IGIHE

Tag: InternationalNews

  • Russia’s VTB Seeks to Sell Rosbank Stake

    {{Russia’s second largest bank VTB (VTBR.MM) wants to sell its stake in Societe Generale’s (SOGN.PA) Russian unit Rosbank and may part with it by the end of the year, the Kommersant daily on Thursday cited an executive as saying.}}

    State-controlled VTB owns a 10 percent stake in Rosbank, and stated its wish to exit after Rosbank’s CEO, Vladimir Golubkov, was last week charged with bribery. SocGen said on Wednesday it would fire Golubkov.

    “We are working with the existing shareholder and a series of investors about selling our stake; this is an interesting asset,” Kommersant quoted Yuri Soloviev, first deputy president and Chairman of VTB Bank’s management board, as saying.

    Soloviev described the Rosbank stake as a non-core holding and said a sale may be possible this year. VTB was not immediately available to confirm his comments.

    VTB CEO Andrei Kostin said earlier this week that he was not interested in increasing his bank’s stake in Rosbank.

    SocGen, which first bought in to Rosbank in 2006, has raised its stake to 82 percent and folded its other Russian interests into the bank in 2011. Rosbank, Russia’s ninth-largest bank by assets, made a small loss last year and gave up market share to faster-growing competitors.

    Metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin, who with former partner Mikhail Prokhorov used to own Rosbank, retains a 7 percent stake.

    {reuters}

  • European Banks stop Sending Money to North Korea

    {{European aid groups said their banks in Europe had stopped sending money to North Korea in the wake of U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang’s main foreign exchange bank, leaving them scrambling for a solution short of hand-carrying cash into the impoverished country.}}

    Aid groups said if it became impossible to send enough money to operate, donors might withdraw support for their programs.

    “This could eventually reduce our ability to carry out projects or even force a complete close down,” Mathias Mogge, director of programs for German aid group Welthungerhilfe, told media.

    “If all the agencies had to pull out, it would affect millions of people,” said Mogge, who has just returned from the reclusive state.

    The biggest problem had been the Bank of China’s recent decision to shut the account of the North’s Foreign Trade Bank, EU officials and non-governmental organizations said. Money to North Korea was routed through China’s biggest foreign exchange bank, they said.

    Chinese firms doing business in North Korea said they were also finding it difficult because Chinese banks were becoming increasingly reluctant to deal with their North Korean counterparts, whether it was the Foreign Trade Bank or other banks.

    Washington imposed sanctions on the Foreign Trade Bank in March after accusing it of helping fund Pyongyang’s banned nuclear weapons program. The measures prohibit any transactions between U.S. entities or individuals and the bank.

    Experts have said Washington’s move was designed to make international banks that do business in the United States think twice about dealing with North Korea, in much the same way banks have become wary about having ties with financial institutions in sanctions-hit Iran.

    All NGOs, U.N. agencies and embassies in Pyongyang have to use the Foreign Trade Bank, aid workers and other officials have said.

    One EU source said there were indications some European embassies in Pyongyang were having similar difficulties with transferring funds. A representative for U.N. agencies in Pyongyang did not have any immediate comment.

    U.S. officials have urged the European Union to put sanctions on the bank. EU diplomats have discussed the issue but are worried about the impact.

    “We are concerned regarding possible unintended effects of certain sanctions such as the designation of the FTB, in particular with regard to humanitarian assistance, and we are looking into possible means to overcome the unintended effects,” said a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

    One source familiar with the matter said a possibility being examined by EU officials was to issue a so-called “letter of comfort” which would explicitly say funding was for humanitarian and development use.

    The idea is this would provide cover for a bank to make a transaction, said the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

    {reuters}

  • Japanese climber, 80, becomes oldest atop Everest

    {{An 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer became the oldest person to reach the top of Mount Everest on Thursday — although his record may last only a few days. An 81-year-old Nepalese man, who held the previous record, plans his own ascent next week.}}

    Yuichiro Miura, who also conquered the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) peak when he was 70 and 75, reached the summit at 9:05 a.m. local time, according to a Nepalese mountaineering official and Miura’s Tokyo-based support team.

    Miura and his son Gota made a phone call from the summit, prompting his daughter Emili to smile broadly and clap her hands in footage on Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

    “I made it!” Miura said over the phone. “I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mount Everest at age 80. This is the world’s best feeling, although I’m totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well.”

    The climbers were going to take pictures at the summit before starting to descend, his office said.

    Nepalese mountaineering official Gyanendra Shrestha, at Everest base camp, confirmed that Miura had reached the summit and is the oldest person to do so.

    The previous oldest was Nepal’s Min Bahadur Sherchan, who accomplished the feat at age 76 in 2008, just a day before Miura reached the top at age 75.

    Sherchan, now 81, was preparing to scale the peak next week despite digestive problems he suffered several days ago. On Wednesday, Sherchan said by telephone from the base camp that he was in good health and “ready to take up the challenge.”

    Sherchan’s team leader Temba, who uses one name, said he would congratulate the new record holder once he returned to the base camp and that Sherchan would not turn back until he completes his mission.

    Sherchan’s team is also facing financial difficulties. It hasn’t received the financial help that the Nepal government announced it would provide them. Purna Chandra Bhattarai, chief of Nepal’s mountaineering department, said the aid proposal was still under consideration.

    On his expedition’s website, Miura explained his attempt to scale Everest at such an advanced age: “It is to challenge (my) own ultimate limit. It is to honor the great Mother Nature.”

    He said a successful climb would raise the bar for what is possible.

    “And if the limit of age 80 is at the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest place on earth, one can never be happier,” he said.

    Miura conquered the mountain despite undergoing heart surgery in January for irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia, his fourth heart operation since 2007, according to his daughter. He also broke his pelvis and left thigh bone in a 2009 skiing accident.

    {Agencies}

  • Iran Expands Nuclear Technology: IAEA

    {{The U.N. atomic agency on Wednesday detailed rapid Iranian progress in two programs that the West fears are geared toward making nuclear weapons, saying Tehran has upgraded its uranium enrichment facilities and advanced in building a plutonium-producing reactor.}}

    In a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tehran had installed close to 700 high-tech centrifuges used for uranium enrichment, which can produce the core of nuclear weapons.

    It also said Tehran had added hundreds of older-generation machines at its main enrichment site to bring the total number to more than 13,000.

    Iran denies that either its enrichment program or the reactor will be used to make nuclear arms.

    Most international concern has focused on its enrichment, because it is further advanced than the reactor and already has the capacity to enrich to weapons-grade uranium.

    But the IAEA devoted more space to the reactor Wednesday than it has in previous reports. While its language was technical, a senior diplomat who closely follows the IAEA’s monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities said that reflected increased international concerns about the potential proliferation dangers it represents as a completion date approaches.

    He demanded anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss confidential IAEA information.

    The report also touched upon a more than six-year stalemate in agency efforts to probe suspicions Tehran may have worked on nuclear weapons.

    It said that — barring Iran’s cooperation — it may not be able to resolve questions about “possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”

    At Parcin, a military site where Iran is suspected of testing blasts to set off a nuclear charge, Iran has started paving over the area where the alleged experiments took place, the agency said, referring to satellite photos of the site.

    It was the latest detail in a series of moves the agency suspects were made to cover up evidence.

    The U.S., Israel and Iran’s other critics say the reactor at Arak, in central Iran, will be able to produce plutonium for several bombs a year once it starts up. They have said Tehran’s plan to put it on line late next year is too optimistic.

    But the report said the Islamic republic had told IAEA experts that it was holding to that timeline.

    The IAEA noted that much work needed to be done at the reactor site, but it said Iranian technicians there already had taken delivery of a huge reactor vessel to contain the facility’s fuel. It also detailed progress in Tehran’s plans to test the fuel.

    Installations of the new IR-2m centrifuges are also of concern for nations fearing that Iran may want to make nuclear arms, because they are believed to be able to enrich two to five times faster than Tehran’s old machines.

    AP

  • Japan Parliament Approves Child Abduction Treaty

    {{Japan’s parliament on Wednesday approved an international treaty on child abductions after decades of pressure from the United States and other Western nations.}}

    Japan is the only member of the Group of Eight major industrialised nations that has not ratified the 1980 Hague Convention, which requires nations to return snatched children to the countries where they usually reside.

    Hundreds of parents, mostly men from North America, Europe and elsewhere have been left without any recourse after their estranged partners took their half-Japanese children back to the country.

    Unlike Western nations, Japan does not recognise joint custody and courts almost always order that children of divorcees live with their mothers.

    US lawmakers have long demanded Japan fall into line on the issue, one of the few open disputes between the close allies. In February, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised action after White House talks with US President Barack Obama.

    The upper house of parliament on Wednesday voted unanimously for Japan to join the treaty, following a similar move by the more powerful lower house last month.

    But Japan must still clear various governmental and legislative hurdles before the Hague Convention can take full effect. The government has said it aims for final ratification by the end of this fiscal year — March 2014.

    A central authority will be set up in the foreign ministry to take charge of locating children who have been removed by one parent following the collapse of an international marriage, and to encourage parents to settle disputes voluntarily.

    If consultations fail, family courts in Tokyo and Osaka will issue rulings.

    The newly enacted law will, however, allow a parent to refuse to return a child if abuse or domestic violence is feared, a provision campaigners say is vital, but which some say risks being exploited.

    The law will allow for parents who separated before its enactment to apply to get a child returned, but contains a provision stating that the application can be refused if a child has been resident in the country for a year or more and is happily settled.

    Detractors say the lumbering pace of Japan’s justice system, where cases can take months or even years to be heard, will reduce the chance of a foreign parent making a successful applicant to have their child returned.

    Under growing pressure from Washington and other Western capitals, Japan has repeatedly pledged to sign the treaty into domestic law, but it has until now never made it through parliament.

    Domestic critics of the convention have previously argued that the country needs to protect its women from potentially abusive men, but supporters say this is overblown and point to a cultural reluctance over things foreign.

    Japanese courts virtually never grant custody to foreign parents in a divorce.

    {AFP}

  • EU to End Apple-style Tax Avoidance

    {{Growing concern in European capitals about aggressive tax avoidance by high-profile corporations such as Amazon, Google and Apple looks set to steal the agenda of a European Union summit in Brussels on Wednesday.}}

    The summit was originally called to discuss energy policy and tax coordination, but press reports in Britain, France and the United States exposing how little tax major international companies have been paying by carefully structuring their European operations has forced the issue up the agenda.

    France and Britain in particular have grown concerned by the sheer scale of the legal tax schemes, with a U.S. investigation revealing on Monday that Apple Inc (AAPL.O) had paid just 2% tax on $74 billion in overseas income, largely by exploiting a loophole in Ireland’s tax code.

    That followed reports that the British unit of Amazon (AMZN.O) paid just $3.7 million tax on 2012 sales of $6.5 billion, and similar revelations concerning Google’s (GOOG.O) and Starbucks’s (SBUX.O) UK operations.

    In all, officials have said that tax avoidance and evasion costs the EU around 1 trillion euros a year.

    “A lot of these revenues (from the digital economy) are not getting taxed,” said a French diplomat briefing reporters in Paris ahead of the EU summit. “We need to find a way of bringing home the tax on these activities.”

    Officials said French President Francois Hollande could raise the issue with the EU’s 27 leaders, although it was unclear what agreement could be reached with little advanced preparation and just four hours of talks scheduled.

    A draft of the summit’s declaration, which is agreed in advance but can be changed, set out nine specific proposals for strengthening tax policy and coordination, including fighting tax avoidance schemes and the process of routing profits abroad.

    “Work will be carried forward as regards the Commission’s recommendations on aggressive tax planning and profit shifting,” a draft seen by Reuters read.

    “The Commission intends to present a proposal before the end of the year for the revision of the ‘parent/subsidiary’ directive, and is reviewing the anti-abuse provisions in relevant EU legislation.”

    {reuters}

  • US Senate panel passes immigration bill

    {{US Senate panel on Tuesday approved legislation to give millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, setting up a spirited debate next month in the full Senate over the biggest changes in immigration policy in a generation.}}

    President Barack Obama, who has made enactment of an immigration bill one of his top priorities for this year, praised the Senate Judiciary Committee’s action, saying the bill was consistent with the goals he has expressed.

    “I encourage the full Senate to bring this bipartisan bill to the floor at the earliest possible opportunity and remain hopeful that the amendment process will lead to further improvements,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House.

    By a vote of 13-5, the Senate panel approved the bill that would put 11 million illegal residents on a 13-year path to citizenship while further strengthening security along the southwestern border with Mexico, long a sieve for illegal crossings into the United States.

    The vote followed the committee’s decision to embrace a Republican move to ease restrictions on high-tech U.S. companies that want to hire more skilled workers from countries like India and China.

    In a dramatic move before the vote, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, withdrew an amendment to give people the right to sponsor same-sex partners who are foreigners for permanent legal status.

    Leahy’s colleagues on the committee – Republicans and Democrats – warned that the amendment would kill the legislation in Congress.

    Democrats generally favor providing equal treatment for heterosexual and homosexual couples, while many Republicans oppose doing so.

    AP

  • The pope and the devil: Is Francis an exorcist?

    {{Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place.}}

    The case concerns a 43-year-old husband and father who traveled to Rome from Mexico to attend Francis’ Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square.

    At the end of the Mass, Francis blessed several wheelchair-bound faithful as he always does, including a man possessed by the devil, according to the priest who brought him, the Rev. Juan Rivas.

    Francis laid his hands on the man’s head and recited a prayer. The man heaved deeply a half-dozen times, shook, then slumped in his wheelchair.

    The images, broadcast worldwide, prompted the television station of the Italian bishops’ conference to declare that according to several exorcists, there was “no doubt” that Francis either performed an exorcism or a simpler prayer to free the man from the devil.

    The Vatican was more cautious. In a statement Tuesday, it said Francis “didn’t intend to perform any exorcism. But as he often does for the sick or suffering, he simply intended to pray for someone who was suffering who was presented to him.”

    The Rev. Gabriele Amorth, a leading exorcist for the diocese of Rome, said he performed a lengthy exorcism of his own on the man Tuesday morning and ascertained he was possessed by four separate demons.

    The case was related to the legalization of abortion in Mexico City, he said.

    Amorth told RAI state radio that even a short prayer, without the full rite of exorcism being performed, is in itself a type of exorcism.

    “That was a true exorcism,” he said of Francis’ prayer. “Exorcisms aren’t just done according to the rules of the ritual.”

    Rivas took the Vatican line, saying it was no exorcism but that Francis merely said a prayer to free the man from the devil.

    “Since no one heard what he said, including me who was right there, you can say he did a prayer for liberation but nothing more,” Rivas wrote on his Facebook page, which was confirmed by his religious order, the Legionaries of Christ.

    Fueling the speculation that Francis did indeed perform an exorcism is his frequent reference to Satan in his homilies — as well as an apparent surge in demand for exorcisms among the faithful despite the irreverent treatment the rite often receives from Hollywood.

    Who can forget the green vomit and the spinning head of the possessed girl in the 1973 cult classic “The Exorcist”?

    In his very first homily as pope on March 14, Francis warned cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel the day after he was elected that “he who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.”

    {AP}

  • Lizards Return From a Month in Space

    A Russian capsule carrying mice, lizards and other small animals returned to Earth on Sunday after spending a month in space for what scientists said was the longest experiment of its kind.

    Fewer than half of the 53 mice and other rodents who blasted off on April 19 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome survived the flight, Russian media reported, quoting Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and the lead researcher.

    Sychov said this was to be expected and the surviving mice were sufficient to complete the study, which was designed to show the effects of weightlessness and other factors of space flight on cell structure.

    All 15 of the lizards survived, he said. The capsule also carried small crayfish and fish.

    The capsule’s orbit reached 575 kilometers (345 miles) above Earth, according to the media, which said this was far higher than the orbit of the International Space Station.

    Russian state television showed the round Bion-M capsule and some of the surviving mice after it landed slightly off course but safely in a planted field near Orenburg, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of Moscow.

    “This is the first time that animals have flown in space for so long on their own,” Sychov said in the television broadcast from the landing site. The last research craft to carry animals into space spent 12 days in orbit in 2007.

    The mice and other animals were to be flown back to Moscow to undergo a series of tests at Sychov’s institute, which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

    AP

  • Zoe Saldana Confesses to Being Bisexual

    {{The Avatar and Star Trek actress, who covers June’s issue of Allure magazine, may have casually come out-of-the-closet after revealing a little more about her sexual preference through this controversial quote: “[I might] end up with a woman raising my children…that’s how androgynous I am.”}}

    The 34-year-old actress, who has also starred in Pirates of the Caribbean and Columbiana, has been linked to a string of actors, the most recent being Bradley Cooper. To that she candidly says, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”

    Zoe isn’t the first, and most likely not the last Hollywood celebrity to admit they swing both ways. Former X-Files actress Gillian Anderson, Marilyn Manson’s former fiance Evan Rachel Wood, True Blood actress and Oscar winner Anna Pacquin, Drew Barrymore, Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong, and even Angelina Jolie; have all admitted to having a dual sexual lifestyle.

    {wirestory}