NEWS,10.07.2013

Surge in growth for online mobile ads

Global spending on mobile internet ads surged 82.8% to $8.9bn in 2012, an industry survey showed this week.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) said the figures highlight "a strong positive growth story taking place across mobile advertising formats".
"Mobile is coming into its own as a powerhouse advertising medium," the IAB's Anna Bager said.
"The massive and continuing acceleration of mobile's international impact provides new and exciting frontiers for content and communication."
More than half of spending was for search ads, or paid ads linked to web search queries; display ads accounted for 38.7% and messaging ads 8.5%, the IAB said.
The survey said the Asia-Pacific region accounted for some 40.2% of revenues, compared to 39.8% for North America and 16.9% for Western Europe,
A key factor for mobile advertising growth is the adoption of advanced fourth-generation mobile networks, which encourage people to spend more time using the internet on mobile devices.
A separate report last month by the research firm eMarketer said Google captured more than half of the mobile Internet advertising revenues worldwide last year and is expected to boost its share in 2013, and that Facebook's share is growing rapidly

Pentagon - WikiLeaks a journalistic site

The US military viewed anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks as a news gathering operation before Private First Class Bradley Manning leaked a trove of classified files to it, a Harvard professor testified at Manning's court-martial on Wednesday.
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard University law professor and expert on media law, testified for the defence that a 2008 Defence Department report on WikiLeaks had said that a US enemy could theoretically use the site to gather information.
But the Pentagon report, which had been based on publicly available material, said there was no sign that that had happened, said Benkler, the co-director of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society.
The Pentagon report came out before Manning, 25, is alleged to have leaked more than 700 000 classified files, combat videos and State Department cables while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.
Benkler is the 10th witness called by chief defence lawyer David Coombs since he started his case on Monday. Coombs has not divulged a customary list of witnesses, but Benkler could be the last called by the defence.
The 21 charges against Manning include espionage, computer fraud and, most seriously, aiding the enemy by disclosing material that could be used by the al-Qaeda extremist network.
Manning, a native of Crescent, Oklahoma, could face life in prison without parole if convicted of aiding the enemy.
In other testimony, a specialist at the Centre for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, said in a sworn statement that the centre had not recommended changes, such as in training or tactics, because of the WikiLeaks disclosures.
The centre, which focuses on adapting operations to changing conditions, also had not been requested to do so, said the witness, whose name was not disclosed.
The defence has sought to portray Manning as a naive but well-intentioned soldier who wanted to show Americans the reality of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Defence lawyers also have contended that much of the material Manning is charged with leaking had been available from public sources before the WikiLeaks disclosure.
The prosecution rested last week after five weeks of testimony, some in closed session. The trial is scheduled to end by 23 August.

Snowden not afraid, no regrets

Fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is not afraid and has no regrets about his revelations of US espionage activities, the reporter who first published the secret documents said Wednesday.
Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist for Britain's Guardian newspaper, also said in an interview with AFP that Venezuela seems like a "logical" asylum destination for Snowden.
"He's anxious about the next step... but feels really good about the debate he provoked," said Greenwald.
"I hadn't spoken to him in two weeks since he got out of Hong Kong until Saturday, when I spoke to him and then again yesterday Tuesday," he added.
"He's very calm, without any fear and definitely happy about the choices that he made," said the journalist, who lives in Rio de Janeiro.
Currently stranded in Moscow, Snowden has applied for asylum in more than two dozen countries in a bid to evade US espionage charges over his disclosure of US initiatives to gather Internet and phone data.
The 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor has gained a sympathetic ear from some leftist Latin American countries. Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have all offered him asylum.
Greenwald said he did not know which country would eventually accept the US fugitive, but suggested Venezuela was the most likely.
"I didn't spend any time talking about his asylum plans. I don't really know what he's planning on doing in terms of that," the 46-year-old US blogger said.
"To me, Venezuela seems like the most logical choice because it's bigger and stronger than the other two countries that offered asylum and will be able to protect him," he added.
I use encryption
On Tuesday, the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said that Snowden had not yet formally accepted asylum in Venezuela as was claimed by a top Russian lawmaker in a Twitter posting that was later deleted.
Pro-Kremlin lawmaker Alexei Pushkov sparked confusion when he tweeted on Tuesday that Snowden had agreed to an offer from Caracas. He deleted the posting after about 30 minutes.
Greenwald spends much of his time in Brazil, where he lives with a Brazilian partner who was unable to join him permanently in America due to legal restrictions.
New York-born and Florida-raised, he specialised in litigating constitutional and civil rights cases before shifting in 2005 towards blogging, book-writing and what he calls "adversarial journalism".
In four best-selling books, most recently With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, he has sought to expose threats to freedom of information.
He entered journalism through his own blog, Unclaimed Territory. He later wrote for Salon.com before contributing to The Guardian in August 2012.
Greenwald said he had many more stories to write based on Snowden's documents.
"I just wrote with O Globo three stories about massive [US] spying first in Brazil and then Latin America," he noted.
"There's a lot more stories like that, big stories about what the NSA is doing inside the United States. These stories take time, but there's a lot more coming."
He said he is fully aware that the US government is keeping him under close surveillance.
"I always assume that I'm being monitored and when I use computers or anything like that, I make sure I use encryption and I'm very careful," he said.
Even though some US politicians have called for Greenwald's arrest on grounds his reporting amounted to a "crime", he insisted: "I have never been directly threatened".
Asked whether he viewed Snowden as more than a source, Greenwald replied: "He is a source, but I have been very clear about the fact that I have a lot of admiration for what he did, a lot of respect.
"I think what he did was heroic. I care about him as a person and hope for the best for him."

Mudslide from flood buries dozens in China

Flooding in western China, the worst in 50 years for some areas, has triggered a landslide that buried up to 40 people and destroyed a high-profile memorial to a devastating 2008 earthquake.

There was no immediate word on the chances of survival for the 30 to 40 people buried in the city of Dujiangyan, but rescue workers with search dogs had rushed to the area, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Mudslides and flooding are common in China's mountainous areas, killing hundreds of people every year. Deforestation has led to soil erosion and made some parts of China prone to mudslides after strong rains.
In nearby Beichuan county, flooding destroyed buildings and destroyed exhibits at a memorial for the earthquake five years ago in Sichuan province that left 90 000 people dead or missing.
The quake left the Beichuan county seat unliveable. The town was abandoned and 27 square kilometers of ruins was turned into a memorial and museum.
The flooding also caused the collapse of an almost 50-year-old bridge in a neighboring county, sending six vehicles into the raging waters and leaving 12 people missing.
Since Sunday, flooding in Sichuan has affected 360 000 people, damaging or destroying 300 homes, and forcing at least 6 100 emergency evacuations, state media reported.

NEWS,05 AND 06.05.2013

Google zaps brain power

The Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr

IS THE internet a good thing or a harmful thing?

If that seems an odd question, it is probably because you are quite certain that the internet has been an enormous advantage to you in so many ways.

You came across my column as you quickly caught up on the latest news. You probably booked last night’s movie tickets online and searched for the critics' opinion of the movie before booking. You quickly found out everything you wanted to know about “existentialism” in a four-minute ‘Web search and skim’.

The title of the book, The Shallows, is Carr’s conclusion of what the Web is doing to how we think, read and remember. The book is an expansion of an essay he wrote for Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google making us stupid?”.

Think of how you would have had to find information about existentialism before access to the Web was available.

You probably would have gone to a library to read a book on general philosophy as an introduction to the background out of which existentialism grew. Then, perhaps, something more specifically on the existentialists before finally settling into Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.

Consider the difference between these two experiences. Carr suggests that the immediacy of the Web’s answers has turned him (and others) from “ a scuba diver in the sea of words” to someone who rides on the “surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”.

At a meeting at Duke University, Professor Katherine Hayles told Carr: “I cannot get my students to read whole books any more.” The students she is talking of are studying literature!

What makes this book so fascinating is not the observation that we have shorter attention spans but that our brains are being changed to have shorter attention spans. If this is correct, the question that follows is whether this means we are sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply.

My immediate response to this would have been a quick, of course not. I read and think about certain things deeply and others superficially.

Carr takes the reader through a tour of neuroscience and the question of how technologies can change the way your brain works.

Is your brain like your hand? Your hand is limited in the movements it can make. It can only get better at the proscribed movements through practice, or worse through disuse.

There is overwhelming evidence that our experiences and the technologies we use do reconfigure the brain.

In an experiment in the late 1990s, British researchers scanned the brains of 16 London cab drivers. Compared to the scans of the control group from the general public, the taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampus was much larger.

This part of the brain stores and manipulates spatial representations of the world. The longer a cab drivers had been on the job, the larger their posterior hippocampus.

They also discovered that the drivers’ anterior hippocampus was smaller than that of the general public, and that the shrinking of the anterior hippocampus could have reduced the cabbies’ aptitude for other memorisation tasks.

Throughout the ages, the latest technologies have changed both how we think about the world and how our brains process information. Carr demonstrates how “tools of the mind” from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer have all had their effects.

Words were the aural means of communication until we developed the technology of the alphabet and we turned the aural into the visual representing the aural.

The clock changed not only how we thought about time, but how we thought about the world. The change was so wide spread and profound that we even began describing the world in the same mechanical terms.

It changed how we thought about time. It was no longer slowly evolving changes over which we have no control; rather, it was something that could be measured in minutes and seconds, and controlled. With a clock in ever town square and on every church building, our concept of time changed.

We are constantly reminded of time used, time spent, time wasted, and time lost. Our concepts of everything from achievement to productivity changed.

If the printed book forces us to focus our attention and promotes deep and creative thought, what is the effect of Google? Are we becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming? Are we are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection?

Wired magazines Clive Thompson wrote: “The perfect recall of silicon memory can be an enormous boon to thinking.” What is the price of that boon? The result may be “the shallows” of the title, but that shallows is incredibly wide.

This is a must-read. It is a thought-provoking and fascinating book.

Readability:   Light ----+ Serious
Insights:       High -+--- Low
Practical:      High ----+ Low

Spies fuel China's fast military build-up

China is using state-sponsored industrial espionage to acquire the technology it needs to forge ahead with a fast-paced military modernisation programme and cut its reliance on foreign arms makers, the Pentagon said in a new report on Monday.
"China continues to leverage foreign investments, commercial joint ventures, academic exchanges, the experience of repatriated Chinese students and researchers, and state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development, and acquisition," the US Defence Department said.
The department, in its 83-page annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, said Beijing's publicly announced defence spending grew at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10% annually over the past decade, but its actual outlays could be much higher.
China announced a 10.7% increase in military spending to $114bn in March, the Pentagon report said. But it estimated that China's actual spending for 2012 could range between $135bn and $215bn. US defence spending is more than double that at over $500bn.
"China continues to engage in activities designed to support military procurement and modernisation," the report said. "These include economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, export control violations, and technology transfer."

Mystery shrouds 'most dangerous neo-Nazi'

The woman prosecutors call Germany's most dangerous neo-Nazi took her place in the dock on Monday at a landmark trial over a racist killing spree, but despite the high-profile proceedings remains an enigmatic presence.

Beate Zschaepe, known to a horrified Germany only from a dishevelled mugshot and a handful of holiday snaps, strode into the Munich courtroom looking smart and self-confident in a tailored black trouser suit and large hoop earrings.

It was just one more mysterious turn by the 38-year-old, the last surviving member of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) who since her surrender 18 months ago has hidden behind a wall of silence.

When she walked through the door of the police station of Zwickau, a sleepy town in former communist East Germany, on 8 November 2011 to turn herself in, she told officers simply: "I'm the one you're looking for."

Since then, she has refused to divulge any secrets from the previous 14 years which she, according to the authorities, spent underground and on the run as part of a militant trio blamed for 10 murders.

"Everyone in Germany knows her name but no one knows who she is," the daily Die Welt wrote about the woman who has shaken the country's self-image of having learned the lessons of its Nazi past.

Macabre love triangle

Four days before she gave herself up, her two fellow gang members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, died in an apparent murder-suicide after a bungled bank heist, finally bringing their lethal NSU to light.

Investigators say the three were locked in a macabre love triangle, robbing banks and living comfortably off the proceeds while they carried out their nationwide hunt for immigrant victims.

Zschaepe, the only surviving member of the group, is suspected of involvement in the killing of nine shopkeepers of Turkish or Greek origin across Germany between 2000 and 2006 and of a German policewoman in 2007, as well as 15 armed robberies, arson and attempted murder.

Dubbed "the Nazi moll" by the German tabloids, Zschaepe faces life in prison.

But those who knew her in Zwickau, where she shared a spacious rented flat with Mundlos and Boehnhardt, say she was a "gentle soul" who never revealed her far-right views.

"She was a kind of big sister, someone with a big heart," a shocked neighbour, who gave her name only as Heike K, told German television.

Dominant

She said her friend told her her name was Lisa, one of at least nine aliases Zschaepe used over the years.

Federal prosecutors say that although she likely never pulled the trigger, Zschaepe played a "dominant role" in the NSU, maintaining the delicate "emotional link" between herself and her lovers.

She fell first for Mundlos, the soft-spoken son of a university professor often seen taking care of his wheelchair-bound brother, at the age of 16, and later took up with Boehnhardt, a more volatile type with a weakness for weapons.

"Ms Zschaepe acted like a wife but for two men," one of their alleged accomplices told authorities.

Zschaepe held the purse strings, managing the windfalls from their bank hold-ups, prosecutors say.

She juggled several identities while she did the cooking and took care of their two pet cats, Lilly and Heidi.

Chaotic upbringing

On 4 November 2011, she allegedly blew up their apartment in a bid to destroy evidence after the deaths of the two Uwes - after dropping off the cats with a neighbour.

Zschaepe had a chaotic upbringing. Her mother, Annerose Apel, gave birth to her on 2 January 1975 in the East German city of Jena, purportedly after being unaware she was pregnant.

Her father was believed to be Romanian but refused to acknowledge her as his child.

During the first three years of her life, Beate's last name changed three times until she finally took the surname of her mother's second husband.

The girl spent much of her youth with her grandmother, to whom she has said she is still attached.

Zschaepe was 14 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, sending economic and ideological shockwaves through communities like hers and leading many to the political extremes.

When she finally gave herself up to police, Zschaepe had not seen her mother or grandmother in over a decade. Investigators say she saw Mundlos and Boehnhardt as her only real family.

Germany arrests alleged Auschwitz guard

German authorities arrested on Monday a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Prosecutors in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg said, the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.
Authorities declined to release the suspect's name, but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.
The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.
"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."
Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect, who had worked at Auschwitz.
A cook vs a guard
Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Württemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.
However, prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.
"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told AFP.
"We will try to determine concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."
She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".
Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".
Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis.
He moved to the US in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.
Nazi Germany
More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.
Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.
Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in about 28 000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.
Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff, who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.
Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.
"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.
"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."

Raid of US home stops 'terror attack'

The FBI says it believes "a terror attack was disrupted" when authorities raided a US mobile home.

The FBI arrested 24-year-old Buford Rogers on Friday, after a search of his home in Montevideo turned up Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms.
The FBI said in a Monday statement that it believes "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" by the search and arrest.
The agency says a terror plot was discovered through analysis of intelligence gathered by local, state and federal authorities.
The statement doesn't offer further details about the extent or manner of the alleged plot.
Rogers is in federal custody and is charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. It's not clear if he has an attorney.

NEWS,03.05.2013

US job market shows strength in April

US employment rose more than expected in April and hiring was much stronger than previously thought in the prior two months, easing concerns that belt-tightening in Washington was dealing a big blow to the economy.
Nonfarm payrolls rose 165 000 last month and the jobless rate fell to 7.5%, the lowest level since December 2008, the Labour Department said on Friday.
Payrolls rose by 138 000 jobs in March, 50 000 more than previously reported, and job growth for February was revised up by 64 000 to 332 000, the largest gain since May 2010.
"Overall, a strong set of numbers which will reassure markets that the U.S. economy is not as weak as it may have seemed given some of the earlier data," said Andrew Grantham, an economist at CIBC World Markets in Toronto.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected April payrolls to rise 145 000 and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 7.6%.
US stocks rallied on the data, while government bonds fell hard. The dollar strengthened against the yen and pared losses against the euro.
The drop in the jobless rate reflected a gain in employment, rather than people leaving the workforce. The workforce actually expanded, while the labor force participation rate - the share of working-age Americans who either have a job or are looking for one - held steady at a 34-year low of 63.3%.
Still, some details of the report remained consistent with a slowdown in economic activity. Construction employment fell for the first time since May, while manufacturing payrolls were flat.
The average workweek pulled off a nine-month high, with a gauge of the overall work effort falling, but average hourly earnings rose four cents.
The relative strength of the data was particularly surprising given other recent signs that suggested the economy had slowed sharply in recent weeks. Although the economy expanded at a 2.5% annual pace in the first quarter, a wide range of data suggested it ended the period with less speed. Further, factory activity barely grew in April.
Fiscal headwinds
Economists feared uncertainty over the full impact of higher taxes and deep government spending cuts on already sluggish demand was making businesses reluctant to hire. A 2% payroll tax cut ended at the start of the year, and $85bn in federal budget cuts went into effect on March 1.
"The idea that the employment is holding as well as it is in the face of the fiscal headwinds the economy is currently enduring is a very positive sign of the economy's underlying fundamental improvements," said Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Services in Troy, Michigan.
While the pace of hiring was stronger than expected in April, it remained below the pace needed to put a significant dent in the jobless rate.
Economists said the data did not appear strong enough to dissuade officials at the Federal Reserve from pressing forward with their bond-buying stimulus, although it could cool speculation the US central bank would step up its purchases.
On Wednesday, the Fed said it would continue to buy $85bn in bonds each month and that it would increase purchases should the need arise.
"I don't think today's data is strong enough to completely offset some of the weakness we have seen in some other areas, such as overall manufacturing activity and the general pace of economic growth, so I think the Fed will remain fully engaged," said Price.
All the job gains last month were in the private sector, which added 176 000 new positions. Gains were led by a rebound in retail employment, which had dropped in March after eight straight months of increases. Retail payrolls rose 29 300.
But construction employment surprisingly fell, shedding 6 000 jobs after 10 straight months of gains. Residential construction has been marching higher and the pullback in construction jobs could be the result of cold weather in April.
Manufacturing employment posted no gains last month.
Government payrolls dropped 11 000 after falling 16 000 in March. Most of the job declines last month came from the federal government and the US Postal Service.

Obama reaches out to Mexican young

President Barack Obama and Mexico's new president, Enrique Pena Nieto, are stepping gingerly to avoid any suggestion of meddling in each other's most contentious issues.
Instead, Obama is drawing attention to the cultural ties that have linked the two nations and the economic bonds that have begun to take hold more recently.
Obama was to deliver a speech on Friday to an audience made up primarily of students, highlighting the role they can play in deciding Mexico's future and promoting the type of broad exchanges he envisions under a new immigration regime in the United States.
After his speech, Obama was to meet privately with Mexican businessmen, where he would stress the commercial ties between the two countries. Mexico is the second-largest export market for US goods and services.
Later, he was to travel to Costa Rica, where he planned to deliver a blunter message to Central American leaders struggling with weak economies and drug violence.
Obama was to meet with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, then attend a gathering of leaders from the Central American Integration system. The regional network also includes the leaders of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.
The US view of the region is that its pervasive violence and security weaknesses are holding back economic growth, and that with fewer Mexicans crossing the border illegally, the rest of the region has become the main source of illegal immigration into the United States.
New initiatives
As a result, Obama is expected to call for stepped up security co-operation, regional economic integration, and improvements in human rights and democratic reforms.
Friday's Mexico City speech comes as Obama's popularity in Mexico has risen over recent years and as views of the United States also improve. A Pew Research Centre poll in March found that two-thirds of Mexicans have a favourable opinion of the US, compared with 44% favorability in 2010.
About half of Mexicans have confidence that Obama will do the right thing on world affairs, up from 38% in 2011.
Still, dozens of migrant families deported from the US even though their children were born there rallied outside the US Embassy before Obama's arrival on Thursday. "Obama, don't deport my Mama", one sign said. So far, the Obama administration has deported more than 1.6 million people.
For all the attention to commerce and trade, the visit to Mexico less than two days long  was not designed for major breakthroughs or new initiatives. Indeed, on one of the top economic pacts before them, the two presidents merely reaffirmed a goal to conclude negotiations this year on a Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asia-Pacific trading bloc that is key to Obama's efforts to boost exports to Asia.
Both men, however, did announce a new partnership to build on the business relationship with closer cooperation between top officials in Mexico and the US, including Vice President Joe Biden.
At a joint news conference on Thursday, Obama and Pena Nieto carefully sidestepped potential trouble spots. Obama steered clear of commenting on Pena Nieto's decision to end the broad access that US security agencies have had in Mexico to combat drug trafficking, a decision that has alarmed some US officials.
Domestic affair
"President Pena Nieto and his team are organizing a vision about how they can most efficiently and effectively address these issues," Obama said. "And we will interact with them in ways that are appropriate, respecting that ultimately Mexico has to deal with its problems internally and we have to deal with ours as well."
For his part, Pena Nieto declined to get drawn into the current immigration debate in Washington, a top priority for Obama but one that is at a delicate stage in Congress. Asked to comment on the debate, the Mexican president merely said that the Mexican government acknowledged the efforts under way in Congress.
"Mexico understands that this is a domestic affair for the US and we wish you the best push that you're giving to immigration," he said.
Likewise, he demurred when asked to react to the failure in the Senate to pass gun control legislation, including an expanded background check for firearms buyers, even though many guns obtained illegally in the United States make their way into the hands of drug dealers in Mexico.
He said he agreed with Obama's campaign to stem gun violence, but added: "This is a domestic issue in the United States."
Obama vowed to keep pressing for gun legislation, saying: "We recognise we've got obligations when it comes to guns that are oftentimes being shipped down South and contributing to violence here in Mexico."

Conservatives suffer in UK local votes

David Cameron's Conservative Party has taken a beating in local elections amid a surge of support for an anti-European Union and anti-immigration party, heaping pressure on the prime minister to shore up support ahead of the next general election.

The early results on Friday show that the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party, or UKIP, won 42 county council seats, while the opposition Labour Party gained 26. The Liberal Democrats - junior partners in Britain's coalition government - were down 16 county council seats, while Cameron's ruling Conservatives lost 74 seats.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage whose party Cameron once referred to as a bunch of "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" said the results will send a "shock wave" through the British political establishment.

"This is a real sea-change in British politics," Farage told the BBC.

The rise of UKIP adds to pressure on Cameron to staunch a flow of voters from his party ahead of the next general election in 2015 and to take a harder line on European reform and immigration.

The results could lend momentum to voices within Cameron's party urging the prime minister to introduce legislation needed to enshrine his pledge for a referendum on European Union membership by 2017.

Michael Fabricant, the Conservative Party's vice-chairperson, confessed he was unsure what voters were saying. "'I hope there will be some serious research about exactly WHAT message UKIP voters are giving: none-of-the-above, or specific issues," he said in a Twitter message.

Voting took place in 34 council contests across England, plus the Isle of Anglesey in Wales.

North Korea Report: Pentagon Says Pyongyang Still Working Toward Goal Of Being Able To Strike U.S. With Nukes

North Korea "will move closer" to its announced goal of being able to strike the U.S. with a nuclear-armed missile if it keeps investing in tests of nuclear and missile technology, the Pentagon said Thursday in a report to Congress.
The unclassified version of the report, which was required by a 2012 law, offered no estimate of when North Korea might achieve that capability. It said the pace of progress will depend in part on how many resources are invested.
The report fits an established U.S. intelligence picture of North Korea making an enormous effort to become a nuclear power and of an economically poor country directing a disproportionate amount of resources to its military.
Much about North Korea is a mystery to Western intelligence agencies, including the intentions of its leader, Kim Jong Un, who came to power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011. The Pentagon report said the U.S. foresees little change in North Korea's key strategic aims, which it said to include using "coercive diplomacy" to compel acceptance of its security interests, as well as developing a nuclear arsenal and undermining of the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
"We anticipate these strategic goals will be consistent under North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un," it said.
U.S. intelligence agencies are not fully in agreement on how far North Korea has advanced in its effort to make a nuclear weapon small enough to fit atop a ballistic missile. In April, a U.S. congressman disclosed that the Defense Intelligence Agency believes with "moderate confidence" that the North could deliver a nuclear weapon by ballistic missile but with "low reliability." The DIA assessment did not mention the potential range of such a strike.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the top U.S. intelligence official, said shortly after the DIA assessment was made public that its conclusion was not shared by other intelligence agencies. Clapper said North Korea has made progress but has not "fully developed, tested or demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear-armed missile."
In its report Thursday, the Pentagon made no mention of the DIA report.
The Pentagon asserted that North Korea wants to leverage the perception that it poses a nuclear threat in order to counter technologically superior forces. South Korea, which does not have nuclear weapons, has a modern military that benefits greatly from a close alliance with the U.S. There are about 28,500 American troops based in the South.
The Pentagon report noted that North Korea has recently showcased its advances in missile technology, including an April 2012 parading of a new road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile that the Pentagon says has not been flight tested.
"These advances in ballistic missile delivery systems, coupled with developments in nuclear technology ... are in line with North Korea's stated objective of being able to strike the U.S. homeland," the report said.
After a February 2013 nuclear test, North Korea made what the Pentagon called "authoritative public announcements" of its desire to field nuclear-armed missiles with sufficient range to attack targets in the United States.
"North Korea will move closer to this goal, as well as increase the threat it poses to U.S. forces and allies in the region, if it continues testing and devoting scarce regime resources to these programs," the report said.
Earlier this year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a series of bellicose threats to attack South Korea, Japan or the United States with nuclear weapons, sparking tough rhetoric in return. In response, the Pentagon in April announced plans to beef up its missile defenses by deploying 14 additional missile interceptors at a military base in Alaska.
Thursday's Pentagon report said the North's work on a space-launch vehicle has contributed heavily to its effort to build a missile capable of reaching the U.S. with a nuclear warhead. That work was highlighted by the launch of a satellite into space last December.
But it added that the North has yet to test a re-entry vehicle, without which it cannot deliver a warhead to a target. A workable re-entry vehicle is necessary to get a warhead back into Earth's atmosphere with protection against severe heating.
The report also projected that North Korea under Kim will stick to its current strategic priorities, including developing nuclear weapons to deter any attack from outside powers and trying to undermine the alliance between the United States and South Korea.

NEWS,10.04.2013

Obama's new budget targets millionaires

The White House on Wednesday proposed a budget that sharply trims the US deficit over three years by forcing millionaires to pay more in taxes and enacting spending cuts that replace the "sequester" reductions that went into place last month.
President Barack Obama's fiscal 2014 budget blueprint ensures that those making $1m a year or more would have to pay at least 30% of their income, after gifts to charity, in taxes, officials said.
That increase, along with spending cuts and a 28% cap on tax deductions for high earners, would bring the US budget deficit down to 2.8% of GDP by 2016, senior administration officials told reporters. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in February projected the US deficit to be 5.3% of GDP this year.
Obama is due to release his full budget at 11:15 a.m. and to make remarks at that time.
The president's budget stands little chance of being enacted into law. However, senior administration officials said that, in spite of Republican leaders' resistance to tax increases, they hoped it could lead to a deficit reduction accord.
"There continue to be people who are on the Republican side ... in the Senate at least, who are saying things that would give you some hope that there is a path to a deal," a senior administration official told reporters.
The president is breaking from the tradition of using the largely symbolic budget release to outline his ideal tax and spending proposals. Instead, he is trying to relaunch talks to resolve a long-running fiscal battle with his Capitol Hill adversaries.
To do so, Obama is offering a concession that has enraged many of his supporters: adopting a less generous measure of inflation to calculate cost-of-living increases for the beneficiaries of many federal programs. One result would be diminished benefits for most recipients of the popular Social Security retirement program.
Although Obama has pledged to shield some of the most vulnerable beneficiaries, the proposal has drawn strong opposition from Democrats and groups representing labor and the elderly.
At the same time, his budget proposal faces seemingly insurmountable opposition from Republican leaders, who reject any new tax revenues.
Obama's hope is to build a coalition of lawmakers willing to compromise, although most observers see that as unlikely. He has invited 12 Republicans to dinner at the White House on Wednesday in an effort to soften resistance.
"The question is, are Republicans going to be willing to come to us to do the serious thing that they say is so important in terms of reducing our deficit," a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters the day before the budget release.
Both sides are so dug that they were unable to prevent some $85bn in across-the-board "sequestration cuts" from going into effect March 1.
Obama's budget proposal would replace those cuts with his original deficit reduction proposal from December. That offer included $930bn in spending reductions and some $580bn in tax revenues.
The president's budget includes spending on policy priorities such as infrastructure and early childhood education. He would pay for those programs with additional new taxes and the elimination of some tax breaks for the well-off.
The budget also includes a 10% tax credit for small businesses that raise wages or hire new workers.
The president's advisers said the budget proposal would achieve $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. Added to the $2.5 trillion in deficit cuts from past efforts, the total would be above the $4 trillion reduction both Republicans and the White House have said would be an acceptable goal.
Obama's budget is a clear contrast with a rival blueprint put forward by Representative Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee and potential 2016 presidential candidate.
"You can invest in the middle class, create jobs, and reduce our deficits," a senior administration official said. "We don't have to choose between deficits as far as the eye can see and the sort of austerity that's in the Paul Ryan budget."

Pentagon budget asks for unpopular cuts

The Pentagon unveiled a $526.6bn budget on Wednesday that calls for base closures, program cancellations and smaller pay increases, but which is still $52bn higher than spending caps set by law, putting the department on a path toward another year of financial uncertainty.
The Defense Department request for the 2014 fiscal year beginning on October 1 asks Congress to implement a series of politically difficult cuts, involving a new round of base closure proceedings, increased healthcare fees and slower military pay increases.
While seeking ways to reduce spending in the current tight fiscal environment, the Pentagon budget would continue to fund high-priority programs and initiatives, including the strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific announced last year.
The budget includes $8.4bn for continued development of the three variants of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon's most expensive procurement program.
It also includes $10.9bn for new ship construction, $9.2bn for missile defenses, $379m for development of a new long-range bomber, $4.7bn for cyberspace operations and $10.1bn for space technologies.
"This budget made important investments in the president's new strategic guidance including rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region and increasing funding for critical capabilities such as cyber, special operations and global mobility," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement.
The budget is part of President Barack Obama's spending plan sent to Congress. The president's budget stands little chance of being enacted into law and is meant to serve largely as a negotiating tool with Republicans, who have outlined budget proposals of their own.
Obama's budget seeks new taxes and spending cuts that aim to replace the automatic, across-the-board reductions known as sequestration that went into effect on March 1. The Pentagon's share of the March 1 cuts is about $500bn over 10 years, or about $50bn a year.
The president's budget proposal unveiled on Wednesday would replace that $500bn cut under sequestration with a $150bn reduction, most of it spread over a five-year period beginning several years from now, a US official told Reuters.
Some $34bn in cuts would be implemented over the next five years, the official said, noting that the proposal would depend on Congress agreeing to eliminate the sequestration budget cuts. The White House and Republicans have been trying for two years to reach a deal on sequestration, without success.
The Pentagon budget asks Congress to begin a new round of Base Realignment and Closure proceedings, a politically unpopular request that was rejected by lawmakers last year and has already produced hearings this year, even before the decision was announced.
Base closures disrupt local economies and cost a huge amount up front, only saving money over the long run. The Pentagon is believed to have more than 20 percent surplus of infrastructure based on estimates from the last round of base closures that started in 2005.
The 2014 budget also renews a request to Congress for increased fees for pharmacy co-pays and health-care enrollment for retired military personnel. The Pentagon also proposed a 1 percent pay increase for military employees, lower than the 1.8 percent increase in the Employment Cost Index ordinarily used to determine pay increases.
Congress has been resistant in the past to increasing healthcare fees for military retirees and has often approved pay increases above those recommended by the department, a factor analysts say has led to military pay rising at an unsustainable pace over the past decade.

Chile halts construction of gold mine

A Chilean court suspended construction of what would be one of the world's biggest gold mines on Wednesday, accepting a complaint filed by indigenous groups on environmental grounds.
The project was launched in 2009 by Canadian mining company Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold producer, after an initial investment of $8bn.
It plans to spend $8.5bn more on the unfinished Pascua Lama mine, which straddles the Chile-Argentina border at an altitude of 4 000 meters (13 200 feet), and had hoped to start production next year.
But local groups have launched a legal battle to halt the plan, citing concerns over possible damage to a river and resulting in Tuesday's ruling by the Santiago Appeals Court, which was seen by AFP.
This came as crews were still removing earth to create the pit from which gold and silver would be extracted, and the order suspends construction of the open-pit mine while the court studies the broader environmental issues.
The complaint was filed by the Diaguita indians, a small community based in northern Chile. It said that the construction work "has generated a situation of imminent environmental danger" for the Estrecho River.
Interior Minister Andres Chadwick said he was not surprised by the court decision, and welcomed the idea of suspending the project while Barrick ensures it is complying with all environmental protection terms set by the government.
Lorenzo Soto, a lawyer for the Indians, said damage being caused by the construction of the mine was of "great magnitude."

Ecobank to assist Chinese investment

The Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) said on Tuesday it would facilitate Chinese investors for business in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The ETI said the opening of its representative office in Beijing, China about six months ago was to ensure that it positioned itself well to support China's drive to do business in Africa.

Answering a question from Xinhua on the floor of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) after leading stakeholders through the bank's 2012 annual performance, Group chief executive Thierry Tanoh said China has become a key player in terms of investment drives in Africa. 

"It will be a big mistake if we are not able to support the Chinese investors coming to invest in the sub-region," Tanoh stressed.

"We will be the entry port to South-South investors in line with our belief in the South-South cooperation," Tanoh said, adding that, with what the bank had experienced through its Beijing representative office, he had confidence that the Chinese market had great potentials for Ecobank. 

Meanwhile, the bank, with branches in 33 African countries, reports that its Profit After Tax went up 39% to record $287m in 2012. 

Its recorded total asset base was $20bn, while customer deposits totalled $14.6bn.

Tanoh described 2012 as a transitional year for the bank as it successfully acquired and integrated two banks, The Trust Bank (TTB) in Ghana, and the Oceanic Bank in Nigeria. 

"The performance was primarily driven by the successful integration of our landmark acquisitions in Ghana and Nigeria, resulting in significantly increased market share in both countries in terms of total assets (Number 1 in Ghana and number 6 in Nigeria) including investments of $74ml in one-off restructuring costs that will enable us to benefit fully from the enlarged platform," he explained. 

Ecobank, with its headquarters in Lome, Togo, and 18 500 employees, is owned by 600 000 individual, institutional, local and international shareholders with 1 200 branches in Africa. 

It has representative offices in Dubai, London and Beijing.

Smartphone price to drop in Brazil

In the latest of a series of tax cuts aimed at revving up the economy by boosting consumption and production, the Brazilian government announced Tuesday that it was doing away with the PIS/Cofins welfare tax on smartphones. 

The tax waiver will be applied to smartphones that retail for less than 1 500 reals ($750), which excludes high-end models such as the latest iPhones and Samsung Galaxy models, but includes most smartphones sold in Brazil. 

Several companies that produce smartphones in Brazil, including Apple, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, will benefit from the tax exemption.

Over the coming weeks, the government expects the price of Brazilian smartphones to fall as much as 30%, compared to their imported counterparts.

According to Communications Minister Paulo Bernardo, consumers will be able to buy smartphones at lower prices just in time for Mother's Day in early May.

With the move, the government expects the number of smartphones sold in the country to grow from 65 million to 130 million by next year, thus increasing digital inclusion. Brazil currently has some 240 million active cellphone lines. 

The tax cut is expected to save companies up to 500m reals ($250m) per year, starting in 2014. 

Tax cuts have already been applied to cars, computers and domestic appliances like ovens and washing machines, though they haven't always worked as expected.

Last month, President Dilma Rousseff announced tax cuts to staple foods, but the prices of several products did not drop, and some actually rose. 

Likewise, the price of tablet computers and Apple products made in Brazil did not fall as much as consumers expected following tax cuts.

WTO warns growth in trade to shrink

Global commerce is set to grow by 3.3% this year, the World Trade Organisation said on Wednesday, as persistent gloom in Europe led it to cut a previous forecast of 4.5%.
The announcement marked the second time that the WTO has reined in its figures for 2013, after initially estimating that world trade would expand by 5.6%.
"Improved economic prospects for the United States in 2013 should only partly offset the continued weakness in the European Union, whose economy is expected to remain flat or even contract slightly this year according to consensus estimates," the WTO said.
"China's growth should continue to outpace other leading economies, cushioning the slowdown, but exports will still be constrained by weak demand in Europe," it added.
As a result, this year looks set to be a "near repeat" of 2012, with both trade and output expanding slowly.
Last year, the WTO said, global commerce expanded by 2.0% from the level in 2011, compared with growth of 5.2%.
That reflected the gloomy economic picture in developed nations, as the WTO's first estimation for 2012 had been for growth of 3.7%.
"The abrupt deceleration of trade in 2012 was attributed to slow growth in developed economies and recurring bouts of uncertainty over the future of the euro," the WTO said.
"Flagging output and high unemployment in developed countries reduced imports and fed through to a lower pace of export growth in both developed and developing economies," it added.
In 2012, the dollar value of world merchandise exports only increased by 0.2% to $18.3 trillion, it underlined.
That trend was driven by falling prices for traded goods, with commodities such as coffee, cotton, iron ore and coal seeing major drops, while oil remained relatively stable.
Meanwhile, the value of world commercial services exports rose by 2.0% to $4.3 trillion.

Buyers of Iran oil seen cutting imports

The United States expects importers of Iranian crude oil to make further significant cuts in their purchases, a senior US official said on Wednesday, though she noted that there are seasonal fluctuations.
"I do expect that reductions in the importation of oil will continue," the senior State Department official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "There is seasonality, there are spikes, it does go up. There are prior contracts and seasonality to those contracts, so we know there will be fluctuations, but I expect that there will be continued reductions."
Asked if she expected these to be significant reductions, the official replied "yes."
Under US law, countries that import Iranian crude oil must make "significant reductions" - as determined by the US government - or their banks run the risk of being cut off from the US financial system under US sanctions.
The United States on March 13 granted a 180-day reprieve from such sanctions to Japan and 10 European Union nations after determining they had made such cuts. The official's comment suggested Washington may grant a further six-month reprieve when it next assesses how much countries have cut their imports.
The US sanctions aim to choke off funding for Tehran's nuclear program, which the West suspects is trying to develop weapons, by slashing Iran's crude exports. Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes.