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New Zealand Prime Minister John Key opened the first ever job summit in Auckland on Friday, saying unemployment would grow in the coming year as the world recession bites.

More than 200 leaders of New Zealand’s business sector, trade unions and community organizations attended the job summit to discuss ideas to protect and create jobs as the economy was hit by the international financial crisis and ongoing recession.

Key said in his opening speech that the government was looking for practical, achievable steps that could be taken to save and create as many jobs as possible.

Key told participants they already knew how difficult economic conditions were and he was not going to spend much time talking about it.

“Our job today is not to promise the impossible,” he said. “But we can all play a part in lessening the blow.”

He called for action, saying the summit was not a “convention of forecasters”.

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard told the summit he was prepared to cut interest rates further if it was necessary and gave a warning to banks that they had to play their part in tackling the economic downturn.

“We are facing the biggest destruction of global wealth the world has ever seen,” Bollard said.

He estimated that around the world the amount of wealth destroyed included 2 trillion NZ dollars (1.1 trillion U.S. dollars) in credit, 30 trillion NZ dollars in equity markets, 4 trillion NZ dollars in housing and 3 trillion NZ dollars in lost output.

Ideas already floated included troubled firms going to work four-days a week and having the government subsidize the fifth day while workers do training or community work.

Those in the building industry have asked for subsidies for wood frame homes arguing it will boost both the construction and forestry sectors.

Those at the summit have been presented with a grim picture of the state of the economy and the government books, as well as the future outlook.

All the indications from New Zealand’s major trading partners were gloomy with rising unemployment and massive uncertainty about the health of the world’s financial and wider economic sectors.

The government was projecting that it has to borrow 40 billion NZ dollars over the next three years, creating a massive increase in debt.

In a related development, business confidence in New Zealand has continued in the doldrums at the start of 2009 with one in three firms now expecting to shed staff.

The National Bank’s first monthly survey of the year shows pessimists outnumber optimists, with a net 41 percent of businesses expecting the economy to worsen over the coming year, a drop of six percentage points.

Kiwi Mark Brown turned up very early on Saturday morning at the CDB Club in Beijing for day 3 of the Volvo China Open. He was a little surprised to be still involved in the competition at all. The reason for that was that he was lying in joint last place at 4-over par - ten strokes behind leader Ho-sung Choi of Korea - and he had not expected to make the weekend cut. His realistic targets could not have been much more than to try to drag himself back to some level of respectability, and pocket a decent cheque for his weekend’s work.
By lunchtime he had a course record in his back pocket, the first bogey-free round of the tournament under his belt (Welshman Stephen Dodd later became the only other player to achieve the feat), and just possibly, a chance of being in contention for the title come Sunday afternoon.

I said Friday that if leader Choi slipped up Saturday, it might still be possible for anyone in the field to win the tournament, and I was almost proved right. Brown teed off when the leaders were still enjoying a well-earned night’s sleep. Taking advantage of ideal conditions - a slightly overcast sky and little or no wind - he put together an immaculate seven-under par score of 65 to finish the day on 3-under.

“I guess going out this morning I was just fortunate to be playing,” he said. “I thought I’d miss the cut yesterday afternoon. The goal today was to try to somehow get back into the tournament and that was going to take something pretty low, so to shoot a course record was a great result. I played really nicely so the signs are good for tomorrow.”

Brown’s round was built around consistently finding the fairway from the tee, and consistently being on the green in regulation, and close enough to the hole to be sure of his par. He estimated that he had hit 16 GIRs - an outstanding performance - Paul McGinley thought he had done exceptionally well on Friday to make 14. This gave Brown birdies on 4, 5, 9, 10, and 11, and on one of the two occasions that he failed to find the green in regulation - on the testing par-4 14th hole - he solved the problem by holing a monster chip from the fringe of the green for a birdie. That was terrific resilience.

In Mark’s own words: “It’s amazing what happens when it’s your day. I got a terrible tee shot off 14 into the middle of about 200 trees, but got lucky with a clear shot out. I hit the approach shot just short of the green and chipped in for a pretty lucky birdie - it was the second time I have chipped in on 14 this week.”

Mark acknowledged his good fortune in getting the best of the conditions, but when he described the course as “there for the taking”, he was perhaps guilty of a little excess modesty. Because the fact is that with one notable exception, none of the other players around Mark were shooting anything like his score.

Most Beijing newcomers see a classic Chinese opera performance in their first months here and, having ticked that box, never return. But Chinese opera appears in both formal and informal of settings, reflecting its popular origins. We checked out the stunning new opera performances at the National Center for Performing Arts (aka “the Egg”, Tel: 6655-0000) and the tourist classic, Liyuan Theater (Tel: 6301-6688), to see two poles of the genre.

At The Egg, one can catch a Kunqu Opera performance with the most dignified of locals. The opera theater’s undulating wood-slatted ceiling masterfully carries the sound to even the most remote corners. The performance is flawless, the subtitles clear, the lighting so crisp that it erases every preconceived notion one might have about Chinese opera as a dark and dingy performance.

But for all its glamour and elite patronage (we glimpsed Wen Jiabao leaving during intermission), it’s difficult not to feel nostalgic for an earthier, more authentic opera experience.

Begin your opera education at the Liyuan Theater in Qianmen Hotel. Catering to tourists for whom the opera will be an ephemeral experience, the theatre provides a cursory education through displays explaining the general roles and themes. The actors prepare their make up at tables in full view of recently disgorged busloads of tourists that observe the process and pose for pictures.

“We don’t do acrobatics here,” says Wang, a performer, while applying orange pancake make up. 25 minutes later he is on stage butterfly-kicking while tossing cudgels at an actress, who deftly kicks them back. While not technically an acrobatics show, Wu Da opera incorporates a great deal of flourishing leaps, tumbles and handsprings.

The Liyuan performance compresses all the action into 75-minutes, a full dose of Chinese culture without a three-hour commitment. Located in the heart of the city, the theater is part of the essential Beijing experience.

“When foreign tourists come to Beijing, they first go to eat roast duck,” Wang said. “Then they go see the Great Wall. And after that, they come here for the opera.”

The UN environmental agency has called on governments to strive to invest in “greening” their economy, saying re-focusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and “natural” infrastructure has the potential for higher returns.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Xinhua in Nairobi on Thursday, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said governments should move rapidly towards a green economy and low carbon projects as part of efforts to revive the world economy from its current slowdown and create millions of jobs.

Steiner also admitted the current economic crisis which many countries are grappling with has shifted the world’s attention away from ecological issues.

“Our attention has been distracted because clearly the financial meltdown of last year that many countries are struggling with now has preoccupied politicians, business leaders but particularly citizens, because if you lose your job in China, the United States or in Kenya here, it really takes your mind from longer-term issues,” Steiner told Xinhua.

However, Steiner who is also the UN Under-secretary-general, said the UN agency has also seen significantly investment in some of the technologies and policies geared towards greener economy.

He said investing stimulus funds in energy efficient technologies, renewable energy, public transport, sustainable agriculture, environmentally friendly tourism and the sustainable management of natural resources could help create millions of jobs.

“I think it’s a matter of public attention now and public interest whether this stimulus package would deliver green benefits,” said Steiner.

The UNEP chief said investing the funds in those sectors reflects the conviction that a green economy can create dynamic new industries, quality jobs and income growth while mitigating and adapting to climate change and arresting biodiversity decline.

“China has been amongst the leading nations in the global context that have promoted investments in the green economy as part of the stimulus package as like (South) Korea and the Obama Administration,” Steiner said.

“So even though we still face a major challenge in this economic crisis … the economic crisis is also an opportunity to change our existing infrastructure to invest in more efficient transport to be able to use energy efficiency as an opportunity.”

Steiner said investments in improved energy efficiency in buildings could generate an additional millions of green jobs in developed countries, with the potential much higher in developing countries.

The UNEP-backed initiative, the Green Economy Initiative, which has close to 4 million U.S. dollar worth of funding from the European Commission, Germany and Norway, builds in part on a request by the G20 group of nations three years ago.

The initiative which was launched in October 2008 has three pillars — valuing and mainstreaming nature’s services into national and international accounts; employment generation through green jobs and the laying out the policies; instruments and market signals able to accelerate a transition to a Green Economy.

The Green Economy Initiative will draw on the existing and considerable body of work generated by UNEP, the UN-system and others ranging from the impacts and opportunities of shifting fish, fuel and other subsidies up to innovative market mechanisms and financial products already triggering a transition.

For the past months, UNEP has been working with a wide variety of agencies, including the Bretton Woods Institutions and Secretariats of Multilateral Environmental Agreements, in the design and implementation of the initiative.

Steiner called for some revived economic strategies and new trade policies which would support both development and the transfer of technologies, accompanied by training and capacity building.

Steiner, who is also the director-general of the UN Office in Nairobi, also backed a global transition to a low carbon, resource efficient green economy, able to deliver multiple economic and environmental opportunities.

The UNEP chief said rapid transition to energy-efficient buildings would create millions of jobs, as well as “greening” existing employment for millions of people already working in the construction and transport sectors.

“We are willing to borrow right now more money than we had ever been willing to invest in either climate change or investing in the destruction of our ecosystem, the every ecological infrastructure that sustains our lives and economy,” said Steiner.

“As we are spending these amounts right now, we are saying we should take the counsel of green economy. Not only can we maintain jobs, we can create millions of new jobs, we can produce energy and transport services with much lesser energy consumption and you can combat climate change.”

Over the past 300 years, Steiner said, the global forest area has shrunk by around 40 percent, half the globe’s wetlands have been lost since 1900 and human-led species extinction rates are now 1,000 higher than the “natural” rate of extinction.

Steiner said the ecological crisis requires a collective response from the global community which would lay a solid foundation for shared growth and sustainable development.

Countries like China, the European countries, North American countries have recognized that climate change is a fundamental gain changer including in economic policies, he said.

“Therefore if we do not use some of this economic stimulus to invest in tomorrow’s jobs rather than in yesterday’s technologies, we would have missed a major opportunity.”

He lauded strides that have been made by China in the last 20 years for increasing its net forest cover as opposed to many developed nations who are facing a net decrease in their forest cover.

“We have to move towards more efficient agriculture, more efficient ecological agriculture, reward farmers not only for maximizing food production but managing the landscapes that we need to grow our future food,” Steiner said.

He said the ideal of investing in green economy was not new until 2008 when many companies and business came up with innovations due to climate change and loss of biodiversity.

“UNEP has managed to encourage governments and the public, businesses and the financial sectors to realize that investing in the green economy is not a charity, its not a subsidy … it’s actually a rational economic preposition,” he said.

Steiner noted that as a result of the UNEP-backed campaign to invest in green economy, over 100 countries have embarked on a very intensive debate in greening the economy that has led to investing in billions of dollars towards that direction.

He said United States , China, South Korea and European Union have lined up billions of dollars towards greener economy projects as part of the crisis management.

“I think there is a fundamental realization that environmental change is increasingly driving economic policies and investment strategies and that is why we have seen renewal energy emerging in just the last eight to nine years from simply very marginal part of the electricity investments to No.1 in the investment sector in the world.”

Most Beijing newcomers see a classic Chinese opera performance in their first months here and, having ticked that box, never return. But Chinese opera appears in both formal and informal of settings, reflecting its popular origins. We checked out the stunning new opera performances at the National Center for Performing Arts (aka “the Egg”, Tel: 6655-0000) and the tourist classic, Liyuan Theater (Tel: 6301-6688), to see two poles of the genre.

At The Egg, one can catch a Kunqu Opera performance with the most dignified of locals. The opera theater’s undulating wood-slatted ceiling masterfully carries the sound to even the most remote corners. The performance is flawless, the subtitles clear, the lighting so crisp that it erases every preconceived notion one might have about Chinese opera as a dark and dingy performance.

But for all its glamour and elite patronage (we glimpsed Wen Jiabao leaving during intermission), it’s difficult not to feel nostalgic for an earthier, more authentic opera experience.

Begin your opera education at the Liyuan Theater in Qianmen Hotel. Catering to tourists for whom the opera will be an ephemeral experience, the theatre provides a cursory education through displays explaining the general roles and themes. The actors prepare their make up at tables in full view of recently disgorged busloads of tourists that observe the process and pose for pictures.

“We don’t do acrobatics here,” says Wang, a performer, while applying orange pancake make up. 25 minutes later he is on stage butterfly-kicking while tossing cudgels at an actress, who deftly kicks them back. While not technically an acrobatics show, Wu Da opera incorporates a great deal of flourishing leaps, tumbles and handsprings.

The Liyuan performance compresses all the action into 75-minutes, a full dose of Chinese culture without a three-hour commitment. Located in the heart of the city, the theater is part of the essential Beijing experience.

“When foreign tourists come to Beijing, they first go to eat roast duck,” Wang said. “Then they go see the Great Wall. And after that, they come here for the opera.”

New Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross had to be loving the scene: the flashbulbs glittering, the passers-by straining to catch a glimpse, the questions asked and answered in Spanish.

This was the kind of energy Ross sought when he added singer Marc Anthony as a minority owner. The Dolphins held the news conference Tuesday not in Miami but in the media mecca of Manhattan, with the bonus buzz of a cameo by Anthony’s wife, Jennifer Lopez.

There was Anthony presenting his wife with a Dolphins jersey as an early 40th birthday gift. There was the celebrity couple kissing before the singer-actress, wearing a short pink dress, slipped back offstage.

Ross wants to reach out to new fans, and in South Florida, that automatically includes the Hispanic community. Singer Gloria Estefan and her husband, producer Emilio Estefan, already bought a small stake in the club last month.

“I’m not doing this as a singer; I’m not doing this as an actor,” Anthony said. “(It’s) just because I love football. Steve and I, our visions are in sync, and this is a great, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of Steve’s vision.”

Anthony will perform the national anthem when the Dolphins host the New York Jets on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” on Oct. 12 as part of the NFL’s celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

“There’s no other place in America that has such a diverse community as Miami and certainly no place in the United States that has a greater Latin culture than South Florida,” Ross said.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and ESPN president George Bodenheimer also attended the news conference in an upscale mall at Columbus Circle. But the spotlight was all on Anthony.

The 40-year-old singer grew up a Giants fan in New York. He said he’s had the “itch” to buy into a sports team for about three years.

His only concern about the Dolphins deal: Lopez’s father is a rabid Jets fan. Anthony said Lopez herself was supportive — mostly because it’s an excuse to spend more time in Miami. He said she was shooting a film in New York until 2:30 a.m. Tuesday morning but still found the time to stop by the news conference.

Asked later on a conference call whether this also meant she was a minority owner, Anthony joked: “By default she owns everything I do. I would say of my share, she owns a majority.”

The four-time Grammy winner has sold more than 10 million albums and also starred in movies. He suggested this venture was part of the next step in his career.

“I could quite possibly by staring at the first day of the rest of my life,” he said. “That’s really quite exciting at this stage of the game.”

Ross, a New York real estate billionaire, completed his purchase of the Dolphins from Wayne Huizenga in January. He began a partnership in May with Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville enterprise, which includes Land Shark Lager.

Buffett has yet to accept Ross’ invitation to become a minority owner, but the Dolphins’ stadium has been renamed Land Shark Stadium for this season. Buffett has also written a song for the team.

Ross insisted the economic downturn had nothing to do with his desire to bring in minority owners.

“Knock on wood, I can say while we’re going through troubled times, fortunately I don’t need to bring in partners. … I always intended to bring in partners,” he said. “I always stated before that I want this team to be representative of the community. That’s what I was looking for — who my partners were, as opposed to the money aspect.”

The normalization of relations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is “certainly possible,” but it depends on Pyongyang’s behaviors, said the U.S. State Department on Wednesday.

“If the North (Korea) returns to the table and takes steps to bring about a verifiable and irreversible end to its nuclear program, we would certainly look at a comprehensive approach to incentives and opportunities,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood at the daily press briefing.

“What I mean by that in terms of opportunities is a normalization of relations is certainly possible,” said Wood, but stressing that “we’re not going to reward the North for steps that it should have taken.”

“The North has to show a commitment to denuclearization. And –but the North cannot be rewarded for the behavior that it’s exhibited and has to address the concerns of the international community. Otherwise, we’re not going to be able to move forward,” said the spokesman.

According to an agreement signed at the six-party talks in February 2007, the Bush administration agreed to begin discussion on normalization of relations with the DPRK in exchange for Pyongyang’s shutdown of its nuclear facilities.

The talks on normalizing the U.S.-DPRK relations were kicked off in March 2007, but few developments have been made because the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula was often drawn in the stalemate.

Dismissing international opposition, the DPRK conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25 and since then has fired at least seven ballistic missiles. It also boycotted the six-party talks on its nuclear program.

Responding to Pyongyang’s behavior, the Obama administration has decided to extend economic sanctions by prolonging the national emergency on the DPRK, and has vowed to enforce sanctions against Pyongyang set in UN Security Council Resolution 1874.

The best leaders aren’t afraid to surround themselves with powerful people–even if those people might eventually pose a threat.
Dora Vell has seen the best and the worst in CEO power struggles as the head of Vell Executive Search. In 12 years as a headhunter, she’s seen CEOs intentionally fill their top ranks with puppets, throw cellphones at top-quality interviewees and block succession plans. One CEO kept a potential successor at bay by rescheduling his job interview 14 times.

But the best leaders aren’t afraid to surround themselves with powerful people–even if they might eventually pose a threat. Smart CEOs should fight to hire the best talent available, and work hard to keep potential problems in line.

“CEOs are there to control their company. That’s their job,” says Brendan Wood, chairman at advisory firm Brendan Wood International (see “The Market’s Best Managers”). And part of that job is hiring capable staff. There’s generally a direct correlation between companies that have top-gun CEOs and top-gun CFOs, he says; one begets the other.

Still, some CEOs insist on treating their companies like a private fiefdom, refusing to share power or hand over the reins. Corey Torrence, currently CEO of Animax Entertainment, is a turnaround specialist, so he’s seen a lot of companies go down in flames when their CEO refused to give up control. “Many CEOs are unwilling to accept that anyone else can do the job,” he says–particularly owner-founder CEOs, who treat a company like their baby.

Isolating yourself and not relying on others is a big mistake, according to Torrence. “As a CEO, my job is to surround myself with smarter people,” he says. Shareholders and boards should be on the lookout for CEOs who make every decision for an organization, and don’t share power, creating a single point of failure.

Even worse, says Lynn Taylor, author of the new book Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant, is when CEO territorialism spreads to the rest of the company. She recommends that CEOs try to stay humble and don’t let success go to their head. Extreme territorialism usually develops over time as leaders achieve their personal and corporate goals. All that positive reinforcement can lead to a sense that you can do no wrong and always know what’s best.

CEOs should also set clear boundaries and job descriptions in order to keep employees from having to feel out their territory or make power grabs. “In tough times, people will get more territorial. Everyone wants to stake their claim,” says Taylor. This is especially true if layoffs may be just around the corner.

Of course, a good leader also knows when to seize control. Some companies, according to Taylor, go too far toward decentralizing power and lose any sense of leadership or direction. “They’ve diversified the company to the ground,” she says. “Now people are scratching their heads wondering what the vision of the company is.”

To NASA’s relief, a fueling test on space shuttle Endeavour uncovered no hydrogen gas leaks Wednesday and paved the way for another launch attempt late next week for the delayed mission.

Last month, potentially dangerous leaks of hydrogen gas thwarted back-to-back launch attempts.

“Nothing in this business is ever guaranteed, but this one I feel really good about, that we got that problem licked and we’re not going to see a … leak again on the next launch attempt,” said Mike Moses, a launch manager.

“And there’s wood around somewhere here I can knock on,” he said, tapping the news conference table.

Because of the successful test, NASA is now shooting for a launch attempt July 11. Endeavour is set to deliver one last piece of a Japanese space station lab.

Earlier Wednesday, launch controllers filled Endeavour’s external fuel tank to see if repairs plugged the leak. No abnormal leakage was detected during the three-hour test.

During two launch attempts in mid-June, significant amounts of hydrogen gas escaped from around a plate on the fuel tank that attaches to a vent line. Engineers discovered a slight misalignment of the plate, and a different, more pliable type of seal, with a spring, and special washers were installed to correct the problem.

The same plate on the fuel tank that will be used to launch Discovery in mid-August also is slightly misaligned, and similar repairs will be conducted, Moses said. Engineers are still trying to figure out how the plates were installed ever so slightly tilted.

Commander Mark Polansky, who monitored the test from Houston, was pleased with the results. He said he and his crew will return to Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday for the start of the launch countdown.

The seven shuttle astronauts will deliver and install the Japanese lab section at the international space station. They will spend nearly two weeks working with the six space station residents. It will be the largest number of people together in orbit ever. The entire shuttle flight will last 16 days.

Shuttle managers are now focused on another technical issue.

An inner window pane in Atlantis’ cockpit may have been damaged when a knob for a work light got wedged between the window and control panel during the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission in May.

NASA had to pressurize the cockpit and use dry ice to get the knob out earlier this week. Engineers are making a mold of the window pressure pane — the innermost one of three — to determine whether it is free of dangerous defects. Some nicking has been observed.

If the window pane needs to be replaced, it would take four to five months — possibly as long as eight months — to complete all the work, Moses said.

Atlantis is supposed to fly to the international space station in November.

“It could take a very long time. It sounds very scary,” Moses said. “But then again, I’ve learned this team is really good at re-sequencing and coming up with some creative ways.”

If damaged badly enough, a window could break apart in space, resulting in a fatal depressurization for the crew.