North Korea close to 'freak out' as 3,000 Britons are to be evacuated from South Korea
SOUTH KOREA - Contingency plans to evacuate more than 3,000 British nationals from South Korea have been drawn up by military leaders. Senior sources said Foreign Office ministers have seen the plans, as tensions in the Korean peninsula reach their highest pitch in five decades. Last night a former US government official put the seriousness of the North Korean threat for the Pentagon as eight out of 10, “where one is strategic patience and 10 is political freak out”. Britain has already sent a team of plain-clothes operators to South Korea from Joint Forces Headquarters in Northwood to make ground preparations for a mass evacuation.
Kerry warns Iran time for nuclear talks is limited
IRAN - US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned Iran that talks on its nuclear programme cannot last forever, after a new round failed to make progress. "This is not an interminable process," he said after arriving in Istanbul, at the start of a 10-day trip to the Middle East, Europe and Asia. World powers failed to make headway at two days of talks with Iran in Almaty. Mr Kerry also called on Turkey and Israel to restore good relations without delay.
'Why Germany has had enough of the euro'
GERMANY - At first glance, Bernd Lucke seems an unlikely character to be causing sleepless nights for the high command of the European Union. Boyish-looking, softly-spoken and an economics professor, he is almost unheard of outside of his homeland, and far from a household name even within Germany.
In coming months, though, the mild-mannered academic from Hamburg may prove a far greater threat to the future of the European project than many more strident Euro-sceptics. The 50-year-old’s breakaway political party is the first to challenge the previously unassailable orthodoxy that Germany must stay in the eurozone. And his newly-formed movement, the Alternative For Germany, is hoping in general elections this September to tap into the 25 per cent of voters who say they could envisage Germany without the euro.
His party is a direct threat to the fragile coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has largely underwritten the eurozone’s future by shouldering the bulk of bail-out costs for southern Europe. But after successive bail-outs of the likes of Greece and Cyprus – and little in the way of gratitude from the recipients, who have branded the Germans as “Nazis” for insisting that their generosity is accompanied by economic reform – the patience of many Germans has run out.
The eurozone is now promoting strife, not unity, says Mr Lucke – and so it is time to quit.
Argentina ships shock
ARGENTINA - Argentina's Navy is so poorly funded that only 14 of its 42 vessels are operational - and these can only sail for 10 days at a time. The news emerges just days after Argentine President Kristina de Kirchner met new Pope Francis I and pleaded with him to intervene in the Falklands dispute. Last year, while still Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he declared that the South Atlantic islands had been "usurped" by Britain. With seaborne assault out of the question, diplomatic pressure is now all she can hope for. Argentina is now struggling with 25 per cent inflation and owes many billions in foreign debts.
Portugese government crisis to endanger eurozone
PORTUGAL - Portugal was teetering on the brink of a new political crisis after its high court blocked austerity plans presented in the 2013 budget, a move that threatened to derail its bailout commitments with European partners.
Crisis talks were held in an emergency cabinet meeting called by the centre-right government coalition late Saturday evening and Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho is scheduled to address the nation in a televised speech Sunday night. Mr Passos Coelho is facing mounting pressure to resign and call early elections after the nation's Constitutional Court blocked four out of nine contested measures within the budget, leaving the government struggling to meet saving conditions set within the 78-billion Euro bailout plan.
The court ruling "poses serious difficulties to the country as it strives to fulfill the objectives to which it is internationally committed and the budget targets it must meet," said Luis Marques Guedes, Secretary of State for Cabinet Affairs, in a statement following Saturday's cabinet meeting. He also said that it would have a "negative effect" on the international credibility of Portugal. A renewed crisis of confidence in the Portugese ability to meet its commitments threatens to push the eurozone crisis into a new phase.
Just days after a drastic package of bank levies eased the Cyprus crisis, Portugal will this week be the focus of investor concern.
Fear of flu wipes £24 billion off shares
UK - Fears over a bird flu epidemic in China and the health of the US economy saw almost £24 billion wiped off the value of Britain’s top companies yesterday. The FTSE 100 was down 1.49 per cent after figures showed America created far fewer jobs in March than expected. The London market was 94 points lower at 6249, while on Wall Street the Dow Jones also weakened. Economic fears were compounded by nervousness about an outbreak of bird flu in China which has so far claimed six lives. A third day of falls has seen the FTSE shed £40 billion in value since Tuesday.
Your Kids Don’t Belong to You
USA - On March 23, my colleague Mark Finkelstein noted how MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry considers the unborn child a "thing" which takes a "lot of money" to "turn into a human," costing thousands of dollars to care for each year of his/her life. Now it appears that Harris-Perry thinks that, after they're born, children fundamentally belong to the state.
Narrating a new MSNBC "Lean Forward" spot, the Tulane professor laments that we in America "haven't had a very collective notion that these are our children. We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities," Harris-Perry argued.
The notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry "Lean Forward" spot contains a reference to a "great leap forward," which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s.
Vegans and druids to gain workplace rights under new equality rules
UK - Vegetarian or vegan employees with deeply held beliefs should be allowed to exert their rights in the workplace by refusing to sit on leather chairs or clean out office fridges containing meat or dairy products, according to new guidance.
A document published for employers by the Equality and Human Rights Commission suggests that ecologists could ask to be excused from duties that increase CO2 emissions, such as flying to business meetings, and that druids and pagans should be allowed to take time off work to go on pilgrimages and attend sacred rituals. The guidance, which also applies to Christians, Jews and Muslims and atheists, was produced after a series of judgments by the European Court of Human Rights, including the ruling that Christians can wear a cross at work.
It states that "employees may assert the right to discuss their personal beliefs in the workplace and employers should not prevent such conversations". Bosses should "consider seriously" adapting the relevant work duties to suit their employees beliefs. It insists that such beliefs should be "more than an opinion or a viewpoint", should be genuinely and sincerely held and worthy of respect in a democratic society.
The document, Religion or Belief in the Workplace: a guide for employers, details a series of hypothetical scenarios to illustrate how such rights should be protected.
Iran nuclear: Ashton says positions 'still far apart'
IRAN - Talks between world powers and Iran on its nuclear programme have ended without agreement, with the EU saying their positions "remain far apart". Over two days of talks in Almaty, Iran was asked to give up work on its most sensitive nuclear activities in return for an easing of sanctions. Iran said it was up to the world powers to demonstrate willingness to take confidence-building steps. World powers suspect Iran of a covert nuclear weapons programme.
BOJ to pump $1.4 trillion into economy in unprecedented stimulus
JAPAN - The Bank of Japan unleashed the world's most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows.
New Governor Haruhiko Kuroda committed the BOJ to open-ended asset buying and said the monetary base would nearly double to 270 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) by the end of 2014, a dose of shock therapy officials hope will end two decades of stagnation.
The policy was viewed as a radical gamble to boost growth and lift inflation expectations and is unmatched in scope even by the US Federal Reserve's own quantitative easing program. The Fed may buy more debt, but since Japan's economy is about one-third the size of the economy, Kuroda's plan looks even bolder.
"This is an unprecedented degree of monetary easing," a smiling Kuroda told a news conference after his first policy meeting at the helm of the central bank. "We took all available steps we can think of. I'm confident that all necessary measures to achieve 2 percent inflation in two years were taken today," he said.
Mysterious mail triggers global tax-haven probe
AUSTRALIA - The cascade of WikiLeaks-style revelations shedding light on the often murky world of offshore tax havens began when Gerard Ryle received a mysterious letter in the post.
The experienced investigative journalist had been busy trying to unravel the details of a large financial fraud in his native Australia when the prospect of an even bigger scoop landed on his doormat. The letter contained part of a hard drive with the details of 2.5 million digital files, a treasure trove that would ultimately yield information on 120,000 offshore companies and nearly 130,000 individuals. Ryle, who moved to Washington to head the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) soon after receiving the hard drive, admits he was not entirely sure what he was dealing with at first.
"My instinct told me it was big but you do not know," Ryle told AFP. Technical impediments also frustrated his early attempts to pore over the information he had received. The ICIJ's efforts were assisted by an Australian software company that provided free software to help make sense of the information in the files. "I approached the firm and said 'Don't ask me why I need it but can you give it to me?'" Ryle recalled.
"We're pretty confident we have a lot more because it's so vast and it takes a long time to understand," Ryle said, adding that he was not concerned about whether the revelations ultimately lead to criminal prosecutions. "It's not our duty - our duty is to report and to let others worry about that," he said. "Our job is to inform the public about something they didn't know and what people or authorities do afterwards is up to them."
A Line Of Demarcation Through The Eurozone Is Taking Shape
EUROPE - Everyone learned a lesson from the “bail-in” of the Cypriot banks: Russian account holders who’d laundered and stored their money on the sunny island; bank bondholders who’d thought they’d always get bailed out; Cypriot politicians whose names showed up on lists of loans that had been extended by the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki Bank but were then forgiven and written off.
Even brand-new Finance Minister Michael Sarris who got axed because he’d been chairman of Laiki when this was going on. His lesson: when a cesspool of corruption blows up, no one is safe. And German politicians learned a lesson too: that it worked!
“With the Cyprus aid package, it was proven that countries like Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland, if they stick together, are able to push for a strict stability course,” Hans Michelbach told the Handelsblatt. The chairman of the finance committee in the German Parliament and member of the CSU, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partner, called for deeper collaboration of the triple-A countries in the Eurozone “to strengthen the confidence of citizens and investors in the common currency.” There are still five in that euro triple-A club: Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, and Luxembourg.
Global Deposit Confiscation Called For
HOLLAND - An interesting development in the precious metals market is that the largest Dutch bank, ABN Amro, has said that they will no longer be providing physical delivery of precious metals including gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion coins and bars.
ABN AMRO, one of the largest banks in Europe announced in a letter to clients that it would no longer allow clients to take delivery of their metal and instead will pay account holders in a paper currency equivalent to the current spot value of the precious metal.
Thus, instead of legally owning a risk free, physical asset (a bullion bar or a bullion coin), the bank’s clients are now unsecured creditors and are now exposed to the bank and the financial system – somewhat defeating the purpose of owning precious metals.
The move highlights the importance of owning physical bullion either in your possession (be that in a safe or vault in a house, in the attic, under the floorboards or elsewhere in your possession) or in a secure vault in a country that is stable and respects property rights.
PM set to sign China currency deal in boost to exporters
AUSTRALIA - A currency deal enabling the Australian dollar to be converted directly into Chinese yuan, slashing costs for thousands of businesses, is set to be the centrepiece of Julia Gillard's mission to China next weekend. Australia would become the third country, after the US and Japan, to secure such an arrangement from China, which is Australia's top trading partner, with exports and imports totalling $120 billion last financial year.
The attack starts Sunday
ISRAEL - Hackers around the globe are making final preparations for a cyberattack against Israel — purported to be the biggest attack to date • They will try to hack into banks, infiltrate government sites and infect users • Israel is also preparing itself.
For over a month now, Israel has been under cyberattack. It began with words and threats, which carry a hefty significance in and of themselves, due to their psychological impact, and because they prompt Internet activity from all levels to try to prevent the damage from such an anticipated attack.
The mass cyberattack is scheduled for this Sunday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day here in Israel and a day of rest in many other countries. The day will give hackers plenty of free time to get comfortable in front of their computers and launch their computerized robots to try again and again to crash Israel's largest and most popular websites. The main objective is to disable access to these sites and to corrupt them, replacing them with images and slogans deriding Israel and the occupation.
According to Shai Blitzblau, the CEO of Maglan, Israel's premier cyber defense services provider, 13 hacker groups have already announced that they plan to take part in the projected attack, alongside hundreds of independent hackers who don't belong to any group. The hackers have developed a software tool to prevent user access that involves a computerized robot and a list of close to 100 targets. The list includes all the government-operated websites. Members of the hackers' Twitter account can access the tool and download it. The robot includes an access code with which hackers can enter the government sites through a back door.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.
