EDGE Spring Presentation 2

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EDGE Spring Presentation 2

• Update on British Hostage Crisis
• Pelosi Delegation visit to Middle East Leaders
• Mid East Leadership Emerging
• Definition of Income distribution Gini
  Coefficient
• World Comparisons
• Change in United States Economic System
• National Trade and Budget deficit
• Growth of U.S. income gap
• Aid around the world
• A Modest Proposal.
• Edge Topics Spring
• Next Week Micro-loans, a major solution

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Iran seizes British marines and sailorsIran's
military has said British naval personnel seized
in the Gulf confessed to entering Iranian waters
illegally, but Britain maintained they were
detained inside Iraqi territory and demanded
their release.Iranian forces captured 15 British
sailors and marines on Friday at the mouth of the
Shatt al-Arab waterway, which marks the southern
stretch of Iraq's border with Iran. It sparked a
diplomatic crisis at a time of increased tension
over Tehran's nuclear standoff with the United
States and other major powers.Mar 25, 2007
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IN COMMON with most disputed waterways which
provide a border between two countries - in this
case Iraq and Iran - the Shatt al-Arab (or Arab
River) is a difficult place to demarcate. As a
result, it has been the scene of countless
disputes in which shots have been fired or people
have been arrested. The 120-mile stretch of
water, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, is a vital channel for Iraq as
it provides its only access to the Persian Gulf.
The river also supplies fresh water to southern
Iraq and Kuwait, but its main importance is the
channel it provides for ships to travel as far as
Basra, Iraq's principal port.
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British sailors issue discussed at Arab
summitFriday 30th March 2007

• London/United Nations Secretary General Ban
  Ki-moon discussed the crisis over the 15 British
  Royal Navy personnel held by Iran with Iranian
  Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki Thursday,
  reports in London said.
• The two men met at the Arab League summit in
  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, amid reports in London that
  Britain was seeking condemnation of Iran by the
  UN Security Council.
• A UN spokesman confirmed that the issue of the
  captured sailors was among the topics raised at
  the Riyadh meeting.
• It had earlier been reported that Iran was
  prepared to allow British officials consular
  access to the captives, who have been held since
  last Friday.
• Late Wednesday, Iranian television screened
  footage of the sailors and Royal Marines, among
  them a woman, Faye Turney.
• Mottaki said Wednesday that Turney, 26, could be
  released 'very soon.
• Britain was reported to have circulated a
  proposed statement among the 15 Security Council
  members that emphasized that the Navy crew were
  deployed under a UN mandate, the reports said.
• British Prime Minister Tony Blair called in an
  address to Parliament Wednesday for international
  pressure to be brought to bear on Iran, saying
  the international community should 'isolate' Iran
  over the 'illegal' capture of British citizens.

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UK-Iran seek 'conciliation'

• Tuesday      3rd April 2007
• LONDON The British government said yesterday
  that it and Iran shared the goal of "early
  bilateral discussions" to end the crisis over a
  captured British naval crew, after a senior
  Iranian official said Tehran did not plan to put
  the sailors and Marines on trial.
• Britain was responding to remarks by Iran's chief
  international negotiator, Ali Larijani, who said
  Iran sought "to solve the problem through proper
  diplomatic channels."
• A Foreign Office spokeswoman said "There remain
  some differences between us, but we can confirm
  we share his preference for early bilateral
  discussions to find a diplomatic solution to this
  problem."

New video footage broadcast yesterday showed
some members of the British group in uniform and
talking to camera, but their voices could not be
heard. Families of the personnel have only
awkward video footage and curious letters to
reassure themselves about their state. The
parents of Mark Banks, 24, a Royal Marine for
around three years, made an emotional statement
yesterday, saying, "We miss him immensely but
know he has the strength of character to get
through this difficult time, and look forward to
seeing him at home soon," they said. Father of
Nathan Thomas Summers, 21, said it was a relief
to see his son was alive.
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The sailors and marines boarded a British Airways
flight in Teheran at about 6am London time and
are expected to arrive in Britain at around
midday.Yesterday the group, who had been held
captive for almost two weeks, spoke of their joy
at their release.Three of the released hostages,
Faye Turney, Chris Air and Felix Carman, publicly
thanked the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
after he announced their release and said their
captors had treated them well.

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Homecoming, reunions for 15 Britons held in Iran

• British service personnel prepare to board a
  military helicopter at London's Heathrow Airport
  Thursday following 13 days of captivity in
  Iran.(Alastair Grant/Associated Press)

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• U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy
  Pelosi toured Jerusalem Saturday together with
  America's first Muslim congressman, Rep. Keith
  Ellison (D).
• The Democratic Speaker arrived Friday on a
  fact-finding mission.
• Pelosi and Ellison, together with staffers,
  toured the Church of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem's
  Old City, followed by a stop at the Western Wall
  prayer plaza at the foot of the Temple Mount. For
  security reasons, the tour was not announced
  ahead of time. Ellison says he plans on visiting
  the mosque atop the Temple Mount. "I haven't seen
  it yet, but I hope to, I'm really looking forward
  to it," Ellison told CBS News. Speaker Pelosi is
  set to address the Knesset on Sunday and will
  also be meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
  and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
  of Fatah in the coming days.
• Pelosi's delegation, which includes U.S.
  Representatives Henry Waxman and Tom Lantos
  (D-California), Louise Slaughter (D-New York),
  Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), and David Hobson
  (R--Ohio), will also be visiting Syria, Lebanon
  and Saudi Arabia.
• There has been some controversy back in the U.S.
  over the visit to Syria "This is a country that
  is a state sponsor of terror, one that is trying
  to disrupt the Seniora government in Lebanon and
  one that is allowing foreign fighters to flow
  into Iraq from its borders," White House
  spokeswoman Dana Perino said of the trip.
  "Pelosi should take a step back and think about
  the message that it sends."
• Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is
  visiting in Israel today, following visits by UN
  Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and US Secretary of
  State Condolleeza Rice. Foreign Minister Tzipi
  Livni will host Merkel on a visit to the Yad
  Vashem Holocaust Museum.

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Syria hails Pelosi trip to DamascusBy Ferry
Biedermann in Damascus Published April 3 2007
2300 Last updated April 3 2007 2300

• Syria on Tuesday hailed what it called the
  courageous position taken by Nancy Pelosi,
  speaker of the US House of Representatives, after
  President George W. Bush criticised the
  Democrats trip to Damascus.
• Ms Pelosi arrived on Tuesday for what is the
  highest level visit by a US official in more than
  two years. She is to meet President Bashar
  al-Assad today as she seeks to build some
  confidence between the two countries

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Syria urged to build ties with Lebanon

• Beirut Stressing support for Lebanese
  independence, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
  yesterday urged Syria to establish diplomatic
  ties with its neighbour, demarcate their joint
  frontier and work to end smuggling of weapons.
• Merkel also said Germany will do all it can to
  help in the establishment of an international
  tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of
  former Leb-anese prime minister Rafik Hariri,
  calling on Syria to cooperate with the UN
  investigation into the 2005 truck bombing that
  killed the leader.
• "Our view is that Syria, too, must play its role
  so that Lebanon will develop as an independent
  state," she told a news conference with Prime
  Minister Fouad Siniora, speaking in German.
• Merkel has made the Middle East a top priority of
  her six-month presidency of the European Union
  and is currently on a tour of the region. She
  flew to Lebanon from Israel yesterday for talks
  with Leb-anese leaders and to visit a German navy
  ship in Beirut Harbour.

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Arab summit to revive peace plan

• Saudi Arabia has said it will press leaders to
  support a plan ending decades of Israeli-Arab
  conflict at a two-day Arab League summit. The
  meeting, being held on Wednesday in Riyadh, the
  Saudi capital, is expected to renew an offer of
  full peace and normal ties with Israel if it
  complies with the conditions of an Arab peace
  blueprint.
• The plan, first adopted at a summit in Beirut in
  2002, says Israel must withdraw from all Arab
  land it occupied in the 1967 war, accept the
  creation of a Palestinian state, and agree to a
  "just solution" for Palestinian refugees.
• The meeting will also tackle other regional
  issues such as the Iraq conflict that has divided
  Sunni and Shia Muslims across the region, and the
  ongoing political crisis in Lebanon between the
  Western-backed government and the opposition
  trying to topple it.

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• Security proposal Arab leaders are also
  considering a proposal to forge closer military
  and security ties, as well as co-operation on
  developing nuclear energy.
• It was not immediately clear whether the proposal
  drawn up by Egypt aims at establishing a formal
  military pact for the Arab League's 22
  member-states. 
• The Egyptian proposal says the countries should
  set up a "new and effective pact for Arab
  national security". Fears are high among Sunni
  leaders that any US-led attack on Iran, which has
  refused to comply with UN demands to halt atomic
  work, could further destabilise their region. 
• Ziad Abu Amr, the Palestinian foreign minister,
  said on Tuesday the time was right for Arab
  states and Israel to end their 60-year-old
  conflict.

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• No concessions
•  Israel has objected to some parts of the plan,
  including the proposed return to the 1967
  borders, the inclusion of Arab East Jerusalem in
  a Palestinian state, and demands for the return
  of Palestinian refugees to their homes in what is
  now Israel. 
• The text is also viewed with reservations by the
  Islamic Hamas movement now leading the
  Palestinian government. Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas
  leader in exile, was quoted by Saudi media as
  urging Arab leaders before the Riyadh summit not
  to make concessions on the demand for the
  Palestinian refugees to return. 
• Hamas demands a right to return for all
  Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what
  is now Israel during the 1948 war. It has refused
  to recognise Israel but Palestinian officials say
  it has agreed not to go against the peace plan. 
• 'Just solution' 
• The final draft avoids any mention of the phrase
  "right of return" for Palestinian
  refugees. Instead, it calls for a just solution
  to the refugee problem. It also sets up a
  mechanism to promote the peace plan that could
  pave the way for Arab countries with no ties to
  Israel to open channels of communications with
  Israel - a long-time goal of US administrations. 
• On Tuesday, Al Jazeera aired an interview with
  Muammar al-Gaddafi, the Libyan president, in
  which he criticised the participation of Arab
  leaders in the Riyadh summit. He urged them not
  to attend the meeting on the grounds that "the US
  administration had identified in advance the
  resolutions of the summit".

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The 22 Members of The Arab League
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• RIYADH --  Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is
  a close US ally, slammed Wednesday the
  "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq in an
  opening speech to the annual Arab summit in
  Riyadh. Arab leaders have kicked off the two-day
  summit in the Saudi capital aiming to revive a
  dormant plan for peace with Israel and launch a
  diplomatic offensive to resolve the Middle East
  conflict.
• "In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among
  brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign
  occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil
  war," Abdullah said.
• He also said that Arab nations, which are
  planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East
  peace plan at the summit, would not allow any
  foreign force to decide the future of the region.
• In the past, Saudi leaders including foreign
  minister Prince Saud Al Faisal have often
  criticized US policy in Iraq but have never
  described its presence there as "illegitimate."
• If Arab leaders recover trust in each other and
  regain their credibility, "the winds of hope will
  blow on the nation, and then, we will not allow
  forces from outside the region to determine the
  future of the region, and only the flag of
  Arabism will be raised on Arab soil," Abdullah
  said.

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• UPDATE The White House insisted Wednesday that
  King Abdullah was wrong to say the US military
  presence in Iraq is an "illegitimate foreign
  occupation." "The United States is in Iraq at
  the request of the Iraqis and under a United
  Nations mandate. Any suggestion to the contrary
  is wrong," said National Security Council
  spokesman Gordon Johndroe. US State Department
  spokesman Tom Casey stressed that the Security
  Council had several times renewed its mandate for
  the US presence in Iraq. "There is no question in
  our mind that our forces are there in a legal and
  legitimate capacity in every sense of the word,"
  Casey said.

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Measuring Inequality in Income Distribution
The Lorenz Curve construction also gives us a
rough measure of the amount of inequality in the
income distribution. The measure is called the
Gini Coefficient. Computation of the Gini
Coefficient is illustrated by Figure 11.
To compute the Gini Coefficient, we first measure
the area between the Lorenz Curve and the 45
degree equality line. This area is divided by the
entire area below the 45 degree line (which is
always exactly one half). The quotient is the
Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality. In
other words, the Gini coefficient is the area
shaded in pink divided by the total of the areas
shaded in pink and light blue-green.
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• Source 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances

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A Gini index of 0 represents perfect economic
equality, and 100 perfect inequality.

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The Change, President Reagan1981 to 1989
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Each day in the United States, at least 800,000
persons are homeless. This includes 200,000
children in homeless families.(1) As of the
beginning of the 21st century, 2.3 to 3.5 million
persons were homeless at some time during an
average year.(2) Approximately 33 percent of
these are families with children, and another 3
percent are unaccompanied minors.(3) Two percent
of children in the United States are homeless in
the course of a year.(4) Figure 13 shows the
composition of the homeless population in the
United States.
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United States Accumulated Trade Balance
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The Value of the Euro vs the Dollar
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• New Jersey
• Poll of Pa. voters supports plan to lease
  turnpike
• The Quinnipiac U. survey differed from earlier
  ones by AAA, which found little backing for a
  sale.
• Gov. Rick Perry announced on Feb. 27 that Cintra
  Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte,
  the Spanish company that is half of the
  partnership of the state contract for the
  Trans-Texas Corridor, won the bid to build,
  operate and maintain S.H. 121 toll lanes in
  Denton and Collin counties.Texas
• State Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, said he
  agrees that he would like to see the bid closer
  to home."I would have preferred it to go to an
  American company, but apparently an American
  company didn't bid high enough to gain that
  project. They were all in the game," Solomons
  said. He also said the road is taking too
  long."The toll road being a 50-year deal is
  bothersome to me. That's two and a half
  generation ordeal," Solomons said. "Yes, we need
  the money.

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Consumer Debt at new high
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HOUSEHOLD DEBT AS A PERCENT OF DISPOSABLE INCOME,
1996-2005
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Minority Families Pay More HMDA Stats Show
Disturbing Disparities
Center For Responsible Lending - A Resource For
Predatory Lending Opponents
On September 13, 2005, the Federal Reserve
released Home Mortgage Disclosure Act statistics
on mortgage lending showing once again that
African-Americans and Latinos pay more for home
loans than comparable white borrowers. Lenders
claim that weaker credit records explain the
disparities, but the industry opposed collecting
any information in the HMDA data that would shed
light on borrowers creditworthiness. Only
lenders have access to the information that would
prove their point and theyre not sharing it.

• Subprime Mortgage Foreclosures

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Times are harder in some places
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Islamic Relief
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Islamic Relief RespondsIslamic Relief
immediately responded to the needs of the victims
of Hurricane Katrina one of the greatest
natural disasters in United States history.
Islamic Relief has committed 2 million for
Katrina relief projects, which include working in
the affected areas of Biloxi, MS and Baton Rouge,
LA as well as helping displaced citizens in
Dallas and Houston, TX.

• Health Clinic in Biloxi, MS
• The Coastal Family Health Center's East Biloxi
  Clinic had previously served the health care
  needs of the indigent populations of Biloxi.
  These facilities were completely flooded during
  the hurricane and rendered non-functional.
• In response to the medical needs of the
  underserved populations post-Hurricane Katrina,
  Islamic Relief agreed to purchase a double-wide
  mobile home structure to be converted into a
  primary health care facility and provide basic
  start-up equipment, such as examination tables.
• The cost of buying and installing the mobile
  facility was over 46,000. Islamic Relief has
  also agreed to donate medicines and other medical
  supplies worth hundreds of thousands of dollars
  to the Coastal Family Health Center

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'Lokvani' translated literally means 'Public
Voice'.

• Hurricane Katrina, has wrought untold destruction
  and damage to people and property in Louisiana,
  Mississippi and New Orleans. According to various
  news sources, eighty percent of New Orleans is
  under water, and large parts of Mississippi lie
  in ruins. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are dead
  thousands more are still at risk for their lives.
  In the weeks and months ahead as we understand
  the full impact of natures fury there is one
  paramount immediate need to reach out to all
  those affected by this disaster.
• According to a report in the Hindustan times,
  there are around 6000 Indians in this area . In
  response to a question by a press correspondent
  on the role of the Indian-American community in
  the wake of the Katrina tragedy, Ambassador Ronen
  Sen said " I appeal to all my fellow Indian
  Citizens in the U.S to contribute generously to
  the American Red Cross and other U.S.
  organizations which are in the forefront of the
  rescue and relief operations

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EDGE Spring Studies

• Life After the Soviet Union, Romania (Salva)
• India Economic Expansion in Asia (Olson)
• Aftermath of the ColdWar, the E.U (Riley)
• Morocco Mid-East Economic development (Bekka)
• Oil and International Balance of Wealth (Butler)
• Chinese Communities around the World (Yan)
• S.America and Middle East Economics (Ashkan)
• Latin American immigration Trade (Barraga)
• ASEAN energy and economic Trade (Sae Chin)

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EDGE Spring Studies (Cont.)

• Japan in todays Economics (Martin)
• Taiwan - China relations (Sae-Wong)
• Colombia and Narco-Terrorism (Miller)

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Microloans
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