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Work to develop the Azores is that policy is to

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:49:15 +0000

The statement is the President of the Government of Azores, Carlos César, who spoke this morning in Angra do Heroísmo.
The President of the Government of the Azores said today that sometimes the size of the progress of recent years, not “is well understood.”
Carlos César spoke at the ceremony the first stone of the renovation and extension of nursery and garden-of-childhood “Sunflower”, the house of the people of Earth Chã.
The Chief Executive Azores also said that with his own venture in which it was, it was achieved the network’s coverage of equipment in the area of children referred to the third island, stressing that “the network of facilities and social services in the area of childcare and pre-school in its educational components and support the family, works as a factor for equal access and ensuring a quality education for all. ” According to the person, “are 56 kindergartens established at regional level, supporting close to two thousand children, or roughly twice that of what happened a decade ago.” Still on the same topic, said that “the same happened with the structures of ATL, which are now one hundred and twenty, including five thousand children. In most aspects of the area of childhood and youth, the region now has three hundred and eleven equipment, the three of ten years ago. ”
The refurbishment and expansion of day care “Sunflower” is budgeted at 780 thousand euros, with a complete refurbishment of the existing building, which will be here at a nursery for 58 children, aged up to 3 years and a room of garden-of-child with capacity for 25 children between 3 and 5 years.
Referring other areas, Carlos César soon approached the construction of 46 new houses for resettlement of local needy families, totaling 2.8 million.
Carlos César said that “it is for the purpose of continuing to promote and ensure social development of children and families of this parish, the Municipality of Angra, Azores, and in general, we are here to work and invest. This is it doing politics. “

Copom to halt reduction of interest

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:48:56 +0000

The minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom), released yesterday, made clear that the cycle of monetary relief is very near the end. But do not minimize the risks in relation to monetary policy in the long term.

The record left open the discussion on how long the Selic at that level will remain low, which makes room for high rates of long interest. Just as was stated in the communiqué issued last week, the BC said in minutes that “any further monetary easing should be implemented in a more parsimonious.”

But advanced little in the discussion on the current gap of the product, as many analysts expected, something that could provide a clearer picture on the monetary policy in the medium term. Drew the attention of professionals the fact the text to exclude the statement that the improvement of the prospective scenario for inflation in 2009 and in 2010 was not, to date, incorporated in the term structure of interest rates.

Risks of inflation are very remote

That statement, in the minutes of the April meeting, was seen as a sign that the BC did not agree with the upward slope of the curve of interest for not seeing inflationary risks in the long term and therefore the rates of the contracts of longer DI suffered sharp falls.

The fact that the minutes exclude this observation was understood as a sign that the BC does not sees the continuity of the trajectory of declining interest. Therefore, long-term interest rates rose strongly in the opening of business on the stock exchange.

But the record also indicates that even with the signs of recovery in activity, the risks of inflation are very remote – that justified a further cut of one percentage point, even when the market supported by weight in a smaller dose of 0.75 pp.

SAO PAULO
The excerpts of the minutes
INTEREST
“Despite having room for a residual process of easing, monetary policy must maintain cautious stance in order to ensure convergence of inflation to the trajectory of targets.”
> Last week, the Selic rate was reduced from 10.25% to 9.25% per annum, higher than expected drop in the financial market. Today, however, the BC court noted that more does not mean that the interest will fall more rapidly in the coming meetings of the Copom.
INDEXING
“The risks to the consolidation of a benign inflation scenario derived in the short term, the role of adjustment mechanisms that contribute to prolonging the time inflationary pressures observed in the past.”
> Although it will raise the issue a few months ago, the board of BC has given greater weight to the impacts that indexation of contracts – the rental and public tariffs, for example-have on inflation, and an obstacle in the long term, the drop in interest.
Renewed growth
“The significant easing of monetary policy implemented since January will have cumulative effects, which will be shown after some lag time on the economy.”
> Faced with a slowing of the economy, the BC states that the cut by four percentage points in the Selic rate occurred since the beginning of the year has not yet been fully felt by the level of activity and should help in the recovery expected in the coming months.

Lack the long-term strategy on health policy

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:47:32 +0000

Management reform does not alter the performance of hospitals, with private partnerships have been launched to breach the rules of good governance and improvement in the waiting lists and in primary care are inadequate.

The conclusion is the Center of the Portuguese Health Systems (OPSS), the Spring Report versa this year on the evolution of the Portuguese health system in the last decade.

Despite being coordinated by Constantine Sakellarides, former Director General of Health and current consultant of the Ministry for primary care, the body does not spare criticism of the evolution of health policies. It is particularly negative with regard to partnerships with private (PPP) for building and managing hospitals and the chronic lack of an analytical basis for assessing the evolution of the results of health policies.

Ana Escoval, one of the authors of the report, cites the example of the politics of medicine, specifically referring to the use of antibiotics. No information or analysis on the situation in the country, knowing that Portugal is just abusing the prescription of these drugs and leads the ranking of the use of quinolones.

As the PPP – a “stark situation” – the OPSS regrets that it has opted for a solution “without parallel international” without starting a pilot project and that, after seven years, still no results in sight. The government earlier decided to build ten hospitals in this scheme – the private building for thirty years and managing a unit integrated in public, which comes after in the state. The current government stopped them for five to have decided, recently, to withdraw from the clinical management of private power.

The advances and setbacks – which also have been targets of the contract (see sheet below) – are proof of the absence of a center for intelligent analysis and strategic direction in the governance of health “that Ana Escoval regrets. “A policy takes years to implement, so it can not depend on changes of direction. Health needs of a pact of regime? “Almost … not like the political system of pacts. But these things are fundamental,” says the researcher, lecturer, National School of Public Health.

The long-term strategic planning “is essential to ensure the availability of human resources for health”, says the report. And its absence results in problems such as inappropriate use of nurses (many are unemployed or employed the term) and the absence of a sustained training of doctors: the medical population is aging. The same lack of strategy was behind the closure of services (hospitals, emergency and health centers at night) because they were made “out of a local integrated planning based on specific needs of each region.”

While admitting it is a complex issue, by its very nature, OPSS highlights the challenge of financial sustainability of the health system. And advocates raising the priority of health policy in relation to other sectors. To be willing to do more and better with existing resources and create value. Sustainability can not be seen as only a financial problem, the researchers warn.

Fiscal policy and energy ‘motley’ says Endesa

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:47:15 +0000

The chairman of Endesa Portugal held today in interview to agency Lusa that Portuguese fiscal policy applied to energy “is a patchwork quilt inconsistent and that contrasts with the discourse of savings that is transmitted to consumers.
The tax applied to energy policy is a patchwork quilt inconsistent, in that often the signs are given in the antipodes of taxation will call rational, the will of the speech that is transmitted to people, “said Nuno Ribeiro da Silva in an interview the agency Lusa.

“It is quite inconsistent in a market economy, and like it or not as we say: do this, do that and then, in terms of prices, once the tax, the incentives or penalties for, use the instruments [to] punish what it says it is right to do and [to] facilitate what is said should not be done “, he added.

The ‘error’ of cultural policy

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:46:59 +0000

The political culture was, it said the prime minister, one of its biggest mistakes. Thus said, speaking of political culture is not about political culture. Or so-only, not politics, when the culture is known to be an inducer of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. And the disgust and hatred is in love – the opposite of passion. Politically, a political culture, where it exists, also serves to arouse passions, members, supporters. Have on your side artists and intellectuals is to pay the government – they are militants of sympathy, of appreciation. Cultural policy is not to create the militant discontent and cultural activists are the catalysts of the vote.
Before Socrates has made the mea culpa, since the current Minister of Culture explain and quantify the “error”. In an interview with Jornal de Letras, Pinto Ribeiro says things cut. One percent of the state budget for culture? “That never happened,” the “people” haggle “the crumbs that culture is.” And the crumbs? “Runs are wrong, you can not [even] to spend the money allocated in the Budget” and sometimes “bad things are budgeted. Results? “In the last ten years was to spend the equivalent of a budget full of culture.” Numbers? “The MC would have a percent of the OE [Recommendation of the States General of PS], but the maximum that was budgeted was 0.64% in 2001, and the run never exceeded 0.57% in 1998.” And the politics of language? “We were not able to do properly.”
It is the relief of the former Minister Isabel Pires de Lima, to thank the Prime Minister’s honesty. We have two ministers to admit their impotence. If we add to that the fact that we had two ministers in four years, we have the true size of the “error” made by Socrates.
Sentenced to understand it
Long before to obtain formal recognition in the revised Labor Code, as practiced in Autoeuropa is the concept of a bank of hours, a management tool of flexible work schedules. In an industry whose end product, in addition to complex, involve very high costs of maintenance of finished products, the secret to good business is to go adjusting the output for signs that demand will offer.
With successive concessions by workers, without fear of entering a land never before agreed, has been forging a social contract that guaranteed Autoeuropa in direct and indirect employment to thousands and also reached the highest rates of productivity and competitiveness in the group Volkswagen.
The path of compromise here, resulted. And the result is bound once again, even after the refusal tangential (51/49) by the workers of the pre-agreement between the Committee of Workers and Administration unit of Palmela.
The prospects for expansion of assembly lines, when passing this terrible crisis, is such that any clash of classes at the moment would be little less than suicidal.

EU: political support for Barroso AFP

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:33:03 +0000

EU leaders are meeting today and tomorrow to support a second term of José Manuel Barroso to head the European Commission and give Ireland the assurances needed to organize a new referendum on the Treaty Lisbon. The 27 leaders were ready to renew for five years Mr Barroso, a conservative 53 years as President of the Commission.

While some, particularly in France, have criticized the former Portuguese prime minister late on responding to the economic crisis, it remains the only declared candidate. And it embodies the stability in the European Union hit by the economic crisis and institutional transition. Mr Barroso should get on top the “political support” of 27 for a second term, a prelude to its formal and final extension. The latter could happen in mid-July, if the new European Parliament – where political alliances are still in development – is well dubbed from its inaugural session.

Even Paris now seems like such a schedule after initially wanted to wait to confirm Mr Barroso, the fate of the Lisbon Treaty, Irish referendum suspended due in September or October.

To have every chance to pull a “yes” to the Irish, who had rejected it in June 2008, the leaders will also provide them at the top, in a legally binding document, it will not affect their military neutrality or prohibition of abortion. The 27 should not undertake to ratify these “guarantees”, not to reopen a debate on this dangerous treaty meant to make the EU more effective. In Great Britain, Gordon Brown weakening effect promotes Eurosceptics that could affect the ratification of the text.
In the Czech Republic, the very eurosceptic President Vaclav Klaus, who felt that the Irish guarantees justify to resubmit the treaty to a vote of the Czech Parliament, could further delay its signature to complete ratification in his country

Advocating a new policy on agricultural prices

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:32:25 +0000

On the occasion of the 14th Rendez-vous de la mondialisation organized today in Paris by the Center for Strategic and Cepii devoted to agricultural challenges, we publish the views of Marcel Mazoyer.
In 2007 and 2008, the tripling of international prices of key agricultural raw materials has caused hunger riots in several developing countries. These high prices have been falling into chronic malnutrition (hunger almost daily) about 75 million poor. Meanwhile, investors of all kinds (private funds or sovereign, or other food companies) are trying to seize large tracts of land in the low-wage countries where land tenure is not firmly established.
These events are not new. They were very predictable. Since the mid-nineteenth century, outbreaks of this kind of price are held every twenty to thirty years on international markets for basic food crops. Furthermore, these events are in a context where, for decades, hunger, and chronic silent, affects about 850 million human beings, the vast majority of farmers in developing countries impoverished by the downward trend very important and real agricultural prices.
Indeed, from 1950 to 1970, the contemporary agricultural revolution was in full swing in developed countries. This revolution was based on the use of tractors and machines ever more powerful, mineral fertilizers, concentrated feed for livestock, pesticides, plant varieties and animal breeds highly selected, and the specialization of farms . It caused a big increase in productivity and a sharp decline in real agricultural prices in the countries concerned. In addition, some of these countries have exportable surplus increasing to decreasing prices. Thus the price of wheat on the Chicago market, which serves as a reference to international prices, has fallen from 600 dollars per tonne in 1947 to $ 180 in 1971.
Consequently, many farmers in developed countries have disappeared and tens of millions of farmers in developing countries, impoverished by competition from imports of low price, have migrated to towns and slums. Growth in production slowed while consumption continued to increase, global stocks fell in 1972 below the safety threshold, or 15% of annual consumption. At this point, traders rushed to buy, prices rose beyond the usual variations, speculators flocked and in 1973-1974, the price per tonne of wheat tripla, dating from around 600 dollars.
Investors of all kinds then began to modernize large agricultural areas, several thousands or tens of thousands of hectares in Latin America, southern Africa. Drawing on the experience gained by the family farmers of the North with the contemporary agricultural revolution, and South with the green revolution, they formed large agricultural enterprises employing workers paid about $ 1 per day. After some time, these companies have proved so productive that the family farms the most efficient North, but with production costs much lower, partly because labor costs are 20 to 30 times less. The stocks were replenished and prices on international markets for food crops started to decline. At the point of reaching around 100 dollars per tonne of grain in the early 2000s.
However, this price is below production costs for the vast majority of farmers in the world, including most of the farmers in North America and Europe, which could not keep their share of domestic and foreign markets if they did not receive their state aid to compensate for the difference between production costs and international prices. A fortiori, these prices are below production costs farmers less productive, especially 500 million of them working only with hand tools, without fertilizers or pesticides, which produces around 1 tonne cereals by farmer per year.
Thus the decline in agricultural prices has depleted to the hunger of hundreds of millions of farmers around the world and the peasant population, which constitutes approximately 40% of the world’s population is largely poor, in under-consumption.
Ultimately, the decline in agricultural prices massively reduced the overall demand. And a huge savings overall, which can be used for productive investments, redemptions of short asset bubbles and credit doubtful debts soon. Until the abyss. In these conditions, the liberalization of agricultural trade, by increasing competition between agriculture extremely unequal and the instability of prices, can only aggravate the situation.
In 1945, many leaders, educated by a century of crises and world wars, the countries engaged in policies of full employment and wage indexation on gains in productivity, as well as in agricultural pricing policies that enabled farmers to expand production and generate income comparable to those of other categories. It is high time to put these policies on the agenda and to extend the benefit to the whole world. Are we going to do? “Yes we will. ”

Policies, students dissipated in ecology

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:30:55 +0000

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, a éveilleur of conscience. ” Thus Bernard Accoyer has presented on Wednesday 17 June 2009. The President of the National Assembly organized a screening of the film Home, in the gallery of the festivities of the Palais Bourbon. Installed on chairs rather uncomfortable in front of a screen just visible from the back of the room, elected officials and ambassadors present came to listen to the lesson in ecology that has issued the director. Those who responded to the invitation-including families, they were about 200 – were attentive. Or almost. Messages to send a file to study, call (urgent) to take, many have sailed between the images of their home and work.

Discomfort or impatience? The agitation was in any case never really fell. The political attitude of what a surprise. The diffusion of Home June 5 on France Televisions has not been accused by some to have influenced the results of the June 9 European gathering for Europe-Ecology?
On Tuesday evening, a few heads if the poster’s political landscape-Jack Lang, Christmas or Mamère Fadela Amara, the only representative of the government remained glued to their chairs in the room, the ranks have been shaken by the many trips . For some, hanging on the phone and not discrete, it started a quarter of an hour after the opening.
SMS to send files to and read
Others have adopted the technique of SMS, which is little more discreet, as the screen lights up. Not more effective, “I remind you” repeated every three minutes by the most popular, receiving many calls and did not follow the discourse of the film. More adept, however, the method of reading the file, pen in hand: it can pretend to take notes and leave the time to lift his head to approve Yann Arthus-Bertrand, as when Dubai Ecological an aberration.
“We are still a few years to change our behavior,” insisted the director, before showing what he calls “the film of [his] life.” A movie applauded by what remained of the House after an hour and a half projection. But a film that, in delivering his message and ecological policy, does that perhaps in addition to An Inconvenient Truth for Al Gore and the 11th hour, the last turn of Leonardo di Caprio (respectively projected in the Palais Bourbon 2006 and 2008). The ecology of overdose could watch members. It must be said that they completed a day during which they saw its second reading the bill from the Grenelle de l’environnement.

Advocating a new policy on agricultural prices

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:24:54 +0000

Manchester United unveiled its new recruitment policy

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:24:03 +0000

Youth to power Manchester United! The new policy of the club in terms of mancunien transfers built around a single rule: the age of the player! This is the Guardian reveals that this new requirement, imposed by the American owners to Sir Alex Ferguson.

The purpose of the maneuver is to rely on young players with high potential, with the opportunity to pocket a nice gain in the event of resale, like Cristiano Ronaldo, bought 14.4 million € in 2003 and sold € 94 million this summer! If we follow this logic, leads to Franck Ribéry, 26 years and David Villa, 27 years take the lead in the wing, the 2 players do not meet the criteria of age.