Bieber sorry for late London appearance

Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs at the o2 Arena in east London, Monday, March 4, 2013. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs at the o2 Arena in east London, Monday, March 4, 2013. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs at the o2 Arena in east London, Monday, March 4, 2013. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs at the O2 Arena in east London, Monday, March 4, 2013. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Canadian singer Justin Bieber performs at the o2 Arena in east London, Monday, March 4, 2013. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen performs at the o2 Arena in east London, Monday, March 4, 2013. (Photo by Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

LONDON (AP) ? Justin Bieber apologized Tuesday to his young fans ? and their outraged, overtired parents ? after they accused him of taking the stage almost two hours late for a concert in London.

The singer insisted he had only been 40 minutes late, and blamed "technical issues."

But, he added in a tweet to his 35 million followers: "There is no excuse for that and I apologize for anyone we upset. However it was great show and I'm proud of that."

Concertgoers said the teenage star appeared onstage at the 02 Arena on Monday at 10:30 p.m., when the start time had been listed as 8:30. Many in the audience, who had been waiting for hours, faced the choice between leaving early or missing the last trains home.

"There were teenage girls crying outside," said financial analyst Louise Cooper, who had taken her 9-year-old daughter to the gig as a birthday present.

"The ladies sitting with us had to leave after 20 minutes and they had spent 70 quid (70 pounds, about $106) each on a ticket, which is really bad.

"It's one thing if your demographic is 50-year-olds, but his demographic is lots of little girls who need to go home and go to bed."

Tracy Wilson, who attended the show with her teenage daughter, said people began booing when Bieber had not appeared by 9:30. She called the lack of explanation "disgusting."

The venue apologized on its Twitter feed "to all the Justin Bieber fans for the lateness of his show tonight."

Critics said the Canadian star, who turned 19 on Friday, risked alienating fans by behaving with the same disregard for timekeeping as more hard-edged rock stars.

John Aizlewood in the Evening Standard newspaper said Bieber had shown contempt for young fans, leaving them "exhausted, disillusioned and probably late for school this morning."

Bieber, who is due to play three more nights at the venue Tuesday through Thursday, has been photographed out on the town several times during his current British tour.

"Since I have been here it hasn't been easy with the press at times but I have loved it," Bieber tweeted.

"I never have any intent to upset or let anyone down. And I'm not okay with things being exaggerated. Once again sorry for anyone upset."

He promised that he would put on a "great show" Tuesday ? and it would start on time.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-03-05-Britain-Belated%20Bieber/id-933d88a8c8e8441fa7a379d75c0a1e1f

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Fiscal fictions: the growth myth | Blog | Public Finance International

A number of governments have been putting their faith in ?expansionary fiscal consolidation? to grow their way out of recession. If this sounds like a contradiction in terms, it?s probably because it is?

The 2007-09 financial crisis left advanced economies with average levels of debt that, for the first time since the aftermath of the second world war, breached 100 percent GDP levels. In response, most governments have sought to place their fiscal policies on a sustainable path by adopting fiscal consolidation programmes.

Textbook analyses of government spending cuts and tax increases suggest that such efforts to reduce government debt will inevitably depress the economy. But there is an, admittedly controversial, view that raises the tantalising prospect of an expansionary fiscal consolidation, whereby the ?economy actually expands following such policies.

Such episodes were initially discussed in the context of debt stabilisation efforts in the 1980s in Denmark and Ireland. But there have since been claims that they can be found in many other countries, in other time periods. This possibility of an expansionary consolidation has been seized upon by some politicians; for ?example, the British chancellor George Osborne, who argued in his emergency Budget of May 2010 that it would ?stimulate economic growth and confidence?.

The argument in support of such an apparently paradoxical result is based on the idea that undertaking a fiscal consolidation leads to households and firms feeling better about their future economic prospects. This then spurs current investment and consumption decisions which more than offset the negative consequences of the fiscal tightening.

In recent research that I have conducted with Eric Leeper and Huixin Bi, we have taken this thesis at face value and attempted to assess whether or not such effects could plausibly generate an expansionary fiscal consolidation in typical developed economies, particularly those in the eurozone.

Our analysis shows that a very particular set of conditions must be in place to generate an expansionary fiscal consolidation. If any one of these conditions is not fulfilled, then a consolidation will not expand the economy in the short run.

The first condition is that as debt levels rise, people must come to expect that a fiscal consolidation is imminent. The second requires that consumers and firms anticipate that the fiscal consolidation will be based on higher taxes rather than lower government spending, but the adopted policy surprises people and turns out to rely more on spending cuts than tax increases.

Finally, the third condition requires that the central bank?supports the fiscal consolidation by relaxing monetary policy.

While the first condition seems reasonable ? we all realise that we live in an age of austerity -? the remaining conditions are not. Historically, fiscal consolidations were often based on tax increases. The data shows that they were likely to contain episodes where governments unexpectedly cut spending rather than raised taxes.

In contrast, an International Monetary Fund report on current fiscal consolidation efforts in eight economies (including those of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain) shows that these are all predominantly based on spending cuts rather than tax increases, which is also the case in the UK.

The IMF and other organisations have also been advising countries to base their debt reduction strategies on spending cuts before tax increases -? advice that politicians who are increasingly reluctant to raise taxes have not resisted.

Given the political environment, it seems unlikely that people will erroneously expect policy makers to return to debt reduction strategies based more on tax increases than spending cuts.?And even if consumers and firms did systematically misjudge the likely form the consolidation would take, the third condition is also unlikely to be met.

Economies in the eurozone no longer have control over their national monetary policy. Even those economies, such as the UK, that retain control over interest rates, are currently stuck (internal Bank of England debates notwithstanding) at the zero lower bound.

Central banks generally cannot simply cut interest rates in support of fiscal consolidation efforts. And even if they could, countries like the UK are seeing inflation staying stubbornly above the official inflation target (partly in response to the inflationary consequences of changes in tax policy), making it unlikely that central banks will ease further.

So, conditions are not ripe for a fiscal consolidation to expand economic activity in any of the developed economies. But there is also an additional message about policy.
Even if it were possible to engineer the conditions that would deliver an expansionary fiscal consolidation, this is unlikely to be a good thing.

An expansionary fiscal consolidation relies on depressing the economy by leading households and firms to believe that ?one debt reduction strategy will be followed, only to induce a boom by implementing a different, less costly, policy. It works by fooling people, which is rarely desirable. In short, debt reduction is, inevitably, a long and painful process.

Campbell Leith is professor of macroeconomics at the University of Glasgow. Along with Huixin Bi and Eric Leeper, he is an author of? Uncertain fiscal consolidations, published in the Economic Journal, February 2013

Source: http://opinion.publicfinanceinternational.org/2013/03/fiscal-fictions-the-growth-myth/

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India's 'human safaris' banned, as fight for tribal rights goes on

India finally halted the practice of allowing tourists to ogle the native tribes of a secluded Island in the Andaman Islands. But with a growing tourism industry there, the battle might not be over.?

By Shaikh Azizur Rahman,?Correspondent / March 2, 2013

India?s Andaman Islands, situated in the Bay of Bengal, are surrounded by crystal waters and a sparsely populated coastline, and are home to lush forests ? the perfect tourist destination. But recent scandals on the island have concerned international activists.

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Each year, thousands of tourists pay tour operators on the archipelago to catch a glimpse of the native semi-naked and naked Jarawa tribesmen and women - the main attraction for most tourists, despite several laws (beginning in 1956) banning tourists from coming too close to the protected tribe.

Then, last year, a tourist video of tourists ordering semi-naked women to dance went viral on the Internet, spurring national and international condemnation ? and a new interim law, which was actually enforced on the island, starting last month.

It appeared to be a win for both activists and the tribe. But with a growing tourism industry the mainstay of the archipelago, the battle might not be over. India?s Supreme Court asked the island?s authorities to decide this month whether the small tribe, which is believed to be descendants of the first people to move from Africa to Asia, should be forcibly assimilated in the mainstream society or remain in isolation.

Activists argue that forced assimilation is an infringement of the tribe?s rights, and is unnecessary.

The decision whether the Jarawa will join mainstream society should not rest with the Islands' authorities, says Sophie Grig, of the UK-based indigenous rights advocacy group Survival International.

?It must be up to the Jarawa to decide how they want to live their lives ? it is not a question of isolation or mainstreaming, but of the Jarawa making their own choices about their lives and their future,? says Ms. Grig.

For centuries, the Andaman Islands were hardly visited by anyone other than the prisoners sent to serve their time there, and the guards who ran the prison. It has only been since the 1990s that mainland Indian tourists started flooding the Islands, which are now home to some 380,000 people.

In the 1970s the government of the Andamans began the construction of a 230 mile-long road to connect Port Blair, the largest town, and capital of the territory, with Middle Andaman and North Andaman Islands to supply essential provisions and medical facilities to the settlers in far-flung areas. Activists warned then that the road, which cut through thick forests inhabited by the Jarawa, could have devastating consequences for the isolated tribe, not accustomed to outsiders and susceptible to disease.

When the Andaman Trunk Road was finally opened in 1998, the tribe?s men shot arrows at the passing vehicles and even killed some settlers, showing anger at the intrusion.

However, as the hostility to outsiders, especially among younger Jarawas, has begun to wane in recent years with more exposure to visitors via the road, tour operators also grew bolder about offering more interactions to clients, putting the tribe at risk. Various rules were placed on the frequency and number of vehicles permitted on the road at a time. Still, in 2002, after pressure from activist groups such as Survival International, India?s Supreme Court ordered the road be closed to tourists.

But Andaman authorities did not enforce the court order to close the road, as it saw the road as a lifeline for settlers.

"I think the real reason they haven't done it [before],? says Grig, is because ?it's not popular with the settlers on the Andamans, and the tribes are a small population with no power or influence. The administration claims that the road is a lifeline but it's only a lifeline because they haven't put an alternative route in place."

Last month, amid fallout from the viral video of the tribeswomen dancing, Survival International wrote to the Supreme Court urging "immediate action" to have Andaman authorities enforce the past orders. Two weeks later, the court ruled that the "disgraceful" Jarawa tourism must be halted immediately. This time, the Andaman authorities closed the road to all tourist vehicles last month.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/zWf1etf63Ng/India-s-human-safaris-banned-as-fight-for-tribal-rights-goes-on

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Obama signs order for "sequester" cuts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama formally ordered broad cuts in government spending on Friday night after he and congressional Republicans failed to reach a deal to avert automatic reductions that could dampen economic growth and curb military readiness.

As the United States staggered into another fiscal crisis, the White House predicted that the spending cuts triggered by the inability of Obama and lawmakers to forge a broader deficit-reduction agreement would be "deeply destructive" to the nation's economic and national security.

"Not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away. The pain though will be real. Beginning this week, many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in significant ways," Obama told journalists after his meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders.

Late on Friday, Obama signed an order that put in effect the across-the-board government spending cuts known as "sequestration." Government agencies will now begin to hack a total of $85 billion from their budgets between Saturday and October 1.

Half of the cuts will fall on the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the reductions put at risk "all of our missions.

Congress and Obama could still halt the cuts in the weeks to come, but neither side has expressed any confidence they will do so. Both Democrats and Republicans set the automatic cuts in motion during feverish deficit-reduction efforts in August 2011.

MARKETS SHRUG OFF CRISIS

Friday's events marked the first budget showdown in Washington of many in the past decade that was not somehow resolved at the last minute - often under pressure from rattled financial markets. Markets in New York shrugged off the stalemate in Washington on Friday as they have for months.

Democrats predicted the cuts could soon cause air-traffic delays, meat shortages as food safety inspections slow down, losses to thousands of federal contractors and damage to local economies across the country, particularly in the hardest-hit regions around military installations.

At the heart of Washington's persistent fiscal crises is disagreement over how to slash the budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt, bloated over the years by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and government stimulus for the ailing economy.

Obama wants to close the fiscal gap with spending cuts and tax hikes. Republicans do not want to concede again on taxes after doing so in negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" at the New Year.

Public outrage, if it materializes, would be the most likely prod for a resolution as the impact of the spending cuts starts to be felt in the coming weeks and months.

As a percentage of total government spending every year, $3.7 trillion, the actual spending reductions are small. But because safety-net programs such as Social Security and Medicare will be untouched, the brunt falls mostly on federal government employees rather than direct recipients of aid.

The U.S. government is the nation's largest employer, with a workforce of roughly 2.7 million civilians spread across the country. If the cuts stay in place, more than 800,000 of those workers could see reduced work days and smaller paychecks between now and September.

Furlough notices warning employees and their unions started to go out earlier this week and the pace picked up on Friday after it became clear that talks at the White House between Obama and congressional leaders would be fruitless.

While the International Monetary Fund warned that the belt-tightening could slow U.S. economic growth by at least 0.5 of a percentage point this year, that is not a huge drag on an economy that is picking up steam.

'THE SPENDING PROBLEM'

Many Republicans accuse the Obama administration of overstating the effects of the cuts in order to pressure them into agreeing to a solution to the White House's liking.

A deal proved elusive as Obama met at the White House with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, as well as the top two Democrats in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

"The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It's about taking on the spending problem," Boehner said after the meeting.

Asked why he did not just refuse to let congressional leaders leave the room until they had a deal, Obama told reporters: "I am not a dictator. I'm the president. So, ultimately, if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say, 'We need to go to catch a plane,' I can't have Secret Service block the doorway, right?"

The across-the-board cutbacks were mandated by a deficit reduction law, structured to be so disruptive that Congress would ultimately replace them with more targeted savings. But partisan gridlock has prevented agreement on where to save.

The White House budget office sent a report to Congress detailing the spending cuts. Some 115,000 employees of the Department of Justice - including prosecutors and the FBI - were among the first to get the official word of furloughs.

The government also sent letters to several state governors advising them of cuts to services like the Head Start education program in California and military facilities in Virginia.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty expressed rare public frustration with the United States for lurching from crisis to crisis.

One reason for the inaction in Washington is that both parties still hope the other will either be blamed by voters for the cuts or cave in before the worst effects predicted by Democrats come into effect.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday showed 28 percent of Americans blamed congressional Republicans for the sequestration mess, 18 percent thought Obama was responsible and 4 percent blamed congressional Democrats. Thirty-seven percent blamed them all, according the online poll.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts 750,000 jobs could be lost in 2013, and federal employees throughout the country are looking to trim their own costs.

"The kids won't go to the dentist, the kids might not go to the doctor, we won't be spending money in local restaurants, local movie theaters," said Paul O'Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council, which represents 2,500 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

After weeks of White House warnings about the cuts causing disruption, Obama acknowledged it might be a while before effects fully kicked in. "We will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse," Obama said.

In the absence of any deal at all, the Pentagon will be forced to slice 13 percent of its budget between now and September 30.

In his first Pentagon news conference since he was sworn in on Wednesday, Hagel struck a more moderate tone than many other defense officials who have said the spending reductions would be devastating or could turn the U.S. military into a second-rate power.

"America ... has the best fighting force, the most capable fighting force, the most powerful fighting force in the world," he said. "The management of this institution, starting with the Joint Chiefs, are not going to allow this capacity to erode."

Most non-defense programs, from NASA space exploration to federally backed education and law enforcement, face a 9 percent reduction.

Moving to head off a new budget crisis later this month, Boehner said the Republican-led House would move a "continuing resolution" to fund government through the rest of the fiscal year, thus hopefully averting a government shutdown.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton, Deborah Zabarenko and Jeff Mason in Washington and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Peter Cooney and Will Dunham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-lurches-budget-crisis-spending-cuts-imminent-005547865--business.html

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Romney jabs Obama for 'berating Republicans'

BOSTON (AP) ? In his first public comments since his Election Day defeat, Mitt Romney is criticizing President Barack Obama for "berating Republicans" instead of leading.

The former Republican presidential nominee tells Fox News that Washington's latest budget battle wasn't "a success" for the president.

Obama rallied against a series of deep federal spending cuts but couldn't convince Congress to adopt an alternative. The cuts begin to take effect Friday.

In an interview scheduled to air Friday evening, Romney says Obama has been, quote, "berating Republicans and blaming and pointing." The former Massachusetts governor calls on the president to instead, quote, "lead the nation and to bring Republicans and Democrats together."

Romney says it's a job only Obama can do.

Romney has been living in seclusion in California since November.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-03-01-Romney/id-0224ca2ef6dc4e63a262e621e6787bcb

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Sugar Bear: No Fried Food for You!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/sugar-bear-no-fried-food-for-you/

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Widow to Supreme Court: DOMA is unconstitutional

Andy Kropa / Getty Images

By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

A federal law that leaves hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples without any recognition of their marriage violates the Constitution, lawyers for a woman whose wife?s death left her unprotected from more than $350,000 in estate taxes said in a legal brief Tuesday, one month before the Supreme Court hears her case.?

The landmark case is one of two the court will hear in March about the battle over whether same-sex couples can legally wed, and if they do, whether they can receive spousal benefits and get the same rights that heterosexual couples currently enjoy.

The former is a legal fight over California?s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, and the latter centers on Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars recognition of same-sex marriage at the federal level.

Of a few cases brought to the high court challenging DOMA, the justices chose to hear the one brought by Edie Windsor, whose wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. The New York couple married in 2007 in Canada, though they were?together for 44 years before Spyer died.

Spyer left her estate to Windsor. As a married heterosexual couple there would have been no estate tax. But Windsor was left with a federal tax bill of $363,000 since the couple?s marriage was not recognized by the U.S. government.

The lawyers? brief filed Tuesday by Windsor?s lawyers argues that DOMA's?Section 3, which defines marriage at the federal level, ?violates the Constitution because it treats married gay couples differently than married straight couples? for ?no logical reason,? the American Civil Liberties Union, part of Windsor's legal team, said in a summary of the brief.

Gays and lesbians, who have already endured a long history of discrimination, the ACLU said, were subjected to further discrimination from DOMA, which they noted Congress passed in 1996 ?based on fear of and stereotypes about gay people, rather than any legitimate government purpose.? ?

?But the Constitution doesn?t permit the government to pass a law just to disadvantage a politically unpopular group of people,? the group added.

DOMA affects more than 1,100 provisions of federal laws, denying gay couples the right to file joint taxes, the protections of the Family Medical and Leave Act, and blocks surviving spouses from accessing veterans? benefits, among other things, Windsor?s lawyers said.

?DOMA excludes married couples who are gay from all of the rights, privileges and obligations that the federal government otherwise affords married couples,? her lawyers? brief said.

Two lower courts have agreed with Windsor and her attorneys. Other lower courts that reviewed DOMA challenges elsewhere, such as in Boston, reached similar findings.

The Obama administration filed a brief last Friday?in the case with the Supreme Court asking it to throw out Section 3, which it had already stopped defending.

The administration also mentioned California's Proposition 8 and similar measures in other states as evidence that anti-gay discrimination remained a major problem.?

The appeal of the lower courts? decision was brought by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a congressional group made of three Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner, and two Democrats.

In its brief, filed in late January, the group argued to let the debate over same-sex marriage continue to play out as it has been through votes in many states and public debate, saying ?gays and lesbians have substantial political power, and that power is growing. Victories at the ballot box that would have been unthinkable a decade ago have become routine,? it said, apparently referring to wins for same-sex marriage in four states last November.

?There is absolutely no reason to think that gays and lesbians are shut out of the political process to a degree that would justify judicial intervention on an issue as divisive and fastmoving as same-sex marriage,? the group said, as it urged the court not to step in.

?Indeed, the democratic process has substantial advantages over constitutionalizing this issue. Same-sex marriage is being actively debated in legislatures, in the press, and at every level of government and society across the country. That is how it should be,? the group added.

The court will hear on DOMA from both sides on March 27, one day after Proposition 8 supporters and opponents go before the justices.

Related:?

Once 'inconceivable,' Republican leaders sign pro-gay marriage brief
US asks Supreme Court to strike down law denying benefits to same-sex couples
Supreme Court to take up same-sex marriage issue??

?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/26/17106674-widow-to-supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-ban-is-unconstitutional?lite

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