UP Links 01 January 2013

+ Kari Kohn

Spiegel on the Challenges German Police Face in Training Officers in Afghanistan

The Afghan national sport is called buzkashi. It’s a game in which horsemen battle over a goat carcass. There are no established teams.

During a match, the competitors forge brief, continuously shifting alliances. They only work together until they have gained a short-term advantage. The game can last for hours, even days. The winner is the rider who manages to carry the carcass to the goal. Buzkashi is a mirror of Afghan society.

By contrast, the German police officers who train local recruits in Afghanistan have brought soccer balls and nets to their base in Mazar-e-Sharif. Football is all about teamwork and team spirit. The goal is to form a team and achieve an objective together.

In a corner of the training center, on a patch of parched earth, there is now a soccer field where the next generation of Afghan police officers is learning the game.

“What we want to achieve with the recruits is a change in mentality,” says a German instructor. More team spirit, a better sense of community, more loyalty. More soccer, less buzkashi.

NYT on Vermont Ski Project Financed Through EB-5 Visa Program

In 2006, the government issued just 802 of these EB-5 visas to investors and their families; this year, it granted 7,818.

The program is now growing so rapidly that in the next year or two the number issued will probably reach the annual limit of 10,000. For the first time in the program’s history, applicants may be turned away.

Joseph Salerno offers the Austrian View Against Cashlessness in Sweden

…a study of bank customers satisfaction released by the Swedish Quality Index in October 2012, indicated that the satisfaction index was pulled down among customers of Swedbank, Nordea and SEB by their policy of eliminating cash transactions at their bank branches.

Fish Fraud: Enforcement vs. More Regulations

A bill introduced to Congress in July is intended to address seafood fraud. Fish suppliers, restaurants, and stores would have to provide more information to their customers about the seafood they sell. In addition, the bill would require more coordination between the FDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the two government agencies responsible for food and fisheries regulation.

But Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, says that the enforcement of current law is what’s really needed. “If there were more enforcement on the ground as opposed to more regulations on the books, we think we’d be seeing less fraud,” Gibbons says.

Figuring out the source of a fishy fraud, whether it’s a retail outlet or a supplier, Gibbons says, “is really not that hard.” With only a DNA test, a menu, and an invoice, an enforcer can see that if the “invoice matches the menu and not the DNA, then you know that the supplier was the source of the fraud.”

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