Recag/C4_21 · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 9 93k
“If the chairman wants to speak to me, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t want to go in and say we need this or that. It is not really my place.
SWANSEA (4-3-3): Fabianski 6; Rangel 6, Fernandez 7, Williams 7, Kingsley 6 (Routledge 86); Fer 5, Cork 6, Ki 5 (BRITTON 46, 7); Barrow 7 (Naughton 78), Gomis 5, Sigurdsson 7.
Subs: Nordfeldt, Amat, Paloschi, Montero.
UP NEXT: STOKE (a) Premier League, Saturday, April 2.
ASTON VILLA (4-2-3-1): Guzan 4; Hutton 5, Lescott 5, CLARK 6, Cissokho 5; Westwood 5, Gana 6; Gil 5 (Agbonlahor 74), Veretout 6 (Green 61, 6), Ayew 5; Gestede 5.
Subs: Bunn, Okore, Bacuna, Sinclair, Sanchez.
UP NEXT: CHELSEA (h) Premier League, Saturday April 2.
STAR MAN: Leon Britton – changed the tempo of the game.
STAR SHOCKER: Brad Guzan – awful error gifted the winner.
With the mom-entous decision to leave the European Union, Sir Roy Strong justifiably thinks it a good time for everybody to be reminded of Britain’s magnificent history in a revised and updated edition of his acclaimed book.
Combining an unsurpassed eye for detail with a visceral understanding of what it means to be British, Strong unfolds a saga of passionate intensity. If we start with the Romans, we end, in this new volume, with Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands, Tony Blair with Bush in the Middle East, and David Cameron giving us the chance to reflect on what we think about patriotism and power.
The lesson I took away from Sir Roy Strong’s epic digest of our islands’ history is that it is frankly a miracle any of us have survived down the years to tell the tale.
When the time schemes are hectically compressed in this fashion, history is seen to be nothing except endless bloodthirsty cycles of ‘politico-religious power struggles’, with corpses rotting in the mud.
Strong begins in 55BC, when we were invaded by Roman legions who remained in Britain for 400 years, constructing cities and colonnaded villas. Recalled home finally to defend Italy from the Goths, the chaps in togas left Britain ‘unprotected and devoid of any central authority’.
This made us prone to barbarian raiders — the Anglo Saxons, Vikings and Norsemen. Everyone drank mead, recited boring poems about Beowulf and dressed in hairy animal pelts. Luckily, the Normans arrived in 1066, and people were put to more interesting work, building cathedrals and castles on ‘inaccessible promontories’.
Taxation, or the compulsory grabbing of people’s private resources, was used to fund foreign wars and crusades. If ever there was a prosperous patch, however, it was never sustained.
The population would boom, which led almost immediately to ‘poverty and near-famine’, when the food supply ran out, as they didn’t have deep-freezers.
Furthermore, as sanitation was non-existent, ditches and sewers thronged with rats, whose fleas carried the Black Death virus, which in 1349 claimed ‘between a quarter and a third of the entire population’. Crops perished as there was nobody to gather in the harvest. The Great Plague of London in 1665 was similar.
Another unresolved source of dissent and death was the state’s envy of the wealth and power of the church. Whenever the king rejected papal authority, there would be an almighty clash — as between Henry II and Thomas Becket or Henry VIII and Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.
How popular is the name Mary?
And so, The Story Of Britain grinds on: the Civil War in the 17th century, the execution of Charles I. Oliver Cromwell brought in a Puritan dictatorship. The Restoration was only superficially colourful. Maintaining the Empire, which burgeoned during the reign of Elizabeth I and reached a climax during the reign of Victoria when she had 400 million subjects across the globe, meant a multitude of military actions.
The Crimean War was an attempt to subdue Russian expansionism. The Boer War, in South Africa, cost £300 million and 30,000 men were killed. That the Kaiser was Victoria’s grandson did not prevent the ‘unprecedented carnage’ of the Great War, when hundreds of thousands were lost at Ypres. Sir Roy’s condensed account of the years 1939 to 1945 is stirring. Churchill is always good value: ‘This was to be one of those rare moments when events and the man were to be perfectly matched’.
Churchill not only possessed ‘a deep sense of the country’s history’, but also had the passionate rhetorical skills ‘to hold a people together’, with his radio broadcasts and his oratory.
In a sense, however, Sir Roy’s lurid, chronological account of kings, queens, battles, political upheaval and fragile moments of peace, is only half the story. For what interested me, and it is to be glimpsed in this book between the lines, is that, despite the chaos, civilisation and society nevertheless somehow evolved against the odds.
In Roman days, new fruits and vegetables, breeds of cattle and the domestic cat were introduced. Later, guilds were formed for craftsmen. Records were kept on parchment scrolls. Caxton invented the printing press. Industry commenced — lead, tin, coal and iron.
Household goods appeared, imported from France: tablecloths, linen, cutlery. Commerce encouraged the exchange of contracts and the beginning of commercial legislation. Criminal law, too, began to be codified: every man should be tried before sentence was given, stipulated Magna Carta.
The Civil Service grew to run the government departments, which bloomed as the Empire bloomed. Industry was aided by the invention of the steam pump, smelting process and, in textile manufacture, the flying shuttle.
There was a national postal service, police force, newspapers, mass literacy, public libraries and museums; piped water and drainage; public hygiene — and a transformation of nursing practice for which we have to thank Florence Nightingale.
Surely we’d reached a point when we’d never had it so good? So why, in 2018, to bring Sir Roy’s study bang up to date, do more than a third of our marriages fail? Why is everyone on anti-depressants and in a state of anxiety? Why are so many people unhappy?
If the story of Britain, as given here, is any clue, we thrive best when overcoming adversity. Too tranquil and we grow slack and bored, destroying ourselves from within, inventing things to worry about and growing to wildness.
No one should be permitted to leave school until they have first read Sir Roy’s rich, thought-provoking and indispensable book.
The push by junior members to limit committee chairmen could face stiff opposition from the minority members of the Democratic Caucus.
A generational fight is brewing inside the Democratic Caucus as a significant bloc of younger members is pushing for term limits for committee chairmen.
And in a potentially major shift that could anger the Congressional Black Caucus and other veteran lawmakers, Nancy Pelosi seems to be warming to the idea.
Democrats are expected to confront the issue next week when they huddle to vote on a package of rules for the new Congress. Pelosi herself has not endorsed the term limits proposal but is “sympathetic” to it, according to her spokesman.
The idea to place limits on committee leaders’ tenure has faced stiff opposition from minority members, particularly the CBC. Because of the sensitivity of the topic, it’s one Pelosi has often avoided publicly taking a position on in recent years.
But if Pelosi were to get behind the idea, it could help buttress her efforts to become speaker by wooing some of her opposition. Pelosi is still short of the 218 votes she needs to regain the gavel on Jan. 3.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, one of the members who opposes Pelosi for speaker, said the California Democrat even floated the idea of backing term limits during a meeting with him Tuesday, according to two sources.
Perlmutter made the comments during a call Wednesday with other House Democrats who oppose Pelosi’s speakership bid, a group sometimes referred to as “the rebels,” the two sources said.
Pelosi denied making the offer via her spokesman: “No such offer was made,” Hammill said. The Pelosi proposal was first reported by the Huffington Post.
The topic also came up during two separate calls with House Democratic leadership and ranking members this week, according to multiple House Democratic sources. Pelosi said on the calls that the idea is being pushed by junior Democrats, from incoming freshmen to lawmakers who have been in Congress five terms or less.
But several top Democrats spoke out against the idea, including incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Reps. Jerry Nadler of New York, Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota, all likely chairmen in the Democratic majority, also voiced opposition.
Democrats have to deal with the topic because it’s currently in the Republican majority’s rules package for the 115th Congress. Democrats can decide to keep the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders, revise the provision or strike it completely.
The move would bring a drastic change in the way the caucus operates. Pelosi’s possible embrace of the proposal shows just how much House Democratic politics have shifted in the month since the election. Democrats elected their largest freshmen class since Watergate, and many of the newcomers campaigned on the promise of bucking Pelosi or calling for new leadership.
“This debate has been occurring in the Caucus for years and has nothing to do with her nomination for speaker,” Hammill said.
The effort could help Pelosi sway some of the members and incoming freshmen who have vowed to vote against her for speaker, allowing her to peel off enough Democrats to clinch the speakership well ahead of the upcoming floor vote. Pelosi can lose 17 Democrats and still win the speaker’s gavel; currently, around 20 Democrats are on record in opposition to her.
Several of those Democrats have signaled publicly and privately that they could switch their position if Pelosi would commit to serving one more term and then handing the reins to a younger leader.
Pelosi has publicly dismissed that idea, saying she will not put an end date on her tenure.
Still, the push to adopt term limits — and where Pelosi stands on the issue — isn’t without potential peril. In the past, the CBC and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have fiercely objected to any suggestion of limits for committee leaders.
Lawmakers in those groups maintain that seniority is the bedrock of the Democratic Caucus. They say it’s what has allowed minority members to rise through the ranks of the caucus, when they otherwise might have been passed over for higher-ranking posts in favor of a white member.
The issue is very sensitive within the caucus. When Democrats took back the majority in 2007, they voted to scrap six-year term limits for committee chairmen. Pelosi has mostly avoided taking a position on the issue since then — even when pressured to do so — saying it’s up to the will of the caucus.
The change, if enacted, would allow for much more churn at the top, giving younger members the opportunity to lead influential committees without having to wait decades to do so. And the move could alleviate some pressure on Pelosi and her two deputies — all of whom are approaching age 80 — to step aside soon.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned of the risk of a “lost decade” for the global economy unless nations act together to counter threats to growth.
China and India echoed the call for cooperation in a separate statement.
Advanced economies have a “special responsibility” to restore confidence and lift growth, while China should boost consumption and allow its currency to rise, the IMF leader said. European leaders are looking to China as a potential source of funds as a sovereign-debt crisis threatens to engulf Italy, the third-biggest economy in the euro area.
Asian stocks rose for the first day in three today as easing inflation in China left more room for officials to support economic growth. A 5.5 percent gain in consumer prices in October was the least in five months, a government report showed.
China and India said that the global economy is in a “critical phase,” in a statement after the fifth meeting in a so-called financial dialogue between the two nations, usually held each year. The comments were dated yesterday and posted on a Chinese government website today.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1.1 percent as of 5:13 p.m. in Tokyo.
In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has offered to resign as his nation struggles with taming its debt burden and borrowing costs climb. Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang said this week that the world economy faces a 50 percent chance of a recession.
In Asia, policy makers need to respond nimbly should conditions worsen, Lagarde said today. They “can ease off the fiscal brakes, draw on reserves or regional reserve pooling arrangements, and reactivate central-bank swap lines,” she said. Lagarde cited high unemployment in advanced economies and economic and financial market declines that reinforce each other as concerns.
Japan’s so-called lost decade during the 1990s saw the economy slip in and out of recession and grow at an average rate of about 1 percent a year after the collapse of a real-estate bubble.
Lagarde said plans by leaders of the euro area economies and Group of 20 nations over the past month to increase a rescue package for Greece were a “step in the right direction” to resolving Europe’s debt crisis.
The enlarged European Financial Stability Facility should be able to start raising funds in December, she said.
European finance ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday pledged to roll out the bulked-up rescue fund next month after consulting investors and credit-rating companies over two options for translating the fund’s 440 billion euros ($607 billion) in guarantees into as much as 1 trillion euros of spending power.
Yesterday, $400 million in cuts came into effect in the early childhood sector.
These cuts will affect Otago disproportionately.
A survey found that 54 centres across Otago will lose an average of $48,500 each per annum.
Fees will be raised by between $5 and $40 per child per week.
In Dunedin alone, 2900 children currently enrolled in high-quality early childhood education will be immediately affected by the cuts.
This is because Dunedin city has the largest proportion of children enrolled in centres employing 100% tertiary-qualified teaching staff.
In overwhelming numbers, Otago's early childhood centres have committed to a high-quality model.
And, until now, they have been able to provide 20 hours of teaching with qualified teachers to all 3 and 4-year-old children free.
Some parents will be able to cope with the price rises that centres are introducing to make ends meet.
Others will struggle, particularly at a time when costs are rising faster than wages.
The GST rise has hit, and inflation is at a 21-year high.
Family stress levels will rise.
For some people, the cuts imposed by the Government will be too much.
It will be easier for them to quit part-time jobs to spend day and night with the kids.
They will end up drawing a benefit, and lose the opportunity to have their children engage with trained teachers for four hours each day.
So why has the Kindergarten Association, many of the community-based child-care providers and even many of the for-profit centres committed to the qualified teacher model of education and care?Longitudinal studies have documented the significant relationship between the quality of early childhood education and a child's literacy and numeracy scores once they reach school.
The early years are the most important for a child's brain development. Quality early childhood education improves cognitive ability in school-aged children: full stop.
For me, the big question is: what do we value most as a society?Early childhood experts argue that because brain development is happening at its fastest rate during the pre-school years, there is a strong argument for as many qualified teachers as possible.
Why would you expect unqualified teachers in the preschool years when you wouldn't tolerate unqualified teachers in your primary and secondary schools? Anecdotally, it seems, centres with some unqualified staff tend to put them with younger rather than older preschool children.
The science suggests it should be the other way around.
Either way, the literature consistently identifies higher proportions of qualified teachers as one of the persistent structural features of quality centres that lead to higher literacy and numeracy scores.
In this case, more seems to be better.
Providing more, quality early education is a smart thing for any government to do.
Until this Government's cuts, New Zealand was moving towards 20 hours' free childhood education by 100% qualified teachers, available for everyone.
So is it worthwhile for the Government to invest in quality? Demonstrating the benefit of investing early has earned a Nobel Prize for at least one economist.
The Government's chief science adviser has argued for it.
Evidence suggests parents also learn important parenting skills from the regular and non-threatening interaction with qualified staff.
Invest at the start of a child's life, and that child, their family and the country reap rewards over a lifetime.
Economic analysis supports quality early education for all. The return is generally strongest for those from poorer backgrounds.
Wider analyses of the provision of good-quality early childhood education generally indicate a healthy positive return to society on its investment.
Overseas studies show decreases in unemployment, antisocial behaviour and imprisonment.
For children from difficult backgrounds, the benefit to society of free, quality early childhood education is the most significant.
That these children are the ones most likely to be excluded as a result of the cuts is perhaps the most bitter pill.
Investment in quality early education for children from difficult backgrounds is paid back to taxpayers many, many times over in the years that follow.
It is not just a child's access to high-quality preschooling that shapes a child's preschool development.
Research shows that their parents' abilities, education and socio-economic situation also have an effect.

“If the chairman wants to speak to me, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t want to go in and say we need this or that. It is not really my place.

SWANSEA (4-3-3): Fabianski 6; Rangel 6, Fernandez 7, Williams 7, Kingsley 6 (Routledge 86); Fer 5, Cork 6, Ki 5 (BRITTON 46, 7); Barrow 7 (Naughton 78), Gomis 5, Sigurdsson 7.

Subs: Nordfeldt, Amat, Paloschi, Montero.

UP NEXT: STOKE (a) Premier League, Saturday, April 2.

ASTON VILLA (4-2-3-1): Guzan 4; Hutton 5, Lescott 5, CLARK 6, Cissokho 5; Westwood 5, Gana 6; Gil 5 (Agbonlahor 74), Veretout 6 (Green 61, 6), Ayew 5; Gestede 5.

Subs: Bunn, Okore, Bacuna, Sinclair, Sanchez.

UP NEXT: CHELSEA (h) Premier League, Saturday April 2.

STAR MAN: Leon Britton – changed the tempo of the game.

STAR SHOCKER: Brad Guzan – awful error gifted the winner.

With the mom-entous decision to leave the European Union, Sir Roy Strong justifiably thinks it a good time for everybody to be reminded of Britain’s magnificent history in a revised and updated edition of his acclaimed book.

Combining an unsurpassed eye for detail with a visceral understanding of what it means to be British, Strong unfolds a saga of passionate intensity. If we start with the Romans, we end, in this new volume, with Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands, Tony Blair with Bush in the Middle East, and David Cameron giving us the chance to reflect on what we think about patriotism and power.

The lesson I took away from Sir Roy Strong’s epic digest of our islands’ history is that it is frankly a miracle any of us have survived down the years to tell the tale.

When the time schemes are hectically compressed in this fashion, history is seen to be nothing except endless bloodthirsty cycles of ‘politico-religious power struggles’, with corpses rotting in the mud.

Strong begins in 55BC, when we were invaded by Roman legions who remained in Britain for 400 years, constructing cities and colonnaded villas. Recalled home finally to defend Italy from the Goths, the chaps in togas left Britain ‘unprotected and devoid of any central authority’.

This made us prone to barbarian raiders — the Anglo Saxons, Vikings and Norsemen. Everyone drank mead, recited boring poems about Beowulf and dressed in hairy animal pelts. Luckily, the Normans arrived in 1066, and people were put to more interesting work, building cathedrals and castles on ‘inaccessible promontories’.

Taxation, or the compulsory grabbing of people’s private resources, was used to fund foreign wars and crusades. If ever there was a prosperous patch, however, it was never sustained.

The population would boom, which led almost immediately to ‘poverty and near-famine’, when the food supply ran out, as they didn’t have deep-freezers.

Furthermore, as sanitation was non-existent, ditches and sewers thronged with rats, whose fleas carried the Black Death virus, which in 1349 claimed ‘between a quarter and a third of the entire population’. Crops perished as there was nobody to gather in the harvest. The Great Plague of London in 1665 was similar.

Another unresolved source of dissent and death was the state’s envy of the wealth and power of the church. Whenever the king rejected papal authority, there would be an almighty clash — as between Henry II and Thomas Becket or Henry VIII and Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.

How popular is the name Mary?

And so, The Story Of Britain grinds on: the Civil War in the 17th century, the execution of Charles I. Oliver Cromwell brought in a Puritan dictatorship. The Restoration was only superficially colourful. Maintaining the Empire, which burgeoned during the reign of Elizabeth I and reached a climax during the reign of Victoria when she had 400 million subjects across the globe, meant a multitude of military actions.

The Crimean War was an attempt to subdue Russian expansionism. The Boer War, in South Africa, cost £300 million and 30,000 men were killed. That the Kaiser was Victoria’s grandson did not prevent the ‘unprecedented carnage’ of the Great War, when hundreds of thousands were lost at Ypres. Sir Roy’s condensed account of the years 1939 to 1945 is stirring. Churchill is always good value: ‘This was to be one of those rare moments when events and the man were to be perfectly matched’.

Churchill not only possessed ‘a deep sense of the country’s history’, but also had the passionate rhetorical skills ‘to hold a people together’, with his radio broadcasts and his oratory.

In a sense, however, Sir Roy’s lurid, chronological account of kings, queens, battles, political upheaval and fragile moments of peace, is only half the story. For what interested me, and it is to be glimpsed in this book between the lines, is that, despite the chaos, civilisation and society nevertheless somehow evolved against the odds.

In Roman days, new fruits and vegetables, breeds of cattle and the domestic cat were introduced. Later, guilds were formed for craftsmen. Records were kept on parchment scrolls. Caxton invented the printing press. Industry commenced — lead, tin, coal and iron.

Household goods appeared, imported from France: tablecloths, linen, cutlery. Commerce encouraged the exchange of contracts and the beginning of commercial legislation. Criminal law, too, began to be codified: every man should be tried before sentence was given, stipulated Magna Carta.

The Civil Service grew to run the government departments, which bloomed as the Empire bloomed. Industry was aided by the invention of the steam pump, smelting process and, in textile manufacture, the flying shuttle.

There was a national postal service, police force, newspapers, mass literacy, public libraries and museums; piped water and drainage; public hygiene — and a transformation of nursing practice for which we have to thank Florence Nightingale.

Surely we’d reached a point when we’d never had it so good? So why, in 2018, to bring Sir Roy’s study bang up to date, do more than a third of our marriages fail? Why is everyone on anti-depressants and in a state of anxiety? Why are so many people unhappy?

If the story of Britain, as given here, is any clue, we thrive best when overcoming adversity. Too tranquil and we grow slack and bored, destroying ourselves from within, inventing things to worry about and growing to wildness.

No one should be permitted to leave school until they have first read Sir Roy’s rich, thought-provoking and indispensable book.

The push by junior members to limit committee chairmen could face stiff opposition from the minority members of the Democratic Caucus.

A generational fight is brewing inside the Democratic Caucus as a significant bloc of younger members is pushing for term limits for committee chairmen.

And in a potentially major shift that could anger the Congressional Black Caucus and other veteran lawmakers, Nancy Pelosi seems to be warming to the idea.

Democrats are expected to confront the issue next week when they huddle to vote on a package of rules for the new Congress. Pelosi herself has not endorsed the term limits proposal but is “sympathetic” to it, according to her spokesman.

The idea to place limits on committee leaders’ tenure has faced stiff opposition from minority members, particularly the CBC. Because of the sensitivity of the topic, it’s one Pelosi has often avoided publicly taking a position on in recent years.

But if Pelosi were to get behind the idea, it could help buttress her efforts to become speaker by wooing some of her opposition. Pelosi is still short of the 218 votes she needs to regain the gavel on Jan. 3.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, one of the members who opposes Pelosi for speaker, said the California Democrat even floated the idea of backing term limits during a meeting with him Tuesday, according to two sources.

Perlmutter made the comments during a call Wednesday with other House Democrats who oppose Pelosi’s speakership bid, a group sometimes referred to as “the rebels,” the two sources said.

Pelosi denied making the offer via her spokesman: “No such offer was made,” Hammill said. The Pelosi proposal was first reported by the Huffington Post.

The topic also came up during two separate calls with House Democratic leadership and ranking members this week, according to multiple House Democratic sources. Pelosi said on the calls that the idea is being pushed by junior Democrats, from incoming freshmen to lawmakers who have been in Congress five terms or less.

But several top Democrats spoke out against the idea, including incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Reps. Jerry Nadler of New York, Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota, all likely chairmen in the Democratic majority, also voiced opposition.

Democrats have to deal with the topic because it’s currently in the Republican majority’s rules package for the 115th Congress. Democrats can decide to keep the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders, revise the provision or strike it completely.

The move would bring a drastic change in the way the caucus operates. Pelosi’s possible embrace of the proposal shows just how much House Democratic politics have shifted in the month since the election. Democrats elected their largest freshmen class since Watergate, and many of the newcomers campaigned on the promise of bucking Pelosi or calling for new leadership.

“This debate has been occurring in the Caucus for years and has nothing to do with her nomination for speaker,” Hammill said.

The effort could help Pelosi sway some of the members and incoming freshmen who have vowed to vote against her for speaker, allowing her to peel off enough Democrats to clinch the speakership well ahead of the upcoming floor vote. Pelosi can lose 17 Democrats and still win the speaker’s gavel; currently, around 20 Democrats are on record in opposition to her.

Several of those Democrats have signaled publicly and privately that they could switch their position if Pelosi would commit to serving one more term and then handing the reins to a younger leader.

Pelosi has publicly dismissed that idea, saying she will not put an end date on her tenure.

Still, the push to adopt term limits — and where Pelosi stands on the issue — isn’t without potential peril. In the past, the CBC and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have fiercely objected to any suggestion of limits for committee leaders.

Lawmakers in those groups maintain that seniority is the bedrock of the Democratic Caucus. They say it’s what has allowed minority members to rise through the ranks of the caucus, when they otherwise might have been passed over for higher-ranking posts in favor of a white member.

The issue is very sensitive within the caucus. When Democrats took back the majority in 2007, they voted to scrap six-year term limits for committee chairmen. Pelosi has mostly avoided taking a position on the issue since then — even when pressured to do so — saying it’s up to the will of the caucus.

The change, if enacted, would allow for much more churn at the top, giving younger members the opportunity to lead influential committees without having to wait decades to do so. And the move could alleviate some pressure on Pelosi and her two deputies — all of whom are approaching age 80 — to step aside soon.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned of the risk of a “lost decade” for the global economy unless nations act together to counter threats to growth.

China and India echoed the call for cooperation in a separate statement.

Advanced economies have a “special responsibility” to restore confidence and lift growth, while China should boost consumption and allow its currency to rise, the IMF leader said. European leaders are looking to China as a potential source of funds as a sovereign-debt crisis threatens to engulf Italy, the third-biggest economy in the euro area.

Asian stocks rose for the first day in three today as easing inflation in China left more room for officials to support economic growth. A 5.5 percent gain in consumer prices in October was the least in five months, a government report showed.

China and India said that the global economy is in a “critical phase,” in a statement after the fifth meeting in a so-called financial dialogue between the two nations, usually held each year. The comments were dated yesterday and posted on a Chinese government website today.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1.1 percent as of 5:13 p.m. in Tokyo.

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has offered to resign as his nation struggles with taming its debt burden and borrowing costs climb. Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang said this week that the world economy faces a 50 percent chance of a recession.

In Asia, policy makers need to respond nimbly should conditions worsen, Lagarde said today. They “can ease off the fiscal brakes, draw on reserves or regional reserve pooling arrangements, and reactivate central-bank swap lines,” she said. Lagarde cited high unemployment in advanced economies and economic and financial market declines that reinforce each other as concerns.

Japan’s so-called lost decade during the 1990s saw the economy slip in and out of recession and grow at an average rate of about 1 percent a year after the collapse of a real-estate bubble.

Lagarde said plans by leaders of the euro area economies and Group of 20 nations over the past month to increase a rescue package for Greece were a “step in the right direction” to resolving Europe’s debt crisis.

The enlarged European Financial Stability Facility should be able to start raising funds in December, she said.

European finance ministers meeting in Brussels yesterday pledged to roll out the bulked-up rescue fund next month after consulting investors and credit-rating companies over two options for translating the fund’s 440 billion euros ($607 billion) in guarantees into as much as 1 trillion euros of spending power.

Yesterday, $400 million in cuts came into effect in the early childhood sector.

These cuts will affect Otago disproportionately.

A survey found that 54 centres across Otago will lose an average of $48,500 each per annum.

Fees will be raised by between $5 and $40 per child per week.

In Dunedin alone, 2900 children currently enrolled in high-quality early childhood education will be immediately affected by the cuts.

This is because Dunedin city has the largest proportion of children enrolled in centres employing 100% tertiary-qualified teaching staff.

In overwhelming numbers, Otago's early childhood centres have committed to a high-quality model.

And, until now, they have been able to provide 20 hours of teaching with qualified teachers to all 3 and 4-year-old children free.

Some parents will be able to cope with the price rises that centres are introducing to make ends meet.

Others will struggle, particularly at a time when costs are rising faster than wages.

The GST rise has hit, and inflation is at a 21-year high.

Family stress levels will rise.

For some people, the cuts imposed by the Government will be too much.

It will be easier for them to quit part-time jobs to spend day and night with the kids.

They will end up drawing a benefit, and lose the opportunity to have their children engage with trained teachers for four hours each day.

So why has the Kindergarten Association, many of the community-based child-care providers and even many of the for-profit centres committed to the qualified teacher model of education and care?Longitudinal studies have documented the significant relationship between the quality of early childhood education and a child's literacy and numeracy scores once they reach school.

The early years are the most important for a child's brain development. Quality early childhood education improves cognitive ability in school-aged children: full stop.

For me, the big question is: what do we value most as a society?Early childhood experts argue that because brain development is happening at its fastest rate during the pre-school years, there is a strong argument for as many qualified teachers as possible.

Why would you expect unqualified teachers in the preschool years when you wouldn't tolerate unqualified teachers in your primary and secondary schools? Anecdotally, it seems, centres with some unqualified staff tend to put them with younger rather than older preschool children.

The science suggests it should be the other way around.

Either way, the literature consistently identifies higher proportions of qualified teachers as one of the persistent structural features of quality centres that lead to higher literacy and numeracy scores.

In this case, more seems to be better.

Providing more, quality early education is a smart thing for any government to do.

Until this Government's cuts, New Zealand was moving towards 20 hours' free childhood education by 100% qualified teachers, available for everyone.

So is it worthwhile for the Government to invest in quality? Demonstrating the benefit of investing early has earned a Nobel Prize for at least one economist.

The Government's chief science adviser has argued for it.

Evidence suggests parents also learn important parenting skills from the regular and non-threatening interaction with qualified staff.

Invest at the start of a child's life, and that child, their family and the country reap rewards over a lifetime.

Economic analysis supports quality early education for all. The return is generally strongest for those from poorer backgrounds.

Wider analyses of the provision of good-quality early childhood education generally indicate a healthy positive return to society on its investment.

Overseas studies show decreases in unemployment, antisocial behaviour and imprisonment.

For children from difficult backgrounds, the benefit to society of free, quality early childhood education is the most significant.

That these children are the ones most likely to be excluded as a result of the cuts is perhaps the most bitter pill.

Investment in quality early education for children from difficult backgrounds is paid back to taxpayers many, many times over in the years that follow.

It is not just a child's access to high-quality preschooling that shapes a child's preschool development.

Research shows that their parents' abilities, education and socio-economic situation also have an effect.