Dempsey: Decision on post-2014 US force can wait

STUTTGART, Germany (AP) ? In order to assess the strength of Afghan government forces, the U.S. should wait until summer or later before deciding how many troops to keep in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends in December 2014, the U.S. military's top officer said Friday.

"I'm not in any particular hurry" to come up with a number for what the U.S. military calls an "enduring presence" in Afghanistan, Gen. Martin Dempsey said in an interview.

Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered no opinion on how many U.S. troops he thinks will be needed for the post-2014 mission of training and advising Afghans and continuing counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and other extremists.

Other officials have said President Barack Obama may approve a residual force of up to 10,000 troops.

Dempsey said he thinks it would be wise to get a better feel for Afghan capabilities under the more difficult circumstances they will face without American troops playing the lead combat role.

"I'd like to see how they do in a fighting season," he said, referring to the period between late spring and early autumn when the Taliban typically put up the stiffest fight.

The U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government have followed a phased approach to putting Afghan forces in the lead combat role in order to avoid their collapse and to keep the Taliban on their heels.

The final phase is supposed to start on an unannounced date this spring; that step had originally been scheduled for summer but it was advanced to springtime by mutual agreement between Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai when Karzai visited Washington in January.

Keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 will be subject to Afghan government approval. The terms of such an arrangement would be part of broader negotiations now under way between Kabul and Washington on a bilateral security agreement.

"My military judgment is that the decision about the enduring presence ... will be necessary to help us and our NATO allies plan, though actually pinning it down is not a matter of urgency," Dempsey said. "I think a range will be prudent to have by the summer."

There are now about 66,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Dempsey was in Stuttgart on Friday to preside at a ceremony installing Gen. David Rodriguez as the commander of U.S. Africa Command.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dempsey-decision-post-2014-us-force-wait-161323265--politics.html

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China culls birds as bird flu death toll mounts

By Fayen Wong and Clare Baldwin

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese authorities were slaughtering birds at a poultry market in the financial hub Shanghai as the death toll from a new strain of bird flu mounted to six on Friday, spreading concern overseas and sparking a sell-off on Hong Kong's share market.

State news agency Xinhua said the Huhuai market for live birds in Shanghai had been shut down and birds were being culled after authorities detected the H7N9 virus from samples of pigeons in the market.

All of the 14 reported infections from the H7N9 bird flu strain have been in eastern China and at least four of the dead are in Shanghai, a city of 23 million people and the showpiece of China's vibrant economy.

Xinhua did not say how many birds would be culled.

In Hong Kong, shares tumbled to a four-month low on Friday on worries that the new strain of bird flu could hurt the local economy.

"The bird flu issue is at the top of people's minds now," said Alfred Chan, chief dealer at Cheer Pearl Investment in Hong Kong.

Chinese airlines were among the biggest percentage losers on the day, including China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and Air China. Cathay Pacific also fell.

The strain does not appear to be transmitted from human to human but Hong Kong airport authorities said they were taking precautions. Vietnam banned imports of Chinese poultry.

In Japan, airports have put up posters at entry points warning all passengers from China to seek medical attention if they have flu-like symptoms.

In the United States, the White House said it was monitoring the situation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it had started work on a vaccine if it was needed. It would take five to six months to begin commercial production.

With the fear that a SARS-like epidemic could re-emerge, China said it was pulling out the stops to combat the virus.

"(China) will strengthen its leadership in combating the virus ... and coordinate and deploy the entire nation's health system to combat the virus," the Health Ministry said in a statement on its website (www.moh.gov.cn).

SHADOW OF SARS

In 2003, authorities initially tried to cover up an epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in China and killed about 10 percent of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

China "will continue to openly and transparently maintain communication and information channels with the World Health Organization and relevant countries and regions, and strengthen monitoring and preventative measures", the ministry said.

Shanghai has suspended poultry sales at two other markets and ordered through disinfection of the premises. In Huhuai, authorities were conducting proper disposal of the culled birds, their excrement and contaminated food as well as disinfection of the market, Xinhua said.

The virus has been shared with World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating centers in Atlanta, Beijing, London, Melbourne and Tokyo, and these groups are analyzing samples to identify the best candidate to be used for the manufacture of vaccine - if it becomes necessary.

Any decision to mass-produce vaccines against H7N9 flu will not be taken lightly, since it will mean sacrificing production of seasonal shots.

That could mean shortages of vaccine against the normal seasonal flu which, while not serious for most people, still costs thousands of lives.

Sanofi Pasteur, the world's largest flu vaccine manufacturer, said it was in continuous contact with the WHO through the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), but it was too soon to know the significance of the Chinese cases.

Other leading flu vaccine makers include GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis

Preliminary test results suggest the new flu strain responds to treatment with Roche's drug Tamiflu and GSK's Relenza, according to the WHO.

Other strains of bird flu, such as H5N1, have been circulating for many years and can be transmitted from bird to bird, and bird to human, but not generally from human to human.

So far, this lack of human-to-human transmission also appears to be a feature of the H7N9 strain.

"The gene sequences confirm that this is an avian virus, and that it is a low pathogenic form (meaning it is likely to cause mild disease in birds)," said Wendy Barclay, a flu virologist at Britain's Imperial College London.

"But what the sequences also reveal is that there are some mammalian adapting mutations in some of the genes."

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Olivier Fabre in TOKYO, Hanoi newsroom; Kate Kelland in LONDON and Julie Steenhuysen in CHICAGO; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/more-deaths-china-bird-flu-u-japan-guard-021437256.html

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No Time For Sleep in This Week's Open Thread

It's almost the end of another week and with just a few more hours to go, it's time to shake off the drowsies! Pour another cup of whatever perks you up and feel free to talk about anything you want in this week's open thread.

Same drill as always, open-threaders: You can chat and ask questions with your fellow readers all week long at the #openthread hashtag page, but our weekly open thread post is your opportunity to reach the most people. Ask questions, offer advice, discuss productivity tips, or just chat about whatever's on your mind. You'll need a commenter account to participate, then you're ready to roll.

An extra reminder: If you're not quite satisfied with the interaction in the weekly open thread or in #tips, remember that you can also share your expertise every day on our Expert Pages.

Photo by dannyelbrazil.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/MxTi6ovmbbM/no-time-for-sleep-in-this-weeks-open-thread

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Times Internet Is Bringing Business Insider To India, Adding To Its ...

Today, Times Internet, the digital arm of Times of India, is announcing a strategic partnership with Business Insider, the online business news site founded by Henry Blodget, for the launch of Business Insider India. The move comes hot on the heels of a similar deal announced between Times Internet and Gawker Media in January 2013, part of its Times Local Partners initiative.

These local sites are due to launch in April 2013, the company says.

The deal will give BI access to a new audience for its content, as well as access to local content written and approached in the same style of quick hits on financial numbers, fast and loose tech and business news, and some opinion and analysis. Times Internet says that partnership is exclusive but is not sharing the financial terms of the deal.

BI has a readership of 15 million monthly visitors worldwide, says Times Internet, and expanding into India makes sense in a couple of regards: it?s a huge, English-speaking audience; and it?s a very tech-forward and business-oriented population, with technology being one of the country?s biggest drivers of its economic growth. (Something that other U.S. tech companies are also noticing.) This has meant that BI has actually already picked up some profile in the country already.

?Business Insider is one of the most successful digital-first news organizations in the world, with a pioneering combination of original reporting, aggregation, and dynamic social engagement tools,? said Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet, in a statement. ?Their bold and direct editorial perspective grips readers, and already today attracts a strong loyal following within India. We can?t wait to expose them to a larger audience and increase their relevance and prominence.?

Henry Blodget, founder & editor of Business Insider, may end up making a move back into trading, but for now he still has to turn around the business at hand. In a profile of Blodget in the New Yorker, it?s noted that BI apparently lost $3 million in 2012, but also that it plans to bring in revenues of some $11 million this year. Deals like this may go some way to hitting those numbers. That profile also, incidentally gives a slightly bigger range to the number of those monthly uniques, between 9 million (comScore) and 24 million (BI?s internal numbers).

In a statement, Blodget also notes the existing base of readers in India that will now be getting more local content: ?We have many loyal readers in India, so making it the site of the latest international version of Business Insider makes a lot of sense for us,? he said. ?We?re thrilled to be partnering with Times Internet ? which has such a storied history, and breadth of editorial resources and acumen ? and we look forward to working with them to engage readers in India with a Business Insider that?s more tailored to them.?

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/times-internet-is-bringing-business-insider-to-india-adding-to-its-gawker-media-partnership/

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US: Restarting NKorea reactor would be 'alarming'

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. called for North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions on Tuesday, saying it would be "extremely alarming" if Pyongyang follows through on a vow to restart its plutonium reactor.

North Korea said Tuesday it will also ramp up production of nuclear weapons material. It's the latest in a ratcheting up of tensions coinciding with annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. is taking steps to ensure it has the capacity to defend itself and its allies, and that President Barack Obama is being updated regularly.

"The entire national security team is focused on it," Carney said.

But Carney noted that a string of threats from North Korea toward the U.S. and South Korea so far have not been backed up by action, calling the threats part of a counterproductive pattern. He called on Russia and China, two countries he said have influence on North Korea, to use that influence to persuade the North to change course.

A spokesman for North Korea's General Department of Atomic Energy said Tuesday scientists will quickly begin "readjusting and restarting" the facilities at its main Nyongbyon nuclear complex, including the plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant. Both could produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said it would be in clear violation of Pyongyang's international commitments. But Nuland added there was "a long way to go" between the North stating an intention and following through on it. She reiterated the U.S. would not accept North Korea as a nuclear state. North Korea has a nuclear weapons program and has conducted three underground nuclear tests.

Nuland spoke ahead of a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-02-US-US-North-Korea/id-bf6d1a512d89434da07fbd0744231635

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Shanghai raises flu response with emergency plan

BEIJING (AP) ? China's financial capital, Shanghai, activated an emergency plan Tuesday that calls for heightened monitoring of suspicious flu cases following the recent deaths of two men from a lesser-known strain of bird flu.

Under the contingency plan, schools, hospitals and retirement facilities are to be on the alert for fevers, and administrators are to report to health authorities if there are more than five cases of flu in a week. Cases of severe pneumonia with unclear causes are to be reported daily by hospitals to health bureaus, up from the weekly norm. The plan also called for stronger monitoring of people who work at poultry farms or are exposed to birds.

The level-3 response plan, the second-lowest in a four-stage scale, reflects higher concern after the H7N9 bird flu virus led to the deaths of two men in Shanghai and seriously sickened a woman in the city of Chuzhou 360 kilometers (230 miles) west.

"The health bureau will take effective and powerful measures to prevent and control the disease, to make sure the flu epidemic is effectively guarded against and to safeguard the health of the city's residents," said Xu Jianguang, head of the Shanghai Health Bureau.

Since the new cases were reported Sunday, China's health agency has said specialists are investigating how the three became infected with the virus.

The H7N9 strain, so named for the combination of proteins on its surface, has previously been considered not easily transmitted to humans, unlike the more virulent H5N1 strain, which began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003 and has since killed 360 people worldwide.

Health officials said this week there was no evidence that any of the three, who were infected over the past two months, had contracted the disease from each other, and no sign of infection in the 88 people who had closest contact with them.

Unverified reports on Chinese microblogs Tuesday said a fourth case of H7N9 surfaced in the eastern city of Nanjing. A post on the Sina Corporation's Weibo microblog appeared to be a photo of a patient record saying a 45-year-old woman in the city who works as a poultry butcher was critically ill and that a provincial disease center confirmed a diagnosis of H7N9. The record indicated that the woman suffered from severe flu-like symptoms and was in intensive care, dependent on a respirator, at the Gulou Hospital.

Authorities at the hospital could not be reached while city and provincial offices said they did not know about the case or declined to comment.

Health authorities in Beijing also upped the capital's state of readiness, ordering hospitals to monitor for cases of bird flu and pneumonia without clear causes, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The announcements, as lacking in details as they are, show that the government is mildly more transparent in handling health crises than it was a decade ago during the SARS pneumonia epidemic. Then, as rumors circulated for weeks of an outbreak of an unidentified disease in southern Guangdong province, government silence contributed to the spread of the virus to many parts of China and to two dozen other countries.

__

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report from Shanghai.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shanghai-raises-flu-response-emergency-plan-101338484.html

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Analysis: Jobless youths could drag on recovery

By Mike Dolan

LONDON (Reuters) - The global economy is recovering - although the younger you are and the longer you've been out of work, the less likely it is that you'll have noticed.

A modest upturn in the major developed economies flagged last week by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development should be a considerable relief for Western countries still struggling to run down huge debts.

But with persistent recession across Europe and high levels of youth unemployment and long-term joblessness, signs that growth is picking up may offer little cheer.

"The rise of long-term unemployment, with more of the unemployed moving off unemployment insurance onto less generous social benefits, is worsening poverty and inequality," the OECD said on Thursday, adding the issue was especially bad in Europe.

The consequent drain on demand could hinder recoveries before they reach what some economists call "escape velocity" and policymakers are starting to fret that the longer high joblessness persists, the harder solving the problem becomes.

More than 40 percent of U.S. unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, almost double the previous post-World War Two record.

Even news on Tuesday of falling registered jobless in employment blackspot Spain may reflect more darkness than light, with economists at Citi saying the decline in March resulted from a tightening of the criteria for accessing benefits.

There is particular anxiety among policymakers - and increasingly global investors - that leaving hordes of youths without work even after a turn in the economic cycle could threaten social and political stability in many economies.

HOMING IN

A growing amount of investment research in recent weeks has homed in on the problem, making links with the huge anti-establishment vote in Italy's election in February and even the conditions that triggered the 'Arab Spring' uprisings in 2011.

"The rising trend of youth unemployment around the world threatens not just current economic growth but also political stability and the potential demographic dividend," according to a report published by Credit Suisse late last month.

That "demographic dividend" - which CS claims explained 44 percent of the rise in per capita output in developing Asia in the 30 years to 2000 - tends to kick in as the number of young workers swells relative to their older and younger dependents.

But it hinges on high levels of labor force participation, meaning potential gains may be evaporating as growing numbers of those in the 15-24 age bracket are left idle.

With International Labour Organisation data showing worldwide youth unemployment at 12.7 percent - or 74.6 million people - in 2012, up about one percentage point from pre-crisis levels, the global problem is pretty clear.

Rather ominously, the region most riven by social and political unrest over the past two years - the Middle East and North Africa - had youth unemployment rates of more than twice the world average in 2012.

Developed economies and the European Union came next, with an average young jobless rate of 18 percent.

Recent official statistics show more than 50 percent of young Spaniards and Greeks are out of work, and more than 30 percent in Italy, the highest among the Group of Seven nations. Bailed-out Ireland and Portugal also have youth unemployment running at more than 30 percent.

Youth joblessness across the euro zone has been more than twice the overall unemployment rate, while the connection between lack of work and inequality can be seen in Eurostat data showing a rising proportion of 15-24 year olds at risk of poverty and social exclusion over the six years to 2011.

Neither is problem solely European. The last time U.S. youth unemployment was below 10 percent was at the height of the dot.com boom in 2000, while it reached 17 percent in 2011.

NEET CUTS

Many people's preferred measure of the true level of youth unemployment - so-called NEETs or those Not in Employment, Education or Training - reduces the more alarming numbers.

So despite oft-cited statistics that almost every second Spanish or Greek youth is out of work, high levels of third-level education there show NEETs much lower at about 18 percent.

However, as Credit Suisse's head of demographics and pension research Amlan Roy points out, a lack of progress in creating jobs for young adults means there's no guarantee those staying in education will find work on graduation.

In a summit statement last month, EU leaders committed to a "youth employment initiative" that sets aside almost 6 billion euros for the worst-affected regions over seven years.

But with this amounting to less than 1,000 euros for each jobless young person in the EU, many are skeptical of success.

"The longer the disengagement lasts, the harder it is to bridge the skills gap and get a foot on the employment ladder. This has an effect on future wealth and living conditions," wrote Roy at CS.

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-jobless-youths-could-drag-recovery-055415977--sector.html

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