Tag: InternationalNews

{{The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s investment arm, plans to raise $1bn by selling Indian rupee-linked bonds.}}

IFC will use the proceeds to finance “private sector investment in India”.

It said the bonds, which will be sold outside India, will strengthen the country’s capital markets and attract greater foreign investment.

Foreign investors have been sceptical of entering India amid uncertainty over policies and a slowdown in growth.

Analysts said the IFC bonds were likely to help attract investors who have been looking to enter India but needed assurance.

“This lends the weight of the credit rating of the World Bank to the potential investment,” Vishnu Varathan, a senior economist with Mizuho bank told the BBC.

“By co-working with the World Bank you get some of the credit risks involved with India off the table.”

agencies

Italy is to hold a state funeral for the hundreds of migrants who died after their boat capsized close to the island of Lampedusa last Thursday.

Prime Minister Enrico Letta made the announcement during a visit to the island with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Mr Barroso pledged 30m euros ($40m; £25m) of EU funds to help refugees in Italy.

Divers have recovered 302 bodies from the wreck.

Of more than 500 people who had been on board the boat, mostly from Eritrea and Somalia, only 155 survived.

On Wednesday afternoon, the bodies of two women and two men were brought to the surface.

The sinking is one of Italy’s worst disasters involving a boat carrying Europe-bound migrants from Africa.

Lampedusa is a key destination for such boats and many residents have long complained that the authorities in Italy and the European Union are not doing enough to deal with the thousands of migrants who come ashore each year.

{agencies}

The Netherlands has issued an apology to Russia over the arrest and detention of a Russian diplomat by police at The Hague.

Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said on Wednesday that an investigation established that the arrest of Dmitry Borodin late on Saturday was a breach of the Vienna Convention that regulates diplomatic relations between nations, including diplomatic immunity.

For the breach, “the state of the Netherlands offers the Russian Federation its apologies,” said Timmermans in a statement.

He also said that he “understands” the action of police officers who arrested Borodin – a statement unlikely to appease Russian demands for action against officers involved.

He added that the two countries “remain in talks” about the situation.

‘The most gross breach’

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called Borodin’s detention at a police station for several hours on Saturday night “the most gross breach of the Vienna Convention”, and demanded an apology.

Dutch police have declined to comment on the case, but Dutch media reports have cited police documents alleging that Borodin was detained after police found him drunk and barely able to stand after neighbours said he was mistreating his two young children.

The Russian foreign ministry on Tuesday accused Dutch police of raiding Borodin’s apartment in The Hague and beating him up before taking him to a police station for hours of questioning on the accusations.

Ties between Russia and the Netherlands have deteriorated sharply since Russian investigators last week charged 30 crew members of a Dutch-flagged Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise, with piracy over a protest against Arctic oil drilling.

The Netherlands responded by launching legal action to free the activists, who face up to 15 years in jail.

Source: Agencies

{{The head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said on Wednesday that the group’s timeline in Syria “is extremely tight,” but denied that the deadlines, including the destruction of all production facilities by November 1, were unrealistic.}}

“If we can ensure cooperation by all parties, and if some temporary ceasefires could be established in order to permit our experts to work in a permissive environment, I think the targets could be reached,” Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) head Ahmet Uzumcu told journalists in The Hague on Wednesday.

Uzumcu said that Syrian officials had been “quite cooperative” in the early stages of the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

Syria submitted a declaration of its chemical weapons arsenal to the OPCW last month, but the details have not been disclosed.

“Much depends on the situation on the ground, that’s why we have urged all parties in Syria to be cooperative,” Uzumcu said. “The elimination is in the interest of all.”

‘Areas which are dangerous’

Inspectors have already visited one chemical site in Syria and are visiting another on Wednesday, with some weapons already destroyed. “There are 20 sites to be visited in the coming weeks,” Uzumcu said.

Speaking at the same press conference, Uzumcu’s political advisor Malik Ellahi said “at the moment there are certain sites that are located in areas which are dangerous.”

Ellahi added that most sites to be inspected at this stage were in Syrian government-controlled areas.

Some 19 OPCW arms experts and 16 UN logistics and security personnel are in Syria and have started to destroy weapons production facilities, with footage of their work broadcast on Syrian television.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has warned that the weapons inspectors face unprecedented danger, saying it would take 100 foreign experts to complete “an operation the likes of which, quite simply, has never been tried before”.

The mission will have bases in Damascus and Cyprus.

Chemical weapons experts believe Syria has roughly 1,000 tonnes of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas, some of it stored as bulk raw chemicals and some of it already loaded onto missiles, warheads or rockets.

Under a Russian-US deal brokered last month, Syria must render useless all production facilities and weapons filling equipment by November. Its entire chemical weapons programme must be destroyed by June 30, 2014.

aljazeera

{{Egypt’s ousted President Mohamed Mursi will face trial on November 4 on charges of inciting killings at protests, a prospect sure to raise concern in Washington, already considering cutting aid to Cairo to press for democracy.}}

Mursi has been held in a secret location since his overthrow on July 3. If he is brought before the court, it will be the Islamist leader’s first public appearance since then.

The trial could further inflame tensions between the Muslim Brotherhood and the army-backed government and deepen the political instability that has decimated tourism and investment in the most populous Arab state.

The upheaval worries Cairo’s Western allies, who were hoping the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule would turn the region’s biggest country into a democratic success story.

The United States and European Union had wanted an inclusive political process in Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel and controls the Suez Canal waterway between Europe and Asia.

Mursi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, and other Brotherhood leaders accuse the army of staging a coup that reversed the gains of the 2011 revolt against Mubarak.

The army, which says it was carrying out the people’s will, presented a roadmap it said would bring free and fair elections.

Judge Nabil Saleeb said Mursi and other Brotherhood members had been charged with “inciting the killing and torture of protesters in front of the Etihadeya (presidential) palace”.

U.S. REVIEWS AID

The charges relate to the deaths of about a dozen people in clashes outside the presidential palace in December after Mursi enraged protesters with a decree expanding his powers.

Egypt has been in turmoil since the army removed Mursi following mass protests against his rule and then launched a tough crackdown against his Brotherhood, killing hundreds at protest camps and marches and arresting about 2,000.

Mursi supporters and security forces clashed again on Sunday, one of the bloodiest days since the military took power, with state media reporting 57 people dead and 391 wounded.

The United States is leaning toward withholding most military aid to Egypt except to promote counter-terrorism, security in the Sinai Peninsula that borders Israel, and other such priorities, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

reuters

A Pakistani teenager shot in the head by the Taliban for championing girls’ rights to education has said talks with the militants are needed for peace.

Malala Yousafzai was attacked by a gunman on a school bus near her former home in Pakistan in October 2012.

The targeting of a schoolgirl who had spoken out for girls’ rights to education caused outrage in Pakistan and around the world.

The 16-year-old was treated in the UK and now lives in Birmingham.

She spent months in hospital and required several operations to repair her skull.

In her first in-depth interview since the attack, Malala told the BBC that discussions with the Taliban were needed to achieve peace.

“The best way to solve problems and to fight against war is through dialogue,” she said.

“That’s not an issue for me, that’s the job of the government… and that’s also the job of America.”

In July, plans for talks involving the Taliban, the US and the Afghan government were frustrated by a row over the status of the Taliban’s newly opened office in Doha, Qatar.

Malala said it was important that the Taliban discussed their demands.

“They must do what they want through dialogue,” she said.

“Killing people, torturing people and flogging people… it’s totally against Islam. They are misusing the name of Islam.”

Malala also described the day of the attack for the first time. She said the street her school bus was travelling on was unusually deserted before the vehicle was flagged down and the gunman opened fire.

“I could see that there was no-one [there] at that time.

“Usually there used to be so many people and boys and they used to be standing in front of shops. But today… it was vacant.”

The teenager, who gave a speech to the UN in July, also spoke of her desire to return to Pakistan and enter politics.

“I will be a politician in my future. I want to change the future of my country and I want to make education compulsory,” she said.

“I hope that a day will come [when] the people of Pakistan will be free, they will have their rights, there will be peace and every girl and every boy will be going to school.”

BBC