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Los Angeles Times (July 22)

2014/ 07/ 23 by jd in Global News

“It’s neither pleasant nor polite to say it, but the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 may have been the best thing to happen to President Obama’s policy on Ukraine in weeks.” The U.S. had taken the lead, but the crisis had been fading from the radar as Europe’s politicians tried to avoid sacrificing business interests with Russia. Now, however, “Putin has a problem he didn’t have a week ago: Europe’s politicians and public are watching.”

 

7/23 Issue

2014/ 07/ 23 by jd in IRCWeekly

Armed conflicts around the world continued this week. Commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Eugene Robinson writes in the Washington Post, “I am simply stating the obvious: Nobody really wants to make peace.” While the U.S. should try to minimize outright violence, he says, “realistic U.S. policy in the Middle East should assume that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue indefinitely.” The Financial Times, too, calls the conflict a “desolate picture” that “rarely varies much,” suggesting that there remains only one way out of the bloody stalemate: “Palestinians need a state of their own.”

The conflict in Ukraine, meanwhile, has taken on a new dimension with the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The New York Times writes that whoever is responsible is “a war criminal.” Investigation of the crash site, however, has been hampered by “Russian-backed rebels who have controlled the incompetent searches.” The result? New pressure is on European leaders to “enforce more stringent sanctions against Russia if it fails to cooperate.” But Europe has reason to be tepid about such sanctions. The Washington Post reports on a recent study that warns that if Russia were to cut off natural gas exports, “Winter demand could not be satisfied” in Europe. If now forced to react, Europeans “may be facing a cold winter.”

Elsewhere in the world, Australia faces its own energy-related challenges as it tries to balance environmental and economic concerns. The New York Times reports that a tax on corporate carbon emissions there has been repealed. While critics say this move makes Australia “the first country to reverse progress on fighting climate change,” Prime Minister Tony Abbot called the defunct tax “a $9 billion handbrake on our economy.”

But perhaps pro-economic and pro-environment forces need not always be opposed. Euromoney writes that “For an asset class that accounts for less than 1% of the corporate bond market, green bonds have been attracting an awful lot of attention,” noting, however, that “just how motivated this [invested] money is by the green nature of the bonds…. is unclear.”

And environment aside, the U.S. economy continues to drag its feet. The Economist writes that “evidence is mounting that America’s potential growth rate has plummeted…. Solving the short-term problem means boosting demand…. But to pep up long-term growth, America also needs to address the supply side. In particular, it needs more workers and faster increases in productivity.”

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To see the overseas media’s takes on these and other developments, you can browse the Global News highlights in app or at http://www.irken.jp/gn/. Links to the original sources are provided above, but please note these are frequently updated. Links that were valid at publication may later be broken. 

 

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