Tag: InternationalNews

{{Japanese carmakers Toyota and Nissan have issued fresh vehicle recalls.}}

Toyota is calling back 615,000 Sienna minivans in the US to fix a lever problem that could cause vehicles to shift out of park mode “without the driver depressing the brake pedal”.

Toyota said that it was aware of 24 “minor accidents” due to the issue.

Meanwhile, Nissan said it is recalling 908,900 vehicles globally due to a flaw in an accelerator sensor but added that no accidents had been reported.

Nissan said the accelerator pedal’s sensor could become unstable, leading to a less-than-intended acceleration. It added that in a worst case scenario, the engine could stall.

Its recall affects Infiniti M, Serena, X-Trail, Lafesta and Fuga models produced in Japan between 2004 and 2013.

Toyota’s recall applies to models made during 2004 to 2005 and 2007 to 2009.

This is the second time in a month that Toyota has issued a recall of its vehicles in the US market.

Earlier in September, it issued a recall for more than 780,000 vehicles in the US to address a suspension defect in its RAV4 and Lexus HS 250h models, on fears that an initial recall last year did not fix the problem.

{agencies}

{{At least three people were killed and one seriously injured in an explosion in the centre of the French capital Paris on Friday.}}

Another person has been reported missing, believed to be trapped under the rubble.

The apparently accidental explosion took place at around 3.45pm in the car park of a building in the city’s tenth arrondissement, where construction work was taking place, police told media.

The force of the blast caused surrounding structures to shake, while a building across from the site of the explosion was evacuated and the fire brigade was reinforcing its foundations to avoid collapse, a fireman told media.

Workers were carrying out repairs on a fuel tank at the time of the explosion late on Friday afternoon, the media reported, and preliminary findings suggest oil vapours that had accumulated at the bottom of the tank may have ignited.

An investigation has been launched to determine the exact cause of the blast, said Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë.

“The circumstances of this tragedy are not yet determined and the investigation will shed light on this terrible accident, ” he said in a statement.

A medical post was set up near the building, located on the Rue d’Enghien, while rescuers used dogs to search for the missing person.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls arrived on the scene shortly after 5pm, but declined to make a statement.

{{Greek police arrested the leader, two lawmakers and party members from the far-right Golden Dawn party on Saturday, and charged one member with being an accomplice to the killing of an anti-fascist rapper, a police official said.}}

Police said party leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos, spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris, two other lawmakers and 10 members had been arrested on charges of founding a criminal organisation. They are due to appear in court this weekend to be formally charged.

Golden Dawn, ranked Greece’s third most popular party in opinion polls, is under investigation for the murder of Pavlos Fissas which sparked violent protests and a crackdown on political extremism.

The party has denied any links to the killing and Mihaloliakos has warned the party could pull its 18 lawmakers from parliament if the crackdown does not stop.

If potential by-elections were won by the opposition, as some polls indicate, Greece’s fragile two-party coalition would become politically untenable, Mihaloliakos has argued.

“Shame on them, the people will lift Golden Dawn higher,” Ilias Panagiotaros, a Golden Dawn lawmakers told reporters before his arrest.

The party has 18 out of parliament’s 300 lawmakers and scored 14 percent of voter support in opinion polls before the stabbing. A poll this week showed its backing had fallen to as low as 6.7 percent.

Greek lawmakers do not lose their political rights or seats unless there is a final court ruling against them but the government has proposed a law that could block state funding for Golden Dawn if police find links to Fissas’s murder.

reuters

{{The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Friday that demands the eradication of Syria’s chemical weapons but does not threaten automatic punitive action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government if it does not comply.}}

The unanimous vote by the 15-member Security Council capped weeks of intense diplomacy between Russia and the United States. It was based on a deal between the two countries reached in Geneva earlier this month following an August 21 sarin nerve gas attack on a Damascus suburb that killed hundreds.

The U.S.-Russia deal averted punitive U.S. military action against Assad’s government, which Washington blamed for the August attack. The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, blamed anti-government rebels for the attack.

One provision of the resolution, described by council diplomats as significant, formally endorses a plan for a political transition in Syria agreed on at an international conference in Geneva in June 2012.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after the vote that the big powers hoped to hold a peace conference on Syria in mid-November in Geneva.

He told the council the plan to eradicate Syria’s chemical weapons was “not a license to kill with conventional weapons.”

“As we mark this important step, we must never forget that the catalog of horrors in Syria continues with bombs and tanks, grenades and guns,” he said. “A red light for one form of weapons does not mean a green light for others.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the vote showed that “actions have consequences.”

“Our original objective was to degrade and deter Syria’s chemical weapons capability. And the option of military force that President Obama has kept on the table could have achieved that. But tonight’s resolution accomplishes even more – through peaceful means, it will for the first time seek to eliminate entirely a nation’s chemical weapons capability,” he said.

The resolution does not allow for automatic punitive action in the form of military strikes or sanctions if Syria does not comply. At Russia’s insistence, Friday’s resolution makes clear a second council decision would be needed for that.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Security Council would be prepared to take punitive steps in the event of confirmed violations of the resolution by either side in the conflict.

The number of Americans giving up their citizenship has rocketed this year – partly, it’s thought, because of a new tax law that is frustrating many expats.

{{Goodbye, US passport.}}

That’s not a concept that Americans contemplate lightly. But it’s one that many of them seem to be considering – and acting on.

The number of expatriates renouncing their US citizenship surged in the second quarter of 2013, compared with the same period the year before – 1,131 cases to 189 in 2012. It’s still a small proportion of the estimated six million Americans abroad, but it’s a significant rise.

The list is compiled by the Federal Register and while no reasons are given, the big looming factor seems to be tax.

A new law called the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) will, from 1 July next year, require all financial institutions around the world to report directly to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) all the assets and incomes of any US citizens with $50,000 (£31,000) on their books.

The US could withhold 30% of dividends and interest payments due to the banks that don’t comply.

It’s an attempt by the US authorities to recover an estimated $100bn a year in unpaid taxes on US citizens’ assets overseas. Unlike other countries, Americans are taxed not only as residents of the US but also as citizens, wherever they live.

Suddenly, some expats are waking up in a cold sweat. They have always had to file tax returns and disclose foreign accounts on a form called the FBAR, although in practice many didn’t.

But now Fatca means they have to be more rigorous or face huge fines, in the knowledge that the US authorities could know a lot more than they have in the past.

Many would say the IRS is only trying to get what it is owed, but critics say that in trying to track down the wealthy tax-dodgers, ordinary people are being dragged into an expensive and time-consuming form-filling nightmare. And for some, it’s become too much.

Bridget(not her real name) told media she gave up her US citizenship in 2011, 32 years after leaving for a new life in Scandinavia.

“This has nothing to do with avoiding taxes. I was never in danger of having to pay taxes in the US since I pay more here. The issue for me was that it was becoming harder and harder to follow the tax code and comply. It was difficult already but when I knew Fatca was coming, I thought, ‘Do I want to go through with it anymore?’”

She felt threatened even if she did everything to fulfil her responsibilities, she says. A simple loyalty card at the local grocery store caused her anxiety when she realised it was linked to a bank account she never knew she had.

It became so complicated to do her tax return that she turned to professionals, at an annual cost of nearly $2,000 (£1,250), with the prospect of Fatca raising the price to $5,000. Also, fewer tax lawyers were taking on American clients, she says, and some banks were even turning away American money.

“In the end, I sleep better now knowing that I no longer have to worry about the US requirements. I will never be able to live or own property in the US but I can visit and that’s enough for me.”

Bridget, who runs an editing and translation company, says her strong emotional bond with the US has been frayed.

“I’ve enjoyed being an American even though I haven’t lived there since I was young. I identified with America so I felt angry that I had to get to this point where it wasn’t viable to keep my citizenship anymore.

“When you’re an American living in America, it’s one thing but when you live abroad in another country, in certain ways that feeling becomes even stronger because you realise that things that you think are individual characteristics are actually national ones so you identify even more strongly with your nationality.

“I used to always introduce myself as American but not now, although I will always be American in my heart even though I won’t carry the passport. I will still celebrate Thanksgiving and 4 July.”

She says the tax issue is the biggest topic of conversation among the expat Americans she knows. And tax lawyers in the US who deal with people living abroad say it has become a huge issue.

BBC

{{A five-storey building has collapsed in Mumbai at day-break in the latest accident in India’s financial capital, killing at least two people with dozens feared trapped inside.}}

Local people put the number of residents usually inside the apartment block as high as 60.

At least two people were killed and 12 others have been pulled alilve from the building and rushed to hospital, Alok Awasthi, an official with the National Disaster Response Force, said.

Officials said the building was believed to have been 35 years old.

Five other apartment blocks have collapsed in or close to Mumbai in recent months, including one in April that killed 74 people.

Across India, building collapses have become relatively common. Massive demand for housing around India’s fast-growing cities combined with widespread corruption often result in builders using substandard materials or adding unauthorised floors.

{Firefighters and other first responders rushed to the scene to begin rescue operations}
wirestory

{{ Iran’s envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog played down prospects for a quick breakthrough in talks on Friday with the agency on a stalled investigation into Tehran’s disputed atomic program.}}

Reza Najafi, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, was asked by reporters whether he expected an agreement in discussions due to start with the IAEA at around 10 a.m.

The meeting between Iran and the IAEA will be the first since Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, took office as new Iranian president in early August, pledging to try to resolve the Islamic state’s nuclear dispute with the West.

It comes after talks between Iran and world powers at the United Nations on Thursday.

“This is the first meeting so nobody I guess should expect that in just (a) one-day meeting we can solve (our) problems,” Najafi, who was appointed new Iranian ambassador last month, said.

“We are going to have a first meeting with the agency. We expect to review the existing issues and also exchange views on the ways we can continue our cooperation to resolve all issues.”

Iran and the United States held their highest-level substantive talks in a generation at the United Nations, saying the tone was positive but sounding cautious about resolving the standoff.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met after Zarif held wider talks with the United States and other major powers to address Western suspicions that Iran may be trying to develop atomic weapons.

Separately from big power diplomacy to resolve the decade-old dispute that could yet trigger a Middle East war, the IAEA has held 10 rounds of talks with Iran since early 2012 to try to resume a blocked inquiry into suspected atom bomb research.

The talks have so far yielded no results but Western states see Friday’s meeting in Vienna as a litmus test of any substantive Iranian shift from its intransigence under Rouhani’s hardline conservative predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran denies it is seeking to develop the capability make nuclear weapons, saying its program is a peaceful bid to generate electricity.

wirestory