China backs fight against Somali piracy in light of international law

China on Wednesday voiced its support to the efforts to counter Somali piracy in accordance with the international law and the relevant Security Council resolutions. "We call upon international community to provide the necessary support to the coastal states to enhance their legal capacity, and China welcomes their report in this regard and will join others to further study the legal framework." "Using such measures as arrests by armed forces and judicial prosecution of pirates can only ease the problem. To solve the problem once and for all, an integrated solution should be adopted."

Chinese banks profits rise on stimulus boost

Two of China's biggest banks have reported big increases in profits for the first half of the year. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, currently the world's biggest bank, said net profits totalled 84.6bn yuan ($12.4bn), up 27% on last year. State-owned Bank of China also reported profits up 27% to 52bn yuan, thanks to a big increase in lending. Chinese banks were encouraged to lend more to individuals and businesses last year to stimulate the economy.

• Law Firm Marketing

Why you shouldn't pitch prevention in your marketing materials

by Tom Trush

The way the marketplace views any product or service has a strong bearing on its success.

Wouldn't you agree?

Unfortunately, this perception isn't always easy to control. Consumers have a way of not always following a predictable path (which is one reason why testing your advertising and marketing campaigns is so important).

Over the years, though, one thing human nature has repeatedly revealed is people's preferences for cures over prevention.

Think about it ...

If you were in my target market and I pitched an herbal powder you rub on your eyelids to ward off diseases such as glaucoma, trachoma and macular degeneration, chances are it would be a challenging sell because you haven't experienced these ailments.

However, if you suddenly woke up blind this morning and I approached you with a similar powder that promised to restore your sight, would you try it?

Of course.

In fact, you wouldn't hesitate paying a pretty penny for the cure -- much more than the preventative product.

Pharmaceutical companies know this fact well. After all, the Pfizer sales reps promoting the little blue pill aren't pitching prevention ... that's for sure.

Do you think guys use Rogaine because they fear losing their hair at some point in their lives?

No way!

They want an instant cure for the rapidly growing forehead they're experiencing right now.

If you're currently pitching prevention with your product or service, begin brainstorming ways you can turn your offering into a cure.

What difficulties does your product solve? Does your service eliminate any pesky problems?

Sure, you can still promote some preventive features, but you'll often get more attention -- and new clients -- when you focus on the curative benefits of your product or service.

-----

© Trey Ryder

FREE LAWYER MARKETING ALERT: If you'd like to receive Trey Ryder's weekly Lawyer Marketing Alert, send an e-mail to [email protected]. Write "Subscribe LMA" in the subject line and write your name and e-mail address in the body of the message.

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Tell your friends and colleagues you've read it in Migalhas International

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• Historia Verdadera

Denuncia

Ecuador presentó denuncia formal ante la fiscalía de México por los hechos de violencia en la frontera México - EE.UU donde fue muerto un ecuatoriano y otro se encuentra en grave estado de salud. Requirió el esclarecimiento estableces si existe un trafico de personas promovida por las bandas organizadas.

DD.HH. - Visa

La Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos culminó la audiencia en el juicio de un ecuatoriano contra Panamá, quien en 2002 fue detenido por entrar sin visa y encarcelado por durante dos años. Los abogados del demandante confían en que sentará un precedente que ayudará a resguardar los derechos de los migrantes ilegales.

Donación

El magnate Eike Batista, el hombre más rico de Brasil, anunció que donará US$ 45 mlls., hasta 2014 - 9 millones por año- para fortalecer la presencia policial en las favelas de Río de Janeiro.

Energía

La estatal brasileña Eletrobras invertirá US$ 700 mlls. en la construcción de una central hidroeléctrica en el sur de Nicaragua, con una capacidad de generación de 250 MW, según informaron medios regionales.

• Brief News

Nuremberg Laws transferred to National Archives

The original Nuremberg Laws documents were transferred to the National Archives in Washington, where they will reside permanently. The papers were signed by Hitler in 1935 and codified the systematic extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany. They are thought to be the only copies of the Nuremberg Laws to exist. Gen. George Patton, who was given the papers by U.S. soldiers who found them in a German bank vault and then disobeyed orders by bringing them out of Germany, gave the documents to the Huntington Library in California in 1945.

Sotomayor predicts WikiLeaks case in Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted Thursday that the nation's high court will be asked again to weigh issues of national security versus free speech because of the recently leaked classified war documents posted on the WikiLeaks website. Sotomayor told high school and college students at the University of Denver that she couldn't answer a student question about the security questions and free speech because "that question is very likely to come before me."

Big Oil ticked off at new money law

A new law requiring oil companies to disclose all payments made to governments has sparked a sharp debate, with Big Oil saying it will put it at a big competitive disadvantage. The law, attached at the last minute to the financial reform bill last month, applies to extractive industries - basically all U.S.-listed oil, gas and mining companies. These companies pay hundreds of billions of dollars each year to governments in the form of royalties, taxes, and other fees. The problem, say some, is that these payments are often not transparent. Now firms must disclose these payments. The law is very specific, requiring information about each individual project in countries where they operate, not simply a lump-sum figure.

Mexico's drug war spawns wave of kidnappings

Drug cartels have stepped up abductions for ransom as a way to supplement their income. The government has called for stiffer sentences and million-dollar rewards, but the number of kidnappings continues to rise.

Will outsourcing improve associate retention?

Outsourcing by BigLaw could limit the number of jobs for new law grads, but those associates lucky enough to be hired could benefit. “For the fortunate few who get jobs, their work could get better as outsourced labor performs some of the menial tasks that now account for most young associates' billable hours. Instead of the mind-numbing tasks that are the bane of so many young lawyers' lives, associates will find themselves doing work that more closely resembles what they thought being a lawyer meant when they first decided to attend law school. If that were to happen—and reality begins to resemble expectations—lawyers as a group could become more satisfied with their jobs. The unthinkable might even happen: a slow reversal in the tide of recent surveys that consistently rank attorneys near the bottom of all occupations in career fulfillment. Such a scenario would be an ironic turn of events. The extraordinary wealth that clients now confer on those running today's highly leveraged big firms could be providing the impetus to upend the profession and force the emergence of a new business model in which leverage no longer mattered.” As law firms turn to outsourcing and contract employment, associates will be doing more work that is truly lawyerly work.

Panel recommends lifting of oil drilling moratorium

The panel of energy and environmental experts said Obama's temporary ban on deep-water oil drilling had served its purpose, and that oil companies should be able to resume drilling if they meet new government standards.

Congo killings 'may be genocide'

Killings by the Rwandan army and allied rebels in Zaire and DR Congo in the 1990s could be classified as genocide, a draft UN report says. The report also lists human rights violations committed by security forces from all the countries involved in what has been called "Africa's world war". Rwanda's justice minister has dismissed the claims as "rubbish".

Blackberry makes offer to India ahead of ban deadline

RIM and the Indian government are holding last-minute talks ahead of a 31 August deadline, when a ban on the devices is due to begin. India wants the ability to monitor secure e-mail and instant messaging services provided by the firm. RIM maintains that it does not do "specific deals" with countries. The firm said that it had now offered to "lead an industry forum focused on supporting the lawful access needs of law enforcement agencies". It said that the forum - which would include other telecoms firms - would work with the Indian government to develop "policies and processes aimed at preventing the misuse of strong encryption technologies".

Brazil government gives go-ahead for huge Amazon dam

Brazil's government has given the formal go-ahead for the building on a tributary of the Amazon of the world's third biggest hydroelectric dam. After several failed legal challenges, Lula signed the contract for the Belo Monte dam with the Norte Energia consortium. Critics say the project will damage the local ecosystem and make homeless 50,000 mainly indigenous people. But the government says it is crucial for development and will create jobs.

Five myths about mosques in America

In addition to spawning passionate debates in the public, the news media and the political class, the proposal to build a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York has revealed widespread misconceptions about the practice of Islam in this country -- and the role of mosques in particular.

1. Mosques are new to this country.

Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn't be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver, would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers -- in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations.

The Midwest was home to the greatest number of permanent U.S. mosques in the first half of the 20th century. In 1921, Sunni, Shiite and Ahmadi Muslims in Detroit celebrated the opening of perhaps the first purpose-built mosque in the nation. Funded by real estate developer Muhammad Karoub, it was just blocks away from Henry Ford's Highland Park automobile factory, which employed hundreds of Arab American men.

Most Midwestern mosques blended into their surroundings. The temples or mosques of the Nation of Islam -- an indigenous form of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad from 1934 to 1975 -- were converted storefronts and churches. In total, mosques numbered perhaps slightly more than 100 nationwide in 1970. In the last three decades of the 20th century, however, more than 1 million new Muslim immigrants came to the United States, and in tandem with their African American co-religionists opened hundreds more mosques. Today there are more than 2,000 places of Muslim prayer -- most of them mosques -- in the United States.

According to recent Pew and Gallup polls, about 40 percent of Muslim Americans say they pray in a mosque at least once a week, nearly the same percentage of American Christians who attend church weekly. About a third of all U.S. Muslims say they seldom or never go to mosques. And contrary to stereotypes of mosques as male-only spaces, Gallup finds that women are as likely as men to attend.

2. Mosques try to spread sharia law in the United States.

In Islam, sharia ("the Way" to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law for a simple reason: It's too complicated for the average believer and even for some imams.

Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet Muhammad) but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretations. If mosques forced Islamic law upon their congregants, most Muslims would probably leave -- just as most Christians might walk out of the pews if preachers gave sermons exclusively on Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar. Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives.

3. Most people attending U.S. mosques are of Middle Eastern descent.

A 2009 Gallup poll found that African Americans accounted for 35 percent of all Muslim Americans, making them the largest racial-ethnic group of Muslims in the nation. It is unclear whether Arab Americans or South Asian Americans (mostly Pakistanis and Indians) are the second-largest. Muslim Americans are also white, Hispanic, Sub-Saharan African, Iranian, European, Central Asian and more -- representing the most racially diverse religious group in the United States.

Mosques reflect this diversity. Though there are hundreds of ethnically and racially integrated mosques, most of these institutions, like many American places of worship, break down along racial and ethnic lines. Arabs, for instance, are the dominant ethnic group in a modest number of mosques -- particularly in states such as Michigan and New York. And according to a 2001 survey (the most recent national survey on mosques available) by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they represented the plurality in only 15 percent of U.S. mosques.

4. Mosques are funded by groups and governments unfriendly to the United States.

There certainly have been instances in which foreign funds, especially from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region, have been used to build mosques in the United States. The Saudi royal family, for example, reportedly gave $8 million for the building of the King Fahd Mosque, which was inaugurated in 1998 in Culver City, a Los Angeles suburb.

But the vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves. Domestic funding reflects the desire of many U.S. Muslims to be independent of overseas influences. Long before Sept. 11, 2001, in the midst of a growing clash of interests between some Muslim-majority nations and the U.S. government -- during the Persian Gulf War, for instance -- Muslim American leaders decided that they must draw primarily from U.S. sources of funding for their projects.

5. Mosques lead to homegrown terrorism.

To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions: In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.

No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, largely because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.

There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.

Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.

Source: Edward E. Curtis IV, The Washington Post

EU socialists claim France Roma deportations violate EU law

The EU Parliament Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats on Thursday accused France of violating EU law by deporting up to 1,000 Roma migrants from the country. The group cited EU directive 38/2004 for the proposition that EU citizens are free to move within EU territory. The group also raised concerns about allegations of the country fingerprinting deportees, stating that such actions violate the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms in addition to other laws.

U.S. tips proposals to hone trade-law enforcement

The Commerce Department said it's developed 14 proposals aimed at strengthening enforcement of U.S. trade laws. The proposals, which now go out for public comment, are part of the Obama administration's efforts to double U.S. exports in the next five years. The government’s International Trade Administration has stepped up the number of antidumping and countervailing-duty investigations undertaken since 2008, and the 14 proposals have been developed with an eye to enhancing enforcement of trade laws to ensure a level playing field for U.S. exporters, the Commerce Department said.

Law firm hamburger war heats up

Certain expectations come with working at an elite corporate law firm: long hours, good pay, and an office largely free from the smell of grilled hamburgers. Steptoe & Johnson has gone to court in a quest to rid itself of hamburger fumes. The powerhouse D.C. firm filed suit claiming that Rogue States, A Burger Company has been piping hamburger exhaust into the firm's air intake system, causing firm employees to suffer "headaches, nausea, dizziness, watery and itchy eyes, drowsiness and distraction." D.C. Judge John Mott this week ordered the restaurant to stop emitting the odors within 30 days.

Germany constitutional court rules EU court precedents must be followed

The German Federal Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that German courts must follow precedent established by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) unless it is clearly a violation of the court's power. The court noted that minor violations of the ECJ's authority would not be enough to disqualify a ruling and that a ruling can be disregarded only if European institutions clearly violate the authority granted to them at the expense of the authority of the member states. The court's ruling came in a case involving a German law that made it easier to limit the employment contracts of workers over the age of 52, which ultimately led younger workers to be better protected by their employment contracts. The ECJ ruled that the law was in violation of an EU general principal against age discrimination. A dissenting opinion in the ruling rejected the majority's finding that there was no violation of ECJ authority in this case and stated that allowing ECJ opinions to set precedent for the member states significantly shifted the structure of power. The ECJ ruling has been controversial in Germany and has been criticized by legal scholars in the country.

Obama signs law blocking "libel tourism" in US courts

Obama recently signed new legislation that will protect journalists, authors and publishers from becoming victims of defamation lawsuits filed in countries with harsh libel laws that discourage critical media, reports Freedom House. The practice of filing libel lawsuits in foreign countries with weak libel protections is called "libel tourism." Countries like England continue to permit this practice with foreign plaintiffs bringing libel actions against foreign defendants in British courts, regardless of where the alleged offense occurred. "Libel tourism" is used by wealthy individuals and high-profile public figures to quash accusations of wrongdoing. The legislation bars US federal courts from recognising judgements from foreign courts that are not in accordance with US constitutional protections for free expression.

U.S. Court goes to Gibraltar for Madoff victims

A Gibraltar court has been asked to release over $73 million deposited in accounts there by a custodian for Bernard L. Madoff investor Vizcaya Partners. The U.S. judge overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's firm is seeking the funds so they can be distributed to victims. Vizcaya allegedly withdrew about $180 million from Madoff's firm in the five months before his scheme was discovered. The trustee for Madoff Investment Securities, Irving Picard, earlier this month won a $180 million default judgment against Vizcay. Picard had held that the cash was "nothing more than other victims' stolen monies."

Itau Unibanco weighs takeover targets abroad

Brazilian lender Itau Unibanco began an aggressive move to buy credit portfolios and smaller rivals in banking, insurance and health services and is looking for assets to buy overseas. It is unlikely to tap the U.S. retail banking market, where rival Banco do Brasil wants to enter. Itau Unibanco has lagged behind larger rival Banco do Brasil in overseas expansion -- partly because valuations for lenders in Latin America remained quite high in the aftermath of the global credit crisis in late 2008.

Wal-Mart appeals class action certification to Supreme Court

Wal-Mart petitioned the US Supreme Court Wednesday to reconsider a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirming class action certification in a gender discrimination case. The company has asked the court to examine whether the appeals court's April ruling was proper under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Due Process Clause, the Seventh Amendment and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 (FRCP). Wal-Mart's position is that the class is overbroad and that the Ninth Circuit's decision is inconsistent with certification standards in multiple circuits.

Uganda court overturns anti-sedition law

A panel of the Ugandan Constitutional Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that a law criminalizing sedition violates the guarantees of free speech and freedom of the press under the Ugandan Constitution. The law made it a crime to say or publish statements that promoted hatred, contempt or disaffection for the Ugandan government, president or judiciary. A conviction could carry a sentence of seven years. The law was first challenged by Andrew Mwenda four years ago, after he was charged with sedition in 2005. The court held that the law unconstitutionally restricts the rights of Ugandans under Article 29 of the Constitution. The decision drops charges against 10 other journalists and five politicians who had faced charges under the law. The court allowed charges of promoting sectarianism against Mwenda to stand, however, finding that the crime was allowed because it was in existence prior to the adoption of the current Ugandan Constitution in 1995.

How Gen X lawyers can bridge the gap, foster work-life balance

The 30- and 40-year-olds who make up Generation X have an important new role in molding the younger Gen Y workers whose brush with the recession has turned them into Generation Comply. Gen X supervisors can help bridge the gap between younger workers who grew up in a world where technology brought flexibility to work and the older Baby Boomers who require face time and sacrifices. The recession was a wake-up call for Generation Y, defined as those between the ages of 18 and 30. “The concept of the ultimate safety net has shattered, they are much more engaged; it was a tipping point that helped the new generation suit up for the game.''

• Daily Press Review