NEWS,20.02.2013

Almost $50bn left Russia illegally

Nearly $50bn was transferred out of Russia illegally in 2012 and more than half this sum may have been controlled by a single group of companies, the central bank said on Wednesday.Sergei Ignatyev, chairperson of the Bank of Russia, was citing the findings of a study that the bank said it would publish later on Wednesday. Ignatyev, who retires in June, was also due to testify to the upper house of parliament."You get the impression that they (half the transfers) are all controlled by one well-organised group of people," Sergei Ignatyev, chairman of the Bank of Russia, told the Vedomosti daily in an interview.

India braces for nationwide strike

Millions of Indian workers were expected to join a two-day nationwide strike starting on Wednesday in protest against "anti-labour" economic reforms introduced by the embattled Congress government. Premier Manmohan Singh has appealed to unions to abandon the strike, the latest in a string of protests against liberalisation, warning it would cause a "loss to our economy" already poised for its slowest annual growth in a decade. A one-day strike against reforms last September cost Asia's third-largest economy $2.3bn in lost output and trade, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry.But talks following Singh's appeal this week collapsed after the government refused to bow to union demands to roll back reforms, which are aimed at jumpstarting the economy and averting a downgrade in India's credit rating."The workers are being totally ignored and this is reflected in the government's anti-labour policies," said Tapan Sen, general secretary of the umbrella Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU).The 11 unions behind the strike plan to block rail and road traffic, and said operations of state-run banks would be disrupted.The government's "big ticket" reforms include opening retail, insurance and aviation sectors to wider foreign investment, hiking prices of subsidised diesel used by farmers and reducing the number of discounted cooking gas cylinders.The steps aimed at freeing up the still heavily state-controlled economy and lowering India's ballooning subsidy bill and fiscal deficit have stirred wide public anger, especially among the poor."The last time that we called a strike (in February 2012), nearly 100 million workers participated. This time we're expecting a bigger number," Sen said.The protest was expected to have maximum impact in eastern West Bengal, where unions enjoy significant clout. The walkout could also have a big effect in southern Kerala state where strikes are common.It might be business as usual however in financial hub Mumbai, where some unions said they would not protest.An overtly patchwork response indicating a lessening of union influence would be welcome news for the government, which has been buffeted by graft scandals, the weakening economy and stubbornly high inflation, analysts said.

Fresh unrest erupts at Greek protests

Police in Athens fired tear gas at stone-throwing protestors Wednesday as thousands of Greeks walked off the job to join the debt-ridden country's first general strike this year and oppose austerity measures. About 15 000 striking workers took part in a Communist-organised demonstration in Athens and 20 000 more joined protests organised by other unions, according to police figures.Another 15 000 people marched in Greece's northern metropolis Thessaloniki, local authorities said.Protesters tried to firebomb a car in Athens and threw rocks at police, who fired back tear gas, while in the city of Iraklio on the island of Crete, demonstrators overturned a squad car, police said.In Thessaloniki, a TV crew car was torched and protesters smashed the front windows of pawn shops."Unpaid bills, slashed wages and pensions, boarded-up shops. Greek people cannot wait for saviours. Only by taking their fortunes into their own hands can they exit the stalemate," main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras, head of the radical leftist Syriza party, told reporters.The nationwide strike  the first general work stoppage in Greece this year  forced airport authorities to scrap or reschedule dozens of flights while hospitals operated on reduced staffing."People of labour must fight for as long as this disastrous policy is followed by the government under orders from [Greece's creditors]," said Yiannis Panagopoulos, chairperson of the private sector union GSEE."They have destroyed an entire people," he said.Ships were to remain docked throughout the day, disrupting ferry services to the islands. And although most public transport was to run, buses and train services expected disruptions.Doctors, lawyers and teachers took part in the protest action organised by GSEE and the public sector ADEDY."Everybody I know is unemployed," said Alexandra Papadatou, a 28-year-old jobless economist."I am fighting on the streets for this government, which passes all these measures, to fall," she told AFP."I am considered lucky because at least I have a salary, about €600," said Panayiotis Kolovos, a 25-year-old novice lawyer."This amount is probably a privilege for the majority of youth near my age. We truly marginally survive," Kolovos said.Greece's three-party government insists there is no alternative to the harsh austerity programme demanded by the country's creditors in return for vital loans to stave of bankruptcy.Successive cuts to salaries and pensions over the past three years have angered Greeks who have frequently taken to the streets to demonstrate their frustration. The government has pledged to remedy some of the cuts when the economy limps back into growth next year - a prospect that had been originally forecast for this year.Facing a sixth year of continuous recession, the heavily indebted country has been relying on international rescue packages to avoid bankruptcy and get its economy back on track.Since 2010 the European Union and the International Monetary Fund have committed €240bn overall in rescue loans to Greece.Auditors representing Greece's EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund creditors are expected in Athens next week to assess the progress of its programme.Their report will determine whether Athens will receive a scheduled slice of €2.8bn from its international creditors due in February.Among its obligations to its creditors, Greece must eliminate 25 000 civil service jobs this year, a measure set to cause further union trouble.The government has seen its parliamentary majority erode after adopting in November a new €18.5bn round of spending cuts and other reforms by 2016.The coalition now has 163 deputies in the 300-seat chamber.

Europe horsemeat scandal spreads to Asia

Europe's horsemeat scandal spread on Wednesday to Asia where an imported lasagne brand was pulled from the shelves in Hong Kong, as Czech officials ordered similar action on frozen meals mislabelled "beef".A host of top players have been caught up in the spiralling scandal including Nestle, the world's biggest food company, top beef producer JBS of Brazil and British supermarket chain Tesco.Hong Kong authorities ordered ParknShop, one of the biggest supermarket chains in the city, to remove lasagne made by frozen food giant Findus, one of the firms at the centre of the scandal.The product was imported from Britain and made by French firm Comigel.Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety said the item "might be adulterated with horsemeat which has not undergone tests for veterinary drugs"."The product was removed from our stores last week following the government's instructions," a ParknShop spokesperson said.The chain, owned by tycoon Li Ka-shing, has about 280 stores in Hong Kong and the neighbouring gaming hub of Macau.A spokesperson at the government's food and environmental hygiene department said only one contaminated product had so far been sold in Hong Kong.In Europe, the Czech Republic became the latest country embroiled in the affair, with food inspectors ordering Tesco to withdraw Nowaco brand frozen "beef" lasagne after detecting horsemeat.The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority said it had found horse DNA in two samples of the Nowaco meals manufactured in Luxembourg.Inspectors "ordered the seller to immediately withdraw the products from its network", the authority said in a statement."We are very sorry about the situation and we will discuss the matter with the supplier," Tesco spokesperson Jan Dvorak told the CTK news agency, adding the chain had protectively withdrawn the product earlier.Supermarkets in Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, France, Austria, Norway, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Slovenia have all removed meals from shelves.The Czech authority noted that horsemeat is sold for human consumption in the country, but that if not mentioned on the product label it was misleading to consumers and could lead to a fine of up to $118 000.Spanghero, the French firm that sparked the food alert by allegedly passing off 750 tons of horsemeat as beef, was on Monday allowed to resume production of minced meat, sausages and ready-to-eat meals.But the company, whose horsemeat found its way into 4.5 million "beef" products sold across Europe, will no longer be allowed to stock frozen meat.Under the ban it cannot act as middleman between slaughterhouses and food-processing companies, the situation which allegedly allowed it to change labels on horsemeat from Romania and sell it on as beef.The firm's sanitary licence was suspended last Thursday after it was accused of passing off huge quantities of mislabelled meat over a period of six months.Investigators on Wednesday conducted a second day of raids on Spanghero's headquarters in Castelnaudary in southern France, a source close to the probe said, adding they had already seized several documents and copied computer records.

Japan pressured over snatched kids

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be under pressure when he meets US President Barack Obama this week to pledge progress on a long-stalled treaty to prevent the snatching of children by a Japanese parent in international divorce cases.Abe is expected to promise that Japan will follow through on a decades-old pledge to ratify the Hague Convention on child abduction, giving some legal muscle to hundreds of foreign fathers - including Americans, French and Canadians - kept apart from their half-Japanese children."Those are only the reported cases," French Senator Richard Yung told AFP during a recent trip to Tokyo to press officials on the issue.Japan is the lone member of the G8 industrialised nations the others being the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia and Canada not to have adopted the 32-year-old international treaty.Key allies including the US, France and Britain have long demanded Tokyo step into line.iplomats say ratification of the Hague Convention could come during Japan's current parliamentary session, which ends in the summer. That would make it the 90th state to adopt the treaty, which is aimed at securing "the prompt return of children wrongfully removed or held" in another treaty state."These cases are particularly cruel birthday or Christmas presents are returned," said Yung, who added that he met a vice foreign affairs minister but was refused a sit down with Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki. The changes would also offer hope to hundreds of thousands of Japanese fathers who face similar estrangement under domestic custody laws.Japan is unique among major industrialised nations when it comes to the children of estranged parents.Courts do not recognise joint custody - for foreigners or Japanese nationals and almost always order that children live with their mothers, leaving desperate fathers with almost no recourse to see their children.Many lose touch with their offspring if the ex-spouse blocks access, a common occurrence due to the widely held opinion that child rearing is a task for women, while men earn the money.Yasuyuki Watanabe, the deputy mayor of a small Japanese town, has not seen his daughter in years. After the country's devastating 2011 quake-tsunami disaster, he says he tried to make contact with the now five-year-old girl."And my wife called the police on me," he said.Michael, a foreigner who has lived in Japan for three decades, had a messy divorce that ultimately saw two of his three kids tell a Japanese court they had no wish to ever see their father again.That, he says, was the product of "brainwashing" by his ex-spouse. Michael, which is not his real name, has never met his two grandchildren.Sometimes, judges do order the custodial parent to send photos of a child to their former spouse, or to allow a short monthly visit. But police almost never intervene when those orders are commonly ignored.Ratification of the convention would not automatically change Japanese laws, but it offers hope for hundreds of thousands of Japanese men cut off from their kids, including Watanabe who said he recently met with the justice minister."I told him how the judicial system is malfunctioning and that judges encourage these abductions, whether it is international or in Japan," he added.But ratifying the treaty alone is no silver bullet and there are fears that future changes to domestic laws could lack both scope and substance, warned Yung, who cited public opinion as the biggest weapon in winning the fight for access.Richard Delrieu, president of advocacy group SOS Parents Japan, has not seen his own half-Japanese son in years and also said that ratifying the treaty alone won't change things overnight."This situation is not worthy of a great country like Japan," he said.

Castro meets US lawmakers in Cuba

President Raul Castro on Tuesday welcomed a delegation of US lawmakers, the first to come to Communist Cuba since US President Barack Obama's re-election, state media reported."Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla took part in the meeting, and issues of interest to both countries were addressed," a statement read out on the government news broadcast said.The US legislators were in Havana to meet with Cuban officials and hope to visit an American contractor jailed for distributing laptops and satellite phones, diplomatic sources said earlier.The US lawmakers also met with Rodriguez Parrilla and Ricardo Alarcon, a former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations and assembly speaker, the Cuban report said.Sources at the US Interests Section - the countries do not have full diplomatic ties - said the delegation arrived on Monday and is led by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.e visited Cuba last year and met with Castro at the time.In Washington, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland confirmed the trip earlier. "Our understanding from the delegation is that they have been told that they will have an opportunity to see jailed US contractor Alan Gross," Nuland told reporters.Nuland said that the State Department expected the lawmakers to call for Gross' "immediate release.""We will look forward to the results of their diplomacy on his behalf and, more broadly, with regard to all of our concerns about Cuba" on human rights and other issues, she said.Gross was arrested in December 2009 for illegally distributing laptops and communications equipment to members of Cuba's small Jewish community under a State Department contract.He is serving a 15-year jail term for "acts against the independence or territorial integrity" of the communist-ruled island.His case has heightened tensions between the two countries, with Washington making his release a condition for improved ties.Cuba has made it clear it is ready to negotiate Gross's release in exchange for the release of five captured Cuban spies held in the United States. But Washington has ruled this out.And the Cuban news bulletin did not say if the Americans were able to meet with Gross.After visiting Cuba, the American lawmakers will head to Haiti on Wednesday.

N Korean camps compared to Nazi Holocaust

North Korea's prison camps are a closed-off world of death, torture and forced labour where babies are born slaves, according to two survivors who liken the horrors of the camps to a Holocaust in progress."People think the Holocaust is in the past, but it is still very much a reality. It is still going on in North Korea," Shin Dong-hyuk told AFP through an interpreter on the sidelines of a human rights summit in Geneva.Shin himself spent his first 23 years in a prison camp in the secretive country, where he says he was tortured and subjected to forced labour before making a spectacular escape seven years ago - and giving the outside world a rare first-hand account of life inside the camps.The 30-year-old is the only person known to have been born in such a camp to flee and live to tell the tale, and was portrayed in a book by journalist Blaine Harden published last year called "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West."Camp 14 - a massive slave labour camp comprising a number of "villages", factories, farms and mines - is one of five known prison camps in North Korea believed to house as many as 200 000 people.While Shin's comparison with Nazi concentration camps - where the majority of the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust were murdered - may seem extreme, another North Korean prison camp survivor, Chol-Hwan Kang, agreed with the analogy."Fundamentally, it is the same as Hitler's Auschwitz," Kang told AFP, also through an interpreter, referring to one of the Nazi era's most notorious death camps.With whole families in North Korea thrown into camps together and starving to death, he said the "methods may be different, but the effect is the same... It's outrageous!"Kang, now 43, was sent to Camp 15 with his whole family when he was nine years old to repent for the suspected disloyalties of his grandfather.He spent 10 years there before his family was released and later managed to flee to China and on to South Korea - the same route taken by Shin.Both men say the international community must do more to help North Koreans, with Kang insisting the world should take advantage of growing feelings of opposition within the communist state.He suggested that Pyongyang's recent nuclear test was meant not only as a message of strength to the outside world but also to potential opponents to the regime within the country."It is the international community's duty to help them light the fire of resistance," he said.Shin, who at the age of 13 was forced to watch the executions of his mother and brother, also said "I want to push the United Nations and the international community to take action."After meeting Shin and hearing his harrowing account in December, UN right chief Navi Pillay called for an in-depth international inquiry into "one of the worst, but least understood and reported, human rights situations in the world."Shin, who says his father and grandfather were sent to the camp because two of his uncles apparently defected to the South, said he was expected to spend his entire life there under North Korea's "guilt-by-association" system that calls for up to three generations of family members of an accused to also be punished."The birth of a baby is a blessed thing in the outside world, but inside the camp, babies are born to be slaves like their parents. It's an absolute scandal," Shin said.Both Shin and Kang described life in the camp as defined by hunger and violence."Daily I saw torture, and every day in the camp I saw people dying of malnutrition and starvation. I saw lots of friends die and I almost died myself of malnutrition," Kang recalled.Shin still carries the scars of his experience on his body. Resting his right hand on the table in front of him, he revealed the missing tip of his middle finger, which was chopped off by a prison guard as punishment after he dropped a piece of machinery in a factory.Overstepping prison rules was enough to get you killed, including not informing the guards of other prisoners' misdeeds.In Harden's book, Shin admits he didn't hesitate to inform a guard of his mother and brother's escape plan, and that he felt no remorse when he was forced to watch their executions.Shin had never felt close to them or anyone else in the camp, seeing others as competitors for the tiny rations of mainly cabbage-based gruel he survived on.That has changed since he got out, he told AFP. "Now I feel they were dear to me, but I'm still learning to feel."Behind barbed wire, Shin had no notion of life on the outside until he met fellow prisoner Park Yong Chul who had lived abroad and who vividly described the food he had tasted."I really didn't have the understanding of freedom and liberty. I only escaped because I imagined the food," Shin said.One day when Shin and Park were working in a remote area on the outskirts of the camp where the guards were far between, they decided to make a run for it through the high-voltage fence.Park was electrocuted and Shin got out by climbing over his body. Today, he lives in South Korea and works to spread awareness about the conditions in the camps."I don't know what impact I'm having," said Shin, who hosts a television show where he interviews North Korea defectors."I'm here outside the camp, but what I'm doing daily is talk about the situation in the camp," he said. "I'm still in the camp in my head."