metro market having a dominant player is in stark contrast with Britain, where 11 national dailies, a clutch of regional newspapers, a few specialist titles, and an independent national Scottish press all slug it out for the same pound.
"The British market is intensely competitive and they try to break every story. They really do publish and be damned," says Cunningham.
In contrast, a staggering 19 daily papers are available on the newsstands nationwide in Ireland, though nine of these are rarely read imports from the US and UK and three more are regional titles from Northern Ireland. Of the seven popular national newspapers in Ireland, two tabloids are "Celtified" editions of British newspapers and two more are hybrids of British and Irish material. All four are members of the Press Council, though their British equivalents object to press regulation.
Having a regulated press hasn't stopped the Irish government from indicating it may seek further powers, though. In February 2012, the publication by the Irish Daily Star of candid photographs of Britain's Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, prompted Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter to consider enacting new, stricter privacy legislation. The government has yet to do so, however.
South Korean Army soldiers patrol along a barbed-wire fence near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Wednesday. North Korea said Wednesday that it had cut off a key military hot line with South Korea that allows cross-border travel to a jointly run industrial complex in the North. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)
North Korea turns up volume by silencing final military hot line
North Korea's edgy game of war talk continued at ever higher volumes today with the announcement that it will cut off the last military hot line with South Korea.
“Under the situation where a war may break out any moment, there is no need to keep North-South military communications,” said the regime, according to the Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang.
The severed line of communication comes as the North, under young and new President Kim Jong-un, has said it is moving into its highest military alert status and has threatened to target Hawaii and Guam with rockets, after last month conducting its third nuclear test.
The escalating rhetoric has brought a new agreement between US and South Korean officials that would dictate military action should the North cross the border, shell islands, or harm shipping in the kind of low-level actions Pyongyang has attempted in recent years.
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US military officials called the North Korean statement “bellicose.” Many have expressed doubt that North Korea’s rockets have the range to reach US bases in Guam and Hawaii, but a few, including the editor of Jane’s Defense Weekly, estimated they could reach US military bases in Japan, according to USA Today.
Yesterday the small, poor state that is anchored by devotion to the Kim family dynasty, and is now nearly entirely dependent on China for basic sustenance but has also devoted considerable resources to its military, repeated a longstanding threat to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire,” among other similarly colorful threats.
Earlier this year, the North said it would no longer answer a hot line at the Demilitarized Zone. The hot line that the country is now threatening to shut down linked the two Koreas at the Kaesong industrial park, created in the North during the warming winds of unification in the 2000s. The economic complex has long been a symbol of the potential for North-South cooperation.
The New York Times today notes the North’s threat on the hot line follows comments from Park Geun-hye, the newly elected president of South Korea, that North Korea needed to end its nuclear threats in order to gain better traction with the South:
“If North Korea provokes or does things that harm peace, we must make sure that it gets nothing but will pay the price, while if it keeps its promises, the South should do the same,” she said during a briefing from her government’s top diplomats and North Korea policy-makers. “Without rushing and in the same way we would lay one brick after another, we must develop South-North relations step by step, based on trust, and create sustainable peace.”
Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, a veteran Korea-watcher once based in Seoul, tells The Christian Science Monitor that Pyongyang's main grievance appears to be recent United Nations sanctions targeted at the North.
Mr. Snyder argues that the meaning of the North’s sudden blustery behavior will only become clearer “once the question of the consolidation of [Kim Jong-un’s] power becomes clearer.”
Agence France-Presse today said that a significant meeting among party elites and power brokers in the closed world of Pyongyang is about to take place.
"They will discuss how to handle the nuclear issue, inter-Korean relations and North Korea's longstanding demand for a peace treaty with the United States," Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul told AFP.
Comparisons between the new Kim and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the patriarch of North Korea, are flowing freely, since there is a resemblance between the two. But Snyder notes that too little is yet known of the young Kim, who took over from his father Kim Jong-il last year, and that his youth is not necessarily a plus in such a high-stakes game.
“Right now the song is the same, but the volume is a lot louder. We don’t know his risk tolerance yet … does he understand the game he is playing?”
The US-South Korea military agreement follows a recent scrapping by the North of the historic legal armistice that effectively ended the Korean war in the 1950s. It came on the anniversary of the infamous sinking of the Choenan Navy vessel in 2010, which resulted in the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors, something that has had powerful emotional resonance in the South. (The Choenan was raised from the ocean floor, and forensics by the South claim the vessel was torpedoed by the North, something the North denies.)
USA Today quotes an Asia-watcher who feels the key to dealing with Pyongyang runs through Beijing:
US diplomats should talk to their Chinese counterparts and say, "Your ally North Korea is acting in a very belligerent and destabilizing way," said [Richard] Bush, who heads the Brookings Institution Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. "They're acting in ways that are contrary to the principles you [China] have laid out. The situation is somewhat dangerous. You need to restrain your ally."
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China's Michelle Obama? First Lady Peng Liyuan inspires fashion frenzy
If you want to make a killing on the stock market, here’s an unusual tip: Identify the fashion house behind the clothes that Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan is wearing at her next public appearance and buy shares in that company, fast.
Ms. Peng, currently touring Africa with her husband, the new Chinese President Xi Jinping, is proving a smash hit back home and inspiring fashionistas to replicate her look.
So when a news story on Tuesday identified the pearl earrings that Peng was wearing as coming from the city of Zhuji, the stock price of all the pearl producers in Zhuji rose on the news. One company’s stock rose so far so fast that market regulators capped its price rise on Wednesday.
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Peng has captured the Chinese imagination as a stylish and modern face for her country, most of whose first ladies have ranged recently from dowdy to invisible. And the state-controlled press is playing the story for all it is worth, with front page photos and breathless coverage.
“Peng Liyuan Opens the Door for Chinese Fashion and Confidence” read the enthusiastic headline of an editorial in Wednesday’s edition of Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party.
In a world where China is more often seen as a threatening potential enemy than as a friend, according to a number of recent international opinion polls, Peng is a more useful weapon for Beijing’s image-makers than an aircraft carrier.
She was already massively popular before her husband became president earlier this month; indeed, as a nationally famous singer of patriotic and military songs, she was better known than Mr. Xi until he was tapped five years as next in line for the top job. And then she dropped out of sight.
Recently she has quietly begun doing first lady-like things, such as becoming a World Health Organization ambassador in the fight against HIV-Aids. She is “widely viewed as a tremendous element of China’s soft power,” wrote leading foreign policy pundit Shen Dingli in an opinion piece for the “Global Times” earlier this week. “Now … it is time to present such soft power on the world stage.”
Peng has not opened her mouth in public yet, but has used her fashion sense to project China’s soft power. Everything she wears is Chinese made and designed, and sometimes clearly designed in the oriental style. That is a marked contrast with the sense of style that prevails among most wealthy Chinese women, which tends towards well known Western brands.
Such brands are bad news in China at the moment, too closely identified with corrupt officials and their wives at a time when Xi has promised a crackdown on corruption.
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An Afghan National Army soldier and US forces arrive to the scene after eight suicide bombers attacked a police headquarters in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Tuesday, killing five police officers and wounding four others, a security official said. (Rahmat Gul/AP)
Afghanistan car bomb injures British troops, underscores transition hurdles (+video)
As Secretary of State John Kerry met with President Hamid Karzai and oversaw the symbolic handoff of a major military prison on a surprise visit to Afghanistan this week, a suicide bombing killed five police officers in the eastern city of Jalalabad Tuesday.
The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for today’s attack, which also injured at least five Afghans at the police headquarters in the provincial capital, according to the Associated Press. In a separate incident today a car bomb blast injured at least 10 British troops on a patrol base in Helmand Province, according to the Guardian.
The timing of the violence highlights the major security challenges that remain as the United States attempts to wind down a decade of intensive military presence in the country and hand control to the Afghans.
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The attacks came just hours after Secretary Kerry and President Karzai held a rosy news conference in Kabul on the state of US-Afghan relations, which have undergone particular strain in recent weeks after Karzai accused the US of working with the Taliban to deliberately keep the country weak.
But during his trip, Kerry was glowing in his appraisal of Karzai, declaring that he and the president were “on the same page” when it came to Afghan security and reconciliation.
"I am confident the president [Karzai] does not believe the US has any interest except to see the Taliban come to the table to make peace and that we are completely cooperative with the government of Afghanistan with respect to the protection of their efforts and their people," Kerry told reporters.
Monday’s meeting was a pivot from the prickly interaction between Karzai and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Mr. Hagel’s own trip to the country earlier this month. During that visit, Hagel and Karzai abruptly called off a joint press conference after tense closed-door negotiations failed to yield progress on key diplomatic questions, including the transfer of a key US-controlled prison to Afghan hands.
The American military formally ceded control of all but a “small number” of prisoners in that facility, known as Bagram Prison, to the Afghans during Kerry’s visit Monday.
This marks the formal completion of a transfer of 4,000 Bagram prisoners that began a year ago, but hit several snags over perceived security threats. The US military, however, will continue to hold in its custody around 50 high-level foreign prisoners considered “enduring security threats,” along with hundreds of Afghans arrested since the initial transfer deal was authorized last March, reports Russia Today.
Despite its limitations, however, the transfer has potent symbolic value for Afghanistan, writes The New York Times.
Bagram Prison was the most flagrant symbol of Mr. Karzai’s lack of control. Americans detained several thousand Afghans there, and Mr. Karzai had no power to release them. His effort to wrest the prison from the Americans began in earnest more than year ago, and nearly succeeded at least twice, most recently two weeks ago, a day before Mr. Hagel’s first visit.
Each time, American military commanders backed out because of worries that the Afghans might release Taliban prisoners, who would return to the battlefield and endanger American soldiers. This time, despite those concerns, the transfer went forward.
“It’s about a shift that’s going on in how the U.S. is looking at what’s important,” said one American official knowledgeable about detention issues. “We have to look at the larger picture: What’s the U.S. strategic interest here?”
Kerry rounded out his visit Tuesday by meeting with democracy activists and female entrepreneurs at the American Embassy in Kabul. There, he traded headers with the captain of the Afghan women’s national soccer team and lauded civic leaders preparing for the 2014 elections, according to the Associated Press.
"You're engaged in a remarkable effort and the whole world is watching," Kerry said.
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Sringatin, a member of a domestic workers union, cries outside the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong Monday, March 25, 2013. Hong Kong's top court ruled against two Filipino domestic helpers seeking permanent residency Monday, the final decision in a case that affects tens of thousands of other foreign maids in the southern Chinese financial hub. (Kin Cheung/AP)
Hong Kong court rejects Filipino maids' plea for residency
Hong Kong’s top court announced that foreigners can enter the city as maids and domestic helpers, but cannot expect to settle there as permanent residents.
The verdict deals a blow to a huge contingent of Filipino maids and nannies – estimated at some 300,000 females, usually unmarried and under 35 – who make up a diaspora in Hong Kong. The domestic workers are increasingly seen as an indispensable part of the fast-paced city's social fabric, helping keep the Chinese family working and orderly in a highly competitive environment.
Yet sadly for the maids, today’s ruling reverses a lower court verdict that would have allowed the women to seek residency. Had it been upheld, the ruling would have been a breakthrough for the rights of domestic workers, who often complain of overwork, second-class status, and occasionally, abuse.
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The system for foreign workers in Hong Kong is stratified. As CNN notes today:
While other foreign workers can apply for permanent residency after spending seven consecutive years in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, domestic helpers are excluded from the law.
Justice Ma wrote in his ruling that foreign domestic helpers are "told from the outset that admission is not for the purposes of settlement."
The ruling was greeted with disappointment by campaigners.
"It's very unfortunate and it's sad but in a way it will make us stronger as it highlights the social exclusion that foreign domestic workers face in Hong Kong," said Cynthia Tellez, General Manager of the United Filipinos in Hong Kong.
In recent years the ubiquitous Filipino maid has become a staple part of Hong Kong culture. They are known for hard work, dignity, and efficiency. Collectively, they have built a kind of mini-civic society: They have their own postal system, often police themselves, have a variety of support groups, and even run ballots and campaigns for elections back home.
Most middle- and upper-echelon Hong Kong families hire a maid, and apartments usually include a tiny space as the maid’s quarters or abode.
For many years on Sundays, usually their only day off, Filipino nannies peacefully and colorfully gathered in central Hong Kong, along the main boulevard, past the city hall and the old Admiralty building, putting down blankets or chairs and pulling out lunch baskets, stretching out two-or three deep on a sidewalk in a line that often is a half-mile long.
Yet the right of maids to assemble has been under attack, and their overall legal status has been shrinking, as the city contemplates the costs (said to be $3 billion or more) of offering them the kinds of equal access that would involve education and other social services.
The South China Morning Post writes:
The judgment ends the right of abode saga started by a judicial review sought by Evangeline Vallejos Banao, a mother of five, who has worked in Hong Kong since 1986. She had argued that an immigration provision barring domestic workers from permanent residency was unconstitutional.
Mark Daly, a lawyer for Vallejos, said his client was “speechless but calmly resigned and said ’no problem.’
Vallejos won a High Court ruling in 2011 granting her the right to request permanent residency status, denied to the city’s 300,000 foreign maids until then. The decision however was overturned later on a government appeal.
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Chef Yochanan Lambiase, who in 2004 established the world's first kosher culinary institute, explains what to look for in a fish at a shop in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market. (Christa Case Bryant / The Christian Science Monitor)
As interest in kosher food surges, chefs take it gourmet
The press of humanity at Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market just might cause the uninitiated visitor to do a face-plant in a heap of eggplants.
On the eve of Passover, which begins in Israel with tonight’s traditional seder meal, the shuk is jammed with everyone from hippie tourists to religious Jews with black hats and tight side curls. Amid the shouts of vendors and the swish of plastic bags, the ultra-Orthodox and ultra-modern jockey for everything from live fish to fresh garlic stalks to rich Israeli cheese and artisan breads. Nearly everything (except the bread) is labeled “Kosher for Passover.”
“It’s the new and old noodling together. I love the feel of the past and the progression of the future,” says Yochanan Lambiase, a fifth-generation chef who fairly glides through the aisles of Machane Yehuda as he explores the magnificent palette with a small group of journalists. “That’s very much Israeli society.”
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While most of the shoppers here are Jewish, it’s no longer just Jews who are buying food grown and packaged in accordance with Jewish law, especially in North America.
Vegetarians, vegans, Hindus, Seventh-Day Adventists, and even Muslims have been increasingly choosing kosher products, driving a 64 percent growth in the US kosher market from 2003 to 2008, when it was estimated to be worth $12.5 billion. Since then the increase has been more gradual, but kosher foods remain one of the most steadily growing sectors of the expanding ethnic food market in North America, according to a March 2012 Agri-Trade Service report.
“I feel the kosher food industry has reached a pinnacle, and now we have to move it into the 21st century,” says chef Lambiase, who established the world’s first kosher culinary institute in the world here in Jerusalem in 2004 and is co-launching a new tour of the Mahane Yehuda market with guide Cliff Churgin.
Mr. Lambiase sees himself as a pioneer of sorts. He was raised in a secular British home, and his kosher career was sparked by a love of cooking rather than of Jewish law, which forbids the consumption of pork and shellfish; requires that meat and dairy dishes be kept separate; and has strict rules governing the slaughter of animals.
But he quickly became drawn in by the religious aspects. “Kosher isn’t anything to do with physical health, it has to do with spiritual health,” says Lambiase, who follows the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, a Hasidic branch of Judaism. Today, he sees other newly observant Jews as playing a role in bringing kosher food to the gastronomic attention of the world.
“I think there’s been a huge revival in Jewish religiosity over the past 10 years and … Jewish people normally know what good food is and they’re not going to take [their non-Jewish friends] out for gefilte fish.”
He heads back to his culinary institute, journalists in tow. We are more adept with our pens than with chef's knives, but he and fellow kosher chef Zev Beck are patient.
Despite the cilantro flying, tomatoes squirting on chef Beck’s jeans, and a stray garlic bulb rolling under the stainless-steel tables, after a couple of hours the rich aroma of fresh bread, shakshoukas (poached eggs in a spicy tomato base), and broiled eggplants garnished with homemade tahina wafts through the school.
If Lambiase and Mr. Beck can teach even journalists to be kosher cooks, their prospects for expanding the global ranks of kosher chefs look promising.
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Boris Berezovsky in 2008 as he arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for his hearing against Roman Abramovich. United Kingdom police have said that Berezovsky has been found dead Saturday March 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Sang Tan, File )
Russian tycoon found dead in Britain: Is it suicide?
Boris Berezovsky, once a wealthy Russian oligarch, was found dead in his home in Surrey, England.
The cause of death is unknown at this time. But speculation that Berezovsky committed suicide is rampant, especially in Russian media.
Two things are prompting the speculation. First, a Russian lawyer, Alexander Dobrovinsky, was among the first to announce his death and posted in social media the following, according to RT.com:
“Just got a call from London. Boris Berezovsky committed suicide. He was a difficult man. A move of disparity? Impossible to live poor? A strike of blows? I am afraid no one will get to know now,”
There's no indication of the quality of Dobrovinsky's source. Certainly, British police have not yet made public a cause of death.
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The second factor fueling the suicide talk is the very public decline in Berezovsky's wealth. He had lost several court cases and was known to be selling off real estate, a yacht, and art to raise funds. As The Guardian of London reports:
"Berezovsky's death comes only months after he lost a high-profile and personally disastrous court case against fellow Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. He had accused the Chelsea football club owner of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract in relation to a Russian oil company. After the claims were dismissed, he was ordered by the high court to pay £35m of Abramovich's legal costs.
His financial difficulties were recently further exacerbated after his former mistress Elena Gorbunova, 43, claimed that Berezovsky owed her $8m (£5m) in compensation over the sale of their $40m residence in Surrey."
Just days ago, Berezovsky sold his Andy Warhol limited edition print of Vladimir Lenin, known as "Red Lenin," for just over $200,000, according to the Russian media outlet RIA Novosti.
Berezovsky's political and financial success follows the arc of recent Russian history. In the 1980s, with the political opening and rise of free enterprise, he went from a quiet mathematician to powerful oligarch. His first business foray - which Russian prosecutors later said was illegal profit skimming - involved car sales for the state auto giant AvtoVAZ. Berezovsky used his initial wealth to build a media empire that included partial ownership of two national television networks and several respected newspapers.
As his wealth grew, so did his political clout.
In 1996, Berezovsky was among a group of businessmen who helped Boris Yeltsin's career. "It is no secret that Russian businessmen played the decisive role in President Yeltsin's victory," Berezovsky later told Forbes magazine. "It was a battle for our blood interests."
In return, Yeltsin sold to his backers Russian national industries at a fraction of their actual value. By the late 1990s, Berezovsky had an 80 percent ownership share in Sibneft, an oil company.
But as Agence France Presse reports "his most significant political move was the one that inadvertently sealed his fate: helping Yeltsin choose then-secret services chief Vladimir Putin as Russia's second president.
Berezovsky quickly became a key target of Putin's crackdown on the oligarchs' political independence. He fled the country and fired back with his entire media arsenal, painting the new president as a budding dictator."
The Guardian notes that "Berezovsky is been on Moscow's most wanted list since 2001 on charges of fraud, money-laundering and attempted interference in the Russian political process. A Russian court sentenced Berezovsky in absentia for embezzling $2bn from two major state companies."
But in the past year, there are reports that Berezovsky was seeking to return to Russia. The Irish Times reports that he had recently written to Mr. Putin seeking a pardon, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
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A woman waits as two people use the ATM machines in central capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Friday. Cypriot authorities were putting the final touches Friday to a plan they hope will convince international lenders to provide the money the country urgently needs to avoid bankruptcy within days. (Petros Karadjias/AP)
Cyprus still groping for a solution to a banking crisis that's roiling Europe
The instant saga of Cyprus – and whether it will go belly up, default, and shake the European, if not the world, economy like some crazed mouse that roared – continues along with enough hourly news to bring live updates here and here.
Cyprus has until Monday to come up with $7 billion and a reform plan, or face losing its creditors and sinking into ignominious pools of red ink.
Today the Russians said "nyet" to Cypriot officials, who waited in Moscow for three days to get a possible bailout. Russian oligarchs hold at least 40 percent of Cyprus bank deposits. Cypriots had hoped, for some reason, that Russia might bail out what is essentially a banking system that thrives on helping the wealthy evade paying Russian taxes.
“The next few hours will determine the future of the country,” Reuters reports Cypriot government spokesman Christos Stylianides said today, ahead of a vote on a slew of different and changing plans to stay solvent. “We must all assume our share of the responsibility.”
What first caught world attention was an EU-inspired plan, voted on and killed by Cyprus lawmakers this week, to tax or expropriate private bank deposits in the country. That sent a shudder through the minds of ordinary Europeans, not to mention a lot of Russians and Cypriots themselves.
Yet facing looming insolvency, the largest Cypriot bank today called for the nation’s parliament to levy a tax on holdings over 100,000 euros ($120,000), arguing the alternative is collapse.
Plans on Cypriot tables include the creation of “good” banks with credible holdings and “bad” banks with toxic holdings, and to cordon off the bad Greek bank debt whose exposure helped cause the problem in the first place, in the midst of a three-year euro crisis that started in Athens.
EU approval is essential to get the tranche of bailout funds from the European Central Bank. Today the Germans said no to a Cyprus pension raiding scheme that has been floated for days.
Cypriot banks remain closed, ostensibly until Tuesday, when no one knows what will happen; bank ATMs are for now providing petty cash for the commercial sustenance of regular folk and lines are long.
As the world starts to focus on why an island making up 0.2 percent of the EU economic picture could shake world markets, the question is being asked: Why would Cypriot officials turn their island into a quasi-money laundering center for offshore oligarchs and at the same time buy Greek debt that was already shaky – and imagine this would somehow turn out fine?
Paul Krugman of The New York Times continues to probe the story, writing Thursday that Cyprus has combined on one tiny Mediterranean island all the mistakes made by the European economies of Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, and so on (the so-called “PIIGS”) that have helped bring the euro crisis to bloom.
This includes “runaway banking,” the all-too familiar real estate bubbles brought by “massive overvaluation,” and the problem of not having enough productive capacity to pull out of a dive into debt when things went sour.
Mr. Krugman asks:
So then what? As a number of people have pointed out, Cyprus is arguably better positioned than Iceland to do an Iceland, because devaluing a reintroduced Cypriot currency could bring in a lot of tourism. But will the Cypriots — who haven’t even reconciled themselves to the end of their round-tripping business — be willing to go there
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