Latest updates: Baldisseri (centre) speaking at a press conference on the synod of bishops at the Vatican.
Move comes after earlier deal where Pope recognized seven clergy ordained by Beijing
VATICAN CITY: Two Chinese Catholic bishops are to take part for the first time from today in a synod, or advisory body meeting, with peers at the Vatican, the Holy See said.
“The Holy Father had invited Chinese bishops in the past but they were never able to come,” said Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who is to preside the synod of bishops on “Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment” from Oct 3-28.
The meeting of more than 300 church officials, outside experts and youth delegates will take place in the shadow of an existential crisis faced by the church owing to cases of widespread sexual abuse of minors by clergy and lay officials in several countries.
On Sept 22, the Vatican and China reached a provisional agreement under which Pope Francis recognised seven clergy initially ordained by Beijing without the Vatican’s approval.
The accord could pave the way for the normalisation of ties between the Catholic Church and the world’s most populous country.
One of those recognised, Bishop Joseph Guo Jincai, is to attend the synod along with Bishop John Baptist Yang Xiaotin, another member of the Patriotic Catholic Association (PCA), a body created by the Chinese government to administer the church.
They will join discussions on how to encourage young people to make the church their vocation, an official theme that could take a back seat to issues raised last March during a pre-synodal meeting of more than 300 youths in Rome along with 15,000 others online that were presented to church leaders.
“We want to say, especially to the hierarchy of the Church, that they should be a transparent, welcoming, honest, inviting, communicative, accessible, joyful and interactive community,” a statement issued at the end of their meeting said.
“The Church should be sincere in admitting its past and present wrongs,” they added.
Pope Francis acknowledged those concerns last week when he told young Christians in Estonia that many “are outraged by sexual and economic scandals that are not met with clear condemnation”.
The pontiff conceded that many also find the Church’s presence “bothersome or even irritating”.
He has called a meeting next February of senior Church leaders from around the world to take up the question of child protection.
Scandals in Australia, Europe, and North and South America have involved widespread claims of abuse – and cover-ups – by clergymen and lay members with one Vatican archbishop describing it as the church’s “own 9/11”.
Germany’s Catholic Church released last month a damning report showing that in Germany alone, almost 3,700 minors were assaulted between 1946 and 2014.
During their pre-synodal meeting, the Catholic youths also urged Church leaders to “speak in practical terms about controversial subjects such as homosexuality and gender issues”, which they were “already freely discussing without taboo”.
They noted in addition that young women regretted “a lack of leading female role models within the Church”.
A handful of women were to take part in the synod of bishops as official observers. - AFP
KUALA LUMPUR: Property developers are behaving more and more like local councils, Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Raja Kamarul Bahrin Shah said, noting that this has given rise to the current form of townships that are not centralised and are dominated and led by private developers.
There are developers who are acting like local councils as the latter have not been taking the lead, and this is a cause for concern, he said.
Raja Kamarul noted that traditionally, the local governments were the decision makers but this fact has changed of late.
“Long ago, it was the local government that determines what developers should build, creating markets, shopping malls, commercial, industrial, agricultural and entertainment areas, and of course, knowing how many homes need to be built because they know the population in the area,” he said in his keynote address at the opening of the one-day Housing and Property Development Colloquium on “Reimagining the Housing and Property Industry in the New Malaysia” here yesterday.
“But now, the role has shifted to the developers, giving rise to the current form of townships that are not centralised and are dominated and led by private developers,” he said.
“Most concerning is the recent trend that developers are behaving more and more like the local council themselves, in having their own private security for substantial portions of residential and commercial areas as an example, and other provisions of services and infrastructure.
“Although the local governments retain power and control where their approval is needed to build, they have often failed to take a more proactive role,” said Raja Kamarul.
He also highlighted that some local governments have failed in providing basic services to the people, causing developers to step in to fill the void.
“Local governments must find the will and desire to see their own town, cities and districts develop into comfortable townships and not allow developers to take entire pieces of land and create their own defacto privatised local government,” he said.
He also said this is why the government is looking to bring back local government elections, in order to bring back a sense of accountability by local governments.
“Once constituted, citizens can take leaders of the local government to task when services and facilities are not up to par. This should lead to more tangible and improved living conditions for the rakyat,” added Raja Kamarul.
Credit:
Ahmad Naqib Idris The Edge Financial Daily
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The sewing lines at Bernhard Furniture Company which where skilled craft
jobs are growing without the help of tariffs, and company officials
https://youtu.be/OCk4VkAKKFc
Trump's tariffs won't restore U.S. furniture jobs :
https://www.reuters.tv/v/PvWi/2018/09/27/trump-s-tariffs-won-t-restore-u-s-furniture-jobs
In a town where a 30-feet tall chair is the chief landmark, and which is synonymous with a U.S. furniture industry decimated over the years by imports from China, many greet the possibility of tariffs on Chinese goods with a shrug.
No wonder. Of three once bustling Thomasville furniture plants in the city limits, one is being demolished and cleared for parkland, another may become the site of a new police station, and a third is being converted into apartments.
President Donald Trump is threatening to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on $500 billion of goods imported from China each year, including roughly $20 billion of furniture, as a way to bring back hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost to China and other low-cost competitors.
Yet, the transformation of U.S. industries since China’s emergence as the world’s low-cost producer almost two decades ago means many no longer directly compete with Chinese imports, so tariffs may not translate so easily into more U.S. jobs.
At family-owned Bernhardt Furniture in Lenoir, some 90 miles west of Thomasville, executives say it would take about $30 million in capital investment - some 10 percent of annual sales - to resurrect standard wood furniture lines now mainly made in countries like China and Vietnam.
That is too much to commit based on a policy that a future administration could reverse.
"The theory is you turn (imports) off, the jobs come back. That's not really true... The buildings don't exist. The people don't exist. The machinery does not exist," to make the sorts of furniture that now gets imported, said Alex Bernhardt Jr., chief executive and the company founder's great grandson.
What the company needs now, executives say, is the open markets and steady economy that have allowed it to grow its workforce from below 800 at the end of the 2007-2009 recession to almost 1,500 today - partly on the basis of exports to China.
DIFFERENT COMPANY
That growth has been largely driven by demand for more customized, higher end furniture. In expanding, the 129-year-old company has been hiring not only factory workers, but also designers, marketing experts and other professionals.
In all, it is a different firm from what it was three decades ago when it first began dividing product lines between the United States and Asia.
Economists say the same is true across much of U.S. manufacturing. To invest and hire more workers, executives would need certainty, for example, that consumers would prefer U.S.-made products at a potentially higher price. They would need confidence that tariffs would last beyond the Trump administration and that production could not be shifted to other more cost-competitive countries.
Even then, there may be little incentive to go back to old product lines for industries that have changed dramatically because of globalization.
Across the Rust Belt and the former factory towns of the south, the transformation is apparent. In Buffalo, an old steel mill is now a solar panel factory, and a retail goods manufacturer now houses an office and restaurant park. Near Dayton, Ohio, a shuttered GM plant has reopened as a Chinese-owned auto glass company. Abandoned factories throughout North Carolina have landed on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of "brownfield" sites that need cleanup.
Some companies are considering moving production from China as a result of the tariffs, but the jobs are unlikely to head home.
Illinois-based CCTY Bearing, for example, said it planned to move U.S.-bound production from Zhenjiang, China, to a new plant near Mumbai in India to keep labor costs down.
JLab Audio's China-made Bluetooth products are not being taxed yet, but its chief executive Win Cramer had been scouting for suppliers in Vietnam and Mexico.
"I would love to build products onshore, but consumers have proven time and time again that "Made in America" isn't as valuable a statement as it once was," Cramer said. "They make decisions based on the cost."
The price of, say, its Bluetooth earbud would jump from $20 to as much as $50 if it was made in the United States, Cramer said, far more than what tariffs would add to the cost of imports.
To be sure, early reactions suggest that foreign companies that make U.S.-bound goods in China may move some of that production to the United States. Still, countries such as Vietnam may ultimately benefit the most from Trump's tariffs.
Japanese construction and mining equipment maker Komatsu Ltd < 6301.T > has said it has already shifted some of its production of parts for U.S.-built excavators from China. Part of that production moved to the United States, but some also went to Mexico and Japan.
In South Korea, LG Electronics <066570 .ks=""> and its rival Samsung Electronics <005930 .ks=""> are considering moving parts of U.S.-bound refrigerator and air conditioner production to Mexico, Vietnam or back home, but not to the United States, according to company sources and local media.
STEADY RECOVERY
The responses to Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum show how such steps create both winners and losers.
Producers such as U.S. Steel and Century Aluminum have said they will add at least several hundred jobs as a result of the higher prices they can charge.
Mid-Continental Nail, however, laid off 130 workers because of those higher steel prices, and furniture parts maker Leggett & Platt has warned that rising metal prices would prompt it to shift production abroad.
So far, Washington has imposed duties on $250 billion of Chinese imports and Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on all Chinese goods.
Many economists project new tariffs would on balance either slow down hiring or cause job losses in a manufacturing sector where employment has grown by 10 percent over the past eight years without special protection.
(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Q1AFUW)
The furniture industry, among the hardest hit by Chinese imports, has added 43,000 jobs since its employment hit a low of 350,000 in 2011, helped by the recovering housing market and strong consumer demand.
Industry officials say skilled upholsterers and other workers are hard to find, echoing the Federal Reserve's concern about the impact of worker shortages on the U.S. economy.
In Thomasville, few expect that tariffs will bring furniture manufacturing back to its heyday, nor does the community need it, says city manager Kelly Craver, whose parents worked in the furniture and textile industries.
Since the recession, Thomasville has become a residential hub for growing nearby cities such as Greensboro and Charlotte. It also has its own mix of manufacturing and white collar jobs.
Mohawk Industries recently expanded its Thomasville laminate flooring facility while the Old Dominion Freight Line transportation firm and the fast-growing Cook Out burger chain have corporate headquarters there.
"We, for the very first time in this city's existence, are going to have a diversified economy," Craver said.
'Leadership has always been about generosity to those who are less
well endowed and fortunate than you are. Often, it is not generosity of
kind, because that would be buying of votes, but generosity of spirit.' - Tan Sri Andrew Sheng
WHY is it that in the last days of September, 10 years after the failure of Lehman Brothers, the world feels as if it is a dangerous place?
The
filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by financial services firm
Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, remains the largest bankruptcy
filing in U.S. history, with Lehman holding over US$600,000,000,000 in
assets. Wikipedia
President Trump’s remarkable speech to the United Nations this week was supposed to re-state the New Order that America has envisioned for the world. And all he got was a laugh.
https://youtu.be/Dqao0PqMgnE
But it was an important speech, because it spelt out more clearly what everyone knew since January 2017 – his Administration is dismantling what America has stood for since the Second World War.
Out goes the vision of a liberal rule-based stable world under US leadership. What replaces it is a “no holds barred” reality show of bilateral “Art of the Deal” negotiations supposedly to solve what is paining America. Never mind the collateral damage on everyone else, even if they are ultimately American consumers. What everyone heard is that the White House does not care too much about allies or enemies, only what is good for America First, trumped by the speaker’s ego.
Speeches to the United Nations has never been about foreign policy. Speaking in front of 193 member countries, the national leader is actually addressing his home audience, a photo-opportunity to show that as a member of the United Nations, your voice is heard by the whole wide world. Accordingly, other than the famous 1960 case of Soviet Leader Khruschev making his point by banging his shoe at the podium, most national leader speeches to the United Nations are boring homilies. They tend to praise themselves, pay due respect to the UN, and expound what Miss Congeniality says in all beauty contests, “world peace!”
What we got instead from President Trump was raw and edged, “America’s policy of principled realism means we will not be held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies, and so-called experts who have been proven wrong over the years, time and time again.” That statement made a powerful indictment of “experts”, because his supporters feel that it is the elite experts that have run the country for 70 years who have let them down.
If America is doing so well economically, militarily and technologically, why should her middle class feel so insecure? And it is lashing out at everyone else.
The answer lies in not what the speech said, but what it omitted. Everywhere in the world, not least in America, the greatest existential concerns are inequality and climate change. Almost nothing was said about both issues, which are stressing societies and pushing immigration from poorer neighbours across borders to richer nations with cooler climates.
Instead, what was decided was non-participation in the Global Compact on Migration, withdrawal from the Human Rights Council and non-recognition of the International Criminal Court. There was also a barrage against Opec, which contains some of the US’s strongest allies. If other bodies like the World Trade Organisation or even the United Nations do not do America’s bidding, then the cutting of funds or withdrawal is a matter of time. Does that imply that the US will now veto every World Bank or IMF loan to members that she does not like?
In short, it is all about anti-globalisation. In the same breath that “We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism,” Trump appeals to the passion and pride of nationalism. “The passion that burns in the hearts of patriots and the souls of nations has inspired reform and revolution, sacrifice and selflessness, scientific breakthroughs, and magnificent works of art.”
Never mind if a lot of that sacrifice and selflessness was by immigrants and new arrivals.
Outsiders who used to admire America as an open society founded by immigrants with new ideas on how to build a more just society and free economy find instead one that has an increasingly closed mind to global issues. It does seem strange that American innovation, entrepreneurship and dynamism which drew continuously on new talent initially from Europe and then the rest of the world is now walling up its borders, physically, legally and mentally.
There are 40 million immigrants in the US today, representing 13% of the US population. Immigrants founded nearly one-fifth of the Fortune 500 companies, such as Google, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Colgate Palmolive, Pfizer, and eBay. Today, much of Silicon Valley talent feel like working in the United Nations, diverse, noisy and creative.
The irony of America drawing on global talent and resources is that she has no need to pay for it from exports, but can easily print more dollars. In other words, the Grand Bargain of global trade was the ability of the US to pay for real goods and services with something that can be printed at near zero marginal cost. Even the Europeans are now creating a separate payment system outside the US dollar dominated SWIFT system to avoid being punished for “trading with the enemy”.
When contracts of trust are being renegotiated, no one can feel at ease. One can never solve global problems unilaterally or even bilaterally, let alone calls for more national patriotism. And as the English writer Samuel Johnson scribbled in 1775, a year before US independence from Britain, “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Leadership has always been about generosity to those who are less well endowed and fortunate than you are. Often, it is not generosity of kind, because that would be buying of votes, but generosity of spirit.
This side of the Pacific, there is awareness that the tensions will not go away with Trump or a change in the November elections. What has happened is that the US establishment has put political interests ahead of economic interests, which means that any settlement will have to go beyond economic considerations.
If trade and political tensions are in for the long haul, can the current US market enthusiasm have sufficient strategic patience?
Now we understand why no one is laughing.
Credit; Think Asian Andrew Sheng
Tan Sri Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective.
https://youtu.be/OCk4VkAKKFc 
