U.S.DOLLAR to EURO ( Graph ) up to MARCH 25TH, 2010
Lowest March 12...Higest March 24th
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Friday, March 26, 2010
"It's all Greek to you " ???[ 807 ]
<---------Clickcourses of instruction & certification ofgreek as a foreign language
- Adult Groups at all levels
- Special Beginners’ Group
- National Certificate of Language Proficiency
- Admission requirement for Greek Universities, Appointment in the Public Sector, Exercise of a Profession, etc.
People who did not have the chance to learn Greek during their childhood are now given this chance. The Educational Centre EPIGNOSIS responds to these people’s need for full social and financial integration by organising Instruction – Certification Courses of Modern Greek Language complying with the requirements and the syllabus of the Centre for Greek Language which is supervised by the Greek Ministry of Education, as follows:
coursesof our educational centre
The Greek Fiscal Rescue ... [ 806 ]
IMF Role in Greek Fiscal Rescue Gains Support in EU (Update1)
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Merkel Excerpts on Greece
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to lawmakers about the outlook for measures to aid Greece's economy. She speaks in Berlin ahead of a summit of European Union leaders. (These are translated German excerpts. Courtesy Pool TV Berlin. Source: Bloomberg)
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to lawmakers about the outlook for measures to aid Greece's economy. She speaks in Berlin ahead of a summit of European Union leaders. (These are translated German excerpts. Courtesy Pool TV Berlin. Source: Bloomberg)
Gross on Greece
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., talks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene and Michael McKee about the Greek financial crisis. Gross also discusses U.S. health-care policy and the U.S. and U.K. budget deficits.
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Gross, manager of the world's biggest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., talks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene and Michael McKee about the Greek financial crisis. Gross also discusses U.S. health-care policy and the U.S. and U.K. budget deficits.
Grose-Hodge on Euro
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Simon Grose-Hodge, an investment strategist at LGT Group, talks with Bloomberg's Linzie Janis about the outlook for the euro ahead of a European Union summit today. Grose-Hodge, speaking in Singapore, also discusses the role of the International Monetary Fund in euro-member economies.
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Simon Grose-Hodge, an investment strategist at LGT Group, talks with Bloomberg's Linzie Janis about the outlook for the euro ahead of a European Union summit today. Grose-Hodge, speaking in Singapore, also discusses the role of the International Monetary Fund in euro-member economies.
By James G. Neuger
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- European leaders showed signs of bowing to German demands for an International Monetary Fund role in any rescue of debt-stricken Greece, seeking to prevent the fiscal crisis from undermining the euro.
Asserting her clout as head of the European Union’s largest economy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for the IMF to be brought in, while counterparts, including Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, said Europe should show its credibility by stanching the crisis on its own with loans to Greece.
“I believe that now we are quite near,” Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Brussels today. “It might be some type of combination of bilateral arrangements and IMF participation.” He declined to speculate whether the EU will make a final decision at the summit, which ends tomorrow.
Signs that Greece may win a financial backstop gave a lift to Greek bonds and nudged the euro up from a 10-month low. The European Central Bank contributed to the rally by announcing a policy reversal ensuring that Greek debt won’t be struck off its collateral list next year.
Greece needs to sell about 10 billion euros ($13 billion) of bonds in coming weeks. About 8.2 billion euros of debt matures April 20 and 8.5 billion euros on May 19, with about 3.9 billion euros of bills maturing in April and May.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates that Greece may ultimately get aid from the IMF worth about 20 billion euros over 18 months, according to an e-mailed note today.
‘Mixed Model’
“We are going in the direction -- in case it’s even necessary to help -- toward a mixed model of IMF and bilaterial help” for Greece, Austrian Finance Minister Josef Proell said in Brussels.
The gain in Greek bonds sent the 10-year yield down 8 basis points to 6.28 percent, 316 basis points above comparable German debt. That extra borrowing cost has risen from 273 basis points on Feb. 11 when the EU vowed “determined and coordinated action” to stanch the crisis. The euro gained 0.3 percent at $1.3355 at 4:05 p.m. in Brussels.
“We will move ahead whatever decisions are taken,” Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou told reporters today in Brussels. “Greece is determined to deal with its own problems,” he said, adding that “we are on the right track.”
Greek Cuts
The Greek government is counting on wage cuts and tax increases to shave the deficit to 8.7 percent of gross domestic product this year from 12.7 percent in 2009, the highest in the euro’s 11-year history.
The summit begins at 5 p.m., though at the last meeting on Feb. 11 a political declaration to back up Greece was made before the official start. A separate gathering of euro-area leaders may be held afterwards, beginning at about midnight.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende endorsed an IMF role and Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, didn’t rule one out, brushing aside criticism that recourse to the Washington- based lender of last resort would expose Europe’s inability to get to grips with the crisis.
“We should start with the IMF because the IMF has the expertise to act,” Balkenende told reporters in Brussels.
Merkel has opposed making a firm aid commitment today and opposed holding a separate get-together of the leaders of the 16 countries using the euro.
“A good European is not necessarily one who rushes to assist,” Merkel told German lawmakers in Berlin today before arriving in Brussels. “A good European is one who abides by the European treaties and national law and thus sees to it that the euro zone’s stability isn’t harmed.”
Sanctions Sought
While the euro’s German-designed “stability pact” foresees financial penalties for countries that go over the limits, no country has been sanctioned since the currency debuted in 1999. The budget deficits of all 16 euro nations are forecast to exceed the EU’s limit of 3 percent of GDP this year after the worst recession since at least World War II.
Merkel has left open the possibility of pushing wayward countries out of the euro and sought a rewrite of European treaties to impose more fiscal rectitude. All 27 EU countries would have to back such an overhaul. The EU’s latest treaty, in force since December, took eight years to negotiate and ratify.
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a former Danish premier and leader of the Party of European Socialists, said Germany’s proposal for a last-resort Greek aid package of loans from the IMF and EU was a “poor solution.”
Socialist Proposal
The Socialists proposed giving euro-region countries access to the same EU facility that provided loans to Hungary, Romania and Latvia during the financial crisis. Such a decision would require a unanimous EU decision and possibly a change to EU treaties.
“If the only answer from Europe is to ask the IMF to help us, then we are really, really, really poor,” Rasmussen, whose group includes Papandreou and Zapatero, said. “It’s a poor solution for Europe that we cannot manage on our own.”
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet took some pressure off Greece today by extending emergency lending rules, saying its bonds won’t be cut off from ECB refinancing operations next year in case Moody’s Investors Service lowers its rating to a level comparable with other companies.
Trichet’s remarks marked a reversal for the ECB, which said in January that it wouldn’t soften its collateral policy for the sake of a single country. The bank was scheduled to reintroduce pre-crisis rules at the end of 2010.
To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 25, 2010 11:41 EDTWhy no...poppy spraying.???...[ 805 ]
NATO rejects Russian call for Afghan poppy spraying
| |
By David Brunnstrom
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO on Wednesday rejected Russian calls for it to eradicate opium poppy fields in Afghanistan, saying the best way for Moscow to help control the drug would be to give more assistance against the insurgency.
Russia's anti-drugs czar, Victor Ivanov, met NATO ambassadors in Brussels and proposed that NATO troops be given a U.N. mandate and an obligation to eradicate Afghan opium crops, which were killing 30,000 Russians a year.
But NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the drug problem had to be handled carefully to avoid alienating local people. He said the alliance was continuing efforts to target drug lords and drug labs, but added at a news briefing:
"We cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income of people who live in the second poorest country in the world without being able to provide them with an alternative."
Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of poppies used to make opium, the key ingredient in the production of heroin.
Appathurai said NATO understood Russian concerns, given its estimated 200,000 heroin and morphine addicts and the tens of thousands dying each year.
"SLIGHT DIFFERENCE OF VIEWS"
"We share the view that it has to be tackled," the spokesman said. "But there is a slight difference of views. Out of Moscow we hear a lot of calls for eradication. The view of the Afghan government up until now is that eradication is not the way to go ... in particular aerial spraying."
"We have 120,000 people on the ground fighting the insurgency and that is the most effective way to tackle the drug problem."
Appathurai said NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had asked Russia for increased support in Afghanistan, including in training counter-narcotics officials and helicopters for the overall counter-insurgency effort.
"We are still waiting for an answer, but we know the Russian Federation is working on it," he said.
Appathurai said the Taliban had stock-piled so much opium that destroying existing crops would make little difference.
NATO's counter-insurgency operation in Marjah has put in place conditions for better governance to allow the creation of alternative livelihoods, "and a sustainable solution that does not just create more enemies".
On Monday, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, expressed concern about plans by U.S. Marines in Marjah to pay farmers to destroy opium crops without a fight instead of NATO troops destroying them.
He said NATO needed to continue to deal with the drugs problem in an "active and robust way".
Ivanov said drugs were killing 100,000 Afghans a year and quoted U.N. figures showing that annual deaths from heroin overdoses in the more 40 than countries contributing to the NATO mission in Afghanistan were 50 times higher than their total military losses, which stand at nearly 1,600 in eight years.
"Is that not a threat to world peace and security?" he said, adding that there was a need to take a new view on the scale of the threat. "I believe this is a question of morality," he said.
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Indonesian workers can't understand Japanese..[ 804 ]
10 percent of Indonesian care worker trainees can't understand Japanese: survey
Mainichi News 25-3-2010,,Some 10 percent of Indonesians who came to Japan in fiscal 2008 to be trained as care workers at nursing homes cannot yet understand Japanese, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has revealed.
The Indonesian trainees came to Japan under an economic partnership agreement, and after about a year in the country about 90 percent can understand Japanese, according to a government study. About half the trainees apparently study Japanese about 1-5 hours a week.
The study, undertaken in January and February this year, queried the heads of nursing homes where the Indonesians are stationed, nursing home staff, patients and the trainees themselves. The ministry received replies from 528 people at 39 institutions.
Some 19 percent of nursing home staff said the trainees had no particular problems communicating, while 73 percent said that there were occasions when the trainees did not understand, but if spoken to slowly could get the rough idea. One percent said communication with the trainees was impossible.
Only 3 percent of nursing home users, however, reported that the trainees could adequately understand them, while 92 percent said the Indonesians mostly understood but sometimes did not, and one percent claimed the trainees could not understand anything they said.
The Indonesian trainees are working toward passing the care worker exam in January 2012, and "More support for improving (the trainees') Japanese skills is needed," the ministry stated.
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