New London finance jobs rise 20%
The number of job vacancies in London's financial services sector rose 20% between April and May as employers took comfort from more stable financial markets, a recruiter said on Monday.
Job vacancies in one of the world's top financial centres rose to 6 426 last month, up from 5 355 in April, according to Morgan McKinley's London Employment Monitor.
London's banks and financial services companies have slashed thousands of jobs in recent years following a wave of banking scandals and a protracted period of economic weakness. However, the sector still employs over 1 million people in Britain and contributes almost 10% of gross domestic product, according to TheCityUK, which promotes UK financial services.
The May employment monitor results showed confidence about the potential for business growth was steadily returning, Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services, said in a statement.
"As we approach the mid-year point, we have seen less volatility both in the financial markets and also in the wider global economy. Although the market remains highly sensitive to macroeconomic issues, sentiment has slowly been improving since the start of the year," Enver said.
However, the number of job opportunities appearing in May was almost 60 percent lower than in May 2012. Enver said this reflected the impact of the large scale redundancies made last year, which have outweighed the number of roles becoming available, and a trend for filling vacancies internally.
The survey, based on Morgan McKinley's weekly records of new permanent and temporary job vacancies and new candidates registering with the firm for employment, also found that the number of job seekers rose by 7% month-on-month in May as job security became less of a concern.
On average, workers moving to new roles last month pocketed an 8% pay rise versus a 12% gain in April.
The smaller pay rise was down to firms having spent some of their hiring budgets earlier in the year, feeling less pressure to snap up top candidates as markets calmed and people returning to work after a period of redundancy.
Saudi prince sues Forbes - report
Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has sued Forbes magazine for libel in a British court, alleging its valuation of his wealth at $20bn was short of the mark by $9.6bn, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.
The prince, a grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder and nephew of King Abdullah, had attacked the US magazine's ranking of world billionaires as flawed and biased against Middle Eastern businesses after he was ranked number 26 in this year's list.
An official at the High Court in London confirmed that Prince Alwaleed had filed a defamation suit against Forbes, its editor Randall Lane, and two of its journalists on April 30. Details of the claim were not immediately available.
Through his Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed owns large stakes in Citigroup, News Corp and Apple Inc, among other companies. He is also owner or part-owner of luxury hotels including the Plaza in New York, the Savoy in London and the George V in Paris.
This year's Forbes World Billionaires list was published on March 4, and the following day Kingdom Holding said the valuation process used "incorrect data" and "seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions".
The public spat attracted a lot of comment, but Forbes stuck by its estimate of Prince Alwaleed's wealth and published an in-depth article in its March 25 issue entitled "Prince Alwaleed and the curious case of Kingdom Holding stock".
The article gave details about how Forbes had arrived at the figure of $20 billion and criticised what it described as a lack of transparency by Kingdom Holding in detailing its assets.
The article also described Prince Alwaleed's marble-filled, 420-room Riyadh palace, his private Boeing 747 equipped with a throne, and his 120-acre resort on the edge of the Saudi capital with five homes, five artificial lakes and a mini-Grand Canyon.
The High Court official in London said the two journalists named in the defamation claim were Kerry Dolan, the author of the article, and Francine McKenna, who was credited with additional reporting.
No date has been set for a court hearing in the case, which is in its very early stages, the official said.
The law firm Kobre & Kim, which the Guardian said was acting for Prince Alwaleed in the suit, declined to comment. New York-based Forbes could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Guardian article quoted the magazine as saying: "We're very surprised at claims that Prince Alwaleed has decided to sue Forbes, particularly if he has done so in the United Kingdom, a jurisdiction that has nothing whatsoever to do with our recent story which raised questions about his claims about his wealth."
Media lawyer Jonathan Coad, of the London firm Lewis Silkin, said London was seen as a more attractive place than New York to bring defamation suits because US libel law made higher requirements of claimants.
"In the US, a high-profile claimant has to prove firstly that the article was untrue and secondly that the publisher knew that the article was untrue, which is what we call malice. Those are two hurdles that a UK libel action does not present," said Coad, who is not involved in the Prince Alwaleed case.
Under British libel law, a claimant has only to prove that a publication was defamatory. Then the burden of proof passes to the defendant, who has several possible defences, including that the publication was true.
Obama to name Furman as chief economist
President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate longtime adviser Jason Furman to be his new chief White House economist, an administration official said.
Furman, who will replace economist Alan Krueger as chair of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and has advised Obama since his 2008 election campaign.
"Furman has been a key adviser to the president and has contributed to most every major proposal on jobs and the economy," said the White House official who declined to be identified. Obama will announce the appointment at 14:10.
Krueger, who was confirmed as CEA chair in November 2011, is returning to his professor post at Princeton University, from which he has been on leave. He had to return to the school by this fall in order to maintain his tenure, according to one source.
Furman is currently assistant to the president for economic policy and principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC), which is run by Gene Sperling, and was an economist in the Clinton administration.
The CEA advises the president on domestic and international economic policy based on data and economic research. The chairman is a cabinet member and requires Senate confirmation.
Former colleagues said Furman would be effective because of his good relationship with the president and White House staff.
The appointment is likely a sign that budget and tax fights with Congress will continue to play a high-profile role in White House economic policy. It could also raise the profile of the CEA within the White House itself.
Opec keeps oil demand forecast steady
Opec kept its world oil demand forecast for 2013 virtually unchanged in its latest update on Tuesday, but tipped downward revisions given the deteriorating economic climate.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) said it expected world demand this year to reach 89.65 million barrels per day (mbpd), a slight drop from the forecast of 89.66 mbpd in its previous monthly report.
This would represent a rise of 780,000 bpd from 2012 oil demand, said the cartel which pumps about 35% of the world's crude.
Most of the increased demand is due to China and other countries not in the OECD club of advanced economies.
But Opec warned "the current forecast is subject to downward revisions not only in the OECD but also in emerging economies."
The latest Chinese manufacturing and export data raised concerns about a slowdown in Chinese growth, while growth in advanced economies is also expected to be lower than initially expected.
The Opec report noted that oil demand from debt crisis-wracked Europe declined for the 20th straight month in April.
"General expectations for the region's oil consumption during 2013 have once more weakened since last month's projections," said Opec.
Despite concerns about weakening global demand for oil, the cartel decided at its latest ministerial meeting at the end of last month to keep its output ceiling unchanged at 30 mbpd as the price per barrel of crude has hovered around $100.
However it warned it stood ready to act to support the price of oil.
The report, citing non-Opec sources, noted that international sanctions were having an impact on Iran's oil output, which fell to 2.64 mbpd in May, down from a level of 3.63 mbpd in 2011.
The International Energy Agency, the energy analysis arm of the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), releases its updated oil market forecasts on Wednesday.
US approves a nearly $1trn farm bill
The US Senate approved a sweeping, $955bn farm bill late Monday that sets out agriculture policy for the next five years, including expansion of crop insurance and reduction of food stamps.
The bill, which allocates some $955bn on nutrition and conservation programs, commodities and other agriculture spending, passed 66-27 with broad bipartisan support, and goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.
It slashes some $24bn from the federal deficit compared with the previous farm bill, a consideration Democrats hope will beef up the likelihood of passage in the Republican-led House where members have expressed intent to cut even more.
Agriculture is among the biggest US industries, accounting for at least 16 million jobs, and Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, chair of the Agriculture Committee, has called passing the farm bill this year a top priority.
"It's been a long road," she said on the Senate floor, referring to how last year's farm bill passed by the Senate was not taken up by the Republican-controlled House, causing the Senate version to expire at the end of 2012.
"I'm very optimistic we will get this done" and on to President Barack Obama's desk for his signature.
Stabenow accused House Republicans of having "walked away from rural America last year," but "this year it looks like it's going to be different."
House Speaker John Boehner suggested as much Monday in a statement saying the House will begin "vigorous and open debate" on its version of the farm bill later this month.
But Boehner hinted at a potential showdown, particularly over dairy provisions from last year that Boehner opposes, but that were kept in the 2013 bill.
"I oppose those provisions and will support efforts on the House floor to change them appropriately," he said, but he urged House members to come forward with possible solutions.
"Let's have the debate, and let's vote," he said.
By far the largest part of the bill, some $760.5bn over 10 years - the chunk of time over which the costs are calculated - addresses nutritional programs including food stamps, which the legislation cuts by some $4bn.
House lawmakers have called for even deeper cuts in the food stamp program as part of their goal of slashing a further $15bn from the overall bill.
It also marks a major transition from direct payments to farmers, a decades-old policy that helps shield growers from risk, to a market-based crop insurance system.
The new crop insurance plan would cost $89bn over 10 years.
Snowden: Russia will consider asylum
Russia would consider granting asylum to the American who has exposed top-secret US surveillance programmes, if he were to ask for it, President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stopped short of saying Moscow would accept Edward Snowden, but pro-Kremlin lawmakers spoke out in favour of the idea, tapping into a lingering Cold War rivalry with the United States and a vein of anti-American sentiment Putin has often encouraged.
"Promising Snowden asylum, Moscow takes upon itself the defence of people persecuted for political reasons," Alexei Pushkov, chairperson of the international affairs committee in the lower house of parliament, said on Twitter.
"There will be hysteria in the United States. They recognise this as their right alone," he said.
Putin and other Russian officials have often accused the United States of hypocrisy, saying it tries to impose standards of human rights, freedom and democracy on other nations while falling far short of them itself.
Snowden, who provided the information for reports that revealed broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data by the US government, fled to Hong Kong and has said he hopes that Iceland might grant him asylum.
He is not known to have mentioned the possibility of asylum in Russia, but Peskov was quoted in Russian daily Kommersant as saying Moscow was open to such an approach.
Asked whether Russia would be inclined to grant an asylum request, the spokesperson said: "It is impossible [to say] now. No one has applied yet. If he says: I request [political asylum], then we will consider it".
US assesses damage after NSA leak
The Obama administration has launched an
internal review to assess damage to US national security
from last week's leak of top-secret details of National Security Agency (NSA)
surveillance programmes, a senior US intelligence official
said.
The review is separate from an initial criminal investigation into the
leak opened by the justice department, the official told.The administration's review will examine the extent of damage to national security programs from the disclosures by Edward Snowden, of details of NSA's collection of phone call and e-mail data, the official said.
It will be co-ordinated by the National Counter-intelligence Executive (NCIX), a branch of the director of national intelligence's office, the official said.
Snowden, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, went public in a video released on Sunday by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
In the interview, he described being disturbed by the NSA's broad monitoring of phone call and internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook.
The company said on Tuesday that it had terminated Snowden's employment on Monday for violations of its code of ethics and policies.
It said he had been an employee for less than three months and had a salary of $122 000.
Snowden's revelations have prompted a broad national debate about the balance of American's privacy rights and national security measures, especially as they have developed since the 11 September 2001, attacks in the United States.
A team of national security, law enforcement and intelligence officials was scheduled to brief House of Representatives members later on Tuesday about the NSA's surveillance programmes. The Senate will be briefed on Thursday.
Snowden "a traitor"
House Speaker John Boehner defended the NSA programmes and their congressional oversight, saying he had been briefed on the programmes and that Americans were not "snooped on", unless they communicated with a terrorist in another country.
"He's a traitor," Boehner said of Snowden in an interview.
"The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk, it shows our adversaries what our capabilities are, and it's a giant violation of the law."
Many other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have also called for swift punishment.
But Senator Rand Paul, a Republican popular with the Tea Party movement that campaigns against intrusive government, said he was reserving judgment on Snowden.
He said such civil disobedience happened when people felt like they had no other options.
"I think most Americans don't want this surveillance," Paul said
Cyber-snooping backlash builds in Berlin
German outrage over a secret US internet spying
programme is building before a visit by Barack Obama next week, with senior
members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government demanding a full explanation
from the president when he lands in Berlin.
Merkel's spokesperson has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday. That could cast a cloud over the visit, designed to celebrate US-German ties on the 50th anniversary of a famous speech in which President John F Kennedy declared: "Ich bin ein Berliner".
Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of East Germany's feared Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.
In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports the United States could access and track virtually all forms of internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially "dangerous".
"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.
"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table."
Germans still enamoured of Obama
Opposition parties have jumped on the issue, keen to put a dampener on the Merkel-Obama talks and prevent them from boosting the chancellor as she gears up for a September parliamentary election in which she is seeking a third term.
"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told.
Obama is due to land in Berlin on Tuesday night, hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday and then give a speech in front of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate.
It is his first trip to the German capital since he passed through in 2008 during his first campaign for the presidency, giving a speech at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten park that attracted 200 000 adoring fans.
Five years on, Germans are still enamoured of Obama: A poll last week showed 82% view him favourably.
But his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, extensive use of drones to kill suspected al-Qaeda militants and the latest revelations about the secret surveillance programme, codenamed Prism, have tempered enthusiasm.
Grounds for 'massive concern'
According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, the programme gave US officials access to e-mails, web chats and other communications from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Skype.
Obama has defended it as a "modest encroachment" on privacy and reassured Americans that no one is listening to their phone calls.
But US law puts virtually no eavesdropping restrictions on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be delving into the private Internet communications of Germans and other Europeans.
Peter Schaar, the German official with responsibility for data privacy, said this was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.
"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance programme," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."
Merkel's spokesperson has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday. That could cast a cloud over the visit, designed to celebrate US-German ties on the 50th anniversary of a famous speech in which President John F Kennedy declared: "Ich bin ein Berliner".
Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of East Germany's feared Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.
In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports the United States could access and track virtually all forms of internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially "dangerous".
"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.
"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table."
Germans still enamoured of Obama
Opposition parties have jumped on the issue, keen to put a dampener on the Merkel-Obama talks and prevent them from boosting the chancellor as she gears up for a September parliamentary election in which she is seeking a third term.
"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told.
Obama is due to land in Berlin on Tuesday night, hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday and then give a speech in front of thousands at the Brandenburg Gate.
It is his first trip to the German capital since he passed through in 2008 during his first campaign for the presidency, giving a speech at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten park that attracted 200 000 adoring fans.
Five years on, Germans are still enamoured of Obama: A poll last week showed 82% view him favourably.
But his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, extensive use of drones to kill suspected al-Qaeda militants and the latest revelations about the secret surveillance programme, codenamed Prism, have tempered enthusiasm.
Grounds for 'massive concern'
According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, the programme gave US officials access to e-mails, web chats and other communications from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Skype.
Obama has defended it as a "modest encroachment" on privacy and reassured Americans that no one is listening to their phone calls.
But US law puts virtually no eavesdropping restrictions on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be delving into the private Internet communications of Germans and other Europeans.
Peter Schaar, the German official with responsibility for data privacy, said this was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.
"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance programme," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."
Swiss want answers on US spy claims
Switzerland on Tuesday revealed that it has asked the United States to explain an alleged CIA blackmail operation to spy on the Alpine country's banks, exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The Swiss foreign ministry told AFP that it was aware of media reports about the issue and that it had sent the US embassy in the capital Berne a diplomatic note seeking "clarification".
The ministry also confirmed that Snowden was accredited as a diplomatic attaché at the US permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva from March 2007 to February 2009.
"The role of members of permanent missions in Geneva is to represent their country at international organisations based in Switzerland," the ministry said.
"In line with the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, Switzerland expects members of diplomatic missions in Berne and permanent missions in Geneva to respect the laws and rules of the country," it added.
Snowden, a 29-year-old technology expert and US government contractor, has turned whistleblower to reveal Washington's so-called PRISM programme.
The programme enables the National Security Agency to issue directives to internet firms such as Google or Facebook to gain access to emails, online chats, pictures, files and videos uploaded by foreign users.
Snowden has said that it was in Geneva - where his diplomatic role was a cover for his work for the US intelligence agency, the CIA - that he first considered going public.
Disillusioned
"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he told the British newspaper The Guardian.
"I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good," he added.
Snowden claimed there was an operation in which an agent made friends with a banker, got him drunk so he was stopped for driving while intoxicated, and then helped him escape legal action.
In exchange, the man allegedly spied on Swiss banks to garner data for US tax authorities on money stashed abroad by Americans.
Speculation is raging in Switzerland's media over the banker's identity, amid a debate over a take-it-or-leave-it deal proposed by Washington to fine Swiss banks that allegedly abetted such tax evasion.
Discharged from the army after an accident in 2003 just before he could deploy to Iraq, Snowden worked at the National Security Agency for various outside contractors, including Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton.
