NEWS,25.02.2013

Obama: Time to start governing

US President Barack Obama warned warring politicians on Monday it was time to start governing as Washington headed into another manufactured crisis threatening the fragile economy. Obama told an annual meeting of state governors at the White House that huge budget cuts due to hit on 1 March would "slow our economy, eliminate good jobs" and leave Americans with "thinly stretched" budgets wondering what to do.The president is demanding that congressional Republicans stave off a set of arbitrary, automatic spending cuts known as the sequester by closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and corporations."We can't just cut our way to prosperity. Cutting alone is not an economic policy," Obama told Democratic and Republican governors in the State Dining Room of the White House.Many Republicans agree that the sequester, which imposes across the board cuts of $85bn this year from government programme, is a bad way to cut spending and reduce the deficit.But they argue that Obama is not serious about reining in spending and warn the president that his success in getting higher income tax rates on the rich late last year is the last time they will permit him to raise more revenue.Obama, who no longer has to worry about answering to voters, warned Washington had to "get past its obsession with focusing on the next election instead of the next generation”."All of us are concerned about our politics, both in our own party as well as the other party. But at some point we've got to do some governing."What we can't do is keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. "The American people have worked hard and long to dig themselves out of one crisis. They don't need us creating another one."

World powers have 'good offer' for Iran

World powers will present Iran with an updated and "good" offer at talks this week on its nuclear programme, an EU official said on Monday, although hopes for a breakthrough were slim. Talks aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear drive start in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, with the so-called 5+1 world powers represented by the EU sitting down with an Iranian team led by its top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili."We have prepared a good and updated offer for the talks, which we believe is balanced and a fair basis for constructive talks," said the spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton."The offer addresses international concerns... on the nature of the Iranian nuclear programme, but is also responsive to Iranian ideas," said the spokesperson, Michael Mann."We hope that Iran will seize this opportunity and come to the talks with flexibility and commitment to make concrete progress towards a confidence-building step."A source close to the negotiations said the offer would still insist that Iran halts enriching uranium to 20%, shuts down its controversial Fordo uranium enrichment plant and sends abroad all uranium already enriched to 20%."This still forms the basis of the demands of the 5+1 group," said the source who asked not to be identified.Reports have said that Iran could in return be offered a softening of sanctions imposed against it, possibly starting with a lifting of measures against its gold industry.However, Jalili said at the weekend that Tehran would not go beyond its obligations or accept anything outside its rights under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT)."We don't expect any breakthrough. The Iranians have made different declarations in the last days. It depends if you take the positive or the negative ones," said one Western official who asked not to be identified.The 5+1 world powers are Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US.

China manufacturing growth falls

China's manufacturing growth hit a four-month low in February but remained positive, British banking giant HSBC said Monday, noting that the world's second-biggest economy was still recovering slowly.The bank's seasonally adjusted preliminary purchasing managers' index (PMI) stood at 50.4 for the month, down from a final 52.3 in January, it said in a statement.A reading above 50 indicates expansion and it was the fourth consecutive month of growth, after 12 months of contraction."The Chinese economy is still on track for a gradual recovery," Qu Hongbin, a Hong Kong-based economist with HSBC, said in the statement, downplaying the fall in PMI."The underlying strength of Chinese growth recovery remains intact, as indicated by the still expanding employment and the recent pick-up of credit growth," he added.Chinese banks more than doubled their lending in January from December, granting 1.07 trillion yuan ($171.7bn) worth of new loans, official data showed earlier this month, as Beijing seeks to boost economic growth.The domestic economy expanded at 7.8% last year, its slowest pace in 13 years, in the face of weakness at home and in key overseas markets.Policymakers cut interest rates twice in 2012 and have trimmed the amount of cash banks must place in reserve three times since December 2011 to encourage lending and pump up growth.The PMI figure, compiled by information services provider Markit and released by HSBC, tracks manufacturing activity and is a closely watched barometer of the health of China's economy.Liao Qun, a Hong Kong-based economist with Citic Bank International, said weaker manufacturing activity in February may have suggested the domestic rebound was unstable, but the overall recovery trend remained intact."The figure, after being seasonally adjusted, might indicate a weaker economic rebound in February due to the uncertainty in overseas economies and a lack of clarity in China's fiscal and monetary policies ahead of the two sessions," Liao said.The "two sessions" is a Chinese reference to the annual meetings of the country's top legislative and political advisory bodies in March, which will set the tone for the country's economic policies."Given the HSBC PMI index is just preliminary, we'll have to wait for the official PMI to gauge the momentum of China's growth recovery," Liao added. The official PMI, released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and the National Bureau of Statistics on a monthly basis, focuses more on large and medium companies, while the HSBC PMI covers mostly small firms.

China communists lament spoiled generation

The mouthpiece of China's ruling Communist Party on Monday lamented a generation who had never tasted "hard work" after the son of a general was detained on suspicion of involvement in a gang rape.Li Guanfeng, the teenage son of general Li Shuangjiang - a popular military singer and household name in the country - was held last Thursday in the latest allegation against privileged children of officials to spark public outrage.The news has dominated internet message boards, online news portals and state-run newspapers in China, where crimes by the offspring of the country's elite cause particular anger among ordinary people."Family education" among successful, well-known figures in China needs to be "cautious", said the People's Daily, the ruling party's official organ, in an editorial on the case."Many of these children have not experienced the hard work needed in the struggle to achieve success, but are shown the results of this success."Used to getting everything they want and having all their problems handled, they will use their father's name as an excuse, take flaunting wealth for granted and regard defying the law as brave behaviour."AssaultLi is among five suspects detained over allegations of a sexual assault on 17 February, the state-run China Daily said.The newspaper quoted an unnamed Beijing police source saying the group were accused of gang-raping a woman in a hotel room after a night of drinking.It is not the first time the 17-year-old has come to public attention.He was sent to a government correctional facility for one year in 2011 for beating a couple while their young child looked on. Domestic media reports said his parents changed his name from Li Tianyi to Li Guanfeng on his release.Hundreds of thousands of people went online to express their outrage at the time, and the general apologised for his son's actions.

Horsemeat found in Swedish meatballs

Czech authorities said on Monday they have detected horsemeat in meatballs labelled as beef and pork for Swedish furniture retailer giant Ikea, while EU officials met to discuss tougher food labelling rules to counter the developing scandal.The horsemeat was found in 1kg packs of frozen meatballs made in Sweden and shipped to the Czech Republic for sale in Ikea stores there, the State Veterinary Administration said. A total of 760kg of the meatballs were stopped from reaching the shelves.Ikea's furniture stores feature restaurants and also sell typical Swedish food, including the so-called Kottbullar meatballs.It was not immediately clear whether Ikea exported the same product to other countries. Calls seeking comment from Ikea in Sweden were not immediately returned on Monday.The Czech authority also found horsemeat in beef burgers imported from Poland during random tests of food products.Authorities across Europe have started doing random DNA checks after traces of horsemeat turned up in frozen supermarket meals such as burgers and lasagne beginning last month.The EU's agriculture ministers gathered in Brussels on Monday to discuss the widening scandal's fallout, with some member states pressing for tougher rules to regain consumer confidence.The 27-nation bloc must agree on binding origin disclosures for food product ingredients, starting with a better labelling of meat products, German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said."Consumers have every right to the greatest-possible transparency," she insisted.Austria backs the German initiative; but others like Ireland say existing rules are sufficient although Europe-wide controls must be strengthened to address the problem of fraudulent labelling.The scandal has created a split between nations like Britain who see further rules as a protectionist hindrance of free trade under the bloc's single market, and those calling for tougher regulation.Processed food products - a business segment with traditionally low margins that often leads producers to hunt for the cheapest suppliers - often contain ingredients from multiple suppliers in different countries, who themselves at time subcontract production to others, making it hard to monitor every link in the production chain.Standardised DNA checks with meat suppliers and more stringent labelling rules will add costs that producers will most likely hand down to consumers, making food more expensive.The startThe scandal began in Ireland in mid-January when the country's announced the results of its first-ever DNA tests on beef products. It tested frozen beef burgers taken from store shelves and found that more than a third of brands at five supermarkets contained at least a trace of horse. The sample of one brand sold by British supermarket kingpin Tesco was more than a quarter horse.Such discoveries have spread like wildfire across Europe as governments, supermarkets, meat traders and processors began their own DNA testing of products labelled beef and have been forced to withdraw tens of millions of products from store shelves.More than a dozen nations have detected horse flesh in processed products such as factory-made burger patties, lasagnes, meat pies and meat-filled pastas. The investigations have been complicated by elaborate supply chains involving multiple cross-border middlemen.

Ikea pulls meatballs from 14 countries

Swedish furniture giant Ikea has withdrawn some of its company-branded meatballs in 14 European countries after horsemeat was found in the product by Czech authorities, the company said on Monday."We take this very seriously and have withdrawn one-kilo bags of frozen meatballs from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Ireland," in addition to Sweden, said company spokesperson Ylva Magnusson.

NEWS,21.02.2013

Hope for foreign workers in US

The leading business advocacy group and the largest labor federation say they have a deal on principles for a new visa programme to bring lesser-skilled workers to the US a key component of any immigration overhaul bill. The groups, the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO, announced the breakthrough on Thursday after weeks of closed-doors negotiations at the request of senators involved in crafting an immigration deal in Congress.The principles include agreement to create a mechanism to let businesses more easily hire foreign workers when Americans aren't available to fill jobs. This will require a new kind of worker visa program that does not keep workers in permanent temporary status.But the joint statement from the chamber and AFL-CIO makes clear that more work needs to be done to turn their deal into a bill.

5 big US banks cut mortgage debt

Five of the biggest US banks have cut struggling homeowners' mortgage balances by $19bn, part of a total $45.8bn in relief provided under a landmark settlement over foreclosure abuses. More than 550 000 borrowers received some form of mortgage relief between March 1 and December 31 2012, according to a report issued on Thursday by Joseph Smith, the monitor of the settlement.That translates to about $82 668 per homeowner, according to the report, which is based on the banks' own accounts of their progress.The report says $19.5bn of the $45.8bn in relief was in the form of short sales, in which lenders agree to accept less than what the seller owes on the mortgage.

Horsemeat scandal spreads to Asia

The fallout from Europe's horsemeat scandal has spread far outside the continent, with an imported lasagne brand pulled from shelves in Hong Kong and a new row over the treatment of horses farmed in the Americas.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 Wednesday that the item "might be adulterated with horsemeat which has not undergone tests for veterinary drugs".The chain, owned by tycoon Li Ka-shing, has about 280 stores in Hong Kong and the neighbouring gaming hub of Macau.In Europe, the Czech Republic became the latest country embroiled in the horsemeat 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 by the Tavola company in Luxembourg.Croatian company Ledo, which imported beef lasagne containing horsemeat into Slovenia, on Wednesday also accused Tavola of being responsible.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 three million koruna (€118 000, $159 000).Spanghero, the French firm that sparked the food alert by allegedly passing off 750 tonnes 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.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.About 60 workers from French company Fraisnor, which produces fresh lasagne, demonstrated on Wednesday in the northern town of Feuchy for state financial aid, saying their sales had dived 70% after the scandal.The company, which manufactures about 700 tonnes of fresh lasagne a month, is on the point of laying off some of its employees.Most Swiss supermarkets on Wednesday withdrew horsemeat products from their shelves, not due to the spiralling fake labelling scandal but over allegations of cruel conditions on farms where horses are bred for meat.German discount chain Lidl said it had removed all horsemeat products from its shelves in Switzerland, while the country's second largest supermarket chain, Coop, said it had withdrawn around 20 horsemeat sausage products.The move came amid outcry over an investigative consumer show that aired on Tuesday evening on Swiss public television, featuring images taken by animal protection activists showing starving and visibly sick and suffering horses on farms in a number of countries that provide meat to Swiss stores.The Zurich-based Animal Protection Association had sent investigators to large horsemeat producing countries Canada, the United States, Mexico and Argentina to probe how the animals were kept, transported and slaughtered."Our investigators found that the horses were bred in conditions that did not meet any of the norms in place in Switzerland and the European Union," project leader Sabrina Gurtner said.Coop however said it would continue to sell fresh horsemeat, pointing out that it receives 70% of that meat from France and the remaining 30% from Poland.Switzerland's largest supermarket chain, Migros, meanwhile said it would not withdraw any horsemeat products, saying it trusted its Canadian supplier.Dried horsemeat products are widely consumed in Switzerland.Elsewhere Bolivia's President Evo Morales slammed western fast food as "a threat to humanity" as he accused multinational firms of seeking to block the development of his country's staple food quinoa.The left-wing Bolivian leader slammed capitalist "fast food" for causing cancer and other diseases, in a speech to the UN General Assembly to launch the commemorative year.Morales steered clear of the growing horsemeat scandal which European officials have been keen to stress is a labelling issue not a public health issue.

North Korea top task for new South head

Park Geun-Hye will be sworn in as South Korea's first female president next week - a historic landmark clouded by North Korea's recent nuclear test and threats emanating from Pyongyang. The daughter of the late dictator and vehement anti-communist Park Chung-Hee, Park campaigned on a policy of cautious engagement with Pyongyang in contrast to her hawkish predecessor, Lee Myung-Bak.But her plans are likely to be shelved, at least for the short term, after the 12 February nuclear test angered the public in the South and emboldened hawks in Park's ruling conservative party.The UN Security Council is still debating how to respond, but is almost certain to toughen sanctions on Pyongyang - a move that could trigger a sharp response from the North and possibly even another nuclear test.Kim Jang-Soo, a former defence minister who has been appointed Park's national security adviser, signalled on the same day as the test that the new administration's policy could "not be the same as before".Park strongly condemned the test and warned the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that it would bring about its own collapse with its complete isolation from the international community.Park's first challenge will be hardliners in her own party who are staunchly opposed to engaging Pyongyang and some of whom have even begun calling in public for South Korea to build its own nuclear deterrent."We urgently need to solve the unbalanced nuclear capability between the two Koreas and may need nuclear arms ourselves for minimum self-defence," said Won Yoo-Chul, a senior member of Park's New Frontier Party.A survey by Gallup Korea published on Wednesday showed more than 60% of South Koreans support the idea of Seoul having its own nuclear weapons capability.At the same time, Park's efforts to mollify her party hawks are being undermined by the increasingly bellicose statements coming from the North.On Tuesday, the North Korean envoy at the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva warned that South Korea faced "final destruction" if Seoul and its allies pushed for tougher UN resolutions over the North's nuclear programme.Kim Yong-Hyun, a professor of North Korea studies at Dongguk University, said Park's hands would be tied after she took office."The UN Security Council will surely impose more sanctions that will be supported by Seoul," Kim said. "In that climate, I see little possibility for substantial cross-border talks for six months at least."Park had promised a package of substantial welfare programmes aimed at the South's rapidly growing elderly population, but the North's test has already resulted in a shift in spending priorities."We are now faced with an unexpected need to increase the defence budget," Park said on Monday.The North has traditionally sought to test the mettle of the South's new leaders as they take office, sometimes with a view to forcing Seoul -and the US - into negotiations.Despite the difficult environment, Moon Chung-In, a politics professor at Yonsei University, said Park needed to move swiftly and "proactively" to position South Korea as the chief international mediator with the North."That way Park will enjoy more diplomatic leverage with China and the US than before... so she needs to take a more open and proactive stance," Moon said.Inter-Korean contacts have been effectively frozen since Seoul accused Pyongyang of torpedoing one of its warships in March 2010, and halted almost all trade and aid to the impoverished North.The North denied involvement, but went on to shell an island on the South Korean side of their disputed maritime border in November 2010, leaving four South Koreans dead and sparking brief fears of a full-scale conflict.Paik Hak-Soon, a North Korean analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the hard-line stance of Park's predecessor, president Lee, had failed to produce any results and should be discarded."If Park takes a confrontational stance, she will end up repeating the same mistake as Lee, who not only failed to curb the North's nuclear ambitions, but also saw inter-Korea relations worsen," Paik said."She needs to act as soon as possible to restart a dialogue, though it won't be politically easy," he said.

Mexico vigilantes kill criminal - claim

Armed vigilantes in southern Mexico engaged in a shootout on Wednesday with a group of men they described as criminals, killing one in what appeared to be the first death related to the month-and-a-half-old "self-defence" movement.The confrontation near the town of Ayutla raised the stakes in a growing movement that has seen residents of several towns arm themselves with a motley assortment of old hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols while conducting patrols and manning checkpoints to fight crime spawned by drug cartels.Bruno Placido, leader of the vigilante movement in the southern state of Guerrero, said one of the civilian patrols caught sight of a group of armed men, who opened fire on the patrol"There was one killed on the side of the criminals," he said.The masked vigilantes frequently stop passing motorists to search for weapons or people whose names are on hand-written lists of "suspects" wanted for crimes like theft and extortion.The vigilantes have opened fire before on motorists who refused to stop, slightly wounding a pair of tourists from Mexico City visiting a local beach in early February. The shootout on Wednesday came one day after the vigilantes freed the last of 42 people detained on suspicion of crimes ranging from theft to extortion and murder, a move that authorities had hoped spelled the beginning of a new, more regulated phase for the "self-defence" groups.The Guerrero state government said the vigilantes turned 20 of the final detainees over to police. It said the other 22 had been suspected of lesser offenses and were released on Tuesday because the vigilantes considered they had been sufficiently punished."The state government foresees that the release of these detainees closes a chapter, and sets things on the road to institutionalising and regulating community police forces," the state government said in a statement.Placido, the vigilantes' leader, confirmed that some prisoners had been turned over.State officials hope the vigilantes can be persuaded to join already-established "community police" forces that operate in some Guerrero towns, where unmasked residents with some training and minimal uniforms, usually printed T-shirts, perform routine patrols and turn over suspects to town assemblies. Following local custom, those assemblies try the suspects and can impose some sentences.The recently formed "self-defence" groups, however, have none of those trappings. They consist of men wearing ski masks and bandanas over their faces while manning the improvised highway checkpoints and patrolling rural areas.Residents tired of rampant crime set up the roadblocks in early January and detained about 53 people. They held the detainees at improvised jails in villages around Ayutla, in some cases for more than 1 month. They released the first 11 detainees in early February.While local media have reported that self-defence groups have spread to 36 communities in eight states, that may exaggerate their numbers. For example, assistants to the mayors of two towns in the State of Mexico, next to Mexico City, where self-defence groups had reportedly formed, denied that any vigilante committees existed in their towns.But "self-defence" represents an attractive option for some rural towns in Guerrero and neighbouring states like Michoacan and Morelos. Because official forces are woefully inadequate and often corrupt, vigilante groups can press to have their members hired by local governments as backup security forcesEven in some of the rougher neighbourhoods on Mexico City's eastern outskirts, improvised block committees have formed to fight crimes like burglaries and muggings."No More Robberies! If We Catch You, We Will Lynch You!" reads one banner that a local block committee hung across the street in the town of Texcoco, east of the capital. A local resident who works at a car wash said residents organized the block committee, called "Vigilant Neighbour Committee", about two years ago in the face of frequent home robberies.Residents ring local church bells to alert each other if they see a crime in progress. The man said they had caught thieves but hadn't lynched any. "The police usually come to pick them up before anything can happen," said the car-wash employee, who did not give his name for fear of reprisals."Before, they would just come into your house to steal, and you would say, 'Sure, take whatever you want,'" said the man. "But nowadays, they beat your family, they start attacking your family."Eduardo Gallo, a prominent anti-crime activist, said the armed community groups pose the danger of becoming vengeful mobs, "but that is what the citizenry is being forced into when they don't have any public safety".Gallo said the "self-defence" groups are likely to hang on, and perhaps grow, if authorities don't guarantee public safety in the wave of drug cartel violence and common crime.Police reform has a long way to go in Mexico, with only about half of the country's police officers vetted and subjected to background checks."I think we are going to see the self-defence phenomenon grow a bit more, and even see them turn into revenge groups, until this hits bottom and the government begins to change its attitude," Gallo said.

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."

NEWS,18.02.2013

JFK jacket sold for over $600

A leather bomber jacket that belonged to slain US president John F. Kennedy has been sold at auction for $665 500, far exceeding the initial estimate, a Massachusetts auction house said on Monday.The brown Air Force One jacket was one of 700 pieces put on the auction block on Sunday after the family of David Powers, a special assistant to Kennedy, discovered a treasure trove of JFK memorabilia in the Powers family home.The jacket was initially estimated at $20 000 to $40 000.Among the other JFK items up for sale, nearly 50 years after his assassination, were photographs, campaign posters, letters and books belonging to the president. The sale lasted more than six hours, the house said.

 

Horsemeat scare hits UK consumers hard

The discovery of horsemeat in products sold as beef has shocked many British consumers into buying less meat, a survey showed on Monday.The furore, which erupted in Ireland last month and then spread quickly across Europe, has led to ready meals being pulled from supermarket shelves and damaged people's confidence in the food on their plate.It raised concerns over food labelling and the complex supply chain across the European Union, putting pressure on governments to explain lapses in quality control.A fifth of adults said they had started buying less meat after traces of horse DNA were found in some products, according to the poll conducted by Consumer Intelligence research company."Our findings show that this scandal has really hit consumers hard, be it through having to change their shopping habits or altering the fundamentals of their diet," David Black, a spokeperson for Consumer Intelligence said.The online poll, conducted on February 14-15, questioned more than 2 200 adults on their spending habits following the horsemeat scandal. It gave no specific figures on how much meat people were buying, focusing only on broader trends.More than 65% of respondents said they trusted food labels less as a result."(Brands) will have to put in place really stringent ways of checking that what's being delivered and what's on the label is indeed what's in there," Black said. In the month since horsemeat was first identified in Irish beefburgers, no one is yet reported to have fallen ill from eating horse but many supermarkets and fast food chains are already struggling to save their reputations. Governments across Europe have stressed that horsemeat poses little or no health risk, although some carcasses have been found tainted with a painkiller given to racehorses but banned for human consumption. More than 60% of adults surveyed said they would now buy meat from their local butchers, the poll said, while a quarter of adults said they would now buy more joints, chops or steaks instead of processed meat. Michael Suleyman, who owns a family-run butchers shop in Brixton, London, said more customers appeared concerned although for now there had not been any difference in sales figures."We have seen people panicking and asking us lots of questions like 'where do you get your meat from?'," Suleyman, 51, told Reuters. "We assure our customers by showing them the meat and mincing it for them in front of their eyes. "But with inflation running above central bank targets and an uncertain job market, the spending power of British consumers has been eroded in recent years and, for some, buying more expensive meat is not an option. Nearly a fifth of respondents said they wanted buy less processed meat such as ready-meals, but could not afford to. At a London branch of Britain's biggest retailer, Tesco, which found horse DNA in some of its own-brand frozen spaghetti bolognese meals last week, consumers were still buying meat products. "I've got nothing against horse meat," said Sean Cosgrove, 39, a local government employee. "I think you're being ambitious if you expect top quality meat in those products anyway."

ECB warns of low interest rates

The head of the European Central Bank on Monday outlined the risks of keeping interest rates low for a long period, suggesting the ECB is unlikely to slash rates further from already record lows.Speaking to members of the European Parliament in Brussels, Mario Draghi also reiterated the bank's view on the level of the euro on the foreign exchange markets, saying talk of a currency war was "really excessive". "Naturally, the ECB is aware of the challenges arising from a protracted period of low policy rates," Draghi said, a week after the bank decided to keep its main interest rate on hold at a record low 0.75%.He said that low interest rates for a long time could harm the returns for savers and investors as well as possibly fuelling bubbles in house prices. In a low interest rate environment, banks might also have less incentive to monitor credit risk properly "and may provide too many loans to non-profitable business," Draghi said.Draghi said current interest rates were "accommodative", which analysts often take to mean that the bank is unlikely to cut them further.Turning to the exchange rate, Draghi said: "I find really excessive any language referring to currency wars" amid concerns that the euro is too strong on the foreign exchange markets and worries over the weak Japanese yen.He referred to the statement made by the Group of 20 countries in Moscow over the weekend, where leading powers vowed they would not target specific forex rates or devalue currencies to make them more competitive."I urge all parties to exercise very, very strong verbal discipline. I think the less we talk about this the better," said Draghi.Some eurozone countries, notably France, have expressed concern that the level of the euro, which has risen recently on the foreign exchange markets, could hurt exports and dampen any nascent recovery in the eurozone.Paris wants the eurozone to arm itself with an exchange rate policy. The external value of the euro should not be left to market forces, French President Francois Hollande has argued.But Draghi hit back saying: "The exchange rate is not a policy target, but it is important for growth and price stability."He also denied that the euro was too strong, saying it was "around its long term average."On the economy, the ECB chief said: "We enter 2013 in a more stable financial environment than in recent years" and predicted "a very gradual recovery" later in the year as the 17-nation eurozone battles with recession.

 

Qatar spends over $15bn on new airport

Energy-rich Qatar will open on April 1 a new airport with a capacity to handle 30 million passengers, as the Gulf state vies to increase its share of transit air travel, an official said Monday."The annual capacity of Hamad International Airport will be 30 million passengers when it opens on April 1," the head of Qatar's Civil Aviation Authority Abdul Aziz al-Nuaimi told AFP.He said the cost of building the new hub over nearly eight years has "exceeded $15bn." Eleven foreign budget carriers will be the first airlines to use the new facility, while the emirate's flag carrier Qatar Airways, will be joining in the second quarter of 2013, he said.The new airport spreads over 29 square kilometres (11.2 square miles), and features two runways stretching 4.85 kilometres (three miles) and 4.25 kilometres (2.64 miles) respectively.The terminal has a total surface of 60 hectares.The new airport, which replaces the old Doha International, is expected to raise its capacity to 50 million passengers per year by 2020.Qatar Airway is one of the fast growing carriers which like neighbouring Gulf carriers, Dubai's Emirates and Abu Dhabi's Etihad, vies to increase its share of transit travel between Europe, Asia and Australia.He acknowledged that austerity in many countries was strangling economic growth but insisted it was "unavoidable" for nations, especially those labouring under high debt, to reduce their public deficits.He called for "properly designed fiscal consolidation as based more on expenditure cuts rather than on tax rises", noting that taxes in the eurozone were "indeed very high already."

Crisis-hit arms market shrinks

For the first time since the mid-1990s, sales of the 100 biggest arms dealers excluding China declined in 2011 as the economic crisis prompted budget cuts, a Stockholm-based think tank said on Monday. The 100 companies' total sales declined, including inflation, by five percent from the previous year, the first time a drop has been registered since 1994, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.Even excluding inflation, the total fell, to €307bn from €412bn in 2010."Austerity policies and proposed and actual decreases in military expenditure as well as postponements in weapons programme procurement affected overall arms sales in North America and Western Europe," SIPRI said in a statement.Troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan and sanctions on arms transfers to Libya also played a role in the decline, it added.Proposed austerity measures "have led some companies to pursue military specialisation, while others have downsized or diversified into adjacent markets" such as security and in particular cyber security, the think tank said.The SIPRI figures do not include China due to a lack of reliable data. Chinese companies supply a military that enjoys the world's second-biggest budget.The list of top 100 arms-producing companies is dominated by American and European companies, which respectively hold 60% and 29% of the global market and together hold the top 17 spots on the list.US group Lockheed Martin is number one, with sales of $36.3bn in 2011, ahead of another US group, Boeing, and BAE Systems of Britain in third place.The think tank, which is specialised in research on conflicts, weapons, arms control and disarmament, was created in 1966 and is 50% financed by the Swedish state. It defines arms sales as "sales of military goods and services to military customers, including both sales for domestic procurement and sales for export."

 

Thai economy soars in fourth-quarter

Thailand's economy enjoyed record growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 as industry recovered from the impact of the kingdom's worst floods in decades, official data showed Monday.Gross domestic product (GDP) soared 18.9% in the three months through December from the year-earlier period according to the government's National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB).GDP rose 3.6% compared with the previous quarter.Strong domestic and international demand helped to drive the strong performance, said NESDB secretary general Arkhom Termpittayapaisith. "There has been a full recovery after the severe floods," he told a press conference. The Thai economy suffered a double-digit contraction in the wake of the months-long floods, which deluged vast swathes of the country in 2011, killing hundreds of people and causing widespread damage to factories. At their height the floodwaters affected 65 of the country's 77 provinces, swamping hundreds of thousands of homes and disrupting global supply chains.The NESDB forecasts economic growth of 4.5%-5.0% for 2013, after an expansion of 6.4% in 2012."An economic recovery in the United States, China and Europe will be good for Thai exports," Arkhom said, adding that an increase in the kingdom's minimum wage would also boost domestic demand.Rising car sales and production helped to lift GDP in the fourth quarter due to a government scheme to encourage new vehicle purchases.Thailand's central bank last month held its key interest rate steady at 2.75% citing a better-than-expected performance in the economy.

NEWS,17.02.2013

Horse-wary Britons spurn all meat

A poll out on Sunday found that almost a third of adults in Britain have stopped eating ready-meals as a result of the horsemeat scandal, while 7% have stopped eating meat altogether.The ComRes survey, for the Sunday Mirror and The Independent on Sunday newspapers, found that 31% have given up eating ready-meals as the discovery of equine flesh in products labelled beef spreads across Europe.The poll also found a 53% to 33% majority in favour of banning the import of all meat products "until we can be sure of their origin". Some 44% agreed that the British government had responded well to the crisis, while 30% disagreed. ComRes interviewed 2 002 adults online on Wednesday and Thursday. Twenty-nine beef products out of 2 501 tested in Britain have been found to contain more than 1% horsemeat, its Food Standards Agency (FSA) said on Friday.The scandal has left governments scrambling to figure out how and where the mislabelling happened in the sprawling chain of production spanning a maze of abattoirs and meat suppliers across Europe."We need to restore consumer confidence," said Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg."That is why we are working flat-out now with the European authorities, with other European countries and, of course, introducing things that we should now do on a more systematic debate like random testing."Opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband said the governing coalition had been too slow to grasp the situation."The government needed to do three things," he told Sky News television."Offer clear guidance, including to schools and hospitals, about what they should be doing;"Get the testing under way as quickly as possible and make sure the official testing is done, not as it is still planned to do by April, but much quicker;"And thirdly, get the police involved and make sure there is a proper police investigation."Mark Price,the chief executive of Waitrose, one of Britain's major supermarket chains, warned that in return for knowing that food is safe and genuine, it can no longer be seen as a "cheap commodity"."If the question is, 'who can sell the cheapest stuff?', I'm afraid it is inevitable that there will be a slackening of product specifications," he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper."If something good comes of the current scandal I hope it is the opening up of a debate around the true economics of food and a determination on the part of everybody in the food industry to apply renewed rigour to their processes and testing regimes to ensure that customers can relax and enjoy the food they buy," he said.Meanwhile FSA chief executive Catherine Brown conceded that the numbers of people who have unwittingly eaten horse will never be known.

G20 steps back from currency brink

The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90% of the world economy.Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20% as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall. "The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates. A draft communique on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth. "The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked."I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters."We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.The communique said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high."A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets."We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in US-bashing ... In St Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand. Meanwhile, Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.

 

G20 vows to halt tax avoidance

The G20 group of the world's top economies expressed determination on Saturday to crack down on companies who duck their full taxation responsibilities with elaborate schemes.The call came after the finance ministers of Britain, France and Germany said it was time for coordinated action to halt the practice of shifting profits from a firm's home country to pay less tax under another jurisdiction.Cash-strapped governments are seeking to use every means to inject new funds into their budgets and have run out of patience with big firms shifting profits to be registered in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda."We are determined to develop measures to address base erosion and profit shifting" the G20 said in a communique after a two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Moscow.They vowed to "take the necessary collective action" and awaited an action plan which is set to be put forward later this year by the Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD).Online retailer Amazon, internet giant Google as well as coffee shop chain Starbucks have been under the spotlight for their tax strategies in Britain and other EU countries in recent months.Starbucks came under particular pressure in Britain following the revelation last year that it has paid just £8.6m in British corporation tax since 1998, despite generating £3bn in revenues. It has now pledged to voluntarily pay back millions in extra tax."We are talking about something that is fundamentally legal. We need to modify the law," admitted the OECD secretary general Angel Gurria. "Avoiding double taxation has become a way of having double non-taxation."In a rare joint news conference, the finance ministers George Osborne of Britain, France's Pierre Moscovici and Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble said while such tax avoidance was still technically legal, laws needed to be changed in a broad global effort.Schaeuble said it was "unfair that multinational companies should be able to use globalisation as a tool" not to pay their fair share of taxes while Moscovici described the issue as a "matter of fairness for our citizens".Osborne said that current global tax rules had been developed almost 100 years ago along principles set out by the League of Nations in the 1920s - and few changes had been made since."We want businesses to pay the taxes that we set in our countries. And this cannot be achieved by one country alone. No one country can create an international tax system by itself."The ministers emphasised that their proposal was supported by the Russian presidency of the G20.A person familiar with the OECD's report said it was essential to move rapidly, especially with the United States apparently not sharing Europe's wholehearted enthusiasm for the anti-tax avoidance drive."The timetable is going to be very tight - otherwise the (OECD) report will be buried," the person said.According to the OECD, some multinational companies use avoidance strategies that allow them to pay just 5% in corporate taxes while smaller businesses are paying 30%.It says that practices have become more aggressive in the past decade, with some multinationals creating offshore subsidiaries or shell companies and taking advantage of the tax breaks offered in the countries where these are registered.This has led to absurdities like the tax havens of Barbados, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands in 2010 together receiving more foreign direct investment than either Germany or Japan, the OECD said.In 2010, the creation of offshores meant the British Virgin Islands was the second largest investor in China, it noted.

France jumps into horsemeat scandal

France on Sunday said there were solid reasons to believe that meat processing firm Spanghero had passed off horsemeat in meals labelled beef, but insisted that unwitting workers should not be penalised.The government said it was meeting with representatives of the 300-odd workers on Monday. The sanitary licence of the Spanghero plant was temporarily revoked last week."The government distinguishes responsibility for what seems to be the actions of Spanghero's leaders from the work of its employees," the agriculture ministry said in a statement.It added however that there was "serious, precise and corroborating evidence of consumer fraud at a European level."The government on Thursday presented the results of its initial investigation that said Spanghero had knowingly sold 750 tons of horsemeat mislabelled as beef over a period of six months.Of this, 500 tons were sent to French firm Comigel, which makes frozen meals at its Tavola subsidiary in Luxembourg.That meat was used to make 4.5 million products that were sold by Comigel to 28 different companies in 13 European countries, said the findings released by the DGCCRF anti-fraud office.Spanghero's licence to handle meat was suspended pending further investigations.Monday's meeting between the workers, Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll and Consumer Affairs Minister Benoit Hamon is aimed at determining how employees will be paid until the plant can re-open."We will tell the ministers to immediately restore the sanitary licence for our meals and sausages which do not contain beef at all," said Claude Hill from the CFDT trade union.

Meteor caused $33m in damage

As a small army of people worked to replace acres of windows shattered by the enormous explosion from a meteor, many joked on Saturday about what had happened in this troubled pocket of Russia.One of the most popular jests: Residents of the meteor were terrified to see Chelyabinsk approaching.The fireball that streaked into the sky over this tough industrial city at about sunrise on Friday was undeniably traumatic. Nearly 1 200 people were reported injured by the shock wave from the explosion, estimated to be as strong as 20 Hiroshima atomic bombs.But it also brought a sense of co-operation in a troubled region. Large numbers of volunteers came forward to help fix the damage caused by the explosion and many residents came together on the internet - first to find out what happened and soon to make jokes.Chelyabinsk, nicknamed Tankograd because it produced the famed Soviet T-34 tanks, can be as grim as its backbone heavy industries. Long winters where temperatures routinely hit minus-30 Celsius add to a general dour mien, as do worries about dangerous facilities in the surrounding region.In 1957, a waste tank at the Mayak nuclear weapons plant in the Chelyabinsk region exploded, contaminating 23 000 square kilometres and prompting authorities to evacuate 10000 nearby residents. It is now Russia's main nuclear waste disposal facility. A vast plant for disposing of chemical weapons lies 85km east of the city."The city is a place where people always seem bitter with each other," said music teacher Ilya Shibanov. But the meteor "was one of the rare times when people started to live together through one event.""For most people, it's a good excuse for a joke," he said.It also is why Shibanov quickly concocted a rap video that got wide internet attention, including the lines: ""Pow, pow, pow - everything flew and factory windows crumbled. This Friday the bars are going to be full, so be ready for the aftermath."But for many, it's provided a reason to roll up their sleeves and get to work repairing the more than 4 000 buildings in the city and region where windows were shattered, or to provide other services.More than 24 000 people, including volunteers, have mobilised in the region to cover windows, gather warm clothes and food, and make other relief efforts, the regional governor's office said. Crews from glass companies in adjacent regions were being flown in.Governor Mikhail Yurevich on Saturday said that damage from the high-altitude explosion - believed to have been as powerful as 20 Hiroshima bombs - is estimated at 1 billion rubles ($33 million). He promised to have all the broken windows replaced within a week.But that is a long wait in a frigid region. The midday temperature in Chelyabinsk was minus-12'C, and for many the immediate task was to put up plastic sheeting and boards on shattered residential windows.Meanwhile, the search continued for major fragments of the meteor.In the town of Chebarkul, 80km west of Chelyabinsk city, divers explored the bottom of an ice-crusted lake looking for meteor fragments believed to have fallen there, leaving a 6m-wide hole. Emergency Ministry spokesperson Irina Rossius told Russian news agencies the search hadn't found anything.Police kept a small crowd of curious onlookers from venturing out onto the icy lake, where a tent was set up for the divers.Many of them were still trying to process the memories of the strange day they'd lived through.Valery Fomichov said he had been out for a run when the meteor streaked across the sky shortly after sunrise."I glanced up and saw a glowing dot in the west. And it got bigger and bigger, like a soccer ball, until it became blindingly white and I turned away," he said.In a local church, clergyman Sexton Sergei sought to derive a larger lesson. "Perhaps God was giving a kind of sign, so that people don't simply think about their own trifles on earth, but rather look to the heavens once in a while."In Chelyabinsk, university student Ksenia Arslanova said she was pleased that people in the city of 1 million generally behaved well after the bewildering flash and explosions."People were kind of ironic about it. And that's a good thing, that people didn't run to the grocery store. Everyone was calm," the 19-year-old architecture student said. "I'm proud that our city didn't fall into depression."As Chelyabinsk began its healing process, residents of San Francisco, on the other side of the planet, worried that they might be next. A science institute in Northern California says it has received numerous reports of a bright streak of light over the San Francisco Bay area on Friday night.Cuba apparently experienced a phenomenon similar to the meteorite that detonated over Russia this week, island media reported, with startled residents describing a bright light in the sky and a loud explosion that shook windows and walls.