Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/queen-elizabeth-ii-hospitalized-for-stomach-infection/
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সোমবার, ৪ মার্চ, ২০১৩
রবিবার, ৩ মার্চ, ২০১৩
শনিবার, ২ মার্চ, ২০১৩
Communism making comeback in Czech Republic
David W. Cerny / Reuters
Demonstrators in Prague protest communist victories in regional government elections. In opinion polls, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) has jumped past ruling conservative parties to second place.
By Jason Hovet and Robert Muller, Reuters
PRAGUE -- Before the fall of communism, Vaclav Sloup trained the soldiers who caught thousands trying to flee across Czechoslovakia's fortified border to West Germany.
Today, he helps power a Czech Communist Party that has surged to second place in polls, tapping anger over poverty and graft.
When communism collapsed in 1989, the once-dominant party was slow to produce the same kind of reformist wing as emerged in other Eastern European countries. While statues of Lenin have vanished and the party insists it has reformed, its lawmakers still greet one another with "comrade" and maintain hard-line foreign policy views such as leaving NATO.
The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia remains a pariah to many, but it is a pariah commanding 20 percent of the vote.
Sloup's rise to become education councilor in the northern region of Karlovy Vary has aroused protests by students and former dissidents that demonstrate the strength of emotion, but the 63-year-old refuses to quit because of his past.
"I carried out my duties when Europe was divided by an Iron Curtain, and it was in accordance with laws of the time," he said. "I have nothing to be ashamed of."?
However, two Communist councilors, one a former border guard and secret police informant, resigned after demonstrations against the party in Bohemia.
"The Communist Party is anti-democratic," said David Pithart, a 47-year-old environmental consultant, whose father Petr was a leading dissident and served as Czech prime minister in 1990.
"The party doesn't know how to govern any other way," he said while at a protest in Ceske Budejovice in December.?
Second most popular party
The communists have jumped past ruling conservative parties to second place in polls and would be a prospective partner for the poll-leading, center-left Social Democrat Party after a 2014 general election.
Social Democrat leader Bohuslav Sobotka now talks openly about prospects of forming a minority government backed by communists. He wants to avoid a repeat of 2010, when his party won the most votes but could not find a partner that would allow it to form a government.
Any cooperation, however, would require ending a 1995 ban on government-level cooperation with the communists.
The Social Democrats will debate this controversial issue at a national congress March 15-16, and many delegates may yet shrink from any close political contact.
Should they refuse to deal with the communists, the country would most likely face an awkward coalition of left and right parties that could stall policymaking.
Easing the 1995 ban could shift Czech politics to the left, allowing a political consolidation and ending years of unstable rule in which cabinets with a shaky power base have repeatedly been unable to push through their full agenda.
Prime Minister Petr Necas, a center-right politician, has called the Communist Party "unreformable."
The communists' return has given rise to soul-searching for many beyond the ranks of party politics in the central European country of 10.5 million.
In October, the communists won spots on governing councils in the majority of the country's 13 regions in regional elections, gaining 20.4 percent of the overall vote versus 12.3 percent for Necas' Civic Democrats.
Sitting under a portrait of Karl Marx, Communist Party Deputy Chairman Jiri Dolejs said the party had apologized repeatedly for repressions of the communist era,?but may yet need to make another gesture to link up with the Social Democrats.
"We are now the closest to a coalition in 23 years," he said from his office in the party's massive, nondescript headquarters, which sits on Political Prisoners Street.
For some, harsh aspects of communist rule have given way to rosier memories of a system that for all its darker aspects offered job security, cheap housing and low-cost food.
Those memories are growing stronger, especially among retirees and blue-collar workers, as the country suffers the longest recession of its post-communist history, having contracted since mid-2011 because of state spending cuts.
A January survey found that just 46 percent of people felt that today's system was better than communism, a 21-year low.
"After almost a quarter of a century, the (communist) stigmatization is not so strong anymore," said Dolejs, an economist who joined the communists in January 1989.
Related:
Leftist wins Czech Republic's first direct presidential election
Huge rally in Prague against austerity measures, alleged corruption
Stalin gets his city back as Russians celebrate dictator's triumph over Nazis
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SmackDown Five-Point Preview: Mar. 1, 2013
While Randy Orton is arguably one of the most dangerous Superstars in WWE history, there is no doubt he will have a giant challenge in front of him when he enters the SmackDown arena tonight. In a mega-sized main event bout, WWE?s Apex Predator will square off against Big Show, one-on-one, on the explosive special event, Social Media SmackDown.
And as if a showdown against The World?s Largest Athlete isn?t enough to tackle in one night, there is also the distinct possibility The Shield will be out for retribution. After all, The Viper (along with Sheamus) got the better of the treacherous trio Monday on Raw. (WATCH)
Can Orton overcome the sky-high odds that are stacked squarely against him?
View CommentsSource: http://www.wwe.com/shows/smackdown/2013-03-01/five-point-preview
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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৮ ফেব্রুয়ারি, ২০১৩
It was impossible to spot Libor rigging: UK watchdog
LONDON (Reuters) - Regulators could not have spotted the "lowballing" of Libor interest rates during the financial crisis even if they had looked, Britain's Financial Services Authority said.
The watchdog's chairman, Adair Turner, told a parliamentary commission on banking standards on Wednesday it was much easier to see abuses in share trading by using computers.
Manipulation of the London interbank offered rate (Libor) during the 2008 crisis, for which three banks - Barclays BARC.L, Royal Bank of Scotland
"There was no information on the trader manipulation," Turner told the commission. Libor is used to price trillions of dollars of financial products from derivatives to mortgages.
As markets went into meltdown following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 some banks put in low submissions for rates at which they could borrow from other banks to give an impression they were sound.
The FSA's report into when and what it knew about Libor rigging will be published on Tuesday, March 5.
It comes after questions from lawmakers as to why the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission began probing possible rigging of the London-based Libor before the FSA.
Neither the FSA, the CFTC - two of the regulators that have fined the three banks - or other regulators had ways to see the trader manipulation, Turner said. "We could not have got at it by intensive supervision. You just cannot have a police force big enough to spot all these problems."
While whistleblowing was one of the few ways to report illegal activity, Turner said trading room mentality was detached from the real economy as some traders see their job in front of a screen as being like playing a computer game, asking "Why shouldn't I cheat?".
FSA managing director Martin Wheatley told lawmakers he was unconvinced about the need to start rewarding information with cash as U.S. regulators can do.
NOT BROCCOLI
Turner, whose job ends next month when the FSA is scrapped, also said the watchdog should have acted faster to deal with mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI).
Commission member Andrew Turnbull said the compensation process was mayhem with banks facing a torrent of claims. The FSA should "get a grip" to bring closure as a rising bill was sucking capital from banks.
"We are not where we want to be," Wheatley said.
some 10 billion pounds has been paid out, a sum that is expected to go higher. PPI sales totaled 50 billion pounds.
The FSA has been in talks with the British Bankers' Association on ideas for accelerating compensation and one or two banks and already had deadlines for claims, which they set three years ago, and have now passed. "The problem is one or two banks that have not done that," Wheatley said.
Wheatley also said he had been surprised by comments this month from Eric Daniels, a former chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group
"I was quite aghast. They are not selling a piece of broccoli that goes off after a few days ... I find it quite extraordinary," Wheatley said.
After the FSA is scrapped, Wheatley will head a new standalone Financial Conduct Authority, with the Bank of England responsible for ensuring banks hold enough capital and cash.
(Editing by Dan Lalor)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/impossible-spot-libor-rigging-uk-watchdog-135842279--finance.html
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Mexico's Zetas gang joins coal mining business for bigger profits - PRI
The coal miners working for the Zetas are lowered into small mines to extract coal that's sold to larger companies. (Photo by Nostrifikator via Wikimedia Commons.)
Mexico's drug cartel, the Zetas, have joined the coal mining business to increase their profits outside of their lucrative drug trading business. But legal and illegal coal mining practices in the region have mining advocates concerned for the miners' safety and future coal mining practices.
The Zetas, one of Mexico's drug cartels, is adding another source of income to their arsenal with illegal coal mining in the Mexican state of Coahuila.
Mines in Coahuila produce 95 percent of Mexico's coal. From small-scale mines, the Zetas can sometimes make a greater profit margins with coal than selling illegal drugs. John Holman, a reporter for Al Jazeera, says Coahuila is home to numerous pothos, small mines, with very little regulation.?
The Zetas typically use miners who aren't highly trained, Holman says, so they can pay them poorly and make greater profits.
"These small mines as you drive through Coahuila ... you can see them on the side of the roads in the coal district. And they?re literally just some men gathered around what looks a very ropey sort of machine to lower them down into the depths of the earth and bring up that coal," he said.
Larger companies buy the coal from these smaller mines and then send the coal to a state-owned company, Prodemi, Holman said. Prodemi sells the coal to clients.?
"This has blown up to be quite a scandal in Mexico because amongst the companies that end up with this coal, as well as private companies, are state-run companies," he said.
Last year, the Mexican federal government killed Heriberto Lazcano, the former leader of the Zetas gang, in the coal-mining town of Progreso. Holman says people believe Lazcano was in the process of becoming a miner.
"This state is very much in the hands of the Zetas gang, one of Mexico?s most ruthless drug gangs, and one that's shown a certain talent in expanding into other businesses: extortion, people trafficking, pirate copies of DVDs ... and it seems like this is the latest venture for them," he said.
With the Zetas getting into the coal mining business, legal coal miners risk being tortured or killed if they speak out, Holman said.
But both legal and illegal coal miners face safety concerns from doing their jobs.
"Almost seven years ago, there was a huge accident in which 65 miners died ? and some of those bodies have never been recovered,"?Holman?said.
Advocates for miners' rights say the safety of coal mining hasn't improved, and illegal miners will endure even worse conditions because they don't have even the few safety regulations that the legal mines have, Holman said.
There's an ongoing federal investigation into what's happening in Coahuila, but there haven't been any conclusions drawn or mass arrests, Holman said.
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Hosted by Steve Curwood, "Living on Earth" is an award-winning environmental news program that delves into the leading issues affecting the world we inhabit. More "Living on Earth."
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