Thursday, April 29, 2010
TIMES ONLINE: The Greek Government has the “fully determined” support of France as it attempts to bring its debt under control, the French President said today.
During a state visit to China, Nicolas Sarkozy said that both France and Germany were in agreement on their approach to the crisis, which led to stock markets around the world falling and took the euro to its lowest level for a year this week.
The European Union said today that it hoped to have reached a deal with the International Monetary Fund and Athens on how to haul Greece out of its downward “debt spiral” by the weekend. Read on (+ video) >>> Emily Ford | Thursday, April 29, 2010
LE POINT: La France "est totalement déterminée à soutenir l'euro et à soutenir la Grèce", dont le plan de sauvetage est "crédible", a déclaré jeudi le président français Nicolas Sarkozy, en visite à Pékin. "Nous faisons confiance au gouvernement grec et nous travaillons d'arrache-pied pour que tout ceci se mette en place sans délai", a ajouté le président.
"La France prendra toute sa part. Nous serons au rendez-vous", a-t-il ajouté à la sortie d'un entretien avec Wu Bangguo, président de l'Assemblée nationale chinoise, au deuxième jour de sa visite à Pékin. Nicolas Sarkozy a, par ailleurs, insisté sur "la parfaite entente entre l'Allemagne et la France" sur les moyens de résoudre la crise de la dette grecque. "J'ai constamment la chancelière (Angela Merkel) au téléphone, on se voit", a ajouté Nicolas Sarkozy. "J'ai été très satisfait des déclarations de (...) la chancelière sur la crédibilité du plan grec , sur sa détermination à mettre en application le plan européen de soutien à l'euro", a-t-il ajouté alors que Berlin a été très réticent à venir en aide à la Grèce. >>> AFP | Jeudi 29 Avril 2010
TIMES ONLINE: Christianity deserves no protection in law above other faiths and to do so would be “irrational” , “divisive, capricious and arbitrary”, a senior judge said today, as he rejected a marriage guidance counsellor’s attempt to challenge his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to gay couples.
In the latest clash between the judiciary and Christian believers, Lord Justice Laws said that laws could not be used to protect one religion above another.
He also delivered a robust dismissal to the former Archbishop of Canterbury who had warned that a series of recent court rulings against Christians could lead to “civil unrest.”
To give one religion legal protection over any other, “however long its tradition, however rich its culture, is deeply unprincipled”, the judge said.
It would give legal force to a “subjective opinion” and would lead to a “theocracy”, which is of necessity autocratic.”
The judge went on to dismiss Lord Carey’s plea for the establishment of a specialist panel of judges to hear cases involving the practice of religious beliefs.
That would be “deeply inimical to the public interest,” he said.
Lord Carey had given a witness statement in support of the counsellor, Gary McFarlane, 48, from Bristol, a member of a Pentecostal church.
Mr McFarlane wanted permission to appeal against an Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling that supported his sacking by Relate Avon in 2008[.]
The father of two, who had worked for the national counselling service since 2003, had alleged unfair dismissal on the grounds of religious discrimination.
But rejecting Mr McFarlane’s application to appeal, Lord Justice Laws said that legislation for the protection of views held purely on religious grounds could not be justified.
He said it was “irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective”, adding: “it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”
“We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs.["]
“The precepts of any one religion - any belief system - cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other.”
“If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic. >>> Frances Gibb, Legal Editor | Thursday, April 19, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: The Greek horror story should scare us all, says Edmund Conway. Its problems are not unique.
It has all the ingredients for a perfect Hollywood sequel. The cliffhanger plot kicks off right where its predecessor ended; the cast is stellar, some characters from the original reprising their roles. But this time the stakes are even higher, the mood even tenser.
Greece is on the brink of bankruptcy. Based on almost any yardstick, markets are now betting that the government will default on its debt. At a staggering 18 per cent, the going rate to borrow for a mere two years is similar to the penal rates credit card companies charge their dodgiest customers. The government, International Monetary Fund and European Union have promised, vaguely, to hand over the necessary cash to help tide the country over, but to no avail.
It would be all the more shocking had it not happened before. But Greece's problems today are merely Lehman Brothers redux. This is Global Meltdown 2. Granted, this time it is a country, rather than a mere bank, that faces collapse; this time, the victim may really be too big to fail. But the pattern is eerily familiar: the money starts to run out; investors realise with horror that there is a real chance of failure; the politicians promise that they will stand behind the institution; in a last-gasp attempt to halt the disaster, they ban short-selling; eventually the law of gravity proves irresistible, investors stage an effective run on the banks and the end is nigh.
Faced with such a scenario, there are two options: confront the crisis, knowing you simply may not have the firepower to deal with it, or go running, screaming, for the hills. The head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Angel Gurria, has chosen the latter path, declaring that the contagion is spreading "like Ebola... when you realise you have it you have to cut your leg off in order to survive".
Before we lapse into amateur dramatics, however, let's establish the facts: the market for Greek government debt has effectively frozen, much as the money markets did worldwide in 2007 – the initial trigger point for the crisis. Its banking system, stacked high with those same government bonds, is effectively insolvent. The country had been due to return to investors on May 19 to raise money; if a bail-out cannot be agreed by then, Greece will have no option but to default. But even that deadline is increasingly academic: the country has fallen victim to a run, and as anyone who watched Northern Rock's demise knows, what follows is not usually pretty. How did it come to this? >>> Edmund Conway | Thursday, April 29, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Hamas has accused Egyptian security forces of pumping poisonous gas into a cross-border smuggling tunnel, killing four Palestinians as a result.
An Egyptian intelligence official has denied they pumped gas into the tunnel although admitted security forces blew up the entrances to several tunnels earlier this week and were not aware of any casualties.
Egypt, which has been under pressure to shut down the cross-border tunnels into Gaza, routinely blows up entrances to seal the tunnels off.
Palestinian medics working for the Hamas-run health ministry said the four had died from suffocation and that there was evidence of poisonous gas.
The Egyptian official said fires sparked by such explosions could use up all the oxygen in the tunnel and people caught inside could suffocate. >>> | Thursday, April 29, 2010
THE NEW YORK TIMES: PHOENIX — Arizona is well accustomed to the derision of its countrymen.
The state resisted adopting Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday years after most other states embraced it. The sheriff in its largest county forces inmates to wear pink underwear, apparently to assault their masculinity. Residents may take guns almost anywhere, but they may not cut down a cactus. The rest of the nation may scoff or grumble, but Arizona, one of the last truly independent Western outposts, carries on.
Now, after passing the nation’s toughest immigration law, one that gives the police broad power to stop people on suspicion of being here illegally, the state finds itself in perhaps the harshest spotlight in a decade.
The law drew not only the threat of a challenge by the Justice Department and a rebuke from the president, but the snickers of late-night comedians. City councils elsewhere have called for a boycott of the resort-driven state; one trade group of immigration lawyers has canceled a conference planned for Scottsdale at a time when the state is broke and desperate for business. Meanwhile, a continuous protest is taking place at the State Capitol. >>> Randal C. Archibold and Jennifer Steinhauer | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
ARIZONA DAILY STAR: The newly signed immigration law is not about immigration; it is about division. It is a blatant attempt to create an identifiable sub-class made up of the politically dispossessed: The undocumented.
But it went too far; its scope is overbroad. In their zeal, the proponents of the law crossed the line. The law affects not only the undocumented but also everyone in the state of Arizona. As a lawyer friend told me, "Hell, I could be from Lithuania."
Because of its overbreadth, the struggle against its enforcement won't be confined to the people who, in the eyes of the proponents, can arouse reasonable suspicion of being here illegally. It will be between those who want to restrict civil liberties and oppress the defenseless - and the rest of us who will not stand for it.
There are about 7 million of us in Arizona; we are about 30 percent Hispanic (in some counties that number is as high as 80 percent); 5 percent Native American, and 4 percent black; 2.5 percent are Asian, and another 2 percent or so are persons with two or more races; that leaves about 57 percent as white, non-Hispanic, as identified by the census. >>> Jesús Romo Special To The Arizona Daily Star | Thursday, April 29, 2010
NZZ ONLINE: Auf Italien lastet die grösste Staatsschuld in der EU. Das Land ist aber noch nicht in die Schusslinie der Finanzmärkte geraten. Es scheint solider als die «PIGS» Griechenland, Portugal, Spanien und Irland zu sein.
In den Jahren vor der internationalen Finanzkrise wurde Italien wiederholt als der am schwersten kranke Patient der Euro-Zone geschmäht. Tatsächlich hat die drittgrösste Euro-Wirtschaft die Wirbelstürme an den internationalen Finanzmärkten bisher aber weit besser überstanden als andere hochverschuldete Mitglieder der Europäischen Währungsunion. Die Zins-Spreads zwischen italienischen und deutschen Staatsanleihen zogen weit weniger an als im Fall Griechenlands, Portugals, Spaniens und Irlands. Und auch laut Vertretern führender Rating-Agenturen ist Italien immerhin noch das stabilste Land in der Gruppe der «GIPSI» (Griechenland, Irland, Portugal, Spanien und Italien). Und das I in der anderen pejorativen Abkürzung PIGS stehe für Irland. >>> Nikos Tzermias, Rom | Donnerstag, 29. April 2010
NZZ ONLINE: Finsternis in Griechenland: Griechische Bevölkerung zwischen Verlustängsten und Verzweiflung >>> Von Perikles Monioudis | Mittwoch, 28. April 2010
NZZ ONLINE: Zorn auf die griechische Elite: Verunsicherte Bevölkerung – Furcht vor schmerzhaften Sparmassnahmen >>> Amalia van Gent, Athen | Donnerstag, 29. April 2010
NZZ ONLINE: Berlin streitet um Griechenland-Hilfe: SPD wirft Kanzlerin Merkel vor, die Deutschen zu belügen >>> ddp | Mittwoch 28 April 2010
NZZ ONLINE: Berlin neigt zum fiskalischen Nationalismus: Die Hilfe für Griechenland als Wahlkampfthema >>> Ulrich Schmid, Berlin | Mittwoch, 28. April 2010
WELT ONLINE: 70 Prozent der Griechen lehnen Sparmaßnahmen und das EU-Rettungspaket ab – mit fatalen Folgen: Der Protest der öffentlichen Verkehrsbetriebe führt zu einem Ausfall von zehn Millionen Euro pro Jahr. Auch die Lehrer wollen streiken und so das Abitur ausfallen lassen. Nun drohen die Pharmahersteller.
Auf der Karolustraße ist das alte Griechenland der Maßlosigkeit in vollem Schwung. Bauern marschieren zum Landwirtschaftsministerium, sie wollen mehr Geld vom Staat.
„6000 Euro stehen mir zu, weil die Ernte schlecht war und die Preise gesunken sind“, sagt Korkas Christos. Als er merkt, dass er mit einem deutschen Reporter spricht, folgt eine Belehrung über das hässliche Deutschland. „Wir mögen euch hier nicht.“ Also ist wohl auch deutsches Geld nicht willkommen? „Doch, das Geld wollen wir natürlich. Wir brauchen es.“
Das ist Griechenland, wie es bisher funktionierte: fordern bis zur Selbstzerstörung. Die Krise führt nirgends zur Einsicht, dass man sich ändern muss. Die Regierung tastet fieberhaft nach Wegen, den Volkszorn zu besänftigen. Ab Montag sollen Medikamente per Regierungsbeschluss um 27 Prozent billiger werden. Folge: Die Pharmahersteller wollen keine Medikamente mehr liefern. >>> Von Boris Kalnoky | Donnerstag, 29. April 2010
LE FIGARO: Au cas où les travaillistes arriveraient en tête mais sans majorité, le chef des LibDems se voit comme un recours.
Nick Clegg dans le fauteuil de Gordon Brown ? Il déclare ne pas trop y penser, car ce serait selon ses termes «absurde et présomptueux, (…) dans un environnement aussi changeant». D'ailleurs, il ne sait pas s'il vivrait au 10 Downing Street : «Quoi qu'il m'arrive, je voudrais que mes enfants restent exactement là où ils sont.» Mais tout de même, Nick Clegg l'affirme : «Bien sûr que je veux être premier ministre.» >>> Par Rose Claverie | Jeudi 29 Avril 2010
LOS ANGELES TIMES: The leader of the minor-party Liberal Democrats has soared in popularity after recent televised debates. A traditionally two-horse race is suddenly unpredictable.
Reporting from London
He is an avowed atheist who famously claimed to have slept with "no more than 30" women. He has criticized British governments for their "slavish" relationship with Washington.
And he may be the most popular politician in the country.
Nick Clegg, the leader of the perennial also-ran Liberal Democrats, is suddenly being compared by the more breathless British media to President Obama and Winston Churchill. Millions of voters will be watching as he takes the stage Thursday night for the last of three televised debates between the men hoping to emerge as Britain's prime minister after elections May 6.
Clegg, 43, has upended the usual narrative of such elections here by turning a traditional two-horse race between the Labor and Conservative parties into an unpredictable and potentially historic three-way heat. Running on a platform of targeted spending cuts, a tax on big banks and clean government, Clegg's left-of-center party is poised for its best-ever showing in a general election.
Credit for that goes almost entirely to the Cambridge-educated Clegg — and the power of television.
Until the first debate two weeks ago by Clegg, David Cameron of the Conservative Party and Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown, British voters had never seen their prospective leaders spar on national television during an election campaign.
As standard-bearers of the two major parties, Brown and Cameron were guaranteed extensive media coverage. But the first live face-off offered Clegg a national platform he never would have had otherwise.
He stole the show. >>> Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
An amazingly frank interview >>> | Monday, March 31, 2008
TIMES ONLINE: Gordon Brown prostrated himself as a “penitent sinner” yesterday after a brush with a voter triggered a calamitous chain of events that threatened to derail Labour on the eve of tonight’s pivotal TV debate.
The Prime Minister spent an unscheduled 45 minutes inside the terraced house of Gillian Duffy apologising to the Labour-supporting widow for insulting her behind her back.
His muttered description of her as a “bigoted woman”, picked up by a microphone as he drove off from their combative but apparently friendly encounter, plunged Labour’s high command into its most serious crisis of the campaign. >>> Roland Watson, Political Editor | Thursday, April 29, 2010
Related links:
’Bigotgate’ = Duffer Brown + Mrs Duffy >>>
THE TELEGRAPH: An unexploded Second World War bomb has been discovered outside George Clooney's Lake Como villa.
The 500lb explosive was discovered 15 yards underwater in Lake Como just in front of the actor's 30million euro 30-bed mansion, Villa Oleandra.
Bomb squad experts raced to the scene on the shores of the Italian lake in the Lombardy region in the alpine north of the country. >>> | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Spain's economy was thrown into chaos on Thursday when its credit rating was cut, sharpening fears that Britain may suffer a similar fate.
The turmoil came just a day after Greece’s rating was cut, increasing concerns of a Europe-wide financial crisis.
The euro fell sharply and the interest rates European governments pay to borrow money jumped after Standard and Poor’s, a credit ratings agency, downgraded Spain.
Last night the government in Madrid appealed for calm, promising an “austerity programme” to cut spending.
But economists fear that events in Spain show that financial “contagion” is spreading from Greece, as investors are scared off investing in any European country with significant government deficits. >>> James Kirkup and Christopher Hope | Thursday, April 29, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Britain risks sliding into a Greek-style fiscal crisis unless the next government takes drastic action to cut borrowing, warned Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat finance spokesman.
Greece is currently in talks with the IMF and the European Union on getting a €45bn bail-out package to prevent a sovereign default, and a slashing of its debt to junk status has sent global financial markets into a tailspin.
"The Greek position is much more serious but is a salutary warning that unless the next government gets seriously to grips with the deficit problems, as we're determined to do, we could have a serious problem," Mr Cable told Reuters Insider television. >>> | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Former first lady's book floats idea of poison plot against George Bush and entourage at 2008 Heiligendamm summit
The former first lady Laura Bush has opened a diplomatic can of worms by writing in her new book that she and her husband may have been poisoned during a state visit to a G8 summit in Germany in 2007.
The passage of Spoken From the Heart in which she discusses the incident amounts to the first time that the idea has been floated that George Bush's illness at the summit may have been the result of poisoning. The then US president succumbed to a stomach complaint, as did his wife and several members of their entourage, during a three-day meeting of world leaders in Heiligendamm.
The book is to be published early next month but a sneak preview of it was gained by the New York Times. >>> Ed Pilkington | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Related article here.
TIMES ONLINE: The crisis affecting the eurozone worsened yesterday when Spain’s credit rating was downgraded less than 24 hours after Greece was sent into financial meltdown.
Fear of contagion gripped Europe’s financial markets when the debt rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut the rating on Spain’s sovereign bonds. The decision — coming after the agency downgraded Portugal’s rating and cast Greek bonds into the scrapyard, designating them junk — sent the euro plunging against the dollar.
The risk that weak eurozone economies might be infected by a Greek financial virus added pressure to an emergency meeting in Berlin, where the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank considered a proposal to triple the size of a bailout for Greece. Read on (+ video) >>> Carl Mortished, World Business Editor | Thursday, April 29, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: An Egyptian businessman accused of killing his lover, a Lebanese singer, has been shown gruesome photographs of her dead body.
Hishaam Talaat Moustafa, a property and hotels magnate with close ties to the Egyptian government, is being retried on murder charges for which he was sentenced to hang last year.
Opening the case against him in a Cairo court, the prosecution displayed pictures of Suzanne Tamim lying on the floor of her Dubai flat with her throat slit. She also had wounds indicating she tried to defend herself in a struggle.
The court was also shown closed circuit television footage taken from the apartment block, in Dubai's Jumeirah Beach Residences complex.
In it, a man identified as Mohsen el-Sukkari, a security officer working in one of Mr Moustafa's hotels, was seen to enter on the day in July 2008 that Miss Tamim was killed. Prosecutors say that, acting on Moustafa's orders, he gained access pretending to work for the apartment's owners and killed her when she answered her door. >>> Samer al-Atrush in Cairo | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Related links here and here.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Gillian Duffy had only popped out to buy a loaf of bread. But by the time she got home, following a chance encounter with the Prime Minister, the 65-year-old widow had become the woman who could seal the outcome of the general election.
Mrs Duffy, a lifelong Labour supporter, had the temerity to tackle Gordon Brown on the national debt, education and his party’s immigration policy.
In return, the Prime Minister branded her a “bigoted woman” in an ill-tempered aside which was caught on a microphone still on his lapel as he was chauffeured away.
Mr Brown’s visit to Rochdale, had been the latest salvo in a new Labour strategy to put him in front of real voters.
It ended with the most disastrous gaffe of the campaign and his party’s election strategy in turmoil.
Within hours, Mr Brown had interrupted his schedule to return to Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where he was forced to make a personal apology to Mrs Duffy.
During an extraordinary address to a live television audience from the grandmother’s driveway he described himself as “a penitent sinner”.
Later, the premier emailed all Labour supporters — including candidates — to make clear his “profound regret” at what he had done.
Coming on the eve of today’s final televised leaders’ debate, some Cabinet ministers privately feared that the blunder had fatally undermined Labour’s campaign.
There was more bad news for Labour when it emerged that Mrs Duffy had been signed up by the PR firm Bell Pottinger, part of a group chaired by Lord Bell, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite PR man. She was thought to have signed an exclusive deal with a tabloid newspaper.
Mr Brown insisted that he was “mortified” by his outburst, claiming he had “misunderstood” what the pensioner had said to him. Mrs Duffy’s family suggested the public had been given an insight into the hypocrisy of the Prime Minister, who had laughed and joked with her in public before insulting her in private when he thought he was no longer being recorded.
Prime Ministerial aides also feared that millions of voters who shared Mrs Duffy’s measured views on immigration, policing, education and the economy would feel slighted by Mr Brown’s remarks. General Election 2010: Gordon Brown's Gillian Duffy 'bigot' gaffe may cost Labour >>> Andrew Porter and Rosa Prince | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Related links here and here.
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