11/14 News Of The Day

Can A New U.S. Tourism Board Woo Visitors?

A new piece of legislation quietly making its way to President Obama's desk is the Travel Promotion Act (TPA) — it has already been approved by the U.S. Senate and is now in front of the U.S. House — which would establish the country's first official nonprofit tourism board. Virtually every country in the world, large and small, has an official tourism department to woo visitors to its shores. Tunisia has 24 tourism offices in 19 countries across the globe. South Africa has 10 offices on four continents. America has none, relying instead on the private sector to attract tourists. While annual international travel has increased, from 124 million global travelers in 2000 to 173 million last year, annual visits by foreigners to the U.S. have ticked down, from 26 million in 2000 to 25.3 million in 2008. The absolute drop-off seems small, until you consider that it has cost the country an estimated $27 billion in lost tax revenue over the past decade. With unemployment levels now topping 10% in the U.S., the economic benefits of foreign travel have never been more urgent, yet visitors have never been scarcer. Helping keep travelers at bay are tighter visa restrictions, tougher entry procedures at immigration desks and a general increase in anti-American sentiment in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

World Leaders Agree To Delay A Deal On Climate Change

President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future. At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on.

The agreement codifies what negotiators had already accepted as all but inevitable: that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks would not resolve the outstanding issues in time. The gulf between rich and poor countries, and even among the wealthiest nations, was just too wide. Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was the U.S. Congress’s inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges. Administration officials and Congressional leaders have said that final legislative action on a climate bill would not occur before the first half of next year.

No Mistresses, No Bars, Chinese Officials Warned

Chinese officials are being told to dump their mistresses, avoid hostess bars, and shun extravagances as part of the Communist party's efforts to clamp down on the corruption that is threatening its rule and sullying its reputation (hat tip: Pete McConnell). One statistic trotted out at a recent speech to bureaucrats: 95 percent of officials investigated for corruption were found to be keeping mistresses.

In one prominent example, Chen Liangyu (pictured), a Politburo member and former Shanghai party boss became the most powerful official to fall in recent years. He was accused of being a greedy lothario who indulged his sexual urges with multiple girlfriends. The focus on Mr. Chen's alleged indecency was seen as an attempt to weaken support for him among other officials whose careers he had nurtured. During the morality campaign, party officials could receive demerits on their character assessments if found patronizing hostess bars, where young women accompany men in drinking, singing, and often much more. The campaign coincides with the sentencing of 16 high-ranking officials this year, four times more than last year.