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A file photo of a man playing with children at Pacific Harbour Beach in Fiji.
It is happening: in one Fiji village, people have packed their bags and moved to higher ground.
Residents of Vunidogolo, a Fijian village where farmland and homes got regularly flooded during the high tide, have relocated under the country’s climate change refugee program, says a report in the Fiji Times. The report says that relocation included the construction of over 30 houses, fish ponds, and farms, which cost the island’s government about $900,000.
“This cost includes the construction of the 30 houses, fish ponds and copra drier, farms and other projects we have set up in the new village site,” a government official told the Times. “It is to help the villagers earn an income while living in their new village.”
The houses have been fully constructed, painted and prepared well, he said.
Other villages, where seawater flows into the village compound during high tide, are also being considered for relocation.
Fiji, in the South Pacific Ocean, is considered threatened by climate change.
The country’s National Climate Change Policy says it expects global sea level changes to more than double by the end of the century, based on projections from the fourth U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.
(The IPPC’s Fifth Assessment Report released in September 2013, however, was worse and predicted that ocean levels would rise by as much as three feet by the end of the century due to climate change.)
While Vunidogolo’s residents are in-home climate change refugees, a Kiribati man asked a New Zealand court to grant him refugee status because rising sea levels make it too dangerous for him and his family to return home. The judge ultimately rejected his claim.
Raveena Aulakh is the Toronto Star’s environment reporter. Follow her on Twitter @raveenaaulakh
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been ready for his close-up all his political life, with not always flattering results. But his career as a cover boy slid again this month, with two satirical covers popping up on heavyweight magazines the Economist and the New Yorker.
“What better way to depict the Russian president’s predilection for self-promotional stunts, of which the winter Olympics in Sochi is merely the most prominent example?” chortled the Economist in an editor’s note.
The cover in question is slugged The triumph of Vladimir Putin, featuring a spandex-clad Vlad on an Olympic rink, arms raised for applause, while a female figure tagged “Russia” sits sprawled on cracked ice.
The New Yorker, twisting the satirical scalpel, shows a flirtatious Putin strutting his stuff in an ice-dancing costume and eye makeup, to an approving audience of Putin clones. That’s titled Jury of his Peers.
Ouch!
Of course this sort of thing isn’t new to Putin, whose skin is thinner than the ice on which the $50 billion Sochi effort is balanced.
Economist covers (among others) have pilloried him in the past, including one titled Russia Resurgent – with a Lenin-like Putin towering above a military parade while jets form up behind him, like a wartime Soviet propaganda poster. Then there’s the Rough Guide to Hell, with Putin engulfed in a bloody inferno along with ally Bashar Assad and bad hair icon Kim Jong-un against a Dante-like backdrop of ruin.
To toss his muscular machismo in his foes’ faces, Putin has fired back with a PR campaign that outdoes Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi for sheer flamboyance: tranquillizing tigers in the wilds, riding bare-chested through the tundra, throwing opponents on the judo mat and strapping into a hang-glider to “guide” Siberian cranes on their migratory path. (I could go on, but I’m out of breath.)
In the last election campaign, Putin’s spin doctors turned his KGB past into spy appeal, recruiting scantily clad “Bond girls” to buff his image. A song was composed for women who want a man “just like Putin.” He was even declared the “sexiest man in Russia.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
At home, of course, Putin gallops all over the opposition, jails dissidents, whistleblowers and environmentalists and presides over a regime that believes that with enough force, you really can fool all the people all of the time. Outside that Kremlin bubble, though, sometimes the people just can't resist making a fool of you.
Olivia Ward covered the former Soviet Union from 1992 to 2002 as a correspondent and bureau chief.
Security tight in Sochi. (Alessandro Della Bella photography)
All those proud parents going over to Sochi to see their Olympic kids fly down the ski hills or rocket down the luge are getting a warning from the Canadian government: Watch your back.
On Thursday, Canada's Minister of State Lynne Yelich updated its travel advice for those planning to attend the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. The Olympics begin on Feb. 7 and the Paralympic Games begin on March 7.
"We continue to advise all Canadians travelling to the 2014 Winter Games to take sensible precautions and maintain a high level of vigilance at all times and in all places," Yelich said in a statement.
While the host country is responsible for all athletes, teams and visitors, Yelich added the Canadian government and its agencies are working with the Russian government and "like-minded allies" to provide security for travellers during these "exciting events."
Specifically, when it comes to public transit, Ottawa advises, "Whenever possible, limit your use of public transportation that is not affiliated with the Games. If you must use public buses or trains, be particularly vigilant and aware of your surroundings at all times."
And, if you happen to be on prescription medication, a special word of warning. Russian authorities have placed "special security measures and restrictions" on various things like prescription drugs. If you are at a venue and you have your migraine pills with you, you've also got to have a copy of the prescription to show officials.
If you actually make it to Sochi, sounds like you might want to think twice about leaving your hotel room.
Tanya Talaga is the Star's global economics reporter. Talaga wrote about the $50 billion cost of the Sochi Olympic games in the Sunday Star. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga
Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, left, chats with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana this week as Castro's wife, Dalia Soto del Valle, listens in.
He’s 87, he’s apparently still alert and intellectually engaged, and he’s still capable of stealing the show.
The “he” in question is former Cuban president Fidel Castro, of course, and he’s been chatting up a succession of Latin American leaders this week, as Havana hosts a regional summit of an organization known as CELAC, Spanish acronym for the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
Photographs show an apparently healthy Fidel holding court, separately, with Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, among other political luminaries gathered in the Cuban capital for the round of meetings.
Neither the United States nor Canada belongs to the organization.
The elder Castro brother was laid low in 2006 by a gastro-intestinal ailment that nearly cost him his life. Since then, he has largely withdrawn from public view, replaced as Cuba’s president by his slightly younger brother, Raúl, a considerably less flamboyant – and more pragmatic – man.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, left, exchanges views with Castro this week in Havana.
It is rare to see the former ruler in so domestic a setting or accompanied in public by the woman variously described as his wife or companion.
Still bearded, with that strikingly familiar visage, Castro in recent years has traded in his olive-green military attire for a distinctly casual if not somewhat sloppy look that seems to consist exclusively of checkered shirts and track suits. As for cigars, he gave those up decades ago.
Oakland Ross is a foreign affairs reporter for the Toronto Star.
The International Court of Justice at The Hague awarded all of the area in light pink to Peru, while dividing the dark-pink area roughly in half, giving the northern portion to Peru and the southern parcel to Chile. Meanwhile, Bolivia remains without direct access to the sea. (Graphic credit: Pace International Law Review.)
El Comercio – Peru’s leading newspaper – called it a “Solomon-like judgment.”
Meanwhile, El Mercurio – the most prominent paper in neighbouring Chile – said the ruling recognized the claims of both countries.
If that seems like an anti-climactic end to a passionately disputed international conflict, well, probably it was.
But nobody in either Peru or Chile seemed too unhappy about the result – a decision handed down Monday by the International Court of Justice at The Hague that pretty much split the difference in resolving a long-running disagreement over maritime rights between the two South American neighbours.
Peru filed the case at The Hague in 2008 in an effort to back its claim to a large area of the Pacific Ocean extending from the terrestrial border region between the two countries. The waters in question are stirred by the cool Humboldt Current and include some of the most valuable fishing grounds on the planet. According to an Associated Press report, an estimated $200 million in annual fishing revenues were at stake, in addition to huge quantities of national pride.
Already acrimonious, the dispute was further fueled by ancient tensions between Lima and Santiago, reaching back to the 19th Century War of the Pacific. Chile triumphed over Peru in that conflict. Its forces occupied the Peruvian capital for a time and exacted major territorial gains. The long-ago defeat remains a sore point for many Peruvians and continues to cause a certain element of distrust in their dealings with Chileans.
According to the Chilean position on the case before The Hague, the maritime boundary between the two countries in the contested area should have extended for 80 km. from the coast along a line running parallel to the Equator.
For their part, the Peruvians favoured a boundary that extended southwest from the coast, more or less following the direction the terrestrial border would have taken if it were prolonged across the sea .
In the end, the apparently even-handed justices at The Hague drew a line in the water that did a bit of both, giving each country some but not all of what it sought. Peru won the greater maritime area, while Chile may have gained the more lucrative fishing rights – or so it seemed. The experts voiced differing opinions.
Both Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s president-elect, and Peruvian President Ollanta Humala seemed reasonably pleased with the outcome, which cannot be appealed. The two countries are increasingly interdependent economically, and the two leaders seemed bent on avoiding further conflict.
Now, perhaps, Chile and Peru can get back to another dispute that divides them – a conflict over pisco, a grape-based libation that both countries claim as their national drink. They have been fighting over that one for years.
As a post-script, it should be noted that this week’s judgment from The Hague in no way resolves yet another and possibly even more fervent South American territorial dispute, also dating back to the War of the Pacific. Bolivia fought in that war, too, and its losses involved more than a parcel of land. In losing to Chile, Bolivia was forced to relinquish its access to the sea and has been a brooding land-locked republic ever since.
The Bolivians still have a navy, though.
Oakland Ross is a foreign affairs reporter for the Toronto Star.
Brian Gallagher, United Way worldwide CEO. (The Guardian)
A who's who of world leaders just got finished meeting in Davos.
As usual, the annual meeting attracts an impressive array of politicians -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, President of the Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani -- and key players in the management of the global economy such as Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
Every year these folks spend four days meeting and greeting the heads of the worlds largest corporations and business leaders from Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo to Bill Gates to Unilever's Paul Polman.
Even Pope Francis sent a message to those gathered in the Swiss resort town, "I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it."
Also in attendance was Brian Gallagher, the CEO and president of the United Way worldwide. The United Way raised $5.4 billion worldwide last year. There are 1,800 local United Way's in 41 countries. Consequently, the United Way in Toronto is one of the single largest United Way's in the world in terms of revenue.
So how relevant is Davos to the head of one of North America's biggest philanthropic organizations?
"It is like a lot of things," said Gallagher, back in Washington D.C. after the meeting. "It is what you make of it. You could and just go and essentially just listen to people and take a week to have a pretty passive experience, or, a social one, I guess. But I don’t take it forgranted. It is really business leaders and government leaders, not many NGOs like myself. I focus on relationships. There are lots of people I don’t know."
Gallagher says Davos opens doors to those he wouldn't normally get to meet. This was his sixth forum.
"It is important for non-profits to do as much as we can to (remind) business and government leaders that civil society matters. And as you talk of the global economy, you need citizens at the centre of it," Gallagher said.
A big focus this year was on income inequality. That was refreshing, he said.
"Income inequality is close to my heart. Some governments talk about it but it wasn’t until this year that businesses started to talk about it. And no matter what anyone says, until business talks about it, it won’t (matter.)"
While that was a step forward, Gallagher said he had hoped to see more concrete thoughts and strategic plans on how to address it.
"But at least it made it into the narrative ... I still think business and government leaders see the potential of narrowing the income gap as a matter of public policy or social solutions and not one of economic behaviour or change. That is what we didn’t hear enough about."
Businesses don't "yet understand" how much their influence matters in closing the income gap such as placing an emphasis on community value instead of shareholder value and the importance of emphasizing more long-term investments and less on what the quarterly earnings are.
Unilever's CEO Paul Polman told Davos his corporation plans on shifting to 6 month, not quarterly reporting, said Gallagher.
He applauded this move. Reporting of longer term returns is the only way to build income inequality into a company's economic strategy. It's a positive step, Gallagher added.
Tanya Talaga is the Star's global economics reporter. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga
An aerial view of Liechtenstein. (Daan Hoffman Photography)
If you are hiding your money from Ottawa in the principality of Liechtenstein you may want to move it out of there.
Ah, Liechtenstein, the tiny landlocked nation nestled between Switzerland and Austria that is trying desperately to shed its notorious tax haven status. Nothing has been the same since 2000, when two big international reports slammed the principality for a banking system that enabled Russian, Italian and Colombian gangs to launder money easily, according to the BBC.
Liechtenstein is one of Europe's last states to be ruled by a monarchy. The German speaking nation is home to about 37,000 people. (No, Anne Hathaway does not live there with Julie Andrews.)
On January 26, the Canadian government's agreement with Liechtenstein for the Exchange of Information on Tax Matters, came into full force.
To mark the occasion, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird travelled to Liechtenstein on Monday to meet with Hereditary Prince Alois. Baird did not have to travel far as he was previously over in Davos at the World Economic Forum.
"Liechtenstein has been a reliable partner for Canada in promoting human rights and the rule of law," said Baird, according to a statement from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The agreement is being hailed as an important step in the fight against international tax evasion.
According to the Canadian Department of Finance release, the two nations both recognize the "well-developed economic ties" between the two parties and they wish to "further develop their relationship by co-operating to their mutual benefit in the field of taxation."
What does that mean? It means both parties have to hand over all tax information, including that which could be possibly relevant to the determination, assessment and collection of a persons taxes, tax claims and the investigation or prosecution of that persons tax matters.
For Canada, that simply includes all tax information administered by Ottawa. But for Liechtenstein, the agreement covers a host of complicated tax information laws governing personal, corporate, real estate capital gains tax, wealth tax, coupon tax, estate and inheritance tax, even value-added tax.
What exactly does the agreement cover when it refers to the sharing of all tax information?
It means turning over any fact, statement or record in any form, whatsoever. Translation: You have got to find someplace else to hide your undeclared income.
Tanya Talaga is the Star's global economics reporter. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga
Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt at a European Union leaders' summit at the EU council headquarters in Brussels last month. Photo: Reuters/Laurent Dubrule
When you think of Sweden do you flash on blonde supermodels, Ikea, or the blood-spattered thrillers of Stieg Larsson?
Quite likely.
What you probably won’t think of are happy taxpayers. But unlike America’s Republicans, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives or Ford Nation, Swedish politicians who want to be on the right side of electoral history are trending toward tax hikes.
According to Bloomberg news, in the upcoming September election voters are preparing to punish the current centre right coalition of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt for his eight-year tax cutting agenda aimed at letting Swedes take home more of their pay.
Say what? Unlike the North American tax trouncers, who have battled for decades to put taxes in the same category as terrorism, Swedes would rather pay now for benefits later. A December poll showed that nearly six in 10 Swedes “opposed further income tax cuts.” They seem ready to press the delete button on the neo-liberal trend that has left millions in the West scrambling for survival.
Their Scandinavian brand of social democracy has made Sweden the best place in the world to grow old, and is rated best for government and global information technology. It’s second on the Democracy Index and close to the top of the international income equality scale. Children from 1-5 are guaranteed a place in a public kindergarten, university fees are state subsidized – and for school kids, there is free lunch.
Not surprising, then, that Swedes have looked southwards anxiously as other European countries were eviscerated by austerity after they were overwhelmed with debt. Spiking unemployment followed, along with a shredded social safety net, resulting in public unrest and anger at political systems that had palpably failed to contain corporate and personal recklessness.
Swedes are also worried by a recent slide in education standards and escalation of the jobless rate to 8 per cent.
The most popular solution so far is to chop the tax cutters who would undermine social programs and the all-important social contract. Some polls put the opposition more than 10 points ahead of Reinfeldt’s coalition. The voters are looking at the cost of his cuts – shrunken unemployment and sickness benefits – and saying “read our lips.”
Olivia Ward has covered Europe, the former Soviet Union, Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.
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Taiji Watanabi shows a bottle of Kyoto sake in his Tokyo liquor store. (Rick Westhead)
TOKYO--Customers at Taiji Watanabi's liquor shop get something extra when they buy a bottle of sake made in Fukushima -- a safety certificate emblazoned with a yellow smiley face that promises the rice wine is radioactive free.
The peace of mind that the certificate purportedly offers isn't making much of a difference.
Watanabi said most of his clients have refused to buy sake made in Fukushima since the March 2011 tsunami swept away much of Japan's coastline and left a nuclear power plant in the prefecture seeping radiation.
"People know radiation gets into rice, gets into soil, and people are afraid," Watanabi said, standing in front of a fridge packed with no fewer than 60 varieties of sake, just one of which comes from Fukushima.
Made from short- and medium-grain rice that is polished, soaked, steamed, fermented, pressed, stored, clarified and pasteurized, sake is a point of collective pride here for more than 1,500 years.
It's used for both official and religious ceremonies alike--Shinto and Buddhist weddings are typically sealed with the betrothed exchanging and downing three cups of sake--and for many years, some of the best sake produced in Japan has come out of Fukushima, a stretch of eastern coastline where the temperate climate aided in the brewing of the national drink.
But Fukushima sake has fallen on hard times.
In the weeks following the tsunami, rice from hundreds of locations in Fukushima were tested, and in some areas, radioactive cesium was detected in the staple grain,leading to criticism that the government had not done its part to keep radioactive substances out of the food supply.
Beef produced in Fukushima was initially banned in other parts of the country, although the ban was later lifted. But Fukushima sake has had a tougher time bouncing back.
So on Wednesday night, Fukushima officials gathered in a five-star hotel in Tokyo to deliver this message to sake lovers through 50 or so local journalists: please give our brew another chance.
"At least 55 of our 66 brewers in Fukushima have been devastated," said Inokichi Shinjo, chairman of the Fukushima Sake Brewers Association. "We are struggling to overcome the negative rumours to provide tasty, delicious sake to consumers.
"After the tsunami, we didn't know what to do, where to start," Shinjo said, sitting on a podium a few metres away from a collection of two dozen new bottles of sake. "Someone told us to start testing for radiation.
Today, Thailand, the U.S. and Brazil accept sake imports from Fukushima, although South Korea and China don't, Shinjo said. "And our domestic sales are down, they are still affected by the rumours."
A government official stood up following Shinjo, and explained that workers had scraped 5 cm of dirt of the fields in Fukushima to remove radioactive residue, and had doused the earth with potassium chloride to prevent rice from absorbing radiation.
"We have checked 10 million 60 kilogram bags of rice and only 28 bags have exceeded safety limits," the official said.
The next morning, across the street from Tokyo University, Watanabi was asked when he thought customers might return to Fukushima sake.
He shrugged and suggested people instead try Eikun, a sake from Kyoto. "This one is much better," he said. "It's fruity, broad, with a deep taste and smooth."