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In Brief...World News Review
Fallout of the GE-Honeywell
Deal-That-Wasn't: Further Evidence of U.S.-EU Rift?
The European Commission's recent unanimous rejection
of a proposed merger between two American companies threatens to widen the rift between
Europe and the United States. On July 3, the 20-member Commission, which is the executive
body of the 15-nation European Union, voted to prohibit a proposed $45 billion merger
between General Electric and Honeywell, International, both headquartered in the
United States. It was the first time in the Commission's history that it had killed
a business merger (already approved by the U.S.
Department of Justice) involving two U.S. companies.
The fact that a European regulatory body could prohibit a merger of two U.S. companies
came as a surprise to many Americans. The news of the deal being killed, reported
ironically on July 4, American Independence Day, makes U.S. sovereignty seem somehow
less absolute than before.
"Welcome to globalization," explained Time magazine (July 8). "Multinational
companies are required to follow the laws of all the countries in which they operate.
Because global companies affect markets far beyond their headquarters, both EU and
U.S. antitrust authorities review the mergers of foreign companies with substantial
activities within their jurisdiction." The European Commission has exercised
jurisdiction since 1990 over all mergers between firms with combined annual revenues
of $4.2 billion, of which $212 million must be within Europe. The proposed merger
of GE and Honeywell far exceeded those thresholds. GE alone had $25 billion in European
revenue last year, and employs 85,000 people in Europe.
The Bush administration and some members of Congress reacted angrily to the decision.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described the Commission's decision as "off
the wall." He criticized the process and results of the EU intervention. "The
European process is in my judgment flawed in the sense that the people who are making
the judgments are not elected by anyone and their judgments are not subject to a
judicial review or any kind of relief."
"And it seems to me that there is a need to make some correction," he said,
"especially in those cases where they are making judgments about business combinations
of companies that are completely located outside their jurisdictionÖ What the EU's
commission is doing is a far reach from looking at questions that are directly of
interest to the European Union and reaching into the affairs of other countries."
Mario Monti, the European competition commissioner, had suggested killing the deal
out of concern that it would hurt competition, chiefly European companies, in the
aircraft engine industry. The U.S. Justice Department had approved the proposed merger
because of the benefits to customers in the global aerospace market. This highlights
a fundamental difference between European regulators' apparent primary concern of
protecting European competitors, and U.S. regulators' emphasis on providing benefits
to customers.
England's Telegraph notes that "the dispute risks setting off a further
downward spiral in relations (between the U.S. and EU) coming so soon after clashes
over the U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto climate agreement, the death penalty in America
and EU attempts to upstage U.S. foreign policy in North Korea and the Middle East"
(July 5). Other prominent differences that have emerged in recent times involve corporate
taxes and missile defense. The Chicago Tribune observes that "the last
thing this marriage needs is more hot rhetoric or threats" (July 10).
Bible prophecy indicates an end-time struggle between an economic superpower in Europe
and the United States, part of the modern-day descendants of Israel. The differences
between these two economic powers will lead to an appalling clash that will only
be healed by the return of Jesus Christ as King of kings, to usher in the Kingdom
of God (Revelation 17; Jeremiah 30).
Sources: Time, The Telegraph, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Washington
Times.
Hands-On
Parents-Key to Curbing Teen Alcohol Abuse
One of the greatest dangers to today's teens is alcohol
abuse. Alcohol was a factor in 2,273 U.S. traffic fatalities among those ages 15
to 20 in 1999 (the most recent statistics available). The average age at which U.S.
teens start drinking is 16-down from 18 in the 1960s. Early drinkers are more likely
to develop a dependency on alcohol.
The rate of harmful alcohol use is disturbing. Some 30 percent of high school seniors,
26 percent of 10th graders and 14 percent of eighth graders reported having at least
five drinks in a row-binge drinking-in the two weeks before they responded to a recent
U.S. government survey. Alcohol-centered partying continues into college or university,
where students face strong peer pressure to drink.
Some have suggested that Americans need to introduce alcohol to their children at
a younger age to "demystify" its use and, hopefully, curb the destructive
trend. A U.S. Justice Department report that compared European and U.S. data on youth
drinking challenges that idea. The analysis, which was released in July, revealed
that a higher percentage of European youths reported having five or more drinks in
a row. Additionally, the intoxication rate among youth is higher in about half of
the European countries than it is among youth in the United States.
What can be done? Hands-on parents make a dramatic difference in keeping children
from abusing alcohol, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse (CASA). CASA conducted a study on youth drug abuse, alcohol and tobacco use.
It found that there was a clear distinction between the rate of problems in children
of hands-on parents and those of hands-off parents.
Hands-on parents did 10 or more of the following actions. Hands-off parents did five
or less.
- Monitor what their teens watch on TV.
- Monitor teen Internet use.
- Restrict the CDs that teens buy.
- Know where teens are after school and on weekends.
- Get the truth about teens' whereabouts.
- Be "very aware" of academic performance.
- Impose curfews.
- Make it clear that they would be "extremely upset"
if their teens used marijuana.
- Eat dinner together six to seven nights per week.
- Turn off the TV during dinner.
- Assign regular chores.
- Have an adult present when the teen returns home from school.
Sources: AP; The Boston Globe; U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services.
Better
Living Standard Doesn't Equal Better Living
Good news-poverty is down in the United States and the number of children growing
up in high-income homes doubled in the last 20 years. So says America's Children
2001 report, a federal government document. (High-income is defined as having
at least $68,116 annually for a family of four.)
But, a better average living standard doesn't translate into better living for all.
More children live in single-parent homes-a staggering 26 percent of the total, most
of which are single-mother families. And 42 percent of the children in those single-mother
families live in poverty.
Even among those children who live in wealthy homes, the news isn't all good. The
same report showed that more parents are working, which means that children enjoy
their supervision less. Less parental supervision means more social problems.
Some of the problems with which U.S. children are dealing are indicated by the following
statistics:
- Births to unmarried teenage girls are up from 62 percent of
all teenage births in 1980 to 88 percent in 1999 (the last year statistics were available).
- Tobacco use remains high-21 percent of high school seniors
smoked daily in the 30 days previous to the survey.
Source: Kathleen Parker, Tribune Media Services.
Why Has
China Pressed So Hard for the Olympics?
The International Olympic Committee bucked political correctness and gave the
2008 Olympics to a country that has been saddled with an appalling human rights record.
Beijing won out over strong contenders Paris and Toronto.
It seems everyone in China made an effort to win the Olympics for 2008. When the
Olympic Committee inspectors arrived in February, thousands of migrants scrubbed
fences and planted fake flowers along the delegation's route to impress them. Cab
drivers were required to have clean cars or have their licenses suspended. The usually
filthy public restroom facilities were cleaned up, and music was played to entertain
users.
China was determined to show it had changed since its bid to host the 2000 Olympics
eight years ago, when stray dogs were beaten to death and the mentally challenged
were detained by authorities to "clean up" Beijing. Of course it is now
history that the Olympics went to Australia chiefly because of China's human rights
record.
Desperate to show a different face to win the Olympics, China has said it will stage
beach volleyball on Tiananmen Square if it wins the bid. For now, though, the square
is bustling with plain-clothes cops.
Why has China pressed so hard to garner the Olympics for 2008 ? Perhaps the sleeping
giant has a strategy for the future. One cannot help but remember Hitler's 1936 Olympics
in Berlin. Though most Americans are educated to think the Games blew up in Hitler's
face with the spectacular performance of black American track champion Jesse Owens,
this is not quite the case. Scholars of that period acknowledge that hosting the
Olympics was of great importance to Germany for the furtherance of Hitler's regime.
As Duff Hart-Davis, author of Hitler's Games, relates, the Nazis ensured that
Berlin was nicely and benignly turned out, creating the mirage that the Fuhrer's
Germany was "a perfectly normal place, in which life went on as pleasantly as
in any other European country." Hart-Davis further writes, "That the success
of the eleventh Olympiad gave Hitler an enormous boost, both moral and political,
nobody could deny."
What will be the state of the world in 2008, and where will China fit into that new
world order economically and, most of all, militarily? The great red dragon is only
now flexing its muscles, and most of its foreign policy with other nations is in
opposition to that of the United States and Britain. Russia and China have formed
an alliance with each other, and the words spoken are often weighed against U.S.
interests.
Justin Yu, a Chinese journalist working in New York, points out that the regime uses
sports to puff itself up before its own people, much as the Eastern-bloc countries
used to do. The Olympics, according to Yu, are strictly "a tool for Beijing
to use." History may be repeating itself, and perhaps we could find the world
in very great turmoil in the last half of this decade with a China viewed far differently
than it is now.
Sources: USNews.com; National Review.
(to top)
Fear of
Global Recession Strengthened by New Report
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan recently
gave his unusually gloomy testimony before the House Financial Services Committee
concerning the U.S. economy. His prescription to reverse the downturn in the American
economy with cuts in the interest rates has failed to stimulate a recovery. It is
his hope that further reductions in interest rates, tax cuts and falling prices in
the energy sector will arrest the downward trend by the end of this year or the next.
As the United States deals with its own financial woes, new reports of economic trouble
from Singapore to Germany cause some analysts to question whether the growing gloom
could push the fragile global economy into a full-blown recession. Recently, Singapore
became the first Southeast Asian country to officially slip into recession. Economic
experts suspect that other Southeast Asian nations will echo that trend when they
release their second-quarter data. Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines already have
reported that their economies shrank in the first quarter.
Dismal economic conditions now reach into most corners of the globe. The U.S. slump
has spread to Europe. Japan is teetering on the brink of recession, emerging economies
such as Argentina and Turkey are at risk and a bear market in equities is showing
little sign of rapid recovery.
The latest batch of wearisome figures comes as financial trouble is rippling through
several emerging nations and raising the possibility of a worldwide economic epidemic.
Currencies in Central Europe and the South African rand have suffered in recent days
from crises in Argentina and Turkey. Events in Argentina have also taken a heavy
toll on neighboring Brazil.
As the eight heads of the world's rich nations gathered in Genoa, Italy, for their
annual summit meeting, economists and bankers feared that a global leadership vacuum
threatens to delay any swift recovery for an international economy already tilting
toward recession. "I think the world economy and world markets are crying out
for leadership, but until now the only leadership has been provided by Alan Greenspan,
and he is running out of ammunition," said Avinash Persaud, senior economist
at State Street.
Sources: International Herald Tribune, Dallas Morning News.
Contributors: Tom Kirkpatrick, Cecil E. Maranville and L. Jim Tuck -wnp-
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