Transcripts For WETA Worldfocus 20100126 : vimarsana.com

tonight on worldfocus britain nally pulls out of recession but justbarely. why isn the wor economy recovering more quickly? will it keep growing at all? a new rept warns al eda is still plotting to us weans ofass destruction against th united states. we will talk to the former senior cia officia who wrote it. muslim students in lobbed co under increed scrutiny after the temptedombing of a u.s. ssenger plane on christmas day. and what is this? it s stand-up comedy in pakistan. from theifferent perspeives of reporters and analysts from around thelobe, this is wldfocus. major support has be provided by rosalind p. walter and th peter g. peterson foundation dedicated to promoti fiscal responsibity and addressing keeconomic challenges facing amera s future. and adtional funding is providedy the following supporters gd evening. hk to worldfocus. i m daljithaliwal in w york. we start tonigh with what remains a key global suet the beginni of the 20. the economy. and in ma countries, a strule to emerge from th crippling ression. today the internation monety fund provided a worldwide snap shot of where tngs stand and where they are headed saying that the recovery is off to stronger sta than ticipated. it raised its growth forecast this year to 4% from just over 3%. and it said key emerging economies in asia, su as chin are lding the way on the other hd, with continuing high unemploymen in tight credit,he recover in thuniversity and oer advanced economies is still expeed to be weak. one of thoseountries is britain which today reported that its worst recession since world war ii ended in the last quarr. and t economy is growing again. but just barely. and that is where we begin, wh tonight lead focus. al he can fore of itn on recovery andontinuing uncertainty in britain. reporter: is hardly been a fastrecovery. more like acrawl. but finally the u.k. is o of recession just. that in part to e government s scheme which itself is due toe scrapped shortly. a growth of.1% is moving i the rit treks but ecomists say it is not much to celebrate. i think the grth we ve seen so far has come frothe car scrappage schemend people spending in december rather than january becau that wasbout to go up. viously, we can t build a sustained recery around tha and so far we re seeing no signed of austained recovery we could end up ck in recession is what you re waing. e could. i think eryone has to say there is aisk of a tunn tip. reporter:he recession has claimed many business and many jo and has beenelt right across the country. in fact, sincethe recession began in 2008,the economy shrunk by 6% costing us about 85 billion pounds. in the last quarr of 2009, gross domestic product grew by.1%. that has made the economy hess than 2 billion pounds. a drop in t ocean. no woer the chancellor himsel is cautious. there are a few bps othe ro we ll to have negotiate but today figures have could not if i recall th we ve come out recession but theres a lot of uncertaty. reporter:t plays into the hands of political oppones. as eh party claims ithas the answer to sustain recovery. this revery has t be driven by business in the private sector. we have toet them fg to cree the jobs. british manufacturing has been alled to climb to a very loebb and it will take years to rebalance and rebuild. reporter: while weay be officially out orecession, there iso guarantee it will last. at least it is aart. al he canforrest, itv new as japan struggles tough the recessn, it received a warning today th its governnt debt. the ratinggen staard and pooraid it cld dowrade the debt ifjapan s data remains weak. such a move wouldake itmore expensive for jan to borrow money. we mentioned china and it s stunning enomic fwroeth whi is eimated at 10% oro this year. one of the ngers of thats inflatn and the chinese are ying to keep inflation under control. so the government has asked severa large banks to rein in credit to temporily stop makingoans ttave largely driven growth in china. d that bringss to the latest installment our continuin series, whichwe ca obama and the wor. toght s topics, the growing economy. yoing us for much mo about this, from theew york times and john authers, the investment edor of the new york times. good to see both y. welcome to the prgram. so president obama seems to have tried all kinds stim husband programs and yet the united stat economy seems to be recoveri very slowly. give us some perspeiveon how important the success or the failures of the president s economic picies areort of tied n, dependent on what is happeng overseas? well, it s not policy they like to shout about and that ought be ableo stum late exrts in some fashion. athe moment, we re used to the idea the u.s. consumer drive the ecomy and the world s economy. ile we re getting ov this debt claimg people paying do deas, thateans it imore important to try to find other markets overseas to take up theslack. that means the emerging mkets that can l the more imrtant. marc thrust, what are you thghts on this? is what isappening overseas th reflection the president s economic scess at home. this was once a timin which the american economy was the driv for the global economy. it was the united states ecomy that head th engine that led the wold s recession,n the past. wee at a turning point whery china is actually the enne of growth for thelobal economy. there will be double t cession in the world. it had a lot more to do wh the chinese ecomy th tuesday economy. at s a starting turn of evts. the presidenannounced that he will propos that the u.s. actually stop increasing spending outde of security. if thawere to hapen,the rest of theorld will reactery positively. especially china which has so much debt in its hands. in the he said, that would write the ameran economy and a stabilizing effect othe global economy. t global economy we in ght now, we have this report about how a lot of therowth is being driven and the recovery being driv in asia and the example, very much again focused onchina. what does this mean for job prp? ell, this is the sad thing. as we sa in the past, with the americanconsumer, thatrove thamerican economy in recovery. e fact that the amecan nsumer is very reticent to spd as he or she once d because of the weak job situation in the united stes is veryimrtant. the american coumer may not be e one leaving is cntry out of recessio becausee can t be certain you ll have a job tomoow. that lack o job cation has en key for thatreason. one would expect, one would hop that it would be the savior for that ecomy. with europe barely out of recession itself, and wi asia still notuying a lot of t ameran gds, it is not quite clear where th gross engine had been f the american onomy itse. at the mment you would exct job gowth to com last after variousther things puck . they found a more nanlds. theyre hurg people to make extra stuff. if yo toee job growth resume and all the people signing on for unemployment insance ggests that it reall shld resume quite soon, th maybe toee our way through th vicious cycle. it is not just a matter of the politics of the situion, or of human painl it is ve critical ieed that we start to e job gwth come throh very soon. just again, a hll bit about the sp that china has taen. it is bg to b liming a lending bubble. what will these moves mean for us? for the u.s. economy? t did allow new hones the nnel from last. doubled. an extraordinary extensn. plnly the rick of a bubble is veryeal indeed. somepeople had you that they re already there. the measures they are taki are ry incremental. it is somewhat interesti to me that the mark is very nerus about this. you would think they wld want to see the chinese,now this crude expanon has to be watered down. at theoment it looks as if there we nerves about whether the chinese can ll thatoff. the real fear is wre it had been. china loads the gwth for the whole global econy. very, verybriefly, couple of though from each of you abt the recory ineurope. what arehe prospects goi forwar the imme indicatio to the u.s. the mu implication for europe which is t iportance of the continent succeeding. the other you know thiss that ere won t be anyone heft to buy american goods. my home country hascomeut of reselling. they pet the farm in a wayeven the u.s. hasn t. thank you foroining us. tha you. after the suicide bbings in baghdad yesterday, tre was anothe terror attack in the iraqi capital today a suide car bombe struck a police cme lab in central baghdad, kilng1 people and injuring yaupmore. the mb smoelded at a nearby trfic surgical and authority said many of tse killed may have bn police officers. the top american commander in iraq said the bombings yestday and today apared to be the work of al qaeda. three days after the british government raised its terror alert from subsntial to sere, poce arrested a 30-yeaold man under the terrorism laws. they say he was from birmingham and was being ld on suicion of bombing materialsnd distributingerrorist publications. the man s home and another proper was searched and the police removeomputer equipment for forens analysis. th man who allegedly tried toblow up a.s. jetliner on ristmas day spent severa ars stoutingn br an. he startedt a mapf the ndon group. andhey ve been under innse scrutiny in recent weks along with the university itself. nadin from al jazeera english has gone to the school d taed to so of those who knew abdul. reporter: jam sal a third year mh and economics student. usc for short. for him it is simply a chance me like-mied people. of a mlim on sxams proving me with suorthen i need it. it s been a great source of communit with u $l. reporter: now thethe nu who triedo blow an airline order december 25thspent three yearstudying and waspresident of the islamic society. another former islamic society president says if he was radicalized, iwasn t because of his contacts in ndon. never an instce where i ha y doub in my mind at he would go to do wat he has opportunity. at for me is upsettingecause i knew him well. i was a close friend of his and inew h the enti time. for me it really pegs the estion, what happened yaf he traveled tyemen. some belie he met indicated dated operatives. they say he joined the network in britain. the auorities here say there were noigns that he adopd what se call extremistiews dung his timehere. they are taking seriously the issu that hisause has raised. a nation panel has been set up to see how british universits can act to prevent extremism while protecting freedom speech. heaid they are investigating his time here but tend his student aivities like ornizingebates about terrorism were cuse for alarm. it was a critiqu and a scussion of merge foreign pocy. is this off lumts? on your television channel, it is what our newspapers do. there is aig gap betwee to go thatnd this isart of the process at leads himo become mass murder. with so insisting they must do more to monitor the societies, these sdents say th re open to debate and discussion andhey re still shoron the diussion. al jazea, london. he attempted bombing on christmas d the latest purported message from osama bin laden two da ago have focused new attention on called indicated and its auds. so is the key that came o this week with a formerer senior for who warns that al qaeda being tient andas notbandoned itsgoal of carrying out another majoattack on the united states with a chemal, biologal, even a nuear weapon. joining us now f more on this is the author of that report, rohf harson. senior at the at e center. hejoins us fromwashington. thank you vermuchor ing with us. thank you. ou talk about al qda over many ars to acquire weapons of mass destruction and then to use thos weapons to h the uted ates. what are you basing that on? it w done bthe community concert with a lot of foreign partners over many, many ars, starti actuallyven bere 9/11 but vy intense is chronology, i hope, shows the leadervery intense efforts to uncould have this activity after 911 and contuing to today. along do you thin they are to acquiring nucar or biological weapons? i think iis hard to swhafl they ve invested is wat iould call a high level intent. that means they reost interestedn using th most lethal weapons which would be a nuclear a biological wapon at could produce mass cualty attacks. to that end, ihink most people today, most an hi believe they ve been frustratein their efforts develop the high end strategic weapons of mass destruction. how good is u.s. western intelligence? ve they, for example, en able to thwrt an attempt by usts? not just al qaeda to try to acquire weaponof mass destructn? one of the od news of my reporti hope is to show more people that t intelligence community has d some incrible work over the last several years. in thwarti their efforts to develop thesweapons and to he extent that we owe, the fact that no terrorist attack has yet occurred with weapons of mass destruion i think in t first instance, you have to lok at the efforts of the people in thentelligence world who have stopped it. along with again how difficult it ito produce these weapons. no one is saying this is easy or at the athtic is inevitable wean prevent these attacks but it will takeven a greater efrt. years ago we heard aout the smuggling of nuclear material out of the soviet unio are her countries more lnerable? i think i will always an case o vlnerability hike you have to look atvery country as being a potential area of vur merrvilt. the i think tay it is lot less than iwas in the years after t break-upof the sovi union. now we conceed aboutother countries th nuclear weapons such as pack, india, and then e operatnal countries like an that will only makeit worse if more states enter the nuclear club. very briefly. how worrisome is allf this to you? think what s most rrisome is that as of yet w still nee a better focused record. we can t forget or underestimate our enemy s ability to do thing likeenvelope. as they said, it wasai univerty imagination. my biggest worry is that we get complacent and we forget our enemy is capable of landi a wide scale attack. thank you for joining us. thanyou. > a panel of the french parliament recommended today that franc impo a banon the wearing of full up bails including buses, subways and hospitals. under the proposal, women would have to show their faces when entering a communityand keep them uncovered. the ban wouldtake effect byhe end of e year. it would n require wearingit the street or in private. france has a large number. on the full face veils. th wtes brings to usonight s questi. as countries iwestern europe try to assimilate the culture, do you thinkanning the veils is a route ing to do? you can find that a worldfocus.org. an also, fro france story about thma. a terroris from anoth e known as krl jackal who was tried for tum of attack in the 1970s and 1980s he is demanding a final rview of the film and the rht to make chans. maintaining at the producers plan to portray him as t mastermind hundred dollars se terrorist aacks of whiche was not convted. finally tonight, now playing in pistan, we ki you not, stand-up comedy. a ory we almost guaraee that you will see nowher else. a young pakistani comedian is taking the country by storm and almost nothing i offlimits. not the president. the allegations, not the former presidt, president musharraf, not even the isi, the intelligence service. as the reportefrom al jazeera es it, a f laughs ar what many pakistani need right now. they hate us. the untians want to write us to our knes? holong will it beefore we insult the chinese? i got the blues. a cd winter s night on the tent on the oskirts of islamad. it wasime to laugh at their problems. saad haron is stand-up comic. he knows t country is going through a tough time. people ae being killed on the streets and in the hills, there ar political problems. something potential jug material. a very fun subjectover hee. every one loves political humor. over here they lov hring abou it. they love making fun of the politicians and i love doing . somebody ings in with a girln one hand a musharraf is sing what the heck a you doing? and says this is not your ace to e. at you thought you would rid of me? n thinkin how you want to impeh this handsome guy spent so many years righting all ese things changing the constitution sn now i m back the governmen doesn t lik to bmade fun of. atone point ey pass ad law eventing people fr making laws. the joke continued and so doe the laster starring tom crui. show me the money! the audience theinclude ung and old are ready to laugh at the problems they face every day. even though everying is going wrg in our countr he still a supplied and we still have gone on with life. one of those lghing loudest, a pakistani polician. sometimes it can be pretty nny. so i think maybe we should invited him. or the mont, he ll take the worst and t to fi the funny. jaera, islamabad. th is worldfocus for for th tuesday. don t forget, you can find a lot more new and perspective on our website, worldfos.org. i m daljit dhalil in new york. thk you for joining us. we ll see you back here the same time morrow. until th, good-bye. captions by vitac www.vitac.com majosupport for worfocus has been provided by rosalind p. walteand the peteg. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fisl responsility and addressing key economic cllenges facing erica s future. and unding is provided by e following pporters -