Home cheap home: Vietnam architect's quest for low-cost housing

Long An (Vietnam) (AFP) - Vo Van Duong's bamboo and coconut leaf house looks much like others deep in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. But unlike them, his seemingly simple abode is designed to withstand typhoons, flooding and earthquakes -- and at a cost of less than $4,000 could herald a new wave of cheap, sustainable housing.

The natural materials on its surface belie the hi-tech internal structure of the farmer's new home, which uses steel struts and wall panels as a defence against the elements in this natural disaster-prone region.

"The new house is safer, I'm not afraid that it will collapse," the 48-year-old papaya farmer told AFP inside the house he moved into nine months ago.

Duong is testing a prototype by an award-winning Vietnamese architecture firm looking for low-cost housing solutions for communities vulnerable to climate change.

His S-House 2 was free, but if rolled-out on a wider scale could be sold for less than $4,000.

"There was water coming down from the roof in my old house. Sometimes, when there was a strong wind, I was so afraid the house wouldn't survive," Duong said, adding his new home was the envy of his neighbours.

He says all architects have a duty to help the poor.The eco-home is the brainchild of Vo Trong Nghia, who joins other architects around the world in trying to fill a demand for cheap and easy to assemble housing -- from flat-pack refugee shelters to shipping-container homes for tsunami victims.

"What about those with low income, billions of them, how can they live?" Nghia told AFP. "They have the right to live in comfortable, functional places."

But he wants to go further, creating a home residents can take pride in.

"I don't want people to be looking at it as 'cheap houses' but as resort-quality accommodation close to nature, so (residents) can live a life of the highest quality."

The design is still being refined by his team, who are eventually aiming to create a flat-pack home. The newest version, S-House 3, can be built by five people in three hours.- Flat-pack homes -

"Our goal for S-house is for the owner to construct it by themselves," said Kosuke Nishijima, a partner at the firm.

The latest design also allows for multiple houses to be tacked together, a function that could allow, for example, the construction of a storm-proof school easily transportable to remote areas or a larger family home.

Nghia has already been approached by NGOs in disaster-prone Bangladesh and the Philippines, but is not yet ready to supply the house commercially.

For decades, Vietnamese families have adapted their houses themselves, many building ad hoc mezzanines to avoid flooding.From saline-intrusion and flooding in the Mekong Delta to typhoons along the central coast, Vietnam is also home to communities living in high risk areas.

In more recent years organisations including the Red Cross and Women's Unions, as well as local authorities, have been trying to help people develop more resilient housing.

But in order to ensure such projects are successful, "private architects' support is critical", according to Boram Kim, an urban specialist with UN-Habitat in Vietnam.

"State and local government authorities are well aware that such houses are needed for the poor, but have little technical knowledge for realising their ideas," she told AFP.

Architect for the poor -"Architects have technical knowledge for reducing the housing construction cost while making it storm proof," she said, cautioning that it was important for designers to listen to the needs of local communities.

Nghia's firm found that one of the problems facing rural Vietnamese living in traditional bamboo shacks or stilted river-bank dwellings is the costly upkeep they require to withstand increasingly extreme weather.

Although the S-House 2's outer casing of coconut leaf may need replacing every four years, the structure itself should require no expensive maintenance, said engineer Lien Phuoc Huy Phuong.

"It can last a long time, the structure is sound," he told AFP during a tour of the small building.

Despite its solid exterior, the house is spacious and airy inside, with large windows and doors to bring residents closer to nature.

"We tried to design this house with the best ventilation system, with spaces by the roof and windows for better air flow," Phuong said, pointing out strategic gaps that should reduce the need for electric fans.

Architect Nghia, who used bamboo as a key element in Vietnam's country pavilion for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, has long sought to incorporate natural and local materials into his work.

One of his first projects in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City was an ecologically-conscious take on a traditional Vietnamese tube home, known as Stacking Green house.

Built in 2011 for around $150,000, the building is made of a series of concrete slabs and gaps filled with plants to provide privacy while still allowing plenty of air and light.

Nghia is in strong demand for high-end projects from hotels to private houses, but said the low-cost S-House is his personal obsession.

"I want to live in S-House. If my family will agree," he said

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The Great Wall of Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia has been constructing a 600-mile East-West barrier on its Northern Border with Iraq since September.

This past week, a commander and two guards on the Saudi-Iraq border were killed during an attack by Islamic State militants, the first direct ground assault by the group on the border.  The main function of the barrier will be keeping out ISIS militants, who have stated that among their goals is an eventual takeover of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, both of which lie deep inside Saudi territory, according to United Press International.

"It is the first attack by Islamic State itself against Saudi Arabia and is a clear message after Saudi Arabia entered the international coalition against it,"  Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with close ties to Saudi Arabia's interior ministry, told Reuters.

The Saudi "Great Wall" as it's being dubbed by some media outlets, will be a fence and ditch barrier that features soft sand embankments that is designed to slow down infiltrators on foot and are too step to drive a tired-vehicle up, according to the Telegraph of London. It will have 40 watchtowers and seven command and control centers complete with radar that can detect aircraft and vehicles as far away as 22 miles as well as day and night camera installations. 

The barrier system will have five layers of fencing, complete with razor wire and underground motion sensors that trigger a silent alarm. The 600-mile structure will be patrolled by border guards and 240 rapid response vehicles. The Saudis sent 30,000 soldiers to patrol the border in July 2014 after ISIS forces swept into western Iraq and Iraqi guards on the Saudi border fled.

The Saudi Wall was first proposed during the Iraq civil war in 2006, but the rise of the Islamic State, which now controls large sections of Iraqi territory, prompted the Saudi government to implement the plan.

But it's not the first Saudi border wall. Since 2003, in fits and starts due to Yemeni opposition, the Saudi government has been working on a less costly barrier along the 1,100 mile border with Yemen on the Kingdom's southern border. 

And Saudi Arabia is not the only country that has turned to a physical barrier to keep its enemies or illegal immigrants out.

The Saudi's wall is designed to function as the modern equivalent of the Great Wall of China, which was completed in 206 B.C. The Great Wall was intended to force attacking armies to have to circumnavigate the 5,500-mile structure. 

In the modern history of wall building, the Soviets militarized the border with Western Europe and separated East and West Berlin with the 87-mile Berlin Wall to stop would-be defectors from escaping to the West through the divided city that had an open border up until 1961.

The US government started constructing a 700-mile border-fence on the Mexican border in order to stem the flow of illegal immigrants back in 2006 that President Obama claimed in 2011 was, "now basically complete," according to Politifact.com. But critics say that statement is untrue. 

Israel operates a 455-mile long "Separation Barrier" to the tune of a yearly average of $260 million in maintenance costs. It criss-crosses its way along the 199-mile Green Line that separates the West Bank from East Jerusalem, according to Al Jazeera. The Separation Barrier's loops and curves have surrounded some Palestinian communities on all sides and cut off some farmers from their agricultural land. 

According to a June story from CBS News, ISIS wants to unite the entire Levant, which includes land in Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and Iraq. Jordan has sent more tanks and rocket launchers to the border with Iraq and its forces remain on "high alert," as was reported in a June BBC story, and Kuwait's border with Iraq has been relatively quiet because Iraq's Shia population lives in the areas north of Kuwait, according to the same report. 

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This Is How You Smuggle 94 iPhones over the Chinese Border

The latest batch of iPhones have been available in China for months, but smuggling is still common for stolen phones, which are often easier to fence in Asia. According to the report, so-called “mobile armor” is a fairly common tactic for phone smugglers. Police noticed this particular smuggler due to “weird walking posture, joint stiffness and muscle tension,” an obvious result of covering your entire body in touchscreens.

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French imams rail against 'crazies who have seized our religion'

Paris (AFP) - French imams condemned violence committed in the name of Islam during Friday prayers as the country reeled from the double hostage dramas that followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine.

"We denounce the odious crimes committed by the terrorists, whose criminal action endangers our willingness to live together," said the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur.The same message -- distancing the country's five million Muslims from the jihadists responsible for the attacks -- was relayed at more than 2,300 mosques across France.

He also appealed to "all the Muslims of France" to take part in demonstrations planned for Sunday to pay homage to the 12 victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday, the bloodiest in France in more than half a century.

In local mosques across the country, imams condemned the jihadists who claimed they were avenging the Prophet Mohammed by shooting dead some of France's best-known cartoonists at the satirical weekly.

Charlie Hebdo had angered many Muslims by repeatedly publishing cartoons that featured the Prophet as it lampooned Islamist extremists.

"The people who carried out that attack in the name of Islam are not Muslims... The Prophet did not advocate violence against non-Muslims," Abdel Qader Achour, of the conservative Omar Ibn Al Khattab mosque not far from Charlie Hebdo's offices, insisted.Muslim groups had taken the magazine to court over the drawings but had lost.

"France is our country, we have been here for three or even four generations, and we should not be afraid," he said as around one thousand of the faithful gathered to pray.

"To a cartoon you reply with a cartoon, to a drawing with a drawing, to a newspaper article with a newspaper article... But you don't reply with guns," said Mustafa Riad of the Union mosque in the southern city of Montpellier.

Muslim theologian Tareq Oubrou, an imam in Bordeaux, in the southwest, said Muslims were furious that their religion had been "confiscated by crazies... and uneducated, unbalanced people".

Muslim leaders fear that the Charlie Hebdo attack will lead to further hostility and attacks against their community.- Fear of rise in hostility -

Prime Minister Manuel Valls insisted Friday that France was "in a war against terrorism", but not "against a religion", and President Francois Hollande appealed for a halt to emotive rhetoric and "stigmatisation and sorry caricaturing" of others.

Since Wednesday's attack, shot have been fired and grenades thrown at several Muslim places of worship without causing injuries.

Four shots were fired at the front of a mosque in Albi in the south and racists slogans scrawled on another in Bayonne in the southwest. On Friday a pig's head and its entrails were found hanging from the door to a prayer hall in Corte on the island of Corsica.

"I am afraid that their acts will get worse in the coming days," said Abdallah Zekr, the president of the French Muslim Council (CFCM), which monitors Islamophobic attacks.

"Muslims are caught in a trap, between those who kill in the name of Islam and those who are using this to stigmatise Muslims," he said.

Up to 390 French jihadists are thought to be fighting in Syria, according to the latest estimates, and around 60 have died fighting with extremist groups there.

Muslim Amine Guellil, a 47-year-old estate agent, said: "A good Muslim would never shoot anyone, those who do that cannot be Muslims."

Two of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre were Muslims, with policeman Ahmed Merabet shot in cold blood as he tried to stop the terrorists fleeing the seen, he said.

"There are several million Muslims in France, and the vast majority are integrated into French society," said Claude Dargent, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris. "And for those who aren't, it's less a question of religion than their social and economic situation."

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AirAsia Boss Applies Deft Touch in Crash Response

SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) — If AirAsia bounces back from its first fatal disaster, much of the credit will go to its effusive founder Tony Fernandes and a well-oiled communications machine.

AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea on Sunday with 162 people on board. More than two dozen bodies have been recovered so far. It was the first deadly air accident for the 13-year-old carrier, which has made air travel affordable for tens of millions of people in fast-growing Southeast Asia.From the highly visible compassion shown by Fernandes to details such as changing the airline's bright red logo to a somber gray online, experts say the Malaysia-based budget carrier's initial response to the tragedy is a textbook example of how to communicate in a crisis.

AirAsia's handling of the disaster has drawn favorable comparisons with the bungled communications by Malaysia Airlines after Flight 370 disappeared March 8. But experts say the situations faced by the two airlines are so different it's unfair to liken them.

For one, it soon became apparent the AirAsia jet had crashed, while the location of the Malaysia Airlines plane has been a mystery since it vanished a short time into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. As a bureaucratic, state-owned company, Malaysia Airlines faced constraints that AirAsia didn't and which resulted in its often lumbering and scripted communications.

A fatal crash is typically a make-or-break event for an airline. Irrespective of the cause, the professionalism and authenticity of the airline's response are crucial for its reputation to recover. After nearly a century of commercial aviation, airlines have accumulated a trove of experience and knowledge about how to respond to disasters, though the lessons are not always learned or applied.

"Fernandes sounds authentic and credible," said Caroline Sapriel, managing director of CS&A, which advises companies on crisis management.

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"He is looking after the priorities — the families. He is showing a lot of empathy. He is using many channels to put that across."

Since Sunday, Fernandes has been constantly in the spotlight, apologizing for the loss of life. An active Twitter user with nearly a million followers, he quickly took to social media to express shock and sympathy. On television, he has not shied away from answering questions while avoiding speculation about the cause of the crash, which occurred during bad weather.

"I apologize profusely for what they are going through. I am the leader of this company and I have to take responsibility," Fernandes said at a televised news conference.

Within hours of the flight disappearing from radar after taking off from Surabaya in Indonesia, he was in the city to meet with families of the passengers and crew. At the same time, the airline and its Indonesian unit in particular were issuing regular statements about the known facts in several languages and had set up a hotline for relatives.

If AirAsia continues in that vein, "it is probably going to prevent a crisis from turning into a reputational train wreck," Sapriel said.

In the first sign of a backlash from the Indonesian government, the Transport Ministry on Friday grounded AirAsia flights from Surabaya to Singapore, saying the airline did not have a permit to fly on Sundays, the day of the crash. AirAsia said it was reviewing the suspension.

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Fernandes "is the boss and everyone knows it," said Maybank aviation analyst Mohshin Aziz. "The human factor is definitely very genuine, from the words he chooses to the facial expression."

Many family members praised AirAsia for being swift in responding to their needs. The airline was quick to arrange hotel accommodation and transport for those from outside Surabaya.

"AirAsia has taken good care of us from day one," said Ronny Tanubun, 37, who lost his 13-year-old nephew. "This is a tragedy, what can we do? It's fated. It can happen to any airline. I am not afraid of flying with AirAsia," he said at the family crisis center at the Surabaya police headquarters.

Still, others complained the airline didn't provide useful information during briefings.

"They are not telling us anything about the latest development. We have to find out by watching TV," said Masykur, 52, who has four family members on the plane.

Even as experts praise AirAsia for its initial handling of the situation, they caution there is a long way to go before it can put the disaster behind it. Its share price is down 8 percent since the crash, wiping nearly $200 million from the airline's stock market value.

There is likely to be a falloff in passengers from Indonesia, where most of the victims are from. It is an important market for AirAsia, the biggest economy in Southeast Asia and the world's fourth-most populous nation.

The accident investigation report will be of paramount importance for the families of those on board and the airline.

If the investigation shows the airline is in some way to blame, it will be crucial for AirAsia to fully acknowledge that and convincingly show it is taking action to ensure that type of accident can never happen again, said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research.

"AirAsia will find that while it is tough to get the message across, people will appreciate their candor," he said.

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Potential 2016 contender Mike Huckabee quits Fox News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a potential Republican candidate for president in 2016, has decided to leave his weekly Fox News program, he announced on Facebook on Saturday.

In the Facebook posting, Huckabee, who ran for the White House in 2008, said he will not decide until late spring whether he will pursue another presidential bid but acknowledged there has been "continued chatter" that he might.

Fox News has previously ended contracts with national figures considering presidential campaigns.

"The honorable thing to do at this point is to end my tenure here at Fox, so I can openly talk with potential donors and supporters and gauge support," Huckabee said. 

"So as we say in television, stay tuned!" he added.

Huckabee has been in the middle of the Republican pack in preliminary national opinion polls. He chose not to run for the White House in 2012 after briefly enjoying frontrunner status during the 2008 Republican nominating contest.

The former pastor won the influential Iowa caucuses that year and he remains popular among conservative evangelical Christian voters.

Huckabee, governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, is set to release a book titled, “God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy” later in January. He spent part of late 2014 shoring up his foreign policy credentials with a European trip.

Should he pursue a White House bid, Huckabee would join former Florida Governor Jeb Bush as a major Republican name considering a run. No other likely contender has announced his or her plans, but the party’s field is expected to be wide and varied as Republicans look to replace Democrat Barack Obama.

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1st of 9 bodies from AirAsia crash identified

SURABAYA, Indonesia (AP) — A passenger aboard AirAsia Flight 8501 became the first victim of the crash to be returned to her family Thursday, one of many painful reunions to come, as search crews struggled against wind and heavy rain to find more than 150 people still missing.

Her body, in a dark casket topped with flowers, was handed over to family members during a brief ceremony at a police hospital in Surabaya, the Indonesian city where the plane took off. A relative cried as she placed both hands against the polished wood.Hayati Lutfiah Hamid's identity was confirmed by fingerprints and other means, said Col. Budiyono of East Java's Disaster Victim Identification Unit.

The coffin was then taken to a village and lowered into a muddy grave, following Muslim obligations requiring bodies to be buried quickly. An imam said a simple prayer as about 150 people gathered in the drizzling rain, and red flowers were sprinkled over the mound of wet dirt topped by a small white tombstone.

The Airbus A320 crashed into the Java Sea on Sunday with 162 people on board. Nine bodies have been recovered so far, including two on Thursday. Remains are being sent initially to Pangkalan Bun, the closest town on Borneo island, before being transported to Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, where Flight 8501 had taken off.

In the thick of Indonesia's rainy season, the weather has frequently prevented helicopters and divers from operating while strong sea currents have kept debris moving.

We are "focusing on finding the body of the plane," Indonesia air force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto told reporters. "There was something like a dark shadow once seen from a plane, but it cannot yet be proven as wreckage."Singapore's navy sent an unmanned underwater vehicle capable of surveying the seabed to try to pinpoint the wreckage and the all-important "black boxes" — flight data and cockpit voice recorders. More than 50 ships, mostly from Indonesia, were scouring the area with high-tech detection equipment. Aircraft with metal detectors also were deployed.

Sonar images have identified what appeared to be large parts of the plane.

"It's possible the bodies are in the fuselage," said Vice Air Marshal Sunarbowo Sandi, search and rescue coordinator in Pangkalan Bun. "So it's a race now against time and weather."

The longer the search takes, the more corpses will decompose and debris scatter.

He added that bodies recovered so far would have come out with a breach in the fuselage. "But most passengers still should have had their seat belts on, particularly as the plane was going into weather. The captain would have still had the seat belt sign on."Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas in Australia said there's a good chance the plane hit the water largely intact, and that many passengers remain inside it.

It is unclear what brought the plane down about halfway into its two-hour flight from Surabaya to Singapore. The jet's last communication indicated the pilots were worried about bad weather. They sought permission to climb above threatening clouds but were denied because of heavy air traffic. Four minutes later, the airliner disappeared from the radar without issuing a distress signal.

The black boxes hold data that will help investigators determine the cause of the crash but have yet to be recovered. Items found so far include a life jacket, an emergency exit door, an inflatable slide, children's shoes, a blue suitcase and backpacks filled with food.

Relatives have given blood for DNA tests and submitted photos of their loved ones, along with identifying information such as tattoos or birthmarks that could help make the process easier.

"I hope that they can find her body soon. I feel sorry for my sister because it has already been five days," she told reporters at a crisis center set up at a Surabaya police station. "I am trying very hard to be patient."The long wait, with its starts and stops, has been frustrating for Sugiarti. Her 40-year-old sister, Susiyah, was a nanny traveling to Singapore for a vacation with her employers and their 2-year-old daughter.

Nearly all the passengers were Indonesian, and many were Christians of Chinese descent. The country is predominantly Muslim, but sizeable pockets of people of other faiths are found throughout the sprawling archipelago

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US Navy joins AirAsia recovery efforts: why the US military is helping

The US Navy joined the search-and-recovery operations for the downed AirAsia flight, as the USS Sampson arrived in the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia Tuesday afternoon.

Though heavy rain and winds have hampered the search efforts, the Navy destroyer has helped to pinpoint the airliner’s debris field with advanced radar, sonar, and optical sites.

The USS Sampson has been encountering two- to four-foot waves and 15- to 20-knot winds in the large and relatively shallow sea, which has made the water choppy.

“But our Navy ships are capable of operating in significantly worse weather than that,” says Lt. Lauren Cole, a spokesman for the Navy’s Seventh Fleet, headquartered in Yokosuka, Japan.

The ship’s search-and-rescue helicopters have also been operating “pretty much around the clock.”

That said, the weather “makes it a bit harder to see, ‘Oh, that’s a whitecap,’ versus ‘Oh, that’s debris,’ ” she adds.

For this reason, the ship has 330 sailors “standing continuous rotating watch” for four- to six-hour shifts.

This means “you have sailors stationed around the ship with binoculars and their bare eyes, looking out and scanning 360 degrees around the ship while it goes around a search area designated by the Indonesian government,” Lieutenant Cole says.

The search area consists of roughly 60 to 80 nautical-mile boxes. “Our ship is assigned to one of those boxes, and they are driving a search pattern in an expanding square, back and forth through that box, with the helicopters doing the same thing.”

Another Navy ship, the USS Fort Worth, is standing by prepared to aid in the search if it is requested, Navy officials say.

“We have a variety of Navy assets within the Seventh Fleet area,” which runs from India to the international date line and consists of some 124 million square miles, Cole says.

These potential assets include top-end technological capabilities and submersible drones.

“Our sonars and radars are designed to find enemy submarines, but you just tweak the bandwidth and you can pick up the surface clutter pretty well,” says Christopher Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington and former deputy director of operations for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Submersible drones may also “come in really, really handy,” he adds. “With its submersible drones, the US Navy is in a much better position to get its hands on flight data than other navies.”

By helping to gather data and recover those who were on the flight for their families, the operation builds goodwill as the US military moves forward with its strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific, Mr. Harmer says.

“It gets to the meat of why we do everything out here, in this region of the world,” Cole says, noting that the US Navy operates with 35 other maritime nations in the Asia-Pacific.

“Obviously there’s a gamut of political opinions and operations,” she adds. “But when countries work together, it can really create some bonds and supersede any potential political tensions or disagreements countries might have.”

“In situations like this, it’s phenomenal to see how countries work together and put things aside and assist with everything we can to make this a little bit easier on the families involved and help provide closure – and hopefully some answers.”

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China to Step Up Free Trade Talks with Middle East

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will speed up free trade talks with six countries on the Arabian peninsula and begin trade negotiations with Israel next year, state media said on Tuesday, as Beijing accelerates efforts to sign such agreements.

China and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - started free trade talks in 2004, and a deal will help China cut costs on energy imports from the region, the official China Daily said.

"GCC countries consider China as a major market for their petrochemical products, and this (FTA) will assist those nations in their industrial development," Zhang Shaogang, head of the Commerce Ministry's international trade and economic affairs department, was quoted as saying.

Zhang added that the ministry has finished a feasibility study on launching free trade talks with Israel, and hopes to sign it sometime in the next few years, the English-language newspaper said.

China inked major free trade agreements with Australia and South Korea this year, and already has deals with a handful of other countries, including Costa Rica, Peru, New Zealand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

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As Oil Prices Fall, Alaska Governor Halts Project Spending

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — With oil prices dropping, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker has halted new spending on six high-profile projects, pending further review.

Walker issued an order Friday putting the new spending on hold. He cited the state's $3.5 billion budget deficit, which has increased as oil prices have dropped sharply.

With oil prices now around a five-year low, officials in Alaska and about a half-dozen other states already have begun paring back projections for a continued gusher of revenues. Spending cuts have started in some places, and more could be necessary if oil prices stay at lower levels.

How well the oil-rich states survive the downturn may hinge on how much they saved during the good times, and how much they depend on oil revenues. Some states, such as Texas, have diversified their economies since oil prices crashed in the mid-1980s. Others, such as Alaska, remain heavily dependent on oil and will have to tap into sizeable savings to get by.

The projects Walker halted spending on include a small-diameter gas pipeline from the North Slope, the Alaska Dispatch News (http://is.gd/ehBsaQ) reported. The other projects are the Kodiak rocket launch complex, the Knik Arm bridge, the Susitna-Watana hydroelectric dam, Juneau access road and the Ambler road.

"The state's fiscal situation demands a critical look and people should be prepared for several of these projects to be delayed and/or stopped," Walker's budget director Pat Pitney said in an email.

According to Walker's order, the hold on spending is pending further review. The administration intends to decide on project priorities near the start of Alaska's legislative session Jan. 20, and no later than a Feb. 18 legal budgeting deadline, Pitney said.

State lawmakers have final authority to decide whether the projects should continue to be funded, Pitney said.

Contractually required spending and employee salaries will continue.

Walker's order asks each agency working on the projects to stop hiring new employees, signing new contracts and committing any new funding from other sources, including the federal government.

The action follows a letter sent Tuesday by the state Legislature's Republican leadership, who urged the governor to immediately cut spending levels in light of the budget crunch.

The state's savings is protected at about $9.6 billion by the end of the 2015 fiscal year next June. But how long the savings last depends on the unstable price of oil and the rate of state spending. Oil taxes and royalties were expected to represent nearly 90 percent of Alaska's unrestricted general fund revenue this year.

Walker won office in November after running as an independent against incumbent Republican Gov. Sean Parnell.

The spending move by Walker, who was long a Republican, was praised by two key Republicans, state Rep. Steve Thompson, who co-chairs the House Finance Committee, and state Senate's majority leader, John Coghill of North Pole.

"The governor's definitely stepped right out there in front of it," said Thompson, of Fairbanks. "I give him credit for that — he's stepping forward and making the hard announcement."

Both lawmakers, however, said they wanted to be cautious about curtailing progress on a gas line.

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US Seeks to Overthrow Venezuela Government

Caracas (AFP) - Tighter new US sanctions against Venezuela are aimed to foment violent unrest to try to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, his defense minister said Saturday.

US President Barack Obama signed a law on Thursday to allow sanctions against senior Venezuelan officials accused of violating the rights of protesters during anti-government demonstrations that rocked the country earlier this year."This US interference is aimed at promoting violence... against our institutions" to oust staunch US critic Maduro, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino told Telesur television.

The text approved just over a week ago by both houses of the US Congress would freeze assets and deny visas to Venezuelan authorities responsible for violence and political detentions triggered by the protests.

Thousands of activists were arrested and more than 43 people were killed during mass demonstrations that raged from February to May against the government of Maduro, the elected successor of late leftist firebrand president Hugo Chavez.

Maduro has repeatedly accused the United States of fomenting the protests and seeking to overthrow and even assassinate him.

The Venezuelan leader condemned the sanctions law in a series of Twitter posts this week, calling it a "misstep" that resembled the US policy isolating Cuba, which was overturned Wednesday as Obama and Cuba's leader Raul Castro announced a bilateral rapprochement.

"The background of all this is much more nuanced. It is dangerous because these are the steps they are taking so that they can try to have the world see the Venezuelan state as a failed one," Padrino warned.

Caracas and Washington have had strained diplomatic ties since Chavez first came to power in 1999, leading to the withdrawal of ambassadors from each other's countries in 2010.

Still, the United States is the main buyer of Venezuelan oil.

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China's Wealth Finds Home in Washington State

MEDINA, Wash. (AP) — Savvy Seattle-area real estate agents have gained an advantage by paying attention to the growing connections between China and Washington state.

"I'm so glad my mother made me study Chinese," laughed property broker Janie Lee, after showing a client from Beijing a $4 million home in the suburb of Medina. "I've been using it a lot."

This year, Chinese visitors are on pace to top the list of international travelers to the Evergreen State. More than half of the 7,300 international students at the University of Washington are from the People's Republic. And a recent top-grossing Chinese romantic comedy featured a Beijing woman who finds love in Seattle.

The influx has made its way to high-end property markets, and observers don't expect it to slow down any time soon. "This is just the beginning from just a few years ago. So in a few years there will be even more," Lee said, interpreting for her prospective buyer, Hongbin Wei.

In anticipation, some Seattle-area homes are being built or remodeled to improve their feng shui, but other factors can help make a property attractive.

As Wei considered the Medina mansion, Lee asked the seller whether all five bedrooms had their own bathrooms. "Most of the buyers, the Asian buyers, like private suites for their parents or extended family," she said.

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Janie Lee, right, a residential specialist with John L. Scott Real Estate, shares a laugh in the kit …

Behind their growing economy, wealthy Chinese homebuyers have poured into the U.S., spending $22 billion on property in the states, tops among all foreign purchasers over the 12 months preceding a March study from the National Association of Realtors. That was up from $12.8 billion the previous year, when Chinese buyers also took the No. 1 spot. The homes had a median price of more than $500,000, which again trumped other international clients.

Washington state received a hefty share of attention, ranking second only to California in sales to Chinese buyers.

"We're at the very beginning of the Chinese outbound investment cycle. It's the tip of the iceberg," said Simon Henry, co-CEO of Juwai.com, an influential real estate website that connects Chinese buyers with international properties.

The China-Washington ties include direct flights between Seattle, Beijing, Hong Kong and several other Chinese cities, and that proximity is part of what makes the West Coast attractive, said Jed Smith, a research director with the Realtors group. Other foreign investors follow similar patterns, he said, noting that Mexican buyers often purchase in the Southwest, while Europeans tend to favor the Northeast.

Nationally, Smith said, foreign buyers spent about $90 billion on U.S. property last year, out of about $1.3 trillion in total sales. The international impact had potential to raise spot prices, but not enough to inflate costs across the U.S. or crowd out local buyers, he said.

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Janie Lee, right, a residential specialist with John L. Scott Real Estate, shows a home for sale to  …

The recent links — including the film "Bei Jing Yu Shang Xi Ya Tu," which Lee says literally translates to "Beijing Meets Seattle" and references the Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan classic "Sleepless in Seattle" — come as other major U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas, have experienced a tourism boost from the Far East.

Chinese tourists have been among the fastest-growing and highest-spending U.S. visitors in recent years. In 2013, about 1.8 million Chinese travelers came to the U.S., contributing about $21 billion to the economy, according to a White House release.

State Department figures show Chinese tourists spent about $7,000 per person in the U.S., compared with the average of $4,500 for all overseas visitors.

To encourage such travel and spending, the U.S. government last month expanded the availability of visas to Chinese visitors. In announcing the change, the White House said it could bring an economic impact of $85 billion by 2021.

In Washington, Visit Seattle, a travel industry group, says more than 100,000 Chinese travelers will visit the state this year, tops among all overseas travelers to the state.

Education has been part of that draw, and veteran Seattle-area real estate agent Tere Foster said it's been common for Chinese parents to buy homes for their children while they attend school, often rooming with other students.

Foster has sold homes in ritzy Seattle suburbs for three decades and has seen foreign buying booms before. She said the cycles depend on whose economy was humming at the time. In years past, she's had spikes of Japanese, Korean and Eastern European clients.

Part of the reason for the current increase of Chinese buyers is investment. "Chinese currency it's still a soft currency," which is subject to rapid value fluctuations, said Jonathan Zhang, who teaches business at the University of Washington. Purchasing a home in the U.S. "is a good way to preserve wealth," he added.

"When you have sudden prosperity, you get excited, you spend it," Zhang said. "At the same time, you think about how you're going to preserve it for the future, because it's not that clear this boom is going to continue."

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OSCE Extends Observer Mission at Russia-Ukraine Border Until March

VIENNA (Reuters) - European security watchdog the OSCE prolonged the mandate of its observer mission at two Russian checkpoints on the border with Ukraine by three months on Thursday, the longest extension so far.

Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of sending weapons and soldiers to help pro-Russian separatists in the country's east during the conflict that began after the overthrow of Ukraine's Moscow-backed leader in February. Russia denies it.

Violence has lessened in recent weeks and Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday the Ukraine crisis should be resolved as quickly as possible. His comments came two days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia had made constructive moves toward reducing tensions.

The 57 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which include Ukraine, Russia and the United States, decided by consensus to extend the mandate of the mission at the Gukovo and Donetsk checkpoints until March 23.

The mission of 22 civilian observers was launched in July with a three-month mandate and had already been extended twice, in October and November, by one month at a time.

"The observers will report on the situation, including movements across the Russian-Ukrainian border at the two Russian checkpoints," the Vienna-based OSCE said in a statement.

The mandate would not change, it said, despite a U.S. call two months ago for an expanded role for the observer mission.

The OSCE also operates a separate, larger monitoring mission in Ukraine itself with international observers seeking to reduce tensions and report on the situation on the ground. That mission has a mandate also running until March

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