IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • N. Korea Ship in Panama Violated UN Sanctions

    N. Korea Ship in Panama Violated UN Sanctions

    The Panama government has said that the undeclared shipment of Cuban weapons found on board a North Korean ship are a “violation” of UN sanctions against arms transfers to Pyongyang, citing a UN report.

    The ministry of public safety said in a statement on Wednesday that according to a draft report by UN experts sent to Panama after the seizure of the ship in July, the cargo “undoubtedly violates the UN sanctions”.

    The ministry statement was the first information released about the mission of the experts, who completed their inspections two weeks ago.

    A source in the public security ministry said authorities had been given a first draft of the report compiled by UN sanctions panel experts.

    North Korea is under UN sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme.

    Those measures bar the transport of all weapons to and from the isolated state apart from the import of small arms.

    North Korea carried out a third nuclear weapons test in February, triggering even tighter UN sanctions.

    aljazeera

  • Colombia Ready to Negotiate With ELN Rebels

    Colombia Ready to Negotiate With ELN Rebels

    {{Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has said he was ready to start negotiating peace with the country’s second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), “as soon as possible”.}}

    The announcement comes a day after the ELN released a Canadian hostage it had been holding for months, Gernot Wober.

    Santos hailed the rebels’ release and said “the government is ready to start a dialogue with the ELN as soon as possible,” in a statement released by his office on Thursday.

    Santos had conditioned any peace talks with the ELN on freeing Wober and all other captives it holds in the nation’s jungles.

    ELN leaders have expressed interest in starting peace negotiations similar to those currently under way with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

    It is not known how many hostages the group holds.

    aljazeera

  • Indian Police Arrest Home-Grown Terror Chief

    Indian Police Arrest Home-Grown Terror Chief

    {{Indian police have arrested the alleged co-founder of top home-grown militant group the Indian Mujahideen, which is suspected of killing hundreds in multiple attacks across the country, a minister said Thursday.}}

    Yasin Bhatkal, believed to be in his 30s, was arrested near the border with Nepal and is in police custody in the northern state of Bihar, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters in the capital.

    “He is being interrogated,” he said. “I cannot disclose which intelligence agencies were involved.”

    The banned Indian Mujahideen came to public attention in November 2007 following serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh state. It is accused of a string of attacks since then in Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi and Pune among other locations.

    The group is thought to head a network of home-grown Islamic militant groups, with some analysts believing it has links to the powerful Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed militant organisations.

    Bhatkal was named as a co-conspirator over an attack on the German Bakery restaurant in the western city of Pune in 2010 when a bomb placed in a rucksack under a table exploded, killing 17 people including five foreigners.

    Reports say he was captured on CCTV footage in the restaurant, planting the bomb shortly before the blast.

    His arrest on Wednesday evening is another success for the Indian security forces following the detention earlier this month of another alleged top militant, Abdul Karim Tunda, who is thought to be a senior member of the LeT.

    It is not known if the two arrests are linked but Tunda, who was also arrested near the Nepal border, has been cooperating with police, according to newspaper reports.

    Tunda is accused of helping mastermind serial blasts in Mumbai in 1993 in which 250 people died, as well as more than 40 other deadly bomb attacks across the country.

    agencies

  • Afghan policemen killed in Taliban ambush

    Afghan policemen killed in Taliban ambush

    {{At least 15 policemen have been killed and another 10 wounded in a Taliban ambush in western Afghanistan’s Farah province, according to a government official.}}

    Abdul Rahman Zhawandai, the Farah provincial government spokesperson, said on Thursday that an Afghan National Police squad was on patrol along the region’s main highway when they were ambushed in a mountain pass.

    Zhawandai said the attack occurred late on Wednesday as about 40 policemen were patrolling the highway in several vehicles. It happened in the Bakwa district, which borders Iran.

    The Taliban have escalated attacks in recent months as they try to take advantage of the withdrawal of foreign troops, who handed over security for the country to Afghan forces two months ago.

    “Highway One”, on which the attack occurred, is a 2,200km circular road connecting the key cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.

    The ambush raised the death toll in Taliban attacks on Wednesday to more than 30, including an American soldier, four policemen and three civilians who died when Taliban fighters tried to storm a joint NATO-Afghan military base in the east.

    Source: Agencies

  • India Finds Price of Expats’ Patriotism Elusive as Growth Fades

    India Finds Price of Expats’ Patriotism Elusive as Growth Fades

    {{The patriotism of wealthy overseas Indians has helped the country avert economic crises in the past and it is little surprise that embattled policymakers are turning to them again to plug a record trade gap that is battering the rupee.}}

    This time, though, big investors among the more than 25-million overseas Indian community – the world’s second-largest diaspora – are staying away as the economic outlook darkens and political instability looms ahead of national elections.

    Shoring up inflows from the overseas Indians is a key weapon in Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s arsenal to prop-up the rupee that has lost 20 percent against the dollar so far this year and which dropped to a record low on Wednesday.

    The rupee’s crash has boosted remittances, mainly from blue-collar workers overseas – particularly in the Gulf – who can get more rupees for hard currency. However, it has not triggered a surge in high-value investments in real estate, private equity funds and stock markets, bankers and wealth managers said.

    Underlining the hesitancy, flows from non-resident Indians (NRIs) into bank deposits in the April-June quarter dropped to $5.5 billion from $6.6 billion a year-earlier, central bank data shows.

    Investments in real estate by overseas Indians dropped about 30 percent in the fiscal year that ended in March, according to the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI), an umbrella group of local property developers.

    “People feel like there are too many unknowns. The most recent government has been ghastly, and nobody quite knows what comes after it. I haven’t been optimistic about India for quite a while,” said Vasant Prabhu, chief financial officer of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc in New York.

    “What makes it hard, you don’t know what the bottom of the rupee is,” he said in comments underscored by a rupee that stumbled from 63 per dollar on Friday to almost 69 per dollar on Wednesday – a sharp move over such a short period of time for a currency.

    His comments were echoed by wealth managers and bankers in Britain, the United States and India who said non-resident Indian clients saw too many uncertainties despite the tantalizing prospect of buying assets with a record-low rupee.

    Economic growth is at its weakest in a decade and seen slowing further, New Delhi is struggling to close a record deficit in the current account – the broadest measure of a country’s international trade – and a national election that must be held by May could tempt the government to spend to win over voters and so undermine its fiscal discipline.

    In addition, emerging markets are losing favor with investors generally as the prospect of the United States reining in its economic stimulus draws cash into U.S. assets.

    In a bid to attract funds, India liberalized bank deposit schemes and some banks raised rates for overseas Indians this month. They could secure interest rates of more than 8.5 percent on one-year rupee deposits and as much as 10 percent on three-year accounts, a relatively high return compared with many other countries where rates remain near historic lows.

    “All these folks always had this strong belief that India is the safest country to invest and four, five years back when the rest of the world was collapsing India was still growing,” said Anil Behl, head of wealth and strategy at lender IndusInd Bank, referring to the global financial crisis.

    “That mood has changed now,” he said. “I can certainly feel that some NRIs are looking at dollar-based products from international stables … they are very wary of pure rupee products.”

    LARGE HIT

    The government goes out of its way to tug at the heartstrings of white-collar expatriates, such as those in Silicon Valley and at top investment banks in London, to raise funds and cushion the impact of slowing institutional inflows. There is even a ministry for Overseas Indian Affairs which has NRI investment as a core goal.

    New Delhi has managed to lure them in the past with attractive deposit schemes and bonds. It issued a five-year Resurgent India Bond in 1998, raising more than $4 billion, and in 2000 it raised $5.5 billion through a deposit scheme.

    India, Asia’s third-largest economy, was the top recipient of remittances from diaspora in 2012 with about $70 billion, followed by China at $66 billion, World Bank figures show. India received about $63 billion in remittances in 2011.

    Banks, including RBS, Barclays and Morgan Stanley, beefed up their teams in cities like New York, Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong in recent years to advise overseas Indians on investment opportunities back home.

    But many investors are now staring at losses as the rupee’s plunge since May has wiped out gains they made on investments in private equity funds and mutual funds in the last few years.

    “For people who are dollar-invested, that’s a large hit,” said Ajay Kaisth, principal of New Jersey-based Kai Advisors, which has $30 million under management, of which more than 60 percent is from Indian clients.

    After trading broadly around 45 per dollar in 2010 and 2011, the rupee has dropped more than 30 percent.

    LOSING FAITH

    The economy is likely to grow even more slowly in fiscal 2013/14 (April-March) than the decade-low of 5 percent struck the previous year, as investment will stay weak due to a dearth of reforms and uncertainty ahead of the election, a Reuters poll showed.

    The rupee has become the worst performer by far among Asian emerging-market currencies tracked by Reuters, despite frantic attempts by the government and central bank to support it.

    Lalit Kumar Jain, chairman of CREDAI said property purchases by Indian expatriates were now needs-based rather than speculative, reducing what has been in the past a key type of demand.

    As a portfolio investment destination, India also faces daunting competition as developed markets, including the United States, show signs of finally emerging from the global financial crisis, said Bundeep Singh Rangar, who advises individuals as well as companies on India investments as chairman of London-based IndusView Advisors.

    “And that’s a cause of concern because the biggest champion of India is its diaspora, and if they are losing faith you can imagine how much the non-Indian investor would be losing faith.”

    {agencies}

  • UK’s Cameron Forced to Delay Strike Against Syria

    UK’s Cameron Forced to Delay Strike Against Syria

    {{Prime Minister David Cameron was forced on Wednesday to push back his plans for an imminent military strike against Syria in a humiliating climb-down for Britain’s leader after coming under fierce domestic and international pressure.}}

    Just a day after recalling Britain’s parliament to vote on how to respond to Syria’s suspected use of chemical weapons, Cameron was ambushed when the opposition Labour party said it wanted greater parliamentary scrutiny and rebel lawmakers in his own ruling Conservative party said they would oppose him.

    Earlier on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had sought more time for inspectors to complete their work, Russia had said it was premature to table a U.N. resolution, and the Labour party had made it clear it wanted clear proof that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

    Cameron’s failure to execute his original plan of action could hamper efforts by the United States to deliver a swift cruise missile strike against Syria as early as this week, potentially harming London’s alliance with Washington.

    Inspired by the legacy of public mistrust left behind by former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s contested decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003, Labour leader Ed Miliband and some rebel Conservatives used the prospect of a government defeat in parliament to force Cameron to delay action.

    After hours of impromptu negotiations between Cameron’s political managers and the opposition, his office agreed that the United Nations Security Council should see findings from chemical weapons inspectors before it responded militarily.

    reuters

  • Defecting Cuban Hurdler Orlando Ortega aims for US move

    Defecting Cuban Hurdler Orlando Ortega aims for US move

    A top Cuban hurdler who defected earlier this month says he now wants to be reunited with his mother in Florida.

    Orlando Ortega, 22, criticised the Cuban sports authorities in a phone call to the Associated Press news agency from Padua in Italy.

    “It was an extremely difficult and tough decision, but I made it and I won’t look back,” said Ortega.

    Ortega came sixth in the 110m hurdles final in the London 2012 Olympics. But this year his form has been much worse.

    He failed to get beyond the qualifying round in his event at the world championships in Moscow recently.

    The Cuban authorities suspended him for six months for insubordination after he refused to compete in a June trial event in Russia.

    In early August he abandoned the Cuban team in Spain, after the World Championships in Moscow.

    He was regarded as one of the island’s top athletes and his defection is seen as a big blow, coming after the decision by fellow Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles to move his career to Monaco.

    “Right now the only thing and what I want most is to reunite with my mother in the United States,” Ortega said. His mother lives in Tampa, Florida.

    “They committed a great injustice with me and my trainer,” Ortega said. “It affected me a lot and I felt very bad, because I didn’t compete during the two months ahead of the world championships,” he told AP.

    “I am living some hard moments. I know that in Cuba people are talking about betrayal,” Ortega said.

    He went on to criticise Cuba’s sports authorities for “the lack .

    BBC

  • UK Drafts Syria UN Resolution

    UK Drafts Syria UN Resolution

    {{The UK is to put a resolution to the UN Security Council later on Wednesday “authorising necessary measures to protect civilians” in Syria.}}

    The resolution will be put forward at a meeting of the five permanent members of the council, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said on Twitter.

    Earlier a team of UN weapons inspectors resumed work probing an alleged chemical weapons attack on 21 August.

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appealed on the council to take action.

    “The body interested with maintaining international peace and security cannot be ‘missing in action’,” Mr Ban said.

    “The council must at last find the unity to act. It must use its authority for peace,” he went on.

    BBC

  • French Girl Attempts Suicide After ‘Veil Attack’

    French Girl Attempts Suicide After ‘Veil Attack’

    {{A 16-year-old girl, who filed charges against a pair of skinheads for what she said was an Islamophobic attack on August 12, attempted to commit suicide on Monday by jumping from a window in her apartment block.}}

    According to a police report, the girl was assaulted on August 13 in the troubled town of Trappes, 35 kilometres west of Paris.

    Two men with shaved heads approached the Muslim girl with a “sharp object,” ripped off her headscarf, shouted Islamphobic insults and hit her on the shoulder before fleeing by car, a judicial source told French media.

    The girl made a first attempt to take her life on August 23 by ingesting a dangerously-high quantity of medicated drugs, police said.

    After jumping from a window on the fourth floor of her apartment building on Monday evening she was said to be “seriously injured” but still conscious when taken to hospital by paramedics.

    She was then transferred to a hospital in Paris during the night. Local authorities described her condition as “worrying”.

    {france24}

  • French Court Orders Ban on Mercedes Cars Be Lifted

    French Court Orders Ban on Mercedes Cars Be Lifted

    {{An interim court ruling issued on Tuesday gives the French government two days to allow Mercedes-Benz’s new models into the country, after the administration banned them over the fluid used in their air-conditioner.}}

    “At this point in the investigation, the introduction in France of the vehicles targeted by the challenged decree cannot be considered in itself to constitute a serious threat to the environment,” France’s Council of State, the country’s highest court in administrative matters, wrote in a statement explaining its ruling.

    This is the second time the German car manufacturer has won a court order against the French government since the row started last June.

    The French authorities then rejected “type approval” – the EU-wide certificate required to put a new model on the road – for four new classes of Mercedes-Benz cars. They argued that their air-conditioning system did not comply with European law.

    {agencies}