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REPRESENTATIVES FROM 21 members representing the Pacific Rim are meeting in Peru today for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum, the first global summit since US president-elect Donald Trump’s victory featuring several major world leaders.
The annual gathering brings together countries and members that jointly account for almost two-thirds of global GDP and half the world’s trade, according to organisers.
The confirmed heads of government attending in Lima include outgoing US President Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, among others, as the world wonders how a new US government might upend global dynamics.
Leaders and other representatives will hold closed-door discussions in the morning among themselves, and in the afternoon with members of Apec’s business advisory council.
The council met on Wednesday and called on Apec nations and members to boost inclusive growth and prioritise the needs of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those led by women and Indigenous entrepreneurs.
“While the global economy remains resilient, Apec economies are grappling with persistent inflation, economic disparities, high interest rates and the urgent need to increase investments for a green, climate-resilient future,” said council chairwoman Julia Torreblanca.
Apec is bound to be one of Biden’s last before leaving office, and White House officials insist that his attendance as well as his subsequent visit to Brazil for the Group of 20 meeting next week will be substantive, with talks to focus on climate issues, global infrastructure, counter-narcotic efforts.
For the first time since last year’s Apec forum, Biden will meet one-on-one with Chinese President Xi on Saturday. He will also meet with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol, Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba and Peru’s President Dina Boluarte.
The officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and persist in negotiating an end to Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza.
Still, analysts say he will be overshadowed at Apec by Xi, who arrived on Thursday and proceeded to inaugurate a 1.3 billion dollar megaport that is perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s ongoing reorientation in the region.
The Chancay port will shave 10 days off shipping times to China, which has seen trade with South America boom over the past two decades.
Peru’s economy minister in June said neighbouring nations are actively modifying their supply chains to benefit from the port, in which total investment will top 3.5 billion dollars.
Ahead of the inauguration at the port, 37 miles north of Lima, locals told The Associated Press that the development has not buoyed their economic prospects.
On the contrary, they said the port has impaired their ability to fish, threatening their livelihoods.
Discontent has been brewing in the middle-class San Borja neighbourhood outside Lima’s Convention Centre, where the Apec conference is sited.
Metal barriers and police equipped with riot gear surround the perimeter where, for the past two days, anti-government protesters angry about a recent spate of gang-fuelled violence have shouted slogans demanding that their wildly unpopular president take action against the crime wave.
The rallies have devolved into scuffles with police, who used batons to drive away the more aggressive protesters on Thursday.
Leo Varadkar is a slimeball.
@TheTrustedChalice: The absolute pits. And yet that Cork buffoon supports him.
@TheTrustedChalice: Martin is every bit as responsible for this sham. He could collapse the government and only agree to renew the confidence and supply on condition of the process being halted while a more affordable solution is found.
@TheTrustedChalice: Mehole is a bigger slim e ball. He is keeping Leo in office
@TheTrustedChalice: Good to have a reasoned political debate with such well versed contributors
@The Risen: what planet are you living on ? Martin to collapse this Government and FG are high in the polls higher than the rest of them . FG would get back maybe with a overall majority and even if they had to rely on others it would end up more or less the very same as what we have now . For a election to take place every young person as well as the older one’s who don’t vote need to come out and vote against the Government otherwise you are going deeper into the muck
@Alan Scott: The only poll that counts is the polling booth. And who are FG going to form a government with if FF refuse? The next biggest party, SF, would be committing political suicide, as it would be seen as greenlighting the NCH fiasco and this abomination.
@The Risen: And how many times are the polls right The answer lies in getting everyone out against the Government
@Alan Scott: so basically Martin is outraged but unmoved. He’s going to sit back and let it happen. He’s choosing service to party over country, they all do it but he has sulked out from the shadows to admit it publicly and expects a pat on the back for it
@TheTrustedChalice: deep
@Alan Scott: Polls aren’t reliable, most people have better things to be doing than wasting their time listening to someone from ipsos/mrbi droning on for 10 minutes
@Cathal: Yep, two polls with near identical questions were carried out by rival polling companies a couple of weekends ago on behalf of two well known Sunday newspapers, both had major differences with the “answers” of those polled (who do they poll?) even taking into account the 3% accuracy threshold. Its been said on here plenty of times, these polls are used to “shape” rather than “gauge” public opinion.
This whole system is farcical. This is brown envelopes on a massive scale and we don’t even own the network at the end of it! I still think FF and FG are two cheeks of the same rear and trust neither but FG are so blatant it’s beyond belief!
@Lydia McLoughlin: A tad bit pointless for Martin to constantly “tut tut”, then decide to support the person he’s criticising…
@Arch Angel: always!! SSDD infuriating.
I have a totally mad idea, how about the broadband provider’s who are going to make a profit out of it when it’s finished pay for it.
@Daniel Curtin: That’s sort of the point, it’s not profitable for about 300k+ homes.
@Daniel Curtin: I’ve been saying this all along it’s a total farce
@Daniel Curtin: Daniel have u not been following it up to now? Its not profitable which is why it’s so difficult to get any providers on board
@Bilbo Baggins:it’s 520,00 home’s, considering eir made 1.2 billion in Ireland last year and virgin made 440 million, Vodafone made 220 million, and then you have to consider what the other broadband provider’s make I think they can easily afford it.
@Daniel Curtin: These companies will not invest into a profit losing venture. They aren’t a charity so why should they invest in infrastucture that wouldn’t pay back for decades?
@Daniel Curtin: The infrastructure is exceptionally expensive per head to roll out to sparsely populated areas, it would cost the same to connect an entire town as it would to connect a dozen isolated homes, as well as the higher associated maintenance costs. It does require subsidisation but the current plan seems to be very ill considered.
@*The* Brendan Gordon: Nobody has articulated a worthwhile alternative, though.
@Daniel Curtin: I think the fact that they haven’t done it means that it wouldn’t be profitable for them to do it. So they won’t. They are not in the business of social infrastructure for future use. They wanna make a quick buck. Same as everywhere. It does need some government intervention to get this done, the concept is sound. Have the whole island fibre connected, future proofed. The execution on the other hand is horrendous
Pretty cynical move from the Govt.
Even by their standards.
Hello, pot to kettle. Remind us which party oversaw the scandalous privatisation of Eircom? It was Bertie’s FF and Mehole was a senior minister at the time.
@Nicky O’Donnell: Exactly. The start of our Telecoms problems right there.
OOH IS MICHAEL STILL WITH US???
@Marianne:
Meehole never gives up on pretending to care. If there was a vote of no confidence in a FG minister again tomorrow he’d be the first one hiding under the bed.
@Marianne: FF tolerates FG, because FG will soon become unelectable, and FF will become resurrected from the hole they dug for us, by the actions of FG.
Big houses and pensions all round.
Plenty of opportunities when big contracts are offered, hospitals ,broadband etc. Cash, champagne and coke.
The ESB should allowed to provide Broadband, they have the infrastructure in place and all homes are connected and metered by the ESB anyways.
However this will never happen as the FG supporters ( owners ) would not make their milllions as expected
@Gowon Geter: it’s not as simple as that. Broadband would not work if ran close to mains electrical cables. The magnetic field would interfere with the fibre optic broadband. Basically it would not work
@Anthony: it’s fiber . EMF does not affect it. That’s why fiber could be ran and is ran along ESB lines currently . No power involved, just light. You could blow fiber up the electrical conduit to any house. That’s what they do in other countries. FTTH (Fiber to the home) by the electrical provide. There is electric in every house therefore the pathway is there to every home in Ireland.
@Anthony: SIRO, 100% fibre broadband. 26 times faster, built on the ESB Network – Thats from the website.
The real issue is any advice the uninformed Irish government receives is usually tainted by commercial interest.
@Gowon Geter: The ESB were allowed to provide broadband, but decided to pull out of the tender process. Has this fact just been forgotten?
@Anthony: It does not affect it and they allready have Fiber in the ground, in fairness to the ESB they are probably the best run semi-state in the country who plan correctly and in advance and year ago they put in the infrastructur and with room to expand.
@Search Eagle: Yeah they were allowwed and pulled out. But we were not allowed to be told why they pulled out.
Has those facts been forgotten ?
@Gowon Geter: The proposed funding was €500m when Siro (ESB/Vodafone) pulled out because it wasn’t viable. When it went to 1 “bidder” the funding was €3bn. Something stinks in the whole process. Successive Govts over promised on broadband delivery. You want to build your house in the middle of the country away from noisy neighbours and traffic, fine.. don’t expect the same facilities as urban dwellers then. Every rural dwellers wants a bus past their front door, a hospital in their back garden and 5gb broadband, and a subsidy to access it as well.
@Search Eagle:They were told they had to deliver for 500million ,Dobby’s getting North of 3billion.
@Cathal: That is incorrect. The 500 million euro figure was out of date before the tender process even started. And it was never a credible figure anyway.
@John fitzpatrick: Fibre optic cables are non-metallic… they transmit signals using pulses of light in glass threads! As a result, they are immune to Electro-Magnetic Interference and Radio Frequency Interference. …
@Anthony: not true. Esb currently wraps fibre around high tension 220kv lines with no issues.
Fibre transmits using light, which is unaffected by emf.
The reason esb has pulled out of the process is that it’s not viable for them.
@Gowon Geter: they pulled out because naughten allowed eir to cherry pick the profitable segments of the market.
Pure nonsesne from Martin if he wanted to do something he could but instead sits on his hands and squawks
@MickN: You have to admit he’s good at it though
Why does everything in this kip have to be an overdose mess that the people have to pay for and big business make huge profits off our backs. The government says it would breach state aid rules?? Funny that when the European Court’s found them guilty of breaching state aid rules in relation to helping apple avoid tax the govt told them to keep the 13 billion we are owed and appealed it.
@John Paul: Its the FG way
An in-depth investigation is required now. The plan stinks to high heaven.
Two of the biggest telecom rollouts in recent times for this country
Digifone (Denis O’Brien) :
National broadband Ireland
And all under Fine Gael, ???
I
Sure sure, didn’t Fianna Fáil privatise our semi-state telecommunications company? Egg, meet face.
“What planet are they on?”
This coming from the guy whose slime party are propping them up.
Treacherous leech.
FFGLab – not one vote on the 24th
@Bill Clay: he’s still right tho
Not sure this plan will even get votes in rural Ireland….They would prefer the money be spend on roads health service and keeping post offices open…
@iComment: no, we wouldn’t. If this is done right it has the potential to repopulate rural ireland, and bring the jobs to the people instead of always sending the people to the jobs.
If it’s done right.
Martin being a slave to two masters again. He could topple the government in an hour if he wanted to and I think he’d have a majority of the country supporting that. He might even secure a few extra TD’s in a following election. But no. Martin knows FF are nowhere near the required support for government unless he bites the bullet and enters with SF.
No Micheál, if FF were in government they would look for backhanders for planning, backhanders for vendor processing and backhanders for vendor selection. They would then place their cronies in positions to overlook the rollout.
No one has forgotten how FF operate.
@John Somers: As bad as they were as bad as they were it couldn’t be as bad as Leo robbers
What planet is Mr Martin on,FF can stop this today it they wanted to,but they are putting FF interests before the publics interests,punish both partys in all elections.
@@mdmak33: Well according to Pat up above Mars.
@@mdmak33: and FG are so whitey white as they fill Denis o Briens pockets again just like. The phone license
When are people going to open their eyes, none of these politicians run the country! It’s the billionaires that are in charge of everything!
FF aid the reason we have the broadband coverage we have today. I’ll leave it up to you to determine whether or not that’s a good thing
Its not to often I agree with FF This time I would 100% agree as the ESB have the knowledge wide experience they know every lane and byroad in the Country to do take on this job.
@Alan Scott: probably cost twice as much again at esb rates of pay
@ed w: If your son or daughter was employed by the ESB there wouldn’t be a peep out of you regarding their rates of pay.
@Wild Goose: Odds are that if your son or daughter is employed by the ESB so are you, your father ,uncle’s,aunt’s and grandparents
Denis, are you listening If you friends in FG lose the election then the ESB will supply broadband and at a much lower cost
Nothing Martin or his FF cronies say about FG means anything as long as they continue to prop them up.
10k EUR per connected household at a cost of 1,200 EUR per taxpayer. How about this for an idea, grow a set and tell the households involved that broadband is luxury and not a life or death need and that this project is not feasible, it’s to expensive and benefits too few!
Since The FG fat cats have taken power – we as a family and not alone our family have had every day of respite care for our non verbal physically overpowering son now 16 robbed from us by the single handed starving of respite services by Leo and his rich benefactors.
The funding has been demolished and we’ve gone from one weekend respite for 10/11 months of the year plus one week to take Our other children on holidays and give them some experience Of what it is to be part of a normal family.
We have Zero respite today and when You listen to a government employee in the Department of expenditure tell the government they are wasting money and here we are knowing a small portion of what they are prepared to lose could solve all our respite problems for years.
No Country for the disabled
They’re living on the same farcical planet martin is living on. He shouldn’t be fooling anyone here he’s only creating noise for some attention because everybody else is shouting. Don’t forget the hand martin, teacher come waste of space millionaire politician had in destroying this country.
Stop huffing and puffing Mehole and blow the house down,
by supporting FG in this you are equally culpable,
O’Bribe needs his millions of taxpayers money,
shameless the lot of ye!
faff |faf|Brit. informal
verb [ no obj. ]
spend time in ineffectual activity: we can’t faff around forever. To be in an endless, pointless, coalition government with another party.
I would imagine FF invented FaFFing. So he’s the current expert on it, no doubt.
If his party was I power…. does he not know that the ff party are keeping the fg party in full swing with free drinks lifts home and bonuses for everyone….talk of been out of touch
Pull the plug then Mehole!
Same planet as you and FF.
Planet Healy-Rae. Spacers
Political stunt before election !
Did not hear him much before when he was on the gravy train
Out FFG!
Martin’s track record includes being minister for health and creating the structure of the HSE. Is there no level of demonstrated incompetence that excludes someone from leadership in this country?
And last time your party whare in power they almost bankrupt the country.
What planet are FF living on? They could end this charade if they wanted to but continue to prop up FG.
Says the man who brought in the smoking ban in pubs cross the country costing people s jobs and he wants to be our next leader what a waste of a joke bad to worse
@liam ward60: Im a smoker and I think that ban was badly needed, I dont like FF but bad comparison
@liam ward60: Say T-Rex, how do you actually smoke with those tiny arms?
@liam ward60: I wish, the government did more radical things like the smoking ban, smoking ban was a great thing, you cna bring kids into pubs to watch live trad music, Sunday dinners in the pub with my dad watching a match, not being chocked to death by smoke, the health and well being of the staff working in the pubs, one of the best things Martin did
@Charles McGuire: the pub is no place to bring kids never has been and never will be
@Patrick Mulligan: I’m a smoker too have been all my life Martin is the man who brought it in costing jobs and closing down pubs I certainly wouldn’t be voting for him and his cronies
@liam ward60: I disagree completely, go down the country for a family holiday and bringing kids to the pub in the early evening to see live trad music, having copious amount of tea is a joy.
@Charles McGuire: Oh yeah, well I would never bring a kid to a pub anyways. One of the main reasons I dont go to a pub on Paddies days is due to kinds running around bored while their parents get drunk.
It’s FF and FG and rural indos pushing this plan through
This infrastructure will be obsolete before it’s even started, wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a national fidget spinner plan.
Why don’t we start with getting every post office in the country fitted with hi speed broadband and provide free wifi from there for residents / small businesses. At least that would be a start and it should be easier to roll out piggybacking on existing infrastructure. There is supposed to be a post office within 5km for 95% of the population. 3bn is not value for money when there are crying need for money for schools, hospitals and public transport infrastructure to alleviate traffic gridlock in Dublin.
Its not perfect but its a start. Once we have that boxed off, then start extending it beyond the first step…
And if anyone can spot a scam, its FF, they’re experts at them.
This is rich coming from FF,
They’ve made a balls of telecoms in Ireland for the past 25 years.
Before broadband they refused to tackle Eircom back in the day and introduce a FRIACO system like the UK had for dialup,
When it came to ADSL roll out year after year FF failed at doing their job, its a farce watching them being critical of FG yet FF never came up with any meaningful plan to solve the problem of Internet access in Ireland.
In saying that the money the FF/FG government have now agreed to shell out is insane, they have a solution but at an insane cost!
Your party literally took ESB semi-state Míchael ye absolute bellend.
By propping up this “government” he is complicit in commissioning this scam.
He is in power he needs to put up or shut up
I remember Fianna Fail’s national broadband scheme which delivered a patchy 3G solution that was abandoned a couple of years later.
Two words…. wireless technology… that’s all needs to be said
@Andy mc Laughlin: try running a major IT company on wireless broadband…
Jesus Martian will you shit or get off the bloody pot!!!!!
eir has provided fibre connections to 350k rural homes for about 1/10 of the cost of the NBP
so why does FF think ESB should take it on.
They already provide the most expensive electricity in Europe
@Thomas Sheridan: eir were given the profitable bits of the network. That’s why there’s only one bidder left in.
Esb consortium pulled out, does he not remember?
Once eir were allowed to cherry pick the easy stuff, the esb bid was taken off the table, there was nothing in it for them at that stage.
Has Martin been asleep for the last couple of years?
Well then put a stop to it.
Bring Bertie back ! at least he did the same sort of crap with the smile on his face that got people on his side.
Planet Confidence and supply….its a funny place where no,means carry on so,kinda like the bestest play school ever..
THE ESB dont want to do it mehole and you cant make them ..
Idiot if you have woken up pull the plug…
have your say