from the Moscow Times

The quality of refereeing at the World Cup had been a source of relief until Friday, when referee Koman Coulibaly disallowed a perfectly legitimate goal by the United States that would have given it an all-important win over Slovenia. Worse still, Coulibaly never had to account for his terrible decision, or explain it to anyone — not to the players and coaches on the pitch and not to the public at large.

Referee decisions in football, no matter how egregiously erroneous, are incontestable and immutable. Football fans the world over will always remember the outrageous error that awarded France the decisive goal against Ireland to qualify for the tournament, despite obvious handball by French superstar Thierry Henry.

A concerted effort to reform football refereeing is urgently needed. Refereeing errors increasingly mar the game on all levels — country and club, major and minor leagues, globally televised tournaments and matches, and local games alike. Since such errors have major implications for the outcome of key tournaments that define this most global of sports, their ubiquity and frequency jeopardize the game’s very integrity and thus its essential legitimacy. Such episodes, after all, are increasingly part of the public domain, given that new media have rendered the game even more global than ever.

What makes this issue so central to football’s future is that these errors do not result from referees’ negligence, inattentiveness or incompetence. Rather, they reflect the game’s speed, its players’ athletic skill, the size of the playing surface and a puzzling resistance by the game’s leading authorities to adapt 19th-century rules to 21st-century resources.

First, there is a need for video evidence. This would literally provide the game-changer in those key situations that decide a match, such as an unjustifiably denied goal, an erroneous red card, or an egregious offside call.

The game’s authorities could establish a sort of “überofficial,” who surveys video monitors, immediately overrules blatantly wrong calls and directly communicates this decision to the referee and linesmen on the field. Alternatively, each team could be given the opportunity to challenge up to two referee decisions per game, employing video replays to review rules infractions and settle disputed calls.

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Gus: the same applies to war "games"... from the US in Iraq to Israel blockade of Gaza...

Say rugby league has had video ref for a while...

By PETER BAKER

In his quest to restore relations with Russia, President Obama focused first on security issues like disarmament and Iran. But with an arms control treaty signed and sanctions against Tehran approved, Mr. Obama hopes this week to open a new phase intended to build the robust economic relationship that has eluded his predecessors.

At Mr. Obama’s invitation, President Dmitri A. Medvedev traveled to the United States on Tuesday, stopping first in California to woo Silicon Valley technology companies to help build his own Russian center of innovation. On Thursday, the two presidents will meet at the White House to discuss expanding trade and investment.

The focus on economic cooperation is intended to take the relationship between the two countries to a new level after years of mutual suspicion that peaked in 2008 during Russia’s war with Georgia, its small neighbor to the south. “We want to develop a multidimensional relationship with Russia,” said Michael McFaul, Mr. Obama’s top Russia adviser. “This trip will build on the foundation of these core security interests.”

If Mr. Obama can open up economic avenues, that could further the emerging partnership. “I think of those mutually beneficial economic ties as ballast that could keep the overall relationship on an even keel even when adverse political winds threaten to blow us off course,” said Edward S. Verona, president of the U.S.-Russia Business Council.

Mr. Obama has already revived a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement that could be lucrative to Russia, and he will have what Mr. McFaul called “a pretty serious discussion” with Mr. Medvedev about how to secure Russian membership in the World Trade Organization after 17 years of talks. Russia is by far the largest economy outside the 153-nation organization, which sets rules for international trade, and Mr. Medvedev expressed frustration that “we have been led around by the nose for a long time,” as he told The Wall Street Journal last week.

“An agreement between the two presidents on Russia’s W.T.O. accession could take away the remaining hurdles,” said Anders Aslund, a Russia specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “It would be a game changer for Russia’s domestic development, rendering the economy more open and competitive, while integrating Russia more firmly in the international community.”

But expanding economic relations may prove harder than negotiating an arms treaty. Since the end of the cold war, every American president has talked about forging closer trade and investment ties with Russia, but with limited success. The United States did only $24 billion in trade with Russia last year — double the figure of just a few years ago, but still less than trade with Brazil, Taiwan or South Korea and a small fraction of the $366 billion in trade with China last year.

One reason is the lack of a genuine rule of law in Russia. Foreign companies and investors have found themselves subject to capricious or even corrupt decisions by the Russian government and politically connected moguls with little real recourse in a judicial system that still defers to the Kremlin or local authorities.

Take the cases of three men as examples:

¶Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and its most successful capitalist, was in talks to sell a stake in his oil company to Exxon Mobil or ChevronTexaco when he was arrested in a political dispute with the Kremlin in 2003. He has been behind bars ever since and is on trial again in Moscow on what independent analysts consider trumped-up charges.

¶William F. Browder, once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Moscow, was denied entry to the country in 2005 and had his companies used in what he says was a huge fraud scheme. A lawyer he had hired, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested and died in prison last year when the authorities withheld medical treatment.

¶Robert Dudley was chief executive of BP’s joint venture with Russian oil moguls, called TNK-BP, until a fight over control of the company led to problems renewing his visa and ultimately forced him out of the country in 2008. He is now managing BP’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Mr. Browder is now waging a campaign warning American businesses away from Russia, briefing corporate lawyers for companies that Mr. Medvedev will visit and the staffs of several California lawmakers.

“Medvedev is on a trip to attract U.S. technology companies to come to Russia and saying many nice things about the rule of law and modernization, when, in fact, the difference between his words and reality could not be more stark,” Mr. Browder said. “My advice to U.S. technology companies is to steer clear of Russia because it’s insanity to go there. They not only will risk their money, but also the lives of their employees.”

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Gus: when the Soviet Union bit the dust in the 1990s, there were many organised shenanigans from the West trying to rape Russia for its hidden wealth... Putin saw these bad deeds hiding behind the fog of "free markets". He put the brakes on that and a few people got hurt. Russia is still in a flux, trying to find its feet away from centralised power. The new lords — unlike the mining lords in Australia, who are allowed to exploit (plunder) under the law — are still iffy creatures not far from the gangsters of yesteryear Yamerika. It's basic economic evolution. Meanwhile in America, the corruption and the rape of resources is codifed and accepted by most without much controversy, like in Australia  — although in Australia, the government is trying to get a bit more dues from the collective resources presently in the hands of a few tycoons.

Facing high unemployment and a difficult economy, most Americans think the U.S. will have a smaller role in the world economy in the coming years.

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Ton by ton, China is buying Australia.

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China's rise is bringing change across the globe as the world makes way for what could be a new superpower. This series explores China's interactions with and effect on the world.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/china_superpower/

see toon at top...

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has told the BBC that the world "cannot depend as much on the US as it did in the past".

He said that other major economies would have to grow more for the global economy to prosper.

He also played down any differences in policy between the US and Europe regarding deficit reduction.

Mr Geithner was speaking in Washington ahead of G8 and G20 meetings this weekend in Toronto.

He said all members of the group were "focused on the challenge of [building] growth and confidence", and would be working to this end at the meetings.

The Group of Eight and Group of 20 rich and developing nations are assembling on Friday for three days of talks on emerging from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who has arrived in Canada along with other leaders, said in an article for the Globe And Mail newspaper: "No-one can doubt the biggest promise we have to deliver: fixing the global economy."

"I believe we must each start by setting out plans for getting our national finances under control," he added.

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see toon at top...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his US counterpart Barack Obama have marked a warming in ties between their countries on the Russian leader's first visit to the White House. Speaking after their talks, Mr Obama said the pair had "succeeded at resetting our relationship". He said the US was backing Russia's World Trade Organisation accession. Earlier, the two ate hamburgers and chips at an eatery close to Washington while amused bystanders looked on. Mr Obama also announced that Moscow would allow the US to resume poultry exports to Russia after a ban of almost six months. "Our country is more secure and the world is safer when the US and Russia get along well together," Mr Obama told reporters. But, he added, there were some issues which the two countries did not agree on, such as the former Soviet republic of Georgia, with which Russia fought a brief war nearly two years ago.

see toon at top...

By SCOTT SHANE and BENJAMIN WEISER

WASHINGTON — The suspected Russian spy ring rolled up by the F.B.I. this week had everything it needed for world-class espionage: excellent training, cutting-edge gadgetry, deep knowledge of American culture and meticulously constructed cover stories.

The only things missing in more than a decade of operation were actual secrets to send home to Moscow.

The assignments, described in secret instructions intercepted by the F.B.I., were to collect routine political gossip and policy talk that might have been more efficiently gathered by surfing the Web. And none of the 11 people accused in the case face charges of espionage, because in all those years they were never caught sending classified information back to Moscow, American officials said.

“What in the world do they think they were going to get out of this, in this day and age?” said Richard F. Stolz, a former head of C.I.A. spy operations and onetime Moscow station chief. “The effort is out of proportion to the alleged benefits. I don’t just understand what they expected.”

As cold war veterans puzzled over the rationale for Russia’s extraordinary effort to place agents in American society, both Russian and American officials signaled that the arrests would not affect the warming of relations between the countries.

At a meeting with former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday, Vladimir V. Putin, the prime minister and a former spy himself, said, “Your police have gotten carried away, putting people in jail.” But he played down the episode: “I really expect that the positive achievements that have been made in our intergovernmental relations lately will not be damaged by the latest events.”

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, struck a similar note. “I do not believe that this will affect the reset of our relationship with Russia,” he said. “We have made great progress in the past year and a half working on issues of mutual concern.” Asked if the White House found it offensive for its partner to be spying on the United States, he said the case was “important,” but a law enforcement matter.

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see toon at top...

Russia has angrily rejected allegations by Washington that it had cracked an undercover Russian spy ring, but US officials said the Cold War-style cloak and dagger saga would not undermine a thaw in relations.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin said US police who arrested 10 suspected spies in four cities in the eastern US on Sunday had gone "out of control".

"I hope that all the positive gains that have been achieved in our relationship will not be damaged by the recent event," Mr Putin told visiting ex-US president Bill Clinton in Moscow.

Russia's foreign ministry has called the allegations baseless and improper, and the country's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has questioned the timing of the charges.

"We have not had an explanation of what this is all about, and I hope that we will receive one," he said.

The arrests for alleged spying came only hours after Russian president Dmitry Medvedev left the G20 summit in Canada, and the White House has confirmed that US president Barack Obama knew about the FBI operation when he met Mr Medvedev for talks last week.

Russia's government says all of those arrested for espionage are Russian citizens and the charges against them are baseless.

China must learn to float

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Since 2009, China's trade surplus has dropped significantly, which many in China hail as progress in re-balancing.

Yet China's 2010 trade surplus was still $183 billion; its current-account surplus soared 25 per cent from 2009, to $306.2 billion; and its balance-of-payments surplus last year totalled more than $470 billion – the bulk of which must have been invested in new holdings of foreign-exchange reserves.

Needless to say, these surpluses reflect a gross misallocation of resources. Above a certain limit, China's stockpiles of US treasury bonds imply welfare losses, not to mention the capital losses that the country almost certainly will suffer.

Is China destined to see the value of its savings evaporate? Given the trade and current-account surpluses, the PBOC must intervene in currency markets, buying the dollar and selling renminbi, to prevent – or moderate – the appreciation of the renminbi exchange rate. But such interventions inevitably translate into more holdings of US government securities.

To stop this accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves, and thus minimise China's welfare and capital losses, the simplest solution would be for the PBOC to call a halt to intervention.

Solutions for currency appreciation

But this implies that China must allow the renminbi to float freely, and thus to appreciate. But nobody knows by how much.

China's official position is that the renminbi is not seriously undervalued. In that case, the government should not fear the end of intervention.

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as seen in toon at top, not only China can float but it has been walking on water...