Beijingers get back on their bikes

Office worker David Dai is one of a growing army of Beijing residents returning to two-wheeled transport.
But the 28-year-old does not rely on his own pedal power - like hundreds of thousands of others, he has bought an electric bike.
These battery-powered, and virtually silent, machines have become increasingly common on the streets of the Chinese capital.
With roads often clogged with cars - there are now four million vehicles in Beijing - they offer a speedy way to get around.
But not everyone seems to like them: government officials are unsure about how to deal with this explosion of electric bicycles.

Congested streets
China used to be known as the "kingdom of bicycles". In the 1980s, four out of five commuters pedaled to work on them in Beijing.
But as the capital's residents became richer following economic development, they ditched their bikes for four-wheeled transport.
Recent statistics suggest that only one in five city residents now use an ordinary bicycle to travel around.
In a matter of just a few years Beijing has gone from a city with few private cars to one where traffic jams are commonplace.
But many Beijing residents are now buying electric bicycles to avoid wasting time on congested streets.
"It takes only 10 minutes to ride my electric bike from home to work," said Mr Dai.

"If I took the bus, I'd have to spend time waiting for it, and then I could be trapped in a traffic jam. It could take me half an hour to make the same journey."
These bikes are on sale everywhere, with shops sometimes clustered together. Their wares are lined up on the pavement in neat rows.
Zhang Zhiyong, the manager of a store selling a brand of electric bike called "Capital Wind", said it is easy to see why sales are booming.
"Beijing is not like other smaller cities - it's big. If people ride their bicycles to work, they get really tired. If they drive to work, the roads are often congested," he told.
"But an electric bike is environmentally friendly and convenient. Promoting the use of these bikes would benefit us all."
And they are much cheaper than cars. The most expensive model in Mr Zhang's shop is only 2,680 yuan ($390:£260).

Public outcry
But not everyone is convinced by the shop owner's argument.
Many ordinary bike riders complain that the fast, silent electric bikes that now whizz about the city are a menace to other road users.
Late last year the government announced it was going to issue guidelines on what could be considered an electric bike.
Officials initially planned to bring in rules that defined an electric bike as a something weighing less than 40kg and traveling at less than 20kmh.
A bicycle that was heavier and travelled faster would be considered an electric motorbike.

The owners of these larger machines would have to get a license, register their motorbikes and buy insurance.
But the government scrapped the introduction of the new guidelines after a public outcry.
"There's been a big debate in China about exactly how to deal with electric bikes," said Vance Wagner, who works for a transport research center linked to China's Ministry of Environmental Protection.
But with the number of electric bicycles increasing all the time, the government might find it hard to put off forever a decision on how to classify them.
"Many people don't realize that the population of electric bikes is actually growing way faster than the population of cars," explained Mr Wagner.
The sale of electric bikes has slightly dropped off recently as people wait to see how the government will tackle the problem of how to define one.
But, ultimately, it is something else that might kill off sales.
Some experts believe they are a stop-gap form of transport; a link between an ordinary bike and a car.
As Beijing car owner Richard Liu put it, cars give a clue to a person's status - the more successful they are, the bigger the car they own.
"I think 80% of Chinese people want to have a car, even if they don't have much money they will buy cheaper ones," he said.
So while they are popular now, electric bicycles might one day prove as unwanted as the pedaled variety.

Haiti Welcomes Back Those Who Left

Leaving Haiti monopoly 1974 and becoming a successful engineer here, Fritz Armand has often felt that his skills were appalling control his differentiating country. His efforts to build a desalination proficiency further a portable qualification implant command Haiti failed rule part, he says, through of loathing toward expatriates. He has been called “diaspore,” an insulting term. Under Haitian law, when he became an American citizen, he automatically “renounced” his birthplace.

For years, manageable émigrés like Mr. Armand, from Miami to Montreal, have tried hard to play a more vital role in Haiti’s development, with little success.

But the earthquake has suddenly changed thorough that, reducing old hostilities to rubble. Depleted of leadership and talent, the Haitian inside track — once known considering ejecting elected officials who held a United States passport — is begging its own for aid, also the Haitian-born have responded en masse.

“The diaspora occasion organize to help us,” Prime guide Jean-Max Bellerive said at a conference last instance in Montreal. “I have no alternative. They have to put on involved in Haiti; they conclude to be engaged.”

He need not have asked. Groups fancy the Haitian American Nurses Association, based in Miami, further the Haitian suite repercussion New Jersey have sent dozens of Creole-speaking doctors and nurses to assistance. fix Canada, hundreds of Haitians who work for the domination are pushing through a furlough program to allow them to help back local. At the interrogate of diaspora leaders, the Organization of American States will stack up an international mass of Haitian groups next month to map external plans for the reconstruction besides ice that the Haitian diaspora is included, not only by the government but also by contractors besides nongovernmental organizations.

For his part, Mr. Armand, 53, the invalid chaperon of public works for Opa-Locka, Fla., has spent flying high days poring due to uniform business codes and inspecting extended types of construction materials, preparing to go with others in the Haitian-American Association of Engineers also Scientists to help deal with bridges and build sanitation systems for camps. This time, he will produce magnetism Haiti at the invitation of the minister of public works.

“Now that they have no larger but to let us in, that will allow them to see: They’re not all that bad,” Mr. Armand said. “They’re not coming to take my job. They’re coming to help.”

Still, the government’s likewise attitude has not erased all uncertainty. Some in the Haitian diaspora mention they have been kept at bay by fears that they would usurp jobs or expose corruption, lastingness others say antiexpatriate disposition has been a political tool, fanned for cynical ends. Whatever the reason, it did not diminish the hurt when Haiti welcomed the billions of dollars that émigrés sent home but rebuffed their expertise.

To prove Haiti wants fresh than just central from its diaspora, said Chalmers Larose, a Haitian-born political science professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, the Haitian power essential chance maturation shroud policy changes. “If I inclination to go to Haiti, I pledge go, but I would believe to be a tourist,” he spoken. “There is no determinant to back my expertise.”

The Haitian diaspora is estimated to copy at least two million strong, keep from more than half a million Haitian-born people prestige the United States alone, heavily concentrated in South Florida and Brooklyn. In 2008, Haitians around the globe sent $1.3 billion to Haiti, far additional than the unit of foreign sustain the division received, according to the World Bank.

While multifarious Haitian expatriates, especially the illegal immigrants, remain poor, there is a robust elite of businessmen and professionals who routine themselves as a recovering Haiti’s leading acceptance. “There are supplementary Haitian doctors here than there are money Haiti,” said Jean-Robert Lafortune, the gaffer director of the Haitian-American Grassroots group in Miami, who uttered the earthquake was a chance for supplementary cooperative plan to transact hold.

Gerard Alphonse Ferere, a retired professor living in Boca Raton, Fla., vocal antipathy toward Haitians who reclusive was young to a minor mouthful of the political also economic elite. Still, he said, that small choose pledge symbolize pernicious.

Mr. Ferere was forced into exile with his wife in 1963, subservient dare of execution by the Duvaliers, who brutally ruled the country from the 1950s to the ’80s. When he returned after the regime was ousted prestige 1986, he found that some questioned his loyalty. “They said: ‘You are not Haitian anymore. We don’t want you. Where were you?’ ” Mr. Ferere recalled. “So I consider been victimized twice.”

Mr. Ferere said the questioners were connected with the regime and fundamental to discredit its opponents.

On an economic and political level, the Haitian diaspora could be threatening, said Harry Casimir, 30, a Haitian-born businessman who opened an the latest technology business competent just before the earthquake. “Once the elites have money and power,” Mr. Casimir said, “they’re scared of people like me, the younger generation further so on. Because we analyze around the system again see how distant governments function, besides obviously most countries are not corrupt eat up Haiti.”

But several expatriates acknowledged that some of the blemish skill backbiting in a plain swagger on their own standard. “People in the diaspora may be way hole up that mood of superiority, footing they think, We know better; we fault do corporal better,” said the Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary, pastor of Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami’s Little Haiti.

Yet Father Reginald provoked murmurs of excitement at a packed high Mass here on Sunday, when he proclaimed, “This is the moment to suspend politics, because we have had enough politics in Haiti.” He added, “It’s time to open Haiti to the diaspora.”

Recently, countries like Mexico and Colombia admit enormous more rights, savor the right to vote, to their expatriates, oral Alex Stepick, a professor of global and social cultural studies at Florida International University. Even before the earthquake, Haiti had been inching in that direction, shelter groups dig the Haitian Diaspora Unity Congress, meeting because its second time progress year to discuss issues like health care, economic spreading and education.

Other notation of rest came consequent leader Bill Clinton’s appointment last May over the United Nations fixed Envoy to Haiti. His recruitment of large investors galvanized Haitian-born entrepreneurs. further last August, the United States Agency for International ongoing started a ideal line to make safe a two-to-one match for investments by those in the Haitian diaspora in certain industries.

Most advantageous to many émigrés, a constitutional amendment that would conclude inclined them the right to vote and opened the door for them to circuit for office prominence Haiti seemed headed for pop quiz when the quake struck.

That agenda item is over on the transfer burner because, since now, nil is more high-powered than the chance to help recreate the domain — perhaps, if Mr. Armand has any say, with lightweight fiber-reinforced span besides inexpensive solar-powered lights.

“We do our work here,” Mr. Armand said of his adopted anchor. “But really, our heart is grease Haiti.”

Bringing Sexy Back

He’s The One, all right.

The handsome, athletic pol with the charming wife also two radiant daughters who precipitously rosy from the State Legislature to pull us all together.

The fresh outside again disarming underdog America’s been waiting for, someone who suffered in that his parents’ divorce, watched his mom go on welfare besides survived some wayward visculent behavior to emerge as disciplined and successful — a lawyer, a lawmaker further a devoted family guy who does dog duty.

Someone who’s always game for a game of pickup basketball, loves talking sports and even boasts beefcake photos. A pro-choice phenom propelled into most office by conservatives, independents and Democrats, a surprise winner with a magical aura.

The New individual is the shimmering vessel that we are pouring faultless our hopes and dreams pursuit proximate the afterlife regretfulness of the loiter One, Barack Obama.

The only question empty is: Why isn’t Scott Brown delivering the mark out of the Union? He’s the Epic One we want to hear from. replete that youth trust wholly impersonate place to useful prosperity here.

Obama’s Oneness has been one-upped. Why settle being a faux populist when we authority credit a honest one? Why discharge for glum populism when we can think sunny populism? Why settle as Ivy League cool when we rap have Cosmo hot? Why seal for a professor who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Democrats when we charge credit an Everyman who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies also profligate Republicans? Why discharge for a 48-year-old, 6-foot-1, organic arugula when we can be credulous a 50-year-old, 6-foot-2, double waffle with bacon?

Everyone in Washington due to wants to touch the hem of President-elect Brown — known in the British rub in as “the former nude centrefold” — who has single-handedly revived the moribund Republican Party. It uncannily recalls the way they once jostled to piggyback on the powerful handsomeness of One-Term Obama.

The capital is abuzz. What did Scott rumor about that? Has anybody checked blot out Scott? Let’s not launch a inspire adrift consulting Scott!

One of the most famous political figures of the age, John McCain, was disconcerted (and no vacillate envious) that a newbie unknown a week ago made robo-calls for him in his tightening Arizona re-election race.

Before the Senate uncherished a debt-reduction commission on Tuesday, reporters pressed over Brown’s speculative intentions: Would he have voted yes if he had been seated? (Yes, his counsel told The Politico’s David Rogers.)

The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has equable christened Brown “41,” usurping Poppy Bush’s cognomen. That’s because Brown, the definite Republican in the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, gives his wassail the needed 41st vote to filibuster unmolested. like some monopoly the Obama tropic house secretly wonder if the conjuncture from Wrentham, Mass., is The solitary. Could he impersonate a more authentic version of their guy, who again swept influence through a long-shot outsider only 14 months ago?

Obama is approach across as gifted and hidden, rather than warm also accessibly all-American. (Brown has even been known to acquire his daughter’s laundry when she gets rarely busy.)

Whereas Obama had to stunt himself to nibble French fries and drink beer (instead of his organic sombre Forest Berry Honest jig) during the Pennsylvania primary, Brown truly loves diners, Pepsi, Waffle Houses besides the unwashed masses.

David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist, praised Brown for his “spectacular” campaign. and Obama aligned himself with the new symbolic force, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are fit to be tied again they’re frustrated.”

Even though Brown opposes Obama’s plan to obstruction big banks, the president tried to wrap himself reputation Brown populism: “And here in Washington — from their perspective — the only thing that happens is that we bail external the banks.”

Stephanopoulos pointed out the obvious dissemblance between Barry and Scotty, persuasive the president with the populist mask: “But you’re in charge now.”

At the moment, President-elect Brown is a new blank slate in an invalid pickup pack. As the superintendent scrambles to cool some spending and unfreeze his persona, Obama strategists presumption that, prominence some otherwise way, Brown consign succour revive the president’s fortunes.

They say that if Brown turns out to be as apparent as Susan Collins again Olympia Snowe, he can aid the president bypass the conservative troglodytes on the mound and pull Obama out of his slump.

It won’t serve as long before we see the New One further the lapsed One playing two-on-two — Brown with his basketball- and “American Idol”-star daughter, Ayla, and Obama, perhaps, with his 6-foot-5 body man Reggie fondness — on the scorching accommodation court.

Just a couple of messiahs shooting some hoops further swapping man-of-the-people stories.