Fil-Am leaders react to P-Noy's ratings dip

 President Benigno Aquino III has only been in office for barely a year, but more people in the Philippines are expressing their dissatisfaction over his performance.
A recent Social Weathers Station (SWS) survey shows another 5 point-drop in Aquino’s ratings.
The SWS says respondents in earlier surveys have been concerned with the rising inflation and slow progress in the justice system in the Philippines.
Rodel Rodis led the Filipino-Americans who raised over a $100,000 for Aquino’s presidential campaign. He said a 5 point-drop is not bad.
Rodis, president of the U.S. Pinoys for Good Governance said, “You need to consider that his predecessor, GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) had a negative 39% — and he has 64%. The fact that he went down from 69% to 64% — while that is a concern — is not that bad.”
Ray Satorre led the the Fi-lAms who staunchly criticized Aquino during the elections. They backed Senator Manny Villar.
Satorre said, “Well you can only please Filipinos for as long as there are jobs, creation of industries, roads, infrastructure and emphasis on education.”
Rodis said there are reasons why the economy is down — and Aquino cannot be faulted for it.
Rodis said, “The situation in the Middle East is causing a lot of Filipino overseas Filipino workers to return. That’s not the result of any policy or anything he could have done. That affects the amount of remittances these OFWS send — and the Philippine economy depends on it greatly.”
Satorre said the drop in ratings could also be due to Aquino’s penchant for allegedly protecting friends, classmates and shooting buddies — giving them positions in government.
Satorre said, “You have to show that you’re a leader for everyone — not just for a chosen few.”
Rodis, to a certain extent, agrees to allegations that Aquino awards to close to him in government.
“He has to find better caliber people. It should not be based on personal friendships but on competition,” Rodis said.
But he added that, so far, Aquino has shown that he will not tolerate corruption in government.
If anything, these FilAm community leaders said the drop in ratings should only encourage Aquino to do better in his job — and prove to more people that he truly is the right man for the job.

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Republicans pound Barack Obama

Republican presidential candidates led by frontrunner Mitt Romney used their first big televised debate to lash out at President Barack Obama -- but not each other.
The debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, late Monday did little to define differences between the seven candidates in the unwieldy Republican line-up as White House hopefuls reserved their venom for Obama on the economy and foreign policy.
The civil exchanges left Romney, who has a slight, but consistent lead in the polls, still looking like the man to beat for the nomination.
Standing behind the centre podium in CNN's ultra modern studio, the carefully combed Romney looked suitably presidential as he led the charge against Obama.
"Any one of the people on this stage would be a better president than President Obama," Romney said.
"Why isn't the president leading? He isn't balancing our budget and he isn't leading on jobs. He's failed the American people... And that's why he's not going to be reelected."
Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman and leading light of the staunchly conservative Tea Party movement, momentarily upstaged the other six when she used her opening comments to announce that she had just formally registered her candidacy.
Bachmann, the only woman on the stage, pulled her punches when opportunities came to attack Romney, but she almost shouted during assaults on Obama.
"President Obama has failed his leadership," she charged.
Newt Gingrich, a veteran Republican who was speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s, piled in to attack "the Obama depression."
The presidential election is not until November 2012. But candidates were using this event -- the first of many over the coming months -- to solidify their sometimes poor name recognition across the country and position themselves for a grueling campaign.

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Special report: Australia's big dig for foreign workers

 Lucille Lievaux, a 25-year-old French geologist, commutes to work on a plane, a 1,300-km journey from Australia's Indian Ocean city of Perth to the mining town of Karratha, a smudge of suburbia on the continent's barren northwest coast. 


Slim, blonde and passionate about her job, she sits in Karratha's busy single-storey airport, waiting for a jet to take her home. She has swapped her hard-hat and orange-striped overalls for a short-sleeved cotton top, jeans and sneakers. Wearing her sunglasses like a hair-band, she looks out of place in a departure lounge crowded mostly with unshaven men. 



Only the dirt beneath her short fingernails and tanned, weathered hands would suggest she has something in common. 


"Australia is like an El Dorado," says Lievaux, who came a year ago on a holiday. She now nets $5,000 a month, working two weeks out of every three at the Whim Creek prospect, an old open-cut copper mine dug out of the red rocky plain. 


"It's so easy, so easy to find a job here as a geologist."

And it's so hard for Australia to find enough workers like Lievaux to sustain its mining boom. The tightening labor market is driving up wages, and combined with the resurgent Aussie dollar, is putting pressure on the entire manufacturing sector. 


Lievaux may earn about $60,000 a year after tax and be chauffeured to work in a jet, but she is not particularly well paid by the standards of Karratha, an Aboriginal word meaning "good country, and other remote boom towns. 



A mine supervisor can earn in excess of $200,000, more than the head of the Federal Reserve. A truck-driver's salary easily runs into six figures. A construction worker can make over $150,000, more than a doctor or lawyer. 


"You can get girls cleaning at the mine camps and they can easily earn $100,000 a year," says Tracy Reis, 42, a travel agent based in Karratha. 


The reason for this labor shortage, and the sky-high wages that come with it, is simple: Australia, with a population of 22 million, does not have the workforce to exploit its enormous natural bounty -- at least not at the pace required to satisfy Asia's hunger for resources. 


The mining and resources industry, including oil and gas, has roughly $400 billion in new projects on the drawing board in Australia and will need another roughly 70,000 workers over the next five years alone, according to government estimates. 


The construction industry is projected to need another 196,000 workers over the same period, many of them associated with new mining and energy projects. 


The boom is just beginning and, already, labor is short -- not just for skilled jobs like geologists but also for unskilled work, creating a situation where even building laborers, cleaners, cooks and drivers are earning stratospheric wages. 


But rather than flinging open the doors to foreign guest workers to fill these lower-level jobs, as countries such as Singapore and Dubai have done, Australia is taking measured and, some economists say, inadequate steps to import overseas labor.

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Indonesia backs Christine Lagarde for IMF job

Emerging economy Indonesia threw its backing on Sunday behind France's Christine Lagarde to become head of the International Monetary Fund. 

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A late challenge from Israel's Stanley Fischer, announced on Saturday, faltered as fast as it emerged.

Indonesia was previously non-committal on the race for the top IMF job as Southeast Asian and other emerging market nations discussed the possibility of putting forward a candidate from their region.

Lagarde, already backed by the European Union and a handful of smaller countries, gained a personal message of approval from her opposite number in Jakarta, Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo.

Several large emerging economies have been critical of the longstanding tradition of the IMF being led by Europeans.

The French finance minister, who is on a world tour to drum up support, said during a Sunday stop in Cairo she had got "very affirmative" support there, suggesting new fans now included two of the world's most populous Muslim countries.

The United Arab Emirates declared its support for her on Sunday.

The top position at the world's main rescue-lending agency became vacant after Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned following his arrest by police on May 14. He has been charged with the attempted rape of a New York hotel maid, which he denies.

On Saturday Bank of Israel boss Stanley Fischer, once second-in-command at the IMF, said he was joining the race. Until then her only real challenger had been Mexican central bank chief Augustin Carstens, whose bid has been seen to be trailing badly.

Fischer's surprise move looked something of a long shot. At 67 he is two years past the maximum set for applicants.

Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz admitted on army radio hours that Fischer's "chances are not great", because of politics as well as his age.

"Were it purely professional one would be hard pressed to find a better person than Fischer," Steinitz added.

Fischer was born in Zambia but holds both Israeli and US citizenship. The former could pose a problem for Arab countries and the latter because the IMF job normally goes to a European on the grounds that a US national already gets to fill another post, the top job at the World Bank.

Fischer's IMF record may additionally be questioned in Asia, where he remains associated with harsh IMF-backed free-market policies the region was forced to adopt in the late 1990s in return for aid to counter a financial crisis.

MORE PROGRESS FOR LAGARDE

"Personally I support France," Indonesian Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said.

"She is a very professional person. She is smart in interacting between institutions, and has high integrity and skills," the minister said in comments during an economic forum in the Indonesian capital.

Lagarde's latest campaign stops included Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

Mexico's Carstens visited New Delhi on Friday but appeared to fail to secure backing.

India and the other biggest emerging market economies China, Brazil, South Africa and Russia have called for an end to Europe's grip on the top IMF job but they have failed to put up a candidate of their own or explicitly back Carstens.

"There is not the capacity to build consensus among the emerging market nations behind one candidate, irrespective of who that person is, and besides that the Europeans feel very strongly," said Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group.

"I think it's virtually impossible to unseat Lagarde at this point."

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Obama calls on private sector to create jobs

US president Barack Obama on Saturday called for the private sector to create more jobs, but underlined the government’s role in promoting professional education.
‘Now, government is not — and should not be — the main engine of job-creation in this country. That’s the role of the private sector,’ the president said in his weekly radio and internet address.
‘But one thing government can do is partner with the private sector to make sure that every worker has the necessary skills for the jobs they’re applying for,’ Obama added.
His comments came after labour department figures showed only 54,000 new jobs had been created in May, just a quarter of the February-April pace; the unemployment rate had edged up to 9.1 per cent.
The White House and economists cautioned that the poor data was likely a monthly blip, but it has fuelled allegations that Obama’s economic policies are failing, 18 months ahead of the presidential election.
The president noted that the US economy had not got into what he called a ‘mess’ overnight, and would not resolve its problems quickly.
‘It’s going to take time,’ he warned.
Obama pointed to the importance of investing in wind power, solar power, and biofuels to make America less dependent on foreign oil and to clean up the environment.
‘These are steps we know will make a difference in people’s lives — not just twenty years from now, or ten years from now, but now, and in the months to come,’ the president said.

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Clinton in talks about possible move to World Bank

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seeking to become president of the World Bank, according to a report.

Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job next year in order to become head of the World Bank.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a news conference after the third contact group meeting on Libya, at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi June 9, 2011. Clinton said on Thursday talks were under way with people close to Muammar Gaddafi and there was "the potential" for a transition of power in Libya.

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The former first lady is already one of the most influential leaders in President Barack Obama's cabinet. She also competed with him for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007 and 2008.

She has publicly said that she did not plan to stay on at the State Department for more than four years - a post she has held since early 2009.

Associates now say she has her eye on having the World Bank job, should the Bank's current president, Robert Zoellick, leave at the end of his term in the middle of 2012.

"Hillary Clinton wants the job," said one source who knows the secretary well.

A second source concurred with the first. And a third said Obama has expressed his support of the change in role.

It is not known if Obama will formally agree to nominate Clinton for the post, which would require approval by the 187 member countries of the World Bank. The White House declined to comment.

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Who's the man she wants writing her a poem?

Katrina Kaif doesn't believe in making her face look like a pancake

Katrina Kaif is considered one of the most beautiful actresses in Bollywood. But, the beauty doesn't believe in making her face look like a pancake. She likes keeping it simple and natural without any make up adding to her look."I prefer staying away from makeup, I don't like it. It is just because of the shoots and events that I have to use makeup as it is a part of an actress' profession. When at home I keep it natural. I feel good only when I'm away from worries and surrounded by people who love me," says Katrina. Kat is enjoying all the success. "I shall treasure my success and show it off to my grandchildren," says the ecstatic actress. 

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She is considered one of the most beautiful women in Bollywood, but surprisingly no one has ever written any romantic poems for Katrina Kaif. So Kat's made it known that she wants a poem written for her, and she's even zeroed in on the man for the job.

"Nobody has ever written a poem for me. But if someone actually writes a poem for me, I think that will be very romantic," she said at the launch of Pritish Nandy's book of love poems 'Tonight, This Savage Rite'.

And it's not one of B'wood's hot hunks that Katrina has in mind to write her a poem. The 26-year-old surprised everyone when she said: "I want Gulzar saab to write poems for me."

Gulzar, 74, who has written many songs for Hindi films and has many poetry books to his credit, was present at the event and said: "Inshallah, I would write a poem for Katrina for sure."

And what did the star have to say about love itself? "Even though love is known to cause pain, disappointment, disillusionment, still I don't want to be pessimistic about love. I would rather want to have a positive approach to love. I believe that there can be a happy ending, because love is the most beautiful thing in the world."

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