Word: agreement
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...gave up her seats in the British Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly and checked into a psychiatric hospital. But much more is at stake over the next six weeks than the couple's political careers: the scandal comes at a critical time for the province's shaky power-sharing agreement. For months, the two biggest parties in government, Robinson's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is mostly supported by Protestants, and the Catholic Sinn Fein, have been at loggerheads over the devolution of policing and justice powers from London. Sinn Fein wants control over the police to be transferred...
...Tsvangirai has come out against an election. In an interview with TIME earlier this month, the former trade union leader rejected any vote before both sides decided on a new constitution. Only after a draft is agreed upon and put to a referendum - the process set out in the agreement under which Mugabe and Tsvangirai agreed to share power - would elections be possible, he said. "People should not preempt process ... which is understood by all parties to be the law," he added. (See the top 10 news stories...
...habitation is possible, in other words, but direct competition can be deadly. That's a lesson Southeast Asia's companies are braced to learn as Chinese manufacturers loom ever larger on their doorstep, unfettered by the duties and tariffs that before Jan. 1, when the free-trade agreement kicked in, gave local businessmen a small measure of protection...
...Still, the opportunity that the agreement opens up for Southeast Asia is huge. According to HSBC, the China-ASEAN free-trade area will encompass 1.9 billion people and a combined GDP of $6 trillion. To capitalize on this vast market, economists advise Southeast Asian companies to specialize in niche goods and services that China cannot duplicate - and to do it fast. "Given the shifting nature of China's comparative advantage, Asian countries may best re-orientate their economies towards sectors that cannot be easily replicated by China," wrote Kit Wei Zheng, a Singapore-based economist with Citigroup...
...Before the free-trade agreement kicked in this month, Yap was paying customs duty in China on his fish that amounted to roughly 6% of their cost, he says. As a result, China only made up slightly less than 10% of Qian Hu's $67 million in 2009 revenue, a share that Yap aims to triple over the next five to 10 years now that the tariff is gone...