NEWS,17.06.2013

Poll shows confidence in Obama slipping

Confidence in President Barack Obama has dropped below 50% to its lowest level in 19 months as Americans worry over broad government surveillance and other controversies, a poll showed Monday.
The tumbling approval numbers come as the White House faces criticism about a domestic program that gathers data on millions of Americans, the US tax agency's targeting of conservative groups which applied for tax-exempt status, and secret collection of journalists' phone records.
Obama's approval rating has now dropped to 45%, an eight-point slide since mid-May, according to CNN which conducted the survey.
Some 54% of the public say they disapprove of how the president is handling his job, marking the first time since November 2011 that a CNN poll showed a majority of Americans with a negative view of Obama.
It shows that for the first time in Obama's presidency, half of Americans do not believe he is honest and trustworthy.
"The drop in Obama's support is fueled by a dramatic 17-point decline over the past month among people under 30, who, along with black Americans, had been the most loyal part of the Obama coalition," CNN polling director Keating Holland said.
Fifty-one percent of respondents say that the existing National Security Agency program that scoops up a billion phone records per day - a programme leaked by a former defense contractor - is appropriate as part of counter-terrorism efforts.
But 43% say Obama has crossed the line in restricting civil liberties in order to fight terrorism, according to the telephone poll of 1 014 people 11-13 June.
"It is clear that revelations about NSA surveillance programs have damaged Obama's standing with the public, although older controversies like the IRS matter may have begun to take their toll as well," Holland said.
Obama opponents have seized on an inspector's damning May report which concluded that Internal Revenue Service agents inappropriately targeted tea party groups, to highlight abuse of power by the administration.
They also pointed to the White House's handling of a deadly attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya last 11 September, and revelations that the Justice Department ordered the seizure of reporters' phone records as part of a leak probe.
Number two House Republican Eric Cantor told CNN that the poll sends a "troubling" message to Obama in that the public is witnessing "a government that has abused its power, and, frankly, has lost focus on the issue that most Americans care about, which is getting people back to work".
But he held fire on the surveillance programmes themselves, saying he believed they strike a balance between civil liberties and national security.

Obama: Make peace permanent in N Ireland

US President Barack Obama on Monday urged young people in Northern Ireland to finish making "permanent peace" and set an example to other parts of the world stricken by religious conflict, violence and war.

Obama, accompanied by his wife Michelle, stopped in Belfast before leaving for the G8 summit, which is being held at a secluded lakeside hotel not far from the site of one of the worst killings in the province's conflict.

A 1998 peace agreement largely ended more than three decades of violence in the British-controlled province between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists seeking union with Ireland and predominantly Protestant unionists who want to remain part of the United Kingdom.

But militant nationalists, who include former operatives who split from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) after it declared a ceasefire, still stage sporadic gun and bomb attacks.

‘A courageous path toward permanent peace’

US leaders have a long history of promoting peace in Northern Ireland and Obama was eager to put his stamp on the issue.

"If you continue your courageous path toward a permanent peace...that won't just be good for you. It will be good for this entire island, for the United Kingdom, for Europe, and it will be good for the world," he told an amphitheatre packed with students.

Obama said people experiencing ethnic, religious, and tribal conflict elsewhere in the world were watching what was happening in Northern Ireland.

"You are their blueprint to follow," he said. "You are their proof of what's possible. Hope is contagious. They're watching to see what you do next."

He did not specifically mention the war in Syria, which is expected to dominate part of the discussions among leaders at the G8.

The summit site is 8km from Enniskillen, where an IRA bomb tore through a mainly Protestant crowd at a memorial service for Britain's war dead in 1987, killing 11 and wounding 63.

The deaths rocked support among Irish Catholics for the IRA and pushed its leaders towards dialogue with Unionists, which lead to a ceasefire and the peace deal.

‘Your choice’

The summit host, British Prime Minister David Cameron, is gambling that the remnants of the IRA are too weak to trouble the visiting leaders.

Obama said there was a time when no one could imagine that such a summit could be held in Northern Ireland.

He encouraged the students to move forward with the progress made by their political leaders and parents who helped achieve peace.

"Ultimately, whether your communities deal with the past and face the future united, together, isn't something you have to wait for somebody else to do that's a choice you have to make right now," he said.

Snowden dismisses claim he is Chinese spy

The young intelligence technician who leaked details of the vast US programme to monitor private internet traffic on Monday dismissed claims that he was working as a Chinese agent.
"This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public," Edward Snowden said in an online interview hosted by the Guardian newspaper in which he was asked why he had gone to Hong Kong before making his revelations.
Earlier, AP reported that Snowden defended his disclosure of top-secret US spying programs in an online chat and attacked US officials for calling him a traitor.

He adds the government will not silence him by jailing or, in his words, murdering him.

The Guardian said that its website hosted an online chat with Snowden, in hiding in Hong Kong, with reporter Glenn Greenwald receiving and posting his questions.

Snowden says he did not reveal any US operations against what he called legitimate military targets, but instead showed the NSA is hacking civilian infrastructure like universities and private businesses.

US officials say the data-gathering programmess were legal and operated under court supervision.

An e-mail to the NSA for comment was not immediately returned.

Merkel: US helped foil terror plot

Germany's chancellor says US intelligence was key to foiling a large-scale terror plot, acknowledging her country is "dependent" on co-operating with American spy services.

But Angela Merkel also told broadcaster RTL on Monday that she was "surprised" to learn of the scope of recently leaked US spying programmes.
Merkel said the US must clarify what information on people's communications is monitored and how, reiterating that she will raise the issue in talks with President Barack Obama in Berlin on Wednesday.
However, Merkel said security services could have not foiled a 2007 terror plot without "tips from American sources".
Four Islamic extremists were then arrested while preparing an explosive device with power equivalent to more than 400kg of TNT that authorities said was meant to attack American soldiers and citizens in Germany.

NEWS,16.6.2013

Tax evasion, bank secrecy: G8 talks tough

Tax evasion and banking secrecy, hot topics and top targets because of the financial crises and austerity, could be the focus of strong statements at the G8 meeting this week.
The British government, organising the meeting in Northern Ireland, has promised big developments on the basis of substantial progress recently in clamping down on evasion and bursting bank secrecy.
But many observers from civic bodies are pessimistic and say that the summit on Monday and Tuesday will amount to a lost opportunity despite the public outrage over recent brazen cases at a time of tax rises and budget cuts.
The tightening up of tax systems across borders, and opening up information on how businesses do their accounting across borders, are two of the burning issues for Britain which is currently chairing the G8 (Group of Eight) leading countries.
The G8 comprises the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Britain, Italy and Russia.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has prepared the way for the summit of heads and state and government by stating the "ambition" that the meeting at Lough Erne will "knock down the walls of banking secrecy" with "concrete measures".
French President Francois Hollande, badly bruised by a recent scandal involving an admission by his budget minister Jerome Cahuzac, also responsible for fighting tax evasion, that he had hidden money abroad, has said: "Tax havens must be eradicated in Europe and throughout the world."
The climate has turned strongly in favour of tough action: pressure on these two fronts, which seemed to have eased after progress in 2009, is again at a high pitch.
First, a new law in the United States, called Fatca, obliges all banks to provide US authorities with all information they hold concerning all assets owned by US taxpayers.
Meanwhile, revelations by journalists, known as "Offshore Leaks", have further strengthened the perception that no bank account can be considered secret and that hidden funds are liable to exposure.
The consequence of this is that the gates of some strongholds of banking secrecy, such as Switzerland, are beginning to give way.
The European Union, in which some countries have arrangements considered favourable to those seeking to dissimulate funds, seems to be overcoming internal divisions and trying to catch up with the United States, even though Austria and Luxembourg still show some reticence.
The G8 leaders are expected to make strong statements calling for a "truly global system of multinational information exchange", according to a draft final statement. But concrete measures appear unlikely.
Cameron has opened a second front to combat strategies by multinational companies to avoid paying tax via transfer pricing and other techniques to generate costs in high-tax countries and profits in low-tax countries or tax havens.
"Missed opportunity"
Public opinion in several countries, already inflamed by stories of tax evasion and tax avoidance at a time of austerity, has been roused further by revelations in the United States and Europe that international brands such as Starbucks, Google, Amazon and Apple, pay little tax in countries where they have high-volume business.
In Northern Ireland, the G8 leaders, all of whom are facing national budget pressures, will support an action plan to be put forward soon by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But even under this programme, hard-hitting measures will have to wait, mainly because of diverging interests.
Sources in Paris which are close to the talks said that "France is most interested in digital issues" while "American negotiators are not particularly enthusiastic."
One of the most sensitive matters concerns trusts and other structures which can be used as legal shields to conceal the identities of people with offshore activities and assets.
Britain has put transparency in this field on the agenda, saying that change is needed also to help fight the laundering of illicit funds.
Cameron, to show goodwill, has also urged British crown dependencies and territories such as the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands, reputed to be flourishing tax havens, to join in and ramp up their cooperation against evasion.
However, the outcome of this appeal is unclear since some of them, such as Bermuda, are reluctant to sign an agreement put forward by Cameron. This could be a blow to the position taken by the G8.
Non-governmental organisations are calling for "public registers of the owners and real beneficiaries of companies and other legal entities offshore," in the words of Mathilde Dupre, the coordinator of a body called the tax and judicial haven platform.
"This is a long way away," she said, noting that the draft final statement so far referred only to vague "national action plans."
At the NGO called One, founded by rock star Bono, Guillaume Grosso commented that "in the field of registers, Cameron has been unable to turn intentions into acts."
He held that the United States and Russia had countered what would have been "the big step forward by the G8."
Judging that this was "a missed opportunity", he said that "these issues could just be forgotten."

Obama heads to prickly Putin talks

President Barack Obama meets Russia's Vladimir Putin on Monday for potentially vexatious talks, as both leaders now offer open military backing to rival sides in Syria's civil war.

Obama, who leaves Washington on Sunday, will confront Putin at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, after his administration signalled it would begin arming vetted rebels battling Syria's government, Russia's top Arab ally.

That decision last week complicated the already delicate politics of the Obama-Putin meeting and prompted Russia to acidly decry US claims that Syria crossed a 'red line' by using chemical weapons as unconvincing.

Washington, trying to preserve the troubled notion of a Geneva peace summit co-organized with Moscow, wants a change of strategy from Putin, who has backed President Bashar Assad even as Obama has repeatedly demanded he leave power.

But no one expects the Russian leader to yield, especially in the wake of battlefield gains against the rebels by Assad's forces bolstered by Hezbollah militia fighters and Iran.

Putin may also be taking some Machiavellian comfort from the public agonising consuming Western governments over what to do about Syria, which has been particularly acute inside the Obama administration.

"We still continue to discuss with the Russians whether there is a way to bring together elements of the regime and the opposition to achieve a political settlement," said Ben Rhodes, a deputy US national security advisor.

"There are no illusions that that's going to be easy."

Different opinions

US officials will try to convince Putin that a descent into deeper chaos and instability in Syria is not in Moscow's national interests.

Top US officials, keen to avoid in Syria the messy splintering of state institutions that led to chaos in Iraq, are stressing the idea that if Assad leaves, elements of the regime, presumably sympathetic to Russia, might stay.

But the argument's potency has weakened given indications that Assad's position is more stable than it has been for months.

"I don't think Obama is going to shift Putin in his way of thinking. The French and the British certainly won't be able to do this," said Michael Geary, a European Studies fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington.

Putin seems in no mood to compromise, and on Sunday hit out at the decision to arm Syrian opposition factions.

"It is barely worth it [supplying arms] to support people who not only kill their enemies but open up their bodies and eat their internal organs in front of the public and the cameras," Putin said in London.

Western powers may hope that by arming selected rebels they can shift the dynamics of the fighting on the ground, which could chip away at Assad's position and raise pressure on Putin to reengage.

"We would very much like to see the Russians taking a similar view about the importance of an inclusive political process to create a transition that Syria needs," a Western diplomat said.

"We would like to see Russia engaging on what that means, less directly attached to the continuation in power of Bashar Assad."

Obama may press Putin on whether Russia plans to complete the delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to the Damascus regime, which could complicate any future US or Western air operations over the country.

Relationship already shaky

Disagreements over Syria have frayed an already testy relationship between Russia and the United States, which has deteriorated since the "reset" engineered by Obama and former president Dmitry Medvedev.

Yet US officials believe progress may be possible in some areas, especially ahead of a planned meeting between the leaders when Obama heads to St Petersburg for the G20 summit in September.

Obama will likely probe whether Putin is ready to talk about weapons cuts as he seeks to cement his nuclear arms reduction legacy after agreeing on a new START treaty with Moscow in his first term.

Both sides also have a renewed interest in co-operation on counter-terrorism issues, following the bombing of the Boston marathon by attackers with origins in the Caucasus region of Russia.

Obama and Putin are not expected to take questions after their talks, but will make statements to the press at the G8 venue in Loch Erne.

Journalists and analysts will be reduced to sifting visual clues.

"I think if we see scowling and stiff body language, you will interpret that one way," said Heather Conley of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

"If we see smiles and backslaps, you will interpret it in another way."

Israel: Iran sanctions should increase

Israel on Sunday warned the international community against easing sanctions on Iran following the election of a reformist-backed president, saying the country's nuclear efforts remain firmly in the hands of Iran's extremist ruling clerics.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued the warning a day after the surprise victory by Hasan Rowhani. Although Rowhani is considered a relative moderate and had the backing of Iranian reformists, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the ultimate authority on all state matters and key security policy decisions, including nuclear efforts, defense and foreign affairs, remain in the hands of Khamenei and his powerful protectors, the Revolutionary Guard.
Netanyahu noted that the Iranian clerics disqualified candidates they disagreed with from running in the election. He said the international community must not get caught in "wishful thinking" and ease the pressure on Tehran, saying "Iran will be tested by its deeds".
Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, citing Iranian calls for Israel's destruction, its support for anti-Israel militant groups and its missile and nuclear technology.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, a claim that Israel and many Western countries reject.
Netanyahu said that sanctions on Iran should be increased. "The more pressure increases on Iran, so will the chance of ending Iran's nuclear program, which remains the biggest threat to world peace," Netanyahu said.
Israeli President Shimon Peres took a softer line. While Peres said it was too early to make predictions, he felt the vote was a clear sign of dissatisfaction with Iran's hard-line leadership and its outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"More than half of Iranians, in their own way, in my judgment, protested against an impossible leadership," Peres told The Associated Press. "Ahmadinejad spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build an idol of uranium. What for? He brought down the people on their knees. The economy is destroyed. Children don't have enough food. Youngsters are leaving the country. Iran became a centre of terror, they hang people, they arrest people. What for?"
He said the biggest loser in the vote was Khamenei. "It is clearly a voice of the people and a voice that says, 'We don't agree with this group of leaders'," Peres said.
Israel has said that it prefers diplomacy and sanctions to end Iran's nuclear program but has hinted that military action would be an option if peaceful attempts fail. It has called on the international community to issue a clear ultimatum to Iran to curb its nuclear programme.
Some Israeli analysts felt having a more moderate Iranian president might make the Islamic Republic harder for Israel to deal with.
Meir Litvak, head of Iranian studies at Tel Aviv University, told Israel Army Radio that Rowhani's "smiley face to the west" might make the option of military action less likely.
In contrast, Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's former security adviser, said that Rowhani's taking over might be good for Israel.
"It's true it might be easier to have an unstable, screaming and vulgar character like Ahmadinejad. but at the end of the day it might be better to have a character that you can deter and can convince via pressure to get the desired result," Arad said.
Arad told Israel Radio that it was a good sign that millions of Iranians voted for a candidate who "explicitly spoke about acting to ease sanctions and strive for talks with the West."

North Korea proposes talks with US

North Korea's top governing body on Sunday proposed high-level nuclear and security talks with the United States in an appeal sent just days after calling off talks with rival South Korea.

The National Defense Commission headed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a statement through state media proposing "senior-level" talks to ease tensions and discuss a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War.
In Washington, a National Security Council spokesperson said talks with North Korea would require that it comply with UN Security Council resolutions and live up to its international obligations.
Foreign analysts expressed scepticism over the North Korean proposal, saying the impoverished country often calls for talks after raising tensions with provocative behaviour in order to win outside concessions.
The rare proposal for talks between the Korean War foes follows months of acrimony over North Korea's defiant launch of a long-range rocket in December and a nuclear test in February, provocative acts that drew tightened UN and US sanctions. The US and South Korea countered the moves by stepping up annual springtime military exercises that prompted North Korea to warn of a "nuclear war" on the Korean Peninsula.
However, as tensions subsided in May and June, Pyongyang has made tentative overtures to re-establish dialogue with South Korea and Washington.
In a notable shift in propaganda in Pyongyang, posters and billboards calling on North Koreans to "wipe away the American imperialist aggressors" have been taken down in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, a recent proposal from Pyongyang for Cabinet-level talks with South Korea (the first in six years) led to plans for two days of meetings in Seoul earlier this week. The talks dramatically fell apart even before they began, amid bickering over who would lead the two delegations.
North Korea fought against US-led United Nations and South Korean troops during the three-year Korean War in the early 1950s, and Pyongyang does not have diplomatic relations with either government. The Korean Peninsula remains divided by a heavily fortified border.
Reunifying the peninsula was a major goal of North Korea's two late leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and is a legacy inherited by current leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea is expected to draw attention to Korea's division in the weeks leading up to the 60th anniversary in July, marking the close of the Korean conflict, which ended in an armistice. A peace treaty has never been signed formally ending the war.
As Pyongyang continues to shun disarmament and shut out nuclear inspectors, Washington's top worry is North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. Pyongyang is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices and has been working toward building a bomb it can mount on a missile capable of striking the United States.
Earlier this year, Kim Jong Un enshrined the drive to build a nuclear arsenal, as well as building the economy, as national goals. North Korea claims the need to build atomic weapons to defend the country against what it sees as a US nuclear threat in Korea and the region.
North Korea will not give up its nuclear ambitions until the entire Korean Peninsula is free of nuclear weapons, a spokesperson from the National Defense Commission said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
"The denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula does not only mean 'dismantling the nuclear weapons of the North'", but also should involve "denuclearising the whole peninsula, including South Korea, and aims at totally ending the US nuclear threats" to North Korea, the spokesperson said.
The US denies having nuclear bombs in South Korea, saying they were removed in 1991. However, the US military keeps nuclear submarines in the region and has deployed them for military exercises with South Korea.
After blaming Washington for raising tensions by imposing "gangster-like sanctions" on North Korea, the unnamed NDC spokesperson called on the US to propose a venue and date for talks but warned against setting preconditions.
US National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said on Sunday that the US hopes to have "credible" negotiations with North Korea.
"But those talks must involve North Korea living up to its obligations to the world, including compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, and ultimately result in denuclearisation," she said. "We will judge North Korea by its actions and not its words and look forward to seeing steps that show North Korea is ready to abide by its commitments and obligations."
Washington has been burned in the past by efforts to reach out to Pyongyang. Months of behind-the-scenes negotiations yielded a significant food-for-disarmament deal in February 2012, but that was scuttled by a failed North Korean long-range rocket launch just weeks later.
Pyongyang's bid to reach out to the US comes as South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, is to sit down for talks with China's new leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing later this month.
Park, whose North Korea policy calls for building trust while remaining firm on provocations, has been active in reaching out to Beijing. Xi, meanwhile, met recently with Obama in California.
China crucially supplied North Korea with troops during the Korean War, and has remained a key ally and benefactor since then, but has pushed Pyongyang to return to disarmament talks.
"The fact that North Korea proposed talks [with the US] ahead of the South Korea-China summit signifies its intent to keep China in check," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies of Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea.
Pyongyang also is sending a message to South Korea warning that if Seoul does not actively try to improve relations with North Korea, the regime will go directly to Washington, sidelining Seoul, he said.

NEWS,21.01.2013

Terrorism in Africa set to top G8 agenda

Britain will use its chairmanship of the Group of Eight richest nations to focus on the threat of terrorism following developments in Algeria and Mali, Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.Cameron said North Africa was becoming a "magnet" for jihadists from other countries, adding that the threat there now outweighed that from Islamist hotbeds in Afghanistan and Pakistan."I will use our chairmanship of the G8 this year to make sure this issue of terrorism and how we respond to it is right at the top of the agenda where it belongs," he said in a statement to parliament on the Algeria hostage crisis.Britain took over the rotating presidency of the Group of Eight richest nations in January and it hosts the summit of G8 leaders at Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, on June 17-18.Cameron said Britain would contribute intelligence and counter-terrorism assets to an "international effort to find and dismantle the network that planned and ordered the brutal assault" on the In Amenas gas field in Algeria.It will also work closely with the Algerian government to learn lessons from the attack, in which three British nationals were confirmed killed and a further three were believed to have died.Cameron said Britain was also looking at whether to provide "transport and surveillance assets" to help the French military mission in Mali in addition to the two transport planes it has already contributed.He said that Britain could send "tens not hundreds" of troops to a new EU training mission for Mali.But Cameron also painted a picture of a "generational struggle" against the "terrorist scourge", saying that it needed both a political and security response."We must frustrate the terrorists with our security, we must beat them militarily, we must address the poisonous narrative they feed on, we must close down the ungoverned space in which they thrive, and we must deal with the grievances they use to garner support," he said."This is the work that our generation faces and we must demonstrate the same resolve and sense of purpose as previous generations have with the challenges that they faced."

Winter chill batters UK businesses

A wintry burst of weather has hit businesses and travellers across Britain for a fourth day on Monday, threatening an unprecedented "triple-dip" recession that could knock the government's economic plans further off track.Commuters fought to get to work as airlines and train operators struggled to deal with a blanket of snow and ice, while some 3 000 schools were closed, forcing parents to stay at home to look after children. Figures this week look set to show the economy shrank again in the fourth quarter of 2012. The snow-induced a loss of working days for manufacturers and builders, allied to falls in business for shops, pubs and restaurants, could now push the first quarter of 2013 into the red also.Even if the economy does turn around later, it would leave the government seeking to dispel fears of slow growth well into next year - with an election due the year after."At a time when retailers are already under pressure, bad weather which keeps people from going shopping is very bad news," said Richard Dodd from the British Retail Consortium body representing the country's major chains."That said, it would have been much worse had it happened over Christmas." Shop owners and workers on a deserted Oxford Street, central London's main shopping destination, said trade had been hit heavily since Friday.Jay Gordon, manager of a hairdresser just off the main thoroughfare said half of his customers had cancelled over the weekend, at a cost of £30-100 per head. "On Saturday, we had 15 no-shows. It's a loss of revenue," he said. Economists said that while retailers may be able to make up the lost sales as customers come back to buy later what they would have bought anyway, the impact on construction and manufacturing is harder to smooth over quickly."Assuming the fourth quarter is as substantially negative as we now fear, we will almost certainly be heading back into recession," Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to business think tank the Ernst and Young Item Club, told Reuters."When the economy is bouncing along the bottom anyway, a bout of bad weather can easily tip it into negative territory. "OutrageThere was a familiar hum of national outrage at train stations and airports about the struggle to run normal services more than 12 hours after the last snowfall in many areas on Sunday evening. Commuter operators across southern England were operating reduced services and only six of every 10 of those were running on time. British Airways had cancelled 350 flights since Friday, largely at the request of London's Heathrow airport, which has little room to reschedule delayed flights. That reflects a shortfall in infrastructure investment over past years which has fallen behind the country's eurozone neighbours. Operators note, however, the UK has less snow than much of the rest of Europe and less on average now than it did 20 years ago. That was no consolation for 24-year-old Georgina Kourousiakli and Fay Sakellariou from Athens, who missed their flight home by minutes due to train delays on Monday morning. "They don't care about us, we told them we need somewhere to live until tomorrow and they just looked at us and said 'oh'," Georgina said. "We don't have any money to eat ... we can't call home and the internet is 10 pence per minute. "Heathrow has come under heavy criticism before for not handling inclement weather well. PainThe Conservative-led coalition government had lauded numbers for the third quarter of last year which saw Britain emerging from its second recession since the 2008 financial crisis.But that always looked at risk from the gloom amongst consumers who account for two thirds of the economy. They have seen wages fall consistently compared with inflation while also struggling to reduce debts built up in a decade of booming credit growth.A survey on Monday showed the state of most households' finances continued to worsen in January, even if the rate of decline was slightly less pronounced than a month earlier."Concern remains that consumers will be restrained in their spending over the coming months which will limit growth," said IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer.He noted that snow had helped spur contractions in the first quarter of last year and fourth quarters of 2010 and 2011."With the bad weather looking set to continue well into this week and possibly beyond, the risk of a triple dip recession is growing by the day," he said. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition's central promise after gaining power in 2010 was to eliminate Britain's underlying budget deficit by the end of a five-year term.But that target was reliant on the private sector taking up the slack for some of the harshest cuts in public sector spending since World War Two. So far this year, government borrowing is up 10% due to falling revenues.

Cash crisis affects EU farm policy reform

European Union politicians will scale back or ditch reforms to the farm subsidy system as they seek to mollify powerful farmers' lobbies who are angry at subsidy cuts forced on them by the bloc's debt crisis. With EU leaders likely to agree on a 10% reduction in farm spending from next year, governments and lawmakers want to water down plans to reform the 50-year-old common agricultural policy (CAP). The debate centres on European Commission proposals to impose new environmental requirements on farmers and share out the subsidies more fairly across the 27-country bloc. Member governments and the European Parliament must approve the plans before they become law. Critics of the Commission's reform proposals say dilution is essential to avoid damaging Europe's agricultural productivity. "The proposals would increase unemployment in rural areas and risk deepening the EU's current economic crisis," said Pekka Pesonen, head of EU farm lobby COPA-COGECA. German farm minister Ilse Aigner described the Commission's bid to boost environmental standards by forcing farmers to leave 7% of their cropland fallow as "absurd". Farmers are counting on Aigner and her colleagues to intervene on their behalf. "I believe ministers will go for a lower rate than 7%," Pesonen told Reuters. But reform advocates say farmers' fears are overblown and that they should do more to justify the billions of euros in public subsidies they receive each year. "What I hear from the parliament and member states is dilution, dilution, dilution," said EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, who supports plans to make the CAP greener by also requiring more crop rotation and permanent grassland. "Normally farmers are rather proud people. Would it not be better, instead of being on subsidies, to be paid for doing something for the common good?" she said at a conference in Brussels this month. Talks on the European Union's long-term budget for 2014-2020, which began in November and will continue in early February, have already whittled down the total for agriculture to about €360bn ($480 billion). That compares with about €400bn in the current seven-year budget when measured in 2011 prices. While most attention has focused on the overall CAP budget and new green rules, the biggest impact on individual farmers would come from proposals to reduce the inequality in payments. Producers in Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands currently receive more than €400 in direct subsidies per hectare on average, compared with less than €150 per hectare in the EU's Baltic states. And in major beneficiary countries such as France, Italy and Spain, the most productive farms currently receive far more EU cash than the rest, thanks to a link between subsidies and 200-2002 production levels. Proposals in the reform to shift payments towards a flatter, per-hectare rate could cut up to 40 percent of the subsidies going to Europe's biggest grain and livestock producers, officials say. "The rate of direct payments in major producing areas such as the Paris Basin will be significantly reduced," said a Commission source who spoke on condition of anonymity. Larger EU governments, with the support of farm groups and MEPs, are aiming to reduce the extent and pace of redistribution proposed by the EU farm commissioner, Dacian Ciolos. On Wednesday, the European Parliament's agriculture committee - traditionally sympathetic to farming interests - will vote on amendments that would delay the introduction of flat-rate payments beyond the Commission's 2019 deadline. The committee could also delay proposals to liberalise the EU's heavily regulated sugar sector by pushing back the planned phase-out of strict production quotas from 2015 to 2020. "There's no doubt that this is a reform without friends," said Alan Matthews, professor of European agricultural policy at Trinity College Dublin. "There really isn't anyone pushing it apart from Ciolos himself, and the longer it goes on the weaker it gets." Despite the efforts of governments and lawmakers to dilute the CAP reform, however, Matthews said future trends in EU farm output will be determined by factors other than public policy. "I would say the market price environment, biofuel and energy prices and things like climate change are probably more important than what is happening in terms of CAP reform," he said.

Investors to shun tax evading firms

Growing anger at aggressive tax avoidance by big business has prompted ethical investors to consider shunning shares in companies that don't pay their fair share of tax.As governments struggle to balance massive budget deficits caused by the financial crisis, reports that big companies like Apple, Google and Vodafone pay minimal taxes in some big markets have sparked public protests in Europe and the United States. All the companies criticised say they follow the law, and some argue they owe it to investors to pay as little tax as legally possible. But politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have argued such avoidance is immoral and hauled executives into public hearings to explain their tax affairs. Tax authorities in France, Germany and Italy have even launched raids on some high-profile companies' offices. Many investors with a 'socially responsible' mandate say they have long taken account of companies' tax practices when deciding where to invest, but few if any funds have made a point of screening out companies over tax issues, according to more than a dozen industry professionals contacted by Reuters. That may be about to change. FTSE Group, which compiles the share indexes that fund managers in the UK, United States and Asia use to build investment portfolios, said it was looking into excluding companies with what it called overly aggressive tax reduction policies from its ethical index group, FTSE4Good. "Tax is one of the areas which the independent FTSE4Good Policy Committee are considering, among other criteria priorities," a spokesperson said. FTSE did not say when it would reach its decision. The FTSE4Good indexes are one of the benchmarks most commonly used by ethical funds to build their portfolios. European funds invested in socially responsible investments totalled €7 trillion at the end of 2011, according to European Sustainable Investment Forum, an ethical investment industry association. Eleven percent of the $33.3 trillion in assets under professional management in the United States is invested in funds that screen for environmental and ethical factors, according to a 2012 report from the US Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. Jacky Prudhomme and Helena Vines-Fiesta, co-heads of Environmental, Social & Governance research at BNP Paribas Investment Partners, said they were working on a system for screening out companies with inappropriate tax practices. The Paris-based asset manager had €513bn in assets under management as of March 2012. "We are not at this stage in a position to assess tax strategies in a systematic manner due to lack of underlying data. However, we are starting to examine how we can do this in some sectors," Prudhomme said, but did not say which sectors. Charity ActionAid, which has campaigned against multinationals shifting profits beyond the reach of tax authorities in developing countries, said it had been working over the past nine months with fund managers who wanted advice on how to encourage companies to pay their fair share of tax. Tax policy adviser Michael Lewis said the charity planned to publish a guide for investors next month outlining how they could pressure companies on tax. This could, in time, help funds develop a framework. "It could be quite challenging" to come up with criteria, explain them and apply them consistently, said Ryan Smith, head of corporate governance at Kames Capital, which manages the Kames Ethical Equity and Kames Ethical Cautious Managed funds. Lewis said ActionAid had been approached by mainstream funds saying aggressive tax planning may point to risky practices elsewhere. Some investors also consider how far increases in net profit are due to operational improvements, which can be maintained, or to tax management. A robust tax audit could rapidly reverse that kind of profit. "We always make sure we know what taxes the firms we invest in are paying. If they are paying a low tax rate, chances are it's unsustainable," said Charles Heenan, investment director at British fund management firm Kennox. In New York, where fund manager Domini Social Investments said it was looking for ways to rank companies on the basis of their tax policies, General Counsel Adam M. Kanzer said there were difficulties. For one, it could be hard to find stocks to invest in. "Unfortunately, tax avoidance practices are so widespread it is virtually impossible to exclude companies based on this issue," he said.